A Tale of Two Readings

I just reread A Tale of Two Cities for the first time since high school, when the fact that it was assigned reading made it a chore, albeit one in which I enjoyed the classroom discussions, and especially, the introduction to Dickens' vivid characterizations. It's intriguing to me that several of the characters and the humorous personalities are what I'd recalled, decades later; the horrific, terroristic elements of the plot I'd either partly forgotten or blocked out altogether.

While reminiscing about that class, an absurd tangent occurred to me: does anyone still remember the Lay's Potato Chips television ad, maybe from the early 1970s, showing French revolutionaries challenging a miscreant to eat just one, delicious potato chip, with a silhouette of the top of a guillotine looming above a hilltop in the background? "He tried, but he couldn't do it," sings the chorus with a knowing smile, as the knife is raised yonder. Yeah. Traumatized for life by that one, I was. "Damn the man who cut this tree," said Sterling North as a precocious 11-year old to an unidentified woodsman, in Rascal; "Eff you, pal," I say to the unidentified Madison Avenue jokester who gave me the heebie-jeebies when I was 11.

Some confront history in a museum. I confront it in the salted snack aisle.

Of course, the reality was far worse. The horror of the age is bludgeoned home by Dickens through artful, awe-filled repetition, as if to say, "It was terrible. Really, bloody terrible. Really, really, REALLY bloody terrible. How terrible, you ask? Let me repeat...".  You're in for a rough ride in the rumble seat when your worst fears are depicted by a crafty novelist who's paid by the word.

Blues Brothers 2015

Downtown Milwaukee prepares for the filming
of the new "Blues Brothers" movie sequel

[photo credit: @danteswardrobe]

50-50 Raffle

It had to come down to the Brewers and Cardinals, didn't it?

Last year (2011), it was a race for the NL Central Division title, won by the Milwaukee Brewers, followed by a rematch in the NL Championship Series, won by the bad guys.  I mean, excuse me, the St. Louis Cardinals.  (Sorry.  Force of habit.)

This year (2012), it's a race for the second NL Wild Card spot.  Doesn't sound quite as compelling, does it?  Sure, the Wild Card teams have made the playoffs, their possibility of a Galactic Championship still alive.  But what have they won, really?

A coin toss.  A lottery ticket.  A 50-50 raffle.

Random chance.

The Brewers sell 50-50 raffle tickets every home game at Miller Park, with 50% of the proceeds going to the raffle winner and 50% going to the Brewers Community Foundation.  That's different.  That's a win-win. That's the Law of Large Numbers, the outcome roughly predictable over a season. 

This is win-lose.  This is playing 162 major league games in order to subject yourself to a coin toss to see if you go home in shock.  Make no mistake, a single play-in game is a coin toss.  You could be eliminated on the basis of an injury, an umpiring call, a bad hop.  Even if you've won 10 more regular season games than your Wild Card opponent, as the Atlanta Braves might this season, you could go home in three hours.  Even if, as the Brewers are hoping, you tunnel your way out of a disappointing first half with a maniacal stretch drive that lasts for weeks, you could lose one ball in the lights and go home.  Even before your fans see a single home playoff game, scalp one triple-priced ticket, wave one terricloth towel for the cameras, you could be done.

The Wild Card round needs to be a Best of Three elimination series.  Even the College World Series, with far fewer regular season games determining the participants, has a loser's bracket.

I hear your objections. "There's no time on the television calendar!" say football-besotten television sports executives, and those who carry their water.  To which I reply: Really?  Two days, not possible?  Two fewer split-squad games in the spring?  You can't drive your Jag back from Florida two days earlier?

"The excitement of a single, sudden-death game trumps all!"  These are the people who think a penalty shoot-out in hockey or penalty kicks to decide a soccer contest make for superior television to a clutch goal with time expiring in overtime.

"Teams play crucial elimination games in every round!"  Yes, but not in Game 1.  Baseball is an ebb and flow, the build-up of a season -- or a playoff series -- to a climax.  It's seeing if a slumping player can pull out of a slump just once in October.  It's needing several members of a starting rotation to succeed, not just a single ace.  It's planning relievers over a multiple-game series in order not to overextend and overuse them.  It's enjoying prolonged excellence and series-long narratives.  The two-team battle leading to a deciding Game 5 or Game 7 enhances the week-long drama.  Those elimination games mean something more, at least to the discerning sports fan, than simply deciding who advances.

