Enotes

The U.S. Postal Service says it will discontinue Saturday mail delivery, possibly as soon as this summer. Why stop with Saturday? I wouldn't mind not getting mail on Tuesdays or Thursdays, either. Mondays and Wednesdays I might be able to do without as well. So I guess just deliver mail to me on Fridays---maybe every other one. Have you looked at your mail these days? Is anything grabbing you? It seems that all we are for a bulk of this mail is to be the middle man between the sender and the landfill. How much mail doesn't even get opened? The question is asked everyday at our house---usually by me, since I'm the one not home during the day. "Anything good in the mail?" The question is a red herring, because what I really mean is, "Anything bad in the mail?" Let's face it, how much "good" mail is there, anyway? My question says "good," but what I really mean---and my wife is on the same wave length---is, anything b...

It was the swig of water seen 'round the world. Florida Senator Marco Rubio has caused quite a stir around the Internet (and the water cooler; sorry!) for an oddly-timed grab for a water bottle and a quick swig during his rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union speech. In a way, you have to feel for Rubio. It must have been a terrible feeling to know you're on national television and in dire need of water. But why wasn't Rubio's rebuttal pre-recorded? Everyone who is anyone in Washington gets an advanced copy of the president's SOTU address---especially the folks, you would think, who are charged with formulating the official retort. Instead, Rubio must have delivered his bit live---hence the frantic water grab. I used to be in local cable TV and watching Rubio's dry mouth dilemma reminded me of something comical (for me, at least) that happened during a live talk show. The guest was then-leader of the Michigan ACLU, Howard Simon. We start...

How much would you wager that a good portion of the fans who online voted the iron out of Monopoly and the cat in, have never played the game? The famous Parker Brothers game is nearly 80 years old, but who knows how much it's being played by those in their teens and early 20s---the demographic that never met an online poll/contest it didn't like? Regardless, it was announced today that, through an online vote using Facebook as its platform, toymaker Hasbro was dumping the iron token and adding a cat to the board game that Parker Brothers bought in 1935. Voting closed Tuesday night and the iron was the loser in a race that put the shoe, wheelbarrow and iron in a down-to-the-wire race for elimination. Meanwhile, the cat was the winner for inclusion in a five-token contest pitting it with a robot, a diamond ring, helicopter and guitar. "We put five new tokens out for our fans to vote on and there were a lot of fans of the many different tokens, but I think there wer...