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September 29, 2008

Cubs fans are willing to try anything

There was an interesting story in today's Tribune, about all the various people in Cub Fan Land who are trying to capitalize on the Cubs' success this year. The Cubs, surprise, are in the playoffs and have a real chance to (gulp) end their 100-year championship drought. One woman is selling a most interesting stuffed animal: a goat you can tear apart in moments of anger, like so:

When the Cubs take the diamond for their first playoff game Wednesday, Marge Flashing will be outside Wrigley Field celebrating America's national pastimes: baseball and making money.

The Wheaton woman is the creator of "Break the Curse" kits, a collection of items aimed squarely at a century of futility. In addition to a stress ball, balloons and other tchotchkes, the kit features a stuffed animal goat that fans can rip apart in times of frustration.

"We've suffered through high and lows for so long as Cubs fans," she said. "We wanted to do something to help the team."

Not to mention turn a buck. Flashing joins a flood of entrepreneurs on Internet sites, at craft fairs or on the Wrigleyville streets hawking everything from Lou Piniella-inspired T-shirts and stadium paintings to self-recorded music CDs and clothing for ceramic geese.

A retired accounting manager, Flashing came up with the goat idea in the middle of the night last year. And while the kits have been buried alongside a dead Cubs fan and in the sand in Iraq by a Chicago-born soldier, sales have not exactly skyrocketed. Profits would not quite cover the price of a scalped World Series ticket, at least not yet.

Of course, this all has to do with the Curse of the Billy Goat, which has haunted the Cubs since 1945. Many efforts to break the curse have failed, but that doesn't stop people from trying.

I like capitalism and all that, but I don't know how I feel about this tear-apart goat. It's kind of, well... Gross. It evokes animal sacrifice, or Jurassic Park, where a goat was fed to a ravenous T-Rex.

It goes something like this: Alfonso Soriano drops a fly ball, and spectators all throughout Wrigley Field are just wishing there was a goat around for them to slaughter, and rip in half. Being squeamish, instead they tear up a plush representation of the goat. However, this does satisfy their lust, and soon half of Wrigleyville is rioting and awash in blood and entrails. Good thing, then, the bars won't have beer after the 7th inning. Thanks Mayor Daley!

Oh yeah, and if you want to buy one of these delightful guys, click here.

Posted at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2008

Bane of my existence

Why is it so hard to keep a pair of socks together? To me, there is nothing more frustrating than doing a load of laundry, and when it is done, being unable to match two socks with each other. It is doubly annoying when it's a pair of socks you actually like. Lately I have tried tying the socks together, but then they get separated in the wash anyway.

Sometimes you can't find the right socks. Other times, you have a bunch of socks that look the same, but look alike enough that you can't tell which go together. I think sock manufacturers could solve quite a bit of this problem by making socks with little tags or marks on them that are unique, the same way golf balls have a number on them to tell them apart. Sorting socks would be so much easier: the number 5's go together, of course!

In the meantime, I have created a "lost sock basket," in which I throw my unmatched socks until they can be reunited. Many have entered the basket... Few have left.

This story reminds me of one of those silly anecdotes in Reader's Digest. It goes something like this: a wife and a husband were watching TV one day, when the wife mentioned to the husband that the socks needed to be put away: "These socks haven't been mated in a long time," said the wife. Without looking away from the television, the husband said, "Yes. I know the feeling."

It took me a long time to figure out what he was talking about.

Posted at 03:55 PM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2008

Whoooah!

I loves me some hyperbole, but this seems a little extreme. I noticed this sign for a garage sale whilst walking down the street earlier today, and it sure made me chuckle.

This garage sale is "wild"! I am imagining that at this garage sale, there are all kinds of wild and wacky things for sale: a time machine, perchance. Or a Monkey's paw. Maybe a live hand grenade. I hope no mogwais.

God willing, Joe Francis and the Girls Gone Wild crew are there. Now that I think about it, there did seem to be a giant mushroom cloud right where this wild garage sale was occurring - did Cleveland Avenue spontaneously combust?

I also am wary of any event that bills its times as "3 pm to ????" It says to me, we're so crazy we don't know when it's going to end. In reality, these sorts of things often suck, because if you were truly that crazy, you'd have an end time that you don't adhere to, or you simply wouldn't prescribe an ending time at all.

