Be first on your block...

...to own your own guillotine.

Via Gizmodo

Lennie Briscoe has nothing to say

E! Online News - "Law & Order" Star Orbach Dead

Be my guinea pig

I haven't tried any of the following vendors, but I'll write about them anyway.

First there's Hometown Favorites. The concept sounds interesting - the proprietor distributes hard-to-find or regional candies, groceries and other nonperishable products.

Or how about SimplyBovine? ("Everything Cows!") I found them while looking for a distributor for "Cow Pies". They also sell, among other things, cow g-strings.

Which reminds me, Valentine's Day is coming! So be sure to place your order with Despair.com for their "BitterSweets" today. Now available in two types - "Dejected" (which includes a reference to blogging!) and "Dysfunctional". (or if you should somehow have a positive attitude, EHarmony offers gift certificates).

Enough for now. Now go stimulate the economy!

No thanks, I won't be having any

Ever since I was a kid I've been hearing references to "eggs in your beer" as if it were the ultimate in unreasonable demands. Where it came from I have no clue. I'm guessing it's a Kraut thing, although the first people I recall hearing it from were Irish. Or maybe it's Midwestern.

Go ahead - look it up: Google Search: "eggs in your beer". Or if you're into regionalisms, check out this.

Of course self-respecting bars have to have some pickled eggs or maybe pig's feet. Occasionally there were free salty snacks to encourage beer consumption (although freeloading in bars can be hazardous to your health), but some people I knew didn't leave this to chance - they put salt directly in their beer lest they should be sated before they ran out of money.

I don't know how common this is, but I knew a guy down south who'd get a bottle of Coke (that's a "coke-cola", Yankee!), dump a small bag of salted peanuts into it, and then drink the mess. Maybe it was about freeing up a hand, or gustatory considerations, and I know it's all going to the same place anyway, but it just wasn't my thing.

I shouldn't talk - I've always been a mad scientist in the kitchen. When I was a kid I had to mix whatever condiments happened to be around and try to eat the results. Or else there were Pixy Stix or Lik-em-Aid to be mixed with Kool-Aid or the occasional soft drink. (And I learned from it too. Later on in chemistry classes when they started discussing solubility I suddenly knew why I never could get the chocolate or Peanut Butter Cups to dissolve in the drink concoctions I made.). This means I'm creative with oddball ingredients, but please, don't ever make shrimp stroganoff (I was down to frozen noodles, frozen shrimp, golden mushroom soup and sour cream. Thaw shrimp. Cook noodles. Mix ingredients. Season to taste. Retch. Throw out and resolve never to repeat).

Now is your chance to share recipes for favorite oddball concoctions.

For better or for worse but not forebearance

It's not too newsworthy to say that professional athletes are a horny lot. Here's a bit of a history.

But not every player's wife takes this infidelity lying down. Consider Anna Benson, a model/ex-stripper voted "baseball's hottest wife". Her husband, Kris Benson of the Mets, is under notice - on Howard Stern's show she said that if she caught him cheating she would do everybody on his whole team, including coaches, groundskeepers, and bat boys.

This immediately set Eric Raymond's keen analytical mind to work:

Somehere, a coalition of the most unattractive no-hopers in the Mets organization — probably organized by some dude with a beer gut, bad breath, and a bread-dough complexion who harbors a long-simmering lust for the wench — is now organizing a pool with which to engage the foxiest hookers in the Big Apple to waylay her husband. What a pitch! Throw $50 in the kitty and “Baseball’s Hottest Wife” will bang you too!

In other news, Mets merchandise sales tripled...

Admittedly Ms. Benson is sending somewhat of a mixed message about fidelity, but consider this:

When Kris had Tommy John surgery, he couldn’t move his arms for a week. Every time he went to the bathroom, I had to help him. Plus, he couldn’t hold down his pain medication. We were flying home from the hospital and we had to squeeze into the plane’s bathroom together so I could stick suppositories up his ass to keep him from throwing up.

Sounds like true love to me.

Birth of a slander?

Via the dynamic Newmark duo (mom and daughter), Powerline notes how the WaPo reported an increase in the number of students eligibility for Pell Grants as a cut.

Happy birthday to...

Arthur H. Ehrat of Virden, Ill, who invented the breakaway basketball rim. He's 80 years old.