More on the light fiasco

Before I tell the tale of our family holiday light display, perhaps a little background info would be helpful. In April, Ben and I sold our house in Ames in favor of a new Beaverdale crib. Not being from Des Moines, I did not know much about Beaverdale other than it had lots of businesses in it with names like "Beaver Mower" and "Beaver Cleaners" that people made fun of. And it had lots of brick houses. "Beaverdale bricks" to be specific. I certainly had never been on Wallace-Ashby, or my current street, which is directly adjacent to Wallace-Ashby, before. But everyone we knew who was originally from or had lived in Des Moines said the same thing when we told them where our new house was located: "Oh! You will have to put up some really good Christmas lights to live in that neighborhood." Apparently people drive slowly through our little part of Beaverdale when it comes time for holiday light-based entertainment around these parts.

Oh shit. Ben and I -- two of the bigger height-phobes on the planet, came to a quick realization: We had just bought an extremely tall house in the alleged Christmas light mecca of metro Des Moines. Add to this equation Ben's quasi-Griswaldian compunction to keep up with the Joneses and my apparent ineptitude at stringing any sort of multi-hued bulb affair in a symmetrical fashion and we have ourselves an interesting situation.

We had planned to string up the lights on Nov. 27, which was a very balmy day and the day most of our neighbors were putting up their lights. Sadly, we were in a serious funk that day after returning from the ISU football game in Lawrence, Kan., the day before. Ben consoled himself with golf all morning and didn't even go out to get the 32-foot ladder we needed until after noon that Sunday. Needless to say, when Ben finally returned with the ladder strapped into the back of a friend's truck after placing a $300 crack in his windshield (32-foot ladder + VW Beetle=not such a swell idea after all), he wasn't much in the mood for holiday cheer. We went to the afternoon matinee of Good Night and Good Luck instead

So that left last Saturday. The day. I had purchased about $150 worth of lights over the past week, and obviously we had the ladder. Upon realizing there were no electrical outlets on the outside of the house, Ben hired an electrician to come out and install them Saturday morning while he worked on the more artistic aspects of the endeavor. This was becoming an expensive proposition.

It was about 14 degrees when Ben ventured out to start the project that morning. Quite a contrast from the 50-degree temps we'd had the previous weekend, but who can get in the holiday spirit when it's nice outside, right? I, who had stayed up most of the night reading, was still asleep at 9 a.m. when Ben bellowed up the stairs at me. "Honey! Can you do me a favor?"

I snapped awake, embarrassed to still be snoozing at 9. "Sure, I'll be right down." When I got outside I realized it had begun snowing.

The favor ended up being TRIP #1 TO THE HARDWARE STORE. Here I go.

On the first trip I looked for, but did not purchase, little tiny hooks and brown outdoor extension cords (could not find).

So I tried a bigger hardware store (TRIP #2 TO THE HARDWARE STORE)

There I purchased some little tiny hooks but no extension cords. All they had was yellow, forest green, lime green, grass green, orange, red, and hot pink. (hot pink?) Apparently brown extension cords are the "socks with sandals" of the exterior illumination fashion world.

So it was back to the house, where I dropped off the hooks and immediately swung back around to go pick up my stranded friend, Steffen, who had called while I was at hardware store #2 to say he needed a ride. On my way home from taking him and couple of others to get their car at a nightclub, I relented and bought the forest green extension cords from the first hardware store (This occurred at TRIP #3 TO THE HARDWARE STORE).

I was just back at home getting ready to helpfully make some hot cocoa for Ben and the electrician when Ben summoned me to make TRIP #4 TO THE HARDWARE STORE. At least Ben went with me this time after I nearly blew a gasket when he said he needed 6 to 8-inch spikes to anchor the ladder. (Spikes?) Thank goodness he went along, as I would not have known that nine-inch nails were an appropriate substitute for six- to eight-inch spikes. Rather appropriate, aren't they? Considering the fact that someone was about to be crucified. Ahem.


