LIFE IS JUST A FANTASY

In a land far away, long before I had the internet, I was playing fantasy sports through what was once known as the U.S. Mail. You'd find the ad to play in what was called a newspaper or magazine, usually sports related. You'd then pick players from a list they had provided, stuffed it an envelope, along with your fee, licked this square paper thingy called a stamp, dropped it in a mailbox, and you were in.

Throughout the season of the particular sport you were playing, you would continue to correspond, make roster changes, add/drop players, etc, via snail mail. Some games even gave you a toll free phone number to call to make such changes, so that you wouldn't have to wait the 3-5 days or so for your changes to take affect. Prizes were given at the end of the season based on how your team did throughout the season. I can even recall a fantasy baseball league I was once in, awarding weekly prizes to the top scorers for that week.

Fantasy sports was born in 1962 when a limited partner of the Oakland Raiders, Bill Winckenbach, invented Fantasy Football. It was an 8 team league called the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL). It wasn't very popular then and it took a very long time to catch on. In fact, it was fantasy baseball that really got the ball rolling with fantasy sports.

Ivan R. Dee, and others, established the Chicago Baseball League in 1978, using players real time stats to accrue points. A year later, Daniel Okrent invented the rotisserie scoring system and Rotisserie Baseball, or Roto, started storming the country. As it became more popular, the ads for Roto baseball started showing up in newspapers and magazines, getting even more people to play. By the 90's, these games started venturing into other sports as well. Again, all of it was done through the mail, or among a group of friends who played together. If the latter, someone (a commissioner) still had to keep track of the stats via the newspaper or magazines like Baseball Weekly.

In 1997, CBS offered a beta version of the 1st fantasy football website, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, fantasy football is so popular that the people who play it may be more into the fantasy aspect than they are the actual games being played. A degenerative few are more into it than real life itself, but that's another story. A serious fantasy player no longer just roots for their home town team to win, they're rooting for multiple players from multiple teams to do well, so that your fantasy teams scores more points. Sometimes you find yourself rooting for a player playing against your home town team.

Fantasy football is so popular that drafting a team that you have to manage for the entire season just wasn't enough. Enter DAILY fantasy sports. Daily fantasy games like FanDuel and DraftKings, allow the fantasy player to draft a different team every single day, or in the case of football, every week. You're not limited to the players you drafted before the season for the entire season. Daily allows you to start over from scratch every week. Unlike your typical fantasy league where if you draft player X, then he's not available for anybody else, daily allows you to draft the same player as anybody else, much like how the mail order games used to work.

These Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) games have exploded onto the scene here in the last 2 to 3 years or so. Actually FanDuel started in 2009. DraftKings, it's biggest competitor, started in 2012. Today, 2015, both companies are each valued at an estimated $1 BILLION, and control 95% of the DFS market. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft even has a stake in DraftKings.

Though fantasy football is as popular as ever, what has caused the explosion of these DFS sites is the money that is being paid out on a weekly, and daily, basis. In the opening week of the 2015 NFL season alone, FanDuel paid out $12 MILLION in prize money, including a contest that paid the top winner $1,000,000. That's right, a FanDuel member with the username jeremybronson became a millionaire on September 14, 2015, winning a FanDuel contest with a $25 entry fee. And this prize money goes out every single week, and in the case of baseball, basketball and other sports that have games every day, that prize money goes out daily.

Unfortunately, because of the times we live in, when there is the kind of money being flung around that these DFS provide, there's always someone somewhere that wants a piece of the action. That someone is usually government.

"Legally", there are only 4 states where you can bet on sports. Delaware, Montana, Oregon, and of course, Nevada. Now, I don't know much about what goes on in the 1st three states listed, but Nevada, of course, is the gambling capital of the world. Las Vegas, in particular, was built on fixed slot machines where very few can win, frowning upon skills, i.e. card counting, simply screwing people out of their money so that these hotel owners can rake in their gozillions. That is perfectly legal. And with the success and popularity of DFS games like FanDuel and DraftKings, Vegas sportsbooks can't be too happy about it. I mean, it has got to be cutting into their sports betting profits, especially when you're not limited to making a bet by actually having to go to Vegas to do it. DFS can be played in the comfort of your home in your Cheetos stained underwear.

