What the Discovery Channel Doesn’t Tell You About Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are more famous now than when they were alive and ruled the planet. They are the Elvis of the Animal Kingdom. This is in large part to the Discovery Channel which promotes and disseminates a pro-Dinosaur agenda nearly 24 hours a day. Surely, no advertisers are demanding this content. The target audience is extinct after all. Who is really behind this Paleozoic propaganda and what are they not telling you? I turned off my TV and started doing some of my own research about dinosaurs and have had some very disturbing revelations. Are these really the kind of creatures we want to dig up and display in our museums? Should we be giving them cute voices in animated movies so our kids fall in love with them? The following facts might change your mind.

Dinosaurs had slaves.
Not human ones, of course. Their version was much more insidious, in fact. They enslaved anything with tusks. It would turn your stomach if you saw how the tusked were treated back then.

Dinosaurs were illiterate.
Not a single one ever learned to read in 160 million years! Guess that college degree is a few more years off! And it also explains why we aren’t studying the writings of the great Hemingwayasaurus Rex.

Dinosaurs were atheist.
The majority of Pterodactyls were followers of Ragzor, Beast-master of the Skies, but by and large nearly all other dinosaurs were godless. Jesus has been suspiciously quiet on this topic, however, suggesting some sort of cover up.

Dinosaurs were pedophiles.
Archaeologists have found skeletons of male dinosaurs perched suggestively next to nests of young, unhatched dinosaurs, still in the egg even.

Dinosaurs were nudists.
These perverts didn’t wear clothes by choice, not evolutionary circumstance.

With these facts, one thing is clear.  The Discovery Channel is only giving us one side of the story.  The only question now is just how much dirt should we dig up on the dinosaurs?

Final Results of the Zillionaire Bracket Pool

The NCAA tournament is over, and the results of the Zillionaire pool are final. Here are some noteworthy scores:

14th Place: (Dead Last): My Wife, score of 150.
13th Place: Logan, score of 195. Keep in mind, Logan is eleven months old, and his parents helped him fill out a bracket by having him point to various toys representing teams in the tourney. This process resulted in Albany (a #13 seed) making it to the Final Four in his bracket. Somehow, he still demolished my wife. Kind of puts her bracket in perspective.
11th Place: Moira, score of 234: An early leader in the tourney, her downfall was putting faith in the WSU Cougars to overachieve in a pressure-filled environment. Silly girl.
7th Place: The Captive Lion, score of 242. Nothing remarkable here, I just want to illustrate who finished one spot ahead in the standings…
6th Place: The Centaur, score of 244. Sixth place never tasted so sweet.
5th Place: Maleah, score of 257. (Incidentally, her husband, Krusty, finished 9th. He is currently hiding in shame.)
4th Place: Amy, score of 268.
3rd Place: Leigh, score of 278. Leigh caps off a nice showing by the ladies in the tourney. Thanks for playing ladies, you really helped class up this event.
2nd Place: Booth, score of 280.

And the winner, Jon Solo, with a score of 321. Amazingly, he correctly picked all of the Final Four teams, and the outcomes of all three Final Four games. This was truly a remarkable performance by Solo. One for the ages.

Solo, as promised, I do hereby bestow upon you bragging rights for an entire year. Also, I grant you permission to be an insufferable braggart whenever the topic of the tourney comes up. And if you desire, I will address you by a nickname befitting your bracket-related skills, perhaps something like “Professor Bracketstein” or “The Amazing Bracketini.” Your call.

Finally, there is one other award to present: “Best Impromptu Rap Lyrics Posted in the Group Message Board.”

Here is the lone entry, by The Captive Lion.

when was the last time i balled?

rain on the blacktop
means no game
the laws of nature
silence the swish of the chain
fold up my FILA shorts
and put away my hightops
peel off my extra-thick
double-layered sweatsocks
no dunkhoops today
no shake n’ bake for the sport
the only move i’m gonna make
is a stopoff at the foodcourt

On that note, let me wish a final congratulations and thanks to Jon Solo for teaching us all the true meaning of March Madness. And thanks to everyone that played along. We’ll be sure to do it again next year.

Sleeping With The Enemy

As all married men know, sharing a bed with your wife can be a harrowing ordeal. A nightly harrowing ordeal. Here is my story:

Unseen Obstacles: On most nights, my wife goes to bed much earlier than I do. However, before going to sleep, she likes to take a moment to craft an assortment of booby traps in the pathway between the bedroom door and my side of the bed. And when I come to bed, I must trek through her obstacle course in the dark. And naturally, just like an unsuspecting burglar in a Home Alone movie, I walk blindly into each household booby trap and suffer a nightly barrage of cartoonish blows to the groin and head before reaching the bed. Sometimes her traps are simple, like traversing through 14 pairs of shoes on the ground, all with the heels turned upwards. Other times, she may place an open suitcase in my path, positioned in a way for the lid to instantly clamp down on my leg like a grizzly trap when stepped on. And sometimes, she’ll put our lamps and nightstands in weird places and reconfigure the walls of our bedroom so that I crash into them. Of course, most nights I am usually stumbling to bed completely drunk, so that could be part of the problem as well.

