something that has been bothering me

I have hesitated to write about this, but I can no longer remain quiet. My hesitation relates to the fact that I play online Scrabble with several people that I know read this blog. I don't want them to get any sort of idea that I might be "cheating" or "augmenting my vocabulary knowledge illicitly," but every now and then, I cruise over to the online Scrabble dictionary provided by Hasbro to check on whether some words are real or not, or perhaps just to see what other words might be made from my tiles. But, I'd like to reiterate, I'm not cheating at online Scrabble.

But the online Scrabble dictionary has really been getting on my nerves. Not the service itself, which is exceptional, but the picture at the top of the page. Take a look at this site: http://www.hasbro.com/games/adult-games/scrabble/home.cfm?page=Dictionary/dict

Why is Scrabble using this picture of a woman and a baby? I don't understand how it's relevant. Maybe if she were reading a book to the baby, or holding up letters for the baby, I might be able to believe that she were imparting a love of words into the baby, which might lead the baby to grow up and play Scabble. But I bet she's just saying nonsensical things to the baby, and while those nonsensical things might technically be on the list of acceptable two-letter words, I don't understand what Scrabble-related activity might be taking place between these two people.

I for one would like to go on the record as saying that I don't believe that babies should be near Scrabble boards, because they might swallow the tiles and die, or at the very least, ruin your version of Scrabble, because you don't have all the tiles.

Then if you go to the main Scrabble page (http://www.hasbro.com/games/adult-games/scrabble/home.cfm?page=home), you can see this slideshow of kids and adults with captions written out in Scrabble tiles. This is cute and all, but let's move these kids over to the Scrabble Jr. page, which, if there is any justice in the world, has pictures of old men and hookers smoking cigarettes, with Scrabble tiles spelling out dirty words.