Midweek Odds and Ends

I'm still recovering from my delightful visit to the dentist yesterday*, and am not in the best of moods this morning, so how about we just run down a few odds and ends in lieu of a coherent post?

First of all, congratulations to Melissa Rycroft and Tony Dovolani, who won the All-Star Season of Dancing with the Stars last night. I've been rooting for them all season, partly because Melissa is gorgeous, and partly because I had a lesson with Mr Dovolani when we were both at the Grand National Dance Championships in Miami some years ago. He spent an hour running me around the dance floor until I was ready to scream ... my hat is off to Melissa for surviving 13 weeks of his tender mercies.

Speaking of gorgeous people, Travel and Leisure Magazine has published its list of the Top Ten Cities for Attractive People. Washington DC is not on the list, it's attractiveness value probably being dragged down by the large population of brain-dead political trolls. Here's the list:

1 - Miami, Florida (been there, agree with that.)

2 - San Diego, California (I worked with a lady from San Diego back in the mid-70's. If she was typical, San Diego needs to be at number 1.)

3 - San Juan, Puerto Rico (oddly enough, Puerto Rico recently voted in favor of statehood. Maybe we can get all those attractive people to replace the ones who want to secede.)

4 - Charleston, South Carolina (I've been to Charleston once ... and it was not a particularly memorable visit. It's a two-beer story that I'll share with you if you make it to DC.)

5 - Los Angeles, California (maybe it's just me, but all the women in LA look ... artificially enhanced.)

6 - Nashville, Tennessee (not the one in the TV series, evidently.)

7 - Austin, Texas (you've got to love a place where the popular t-shirt says "Keep Austin Weird.")

8 - Savannah, Georgia (it's the southern drawl that does it.)

9 - Honolulu, Hawaii (nobody really lives there ... if you don't believe me, just ask one of them to show you a birth certificate.)

10 - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota (the people really are attractive ... but you can only see it in the summer. In the winter, they have to wear so many layers of clothes you can't tell the men from the women.)

The dead horse of secession lunacy is still twitching, so I thought that this article might provide a dash of reality to counterbalance all the ass-clownery of buffoons who think everything will magically improve if they leave the union.

Tonight's Powerball jackpot is worth over a half-billion dollars. You may win it, but the odds are slightly against you. The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are estimated at 1 in 175,223,510, which compares unfavorably to the odds of dying from being struck by lightning** (1 in 3,000,000), being attacked by a shark (1 in 11,500,000), or a golfer hitting a hole in one on consecutive par-3 holes (1 in about 156,000,000). Good luck.

And that's it for today. 

Have a good day. Don't spend all that Powerball money just yet. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* I'd have said that with tongue in cheek, but my cheek is still too swollen to let me get my tongue into it.

** Agnes is named after one of her relatives who, oddly enough, was killed when struck by lightning.