The Cougar Lounge - A Series Of Curds

"We were stupid."

- Senior Badger hockey player Kyle Klubertanz's detailed explanation of the rationale behind his and a friend's tipping of cow sculptures in front of Kohl Center, the home of Badger hockey.

"The individual would have preferred to keep his hair."

- Unidentified Wisconsin faculty member who reported a Wisconsin band member who reportedly had his head shaved in a hazing incident last year during the band's trip to Michigan.

"She has personality, but she has issues also."

- Wisconsin dog owner Debbie Hulleman, whose eight-year-old Lab-German shorthair mix, Pepper Ann, likes to eat things and ate more than $800 in cash belonging to one of grandma's friends.

"Stop cakin' and finish the paper…dang!"

- Former Purdue women's hoop player Cherelle George in an e-mail to assistant coach Katrina Merriweather admonishing her for not cheating fast enough while waiting for Merriweather to finish a sociology paper for her during the 2005-06 season [a violation for which Purdue was recently put on probation and lost three scholarships]. Not only do they keep stubbornly insisting that they do not have 11 conference members in the "Big Ten" – but they are also tough on cheaters.

People are running around the Lounge shouting uncontrollably – "It's game week! It's game week!" Well, okay, it is mostly Father Lotto and he is just upset that – on the verge of the big Wisconsin trip - cow-tipping has been debunked as an urban, uh, we mean, rural myth, by – who else? – Canadians. The aforementioned Canadians from our very own University of British Columbia in our very own northwestern section of the continent say you need a cow sleeping on its feet…uh, we mean, hooves…sorry for the anthropomorphizing, that is only necessary when dealing with celebrities…and they say cows only doze instead of diving into that REM mode, plus they claim you will need 4.43 humans to do the trick and we ask you – where can you get 4.43 reliable humans these days? 3.73 maybe, but not 4.43. No way, no how, Jose. It is hard enough finding good robot squirrels – not those squirrelly spying Iranian squirrels - but good robot squirrels to do our dirty work for us and as we can see, the badgers already have a good gig over there in Basra, so maybe we can enlist Muskie, the giant fish to do the job. After all, he can fit 20 people in his mouth alone. Now, we are not as smart as that Wisconsin hockey guy but we are thinking 20 people and a giant fiberglass fish can tip over a cow.

Clearly, a cow should be tipped over - right on top of the Big Ten. First, it should be tipped over on them for continually and stubbornly refusing to change their name or office stationery to Big 11. That is a no-brainer that even an Iranian spying squirrel could figure out. Then, another cow should be tipped over on them for trying to badger [ha ha..badger…get it? ha ha…ahem] Comcast into carrying their silly Big Ten network on basic cable when Comcast wants to put it on their sports tier like everybody else so we can all avoid the inevitable Indiana-Northwestern barnburner in any sport. Besides, haven't hey heard that the internet has officially overtaken television as the primary media device [hmmm…sounds kinda kinky if you ask us]? How do they suppose we found out about the dwarf who glued his todger to a hoover? That kind of breaking news is only available on the internet and it is a fair distance more interesting than the grappling over the old oaken bucket or whatever pseudo farm implement they tussle for in some of those Midwest football rivalries. We say, toss the Big Ten bigwigs – or rather the people who think they are bigwigs and take themselves way too seriously – into the hoosegow so they can do 82 minutes of hard time with Nicole Richie. That'll learn 'em.

They apparently need some more learning in Wisconsin about things that can send you to the hoosegow after starting defensive back Jack Ikegwuonu and his brother thought it was okay to "borrow" ["you know, just to see what it's like, we'll give it back in the morning, promise…"] somebody else's Xbox, running back Lance Smith who thought it was okay to push a woman down and keep her involuntarily confined as long as it is your girlfriend [What? You mean that's not the rule?]. Maybe that will be "ex-girlfriend" if she is smart. Those guys are still on the Badger football team, so of course, we do not know what kind of vicious demon squirrels are running around in defensive lineman Jamal Cooper's head that got him suspended from the team last week. Must have been bad. China just released 1.6 million tickets to next year's Olympics in Beijing, maybe he was trying to scalp lead-filled toy ticket replicas to the schoolchildren of Madison. Beats us, all we know is that it is time to go on a beer run.

