Nancy Takes Week #7 Pool!

This one's for Nancy!
This one's for you, Nancy!

It came down to points on Monday night and Nancy took advantage of a late, meaningless score by a thoroughly embarrassed Redskin team to secure her first NFL pool victory of the season. Excellent work, Nancy!

In addition to some $330, Nancy extends her lead in the NFL Smackdown competition.

Asked about her victory, Nancy gushed, “Jim and I were recently down in Philly, and I really got a good feeling about the city at that time. I put them in a position to come through for me Monday night, and the Eagles didn’t let me down. I’ve never felt better about green uniforms, greasy cheesesteaks, cracked bells, and Rocky Balboa. I can’t wait to take my winnings out to buy Abigail some fashionable size 12M clothing for the winter season. I LOVE this game!”

Asked about tragically losing last week on the final score tie-breaker as Denver ran both a punt and a kickoff back for touchdowns and asked about falling short again this week by one game as the Raiders couldn’t find the stadium where they were supposed to be playing on Sunday, Andy replied, “it’s all good… even losing looks better on our new television. Go Samsung!”

STFD! Gets Forked!

You're not Mia Hamm!
You're not Mia Hamm!

Shut The Front Door! finished a depressing 3rd for the second straight time, while Get The Fork Out! took home $80 for its second consecutive 1st place finish.

When they needed a Ray Bourque, STFD! sent a Bobby Orr. When they needed a Wilt Chamberlain, they sent a Bill Russell. When they needed a Brad Pitt movie, they sent the wrong Brad Pitt movie. When they needed an Eminem, they sent a Dr. Dre. And perhaps most troubling, when they needed a topless soccer player, they sent a fully-clothed Mia Hamm.

The one bright spot for STFD! this week was the final round where Addison single-handedly dominated the Disney animated film category and enabled STFD! to eek by The Grandmothers Gone Wild.

And yes… there IS a team called The Grandmothers Gone Wild now. They may sip Metamucil instead of tequila, but that only results in them regularly dropping knowledge down on other teams like a Geritol-fortified hammer!

Many theories circulate as to why STFD! finds itself underperforming of late. Is playing constantly shorthanded taking a toll? Are they getting dumber? Are they trying to get invited to the White House by acting “stupidly?” Is their success positively correlated with that of the New England Patriots or negatively correlated with that of the NY Jets?

Asked for his insight, Mike from Get The Fork Out! offered, “I don’t know if it’s early onset of Alzheimers or late-stage siphilis, but whatever disease STFD! has, those guys are taking a whole cocktail of suck pills these days.”

The full-proof Abigail System Revealed!

Forget tea leaves or pig entrails!
Forget tea leaves or psychics!

My mother and father currently have barely 50% of their football picks correct so far this NFL season. That’s not impressive. My grandmother is under .500 for her picks. That’s even worse!

What these amateurs need is a viable, proven system for handicapping teams, but instead they rely on senseless data like “which team has the better punter,” or “which team plays in a dome,” or “which team’s mascot is more powerful.”

I wouldn’t care, but since they’re foolishly gambling with MY future college funds, I need to get these people back on track pronto. Towards that end, I offer my full-proof method for determining NFL winners.

All you need is a list of match-ups and a supply of cereal. Raise several pieces of cereal above your head, close your eyes, and drop the cereal on the list of teams. Where the cereal ends up accurately determines the victorious team, since cereal naturally gravitates toward winners, milk, and dog mouths. As you can see from the example pictured, the Patriots are looking like a lock to beat the Jets and to cover the spread.

Note: don’t conduct your experiment near milk or dog mouths or you may end up with spurious data!

I happen to favor stale Cheerios for my picks, but you can also use Capn Crunch. I do not suggest using oatmeal, simply because it tends to splatter, to obscure the results and to anger the owners of the carpet.

Give my system a try. I think you’ll like the results.

Week #1 NFL Smackdown Update!

Week of the dog!
Week of the dog!

As you can see from the official smackdown standings, week #1 failed to separate brains from luck in the gridiron picking arena. Both Emily and Andy finished the week at (8w – 8l), while Nancy finished at (7w – 9l), so no clear trend has emerged.

