Someone has to do something to stop that Kenny G version of Auld Lang Syne (Millennium Mix) from being played anymore. That thing is the worst.

A Holiday Quiz for you!

Which of the following are actually the names of reindeer according to 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
or Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas?
(for the answers, scroll down and turn your monitor upside down)

Vixen
Susan
Crasher
Dancer
Prilosec
Schnitzel
Prancer
Orvis
Mannix
Venus
Englebert
Donner
Comet
Doris
Stasher
Coronet
Cupid
Frosty
Cher
Donder
Vermin
Blitzen
Rudolph
Stan
Dasher
Lender
Sassy
Glenda



How many correct reindeer did you identify?
8 - Special Assistant to Mr. Claus
7 - Special Assistant to Mrs. Claus
6 - Nice
5 - Eggnog Addict
4 - Lump O' Coal
3 - Not-so-wiseman
2 - Naughty
1 - Santa's Masseur
0 - Misfit Toy

It's that time of year again! I will appear on public radio shamelessly begging for money on KCUR's behalf.

KCUR 89.3
This Friday, October 25th
During "Talk of the Nation Science Friday"
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

If you plan on supporting public radio in Kansas City, please hold off on pledging until you hear my grating voice on the radio. I'll even try to read your name on the air if you call before 2:30 and you tell them you know me.

A friend of mine, Jeff Drake and I have played a game for over two years now called the Facts of Life Synopsis Game. We start out with a real synopsis of the sitcom Facts of Life culled from Yahoo! TV. We then make up fake synopses that rhyme with the real one.

Here are some examples:
The Real Synopsis: Santa's visit alleviates Beverly Ann's holiday blues.
1. Blair admits she has a sexual attraction to Tootie's shoes
2. Tootie's Mutti's murderer leaves very few clues.
3. Natalie's expanding girth makes the evening news.
4. Spring rains spur mentally-ill Molly to gather all the world's animals in twos.
5. After 24 hilarious hours on the stool, Mrs. Garrett implores Jo to prepare no more stews.
6. Tootie exercises her right to choose
7. Jo and Blair spend the afternoon sniffing glues
8. Cousin Geri accidentally erases all of Mrs. Garrett's "Donahues"
9. Feral Tootie is not accepted by any of the area zoos.
10. Mrs. Garrett starts Homecoming morning by hitting the booze.
11. Blair wakes up covered in a mysterious ooze
12. Mrs. Garrett dreams of future Seattle Slews
13. George makes the girls an offer few can refuse
14. Cousin Geri's comedy routine is drowned out by a chorus of mean-spirited boos
15. The school talent show features Tom and Penelope Cruz
16. Blair returns from her date with George with one sexy bruise.
17. Tootie negotiates a last minute Iraq-U.S. truce (pronounced troooos)
18. When she refuses to put out, Blair finds out George has a short fuse
19. A pimp comes to the boarding house just to peruse.
20. Drunk, the girls and Mrs. Garrett play a spirited game of Duck Duck Goose (pronounced goooze)
21. George's alibi is designed to bemuse.
23. George's gumbo features a funky-tasting roux
24. George's love for Mrs. Garrett turns out to be a cruel and tasteless april fool's day ruse
25. A local magazine prints nudie pics of Jo, so she sues
26. Tootie dreams she is in the wild west, communing with the Siouxs.
28. The girls get matching Vanilla Ice tattoos. (Special Guest Star: Vanilla Ice)
30. The girls get silly after George disables the dorm's flues.
31. Blair tapes over Tootie's library of "New Zoo Revues"
32. Blair catches Tootie crapping on her library of National Reviews
33. The girls give a makeover and manicure to guest star Howard Hughes.
34. Blair flaunts her beauty contest winnings while Natalie boo-hoos
35. Natalie dreams she'll be buried in a piano case, just like Robert Earl Hughes
36. George is caught in Tootie's bed wearing nothing but her underoos
37. Mrs. Garrett proves to be adept at "whispering" to the ailing kangaroos
38. Singer Sade guest stars and sings of the sweetest taboos
39. A nasty fall from the gutter outside Blair's bedroom window causes two of George's vertebrae to fuse.
40. During a ribald game of strip poker, George ensures Natalie doesn't lose.
41. George is discovered halfway into his auto-erotic asphyxiation noose
42. Beverly Ann is fired for blaming all of her problems on “those evil Jews.”
43. Jo is pregnant with a baby, but she won't say whose.
44. The girls suggest a bikini car wash, which Mrs. Garrett poo-poos
45. After finishing school, the girls move off Bannister Road, into The Mews!
46. A love potion sends the girls to George's room by twos
47. Before the Christmas pageant, George pins Blair on the casting couch and tells her she must pay her dues.

