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Local man calls boss smart, but lazy

Cleveland, TN- after pulling a double shift at the Highway 57 Tastee Freeze, Horace Rogers told his boss that “it would be a cold day in Hell (or the Tastee Freeze) before he would cover for his lazy ass again. The incident occurred just before closing last Saturday night when Biff Pocoroba, the owner and proprietor of the establishment for the last six years, stopped by to “see how the day went.”

Today sucked, Rogers told his boss. Jimmy, the regularly scheduled closer called out sick and Rogers couldn’t get in touch with Pocoroba to arrange for a relief to cover the closing shift. “I couldn’t just close the doors and disappoint all the kids wanting a Choco-Snickers Frosty,” said Rogers. “But believe me,” he added, “The next time you’re off at the lake with your family and can’t be reached, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

Pocoroba told authorities that this is a rare occurrance and that Jimmy is usually one of his most reliable employees.  He also said that, of course, Rogers will be paid the four hours overtime he is due for covering the second shift.

“You’re damn right, he will.” Rogers said in a statement. That’s when he said of his boss, “He’s a pretty smart business man, but he’s just too lazy sometimes.” Rogers concluded by grumbling that, “I almost hope this does happen again. I’ll burn the whole building down. I’ll show his lazy ass.” Rogers has one prior conviction for a drunken disorderly misdeameanor.

Posted by admin for the early learning toys at Atomic Elephant Toy.

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Barry Bonds’ wife files for legal separation

LOS ANGELES- Barry Bonds’ wife has filed for legal separation.

The former San Francisco Giants’ steroid abuser and Liz Watson were married in 1998 and together have two cockatoos, three hermit crabs, a tortoise and one hamster.

Watson cited irreconcilable differences in papers filed by her cousin Omar on Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. She is seeking spousal support in the sum of four trillion dollars a week and joint legal and physical custody of their rare 130-year-old Tanzanian Leopard tortoise, Zippy.

Bonds, major league baseball’s asterisk leader, is awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to lying to a federal grand jury in December 2003 when he denied knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs. The trial has been delayed because of a dispute over whether or not he can wear the same jacket Michael Jackson wore to his last trial.

Bonds’ first marriage to Susann Margreth Branco ended in a highly publicized divorce in 1994. Bonds was successful in winning custody of his turtle in this divorce.

Barry and Sean Hannity contributed to this report. For a great star theater planetarium, check out my online toy store.

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11-Year-Old Graduates From LA College

Moshe Kai Cavalin, 11, graduates with honors from an East Los Angeles Community College with an Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Studies this week, but just don’t call him a genius.

“I consider myself a regular kid with a terrible first name, who is just smarter than most grown-ups out there,” says this only child of a Taiwanese mother and a goat herder father.

When Cavalin started college at the age of 8, he may have barely been out of diapers, but he ended up tutoring some of his 19- and 20-year-old classmates in math and science.  Cavalin was one of 3 in the school graduating with a 4.0 GPA. Another was a 19-year-old MIT dropout and the other was Jerome Struthers, Sally Struthers’ mentally challenged 24-year-old nephew who insists on dressing up like his semi-famous aunt.

Astrophysics is his passion. Albert Einstein and Bruce Lee are among Cavalin’s idols. Struthers’ idols, on the other hand, are Elmo from Sesame Street fame and the chair from Pee Wee’s Playhouse.

Like a twist out of a Hollywood action flick, Cavalin combines his exceptional smarts with fearsome martial arts abilities: The preteen has won a few East LA martial arts championships.

Up next for the tireless boy wonder: In the next take six months to a year he plans to devote himself to TV and VCR repair, write a book for pre-teens on how to pick up women, and take up scuba diving.

Not on the agenda: having fun with video games.

“I feel it’s a waste of time playing video games because it’s not helping humanity in any way,” says the 11-year-old, who wants to use his knowledge to let everyone know that he is much smarter than they are.