Interesting notes from week #1:

There were 15 possible underdog/favorite picks (underdogs GET points while favorites GIVE points).  The Carolina Panthers versus Philadelphia Eagles game was straight up (no points either way) in our pool.

For these possible 15 favorite/underdog matchups:

  • Emily took ALL 15 possible favorites!
  • Nancy took 7 favorites and 8 dogs.
  • Andy took 9 favorites and 6 dogs.
  • For the week, favorites went (7w – 9l) with Philly winning the straight up matchup, so the underdogs won week #1.
  • Nancy took the most dogs and should have had an advantage from doing so, but alas, she chose the wrong puppies at times which left her one game off the pace.

STFD! versus GTFO!? There can be only one!

War-painted Header!
War-painted Header!

STFD! was incomplete and outplayed this week at Tin Whistle Trivia. We offer no excuses; we do offer an explanation.

Since the Silbergleit Summer Carnival pulled up its tent pegs and hoofed it out of town, we expected fewer/weaker competitors and we handicapped our varsity team accordingly. Our magnanimous, parity-seeking actions (we left both Abigail and Emily off the roster!) were horribly misplaced, as five fully-staffed rival teams ponied up and came to play harder than megashark and giant octopus combined.

We did not know who won the first ever Monday Night Football game, we did not know all of the monthly birthstones, we were not familiar with Jay-Z’s catalog of crap, we did not know Vince Vaughn’s sundry Hollywood aliases, and there were absolutely no questions concerning the wingspan of fowl.

Homework must be done!
Feel lucky, punk?

Andy also proved to be, in the words of one observer, “pretty damn useless” during crunch time, since the final round was a puzzle variety akin to the brain-wrenching rebus riddles to be found beneath the evil caps of Lucky Lager. This is an area where Andy has never performed above the .08 percentile, and he once again folded before the challenge like a house of cards assembled by a kindergarten class.

A few Tin Whistle Trivia final round puzzle examples:

  1. 18 H I A R O G
  2. 200 D F P G I M
  3. 8 S O A S S
Would-be utensil usurpers?
Would-be utensil usurpers?

But perhaps more troubling than our third-place finish was the emergence of a new trivia team named Get The Fork Out!, a team clearly parodying the legendary success of Shut The Front Door! with admirably postmodern, mock homage.

This new team (which finished in forkly fourth… heh heh!) will undoubtedly polarize trivia fans, since it makes sense to either Shut The Front Door! or to Get The Fork Out!, but to do both is unnecessarily redundant.

Next week we will field a complete, well-conditioned, motivated team. We will listen to additional crappy music, we will drink and solve several cases of the Lucky Lager, and we will arrive early to Shut The Front Door! before the fork folks even arrive. We’re curious to see if Get The Fork Out! turn into Lettuce The Fork In! when faced with a blocked entrance.

Alternative to Obama-care?

Philip Greenspun of MIT and Web development fame is working on a draft of an essay on how to reform health care. Sound like a dry topic? It isn’t. Here’s a sample from the rough draft:

… Suppose that you could give up two years of life expectancy in exchange for the following: paid-for housing, paid-for cars, paid-for college, paid-for vacations, paid-for children. Instead of living 78 years, you’d expect to live 76, but you’d never have to work full-time and could probably pack a lot of enjoyment into those 76 years because you wouldn’t be a slave to day-to-day expenses.

Let’s compare the U.S. to Mexico. Mexicans share our continent, our love for soda and corn syrup, and our tendency towards chubbiness (source). We spend approximately $8500 per year per American on health care and live to the age of 78. A Mexican can expect to live to age 76. How much do Mexicans spend on health care? Their per-person GDP is only about $13,000 per year, and they supposedly spend about 6 percent of GDP on health care (source) so $800 per person is a good estimate.

An American will spend $600,000 in order to add two years to the end of his life. Those two years may very well be spent in an intensive care unit or a nursing home and certainly are not likely to be spent on the tennis court or visiting the Venice Biennale.

