Once upon a time, that "Ken Harrison" fellow pictured below and I worked together in a comic book store. Now he's a "Supervisor in Charge" at a major electronics store. I'm sure he worked hard to earn what must be an important position given the redundancy of its title.

In the big leagues, it apparently doesn't matter whether you comb your hair before they photograph you.

And I just received an email from my college roommate, an environmental lawyer, announcing that he will be a daddy this time next year. (All my high school friends already have kids.)

I suppose that this says something about how people change over time. It's a shame that some people can't deal with life as well as others. Look at me: I live in my mother's house where I read comic books and watch football all week. I have no wife, no kids, and no real responsibility.

Clearly, all of my friends must be doing something wrong.

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The 2010 New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year is "refudiate," meaning "to reject." My spell-checker wants to change that word into "repudiate," which makes sense, since "refudiate" is nothing more than a typo in a Twitter feed back in July. We now have a new, completely unnecessary word in our dictionary. This bit of political genius/manipulation will now be bloating the reference aisles on our national bookshelves with as much bullshit as is typically reserved for the self-help section.

The enemy here is not, surprisingly, Palin. This bit of trivia may be lost to history, but Sarah Palin herself attempted to correct her initial typo to "refute," the word she presumably meant to Tweet. Rather than let Palin get away with her mistake on Twitter -- where grammar goes to die -- her followers and detractors forced her into owning the mistake as intentional in order to save political face. She's relatively innocent in this fiasco. Sure, she could be smarter and not send messages to the public realm without reviewing them for mistakes, but that's probably asking too much.

No, the enemy here is the New Oxford American Dictionary. Damn you, Oxford University Press dictionary editors. Throwing a political figure's mistaken and jumbled words words back at them is a tried and true political tactic with great lineage. ("Potatoe" and "misunderestimate" spring to mind.) Mudslinging may have a storied tradition in American politics, but let's not start treating the weapons used as anything other than what they are: mud. If Oxford University Press includes words like "refudiate" in their dictionary, all they are doing is dirtying their own reputation.

Therefore, I refudiate the inclusion of the word "refudiate" to my automated spell-checker's personal dictionary. It already has a hard enough time with the perfectly cromulent words that I've already added such as "truthiness," "unfriend," and "wriphe." I mean, come on, it's not like my hard drive has all the space in the world.

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If you're been around awhile, you may have read one of my many rants against Chad Pennington here before. (Need a refresher? Look Here.) Well, it finally looks like the Dolphins will be rid of Mr. Noodle Arm forever.

After a tumultuous week in which Pennington (drafted in 2000), who signed a one-year contract to be a backup quarterback with the Dolphins in March for $2.5 million, was named the starting quarterback over Chad Henne (drafted in 2008), Pennington was injured in Sunday's game versus the Titans. After attempting a 5-yard pass. On the very first play from scrimmage. In his throwing shoulder. The same shoulder that ended his season in 2004. And 2005. And 2009.

So with any luck, we're through with the quarterback who lost his ability to throw more than 20 yards down field sometime before Chad Henne even entered college. But don't fear for Pennington: since his injury was on the first offensive play of the game, it triggered a contract rider paying him $3.25 million more. So Pennington will be paid $5.75 million for the two snaps he played this season, or $2,875,000.00 per snap. Ugh.

But wait, it gets worse! Later in the same game that claimed Chad Pennington, Chad Henne was struck down with a knee injury that may keep him on the sidelines for weeks! The Dolphins have somehow angered the football gods!

With only two days until tomorrow night's game against the Chicago Bears, the Dolphins are now scrambling for quarterbacks. Yesterday the Dolphins signed Patrick Ramsey, 2002 first-round pick mega-failure for the Washington Redskins. After years of under-performing, Ramsey was traded from the Redskins to the Jets in March 2006, where he failed to beat two-time shoulder injury survivor Chad Pennington for the starting job and was cut. Never one to say "die," Ramsey has played for the Broncos, Titans, Lions, Saints, and Jaguars while waiting for his opportunity to finally replace Pennington.

Bonus trivia: Ramsey will be the third of the first four quarterbacks drafted in the 2002 NFL Draft to play for the Dolphins. The only stand-out in that elite group is mega-failure David Carr, currently the third-string quarterback for the 49ers. The first to sign with Miami was mega-failure Joey Harrington in 2008. The Dolphins have also previously signed Josh McCown, the fourth quarterback taken in 2002, who was cut from the team to make room for... Chad Pennington. Note that prior to Ramsey, the Dolphins considered signing J.T. O'Sullivan as a potential Pennington replacement, but since he was taken relatively late -- sixth-round -- in the 2002 Draft, he was presumably not a big enough failure to sign. The only other quarterback taken in the 2002 Draft still active is David Garrard, who has been the starting quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars since 2007, and is the only QB from 2002 who can't be considered a failure.