Defensive Stance: My wife is a hard-nosed defender. When sleeping, she crowds my side of the bed and positions herself to not allow me any movement whatsoever. I am seriously stymied. In basketball terminology, we would refer to this as a defensive lockdown. And as the rules state, once a defender has established position, any contact made by the opposition is clearly an offensive foul. Consequently, because of her lockdown, I can’t rollover or move my arm without drawing contact. I think she hopes is that I’ll eventually foul-out and be ejected from the bed.

The Night Auditor: I have been awakened many times by my wife talking in her sleep, usually asking an accounting question like “Why doesn’t the general ledger match the data in the cost report?” Fantastic. She is conducting an audit in her sleep again. With a marriage of an actuary and an accountant, you can say that there is always a dull moment in our house.

The Alarm Clock: My wife ambitiously sets her alarm for very early in the morning. Unfortunately, she rarely has the same ambition needed to actually get out of bed when it goes off. Perhaps one day a month she’ll actually get up with her alarm. The other days she simply hits the “snooze” button, and I am treated to a completely unnecessary wake-up, an hour before I need to get out of bed. While being awakened prematurely is never enjoyable, I try to put the extra hour to constructive use. For instance, I can spend the hour endlessly rolling around, desperately trying to get back to sleep. In addition, I have an extra hour now to stew about how much I dread going to work everyday. Needless to say, both of these options are great ways to start the day.

Tall Tales: In the morning, I get a rundown of the agonizing events my wife had to endure the night before. Her tales of hardship center around things like getting up to console a crying baby, or having to cope with the theft of blankets by her husband. Of course, I can usually manage to sleep through the sounds of a crying baby so there is no way to know if her account is totally fabricated. We’ll just assume it is. As for the blankets, while I would love to point out her many annoying sleeping habits, I am usually too delirious from exhaustion to muster a defense for myself.

As you can imagine, I look forward to the day when it is socially acceptable for a married couple to sleep in bunk beds. And just in case that day does arrive, let me get this in print: I call bottom.

Clever Caption Nabs Oink Invite

And the winner is:

The Centaur called me last night and asked me if I’d bit off more than I could chew with this contest. I told him I only ate one of the hot dogs seen in the picture below.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

He was referring to the quality of the entries I presume. And the difficult task of picking a winner. And he was right. There was a snow-globe flurry of entries on the last day and they ranged from the completely obvious to the total left field. Just what I had hoped for. So thanks again everyone for playing along at home.

But in the end there was one entry that had me baffled initially. On first read, it was neither clever nor funny. I wondered why someone had submitted it at all. Then, 24 hours later as I was looking back at this caption and studying the photo, it all became clear. Big bonus points for having the guts to play such an understated hand.

So congratulations Tom! If you contact me, I’ll hook you up with that invite.

When you see this many hot dogs on a grill, you instinctively pull out your camera, snap a picture, post it on your blog, and wait for the clever captions to come pouring in. It’s a pretty tired formula. But this time, there is a twist for the music lovers, nerds and geeks out there. On Monday at Midnight (EST), I will award an Oink (oink.me.uk) invite to the most clever, funniest caption as deemed by me and me alone. And if you don’t know what Oink is, do as the King James Bible says and “Ye, go forth and google it.”

Nathan's Hotdogs at Coney Island

But I can’t just leave it at that. I have to set some sort of bar, however low. So here are my top 5 captions for the photo:

  1. I guess if heaven is a grill, then all dogs do go to heaven. I don’t think I want to go to grill heaven though. Good thing I am not a dog.
  2. {To the tune of the Reading Rainbow TV theme song} Take you one, it’s in a bun-Weiner Rainbow.
  3. How many lips and assholes are we looking at here?
  4. Is it just me or do all the dogs in their buns look like turtles in various poses? The third one from the top left looks like it’s trying to whisper a secret.
  5. 99 hot dogs in buns on the grill. 99 hot dogs in buns. Take one down, pass it around. Why are we passing around hot dogs in buns?

Yes, I just wasted your time with those captions. They were purposely bad. The real fun is now in your hands. Put yourself in my shoes. Spend a few minutes thinking about it. Be brave. Throw something out there. There is nothing to lose. Don’t worry if it’s not spectacular. Who cares. You can hide behind the great invisible walls of the Internet just like me. It’s kinda cool back here.

The Official Zillionaire NCAA Bracket Pool

It is once again that time of year to plant myself on a couch, swear at the television, drink to excess and pin my happiness on the success of Gonzaga’s basketball team. Yes, it is NCAA tournament time.

I’m pleased to announce that the second annual Zillionaire pool is up and running. This contest is 100% free, mainly because the prospect of collecting money from each person would entail pulling off the biggest upset in tournament history. Consequently, since this contest is free, there are no prizes whatsoever. Instead, the winner will be lionized on this website and have the freedom to be an insufferable braggart for an entire year.

Please note, by submitting picks, you are subject to ridicule on this site for any of the following transgressions:

1. Horrible picks
2. Losing to my wife
3. Failing to pick a single upset
4. Lack of creativity on user name
5. Neglecting to trash talk others below you in the rankings

Go here to sign up. The deadline to enter is one millisecond before the tip-off of the first game (Thursday Morning, approx 9am).
The group name is: Internet Zillionaire
The password is: Zillionaire

Also, make sure to read up on the scoring system when you sign up, as there are bonus points awarded for correctly picking upsets. The justification for this is that if you are willing to make a high-risk pick, there should be a high-reward for doing so as well.

Best of luck to everyone.