How We Saved Donald Duck

Walt Disney (right, in copyright-violating jacket) and UO Athletic Director Leo Harris (holding non-animatronic duck) meet in 1947, reaching a handshake agreement that would piss off lawyers decades later.

With the Oregon Ducks playing in the Rose Bowl this afternoon, and the Official History forever confused, we thought we’d explain once and for all why the University of Oregon mascot is a Disney-licensed cartoon character, and why it’s all our fault.

UO yearbook, 1906. The phrase "Fuck a Duck" stems from misbehavior by early Eugene settlers, leading to genetic anomalies that are still visible in local natives.

The full story goes back long before our time. The real team nickname was “Webfoots”, which had nothing to do with delicious waterfowl. Instead, the original Webfoots were Massachusetts fishermen (even longer story), the name came West with the settlers, and eventually it landed on the UO’s doorstep in Eugene.

The Media (then quaintly known as The Press) couldn’t handle eight-letter names in headlines, so “Ducks” started showing up in sports sections. The UO students offically confirmed Ducks as the team mascot in 1932.

Ducks. Not Donald.

However, since Donald was introduced in 1934, a casual association was inevitable, and the Duck became that duck in the local imagination. Walt Disney himself informally approved the use in 1947 — that’s a photo of him posing with the UO athletic director and a real bird — and after Walt’s death, a legal agreement was drawn up.

And there things stood.

Until 1978. Our freshman year.

Here’s how the Official History reports it:

Oregon’s duck endured another popularity contest in 1978 when a cartoonist for the student newspaper pushed his Mallard Drake as a suitable successor to Donald, prompting one local high school student to comment that “if that sleazy Duck makes it, I’m going to OSU.” Donald was the students’ overwhelming choice by a 2-to-1 landslide in an election that saw more than twice the typical voter turnout on campus.

That election is where we step into the picture.

The RCYB is born, in a crucible of bad puns. (click to enlarge)

The cartoonist was Steve Sandstrom, and Mallard Drake was his suave Daffy-like creation for the Oregon Daily Emerald. The annual student elections were approaching, and some genius at the Emerald filed a ballot measure to officially declare Mallard the UO mascot. The Emerald then began running a series of clever house ads promoting its campaign.

We had worked up a casual acquaintance with the Emerald’s features editor, based on a self-distributed parody we literally slipped under the office door, but as yet had no formal association with the paper. (We later became satire columnist and all-around troublemaker.) Instead, as we saw house ad after house ad appearing in its pages, we thought—

Well, here’s what we didn’t think: Who’s standing up for Donald? Honestly, we couldn’t care less. But if the Emerald was running a mock campaign for Mallard, surely someone needed to start a mock campaign against him. And thus the Retain Class in Your Bird committee was formed.

By us. As a counter-gag.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smelly photo-op. (click to enlarge)

Our RCYB conveniently shared an acronym with the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, a ridiculously silly group of post-Sixties lefties still haunting campus at the time. Adopting their shopworn tactics, we held an “upper-class sit-in” at the Emerald’s office on Monday of election week, smoking cigars and squatting on their couch until a photographer arrived to memorialize the occasion.

The story ran the next morning. And that’s when everyone started paying attention — and joining in the fun. Mallard may well have won, but thanks to our intervention, the ginned-up “controversy” drew a record turnout: Mallard was trounced, 1,068 to 590.

Technically, Donald didn’t “win” — the election wasn’t a “choice” between mascot candidates. It’s our fault that the election was regarded as a referendum for Donald, and not a referendum against Mallard. We made Donald the issue.

The Official History also misses an important nuance: 1,658 votes were cast in the measure. The race for student-body president drew less than half the votes. On the same ballot.

That comparison was our immediate public spin after the election, and we were quite proud of it. So proud, in fact, that we used it as our rallying cry the following year, when we ran for student-body president — as the “Apathy Candidate”, claiming the allegiance of some fifteen thousand students who never voted in campus elections.