So I went back to my cocoa. Later, when I stuck my head out the front door, I found our good chum Matthew standing at the top of our ladder (anchored with giant nails to the ground, of course), pinning hooks and attaching lights to the wood trim at the waaaaaay ass top off the house. Where was my faithful Clark Griswold? Standing on the ground. Turns out he started up the ladder, nearly peed himself, and retreated back down as the fear of extreme heights overtook him. Weird how that works. Matthew, on the other hand, is not a threat to chicken out -- seeing whereas he's the same guy who once jumped off the roof of his house while clutching two 80-pound bags of shingles in his left mitt.

Steffen also came over to help, so I offered him some of my marvelous homemade cocoa. Yes! A taker on cocoa! Unfortunately, the cocoa had been sitting on the stove for a while and had built up its own protective shell, which Steffen urged me to just "scrape off." For some reason my pea brain decided it would be easier to strain the cocoa. Of course straining cocoa is difficult to do when you are straining the liquid part directly into the kitchen drain. I stopped myself just in time to salvage one decent mug of the stuff. Yes, add this to my list of brunette moments -- right next to my reference at Thanksgiving to the "three-finger discount" which resulted in my husband and brother running around my mother's house attempting to figure out exactly what types of items one might be able to steal with three fingers. Which was funny. But I digress.

TRIP #5 TO THE HARDWARE STORE came around 3 p.m., when Ben and Steffen convinced me that we needed some additional mounts for the light bulbs, and some sleds so that we could celebrate later by hurling ourselves down the icy slopes of Waveland golf course with only a 1/8-inch-thick piece of plastic to hold on to. Dutifully, I made my final hardware trip of the day as they finished attaching lights to our garage (the piece de resistance of our project).

It turns out we were too tired and frozen to want to go sledding, so Steffen and I slept on the couch, watched football, slept on the couch some more, and then watched another football game (oh yeah, and slept on the couch) while Ben finished hooking up the light timers, suspending the ladder from the ceiling of the garage, and snow-blowing the driveway. (Thanks, honey.) Then we gorged ourselves with beans and rice, brisket, sweet potato pancakes, andouille sausage, beer, cabernet, cream cake, and bread pudding. Hooray for the Flying Mango. Oh yeah, and we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation to cap off the evening.



Now we just have to figure out who is going to take the lights down this January. Any volunteers?

My night at the cat whiz seminar

Tonight, in the latest installment of my Glamorous Life, I attended a free seminar at the vet school about feline urine and fecal material. I'm serious. Actually it was pretty interesting, with the exception of the part when (and I am not making this up) a woman in the audience described her hemorrhoid pain in graphic detail.

Moving along, I thought I'd share a few things I learned from the seminar:

• The best enzymatic cleaner for removing the presence and odor of cat pee is actually called Anti-Icky Poo
• If you rub a cat's jawline with a cotton ball, you can pick up enough of its scent to rub it on another area in the house where you don't want it to whiz
• If you need to move a litter box, your best bet is to move it two inches per day until you get it to its new location
• You seriously can train a cat to use the toilet, Focker. Even though it doesn't have opposable thumbs.
• It pretty much does no good to ever try and discipline a cat. They don't think that way.

Oh yeah, and I should be nicer to my cat. She did not pee on my carpet because she hates me. It's just how her pea brain rolls.

My prideful prejudice

Milquetoast Darcy?

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who never really likes any movie, is lauding the new film version of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley as pretty decent, even going so far as to say it "does Jane Austen proud."

The Chicago Tribune says: "Memories of Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier (from the 1940 film) or Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth (from the 1995 miniseries) won't suffer by comparison."

So...erm...why am I having so much trouble believing this? The new version scares me; it seems that it takes a beautifully written, witty plot and twists it into a gothic romance flick with potentially cheesy dialog. Was there really, really a need for this new movie? It's hard for me to have an open mind about messing with something so purely perfect as P&P.

To quote my friend Lorraine, who also considers it blasphemy for the dialog to be tampered with: "I don't want to see some milquetoast Darcy simper 'you've bewitched me, body and soul.'"

