The Smarmy Carny

How do these tongue twisters stack up? Please, feel free to try saying these tongue twisters right now!

• Cher shot Sharif, the shoddy city sheriff: B Here's one you don't want to mess up in front of grandma!
• How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?: F I don't know if this one has ever twisted my tongue.
• I'm not the pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant pluckers mate and I'm only plucking pheasants 'cause the pheasant plucker's late: B+ This four-line tongue twister is a bit long for my taste, but it's a great one to try out. Though it's not particularly hard if you can read it, it's a doozy when you do mess up!
• Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers: D- The only hard part about saying this traditional tongue twister is that I always try and figure out what a "peck" is.
• Red rubber baby buggy bumpers: C- This one is a classic tongue twister, though I've never seen a bumper on a baby buggy before.
• She sold six Swiss wristwatches: A I like this tongue twister because it has just five words, but gets me almost every single time.
• Unique New York: A I appreciate this one for its simplicity. When I tell this one to people, they scoff — until they try to say it. I like the deceptiveness hidden here.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which items do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Here are some of the things you get for free (or things you aren't supposed to take, but do) from hotels. For the record this review is based on cheap hotels, not expensive hotels.

• Bar Soap: C+ Hotel soap works quite well, even if it doesn't last very long. They are particularly useful
• Towels: F Stealing hotel towels is one of those things you hear about all the time. The thing is, hotel towels are fundamentally worthless, but perhaps that's because people keep stealing them. A tablespoon of water will soak the entire towel. They don't even make a good bathmat.
• Shampoo and Conditioner: C For a guy like me, the quality of the shampoo and conditioner are just fine, but the bottles are so small you're lucky if you can get two full uses out of them. If you're picky about your hair care products, they're probably worthless to you.
• Pens: A Hotel pens work just as perfectly as any other pen. You simply have to carry around their logo wherever you take the pen. I don't think I've ever looked inside one to see if they put less ink in them, though. Maybe they're sample-sized, just like all the other hotel freebies?
• Notepads: B Hotel notepads work just fine away from the hotel, but they have a suspiciously small number of pages to use.
• Mouthwash: B Mouthwash is always good to have around, but this is yet another sample-sized bottle. Good luck getting more than a couple days out of one tiny bottle.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which hotel freebies do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Ever since we were small children, we have learned the sounds that animals make. We are even taught at a young age how to "properly" spell these sounds. But how accurate are they?

• Baa: B- Sheep do seem to make a "baa" sound of sorts, though I'm not sure I can hear a "b" at the beginning. I'd be happier with it if there was an obligatory hyphen to show that they are making that repeated guttural pause.
• Bow-Wow: F This may be one of the worst animal sounds. The closest a dog comes to making this sound is when it's yapping repeatedly, and even then it rarely just says two syllables. I've heard more dogs say "I ruv you, Reorge" than I have heard saying "bow-wow".
• Caw: A Crows say it, no doubt about it. So does my friend Joel D — seemingly nonstop.
• Croak: D- No, no, no. Frogs don't croak at all. "Ribbit" works well for some frog sounds, but not "croak." Whoever it was who first thought they heard this particular sound was probably licking the frog a couple minutes beforehand.
• Hoot: C I've heard an owl say "who" before, but never with a "t" on the end. Hilarious comedian Brian Regan has a spiel on how the owl doesn't go "hoot".
• Meow: A- I can hear "meow" coming from a cat. It's definitely two syllables and definitely has "e-ow" in it. I'm not so sure about the "m" at the beginning, but we'll roll with it.
• Moo: D- I think "moo" is one of the most popular animal sounds, but it's not one of the best. Go listen to a cow. The sound they make is not "moo". It's the same sound I make when my wife tries to wake me up in the middle of the night. I can tell you one thing — it's definitely not "moo".
• Oink: F As far as I can remember, I've never heard a pig make the "n" sound, so how can they say "oink"? They also don't make the "oi" sound, unless perhaps you've got an Australian pig. A pig's snorting sound definitely needs a new name.
• Quack: D+ When you say "quack", you're not making a duck sound, but part of your word is. That "wa" sound in the middle is spot on. The rest is just filler to make you say that sound.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which examples of animal sounds onomatopoeia do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

NB: Not only do I love onomatopoeia, I even know how to spell it.

In my mind, the Atari 2600 is the best video game console of all time. You either had a joystick or a paddle — both of which had just one button. Modern day consoles have nothing on the Atari 2600 with their 80-button, vibrating controllers and frequent crashes. The Atari 2600 blows these out of the water with its 128 bytes of RAM and 1.19 MHz processing speed.

