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January 31, 2008

Oh please

Well, today the Bills have confirmed that they will (gasp) play 5 regular season and 3 exhibition games over the next five years in (gasp!!!!) Toronto. On a monetary basis, this is probably a good thing, as the Bills will gain some serious cash. On the other hand, it increases the chances that when Bills owner Ralph Wilson, who is getting seriously decrepit, passes on, the Bills will shuffle off to Toronto. Or some other place. For example, consider this quote that is sure to send everyone into a tizzy:

Wilson, asked about the fears of Bills fans that this might be the first step in losing the team to Toronto, said, “They can think whatever they want. I can’t speculate the future.”

Thanks, Ralph! To make things worse, the Bills plan to let the Toronto game be, possibly, a December game against a marquee opponent. Meanwhile, he's also playing the poor card with his franchise, which, according to Forbes, is worth $637 million:

“When I was making the presentation to the owners, I said, ‘I’m tired of standing on a street corner with a tin cup asking you guys to support us,’ ” Wilson said.

Now, I honestly don't know the economics of running an NFL team. However, I am pretty sure the Bills aren't exactly losing money. I'm not happy the Bills are playing games in Toronto, but if it helps the team stay in Buffalo for a long time, I can deal.

Posted at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2008

I'll take that

Being offered for free on Craigslist today:

I have a 4x4x4 box full of packing peanuts and bubble wrap. All previously used, but not in bad shape. First email gets it, please leave your phone number in the email. Thanks.

Free bubblewrap? Be still my heart! Why, just the other day I got something in the mail, and it was wrapped in bubble wrap. I spent the next fifteen minutes popping the bubbles. Each time one popped, I squealed with glee.

I guess people have different methods of popping bubbles. Some pop one at a time. Others roll the sheet up to pop many at once. My favorite method is to squeeze two together, and let them pop each other with their own weight. The fun can last for hours!

Posted at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2008

Best intentions

I have to feel bad for this fellow. He drinks some wine, wants some more. He discovers that he doesn't have any more wine at home, and decides he needs to go get some. Being highly intoxicated, he takes the family tractor for a spin to the liquor store. Gets a DUI anyway:

A man was charged with drunken driving after going through two bottles of wine, cutting through a snowstorm on his lawn mower and riding down the center of the street to reach a liquor store, authorities said.

Police found Frank Kozumplik, 49, homeward bound on a John Deere tractor Saturday night, toting four bottles of wine in a paper bag, officials said.

He told officers that his wife had taken their car to work, and that the mower was the only way he could reach the store, two miles from home.

His blood alcohol level was 2 1/2 times Michigan's legal driving limit of 0.08 percent, police told WLEN-FM. They arrested him and confiscated the mower.

Posted at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2008

Judges aren't always wise

I read this interesting case in one of my classes, concerning a fellow who made a will that kind of screwed over some of his relatives:

His will was formally executed one year and four months prior to his death. By its terms he devised to Charlotte Josephine Hindmarch, fifty years of age, and whom he describes as his friend, his house located at 722 Nowita place and all his personal ‘belongings, monies, collateral, notes or anything of value’; he devised to his daughter, the contestant herein, the house located on lot nine, at 724 Nowita place, and to his granddaughter, Marjorie Jean Angell, his interest in an estate in Salt Lake City. He gave to his grandson, his son-in-law and several other persons, relatives or friends, $1 each.

So, what do you do in such situations? Naturally, you try to get the will invalidated. This particular litigant attempted to prove Mr. Wright was bonkers (or, legally speaking, lacked testamentary capacity) when he executed his will, thereby making it legally inoperative. Among the incidents cited for this proposition were this one:

[H]e once gave her a fish (he spent much time in fishing) which he said he had caught and she found it had been soaked in kerosene and when he asked her how she liked it he laughed and said he had put the kerosene on it before he brought it to her ...

