A Canadian blogger named Kyle MacDonald decided one day that he wanted to play a real world game of “Bigger and Better”. You know, that game you may have played as a child where you start with a practically worthless object and compete against other friends to trade it for some thing bigger and better. Then turn around and trade it again for something even better, and so on. The person with the biggest/best thing at the end wins.

Well this is the ultimate version of this game. Starting with a single red paperclip, this guy wants to end up with a house, by bartering for it. At first I thought, he would never come close but wouldn’t you know it as of 2 days ago he met his goal 1 year and just 14 trades later. The journey across the U.S. and Canada for these trades is much more entertaining than it sounds. His blog was the epicenter of the trades and he keeps a great journal of this wild story. It’s one of those “I wish I would have thought of that” ideas that was just crazy enough to work!

Now and then a baseball manager entertains the crowd by throwing a tantrum on the field arguing a call. Some classics from Lou Pinella come to mind as well as Billy Martin and Earl Weaver. But I have to say this video from Sunday is currently the best manager explosion I have ever seen. This guy lost it like no other manager that I can remember in the past decade. His name is Joe Mikulik the manager of the Colorado Rockies single-A minor league affiliate. Here is a good breakdown of this particular blowout.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg felt like taking a 15 minute “cat nap” during a hearing today. I wonder if she had a pillow to make it a little more comfortable for her to sleep in our highest court. The picture on the left depicts this funny scene.

It seems highly technical matters of political redistricting in Texas do not interest her. It wouldn’t interest me much either, but it’s her job to be interested because of the importance of her position. Not to mention the importance of her ruling.

Just a thought for the Justice: Drink more coffee and maybe a Red Bull or two.

The 2006 Winter Olympics began in Torino, Italy last night with the opening ceremonies. I enjoy watching the Olympics for the most part, though there are some events I wonder why they are even an “olympic sport.” Luge for one. Jerry Seinfeld has a classic routine on the luge. It makes me laugh every time I read it:

“And that other one that I love is the luge. You know the luge, where the guy wears the slick suit. This is on the bobsled run, but it’s not even a sled. It’s just bob. It’s just a human being hanging on for their life, this is the whole sport. Just ahhhhhhhhh… “oh he pointed his toes… oh, this guy is a tremendous athlete”.

The luge is the only sport I’ve ever seen that you could have people competing in it against their will. And it would be exactly the same. You know, if they were just picking people off the street, “hey hey hey, what is this ?! I don’t wanna be in the luge”. You know, you put the helmet on them, you wouldn’t really hear them screaming, just:

- purrrrrr -
“you’re in the luge, buddy”
“ahhh ahhh ahhh ahhh… aaahhh…”
“World record. Didn’t even wanna do it”
I wanna see that event next year, the involuntary luge.”

Ha! Good stuff. Go USA!

1. Aretha Franklin should have sung the “Star-Spangled Banner” by herself. Aaron Neville’s singing made me wonder if his mic was broken.

2. Why in the world was Tom Brady doing the official coin flip? Aren’t there plenty of other famous people to do this? Did the NFL think the ratings would stink if they didn’t have the Patriots there?

3. Watching the Super Bowl on an HDTV is good. Watching Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in HD is bad. Really bad. Downright disturbing. One of the few drawbacks of HDTV. Plus did anyone understand what he was singing most of the time?

4. Any high school football team could manage the clock better that the Seattle Seahawks did at the end of both halves. They looked better overall in the game, but its the scoreboard that matters.

5. MacGyver is back! Here is the commercial. One of the better commercials last night.

6. Other good commercials included the Careerbuilder.com Monkeys in the Office, the Caveman FedEx commercial. More Commercials here at Google Video.

7. The game did have its moments. The Steelers habit of throwing in a few gadget plays is always fun to watch, especially when it ends in a game breaking touchdown to Hines Ward.

8. Yet again the officiating crew made some horrible calls that seriously effected the momentum of the game.

9. Steelers owner Dan Rooney grabbed the trophy before they even got to the official presentation. Mike Tirico had to make him put it back.

10. In the end the NFL got what they wanted a storybook ending for Jerome Bettis’ career.

Here in Chicagoland the football season has sadly come to an end.

Da Bearsssss lost daaaaa NFC divisional playoff game my friend. Pass da haaat dawgssss, braaaatsssss and saaasage. (Think in a Chicago accent… It’ll make more sense. If you don’t know what that is, come to Chicago and you’ll hear it) If we only had a team of all Ditka’s.

