What Might Have Been

I'm devastated that Esken-unpronounceable-dereya is out of the Kentucky Derby.



Now what? Lookin' at Lucky looks great on paper - never finished out of the money- but going in as the favorite is pretty much the kiss of death. Devil May Care? I'd love to see a filly (and Pletcher) win it, but I'm not convinced. One thing is for sure - I'll put some money on Super Saver to win. One would think I could get a $2 bet for only a $1.50 on a horse with a name like that...

Your Point Being?

You Are a Snarky Blogger!

You've got a razor sharp wit that bloggers are secretly scared of. You're honest and critical. You never hold back, even if you're opinion is controversial. Okay, let's be honest. You try to make your posts as controversial as possible! And that's why your audience reads your posts as often as they can.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

Blogthings: 100's of Fun, Free Quizzes and 3 Stupid Ones

There's a Word for That

And that word is spelled w-r-o-n-g. Or perhaps s-a-c-r-i-l-e-g-e.

Just when you thought the dumbing-down of America was pretty much complete, comes this little tidbit: Mattel announced their newest edition of Scrabble will allow proper nouns.

What? After sixty years they're just opening the floodgates of 'but I know someone who spells his name that way'? Are they paying a corporate sponsorship fee to the first couple to name their child Qzxtb? Did they lose a bet with Barbie? Get bored of the Hot Wheels loop?

The games company said it would be introducing the rule change – the first in the game's 62 year history – to "enable younger players" to get involved.

Admit it - you mean the txt gn - why not accept LOL and WTF?

This could cause a power shift between the generations, with those possessing a keen knowledge of the top 40 singles' chart legitimately able to cite such high-scoring examples as singers N-Dubz (17 points) and Jay-Z (23 points).

Oh, like they would be caught dead playing some antique game with tree pieces. With Grandpa.

A Mattel spokesman said: "The layout, the colors of the board, the rules and the game itself have all remained unchanged for over 60 years.

So let's mess it up! Let's change for the sake of change! Let's make the board 3D with sound chips while we're at it. (Hologram adapter sold separately)

"These changes are the biggest news for Scrabble lovers in the history of the game and will provide a great new twist on the old formula. We believe that people who are already fans of the game will enjoy the changes and they will also enable younger players and families to get involved.

That drab old formula that required thought, spelling skills and a dictionary. Yes, let's get rid of that. People will rush right out to pay $19.59 for a new set of printed instructions inside our box. It will give them a magical site license to play the game with standards lower than your typical Washington Lobbyist.

Why stop at Scrabble? Why not make more games easier for today's ADHD youth?

Like "Chutes". Who wants to scale those pesky ladders? Life should be one big happy slide.

Or "Monopoly - Bailout Edition". Run out of money? All your hotels mortgaged to the hilt? Never fear, just cut up some slips of paper and write denominations on them. Distribute to give your players a federal bailout. No one need ever lose again! Always get out of jail free!

I'd love a more realistic version of "Life" - instead of having twins or going to college they should now offer more likely scenarios like "stay on your parents couch to age thirty" and "do you want fries with that" as an occupation space. No cash in this version. Just Promissory Notes.

(No) Risk - players compete to take over the world with junk bonds and load funds.

(Get a) Clue - players realize they are trapped with a bunch of dislikeable idiots in a drafty old house.

Fortunately, I was able to find this explanation of the whole ruckus online.

Whew! They sure Trickstered me.

Max-imum Auto Abuse

For why"Artsy Types" should not be allowed to purchase collectible automobiles, read this incredible story.

Correction: Incredibly upsetting story.

I remember that promotion! I recall really, really wanting to win. I wasn't sure how I was going to house and finance an entire museum, but those pesky details could be worked out afterward.

Sad to say, I was a bit of a Peter Max fan, but that was when I had no idea about any of this.
Psychedelic paint looks cute on a VW Bug, but if he touches the Polo White exterior of that 53 I'm gonna sic Zora's ghost on him...

