Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

Sports attorney: Phelps could lose endorsements – CNN.com.

You know, I sincerely believe he would not lose any endorsements but for the fact that everybody is now speculating about whether he will lose his endorsements.

Phelps admits ‘bad judgment’ after marijuana-pipe photo – CNN.com.

Jesus. Big freakin’ deal. It’s not like the guy was shooting heroin or steroids or something. If he was apologizing over the drunk driving incident, I’d be all about him appearing shamefaced before the media. That’s actually something worth apologizing for. But this? Please.

Obama may have to give up e-messaging – CNN.com.

Not the Crackberry! NOOOOO, DARKNEEEESSS! CHAARRLIIIEEEEE!

My guess is he’ll keep the thing, and just switch it out somewhat frequently. You can’t just give that up. You’ve gotta ease out of it over a period of like… you know… a decade or so. Or until the Next Great Thing comes along to replace it.

How much of a geek am I, that I had to actually open Google Earth and see the giant stuffed pink bunny for myself?

It’s there! I’m so amused.

Testing Google’s Drunk E-Mail Protector – TIME.

I love it! It’s an amusing article.

Don’t leave until you read this whole post! You won’t regret it!

Restaurant.com has an AMAZING deal right now – they are offering 80% off their already-reduced dining gift certificates when you enter code EIGHTY at checkout – DON’T FORGET to enter the promo code or else you won’t get the discount. This deal expires October 15, 2008 – that’s tomorrow – so if you want in, you’d better hurry up!

My guess is that this is meant to encourage people to keep going out to eat in this ridiculous economy, especially since most of the restaurants listed are smaller restaurants that tend not to be huge chains. That said, there are some chains on there, and we found a handful of our favorite restaurants there. I can’t wait to start eating!

There are minimum purchase amounts (usually $35 to use a $25 coupon) but that usually isn’t hard to reach unless you’re eating at a fast-food restaurant – and if you have a few people, you know you’ll reach the minimum. Let me tell you, this is an amazing deal. Their prices are already pretty good – $25 certificates are normally $10. Right now, they are $2. $10 gift cards are even less; they’re $0.60! I got about $80 worth of gift cards – for $16!

Can you do better than that?

Well, actually, you can! As it turns out, eBates, a rewards program that gives you cash back four times a year, offers 15% cash back on Restaurant.com – that’s a way generous rebate. So of my $16, I’ll get 15%, or $2.40, deposited into my eBates account. (I’ve gotten checks from them before, so I know it’s legit!) That’s just too awesome.

BUT WAIT! It gets EVEN better. If you sign up for eBates through this link before October 31, 2008 you’ll get a $10 welcome deposit into your eBates account, instead of the usual $5. So not only can you get 80% off your Restaurant.com dining gift certificates, but they will practically pay for themselves (ha, depending on how much you spend) if you sign up for eBates and make your Restaurant.com purchase through their link.

Now how awesome is that?

Oh. My. Gawd. No, but seriously. OHMYGAWD. PETA Urges Ben & Jerry’s To Use Human Milk.

Ew. Not only that, but EW.

In all seriousness, though, if PETA discourages the abuse of cows in the dairy industry, what makes it think an increase in the use of / demand for breast milk won’t similarly result in the abuse of women? I mean, honestly – if that kind of treatment isn’t good enough for cattle, certainly it isn’t good enough for lactating women. Sure, they’d be paid in the beginning, but how long would it take before the world would be shocked and horrified to learn of impoverished women being held captive on a human dairy farm?

Don’t we know better than to open this can of worms?

It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye because they leaned too close to the baby…

CNN has an interesting story about bartering sex for stuff or services. It doesn’t even portray people who do this as evil and depraved. Golly. Could it be that we’re actually making some progress in eliminating our status as one of the most prudish and Puritanical of free and industrialized countries?

I have a question: just who does the IOC think it is kidding? Government-issued documents are the last place they should look for reliable information. I have no doubt whatsoever that a government like China’s would not hesitate to reissue birth certificates and passports with falsified ages if it meant they would come out ahead in the Olympics. In fact, medal-winning Chinese gymnast Yang Yun has already admitted that she was 14 at the 2000 Olympics. Surely she, too, submitted legal government-issued documents proving her age? Documents provided by, oh, I don’t know, the Chinese government?

Well, he did it. He’s the man of the hour! Michael Phelps won his 8th gold medal earlier this week, meaning he has won more gold medals than any other athlete at a single Olympiad. The record was previously held by Mark Spitz.