The late Mr. Wright thus had a pretty wacky side. But the judge poo-pooed many of these reasons, before next noting this:

Mr. Brem testified substantially as his wife had testified, but added the statement that ‘Mr. Wright often chased the children out of his yard and turned the hose on them and that children in the neighborhood were afraid of Mr. Wright.’ He did not explain why they often returned to his yard if they feared him.

Come on, judge. Do you really need an explanation as to why they kept coming back? It's because they were scared of him! Since time immemorial, kids have been going to harass old people who live alone. It's Boo Radley. Or Ben Kenobi. Or hell, the guy with the giant dog in The Sandlot. Sounds to me like Mr. Wright was the neighborhood crazy man whose house kids would visit, and the second he stepped outside, they would scream and run away, all in separate directions. The citation, by the way, if you're desperate to read this whole case (it is quite interesting), is In re Wright's Estate, 7 Cal.2d 348, 60 P.2d 434 (Cal. 1936).

We didn't really have a person like that in my neighborhood. The closest we have to that is my grandma's neighbor, but that's another story. Instead, consider what happened to these kids in Columbus who chose the wrong shut-in to bother.

Also, speaking of wills, here's a great New Yorker cartoon on the subject.

Posted at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2008

I hope she died happy

One man's attempt to "put a charge" into his sex life appears to have failed miserably. Very miserably, in fact: it lead to manslaughter charges. Oops:

Police said a 29-year-old York County woman is dead after her husband apparently shocked her with an electric cord to stimulate her during sex.

Officials said 37-year-old Toby Taylor was jailed Thursday in lieu of $100,000 bail on involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges.

Authorities said Kirsten Taylor was found unconscious Wednesday night at their Lower Windsor Township home. She was taken to York Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Police charging documents said Toby Taylor first said his wife was shocked by a hair dryer. But police said when burns were found, he told them he had clipped a cord to his wife and plugged it into an electric strip three or four times.

York County Coroner Barry Bloss called it a case of "bizarre sex" and said, "Even if you did it before, you have to know you could kill someone."

Posted at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2008

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse

Imagine how awkward the conversations between the buyer and seller of this horse must've been. "We'll eat like kings!" Or something.

Kristen DeGroat just wanted to sell her horse to another animal lover, but her ad ended up under "Good Things to Eat" in the classified sections of two newspapers. About a third of the 60 or so calls she received were from people interested in buying horse meat.

"It's been enough to turn your stomach," said DeGroat, who eventually sold her 3-year-old mare, Foxy, to a man who wanted a live horse for his grandchildren.

DeGroat's ad, offering the registered pinto for $200 or the best offer, was intended to run Sunday and Monday under the classified ad heading for horses and stables in The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times.

However, human error landed the ad under the food heading in the classified sections of both newspapers. The papers, which have a jointly run classified ad department, corrected the mistake.

Posted at 06:11 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2008

Mo-ron

Via Joe Sportsfan, check out the guy in the background of this picture. The one with the "defense" sign. Notwithstanding the fact that it is lame to bring a d + fencepost sign to a football game, it is that much lamer to bring one to a sporting event where people don't play defense! So, either this guy is really, really stupid, or, I hope, he has a wicked sense of humor. But somehow I think it is the former.

Posted at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2008

Lock her up

Old women at McDonald's are always a funny sight. I will never forget the time when I was about 8 years old, and the old lady in front of me in line yelled at the clerk, "I don't want no mayo!"

However, she didn't get throwed in jail. The woman pictured above did, when a cop asked her to move her car out of the drive thru lane and she failed to comply. There are thousands of cop-McDonald's jokes I could make here, but I won't.

A 75-year-old woman was arrested at a Clearwater McDonald's drive-thru because police said she wouldn't pull her car forward.

Authorities said Jean Merola, a grandmother of eight, was arrested for disorderly conduct after she refused an officer's orders to move her car while she waited for the coffee and fries she ordered at the drive-through window. Merola said the McDonald's employees told her to wait there for her food.