An open letter to the marketing director of NFL.com;

Having been involved in it for 7 years, I know a lot about Internet marketing. That’s why I have been so appalled at how your organization had conducted the marketing on your site, nfl.com.

The cardinal sin in permission-based online marketing is sending people marketing information when they have indicated that they do not wish to receive it from you. This defies the whole concept of permission-based marketing. It also does harm to your brand in the mind of someone who initially sought out your site to make a purchase. I claim that you may never be able to repair this kind of harm.

Take my experience as an example. I ordered a gift for a Denver Broncos fan last November. It represented a single purchase, and I had never indicated on your site that I was actually a Broncos fan. I actually am a Chiefs fan, and we don’t much like the Broncos. If I was ever given an option to receive email or snail mail offers in the course of ordering from your site, I refused them. However, you sold my name to the Franklin Mint (or Danburry Mint, or something like that) to pitch me Broncos material. It had to come from you because there is no other way they would have my name associated with the Broncos. I have also received catalogs from you featuring the Broncos on the cover.

This is not only bad online marketing, it is bad direct marketing, pointing out the lack of sophistication in your database rules for selecting my name. It is not as simple as “He ordered a Broncos sweatshirt near the holidays. Therefore, he is a broncos fan and should receive Broncos material forever.” Your database people need to be better stewards of that information and use a little thought.

Then today, I get an email from Jon Bonjovi. The copy on this email is horrible. Here’s an example:
“Dear , (you don’t even know my first name???? Can’t you customize this to say that if a first name is not present, like “Friend of the NFL?”),

“You're invited to join myself and the boys in the band for a unique New York celebration!" Join myself? This is incorrect grammar. It should be ‘join me.’ Now I know that Jon Bonjovi did not write this, nor can you claim you were trying to sound conversational, because in the next paragraph it says “We'll be joined by Latin superstar Enrique Iglesias, R&B sensation Alicia Keys, and hip-hop artist Eve," hardly a style in which anyone speaks.

I do not want email like this from you, so I go to your site to unsubscribe. I checked the ‘unsubscribe to NFL.com newsletters’ check box and hit submit. Since your database did not include my name, a window popped up and said “enter your first name.” Why in the hell do I have to put my first name in to unsubscribe? It’s required, so I type it in. Then when I hit submit this time another window comes up that says “enter a last name.” This is ridiculous. Then it asks for my age. I’m just trying to get done, so I put in 01/01/2000. Well, then it tells me I must be 13 to enjoy the nfl.com site and puts me at the home page. You need to make it simple to unsubscribe. The way you have used my information thus far makes me think I have now been added to another database with the new information I had to input just to get off of the mailing list.

On top of all that, you don’t even have a link on the front page of your site for people to contact anyone or email any feedback! It’s buried in the Help section below information for former football players interested in playing for a NFL Europe League team and aspiring player agents. Do you really prioritize the visitors and customers to your site below the miniscule group of aspiring player agents who might happen to visit your site?

I love the NFL. I watch every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday, but there are plenty of places to buy NFL merchandise and get information about NFL teams. I will never return to, or order from NFL.com again.

Some of my favorite phobias from the The Phobia List.
Alektorophobia- Fear of chickens.
Ancraophobia- Fear of wind.
Cacophobia- Fear of ugliness.
Coitophobia- Fear of coitus.
Deipnophobia- Fear of dining or dinner conversations.
Dikephobia- Fear of justice.
Dutchphobia- Fear of the Dutch.
Epistemophobia- Fear of knowledge.
Euphobia- Fear of hearing good news.
Geniophobia- Fear of chins.
Ideophobia- Fear of ideas.
Kainolophobia- Fear of novelty.
Kyphophobia- Fear of stooping.
Linonophobia- Fear of string.
Lutraphobia- Fear of otters.
Microphobia- Fear of small things.
Myxophobia- Fear of slime.
Peladophobia- Fear of bald people.
Phronemophobia- Fear of thinking.
Proctophobia- Fear of rectum.
Scriptophobia- Fear of writing in public.
Syngenesophobia- Fear of relatives.
Tyrannophobia- Fear of tyrants.
Walloonphobia- Fear of the Walloons.
Zemmiphobia- Fear of the great mole rat.

Check out this ironic link.

FUN FACT: Did you know that Brawny paper towels have Scrubbing Circles?

