You'd better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago

Corporations do odd things. Maybe the working definition of a corporation is ``a group of people gathered together to do odd things''. Today after I bought a couple of Video CDs from LaserFlair -- and isn't that a fine name? -- they gave me a Loyalty Rewards card, buy enough discs and get one free. And they gave me an entry blank for a contest.

The grand prize is a 42 inch high-definition plasma TV, the kind you can't possibly buy because if you ever did, someday you'd say, ``I paid more for this TV than my dad did for his first house and first car combined and I'm watching Press Your Luck'' and kill yourself. For free it's a less intimidating set. The entry blank asks for my name, contact information, receipt number, ``Title(s) Bought'', and it comes with a checkbox, ``I support original products and pledge to be a HIPFriend,'' which is unexplained.

Also unexplained is what one's to do with the entry blank if one joins the HIPFriend Mouseketeers. There's no drop box in the store, nor an address to mail it to. There's a serial number to check after the draw date, but there's no way to separate the number from the entry blank, so either you write it down separately or keep the whole blank. I suspect they'll be disappointed by low returns of consumer profile data. And that the one guy who knows what to do with the blank wins the TV.

Trivia: Edmond Halley published in 1686 the first map of the globe's winds. Source: A History of Scientific Ideas, Charles Singer.

Currently Reading: The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey That Changed The World, Ken Alder.