Now, I just think of those poor tires rotting into a New York garage floor. It sure wasn't Jerry Seinfeld's building. He would have stepped in. If nothing else, to kick them out so he could have room for his Porsche collection.

I know! They should have done a Hoarders episode on Max. At least that would have been entertaining. I'd volunteer to take them to a good home. I don't know if all 36 could fit in my barn, but I'd sure give it the old college try.

As for me, I'm just awaiting the day I can join the list of very rich comedians who collect cars.

Virtual Retail

Dear Video Game Programmers and Purveyors -

Want more girl gamers? How about a game we can relate to? Like shopping.

Not too hard to develop a dream game for me, that’s for sure. Just throw a little retail therapy into your basic racing game and you’re sure to have me hooked.

First, players select a cool car. Choose carefully! A Ferrari can get you to more stores, quickly; but an Escalade will have more room for purchases. Next a little menu of famous malls will come up, complete with floor plan and list of stores. To win the game, you’ll need something from the shoe category, formal wear category, jeans, etc.

You’ll then be issued a credit line and stack of cards and coupons. Your challenge is to get every item on the list for the best price. Think of all the educational tie-ins! Math skills galore! Trunk size vs. volume and shape of packages = geometry. Finding a good parking spot = probability. Which mall at what time of the day = statistics. Budgeting and coupon redemption = Finance and Accounting.

Throw in some nutrition lessons, too. The winner will be the one who can shop eight hours on a large cappuccino and stick of sugarless gum. Just like real life, the anorexic player will be rewarded.

Not exciting enough? Throw in some Zombies!

Suggested Names:

Grand Shop Auto

World of MallCraft

Wii Love to Shop (with credit card wrist-flicking action!)

Super Shoprio

Mall-tal Combat

Count Me Out

Mailed in my Sensless form the other day. If the Government wants to know where I live, why don’t they just use GoogleMaps like everyone else and save the taxpayers a few billion?

What’s with asking if I own my home free and clear? Smacks of socialism. What’s it to you, Government? Thinking up new ways to tax the five fiscally responsible people left in America? Trying to decide how many more billions to throw at the banks that made all those stupid lending decisions? Need to know who might put up a fight while you’re declaring Eminent Domain willy-nilly?

How many people live in my house? More than I’d like. How’s that for an answer? Not interested in getting any more representation, thank you. The idiots elected now don’t need any further help.

Race? What does it matter? All I can do is pick a box I “identify with”. So what? Does that somehow mean I’ll be perceived that race by the Government or my neighbors? Of course not. People and institutions can discriminate based on all kinds of wacky and erroneous perceptions. Why even care what I think? Unless you want to round me up and put me in a detention camp for lying on an official form. Won’t happen? Don’t be so sure. The Census Bureau has a wonderfully colorful history of having its data mined by other divisions. Credit them for helping find draft dodgers, fill internment camps and generally terrorizing the citizenry.

Supposedly, it has to do with representation. Do we get a certain amount of legislators of a certain race? Nope. Just a money ploy. Sad to say, America is actually well below the average of most other nations as to the number of women holding public office. Which explains so much.

Sorry to have been gone so long

Ouch!

see more

Success Is

see more Funny Graphs

Well Lookie Here!

The only things at Toyota coming to a screeching halt are sales!

Ford: up 43% in February.

Toyota: down 20%

Why I Haven't Got Time For Your $#%@

The massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile may have changed the entire Earth's rotation and shortened the length of days on our planet, a NASA scientist said Monday.

The quake, the seventh strongest earthquake in recorded history, hit Chile Saturday and should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 milliseconds, according to research scientist Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth's axis," NASA officials said in a Monday update.

Is it just me, or does it seem to be 'Earthquake Season' all of a sudden???

Closing Ceremonies

William Shatner? Really? That's the best you can do? Was Rush busy?

Wish I'd Said That...

"The Olympic Games were fun, but there were some high-profile mistakes, come on. Admit it. Like the terrible decision to let Toyota design the luge." -Bill Maher

Sham-Wow!