We promised nothing. We played solitaire at the presidential debate.

And we missed the run-off by only 25 votes.

The Duck [University of Oregon]
57 Comments

An awesome history. Reminds me of my first campaign, when we ran a stuffed aramdillo for student body president in high school under the “Oat Willie” banner from the Freak Brothers comix. Came in 3rd out of a field of four, but without the earth shattering implications of Nojo’s efforts.

Oh, and 1st!!!

Student elections at this country’s universities are, perhaps, one of the greatest bastardizations of democracy in the history of the field.

Take Stanford’s. For four years, I was subjected to the irrelevant, by the vain, for no recognizable purpose. It did not resemble an ideal political process in any real way. Sure, you had voting blocs, but it came down to who had the funniest slogan and the most funding (largely, it must be said, from Mommy and Daddy). Slick campaigns won over not-slick campaigns. And there was no pretense about actually doing something useful.

The flip side is the funding of student orgs. Now, there, people could actually vote on something concrete — “I want to pay $2 per year to keep the radio station running,” for instance. But, still, it was more marketing than anything else. The fact that I ran the business side of the station at Stanford (and a four-year DJ… the most fun I’ve ever had on a day-in-day-out basis) and won a crucial election? Please tell me that it was down solely to my skill and the noble nature of our cause. I, however, know better.

(Incidentally, speaking of Farm — we fucking stunk on 3rd down conversions yesterday. Missed a golden opportunity to beat Oklahoma — who can’t get beat often enough, of course.)

(But also: don’t forget — hockey outdoors, at Fenway! If you’ve never watched hockey, flip on NBC at 1300 Eastern War Time. You’ll be impressed. I went to Wrigley last year, and it was painfully awesome. Your competition for Sport at that hour will be a third-rate bowl that is considered second-rate simply because of the calendar. I mean, the “Capital One Bowl.” Jesus.)

This is an awesome tale…I never ran for anything, and the best spoof I pulled off was leveraging my music column in the high school rag to drum up interest in the fake punk band my buddies and I fielded for the senior talent show. Our 45 seconds of ‘Pretty Vacant’ were legendary, and if course I scooped the MSM with an interview with…myself.

@CB, I’m watching the annual Mummers parade on Teevee as the coffee and water replaces the rum in my veins; this thing is like Mardi Gras except it is cold, there’s no booze and all the women look like Maude. Hockey is looking good right about now.

Note to Stinquers: SFL could use our support right about now. Visit the clubhouse.

@Nojo: Very cool story. There were moments of great anxiety this a.m. when we couldn’t get ABC on the cable – Mr. SFL the Duck was quite concerned that we wouldn’t fix the problem by the game.

@Dodgerblue: Thanks, dear.

@chicago bureau: four-year DJ… the most fun I’ve ever had on a day-in-day-out basis

The only thing that would get me up at four-fucking-thirty was a morning-drive radio show, and it was indeed great fun. Especially when someone complained that I called Mozart “Wolfie” on-air. Someone from another radio station.

(On the other hand, the wife of the music school’s performance-hall namesake loved my shtick.)

Student government, of course, had nothing to do with students, and everything to do with resume-padding. For my third at-bat — I made good use of my college years — I ran 31 candidates for student-body president. Longest ballot you’ve ever seen, and I still have it.

@nojo: You must have gone light on the weed to have been that active. I graduated UCLA summa cum marijuana.

@chicago bureau: I mean, the “Capital One Bowl.” Jesus.

Alas, Sandy Eggo’s entry is no longer sponsored by Culligan, and so no longer can be called the Toilet Bowl.

@Dodgerblue: Since I just forwarded this post to the family, I’ll have to remain silent on that subject. We’ll just say I was a late bloomer and leave it at that.

(Just remembered my standard line when the subject came up: “I am a child of my generation.”)