For that $600,000, an American could have the following:

  • a house, free and clear of all mortgages (median price for a single family house sold nationwide in May 2009 was $170,000)
  • a lifetime supply of automobiles, assuming $20,000 per car, a 10-year life per car, and 50 years of driving ($100,000)
  • 50 vacations for a family of four (average cost $1600; total of $80,000)
  • a college education ($25,000 of tuition for four years at a public university)
  • two children, reared to the age of 17 ($125,000 per kid, average cost for a basic family (source); note that a pair of Americans could have four children, all of whose costs would be completely paid for out of this $600,000)
  • $75,000 in walking-around money

– Philip Greenspun from rough draft of Health Care Reform for the United States

Greenspun’s longer draft covers a great deal more and offers many other specific recommendations for improving the current U.S. health care system. Read and comment on the full essay.

STFD!’s latest victory has many whispering the “D” word

Best in Show, Bro!
Best in Show, Bros!

They said it when Warren Remedy won her third best-in-show, they said it about the Carringtons when Alexis showed up in a Denver courthouse, they said it when the Patriots lifted their third Lombardi trophy, and now they’re saying it about a formidable group of triviateurs dominating Thursdays at The Tin Whistle. Is Shut The Front Door! now officially a dynasty?

Craig, The Tin Whistle owner, said, “they’re equal parts evil genius, comedic hubris, and New England moxie. It’s not just that they keep taunting and winning, but it’s the myriad of ways they backup their unsportsmanlike conduct with stellar performances. They’ve built early leads and coasted at times, sure, but they’ve also demonstrated an uncanny knack for pulling out late round victories when necessary. I don’t know if they’re a dynasty yet, but my receipts tell me that they eat and drink an average of 137% of their winnings, so I sure as hell hope they keep winning.”

Kenny, team captain for the rival Headers, expressed profound frustration at his team’s inability to overcome STFD!. “I’m profoundly frustrated! We just haven’t found the right mix of team members yet. I really thought that adding two Michigan alumni and a semi-pro golfer would put us over-the-top, but we came up short again. It’s profoundly frustrating! Worse yet, we won’t be able to compete again until Joanie’s (Joanie is Kenny’s wife and The Headers ‘chief wrong answer giver’ according to Kenny) school hits a significant holiday break in the calendar, so these smug bastards will no-doubt be feeling mighty proud of themselves for an extended period of time. I’d like to say something nice about STFD!. I know that’s the right thing to do, but honestly, I really just hope they all get the swine flu, food poisoning, and pink-eye at the same time.”

Big-mouthed dominance: it must be STFD!
Big-mouthed dominance STFD! style...

Michael, from Billie Jean, sounded decidedly less bitter and expressed no desire for STFD! to fall prey to a porcine pandemic. “People forget, but Billie Jean won two or three times early on. They lost to us a few times, congratulated us, and then they started routinely and matter-of-factly kicking our ass week-in and week-out. Ha! Who knew!? Now they have this aura of invincibility that gives them a real competitive edge over some of the teams. Even when you have them down a few points, it’s as if you’re just waiting for them to make a move. Are they a dynasty? Yeah… they are, but we’re still going to compete and try to take them down.”

STFD! meets Dynasty!
STFD!'s date with Dynasty!

John, STFD! alumnus, offers little hope to would-be usurpers. “It’s funny. When I left the team to open up my novelty shop, Provincetown Enfuego, in California, people started saying that STFD! would come back to the pack. Lol… not likely. I know they stumbled for one week, but those bastards bounced back and I wouldn’t be surprised if they run the table for the rest of the season. They’re focused like wound-up Santa Monica crack fiends at this point.” Pushed for insight into the team’s success, John added, “basically they’re glory whores and would rather place bets on trivial matters than better mankind in any way. They’ll ride this donkey downhill until its hooves crack and then jump on something else that amuses them.”

No one from the present STFD! team would comment on this story unless I bought them drinks (they didn’t look like they needed any more), but they did tell me to remind you to bring your prettiest 20 dollar bill down to see them. Think you have what it takes to shut up Shut The Front Door!? Trivia takes place Thursday nights at The Tin Whistle.

Reuters and the AP contributed to this story. Some quotes may have been paraphrased, corrected for spelling, or invented entirely.

Wolverine-powered Header win on tap?

The Headers are winning!
Headers are beating the infidels!

Since a Harvard-educated team member has proven insufficient to topple the juggernaut that was STFD! and is “The Trivia Team to be Named Later,” The Headers are now reaching out to Michigan alumni (just as the Sith reached out to young Anakin Skywalker) to aid their trivial cause.

