On the rocks!

Oct 20 UPDATE: As a result of being left on the concrete steps for a whole day, the J-24 is totaled, so the club is filing an insurance claim on it to help balance the books. Note to commodore: whenever you need cash, just go out to a mooring on a stormy night, set a keelboat free, and in a few months if you're lucky you'll have another $10-25K in insurance money! (Just kidding. We know you'd never do that.)

It's everyone's worst nightmare: putting one of the keelboats onto the rocks. Well, last night's 40+ mph wind gusts did just that, and an odd sight greeted visitors to the lakefront this morning (see photo). Incredibly, the J24 is still sitting there, bouncing on the concrete steps, 12 hours later at sunset!

Here's a crutch for J-boaters on "HOW TO TIE A BOWLINE":

The gopher comes out of his hole, runs around the tree, meets the squirrel, they have a couple of drinks, then the gopher grabs the squirrel by the tail and tries to have sex with it, then they do a couple more shots, the squirrel runs up the tree and the gopher crawls back into his hole.

That's it! An easy bowline, tied the Hoofer way!

(Actually, it was the mooring that failed, but more than a few J sailors do have trouble with their knots.)

Raped and robbed--and lovin' it!

As if the controversial Wis. Union "renovations" weren't enough, the UW Alumni Association has just announced that the Union parking lot, concrete pier, and everything else along the lake will be torn up too, to be replaced with a grassy, utopian plaza intended to "honor contributions by alumni". That would be cash contributions of some $8 million. Obviously those alumni don't need to be honored. They need to pay more taxes.

This multimillion$ project is on top of dozens of other major building projects at UW-Madison. It's part of the Campus Master Plan to tear down more perfectly good buildings, e.g. Humanities, Van Hise, Engineering Research, and replace them.

Wherever the money for this billion dollar butt-fuck is coming from (rich people? the state?-hardly, seg fees?) it could be going to a hundred other things that are more important, like health care, cutting UW tuition, better instructors, more support for TAs, road improvement, toxic waste cleanup, alternative energy, ETC. You name it.

But that's not how the world works. Instead, some people rip others off, get rich, and then donate money for "utopian plazas" or other projects (read: buildings) that will carry their names. Meanwhile, overpaid administrators skip their meds and dream up shit like this, even as Wisconsin cuts school funding faster than any other state. UW's funding is being cut by some $250 million.

Note the glass skybox (theatre addition) present in the architectural rendering--plus, motorboat parking!