This Little Piggy

Editors note: Depending on how big a nerd you are, you will love this post or be bored to tears.  At least its not about fantasy football.

In my family birthdays are kind of a big deal.  Not because we like getting older or getting presents, but because we like any excuse to be together, and of course there is food involved.  With the exception of five birthdays within five days from August 28 and September 1, our birthdays are pretty spread out through the year.  That has not always been the case.  When there were only ten of us, four birthdays were in September.  Further back, before my time, three of the five original members of our family were born in September (it help that two of them were twins).

Back when we were all kids, there were sixteen birthdays spread over nine months.  Technically it was only fifteen since there are twins in the family.  We were only missing May, October, and November   By the time the first two great grands were born, the family had grown to twenty-one, and we had birthdays in eleven months.  November was all that we lacked.  A November married into the family in 2004 and completed our collection.  I don't know if twenty-six is a typical number of birthdays to get to one in every month.  I ran an experiment on facebook to see.  It took twenty-five and thirty-six births on my two attempts.

Once we finally got a November, they kept coming.  Three of the last eight new family members were born in November including last Monday's birth.  January is tied with September for the most births at four.  October is the only month with just one birthday.  Since we have all twelve months covered, I think that we should now go for all thirty-one dates.  The first and twenty-first are the most common dates at three each.  Of course all three births on the first were in September.  If I remembered everyone's birthdate correctly, we still need 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 17, 19, 22, 26, and 31.  Anyone wanting to marry into our family would find it to their advantage to have been born on one of those dates.  If somehow our unborn descendants are reading this, try to be born on one of these dates.

My parents have five grandchildren who are collectively known as the Handful.  Some times, instead of calling them by their names, we will call them by their finger names: Pointer, Bird, Ring, Pinkie, and Thumb.  When the fifth Sandlin great grand was born, I named them the Other Hand.  That naming and numbering system worked fine for a year and a half until Monday when the youngest Sandlin was born.  Since all ten fingers have been taken, it is time to start counting on toes.  Unfortunately not all the toes have names.  The King Toe and Pinkie Toe do, but the middle three are nameless.  The only solution to the problem is to use the This Little Piggy Nursery Rhyme, but the question is, which one?  Does he Go to market or Want some corn?  I am inclined to choose the latter.  It is unlikely that we complete both feet, so I will probably keep counting on the same foot regardless of which side of the family the next great grad is born.

Discount Double Check

It was not my intention to write fantasy football posts two weeks in a row.  I realize that if I continue this trend I will drive away at least one of my loyal readers.  I would hate to do that since he is a large percentage of my readership.  Unfortunately this post had to be written, so please forgive me.

Those of you who follow me on the Twitters, @TodayPOMPOUS, know that on Sunday fantasy football was dead to me.  Then Monday night its reanimated corpse declared that it was still alive.  The story of how fantasy football was resurrected takes more than 140 characters, so I moved the story to my blog.

In week 9, I faced some tough match-ups.  My four opponents were a combined 22-10.  I was disappointed by my 2-2 record that weekend.  I won't bore you with the details here since you already read about them.  This week I expected things to go much easier.  My opponents were a lowly 10-26.

It started going bad as soon as the games began.  I got online right at kickoff time and learned that DeSean Jackson had been suspended for the game.  If I had checked the news just a couple of minutes earlier, I could have benched him.  It went down hill from there.  By the time that the early games ended on Sunday, all four of my teams were losing badly to vastly inferior teams.  To make matters worse Philadelphia was upset by Arizona which brought an end to my Survivor League season.

Monday night there remained a sliver of hope.  The Danville Platypi were losing by 6.17 with the Green Bay defense yet to play.  The Packers defense, which has been shaky much of the season, contained the leagues best running back and might have pitched a shutout if not for a muffed punt.  They scored 9 points which was enough for a 96.98-94.15 victory.

John Brown was in more desperate need on Monday down 35.62 points.  I thought that there might be a chance that Greg Jennings, Jordy Nelson, and Mason Crosby could combine for that much but it was unlikely.  Aaron Rodgers threw his first TD pass to Jennings and the second one to Nelson with a Crosby field goal in between.  When Rodgers threw his fourth TD to Nelson, I had nearly caught up.  By this point I was at work listening to the game on the radio.  I knew that Rodgers had been benched but I could not tell if Jennings and Nelson were still in the game.  The backup QB Matt Flynn ran in a three yard touch down for the final score of the game, and Crosby's sixth extra point gave me the lead.  I won 129.54-129.41.  The difference in our scores 0.13 is equal to 2.6 rushing or receiving yards, 6.5 passing yards, or 4.55 return yards.  I didn't have any karma voodoo working this week, so it had to be pure luck that I got just enough points to win.

ps. I could not think of a name for this post, so I named it for the commercial linked to Aaron Rodgers.  You should watch it.

