I remember my fourth grade teacher, Ms. Eva, who was a young and idealistic teacher at the time. She used to take a little time out to challenge us to a "trivia contest" - each "column" of seats was a team, and we all get to answer a question.

The topic ranged from biology to geography to whatever - it was the most interesting time I had in a classroom. We actually paid attention to whatever it was she was teaching so we would have time leftover for the trivia game (and so we'll know the answer to the question, of course).

Then the school cracked down on her, and made her stop - so I can see monkey_town's point: school system don't like iconoclasts. They only see one way of doing things: their way, whether it's right or wrong.

Amateurs! Now THIS is chess!

I vote for money. Preferably from an actual stack of money, not some stupid candle :) Either that or brownies. Hmmm... brownies ....

Congratulations to kusito #11 who got it right! It's a weaning mask for calf.

He'll come beat you up, NiteWhite.

Wow, that looks so awesome!

This one is funny too:

Ah, fixed - thanks for pointing out the error, ted.

I was surprised that the tower would give permission to land in the first place ...

I've written similar intro along the snarky lines of "hooray for global warming," only for the tongue-in-cheek effect.

I actually don't have an anti-US military streak, but rereading my intro, I'll agree with Tony LaRocca that it does have an anti-military tone. That was unintended and I unreservedly apologize.

Correction is posted above.

Can't be Californian accent. It's missing "like" and "um": I'm like Amy Walker, I was born in um, California.

This proves that the uke is the devil's instrument!

I think I know what happened with the photo confusion now (it was copied to Neatorama's image server, with attributions to Tyler in the post by me) - my apologies to Tyler Yip. We always try to do right by the photograph owner.

I think removing the photo and replacing it with the one from Consumerist should resolve the matter.

Incidentally, I find the whole idea of the Consumerist blog brilliant - it certainly gives an outlet to people who got bad service from companies.

@Mike Harris: whatever impact Neatorama has, it pales in comparison to it being on Consumerist and on digg. That's for sure!

And lastly, about comcast itself: actually I used to have comcast for cable internet at home. Believe it or not, they were fine. They show up when the appointment said they would show up and did the job right.

It was when Time Warner Cable bought the operation that the things got bad (at least for me): they didn't show up or call when they said they would.

I actually wasted a week trying to get cable installed in my new office only to be told that they could *technically* do it, but they'd want another two weeks to see if they would but would gladly take my money first. I went with DSL.

Grrrwl - link fixed. Thanks seeker and RiClious!

The L has been corralled and forced back into the title. Thanks EvilMonkeyNZ!