Moreover, imagine the lower season-long investment in player payroll that many baseball owners will likely commit to if the most positive result they can foresee from competing is a 50-50 coin toss.  In MBA-speak, that's like slashing the expected value of having a good team by one-half.  Owners like Pittsburgh's Bob Nutting might never invest in an A.J. Burnett on the free agent market again.

Make a deal with you, Major League Baseball executives: if MLB agrees to expand the Wild Card round to Best of Three, I'll agree that you can cut the MLB League Championship Series back to a Best of Five.  Fair enough?  Just keep your hands off the Best of Seven World Series, alright?

We're all reasonable people here.  We all want what's best for the game.  Like everyone else in the game, from the Commissioner's Office to the Player's Association to the networks, we can all choose to honor Major League Baseball's time-honored motto, courtesy of Red Green:

I'm a man, but I can change.  If I have to.  I guess.

Whither the Bee?

I finished a book last night!  And the crowd goes crazy!

This is not news, but you should see my reading pile.  My backlog has grown to a height that would cause my mountain-climbing sister to pause before considering a summit attempt.  Parental pass-alongs, estate sales, library sales, and Goodwill stores are all my undoing, as is that evil American Council of the Blind thrift store in West Allis.  Boswell Book Company on N. Downer Street suckers me in with author talks by the likes of Craig Thompson and John Scalzi; I may sneak out without a $24.95 autographed hardcover in hand, but the pesky bargain shelf ambushes me on the way to the door.  Curiosity killed the cat, but it's burying me alive.

You'd think, then, that when I finish an amiable read like Samantha Bee's I Know I Am, But What Are You, I would instantly fling it back through the portal into the ocean of resale print whence it came, the better to make room for its successors.  However, I'm a cheapskate.  If I've spent 50 or 89 cents on a volume of inspirationally snarky personal essays for which, in an earlier, pre-abundance era, I might have shelled out $2.98 plus $3.49 shipping from the Edward R. Hamilton catalog, it feels like I've turned a profit.

What to do, then, with this exemplar of the epistolary, this Woodstock of wit?  I resell some medium-priced books on Amazon.com, but few popular titles sell for more than a literal penny.  Giving the book to my sister-in-law, who earlier had giggle-snorted her way through David Sedaris despite her Christian upbringing, would be an option; but with Ms. Bee's chapter on rude characters who expose themselves to the author on a recurring basis as if she were a perv magnet, this seems unwise.  That's before we even get to her confession of releasing a psychopathic, rapist guinea pig into her basement with the cats.

I decided at last to stage a ninja attack under cover of darkness and donate the book to one of the Little Free Libraries that have sprouted in our city, and many others, in recent months.  As my Beloved Spousal Unit has described in her blog, Dante's Wardrobe, the Little Free Library movement is a casually organized community resource provided by private citizens for the benefit of their neighbors and neighborhood.  It's a friendly sharing of books over the back fence, only the back fence is now on a prominent street corner.  The collection is a bit spotty, but you've got to love the due date.  It is possible, Dear Reader, that one or two items from our local giveaway spots may have found their way back into our home, adding to my personal Magic Mountain.  Oh, what foul cruelty Fortuna has spun to me today!

Samantha Bee, her guinea pig, and her murderous cats are now lurking inside the box at N. 52nd and W. Vine, waiting to pounce on a curious, bypassing pedestrian.  Neighbors, be forewarned!

A Clearer Vision

As a public service, My Two Innings today announces a revolutionary, five-step process for glasses-wearers to increase vision, reduce headaches and eyestrain, and improve personal disposition -- all in less than one minute, all without a prescription.

No, this is not a LASIK testimonial. Rather, after 45 years as a card-carrying, prescription-packing myopic, I've finally figured out how to clean my glasses. Really, really clean them. Listen, children, to my story.

Bane is not a Batman villain but the irritation that arises when one attempts to focus on the world through greasy, gritty, grubby, sweaty spectacles. Summertime is the worst.

Especially for those who look at computer screens for a living, the quest for a truly reliable cleaning method is endless. I've constantly yearned to restore my glasses to their original refractive clarity. I've dreamed of viewing the world through pristine, crystalline lenses, the way they come from the optician shop with the Magic Cloth.

I've tried the Magic Cloth. The Magic Cloth is pretty good. My way is better.

It's a five-step process. Skip any one step, and you condemn yourself to a lifetime of a heartache far worse than psoriasis. I might be exaggerating, but only a little. I might be a little OCD about this. Whatever.