Merola was handcuffed behind her back and put in the cruiser. Another officer arrived and took her to the Pinellas County Jail.

Posted at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)

Anything to win

I've never quite understood the appeal of beauty pageants. Sure, the ones with swimsuit competitions get an a-plus in my book, but they seem to be more trouble than they are worth. Some contestants will go all Tonya Harding on their competition, if that's what they have to do to win. Whoever did this isn't quite on the level of Ms. Harding, but she seems to really, really want to do well in the pageant. At least when they find a suspect, it won't be too hard to catch her, as it's hard to run in high heels. Unless her talent is running in high heels. Also, I've never tried running in high heels. That's just what I hear.

Lipstick streaks on a beauty pageant contestant's $3,000 evening gown prompted a search for the person responsible for the vandalism.

The red streaks on Jessica Wittenbrink's gown were discovered backstage during the Miss South Florida Fair pageant over the weekend.

Pageant organizers and Palm Beach County sheriff's deputies met with the 13 contestants, but deputies said there's not enough "conclusive evidence" to name a suspect.

It wasn't clear if the lipstick was internal sabotage or random vandalism by someone unrelated to the pageant.

Posted at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2008

No solicitors

Today I got an email from a friend. It began with a greeting and a personalized comment, then the next paragraph launched into a long, detailed description of a trip my friend was taking along with a request for money. It's a charity trip to Africa or something or other. The whole method of the email left a sour taste in my mouth.

Here's why: the asking for money part wasn't separated from the personal part of the email. I don't mind getting fundraising emails from friends, because I'll usually donate twenty bucks or something. However, I think it is paramount that any sort of form letter not be presented as personal correspondence. Instead, either make it an obvious mass mailing, or if you're going to send it to another person, say "and here's an email about my trip to Africa." I'm not a nameless schmo, I'm your friend! Show me some e-mail love. I would much prefer something like, "Hello [friend's name], how are you? blah blah blah. Also, you might have heard I'm going to Africa. Here's a little message about that..."

Generally, I think it's poor form to pass off a form letter as personalized correspondence. I mean, hell, if you do that on an online dating site, it can make you infamous. (Note the form letter nature of his email.)

In short, I have no problem getting form letters, just so long as the sender doesn't attempt to pass it off as addressed solely to me.

Posted at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2008

Am I smarter than a 5th grader?

First off, if there are any misspellings here, please, treat them as ironic, considering the topic at hand. I was loafing around the house a little while ago, when the TV show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" came on.

Now, I know the conceit of the show: kids know a lot more than adults about certain things. Of course they know it, they have to in order to pass tests. But the kind of stuff the fifth graders know is usually of little import to the average adult. For example, some of the questions I saw were "Who said 'give me liberty or give me death'?"; "99% of the solar system's mass is contained where?"; "What is the least common denominator of 12 and 36?" All of these have the distinct characteristic of being pure trivia. It pains me to say this, as I am well-known for my ability to remember trivia, but it's all pretty damn useless. That's why it's called trivia.

Now, there are a few instances where knowing who said "give me liberty or give me death" might be good for an adult. Most of them involve winning money on a game show. However, a fifth grader better know who said it, because it's on his damn test. If he doesn't know, he gets a bad grade. There's little incentive for an adult to know that, because the odds of ever needing to know that are very small. After the average fifth grader takes the test, he'll quickly forget all about Patrick Henry.

So, what I'm saying is, it's specious to suggest a fifth grader is smarter than an adult because he might know crap like that. Judging by Zorn's list of fifth grader wisdom, it might be fair to say that adults are a little wise than fifth graders. Well... most adults are. There are some pretty stupid adults.

However, it is kind of cumbersome to entitle a show, "Are you better at remembering stuff you learned in fifth grade but no longer need to know than a person who is currently in fifth grade?" Plus Jeff Foxworthy might not be able to say all that.

