Some Harmless Fun

I don’t know about you, but I need some comic relief, and I need it now.

What happens when you toss some pieces of Mentos candy into a bottle of Diet Coke? The above video will show you what happens. There is a very violent reaction–which is still perfectly safe as long as you avoid doing certain idiotic things.

Don’t try this indoors.

Don’t put Mentos in your mouth and then pour in some Diet Coke. Please do not do this. They’re calling it a “challenge” and filming themselves doing it. If you insist on trying this, remember–this blog told you not to.

Don’t do this inside your car.

These mistakes are very easy to avoid–and you can still have fun with this simple, albeit simple-minded, home science experiment.

Happy landings.

The 5 Easiest Jobs in the World

If you’re like millions of Americans these days, you probably need a job. Here are the five cushiest jobs you could ever hope to get. I have not listed “TV News Anchor” because, although it’s a ridiculously easy job–the stories you report don’t have to be true–you can’t get it if you’re fat or funny-looking. So here are the top five.

1. U.S. Senator. Absolutely, positively the easiest job on earth. It pays well, and the opportunities to pick up extra money by selling your vote are limitless. Best of all, the job carries with it not a shred of responsibility. Just vote “present” if you can’t make up your mind.

2. President of the United States. Now that it’s been established as an entry-level job which anybody, and I do mean anybody, can hold–hey, what are you waiting for? Vacations galore, all paid for by the taxpayer, unlimited free golf, and countless opportunities to make speeches that don’t have to make any sense. You just can’t do it worse than it’s being done now.

3. Oil Sheik. Once you’re in (that’s the tricky part, I must admit), all you have to do is funnel those petrodollars into your secret Swiss bank account and spent all your time lounging around the best hotels in Europe. It’s best not to spend much time in your sheikdom, though, in case there’s a revolution.

4. Professor of Women’s Studies at any University. You can stand up in front of your class and speak in tongues every day, and it won’t be any less valuable than the actual curriculum. If you’ve got tenure, you’re set for life. You can even perform Feminist Music to your class every day, and not get fired.

5. Diversity Consultant. Does anybody know what this job actually entails? Does anybody care? This is another one of those jobs which it’s literally impossible to do badly. Or to do well, for that matter. It’s no harder than being a mummy, and it pays better.

Feel free to add to this list, dear readers–in case I’ve missed a good one.

New Fantasy by Y.B. Sane Already Rated Best of 21st Century

New York Times best-selling author Y.B. Sane has done it again: his newest Young Adults fantasy, The Spiritual Spirits, is a triumph.

Join Rubella, the 9-year-old Invincible Female Warrior, as she slashes and thrusts and kung-fus her way through rank after rank of able-bodied adult male bad guys in her quest to save the world called Oith from sure destruction.

And if that weren’t enough, the publishers, Coldsore Books, have provided a game and contests accessible via a special website you can find out about after you buy a copy of The Spiritual Spirits. You can also, on the website, discover your own Spiritual Magic Number, which will prevent anything  bad from ever happening to you.

But it’s the story that’s really compelling. An evil conspiracy called The Choich has vowed to conquer all Oith and then destroy it. Their first attack wiped out all but scattered opposition. These few brave souls have rallied around the wise, loveable sorceress, Genderama, and, guided by her loveable wisdom, have identified the young Rubella as a spiritual powerhouse able to give the Choich a dose of its own medicine.

We especially marveled at her many rescues of her 21-year-old male soul-mate, Loola, whose penchant for swooning makes him easy prey for the enemy. However, Loola is able to tap into the Power of the Earth Spirit–but to tell you any more would be to spoil it.

The American Library Assn. has already named The Spiritual Spirits one of its Top Ten Young Adult Fiction Novels of the millenium.

How to Write Good

The guy who usully writes here, he can’t make it today so I’m taking his place. He is a litterery snob anyhow.

I can’t tell you who I am because I snuck away from my edditor to do this, and then they’d all be mad at me and they wouldnt put me on the New york times best-seller list anymore. You would sure recognize my name if you knew it was me.

I am here to complain about some stuff that other guy has been saying, like he knows how to write fantersy and I don’t. Ha ha! I sell more books in a day than he sells all year.

So he don’t like my dialog. That is cause my dialog is up to date and his isnt. I had a dworf say to a Elf, “Dude, get out of my space!”:And this Mr. Lee he didn’t like that. Also he don’t like it that I write for Young Readers and so the chacterers in my books are in school most of the time, he says that ruins the fantersy, but my edditor says just keep on doing it, the sales are fine.

