jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec
Above: Hong Kong horse promoting local horse racing establishment; Macau corner scooter shop; Shibuya train station sign
Longer 2004 articles: Billboards in a Red, Red State / Pig Parts: Arizona State Fair 2004 / Dot's Diner / Welcome Diner / Hawaii Shop / Toys in Japan / Arcades in Japan
January 2004.
2004jan07. Henhouse Update #17a. The roosters are being replaced faster than members of Menudo. Since they've been quarantined to the coop after the mighty chihuahua attack, they are for the most part out of sight ... but the crowing is changing. Back in the day, there were three roosters, two with bright, shiny vocalizations, and one who must have been chugging Vicks Formula 44-D ... now I'm getting the impression there's only one shy one. Unless, of course, they've all mostly decided to stop crowing because of that whole dog-killing-chicken thing. Hard to say. The turkeys can still roam, however (tough enough to fight dogs?), and one of them is getting infinitesimally more comfortable with our occasional presence. The turkey still immediately gets all puffed-up macho and fans out his tail feathers when he sees us, but now he will occasionally stop dragging his wings on the ground (which I am guessing is another macho thing, I used to do it back when I drove my shiny black Trans-Am around, muscle shirt, gold chains, you remember [here the narrator strikes a familiar "weightlifting" pose known as the "sneaky snake"]) to peck at a stray kernel of whatever it is that turkeys eat. Off the ground. Way far away from any feeder. Bugs? Dirt/rocks for the gullet? Or is that gizzard? Or, as the kids on the street say, the "gizzazzay." I am not up on my turkey technology. In other bird news, we are scheming and dreaming up ways to entice a roadrunner or two to visit the property from time to time, as they are swell, beautiful birds -- you can apparently set your watch by them as they run around pre-determined paths each day, just like Paul Ordman, or Oortcloud, the math guy who had sex with numbers or mistook his hat for an integral, whatever. Also we would like ravens to visit. Without the whole leave-some-delicious-dead-carcasses-on-the-ground theme. In other news, I am coming to you LIVE in glorious 16 colors. I have two crippled 1997-era PCs that constantly fight me as I try to maxorize them into just one that actually works properly. Today one of them lost its "operating system." I tried to feed it some grain, no dice.
2004jan10. A review of Unmade Beds.
2004jan12. We had a coco-nut today. Drilling holes, drinking the juice (delicious, with a slightly woody taste), hacking it open with a machete to get at the "meat" ‒ eating a coco-nut is a very hands-on surreal experience and inexpensive. That is, as long as you have a drill and a machete ‒ though the tradition is to just use a machete for both liquid and solid acquisition. Or you could drop a large rock on it, or shoot it open, I suppose.Also, the noise it makes when you knock on it is priceless. You can choose between the young coco-nut (which looks like a scale model of a yurt) and the mature coco-nut, which you have seen in cartoons. I recommend it to everyone. [arms splayed] EVERYONE! ENJOY THE POTABLE, EDIBLE COCO-NUT TODAY!
2017: You amateur. You need two kitchen knives, tops.
2004jan14. RED-NET. "RED#NET intends to be a multi-functional, permeable, portable surface that reroutes and reapplies public space."
The main function of this service is to match travellers who are prepared to carry parcels against people who have things that need to go to the same place.
Stuff it, UPS!
2004jan16. Your tax dollars at work ... and play! I believe the photos on the cover of the bookmark are potential "mules," that is, drugs can conceivably be smuggled inside small children or conjoined dogs, or illegal dogs made of drugs inside children or vice-versa. Or maybe someone was sitting at the GPO and said "oh, how are we going to cram this ham-fisted stool pigeon shit down America's tender throat? I know, America can't get enough of kids ... 'n' dogs!" There's another bookmark with the cat holding onto the edge of a frayed rope for CAPPS II with the title "When you can't fly any more, just tie a knot at the end and hang on!"
This message acknowledges both the return and the contribution to society of Misterpants.
2004jan17. Mail.
I am interested in buying into your pop-ad inventory. If you could get back to me with pricing and availability, I would appreciate it.
Currently, we are doing in-house promotionals for Alienware, a Go-L.com supercomputer, 42-inch plasma TV and some other items that would appeal to your audience.
I have an $8 ‒ $10k budget to work with, and I'm looking for sites that can deliver high volume. If possible, please contact me by phone.
We currently have one pop-up slot open, enabling you to deliver pop-up ads to what our in-house demographics department describes as a "bored housewife in Idaho" and then there are a bunch of random fake numbers after that to make the demographic department look like it's actually relevant to the company. She has no desire for any of things you name in your above email, but I think if we really stick with this campaign, pepper her web surfing with four or five pop-ups per hour, she may begin to see the wisdom of enjoying an episode of FOX TV's "America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back" in a ridiculously-oversized/overpriced format. I've spoken with Jerry in accounting, and he's thinking we can soak your ass for five hunnerd clams per view, and an extra cool grand per click-through. I trust Jerry, he's a good guy, but I think he's a little off this time. So I'm giving you HALF OFF of Jerry's little flip reasoning lapse. Throw an extra Franklin on the table and I'll give you the target market's hometown and how many Wal-Marts are within ten miles of her. Act now and you'll get this dirty bowl in front of me that until very recently contained what I amusingly refer to as "my lunch." It's dishwasher safe and unlike most online advertisers actually reads the webpages it ends up at so when it sees a phrase on a website's contact page that reads "Advertising of any kind is frowned upon. Big frowny face for you, ad-man. You make me bloat with queasiness. Do us all a favor and go away." it knows that if it were an advertiser, its gap-jawed schtick is not welcome there. If you feel like replying, be reminded that my email program automatically substitutes any swear words with a parenthetical "[here the author wees on himself repeatedly]" ... cracks me up every time.