1. The Application

Grasping your specs by the frame lightly, from the top and bottom edges, spritz your favorite glasses-cleaning solvent on each side of each lens. Windex, Glass Plus, or that clear stuff that the receptionist with the bad haircut sells you when you go in to get your new glasses prescription will all work well. You don't have to spray on a living room-window dose until it's dripping; a light mist that covers the lenses evenly is what you're after.

2. The Wipe

After waiting a few seconds, use your clean-ish thumb and forefinger to rub each lens lightly, smearing the solvent around the front and back of each lens with a light pinching motion.

3. The Rinse

Rinse the solvent off all lens surfaces at a convenient, nearby sink under a stream of regular tapwater from the faucet.

4. The Re-application

Here's the kicker: respray your lenses, front and back. Granted, it seems wasteful to use two doses of solvent per cleaning, but if you follow this procedure exactly, I promise you'll make it back in career earnings and reduced aggravation. Besides, wash-rinse-repeat is as American as Uncle Fester.

5. The Cloth

It can be the Magic Cloth. It can be a clean handkerchief. It can be a tissue from the box. It can be the back of a clean t-shirt from the pile of laundry that you brought up from the basement and dumped in your office because your Beloved Spousal Unit has already gone to bed. The beauty of the five-step process is that it doesn't much matter what cloth you use to perform the Final Lens Rubdown [note to self: new band name?], so long as it's not slathered with motor oil or sunscreen.

That's it. That's all there is to it. You're no longer looking at the world through factory windows. You've got your vision back. You can see!

Go forth and enjoy your new life. You can thank me later.

Neverread

Someone else will have to write the definitive review of Neil Gaiman's darkly comic fantasy novel Neverwhere, for I didn't make it past page seventy.

That's not Gaiman's fault. Neverwhere is a perfectly entertaining story, at least so far, with enough colorful whimsy and clever lines to fill a Monty Python movie. There's an Arthur Dent-type urban everyman as protagonist, a mysterious damsel in distress, two Looney Tunes villains whose urbane, Dickensian dialogue only heightens their cartoonish menace, a host of Doctor Dolittle-like transgressions of the animal-human communication barrier, and enough impressionistic descriptions of London proper and the London underground to fill a Fodor's guide.

To be sure, I'm not usually one for the fantasy genre. Fiction is already unreal enough for me; fantasy fiction seems like overegging the pudding. Moreover, having seen "Stardust" on the big screen and a recent, Neil Gaiman-penned "Doctor Who" episode on the small screen, I think I get Gaiman's recurring meme: normal meets fantastical at a mysterious frontier, to both scary and wonderous effect, à la Terry Gilliam. The spooky, semi-occult themes of fantasy lit don't often grab me -- but that's not what stopped me from reading this light, slightly subversive thriller in mid-noir.

Nor can I articulate any particular objection I had to Roy Blount, Jr.'s Hail, Hail, Euphoria!, the noted humorist's personal, crafty, scene-by-scene explication of the Marx Brothers classic flick, "Duck Soup", that kept me from finishing that book; nor can I recall why An Object of Beauty, Steve Martin's amiable novel of the modern art collecting world, failed to capture my eyeballs for more than a couple of chapters, for it too looked promising; as did a fascinating historical treatment of the New York City art world, The Pop Revolution by the late Alice Goldfarb Marquis.

I actually did finish The Year of the Hare, a wry picaresque tale set in Finland that became a touchstone of the 1970s back-to-nature movement. In truth, however, Arto Paasilinna's symbolism-laden allegory was less than 200 pages long and super-simple reading; it's one of those Euro-fables that your foreign language teacher might have assigned to your tenth grade class, were it not already in English. Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou, a starkly riotous and ribald African novel of similar brevity and simplicity, comprising a series of low episodes told to a street-smart Congolese bartender and relayed in his purported diaries, deserved a much better fate in my hands than it received, but halfway through fell victim to my all-too-brief attention span and manic library habits.

Therein lies the tale. Each trip to the public library is a festival of eyes-bigger-than-stomach reading avarice. The ritual begins with the guilt- and sadness-inducing return of a big bag o' books that I haven't even begun to read, despite initial excitement, earnest intentions, one or two online renewals, and a grace period, along with perhaps two or three books that I speed-read through page twenty or fifty in the last hour of their due date, just to get the sense of what I would be missing, before dropping them into the slot. There! Now I can focus on the two or three checked-out books still at home, left behind as it were, a sensibly small number of items awaiting my undivided attention. Naturally, as long as I've already spent the gas money to return the others, I'll just take a quick peek at the New Books section by the front door...and two and a half armloads later, I'm on my way.