In other news, does anybody else think that Nastia Liukin was robbed of that gold medal on the uneven bars? What was up with that tie-breaking method? I still want to know how China expects us to believe that tiny kid who won is really sixteen. I don’t believe it for a minute. Ah well. At least Liukin got her all-around gold.

This awesome story is making the rounds on the Internet and in the news lately.

In 1969, Anthony “Ace” Bourke and John Rendall rescued a lion cub from the “exotic animals” department at Harrod’s Department Store in London. They named him “Christian” and raised him in their apartment, exercising the cub on the grounds of the local church. After a year, though, Christian the lion became too large to keep in their home.

As luck would have it, the two men coincidentally ran into actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, who had recently starred in Born Free, the 1966 film about another domesticated lion who had been reintroduced into the wild by the couple whom the actors had portrayed, George and Joy Adamson (author of Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds). They suggested that the two men contact George Adamson in Kenya.

Bourke and Rendall eventually brought the lion to Kenya, and after a few years, they returned to visit him. They were informed at that point that Christian was the leader of his own pride and was fully wild now, and that he would not remember them. See for yourself what really happened when the lion and the men met again.

You can purchase the DVD made about Christian the lion at the Born Free Foundation website.

I would love to go back to Israel again some day, and this NY Times article on Tel Aviv is definitely a reminder that I need to go again some time soon! (Last time I visited was 1994!)

It turned out to be a pretty interesting article about an 80-year old stripper, Tempest Storm – something of a legend, apparently, who still performs on stage. Who knew?

I published this article over at Hubpages, and thought you might like to read it. I’ve included the text for archive posterity.

Five Myths About Same-Sex Marriage

Over the past several weeks I have seen a huge number of articles spring up in protest of last month’s CA Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriages. I want to address some of the arguments and claims that I’ve seen in those articles.

Myth #1: Four liberal activist judges overruled the will of the people.

What You Should Know: The California Supreme Court, a conservative court, struggled with the issue, looked to the CA Constitution, and concluded that equality means equality for ALL – and that includes those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Many have argued that legislatures, not judges, should be responsible for making marriage law. The CA legislature has twice passed the Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality Act, which equalized civil marriage rights among couples but explicitly stated that no religious institution shall be compelled to preside over a same-sex marriage. The bill was passed by two different assemblies of the legislature, since one passage was prior to a major election and once occurred after. The bill was twice vetoed by the Governor specifically because he believed it WAS an issue for the courts, not for the legislature.

Of the seven CA Supreme Court Justices, six were appointed by Republicans. The CA Supreme Court is traditionally known for being fairly conservative. If you think “CA” and think “liberal judges,” you might be mistaking the CA Supreme Court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Circuit. They are two very different courts. Incidentally, one of the dissenters is personally in favor of allowing same-sex marriage. Judges can and do go against their own personally-held beliefs in favor of upholding the CA Constitution.

The Supreme Court decision did not create a “new right” – rather, it acknowledged prior decisions stating that every person has a right to choose his or her life partner, and determined that this right cannot be abridged based solely on sexual orientation, which the Court views as akin to race and religion as far as discrimination practices are concerned. The judges did not come to their decision easily; they struggled with it, and that struggle is documented in the extremely lengthy opinion released last month (most court decisions are NOT this long – the Massachusetts marriage decision was less than a third of this length). If you think all it took was a stroke of a pen, I challenge you to read the 172-page opinion. I did.

Myth #2: The people of CA already spoke on the issue of gay marriage by passing Proposition 22

What You Should Know: Only 29% of registered California voters (21.5% of eligible voters) voted in favor of Prop 22. Is that an overwhelming majority?

While Proposition 22 was a statewide ballot initiative, it was not an accurate reflection of all of CA, for two major reasons:

First, contrary to popular belief, Prop 22 was not approved by an overwhelming majority of CA voters. Prop 22 was passed by an overwhelming majority of the voters who came out in March of 2000 to pick between John McCain and George Bush, since there was no true competition in the Democratic race, with Vice President Al Gore being the assumed winner. True, more Democrats than Republicans voted in the election, but if you count by who they voted for instead of their party identification, you get 2,654,114 voting Democratic and 3,702,487 voting Republican. In a consistently blue state, these statistics are not representative of the true population (about 30 million people). Overall, the election had a pretty low turnout rate. That primary election had around 7 million voters out of about 15 million registered voters. This past February primary (2008) had about the same number of registered voters, but more than 9 million actually turned out – and THAT was with closed primaries, which we didn’t have before, and no real contest in the Republican race.