The question marks are acceptable if you're talking about your kid's 8th birthday party, but not for adults. Adults know when a party is going to end - when everyone is too tired or drunk to care anymore. Instead, I think it should just say "3 pm," instead of "3 pm - ????" There is a subtle difference.

Posted at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2008

Survey says... Whaaaa?

Family Feud is one of my favorite TV shows. I never miss an opportunity to watch it. But I think the people who write the questions for the show are starting to run out of ideas for good questions.

To wit, a recent question asked, "Name a famous person you think has no sense of humor." This is kind of a hard question anyway, but I was completely perturbed when the number one answer was revealed: George W. Bush.

Let me repeat that: George W. Bush was the most popular choice for a famous person with no sense of humor. I don't say many nice things about President Bush, but I will say this: he has a sense of humor. At the very least, he thinks he's funny. (I guess I think I'm funny, too. Doesn't make me funny though.)

This is the man who called his top adviser Turd Blossom. He's also the guy who joked about his inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

WTF, one hundred Americans? Do you not pay attention at all? At least the ones who didn't pick Bush made some good suggestions, namely Dick Cheney and Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson doesn't seem to be funny - just funny lookin! I'm not sure if Dick Cheney knows how to smile. He does grin, but his grin looks like somebody took a key and twisted his face until it became grin-like. Ah, I'm sure Dick is delightful in private company!

Posted at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2008

Move to Naperville

I read a lot of Chicago-centric websites, and every now and then a debate will arise about some annoying part of live in the Second City, such as the sorry state of the El, annoying fans at baseball games, the general crowdiness of the place, and the bucket boys who frequent crowded areas. As soon as the debate gets heated, somebody will drop this bomb: "If you don't like it, move to Naperville!"

Naperville, of course, is the utopian ideal of a suburb. It has lovely homes, great schools, lots of parks, a charming downtown, and chain stores out the wazoo. (It's also home to one of only two Chicago outlets of my favorite establishment, BD's Mongolian Barbeque.) It routinely makes the list of best cities to live in.

Despite all these advantages, Naperville frequently gets blasted by urban Chicagoans for its blandness, whiteness, and lack of personality. I can't say Naperville is all of these things. A person could have a quite fulfilling existence in Naperville, but indeed it would likely be relatively dull for a person used to life in Chicago. Simply having to drive everywhere would be a major change.

Nevertheless, I think the people who are dismissive of Naperville are missing the point. There's lots of problems in Chicago. High taxes. Crime. Vandalism. Corruption. It's something we all have to deal with, but suggesting somebody who complains about it ought to move to Naperville if he doesn't like it isn't going to solve anything. In fact, I think, much like a Hitler reference, any argument about moving to Naperville should mean you automatically lose the debate.

Why shouldn't we want to improve the city? Is it a bad thing to make the place more livable? It shouldn't be. Maybe, just maybe, trying to make certain things about Chicago more like Naperville wouldn't be a bad thing.

Posted at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2008

A-pox-alypse

When I was a kid, I was worried about lots of things. Like the house burning down, or my cat Sam getting hit by a car, or a nuclear war destroying the world. I was a worrisome child.

One of my greatest fears, and the most realistic, was catching chicken pox. Anytime one of my classmates in school got the chicken pox, I'd keep far away, frightened that I might one day catch this horrific illness. It may as well have been the black plague. Or AIDS. I used to worry about catching HIV. I guess I still should, now that I think about it. But how's a 10-year old kid going to get HIV? (No suggestions, you pervs.)

So, eventually I did get chicken pox, in the fifth grade. It was one of the mildest cases of chicken pox you could ask for, so much so that my mom thought I'd probably get it again. I barely had any sores, it hardly itched, and I was only out of school for like a day. (Son of a bitch!)

Now, they have a chicken pox vaccine. Nevertheless, some parents are wary of vaccines - citing what I would consider a specious link to autism, for example. These parents aren't content to vaccinate their kids from chicken pox. But it's not enough to let children grow up without catching chicken pox, because it can turn into shingles when you're an adult, which I hear is kind of painful. And maybe deadly.

Instead, these parents have taken a page from swingers, dominatrixes, and anonymous sex enthusiasts: they're using the internet to arrange "chicken pox parties."