The state of Nevada has already raised a big stink about DFS being played in their state and have successfully lobbied a cease and desist order where Nevada residents can NOT play the DFS games. The state of New York is the latest state trying to get these DFS games banned. Their reasoning is that DFS is illegal gambling, that these DFS games are addictive and rob people of their money with these games of chance. Never mind the fact that buying lottery tickets in the state of New York is perfectly fine for these addictive gamblers. The difference of course, is that the state makes money off the lottery. They don't get anything from DFS.

And though DFS is technically gambling, there is a skill involved, or at least a knowledge that allows you to make a much more informed wager. Much like doing your due diligence when picking companies to invest in in the stock market, which, by the way, is also gambling. In DFS, though you do have to pick numbers, in this case players, and hope those players put up the stats you need, it does take some knowledge to improve your chances. For example, the numbers/players have certain values. Player X, say Tom Brady, will carry a certain value over player Y, say Colin Kaepernick. The fantasy player has to weigh that knowledge and determine where his value can be best utilized in relation to the value at other positions. So there is indeed some "skill" involved and it is not a total game a chance like playing the lottery.

In the lottery, all the numbers are the same. Picking the number 7 has no advantage, has no more value over the number 43. Picking numbers for your lottery entry is no different than being blindfolded and throwing darts at a dart board. Yet the lottery, a total game of chance where knowledge and skill make no difference, and people can still blow their paychecks on, is perfectly OK in New York. Never mind the rigged slot machines in "legal" casinos all over the country, ROBBING people blind. That's perfectly legal.

Of course, that's not the REAL issue. The real issue is state's make money off their state lotteries, they don't make money off of FanDuel. FanDuel and DraftKings are going to court to plead their cases and get the cease and desist order removed. Their contention is that their games require a skill to play, or at least to win, and are not solely based on luck like picking lottery numbers is. And since the values of the numbers/players is different for each number/player, their game does not violate the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which is sketchy at best when it comes to defining games of skill and games of chance. I mean, before DraftKings and FanDuel hit the big time, no one was going after Yahoo's, or anyone elses, thousands of season long fantasy leagues that pay out prizes to league champions, runners-up and so forth. All of that has been OK since the day they went online, and even before that with the mail order games.

I honestly don't see FanDuel and DraftKings having success in court though, unless the state somehow worms their way in to getting a piece of the pie. It's a damn shame that government is just as much of a crook as the guy with a gun at a liquor store. Maybe more so, because they can "legally" get away with it.

In the meantime, fantasy players, some who make a decent living playing these DFS games, some who just hit the big one and are set for life or at least set for retirement or a nice nest egg or whatever the case may be, are facing having that opportunity taken away from them. And if the concern is that it is addictive and people are spending their paychecks on it and losing their cars or homes or whatever the case a degenerate gambler, or one with a legitimate gambling addiction, may have, it doesn't limit that person from spending that paycheck on the state lottery, or throwing that money away in a rigged slot machine in any of the states that now allow casino gambling.

The whole illegal gambling thing is a farce anyway. 46 states have some form of "legal" gambling, whether it be lotteries, casinos or horse racing. 46! New York is included with all of the above. Again, it's all OK as long as the state gets their cut, but that's not the case with DFS, and that's why New York is trying to shut it down.

Hypocrisy up to our necks here. You are allowed to blow all of your money on horses, but you will not be allowed to blow it all on football.

LOOK INTO MY DRANO EYES

Sometimes when I run across these stories I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or just sit there and shake my damn head.

Here's a LINK to the story.

There's a 30 year old woman in North Carolina, we'll call her Jewel Shuping, mainly because that's her name. This woman says in her "very touching" video, that she's always dreamed of being blind, well, at least since she was 6 years old when she remembers staring straight into the sun. And, of course, we've had someone already using their disorder app to give her "condition" a name. It's called "body integrity identity disorder" or BIID.

BIID is a "disease" that causes abled-bodied people to strongly desire a disability. In fact, this woman, Jewel Shuping, felt so strongly about being blind that she had drain cleaner poured into her eyes to get the job done.

If that's not bad enough, she didn't do the actual pouring of the Drano into her peepers. Apparently this woman found a willing PSYCHOLOGIST to drop the Liquid Plumber into her eyeballs.

Now, I've gotten into the calling every little itch you have some kind of disorder before so I won't delve too much into that, but to to call this a disease? Yes, it very much is a disease and the disease is called insanity!!

