Things I Want (Or Need) To Know

Did Joe Scarborough perform a necessary public service this week on his MSNBC program, or did you already know which word “the f word” is?

The National Toy Hall of Fame has named the stick as one of this year’s inductees.  I’m not kidding!  http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/07/stick.hall.fame.ap/index.html  How would you differentiate between a toy stick and a real one?

Polka dots:  why are they called that?  Does it have anything to do with dancing or accordions?

Is bombarding people with unwanted e-mail an effective way of selling stuff?  I took my wife to a nice restaurant last month.  They have a rewards program.  If we joined, they’d give us a ten-percent discount on the bill, so we joined.  Now, we get at least one e-mail from the restaurant per day.  Yes, I’ve added them to the filter that dumps selected e-mail into the junk mail folder.

I know I’m admitting to being older than a teenager when I ask this, but if you know what pismatology is, or the meaning of either the pompatus or the puppetuse of love for that matter, get in touch, please.

Has any individual ever used every function of a top-of-the-line Swiss Army knife?

Did you ever wonder why there are no holes in Swiss Army knives or in Swiss steak?

“Into,” one word.  “On to,” two words.  How does that make any sense?

Why is orange the only fruit named after a color?

Did you know you can play solitaire without a computer?

I don’t know if they still do, but the NY Times used to run personal ads in the regional sections on Sunday.  I didn’t see this recently, but it’s still stuck in my mind.  Only in a NY Times personal ad would a man describe himself as “ursine.”  I know that means bear-like, but doesn’t it really mean big, fat and hairy?

Are you as sick of teasers on TV newscasts as I am?  “Governor Patterson’s proposed state budget cuts, how will they affect your property taxes?  Coming up.”  Uh, your property taxes will go up?  I think I’m going to banish those things to a new cable TV channel and call it The Obvious Channel.

For less than $200, I bought a portable hard drive that holds 500GB of information.  Do you know how much that is?  The package says it will hold 120,000 songs.  I have around 6,000 now.  I’d better get busy downloading.