Gameblogging from this chick's perspective

2:39PM: Touchdown Oklahoma! pass from Bradford to Broyles. Sheesh, that was pretty. And fast. What, didn't that take about a minute and a half into the game?

This would be the perfect day to be at that stadium in Norman.

The kickoff receiver for Cincinnati looks like his jersey doesn't fit properly. Matter of fact, none of the Cincy players look like those jerseys fit. I know it's just the way those weird skinny jerseys look, but those seem to be worse than usual. Like they're all barrel-chested skinny-boys or something.

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2:44PM Cincinnati QB Brutza sacked.

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2:51PM Touchdown Sooners! Again!

This is NOT looking good for Cincinnati. [sigh]

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3:03PM What'd I miss? I was loading the dishwasher. Oh, the score is still 14-0. I guess I didn't miss anything major.

Ugh, they just put a lot more pressure on Bradford than they've been doing. That was ugly. On third and ten, too. Time to punt.

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3:06PM Wow... what a massive sack on Brutza again. Sheesh.

Fantastic punt by the Cincy kicker. That thing had wings.

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3:09PM Cincy just intercepted... wait, a flag on the play, what's going on? Oh, OK. Cincy still gets the turnover, but they get a major penalty for a bad hit.

Ugh, they just fixed that problem with a terrific run by Gilyard. Huge gain for Cincy.

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Aside: Can someone please 'splain to me what a Bearcat is? There are a bunch of 'em around this area, too, in the high schools... Pilot Point, Whitesboro, Sherman... lotsa bearcats. I've never quite known what one was, though.

UPDATE: Here's what I found on the internet about the Bearcat. I'm still not particularly impressed. Aren't they sort-of related to skunks and stuff? Just askin'.

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3:20PM Touchdown Cincy. They struggled hard for that one. Nice QB sneak.

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3:26PM Great big gain for OU, first down. And another first down! Ooh, and then the guy with the lovely long curls (Clapp) almost went into the end zone. OU isn't taking any of this lying down... Hey, Cincy -- Offsides, doofuses. Heh, we moved from the half-yard line to the fourth-yard line.

Touchdown Sooners. Chris Brown for the run-in.

Ummm, hello Special Teams?!? Why the heck did you let that guy run right down the middle of the field for that long? And who was that idiot Sooner standing right in front of him and doing NOTHING as he ran right by? Ecch.

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They just interviewed the guy from the Oklahoma City Thunder (Seattle Supersonics' new name, isn't it) NBA team. I could've thought of a lot better mascot names. How do you represent a Thunder? It's just something that makes a lot of noise and does nothing. That doesn't bode well.

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3:40PM Oh sheesh. Grutza just sent a huge pass flying downfield and Gilyard made a flying leap catch.

WHOA we almost intercepted it just then.

[sigh] Sooners, they already got your number. Don't y'all start caving in now. Can someone please shut down Mardy Gilyard? Good grief.

HEYYY! We just intercepted it in the end zone. Good pressure on Grutza.

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3:49PM [sigh] Interception on an accidental tip. I gotta go finish loading the dishwasher.

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4:00PM The dishwasher is loaded and running, and I'm back on the couch and it's 21-13 now. I guess they scored, but what happened to their extra point? I'll probably never know.

Halftime at 4:10PM.

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4:40PM Touchdown Sooners!! Nice little pass to Numbah Nine Juaquin Iglesias.

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4:45PM WTF?!?!? WHERE ARE OUR SPECIAL TEAMS?!?!?!? YOU JUST LET GILYARD RUN ALL THE WAY BACK FOR A TD, YOU DOOFUSES!!!!

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4:51PM Spectacular catch by Broyles!! Holy moly. What was that, like, eight hundred yards or something? Dadgum.

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4:56PM Touchdown Sooners! Very nice, Chris Brown.

I am not liking how well Cincy is keeping up with us, though. We oughta be a little more dominant, I think.