I think that about sums it up. Bring back Colin Firth, o Milquetoast Darcy.

Making spirits bright

I just had the following e-mail exchange with my husband after I went to Target at lunchtime and bought four boxes of Christmas lights for our house:

Me: I went out and got 96 feet of ceramic white lights with the old-fashioned bulbs today. I don't know if it's enough, but it can get us started.

Ben: Thanks, but I think we'll need about six times that amount.

Me: Holy balls! Six times? What are you planning to do?

Ben: Clark, where's my stogie?

Me: *dies laughing, then becomes frightened*

Stay tuned...

Just skip that house with the purse gum, you'll only scrape your knee

Last year, at my old house in Ames, I don't think I had more than 20 trick-or-treaters on Halloween. It was sort of a down year, but not too far off the average for the four Halloweens we lived there. It wasn't a neighborhood with a lot of kids, but it was fairly residential. Twenty seemed about right.

Now I live in a much more family-oriented neighborhood in Des Moines. So I knew that I would probably have more trick-or-treaters this year. I loaded up last week, figuring we could always just eat the leftover candy. "We've got plenty of candy over here," I bragged to my neighbors yesterday afternoon as we discussed football and chased my neighbor Joe's rambunctious cats out of my garage. "You can send them over here; we'll get it covered."

I figure I started the evening with 200 treats. Trick-or-treating began at 6, and I didn' t have a knock at the door until 6:15. We've got plenty of candy, I thought, kicking back in my chair with the Opinion pages of the Sunday Register. A few more kids started coming...okay, we'll go through a good chunk of it...and before I knew it I was listening to a nonstop barrage of jokes (a Des Moines tradition -- you must tell a joke to receive candy on "Beggar's Night") and watching the candy bowl drain down to the least desirable items. My husband, who was in the family room watching Dogma on Comedy Central while swearing in the general direction of a do-it-yourself project, was no help. He just watched me dart from the front door back to the kitchen, using every possible 10-second lull in the action to scan our cupboards for candy or candy-type food products. "Could I hand out marshmallows?" I asked him as he spilled rubber cement in the carpet. "How about granola bars? Do kids like granola bars?" I thought I had some gum in my purse.

Sadly, at 7:20 p.m., I threw in the towel and turned off the front-stoop light of surrender. The kids had eaten me, and my Kit-Kat bars, alive. I had no trick-or-treating game at all. I'd better start my next year's trick-or-treat candy savings fund now.

I did, however, enjoy seeing the costumes and hearing the jokes. My very first trick-or-treater was a three-foot-tall black boy dressed as Napoleon Dynamite, which I found hilarious. And by far the most popular joke of the year was: "Why didn't the skeleton cross the road? -- Because he didn't have the guts." I did not enjoy the snotty 10-year-old who chewed me out because "our steps were too steep" and caused her sister to fall and scrape her knee. All I could do was offer the sister a Band-Aid while her older sib proceeded to berate me. Gee, I hope I didn't act like that when I was 10.

Oh yeah, and I still want to know what a 2-year-old is going to do with Hot Tamales.

Damn you, magical nachos, for toying with my emotions

The nachos hath forsaken us.

So I have this friend, Shane. He has superhuman metabolism, it seems, because he's not the slightest bit chubby despite eating like Godzilla most of the time. I attended the Iowa State vs. Missouri football game with him this weekend, and attention: It was actually Shane's fault ISU lost the game. Shane sends his apologies to the Cyclone faithful.

Why can this loss be blamed on Shane? You see, all through the first half he was extolling the wonderfulness of Missouri's concession stand nachos. He hadn't tasted them, but he saw them and they were available with Philly cheesesteak meat, he informed me. He spent most of the first half debating about whether or not to purchase said nachos. Finally, toward the beginning of the third quarter he relented and returned to Sec. A, Row 64 with a gigantic plate.

