Gonzaga's Josh Heytvelt and some Redshirt Arrested with Marijuana, 'Shrooms

The World Wide Leader is reporting that two Gonzaga basketball players, Josh Heytvelt and Theo Davis, were arrested last night on suspicion of drug possession, with the Spokane Review confirming the story, and reporting that Gonzaga officials will hold a press conference later today. The fact that two basketball players got arrested on drug possession charges isn't of much interest, particularly the fact that they had marijuana on them, but I'm pretty sure this is first time I've heard of an athlete arrested on possession of psychedelic mushrooms. I must say this greatly improves my opinion of Josh Heytvelt, who has already impressed me this year on the court, particularly the UW game in which he dominated Spencer Hawes for most of the game. The fact that he can do that and also have intimate knowledge of what it feels like to have all the bones in one's arms disappear, or have one's head detach from the rest of his body, is amazing. There's so many questions that this prompts:

-What do two basketball players who happen to be 6-11 and 6-9 do when they want to want to trip balls in Spokane, Washington? Do they go out into the woods? Roll around on the grass in the quad? Do they hole up in their dorm room listening to the Mars Volta? If shit gets too heavy, do they start chain-smoking? Afterwards, do they hug because the experience has brought them so much closer?

-How many other athletes, across the country, have done shrooms? Any hallucinogen? Marijuana and cocaine arrests are so boring; what players are doing the really cool drugs?

-Why the hell is possession of mushrooms a felony? I could maybe see sale or distribution, due to the dangers of mushroom identification, but why is simple possession a felony? It's the Pacific Northwest, there's trees and there's rain, so there's mushrooms everywhere. Does this go for all mushrooms? What if Heytvelt and Davis had just been foraging for chanterelles or morels? Maybe they're some of those weirdos who forage for mushrooms to sell to restaurants. Is that illegal? How do you draw a line between different varieties of mushrooms? Would one be prosecuted for accidentally picking the wrong mushrooms?

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this all goes down. Personally, I'd like to see the players get off scot-free because I like seeing people beat the asinine US drug laws. But that's just my opinion. I'm interested to hear what others have to say about this. Give me your thoughts in the comments.

Huskies over Cal

Just finished watching the Huskies beat Cal at home, 79-71. It was the first time in a couple games that I've really got to watch the Dawgs closely which was nice. I'm trying to keep this short, so I'll just run through a couple things:

-Good game overall. Cal has given UW a lot of problems over the last couple years, so it's nice to get a win against them, even if they were shorthanded.

-Jon Brockman was an absolute manimal, 22 points and 14 rebounds. He's really holding the team together right now. I tried to focus on watching him on the defensive end, which you should try some time. He's an incredible position defender, and amazing at denying the ball in the post.

-Justin Dentmon made some asinine turnovers. What's annoying about that is that it wouldn't be that hard to fix. If he could tighten up on turnovers, he could be the best point in the Pac-10, but he needs to make the effort.

-Brandon Burmeister got a ton of minutes, and it looks like it was in place of Phil Nelson. I don't mind that at all, as I think Burmeister's a much better defender and rebounder, and probably an equal offensive player at the moment.

-Artem Wallace scored 8 points. I don't know how that's possible. He even made two free throws.

-Since my friend Jeremy pointed it out to me last week, I couldn't help but notice: Ryan Appleby is always the first guy back on defense. Even though he's not a good defender, it's not for lack of effort.

-Spencer Hawes looks like he's almost back to normal.

-Huskies are now 4-1 in their last 5 games. They close out the season with a pretty tough stretch, playing six ranked teams in seven games, but they get most of them at home. Should be interesting.

That's about it. Stanford on Sunday, should be good.

The Death of Vlog

We have reached the most boring stretch of the year in terms of American sports. There is absolutely nothing of consequence occurring at the moment in the world of sports, so I would like to go on a tangent regarding a recent pet peeve of mine, a pet peeve currently confined to the Internet, but threatening to make its way into everyday discourse.

My issue is with the word "vlog," or rather the fact that "vlog" should not be an accepted new word. "vlog," meaning "video log," falls under a category of words known as blends, similar to compound words in that they are the product of combining two existing words, with the difference between a compound and a blend being that in a blend, part of the combined words is deleted. Examples of English blends are smog (smoke+fog), brunch (breakfast+lunch), and infomercial (info+commercial). It is most likely that "video" and "log" were blended into "vlog" as a means of equating it with the similar and related blend, "blog" (web+log). The major linguistic difference between "vlog" and "blog" lies in the laws of new word coinage; more specifically, that "blog" conforms to these laws, whereas "vlog" does not. The coinage of a new word must conform to possible English sound and spelling combinations, and "vlog" does not fit this profile. This is the reason why I can't make up a word along the lines of "ndbkae" because English words do not start with the combination of "nd" and don't string together the four consonants "ndbk" at any time. "vl" only occurs at the beginning of a word in English in the case of adoptions of foreign proper nouns, usually from Russian, such as the name "Vladimir" or the city "Vladivostok", which do not fall under the category of word coinage, as they already exist in a different language and are merely adoptions. "Blog" conforms to the rules of coinage, such as in words like "block" or "black." It would be reasonable to create a word that conforms to this form, such as "blick" or "bleck," which are possible new words, as long as one attaches a meaning and could get "blick" or "bleck" into common usage. "Vlog," though, should not be allowed to continue functioning as a free morpheme, and most certainly should not be accepted into the English language. Now, if it were to be "v-log" or "vidog" or "vilog," then I could get behind it as a new term, but until this change is made, I'm putting a stop to this nonsense "word." Anyway, v-logs are awful; utterly boring, self-indulgent tripe.