Not you, Mr. Potato Head!

Mr. Potato Head in ecstasy bust

Another clean untainted childhood memory, crushed into fine powder.

I always thought he smiled a bit too much. Or not enough, depending on how his mouth was inserted.

What's next, the slinky dog dipped in cocaine?

1,500 years in jail isn't all that long

Biddeford Couple Faces More than 1,500 years in prison

You may be thinking 1,500 years in jail is a pretty long time. That's quite a few missed Christmases and birthdays, if you think about it, and your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren may not even recognize you when you get out. YOU may not recognize you.

This is, nevertheless, a just and consistent sentence for people with 60 some charges, each worth 20 years in prison. There are precedents, of course.

You may recall several years ago when a 19 year old man sent out emails to an entire school district asking for money to pay for his grandmother's funeral. The grandmother was blind stinking drunk and so may have looked dead, but a swift poke in the eye would have proved her very much alive.

The young man nevertheless collected almost $10,000 from nearly 1,500 very sympathetic people who then formed an unruly mob and quickly tracked the youth to a fine restaurant where he was impressing his girlfriend with money from his "new job". There, they beat him within an inch of his life with his own braised Duck ala Orange.

The boy was charged with 1,467 counts, each a maximum of 2 years, or 2,934 years in prison. Needless to say, the boy blamed his deadbeat dad, who it turned out was the one actually dead.

Need another example? Who could forget the jovial gentleman from the Philippines who thought it would be funny to send a virus to his three co-workers, which ended up all over the world and shut down half of Asia, gaining him a rather impressive prison sentence of 4,000,000 years and a $2 billion fine for damages. Ouch.

So, really, the couple getting 1,500 years could have had it a whole lot worse. In 4,000,000 years, its entirely possible that something could have happened to all their stuff! My car doesn't like to start after a whole weekend of sitting idle. I can't imagine how stubborn it would be after 4,000,000 years.


Minor Correction: I suppose I should mention now, months later, that some of this article was completely made up. I exaggerated one or two things, the numbers are a bit off, by one or two zeroes, or more, and the people involved, to be frank, do not exist. In fact the only truth to this entire piece is the link at the top. And I don't believe that crap for a second. I mean, c'mon! The things people will put on the internet just to get some attention. Pathetic!

Setting the record straight

Some people have claimed that I am far too easy with the truth. Others will say I am creative about information. Still others will say I am ignorant about nearly everything and am desperately trying to come up with a plausible answer that cannot be conveniently debunked. At least not before I can leave the room.

Tell me: why can't these all be true? Is there no better or worse way to say that I on occasion tend to exaggerate, slightly?


Here is an example: Many years ago, before he began to wonder if I was a nincompoop and made up idiotic answers to his questions, my son wanted to know why the sky was blue. The simple answer, and one most of you would have uttered far too carelessly and easily, is "I have no idea." What kind of answer is that? Is that all you can do for your child? That was not for me, naturally. And I was certainly not going to stop watching "Dumber and Dumberest" to go look it up.

So I said, "I'm glad you asked that, son" with a calm air, and explained that the sky was blue because the world was surrounded by water vapor, a fact being covered up by the U.S. government for fear of causing a massive worldwide panic wherein we all tried to suck in a lot of air, all at once, so we wouldn't drown in case the water fell on us.

This simultaneous sucking in of air would then deplete the atmosphere so quickly and drastically that the ozone would come crashing to the ground, much like how a vacuum cleaner shoved into a small...uh, thing, looks like the planet earth with its ozone layer caving in.

And of course then we would all die because the ozone keeps the water in the air, so it and all the junk the U.S. government has been hiding from us in orbit--missiles and tanks and Jimmy Hoffa and so forth--would crash down on us.

It was then that I discovered that my son had left shortly after I said the word "glad". Short attention spans, that's the problem with children these days.

Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want

Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want

This is just fabulous. About time, boys!

Go here immediately and give them a tenner. Or a pence. Or an IOU. Listen to it for free for a bit and then give them some money.

I am just floored.

Anybody know how to convert dollars to pounds?

As I recall, figuring $1 = .8 pounds (a total guess), if I want to give them $15, then I'd need to put in.....4...carry the 2...oops...no....

Something on the order of 17,240 pounds. More or less.

Wait a minute....yes, that's right....hmmm....seems a bit too hefty, as pounds go.


Any mathematicians out there?