Quotulatiousness

November 8, 2015

The Legend of the Desk & the Far Ends of the Trenches I OUT OF THE TRENCHES

Filed under: Europe, Humour, Italy, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Published on 7 Nov 2015

Indy sits in the chair of wisdom again to answer your questions. And this time, we’re talking about the legend behind our desk and how the far ends of the trenches looked like. Don’t forget to ask us more questions.

Nobody wants to get on the Vikings bandwagon

Filed under: Football, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Draw Play Dave finally came up with an idea for a comic about the Minnesota Vikings:

Click to see the full comic at The Draw Play

Click to see the full comic at The Draw Play

For a few months now I’ve been playfully jawing with a Vikings sportswriter on twitter (Arif Hasan, he’s good, you should read his stuff if you care about the Vikings) about making or not making a Vikings comic. He kept bugging me to make one. I actually wanted to, to be honest. The Vikings are one of the teams I’ve neglected over the past few years, and when there is no obvious comic material out there I usually try to pick a team I ignore and give it some love so people on reddit can call me an unfunny jerk because I mocked their team. So for months now I’ve been trying to come up with a Vikings comic, if only to give them some love and get Arif (who is the viking pictured here) to shut up. And I couldn’t do it, because the Vikings are the blandest, least interesting team I can possibly think of. How else can you explain the fact that they are currently 5-2 and are getting less media attention than basically every other team?

Every other team has interesting things about them that make them fun to follow. Some more than others obviously, but frankly every team seems to have something interesting going on. The Vikings don’t. Obviously Vikings fans are likely to disagree with me on that front because they are following the tiny minutiae more closely but from an outside fan perspective, even trying to find the Vikings interesting seems futile to the point where the only idea I can feasibly come up with is about how nobody cares. Teddy Bridgewater is progressing nicely, but he’s a boring QB. He’s got no personality, he’s got no quirks, no flair, and he’s not doing good enough or bad enough to really matter yet. The Defense is good, but not Denver good, or Seattle flashy, or Giants non-existent. Mike Zimmer was all sorts of hilariously blunt as a coordinator, but he never gives great soundbites anymore, or if he does nobody quotes him. About the only exciting thing going on right now is Stefon Diggs, who made the only interesting play of the season when he turned a Teddy overthrow into a beautiful lunging TD two weeks ago.

Who are the drunkest NFL fans? Come on down, Buffalo Bills fans!

Filed under: Football, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

A breathalyzer company conducted a study to determine who are the drunkest fanbases in the NFL, and Buffalo turned in the highest overall score:

Click to see the full-size map at CBSSports.com

Click to see the full-size map at CBSSports.com

Apparently, losing does drive fans to drinking, at least according to a recent study done by BACtrack.

The Breathalyzer company spent the past six weeks anonymously collecting BAC samples and what they found is that Bills fans really, really, really like to drink.

According to the study, Bills fans had an average blood-alcohol level of .076 through the first seven weeks of the NFL season, which was the highest among all NFL fan bases.

If you’re wondering how BACtrack was able to hunt down the BAC level of random fans, they didn’t. The samples came to them.

The company used anonymous samples sent in by fans who were using the BACTrack app on their phone, an app that works as a Breathalyzer.

The company then collected data on Sundays between Sept. 13 and Oct. 25 to try and accurately gauge how much fans were drinking. Only samples sent in between 6 a.m. on Sunday and 5:59 a.m. on Monday counted toward the study.

The data was only collected from geographic locations that were hosting NFL games during the first seven weeks of the season.

There were probably plenty of flaws in the study, but based on what I’ve seen from Bills fans, it’s not surprising they’re No. 1.

I find it amusing that the NFC North’s drunk fan index exactly matches the teams’ relative standings right now, with Green Bay fans the most sober (at 0.042), followed by Vikings fans (0.046), then Bears fans (0.054), and finally Detroit fans (who definitely have reason to be drinking more this season) at 0.069.

QotD: Small bits of French revenge

Filed under: Europe, France, Germany, Humour, Quotations, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

But [the German] is no gourmet. French cooks and French prices are not the rule at his restaurant. His beer or his inexpensive native white wine he prefers to the most costly clarets or champagnes. And, indeed, it is well for him he does; for one is inclined to think that every time a French grower sells a bottle of wine to a German hotel- or shop-keeper, Sedan is rankling in his mind. It is a foolish revenge, seeing that it is not the German who as a rule drinks it; the punishment falls upon some innocent travelling Englishman. Maybe, however, the French dealer remembers also Waterloo, and feels that in any event he scores.

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel, 1914.

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