The advertiser was not cowed by this response, sending it around the office and "everyone is having a laugh." My campaign of email terror has backfired. Resolution for 2004: MORE WRATHFULNESS
To wit: his username was first initial-last name and I was all like "I bet it's Brad" and it turned out to be Brad and then I was like I KNEW his name was Brad, I should have guessed at it in the email ‒ it's ALWAYS Brad ‒ IT HAS "AD" RIGHT IN THE FUGGIN PANTS OF THE NAME
In other news, the UPS man ("We're brown! We're emphasizing this for some reason! We're putting our mighty marketing power behind the most putrid color in the rainbow!") stopped by today and was schlepping a large package to me as I waited patiently on the porch. I wasn't wearing shoes, and in Arizona, everything tries to kill you, including the ground (the trees drop caltrops-like mini-branches, the cactus spines end up there, holes hold bitey things, and of course there's the wily maneuvers of the wisely-feared desert jellyfish). I think I mentioned this before. Anyway, he's dragging this package over to me, and he reads the package upside down and mispronounces the name on the package and then makes a joke about how he shouldn't try to read packages upside-down and of course right then instead of laughing I just thought of n package delivery drivers in the entire history of time making that joke m times throughout the course of their careers and I got this really far-away mxn look on my face and the UPS guy saw it and couldn't wait to get out of there.
2004jan18. Three Stories About Christopher Walken.
2004jan18. Rare? I burned 200 of those things. (X Magazine)
2004jan19. Interview: Dan Schneider (Ricky on Better Off Dead).
2004jan19. Bob's Travel Journal: New Zealand.
2004jan19. There's so many beautiful things going on in this short quicktime movie of a truck-surfing idiot it's astounding.
1) If you're going to do something like this, and that's not to say that anyone with a dollop of brainpower would want to, but ... if you are ... I can think of better places than a house-packed suburb.
2) That's a fire hydrant. Nice shot.
3) Unfortunately the camera cuts away, but it looks like he may have scored 5x bonus points by running over himself.
4) I would like to see the police report on this one.
2004jan19. Surreal use of beaucratic hoo-hoo: Love & Afferications ‒ The George Kotolaris Story. (Word.com, 1997)
2004jan27. Another observation about coco-nuts. The mature coco-nut does not have as much juice as a young coco-nut. In addition, the mature coco-nut's juice does not taste as excellent as the young coco-nut. Finally, the young coco-nut's meat, although thinner, is softer and easier to remove from the coco-nut itself. Ultimately, it is your choice, but I have turned my attention away from the mature coco-nut.
2004jan28. I BEAT FRIENDSTER
THE LAST GUY WAS HARD
2004jan28. Bob's Travel Journal: Rarotonga / Los Angeles.
2004jan31. There really aren't that many foodstuffs that you can both drink and eat. That's another reason why I am firmly endorsing the immature coco-nut.
2004jan31. Penkiln Burn: Job 5. Corrected URL. Penkiln Burn is run by Bill Drummond, formerly of the musical group The KLF.
2004jan31. My doctor put me on Orkut the other day ("Jeff Stendec"). SIDE EFFECTS: Dizziness, cramping, bloating. If you are not on Orkut you are probably not missing anything.
2004jan31. Phone conversation.
"Hello, T D Rowe."
"What exactly is T D Rowe?"
"You know, sir, I don't know. This is an answering service."
Perhaps I will ask more relevant questions next time.
February 2004.
2004feb02. Age-maps. [via The Finger]
2004feb04. A very bad person was able to re-purpose the Cardhouse contact page to send spam to various AOL users. I would just like to say to these people that I am sorry you are using AOL. Hahahahah! That's an old "AOL users are zombies" joke. Anyway, we've got our top men working on it. If you need to send me email, use [username deleted] [squiggly which I call the "at" sign] cardhouse [period] com ... for now.
2004feb08. "The operation timed out when attempting to contact [domain name]." It's a good thing I have to click "ok" for every ad that bombs out on a webpage. Ads: annoying even when they're not there.
2004feb10. All She Left Behind.
2004feb15. Classification.
The Site: cardhouse.com/
is categorized by N2H2 as:
Jokes
I hate jokes. Jokes are what people say when they're used to running their mouths all day and they've nothing left to say. You watch, the co-worker will jibber-jabber and then suddenly seize up and you see his eyes darting back and forth and he's run out of conversational juice but he's got a whole TANK of joke juice. "Hey, what do you call two people who are having sex? You call them the sex-havers." Whatever. Back in the ole' office days, I got used to responding with dead eyes and a robotic "oh." It never worked, they just started rolling through their "routine." "Wait, I just remembered, I have to go get a piece of paper from my desk and carry it around all day." You can do the same thing in the construction industry, but it's a piece of wood. Or an empty bucket. That's my "the construction industry would seem dissimilar to office culture but you'd be surprised ‒ it's not" joke.