It's not a damn disease, there's something wrong with these people's brains!!! Their wiring is messed up, too many drugs (probably taken for their bullshit disorder), hit in the head with a shovel, something! How 'bout we concentrate on and fix that instead of this lazy ass crap we do now - calling it some made up disorder and writing a prescription. Well, we do that because Big Pharma rules the planet, also something I've probably covered before.

Then there's the psychologist. This is a person that has a doctorate degree. This is a person who is supposed to have a well functioning brain in their skull, who decides to go ahead and adhere to this crazy woman's wishes and do the deed him/herself, then drive her to the hospital where they try to save her sight. WTF?? This psycho psychologist not only needs to have his/her license stripped, not only needs to serve jail time, but needs to at least have one eye carved out with a butter knife.

There's some messed up people on this planet and as long as Big Pharma has mega-billions of dollars to make selling drugs, there will always be messed up people on this planet with a list of disorders that would reach from this planet to Pluto and back.

I have a strong, deep-seeded desire to be rich and not have to work, so my robbing of banks isn't really a crime at all. No, it's a disease. For you see, I have MBALD (moderate bank account level disorder). Now if I can just find an idiot with a doctor's degree to back me.....

PLUTO OR BUST

This entry isn't going to be about the stupidity committed by "earthlings" on a second-by-second basis day after day after day. Instead, we're going to travel to the far reaches of the solar system and talk about what Plutonians are up to these days. OK, how about some mind boggling Pluto facts then?

Pluto-mania is catching on as the New Horizons space probe closes in on the former planet, now dwarf planet. Yeah, some idiot earthlings came up with that because somehow a world with at least 5 moons orbiting it isn't a "planet". Anyhoo, it's the first time an earth vehicle has ever visited Pluto so we're all going to get to see what it's all about for the first time ever.

Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. Not only was Tombaugh the first to discover Pluto, he will also be the first to ever visit Pluto. Well, at least his ashes will as they are aboard New Horizons.

Being over 3 BILLION miles away from the sun, Pluto is a cold, cold planet. The average low temperature on the surface of Pluto is -387°F. Game of Thrones winters have got nothing on Pluto's winters. Daytime highs, however, reach a balmy -369°F. Being over 3 billion miles away from the sun, it takes the light from the sun 4.3 hours to reach Pluto and daylight on Pluto is about as bright as a moonlit night on earth. You can see stars in the daytime, provided you're far enough away from big Plutonian city lights.

It's hard to grasp these kinds of distances, especially when we grew up with solar system models in school that had all the planets lined up in a row. Those models were nowhere close in scale to giving us an inkling of the distances between planets. To be fair though, there's really no way schools could have made a model to suffice. To do so they would have had to tell us that if the earth was the size of a basketball, Pluto would be the size of a golf ball. They would then have to place that basketball representing earth, in downtown Houston, TX. Then they'd have to take the golf ball representing Pluto and place it on Seawall Blvd. in Galveston, TX for a true scale of the distance between the two.

New Horizons, about the size of a grand piano, was launched in 2006 on the fastest rocket ever made. New Horizons used Jupiter's orbit to help it pick up speed and at over 31,000 mph, it has taken New Horizon's 9 years to reach Pluto.

The pictures New Horizons takes will be sent back to earth via radio waves which will take 4 1/2 hours. Then it will only be able to be downloaded at 1kb per second. That's 56 times slower than those dialup internet connections we used to have.

If you were going to drive to Pluto and you could do it without ever stopping for gas or restrooms and your average speed was 70 mph, it would take you 4,892 YEARS to get to Pluto.

A day on earth is 24 hours, meaning that's how long it takes the earth to make one full rotation. A day on Pluto takes over 6 earth days. Great for weekends and holidays but Mondays on Pluto have got to be the worst. Pluto also spins in the opposite direction of earth, meaning the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

365 days is one year here on earth, a complete cycle around the sun. It takes Pluto 248 YEARS to circle the sun. 90,410 earth days make a year on Pluto. And amazingly February still has just 28 days on both planets.

One year ago on Pluto, the United States wasn't even a country yet. We were about 8 years from declaring independence from Great Britain, we were 134 years from the Wright Brothers 1st flight, and over 200 years from landing on our own moon. All within one year on Pluto. In Pluto time, Christ walked the earth just 8 years ago.