Once home, I'm doomed, pile-driven to distraction by a looming, unread stack of erudition and expert storytelling on the oval side table in the living room, the defined check-out period for each item establishing an anxiety-inducing expiration date. There's compound guilt, of course: so long as I'm not reading them, I'm not experiencing the cozy, enlightened life of writerly illumination that I'd imagined they would confer upon me when I checked them out; so long as they're in my possession, I'm preventing another equally delusional County Library cardholder from checking them out with similar earnest intent. The cycle repeats.

Only one way to break this pernicious recurrence, this wretched "Groundhog Day" scenario, this Fortuna-thon: discover a new musical infatuation on YouTube to absorb my restless mental energies, and return all the books. As it turns out, they have CDs at the library, too.

"X-U" Too, Buddy!

Word came last night that K.Q., creator of alternative worlds and a college radio friend, has suffered a small stroke. His demeanor remains feisty and humorous; he later posted on Facebook, "I'll still beat you in Scrabble if you don't make me use my left hand."

Have I been called out?

With K.Q. in mind, this seems an excellent time to disclose my burgeoning Scrabble habit -- possibly an addiction by now. (Yes, I know I'm supposed to use the ® symbol after each instance of the word Scrabble. Let's pretend I did.)

I have two principal enablers: my Beloved Spousal Unit, who challenges me routinely and defeats me regularly in our epic series of spirited analog contests ("You're going down, Tile-Boy!"), and Pogo.com, a multi-user gaming site that is the licensed host, promoter, and operator of the "official" online version of Scrabble.

(If you think I'm shilling here, please be advised that I am not an obsolete English coin, nor do I own a bloody sock. Ahem.)

The two Scrabble experiences are different. Keeping our rivalry casual and friendly -- the usual trash-talking at kickoff time notwithstanding -- Beloved Spousal Unit and I rely upon Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed. as our handy reference. Utterances such as "A-H", "E-R" and "U-M" are old friends, and I've inherited a familiarity with the wonders of "J-O" and "Q-I" from my Scrabble-playing parents. These are all fair game according to Merriam-Webster.

Subsequently, however, my overconfidence in thinking I'd become a bona fide Scrabble person led me online to Pogo.com, where the game site's Scrabble-playing 'bot -- and the carbon-based life-forms that frequent the Pogo.com community, I might add -- immediately confronted me with nuggets of rare ore such as "A-A", "O-D", and "X-U". A thorough knowledge of two- and three-letter words is essential for a full and healthy life, granted, but "X-U"? What the bleep?

Turns out, a xu (n.) is a Vietnamese coin. Not just any Vietnamese coin, but a formerly minted Vietnamese coin, as obsolete nowadays as the English shilling (or the word "nowadays"). The plural of xu is xu, too. All of which is completely irrelevant, of course; the only thing that matters is that "X-U" somehow snuck into the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, 4th Ed., the standard reference used for online Scrabble. To the automated 'bot, "X-U" is as good as "C-E-N-T"; just another allowable permutation of the 26 letters of the alphabet, hence, just as likely to appear depending on the game situation. It's a great way to use two inconvenient letters in the same turn while increasing your vocabulary, thereby impressing and angering your friends.

With an arsenal full of "A-R", "P-E", and "U-T", as well as the aforementioned "X-U", I now feel vaguely qualified to respond in kind to Recovering Carbon-Based Unit K.Q.'s all-comers challenge: "You're going down, Tile-Boy!"

(Please don't hurt me.)

Confidential to Classmate Now Ragging Me for Posting Zero Recent Blog Entries

Why don't we just call it...one.

A Cheshire Cat, With Wings

Andrew Weiland of BizTimes Milwaukee posted an article today about the post-merger rebranding of Milwaukee-based Midwest Airlines as Frontier Airlines: "Only the Cookie Remains".

Midwest had some great amenities in its heyday as Midwest Express: 2x2 leather seating, enough legroom for actual human persons, and real meals featuring real food on real tablecloths. With direct flights that avoided an O'Hare connection, Midwest truly was, as the slogans went, "Milwaukee's Hometown Airline" offering "The Best Care in the Air."

It was a wonderful experience. Passengers were happy cats. Clearly, it couldn't last.

One by one, the amenities disappeared as airline price competition and a moribund travel economy, post-9/11, brought cost-cutting imperatives and forced Midwest to consider consolidation. The company's Board of Directors rebuffed a takeover bid from AirTran Airways, only to sell soon thereafter to Republic Airways, which had also bought Denver-based Frontier Airlines.

