July 25th, 2010
Lotto with a Laugh
If you’ve never read through Powerball’s FAQs, you’re missing out. Seriously. I made my weekly donation to Virginia’s public school system, and unlike weeks past, actually won a couple bucks in the process (a couple. Not lots. 4, to be precise). I wanted to check to see where I could claim my giant jar of pennies, so I opened up Powerball’s FAQ page and started scrolling through the usual stuff… What are the ways to win, what does it cost, how do I know if I won. Then, for kicks, I read Can I Buy Powerball Tickets Through The Internet? and discovered that at this point in creating (or updating) the FAQs, someone got cheeky. I’ll let you peruse, but as a teaser, here’s an excerpt from Is There A Secret To Improve Your Chances of Winning Powerball?:
“First, we need to cover some things that don’t work. Swinging a live chicken above your head while wishing for the future numbers does NOT work. There is no improvement to be had by swinging a dead chicken. Although I have not tested it, swinging a bucket of extra crispy is not likely to work either.”
June 27th, 2010
World Flop
I’ve never really liked soccer before, as it’s always seemed to be the only sport that apparently has less action than baseball. Nevertheless, I’ve been watching the World Cup matches (yes, even the ones the US wasn’t playing in), and here’s what I’ve learned about soccer from watching World Cup matches:
1) Soccer players are incredibly tough, explosive athletic warriors… except when nobody is touching them. At this point, they turn into something worse than “professional” wrestlers. It appears to be a rule that each player must, at least once per game, get clothes-lined, kicked in the groin, eviscerated, or otherwise mauled by a ghost, writhe in terrible pain for several seconds, and then slowly get up with a bewildered look on their completely uninjured faces, as if they are just as confused as everyone watching about what just happened.
2) Soccer referees are just as bored by the game as I am. More so, perhaps. The earpieces they wear (which I just recently heard a commentator explain as enabling them to talk to the other referees on the field) make me wonder whether they are working for Buffalo Wild Wings, largely ignoring the game itself and instead listening to instructions on what to call from some bar. Occasionally they also see the ghosts that clothes-line/eviscerate/maul the players and call a foul on an opposing player who was, at the time, on the other side of the pitch (oh, I did learn some useful terminology).
3) Bear hugs are not fouls. But then, who doesn’t like a good hug?
4) Games last 90 minutes. Unless the referee isn’t paying attention to the clock, in which case the game lasts until the referee blows, which again seems to be controlled by a Buffalo Wild Wings bar somewhere, but usually occurs within the 5 minutes it takes for the patrons (who I presume are massively drunk after 90 minutes of drinking games revolving around ghosts and horns) to remember that they really don’t care anymore.
5) There is no such thing as a “delay of game.” Then again, I can understand why ghost-plagued players suffocated by bear hugs would want the thing to be over sooner, and I’ve already covered the indifference of the referees.
6) A goal is scored when a ball crosses the goal line. Unless it isn’t, but sometimes when it doesn’t.
7) UPDATE from watching the finals: It is exactly as illegal to karate flying-kick someone in the sternum as it is to be in the general vicinity of a player who stubs their toes into the ground and falls down pretending to be in great agony.
Unfortunately, even though some of these things can be comical, put together they take a sport that I’ve never really liked and make it a sport I actively dislike. Maybe these things are unique to the World Cup, but I doubt it.
May 16th, 2010
Biking
I’m going to have to find a better way to keep track of this at some point, but for now I’ll just update this post with links to the routes we bike around Arlington.
Sunday, June 6th, 2010 – this one was a little shorter, since we didn’t do that weirdness on the Custis Trail northeast of where we turned around (the B marker), but Google Maps wouldn’t let me show exactly the route we took.