In a state of more than 30 million people, only 4,618,673 voted in favor of Prop 22, and 2,909,370 voted against it. With only about a third of eligible voters, and barely half of registered voters, having voted on Prop 22 (that’s overall, not just in favor), it’s hard to use the word “overwhelming” to describe the outcome. Basically, 29% of registered voters (21.5% of eligible voters) voted in favor of Prop 22 – and that was eight years ago. The world has changed since then. People have changed since then. I know a LOT of people who voted for Prop 22 and are, in retrospect, utterly ashamed of themselves for it.

Second, Proposition 22, while appearing simple, was actually quite misleading. It came as a response to DOMA, which allowed states to refuse to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages, and the entire campaign was centered around the notion that CA should not be forced to recognize other states’ marriages. The argument was framed in such a way that many people who had no particular opinion on same-sex marriage voted for Prop 22 because they believed CA should be allowed to make the decision for itself and not be forced into it by another state. While this same Supreme Court ruling ultimately determined that Prop 22 did apply to all marriages and not just those performed out of state, the “yes” campaign intimated otherwise, and countless voters were duped in the process.

Even if Proposition 22 HAD passed with the approval of most Californians (which it didn’t), the CA Supreme Court had the responsibility to ensure that it complied with the CA Constitution (which it didn’t). The Court here didn’t ignore Proposition 22; it attacked it head on and found it to violate the spirit of the California Constitution. Courts have declared other initiatives unconstitutional as well, and in the 1960’s the US Supreme Court even invalidated a voter-approved CA constitutional amendment which sought to overturn a recently-passed legislative act banning housing discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, physical handicap, or familial status. Propositions don’t just glide into law just because the voters approved them. They still have to meet the rigorous standards of our great state and federal constitutions, and Proposition 22 violated what both the CA and US Supreme Courts have called a basic human right, the right to marry and create a family with your chosen spouse.

Myth #3: Marriage is a sacrament and has always been between one man and one woman.

What You Should Know: Read Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz. You’ll learn things you didn’t even know you didn’t know.

I could go on for pages about the ways in which marriage has changed over the years. One man can no longer have eight wives. Women are no longer subsumed by their husband’s identity and viewed as property. Couples are no longer barred from marriage based on their racial makeup. Most importantly, however, couples do not have to have their marriage blessed or sanctified by a religious institution, and they do not have to be married by a member of the clergy. This is the key to the constitutionality argument for same-sex marriage. The court cannot, and must not, and WILL not force religious institutions to officiate marriage for same-gender couples. Religions have the right to dictate their requirements for marriage, and the government may not interfere.

However, the state does not “recognize” religious institutions’ marriages; it creates the official status itself, and it officiates marriages outside the religious sphere. We call this civil marriage. It is an entirely different institution from religious marriage; it just happens that the state grants clergymen the status to officiate civil marriages at the same time as religious ones, for convenience’s purpose, so that a couple can be married in a single ceremony. A couple that goes to church and exchanges vows before witnesses is NOT married unless they fill out the necessary paperwork for a civil marriage. Likewise, a couple can obtain a civil marriage license and be married by a judge, a marriage deputy, or other civil servants acting as agents for the state, and never even interact with a religious institution.

Religious institutions can discriminate against certain couples; for example, most rabbis will not officiate at a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew, because Jewish law only recognizes as valid a marriage between two Jews. However, the STATE cannot discriminate in the same way and purport to be upholding the Constitution, state OR federal. If the STATE offers civil marriage, it must allow it to all adult couples, not just those who fit religious descriptions of propriety. After all, can you imagine the chaos if the state refused to issue a marriage license to a couple because one of them was Jewish and one was not? It is not the state’s business to uphold or enforce religious restrictions on marriage. (In fact, considering the VAST number of religious institutions and clergy who submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in support of same-gender marriage, I would argue that the state would have been in violation of the Establishment Clause had it NOT allowed the marriages to take place, since barring same-gender couples would have been equivalent to expressing a preference for some religions over others, at the expense of individual civil rights.)

If you want Biblical proof that it hasn’t always been about men and women, read I Samuel, not just the lines I have provided below, but the entire story – and read a translation that is as close to the original Hebrew as possible, as modern versions have diluted the story, often explicitly changing words entirely to tone down the relationship. Think about what it means to make a “covenant.” In nearly every other case in the Bible, the word “covenant” refers to the relationship between God and people, or to people promising to serve God. A covenant is an eternal promise – why else would some states institute “covenant marriages,” which are not as easy to dissolve?

