Madness 1 -- A bit of advice: If you aren't using the NCAA March Madness iphone app, you're asleep at the wheel. You can watch every game, of course. The picture is crystal clear, and you can pause the action and pick back up like it's on a DVR. You can watch highlights, box scores, or see the bracket in real time. It's a front-pager this week and next.

As I type this, I'm almost all the way through Carnival without having actually gone to a parade. Tonight is Mrs. theskinnyonbenny's parade, so we will go catch that one along with whatever is rolling beforehand. But that's not to say that it hasn't been busy. This is the time of year where I'm all giddy and loving life, because the weather is warm but not too humid, the flowers are starting to bloom, and I can work, eat, and play entirely outside.

Back when I was a college student, someone came up with the notion that on a home football game Saturday, they could get a couple of thousand people out to the Parade Ground at LSU, run through the Hokey Pokey, and get ourselves in. It was pulled off the morning of an LSU/Alabama game, and it was acknowledged as a record by Guinness.

About six months ago, we got a letter from Cox telling us to come to their office and pick up some new gadgets that attach to our TIVO boxes. The letter said we would need them in order to receive new features. I dutifully went to the office, picked up the gadgets, and attached the first one to our TV.

There are many inconsiderate things that your office mates do from day to day. Perhaps you work with slobs who leave an empty coffee pot on the burner, snack from lunches left in the refrigerator, or pee on the toilet seat. But perhaps the worst offense is a seasonal one: stuffing the baby back into a king cake.

For the last few days, I've been trying to come up with something to post. But my life isn't too interesting right now. Pretty much stayed home this weekend and did nothing you would be interested in. I haven't been to the movies, haven't watched much TV, haven't stumbled on any brilliant new music, and I haven't come up with any new jokes about my poop.

One day, when I was in my early teens, I got a hankering for a hard-boiled egg. Not sure why, but that's what I wanted. Being the mollycoddled child that I was, I asked my mom to boil an egg for me. I was rebuffed.

After last night's national championship game, ESPN went to Auburn, AL, to show us live footage of the fans covering the trees of Toomer's corner with toilet paper.

If you have a little kid, you've probably suffered through little kid music. It's part of the price of raising a child. But there are degrees of bad little kid music, and I'm with you today to warn you away from the worst of the worst.

This morning, I needed to exit the interstate on Seigen Lane. It's a busy street, so the exit ramp for cars turning left is two lanes, and it is often many cars deep. Today, the left turn lane on the right was about 8 cars deep, and the left turn lane on the left was a single car. I looked down the lane to see the reason. A beggar was standing on the side of the street right by where the next car would have to stop.

The standards of decent storytelling require me to start our holiday recap not with Christmas itself and not with the chronological beginning of the season. Instead, I jump out to December 19. It's a dark and cold Sunday night, and we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere, some 30 minutes outside of the spot where Birmingham, Alabama's civilized limit stops.

Meet Hershel. Hershel is a pussy magnet.