you's a ho

so, in australia (that crazy country), they are asking santa's not to say "ho ho ho" this christmas in sydney because some women will find it offensive. no, i'm not kidding. really. i swear. it's even on fox news!

Australian Santas Asked Not to 'Ho Ho Ho'
Thursday , November 15, 2007

By Janet Fyfe-Yeomans and Amanda Grant

SYDNEY, Australia —

He is an unlikely revolutionary, but this Christmas, Santa is a rebel with a claus.

He is having the last laugh on political correctness — and it's a great big fat belly laugh.

Santas across Sydney, Australia, are rebelling against attempts to ban their traditional greeting of "ho, ho, ho" in favor of "ha, ha, ha."

Recruitment firm Westaff — which supplies hundreds of Santas across the country — has told its trainees that the "ho ho ho" phrase could frighten children and could even be derogatory to women.

Two Santa hopefuls reportedly quit the course because of the hullabaloo of the ho, ho, ho.

One would-be Santa has told The Daily Telegraph he was taught not to use "ho, ho, ho" because it was too close to the American slang for prostitute. He also quit.

"Gimme a break," said Julie Gale, who runs a campaign against sexualizing children called Kids Free 2B Kids. "We are talking about little kids who do not understand that 'ho, ho, ho' has any other connotation, and nor should they."

"Leave Santa alone," she added.

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you know, i think it's about time this creepy old perv "santa" was reprimanded for his behavior. watching children while they play, keeping lists of their names, labelling them "naughty" - even luring them with treats and gifts. i mean, everyone learns as a kid - this kind of perpetrator is dangerous. he's a stranger with candy and has his eye on the youngins'. and to top it off, he's been getting away with yelling profanity at these innocent babies! calling them ho's and obviously degrading their self-esteem from a very young age.

i personally am glad that this came about, because we've all been living blind of the fact that santa is nothing more than a morally corrupt old man, running a factory with vertically challenged people as his employees. the horror! hasn't santa watched "little people big world"? these people can lead perfectly normal lives, and don't have to be subjected to this non-stop toymaking labor.

so hear this santa, you think you can get away with your jollitry and games, but we're on to you. by next year, your holiday will be nothing more than a day off work with a plastic "family" tree in the living room. we will not allow your attempts to bring light to our bleak winter season. and watch out david - we're after your star next.

how old is creepy?

the other day, i visited my local st. louis bread company to enjoy a bowl of chicken and wild rice soup with a co-worker. we waited in the usual line to place our orders, and when i reached the front of the line, i noticed the employee there to take my order was an elderly friendly-looking gentleman, who appeared to be having a great time taking people's orders.

old guy: well hello there young lady? how are you doing today? what can i get you?
me: i'll take the you-pick-two with chicken and wild rice soup and a tuscan chicken sandwich.
old guy: ok, great choices. i love the chicken and wild rice soup - it's delicious!
me: (thinking) i know that dummy, that's why i ordered it.
old guy: now would you like to buy a cookie with your meal for just 99 cents? it's our special right now.
me: no thank you.
old guy: oh come on - get a cookie - they are delicious! with your lovely figure, you can have a cookie with your lunch.
me: (thinking) did i hear that right?
me: (out loud) uh...thanks?
old guy: my friend is a fitness instructor, and she eats our cookies! but i get them for her with my employee discount.
me: i'll pass on the cookie, but i'd like a drink with my meal.
old guy: ok great! how would you like to pay?
(note: i have been holding my credit card in front of him for 3 minutes at this point)
old guy: on the magic credit card, great. your name is erin? a beautiful irish name for a beautiful girl. i'm irish, you know. john o'finnigan. i'm travelling to ireland next spring.
me: that's great, though i'm actually german.
old guy: well, ok. the germans and the irish get along now-a-days anyways! enjoy your lunch and watch that lovely figure!

i ran away from the counter as quickly as i could, so that he wouldn't come up with something else to talk to me about...and got to the table where my co-worker was sitting, already eating his food. i told him what the old guy said and why it took so long, and he brought up an interesting point. if this guy were 30, i would have thought he was a total creep - but somehow at 70, a guy can totally get away with it.

so at what age does a guy stop being a creepy perv? i'm thinking somewhere around 64...possibly 60, but that might be pushing it.

that's all i've got for today. that and a 9:30 softball game tonight that i'd rather not attend...but it's the last game of the season (FINALLY) so at least i have a break until next fall. if we win this one, we come in second, surprisingly.

enjoy the extra hour of your weekend.

now that's just plain stupid

Teenager escapes prison in suitcase
Tue Oct 30, 2007 4:55pm EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 19-year-old German woman has escaped from prison by hiding in a friend's suitcase.