1 Samuel 18

1. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

3. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.

1 Samuel 23

18. And they two made a covenant before the LORD: and David abode in the wood, and Jonathan went to his house.

Myth #4: Allowing same-sex marriage will lead to legalization of incest, pedophilia, and polygamy! Next thing you know, people will be marrying their dogs!

What You Need To Know: It’s far too late for that.

Let’s get this one over with: A dog is not and will never be a consenting adult. Nor will a goat. In addition to being morally and utterly repugnant, sex with animals is always rape, because an animal cannot consent. Likewise, a paw print does not suffice as a signature on a marriage license – and no matter how sure you are that your dog is trying to tell you something, absent a licensed dog-to-human translator, “Arf arf” cannot be properly construed to mean “I do.” Get your mind out of the gutter and stick to the issue at hand.

Incest is already legal in the 26 states where individuals can marry their first cousins. Cousins are the next degree of siblings; they are the children of your parents’ siblings. The great irony of today’s marriage laws is that I can marry my black cousin, the son of my aunt, but I can’t marry my wife. Or rather… I couldn’t. Now I can.

Pedophilia is already legal in the 1/3 of states that allow children under age 16 to marry, with some allowing marriage as early as age 13 with permission from the court. I’d be willing to bet that in most cases the men marrying adolescent girls are not also in their teens. If you want to protect children, you can start by lobbying states to prohibit children from getting married before they are old enough to see R-rated movies.

Polygamy is a separate issue because it doesn’t involve marital prohibition so much as it involves individuals trying to “double-dip” on the marital property and tax systems, among other things. A marriage is a union of two individuals into one economic unit. You can’t “become one” with one person if you’re already “one” with another person. There’s an argument to be made for allowing “threesomes” of people to marry, but I highly doubt anybody would take the economic risk, considering that one individual could wind up paying alimony to everybody else in the group if s/he decided to leave. I think the specter of alimony would be enough to prevent anybody from seriously raising this concern – not to mention that it’s an extremely rare arrangement in the first place.

Myth #5: Gay couples don’t need marriage in order to get their legal matters in order. Calling it “marriage” does nothing but devalue the sanctity of marriage.

What You Need To Know: Allowing committed couples to marry encourages and promotes monogamy and family responsibility, two crucial family values. As a result, federal and state governments have instituted a system of rights and responsibilities that have become necessary and irreplaceable for two people sharing their lives together. These rights are not replicable in private legal arrangements since most of them have to do with third-party or government recognition.

First, I have to point out that same-gender couples can’t possibly do more harm to the institution of marriage than that already inflicted by the heterosexuals who have held a monopoly on it for so long. (Hello Britney; hello “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?”) With more than half of all marriages ending in divorce, marriage needs all the good role models it can get. Many of the couples that are getting married in California this week have been together longer than most heterosexual marriages ever last. In fact, some social scientists believe that studying the way same-sex couples communicate and deal with conflict may actually help decrease the divorce rate among heterosexual couples by helping them overcome conflict.

Whether you like it or not, same-sex couples will have children. Children fare better in life when their parents are married. Why would you deny these children the right to be raised by married parents? Studies show that there is no substantial difference between children raised by gay parents and those raised by straight parents. They do, however, show that two parents are better than one. Marriage encourages two-parent childrearing, and provides economic safety-nets for situations where one parent abandons the family. Without marriage, the protections are substantially reduced. Marriage also encourages personal responsibility and shifts economic support responsibilities from the government to the individual and the private sector; with gay marriage legalized, many people will no longer have a need for state-provided benefits because they will be eligible for benefits through their spouse.

Children tend to thrive when they have one parent at home and one parent working to support the family; in an ideal world, families could afford to live on the salary of only one working parent (this is becoming less common as the cost of living skyrockets). Federal marriage recognition encourages parents to stay home with their children; spouses are entitled to their deceased spouses’ Social Security benefits if their own are insufficient. Gay couples do not receive this benefit, effectively removing this incentive to keep one parent at home. Additionally, federal marriage recognition keeps families from being uprooted in case of the death of a spouse; the property passes from one spouse to the other without tax repercussions, which means that in the tragic event of one spouse’s death, the other spouse and their children will not be forced to sell their home to pay estate taxes. Gay partners are taxed on bequests as though they were granted by any acquaintance; a partner of 55 years could be forced to sell her home to pay the taxes on property inherited from the deceased partner. Finally, the federal tax system actually penalizes gay couples who choose to have one partner remain at home to care for the children; the wage-earning partner is taxed on her income as a single person even though her salary is supporting both partners and their children. Stay-at-home moms should relate to this – imagine if your husband had to pay taxes as a single person!

