I get a 96th-percentile 167 on the LSATs, the Trojans crush the Ducks, and the Angels rally from a 5-0 seventh-inning deficit to force Game 7. What more could I ask for?

Well, an Arizona win over Washington State would be nice… it would help USC’s Rose Bowl hopes… and at halftime, incredibly, the Wildcats, winless thus far in the conference, are leading the #9-ranked Cougars 10-5! Click here for the most updated score and play-by-play.

UPDATE, 10:33 PM: Washington State unfortunately survived the scare from Arizona, winning 21-13. So the Cougars remain undefeated in the conference, and they need to lose 2 of their next 4 games in order for USC to have a chance of reaching the Rose Bowl.

Angels rally, take a 6-5 lead! The monkey’s going NUTS! Go, Troy Percival, go!

It suddenly occurred to me while watching the World Series that I should find my stuffed monkey, Beck Jr…. and a couple of swings later, the Angels are within two runs. Coincidence? I think not!

The Angels need that monkey to do some serious jumping. San Francisco 4, Anaheim 0, two out, bottom of the 6th.

Nick Pelletier, a Newington High School Class of 1999 graduate and an Air Force Senior Airman currently stationed at Osan Air Base in South Korea, smiles for an engagement photo with Misty, whom he married last summer. To view wedding and honeymoon pictures and other photos, visit Nick’s homepage.

USC’s football team caught Oregon on Saturday like a Duck in a noose.

The #15 Trojans beat the #14 Ducks, 44-33, and it wasn’t even that close. The Trojans dominated the second half, and led 44-19 until Oregon scored two garbage-time touchdowns. I think we can now consider the Oregon football billboard on Figueroa Street thoroughly avenged.

Oregon is virtually eliminated from the Pac-10 title hunt, but USC remains very much in the race. The Trojans just need to win their next three games — two of which are against teams that aren’t doing very well this season, Stanford and UCLA — and hope that Washington State loses two of its next five games. The Cougars still have to play Arizona (tonight), Arizona State, Oregon, Washington, and UCLA. (There is a possible scenario whereby USC would need to root for UCLA to beat Washington State to give the Trojans the conference title.)

Meanwhile, Game 6 of the World Series is tied 0-0 in the 3rd inning.

After dozens of busy signals, I finally got through to the LSAT score reporting line — and my score is 167, which puts me in the 96th percentile. That’s not quite Yale-worthy, but it puts me within striking distance of NYU and Columbia, and Georgetown is a definite possibility. I’m above the median score for Fordham, Boston College, George Washington, American U., and UConn.

Becky is proud of me. :)

Yay!

In other news, the USC-Oregon game looks like it’s going to be a hard-fought, see-saw affair. Trojans lead 14-13 with a few seconds left in the first quarter.

First things first: Newington High School’s football team beat Maloney 14-7 Friday night for their second consecutive win — the first time the Indians have done that since starting last season 3-0. (They finished the season 3-8.) This season, they are now 3-4 with four games remaining. (You must understand the context of this: the NHS football team won a grand total of three games the entire time I was in high school.)

Now, looking ahead to tomorrow…

The first big event occurs in less than six hours, at 7:00 AM Pacific time, when my LSAT score will become available by phone. Of course, I’ll undoubtedly be sleeping at 7:00 AM, so the big event will really occur when I bother to wake up, groggily grab a phone, and call. I’m hoping for mid-160s…

The second big event is the USC football team’s must-win game against Oregon at 12:30 PM Pacific time. (We need to catch the Ducks in a noose!) This game is crucial not only because the loser is effectively eliminated from winning the Pac-10, but also because Oregon’s athletic department had the unbelieveable audacity to paint a giant f***ing advertisement for Oregon football on the side of the Hotel Figueroa, just down the street from OUR campus!!! That’s what we call a declaration of war, my friends, and it means unequivocally that we MUST beat them. Let’s just hope Carson Palmer, Mike Williams & company will be weapons of mass destructions tomorrow in Eugene!

The third big event, of course, is Game Six of the World Series at 5:00 PM Pacific time in Anaheim. The Angels are trailing 3-2, seeking to repeat the home-field feat of the Diamondbacks last year, so they’re going to need some big-time help from the Rally Monkey (and perhaps a couple of their players… though really, I think the monkey can handle most of the hard work).

By the way, while we’re on the topic of the Angels, the funniest thing I read about the three games in San Francisco was that at one point, some Giants fans started chanting, “Beat L.A.! Beat L.A.!” A small group of Anaheim faithful correctly shouted back, “We’re not L.A.! We’re not L.A.!”

So, in conclusion… Wish me luck on my LSAT score, Fight on Trojans, and Believe in the Power of the Rally Monkey!

Oh yeah, one more news item: 4 days till I turn 21!!!

(Oh, you wanted real news? Well, the seige in Moscow ended, thank God; the Democrats are thinking about running Walter Mondale for Senate in place of the late Senator Wellstone; and the authorities are battling over who should get to put the snipers on trial first. Also, as friend and fellow blogger Andrew rightly points out, I have been remiss in not mentioning Hurricane Kenna on this site. Despite my usually intense interest in weather generally and hurricanes especially, I have been so consumed with sniper news that, frankly, I barely noticed it. But Kenna was a ferocious Category 5 storm at one point, and it has now made landfall in Mexico as a powerful Category 4.)

One day after receiving its 5,000th hit, “My world” experienced its second-busiest day ever with 78 unique hits on Friday — 55 of them occurring between 5:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Pacific time, and 28 of them coming from web surfers using search engines to look up the phrase “a duck in a noose.”

But the site, which at midday was on pace for between 120 and 130 hits by the end of the day, wound up falling just short of the all-time daily hits record of 80 when traffic dropped off sharply after 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. It is unclear why this occurred; more than half of the website’s daily traffic usually occurs after 2:00. Yet on Friday, there were only 17 hits — and only three “duck in a noose” hits — during the day’s final 10 hours.

One possible explanation is that as the sniper case was overshadowed by the day’s breaking news events, especially the death of Senator Paul Wellstone, the number of Internet searches for “a duck in a noose” diminished overall, returning the site to a traffic pattern more reminiscent of a typical day. The average daily traffic to “My world” is roughly 25 hits, roughly 13 or 14 of which typically happen after 2:00 p.m.

It is also unclear whether another flurry of “duck”-related hits might occur tomorrow or in the coming days. The possibility can’t be ruled out, since “My world” is still very highly rated in various search engine queries for the sniper’s mysterious words. Search-engine databases are always changing, but as of now, the phrase “duck in a noose” (surrounded by quotation marks) causes this website to come up third in an MSN search, while the words duck in a noose without quotes bring “My world” up eighth.

At any rate, May 28, 2002, my parents’ 25th anniversary, remains the #1 busiest day of all-time with 80 hits. Friday takes over second place from the website’s 74-hit launch day, Nov. 30, 2001, which now falls to third. Dropping to fourth and fifth place, respectively, are the 68 hits on Sept. 10, 2002 and the 65 on Sept. 11, 2002.