Whoo-hoo! Job opening in lovely Orlando! I'm whale-qualified.

File under "Surprised, Not":

A killer whale killed a trainer Wednesday afternoon at SeaWorld's Shamu Stadium in Orlando, Florida, a public information officer for the Orange County Sheriff's Office said.

Are they called Cuddly Whales? Nope. Face it, they're just dolphins with really bad attitudes and even sharper teeth. A lot like me.

Sorry, but I'm totally seeing the Orca's point of view here. Honestly, how many times would you jump through a hoop for a dead fish? Two-thirds of the planet is your playground and suddenly you're trapped in a bathtub for twenty years. Wouldn't do much for my willingness to play nice.

Also, what was with Naked Guy? Taunting the tigers not fun enough in the middle of the night?

Am I the Only One?

Cringing every time a Toyota is spotted in the rear view mirror? What if they can't stop at this intersection?

Wood You Believe Him?

So could Alice Cooper be helping Tiger Woods start a garage band? As he writes in his book "Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock 'n' Roller's 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict", taking up the game was a wonderful way to combat the urge to party on the road.

"I traded one bad habit for another habit, only this habit (golf) was a lot healthier," says Cooper, who went through rehab in the late '70s and early '80s but has been clean and sober since 1983 and has counseled other celebrities about kicking their addictions. "Golf ended up being a good trade-off," he says. "The thing about this book, is that when I look at the whole juxtaposition of who Alice Cooper is, the golf addiction and the music addiction, still, it's pretty interesting how they can co-exist."

Maybe Tiger and his band could practice on Elin's private island so as not to annoy the neighbors? One thing is for sure: he had better make a very good showing the first game of his return to professional golf, whenever that might be. Otherwise, millions of men will use it as an excuse to take a mistress (or three, or... ) since it seems to improve the golf game.

All across America kids will be getting their dads little coffee mugs that say 'World's Best Golfer'. Lucky Elin. The kids are still small enough to need some help shopping for Daddy's big day and she can wrap the one that says 'World's Worst Husband'.

Trade Up!

To a vehicle with more steering ability and stopping power than your average Toyota!

Lower Education

Face it, right now you're thinking about how many of your co-workers this could apply to:

Ms Bishop, who has four children, obtained a PhD from Harvard University in 1993. She began teaching at the University of Alabama in 2003. She was told last year that she would not get a tenured, or permanent, position and that this was her last term. Colleagues described her as a brilliant researcher but a poor teacher and communicator.

She held her regular anatomy and neuroscience class on Friday before going to a faculty meeting at a university building in Huntsville, Alabama, where she allegedly pulled out a 9mm handgun and began firing. Witnesses said that she then left the room and dumped the gun in a lavatory before being arrested.

When she was led away, she told local television: “It didn’t happen. There’s no way. They’re still alive.”

But wait! It gets better.

The shooting has prompted police to reopen the case of her younger brother’s death in 1986. The police chief in the Boston suburb of Braintree said at the weekend that Ms Bishop, then 19, was freed after his predecessor apparently halted the investigation. “I don’t want to use the word ‘cover-up’. I don’t know what the thought process was at the time,” Paul Frazier said.

Ms Bishop shot her brother Seth, 18, a violinist and prize-winning science student, with a shotgun during an argument, he said. She was arrested at gunpoint after allegedly pointing the gun at a car to try to force the driver to stop.

A former auto-body worker claims Amy Bishop put a gun to his chest and demanded a getaway car just minutes after she shot her brother to death 24 years ago in a controversial case that is now being reviewed.

The police chief at the time, John Polio, apparently ordered officers to free Ms Bishop and declare the shooting accidental. “I spoke with the retired deputy chief who was . . . responsible for booking Ms Bishop. He said he had started the process when he received a call from then police chief John Polio, or possibly from a captain on Chief Polio’s behalf,” Mr Frazier said. “He was instructed to stop the booking process. The release of Ms Bishop did not sit well with the police officers.”