Everyone seems relieved that Midwest's fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies, customarily handed out to passengers during the descent, will continue to be part of the customer experience as the fleet is repainted in Frontier's colors. Really? Was it only about the cookies, all along?

The smile may remain, but this cat's disappeared. Like Grizabella, only time will tell if she has another life left in her.

A "Grammar Revolution", Close Quote

Astute readers of this blog will notice my fastidious habit of flouting one of the long-standing rules of grammar, boldly and intentionally.

(In addition to my use of snappy sentence fragments instead of sentences, that is.)

To wit: I cannot -- will not! -- place a comma, period, or other punctuation before a closing quotation mark if it is not part of the title, word, or phrase being signified in the first place.

This goes whether the referenced item is an actual title or merely a "gaggle of words" which, if you were to "speak aloud", you would "enunciate archly" while holding up two "waggling fingers" on each hand.

To illustrate, here are some examples from previous posts:

      Grammatical but Dumb: Scrabble People watch Patrick McGoohan in
          "Secret Agent."
      Much, Much Better: Scrabble People watch Patrick McGoohan in
          "Secret Agent".

Dagnabbit, if the producers had wanted to call the show "Secret Agent." with a period at the end of the title, they would have called it that!

      Grammatical but Dumb: The Dresden Dolls describe their niche as
          "Brechtian Punk Cabaret."
      Much, Much Better: The Dresden Dolls describe their niche as
          "Brechtian Punk Cabaret".

If Hal Prince had included a period at the end of the word "Cabaret", Liza Minnelli would have come to a full stop in mid-chorus. We'd never have heard her call us "Old Chum". How tragic!

      Grammatical but Dumb: I know how to spell and pronounce
          "Schenectady," "Schaghticoke," and "Rensselaer."
      Much, Much Better: I know how to spell and pronounce
          "Schenectady", "Schaghticoke", and "Rensselaer".

No Rensselaer-educated computer programmer would dream of placing commas that separate instances of listed string variables inside the quotation marks that demarcate those string variables! Can you say "Syntax Error"? Hel-lo, World!!!

Clearly, Strunk and White never read Programming for Dummies.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this revolution -- Our Revolution! -- Your Revolution! -- is gaining momentum! The need is urgent; the time has come. Our representatives in Washington must hear our voices. With your letters and, more importantly, generous contributions to the Committee to Avoid Misplacing Punctuation (CAMP), we will turn Congress in our favor on this "crucial issue".

(Right after it deals with the financial crisis and split infinitives, that is.)

Scrabble People & Upwords People

I was raised with affection by Scrabble People. Perhaps you know the type: research scientists, math homework helpers, bridge players, dictionary readers, Tchaikovsky listeners, amateur genealogists. Scrabble people are all about the information.

My beloved spousal unit is an Upwords Person. In Upwords, unlike Scrabble, all tiles count for one point only, but you can stack tiles atop one another, creating three-dimensional patterns. Upwords people are all about the patterns.

Scrabble People feel best about making high score. Upwords People feel best about connecting two previous plays on the board with a really clever word.

Scrabble People use their knowledge. Upwords People use their imagination.

Scrabble People email. Upwords People create greeting cards out of fancy art paper.

Scrabble People do the acrostic puzzle in the Sunday New York Times. Upwords People play rummy on their Palm Pilot.

Scrabble People attend the ballet. Upwords People go to the ballpark.

At the ballpark, Scrabble People keep score with a mechanical pencil and keep the pitch count. Upwords People keep score with art markers, color in the diamonds, and doodle in the margins.

To relax, Scrabble People read history and historical fiction. Upwords People create three-dimensional craft projects.

In the Old West of the 19th Century, Upwords People organized and ran the Pony Express, risking life and limb to get the mail to the destination, over dusty trails and through dangerous territory, by sheer determination and persistence. Scrabble People invented the telegraph.

You want Scrabble People to design your nuclear power plants. You want Upwords People to organize the emergency response.

Scrabble People like routine. Upwords People like road trips.

Scrabble People subscribe to magazines. Upwords People buy 'zines at the newsstand.

Scrabble People file their taxes online in mid-February. Upwords People mail in the forms on April 15th. In the evening. The late evening.

