The Varsity Sport of the Mind

I’m in St. Louis right now, where me and the other members of CU’s “College Bowl” team just checked into our hotel. Next we’ll be heading out to register for the NAQT quiz bowl national tournament. The questions are brutally hard, and the competition is brutally nerdy, so wish us luck.

Reading note: Today I had the pleasure of finishing Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, which I’d been meaning to read to learn more about Nixon’s lovely Watergate antics (such a sweet, cuddly man) and now I’m starting in on Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I like having travel time, as its about the only time I’ve been getting to read lately.

The Ultimate Headline?

How many times do you get to have a headline in a legitimate newspaper that inclues the words “Nazi,” “Grand Prix,” and “Orgy”?

At least once in a lifetime, evidently.

So it seems Mr. Mosley was secretly videotaped taking part in a sadomachistic orgy with five prostitutes (bet Elliot Spitzer feels like a wimp now!).

Family history has added to the notoriety: Mr. Mosley, 67, is the younger son of Britain’s 1930s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and the society beauty Diana Mitford, whose secret wedding in Berlin in October 1936 was held at the home of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and included Hitler as a guest of honor.

Actually, it may be that a lot of the blame for this is on the tabloid (which Mosley is now suing) that set this sting up and claimed it had a Nazi theme.

The Times of London reported Friday that Mr. Mosley would argue in his lawsuit that he spoke German during the sex-and-bondage session because two of the women involved were Germans, not to engage in Nazi role playing.

That might actually be a legitimate reason… It doesn’t sound like there was anything explicitly Nazi going on, but once the press picked up on the theme, the condemnations started rolling in, so I’d guess Mr. Mosley is on his way out of the spotlight very soon. The only way to know for sure would be to evaluate the actual video, and I don’t think either my sanity or Christian U’s rules would permit that.

Best quote of the day comes from The News of the World, the lovely tabloid that broke the story. They described it as “a depraved Nazi sadomasochistic orgy.” Yes, that’s right, it wasn’t just a Nazi sadomasochistic orgy. It was a depraved one.

Thank you, Mr. Registrar (T-Minus 38 Days)

There are now only 38 days between today and graduation day. Hurrah! I think I’ll be making intermittent countdown posts chronicling my last days here at Christian U (CU), my school. Because I go to college in my hometown, it’s difficult to separate my childhood and high school years from the time I spent in college, so the whole graduating-and-moving-away thing that I will be experiencing after college is really the first time I’ll have lived anywhere but this small town in Arkansas.

Anyway, as one step on the highway toward a diploma, I recently communicated with the registrar at CU. This is the person who checks to make sure you’ve taken every class you need before you graduate. Thankfully, I evidently took the right classes in my 10 semesters, so I get to graduate “on time” (ha).

I think being a registrar is probably a pretty thankless job. From the university side you’ve got pressure to check everything off and make sure everyone takes exactly what they’re required to take. But whenever you stop a student from graduating because they forgot to take that 1 hour kinesiology activity credit, that’s gotta piss people off.

So here’s to you Mr. Registrar, thanks for letting me out.