The Site: n2h2.com
is categorized by Cardhouse as:
Useless
[via Jessamyn]
2004feb15. It's everyone's favorite Cardhouse Entertainment Segment, ANIMULE UPDATE!!!! Yesterday morning at about four a.m. we were in bed, listening to something walking on the wooden porch. KA-DONK KA-DONK KA-DONK. Slow, deliberate steps. The porch rounds the corner, and so did Kadonk. KA-DONK KA-DONK KA-DONK. Now the footsteps were coming up to the full-length glass doors ... and there's the Javelina. At the doors, the porch is about three feet off the ground. The javelina goes kadonking over to the edge and ... gracelessly falls over the side. Ka-thud. In addition to the shitting and the eating of prickly pear cactus, the packs of javelinas are at least providing a bit of mirth.
2004feb18. Two pieces of spam. They're starting to get closer to my normal inbox ravings.
fantangariffic! I took the only one pizzle of Cialgs and that was such a GREAT weekend! All the girls at the party were just punch-drizzunk with my potenshialle. i wurk it wurk it. I have dogged all of them THREE times but my dongle WAS able to do some more! IT LINGERED. Cgalis ‒ it`s COOL!!! The best weekend stuff I've ever trgied! Haven`t you tgried yet? DO IT at hitelite linnkk coopee and then passste intoo browzerr [url deleted] watch adulltswim on cartoon networrk eep opp ork aa aa that means i loovvee youuuuuuu
Hey bro,
What's up? Did I tell you about the party I hit up the other day? It was doppee! I found this n e t s i t e that slings this stuff called sillyest. It's like vighagra times ten. You don't even need a script to get it either. I was like a rockstar for 2 days straight. It was even better than that time we went to the clubb in lake titicaca!
they had some sort of prommotioncommotion thing going on when i hooked some up, i think it's still on sail too.
"A script to get it."
YOU: "I would like some 'Sillyest.' I believe it is like Vighagra, but multiplied by a factor of ten."
DOCTOR (dramatically): "Sillyest? Oh, I don't think I have any of that."
[CAMERA SLOWLY PANS TO LOCKED CLOSET]
YOU: "But I want to be a rockstar for at least a couple of days straight. I am recalling the time a friend and I went to the Lake Titicaca Clubb. I was almost a rockstar then, perhaps for a day, day and a half. This would be better."
DOCTOR (SFX: OPENS CLOSET): "Okay, you have followed the script. Luckily for you, it's still on sail."
YOU: "Ah. The prommotioncommotion."
DOCTOR: "You can stop now."
2004feb18. A personal message from the CEO and president of the Gillette company.
2004feb19. I am entirely sick of "logging in" to websites, especially when it's for online media concerns that I may visit once every two weeks. Perhaps you already know you can get into a certain paper's (rhymes with Stew Pork Times) website with the username "testtesttest" and the password "testtesttest." This is a direct descendent from early default password schemes on mainframes, some of which had a username "test" and password "test." I don't know if that ever worked at SPT, but "testtest" used to, then it was killed, probably due to overuse. What the hivemind needs ‒ and perhaps they've already come up with something and I've missed the bus again ‒ is a logically extensible namespace for usernames/email addresses and passwords so all of us don't have to continually enter "90210" when prompted for a zip code just to read a newspaper article. Those of us who are never going to enter correct demographic data should have a little communal "route around damage" path while compu-zombies around the world obligingly spend five minutes entering personal information for online concerns. It's a win-win situation ‒ the people who don't want to enter information don't foul up various corporation's precious demographic data, and the people who think that giving "primary responsibility" information to the Washington Post is going to ‒ I don't know ‒ magically shower them with gifts one day ‒ can still do so as usual. Then again, perhaps the programmers at these various login-driven sites automatically kill IDs that are habitually swarmed by the hivemind. I cannot say at this time.
In a way, the Washington Post's new overly-detailed sign-in page reminds me of the parable of the Monitor and The Merrimac. The Monitor was an olde-tyme BBS back in the days of youth and yore. Now, the way I understand the story, someone created a rogue dialer that they called "The Merrimac" that would dial into The Monitor late at night and create random users. So the sysop of The Monitor changed the login screen to ask the user a skill-testing question. The guy who programmed The Merrimac then futzed with his code a little bit so it would get past this and continue to add users. The battle became pitched on both sides until the login screen for The Monitor became so convoluted the regular users jumped ship, as it were, to other BBSes and/or the Monitor's sysop became so disgusted with The Merrimac that he shut The Monitor down.
2004feb23. Phone conversation.
THEM: "Hello, I'm Unimportant Name from Tucson Radio Annoying Phone Intrusion Products GmbH and I'd like to take this time to conduct a small thirty-second poll with you concerning your daily radio choices. Which radio station do you listen to primarily during the day?"
NOT THEM: "Yes, I find myself listening these days mostly to WOFF FM, which broadcasts twenty-four hours of continuous silence. Less talk, less rock, W O F F."
THEM: [begins to laugh]
NOT THEM: [click]
That was less than thirty seconds, perhaps I should ask for my money back. In other news, we macheted the last of the eight-foot tall dying prickly pear down for the Javelinas, who are still naughty smelly pigs but I figured since they started eating birdseed at 4am the other day they were a little low on foodstuffs. But that's the last of it, you stinky porkers. Sort of like a good-bye treat. The machete goes clean through a prickly pear like it's paper. It's kind of scary. Scarier: gas-powered machete.
2004feb29. The only way to advance page(s) during a Google search is to scroll down to the bottom of the page to click on the "Goooooogle" string. Yahoo thought that crafty bit of UI was so awesome that they hobbled their own search pages with it as well! Well all righta!
