Actual betting opportunity found on BETonSPORTS.com:
What will Saddams fate be by 06/30/03?
He will still be the president of Iraq(mantain control of Baghdad) +300
He will be a US Prisoner +175
He will be dead EV
He will be MIA +150
He will be a political exile +300
He will be Smoking Cubans with buddy boy Muammar Qadhafi +500
He will travel to Calcutta and take up Mother Theresa’s Torch +15000
He will Join the Backstreet Boys and tour with Elton John +15000
Violent Aliens will arrive on earth and claim him as a citizen of planet Zerg +15000

(For those of you not in the know, a positive number indicates the amount you would win if you bet $100 and a negative number indicates the amount you would have to bet in order to win $100. I had to look it up. I still have the provincial view that odds should be expressed as a ratio. Silly me.)

My money’s on the Zergians. Other lines allow you to bet on whether or not Elvis is alive, who the next Pope will be, and whether the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan will be subject to a terrorist attack within the next year.

Lower Back Pain a Familiar Ache
Dr. Joel Press is quoted as saying the following: “The majority of back problems will be resolved with some simple treatments, or, in some cases, more advanced treatments.”

To be fair, this sentence would make sense if the point were that the majority of back problems would, in fact, be resolved. Unfortunately, I don’t think that was the intent of the statement…

The Horror of Blimps.

Link stolen shamelessly off of Greg Morrow’s blog, who stole it off of someone else’s blog, who stole it off of someone else’s blog, and so on, and so on. What can I say, it’s so funny it made me cry.

Paper says soldiers’ singing will create ‘mortal terror’

Apparently, the author has never seen American Idol. If we can take Keith (not for the faint of heart), we can take North Korea’s army.

NASA Flip-Flops in Columbia Investigation
Does this headline make anybody else wonder what effect a stray sandal would have on the heat shielding?

Along the same lines, this headline from last week’s Onion made me chuckle:
Texan Unable To Trick NASA Into Hauling Old Washing Machine Off Lawn.

Japander:n.,& v.t. 1. a western star who uses his or her fame to make large sums of money in a short time by advertising products in Japan that they would probably never use. ~er (see synecure, prostitute) 2. to make an ass of oneself in Japanese media.

Check out many of these asses on Japander.com. Some of the biggest and best asses were Nicolas Cage and Arnold Schwarzenegger (especially the latter’s Arinamin V ads).

Funny quote from Sylvester Stallone’s page: Sylvester Stallone – synonymous with ham in Japan.
Amusingly, he’s synonymous with ham in the States as well.

Weird. Weird. Weird. Weird.

From Powell may take U.S. intelligence to U.N. at CNN.com…
“Stevenson had a much easier task, I think,” Powell said. “All he had to prove was that there were Russian missiles in Cuba, and viola, there were Russian missiles in Cuba”
As “voila” seems more likely to be misspelled than mispronounced, I’m assuming the error occurred in CNN’s domain. Maybe somebody should ask the Secretary of State to please refrain from using words that are “all complicated and French”.

As usual, I Tivoed the Superbowl this year so that I could fast forward through the game and watch the commercials. I have my priorities in order. If you weren’t quite so clever, you can see most of the ads on AOL. If you’ve ever wondered why the 5th dentist didn’t recommend Trident, check out this ad. The big winner this year, though, was the Terry Tate: Office Linebacker spot. If you enjoy that, you should check out the extended and alternate versions at Reebok.

The Peabody Hotel in Memphis is looking for a new Duckmaster. This might just be the new career you’re looking for. (Unless, by some outrageous coincidence, you already are a duckmaster.)

Actually, I can’t hear “duckmaster” without thinking of that awful Marc Singer movie. Except that instead of
The courage of an eagle, the strength of a panther and the power of a God!
it would be
The courage of a duck, the strength of a duck, and the power of… say it with me… a Duck!
The big DM could command vast armies of waterfowl, or just go into that goofy trance and scan the landscape in DuckCam mode.

Now that’s Hollywood gold. Virtually guaranteed to make millions at the box office.