Important news

Three exciting pieces of news in my inbox.

1) I've been invited to be a guest on "Nine to Noon," New Zealand National Radio's flagship news and current affairs programme. They're doing a segment on the Kiwi Curlers Friday morning. They have a listening audience of 250,000, which is something like six percent of the country's population. If there's any way to post an audio link here, you can bet I will.

2) I received another good story about those impossible toy crane claw grabbers of death that stole my money last night. Granted, it was from a co-worker, but it's still a good story. Sonny writes:

When I was in high school, I worked at a movie theater selling candy. (I was actually the first male they ever hired to sell candy and, thusly, spent the summer being called "candy girl." GREAT for the ol' ego. But I was a pioneer of sorts.) Anyway, my two special responsibilities included cleaning the butter pump (I now eat my popcorn dry and you should too), and refilling the claw grabber machine in the lobby. We had two types of toys in the grabber -- the ones you had a slight chance of winning and the Pocahontas dolls. I was instructed that if anyone won the Pocahontas dolls, they would revoke my free movie passes (the job's only perk). Long story short, I had Pocahontas's legs buried so securely in the rest of the crappy toys that you would have been hard pressed to actually pull her out with your own arm, let alone a cheap, aluminum claw that barely closed. However, if you wanted to pay a dollar to grab one of the fuzzy little beach balls that cost the theater five cents apiece, then you had about an eight percent chance of doing so. I'm not proud of making little girls cry as their fathers spent dollar after dollar trying to dislodge the dolls. But my friends and I did see "Clueless" for free--a few times.

How great is that? I knew that those things were rigged. Can't believe I wasted two Euros yesterday trying to win a "Madagascar" ball.

3) I got a news release from "Busy Entrepreneur Sheryl Morley," who announces that she "is tired of fad diets, diet pills and single step plans that do not work" and is thus unveiling her non-fad diet, non-single-step plan, known as "Blast Build Beautify," the "3B Program." Sheryl, like everyone else in the world, is promoting this via a blog. Wonder if there will be a Cheese!Of!The!Day! segment.

By Dan Steinberg |  February 22, 2006; 1:44 PM ET
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