We were born two blocks off the University of Oregon campus, around the corner from what would later be filmed as the Animal House. We don’t recall whether we were there for Autzen Stadium’s opening day in 1967, but we would haunt the endzone “Knothole Gang” with the other kids soon enough.

(Note: Autzen Stadium is cement, and has no knotholes.)

We watched Fouts. We watched Norv. We watched Bobby Moore, who would grow up to be Ahmad Rashad and marry Bill Cosby’s wife.

Our high school played its football games there Friday nights. Then, and for a couple years in college, we played trumpet in the marching band. We were intensely jealous of the Stanford band, which got to run around and have fun while we were stuck doing the same goddamn circular formation halftime after halftime after halftime. The fifth time it was announced, the fans started booing. We agreed with them.

But none of it mattered. The Ducks sucked. They were featured in the satirical “Bottom Ten” column so often, the local newspaper canceled it. That was a sad day. We enjoyed being losers. Hey, it’s only football. No point taking it seriously.

We loved that about Eugene.

Unfortunately, people wealthier than us had other ideas.

Read more »

[Psych Central]

“[Republican Jeff] Landry has introduced H.R. 3676, which would amend the NDAA by saying that ‘no United States citizen may be detained against his or her will without all the rights of due process afforded to the citizen in a court ordained or established by or under Article III of the Constitution of the United States.'” That’s right: A Republican is protecting us from Democrats. [The Hill, via ThinkProgress]

PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: “Introduced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the plan kept Medicare intact for people 55 or older, but dramatically changed the program for everyone else by privatizing it and providing government subsidies… The Democratic attack about ‘ending Medicare’ was a pervasive line in 2011 that preyed on seniors’ worries about whether they could afford health care.” [via Political Wire]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqI0vjArbn8

Rick Perry’s latest campaign ad cuts to the chase.

[via Know Your Meme]

Our guest columnist is Noel Biderman, founder of an adultry-friendly dating website, who has purchased a billboard in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Now that Newt is the leading contender in the race for the GOP nomination, we felt compelled to make a point to illustrate how times have changed when a serial divorcee/adulterer is capturing the hearts of the American people.

Gingrich proves that marital fidelity has no bearing on someone’s ability to do a job. Rather than judge him, Americans have finally embraced the reality that affairs are commonplace, and perhaps paradoxically, might be an indication of great leadership to come. He is not the first nor last politician who will step outside of their marriage.

Adultery club “endorses” Gingrich [Morning Call, via ThinkProgress]

If we were to sum up 2011 in a word, and since “malaise” is legendarily, if not factually, taken, we would choose miasma, which our StinquePad dictionary calls “an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere that surrounds or emanates from something”. It’s not any one thing that sucked. Everything sucked.

Which makes our task today — sorting varieties of Suck into categories — uncommonly difficult. We have to carve the maggot-covered chicken somewhere, but it’s awfully hard to see the chicken through the maggots. Of the many fine categories proposed last week, they had a common theme: People were even more stupid than usual this year. But rather than pull a Time and cheat our own rules for arbitrary year-end publishing gimmicks, we’re diving in.

So welcome to the second installment of the Fourth Annual Stinque Awards for Achievement in Infamy, sponsored by Anosognosia Bitters. (“Anosognosia: For when you’re mad as hell, and we just can’t take you any more.”) Voting is now open in the following categories:

Read more »