Finally! A Portable Hangman !

Have You Ever Wanted to play "Hangman", but were away from the house, or on the road, or the beach, and you hadn't packed your full size "Hangman" set, because it was just too unwieldy to carry around?

Well Now, for only 12 Dollars and 50 cents, you can have all the fun of playing "Hangman" On the Go with a convenient Travel Version!



Previously, to play hangman, you would have had to buy an Ink Pen. Or a Pencil.*

Ink pens, like the ones pictured below, can cost more than 150 dollars! Remember, You can't spell "Expensive" without "pens". And Pencils? Dont even get me started! The Broken points, the sharpening, the eraser holes in your Newspaper Crossword... Who needs that kind of hassle? I know I don't!

The Travel Hangman set costs only $12.50, and works without any pen or pencil required!** So buy a Travel Magnetic Hangman Set Today!


*If you are on the beach, you could just use your finger to write in the sand. But who needs that hassle?
**Pen or Pencil (as well as paper) may be required for scorekeeping. Check with your local Hangman Regulating Authority for details.


(Special Thanks to My Dad, Tom Gibson, for bringing this product to my attention. And thanks even more for not buying me one for Christmas.)

Finally! Five Fitness Products To Get Me In Shape!

If Necessity is the Mother of Invention, Then These Inventions are Orphans.

In my relentless pursuit of things that were conceived of, designed, manufactured, packaged and sold despite there being no actual need for them to exist, I came across this site featuring the 5 worst infomercial fitness products ever sold. I was going to scan it for a product to feature for a Finally! post, but the article is so well written and funny, that I can't improve on it. so here, in its entirety for your reading pleasure, are The 5 worst infomercial products EVER.

Playing Catchup

OK, I haven't posted for awhile, because I've been spending a lot of time on... that, thing.. What's it called? That thing where you are not sitting at a computer? Oh! Yeah!

REAL LIFE. Yeah, that's it!

Yeah.. So spending time on real life really eats into the old "Virtual" life of the blogger. I had a little Wi-Fi-Enabled time at lunch on Saturday, but I spent it getting airline tickets and hotel reservations for my Big San Diego Adventure.

Other than that brief window, the weekend was just too busy to get any serious bloggetry done. I spent 48 hours away from the interweb, and just spent 2 hours clearing out my various in-boxes. My sincerest apologies to my cult-like band of devoted followers (if you, in fact, exist) for not posting enough. And my apologies to the rest of you for the deluge of posts that I am about to create in an effort to catch up.

Speaking of Ketchup, What's the deal with this? I walked into the Ol' Workplace the other day and spotted this Heinz "Mini-Me" Ketchup Bottle sitting on the counter. We do not sell these at the store, and none of the employees that I spoke to knew where it came from. It struck me immediately as:

1. ridiculous
2. impractical
3. totally unnecessary
4. awfully freakin' cute!

I photographed it, thinking to include it in my Finally! series of supposedly-convenient items, but I am not quite sure it qualifies, as it never claims to be useful.

So, instead, I used it to make a corny pun. So sue me!

Incidentally, this little glass bottle holds exactly the amount of Ketchup you threw away with your last bottle of ketchup, bacause you couldn't extract it from the container.

Finally! A Handle For My Pop-Tart!

We here at The Daily Blog of The Day like to bring to your attention the latest inventions that somebody, somewhere, thought were worth developing into a product. The "Easy-Grip" Coke bottle was the first to be featured in this space.

But there are so many more items out there that are theoretically helpful in some way, that today we are announcing a recurring feature we are calling... FINALLY!

Our 1st, or 2nd, or (If you count the "Corkpops" system) possibly 3rd, featured item of note is the Pop-Tart "Freezer Pop Maker". If you are anything like me, then you love the taste and nutrition of Pop-Tarts, but often wish that they were convenient and/or portable. Especially when frozen.

Well worry no more! Now, for only a few Proofs of Purchase (+$S&H), you can have a blue plastic stick, scientifically engineered for optimum frozen tart holdage, that you will undoubtedly treasure for years to come. Melting Pop-Tart Mess will be a thing of the past, with this terrific new device!

