It's an Idiot Thing; I'm Quite Certain You'd Understand

True Story: I was working at Hallmark on Sunday when a customer came in wearing a tee shirt that read, "It's a Southern thing...you wouldn't understand," the words framing a Confederate flag. This was on top of the obnoxiously huge Confederate flag belt buckle the man was also sporting. The combination of the tee shirt and the belt buckle irked me to the point that I wasn't sure if I could wait on this man had he approached the register. I was a little taken aback by my level of vexation until I realized a few things:

1. I live in Ohio. Ohio is not and never has been a part of the South.

2. The Confederacy was crushed by Union troops close to 143 years ago.

3. Anyone who wears a Confederate flag in the year 2008 is either ignorant, delusional, or racist. I'm inclined to believe that someone who wears a Confederate flag in the year 2008 is all three of those.

Kent State Rocks My Socks

Or, I should say, Kent State men's basketball rocks my socks. Let's hope they tear it up like the team did back in '02 when they reached the Elite Eight. Although, I must say that even though the students on campus were excited about that, it was actually more exciting the year before when the Golden Flashes upset Indiana in the first round. I recall that our normally lackadaisical campus was a little bit more, shall we say, spirited that night. (Just out of curiosity, why isn't the opposite of lackadaisical, "daisical?" Wouldn't that make sense?)

Anyhow, I went up to the game Saturday night and witnessed KSU beat Akron for the third time this year. I didn't make it to their first meeting, a home game for Kent, but I went to their game at Akron's J.A.R. arena. That was a good game. Kent was winning by a good margin for most of the game, and then Akron came back to tie it up in the last two minutes...only to be crushed by Al Fisher's three-pointer with two seconds left. It was awesome. Those stupid little Zips fans were stunned. It was great.

By the way, I don't recommend attending a Zips home game any time soon. I, admittedly, am biased, but I don't like their arena. I especially don't like it when their hype man comes out onto the floor, trying to pump up the crowd. There shouldn't have to be a guy out on the middle of the court, screaming into a microphone, cajoling the crowd into supporting their team. That's why there's a student section and, to some extent, cheerleaders. The J.A.R. has a huge sound system, fully capable of blasting one's eardrums out, and when the hype man would yell at the crowd to make some noise, instead of the fans screaming until their vocal cords bled, Akron would just turn the volume on their sound system up, completely drowning out the cheers of the crowd. How lame.

I voted today!

I voted today and I have the sticker to prove it! Yes, yes, I did my civic duty and voted against every tax levy on the ballot. Actually, I only had to vote down two tax levies, one of them a levy for the local school district. And actually, the tax levies were the only things I voted on, because I am a registered "non-partisan" voter. I like it that way.

I'm tired of school levies. Our state has an unconstitutional public school funding system and I'm saying no to unconstitutionalism. When people decided to elect our current governor, one of his campaign promises was to fix our state school funding, and that hasn't happened. Fix the funding issue already and stop trying to raise property taxes. And allowing people to play stupid keno games in bars isn't the answer, either.