Item! One of the perks of being a Hollywood gadfly is that you get to go to movie screenings. That means free tickets (yay!), but you still have to buy your own popcorn and chuckles (boo-hoo!). Anyhow, last night I had the opportunity to see The Insomniac. Don't miss this star-studded rollercoaster from the director of Mo' Mentos. Faithful readers might remember me mentioning the screening of that movie last year when the hapless projectionist ran the entire movie backwards. Ooops! The title character is none other than our favorite foul-mouthed blind actor, Al Pacino, recently of Godfather 3: Attack of the Clones. In this picture, Al does a turn as a policeman working alongside Hilary Swank, who plays a girl this time, unlike in Let's Hear it for the Boy. The film also stars the girlfriend from News Radio and Robin Williams, playing a bad guy like he did in the wonderful Die, Smoochie, Die. Mork calling Orson, come in Orson: this one'll keep you guessing all the way to the parking lot. While I can't say I understood the ending, I definitely loved the ride!

Ed. Note: Thanks to Jackie Harvey, who contributed to this post.

One of my dogs, Greta, just ate a bird. In one gulp, she consumed an entire live bird that she caught flying around on our porch.

Whenever we crank open the window over the sink in our kitchen, a million small flying bugs come in our house and die on our countertops. It's like a mass-suicide. I keep poring over the corpses, looking for one that looks like the leader of the cult, but they all look the same to me.

Gee, I sure miss Justine Bateman.

Did you know that over three million Chinese drink their own urine?

I guess that shouldn't be so surprising. With a population over 1,274,624,930 people (current tally), you can probaby find 3 million Chinese people doing any specific activity at any one time.

I have recently updated the Bad Banner Museum under projects. Take a gander!

After some work, I have successfully transferred www.revare.com to a new ISP. You should enjoy slightly better response times, and I will soon increased the picture snapping time on the two cameras to once every 30 seconds. Enjoy!

According to the government, I am overweight; my BM Index just .3 away from obeisity. How can this be? I mean, I eat Reduced Fat Cheez-Its.

GO Hoosiers!

A good friend has drawn my attention to another odd name for a business: "Dress Barn Woman." Wasn't that a Fleetwood Mac song? Yes, I think it was. I can just hear Stevie Nicks haunting voice... "Rock on, Dress Barn Woman."

Who decided that LA Nail Trap was a good name for a business, or that the Tannery is a good name for a tanning salon?

SteveCam is back! And now, I sometimes have TWO cameras running.
Take a look!

Here's my playlist from KKFI Friday morning. Thanks to Bill O'Connor for engineering the show. his morning show is on every weekday from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM.

Before I Go by John Hiatt
from Crossing Muddy Waters

Call Me The Breeze by J J Cale
from JJ. Cale Live

The Band Wore Blue Shirts by Joe Jackson
from I'm The Man

Yeah! Yeah! by They Might Be Giants
from Mink Car

Steal Your Love by Lucinda Williams
from Essence

New Favorite by Alison Krauss
from New Favorite

Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies
from The Trinity Session

Velvet Underground by Jonathan Richman
from I, Jonathan

Sweet Jane by Lou Reed
from Live On Letterman

I Don't Want to Talk About It Now by Emmylou Harris
from Red Dirt Girl

I Don't Wanna Talk About It by Indigo Girls
from Philadelphia (Soundtrack)

The Unbreakable Chain by Daniel Lanois
from For The Beauty Of Wynona

Come A Long Way by Michelle Shocked
from Arkansas Traveler

Tenderness on the Block by Shawn Colvin
from Fat City

[You'll Be] Satisfied by The Subdudes
from Annunciation

Rockaway the Days by Bruce Springsteen
from Tracks (Disc 3)

Everyone's In Love With You by Steve Earle
from Transcendental Blues

She's A Woman by The Beatles
from Anthology 2 (Disc 1)

Two Trains by Sue Foley
from Love Comin' Down

King Of The Mountain by Southern Culture On The Skids
from Liquored Up And Lacquered Down

Medicine Hat by Son Volt
from Wide Swing Tremolo

Blue by The Jayhawks
from Tomorrow the Green Grass

Give Back the Key to My Heart by Uncle Tupelo
from Anodyne

In A Little While by U2
from All That You Can't Leave Behind

That's Right (You're Not from Texas) by Lyle Lovett
from Live in Texas

All the Lilacs in Ohio by John Hiatt
from The Tiki Bar Is Open

All Men are Liars by Nick Lowe
from party of ONE