Does anyone know what happens to milk chocolate when it gets old? I've had a giant chocolate rabbit on my desk for some time now and I would like, ideally, for it to remain there for the rest of my tenure at this job. After melting the peeps that had previously adorned my desk - it was a tribute to the recently-deceased Pope, and we gathered around the microwave in the office kitchen, saying nice things about the old guy as the peeps assumed strange and horrifying forms, and then we left the mess in the sink and pretended to know nothing about it - I needed something else to liven up the ol' work station, and wouldn't you know it, the convenience store downstairs was selling all of the long-past-due Easter merchandise at a massive discount. It was probably the craftiest set of negotiations I've ever conducted. How often do you seal a deal over a giant chocolate rabbit with nothing more than a pair of Washingtons? I'm on record as having said that M.B.A.s are for shit and I think the fact that I closed that deal without a day of business school proves my point in a fairly emphatic fashion.

Because I work until 7pm, I'm usually here when the cleaning lady comes by, and she always dusts behind the giant chocolate rabbit. I've never had to tell her to do that. Wealthy plutocrats often say that good help is hard to find, but that hasn't been my experience at all.

When the game began, though, the two die-hards stood up and unfurled their trump card, a hand-written sign that said something along the lines of:

Their placard inspired a few thoughts. First, who is more of an [word for donkey], the guy who is three years behind the times and thought of the “joke,” or the guy who, back at the apartment, said, “Now that’s funny, dude. You totally have to take that to the game”?

Paul Shirley's journal is back for the playoffs and offers another compelling reason to support the Phoenix Suns (at least in the West - for legal reasons, I have to keep rooting for the Bulls until they're formally eliminated). He is the twelfth man on a team that only uses seven players, giving him the basketball equivalent of a temp job where you sit in front of a computer all day and try to look busy whenever someone walks by until you just can't be arsed to minimize browser windows any more. Having smacked down the "priceless" "joke" is a profoundly noble use of his position, and in the May 3rd entry, he establishes a formula that plots the vector in an emotional matrix involving Shawn Marion and a drunken homeless guy outside the arena. At the very minimum, that entitles him to a supporting role in an "Escape to Victory" remake. Or a little bit of playing time.