A 200 lb. person on earth would weigh a little over 13 lbs. on Pluto. New Horizons can go ahead and send that Plutonian diet back to earth pronto! Basketball players would be able to dunk on a 150 foot high goal. Probably have to lower it to about 147 feet for me.

So, that's probably more than you ever needed to know about something that's over 3 billion miles away from you, but now you know. And there's a lot more we'll learn in the coming days as New Horizons starts sending data back home.

Na-Nu, Na-Nu!

THE PRICE IS "NOT" RIGHT

Whole Foods Market is a supermarket chain that specializes in organic/natural foods. They opened for business in Austin, TX in 1980, and now have 420 locations throughout the U.S. Canada and the U.K.

Because they deal with organic, natural products almost exclusively, their prices are a little higher than your typical grocery store. They make sure the eggs they sell don't come from hens confined to battery cages. Their nutritional screening doesn't allow for foods containing trans fats or artificial coloring. Non-food organic products such as shampoo, soap, etc. are required to contain 95% or more certified organic ingredients. So you can see why the prices at a Whole Foods Market are going to be a little higher.

Questions dot their history about the claims they make of their food and products being of a natural/organic quality. Articles in the Wall Street Journal have claimed that Whole Foods has become more concerned with competing with other big box grocery chains and less about the quality of their products. It wasn't until 2011 that Whole Foods was required to meet the 95% standard of certified organic ingredients in their products they labeled as organic. And they are not without controversy involving business practices, product selection and failure to support farmers and suppliers.

The most recent uproar regarding Whole Foods is a price scam accusation by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. They claim that 8 Whole Foods stores in the NYC area consistently listed improper weights on their pre-packaged foods resulting in overcharged pricing by as little as 80 cents to as much as $15 an item.

After first denying any wrong doing, Whole Foods has just come out and admitted mistakes being made with the way the operation works. They claim, of course, that it was unintentional, that the mistakes sometimes overcharged the consumer and sometimes undercharged them, and attributing it all to human error. The same human error in 8 different stores. And, of course, no one ever stumbles upon this error until someone gets caught.

Now, I can understand human error, it happens. This is what I don't get. When I go to the butcher counter at any grocery store and ask for a pound of shrimp, the butcher fills up a bag with shrimp and sets it on the scale. Most of the time it's not exactly 1 pound, so the butcher will either add a couple of shrimp, take a couple out, or ask me if that's close enough to the pound I wanted. Whether it's a little over or a little under is then my choice. When I give him the OK, the scale prints out a label with the proper weight, that I saw with my own 2 eyes, and the price per pound and total price.

Question - does Whole Foods not have these types of scales?

Umm, this one feels about 1.2 lbs.

Now to be honest, who of us grabs a pre-package of porterhouse steaks and then puts them on the scale to see if the weight matches what's on the label? And I honestly don't know how Whole Foods operates, but I'm assuming they aren't just holding the product in their hands and guessing a weight. If so, I can see where the human error comes into play. But having a scale and missing on the weight, so much so that a product can be $15 over priced, that's not human error, that's highway robbery.

So there's that information for you to do with what you will. And believe me, people are doing just that. Social media gives us all the opportunity to hear what people have to say about anything almost instantly. Or at least as instantly as we click on that medium. And I just don't get "those people" who blindly support Whole Foods because they feel the products are better for them and can't get them anywhere else, or they aren't as easily accessible.

For the sake of this argument, let's just assume that the organic products they sell are what they claim they are, better quality, better for you. With that, I have no qualms about the prices being higher than the Kroger down the street. The higher prices for better quality is fine, but charging $12 a lb. for organic beef is one thing. Charging $12 a lb. and getting well less than a lb. is another. That's disception, dishonesty and flat out stealing.

Human error? The only human error I see is people rationalizing that they're OK with someone stealing from them as long as they still get some sort of benefit from it. Crazy freaking world.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

I haven't been around the blogosphere in a while but I just can't stay locked up in the basement any longer.

Let me preface this by saying that I am happy for ANYONE who has found them a partner that they can be with, love, trust, spend a life with, regardless of your sexual orientation, your religious beliefs or your race. Sincerest congratulations to you because that can be a difficult thing to accomplish....for anybody!