While Shane was purchasing the nachos, Cyclone Nik Moser made an interception that set up ISU's go-ahead touchdown. Soon thereafter it was Tigers 14, Nachos 17. All hail the nachos. I partook of the nachos, feeling their golden energy coat my stomach as Iowa State made play after play, dominating the line of scrimmage and shutting down the Mizzou offense. "I knew I should have bought these nachos," Shane gloated, spraying chip residue on the senior citizens in front of us as he cheered for another ISU touchdown. "It's gotta be the nachos." Before long it was Nachos 24, Missouri 14. No one could stop the power of the nachos.

That is, until Shane got selfish. His platter abused and wilted, he stared with defeat at the nacho remains -- quite a few smothered chips buried under a large pile of jalapenos. Bits of Philly cheesesteak meat were scattered randomly across the styrofoam. Being a slightly bigger Cyclone fan than nacho enthusiast, Shane wanted to turn his full attention to cheering.

So he decided to (gasp!) abandon the nachos. Yes, that's right: He threw them in the trash.

You don't need me to tell you that the moment Shane threw away the magical nachos of wealth and prosperity was the moment that Missouri and its backup freshman quarterback started moving the ball and the refs started screwing over Iowa State. Final score: Missouri 27, Iowa State and the Nachos 24.

One will never know why these cruel nachos toyed with our emotions for so long, but we will be left to always wonder what might have been.

Corn for your corns

What's up with Gov. Vilsack lately and his obsession with corn socks? I think I've heard about this from him like eleventy bajillion times, including a conference I attended at which he spoke on Friday.

Not that corn socks don't rule, of course. Coming this spring, you can buy them from a company called Fox River Mills in Osage. According to the Register, "the socks...look like any typical pair. They're white, not yellow. They don't smell like popcorn — no matter how hot your feet get while wearing them."

Good to know.

Pink Eye

Okay, so the University of Iowa recently remodeled its football stadium. Big deal, I know, but it's news here.

Not only is it news here, but now it's controversy here. Why? Because the university decided to keep alive a tradition of former Iowa coach Hayden Fry and remodel the visitor's locker room completely in the color pink. (The old locker room was painted pink under Fry’s leadership, but the new locker room goes much further with custom pink urinals and sinks, etc. Think Barbie barfing up wintergreen lozenges and you'll get the picture.)

Anyway, the pink paint, which I’ve known about for years, had always been explained to me this way: Fry, a former psychology major, chose pink after reading studies that showed looking at the color makes one lethargic. Okay, whatever. It always seemed rather stupid to me, but I didn't really care, and most certainly I understand that an element of psychology plays into college football in many ways.

So, the pink locker room is living on. Not being a Hawkeye fan or a person who spends any time in the Kinnick Stadium locker rooms, I hadn’t really thought too much more about it. And I certainly have never read Hayden Fry's autobiography, A High Porch Picnic. (Actually, I think I'd rather stick barbecue skewers in my eye while listening to Rush Limbaugh than read A High Porch Picnic). However, if I had read the jerk’s book, I would probably have been more disturbed. According to the blog BuzWords, penned by adjunct U of I law professor Erin Buzuvius, Hayden Fry uses his book to explain the pink locker room in this way: "Pink is often found in girl's (sic) bedrooms, and because of that some consider it a sissy color."

A sissy color. Ahem.

I guess deep down I probably always realized that the whole thing was rooted in homophobia but never really took time to think about it. Buzuvius obviously did -- but now, of course, she’s getting blasted for having an opinion. Do I think this is a really big deal? No. But if I were a supporter of the U of I might damned well. It’s awfully embarrassing in the year 2005 for a supposedly forward-thinking university to perpetuate a “tradition” that essentially implies that femininity is tantamount to weakness. I mean, would the coach of a woman’s sport ever paint her opponents’ locker room pink to make them calm? I don’t think so. It’s never been about color psychology.