Keller did not trust the chickenpox vaccine, so she was arranging for her children to get immunity the old-fashioned way, by catching the disease from an infected child and muddling through weeks of itchiness. Such chickenpox parties were also held in the pre-vaccine era because some experts argued it was safest for kids to get the disease early in life, when the effects tend to be relatively mild.

Although most pediatricians today advise against chickenpox parties, some parents who avoid the vaccination for medical or religious reasons seek out such get-togethers on Internet message boards. Those who have tried it say the strategy takes commitment, persistence and a dose of good luck.

Keller, a stay-at-home mom from Burbank, said going to the party also required resisting some of her instincts as a parent.

"It was so ironic and strange to be driving out to this house, hoping that my kids would get sick," Keller said. "That's pretty much what you spend your entire life avoiding.

Really? It's against your nature to deliberately infect your child? I suppose it makes sense to see that it is better for your kid to get chicken pox as a child rather than risk a bad case of shingles as an adult. But, so help me God, I will never take a theoretical kid of mine to one of these. The methods some of the parents use is downright repulsive. It seems rather Goebbels-ish:

Most pox parties resemble an ordinary playdate, with extra measures to aid infection. Many parents encourage the children to share whistles, lollipops or Popsicles. One mom said her kids shared T-shirts with the infected kids, and another said they rubbed lollipops on the sores.

That, friends, is sick.

Posted at 10:07 PM | Comments (1)

September 15, 2008

Nice work if you can get it

So now that I'm pretty much unemployed, I've been trying to find some work to do until I find out if I passed the bar and can get a lawyer job. It's quite fun, really. However, I'm a little disappointed that there aren't more jobs like this one I saw on Craigslist that might be available for men:

Looking for an extremely attractive female
to make ex-girlfriend jealous. Just hang out at a Wrigleyville
bar for a couple hrs. a few times. That's it. If
interested please send photo and contact info.

* Compensation: $50.00/hr

I mean, I can hang out. You don't even have to pay me. Buy me a beer, is all I need!

I don't know think if this guy's ex saw him hanging out with another guy she'd be jealous. She'd probably be horrified to think he turned gay, or more likely, wonder who his fiendishly handsome new buddy is. (That's me, obviously.)

Posted at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2008

Enough

You know what? I'm over this whole hurricane business. As I write this, Hurricane "Ike" is bearing down on Texas, and is likely to flood the bejesus out of Galveston and Houston. I truly hope that all those in the way of the hurricane are safe, and that they return to find their property also safe.

However, I think I've had it with the hurricane naming system. It's simple, really. Each tropical storm and hurricane is given a name, so as to make them easier to identify in case multiple storms should form at the same time. Also, it helps to portray storms as almost humanlike. It also helps for songs. (Incidentally, when I make a mix CD, I also give it a person's name. So there.)

The current system, though, is unfair. It always starts with A, then goes in alphabetical order. So, unless there's an exceptional amount of hurricanes, the people with names lower in the alphabet get the metaphorical shaft. Do you know there has never been a Hurricane Tim? Sure it made the list once, but what are the odds of there being 20 hurricanes in one year? Scant, I tell you, scant! I, and all people with names like Rick, or Zach, or Wanda, ought to consider this a personal affront. What's so cool about an A name, anyway? Everybody knows the people who get called on first are all brown-nosers anyway.

There's only one way to remedy this. One year, the list starts at A; the next year, it starts at Z, and goes in reverse alphabetical order. This shouldn't be too hard of a concept. Anyone who's sober can say the alphabet backwards, so it shouldn't be so hard for naming storms.

It's only fair.

Posted at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2008

Don't marry outside the faith

I know several people who are from Indian families (from India, not Native American), and a few of them have mentioned how their parents would be very upset if they married a non-Indian person. I don't understand this. It's not like the Indian culture is in danger of being eradicated. There's almost a billion of them, for heaven's sake. I'm not sure how one Indian marrying a girl from Iowa is going to wipe out Indian civilization.

Conversely, I get why Jewish people might be concerned about their children marrying gentiles. For example, one particular dentist was so adamant that his grandchildren marry fellow Jews, that his will disinherited any of them who married outside the faith. Naturally, the grandchildren disobeyed this wish, and now they're involved in a lawsuit wherein the Illinois courts must determine whether they can enforce such clauses in wills. The arguments for are that to cancel the clause would destroy the wishes of the decedent, and as it is his money/assets he can do with it as he pleases, even if such wishes are politically incorrect. On the other hand, opponents argue that courts shouldn't enforce discriminatory clauses like this, and that to do so would allow a "dead man's hand" to control distributions of assets.

