Opinion
Big Ups & Backhands
Story by Bill Oram | April 11, 2008
Montana Kaimin
Welcome to Big Ups and Backhands, where, even if we hadn’t let that grounder go between our legs at shortstop Wednesday, Team Kaimin likely still would have lost its intramural softball game (season record: 0-2).
ASUM business manager candidate José Diaz has to get Backhands this week. A grizzled veteran of student government, Diaz tried to bill campaign expenditures to his fraternity. Shouldn’t someone running for business manager be a little better at business?
Big Ups to the news revealed in a study this week that says sex is at its best for both parties when it lasts between three and 13 minutes. Thank God.
Ron Paul to Missoula? Guess that makes sense, since he won the caucus here in February. The barrage of presidential candidates – and Paul – has been cool and all, but seriously, Backhands to people who still support the Texas congressman and think he can win the White House. Forrest Gump has a better shot.
UM administrators – specifically VP Bob Duringer – have proposed that UM reduce its energy consumption by 20 percent in two years. This may seem a bit dreamy, and probably is. But while we love to poke fun at big-wigs, Big Ups to Duringer (who drives a big-ass pick-up truck but is presently sitting in his office with the lights off struggling to read his Montana Kaimin).
Big Ups to Elton John. There. We’re done. He’s coming. We hope, for the last time. No more memorandums of understanding. No more AIDS charities. No more $75,000 promises. No more lame jokes about Elton John (we reserve the right to make more, though, after something goes terribly wrong this weekend).
Good news, it ain’t just baseball players. Britain’s top science journal released statistics this week that revealed 20 percent of scientists take performance-enhancing drugs, mostly stimulants that help improve concentration. Backhands to scientists: You’re already flippin’ scientists and thus considerably smarter than the rest of us. You don’t need to rub our faces in it.
Former Montana Sen. Conrad Burns has registered as a lobbyist for the American Quarter Horse Association. The lefty media is trying to spin this as some anti-animal thing for Burns, since the AQHA – as it’s known on the street – advocates the slaughter of wild horses. BU&Bh, however, sees it differently. Big Ups to Burns, though, the way we see it, wild horses can’t drag him anywhere.
Last week the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers breached the Milltown Dam. This week, it was the fish. A rainbow trout was tagged as the first fish to cross the dam site in 100 years. Backhands to the fisherman who catches and kills that fish. Seriously, he was like the Three Billy Goats Gruff: he just wanted to cross to get to the grass on the other side.
That’s it for BU&Bh this week. We’re sinking into withdrawals since we’re not going to see any presidential candidates this weekend.
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Comments
Perhaps when you refer to Diaz as a “grizzled veteran” you really mean to say “career student so caught up in the fantasy of being the Big Man on Campus that he strives diligently to never leave.”
Jose Diaz doesn’t give two craps one way or the other about being the ASUM business manager. He’s simply trying to fulfill the fantasy of being UM’s Van Wilder, mixed with a bit of Max Fischer from Rushmore.
Grow up, Jose. Get a job for Christ’s sake. It’s not cute anymore.
Posted by Fred Stapleton on 04/11/2008 at 12:51 am
So Conrad Burns gets ‘Big Ups’ for jumping head first into the business that he claims he wasn’t painfully corrupted by? Oh yes Senator, congrats on proving to everyone that they made the right choice in kicking you to the curb in 2006. Any real Montana statesman would have come home to Montana and started working on projects to better our state and our country to once-and-for-all prove that you always had us, your Montana constituents in mind. Instead you stayed in Washington D.C. (like we knew you would) and became a high dollar lobbyist so you can start bribing your former Senate colleagues and further corrupt the process that so clearly corrupted you.
Posted by Jacoby Baker on 04/11/2008 at 9:27 am
Jose Diaz is still going to school? Kappa Sigma is still a fraternity? Wow, I thought he had joined the cast of the Broadway rendition of “Nacho Libre” years ago. If he is UM’s version of Van Wilder, than Van Wilder was a bigger dbag than I remember.
Posted by Taylor Seeberger 05 on 04/11/2008 at 12:40 pm
So Burns is off lobbying for the slaughter of wild horses now?
I take it the “roast kindergarteners on a spit” and “nuke switzerland” lobbies are pretty well staffed then.
I mean really...I think we’ve been lied to for years. Burns isn’t some senile old fogey from Missouri/Billings- he’s Darth Vader.
Posted by Charles Copeland on 04/11/2008 at 12:41 pm
Between Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, only one promises to withdraw our troops from Iraq immediately: Ron Paul.
All candidates that have held this strong anti-Iraq-war position have been marginalized by the mainstream media machine and dropped out of the race. Ron Paul, viable or not, is the last guy standing willing to effect immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Kaimin editorial folks, you can do better than just parroting the mainstream media.
Posted by Erik Pritchard on 04/15/2008 at 4:25 pm
Erik Pritchard wrote: “Kaimin editorial folks, you can do better than just parroting the mainstream media.”
Erik- This isn’t “Muckraking 101” it’s “Toe Our Line If You Want a Paycheck 101”.
the PURPOSE of the Kaimin is training students to take up positions in the mainstream media that they parrot.
I’d say they’re doing a damn good job at that, if you ask me.
Posted by Charles Copeland on 04/16/2008 at 2:49 pm