March 2004.
2004mar02. Inches and football fields: David Cay Johnson on the money.
2004mar02. Steve Wozniak on messing with the Secret Service: "You only live once." That's beautiful.
2004mar04. Photographic tour of Chernobyl "dead zone." [via die puny humans]
2004mar06. I used to read Salon.com a lot. Now you have to sit through a full-page flash advertisement (once a day) to get any actual article you'd like to read. First you click on a splash screen, then you watch the ad for a "gaydar"-themed television series created by a rabid right-wing television station, and then you can "enter Salon premium." Then you are released unto Salon.com proper (or maybe not ‒ the last time I tried to do this, the flash ad kept repeating before it would get to the end), where among the five ads wrapped around the "content," at least three of them are for the aforementioned Gaydar reality show (I'm just assuming it's a reality show. That's all there is now, really). And really, it's not like I sat around and watched the ad while it was playing. This is a computer I'm on here, and I've got nine kabillion windows open. You, my pathetic little flash advertisement, can sit in the background grinding away with whatever memecrap you think you're cramming into my headspace, but you're just little numbers spinning lazily in my taskbar. I only see the first frame of the ad, and the last, which, typically, are the exact same things that appear as static ads on the Salon.com content page. Your little robot talkie shill is completely ineffective and redundant. I don't go to Salon.com anymore, so now even the non-moving advertisements are no longer penetrating my soft, delicate/innocent eyeballs.
Salon.com is like the RealPlayer of media websites.
2004mar06. The Vegas Playgirl bombs on Jeopardy, even with her magical fake Starbucks drink.
2004mar06. Netflix message.
Louise Brooks: Looking For Lulu has been added to your rental queue.
Other movies with the same director, actor, and/or genre:
- Gangsta King: Raymond Lee Washington
- Raising Tennis Aces: The Williams Story
- Nasty's World: White Knuckle Extreme
- Boys of 2nd Street Park
The page also features a section entirled "more movies with Shirley MacLaine." [FX: netflix.com sheepishly draws figure eights in the dirt with its foot]
2004mar10. See? If you want something, you have to ask for it.
2004mar16. Area Website Writes About Anything, Slaps "Urban Legend" Title On It
2004mar20. No seriously, I'm with FedEx.
2004mar20. Another illegal immigrant FedEx delivery from 2002.
2004mar21. Language Hat kicks the "100 Most Mispronounced Words" list in the face, and this churns up another bit about the difference between duct and duck tape. This then reminds me of putting duct tape all over a dryer duct years ago and watching it just fall off days later.
2004mar22. In keeping with today's headlines: Caboose FAQ.
2004mar22. This squirrel cop patch rules. It also "rocks." The original squirrel cop story was broadcast on This American Life back in 1998, when most of us were younger.
2004mar25. Penkiln-Burn Job No. 41: Cake.
2004mar25. Photos from road trip. Tucumcari, New Mexico.
Dean's sign.
Dean's alley.
Dean's.
2004mar29. Herbert's Pledge of Allegiance.
2004mar31. Yet another Wired article, this time on Netflix clones. Guess I've been sleeping under a log for awhile.
2004mar31. Netflix analysis. A friend of mine told me he copies the discs he gets and puts them right back in the mail, sometimes on the same day. I don't think they're making any money on him.
2004mar31. Netflix (Wired article from December 2002) is a subscription DVD rental service. For $20 a month, you select three movies that you'd like to watch, and these are mailed to you. You can keep them as long as you like. When you're done with one or more, you mail them back, and the next movie(s) you'd like to see is mailed to you. No late fees, no "we're out of that one." The only problem with Netflix is their rental queue design, which is minimalistic and yet atrocious. Netflix Freak looks like it takes care of some nagging UI problems plus adds plenty of bonus additional extra features.
2004mar31. Yeah! That's what we need! The FBI, the CIA, the NSA, that other one that is more seekrit than the NSA, the TSA, the DHS, ECHELON, INS, IRS, DEA, ATF, the shadow government, state and local police, the impotent mall security guard ... it's not enough. Soon, all U.S. citizens will be employed at one of several hundred TLAs which will spy on all the other TLA employees and themselves. Weee! We all get to wear sharp uniforms! [via doc]
2004mar31. I am travelling to Japan and various other countries. In a month. An article in Wired mentioned that there's discussion about using GPS instead of "normal" addresses in Japan, where sometimes the taxi drivers have to ask around to find a certain location. But I can't find any of this "discussion." Really what I'm looking for is a big ole' list of interesting/relevant landmarks with accompanying lat/long readings. ARE YOU THAT LIST?
April 2004.
2004apr04. McSweeney's: The magic of radio.
2004apr04. My first time reading a newspaper in two years. Newspapers smell and are filled with ads. Today, the Family Circus has a one-panel color strip featuring Grandma speaking to the four Family Circus Childrens while a sun sets in the background. "There's a precious cargo aboard that setting sun. It's taking a part of each of our lives with it." Powerful stuff. And then there's a strip I've never heard of, "Pickles," with this cheery sentiment: also powerful. I remember back in my day, mainstream comics tried to make us laugh ‒ and failed. Now, cartoonists are more interested in the heavy stuff. Like old people, teaching young children about death. We're all going to die, but we're going to die first, because we're older. If you remember one thing, Little Jimmy Jr., it's that I'm about to croak. But when we die, someone else will take over our horrible comic strip, producing howls of agony from the populace at large. Here comes the death. Any second. I'm turning the pen over to my subordinates who are also not funny ... now.
