‘William & Mary’ Posts

after more than two decades battling with our own consciousnesses, college of william and mary students and alumni have a mascot to call our own … an eagle that has misplaced its pants.

back in the 1980s, the school realized that the then current moniker (the “indians”) wasn’t going to cut the social mustard anymore, even if one of our original mandates was as a school to educate those who had the alleged misfortune of being born non-european.

at the time, the school boldly chose to drop the nickname, but curiously insisted on keeping an obvious indian-derivative (the “tribe”) in its place, and then fought tooth-and-nail to keep an indian feather on the school logo (a fight they eventually lost).

(note to school: that last part about the tribe and the feather might have tarnished some of the nobleness of the re-logoing effort.)

anyway, a multi-year lack of identity ensued, which included a couple of dark years where we had an asexual amorphous green blob as our mascot.

but then … the same branding geniuses that sacrificed a beloved president to appease out-of-state christian fundamentalists came up with an *even better* way to market the school:

instead of coming up with a new mascot that matches the “tribe” nickname (or, you know, changing our nickname to something that matches our new mascot) the college of william and mary now has the very worst of both worlds …

… we’re a tribe of eagles that have misplaced our pants.

in due fairness to the administration, the creature is apparently a mythical Griffin, “a mascot that unites strength and intelligence, recalls our royal origins and speaks to our deep roots in American history.”

unfortunately, that still doesn’t explain to me what happened to the dude’s pants.

the lady sparkler and I have been crossing things off our list, dilligently trying to get everything resolved so we can relax with some peace and quite before sparklet arrives…

and then we realized neither of us really has an interest in relaxing.

case and point: things were winding down this weekend (I finished off the kitchen, and found places for those “last few items” without a place to live — she washed two and a half tons of baby clothes) when we spontaneously decided to rearrange the living room.

nominally, the problem was nominally getting rid of a DVD cabinet that we forgot had (non-safety) glass doors, but the lack of quality television programming (I actually watched a William & Mary football game I was so bored) might have had something to do with it.

so, we moved things around, and made space for a new chair that we are waiting to be delivered. the sofa now looks into the kitchen (which is a little weird) but the new setup is a much more economical use of space.

the real “win” however is that I added something else to the todo list, because taking down the cabinet pulled up some of the wall paint, which will need to be patched and repaired.

whew.