Posted at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2008

Dirty hippies

What can baseball Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers do that former President Abraham Lincoln cannot do?

The answer: be a New York City police officer:

The city's police have been told to get a little more uniform -- it's goodbye to goatees, chinstrap beards and designer hair affectations more suitable for, well, designers.

A Jan. 8 memo clarifies a regulation that says officers are not allowed goatees, chinstrap beards (think Abraham Lincoln) or other "designer beards."

New York officers are allowed to have mustaches -- including Chief Joe Esposito -- and undercover officers can pretty much do whatever they want when it comes to facial hair.

I know, I know. You're probably saying, but Abraham Lincoln has been dead for more than 140 years, he can't be a cop even if he shaved the beard. That's not really the point, is it? You're also probably saying, why would Rollie Fingers want to be a cop? He's a millionaire. Well look at that mustache, does it look like he does things the logical way?

Lincoln could be an undercover cop, of course. However I think most people would recognize him, even gangbangers. After all, his picture is all over our money. But then people would have to know he's a cop, though must people would probably wonder why is Lincoln buying heroin? Well why would he be a cop, too? Nobody knows.

Posted at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

My new favorite TV show

Damn, I love Flight of the Conchords. The show follows the adventures of a fictionalized version of the eponymous New Zealand folk duo as they try to make it big in New York City.

My favorite part of the show is its laid-back vibe. It's not like shows where something major happens every episode, and it takes time for the plot to unfold. The goofy dialogue is interspersed with equally goofy songs, and its quirkiness grows on you with each viewing.

Additionally, I have to like it because I had to go to five stores before I found a place that had the DVD. Here's a bit from one of the episodes:

Posted at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2008

Gee whiz

If I am ever feeling bad about myself, I know exactly where to go for an ego boost: Yahoo Answers. Questions range from the inane to the mundane, with an occasionally interesting query. Sometimes, people are just really stupid. Further, I think most "questions" are either kids seeking help on their homework, or people who are too lazy to look up directions.

But my favorite are the ones that are clearly from not very bright people. It is verily astounding at the stuff that people do not know, like why the day starts at midnight, or what was the Trojan War. I feel like, even if people don't *know* what this stuff is, they can look it up. Anyway, I always feel better after that. Thank you, Yahoo, for boosting my self-esteem.

Posted at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)

Get mappin'

I went to the excellent Maps exhibit at the Field Museum today. As usual with such exhibits, I have one major gripe: get rid of the freaking audio tour guides!

It is a staple of every museum exhibit that you trade $5 in exchange for a tape recorder with a narrated audio tour of the exhibit. Sure, they are informative and give lots of background information that tourless schmucks like myself can't know, but they have one major drawback. They create an army of museum zombies.

They are always there: people who zone out, stare at the artifact in question, and become completely immobile, blocking all others. Combined with the incredible overcrowding such exhibits usually attract, it is nigh impossible to see anything because there is a wall of zombies. Sometimes, they will all get their tape recorders in sync, and move between walls as one. Woe be to anyone who gets in their way: listening to the dulcet tones of the B-list narrator, they don't even watch where they are going. A bump, followed by not even an apology, and they are on their way.

This is unacceptable. Please, get rid of the audio tours. It will make exhibits so much easier to attend.

Posted at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2008

Kids never learn

I swear, schools now-a-days. Back when I was in school, you had a food fight, you got thrown in detention for a couple of days. I'm not sure what has precipitated this crackdown, but kids in Wisconsin who started a food fight found themselves thrown in jail instead of detention:

It was a costly food fight for some students at Monona Grove High School, and some parents said that the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

Seven students, ages 17 and 18, are facing fines of nearly $300 each and four-day school suspensions for slinging spaghetti at the cafeteria pasta bar last month.

Junior Dave Peiss said that it was a "total, complete mess" after the food fight.

School administrators said that they wanted to take a hard line against such behavior.

