So, apparently, an animated movie named Delgo opened the weekend of 12/12/08. I had never heard of it until I heard it made news… for being the biggest opening weekend flop of all time. It opened on nearly 2,200 screens and made only just over a half-million dollars. That’s not good!

This site, where I’m getting most of my info from, made an interesting point:

…the film pulled in less than $237 average per screen. Ouch. To give
that some perspective, another animated movie, Bolt, made an average of $2,382
per screen the same weekend and a small movie like Slumdog Millionaire made an
average of $12,873 per screen. Another way of looking at it is, Glitter’s
opening weekend made $2,414,596, Delgo made $511,920.

It had a big-name cast too. But, considering I never even heard of it, they obviously didn’t advertise for it at all. It also only got 4 stars on IMDB.

Source: That site and IMDB.

The “Con” in “Con Man” is short for “Confidence.”

The term goes back to 1849, where a man in New York City stole people’s watches by chatting with them until they gained confidence in him. The term was used in coverage of his trial.

Source: The article from the last post, then wiki.

Actually, there wasn’t a Ponzi in Happy Days. But if you mix Potsie and Fonzie you get something close.

A Ponzi Scheme is an illegal investment operation where the old investors are paid very high returns using the investments of new investors. It’s similar to a Pyramid scheme, though wikipedia goes into painful detail about the difference between the two.

Basically, people sign up for a deal that sounds too good to be true, and then they act surprised when they find out that it actually is too good to be true.

The term has been in the news a lot lately because Bernie Madoff, the former Chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange was running a major scam that ended with him losing over $50 Billion of his client’s money. As usual, in retrospect there were a ton of warning signs, but people were making fake money by the bucketful so no one cared.

BTW, the term “Ponzi Scheme”, as you’d expect, comes from a guy named Charles Ponzi who bilked his investors out of about $10 Million in 1920. His scheme involved International Postal Reply Coupons, which are apparently some type of universal stamp that are still in use today, especially among the amateur radio crowd.

Source: wiki

The McDouble is basically a McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger with only one slice of cheese instead of the regular two.

At the McDonald’s by my house it replaced the Double Cheeseburger on the Dollar Menu.

Although I disagree with a business giving us less for more when their sales are through the roof, I typically removed a good portion of the cheese on the Double Cheeseburger anyway, so I won’t cry about the change.

I was wondering where this clever phrase came from and got some help from deadkytty9.

deadkytty9Feb 12 2007, 12:01 PM

From here:
“Since the early 1500s there have been similar expressions to
describe things difficult to find: “like finding a needle in a meadow of hay”
and “like finding a pin’s head in a cartload of hay.” In the mid-1800s the
expression became “needle in a haystack.”"

And from here:
“needle in a haystack – impossible search for something relatively tiny,
lost or hidden in something that is relatively enormous – the first use of this
expression, and its likely origin, is by the writer Miguel de Cervantes, in his
story Don Quixote de la Mancha written from 1605-1615. According to Bartlett’s,
the expression ‘As well look for as needle in a bottle of hay’ (translated from
the original Spanish) appears in part III, chapter 10. ‘Bottle’ is an old word
for a bundle of hay, taken from the French word botte, meaning bundle. Brewer
(1870-94 dictionary and revisions) lists the full expression – ‘looking for a
needle in a bottle of hay’ which tells us that the term was first used in this
form, and was later adapted during the 1900′s into the modern form.”

MythBusters had a clever episode on this. They suggested that if you really do need to find a needle in a haystack, try using a metal detector or other strong magnet, or throw the haysack in a swimming pool. The needle will sink, while the hay will float!

Source: This forum and Wiki

1. The onion rings suck. 0 out of 10 stars. Don’t waste your time.
2. The Fried Zucchini is pretty good (so I’m told). But personal experience dictates that you have to let them cool down before taking a bite.
3. They have a really cool new touch screen order system. I remember Arby’s pioneering a touch screen do-it-yourself ordering system about 15 years ago, but it didn’t catch on. This one was actually really cool. It was very fast and intuitive. They also used every opportunity to cross-sell me other things (“would you like Cheese on that”, “Don’t forget dessert!”) and I decided to add cheese and bacon to my burger based on their suggestions.

   The good thing about the diy ordering is that you don’t have to deal with the typically sub-standard fast food employees. That and you know that your order was input correctly. Where the retail chains drop the ball on self-checkout is that the process is infuriatingly slow. This system was not slow at all.

   I should mention that the employees at this particular Carl’s Jr. are actually really nice and above average for the fast food industry, so next time I’ll probably just go to the register. But I am a sucker for new fangled technology.

noun – an admirer or lover of the arts 2) a person having a superficial interest in an art or a branch of knowledge : dabbler

(dill-uh-taunt)

Source: m-w

adjective – 1. Indigestion 2. Ill Humored.
(diss-pep-tick)

Source: m-w via Mr. Dilettante

noun – Slaughterhouse
(ab-uh-twar)

source: m-w via Mr. Dilettante

That would be Heath and Deborah Campbell, the two geniuses who named their kids the following:

• Adolf Hitler Campbell
• JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell
• Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell

Why did they name their kid Adolf Hitler?

Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because “no one else in the world would have that name.”

Standesamt anyone?

Source: Fox News