@nojo: My favorite Mike Watt lyric goes something like this:
The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70’s
It’s not reality, just someone else’s sentimentality…
Look what it did to us…

@chicago bureau: @nojo: I did three years of college radio, also my favorite time killer outside of ultimate frisbee and grrrls. I volunteered for shows at all hours, any time. I convinced the programming manager to try a 24 hour format, then signed up for three consecutive nights/mornings of 12 am to 7 am to make it happen. It was a 10 freakin watt station, my audience was mostly made of my wasted friends and prisoners from the local federal pen, and I absolutely loved every freakin minute of it.

@Nabisco:

The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70’s
It’s not reality, just someone else’s sentimentality…

Yeah, well, we knew that at the time. American Grafitti? Happy Days? Animal House? Grease? The Boomers were looking back before we had a chance to look forward.

@nojo: Since your family is reading this post, I’ll just say that I initially mis-read what it was that the wife loved and wondered if you were also an inspiration for the Mrs. Dean Wormer storyline in AH.

@nojo: My copy of the “Grafitti” soundtrack actually turned me on to 50s rock, so that was a good thing. But yeah.

@chicago bureau: Looks like JeauxPa is getting his butt dragged through the mud. And since when is it wet and cloudy in Florida, except during hurricane season?

@Nabisco: Done right, radio is the most intimate and rewarding form of mass communication. No other medium allows you to get inside someone’s head like that. Sound is not a focal point, it envelops a space. You’re in the room with somebody, purring in their ears.

I was a volunteer jazz jock before I got the paid classical gig. I would tape a show and play it back at the pizza parlor where I was prep cook — in the morning, before anyone else arrived. It wasn’t an exercise in self-infatuation, but a learning tool: How does this sound to a Typical Listener? Once you learn how to squeeze your personality through a microphone, it becomes really fun.

@Mistress Cynica: Alas, I can claim no credit (or blame) for Animal House, although it was filmed on campus the prior fall of my freshman year. I’d walk past the decorated exterior — only the front, not the sides of the building — in the morning, I never saw the statue in the quad (although the base was marked in the ground), and the only scene I remember watching being filmed was in the student-union “Fishbowl”, where the food fight broke out.

But, as I like to say: That really was a horse in the real UO president’s office. Which leads to yet another prank: We elected him president of our dorm. He graciously accepted, asked about the perks, and posed with us on the admin-building steps for our yearbook photo.

@Nojo: my brother always claimed the script was based on his frat, an ivyish one in New Hampshire.

I was a DJ at the mighty K.A.O.S. – one hundred thousand microwatts strong – serving the dorms of the august ski country party school I briefly attended until “taking a year off” in which I built fences in the mountains and flipped burgers at a ski area. I was later did a few shifts at a new freeform station getting off the ground in the ancestral homeland (how I got involved, I don’t remember), but I went back to the big city to give college another shot and so here we are.

@Nabisco: Let’s go to the tape

The screenplay was adapted by Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller and Harold Ramis from stories written by Miller and published in National Lampoon magazine based on Miller’s experiences in the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at Dartmouth College, as well as Ramis’ experiences in the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis, and producer Ivan Reitman’s experiences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Memory fails (and I never read the NatLamp articles), but I think Pinto was a stand-in for Miller at Dartmouth. I used to have a photo-heavy “novelization”, released before the movie, that highly amused me at the time. (Pinto’s name, never explained in the movie, stemmed from birthmarks on his cock.)

Part of my crushing disappointment at the Eugene premiere — I was the only person not roaring with laughter in a packed house — was that the movie didn’t come close to the humor in the novelization. Although maybe if I read the latter again today, I would think the entire enterprise sucked.

Really: College years full of disco and toga parties. No wonder I went rogue.

@Nabisco: @nojo: The one thing the 70s left me with was a deep and abiding hatred for everything 50s.

