With Apologies to Shel Silverstein: Sarah Palin's "Where The Bridge to Nowhere Ends"

There's a place where honesty gets lost in the wind
Blown away by politicians' lies.
But there was one clear-voiced maverick
And to the straight-talking truth he would always stick...
And then he threw it all away with his running-mate pick
From where the bridge to nowhere ends.

From convention to election in every speech
To the role of reformer she pretends:
Pork barrel pet projects she claims to have slowed
Says she stood up against earmarks, but that's a big stinking lode.
Bragged she stopped the wasteful spending, but the money still flowed
To where the bridge to nowhere ends.

"Thanks, but no thanks," must be some sort of code
For "I'm keeping the money that I'm entitled and owed!"
True, she stopped the bridge--but she's still building the road
To where the bridge to nowhere ends.

Created By Marketing Executives With Too Much Downtime, Part 3

Today Borders books sent out an e-mail to their mailing list that contained a series of coupons and sales notices. One of those sales qualifies as...

The Saddest Direct Marketing Campaign Offer of All Time

Here, for your review, is the offer in that qualifies Borders for this dubious distinction.




Offering consumers 5 romance novels for the price of 4 (and making the offer a week before Valentines Day) crosses the line from "meeting the consumer's untapped needs" to "exploiting the consumer's human frailty at a time of emotional weakness."

Study: The Predictive Qualities of Rob Reiner's Stand By Me

An Empirical Analysis Comparing the Futures of the Actor Wil Wheaton and the Character "Gordie Lachance" from Stand By Me


Finding Number 1: Stand By Me achieves mixed results in predicting the appearance of a 30-something Wil Wheaton.

a. In his adulthood, Wil Wheaton neither looks nor sounds like Richard Dreyfuss, the actor who portrayed the older version of Gordie Lachance.

b. Based on the appearances of both actors at the time of this study in 2008, Wil Wheaton continues to strongly resemble John Cusack who portrayed Gordie Lachance's brother Denny in the 1986 film.


Finding Number 2: There is a strong correlation between the career paths of the performer and the character

a. The real life Wil Wheaton and the fictional Gordie Lachance both grow up to be professional writers. Mr. Wheaton does not yet appear to have the same level of success as Mr. Lachance as seen in the film's coda. (It is estimated that Mr. Lachance's literary acclaim is on par with Stephen King's.) However, Mr. Wheaton does appear to be more technically adept than his on-screen counterpart in that, unlike Mr. Lachance, he would most certainly know that he should save his manuscripts before turning off his computer.

Pop Quiz: Is This Book by Stephen King or Jane Austen?

Section One: Books Named After Women
1. Emma
2. Carrie
3. Lady Susan
4. Lisey's Story
5. Christine
6. The Beautiful Cassandra

Section Two: Books Named After Groups of Women
7. The Woman in the Room
8. The Little Sisters of Eluria
9. The Three Sisters

Section Three: Books Who's Names Sound Like New Calvin Klein Fragrances
10. Different Seasons
11. Persuasion
12. Desperation

Section Four: Books Named After Places
13. The House on Value Street
14. Northanger Abbey
15. Mansfield Park
16. The Marsten House

Section Five: Books About This And That
17. The Begger and the Diamond
18. Sense and Sensibility

Highlight the "invisitext" below to check you answers.
1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 15, and 18 are all by Jane Austen. The others are by Stephen King.