The irony, of course, is that after appearing on a local television station’s report about the locker room and then posting her opinions on BuzWords, Buzuvius has had about 150 posters on her blog, and plenty of others in additional forums, I’m sure, telling her that she should get over it and find more important things to worry about. (This from people who spend large parts of their day discussing Hawkeye athletics in great detail online, of course.) Other arguments against have largely included sentiments along the lines of “men wear pink now, so how is it sexist?”

The way I see it (and I think the way Buzuvius sees it, too), the actual issue here is not whether painting something pink is in and of itself insulting to any group of people. The “men reclaiming pink” arguments are entirely missing the point. The issue is that the University of Iowa is choosing to celebrate a tradition that is rooted in Hayden’s old-fashioned, good-old-boy sexism.

I mean, if it isn’t a big deal, why was it done?

I think it's a fair question to ask.

Sometimes I DON'T enjoy being a girl

Okay, so here was the scene at our team meeting last week at work:

Emily and Me (looking at each other): Did something just fly by the doorway?
Emily: I think there's a bird in here.
Carole: A bird?
Me: Um...I think it's a bat.
Bat: *Flies by again*
Me: Ick, it is!
Scott: Really? A bat?
Scott: *Goes out in hallway to investigate*
Me: Close the door so it doesn't fly into the meeting room!
Carole: *Follows Scott into the hallway*
Bat: *Flies directly one inch over Carole's head*
Carole: *Screams*
Me: *Screams*
Emily: *Screams*
Carole: Okay, I was going to try and be brave, but I didn't know it was going to fly over my head like that.
Carole: *Falls back into her seat at conference table*
Me: It almost landed on your head. Ew!
All of us: Scott! Close the door to the meeting room!
Scott: *Bravely closes the door and opens all the exterior doors to the building so the bat can fly out*
Emily: I wonder what's going on out there.
Me: I hope he shoos it out.
Scott: *Returns to conference room and closes door behind him*
Scott: Well, I opened all the doors so it can get out.
Me: It's just scared...I'm sure it will fly out.
Emily: I can't believe we all screamed when the bat flew over Carole's head.
Me: What is wrong with us? Like, why should anyone be scared of a little harmless bat?
Emily: We're just girls.
Me: I hate that.

Our night at the State Fair

1. Arrive State Fair.
2. Immediately head to beer garden and order two Bud Lights (one small for me, one large for Ben)
2. Find cheese on a stick booth and order two mozzarellas. (one for me, one for Ben)
3. Purchase round-trip tickets for chair lift. Ride to other side of the fairgrounds.
4. Get off on other side, where Ben purchases a corn dog, wolfs it down, and deposits stick in dumpster.
5. Get back on chair lift.
6. Immediately head to the Grater Taters booth we spotted while riding chair lift.
8. Because line is so long, order some crab rangoons for Ben, which he eats while standing in line for a Grater Tater.
9. Ben eats most of Grater Tater whilst sitting on park bench near the talent stage. I pick a little off and drop a huge cheesy hunk on the ground, getting cheese all over my hand in the process.
10. Head to Varied Industries Building to get chocolate chip cookies in a cup and use the bathroom to wash my hands.
11. Arrive at cookie booth and order two cups (one for me, one for Ben).
12. Whilst eating cookies, head out toward livestock area to see really big bull.
13. Get distracted by beer garden and order a Boulevard and an MGD.
14. Proceed toward livestock area but get stopped by horse parade so that we can't cross the street.
15. Give up on livestock and just head home.
16. Sit at home.
17. Have indigestion.

Save Sesame Street

In an article that appeared in the Washington Post on Friday, we learned that a House subcommittee has voted to make the largest reduction EVER to federal support for public broadcasting, eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite shows like "Sesame Street" and eliminating ALL federal money for the CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting), which accounts for 15 percent of the public broadcasting industry's total revenue.

Rep. Ralph Regula, an Ohio republican and the subcommittee's chairman, said the cuts had nothing to do with dissatisfaction over public radio or TV programs (though many have suggested it's part of a Republican attack on programs they perceive as having a "liberal bias.").