Oh no! I hope there’s not a question about Michigan football’s record in 2008 (3W+9L = ouch by my math!), or whom they ripped off for their football helmet art work (thanks Coach Fritz!), or how much a cured wolverine pelt is worth in Saskatchewan (half a case of Molson and a carton of Benson & Hedges!).

No matter… at least one dead desert dictator’s spokesman has predicted a Header win this Thursday. Too bad he broke into song; we deduct A LOT of points for that.

Baghdad Bob’s Song of Silbergleit Victory

What hit me?
What hit me?

Who’s the family on the team
That loses to Andy!?
S-I-L B-E-R G-L-E-I-T!
Hey there! Hi there! Header there!
Your losing streak is a bad dream!
But this week brings a win by…

Silbergleit! Silbergleit! Silbergleit!

For once they’ll hold a stranger’s twenty
High! High! High! High!

Come along and sing Bob’s song
And belly to the bar!
S-I-L B-E-R G-L-E-I-T!

Abigail Care made easy!

I love to visit my Great Aunts, Great Uncles, Grandparents, close family friends, and kindly strangers, since my parents often abandon me with little or no warning. Many of you may wonder, “isn’t it extremely difficult to care for Abigail?” Nahh… it’s a piece of cake for a baby as easy-going as I am!

What does my daily schedule look like? Here is a VERY rough idea:

  • 7:00am – 6 ounce bottle!
  • 8:00 or 9:00am – nap… whether I want it or not! I usually scream for 10 minutes, and then sleep for an hour or an hour and a half.
  • 9:30ish or when I wake up – solid feeding.
  • 11:30ish – 6 ounce bottle!
  • 1:00ish – solid feeding.
  • 2:30 or 3:30pm – another nap for an hour or so.
  • 4:00pm – 6 ounce bottle!
  • 6:30 or 7:00pm – my last 6 ounce bottle!

How do you make my bottle? No sweat. Really, don’t put sweat in my bottle. Put six ounces of warm water in a bottle, add three scoops of Enfamil premium formula (level scoops… no packing!), and shake it up!

I hate naps and I will scream when you put me down for one. That’s ok as I’m just developing my lungs. Let me shriek until I nod off (usually 5 to 15 minutes of me swearing at you in baby will tire me out the last little bit and I’ll fall asleep!)

Please change my diapers every couple of hours or when I smell like poo. And don’t take any pictures of me just wearing a diaper, or you will pay a stiff, violent price for your insolence!

Jacksonian 20 Dollar “Damn You, Kenny!” Dirge

(Sung to the tune of any major musical but Oklahoma!)

First the national bank and now Kenny!
I'll miss you, Kenny!

I used to live in Kenny’s pocket,
But now ride a different hip!
No one told me it was down on the docket,
My move to Moore’s tight money clip!

I used to hang with kite-flying Bennies!
I used to live with Ulysses S. Grants,
I’ll never forgive that damn Kenny,
Now my bunkmates are small bill pissants!

This move, dear friends, got me thinking,
My life now will always be hard!
I’m lucky to see an Abe Lincoln,
As I’m crushed by a blue debit card!

At Kenny weep tears and shout curses,
Since Headers get trivia wrong!
Other 20’s should start penning verses,
Of their own sullen Silbergleit songs!

Beware tenants of Kenny’s wallet,
Thinking lint and life wonderful bores!
Keep a bag packed, as nothing can stall it,
When a lost bet moves you in with the Moores!

I used to live in Kenny’s pocket,
But now ride a different hip!
No one told me it was down on the docket,
My move to Moore’s tight money clip!

Blogwall of Shame #1

Wearing it well!
Might want to cut eye holes next time!

We may be misers when it comes to praise, but here at Moorezilla LLC we are quite generous when it comes to illuminating flaws, shortcomings, and other imperfections. At times, our righteous vitriol rises quicker than the water levels in Zion National Park during a thunderstorm, so we’ve adopted the bullet point emergency shame list to release the negative pressure when we feel deluged by a host of underperforming targets.