For some reason I wasn’t very surprised the Bears lost to the Carolina Panthers last Sunday. They did a little too much trash talking leading up to the game and were rusty in the 1st half, since they sat out the starters for the last regular season game. In the end, it was a flawed defensive scheme that was their downfall. A surprise considering their performance throughout the season. It was a fun season to watch nonetheless. Now the sports doldrums take over here for the next 2 months until the Cubs spring training.

I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this picture on another blog. Click on the picture to see a larger version of it.

Proof that there is a sign for everything these days. A sign which has a sole purpose to warn people that they could hit their head on it. It has been called a “self referential” sign. If the sign didn’t exist, there would be no need for it in the first place.

In a way it reminds me of the old Batman TV show where everything was labeled with a lame sign as if you didn’t know what they were.

Sorry for the lack of posts in the past month. I didn’t realize the archive of the posts for December/Jan was inadvertently moved to another folder on my website host during some routine maintenance I was performing.

I didn’t notice anything was wrong until a friend stopped by the site today. When they emailed me to say hi, I thought I’d check out how things were looking here and to my surprise nothing from December or January… D’oh!

I’ll spare you the rest of the details. It’s all up and running now and I have reposted those that were missing.

I should be back to more frequently posting now.

Picture credit: Fox

When I heard about this story on the radio today I thought it was just a comedy bit they were perfoming, but no, it’s true.

Ronald MacDonald (that’s the guy’s real name), an employee of a Wendy’s restaurant in Manchester, NH and another man stole money from the safe in the establishment. This is classic… Ronald MacDonald who is employee of Wendy’s, robs from them! Did the size 24 shoe prints, poofy red hair and clown make up give him away? Was the Burger King an accomplice? Did the Taco Bell chihuahua stand as the lookout? Inquiring minds want to know.

You knew this was coming… A reality TV show (should I really call it that?) in England is being filmed that attempts to dupe unwitting contestants that they are training for space flight. In the end they hope to trick them in to thinking they have been rocketed to space.

All of it is staged, of course, on a old military base. They have been cutoff from the outside world and actors have been placed amongst them to monitor if they are actually believing this whole scenario. The producers hope to make these goofs think they actually fly into space with special effects and video screens. It does seem like a smaller version of what the movie The Truman Show was about. Creating a false “reality” to see how people will react with everyone viewing except the actual cast knowing its fake. I suppose they’ll have to reveal everything when they don’t see the effects of zero gravity.

If they actually fall for this, they have to be some of most gullible people on earth. The more I think about it, it does sound quite funny. Nothing like a good practical joke.

Check out this news story from Brattleboro, Vermont. (which is my mother’s hometown by the way) Apparently a guy stole and sold more than 75 gallons of maple syrup. Since he has been deemed a habitual offender could get life in prison as a result. Life in prison for stealing syrup? They don’t mess around in the Green Mountain State, maple syrup is like liquid gold there.

Now I have to say I have first hand knowledge that Vermont maple syrup is one of God’s most delicious creations. The imitators such as Mrs. Butterworth’s or Aunt Jemima’s syrup are tasteless goo compared with the sweet goodness that is Vermont maple syrup. It’s so good that they have different grades of it that are set and strictly enforced by Vermont law.

As a child, I was raised using the Vermont maple syrup on pancakes, waffles, french toast, steak (well maybe not steak, but syrup makes most anything taste good). Nothing is better and nothing can imitate it. Hmmm… Pardon me while I toast some waffles now.

Calvin and Hobbes is in my top three of my all time favorite comic strips. It’s too bad that Bill Watterson decided to stop drawing it 10 years ago at the height of its popularity.

This past Tuesday, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes was released. Every Calvin and Hobbes strip ever printed is included, along with it comes days of laughter.

The other day, The Washington Post had a great review and retrospect on the strip and its “normal guy” author Watterson.

“People still remember because it was never worse than good, and was often simply brilliant. It parodied the issues of the day, the materialism, the greed-is-good cynicism, the pointlessness of television, the rampaging egos, the growing crassness of public intercourse, the bad behavior, our infinitesimal place in the universe. There was also time for snacks and a bedtime story.” ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ is probably one of the last great American comic strips,” says Dirk Deppey, editor of the Comics Journal.”

I miss reading new stories of Calvin’s favorite cereal Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs and his day dreaming escape from math class via alter-ego’s Captain Napalm, Stupendous Man and Spaceman Spiff. Hopefully someday Watterson will decide to bring it back. It’s fun to dream.

Picture credit: (Bill Watterson/Universal Press Syndicate)