I don't know what to think about this. You'd think that by now, school administrators would have come to the realization that kids are kids, and they sometimes do idiotic things, like start food fights. Unless there are some extenuating circumstances, like, I don't know, there were many other food fights before this and it then caused a riot, this is clearly overreacting.

Posted at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2008

Okay, but why?

Whirlpool has unveiled a refrigerator that has some very high tech features:

As if storing food wasn't enough, Whirlpool's $1,999 Central Park refrigerator now does double-duty with attachments that dock an iPod, display digital photos, hold a tablet PC and serve as a whiteboard.

The unit, about the size of a large textbook, clips onto the top of the freezer door and connects to the fridge's power. Each is sold separately, the iPod dock for $149, the digital picture frame for $249, the tablet PC for $799 and the white board for $100.

This made me recall that Oprah recently gave every member of her audience a refrigerator with a High Definition TV built into the door. (Incidentally, it's really hard to spell refrigerator.)

All I can think is, what purpose does this serve? Refrigerators are important kitchen appliances, but they aren't ones that people gather around for any sustained period of time. Sure, there are probably moments of family togetherness when everyone stands in front of the fridge to choose between the mango salso or the bean dip, but once the task is completed you leave. Why, then, would someone stand in front of the fridge to work on his computer, when there is a perfectly good kitchen table somewhere? You can't even sit down!

Why would anyone want an HD TV in his fridge? It's probably the only HD most people have: "Hey, Bill, wanna come over to my house and watch the Super Bowl? We can watch it on the HD!"

"Sweet, I'm there."

"Make sure you bring one of those collapsible lawn chairs, 'cause we're watching it on my fridge! Oh yeah, and bring your cooler, I don't want to miss anything because I have to open the door to get a beer."

What a rocking Super Bowl party that one would be!

Or maybe one would want to throw a dance party. "Everyone gather in the kitchen, I can plug my brand new iPod into the Frigidaire! It has a subwoofer and everything."

Putzes.

Posted at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2008

Bait n' switch

I was watching Law & Order today, and this commercial came on during the break:

When I heard the first few seconds, I said, "oh, this girl can't go to school because getting one's period is shameful and cause for shunning in Africa. What backwards and misguided people!" But no, it turns out she can't go to school because there isn't enough whatever it is women use for their periods to go around. Personally, I don't know about any of that stuff. Nope. No how. Don't wanna know about THAT.

The gist of the commercial is, buy Always, help girls in Africa. This is an admirable goal. I'm mildly disappointed the commercial wasn't a militant call to arms against oppression of women, though. Oh well.

Posted at 05:52 PM | Comments (1)

Seg-no-way

I really do not like Segways. They are a marvelous invention, relying on technology and design that I could not even comprehend. Nevertheless, they are annoying and stupid.

I was crossing the street outside my office building today, when a man on a Segway buzzed me as he came from the opposite direction. I turned to watch him as he went, and I wanted to make a face at my fellow pedestrians, as if to say, look at this d-bag. Nobody noticed, though.

There are a litany of reasons why I don't like Segways. First, they promote laziness. As if Americans aren't sedentary enough, now we have a machine that will do our walking for us. Dean Kamen, who invented the thing, once said that he envisioned people in offices rolling around between cubicles on their Segways. It's not that hard to walk to somebody else's cube, and hell, most people don't even bother to walk over to another cube: they call on the phone or maybe send an instant message.

Second, they're dangerous. If more people wind up with Segways, they are going to start running old-fashioned pedestrians off the sidewalk. If they get banned to the street, like bicycles, they'll cause more chaos because cyclists will have to zoom around them.

Third, people who ride them look stupid. Remember the episode of Frasier where Niles Crane was riding a Segway? That's right, and who wants to be associated with Niles Crane, the ultimate TV wuss if there ever was one. Yes he scored a hot English wife, but he was also fictional, so it is hard to make a case for that meaning anything. About five years ago, whilst still living on the street that gave this here commentary its fine name, I saw a man riding a Segway down Belmont Avenue. He looked so smug and smarmy atop that thing, I wanted to steer him into a pothole. It is the transportation equivalent of socks and sandals or the fanny pack. A person riding one automatically looks like an uberdork. They may as well ride a unicycle, at least that has a fun novelty edge to it.

