December
7, 2005: NFL Commentary, Week 13
By White Russian
Due
to the Ukraine Bros. Disneyland Odyssey, the commentary will contain nothing
about professional football this week.
Overheard
Actual conversation overheard at Disneyland between a father and young daughter:
Girl: I want to go on the Haunted Mansion.
Father: Would you find Jesus on the Haunted Mansion?
Girl: Jesus is in my heart.
Father: Why would Jesus want to go on the Haunted Mansion?
Parking Garage Scam
Beware when parking at garages that charge by the time spent in the lot. It
is bad enough that just a few minutes into the half hour means you must pay
for the entire half hour, but there is emerging a new scam that you won’t
find exposed on the likes of Primetime Live or 20/20. While those shows are
too busy recycling the same old stories week after
week, there is a parking garage in Downtown Sacramento, and who knows
how many other garages nationwide, that is scheming to boost its profits by
shortchanging you on your time. The BMTG has found, over the course of the
last six months, that the garage in question consistently has their time clock
set about five minutes ahead of the actual time. If you judge the time you
have to be out of the garage by the parking ticket you take when you enter
the garage you will have the false notion that you have five minutes more
than you actually have to get out of the garage before paying another $1.50
for the next half hour period.
For example, you roll into the garage at 8:10 AM, according to both the clock in your vehicle and the time that your morning talk show tells you in between commercials and traffic reports. You take your ticket as you enter the garage, but do not look at the time printed on it. As you park and go to wherever it is you go, you don’t even pay attention to the time, but you know it is after 8 in the morning. Less than three hours later you check your parking ticket to see what the cut off time is that you need to leave in order to avoid going into the next half hour increment. The time printed on your ticket says you entered the garage at 8:15 AM, so you plan your exit accordingly. Confident you will make it on time, you approach the garage exit at 11:11 AM, according to the clock in your car, and find that you owe an extra $1.50 because you went over three hours by one minute. Irritated and thinking the clock in your car must be slow, you try to complain, but the parking attendant only says that the computer system will not allow them to adjust for even being one second into the next time increment. The attendant is only able to give you a receipt with a phone number on it for you to call and complain. As you go on with your day, you are still irritated, but the anger subsides as more important things take a higher priority and you throw away the receipt deciding that is just isn’t worth wasting any more of your time for a mere $1.50.
Now repeat this scenario for many more victims and the parking garage brings in a nice little bonus from this simple and effective scheme.
College
Football
Before the UCLA – USC game, Dan Fouts said that USC beat UCLA last year
29 to 24, but if USC only scored 29 points this time around they would lose
the game. USC went on to pound UCLA into the ground and won easily. UCLA managed
19 points, and most of that came when the game was clearly decided.
Everyone knew going into the final games that Texas and USC should play for the championship, and their blowout wins emphasized the point, but what would have happened if either team lost on Saturday?
Sacramento Drivers
How to tell you are driving in Sacramento? You get cut off and the car that
cuts you off either slows down or just doesn’t get out of your way.
In Los Angeles and Frisco, when a car changes lanes in front of you, you are
generally not affected because they speed up and go on their way. After driving
in Sacramento for a while you get used to the way the drivers are, but try
going out of town and spend time driving in either L.A. or Frisco. The first
thing you will notice upon your return to Sac town is how many drivers will
just get in front of you and stay there, forcing you to either go around them
or slow down to allow enough space between you. You will notice this unless,
of course, you drive like Brother Nature.
Fantasy Notes
With only two weeks remaining in the main portion of this years competition,
White Russian and Sandman basically matched each other, with Sandman getting
about 50 points closer. Trailing by just over 1,000 points, Sandman can still
catch up to White Russian, but the other races are pretty much wrapped up,
with Brother Nature and The Diesel comfortably in third and fourth place.
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