Saturday, February 27, 2010

The Olympics and Condoms-Strange Bedfellows

Did that title get your attention?  I was telling some friends of mine about this the other day.  I had read about this concerning another Olympics.   Their response was "you've got to be kidding".  Nope.  Would Hairball lie to you honey?   The practice of handing out free condoms began in 1992 in Barcelona.  Condom use within the Vancouver Olympic village is rampant.  This year some 100,000 free condoms were given to some 7000 athletes and officials of the games.  That's some 14 condoms PER person.  Back up...they gave them to the officials too?  This makes Tiger Woods and his trysts pale in comparison.  What do they have there?  A condom depot? Read more...

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Totally Worthless Info to Impress Your Friends

A friend recently suggested I pick up a copy of a book entitled Who Knew.  Well, I obviously didn't know or I would have already read it. By the by, if I can't get a book on Kindle through Amazon, I buy them used.  My sister would say "go to the library".  But I bought this book for $3 and change including shipping.  So, there ya go.  The sub-title of the book is:  Things You Didn't Know About Things You Know Well by David Hoffman .

So, did you know:

If Jell-O is hooked up to an EEG, it registers movements virtually identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult.  After a martini or before?

On average, a Twinkie will explode in a microwave in 45 seconds.  Ok, tell me the truth.  How many of you tried this?

There are approximately 1,750 O's in every can of SpaghettiOs.  Job descriptiton:  The job entails counting food elements but not eating them...

Coca Cola was first marketed as "the best cure for a hangover".  A true Texas cure for a hangover:  A Big Red float with vanilla BlueBell Ice Cream.

The five  interlocking Olympic rings are black, blue, red, white, and yellow because at least one of these colors appears on every national flag.  Hurray for our Olympic team in Vancouver.  The most medals since Lake Placid.  Hmm, do we have to apologize for that? I just had to say it...

Banks are commonly shaped like pigs because in the eighteenth century frugal people saved their money in earthenware jars made of dense orange clay known as pygg.   Today banks are viewed as pigs...

In Pulp Fiction, the word f**k is used 257 times.  Just a typical day on the golf course folks...

For you dog lovers out there that do not pick up your pooch's poop:  Each instance of dog poop that goes unscooped attracts approx. 144 flies! Oh Oh yuck!

Seinfeld wasn't Jerry Seinfeld's first sitcom.  He played the govenor's speechwriter on Benson, but was fired after three episodes.   Why didn't he just show up the next day and pretend that he hadn't been fired? 

On average, we forget 80% of what we learn on any given day.  Is that before or after menapause?

Saturday, February 13, 2010

What if You Had Two Cows: Political Science for Dummies

This is floating around the internet and I found it funny:

DEMOCRATIC
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow. Read more...

Thursday, February 11, 2010

A Small But Growing Culture Within the NBA

Hairball, you mean other than tats, and guns, and women?  I'm not an NBA fan.  I can't even remember  the last time I went to an NBA game.  I think, maybe,  it was in Dallas in 1990.  So, if you're not an NBA fan, why are you writing about it?  It's because whenever I see an article about something "different", I read it.  And this article in today's WSJ really caught my eye.  It seems that over the last decade the NBA has recruited more and more players from outside of the good old U S of A. (Hairball, you really don't watch the sport if that's news to you.)  Stop being a wisenheimer and let me finish.  For those of you who DON"T know this, the number of players born outside of the US has doubled over the last decade (up to 83).  This year, 5 of the top 15 highest paid players are from outside the US.  Ok, OK.  You've made your point.  Move on.  The locker room atmosphere is changing.  While the American players listen to their iPods, iPhones to their ears, looking at laptops, the foreign born players are....drum roll please...READING!  WHAT?!  READING?! In the NBA?!        Listen up.  If you take into account the countries they come from Russia,  the Ukraine, Lithuania, Nigeria etc and couple this with their economic status, they could not  afford nor did they have access to ipods, iphones, laptops etc.  Instead, they read.  Their coaches insisted that they read.  So, it has carried forward.  New Orleans Hornets player, Emeka Okafor, just finished The Road, Interpreter of Maladies, and The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao.  Trust me.  These are not light weight books.  Apparently some of this is nibbling at the edges of the NBA culture.  The Bucks gave all of their players Kindles for Christmas.  But don't get the idea that this all hunky dory with the other players.  (Do you think any of the players in the NBA would say hunky dory? I'm not going to write what I believe they would actually say.)  They do make fun of "the readers".  So, now you know why I read the article.  Pairing reading with the NBA was such an oxymoron that to me it was like putting Obama and Cheney in a room and asking  them to come up with a plan.  Any plan.... Here's the link for the whole article:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704140104575057521488502914.html