"I have my football poster so I'm ready to chant 'it's more than a game!'" says Lounge newcomer Ethel the Kaiser, who we suspect, got into a bad batch of blackberries.

We saw Ethel's poster and immediately placed it up on the wall and took a vote of Lounge clientele over what season slogan might get even more Cougar fans and well-wishers in the seats and the outright winner was "Tony will be there!" in reference to men's hoop head coach Tony Bennett who has the Midas touch at the moment [at least until the first game of the year – those fickle fans are predictable in their fickleness]. But Bennett is from Wisconsin – like just about 78% of the athletic department it seems [this is what is known in the alien worlds, like out there near the ring that was supposed to be circling Uranus but disappeared – poof! – just like that, as a joke, so the Lounge does not want to hear from agitated internet folk families complaining that we should be more accurate and say 91%] - so maybe that will not work this particular season. The Lounge is unconcerned – blasé, even – about the showdown between Cougar Gold and whatever cheese Wisconsin decides to throw out there in the pre-game cheese showdown but the clientele is infinitely more concerned that the Wazzu-Wisconsin alumni pre-game rally contains the standard steak, chicken and potato salad fare and not one solitary mention of brats or fish fry. Vegetarian Garden burgers but no brats!? It will take plenty of beer to overlook that faux pas – perhaps it will be a local Badger brew accompanied by an appropriate amount of squeaky cheese.

"That was a good start but it was only Idaho," snorts The Village Idiot with the kind of disdain only a soccer fan can successfully master.

Well, yes, Idiot, it was only Idaho and it was only an exhibition but the improvement was obvious even to an Iranian spying squirrel. Last year, in a real counting game, the Cougars beat Idaho 2-0 and were only able to manage 10 measly shots on the Vandals. Good defense but sketchy offense. This year, different story – 24 shots on Idaho, four them finding the "back of the net" as they like to say in soccer circles and still keeping the skunk despite head coach Matt Potter playing true freshman Lindsay Parlee in goal for half the game. The real test, of course, will come on the pitch this Friday in Missoula when they open up in a tough venue against a Montana program that has given Wazzu problems [Wazzu is only 6-6-1 v. the Lady Griz all-time and only 1-4 in Missoula]. Potter, however, has won three of the last four since he has been at the helm – so it will be the classic contest of the irresistible force against the immovable object.

Remember way back there in paragraph two [we have to issue a reminder in these short attention span-plagued days] when we said the internet had overtaken television as the leading supplier of brain candy in the nation? Well, here is the exact reason why – you can go to Food Court Lunch and find a smorgasbord [we use the Swedish term because Wisconsin is full of Swedes, dontcha know…] and find anything you want such as who would win a match race between Chad Johnson and Secretariat, the use of anything related to the Simpsons [but in this case, a Gabbo quote] or the best one of them all – okay, some television was involved, alright already, pipe down back there! – the Adventures of Argonaut Ashley at an in-game promotion at a CFL game earlier this month

Finally the Lounge Scientists, in honor of the first college football game of the year, tackle the much-ballyhooed hormone called oxytocin, which scientists were studying in relation to efforts to alter negative thoughts and get rid of shy behavior amongst those afflicted with social interaction phobias. Subjects were dosed with oxytocin via nasal spray and scientists report positive reactions were apparent shortly afterward, convincing them to perform a separate study on which part of the brain was calling the shots here – and the answer is – the amygdala.

"Oxytocin reduces the response of the amygdala – a brain region involved in fear response – to pictures of fearful, happy or angry faces [Lounge note: such as those that may be found on the faces of monkey-faced Iraqi badgers or Iranian spying squirrels]. This may explain why patients are more ready to engage in social situations," says Lounge Scientist #41, Markus Heinrichs, a scientist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, who was impressed with how pleased he felt with his results after he sprayed himself with a dose.

Reports at this time remain unconfirmed that WSU school officials plan to spray the entire population of Cougar fans and well-wishers before the football season opener against Wisconsin in Madison – but the Lounge urges them to eat brats and squeaky cheese in lieu of a nasal dosing.

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