The Cougar Lounge - Intentional Mind Boggling

"Contador's performance is suspicious – very suspicious. But we can't say anything unless he's caught in a doping check. I don't trust this team."

- AG2R team manager Vincent Lavenu, at the Tour de France sharing his internal demons regarding American-based Team Discovery Channel led to victory this year by Spaniard Alberto Contador and who have now won eight of the last nine Tours.

"We're the only regulatory agency in the world that really looks at unusual activity as far as the movement of the line and that type of conduct. That's why whenever red herrings are thrown up that somehow Las Vegas is a bad place because we have sports betting, I look at it as a reverse – I think it's a good thing that Las Vegas has the type of regulation that makes sure bad things don't happen."

- Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman - and the Lounge would like to believe Oscar because bad things happen to those who are non-believers and try to move that 42-point spread on the USC-Idaho game.

"Come on, Dad – it doesn't take a genius to realize that Houston's failed to cover their last 10 outings on away turf the week after scoring more than three touchdowns in a conference game."

- Lisa Simpson in the classic "Lisa the Greek" episode of The Simpsons show.

The cheating raccoons are everywhere! Once the nocturnal, bandit-faced scalawags were highly valued members of the family of story-telling mammals and then…oh wait, those are raconteurs. Well, those wily bastards are not to be trusted either – they would probably cheat on their taxes, their wife and a bike race and call it a bad day! The Lounge is sick of cheaters like that guy on that nature show that said he was a nature boy when he was really a room service boy, former Washington football coach Don James, that kid who sat behind us and cheated on the SAT test, that tennis player at Wimbledon who cheated to the baseline on the left, the Tour de France rider who cheated and then ran over an old French guy and former NBA ref "Vegas Tim" Donaghy, who made bad things happen in Las Vegas and now all the buffets cost 35 cents more. The only place we can go for consolation is ESPN – because they understand. They know what it is all about – it is all about cricket and rugby – with a little hoop, fantasy sports and auto racing thrown in. When there is trouble in life, Americans compensate by shopping – it is what made our country great - and that is exactly what ESPN has done. They have gone on a shopping spree and bought up all the prime cricket and rugby web sites and then did a few more tequila shots and bought a NASCAR web site and set up a content-sharing deal with a martial arts outfit. That's what we're talking about - ESPN is in the scrum! Cheating in sports? Who can we buy next? Give us another scoop of ice cream! In fact, one guy was so inspired by the recent rugby and cricket purchases that he decided to have a party and celebrate with his friends.

Meanwhile, the Lounge has been alerted that college football season is just around the corner and that means, of course, it is time to begin determining who has the best mascot - and already there is some controversy as neither the Anteater nor Banana Slug have made this list – immediately showering intense doubt as to the veracity of the list and how much alcohol the authors really swilled before compiling it. After all – Albert the Alligator? Any plankton-brained schoolchild could have come up with that mascot. The Lounge clientele are looking for originality, verve and maybe a little perversion [so long as it stays on that side of the room – don't touch us, you mascot perverts] and Albert, Uga and Bevo are definitely not bringing it on. Now, Brutus the Bucknut caught our eyeball because he is poisonous but he doesn't have the panache of an anteater [UC-Irvine] or the oozing qualities of the Banana Slug [UC-Santa Cruz]. Now the Tree at Stanford has got it down for proper antics – but it's still just a Tree, no matter how you dress it up in palm doilies – so it's missing a little something extra to make it numero uno - we can say that with a very convincing accent. So the Lounge clientele will continue to raid the liquor cabinets and search the collegiate universe during the course of the 2007-08 athletic season for mascot nirvana.

The Lounge took an internal poll – very dangerous, as we internalize everything - and was trying to figure out who was smarter – Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote or Inspector Clouseau? Naturally, we were flummoxed, because the Lounge only made it through the seventh grade before exploding in a gigantic hormonal burst creating the Crab Nebula [Scientists think it is made of gas – ha, those goofy scientists! what do they know? All escaped hormones, you goofy scientists.] and we would have taken it to an institute of higher learning like, say, UCLA or Michigan – but they are too busy being involved in burglaries in Westwood and 82% of the football players at Ann Arbor are getting their college edumacations in general studies, so they are obviously still trying to find the liberry [it isn't where Dennis Erickson told them it would be]. So we just figured David Beckham was the smartest – because any guy who can make $250 mil for 14 minutes of play is playing with a full deck – and who is televising all 14 minutes? You know it, Chesterfield.