This is getting a little bizarre, for I, too, was a DJ at my college radio station with such a low wattage that you couldn’t get it on the edge of campus (and it was a small urban campus). This was the height of grunge music, so naturally I focused on playing alt-country. Station manager was my boyfriend’s roommate, so he didn’t care that I was providing some Lyle Lovett, Shawn Colvin, and Stevie Ray Vaughn as a change of pace from the Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam that was on infinite loop the rest of the time. Also did college newspaper, in the pre-desktop publishing days. So much fricken fun, and probably dragged my GPA down 0.5 as a result. (Because I had two paying jobs on the side as well).

@redmanlaw: I caught up with FM at the tail end of the Golden Age, when jocks were live around the clock, playlists weren’t writ in stone, and entire albums would be broadcast at night so you could tape them on cassette.

And, as chance would have it, my first experience in radio was as a college news stringer for a local FM station. So I didn’t have to wait for the album broadcast — I could just slip into a spare studio and take care of it myself. That’s actually the first time I heard Dark Side, and my immediate thought was, How the fuck can they get away with that?

@SanFranLefty: I was on academic probation while I was at the college paper because I was so hard core about it. I had better grades when I was drankin’ an’ partyin’ an’ shit. They named an award after me there for best student reporter and I’m not even dead yet.

Being on AP meant my application to be editor was dee-clined, which was cool cuz I went on to cover higher education issues at the state legislature, causing me to miss about two months of school working the ledge dawn to midnight. After that, I worked at the local paper in my senior year, missed almost all my last semester while on the road hitting the reservations for a major project, and then stayed out there for another year or so on a second major project that won me a Big Award and got me nominated for That Other Really Big Award. Then I quit having fun and went to law school.

@SanFranLefty: Also did college newspaper, in the pre-desktop publishing days.

How pre?

When I arrived at the Emerald, the office was stuffed with typewriters. By the time I left — in 1981 — the office was stuffed with dedicated terminals that fed a Linotronic in the back. Not desktop publishing as such, but not Dark Ages either.

Obligatory footnote: Aldus (which introduced PageMaker and thus desktop publishing) was founded by Paul Brainerd, UO class of 1970, and Emerald editor, 1969-70. Brainerd initiated the process that made the Emerald an independent student newspaper in 1971.

See, it’s not all about Nike.

C’mon Ducks, pull your heads out of your asses!

@Dodgerblue: You would think the Ducks would be ready for a passing game after Boise State trounced them.

Nojo, I would be very grateful if you would continue your longstanding tradition of doing small but significant actions to improve all our lives by blocking this URL for the not-the-MSNBC ad space:
http://www.everyotherdaydiet.com/video.php

I abhor those ads that animate fat-to-skinny ladies in bikinis. Much obliged!

@SanFranLefty: Well heck, maybe we’ll get a good postgame fight.

Or is it over already? Any Waving Green Fingers in the crowd?

@flippin eck: ’Tis blocked, allowing for kick-in time.

@nojo: Hooray! You’re still the wind beneath my wings, Nojo.

Three minutes to go . . . goddammit . . .

@nojo: Different frat, same school. At least I can prick that balloon a little bit at the next get together.

@SanFranLefty:
@nojo: During my Peace Corps days, I headed up the monthly fishass wipe that operated on the ethos of “we’ll print anything”. I typed that fracker up on a Selectric, and mimeographed the damn thing, 100 copies a month. That was 83-85. I was always pleased when I’d visit friends in their sites and find pages from our latest issue hanging in the latrine because, well, you have to read something when you’ve got the trots.

@Nabisco: I started an in-house newsletter for law clerks at the Navajo Nation legal aid program that I sent out weekly by fax in 92. Don’t know if anyone ever kept it going.

@nojo: @redmanlaw: @Nabisco: Remember when fax machines were the new technology? I do. I am on the weird cusp of Gen X – not to mention almost all of my friends (until recently) were two to five years older than I was, plus I was a little precocious thing and started school early. Oh, and the desktop publishing – it was coming out my junior year but we couldn’t afford it at our campus rag.