Shame on YOU:

  • The Headers, for coming in last place on trivia night 8/20/09. That wasn’t a poor showing; that was a non-showing. If you were strippers, you’d have gone home empty handed, so I guess that means you might be strippers, because you went home empty handed after showing everyone nothing, instead of showing some people everything, or something like that. In short, next time, keep your clothes on but try to show people something. Your lousy performance has, frankly, damaged my control of the English language, so try to get your act together before my blog suffers.
  • Mainstream media, for praising Ted Kennedy, a guy who should have been in the state penitentiary (see here, or here), not in the Senate.
  • Red Sox, for (a.) signing Billy Wagner (bad enough!) and then (b.) CONTINUING to praise Ted Kennedy during the White Sox game. Eunice good… Teddy bad. Schmucks!
  • Ron Paul. You know what you did.
  • Gourmet Gardens, for putting your sushi/sashimi columns right next to each other on the ordering sheet. It doesn’t matter if every other sushi restaurant does the same thing; I hold you to a higher standard.
  • Tropical Storm Danny, for planning on coming to New England on a Saturday.
  • Don Draper. You know what you did.
  • General Electric, for cutting your share dividends, moving sideways, getting caught lying to the SEC, and continuing your lackluster performance despite NBC being a mouthpiece for Obama health care programming. You should be up to at least $20 a share by now!
  • The Headers, again, for trying to break up STFD! after STFD! already kind of broke up. Some of us will be beating all of you… TONIGHT!
  • Whatever phantom leftover stinks in our fridge right now, for stinking in our fridge right now and not having the guts to show yourself on trash day.

Abby and Max take Grandma to the beach!

Nancy really wanted to go to the beach, so Abby and Max made a deal with her. If Grandma would make them bottles, feed them watermelon, cheerios and peaches, pack up a selection of rattling toys, change their traditional diapers to swim diapers and then their swim diapers back to traditional diapers, lacquer them head to toe with sunscreen (including baby back massage), put their hats on, put their hats BACK on when they tore them off, remind them not to eat sand, remind them not to eat wet sand either because wet sand shouldn’t be eaten cuz it’s just regular sand with water in it, put them back in the shade of the blanket when they rolled, lurched or crawled off, and take them for stroller rides down the packed sand at the water’s edge when they got cranky, they would agree to go to the beach for the afternoon. Nancy agreed and was very well-behaved all morning long, so Abby and Max took her down to the ocean’s edge to cool off during the recent heatwave.

Tide's coming in any minute now! Click for larger image!
Tide's coming in any minute now! Click for larger image!

STFD! opens the mailbag and closes a chapter…

With our fourth consecutive victory, it’s time for Shut The Front Door! to answer a little fanmail. We like getting fanmail, but it’s laborious to answer it, and if we answer it at all, it will only be through electronic media. When the Tin Whistle trivia people ask how much a stamp costs, we will have to guess. The last time we bought stamps they were 18 cents.

Audrey from Cambridge, MA asks, “what is best in life according to STFD!?”

I said it was chicken, fool!
I said it was chicken, fool!

Well, Audrey, our team philosophy is very similar to Conan’s. There’s really nothing we like better than “to crush our trivial enemies, to see them driven before us in shame, and to hear the lamentation of their women.” We also like our bar tab to be subsidized by inferior competitors. What’s the best tasting drink in the world? For us, Audrey, it’s a free one provided by some schlepp team snatching a loss from the jaws of victory when we use our Joker Double in the third round.

Glen from Worcester, MA asks, “if you guys are so smart, how come you don’t order appetizers when the appetizers are half-price, since they’re half-price on the same night as trivia?”

I could just say that it doesn’t matter, since we’re buying pizza and entrees with the money fleeced from other teams… actually… that’s exactly why it doesn’t matter. You go ahead and watch your wallet, Glen, but STFD! plans on spending money like drunken sailors until some other team steps up its game.

Reverend Cherrycoke offers, “pride cometh before the fall. You should be humble in victory as you will eventually taste defeat.”

Sounds like loser talk to us. Perhaps your unsolicited spiritual musings could be better spent comforting “not winning teams” like The Headers. We’ll dig up an address for them and send it along.

Three shall replace one!
Three shall replace one!

John from Methuen, MA asks, “now that John is leaving to start a trivia team fork in Los Angeles, California, who will replace John and will you change your team name?”

