My Sick Mind

BONN, Germany, July 6 (UPI) - The world is smaller than first thought, German researchers at the University of Bonn said on Thursday. They took part in an international project to measure the diameter of the world that showed it is 0.2 inches smaller than the last measurement made five years ago. The scientists round the number up to 7,926 . 3812 miles for the general public . Hey - thanks for dumbing down and rounding for us, the dopey GP. F.Y.I. - 0.0002 miles [the rounded number] equals one foot, so they have this thing right on the button. Quick, everybody jump up and down, we'll make the earth a little smaller for the U of Bonn. And ... with global warming, the polar ice caps have been melting and you know what cold water does to things. Shrinkage.

The Quiznos post from Thursday immediately got funnier once I realized that someone from corporate in Denver read it. What started as a mundane essay based on the back of a sandwich receipt became hysterical to me. Those kinds of things are funnier from 1,750 miles away. From the gist of their web site, the company appears to have a sense of humor. Let's hope so, since I put the CEO in the position of awarding the weekly $1000 survey prize to his nephew as a birthday gift. Pretty funny, eh? Sure. Oh, and ... my Phillies are playing the Rockies this weekend at Coors Field. Don't be a Scrooge and screw up our 10,000th loss by making it happen in Colorado. They need two more, and it's a three-game series. Do the math. C'mon, give us a little enjoyment. They come home after the All-Star break and I have a ticket for next Friday's home game against the Cardinals and I want to be a part of history, so let the Phils win 2 of 3 so they can make the magic number her...

I may have already won some money. Quiznos will probably be pulling my name from their sandwich-shaped hat and sending me the thousand-dollar weekly prize for filling out their on-line customer survey today. Either that or they were merely using me for information. I should know by the end of the week. I promise that the money will go to my head and I will change completely based on the sudden influx of riches. I do enjoy a good survey, but I don’t want to spend too much time with it. This one took less time than it takes to make a sandwich, so I persevered. I had to choose between answers of “Strongly Agree”, “Agree,” “Neither Agree nor Disagree,” “Disagree” and “Strongly Disagree.” I had trouble determining whether I could strongly agree with anything that had to do with buying a sandwich for lunch. “Was your sandwich the right temperature?” they asked. I strongly agree. It was “room.” They asked if I liked being able to watch my sandwich being made. Did I have a choice? No, I di...

OK, so I'm bored on July 4 th . No picnics or family Bar-Be-Que's to attend, so my thoughts turn to the weather and how the masses will deal with it. Local dumbass on NBC10 says, "There's rain in the forecast for the fireworks, so keep your eyes to the skies." Really? Ya think? Isn't that where the fireworks are? It's six o'clock. Three hours from the fireworks, and dumbass can't tell his viewers whether or not they should go outside to watch the fireworks on the Parkway. If he can, he's too gutless to make a call because if he does, he will be held responsible for something, and God knows, at a half a million a year, he doesn't want to be held responsible for anything. Go - and pack an umbrella in case we are wrong - or not wrong, since we haven't really expressed an opinion - only a viewpoint. Legally, there is a difference. So, here it is, 9:45pm, and I can hear both rain and fireworks going off outside my window. Three hours prio...

Today, HBO showed all three Back to the Future movies. It's a pretty good series, but you have to suspend disbelief for most of it, which is difficult for me. I watched part of II and III , and it wasn't until the end of the third that I got to thinking. It takes a while, sometimes. Where were Emmett and Clara's kids (Jules and Vern) in the first and second movies? He introduces them in the steam-powered time-travel train that shows up at the end of BTF III, in 1985. One assumes they would be alive in 1955, so one would suspect that they would be mentioned somewhere along the way. Brown never mentions a wife, either, although his dog Einstein shows up throughout. Of course, we're not supposed to alter time, so I guess I shouldn't bring it up, lest the blog disappear like Marty's family photo. (and, wasn't that a ridiculous notion?) And Biff Tannen .  Wouldn't the 1985 Biff recognize the 1985 Marty from his encounters with him in 1955?  And, wo...

Happy Independence Day It's a legal holiday here in the U.S. We don't have National Holidays like they do in other countries. Most of our stores and restaurants are open. I suspected that the local Commerce Bank would be open for business at least part of the day. A quick web search confirmed: All of the nearly 160 Commerce Bank branches in the tri-state region will be open for business on Wednesday, July 4 from 7:30 a.m. until 1 p.m . They aren't called "America's Most Convenient Bank" for nothing, although "nothing" is close to the amount of interest they pay on savings accounts. Guess who pays for those long hours? As for me, bright and early at 8:00am I'll be out on the bike with a bunch of like-minded folk dressed in strange clothing in honor of Delaware, the first state admitted to the union and home of DuPont and Joseph Shivers , who, in 1959 invented Spandex, without which we would chafe. Fact for the Day: In the 1970s, cyclists trad...

Nine-thousand, nine-hundred, ninety-six Phils losses in all. Nine-thousand, nine-hundred, ninety-six losses. If one more late comeback should happen to stall; Nine-thousand, nine-hundred, ninety-seven Phils losses in all … Our hometown baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies , are closing in on a record of futility that is somehow befitting this woeful franchise and its long-suffering fans. As of Tuesday morning, they are four losses away from their 10,000th in the team's history, which goes back to 1883. For you math majors, that averages 81 losses a year. Eighty-one is the benchmark of mediocrity in baseball. It is the exact center of being average. They play 162 games a year and lose half of them. Perfect. Add in a few dozen rotten years and the Phillies have lost more games than any franchise in sports history . While it’s true that baseball plays more games than other sports, why does it have to be the Phillies? Because they have a legacy of losing that is the Yin to the Yank...

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin - The Milwaukee Bucks believed Chinese power forward Yi Jianlian was a steal with the sixth pick of last week's NBA draft. But the ramifications of the move were laid bare this weekend as Yi's handlers confirmed they were looking to get their client out of a city he wants no part of. The city, in the northern state of Wisconsin, has a population of just 550,000 - only 1.7% of whom are of Chinese origin. Whoops. We wouldn't be racist now, would we, Yi? Rumor has it that Yi wants to come to Philadelphia to play for the Sixers. I can see the Yo Yi headlines now. Here's some news: 1.17% of Philadelphia's 5.8 million people are Chinese, and we have some great restaurants in Chinatown, so maybe Yi is better off here, but I suppose the Sixers would have to trade away some black players to get him, so it may be a racial wash. As the sixth pick in the draft, he'll make about $3 million per , plus a signing bonus, I suppose. That will buy a lot of...

Another weekend without the car. Strange? Yes, kinda. Saturday was easy. Our early morning 38-miler followed by a short trip to the local Subway for lunch. Sunday was a trip to the gym (redundant, I know) followed by a Radio Shack run for an HDMI cable for my new upconvert DVD player. Fifty bucks for a 5-foot hunk of wire. The DVD's look good, though. I was going to wander into the city to see this movie I had read good things about, but I decided I wanted to be back by 3 for the final round of the U.S. Open, where Lorena Ochoa bungled her way through the final two holes to give Christie Kerr her first major in her 251st career tournament. Way to go, Christie. She's one of those players that always seems to be close , and has won 9 times (10 now), but seems to fall short. Sometimes it's because she appears to get overly emotional and other times it's because someone else is just better. Today, she held it together until the final one-foot par putt on 18, after which s...