• Basketball: D- I know that the graphics weren't top-notch on the Atari 2600, and that's fine. But playing basketball with a square ball? Something's just not right with that.
• Combat: B It came with the console, so everyone had it and knew how to play it. Somehow, they managed to turn two games (tanks and planes) into 27 games — really just different options on the two themes. For such a basic game, though, getting those tanks to move and shoot the way you needed them to really became an art.
• Missile Command: C- In retrospect, I probably played Missile Command far more than I should have. This game, though entertaining, quickly becomes repetitive. Gee, I wonder what the next level will bring me — perhaps more missiles I'll have to shoot down in the same manner? You basically played until the game outplayed you.
• Pac-Man: A- Pac-Man was the game. Easy to understand but difficult to master, I don't know a kid who was yelling at their television because of this yellow dude.
• Pitfall!: B+ I don't know how many times poor Pitfall Harry fell down holes or got eaten by a crocodile, but this game was addictive. The game used a combination of timing skills and just a bit of strategy that made you want to come back for more.
• Space Invaders: A+ Simple, easy, and perfectly designed for the platform. You have shields, you have bad guys. They inch closer, and you try and pick them off. And just when that might have started to get boring, you've got a UFO to aim at! It even spawned quite a few 80s song, which actually might not have been a good thing.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which Atari 2600 games do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Condiments — what would we do without them? Eat our food plain? Enjoy the taste of the food we're eating??? Imagine the horror!

• Hot Sauce: C Hot sauce earns a middle-of-the-road grade because it can go either way. The name of the condiment itself promises only to be hot, so many hot sauces do not have a particularly good taste. In the end, its best uses are for novelty purposes and practical jokes.
• Ketchup: B+ Ketchup is one of the standard condiments, and it has earned that status. It's the standard condiment for America's classic food, the hamburger. It's so good, some people even like to use it on eggs. Plus, we've somehow got dozens of varieties of ketchup.
• Mustard: A- Mustard is another standard, typically for topping off a hot dog. Face it — who really wants to taste their hot dog? Mustard helps the nation ignore the actual meat between the condiment and the bun. Summer picnics wouldn't be the same.
• Relish: D This is the most overrated condiment of all time. Relish breaks one of my primary food rules by consisting of something pickled. Another broken rule is that it's a condiment in which you can pick out the various pieces of the food that created it. I don't want to see poor Larry the cucumber's sad face staring up at me from my food! Another problem with relish is that you never know if it's going to be sweet, hot, or whatever. If you're going to be a chunky condiment, you should still have more sauce than chunks and you better taste as delicious as tartar sauce!
• Tartar Sauce: A There's just something about tartar sauce that awakens my taste buds. I'm no fan of relish or mayonnaise, but tartar sauce takes two awful ingredients and turns them into a super-flavor. I've always said it: Fish is a great excuse to have tartar sauce.
• Worcestershire sauce: D- Based on taste alone, Worcestershire sauce would quickly fail with an F–. I think I'd rather eat raw radishes than spread any of this on anything I'm about to eat. The only reason this one gets bumped up to a D- is that it's one of my favorite fun words to say.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which condiments do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Since the Blogathon starts tomorrow, Saturday July 28, 2007, I worked for a few days on a 60 second commercial for the site.

The quality isn't as great as I'd prefer, but it's time to call it finished:

As some of you can tell, I relied on some good old Electric Company techniques. I'm no Morgan Freeman, but I got the job done.

If you can't understand that puppet's lousy voice (I got the cheapest voice coach I could find on 12 minutes' notice), he's telling you that Novac will be grading different topics including Seinfeld characters, condiments, driving pet peeves, types of precipitation, and many many more. This is all part of the "Grating Ratings" I will be blogging during the Blogathon.

Oh, and if you're into YouTube, you can just clicky.

Thanks to Kevin MacLeod of incompetech.com for supplying the royalty-free music!

Springfield, Vermont has been announced the Simpsons' home state in a vote organized by USA Today. It will host the official premiere for The Simpsons Movie on July 21.

The Simpsons' mystery home state has long been a running gag in the series. For instance, Marge once gave their address over the phone as "742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, Oh-hiya Maude, come on in!," leading the audience to falsely believe that Ohio was about to be named the home state.

According to some research posted on The Simpsons Archive, there are 71 Springfields in 36 states. Each of the following 14 Springfields submitted a video promoting their own Springfield as the home to The Simpsons:

• Springfield, Colorado
• Springfield, Florida
• Springfield, Illinois
• Springfield, Kentucky
• Springfield, Louisiana
• Springfield, Massachusetts
• Springfield, Michigan
• Springfield, Missouri
• Springfield, Nebraska
• Springfield, New Jersey
• Springfield, Ohio
• Springfield, Oregon
• Springfield, Tennessee
• Springfield, Vermont

See the promotional videos from each of these Springfields at USA Today. The other towns will be rewarded with screenings of The Simpsons Movie the night before the movie opens nationwide.