America deploys Muppets to Iraq

What better way to fight colorful, hairy monsters than with some of our own? The insurgents won't know what hit 'em.

Note: Dig Elmo's dad with the orange hair, toting a gym bag.

My simple solution for travelers stranded in Denver

Maybe I'm missing a key piece of information here, but why don't people stranded in Denver simply do this:

1. Rent car from major provider
2. Drive a few hours to another airport and fly from there.

My take is this. If you can afford it and you *really* want to get home for Christmas, just drive to another airport. The roads should be clear now, it's just the airlines that are backed up. Santa Fe is, I believe, the closest "International" airport to Denver at six hours away, but all you really need to do is just drive to another, smaller airport that connects to a major hub and you're good to go (assuming, of course, that the rental car company has an office in that city where you can drop off that car). Hell, according to this link, there are seven other non-Denver airports in Colorado. Drive there and use those airlines to get the hell out!

Is this many twist ties really @#&*$ necessary?

And so, with the first Christmas presents now rolling in, I begin my semi annual complaint of the method in which many toy manufacturers package their product.

Is this many twist ties really frigging necessary to secure the toy in the box? Case in point, a Leap Frog train-shaped electric toy with numbers all over it that play sounds when pressed. To remove the toy from the box, you must first cut all the tape around the perimeter of the box. Then, you must physically detach the inside cardboard box from the outside cardboard box. This involves navigating your way through a series of folds that makes you feel like you're undoing an origami project. As if this isn't difficult enough, they decide to also tape numerous pieces together, meaning that what at first seemed like a delicate, but doable task has now devolved into an elaborate tearing exercise similar to the one my two year old son put on while removing the wrapping paper from the present.

And then come the twist ties. The fucking twist ties. Apparently, there needed to be a good method to secure the toy to this inside cardboard box that I just managed to extract. Their solution was to not only use a twist tie on three of the four sides of the toy (the fourth side being open to the public so that kids to see could press the buttons to see what they did), but to also use a twist tie on every conceivable anchor point of the train. There was a twist tie around the front and back tires. There were two more twist ties going around various points of the open frame of the train, and then there was another one threaded through the open front windshield.

So as if it's not bad enough that you have to undo 5+ heavy gauge twist ties on this toy and then unthread them from the cardboard box, the fuckers also decide to tape the open ends of the twist ties down! That means that you have to rip the tape off the twist ties first, before you can begin the unthreading process! All this while I'm trying to fend off my two year old son who wants to play with the toy!

Mental note: next time use scissors.

T'aint so bad after all

Looks like I was able to win out in one of my money leagues after all. Marvin Harrison's 3 TDs allowed me to overcome the frigging 3 defensive TDs from the Titans defense. Hot diggety!

What a shitty effing day

This is a rant for mostly myself since I don't expect anyone to fully understand, let alone sympathize with me.

Today was just a shitty day overall where, although nothing went horribly wrong, it's been enough to put me in a general overall funk. If I vent, maybe I'll feel better.

I had to attend an all-day family event today and, while it was definitely a nice gig, it was enough to knock me out of my Sunday football-watching routine to make me not fully enjoy it. So instead of sitting on a couch with a bunch of games on TV at my disposal, I had to follow the football action by surfing the internet on my Blackberry.

But it wasn't even so much that I'm a shallow jerk who gets whiny when disturbed, it was the fantasy football playoffs today. In the four leagues I'm in, I was ranked around the top in all of them. I was good enough to conceivably win championships in *all* of them. Instead, my respective teams shit the beds so badly in each league, I'm probably history across the board. This was slowly realized across the course of the day as, every ten-fifteen minutes between 1 PM and 7 PM, I painfully read my Blackberry and saw every goddamn one of my players underperform. Every time a touchdown was scored, it was by someone OTHER than a player on my team. Every player I owned suddenly became invisible. I can take one or two of my players sucking, but not everyone on my whole fucking roster, in EVERY league. And to make matters worse, the people I played against in each league didn't do much better, but they played just well enough to edge me out in each league. If I was able to get just one or two good performances from *someone* on my team, I would have been able to win. And in one league where I thought I still had a chance, I found out that my opponent started a mediocre defense that scored three TDs against me. That after I was joking to my friend earlier today, "boy I'd sure hate to be playing him this week". And then I came home and found out I was.

This sucks. In retrospect, maybe it was better off that I wasn't home to wallow in my misery.

Oh, and the Raiders lost 20-0, too. Hey Fate, why don't you just kick my dog while you're at it?

A place to rat out the bad drivers in your state

It was only a matter of time before this happened. Now you can report the people on the road who piss you off. Or maybe even find out if you've been tagged. Although this is more of a venting tool and isn't technically reporting anyone to the cops, according to CNN there *are* some cops using this list as a "heads-up" when they go on patrol.

Now, I suppose it's only a matter of time before legal issues shut this place down...