Both Scrabble People and Upwords People like "Monty Python's Flying Circus", which is one reason they end up together. Scrabble People like the witty, verbal sketches of John Cleese and Graham Chapman. Upwords People prefer the more cinematic Michael Palin and Terry Jones sketches as well as Terry Gilliam cartoons. (Nobody's sure about Eric Idle.)

Scrabble People dig Groucho Marx. Upwords People dig Harpo Marx.

Scrabble People watch Patrick McGoohan in "Secret Agent". Upwords People watch Patrick McGoohan in "The Prisoner".

At the core, I'm still a Scrabble Person. Being with an Upwords Person, however, has truly enriched my life. Besides, she's the one with the Ph.D.! "Be seeing you" on April 15th at the post office -- right after the ballgame!

Suburban Cowboy

Few retail clothing establishments are more fully realized in concept, and match my sartorial style less, than Shepler's, the Western-wear outfitter. I stopped in their Denver Tech Center location today to investigate.

First observation: the store is in the Denver Tech Center, nestled among the gleaming, high-tech office buildings filled with computers and surrounded by parking lots. The RTD light rail trains serving the congested I-25 commuter corridor travel north and south, only eight or ten lanes of freeway traffic away from the store. I've heard Denver called a cow town before, but there isn't a dogie to punch for miles around.

Fully 20% of the floor space holds boots, in five basic form-factors: work boots, steel-toed work books, low-cut cowboy boots, high-cut cowboy boots, and absurdly high-cut cowboy boots. Any higher, and they'd touch the rim of your cowboy hat; which naturally they can also sell you, in sizes ranging from Huge to Even More Xtra Huge. The Texas insult "All hat, no cattle" could have originated at Shepler's.

Then we have the jeans: boot cut, cowboy cut, slim fit, classic fit, relaxed fit, pre-shrunk, unshrunk, pre-faded, unfaded, black, blue, dark brown, tan, Levi's, Wranglers, etc. Surely these are the same, authentic selections that were available to Centennial State homesteaders in 1876.

Racks of polyester plaid shirts with faux-pearl snap-fasteners in lieu of buttons were on "Clearance", marked all the way down to $24.95. By the way, what's the deal with those snaps on the front of Western-style shirts? It seems to me they'd be awfully cold against your belly tattoos, especially in winter, while you're out riding fences, corralling your herd, or oiling your six-gun in preparation for the climactic shootout.

Speaking of firearms, I saw an advertisement for local shooting lessons posted on the community bulletin board, next to the private-party notices of Winnebagos and quarterhorses for sale. The logo on the shooting lessons ad depicted a human skull with two crossed rifles. Yee-haw!

I walked out of Shepler's empty-handed, steered out of the parking lot past the steakhouse that looks like a funeral home, and motored back onto the interstate. You might take this cowboy out of the Northeast, but you'll have to pry the L.L. Bean catalog from his cold, dead fingers.

How about Blog-opoly?

I bought a Monopoly game the other day. To get to it on the shelf, I had to browse past Star Trek-opoly, Star Wars-opoly, MLB- NFL- and NBA-opoly, the Batman, Beatles, Boston Red Sox, and Chicago White Sox editions, and the Christmas Story edition (no doubt a heartwarming holiday tale of mortgaging your toy train while it's still under the tree to buy a luxury condo). There's a Monopoly for Indianapolis and one for Minneapolis, and in the Superman edition, you can buy up Metropolis. There's the Lord of the Rings edition, the Harley Davidson edition, and an edition for seemingly every syndicated TV show from the past 30 years. M*A*S*H-opoly, The Simpsons-opoly, SpongeBob SquarePants-opoly. Even I Love Lucy-opoly. "No, Ricky, stop! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"

I bought a computer book the other day. To get to it on the shelf, I had to browse past Visual Basic for Dummies, Windows for Dummies, MacOS for Dummies, Linux for Dummies, Java for Dummies, C, C++, C# for Dummies (I didn't see the Bette Midler edition, C-Minus for Dummies), ASP, PHP, SQLServer, Oracle, and SAP for Dummies. There were Excel for Dummies, Access for Dummies, Word for Dummies, PowerPoint for Dummies, and to provide equal time, OpenOffice for Dummies. There were references for Dummies on computer languages I've never heard of and ones I wish I hadn't. Reeling, I sought refuge in the other aisles and found that the entire target market for retail book consumers now comprises nothing but Dummies. This was likely the conclusion of some publishing executive who'd read Market Research for Dummies on his lunch hour.

Only one place to go with all this madness: "Dummies-opoly". The first one to trade in four independent bookstores and erect a hotel on Amazon.com wins.