news roundup Friday - college basketball, lost-and-found kitty, stupid thief and MILs

Happy Friday the 13th for the second time this year! Here's a rundown of a few news stories that interested me.


six overtimes in college basketball game

I don't generally care about college sports. Yeah, I pay attention somewhat to college football, particularly when it comes to Cal, but while I might be interested in scores, I don't much care about watching the games. I have even less interest in college basketball. To me, that's about as bad as ... watching the WNBA. But while driving home last night, I heard the story about the college basketball game between Syracuse University and the University of Connecticut. Syracuse ended up winning the game, but not until after they'd played 6 overtime periods, with the game lasting a total of almost 4 hours, ending at 1:22am at Madison Square Garden in New York. I'm pretty amazed that almost the entire crowd was there for the entire game - overtimes included. Yeah, the game was exciting - Syracuse had a basket at the end of regulation which would have broken the tie and given them the win right then and there, but the basket was ruled to be too late, after time had already expired in the game - and once you've committed to one overtime and then two, you HAVE to stay to the end, but I am pretty impressed that most of them actually did stay. There have to be a lot of people exhausted at work today.

Speaking of which, Syracuse has a game tonight at 9pm Eastern time against West Virginia. Hope they'll be awake by then. And not limping.


why is the couch mewing at me?

A woman bought a used couch from a thrift store only to discover several days later that the couch came with an extra feature - a calico cat. I'm wondering how long the couch was at the store, and the cat didn't make any noise or expend any effort to get out then? And when a couch is donated to a store for re-sale, they don't clean it or anything, which would have exposed the cat? Ewww. I don't know that I would have thought about trying to contact the owner, though, so it's good that she did, and it's good that the cat was reunited with its owner. Orkid would be one of those who'd be locked away in a trunk and we'd never know it, because while she is now vocal TO us (she didn't mew for the longest time when we first got her, so we didn't even know what her voice sounded like), she doesn't make a sound when she's been accidentally locked somewhere. I'll just happen to notice that I haven't seen her in a while, and she's not in any of her normal napping places, so the husband and I will go around the house calling her. No answer. We'll try to remember what rooms we've been in where we normally keep the door closed, or we'll look in the closet or cabinets or something, and invariably, she snuck into a room she's not normally allowed in, and we didn't notice and closed the door on her inside. And we only find her if we open enough doors, and eventually, she'll walk out of one.


maybe next time, he should try robbing a police station

All I'm going to say is - don't mess with a Tae Kwon Do dude.


not exactly a monopoly

A woman has filed a lawsuit naming about forty bazillion people, accusing them of stealing her script and making the movie "Monster-in-Law" with it. First of all, I guess she's either casting the widest net possible, or she's just really ignorant about things, because she has named the actors of the movie in her lawsuit. Ummm, yeah, you know, they didn't write the script, they were just hired to do a movie, so really, they have no liability of any alleged theft of your screenplay. And secondly, while I haven't seen the film, problems with mothers-in-law isn't a unique situation, no matter how complicated the relationship might be. Unless there are incidents depicted in the film that are unique and have only happened to her and NO ONE ELSE EVER, she doesn't have a leg to stand on. I read about MIL-related incidents that happen all the time, and there are lots of similarities among the stories. And, on top of that, she doesn't seem to be able to make any connection as to how any of the forty bazillion people might have had any access to her script. There is such a thing as simultaneous creation.