2004apr04. HOT SOCKS!!!!!111! You mean if I buy the Apacer Disk Steno CP100, chix will be draped all over me like that? "Hey big boy, it looks like you've completely solved the problem of your limited CompactFlash® card inventory while on safari by purchasing a portable CD writer without link to PC ... and that makes me all melty." I will turn away, with my crappy 1978 hair helmet, and smile the smile of the truly contented while I enjoy the fun of the digital technology on the move.
2004apr04. Yucca Motel. Logan New Mexico.
I tried to stay at Western Stars but no one would answer my plaintive rap-tap-tapping.
I liked the sign. There's a star inside the "O" as well. That's pretty much my only requirement in the way of motels. Old sign, neon. But fluorescent is so much cheaper! And a sign designed in Helvetica by a 14-year-old is so much cheaper! That's what America is -- land of the cheapies. And do all your shopping ... AT WAL-MART!
2004apr04. Vending machine. Rest area, somewhere Indiana.
The label for the candy oranges reads "ORANGE SLICES" and right above it in teeny-tiny print "TENDER" ... sell those sugar wedges, Universal Snacks. In small print at the bottom: "TASTEE TREATS" ‒ no expense was spared to make the packaging as enticing as possible. I couldn't see the back of the label, but I think it said something like "PLEASE TRY TO ENJOY THIS FOOD ITEM" and "THE SUGAR CONTAINED WITHIN THIS CANDY PRODUCT MAY BRIEFLY ELEVATE SEROTONIN LEVELS PRODUCING A SOMEWHAT PLEASANT FEELING" or "SUPPORT YOUR STATE: MOTHER INDIANA REQUIRES IMMEDIATE CONSUMPTION OF ALL UNIVERSAL SNACKS GOODS"
2004apr05. Let's all go to the Jitterbug with the Night Cabbie. Poor guy.
2004apr05. When I was a little girl, I had a large colored pencil which was really just a container shaped like a pen. It had a place to put a colored pencil nib at the bottom, and jammed inside the container were about thirty different colored nibs lined up like kernels of corn, but different colors, except for the one that was yellow, and also the one that was light orange, and the one that was purple which were the same. As corn. Except smaller. It had a yellow cap on it and it was topped by a smiley face. Oh, it was heaven, and I ate ice cream all day! If someone can find this pencil for me on the net, I promise I will smile on the inside for a whole three hours just for this very special someone. [Found it. Deal's off. No smiles.]
2004apr05. Cockeyed: Veeeeahhhhgrrrrrrra. \/1AGR/\. VEE AHH GRA. v1aqra. v/agra. \\\\////111////\\\GGG rah! etc, and so on. Did you get all of that? Okay, please make ten million carbon copies and send them to random addresses. I'm sure someone out there will send us some money.
2004apr06. Bienvenido! Quienes somos! Servicios! Ofertas! Taquitos! Todo esto se le lo ofrecemos en Cardhouse ... ¡y ése es cuando estallaremos!
2004apr06. Why doesn't bloglines highlight their links? I think it is because of that problem programmers have with the UI, the one where they ignore it completely. "It's coming up," someone wrote me a month ago.
2004apr06. There are weblogs for everyone. The Coco-Nut Weblog. Contains bits on my favorite island, Nauru, and Dr. Scott's favorite island, Montserrat. Everyone should have a favorite island. Jack Hitt had a (obviously) excellent piece on Nauru on This American Life sometime ago, but I'm going to let you find that, you little treasure-seeker you. Fetch your granpappy some more of that delicious coco-nut juice while you're up.
2004apr08. Peanuts. These images appear in Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz and are taken from a 1966 View-Master reel and sleeve.
You are looking at a monitor displaying a file of a scan of a page of a file of scan of a sleeve of a slide of a photo of a 3D diorama of a 2D comic strip.
2004apr09. I need a portable CDR that reads Compact Flash cards. There is not that much info about this new technology out there, but it looks like I've settled on a particular brand and model. The actual name of the product is (and I've mentioned this before) Apacer Disk Steno, and one variant of it is named CRUMPLER Jobo Apacer Disk Steno CP100 Mobile CD Burner. Crumpler Jobo Apacer Disk Steno CP100. Man, that is the stupidest product name ever. I'm going to make a little sticker that reads "Jimmy Jr." and stick it over their lousy name.
"Hey, whatcha got there, mister?"
"This here is the Jimmy Jr. CDR burner."
Rolls right off the tongue. Steno. Jobo? Crumpler. Anyway, the Stenographic Job Cobbler is the only fryer that has a battery pack, which is the whole point ... it's supposed to be a product on the go. Now, standardize the battery pack so it's rechargeable double-A just like my camera, and I'll be all swoony. Oh yeah, and get rid of the remote control, I'm on the go.
2004apr11. Future technology continues to bottom out.
Andersson said a technology in development called "Ergovision" would customize the vehicle to each driver to provide the safest and most comfortable ride. Drivers would have their bodies scanned at the dealership, and the measurements would be stored on an intelligent key fob that would relay the information to the car when the key is put into the ignition. Electric motors would then reposition the seat, pedals, shoulder seat belt, headrest, steering wheel and mirrors so that the driver has the best possible sight lines.