Posted by admin for some cool science toys at my favorite online toy store.

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Barney the purple dinosaur

Barney the Dinosaur is a purple and green Tyrannosaurus Rex, who comes to life through a child’s imagination. Aside from being the main character in Barney and Friends, he is quite likely the most annoying character ever seen on modern children’s television. An interesting fact that most don’t know about this famous T-Rex is that his theme song is actually “Barney Is A Dinosaur” and not the much more enjoyable “I Love You.” Okay, so that wasn’t a very interesting fact. And the latter song is certainly not more enjoyable.

Barney likes most kinds of fast food, but his favorites are double Whoppers with Cheese,  peanut butter & pterodactyl sandwiches made with pumpernickel bread, and the classic Filet-o-Fish from the Jurassic era McDonalds. According to Barney’s Campfire Sing-Along, vegetables are also a favorite of his. I have a hard time believing this as most paleontologists believe that the Tyrannosaurus were carnivorous. As of Season 11, Barney has grown to like pistachios as well.

While you can’t buy any stuffed purple Barney dinosaurs at Atomic Elephant Toy, you can get some pretty cool dinosaur toys and kits and some very realistic dinosaur replicas there.

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Tomb of Dracula #16, 1973

I just flipped through a copy of Tomb of Dracula #16 from January 1973. And wow, what a great edition. I haven’t read the story yet, but the ads in this one are hysterical. Just inside the cover is the classic, “The Insult that made a man out of Mac.” Remember this one? Have a Charles Atlas body in 7 days! Page 4 has an ad for a book that will make you a master of Karate for only 99 cents. On page 8 and 9 is a double spread where you can join the Record Club of America and get six LPs or 8-track tapes for only 99 cents.  There are so many others I’d love to write about but it’s late and I want to go to sleep. Maybe I’ll start a category about funny comic book ads and scan a few of them in. I don’t know. That might be too much work for too little reward.

Anyway, good night. And I can’t forget a link to the Ein-O Science Kits and Toys at Atomic Elephant Toy.

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Conversation with a one-year old

I just got back from a weekend at home with the family. Remember that show called, “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” or something like that? Yeah, I remember. It sucked. Of course, now that I have kids… well, it doesn’t change anything. It still sucked. But I did have the following conversation with my one-year old daughter today.

Me: Maggie Belle, please get out of the pantry. What are you doing in there??

What Maggie Belle said: ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. (What she meant: What does it look like I’m doing? I’m looking for something to put in my mouth.)

Read the rest of this entry »

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How can I write to Cole Sprouse?

As a keyword phrase, this exact subject line is currently getting searched for over 1,100 times a day. And by current, I mean approximately the winter of 2009. So who the heck is Cole Sprouse? I guess if you searched and found this post you already know. I didn’t. It turns out they are identical twins who play two twins in a show called “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.” I’ve never seen the show but Wikipedia says it’s pretty popular and these guys are the latest teen and pre-teen heartthrobs. In the picture above, I’m not sure which one is Cole and which one is Dylan. I even spent almost three minutes reading their Wiki page and still can’t tell. My guess is that Dylan is the chubby one and Cole is the one all the tweeners are fawning over. Maybe that’s why the phrase, “How can I write to Cole Sprouse?” gets searched for over a thousand times a day and appearantly no one is searching for how to write to Dylan. Poor guy. Anyway, if you want to write either of them, mail sent to the below addresses should get to them. Read the rest of this entry »

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When did Sesame Street start?

Sesame Street was first broadcast on November 10, 1969 on the National Educational Television (NET) network which later became the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). This makes sense in that you can still see remnants of the hippie culture that was prevalent in New York City in some of the vintage episodes.
Sesame Street was, and remains, one of the earliest programs with a strong commitment to multiculturalism. The actors (and muppets) cover a wide range of age, ethnicity, color and even physical abilities. The program uses a mixture of puppets, animation and live action to teach young children basic reading and arithmetic, for example, colors, letters, numbers and the days of the week. It also has segments focusing on basic life-skills, such as how to cross the road safely or the importance of basic hygiene.