He dont like magic and super powers, but I know kids want to read about magic and super powers because my books are best sellers and his aint! He also says my books they dont make any sense. For instants, in my New york times best seller called The 12-Year-Old Sorcerors With Super Powers, I made a story that had this terrible bad guy wizard who was going to wipe out all life on Earth (only I didn’t call it Earth, I called it, well I don’t remember, Id have to look it up). And you know what he said? He said it didnt make any sense! He wrote a nasty review and he said, “What is the point of being a dictator if there’s no one left to rule over?” Well I sell more books in a minute than he does in a week.

So take my advice and write fantersy that has kids with super powers sitting around in algerbra class and going on dates and texting, and its all right to have elfs and dworfs and orks and habbits saying okay and dude and celerbrate diversity, etc. If the truth be known, you can write any old thing you want and you can be a best seller. All it takes is good edditors and lots of avertising.

Centaur Escapes from Government Raptor Facility

Image result for images of centaurs

Word has just come in that a male centaur has escaped from a Velociraptor breeding facility operated by the Internal Revenue Service in Ongs Hat, New Jersey. NJ State Police are on the hunt for the monster, which broke down a high-security picket fence and disappeared into the Pine Barrens.

Government emails dealing with the centaur, and with the day-to-day maintenance of the bloodthirsty dinosaurs, cannot be found.

Why was the IRS breeding raptors? “Don’t even ask!” says our confidential source. And why was an adult centaur being held captive at the raptor farm? “He didn’t pay his taxes,” says our source, “and they were going to make an example of him.”

The raptor farm is part of the IRS’s “Smart Growth” program, established for the purpose of finding new and unexpected ways to extract money from the American people. The facility at Ongs Hat costs $22 billion a year to operate.

“They’re going to have to get that centaur before he has a chance to talk about all the things he’s seen at the raptor facility,” said our source. “You know, they always underrate centaurs. Just because you have a horse’s a** doesn’t mean you are a horse’s ass! Let this one get hold of a Fox News reporter, and a lot of major figures in this government are not going to be around tomorrow.”

Are Centaurs Really Real?

I am sorry I ever got involved in the controversy about centaurs being real or not. Feelings on both sides are running high, and it’s not much fun getting caught in the crossfire.

Among famous, well-respected, highly reputable persons who have actually seen centaurs, at least supposedly, are Theseus, Davy Crockett, Pliny the Elder, and H.P. Lovecraft. None of these witnesses is available for further questioning. It is also said that Jimmy Carter saw a centaur once.

For the time being, here are the facts.

*The best time to see a centaur is when you are intoxicated or asleep.

*California is the state with the most centaur sightings.

*Centaurs constitute a small but important voting bloc for the Democrat Party, especially in swing states.

*No centaur has ever been seen riding a bicycle or driving an SUV.

*The world’s greatest living expert on centaurs, Professor Jeremy Coldsore, has been hired by NASA to provide definitive proof of their existence–the centaurs’, not NASA’s.

To those who continue to email me with passionate arguments for one side or another, I can only repeat that it’s not up to me to make a ruling on this issue. Please direct your questions to a higher authority.

Remember King Whatsisname

I have re-entered the Book of Judges in my Bible-reading, and yesterday the name Chushanrishathaim (in Judges 3:8-9) jumped out at me. He is mentioned as a “king of Mesopotamia” who oppressed Israel and was overthrown by Israel’s first judge, Othniel, the nephew of Caleb.

It isn’t every day you run across a name like this. It consists of two elements: a proper name, “Chushan,” which can also be rendered “Cush,” and relates either to a region north of Babylon or south of Egypt; and a kind of title, “Rishathaim,” which, in ancient times, meant “double wickedness,” and also could mean “governor of two presidencies,” or both at once. So the name belongs to a powerful bad guy named “Chushan” or “Cush” who came into Israel from, probably, somewhere to the north of Babylon.

If we could pin the man down more precisely, we might have a shot at getting a firm date for the beginning of the period of the Judges. But no such luck. The Book of Judges harks back to a very unsettled era from which little hard information has come down to us from non-Biblical sources–kind of like the 5th and 6th centuries in Britain. The Bible is not concerned with events in Egypt and Babylon; and they had troubles aplenty of their own.

As I pursued my research, I came upon a website called “Names of Cute Baby’s [sic]” ( http://namesof.com/name-Chushanrishathaim ). If you want to name your baby “Chushanrishathaim,” they’ll teach you where the name comes from, what it means, and how to pronounce it.

“What should we name our baby, dear?”

“Oh, I dunno. How about Chushanrishathaim?”

“Oh, I like that! It has a certain ring to it! Wasn’t he on Dancing With the Stars?”