Like RML and ‘Bisco, I started an in-house newsletter at my pre-law school job that went out to a bunch of affiliated orgs once a week. It contained a hodge-podge of bits on our social issues plus popular culture. If it weren’t for a couple of jackasses I worked with, it would have been the perfect job. Sadly, it only survived my departure to law school by about 4 months and then it died. So sad.

@SanFranLefty: For a generation that didn’t do the Lindbergh-Moon Landing span, we’ve had a pretty interesting time of it. Royals! Olivettis! IBM Selectrics! How did we ever survive?

The UO archivist (since retired) had a treasured collection that rivaled medieval torture devices for gruesome terror: mid-century office equipment.

@nojo: I don’t see how I am not a boomer, and I don’t see how you aren’t, too, if you are about my age, as I always thought.

I don’t like attacks on boomers. Boomers aren’t, for example, responsible for our current economic and financial ethics. I notice it, when I deal with business people as a lawyer, the old ones, the boomers, are much more cautious and yes, ethical. Its the generation that came of age and graduated from the business schools beginning in the 80s that embraced the reaganist ethic of profit uber alles, of gaming the market, inventing systems of legal organized fraud, such as credit default swaps.

No, I am not fond of boomer-bashing, the boomers are my people, I am one of the youngest, but I am one, and I don’t sense that this nasty decline in business ethics is something that can attributed to my generation.

To me the tipping point in our culture was Watergate. Boomers like Hillary Clinton, a staffer on the Watergate committee, led the charge against Nixon. If you can divide political moments by generation, I would put watergate as the high point of boomers against the older, WWII generation.

The aftermath of Watergate, to me, is what started this new era of total cynicism and ruthlessness and contempt for ethics.

It was after watergate that the meme arose that “Nixon was not worse than anyone else, he just got caught,” and that ethic, or abandonment of ethics, led directly to our vicious political culture, and the current piracy that is the only ethic of our financial system. This completely cynical idea that everyone does it, so you are a fool to be honest, that, to me, is a post-Watergate thing, a post-boomer thing.

@Promnight: I was 3-1/2 when Nixon went off in the helicopter with his peace/I’m innocent gang-flashing. So my generation – aka those of us born b/n 1970 and 1974 – are totally f’ed – b/c we (I) remember finding white powder on the bathroom counter at our parents’ friend’s house…or being told to carefully measure out the white powder b/c of being so science oriented…or having the honor of holding the giant bag for the swinger couples to pick out keys…the ’70s are so cool except when you consider it from the POV of the kids who were silent witnesses. And I was lucky – 75% of my friends’ parents got divorced or worse.

That’s why I liked the ’80s. Greed and hot pants.

@Promnight: Demographically, you are correct: Boomers go until 1964-ish, followed by GenX.

Culturally, it’s another matter entirely. If you weren’t part of the Sixties — if you were, oh, let’s say ten in 1969 — no way in hell you’re a Boomer. Maybe you had some older siblings or cousins who were part of the show, but it wasn’t your scene. You may have barely been aware of it.

Nor, by that benchmark, are you GenX — you’re too old for that, by just a few years. You’re a freaking fogey at their party.

So what are you? A crack in the demographic sidewalk, the fringe of the bell curves. Too young for the Draft, too old for Registration. You grow up where all the attention — all the marketing — is aimed to one side or another. I rather like it, but it’s an unusual perspective for a middle-class white boy.

You’re free to identify with Boomers. I don’t. Their decade was the Sixties, mine was the Seventies, GenX claimed the Eighties. I was twentysomething when thirtysomething premiered.

I’m watching a famous documentary right now about a famous concert that took place in 1969. It’s Boomer Central, all those kids in upstate New York. It’s good music. But it’s not the music of my life.

Where was I in 1969? In Eugene, of course. In third grade. Listening to the Carpenters.