The fugitive hid inside the large case when her 17-year-old fellow inmate was released from the youth prison in northwest Germany on Friday, Lower Saxony ministry spokesman Dennis Weilmann said on Monday.

The girl simply walked out of the building with her friend concealed in her luggage, Weilmann said.

"Our staff are going to make sure they inspect big suitcases more carefully in the future," Weilmann said.

Neither of the teenagers has since been caught. Both had been jailed for theft. The escaped prisoner had less than two weeks left to serve.

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i was completely following up until the very last sentence. the girl didn't want to be in prison, she came up with great escape plan, it worked...but she was only there for two more weeks? come on...that's so ridiculous. it's like getting caught using a fake id the night before your 21st birthday. plain old stupid.

oh what people will do

what would make a grown man duct-tape high heels to his feet? has to be something good, right? say, i don't know, perhaps a free vacation? possibly. or some free money - but would have to be enough to make it worth while - $1,000? maybe. OR what about a pair of tickets to see hannah montana in concert? ABSOLUTELY.

yesterday, local radio station held a high heel derby for men only to compete for two tickets to see hannah montana tonight. clearly, it was well worth buying women's size 20 high heels, missing work, standing in the rain, and running in circles for the chance to see billy ray cyrus' daughter perform.

and even worse, people are paying up to $250 PER TICKET to see this kid in concert. she's outselling bruce springsteen for pete's sake.

i mean seriously, what is the world coming to?!?!?! first of all, little kids are going to concerts. secondly, parents are spending a small fortune to get them there. and lastly, the man who brought us achy breaky heart has procreated.

i can't take it any more than that.

it's finally here...

it seems as thought fall has finally come upon us, and in celebration of the cool weather, i will be spending the weekend eating soup, drinking hot cider and wearing hoodies.

really though, my third-to-last softball game is tonight, we shouldn't have a problem winning, and the mosquitos that were infesting the field the last few weeks should finally have gone underground for the winter. i must say, drinking cold beer during a cold game is less desirable than when it's warm out.

then tomorrow, some friends and i are taking a trip to the apple farm. it doesn't get much more autumnal than apple-picking.

(and of course, we will be watching football before the apples...duh)

so enjoy wearing your jeans and long-sleeve shirts, go rake some leaves or something. have a good one.

pheidippides

in the recent years, i have noticed a large number of people in my generation participating in marathons. seems that it's caught on like slap bracelets in 1993. and every time i read someone's time in their facebook info, or see their myspace pic of them running across the finish line, i can't help but think, "why in the world would you want to run that far?"

but there are quite a few marathons that exist, in fact, over 100 opportunities annually to run one in the us. my hometown is proud of their go! st. louis marathon in april. not sure why they have to have an exclamation point in their title. but apparently, we are a city of exclamation points. no really, we are.

anyways, with all of the marathons, and all of the people running them, i figured there must be something great about finishing one. you've accomplished something extremely difficult, you trained for months to prepare, you dedicated yourself, and you ran a distance that i don't even enjoy driving in my car.

but then i stumbled across the history of the marathon. named for a greek city, the story is that a soldier, pheidippides, ran from athens to marathon to declare that the persians had been defeated in battle. (there are variations of the story - don't ask me to cite my source). according to legend, this young man ran the whole way without stopping...and upon arrival and announcement of his message, he collapsed dead.

so i'm back at my original question, why would you want to run a distance that killed the first man who did it? (note: this is a rhetorical question. please don't post comments about how awesome it is. i will delete them.)

seriously though, to all of you who have attempted or finished a marathon, kudos. i guess.

tv-less life

after a weekend of no tv at the new house, we have stumbled upon the full series of sopranos on dvd to bide the time until saturday morning when directtv comes out to install our sweet dish and choicextra package. after investigating pricing of various cable/dish plans, i feel like i'm totally robbing directtv blind. i got free upgrade to dvr, $200 cash back, $50 referral bonus, AND a free portable dvd player. freaking awesome.

so anyways, back to the sopranos. i only had hbo for a short stint in college when it was a free add on for a few months, but even then, i don't think i ever watched sopranos. just never got into it. but it's a pretty good show, now that i'm starting at the beginning and get what the hell is going on. but i can't help but think of the things that tv shows on dvd do wrong.

