'Twas brillig and the Hannity tweet

David Letterman was the first person I ever heard observe, during an interview, that a certain combination of words had never been put together before. I don't remember what was said, but his observation hit me as shockingly plausible. Ever since I've been on the lookout for "neophrasisms."

How many words are there in the English language? The folks behind the Oxford English Dictionary say, "there is no single sensible answer to this question" but note the OED contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use. Throw in technical and regional vocabularies and the OED says there are at least a quarter million words in English.

Even with that it still tickles to observe that the following combination of words, noted this week, has quite likely never before occurred:

Cons: Implausibly large urethra

When you start to look for them, you realize how frequently this occurs. They often appear as headlines, like Green Youth Tweet for Clean Energy at Climate Hearings, which sounds more ridiculous the more you repeat it. Hannity Offers To Be Waterboarded For Charity. Has anyone ever said or written those words before today? No way!

This phenomenon happens a lot when you have kids. Why is the ham in your armpit? I actually spoke those words, probably the first person ever to do so.

What's the point? Maybe it's this: Hoops maybe this weekend you at St. John's will play. Let me know. Tip at 8:00 a.m. Saturday. 

So it's Rah, Rah, Car'lina-lina

For all that last year's championship had, this year's was a snoozer. Literally. I was asleep with 8:30 to go in the second half, though it may have been the manhattans my dad was mixing. 

The real competition this year was in the St. John's Hoops Al McGuire Memorial Final Four contest. Poe asserted checkers is more difficult than checkers. In the same vein I wonder if more calculation is required to simply name the final four teams than to fill out an entire 64-team bracket. But, you say, you fill out your bracket to arrive at the final four in any event. That's true for most, but perhaps the act of focusing the mind on four and only four teams and predicting their final positions requires higher powers of analysis.

Or perhaps not. Some astute hoops observers logged a goose egg this year. Overthinking that injury to Ty Lawson's toe, perhaps, or giving too much credit to the Syracuse 2-3?

Let's cut to the chase. This year's winner is...

Matt Etzell!

Congratulations, Matt. Your NDSU Bison apparel is on the way. Here are the final scores. Remember: 1 point for each team you correctly placed in the Final Four, 2 points for naming the runner-up, and 3 points for naming the champion. 

8 - Matt Etzell

7 - Carolyn Carpenter (last year's champ)

7 - Bruce Holt

5 - Andy Pearson

5 - Kelly Kayser

5 - SPY

4 - Bruce Kayser

2 - Jim Julian

2 - Matt Thurber

1 - Krall

1 - Cole Carpenter

1 - Dan Haase

0 - Bob Root

0 - Marty

0 - Griff

0 - Steve C.

0 - Lucas

0 - The Missus

0 - Audrey Schroeder

No hoops at St. John's this week due to student activity in the gym. See you next week.