Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends, we're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside...

You are looking live at the latest incarnation of The Duck Pond. Think of this as Shagout Light. It may not have all the bells and whistles, but it's 1/3 less calories than the regular Shagout, and that's a good thing.

As for Ducksoup's Blog 1.0, we'll leave that as is, sort of a monument to simpler times when I had no idea what I was doing (as if I do now).

That's it for now, I need sleep. Until next time, for those who haven't yet been exposed to it, here's my piece on waffles that I didn't get a chance to post in the previous Pond before Shagout got zonked:

WAFFLE FENCING?

"The Fed is gonna be lowering rates, so get your money out of T-bills and put it all into [THWACK] waffles! Tasty waffles! With lots of syrup!" --Quote from Family Guy

Why are waffles female?

You know how an extension cord, for example, has a male end and a female end? (Yes, Willie, that's right, just like a flatworm, yes, yes, now shut up.) Okay, so it occured to me that waffles are female, in that the squares go inward. As opposed to a waffle iron, where the squares point outward.

Well, what the fuck, I just answered my own question: Waffles are female because waffle irons are male. Duh! Alrighty then, so why doesn't somebody make a female waffle iron, thus creating male waffles?

Here's another idea: How about making waffles and waffle irons hermaphroditic, with one side male and one side female? Just like extension cords. Just like flatworms. Just like...

Lego bricks! Yeah, then you could build stuff with them! Think of the fun kids will have playing with their food. Think of the promotional tie-in between Lego and Eggo!

Heck, you could even build yourself a whole house out of waffles. It'd work better than a house of pancakes. How the hell can you build a house of pancakes? They're flat. There's no interlocking. One good windstorm and you're screwed. A house of waffles, now there's a sturdy sumbitch!

Then you could do like Lego-Land and build yourself a whole town.

You could call it...WAFFLE-OPOLIS!

Wait, wasn't that a member of Clinton's staff?

No, that was Stephanopoulos.

I though that was a character on Sesame Street.

No, that's Snuffleupagus.

I thought that was another name for your windpipe.

No, that's esophagus.

I thought that was the name of those islands where Darwin hung out.

No, that's Galapagos.

I have to go lie down now, my head is spinning.

***

POSTSCRIPT: May 23, 2007--Once again, I have proven to be ahead of my time: About a year or so ago, Lego-shaped Eggo waffles hit the test market. I got zilch in royalties. Just as well, as they don't seem to have worked out too well, according to the following review from taquitos.net:

"05.21.2006
This new variety of Eggo Waffles looked like fun, promising a Lego-like shape that lets its eaters 'Toast Break & Build!' So I bought a box.

Each square sheet consisted of six 2x4-grid detachable bricks. So the idea is that you toast your waffles, cut them up into Lego bricks, build something, and then (presumably) eat your Lego creation. I had a huge Lego collection when I was a kid and built all sorts of things with them, so the idea of edible Legos seemed appealing.

Unfortunately, it was a lot less fun than it sounded. This was a severely flawed concept. Problems included:

The perforations in the waffles (intended to help separate the bricks) caused the waffles to bend in my vertical toaster, so some parts were closer to the heating elements than others, resulting in uneven cooking.
Once toasted, it was hard to separate the individual bricks in each sheet. It really required a sharp knife and some very careful cutting, which is probably not something that the target audience should be encouraged to do. (If you just pulled them apart, they would barely resemble bricks once you were done, as they did not separate easily. And if you did that shortly after toasting, you would burn your fingers.)
There were eight circles jutting out of the top of each brick, and matching indentations on the bottom, sort of like real Legos, but they didn't even remotely snap together. They barely even stacked on top of each other with any kind of stablilty.
A standard serving is two waffles, or 12 bricks once you've broken them up. There's just not all that much you can build with that many bricks.
Eggo's quality control department allowed some of the sheets in this box to include incomplete bricks, as the batter did not fill the entire waffle iron and also spilled out off the edge. The irregular look might add charm to your standard Eggo waffles, but in this case, it reduced the number of usable bricks and made actual Lego contruction even more difficult.
Even if you manage to get a good sheet of waffles, cook them evenly, and cut them perfectly, they look a heck of a lot less like Legos than the picture on the box. And you really can't do much with them other than eat them."

Also, at the time I wrote this I had not yet heard of Waffle House. I don't think they were in this area yet. I have been there since, and turns out they are not built with actual waffles, which, upon reading the above review, is not at all surprising.