Not to get all legal-googly on you, but the courts should keep the will as it is. The will isn't taking property from anyone, it merely expresses who it should go to. And although the will is not a "nice" or even prudent thing, it's his directive and it should be obeyed.

Now, back to the Indians. Here's Devendra Banhart's music video for Carmensita, which features non-Indian (but Israeli) Natalie Portman as an Indian princess in a Bollywood-inspired video. After this, the pube-showing Banhart and Portman started to date, which really is just kind of gross. I should have learned to play a guitar. And sing. And also express myself emotionally instead of hiding behind jokes about other people... God I need a hug.

Posted at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2008

Welcome to Chicago

It was a little before my time, but the 1968 Democratic National Convention took place 40 years ago here in Chicago. It was, to say the least, a mess.

The Tribune has a nice retrospective about it, including a photo gallery, newspaper articles, and the like. It makes the shenanigans in Denver and St. Paul last week look like small potatoes, doesn't it?

Posted at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)

Fecal matters

A principal in Colorado is in trouble for a novel way to deal with students who are abusing the restrooms:

It happened at Peyton Elementary School Monday; the principal there is now apologizing. He sent a letter home with students Tuesday explaining in detail what happened. Principal Michael AuClaire admits it was a bad decision and if it comes down to it he'll go as far as resigning to get the parents trust back.

"There were feces in a paper bag, they had to either bend down or lift up the flap of the bag to see what was in it," said AuClaire.

He says he made the student's look at the bag, left in the girl’s bathroom, to give them idea of what the janitors have to deal with. AuClaire says since school started students have been leaving disgusting messes in the bathroom.

"They've been going to the bathroom on the floor, putting it on the seats," he said.

He now acknowledges that he made a mistake.

"It was a bad decision, I apologize to the students and parents, it wasn't an appropriate thing to do," AuClaire said.

But parent Kerri Peters is still in shock, she can't believe her daughter was exposed to human waste.

"To make them look at it, smell it, breath it, it's disgusting," Peter’s said.

Principal AuClaire says the students wore rubber gloves and never touched the waste and he assures parents something like this will never happen again.

You know, I don't think this is as terrible a thing as it's being made out to be. Yes, human waste is disgusting - but these are kids. I was a kid once. Lots of them have no shame. They'll poop anywhere, pee anywhere. I mean, lots of bars AND Wrigley Field have troughs for people to pee in.

I can truthfully say, if this was my kid, I don't think I'd be that upset about it. It is pretty gross, but sometimes that's what you have to do get your point across to people. I bet none of those kids are going to make a mess in the bathroom again, that's for sure.

Posted at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2008

Dare to be different

As you probably know, I love t-shirts. One of my favorite places to get shirts is Threadless, who consistently produce interesting and unique designs. One such design is called "Funkalicious," and it features an astronaut with a boombox, as you can see from the picture of the girl above.

Personally, I think this shirt is great. I love it, but I am now loathe to wear it. Know why? It seems that every time I go somewhere, I see somebody wearing the shirt. At least three times I've seen somebody else wearing the shirt, while I am also wearing it. There is nothing more embarrassing than wearing a distinctive shirt, only to encounter another person in the exact same shirt.

I always feel like a tool when this happens, but what can you do? I try to make the best of an awkward situation, and deliver an appropriately awkward response, such as "nice shirt!" It's my way of acknowledging that we're wearing the same thing, and that it's okay. At the same time, I don't like being in those kinds of situations, so I don't wear the shirt as much as I would like.

On the other hand, I was at a bar on Saturday listening to an 80's cover band. A few feet in front of me was a heavyset fellow, pounding his hands in the air and spilling beer on bystanders. He seemed to be enjoying himself, but was completely oblivious to the fact that he was being obnoxious.

It soon hit me: we were wearing the same shirt, a navy blue polo shirt from Target. What could I do? I pointed it out to my friends that he was wearing the same shirt, and then I tapped him on the shoulder and said "I love your shirt!" He completely ignored me - this only confirmed my suspicion that he was, in fact, the biggest idiot in the bar that night.

Don't deny a same shirt guy, is all!