Thank Goodness They Finally Invented This!

The Coca Cola Corporation has Finally done something about their incredibly difficult-to-hold-on-to bottles. Those old bottles, you know, the ones that were always slipping out of your hand? Oh, the messes that used to cause! Spilled Coke everywhere!

I remember the old "Coke-Carry" relay races we used to have at our annual family reunion, right after the "Egg-In-The-Spoon"race. I remember I always used to drop the bottle, and I would have to go all the way back and start over. Uncle Jerry once carried a cold bottle of Coke over 30 Yards, without it slipping out of his hand once! But he did drop it when he tried to drink it, after the race was over! It went all over his pants!

Ahh, those were good times...

But alas, now with the creation of the new, easy to hold bottle, we will have to start using Pepsi, I guess.

Want to start not-buying things? Start by not-buying this!

I am generally a very environmentally conscious guy. I walk rather than drive wherever practical, ride an 80 MPG motorscooter at risk of life and limb (and Divorce), and I am pretty religous about the "3 R's" of Environmental Responsibility: Reduce , Reuse and Recycle.

The Second and Third of those "R's" conflict with the having a clean house that's free of Junk. It's not just me; this gets a lot of people in trouble. "I better not throw this out, I could reuse it someday," they say. "I will save this, and give it to my neighbor/favorite charity/heir" As a result, They end up with an accumulation of:

1. Fabric scraps
2. Wires and cables
3. Mismatched Tupperware containers/lids
4. Promotional t-shirts/caps/buttons/magnets/tote bags/whistles/lanyards/etc.
5. Scraps of wood/tile/chicken-wire
6. Computers and/or computer parts
7. Pre-digital cameras/film/equipment
8. Ace Ventura, Pet Detective and Ghost Dad on VHS tape
9. "Queen's Greatest Hits" Cassette Tapes
   
10. 1.44 MB Floppy Disks
11. 1/4 Full buckets of paint
12. And so on, and so on, and so on....
    

The cure for this, of course, is the first "R", REDUCE. This is where the often-competing "Be Earth-Friendly" and "Keep an Uncluttered Home" motivations line up perfectly. Avoid getting a bunch of stuff in the first place, and you won't be faced with the conundrum of responsibly disposing of it once it inevitably becomes unwanted junk. And, to state the obvious, you save lots of money by not buying stuff, too. This appeals to the "Be A Real Tightwad" motivation. The number of furniture pieces in my home that I bought from a store can be counted on one hand. And I don't even need most of the hand. My wife and I have had the vast majority of our furniture given to us - by family, friends, church members, and co-workers. Same goes for our electronics; our TV/VCR, Microwave, and both of our DVD players were given to us, and my desktop computer is made from mostly discarded parts.

There are, as you might expect, problems with this approach to life. The TV/VCR combo has several features that cannot be used without the original remote control, which Becca's dog used as a chew toy about eight years ago, and the Display screen on our microwave hasn't worked for a couple of years. All that second-hand furniture, while comfy, doesn't even remotely match, and some of it still has the marks from a toddler's artistic experimentation with an ink pen. (That toddler probably has his learner's permit by now.)

Anyway, If you are ready to start saving the world and your wallet by not buying things, I have the perfect thing to not-buy first. The Cork Pops Wine Bottle Opener! Why use a simple Corkscrew, when you can use a High-Tech, State-of-the-Art, Pneumatic Cork-removal Device? Never mind that you have to buy disposable replacement CO2 canisters for it to continue working into the future!

Honestly, Who dreamed this up? I saw one of these gizmos at the Sharp Shopper (though not the brand-name version, of course), and was immediately taken by how redundant and un-useful it was. I mean, doesn't a corkscrew get the job done pretty well? Why would you want one that required "re-loading"? Turns out, it isn't quite as bad as I thought - One CO2 canister is good for 60-80 bottles (according to the website), but still... Not to mention the safety implications. When I imagine forcing pressurized gas into a glass container, the results might not be pretty.

If you would like to pare down the level of junk in your life, you can get a lot of ideas about how to cut the clutter in your home at Unclutterer.com