The Lounge was saddened this week by the untimely demise of one of our favorite sources of insanity – and really one of the world's bravest havens of journalism [it says it right there - the world's only reliable newspaper] – the Weekly World News. WWN was not afraid to have both a monkey AND a horse as columnists when most publications were still toying around with pigs. Now this – word that WWN, source of all exclusive Bat Boy news [including the time he took the cops on a three-state chase in his Mini-Cooper] – is shuttering their palatial Florida estate doors this month. It is a sad day in Southampton, New York – home of the Mosquito Lady – when we can't get our breaking news about beavers suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder.

"Well, at least the guy did the "Wright" thing and started Derrick in three of those games," sulks Dereck "The Avant-Garde Left Wing Namby Pamby" Eau de Toilette, who has recently ingested the new wonder ingredient – glee – to get him through football season.

Ha-ha, we get it, the "Wright" thing – but Wright was all wrong for the first two Team USA games in the Pan Ams when he was playing turnover-prone Scottie Reynolds and offensive black hole Drew Neitzel at the guard positions and watched the USA go 0-2 before he finally wised up and started Low, who then led the Americans on their three-game win streak to save a tiny bit of face with a fifth place finish. Still, there cannot be too many complaints from Cougar fans and well-wishers as both Low and his Cougar teammate Kyle Weaver received valuable international playing experience on top of the experience they received in the earlier Down Under tour and with teammates Aron Baynes and Thomas Abercrombie being selected to play for their respective countries – Australia and New Zealand – at the World University Games in Bangkok, Thailand, this week – it all works out being a proverbial win-win for the Cougars and head coach Tony Bennett.

"If we could just get some big name teams to come to Pullman, I would be a little happier about football season," mumbles Otto T. Ott.

Well, 2OT, this is a tough Catch-22 [or Catch-666 as Satan likes to call it]. WSU needs the money and they can currently make more of it by playing body bag road games against the likes of Auburn, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Notre Dame [and the Cougs would have got a return from Ohio State until the Buckeyeballs bought them out]. So that leaves Wazzu with the likes of Baylor and San Diego State for home games – only they have decided to shift those to Seattle, which seems to go against the original purpose of the game – leaving the students with one lonely non-conference game this year against Idaho. Therefore, is it any surprise enthusiasm is lacking when the only home game during the best month in Pullman for home games – September – is against Idaho? On top of that, the stadium rehab project will not be fully ready and the Idaho game will now be televised – probably taking another chunk out of attendance for those content with keeping their SUV in their moss-lined driveways that weekend. There are some negotiations with Oklahoma State looming on the horizon but unless the Cowboys are slated for Pullman – and not Seattle – it could be merely a Baylor rehash.

The Cougars first football game this year is against Wisconsin and already there is some controversy brewing in the state – not about the Cougars, silly – about there not being enough good looking Chinese women in Milwaukee to accommodate some Chinese NBA guy's demands. And restaurants too – none of this beer and brat stuff – where is General Tso's chicken? We ask you, what are the odds a Chinese hoop guy wouldn't be enamored with Milwaukee - wait a minute – where's Vegas Tim?

Finally the Lounge Scientists, having apologized for their mistakenly outlandish Crab Nebula claims, have figured out the reason they were so wrong – they forgot. Turns out that forgetfulness is just one of the many tools in the human brain's toolbox [along with incredulity about reality television]. A human is supposed to forget things, if they did not forget, it is a sign that something is amiss. A new study finds that the brain only selects memories that are most relevant for its purposes and suppresses others that will unnecessarily burden the brain and perhaps cause confusion.

"Whenever you're engaging in remembering, the brain adapts. It's constantly re-weighting memories," says Lounge Scientist #91, Brice Kuhl, a researcher at Stanford, who, reportedly, seems to have forgotten a very important piece of his brain somewhere in a field in New Hampshire.

So the moral of the story is - if you plan on cheating at some sporting event, the brain is already one step ahead of you and has forgotten where you were when the drug testing call came – was it Mexico or Italy?

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