Opposite Day

When British General Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington, his drum and fife corps played “The World Turn’d Upside Down.”

History is full of opposite days. So much so, in fact, that I spent every day between kindergarten and today practicing for one. Especially when caught in a childhood gaffe, like accidentally admitting to watching David the Gnome every day. “What? No! I was kidding! It’ s Opposite Day. Or is it?”

Reading the news today, it’s either Opposite Day, or I drove through a dimensional detour on my way to work. After all, there are certain truths that will always be true, right? Truths like …

Frat Bros Drink

In this world, there has always been one given: college students, particularly those in fraternities, will drink alcohol. And sometimes, they will drink enough to nearly die from it. But, I never believed that I would see the day when frat brothers chose (A) wine — even if it was boxed wine:

“Reports released by [University of Tennessee] police Wednesday say investigators saw beer cans and bottles and ‘bags from wine boxes, some empty and some partially empty, strewn across the halls and rooms.'”

… and (B) ingest it anally:

“‘Upon extensive questioning, it is believed that members of the fraternity were using rubber tubing inserted into their rectums as a conduit for alcohol as the abundance of capillaries and blood vessels present greatly heightens the level and speed of the alcohol entering the bloodstream as it bypasses the filtering by the liver,’ Knoxville Police spokesman Darrell DeBusk said Monday in a statement.”

In other words, the next generation, possibly second to the one that defeated fascism, has invented freeanusing boxed wine.

True story: I thought for most of my life that I didn’t like wine. It turned out that I just didn’t like the wine my parents bought. Had I known that I could drink it without a drop ever touching my taste buds, I’d be a Pink Zinfidel to this very day, never the wiser and with Fess Parker-scented farts.

Parents Want You to Eat Your Vegetables

The oldest fight between American children and parents wasn’t the Civil War. It began even further back in history at the dinner table over vegetables. I knew kids who nearly died of old age because they couldn’t be excused until they ate their peas. And, even that was a hollow victory, because guess what turned up in the next night’s casserole? It was the first Scott Tenorman chili cook-off.

By nature, children’s tastes are garbage. Given the choice between a fine turkey dinner with all the trimmings and pizza-flavored chicken nuggets, your kid — the genius you brag to your friends about — will chose the breaded marinara monstrosity every time, especially if it comes with penguin on the box and a microwaveable brownie.

So, when public schools started selling healthier lunches in cafeterias this week, it went about as well as I expected it to: in Glee-style rebellion.

The opening alone demonstrates why math and science-related jobs are shipped overseas. As the students who made it correctly assert, “Active teens require 2000 – 5000 calories a day to meet growth and energy needs.” They follow this with the new school lunch policy mandate, that “all teens receive only 750 – 850 calories per lunch.”

2000 to 5000 calories a day is clearly not being met by a 750 to 850 calorie lunch. Obviously. Because there are three meals in a day (30 meals if you’re a hobbit), you fuuuuture leaders of the free world. If you eat three meals equivalent to the bare minimum lunch, then you’ve consumed 2250 calories that day. And that’s assuming that these students are actually eating all 750 calories, every meal.

Oh, what’s that, janitors?

“I throw some of it away,” admitted one student. Others agreed.

So, it’s up to parents to leap once more upon the breach and force them to eat their green beans, seeds and all. We all know where this is going: “starving kids in Darfur,” “throwing my tax dollars away,” maybe even a few “why, in my day’s” …

“I think the main point is that our federal government has once again put its 2 cents into something and fucked it up again……as usual. To put a blanket lunch (one size fits all) is another stupid act by Obama and this time, the wonderful do nothing first lady.”

Well, OK then. It’s perfectly alright to throw away food when politically expedient.

You suck, ref!

At least we’ll always be glad to see the referees that ruined past games get kicked out of the NFL, right?

Nope! After three weeks of shoddy play-calling by scrappy, young scabs, talks have begun of a fan boycott of the NFL should the league fail to reach an agreement with the unionized professional referees. You’ll recall that these are the same refs that we’ve been mailing coupons for Lenscrafters and Lasik treatments since Rutgers and Princeton added rules to their annual field brawl.

As Weird Al once sang, everything I know is wrong. Black is white, and it’s barely noticeable on a blind ref’s uniform, but wrong, nevertheless. We’ll see how long this Opposite Day goes.