Actually, I may be being conservative in my estimate.
Okay, so let’s head out to a nice high school in Utah. Salt Lake City, specifically. A city where the paranoid idiot brigade is in charge as evidenced by the fact that they refuse to let a high school sports team call themselves the Cougars
A Utah school district has decided against using “Cougars” as a mascot for a new high school in part because of the negative connotation of the word in popular culture.
Canyons School District Superintendent David S. Doty says the selection of “Chargers” as mascot was driven by the desire for originality, despite a poll of some future students that showed 26 percent in favor of using the cougar.
At least three Utah schools, including Brigham Young University, use cougar as a mascot.
Doty says public comments reflect a desire to be different, but he also notes that some see the word cougar as carrying a “negative double entendre.”
The term cougar in popular culture can refer to women in their 40s who have sex with younger men.
Oh, you mean MILFs! Like these adorable Minnesota moms who french kissed their sons.
Our entire production staff just breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t pop up a link to MILFs.
Anyway, geniuses of the west, a quick run around Google brought me the following, all active, high school sports team names.
Brush Beetdiggers
Cairo Syrupmakers.
Carlsbad Cavemen
Centralia named their boys teams the Orphans and their girls teams the Orphan Annies
Chattanooga Central Purple Pounders
Cordozo Clerks
Danville Little Johns (gotta love prison humor)
Fairbury Jeffs
Frankfort Hot Dogs
Freeburg Midgets
Hickman Kewpies
Hoopeston Area Cornjerkers (umm, what?)
Hurley Midgets
Laurel Hill Hoboes
Mars Area Fighting Planets
Maryville Spoofhounds
Mcaughlin Midgets
New Berlin Pretzels
Normandy Invaders
Orofino Maniacs.
Orono Riots
Poca Dots
Polo Marcos
Powell County Wardens
Rawlins County Outlaws (not to be confused with the Outlaws Motorcycle Group unless you need to scare people)
Rocky Ford Meloneers
Shoals Jug Rox
Tonopah Fighting Muckers (as opposed to the Mighting ….)
Van Vandals
Vintage Crushers.
Watersmeet Nimrods
Webb Feet
Yuba City Honkers
Yuma City Criminal
And, of course, Colorado legends, The Fighting Whites!
So, unless your team is fielded by a bunch of 40-something soccer moms in too tight dresses and wearing fake nails (aka, female Charlie Sheens), I think you should just let the kids use the name.
Of course, it’s easy to see why some people might just want to avoid the whole cat theme all together. Police in Newcastle, PA are reporting that a cat burned down its owners home.
One western Pennsylvania fire department learned that there’s not necessarily fire wherever there’s smoke.
New Castle’s assistant fire chief Jim Donston tells The Associated Press that firefighters were called when an electrical outlet on a floor was smoking, only to find that happened because the family’s cat urinated into the outlet.
The New Castle News ( http://bit.ly/zHd1RS) first reported the incident Friday and Donston supplied more details to the AP.
The assistant chief says a Columbia Gas worker was at the house checking for a possible leak when he noticed the smoking outlet and called the fire department Wednesday about 7:30 p.m.
Donston says firefighters “found the receptacle wet from cat urine” and shut off the electrical supply to that circuit.
That’ll teach them to skimp on kitty litter.
But one guy takes the cake, and not in a good way. Police in Phoenix have arrested a man who was eating cats.
A transient has been arrested after police say he skinned and ate a cat while camping inside a Phoenix warehouse and music venue.
Authorities say the building’s owners reported a burglary after they opened the warehouse Wednesday and heard blaring music.
Police found 24-year-old Russell Christopher Hofstad inside with his face painted and the cat’s tail and intestines around his neck.
Hofstad told police he killed the cat because he was hungry. He also said he was going to use its skeleton as party decorations.
He was arrested on suspicion of burglary and animal cruelty.
The Arizona Republic (http://bit.ly/xyh0aX) reports Hofstad had been released from jail Jan. 10 and told police he had nowhere to go. He decided to camp in the building because he had attended music events there.
Of course, it’s easy to be sympathetic to the guy. After all, we are talking about a species that put an 85 year old woman into a coma.
An 85-year-old woman is still fighting for her life after being hit on the head by a falling cat while walking across the road – seven months ago.
Opera singer Betty Deli was knocked unconscious and suffered a fractured skull in July – spending six weeks in a coma.
The pet cat was accidentally thrown out of the fourth floor window of an apartment block in the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires.
It came after a married couple had a blazing row.
During their quarrel the husband picked up the family pet and threw it at his wife.
But she ducked, according to Argentina’s La Nacion newspaper.
The feline then flew out of an open window, landing on the elderly woman’s head as she crossed the street, in the Belgrano district, below.
Betty’s daughter Fatima said her mother, who is staying at the Pirovano Hospital, is now fighting for her life as she undergoes rehabilitation.
She suffers from dementia and ‘recognises no-one’. Fatima has also called for ‘justice’.
Argentinian newspapers have reported the woman who the cat was thrown at was ‘more concerned with the state of her pet than the singer.’
Fatima added: ‘The doctors say it was a miracle she survived. My mother had projects, she sang opera, she was learning Italian.
‘She had tickets to go to the Opera that very day. She was my friend.’ The cat did not survive the fall, a police spokesman added.
Really? Look I have 3 cats and I love them to pieces, but given the choice between a human life and the cat’s, humans win every time. Okay, I did check further and nothing’s changed. The husband and wife who started this catastrophe (sorry) are still grade A tools and the little old opera singer is still in the hospital.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0K46C82v9o&w=560&h=315]
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!