Manlinest City

There has been a study commissioned by COMBOS, "the hearty, pretzel and cracker snack made with real cheese," to determine the manliest city in America. (Incidentally, I most closely associate with my sister, as she would always eat these on road trips when we were kids.) Minneapolis is ranked 18th. They've gotten everything wrong.

Their basic parameters of manliness are as follows:

• Unhealth
• Banality of sports taste (NASCAR-related things were weighted more heavily)
  

Just because you are obese (you eat COMBOS, the hearty, pretzel and cracker snack made with real cheese), that does not make you a man.

Ostensibly, we are trying to measure the manliness of the men in these cities. Minneapolis may not be the number one manliest city, but let's measure based on some real manliness criteria:

• Number of beards, with extra points given for achieving the beard contest criteria.
  
• Total pounds of man-muscle
• Total pounds of beer belly
• Number of cars with flames on them
• Number of men shot in the chest by an anarchist who then go on to give their speech before being driven to the hospital
  

Manliness is not measured by NASCAR.

Because You Asked

I have a plant in my cube at work. I have come to really love this plant. But there has been a bit of a problem: the plant had no name. So, a quest for a name began--with the idea that the piece I took from this plant and put in some water at home to turn into a second plant (hooray thrift!) would be [Plantname, Jr.]. Two people suggested I name the plant after myself: one person suggested "Art, Jr. and Art III," while the other was making a mean joke and suggested "Stupid." I also momentarily considered Ralph and Jefferson. None of these seemed right.

But I think I have it now.

The plant at my desk will be known as The 1987 Minnesota Twins.

Which, then, makes the plant at home The 1991 Minnesota Twins.

I'm not sure what kind of plant it is, so don't ask. I will say it looks like this:



(Note: Yes that is my work's only copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, and YES it lives at MY DESK BECAUSE I AM THE GREATEST.)