If someone pointed a gun to my head, I would say that I am a non-judgmental person. Stop laughing! Now, that doesn't mean I don't have my judging moments, whether joking around which I've been known to do or telling you that people who text while driving are idiots, for example. I mean, I do have issues with stupidity which is why this blog exists, but when it comes to the things that people do, like how they live their lives, who they like or don't, I really don't give a flying pink rat's ass how they live it, as long as they aren't hurting others. If it works for you, more power to you.

My question is....why is it that whatever lifestyle or religion or what have you, that someone, or a group of someones, chooses in life, they feel the need to conform everyone to their ways or need their acceptance? For example, vegans. If you are a vegan and that's the way you feel is best for YOUR life, why are you protesting at the meat market where I'm trying to buy steak? What is the deal with all the anti-meat propaganda, animal cruelty BS, rallies and protests trying to get EVERYONE to get off the meat wagon and go vegan?

That's my problem with these groups. It's not a problem, to me, that they live their lives like they want to, the problem is them not letting me live mine the way I want to. I'm not at the farmer's market leading a protest against people buying vegetables. If you enjoy eating only vegetables, why is it a concern of yours that people eat meat?

If you are homosexual, that's your business, is how I look at it. I don't care if you like country music, I don't care what you eat, I don't care what car you drive, and I damn sure don't care who you sleep with. And why would I? It's none of my damn business, whether it's Jack and Jill or Adam and Steve. Yet we get bombarded almost daily with gay rights, parades and all that jazz. Why? Why is it these groups feel the need to advertise their sexuality to the world, to try to gain someone elses acceptance? And on top of that, label everyone who disagrees with that lifestyle a homophobe? That isn't any different than those who oppose Obama being labeled racists.

This leads me to the recent Supreme Court decision declaring same-sex marriage legal nationwide. That is fantastic news if you are homosexual. It really is. The problem now is, where do you get married? The Justice of the Peace might be an option, getting an internet ordained minister to perform the ceremony at the beach, lake house or something, and all of that is fine. But what about those that are going to want to get married in a church? You know it's coming.

Now I'm just going to take a stab in the dark and assume no one is going to a mosque for a same-sex marriage, but you just know that people are going to want to get married in a church. And here is what's going to happen. First of all, homosexuality is something the Christian God frowns upon. Couldn't tell you how the Muslim, Hindu or Buddist gods feel about it, but I know the Christian God isn't down with it. So when that Christian minister refuses the same-sex couple, fire and brimstone are sure to follow as it hits the fan and Brainwash Inc (the media) starts doing what they do best - getting everyone into a hate-filled frenzy.

Then here comes the protests and riots and the "I thought Christianity was about love and acceptance and turning the other cheek, blah, blah, blah". Next thing you know, the church probably has to shut down, if it doesn't get burned down first, and the preacher has to move to another state.

Again, if you are homosexual and you want to marry the same-sex, which is now legal, then why do you feel the need to force that on those that don't have your beliefs? You know Christianity doesn't support that, and as I mentioned before, you damn sure aren't going to a mosque, so why even try it? I just don't get why you feel everyone should support what you do. You know the Christian church doesn't support homosexuality, yet if it's the last thing you do, your are going to take that church down if they don't marry you.

I support anyone's decision to live their lives they way they want. That doesn't mean I have to support what that decision is. Again, I'm not going to a vegan restaurant and demanding they serve me ribs. I know they won't so I'm not going there.

And while everyone is celebrating the Supreme Court's decision about same-sex marriage, what is QUIETLY being brushed under the rug is the total disregard for state's rights. Again, I don't care one way or the other about who any one marries, but I DO care about the Constitution of the United States. And here we have a classic example of state's rights being tossed aside.

I know that because of years of media brainwash and their need to keep racism alive, that this will come as a shock to some, but about 150 years ago there was this nasty little war that broke out over - state's rights. Now, I'm in no way, shape, or form saying that the Confederacy is about to make a comeback because of this. I AM saying, however, that there goes one more piece of our freedoms and liberties, that no one is batting an eye about, because they did this in a way to give a group of people what they wanted, get everybody celebrating, blow up the reactions to those opposed and of course, if you do oppose it, then you have phobia issues. Chipping away at our freedoms and liberties one little battle at a time, and by the time everyone is through celebrating those little individual battles, the war on freedom will be over, and we the people, will have lost.

Might be a good time to learn Chinese.