Some Blog Site

I’ve been spending my time putting together the Christmas card (actually, it’s a flyer this year), so I don’t have much of anything to post here today.

Am I the only one who still sorts Christmas cards by ZIP code before mailing them? It used to be that was appreciated by the postal workers who had to sort the outgoing mail. Is that stuff all automated now anyway?

No matter, I still like sorting them myself.

Random note: my brother wins the award for highest ZIP code number in our list this year.

As I was setting up a new appliance this weekend, I noticed the marketing hype on the packaging: “Only uses as much electricity as four 100-watt light bulbs!”

Four 100-watt light bulbs is a fair amount of electricity. Four of those appliances could trip a circuit breaker.

I realized, shortly after reading that phrase, that most electrical products can be made to sound insignificant if you compare them to light bulbs.

For example, my water heater uses only as much electricity as 45 light bulbs!

And my electric fireplace uses the same amount of electricity as 15 light bulbs!

You know what? I’m heating my house with electricity and it is costing me mere pennies per day!

Never mind that it is hundreds of pennies per day, maybe even a thousand pennies per day in really cold weather. The fact is that I do heat my house with electricity and it does cost me pennies per day.

You can’t argue with that, can you?

With apologies to Mariah Carey, and thanks to Magix.L for the Caricature font.

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
Read the rest of this entry »

• Parent Tip: If your child has a loose tooth, give him and his brother each sword-type objects. They will naturally start sword fighting, and inevitably a child will get hit in the face and start crying. You have a 50/50 chance of that child being the one with the loose tooth. In our case, they were foam baseball bats and yes, the loose tooth did get knocked out.
• Church Youth Leader Tip: Don’t close your eyes during the program’s opening or closing prayers. In my case, I’m with the 3rd- through 6th-grade boys. No, as one of the leaders. If all the boys’ leaders closed their eyes during the prayer, when we opened our eyes half the boys would be gone and the other half would have each other in headlocks. Keep at least one eye open.
• Parent Tip: Do not tickle one child when another child is throwing a ball at him. In this hypothetical example, when one child raised his arms to catch the ball, the parent allegedly tickled him, causing him to bring his arms back down to protect his armpits. The ball was then able to travel unimpeded to the child’s face, theoretically speaking.

Given that there will be a lot of people doing a lot of driving this holiday season, I felt some caution was in order. Today’s post is a Public Service Announcement:

Adverb-Man says:
Please Drive Safe

No, I am not cautioning you about your driving. I am cautioning you to make sure that you add -ly to words that modify verbs. Beware the poorly-written signs and announcements this Christmastime.

I don’t want to drive a safe – I want to drive my car.

And I want to do it safely.

Proposed Rule Changes for the NFL

• Calling a timeout just before a field goal attempt will cost the team 5 yards. No one likes the attempts to ice the kicker. If you try to ice the other team’s kicker, you will make his attempt easier.
• A player who causes an injury via foul play are suspended for as long as the injured player is out. Players can be injured on accident, but those are not subject to this rule. For this rule, if you are flagged for a personal foul and the other player is injured, you can’t play again until he does. If that is a play or two, or a few games, you are done for that time. Play nicely.
• Celebrations are allowed only on first downs or scores for offense or turnovers or tackles for loss or stops on 3rd down for defense. Any other instances will be flagged for excessive celebration. You need to accomplish something in order to celebrate it.
• Centers will be held to the same standards as everyone else regarding false starts. No more jerking around and pointing after you are in position. Do not turn into the NBA, where travelling is allowed as long as you dunk. Let the quarterback call the audibles – you stay still until the snap.

Noticeably absent from this list is a modification to the Coach’s Challenge System (CCS, remarkably close to the equally popular (meaning, not popular at all) BCS). Plenty of other people are calling for an overhaul of the challenge/review system, so I’ll let them worry about that.