How can you adequately replace a team member who combines the incredibly destructive propensity to blurt out correct answers loud enough for other teams to hear with the incredibly positive propensity to come up with Dale Earnhardt’s car number? Wait… Addison reminds me that John got that freaking question wrong. But what about the greatest carrier of salmonella… err… Rachel reminds me that John got that wrong too. Emily also feels bitter that John vetoed her wish to go with “middle of the country” instead of LA for the locale of George Clooney’s failed baseball tryout. Still… John has supplied many, many correct answers (both to us and to other teams!), so we will have a very difficult time replacing him.

Short term, we will replace John with a revolving trio of Michael Jackson, Bubbles the Chimp, and Lucy the Bulldog (Lucy checks out as all English, no French, per John’s demand for AKC papers!).

We do not yet have a new team name, but I like Anti-inglorious Bastards.

Churn, baby, churn!

Classical Mound of Butter!
Classical Mound of Butter!

Part I of a IV part spirited defense of nature’s second greatest grease!

Writing a defense of butter is in some ways akin to sticking up for the 1927 New York Yankees, the 1986 Chicago Bears, or the Mossad; none of them really need any help taking care of themselves, but once in a while it’s necessary to set the record straight, to expose false rumors, and to restore sanity to the public discussion.

Although public opinion begrudgingly places butter above margarine and parkay these days, butter has not yet regained its rightful center spot in the nutritional pyramid, and I, for one, can no longer stomach such a glaring example of dietary discrimination.

Most butter alarmists begin with a campaign of “butter offers little nutritional benefit and stops your heart, so why would you eat it?” In part one we’ll deal with the “no benefits in butter” part of this vicious, groundless slander.

What’s good about butter? Here’s a START according to Donna Gates:

  1. Butter is rich in the most easily absorbable form of Vitamin A necessary for thyroid and adrenal health.
  2. Butter & Chocolate = goodness!
    Butter & Chocolate = goodness!

    Contains lauric acid, important in treating fungal infections and candida.

  3. Contains lecithin, essential for cholesterol metabolism.
  4. Contains anti-oxidants that protect against free radical damage.
  5. Has anti-oxidants that protect against weakening arteries.
  6. Is a great source of Vitamins E and K.
  7. Is a very rich source of the vital mineral selenium.
  8. Saturated fats in butter have strong anti-tumor and anti-cancer properties.
  9. Butter contains conjugated linoleic acid, which is a potent anti-cancer agent, muscle builder, and immunity booster
  10. Vitamin D found in butter is essential to absorption of calcium.
  11. Protects against tooth decay.
  12. Is your only source of an anti-stiffness factor, which protects against calcification of the joints.
  13. Anti-stiffness factor in butter also prevents hardening of the arteries, cataracts, and calcification of the pineal gland.
  14. Is a source of Activator X, which helps your body absorb minerals.
  15. churningIs a source of iodine in highly absorbable form.
  16. May promote fertility in women.
  17. Is a source of quick energy, and is not stored in your body’s adipose tissue.
  18. Cholesterol found in butterfat is essential to children’s brain and nervous system development.
  19. Contains Arachidonic Acid (AA) which plays a role in brain function and is a vital component of cell membranes.
  20. Protects against gastrointestinal infections in the very young or the elderly.

In part II we’ll deal with the possible motivations behind “bad-talking butter” and expose the nutritional and pharmacological industries as little more than greedy, lobbying cabals concerned much more with the production of profits than the production of healthy consumers.

And don’t fret about bacon; we’ll be getting to pork bellies after we’re done with butter. Never tried butter wrapped in bacon? Soon you will!

Shut The Front Door! memorabilia beckons…

Who's the champion? STFD! is, biznitch!
Who's the champion? STFD! is, biznitch!

With three consecutive victories and counting, it’s time for Shut The Front Door! to shamelessly cash in on our marginal celebrity status. We still have plenty of baby onesies left in 0 to 9 month sizes, but avid collectors need to move fast to secure one of our VERY limited edition “Freddie Mercury Knows that STFD! are the Champions; do you?” action figures.