BRILLIANT! So I'm paying how much again for all of this scanning/key fob crap and each of these motors? Let's see, there are six of them ... wow, that's worth the convenience of usually having to manually shift the pedals around after someone else has driven my car. Makin' up problems and solvin' 'em ‒ that's technology! Next year's Ergovision model will feature a robot that picks you up out of bed, puts you in the car, and then the robot gets in and drives you to work and then goes in and does your job and then drives you home and puts you back into bed.
2004apr12. A snotty employee at Fry's took me to task for saying that the Roadstor doesn't have a battery, when in fact it does. I blame the internet. Also -- everybody stop what you're doing ‒ and marvel at the Fry's employee who knows what the hell's going on over there. I've never had a problem with the people there because I've never had to ask 'em any questions, but every single time I mention Fry's to someone else the response is automatic: "know what you want before you go."
2004apr13. The seasons change here in Arizona. I am experiencing them for the first time. New for April: a small black fly that likes to orbit my skull at about six inches out. It's exciting when there are two or three of them, you feel like an atom.
2004apr13. Maakies: Drinky Crow with a level-headed assessment of strip clubs. My name is Cardhouse Robot and I endorse this message.
2004apr14. I finally made my decision vis-a-vis the Roadstor and Apacer Disk Steno. My decision to purchase the Roadstor is based on two factors. [1] I guess I'm tired of beating my brains against the monitor trying to read the broken English of the Apacer site and finding relevant stats for all three of their units for comparison purposes ‒ the 200 Combo, in particular, gives off this serious vaporunit stench, and I'm sure that's not true, but one of the distributors hasn't heard of it and the user manual isn't on their site. And those photos of the smiling people scare me. I just can't struggle anymore, I'm the roulette ball falling into the slot. [2] The Roadstor is available at Fry's, and thus I can purchase it and examine it now instead of getting it two days before I'm scheduled to leave. I mention this because a few people were asking me about this Roadstor/Steno shootout earlier.
2004apr14. Ftrain: Memories of the New Economy.
2004apr14. The Eglu is a well-designed little chicken house. The roosters next door haven't been crowing that much lately, so I'm not cringing as I read the multitude of warmly-written pages about keeping chickens. I think perhaps the overachieving rooster that would crow at 11pm and 3am and anytime at all has been replaced. It's disconcerting, the donkeys down the street also did some sort of line-up shuffle. You think to yourself, "there's so much I wanted to tell you ... but now you're gone." [via boingboing]
2004apr14. Two weeks before trip. I'm going to be in various airplanes a total of around 48 hours, so I'm practicing screaming and clawing at my face. I just do what the guidebooks tell me.
2004apr14. Photos from road trip. Tucumcari NM.
More dangerous than one bee: two bees with tiny hot pans of food.
Three of those mini-signs advertise weekly meetings at noon. Blanket parties for the unsuspecting tourist, maybe.
Don't really know where to begin on this one. I'll post the rest of the sign someday that is other than today.
2004apr15. Breaking Thumbs. Tokyo co-op. Also: cow on bicycle milk design.
2004apr15. Taxes.
Parent of a Kidnapped Child.
The parent of a child who is presumed by law enforcement authorities to have been kidnapped by someone who is not a family member may be able to take the child into account in determining his or her eligibility for the head of household or qualifying widow(er) filing status, deduction for dependents, child tax credit, and the earned income credit (EIC). [for more information dial 1-800-829-4477 press "357]
So if a child is kidnapped by a family member, the parent who lost the child doesn't get the tax breaks.
2004apr15. I haven't checked in with Parking Spots for awhile. I love the deadpan text that accompanies some of the pictures. "My Massey Ferguson and the reaper is ready for the haymaking season." I'll bet it is.
2004apr16. New Yorker: Big Harold Ramis article perfect for whiling away the working day. Coming to you live in teeny-tiny-column-o-vision. "Dammit, it has to look like the magazine! Tighter! TIGHTER!" [via greg.org]
2004apr16. I used to use blogdex. Blogdex has 21 links for its top link today. The Bloglines "most popular links" page has 117 links for the same top link. That's more than 5x better.
2004apr16. Mail.
i like to know if you sell i watch ,,cheap watch and if you sell you write me your adres state
I could know watch sell cheap state you? I write watch. Watch what I write, you cheap!
2004apr19. Generic Misguided Patriotic Complaint Mail.
I am upset to find that you still make and sell candy cigarettes!!!! It's absolutely unacceptable in todays society....... Talk about convincing little kids that cigarettes are good for you........ Shame shame on you,,,, obviously you put more value on how much money is in your account rather than what is really morally responsible to the people of this great country....
I'm doing quite well with my candy cigarette business, thank you, and no "morality" is going to stop me or my kind. I am also upset to find that you didn't include your email address so I could submit it to spammers and porn sites.
2004apr19. Bush, deep as always.
After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, "Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,"says Woodward.
And he said, "History," and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, "History, we don't know. We'll all be dead."
2004apr20. Get Your War On: Goo Gah Freedom.
2004apr23. The Lessons of 9/11. [via doc]
2004apr26. The Site of Unimaginative City Names. C'mon everyone, let's contribute!
2004apr30. JAL airlines features two inflight cameras, one pointing straight forward, and one pointing straight down. So while you're flying over the ocean, you can see the ocean, 30000 feet down. Past the clouds. And the shadows of the clouds. Or are the shadows actually part of the water? It is not for me to say.