While some of the funding can be recovered through other sources, the loss of $23.4 million in federal funds for PBS's "Ready to Learn" programs could mean they go off the air altogether. The Ready to Learn programs include "Sesame Street," "Dragontales," "Clifford the Big Red Dog," and "Arthur." The cuts are also likely to put small public radio stations with shoestring budgets completely out of business.

As a kid who grew up learning Spanish from Maria and Luis, who learned math from "The Count," and who loved to sing "I'm a dog, I'm a workin' dog, I'm a hard workin' dog," I have trouble imagining the future for my own children without Sesame Street.

MoveOn has a petition on its Web site at http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/?t=1
It would also be wise to contact your legislators and tell them you want to protect PBS and NPR and all their affiliates -- the best quality programming we have left.

From the Ghee-Roj

Things people did not buy at my garage sale last weekend:

• A really nice computer desk for $20
• A fully functional Dirt Devil hand vac for $5
• A brand new desktop coffee warmer with coffee mug for $3

Things people scooped right up:

• a beat-up wastebasket for $0.50
• my collection of horrible 1980s/early 1990s audio cassette tapes (I mean, I am not exaggerating when I tell you it included Milli Vanilli, Adam Ant, and the single of "Here Comes the Hotstepper" by Ini Kamoze, okay?) for $5.00
• a broken cooler for $0.75

Scenes from a waiting room

The following was the actual scene I experienced yesterday in the doctor's office waiting room:

First, let me set the scene. I am sitting in the corner, as far away from potentially contagious sick people as possible, minding my own business whilst reading David Sedaris. 1980s hit "The Politics of Dancing" by Re-Flex is playing at a mid-range volume from the overhead speakers.

Very elderly lady #1 sitting to my left, talking very loudly to VEL#2 sitting right next to her: Is it a rash?

VEL #2 (SHOUTING): YES, BUT AT LEAST I DON'T GET IT, YOU KNOW, DOWN THERE IN MY PRIVATES ANYMORE.

VEL #1 (ALSO SHOUTING): YES, AND SOMETIMES IT ITCHES! I CAN'T STAND WHEN IT ITCHES DOWN THERE.

My inner monlogue: Please stop yelling about personal discomfort in your privates...Please stop yelling about personal discomfort in your privates...Please stop yelling about personal discomfort in your privates...Please stop yelling about personal discomfort in your privates

Angry Man to my right (mercifully interrupting the private itch conversation): This is ridiculous.

Rest of room:

Angry Man (standing up from his uncomfortable attempt to recline in a waiting room chair, trying to stage a coup): They should at least give us recliners to sit on, as much as we pay for health care. (begins shaking fist)

My inner monologue: Quick, think...is Candid Camera still on the air?

Then the nurse came out and called Angry Man's name, which I believe was Anderson, so that show was over. Then the two VEL's decided to take a stroll over to the optometry department, so I was once again left alone with my book, wondering if I would remember when I got home to write something about this bizarre experience.

Well, I remembered, and now you, reader, are the one paying the price. Sorry.

Billy Packer is a cheese-brained ACC whore

Today my beloved Cyclones were knocked out of the NCAA Tournament by No. 1-seeded North Carolina. UNC was more talented and had a much deeper bench. We were outmatched, and the Tar Heels clearly deserved to win the game. I can tolerate this.

What I cannot tolerate is Billy Packer, who called the game for CBS with Jim Nantz. From the beginning, he decided that there were three major themes to the game:

1) North Carolina had already won the game and non-ACC teams such as ISU shouldn't even bother to field basketball teams.
2) Iowa State's players, most of whom average more than 35 minutes of playing time per game, were tired -- no, exhausted.
3) Iowa State's players are thugs who play too rough.

He backed up these themes with some the most idiotic commentary I have ever heard. Here's a brief sampling, as I could never list them all:

1) Three minutes into the game, Packer commented on the fact that ISU center Jared Homan, who ranks among the top three Big 12 players in average minutes played, was CLEARLY (not just tired, but) EXHAUSTED.

