Don’t you hate it when your favorite coffee mug breaks? Now you don’t have to worry, provided that you don’t mind using a mug the size of a bowling ball.

A team of New Mexico Tech students recently won second place in the American Ceramic Society’s Mug Drop Contest by creating a mug with a large ceramic weight on the bottom. Not only do you get a great cup of coffee with this mug, but you also get an incredible forearm workout.

For the contest the various mugs are dropped onto a concrete slab and then tested to see if they still hold a cup of coffe. The New Mexico Tech mug’s large ceramic base shattered when it was dropped from a height of nine feet, but the mug portion remained unscathed.

Of course, if you were really clumsy and dropped it again all would be lost. Then you’d be sorry.

The first place mug, created by a team from the University of Missouri-Rolla looks much more like a ceramic thermos than a coffee mug. The University of Missouri-Rolla team concentrated on making the edges rounded and the handle small.

I’m glad there is vital research being done to create unbreakable coffee mugs, but I think they should be spending their time on more important things: like making paper coffee cups that stick to the roof of your car as you drive off.

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Have you ever been lost deep in conversation and someone was talking to you and he or she made some sort of face that you really couldn’t quite read but you knew that person was trying to convey some sort of emotion?

Me neither.

But just in case you have then you want to visit the hilarious and very well crafted site Eric Conveys an Emotion. It started out as a simple site where the oddly charming Eric would take goofy pictures of himself conveying emotions and it was such a brilliantly silly idea that it was destined to succeed. While the emotions started out as “Stressed Out” and “Reserved” they quickly degenerate into “Working on a Tech Support Line, Answering Your 500th Call of Someone Who Claims He Can’t Send Email” and even “I’d Like to See the Emotion of “Oops” as in an Accident that Eric Caused Resulting in the Death of Millions of Innocents.”

Eric’s expanded the site with an infrequently updated blog and photo “adventures” which are just as much fun as the emotion photos.

So visit Eric and waste an hour or two. Yes, it’s pretty darn funny. No, it doesn’t make any sense. Neither does your job and you show up for that evey day.

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It has come to my attention that some of you are not spending every waking moment eating, breathing, drinking, snorting and watching the Winter Olympics. This lack of interest is largely due to the fact that watching four spandex-wearing guys skate around a circle for three hours straight to obscure pieces of Russian music is much less exciting than watching just about anything else on TV, including fishing shows. At least you can make fun of fishing programs. Making satirical comments doesn’t really work during the Olympics.

“Hey, look at them there athletes! They sure are physically perfect!”

“Yeah, and most are intelligent, charming, and good-looking, too!”

“Wow, they’re so much better than us!”

As spoiled Americans we have come to expect non-stop excitement in our entertainment to the point where every program we watch on TV contains gratuitous sex, violence, or, if it’s really good, both.

“Thank you and welcome to Vatican Today. In the next 30 minutes we hope to show you shocking and gruesome guerrilla fighting scenes in Nicaragua, fire-eating priests in Texas and seven ways you can make prostitution a mortal sin with a banana and two cans of whip cream.”

This problem led me to come up with some new Winter Olympic events which will hopefully capture the interest of American viewers and strengthen the prevailing force and spirit behind the world-wide games. Namely, advertising.

Here they are:

Downhill Ski Slalom (Through a Minefield) - Remember that Wide World of Sports skier flailing his arms and legs through the air as the announcer spoke gravely about the “agony of defeat?” Now image that guy flailing through the air with his arms and legs about 20 feet ahead of him.

Ice Hockey (With Explosives) – You haven’t seen hockey players hustle until you’ve seen them slapping a live grenade around the ice instead of a wimpy puck. There would never, ever be any question as to whether a goal was scored in this version.

Curling (During a Hockey Game) - Because it would be a lot of fun to see even more front teeth sliding across the ice like Chicklets. With landmines.

Naked Figure Skating – Enough said.

Bobsledding (With Rocket Engines) – Let’s face it, a four guys squeezing together into a little cart and zipping downhill at eighty miles an hour is okay, but four guys squeezing together into a little cart and flying through the air at Mach 4 is much, much better.

Speed Skating (With Whips and Chains) – Think of the chariot race theme from Ben Hur. Now lose the horses, chariots and Romans. Heck, lose the clothing, too. And add some landmines. Now you have a sport.

Curling (On a Luge Track) - The Luge is an entertaining sport because there’s a hint of danger involved. Now imagine the chance to see some guy going ninety miles an hour slam into a stone the size of a watermelon with his groin. That’ll pull in the Nascar fans.

Biatholon Pursuit (Running Man Version) - Why bother skiing around in the woods and shooting little targets when you can watch people skiing around the woods shooting each other.

Sure, I’ll watch the Winter Olympics as they are now, but I’ll be waiting for the day when I can see the “15 Kilometer Downhill Naked Curling Luge Hockey event”…with landmines.

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