Fast Freddie can be yours for a mere $29.95 plus a piddly extra $6.95 for shipping and handling. Kit comes complete with a collectible, faux-mahogany stand that sings one of three catchy, braggart jingles when you press the Queen button. Checkerboard polyester blend leotard resists stains, laughs in the face of fading, and effectively frightens away timid or smallish pets before they can chew on Freddie’s mic stand!

But wait! There’s more! Best of all, Freddie’s chest hair is chi-chi-chi-CHIA-FIED and grows out (just add water, sunshine!) into a randomly-selected STFD! member likeness… wow WOW! Who will you get? Will it be Wrong Answer Rachel, Empty Bottle Emily, Scratch Ticket John, IMDB Addison, Crabigail Regina, Redd “Alzheimer” Andy, or maybe the elusive outcast Schultz (unofficially banished from STFD! after insisting that the Mississippi river is longer than the Missouri)?

Two AA batteries and chia seeds included. Significant assembly required.

Joanie Implicated!

It’s never a comfortable situation when family members face indictment, but recently surfaced psychoanalytical art evidence suggests Silbergleit foul play in the death of Emily’s undeniably ugly, yet once functional designer sunglasses.

In Exhibit #1 we see what appears to be an innocuous, demi-nouveau, pastoral/expressionist/dadaish, chair-in-the-wayish scene that Joanie is well-known for producing. The style is unmistakable (see Joanie’s Lime in Repose series numbers 1-29), but this particular painting, Solitary Break-fest, also betrays a clue to Joanie’s criminal intent if you concentrate on the area highlighted by the red arrow. Don’t be distracted by the chair, the Capn Crunch, or the pop tart; they and the rest of the breakfast are nothing but red herrings! The action, my friends, is on the water colored floor where you can clearly see the future crime scene!

Exhibit #1
Exhibit #1

In Exhibit #2, we see a close up of the floor section of the painting and upon careful inspection the evidence mounts like a bloody leather glove left behind a pool house. The injured and gasping spectacles are an obvious allusion to future nefarious plans, but note also the angry azure pebbles and the Daliesque warping of earth patterns culminating in ferocious flesh-toned stones; these “flesh” formations suggest that the eyewear will be bludgeoned physically, brutally, haphazardly, yet in a seemingly accidental manner.

The malevolent minerals foreshadow menacingly, “maybe you’ll be stepped on… or maybe you’ll be sat on… but in any case, you won’t see it coming. You might allow other people to gaze into the blinding sun, but you’ll never see your own death coming.”

Everything about this painting warns like the yellow and black stripes on a wasp’s abdomen, “DANGER! MY ASS IS A DEADLY WEAPON!”

Exhibit #2
Exhibit #2

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “nice try, buddy, but where are your culturally-established art critic/historian credentials? You may draw a mean stick figure, you may even be the master of the crayon and construction paper greeting card, but that doesn’t make you any Robert Hughes. Great artists do not necessarily make great art critics! For all we know, you could be completely off-base (if not patently postmodern) in your interpretation, and your ‘evidence’ looks largely contrived, tenuous, and circumstantial. Why should we believe YOU!?”

Is Joanie guilty, Mr. Eight Ball?
Is Joanie guilty, Mr. Eight Ball?

No problem, doubter! I understand that some of you put faith only in narrow-minded specialists, believing perhaps that Renaissance men of genius no longer walk the earth in this day and age. But you don’t have to take my amateur word for it. I’ve set up an unassailable test for confirmation. Earlier today, coffee mug in hand, I formally asked the unquestionable, omniscient oracle perched on my desk, “did Joanie intentionally destroy Emily’s sunglasses with her derriere?” The eight-ball’s second answer (his first answer was a disappointing and inconclusive “concentrate and ask again”) pretty much removes any question of Joanie’s guilt.

STFD! Slams Door on would-be rivals… AGAIN!

Ask not for whom the baby cries...
Like the onesie? You'll love the diaper!

We might not know what Vanilla Ice’s real name is (and we’re secretly proud of this fact!), we might not know that chicken moves more salmonella annually than hamburger (well… we did know that but we have to overrule Rachel at least once per night even if it costs us points!), we might not know that Whitney Houston was on the cover of 17 Magazine when she was 16 (poorly named magazine!), and we might have used revisionist history to move Tom Brady’s draft pick  from the 6th round to the 5th round (how could so many NFL teams be so stupid for so long?), BUTSTFD still knew plenty of trivia to remain undefeated at The Whistle.