2) When analyzing a side-by-side chart of three point percentage for both teams, Packer commented that ISU was clearly hurt by its lack of ability to make shots from beyond the arc. Never mind, of course, that the Cyclones were actually shooting a higher percentage from three-point range than the Tar Heels, which could be easily understood if one actually read the graphic.

3) At one point during the second half, Packer began blathering on pointlessly about something that had to do with former ISU assistant basketball coach (from the 1980s) Steve Krafcicin. Who the hell knows why.

4) When going up for a layup in the second half, Cyclone guard Curtis Stinson stuck his elbow out a bit to draw contact, which Packer essentially labeled reprehensible. He proceeded to launch into a 10-minute diatribe about ISU's disgusting rough play (that's how we do it in the Big 12, jerk).

5) Along those same lines, when a foul was called after Cyclone Will Blalock kind of bumped Tar Heel guard Raymond Felton and Felton slid onto the court, Packer freaked out, attempting to imply that somehow Blalock's foul was some sort of thugtastic cheap-shot, and said UNC coach Roy Williams should really take Felton out of the game now before he got hurt. Never mind that the Heels only held a 13-point lead at the time. Packer had apparently forgotten to even look at the score. Even Nantz couldn't ignore that one, responding: "Um...well, Iowa State is kind of making a run and are only down 13, Billy."

UGH!

6) Perhaps the most hilarious (by hilarious I mean "so ridiculous that you can't even really get mad but instead just laugh") comment of the day came when he was attempting to console ISU fans. "Well, ISU might not get to St. Louis in basketball," he said, "but they got there in wrestling, and won their third-straight team title with five individual champions!"

Well, um...actually. OKLAHOMA State was the team that won its third national wrestling title, you moron. And thanks for reminding ISU fans of our poor performance in the national wrestling tourney, in which we placed 10th (lower than usual and much lower than expected) with NO individual champs. But thanks, anyway, you pittsnoggling asshat.

Go, Mississippi State. At least Packer can stop smooching Duke's butt if the Bulldogs knock them out.

"Banana Trauma" would be a good name for a rock band

A friend on a forum linked to this awesome Web site for the best thing you never knew you needed, The Banana Guard.

Some highlights from the Web site:

• The Banana Guard is available in nine colors, including glow in the dark. The best selling color is "Mellow Yellow."
• You can give someone a gift certificate for Banana Guards. (But that ruins all the fun of giving the Banana Guard as a gift and watching the recipient's face turn assorted colors and contort into a variety of expressions as s/he tries to figure out what in the heck s/he has just received.)
• Banana Guard's slogan is "Protect your banana!"
• From the FAQ:
  Q: Is there a battery attachment?
  A. No. The Banana Guard was designed for its intended purpose only as a device to prevent banana trauma during transport. ("Banana Trauma," I think Dave Barry would agree, would be an excellent name for a rock band.)

Oh, how I miss Dave's column; I'd be all over sending him the Banana Guard link.

The Joys of House Hunting

So, we've been shopping around for a new house. I love looking at houses, but sometimes I just have to laugh at the choices we are offered. A few tips if you've got your house on the market:

1) If the only new item you've purchased for your home in the last 50 years is one of those chirping bird clocks you can buy "as seen on TV," it's probably not going to be too appealing to prospective buyers, particularly ones under the age of 65. Not that we're not happy you take good care of your green shag carpeting. And no, it doesn't need to be replaced...

2) You may want to consider washing your dishes and picking up any clothes that happen to be strewn all over the floor of your bedroom, guest room, laundry room, and living room. I didn't think this was something you would have to put on a list of tips, but surprise! -- It is!

3) If you are a smoker trying to sell your home, it may be best to start smoking outside the house so that visitors can actually breathe in your house without gagging. Oh yeah, and if you have emphysema as a result of your excessive smoking, it might be a good idea to empty your bag of disgusting Kleenex tissues before folks come over.

4) If you own eleven thousand freaky ass dolls, I would recommend packing them in a box or hiding them in a closet before people start touring your home.

Just a few ideas I'm throwing out there.