@SanFranLefty: You’re just a tad younger than NojoBro, whose cultural references are completely different than mine. (Mom took ten years to recover from me…)

For comparison, I was 4-1/2 when JFK was shot — no memory of that whatsoever, although I may have seen Oswald plugged. (All I remember is tuning in cartoons and getting fucking news that weekend.)

The world at large doesn’t come into focus for me until 1968 — RFK and MLK I remember quite well. Before that, it’s all Batman, Star Trek and the Monkees. And Laugh-In.

@nojo: I can still remember the horror of typing papers on an actual typewriter. I used wite-out by the gallon.

All this crap about The Greatest Generation and Boomers and Gen X and Gen Y is just advertising-speak that’s made its way into the language. None of the labels are anything but wedges. No previous generations felt the need to distinguish themselves from either their predecessors or their successors. Until we remember that we all have so incredibly much more in common than the infinitesimal details that divide us we humans are well and truly screwed.

Speaking of details that divide us, the Big Ten actually won the Pac Ten Invitational in Pasadena? I’m stunned! Pleased but stunned.

@Promnight: @nojo: I was born the same year as Prommie, and I definitely do not identify with Boomers. If I recall, the book Generation X was originally written about those born at the tail end of the Baby Boom, for whom none of the childhood experiences or cultural references of that group applied. We didn’t protest in the ’60s because we were in grade school. We weren’t the yuppies of the ’80s—sorry Prom, they were all Boomers who trashed their hippie ethics to get rich. We graduated from college when the only jobs available were low-paying retail or service positions. The only lawyers I worked with at big firms who had anything resembling ethics or any feeling of professional collegiality were those who were alive during (and sometimes fighting in) WWII. The Boomer lawyers I knew (Stinque Law obvs excepted) were a greedy bunch of fucks who destroyed what was once an honorable profession. The Gen X and younger lawyers are only following their yuppie lead. Check the birth dates of the investment bankers, “regulators”, and officials responsible for the current financial mess and I think you’ll find they were mostly born between 1945 and 1955.

@Dave H: Dude, don’t gloat about the Big Ten over the Pac Ten in this crowd. The Left Coast may be a little slow around here, but we’ll get angry eventually! ;-P

/don’t want to talk about last night’s Tree v. Sooner game

@nojo: I am not sure if music defines it, but I definitely grew up in the 70s, and love the Eddie Vedder version of “The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70s.” I also love that other guy when he sang “excess ain’t rebellion, you’re drinking what they’re selling.”

I am definitely completely a 70s kid, and that was a strange time.

The predominant pop music of my time was disco, and I was in complete rebellion against it. The first album I ever bought was Kiss “Destroyer,” and I will argue that that was a good album. There was Boston, and the Toys in the Attic album by Aerosmith was major. I listened to the Who, and Steve Miller, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Yes, and I loved Brain Salad Surgery. And then in 1978, 1979, there was suddenly this thing we called power pop then, The Knack, The Cars, and the best of them, What I like About You, those guys, and then I discovered The Clash, London Calling and Sandanista, and I worked backwards into punk during the 80s, and also enjoyed the Smiths and the Cure, but I am now, in my dotage, a punker, a pure punker, and the Ramones are my favorite band of my lifetime.

I lately listen to Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed and especially, I loves me my Tom Waits, and also, I adore the new garage bands, and The Killers.

But since I was 5 and to this day, the Beatles are to me the greatest rock and roll band ever, ever, ever. And I had a bunch of Beatles 45s when I was a young kid.

But thats not what your reference to boomers was about.

I think dividing our culture into this boomer, gen-x, slacker, whatever, its all BS.

What divides our culture is educated, informed, progressivism, and the monstrosity that is modern conservatism, a downright fasicst, amoral, evil, warmongering, lying, selfish, racist, xenophobic, anti-intellectual, might-makes right asshole culture of idiots, and this divide crosses all generational cohorts. This evil culture of modern conservatism seems to me a reactionary backlash that has roots all the way back to the civil rights movement, and even before, to the civil war. Watergate ignited the flames already burning, and its a cancer in our society.