#1 fit more episodes on a disc. i mean, four episodes is just not enough. i can't imagine that technology couldn't allow for at least 10 episodes on one disc.

#2 don't play the freaking theme song at the beginning of every episode. people are paying way too much for box sets to have to fast forward through (or listen to - if the remote is too far away or you fall asleep while watching) this for every single show you watch. how hard can it be to edit that out?

#3 don't make me read a synopsis of the episode before it plays. if i wasn't sure what i was watching, i could look at the dvd case.

and to sum up, i have clearly watched too much tv on dvd this weekend.

yowsers

so shit is hitting the fan at the fine institution that granted me my high school diploma. the principal was fired a few months ago, and now she's suing the school for defamation, libel and slander. apparently, she was fired for behavior "not in line with the school's standards" or something like that - but the incident they are blaming it on is an email she forwarded to a few friends, which included jokes about smoking and gay sex.

now, this principal was a bit revolutionary at the school - first of all, she isn't a nun (which many principals before here were), and secondly, she spent a lot of time making the school better. but - she was the kind of person that people either loved or hated. i, for one at least, did not care for her much...but nonetheless, she helped the school.

the interesting part of this lawsuit is the dollar figure on it. she's suing for $125,000 plus backpay and lawyers fees. now, i don't know much about lawsuits, but i think $125k is a lame amount of money to ask for, why not go big? the school could never afford millions, but why not ask for it if you're going through the efforts of suing?

we'll see where this gets her...i just hope my hs doesn't get a bad rap over all of this.

update: why i really hate fantasy football

you may have previously read this rant about why i dislike fantasy football. well, after discussing with my sources, and deciding i shouldn't knock it till i try it (my life-long motto), i signed up for a fantasy league courtesy of yahoo sports with some family members and friends. i wasn't able to attend the live draft, so auto-pilot took over and provided my team - the muffin bunnies* - some good players, so i was told.

my male opponents in the league said, "your team is so good - you have donovan mcnabb, and clinton portis and larry johnson, and lj smith..." since i don't know who any of these players are (if your name isn't tom brady, i don't pay attention to you), i trusted them and thought this might turn out to actually be fun.

low and behold, i have lost my first two games. donovan mcnabb didn't throw one touchdown pass this week. my team was projected to win by 25 points, and lost by 6.

so now, not only does fantasy football annoy me because of how dumb it is, it annoys me because my players are suckasses.

stupid pretend sports.

*yes, that is actually the name of my team. it was the name i chose for my pet rabbit at age 4, so i thought it was a solid tribute.

hump day

for lack of anything substantial to talk about, i'd like to share a few fun things:

1. while watching the cardinals lose AGAIN last night at great american ballpark in cincinnati, somewhere around the bottom of the eighth inning one of the reds hit a foul ball and broke his bat. the top part of the bat flew towards the stands on the first base side, but ended up hitting the wall in front of the stands instead. naturally, the few fans that were there (are there baseball fans in cincinnati? because they couldn't even fill 1/4 of that stadium last night) jumped out of their seats to run down and grab the bat. a kid in a cards jersey reached over, grabbed the bat and held it over his head like a trophy and ran back up to his seat. not 5 minutes later, a security guy from the ball park comes up to the kid and his dad and escorts them out of the stadium. you could almost hear the dad saying, "are you kidding? there are only 1,000 people left in this park, our team is losing 7-2...you don't even need to ask us to leave."

2. this is hysterical. i can't believe anyone would put in this amount of work for a prank, but it's awesome. the best part is they interviewed the guy who planned it, and he said that you can actually hear "streeter" say to his girlfriend, "i don't wanna f*cking marry you!" enjoy.