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5:03PM Touchdown Sooners again... oh, crap, did Gresham celebrate too much? Ugh, looks like some nasty business going on down in that end zone. Are we all getting a little miffed about things? Cincy gets an unsportsmanlike conduct for that, and we get the touchdown. Sheesh, people. It's a GAME. A very awesome game, admittedly, but still!

42-20 Sooners. This is more like it.

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5:15PM Third quarter is over. I have to be down at the football field in about ten minutes, but I don't really want to leave and miss the rest of this game. Shame on me, though -- my kids really want to see the monster truck thing.

I can't believe I'm taking my kids to see a monster truck. I have thoroughly converted to redneck in the short space of two years. [sigh]
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5:20PM Field Goal Sooners. It's 45-20 now. And we seem to have gotten some semblance of rhythm back. I can breathe, and maybe I feel like I can leave and trust them to actually finish the job without me screaming at the TV.

I am pathetic.

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FINAL: Sooners 52, Cincinnati 26. Boomer Sooner!!!

At least he died happy...

In the stairwell of the Choctaw County Courthouse in Hugo, Oklahoma:

I first saw this when I was in the ninth grade at Hugo High School (way back in 1981) and we went on a field trip to the courthouse. Pat Prock, one of the boys in my class, pointed at it and guffawed, so we all looked at it and had a laugh.

Recently my sister reminded me of its existence and wondered if I had a photograph of it to send her; she had told her co-workers and they couldn't believe something like this actually existed. I hunted all over the internet and searched through Flickr, but found no photographic evidence of it. There was a news article containing a brief reference to it, but no picture.

This just screamed for intervention...

Since I was heading back in that general direction for my orthopedic doc appointment, I took a brief detour across the Red River into Oklahoma to grab a picture of this bizarre memorial.

Next week I'll be in the area for two different days, so I'm hoping to go back to Hugo and take some photographs of the circus cemetery.

No, I'm not kidding. Hugo is a wintering ground for a circus, and they actually have their own cemetery.

Watch this space.

And how do they pronounce that?

I stumbled upon a very cool article from Genealogy Magazine's 2006 archives and thought you guys might enjoy it:

Surnames Sound a Challenge For Researchers

It's all about how Americans' pronunciation of surnames diverged a long time ago from how the names were actually spelled. I found it while searching for the correct pronunciation of "Beauchamp," since I have read soooooo many articles lately about The New Republic's military go-to guy, Scott Thomas Beauchamp. It's usually pronounced "Beecham" over on this side of the pond, apparently. The magazine folks compiled a nice list for us of names and pronunciations that aren't, well, intuitive.

I've been amused by the variation between spelling and pronunciation of proper nouns for as long as I could spell. Near the city of Paris in northeast Texas, where I graduated from high school, there's a small town called Bogata. The first time I saw it, I pronounced it like the capitol of Colombia: bo-gah-TAH. I was corrected immediately, for over there they say "buh-GO-tuh." But, I protested, it's not spelled the right way to say that. They misspelled it. Well, yeah, maybe they did. But this is how it is.

Okay.

Another local community over there is Kiomatia... pronounced ki-MISH.

In Oklahoma, we have the Washita River. Next state over, in Arkansas, they have the Ouachita National Forest. It's pronounced the same: WAH-shih-tah.

It's not a trend peculiar to Americans, though. The English have some incomprehensible ones, starting with such obvious ones as Worcestershire / Woostershir. And how in the world do they get "Sinjin" from "St. John?"

If there are any odd ones from your neck of the woods, leave 'em in the comments. I love this kind of stuff.

For my Okie readers

Y'all go vote on which design gets to go on the Oklahoma state quarter: The Pioneer Woman, a gushing oil derrick, a scissortail flycatcher (state bird), or a calumet (a long peace-pipe thingy used by the Plains tribes).

I'm a little bummed that a covered wagon won't be featured on the quarter, but I suppose the Oklahoma State people might fuss that the OU Sooner mascot was featured. Other than that, I suppose Sequoia (inventor of the Cherokee alphabet) might've been a good choice, or even the "End of the Trail" statue (although lots of First Nations folks don't care for that one).