9-11 was, I am now convinced, the second firing on Fort Sumpter.

@Dave H: No previous generations felt the need to distinguish themselves from either their predecessors or their successors.

Well, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” is credited to Jerry Rubin…

The broader point, about marketing co-opting the counterculture and beyond, is long-observerd and still relevant. But it’s not all just the late-century equivalent of greeting cards. The sheer size of the Boomers was historically remarkable, and the development of mass media between 1950 and now — three generations — is stunning.

The surface of American life has changed so quickly, and so broadly, we do have different cultural referents based on our age. Every year, the UO (and I’m sure, many other colleges) issues a checklist to faculty and staff: Here’s what you can expect 18-year-olds to know about, and what is ancient history to them.

For example, the class that entered last fall was born in 1991. They know Clinton like I know LBJ — just barely, if at all. It’s all Shrub to them, with a topping of Obama. The Internet — broadband Internet — is a blasé fact of life. (AOL? Earthlink? CompuServe? What? Hello?) Marketing can and will prey on that, but the underlying distinctions are real enough.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be the Ducks unless they choked at the big game.

@Promnight: The predominant pop music of my time was disco, and I was in complete rebellion against it.

One of my most popular campus columns was about the emergence of Airheads. Everyone loved it. Including the Airheads.

What divides our culture…

…is many things, which slice many ways. Given our proclivities in this forum, we focus on the religiopolitical side of things. But our very interest in the subject is yet another division. In another world, we could still be arguing over John/Paul, Keith/Mick, or Beatles/Stones.

And then there’s my journey from Carpenters to Coltrane, but I’m a freak.

But while I’ll agree that there’s some artificiality in how the pie is sliced, there’s also artificiality in not slicing it at all. In the eyes of the Lord, and the Constitution, yes, we are all equal, and our similarities overwhelm our differences. (I’m much better with fellow mammals than with birds. I don’t get birds.) We’re children of the world, yes, but we’re also children of our culture and society. Kids born in 1959 grew up in a much different world than kids born in 1979. What you take for granted makes a big difference in how you see things.

@nojo: The thing about birds is, they are pure malevolent evil, they are truly the descendants of the dinosaurs and the most advanced reptilian intelligences on earth, and they are the meanest, most evil animals on earth, but we have this romantic view of them as cute little birdies. Cheney has a bird’s heart.

@Promnight: Prom and I are twins but for geography, geneology, and age – I think I’m a tick or two closer to half a century. We’re John v. Paul, Clash v. the Jam, TDK v. Maxell, Levis v. Wrangler, Cons v. Keds.

So, it was you, Mr. Stinque, who undermined Sandstrom. I can’t remember how I voted in the mascot election, but being for upheaval in general, I probably backed Mallard. Besides, the Mallard Drake campaign created a “Mallard is Meaner” poster featuring Mallard as a wrestler, which our wrestling team later adopted as our own mascot. This image http://tinyurl.com/ye4uvbv adorned everything from Oregon wrestling camp t-shirts to tournament medals for a couple decades. Then Pat Kilkenny became UO AD in 2007 and killed wrestling to make room for baseball–which he hoped would generate more dough. In a similarly greedy move, Oregon rebranded the O to usurp Donald as the Oregon icon that Oregon would own all rights to, and not have to pay any cut to Disney, or bother with sales distribution restrictions outside of Oregon that Disney imposes on Donald, or concern over any Nike/Disney conflict.

@Hank Hosfield: To be fair, you knew it was me all along, you spit-valve jockey.

It will be great to watch Oregon Ducks, i have bought tickets from
http://ticketfront.com/event/Oregon_Ducks-tickets looking forward to it.

How the hell did I miss this?

@JNOV: I only mention it when the Ducks are within spitting distance of national championships. So, y’know, twice.

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