happy half birthday to me / go heels! beat duke!

It's my half birthday!  And because I'm just that awesome, I share it with such cultural touchstones as...

Melanie Griffith...

Hoda Kotb...

...and Whitney Houston.

I know.  Your jealousy is uncontainable.  Let it out.  But, the world may have never been the same without August 9, because...

Hurricane Belle hit the East Coast on August 9, 1976...

Nixon left the White House on August 9, 1974...

...and we dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

So I mean, yeah, it's probably a good thing I was born, otherwise the government might have tried to cut August 9 out of the calendar like it was the 13th floor.  I would.  Is there really a more dismal day in history?!?  Maybe that's why it always rained on my birthday.  Joy would be futile.

But February 9, my sweet half birthday, you are lovely and close to Valentine's Day and get to be the birthday of people like Smokey Robinson and Barbara Lewis.  So, I will let you be my very merry un-birthday.

Moving on...

UNC PLAYS DUKE TONIGHT!!!  Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.  This is one of the two days a year when I get butterflies all day and I yell at the TV and jump over fires and generally become overwhelmed with simultaneous anxiety and hatred.  (Yeah, I wasn't kidding about the jumping over fires part.  This happened.)

So, as is tradition, I'll leave you with an excerpt from the greatest column ever published by the Daily Tar Heel, written by Ian Williams in 1993 and entitled "Why I Hate Duke".

"Now I realize that school spirit is a pretty goofy thing to some people, but I'll tell you something: I hate Duke with an infernal passion undying. I hate every leaf of every tree on that sickening campus. I hate every fake cherub Gothic piece of crap that litters the buildings like hemorrhoidal testiments to imagined superiority. When I see those Dookie boneheads shoe-polishing their faces navy blue on television, squadering their parents' money with their fratty elitist bad sportsmanship antics and Saab stories, I want to puke all over Durham.

So this is my request, boys of basketball: Tonight, I not only want you to win, I want Krzyzewski calling home to his mother with tears in his eyes. I want Alaa Abdelnaby to throw up brick after brick. I want Rick Fox to take Christian Laettner to the hoop so many times that poor Christian will be dazed on the bench with an Etch-a-Sketch and a box of Crayola crayons. I want Bobby Hurley to trip on his shoelaces and fly into a fat alumnus from Wilimington. Send Thad and Lorna home with their blue tails between their legs.

God bless them Tar Heel boys!"