3. one last quasi-funny story. i had this conference for work last week, so all of the vendors who sell us product were invited in to meet the company. you never think about the men in the world who make a living selling women's underwire camis or bamboo weave sheet sets, but they exist. so one older gentleman is sitting and a small group session next to me and leans over to the woman sitting next to him and says, "do you have the time?" she grabs her cell phone to tell him what time it was, and before she can even respond, he says, "haha...just a little joke, i'm wearing two watches!" he pulled his shirt sleeve up to show that he was, in fact, wearing two watches. it was such a terrible joke i laughed out loud.

trainwreck

you've probably already seen it, but it's so awful, you have to watch it again.

the pretend world of sports

the time is upon us when students are heading back to school, the blazing heat of summer is close to breaking, stores are bringing in fall clothes...and oh yeah, fantasy football is underway.

now, i have learned to tolerate - even mildly enjoy - the everlong season of football. i didn't grow up in a house where football was a big deal, but have learned later in life that most men live for it. now that i've endured a few seasons of it, i realize that there is no arguing with a significant other about whether or not he's going to watch the games that weekend. i've even learned what's going on, and can actually follow a game now and then.

and now, pre-season has started...it's only a short time before every sunday afternoon, saturday afternoon, monday night, occasional thursday night, possibly tuesday night is football. and it doesn't end there.

i used consider myself lucky because my significant other is mostly obsessed with college football. (i don't think he reads this much, but he would appreciate a "go blue" here) so i used to not have to deal with many sunday pro games. BUT - fantasy football took that away from me.

because of the fantasy team, we have to watch every game that is televised in order to check in on the players on his team. and i can't help but think about the fact that it is FANTASY - which means is 100% not real. fake teams, fake plays, fake scores, and in the end, a fake winner. fake fake fake.

and i get criticized for watching american idol...

i'm a tropical storm!

i found out yesterday that a current tropical storm and i share the same name. upon hearing this, i was so honored that the meteorologists of the world think so highly of my name that they are willing to add it to the list of hurricanes. but i came to find out that it was already on the list, and i should have known this much earlier in my life. you see, hurricane names are set alphabetical lists, alternating male and female names, that rotate every six years. names are used so that weather stations can communicate quickly about the storm, instead of using latitude and longitude identification. there is a pacific list and an atlantic list. so there was actually a tropical storm erin in 2001, but i guess it never got big enough to make news. (apologies for the outdated links - they serve their purpose though)

so basically, either you are a hurricane or you're not...with the exception of the newly added names from time to time. when a storm is particularly devastating, they retire the name and replace it with a new one- i.e. katrina & hugo. (retired names)

and, another little tidbit of cocktail trivia - storms used to all be named female names until 1978, when the world meteorological organization starting incorporating male names as well. if that's not equality, i don't know what is.

and that is the science lesson for today, class.

**fall softball game 1 tomorrow night. team name: knocked up - because three of our players are benched due to impregnation. pretty funny, huh.

surface of the sun

after a long weekend of staying indoors for fear of melting upon entering the sunlight, i had my first experience with wii. yes, i was a wii virgin until this weekend. and boy, was it a good time. i'm literally sore from playing so much. if i had a couple hundred to blow right now, that's what i'd get.

anyways, as i realized just how hot it is in st. louis right now, i began to wonder if this is the hottest it's ever been. apparently, it is not. the record high for the area was July 14, 1954, when it reached 115 degrees.

and what is the record high in the u.s., you ask? greenland ranch, california, with 134°F on July 10, 1913. that's just crazy. and they didn't have air conditioning. well, actually - it's in the middle of death valley, where no one lives...so it doesn't really matter. but either way, that's freaking hot.

so i'll be enjoying sitting inside working all week as the temps reach 108...but then dying on the ball field as fall softball starts on friday. we finished spring league at 5 and 5, and won $50 to hooters. just what i wanted.

welcome back, welcome back, welcome back

great news for folks in st. louis who missed their buddy - rick ankiel was called up this week. enjoy this:



and in another fun cards story, apparently the announcer for san diego got caught this week saying something on air that was supposed to be muted. i love it when stuff like this happens. i'll set the scene...san diego's losing bad, it's hot as balls in st. louis. he made a comment about cards fans "driving back to the ozarks in their el caminos" first. then he muted his microphone, to tell the guys in his production van (who are st. louisans, keep in mind), "i'm done with this place...i'm so tired of losing here...it's hotter than shit. we get our asses kicked every time we come here...i'm not coming here next year." but his partner's mike picked up the whole thing.

so 98.1 in st. louis got this guy on the radio the next morning, and i have to say - he really was pretty funny. he explained that he was just trying to get on the guys from st. louis that make digs at him because of the cards beating san diego in post season so many years. and the comment about the ozarks and el caminos...i'm pretty sure that's true.

well, friends - that's about all i have for today. have a good weekend folks. drink lots of fluids and don't stay in the sun too long. you might melt.