Realm of the Wombat

Readers, the following questions have been puzzling me lately, and I need your opinions:

1) Why does our mail regularly arrive at 7:00 pm and sporadically at 10:00 pm?

2) Why does my cat like to chew on plastic bags?

3) Will we ever drink milk from a fountain?

#1: Drivers who don’t signal. Ever.
#2: NMR spectrometers on a different floor
#3: Undergrads on the elevators
#4: Three hour time difference to the east coast
#5: Use of the definite article before highway numbers (e.g. “the 80″ in reference to I-80)
#6: “Pitch to Barry” signs and rubber chickens
#7: Fear that the earth will swallow me
#8: Stanfurd
#9: Waiting 30+ minutes for AC Transit #43 on Friday nights
#10: Neighbors that fight each other
#11: Travel time to the east coast

Not only is ND hockey ranked #1 in the polls, they have just finished a 27-6-3 regular season, good enough for their first conference title.

Despite their recent success, do not believe all that you read about the hockey facilities at ND, specifically what’s said at und.com:

The field house, and in particular the hockey facility, has undergone a series of improvements that make the Joyce Center one of the finest facilities in collegiate hockey. Renovations to coaches offices and the locker rooms along with the addition of a dividing curtain have given the hockey rink and the Irish more of a “home-ice advantage.” Fans also have benefited from Notre Dame’s commitment to hockey, with theatre-style seating that replaced metal bleachers on the north side of the arena.

While there’s no curtain in the world that’s going to cover up everything that’s wrong with the nation’s worst D-I college hockey facility, a few more of those championship banners might do the trick.

Excellent online exhibit of presidential candidates’ television advertisements: The Living Room Candidate (as discussed on
Fresh Air with its curator)

I had never heard the word “bailiwick” before a month ago. Then it appeared throughout The Cuckoo’s Egg and as the name of a theater in Lakeview, the Bailiwick Repertory Theater. I figured I should look it up.

noun
1. the district within which a bailie or bailiff has jurisdiction.
2. a person’s area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work: to confine suggestions to one’s own bailiwick.

Learning… It’s great!

Flowchart for the Bush presidency

I’m not sure how the maker’s of the Rubik’s Cube expect the general public to solve their puzzle, because they don’t believe you plebeians can even understand large numbers. According to the Wikipedia entry:

A Normal (3×3×3) Rubik’s Cube can have (8! × 3⁸⁻¹) × (12! × 2¹²⁻¹)/2 = 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different positions (permutations), or about 4.3 × 10¹⁹, forty-three quintillion, but the puzzle is advertised as having only “billions” of positions, due to the general incomprehensibility of such a large number to laymen.

Best Valentine’s Cake Ever?

Odie gave me this one the other day. I don’t know what happens if you call that number, but the web page, scottyiseri.com, is for a Chicago based comedy rock act, which seems similar to Liam Lynch.

Jim Dandy and I met this guy in the Berkeley hills while scoping out a record-laden yard sale. JD bought a car from him, and his wife gave me a Coke for the road. As you can tell from the card, he’s a real character.

Dick Cheney’s opinion of reducing our dependence on oil (Sorry that this is from Leno)

Three obscure facts about Mike Tyson’s Punch Out

“Factotum” first appeared in the Jack Black classic School of Rock. It since graduated to a movie of its own, starring Matt Dillon. That was the tipping point for me to look it up.

noun
1. a person, as a handyman or servant, employed to do all kinds of work around the house.
2. any employee or official having many different responsibilities.