Posted at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2008

I hate fantasy sports

At the risk of offending half of the males in this country, aged 18 to 35, I'm going to say it: I hate fantasy football.

The NFL is back. For the first time in what seems like an eternity, the Bills opened the season with a win. NFL demigod Tom Brady apparently tore his ACL and is out for the year, meaning the New England Patriots are at a serious disadvantage. And what's going on? Some schlub is bemoaning the demise of his fantasy football team, which probably has some stupid name like "John Madden's Hershey Squirts."

I see why people like fantasy football. It lets you pretend you're a general manager, and you can boast about how you "totally called" that so-and-so was going to have a monster season. But it's not for me. There's too much of a time commitment. I like football, I really do. But I have no interest in learning who every team's nickel cornerback is. My idea of a great Sunday in August does not involve sitting in my buddy's apartment, conducting a fantasy draft.

And I will not ever be like the guy I see who brings his laptop to the bar to keep track of his fantasy team as he watches football games on TV. If this happens... Please, break the nearest bottle of beer over my head, and tell the officer who comes to arrest you that you did it to save me.

Then, as always, there is the conflict-of-interest issue. The Patriots are universally reviled. Everyone except Patriot fans should be reacting with glee that Brady is out for the year. Instead, people are complaining about how it affects their fantasy team. I refuse to play fantasy football, because I do not want to root for despicable teams like the Dallas Cowboys, as their tight end happens to be on my fantasy team.

But, the fantasy advocate might say, you can root for the player but against his team. No you can't. Cheering for a particular player to succeed can't be separated from cheering for that team.

As for Tedy Bruschi, pictured above, his likeness inspired this particular post. You see, as I was perusing the Bills message board this evening, somebody wrote this rambling missive about fantasy football:

I'm in a fantasy league with individual defensive players where the bulk of our points come from solo tackles. Early in the season, I sift through all of the box scores to see who is getting a bunch of solo tackles. Along with solo tackles they also list assisted tackles. Assisted tackles are vague and players usually don't get many of them. For instance, London Fletcher had a good fantasy day today with 12 solo tackles and 5 assisted tackles. It's normal for the elite linebackers to often get about a third to a half as many assisted tackles as solo tackles. Five assisted tackles was highest in the NFL this week. Well almost highest. Rodney Harrison had 7 solo tackles and 7 assisted tackles for New England. That was only second highest. Bruschi had 2 solo tackles and a whopping 10 assisted tackles this week. I searched around for background on awarding assisted tackles and found this:

"Tackles (solos and assists) are not an official stat, as you noted, so every stadium's stat crew awards them differently. Some crews (STL, ATL) award assists extremely rarely, others award assists to the second player in on nearly every tackle. The only consistent aspect of assisted tackles is that, while two players may be given an assist (and no solo awarded) on a given play, there's no more than two players credited with an assist on a single play and never more than one assist when a solo tackle has already been awarded. There's probably some criteria for judging assisted tackles given to the stat crews, but I don't believe it's been made public and it's clearly applied differently by everyone anyway."

Dear lord.

Posted at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2008

Huh?

Hey, how come when a person thinks something is of poor quality, he calls it "below par"? Shouldn't something that is bad be "above par"? As a golfer, you want to get a score that is below par; but as a worker, you don't want your work to be below par.

This is the strange nature of golf. Unlike almost every other sport, the lower the score, the better. It doesn't make sense to the average person. And so, it flummoxes the average person - below par is good??? I don't get it!

Then my head explodes.

Posted at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2008

Hot diggity

I only caught part of Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention last night, but in browsing the internet, I found quite the interesting nugget. Apparently she mentioned dear old Lancaster in her speech, while talking about John McCain and his time as a prisoner of war:

In describing how Sen. John McCain would bring compassion to the White House, Palin told the story of "fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe, of Lancaster, Ohio."

At the mention of Moe's name, the 88 members of the Ohio delegation, seated front and center on the convention floor, rose to their feet and cheered wildly. Moe, 64, is a first-time convention delegate.

Palin described how Moe recalled "looking through a pinhole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway by the guards."

"As the story is told," Palin continued, "when McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn toward Moe's door and flash a grin and thumbs up - as if to say, 'We're going to pull through this.' "

This is really surprising to me, because it's the first time I ever heard that a fellow POW with McCain was living in Lancaster. I figured that the newspaper would have been all over that years ago. There isn't much else to talk about there, is all I'm saying.