The only advantage to Segways that I can think of are that they get you where you want to go faster than walking. However, that doesn't matter. Why would anyone want to hang out with a guy who rolls up on a Segway? Exactly.

Posted at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

January 07, 2008

Greaaaat

That's a cat of mine, Tony. His real name is Antonio, but that's hard to say so everyone calls him Tony. In case you were wondering, I do not know if he is Italian.

Today in Lancaster it was 55 degrees, and Tony celebrated by going into the field next to my parents' house to scrounge up a meal. He was successful, because a few minutes later he was doing this:

Now, when I first came upon this scene I saw him emerging from the field carrying a mouse. He dropped it in front of me, and then started batting it around as it tried to run away. Needless to say, Tony was victorious, and he had soon left a pile of entrails at the doorstep.

Would you believe, one mouse was not enough? After I cleaned up the guts, I saw him coming back from the field with another mouse. This time he left the mouse's head on the doorstep. I feel pretty bad for those mice, but who am I to interfere with nature?

As my parents and I left for brunch before I drove back to Chicago, he was in the field again, looking for a THIRD mouse. That's when I took the top picture.

Tony looks a lot like my old cat, Sam. It's crazy, but ol' Sam died nearly five years ago. Now here is where things get disturbing. Whenever I go home, we do a lot of reminiscing. This was especially so this time around, because my mom bought a DVD recorder and has me copying all our old tapes, including an infamous video where Santa Claus came to visit in 1983. There were lots of videos of old pets, such as our first dog, Stanley, who was as gentle as he was giant. There were videos of Sam as a young kitten, and cats who are faded memories, like Robbie and Pickles. They both suffered ignoble deaths: Robbie tried to sneak under the automatic garage door and was crushed to death, while Pickles got run over by a car. Sam also got caught underneath the garage door, but he was so fat that he survived.

This led to a rather awkward conversation: my mom told me how when we first got the cats, the reason was for them to kill mice. We had just moved into this house in the country, with the aforementioned field. Mice sneaking into the house were a big problem, but they said, hey, let's get some cats, and they'll eat all the mice! We'll let them run around, kill bunches of mice, and oh yeah, we'll let little Timmy carry this animal around and treat it like his kid when he's not killing small fauna and eating out of the garbage can. I mean, I'm not stupid, I knew Sam was there to eat mice, but I liked to think it was a secondary purpose to other things like providing companionship and teaching responsibility. It's all good, though, I think Sam did all of his jobs quite well.

Posted at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)

January 03, 2008

Best of 2007, number 1

M.I.A. - Kala. Now here's a surprise, right? I think pretty much everyone has this as their number one or number two, but it's deservedly so. When I think about how to describe this album, I'm always reminded of the movie About a Boy when Will gives Marcus a CD player and a Mystikal album. He says it's "world music... slash rap." Well, I have no idea what that means, but that's what I think this is. M.I.A. comes from Sri Lanka and has a father who was a member of the political/"militant" Tamil Tiget party. She throws raps, Bollywood songs, a freakin' Jonathan Richman reference, and sound effects like barking dogs and gunshots into her songs. Unlike so much other rap, her songs have a political conscience in addition to driving beats, and it's an irresistable combo.

Posted at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2008

Best of 2007, number 2

The Pierces - Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge. Ah yes, my affinity for girlie music continues. However, the Pierce sisters have crafted a record which I think anyone can enjoy. The title of the album pretty much says it all, with songs filled with good men and bad men, but mostly bad men. Sometimes they are sung with a coo, sometimes with a snarl - but however they are sung, they are great songs.

Posted at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)