During the flight JAL has done pretty much everything in their power to make you forget you're flying. Each seat has its own li'l video screen (like JetBlue) and then there's this mongo remote which allows you to select video stations, musical stations, play videogames, and if you turn it around ‒ ABRA ABRA CADABRA! ‒ it's an airphone with a credit card slot (USD7.50/minute). Then there are the larger video screens which show important flightal instructions like the "alcohol has more affect in the air" directive animation which featured a guy banging down an aisle, falling on people. As if that wasn't enough, about halfway through the flight -- it's BINGO! Sponsored by the manufacturers of the mango jelly substance we were given for dessert ("HIGH FLACTOSE CORN SYRUP"), passengers were given free bingo cards and then you watched the accompanying video (and for me and a few other passengers, English-dubbed) and perhaps you won valuable non-valuable prizes if you were not me. Actually, they didn't look too shabby -- couldn't really tell what they were, but they appeared to have some bulk/heft to them, it wasn't like "Here's a free case of High Flactose Corn Syrup Mango Jelly."
I am in Narita's airport, pretending like I know what the hell's going on here. In front of me is the glass-walled smoking lounge, and after you get off the plane there's a smoking "station" of sorts that's like a bar ‒ you hie up to it, start smoking, and powerful venting/suction devices take in the smoke and everyone is happy.
I am actually just here for a layover, I'm on my way to Hong Kong which is a different place entirely.
May 2004.
2004may04. Google seach strings. Internet cafe, Little India Singapore.
free sex pictures
new ringtones in tamil
online sex spell
This travel thing is really taking a chunk out of me.
2004may06. Now I am in Kuala Lumpur. I took the train here from Singapore. There are people here, and also cars. I am sensing ... a temperature change? I think so.
2004may07. There are so many cute little cars and trucks here. Just like the food. And the utensils are smaller as well. Screw that Atkins crap, it's all about portion control. I want a tiny car. There aren't many SUVs here, but the ones that are here look like mega-monsters parked next to them.
2004may07. The piratical DVD industry here in Kuala Lumpur has been raved about by various backpackers, but all I'm seeing is current, horrible releases like "Walking Tall." I'm sure you could get the same thing in Oakland California.
I had a Malaysian coco-nut yesterday. It was a young'un, nice and green and huge, almost as big as my head. top cut open, straw inserted. Not as delicious as the Thailand coco-nuts I have tasted back home. I have no explanation for this. Malaysia is the home of the coco-nut.
2004may11. Everyone's chirping about how Blogger now has a "weblogging by email" function. I just want to say ... the system that Cardhouse uses, Sooper Hot Weblog Thing V2.1, has had this feature since THE YEAR TWO SCRATCHIN' THOUSAND, thanks to the efforts of star programmer Dr. Scott Berk. In your face, Blogger.
This was so important I wrote it from Bangkok. Khao San road is like Burning Man except I don't smell any patchouli. WHERE IS THE PATCHOULI I WANT TO RAIL ON THE PATCHOULI
Also while we are talking about overdue features, how about a copy-paste buffer array? I think today's smart, smart computers can handle this small modification. Perhaps this is why I am a construction worker.
2004may17. I'm trying to think of a polite way to put this ... but I'm sick to death of bargaining for things. I'm back in Bangkok, but at Koh Samui everytime you wanted to take a trip by songthaew (two benches plus a raised roof in a truck bed), you bargain with the driver for a rate. Maybe. And in Bangkok, everytime you buy something that isn't at the 7-11 or Family Mart, you bargain with the seller. Maybe. That is to say, sometimes the price is fixed, and sometimes it ain't, and it's up to you to figure out which is which. The songthaew experience was bargaining overdrive ‒ sometimes you couldn't bargain, sometimes the route was 2x than it was yesterday at the same time, sometimes the same driver would give you two vastly different rates only minutes apart, sometimes the driver would make a lemon face when you'd try to bargain, sometimes you'd tear your hair out and it was all over two dollars at most, but you multiply it out by how much songthaew travelling I did in Koh Samui and perhaps it was worth it. I didn't rent a motorcycle like 99% of the other visitors because I like doing things the hard and stupid way, as evidenced by my Michael Palin dress shirt/pants get-up. See, I had read in the guide books that Thais found the Western style of dress ‒ or non-dress (shorts/short-sleeved shirts) not to their liking, yet nearly every single tourist I've seen in Bangkok is doing the USA shorts/t-shirt thing, if they haven't been infected by Thailand fever and are wearing "authentic" clothing that no one else is wearing except all of them. And corn rows. And tribal tattoos. Just trying to express my individuality. Also (getting back to the motorcycle thing) the highest number of accidents occur at Koh Samui because pretty much anyone can ride a motorcycle. Saw three eight-year-olds on a motorcycle one day. That's a 24-year-old in terms of cycling experience right there.
Tomorrow, Japan. My understanding is that it is a different country.
2004may25. I'm in Kyoto, Japan, being polite. My limited knowledge of Katakana is helping a little bit, but when I get to a temple, it's pretty much all Kanji and nothing is translated. The temples are riddled with small tourist trinket stations, a lot of them repeat in case you were walking by too fast the first two times. I got a good luck charm for TRAVEL SAFETY (which of course had little cartoon representations of all the major forms of transporation currently popular with the "in" crowd) but I don't know if I'm supposed to keep it with me, eat it, or dangle it over my head.