Rumor has it that we worked out Oakland Raiders' mega-mega-failure JaMarcus Russell earlier in the week. Russell (drafted in 2007) was run out of Oakland on a rail earlier this season after three years where he was paid $5,586,000 million for each of the 7 games that he won during that time. That sounds like a quarterback that the Dolphins' management should be considering.

Meanwhile, I suspect that somewhere, minor-failure quarterback Pat White, the Dolphins' second-round pick in 2009 who was cut from the team in September after being paid nearly $2.4 million for only one year of play, is very disappointed with his agent.

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Unintentionally tragically hilarious quote of the week:

"My daughter didn't get any justice before this, and she is not getting justice now."
-- June Justice, as reported by WDIV in Detroit.

If you can't find something to laugh at in a case of consensual teenage sex turned into criminal statutory rape only after a parent named "Justice" pressured her child to go on local television and accuse the boy of rape, directly contradicting the story that that the daughter had previously given to police and unintentionally revealing her identity to her classmates which led to bullying at school causing the girl to commit suicide rather than face a cross examination of her story in open court.... Well, life is going to be much harder for you.

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Adventures in Fine Dining

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Research published in the September 2010 issue of European Journal of Wildlife Research suggests that wind-powered turbines should be painted purple in order to reduce bat fatalities. (Before you ask: blind bats don't care about the color of the windmills, but their insect food source apparently does.)

Obviously, this is a perfect opportunity for windmills to join the list of objects that have inspired Batman villains. The list currently includes items as varied as calculators, calendars, cats, clay, clowns, and crocodiles. And that's just the letter "c"! It's no more ludicrous a motif than that employed by bat-villains Mirror Man (who uses mirrors to confound his foes!), Kite Man (who escapes from his latest crime with the aid of a giant kite!), or Polka-Dot Man (who uses polka dots to, um,... well, you get the idea).

da, nah-nah, nah-nah, windmills!

What happens when green technology becomes greed technology? Will the long arm of the law be severed by the blades of the Windmill? Can the Batman resist the Windmill's strange allure and save Robin from a gristly fate? Find out next week: same Bat-Time, same Bat-channel!

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Dateline: USA, today:

As deer hunting season gets underway around the country, trauma surgeons in Ohio have a message for hunters: It's not the guns but the trees that will get you. A 10-year survey of hunting-related injuries at two major trauma centers in Ohio found that falling out of trees is how the majority of deer hunters are injured.

It seems that some doctors can't see the deer for the forest. Those aren't "accidents." I read A Separate Peace. Grown men don't just fall out of trees. They're pushed.

I hadn't realized that the battlefields of the Great Deer Uprising of 2010 were so far spread as Ohio. Or that the Uprising has already been a decade in the making. Is it really possible that we're at the 10-year anniversary of the Great Deer Uprising of 2000 with no end in sight? Oh, the inhumanity!

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There's not really much to say about the Idaho State game today. The line for the game was 43 points, and Georgia beat that by 5 points in a very lopsided 55-7 contest. As far as the minimal crowd was concerned, the game highlight was the halftime introduction of the players on the 1980 University of Georgia National Championship team.

UGA 55, Idaho State 7

Trey and I arrived late, about halfway through the first quarter, thanks to bad timing for the departure from his house in Dublin. I didn't much mind the late arrival because the trip took us through Madison, GA, a naturally picturesque town whose charm was amplified mightily by the colorful autumn foliage.

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According to an article at dailymail.co.uk, the online portal for London's Daily Mail newspaper, Haynes will be releasing a guide for the U.S.S. Enterprise. My Haynes mechanical manual failed miserably in helping me with the relatively simple wiring for the dashboard and brake lights a few years back (before it was "accidentally" caught in a week's worth of downpours as the Jeep sat open-topped at the mechanics). I advise that Scotty tread carefully around the warp core with Haynes manual in hand: poorly written instructions are far more dangerous than any Klingon.

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In the past 10 days, I've watched the following movies in the following order:

Between Rocky Horror and When in Rome, I started The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but I just couldn't get into it. Terry Gilliam movies typically look great and are too long. I learned a long time ago that if I can't get into a Gilliam movie early, it's best to bail before I've wasted too many hours. This one had so much incongruous cgi up-front, distracting from the awesome make-up and stage sets, that I decided to cut my losses at the 20 minute mark.

Also I had planned on watching The Losers before Gamer, but I instead watched the UGA vs. Florida game and got my fill of losing another way. Unfortunately, I also lost by watching Gamer, a pitifully stupid and stale remake of The Running Man.

This entire time I've been watching movies on Netflix, TCM, and FMC, the DVD of the remake Hairspray has been sitting on my kitchen table. Poor, unloved Hairspray.

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To be continued...

 

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