I could go on forever, but I think it’s time to wrap up this article. However, I am happy to answer any questions you might have. As for me, my wife and I got married this past Tuesday, on the one-year anniversary of our religious wedding. We were already married in the eyes of God – it was time for the state to catch up.

If you seem to always guess correctly as to how sports games, current events, and other occurrences will turn out, perhaps you need to sign up for Predictify.

I am always a little bit too optimistic or a little bit too pessimistic, so I haven’t made a dime — but my wife has made a little under $15 already, just by predicting the outcome of such questions as “What will Sex and the City: The Movie gross in the box office on its opening weekend?” or “Who will be the Democratic candidate for the 2008 presidential election?”

Want to try your hand at predicting the future? Give it a shot!

Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

I am a huge Cranium fan, and although I tend to be a purist when it comes to “new editions,” I have to admit that Cranium Turbo Edition really is fabulous. Not only do the usual activity categories return in the Turbo edition, but this version also includes some fun new categories, including Team Gnilleps, Zooma (identify objects from close-up photos), and Sideshow (one team member uses another as a puppet to act out the clue). This version of Cranium includes an electric timer and selector (rather than a multi-sided die), and includes “turbo” cards in which there are three tasks which must be completed rather than one.

I still like the original edition, but this Turbo Edition is certainly refreshing after so many years of playing the first Cranium game.

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I just got my $5 Amazon gift certificate from Winzy! Most of my prizes have been for points, but this was my first actual prize, and it’s officially in my hands now, or at least, figuratively in my hands, actually in my email. 🙂 Sign up so you can win too!

[Cross-posted at my epinions account.]

We have friends over fairly often, and the game of Cranium is definitely one of our favorites to bring out. The game is terrific because it relies on teamwork and a variety of creative and intellectual tasks.

This is no “Candy Land“; if you want to win, you’re going to have to use your… cranium, as it were. You can get the basic board rules from the game’s instructions; the more important information you need to know is about the different tasks you could be assigned.

The Basic Stuff

Each space on the Cranium game board is marked with a color, either red, blue, green or yellow. At the four “corners” of the gameboard (actually located in the middle of each side) is a purple “brain.”. Regardless of how many spaces a player is supposed to move, they must stop when they reach each brain, even if their roll would have taken them further. Between each “brain” spot is an inside track and an outside track; the inside track has fewer spaces, so you get to the next brain more quickly. The team that goes first is the team including the player with the next birthday. I’m not kidding; this is in the rules!

At the start of the game, every player is on the initial “brain” spot, and therefore they get to pick their first task. If they are successful in their first task, they get to roll the dice and move to the appropriate color via the inside track, and on their next turn, they will draw a card from the deck of this color. If they do not succeed in their first task, their turn is over. When they do successfully complete a task, they must go along the outside track until they reach the next brain. The inside-outside path resets at each brain, so you can still catch up even if you miss your first challenge.

Once you’ve made your way around the board, you enter the center “brain” – the big brain, if you will, and you must answer, on each of your subsequent turns, a question from each of the four categories. Once you finish the fourth, you move to the middle of the brain, and on your next turn, all of the other teams get to pick a card for you. That’s all of the teams, not each of the teams. They will have to agree on a category. Usually this category is red (Data Head), unless your team includes one of those people who just knows everything about everything. In order to win, your team must successfully complete this last task.

So What Are These Challenges?

The game’s challenges are broken up into four key categories: Word Worm (yellow), Creative Cat (blue), Data Head (red), and Star Performer (green).

Yellow is “Word Worm,” and contains such wacky tasks as:

• Gnilleps: One player from the team must correctly spell a word backwards on your first attempt, and without writing anything down.

• Spellbound: The same as Gnilleps, only you get to spell it the normal way!
• Zelpuz: The team must unscramble words using a very vague clue.
• Lexicon: Multiple choice definitions. Be careful – these aren’t SAT questions. Here, they ARE trying to trick you; watch out for homonyms, because inevitably both words’ definitions will be potential answers
• Blankout: These are the hardest; you must complete a word with letters whited out. You do get a clue, but the clues usually aren’t too helpful.

