I used to participate in these 'Prizes or Cash!' things, with terrible results.  The idea changed a little bit over the decades, but when I was doing it, your goal was to sell as much lousy overpriced stationary as possible.  In return, you'd either make a dollar per item sold, or gain a point towards prize rewards.  You actually could make out pretty well if you had a large, wealthy family willing to buy loads of crap.  I had a large family, and I suppose we weren't paupers, but very few were willing to spend thirty dollars on pink envelopes with elephants stamped on the corners.

click the picture to see the full-sized version.

For me, the best part was living in a state of denial and anticipating all the great prizes I'd surely earn myself.  I couldn't begin to count the hours I used to spend staring at this page and picking out what I considered the 'top five.'  Try it out, it's somehow therapeutic.  Here's my five…

1) Atari System: My older brothers had an Atari for as long as I can remember, and I don't think there was ever a point where I wasn't able to play it.  Still, it was always my first choice anyway.  I think it had something to do with the fact that the other prizes mainly focused on fishing equipment and baseball gloves.

2) Tyco Cliffhangers Racing Set: If I could've gotten a cool race track just from selling holiday cards and address labels, I would've been at peace with the world.

3) G.I. Joe Electric Train & Battle Set: I have no idea what it is, but great things happen when you mix trains and battles.

4) Senior Chemistry Lab: I used to get a chemistry set pretty much yearly, but never used one for anything but decorative purposes.  In the back of my mind, grand bomb-making plans always swam around quietly.  Plus, I figured the set would help out if I ever needed to turn my skin green.

5) Nylon Backpack Tent: I always chose this in my 'Top 5.'  I never realized that the thing would be shipped unassembled, and my real goal was just to pick the prize that'd come in the largest box.  For a time, the only way I could ascertain my worth to the world was by the size/amount of the mail I got.  I didn't like getting beat up, so this wasn't something I'd casually talk about in public.  Forget I said it.

Now you try it.  There's a new article up, about Clowny Crayons.  I'm sure only a few of you remember 'em, but I didn't think the site would ever be complete without a tribute to my favorite crayon.  I'm sure you can understand.

Fortune Teller Miracle Fish promise to reveal your private sexual inclinations in ways no one can understand.  In reality, they're little red fish-shaped pieces of thin plastic that curl up in certain ways depending on the heat source they're currently on top of.  For the three of you who've never heard of these fishies, the gimmick is that they'll curl up into some random position when placed in the palm of your hand.  After seeing what position it forms into, you referred to a stupid chart to find out what kind of lover you were.  Truth be told, the Fortune Teller Fish is how I was exposed for having a crush on Bailey from WKRP when I was six-years-old.  I've never been able to live it down, and now that I've got another FTF in my possession, I will soon extract revenge by feeding it to an alien tiger.  First, let's see the chart:

According to this, no matter how the fish curls up, there's one thing no one can deny: you've got a pretty weak emotional gamut.  But you do have a plastic fish, so things kinda balance out in the end.

Matching the position of the fish with the chart, we can deduce that the person who owns that hand up above is fickle.  Now that's really amazing.  Magic personified.  There's just one problem…

My broken ecosphere, once home to four small shrimp and a couple of sticks in purified water, seems to be displaying the same inner fickleness.  So either a broken ecosphere and the person who owns that hand are emotionally equivalent, or the Fortune Teller Miracle Fish sucks. 

Hey everyone, hope you all had a fun V-Day.  I did - I got a glow-in-the-dark glowing brain toy.  Anyway, this was on AOL's welcome screen today:

Holy shit, Maya Angelou = Madame Cleo.  I didn't feel that my life would ever be complete without pointing that out.

We decided to use Saturday's version of the site to simply plug the week's past articles into the main box.  Much simpler, and now I can go do other things, like fishing and hunting, and painting lions.  The Classics thing has been updated, though.  Enjoy.  Blah.

Nyah nyah nyah.

