And if you've ever seen what a horse can produce, just imagine what a killer whale can do.

Hey, I wish them all the luck in the world with their work-boot choreography and their bevy of 14-year-old fans, but honestly — who can eat with this staring at them?

Why? Well, take the word mail. It's collective. You get magazines, bills, ads, cards — all in the mail. But, when I get a single message from someone, I call that a letter. I never ever say I got a mail from someone. "My grandma sent me another mail. I get at least two mails from her a week." Say that and you sound like a moron.

But, it's perfectly legitimate to say, "Stop sending me so many e-mails." Why haven't we started using the word e-letter? "I just checked my e-mail. I got only one e-letter today."

Sounds perfectly acceptable, right? However, be the first in your class to say "e-letter" and you'll be shunned like an Amish who...well, who uses e-mail.

However, Burger King's onion rings are bite size and relatively devoid of grease. So I eat them with a Whopper more often than fries now.

But, the burger giant's endorsement aside, I really wanted to talk about a general observation about fast-food side orders. Why is it whenever I order onion rings, there's always a french fry in there? One fry in the middle of my...what is that thing called...my cardboard pouch full of rings. It's the same deal with curly fries! There's always one regular fry stowing away!

And I never eat it...it's just weird. Perhaps that's what they've got in mind. Escapee fries. Fugitive potato slivers counting on the which-one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other factor of food revulsion.

She sounds like a Muppet, but with no range.

I remember a time when I played with Legos — it doesn't seem that long ago — and you could actually build various things with them. First, of course, you'd buy a set and build the intended cover design. You'd rip open the box, spill out the assorted pieces — one or two would invariably find their way under the couch — and then you would follow the little picture instructions from one step to the next, deciphering which pieces were added to the puzzle from the previous step.

Once you got that done, you'd rip your predetermined creation apart and dump all the pieces into your giant box of Legos, the newest pieces never to be part of the same architecture again. The next four hours would be spent building various fortresses, spaceships, etc. from the increased number of blocks at your disposal. The tiny, square ones with one bubble, the rectangular ones with two bubbles, the blocks with six bubbles, the big plates with dozens of bubbles, they were all there. Colors ranging from bright red and yellow to a cooler blue to a dull middle gray. They mixed a matched. You even had little cylindrical, translucent ones for lights. Anything was possible.

But now...now you may as well just buy a regular toy. The pieces are already molded for you. Take a look. You want to buy a pirate ship? The hull is nearly one solid piece! How about a racecar? Stick on the wheels and you're ready to go! Each box has its own unique, specially designed pieces!

When I was buying Legos, the most specialized pieces you could get were the antennas and those wing-shaped ones. Oh yeah, and the blue cockpit hatches — every spaceship had the same ones. But, they were cool. You could build a hundred space fighters and they were all part of the Blue Cockpit Fleet. And the little pilots all wore those tiny yellow helmets. Well, at least as many as you could find helmets for.

And sure, some men were painted like firefighters, and some were missing eyes from being shaken around in that box, but they could all fly a starship.

Hmm...I think I'm going to go dig around in the attic a while. This place could use a few defenders of the cosmos.

It's like it's a curse to be called "Grandma." I guess grandmothers don't want the stigma of sounding like they're that old. Then again, when you start having a line of 25-year-old grandparents, the generations would have to begin differentiating.

And let's not even talk about that tip cup that he saw you glance at while you were putting your change in your pocket.

Is it a matter of vanity? Or is it just a bewildering lack of imagination? Perhaps it's aspirations of one day having offspring that will tack on the pretentious suffixes "the Third" or "the Fourth."

Whatever it may be, I don't think anyone who does this seems to comprehend the problems it causes. Whenever you refer to either the father or the son, you always have to differentiate. Sure, you can just call the dad Eric as you always have, but then you have to say "Eric Jr." when you refer to the kid. And that gets tiresome.

I know some people who have chosen to use the word "little" to preface the name. Eric and Little Eric. It rolls off the tongue more easily, but what about when the boy grows up? I don't think he'll take too kindly to being called Little Eric for very long. Then you're back to Eric Jr. And he'll probably hate that, too.

Then again, there is the option of just calling him Junior. But, then you'd have to move to Alabama.

Now, if I accidentally left both of them rolled up, it wouldn't be so bad. But, when I walk into public with one cuff rolled up, I look like I'm expressing my devotion to some ridiculous '80s hair band. And until I discovered my absurd gaffe, I was feeling cocky because I thought a table of women were checking me out while I was waiting for my chili fries.

I may as well tie a row of bandannas around one leg next time.

I may be wrong, but I do believe that something of intent is intentional. So what else would intent be but deliberate? It's like saying "the egotistic William Shatner." It's a given.

Who wrote this thing? If you don't get it, the point of the commercial is that Pepsi One tastes almost exactly like Coke. Well, anyone who would care that Pepsi One tastes almost like Coke would be someone who drinks Coke. I mean, if you're a Pepsi drinker, you like Pepsi; you wouldn't be interested in something that tastes like Coke. And why the hell would someone who drinks Coke switch to a soda because it tastes almost like Coke? They already drink something exactly like Coke...Coke! So, who is this working on?

I've noticed something in the past few months about commercials on the radio. And maybe it's just something they do here in the Los Angeles area or maybe it's a nationwide trend that has just started since I moved out here, I don't know. But, I will hear a radio commercial about a hundred times in the course of three or four months, at which time it changes.

Now, I'm not talking about a complete change of commercial. I mean they simply re-record the same dialogue, changing only a couple of insignificant words or using a different, yet similar-sounding actor in one of the roles. And it's usually worse the second time around. On a few rare occasions, they'll actually run through the same script, add some sound effects and deliver it in a way that agonizingly "explains" the joke that we got the first time. No new information, no improvement in sound quality — just an extra bit of "Hey, moron. Let's go over this one more time in case you didn't understand the phrase extra smooth."