Green, “Star Performer,” is my favorite; it involves various physical performance skills, including:

• Humdinger: One team member must hum the song on the card, while the other members attempt to guess the song. Generally when we play, we allow the team member to hand over the card to another teammate if she doesn’t know the song; she is forbidden to guess. If no player knows the song, then we allow them to pick another card.

• Cameo: Basically, charades. In theory, you’re not supposed to be allowed to give any indication of how many words or whether your team is on the right track, but we generally just follow the rules of charades instead.
• Copycat: The performing team member must get her teammates to guess which famous person she is imitating by mimicking the person’s speech, actions, characteristics. No names of people or places are permitted, and the team member cannot respond to anything the guessers ask. This challenge can either be really boring or absolutely hilarious, depending on how strictly you adhere to the rules. Given “Elvis Presley,” some people will say something boring like, “I have left the building,” or “Thank you very much.” More creative performances will involve hip thrusting and curled lips. It’s up to the game’s players to decide what they will and will not allow here.

Blue, “Creative Cat,” is my other favorite; it involves artistic tasks such as:

• Cloodle: Basically, Pictionary.

• Sensosketch: Like Cloodle, except that the drawer’s eyes must be shut. This can be extremely entertaining, and I like to hold on to the most brilliant “Cloodle” masterpieces for reminiscing in future games. If you do this, you might want to label it after the turn is over; some of them will be pretty unrecognizable later on!
• Sculptorades: The player has to translate the answer into sculpted form. No gestures/acting/pointing is allowed; this isn’t charades!

Red, “Data Head,” is my least favorite, although some people are freakishly good at this. The tasks include:

• Factoid: Random trivia questions. No list to choose from. These can be ridiculously hard.

• Selectaquest: Trivia, but with multiple choice answers.
• Polygraph: True or false trivia. The logical answer is rarely the actual answer.

Things You Should Know

• Sculptorades: We need to get a jar of Play-Dough; the Hints: Generally in “Star Performer” and “Creative Cat” you will have to rely on hints in order to give you some context as to what the answer might be. However, we find that sometimes

  As you can see, this game can be a lot of fun, and as in other popular board games like “Monopoly” and “LIFE,” you’ll probably find yourself modifying the rules as you go along. This can be the most fun part! After all, by tweaking it, you make it your own. 🙂

I just started using Winzy, another search engine where you can win random prizes while you search. Winzy is a lot like Blingo, except with a new twist in that some of the prizes are for points, which represent entries into a sweepstakes drawing each month. It’s kind of nifty, and a little bit more exciting than Blingo because you win more often (although the prizes are usually for points!). I did win a $5 Amazon gift certificate on Winzy last night. It may not match up to the $100 Visa Gift Card (and multiple $10 iTunes gift certificates) I’ve won through Blingo, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at (and I have been using Blingo longer…)! Besides, it’s fun – in addition to instant wins, you can also land on little “games” where you can spin a wheel, play “Lucky 7s,” or eliminate suitcases a la “Deal or No Deal.”

One thing I do have to say for Blingo over Winzy (one of several things) is that with Blingo, you get your prize as soon as you claim it, if your prize is a gift card. Winzy apparently sends out the gift card within a month of your winning it – which is kind of silly if they could just email it. I will post again when I receive this first prize!

In the end, I like Blingo better, but Winzy is still a fun site to check out, and you can still win some nifty prizes.

If you sign up for either Blingo or Winzy, please be sure to be logged in when you search, so that I can win along with you! If you refer your own friends, tell them the same – if they win a prize, you win the same prize, as long as they’re logged in! (It only goes one level down; I don’t win if your friends win.)

By the way, see if Raining Jane IS coming to your town:

Schedule below the cut: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve probably already talked about Raining Jane and how very wonderful they are, but now I have a new reason to yammer on about them! My friend was searching on YouTube and found a series of Raining Jane videos from a Fender show, so now you can see how fantabulous these ladies are, even if they’re not coming to your town!

(However, if they are playing locally, GO SEE THEM. No matter how terrific these videos are, Raining Jane is a thousand times better when they’re standing right in front of you. This is pretty mellow as their performances go, and the sound quality is crystal clear but doesn’t really capture their essence.) 😀

Convinced? Buy Raining Jane’s most recent album, Diamond Lane, on iTunes, at Amazon.com, or even better, through Raining Jane’s website.

Desperate Sails:

More Raining Jane awesomeness behind the cut:

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