My Name Is Shane

The fantasy version of the 1972 Miami Dolphins popped the cork on the champagne Monday night.  The Neptune Pirates suffered their first loss of the season this weekend.  This ended an eleven game winning streak dating back to last year's champions.  I now have to win out to top the 13-2 championship season of 2010.  I knew that this week was going to be the 8-1 Pirates most difficult test.  I was playing against the second place team, now 8-1 also, without Adrian Peterson, Matthew Stafford, and the newly acquired Calvin Johnson.  Thankfully the 8-0 NFL Green Bay Packers are still undefeated with a fourteen game winning streak that includes a Super Bowl win.  Hopefully they will keep the real 72 Dolphins from celebrating this year.

In other fantasy football news, on Saturday night I reminded my opponent in two leagues that he had not yet edited his lineup for the Sunday's games.  I am sure that he would have remembered it on his own, but that act of sportsmanship netted me enough karma to win both games.  In another league I did not show that same amount of sportsmanship and lost to a team that had two players in its lineup on their bye week.  Only one player on my team reached his projected points total.  I scored 44 points less than projected and lost by less than four points.  Karma giveth, and karma taketh away.

I've Got the Conch!

Once upon a time, I was one of those annoying people who read books.  I would say things like, "You haven't read A Tale of Two Cities," with equal parts surprise, pity, and superiority.  Actually, I said that this week.  Unfortunately I no longer read books.  As with all things that are left undone in my life, I blame the internet for this.  I can't be bothered to read some classic work of literature when I should be reading tweets.  I have only read one book this year.  Actually, I have read thirteen books, but twelve of them have been audio books, and eleven of those rereads.  My most recent reread was Lord of the Flies.

This was the perfect time for me to read this book.  The cast ranges from age six to twelve.  I have a six years old nephew and a twelve years old niece.  Obviously girls are different than boys, but I can imagine what her maturity and mindset would be like in a boy that age.  Often when children appear in books, they will behave just like adults would.  They are too smart, too rational, and, when Stephen King is writing about them, having too much sex.  I think Golding did a good job of capturing the youth of his characters.

If these children had watched Recess, they would have learned the dangers of mob mentality.  Instead, tragedy strikes their community.  This story contrasts rules vs. anarchy, duty vs. desire, and Bart vs. Nelson.  Oh, that last one was from The Simpsons LotF parody, Das Bus.  I got it from Netflix after I finished the book.  As a bonus, one of my favorite Homer lines was on that disc.  "Don't you hate Pants!"


So the children learned to function as a society, and eventually they were rescued by… oh lets say Moe.

Halloween

I spent the entire month of October trying to come up with a great Halloween costume.  By spent the entire month, I mean that it would cross my mind every couple of days.  Nothing came to mind so I continually put it off until later.  On the day before the Halloween party, I still had no costume idea.  It appeared that I would be one of those lame people who show up to the party with no costume.  I was watching the news that afternoon, and they mentioned that Occupy Wall Street would be a popular costume this year.  I immediately realized how easy this would be to pull off.  I bought a poster board at Kroger and Googled OWS signs, so that my protest would be authentic.  I was disappointed by my lack of hippie wear, but I made do as best I could.  I went to the party unshaven and without deodorant to simulate the unwashed masses protesting in the streets of New York.

Somehow I did not win the costume contest.  I have spent the last few days trying to figure out how I lost.  Here are possible explanations that I came up with.

1. I was black balled because people were tired of me winning every year.  At the last three parties I have two second places and a first place finish.  I don't think that my friends are that petty, so I ruled this out.

2. There were better costumes than mine.  Obviously that could never happen.

3. My friends have been brainwashed by Fox News into believing that OWS is evil.  While I suspect that some of my friends are Republican, I doubt that they are so easily manipulated as to fall for the Fox News rhetoric.  Though if they did drink the Fox News Kool-Aid, they might have thought my costume was very scary.

4. My friends don't watch the news and are unaware of how great my costume is.  I think this has to be the most likely answer.  I wouldn't watch the news if it didn't come on Comedy Central.

I guess I should have gone with by backup plan.  I could have shown up to the party naked and claimed to be Daniel Tosh.