I'll Vote For That

Hello World, Well, all I can say is that it's a good thing that we're not all given to wanton hysterics or incoherent tantrums, and frankly, outright despair might not be out of the question either, the way things are going around here. After six weeks of football, the Patriots and Cowboys are running away with things at identical 5-1 records, although the Vikings have them beat on percentage points by still being undefeated after 5 games. Both the Giants and Jets are wallowing in the bottom of their respective divisions, with Big Blue showing slightly better at 3-3 than Gang Green at a woeful 1-5, and hard to get much worse than that and still be considered a professional football team, after all. Meanwhile in baseball, the Cleveland Indians have secured their spot in the World Series, and just waiting for the winner of the Cubs-Dodgers series to see who they're going to play against for all the marbles. Of course, this leaves disappointed fans in cities all over the map, and perhaps none more so than in Toronto, where their scrappy Blue Jays squeaked into the Wild Card at the end of the regular season, and promptly blew out Baltimore and Texas handily, before smacking into the brick wall that is Cleveland, who quickly dashed their hopes in the second round, alas. The NBA hasn't started playing games yet for real, but they've got about 5 under their collective belts in hockey already, with the Canadiens, Canucks, and Capitals all undefeated so far (I can assure you that I'm not making up these alliterative teams for dramatic effect, it really is true, believe it or not) and the hapless Rangers limping along at an underwhelming 2-2 now. I'm starting to get the feeling that this could be a very long winter, in more ways than one. Speaking of more ways, I'm sure I'm not the only person, when faced with the prospect of a supposedly resealable product, has never had any success in getting the zipper re-connected in such a way as to re-close the package once again. It may not matter so much if it's a package full of cup hooks or rubber bands that might not manage to escape on their own, but it's much more critical if you're dealing with food items that could easily spill, spoil, or fall victim to marauding varmints if not properly contained. We have our friends at Lundberg Family Farms to thank for the following innovation in their Wild Blend Rice (and before you ask where was this brilliant invention over the last 150 years of packaging, please be advised that the family farmers at Lundberg have only been in business since 1937) which is that the package closes with sturdy Velcro instead of a spindly plastic zipper, and thanks ever so. How genius is that! I don't know how or when they came up with this brainstorm, but all I have to say is, "Give that person a raise, by golly!" On the other side of the coin, I was rudely interrupted by a pop-up ad last week, for one of those gambling web sites where I could play their electronic slots, card games, or other games of chance, to while away the hours in the privacy of my own computer screen, and with any luck, WIN BIG BIG BIG!!! Obviously, they didn't want me to miss out on this opportunity, so their ad was very persistent in its efforts to encourage me to "Sign Up For Your Free Trail Today!" Although I doubt that their actual intention was to sign me up for a free "trail," I faced no difficulty in turning them down on the grounds that I had no need for a trail, track, path, route, way, course, or passage, free or not. Honestly, sometimes you just don't know whether to laugh or cry, and believe me, I've tried both to no avail. In other technology news, alert readers may have noticed this little electronic parlor trick making the rounds through Facebook under the tantalizing announcement: "YOUR PHONE HAS A NAME!" That isn't actually the case, although for whatever reason, it is true that you can exploit an arcane feature of Facebook to make it look that way. For instance, if your phone number was 987-6543, you would enter the last 3 numbers into the Comment section of a standard Facebook post, in the following exact pattern: @[543:0] and you would be rewarded with a random name that the software generates for you - something along the lines of HILDA FRAK or DIEGO VILLALOBOS or some other such nonsense, that is only notable for the fact that you can tell at a glance that it's not you. This should work with any 3-digit number, and theoretically, should return the same generated name for the same number each time, no matter who does it, or from where, or when. And like many things on the Internet these days, heaven knows, there's no purpose to being able to do this (although there are pages upon pages of search results in geek-speak trying to explain why this does or doesn't work, or where the names come from) but that wouldn't stop people from trying it, not by a long shot, and I ought to know. Just tell them CASSIDY OGLETHORPE sent you. Now, anyone who knows me can tell you that I am apolitical to a fault, and the last time I took sides in an election, it was when Thak was running for The Dirt Party on the platform of introducing the wheel - against his Troglodyte opponent, who naturally, was opposed to anything so radical and futuristic. (Personally, I said that no good could come of it, and while I hate to be smug, I think it's only fair to admit that history has borne me out on that point, and then some.) But wherever anybody may fall on the political spectrum, I believe that we can all agree that this presidential election has been one for the books, and not necessarily in a good way, and in fact, I anticipate more than the usual amount of write-in votes for the likes of Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, Elvis Presley, or Rin Tin Tin, and that's not just Captain Kangaroo talking, believe me. So you can be sure that I was more than ready when this came my way in the wonderful wide world of social media on Facebook, and I couldn't get on board fast enough. (Although in fairness, plenty of eager folks pounced on this with enthusiasm way before I got there.) ================================= DESCRIBE THIS ELECTION USING ONLY A MOVIE TITLE - Liar, Liar The Hero & The Terror How to Get Away with Murder Lost in Space We Bought a Zoo I Know What You Did Last Summer The Hunger Games Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Les Miserables 10 Things I Hate About You Night of the Living Dead Lost Imitation of Life Apocalypse Now Nightmare on Elm Street Titanic Witches Dumb & Dumber Clash of the Titans Groundhog Day The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (that was my contribution) And my personal favorite - The Rocky Horror Picture Show ======================================= Oh, ya gotta love it! One can only imagine that somewhere off in The Great Beyond, our poor beleaguered Founding Fathers are lounging around with a large bowl of popcorn and having a great big laugh at our expense - because let's face it, you've got to laugh to keep from crying. I just hope they're not watching "Armageddon." Elle