Controversial issues:  the show has never been afraid to skirt the edge of controversial issues in all the languages and countries in which it is produced. An example… when Mr. Hooper died in the early 1980s, the writers decided to portray that in the show instead of simply write him out of the forthcoming scripts. The program actually won an Emmy for the show when Big Bird had to come to terms with the loss of his friend. Another example of multiculturalism and controversy is in the fact that the South African version of the show has an HIV-positive character called Kami. The show produces alternate language versions in Greece, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, and Mexico (called Plaza Sesamo).

Posted by mo for the Ant Farm Gel Colony at Atomic Elephant Toy. Source: the Biography Channel.

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Who won American Idol tonight vs. who won the Civil War?

I guess we really do live in a pop culture world. I just finished researching keyword phrases that start with the words “who won” and was a little surprised at the phrases that folks are searching for these days. I wasn’t completely surprised about the relative search volumes of some of the below phrases but was somewhat befuddled about some of the actual phrases. I wouldn’t  have thought that very many people would have to search for the answer to who won the Civil War. But then again, maybe I am being a bit short-sighted and should realize that some of these searches are being done from countries all over the world. Or maybe there are a few hundred knuckleheads in places like Earle, New Jersey or Muscle Shoals, Alabama who really don’t know who won.

Anyway, below are some of the more interesting search strings that begin with the words “who won” and their approximate number of searches a day.

1. Who won the most Oscars during his career? 1,100 daily searches
2. Who won the next Food Network Star? 980 daily searches
3. Who won American Idol tonight? 810 daily searches
4. Who won the Revolutionary War? 690 daily searches
5. Who won Dancing with the Stars? 640 daily searches
6. Who won the Civil War? 440 daily searches
7. Who won Flavor of Love? 46 daily searches

Here’s an amazing discovery. Out of the top 50 search strings that begin with the words “who won,” 41 of them that were asking about who won on a reality show. The nine that weren’t about some reality show were asking who won a war (or Civil War battle), a super bowl or an election. I’m really not sure what this says about our society. Would I be naive to think that most people know who won our major wars and don’t need to look for that answer? And people pay less attention to reality TV and thus have to search for who won (because they didn’t care enough to watch)? Or is it simply that more people are interested in who got voted off the Biggest Loser than are interested in knowing about our country’s history. I’m sure it’s a combination of both these, but either way, I’m not sure what to think about the results in this little piece of research. What do you think?

Note: I did this research on February 22, 2009, which happened to be the night of the 81st Annual Academy Awards (Oscars) so the results are a bit skewed with that taking the top spot. On any other day of the year this probably gets searched for much less. Posted by Mo for the best selling science toys of 2009.

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Where did Ronald Reagan go to college?

Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911–2004) was the 40th POTUS (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of the sunny state of California in the late 60s and early 70s. He was born in Illinois where he spent most of his childhood watching the Three Stooges and playing marbles. He moved to L.A. in the 1930s, where he became an actor, then the president of the Cheech and Chong Fan Club, then a spokesman for General Electric, and finally the governor and president.

After high school, Ronald Reagan attended Eureka College, where he was a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, majored in economics and sociology, and was very active in sports, including badminton and football.

After graduating from Eureka in 1932, Reagan drove himself to Iowa, where he auditioned for a job at many small-town radio stations. He got a job broadcasting University of Iowa home football games for the Hawkeyes. He was paid $10 per game. Soon after, a staff announcer’s job opened at radio station WOC in Davenport, and Reagan was hired, now earning $100 per month. Due to his persuasive voice, he moved to WHO radio in Des Moines as an announcer for Chicago Cubs baseball games. His specialty was creating play-by-play accounts of games that the station received by wire.

Posted by mo for some very cool science toys at Atomic Elephant Toy.

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