Posted at 11:33 PM | Comments (1)

September 03, 2008

Dare to be different

I try to do some form of exercise almost every day of the week. I love to go running, and other days I go to the gym. Failing that, I'll try to ride my bike somewhere. If anything, it allows me to look down haughtily upon the un-fit masses.

Yesterday, I was riding the elevator at the gym when another guy stepped into the elevator, and he was blasting Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" on his iPod.

This highlighted quite a conundrum for me: I love to rock out to, shall we say, songs you might not expect a normal 28-year-old guy to listen to. I'm talking stuff like I Will Survive, It's Raining Men, and a good deal of the Rihanna, Britney Spears and Shakira catalogs. These aren't bad songs, per se, but I feel slightly embarrassed when I'm running down the street and everyone can hear me listening to Since U Been Gone.

However, the other part of me says this: don't be embarrassed. Be proud of your love for teen pop, female empowerment, and satires about dolls. And I tend to agree - it might look weird that The Go-Gos help me run fast, but I don't care. I like Kelly Clarkson. And judging by her album sales, lots of other people do too. Having Avril Lavigne on my playlist might call my sexuality into question, but am I ashamed? No!

So to my fellow humans, who change the station when Abba comes on, and who lower the volume when others can hear you enjoying a Nelly Furtado track, I say embrace it! Let the cheese blare!

Conversely, there are also songs that are so cliche, they might also lead to embarrassment: Eye of the Tiger. Don't Stop Believing. Living on a Prayer. I call these "training montage" songs, and they are embarrassing because they are exactly what you're supposed to be listening to when working out. These also do not deserve to be shunned: they are merely victims of their own popularity. Clearly the goal here is that if Eye of the Tiger is too cliche, you need to find a substitute that sounds very much like it, and produces similar motivating results.

Why not, then, just use the original? I have over 300 songs on my running playlist - some of them are bound to be ones people have heard before. Don't want me emulating Rocky Balboa? Tough luck - now get off the sidewalk, fatty.

Posted at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2008

Beat me to it

By now I'm sure everyone knows that John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate - no breaking news on THIS web site, friends. Like many of you, this was surely an odd choice. Either it will be disastrous, or a gamble that pays off. But, being the superficial guy that I am, who plans to vote for Barack Obama unless it turns out he's actually one of the aliens from V, I have to focus on some of the other "assets" that Palin brings to the table. She has an interesting life history. Apparently she likes the outdoors. There's her typically Republican stance on sex education, complete with oopsy-daisy ironic twist. But let's face it, she's not too bad to look at either. Compared to John McCain, she's positively radiant.

A story on Craigslist described her appeal to young men in more graphic terms:

We were in line at Caribu Coffee on Halsted when, apropos of nothing, you asked me what I thought of McCain's VP selection Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. After I said I thought she was a horrifying choice in almost every way, you told me she "gave [you] massive boners."

At this point in our "conversation," I said "Ew" and left the coffee shop...without even getting my coffee! I was offended. That kind of language is inappropriate and no one wants to know that kind of personal information about a stranger.

But then, I thought about what you said. More, I thought about the way you said it. It was like you were spooked a little bit. Scared, but also fascinated at this. And then I began to wonder if you said that to me because you were afraid to say it to anyone.

Now I find myself wanting to talk to you again. About this. About everything.

Let me be clear, however: I don't date men with beards. Ever. So that's got to go. The nail polish is negotiable.

Me: Blonde, blue eyes behind cute glasses, Nordic, stern.

[Side note... If you want to get a date from Craigslist, I don't think it's good to start off by demanding your love interest shave his beard, while describing yourself as "stern."]

So, seeing as I have a lot of spare time on my hand, I took the low road and created a new term from the always-in-style MILF. Yes, if John McCain wins the election, Sarah Palin will be a VPILF.

Instead of congratulating myself on my cleverness, I had to curse the internet. You see, pretty much everything I think of that might be remotely funny, somebody has already done. And this is no exception. There's already a god-damn VPILF.com. Or, if you want to borrow from Wayne's World, she would be Baberaham Lincoln.

As I said, this was an interesting choice, and I'm glad to see somebody from outside "The Establishment" get involved in the race. And if the whole Vice President and Governor thing doesn't work out, there's always sportscasting.

Posted at 09:32 PM | Comments (0)