According to the police chief, Ms Bishop’s mother, Judith, was a public official who sat on a police personnel committee. Apart from a short entry in the Braintree police log the case file on the death, including a seven-page report, has disappeared.

Hmmm. Bumped off an inconveniently smarter sibling? Just a baby bird pushing the weaker ones out of the nest to get all the worms. Natural selection. Nothing more to see here. Move along.

Oooh. What about this?

Grieving relatives of three professors gunned down at a university faculty meeting questioned why their accused colleague was hired despite a dispute with a former boss who received a pipe bomb and the shooting death of her brother.

And this sure doesn't describe anybody you work with...

...had described Bishop as “not being able to deal with reality” and “not as good as she thought she was."

So much for the good old days when you hoped your kid got into college for a draft deferment, since a war zone was a dangerous place where they could get shot.

Economy: 1 Waistline: 0

Played hooky from the Health Club tonight.

Just last week they asked me to fill out an appraisal sheet on the instructors. As usual, I spent no time critiquing the classes and about two paragraphs begging them to buy a bottle of bleach and clean the place. Anyhoo...

I'm suffering from a really bad case of the Febru-drearies and decided my serotonin levels would be better boosted by shoe-shopping than exercise. Common mid-winter malady. Didn't do ANY shopping in January, as I had bought so much at the end of December at after-Christmas sales, there really wasn't any new merchandise to be had.

Might have made it through the short misery that is February except for that insidious retailing trick known as the Birthday Coupon. Buisnesses are not stupid. They know a free movie equals a popcorn sale, a free dinner equals a beverage and a $10 off coupon could lead someplace fantastic.

Went to Kohl's last week because I had a 30% off coupon. For 15%, I don't leave the house. 20%, I might stop in if I 'need' something. 30% off is a Holy Day of Obligatory Spending.

So I bought waaaaay too much stuff and earned $20 off in Kohl's Bucks or something. It was some deal to get you back in the store the very next week with the promise of $20 off. Turns out I wanted to return a blazer. I was in no rush until I read the coupons carefully. Hmmm. Seems the 30% was good to Feb. 17. The $20 off started Feb 15. That means.... Gasp! February 16 was a magical equinox of savings !!! They NEVER overlap offers!!! What happened? How did the stars align? Will the Year of the Tiger be especially good to this lowly Snake?

Wasting no time, I found a pair of Candie's stilettos I had been coveting in the celebrity magazines. On sale for $39.99, minus $20, minus 30% = SCORE!!!

I feel so much better now. Shouldn't have had the pasta for dinner, but the shoes were worth it!!

Oh, sure it was stolen...

Troubled actor Charlie Sheen had left his Mercedes-Benz in his open garage with the keys in it when it was stolen and later found crashed in a ravine off Mulholland Drive, police said Friday.

The 2009 Mercedes four-door sedan was found badly damaged about 350 feet down from Mulholland Drive about two miles from Sheen's home in a gated community in Sherman Oaks.

After an extensive search on foot and by helicopter, rescue crews did not find a driver or passengers in the vicinity of the stolen car.

Los Angeles fire and police officials learned the car had been in an accident just after 4 a.m. when the Mercedes' electronic security system automatically notified them. After locating the vehicle, they discovered it was Sheen's and went to notify him.

Meanwhile, Sheen had also received an alert from his car's security system and reported a burglary to the police, who responded to the report about 5 a.m.

Los Angeles police said the car was probably abandoned by the burglars, who had stolen items from other garages in the neighborhood. Nothing else from Sheen's home was reported stolen, said Officer Bruce Borihanh of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Another luxury car stolen from a nearby neighborhood was discovered off the side of the road about 200 yards from where Sheen's car had been found, police spokesman Richard French said.

The 2009 silver Bentley coupe was reported to police about 1:45 p.m. by a press photographer.

French, who called the Bentley's appearance "highly coincidental," said it was unclear if the car was stolen by the same thieves.

Sources said police ruled out any domestic dispute in the Sheen incident after interviewing the actor and his wife, who was out of state.