badger badger badger badger

My alma mater is in the NCAA tournament. Would you believe that this is Wisconsin's 8th straight tournament appearance, a run that includes a Sweet Sixteen, an Elite Eight, and a Final Four? Did you know that only like five teams have longer streaks than that (for two points each, name them, no googling)? Do you recall that last year's team made it to the Elite Eight before losing a close game to eventual champion UNC? No you don't, liar.

What a strong, anonymous basketball tradition we're building up there in Madison. You probably wouldn't call it one of the top dozen programs in the country, but look at them numbers, chump.

Speaking of streaks, this may be the first time in like ten years that my office has no NCAA pool. Anybody got a good one my pop and I can join?

If you're wondering why no "High Socks and Short Shorts" columns in a while, it's because MSG showed two repeat episodes this week. I have a slight fear that maybe there are only like 14 episodes of this series, in which case we need to get an email campaign going to let them know that is simply not adequate. They're sitting on all the footage, how expensive can it be to produce the show? Whatever the number is, I'll do it cheaper and better.

We should have a new "Trayline" at some point this week, if for no other reason than to put that one really bad night behind us.

If you are a "creative" person, and by that I mean someone who likes to make stuff, write stuff, paint stuff, record stuff, produce stuff, etc.*, it seems to me that there should always be a balance in your life between what is going in and what is coming out. The danger lies in losing the balance. Meaning, if you are a professional writer and in a moment of low self-confidence you decide that none of your shit is worthy because you don't have the depth of knowledge to make it good, so you stop writing and just read books all day to learn how others do it and to enhance your skill level, and eventually you run out of money because you're not writing anything, and you starve to death, that's no good. And likewise, if you have a bullshit website that you update almost every day, using up just about all of your limited free time, making it impossible to even sit down with a good book or keep abreast of world events, your website will likely not be any good. Because you are creating it in a vacuum and you will never improve.

I think this site puts me in serious danger of the second of these scenarios. But for some reason I find it immensely gratifying, so the cycle will continue.

I'm tired so no new questions today. We still need answers for yesterday's, though.

* For the purposes of this discussion there is no minimum talent cutoff to earn this title. It's just about the urge to create, not the ability to do it well.