The sky was really quite lovely this evening.

I occasionally am sent books to review for my book blog, and this time the publisher gave me one book to review and another book to give away.

So, a contest!

Seeing as how I love short short stories, you can submit one or more stories, and the story I like best wins.

Although you don’t have to, it would be nice if you posted the story anonymously or under a pseudonym that I can’t guess, so I won’t have any preconceived notions when I read the story. Just put your real e-mail address in so I can declare the winner and not have everyone claim to have written the story. (I won’t peek until the contest has been decided.)

You’ll have a week. The contest will end Saturday the 11th at 11:59 PM.

Kibitzing is not only allowed, it’s encouraged.

The only restriction is please keep it to a PG-13 rating.

If you’d like an idea of what I like, here is one of my all time favorite short short stories. And I know there are plenty of you out there who read but don’t comment. Since it can be completely anonymous, I fully expect everyone to participate. Got it?

I’m hoping that the team continues to gel, and that Pat White’s hand is in good shape.

ADDENDUM the First:
Halftime 17 – 10.

We missed most of the first half having lunch with Michael’s mom and her husband.

ADDENDUM the Second:
I hate it when Pat White goes down.

ADDENDUM the Third:
Pat White is heading back to the locker room. As much as I hate to see him off the field, I’m glad to see the training staff being proactive about concussions and head injuries.

ADDENDUM the Fourth:
Pat is back on the sideline and looking fine, but out of the game.

As I said before, I hate to see him out of the game, but I’d hate more for him to suffer long term damage from playing with a concussion.

ADDENDUM the Fifth:
It’s now a seven point game.

24 – 17

ADDENDUM the Sixth:
Final = 24 – 17 WVU

ADDENDUM the Seventh:
Coming off the field they just asked Coach Stewart about Pat White, and he said although Pat said he was okay the trainer said no, so Coach Stewart said he’d never ever never put a player on the field when they could get hurt or cause long term damage.

That is awesome. Because no one’s long term health is worth a single game.

More playing with pictures. Feel free to move along if this bores the ever living snot out of you. Or feel free to force the conversation to something that interests you. It’s Friday, so it’s all good.

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You may not have know that something important happened last night.

The IgNobles were announced!

Here are some of the winners:

MEDICINE PRIZE. Dan Ariely of Duke University, USA, for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine.

PHYSICS PRIZE. Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.

LITERATURE PRIZE. David Sims of Cass Business School. London, UK, for his lovingly written study “You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations.”

I started Kat the other morning, and as he stared up at me I realized that he might actually be a manga cat: his face looked to be about 50% eyes.

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Why I Can’t Get Anything Done:

I just spent two &^@&!&@ hours fighting with PivotTables in Excel trying to group my data by year and having Excel tell me to piss off.

Why on earth do you have to copy data between Access and Excel and paste it as text only if you want to format dates as tables? Once I brought the damned date column into Excel I couldn’t do a THING with it to change the formatting.

I hate Access.

West Virginia is in a fiscally sound position to weather the Wall Street storm, said Gov. Joe Manchin.
…
“Our revenues are still exceeding our projections, which is strong in a volatile market,” the governor said Monday. “Like every other state, we won’t escape financial losses from this shakeout. But we’re in good shape to handle it.”

Here’s a quote I found particularly interesting:

“(Manchin) also noted that West Virginia’s banking laws are stricter than the rest of the nation. The state’s only bank failure during the crisis — Ameribank of Welch — was a result of lingering problems in that area from years ago, Manchin said.”

That lingering problem was embezzlement from the First National Bank of Keystone.

See also:
Manchin says his administration’s efforts to pay off nearly $1 billion in debt and the accumulation of $568 million in a rainy day fund have put the state in a good position.
Governor Manchin states, “There’s an old proverb that says it’s better to be careful a hundred times than be killed once.”

As much as I don’t care for Manchin and some of the things he’s tried to do (“Open for Business” anyone?) he has done some things very right. And contributing to the rainy day fun and getting the economy so we’re better off than other states is pretty impressive.

And it’s nice to know that as a state employee, it doesn’t look like job cuts are in the state’s future.

Anguna Cbbe checked her makeup in the rear view mirror. Her father griped at her whenever he caught her doing it, claiming that she’d kill herself, but he wasn’t here, and despite his protests of her impending doom by vanity, she only checked her makeup at red lights.

She moved the mirror back to see behind her, hung her hands over the steering wheel, and tilted her head back against the seat rest. It had been a very long day, and the evening didn’t look to be much better. She’d promised her best friend she’d go out for drinks with her new boyfriend, but she had an ugly feeling Betty was trying to set her up.

Again.

While she was musing about the last time Betty had tried this, the car behind her blared its horn. Despite her closed windows, she could hear the man in the car cursing her out. Sighing she put the car into gear and moved through the intersection. The car behind her jerked into the empty opposing lane, zoomed past her, and then cut sharply in front of her as traffic appeared around the corner.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered to herself as he slammed on his brakes. “I don’t need this shit today.” As they arrived at the next intersection she kept slowing down, and as he went through the intersection she turned the wheel sharply to the right escaped down a cross street.

“What an asshole,” she muttered as she turned left to parallel her previous route.

She ended up at the bar without further incident but her already dark mood had soured further. When she stepped into the dark bar it took her a few moments to see Betty waving from a booth in the back. She sighed when she saw two men sitting with Betty. Anguna recognized Bozz, Betty’s latest dish right off, but although the man sitting with his back to the door looked strangely familiar, she didn’t think she knew who he was.

When Anguna got to the table Betty jumped up to give her a hug. “Bozz bought a friend along, I hope you don’t mind!” Betty said the same thing every time she did this, and it aways worked out very badly. At times she wonder if Betty was secretly punishing her for some past indiscretion.

Then Anguna looked at the man sitting at the table. It was the asshole who’d cut her off in traffic. He jumped out and sidled over to her. “The name’s Durian. You can call me Durian Smooth,” he said, pronouncing the word with about seven Os in the middle.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” said Anguna.

Without a further word she turned on her heel, marched out the door to her car, drove home, and went to bed with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

Which do you prefer?

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