Our thanks go out to The Headers for wimping out! We would have won any way, but we might not have been able to do as many shots before the joker round.

Abby Statistics, Graphs, and Earnings Outlook!

Impressive Height Gains!
Impressive Height Gains!

Here are the latest measurements:

  • Age: 8.7 months
  • Height: 26 inches
  • Height percentile: 11
  • Weight: 14lbs 9ounces
  • Weight percentile: 2
  • Weight for height %: 11
  • Head Circumference: 41.5cm
  • Head Circumference percentile: 3
  • BMI: 15.2
Addition of avocado, peas, and leaves to diet has proven effective!
Addition of avocado, peas, and leaves to diet has proven effective!
Abigail's Average Daily Activity Expenditures.
Abigail's Average Daily Activity Expenditures.
Abigail INC Shareholder Report for Quarter 2, 2009
Abigail INC Shareholder Report for Quarter 2, 2009

As you can see from the chart above, Abigail Inc. continues to see a negative earnings flow, and we anticipate a net loss for the next 72 quarters. Depending upon our ROI on golf and tennis lessons, we might see an improved outlook after the 62nd quarter, but we are conservatively hedging our mainstream, widely-accepted athletics calls with defensive athletics puts on left-handed fencing lessons on odd Saturdays to protect against the threat of college tuition.

This document contains forward-looking statements. Past performance is not an indicator of future gains.

Trivial Victory at The Tin Whistle!

It took us a couple of weeks and three name changes to get it right, but under our new team name and extended roster we are undefeated, unchallenged, undisputed masters of the trivial. Important things we’ve learned so far include: Redd Foxx is not Red Skelton, Dr. Pepper is older than Mr. Coke, Frankfurt is in Kentucky, tooth decay is not contagious, Addison rules the animation department, the Beatles still suck, even though we can spell “mississippi” it’s the wrong answer, brownie bites should be eaten AFTER jello shots, and most important, we’ve learned that Abby WILL eventually fall  asleep in a loud room in an upside down high chair.

Headers? We'll knock your headers right off!
Headers? We'll knock your headers right off!

A Regrettable Miscommunication

I'll be editing rough drafts from this point forward!
I'll be editing rough drafts from now on!

Here at Moorezilla LLC we try moderately hard to produce an entertaining blog for a wide-range of attention spans and tastes. Occasionally we may cross lines of appropriateness and taste in our efforts to amuse the jaded members of our audience, and we are cognizant that we perilously run the risk of offending at times our readers maintaining more delicate, refined sensibilities.

When we do stray from the middle road of safety and moderation, our readers quickly put us back in our place. Our recent post, “Justice Served!” elicited a strong reaction from both admirers and detractors… and from spam bots as well for that matter! As examples:

Heather Barbarie commented, “…furthermore, taking a picture of your screaming, obviously traumatized child rather than comforting him is both sick and twisted.”

Abbyalcatraz
Abbyalcatraz

Thanks for your feedback, Heather! We’ll stop taking pictures of crying babies if YOU stop calling our daughter a HIM! We’ve had enough of your weaponized pronouns crushing our baby’s psyche.

Bill Munny wrote, “it’s nice to see parents dipping their toes into the polar waters of discipline. Your daughter will thank you when she grows up to be a productive member of society.”

Unfortunately, neither comment captures the truth, since Abby went from smiling to crying in the time it takes for our crappy digital camera to ready the flash and to snap a picture. As parents, we cave to our daughter’s demands like thin strips of balsa wood catching a bowling ball thrown from a roof; what Abby wants, Abby gets, and only the immutable laws of physics limit how quickly we give it to her.

Justice Served!

Abbyalcatraz: pink collar, roofless, island prison for infantile offenders.
Abbyalcatraz: pink collar, roofless, island prison for infantile offenders.

Captured on the crawl and summarily convicted of tiredness, obstreperousness, and second-degree crankiness, Abigail Moore is hereby sentenced to serve a nap of 55 minutes with eligibility for parole after 30 minutes of good… or at least relatively quiet… behavior.