Why in the world would you want to name your baby Chushanrishathaim? It was bad enough when every other baby boy was being named Zack, and baby girls got stuck with names like Cadence and Destiny. But Chushanrishathaim is going a bit too far.

What ever happened to names like Tommy and Susan?

 

Do Centaurs Dwell Among Us?

See that guy over there–the one who seems to be always leaning his rump against some object completely covered by a drop-cloth? From the waist up he’s normal, even handsome. But from the waist down he doesn’t look quite right, although he wears very baggy pants to disguise whatever’s wrong about him. It would be bad manners to go up and ask him what he’s got under the drop-cloth, or what’s funny about his hips and legs.

Chances are he’s a centaur. The back half, the horse half, he hides under the drop-cloth. He wears baggy pants to hide the horse’s forelegs. Female centaurs wear long, loose dresses.

You’ve been seeing them lately, haven’t you? Just sort of hanging out in front of the Seven-Eleven, or outside the laundromat: any old place. Where have they come from? According to the Liberal Bible, Book of Kerry, 6:66, “The centaurs are here to protect the Hispanic world from Global Warming.” But you can’t get a centaur to confirm this or deny it. In fact, it can be dangerous trying to get a centaur to say anything at all.

It has been suggested that centaurs are the product of genetic engineering by the mysterious beings known as Slim Jims, who come from inside the Big Dipper. This remains to be proved.

Why are they here? What are they getting set to do?

Blamed if I know.

A Silly Baseball Statistic for Really Silly People

War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!  –Edward Starr, 1969

Let’s face it: baseball just ain’t the national pastime anymore. What with player strikes, steroids, expansion, league-shuffling, stratospheric ticket prices ($272 a pop for seats in Yankee Stadium that we used to get for $15), and no more games on free TV, it’s become just another thing not to care about.

And so baseball’s answer to public indifference is… war.

No, not the real kind, like in the Edwin Starr oldie. This is a new statistic, WAR, short for “Wins Above Replacement Player.” It’s supposed to be a formula showing how many wins a player is worth to his team by comparing him to a “replacement player”–to wit, a bum.

You’ve gotta see the formula for calculating WAR (see http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Wins_above_replacement ). It looks like the mess Sam Jaffee had on his blackboard in The Day the Earth Stood Still. But, heck, you have to expect some complications when you’re wondering how much better the Yankees do with Derek Jeter at shortstop than Perez Hilton.

But the WAR statistic enables us, or so we’re told, to compare players from all eras. So you can find all-time rankings of players according to their WAR. And what do these rankings tell us?

That Rickey Henderson (#19) was a little better than Mickey Mantle (#21) and a whole lot better than Joe DiMaggio (#67).

Presto! A completely useless statistic! A quintessential product of our current age! What could possibly be more representative of today’s state of civilization than this? Not only blatantly wrong–but arrived at only after tremendous trouble and toil.

Remember, way back, when you’d get a word problem in arithmetic that went like this? Johnny came to bat 10 times and got 3 hits. What is his batting average? So now you can’t appreciate baseball unless you’ve got a Ph.D. in statistics and a hand-held computer? If Willie Mays is replaced in center field by Michael Moore and the Giants never, ever win another game forever, calculate Willie Mays’ WAR?

Lemme outta here!

The $10 Million Catnap

One of the news stories that surfaced while my computer was out of the saga was this gem.

At a July 4 game at Yankee Stadium, a fan fell asleep in the stands. As is the custom in baseball telecasts, ESPN’s cameras sometimes did sweeps of the fans. So they found this guy snoozing away, and the announcers had some gentle fun at his expense.

A few days later, the gavone sued ESPN, the Yankees, and Major League Baseball for $10 million dollars. He claimed he was the target of an “unrelenting verbal crusade” and an “avalanche of disparaging words.” The announcers called him names, he claimed, and ruined his reputation, etc. (See http://finance.yahoo.com/news/snoozing-yankees-fan-sues-espn-050856813.html )

The actual video of the broadcast is easily viewed on the internet (especially if the link I gave you works!), and anyone can see that this lawsuit has no merit whatsoever.

What was this guy thinking? Didn’t he know the whole thing would be on tape? Obviously the announcers never said any of the things he claims they said.

I couldn’t help thinking of Judge Wapner on the old The People’s Court TV show, patiently explaining to one idiot after another that the court system was not set up as a get-rich-quick apparatus for simpletons. You don’t get $100,000 because a guy sold you a couple of bad spark plugs.

Gee, what would I do if I were a judge and some clown came into my courtroom seeking a $10 million payday in a lawsuit based on easily exposed lies? Would I be sorely tempted to jail both him and his shyster lawyer for flagrant contempt of court?

Yeah, I think I would.