Why is it that whenever Muncie's in the news, it's for something pathetic or embarrassing?  Remember a few years back when that female hillbilly got completely wasted and decided to remove a wart on her toe with a shotgun? 

Only in Muncie.

I've already caught shit from the department's college football fans early in the season for Ball State's stellar start, where they lost the first four games of the season by an average of 40 points.  Why does Ball State keep playing these huge opponents with whom they have no chance of even keeping it close?  These are called "buy games," where these big schools pay some stupid little school like Ball State to come in and essentially be a crash dummy for an easy win.  So, Ball State's administration is sacrificing their kids to those at the big schools for cash?  Nah, it's a learning experience for them!  It gives them a heads-up to how their asses will be kicked in the real world workplace by the big school kids.

(At least they brought the season around and went 4-7, basically having a winning record against comparable programs.  I might add, Kent State went 1-10, only winning against South Eastern Central Missouri State Technical Institute of Diesel Mechanics, a Division-46 school equivalent to a high school team.  We were at that game... it was pathetic on both sides.)

Again in the sports world, there's another case of Ball State sacrificing its players, this time sending the women's basketball team for a hard-fought battle against Duke last night.  When it's bad enough that Sportscenter features women's college basketball (not that I care about the difference between men's and women's basketball, but it's not popular) just to show the severity of the loss... that's just not right.  I mean, exposure is an unmeasurable asset, but wouldn't this qualify for negative exposure?

I wonder how much cash Ball State made for that game, and why they couldn't keep the programs they ditched a few years ago with this cash flowing in.  Oh, it's because you have to pay to keep 80-some-odd players under full scholarship for a failure of a football team.

Okay, away from sports.... Apparently a robbery was foiled at a Puerto Vallarta, Muncie's premier Mexican restaurants because one worker didn't understand what the robber was saying and the other pretended not to speak English so he could call the cops.  Heard this one on NPR... amazingly it never made it into the StarPress.

I mentioned this last week, but the story made the national news (NPR) up here.  The James Dean Museum and Gallery in Gas City, north of Muncie about 20 minutes, is closing.  Big whoop, right?  James Dean was an actor who though famous has been dead for 50 years, and he gives nearby Fairmount, Indiana its only claim to fame.  Well, read the last two sentences of the story.

Meh... that women's basketball story put me over the edge today.