New Article: Remember those sticky, squishy rubber octopus toys you used to get out of cereal boxes and vending machines?  They were called Wacky Wall Walkers.  Believe it or not, behind their wall-sticking stretchy-pully goodness lies a semi-famous marketing success story.  Anyway, read it.  Somehow, it's one of the better articles I've done recently.  Gooey octopi are a motivator.

Anyway, the next article is about the old Photon television series.  If you haven't seen this, trust me, it's absolutely unreal.  This isn't the cartoon, rather the live-action Japanese show featuring lots of bad voice dubs, blue screens, giant lizards, and drug references.  It'll be up at midnight.

Also: in terms of article scheduling, I think I've decided that taking weekends off will be a necessity.  I've been putting ungodly amounts of time into the posts lately, and if I don't sleep it off over the weekends, I know I'm gonna burnout pretty fast.  The goal is to have something new up Mon-Fri, meaning you'll at least get five articles a week.  Considering my past hobbies of disappearing for weeks on end, that's quite a load.  Since there's far fewer people browsing on Saturday and Sunday, I suppose those are the best days to throw to the lions.

Despite that, I don't want to not have anything ready for the weekends.  If you've got any suggestions as to what I can do on Saturdays with the site, I'm all ears.  So far, the two candidates are reserving Saturdays for a 'classic' article, or writing a short week-in-review going over the recent articles and other crap.  Neither choice is making me sprout heart antennas, so if you think you've got a better idea, let me know.

Sundays will be reserved for adding files to the downloads section.  This'll happen a lot more regularly once the archives are done.  When will they be done?  Not sure.  Hopefully by 3046.

PS, the Baleen Whales section has been updated.  With more baleen whales.  Yeah.

New Article: I won't be satisfied until we've looked at every last one of He-Man's friends and foes, so today's article is all about Sy-Klone, the only Masters of the Universe character who can turn into a tornado.  Tons of bonuses in this one - aside from the standard review, you can download the original commercial and read his old mini-comic, page by page.

Here's something I wanted to have up on the site, but knew I'd never actually write a full article about.  I've written about tigers and mysterious pink boxes, but I doubt I could get too far in a speech about Return of the Jedi erasers…

For your viewing pleasure: an almost-complete picture gallery of all the school supplies and kiddie baubles from Return of the Jedi.  I've had most of these.  The Yoda figural eraser was actually the first Star Wars item I've ever owned, having been given to me by my brother who felt the eraser smelled just a little bit too much like candy.  Indeed, it smelled so much like candy that I couldn't help biting Yoda's ears off and eating them.  I don't think they were toxic, but I still throw up whenever I see erasers sheerly by association.  Thanks, Yoda.  I know you can barely tell what these items are from their linking pics, so just consider each one a special new surprise.  Click on the pictures to see the full-sized versions…

There's your little dog and pony show.  Tomorrow's article should be good - it's about the most famous cereal premium of all time, a small-but-spirited item that had the kind of fad power to take in nearly 80 million dollars from the U.S. alone.  I've been keeping up a pretty decent schedule with the article frequency, no?  Just goes to show you how far fifteen cups of coffee at 7 AM can actually take you.  I've got a huge lot of stuff to review coming on in - not movies this time, but actual stuff.  These are the kind of things that really can't be reviewed unless I've got them in my hands to fondle and take pictures of, so figure on a heavy dose of firsthand item examinations real soon.  What the fuck am I talking about?  Guess I need a sixteenth cup.

By the way, enter your name in that Sony Watchman contest if you haven't already.  I'm serious when I say that it's in no way a come-on - I personally know the people responsible for both putting the contest together and sending out the prizes, and they're basically just trying to clear out old warehouse stock.  Again, if you're one of the winners, make sure you e-mail me to let me know.

I skipped the article mentioned in the last update in favor of another for tomorrow - goes up at midnight.  It's about something that isn't known to everyone, but those who do recognize it should be excited.  How do you like all this mystery talk?

Speaking of mystery, a friend sent me a pretty cool trick today.  Wanna play?  I'll post the first step here, and finish it off in the extended version of this entry:

Count the number of F's in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE
RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC
STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS

After you've counted them, click 'more.'
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