March Madness. OMC Style.

At the risk of sounding too much like Jerry Seinfeld…What's the deal with the scoring system of some sports? Let me tell you something…although I'm not exactly a sports fanatic, I've watched my share of athletics and can't for the life of me come up with a reasonable explanation as to how or why these scoring systems came to be.

Basketball: Each 'regular' basket is worth 2 points. But if you move out beyond a certain point, it is then worth 3 points. Distance-related scoring! What if golf adopted a similar method, but in reverse, given that the object of the game is to have a low score? Smoke a shot 220 yards, it counts as 1, but if you flub it and get only 20 yards, that counts as 3 shots. I, for one, would have an astronomical score after 3 holes. As for freethrows; you're given the opportunity to shoot a basket while all of the other players line up on either side of you. That's only worth 1 point. Could the same apply to golf? The more people distracting you while you shoot, the fewer strokes it costs you.

In football, a touchdown is worth 6 points. And if you kick the ball through the uprights, immediately after a touchdown, you get 1 whole point more!

"What's that? You want MORE points after scoring a touchdown? What, 6 isn't enough? Fine, but you have to use your skinniest player to score and we'll only give you 1 additional point."

This seems to be "effort-related" scoring and although difficult to determine the basis for the actual numbers, I suppose I can understand the rationale behind it. You bust your ass against a pile of 300-lb monsters for 100 yards and you didn't break any bones. You deserve more than just a single point. However, if you can't manage the full 100 yards but you almost make it, we'll let you wimp out and kick it, but you only get 3 points. Thanks for coming out.

What if we started recounting our love-life, using an effort-based system?

"How many people have you slept with?"
"Well, 5 I had to repeatedly take to dinner and a movie and buy flowers and candy. So they count as 6 each, so that's 30. Then there was the girl who was such high maintenance that we were always late for everything, but she was always ready to get her freak on, so she counts as 3. So there's 33. Then, I had 4 girls who slept with me on the first date, thanks to José Cuervo. I can only count them as singles because they were so easy. So that's a grand total of 37."
"Not bad for frosh week, eh?"

And then there's tennis. Understanding that scoring system is about as easy as skiing through a revolving door. It's almost a whole new language! They even combine numbers AND words! Whack a fuzzy ball back and forth for a while. Whether your opponent screws up right away or after an hour-long rally, you get the same number of points. Not 1, not 2, not even 6 points to start. How about 15? And if you score again, you're up 15 more points, for a total score of 30. If you score again, though, you only get 10 more points, bringing you to 40. One more point and that's "Game" and the "score" is 1-0 for you. Keep going until you get to "Set", which is comprised of 7 Games, and "Match" which consists of 3 Sets. To make matters worse, zeros are called "Love", and there's something called a "deuce" which, as far as I can tell, has absolutely nothing to do with coupes or Aerosmith.

At one point during tennis play, the score could be 30-Love, 4-2, 1-1. To tennis geeks, that actually makes sense. To the rest of us... What the hell? Too many hot toddies for the royals when they came up with that scheme, I'd say.

Listening to a sports report, you need a calculator to figure out what all happened during a game. While 6-0 is a fairly decisive win in hockey, it represents just the first 5 minutes of a basketball game. A score of 35-21 would be roughly a quarter of a basketball game, but just an average final score in football. Why the hell can't we simply say "You score; you get ONE point. And the next point makes TWO" and so on? Forget all this random number scoring. It's all the same measure! All I want to know is how many times Team A scored and how many times Team B scored. Don't give me an aneurism by turning it into a math lesson. I just want some standardization!

By the way…

This is my 79th post.
553rd, by football scoring.
182nd, by basketball scoring.

But who's counting?

Sitting Down on the Job.

Reader Warning: For those of you hung up on etiquette and good taste, you might want to surf on by this post, because today I'd like to talk about poo. Specifically, pooing at work.

As many of you know by now, I'm all about pointing out the flaws of society and occasionally offering solutions to those flaws. Well today is no different. Let me tell you something… Not much turns my stomach more than walking into the washroom at the office and being lambasted with the smell of some other guy's daily constitutional. Even despite the occasional thoughtful shitter who will enact the courtesy flush (i.e. flushing immediately following "the main event" so as to reduce the level of offensive odours), nothing can completely eliminate the fecal funk of a hefty dump.

So I'd like to propose a solution. We already have segregated washrooms for men and women (unless you live in Ally McBeal World, where co-ed crappers are as common as the men stepping forward to claim Anna-Nicole's baby), but what I'd like to see incorporated into our office buildings and public rest areas is a separate men's and women's washroom for "Number Twos" only. A workplace dumping station, if you will.

And this idea doesn't just help the innocent folks who mistakenly walk in on a bowel-laden blitzkrieg. I'm also thinking of those of us who can muster enough gall to take a dump while at work. No more clenching 'the worst of it' or cowering in the stall until the washroom is empty so as to avoid that embarassing walk from the stall to the sink (known as the Brown Mile) while the poor saps at the urinal or the other sinks try to stop their eyes from bleeding.

The stations wouldn't have to be anything fancy -- just a couple of stalls, each with their own air-exchange system that could quickly remove the poo smells and any wayward farts before the nearly-visible stink molecules begin to peel the paint off the walls. Perhaps some muzak or something to help mask those embarassing symphonies that also tend to accompany events such as these.

And while we're at it, given today's technology, I'd like to suggest a few additional features to the design. For example, each stall could have it's own sink. The door to the stall would remain electronically locked until the user had washed his/her hands. The result would be fewer e-coli (more commonly referred to as 'poo germs' in the scientific community) being spread throughout the building.

It is said that "family" means not being grossed out by a warm toilet seat. I can tell you that I do not consider Harvey, the Sasquatch from Purchasing who disappears with a copy of War & Peace each day around 2pm as 'family'. Guh-ross. Many women prefer to hover over the seat, and I give them all the credit in the world, but I don't think those women have ever really taken a "mean shit" -- one that feels like it's coming out sideways and causes the veins in your neck to stick out. After passing something like that (or simply trying to), I don't care if you've got thigh muscles like Lance Armstrong…You need to sit down.

But I digress….Where was I? Oh yeah…I want something that keeps the toilet seats cold. Not butt-numbing, shrinky-dink cold, mind you; just something that gives me the illusion that I'm the first one in the stall since the cleaning lady disinfected everything.

So with a little effort and some slight modifications to our buildings, I think we can make the world a better place. A world devoid of the stench of a stranger's poo. Can't you just imagine how much better your workplace would be if you no longer had to worry about how long you can hold your breath while you take a leak?

I'm going to go picture that right now...

Where's the newspaper?