USAMRIID

USAMRIID (pronounced you-sam-rid) stands for the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.

Based at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, the facilities of USAMRIID are used primarily for research on counter measurements for biological warfare. Along with the next-door National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) and the nearby United States Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense (USAMRICD) they handle many of the biological threats that come up in regards to national defense. When a new infectious agent or biological threat comes up they are on the case to have the data on file regarding any incident that, again, may eventually pertain to national biological defense.

USAMRIID was featured in Richard Preston's best-selling book "The Hot Zone" which described the outbreak of the then-undiscovered Ebola Reston (which was discovered in Reston, Virginia but was not discovered by Preston since people say if you take off the P in Preston you have "reston" left). The book describes the events of decontamination of medical research facilities used to store imported monkeys from the Philippines. It was then discovered that Ebola Reston can't be caught by humans but the same virus has a 90% fatality rate in primates.

I had never heard of USAMRIID before until I read Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone".

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UConn

The largest public university (and primier party school) of New England.

You know you go to UConn if...

1. You live in Storrs CT at all
2. You walk miles to get to football games
3. You can fill all the spots in a 10-person drinking waterfall and still go to 8 AM classes the next morning
4. You hate Northeastern University for taking the husky as their official mascot first
5. A tent is your dorm room during basketball season

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afrotastic

Taken (well, more like stolen) from Hairspray, it's the black way of saying "fantastic"

Seaweed: These are my new friends Link Larkin, Penny Pingleton, and Tracy Turnblad.

Stacy: This is so afrotastic!

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Crazy Taxi

Crazy Taxi is a classic Dreamcast game that was converted to fit other platforms like the PS2 and others. The goal of the game is to get people to their destination as quick as possible. The quicker you get them there and the fewer cars you hit on the way the more money you'll get.

There are several moves that you can do with your car to help you like the crazy dash, crazy drift, crazy stop and others which must be mastered for best use. These however are either highly dangerous or impossible for a real car considering both the damage to your transmition and the physics behind them.

12yo kid: Wow, I just got $8,000 on Arcade mode in Crazy Taxi!
Me: Kid, you've got a long ways to go ((I seriously got $43,000 before in real life))

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hang around

A "hang around" is the first of various levels of membership in the Hells Angels biker gang.

A hang around is described as friendly to the organization but is not an actual member yet. They typically go to parties, buy the t-shirts and try to make contacts within the organization to help boost their membership level. Hang arounds also ride with the group whenever there is a ride but otherwise they don't get involved in the organization; they never hold offices within the group and they typically do not participate in extreme group activities such as retaliation or gun trafficking.

Matt's become a hang around after he met a small Hells Angels group at the bar last month.

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Literature

Literature is the all-inclusive term used to describe instructions or other small-typed text found in various products in small booklets or otherwise. A classic example of "fine American literature" would be Johnson & Johnson's literature on their rectal thermometers (see below).

An example of American literature:

"Every Rectal Thermometer made by Johnson & Johnson is personally tested and then sanitized." -from literature of rectal thermometers made by Johnson and Johnson

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Bad Company

1. A huge 1970's Blues Rock supergroup. Released a self-titled song which is played on classic rock radio to this day. They went on hiatus in 1982 but returned in 1986 and were active until 2002.

2. A song by the above band which has been covered so many times that Einstein couldn't come up with a mathematical equation to figure it out.

I went to the Bad Company concert last night and everyone went crazy when the song Bad Company came on.

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