The major two food groups of visitors to the temples and other tourist attractions are single women, and schoolchildren. Boatloads of schoolchildren, all dressed like sailors. Schoolchildren in Japan are never actually in the classroom, they just tour Japan all year. At least that's what a totally mythical tour guide told me as I bashed my head against the top of the nth small temple doorway that day.
June 2004.
2004jun02. A little poison to wrap-up your day, courtesy the Salvation Army. [via glassdog]
2004jun02. Mail.
Looked at Deep Fried Arizona Pics. One caught my eye. the Marisco's food stand.
My name is S. Marasco. I have seen a couple other spellings of my name, but never with the I. Can you put me in touch with these people. I would be curious of geneology.
Thank you.
So you want me to find the people ... who run a food stand ... that I took a picture of ... from a fair ... that ended months ago?
Why not kick it old school style with Switchboard and go Hazee-Fantazee with the sleuthing, is wot I say.
[switchboard URL provided]
There's THIRTY-ONE FLAVORS of Mariscos in Arizona, pops. Dig that beautiful scene, your mutated genes have spread throughout this tragic, insane land. Porpoises flock to the gates, regretting nothing. [snaps fingers arrhythmically]
If that link doesn't work for you, go to http://www.switchboard.com and then type in "Marisco's" and "AZ" in the proper fields, hit return, and watch the magic. (ANSWER KEY: "Marisco" means "seafood")
2004jun02. More on the Get it together, Hawaii, theme.
[1] Given an almost infinite namespace, let us pick the worst possible one. Oahu's mass transit bus system is imaginatively called "The Bus." Now, imagine you're a tourist from another country, and you want to get a shuttle bus to your hotel which costs around $8 ‒ $10, and your English is not that good. "I'd like to take the bus to my hotel, please." Well step right on up to The Bus, my German friend.
[2] The following tourist amenities are available upon arrival at Honolulu International Airport. #1: A tourist hotline phone. You dial the number and get a busy signal. I've heard rumors that sometimes there's an actual human being on the other end. #2: Various ad-laden guides to Oahu. This is always a bad scene, and a common one. You pick up one of these things, and all of the reviews read "I had dinner at Pepe's Weasel Broth Nook and it was a life-changing experience that also ROKKED" and right in the next column is a four-color ad for Pepe's Weasel Broth Nook. Of course, this is how all magazines work, but let us continue to be crabby. #3: The baggage-claim desk, where you can actually speak to a real, live human person who will answer questions but that's not what they're there for and this is HAWAII we're talking about our nation's premiere tropical destination you can't drop someone behind a fuggin' lectern who only really has to be there when the incoming flights arrive and it's not like you're dropping 300 people into Oahu every minute or so? #4: The shuttle bus hotline system. Two of the three phones don't work and how many people need a shuttle to their hotels from your flight?
[3] So now you're going to try to use The Bus to get to your hotel. You are at the airport. You go to the The Bus bus stop. There is a sign: "The Bus." This is all the sign indicates. There is absolutely no information about routes available, times, bus numbers, a map, nothing, this is at the AIRPORT can anyone hear me over there HELLLLOOOOOOO? Okay. Yes, in various places in Southeast Asia excluding Japan, the transportation options weren't actually glaringly obvious. But this The Bus thing, where 98% of the stops have no indication of anything except that it's a bus stop, and 1% feature this thing, it's like a map on a pole, it's in the shape of a cylinder, because some dumbshit over in Oahu thought that centuries of mapmakers had their thumbs up their asses and what humanity really needed was a map of a very linear route displayed on a vertical (I've got this thing about vertical maps. I make tiny gleeful noises when I [rarely] run into a map that is presented horizontally) rotating cloudy circular plastic surface. It's interactive! You can't see the whole thing in one fell swoop, it possesses hidden elements of surprise! I'VE EVEN PUT LITTLE TINKLY BELLS IN IT SO THE RIDER IS SOOTHED WHILE FIGURING OUT HOW TO TRANSFER OR JUST WHAT IN THE FREAKING HELL OPTIONS HE OR SHE HAS OR DOES NOT HAVE The other 1% feature a smashed version of said thing, and good on them ‒ I want the fetish The Bus Navigational Route Thing Smashfest DVD.
Of course there are beautiful The Bus route markers at the central mall.
I also applaud the drivers for not enforcing the heinous "no baggage" rule. If I can make my baggage fit in my own personal zone and I'm not pissing off any other passengers then let me ride in peace except if I'm sitting on the engine in back then me ride in peace with an extremely hot butt and I don't mean sexy, that's just a given.
"Man, there's some totally fresh stuff going off at Cardhouse today! This guy went halfway around the world for a month or something, right? And now he's complaining about mass transit. Fresh."
2004jun02. While I'm incessantly talking about coco-nuts ... in the Bangkok airport, the international terminal gates are laid out in one long line. So if you want to, for example, competitively price small water bottles (because there are no big water bottles in the Bangkok airport), you have to troll up and down this fifty-mile stretch of airport property, one shop at a time. So I finally found two kiosks that were only marking up the water three times the average Bangkok price (instead of like the sushi stand, which was marking up the water nine times the average Bangkok price) and I purchased a lake's worth 'cause plane cabins are drier than the driest desert and that's pretty dry (Travel tip #981f: When ordering drinks on a plane, order two or three ... I've only had one flight attendant stop short at the request, but I still got the order). While doing this at one store, I noticed they had plastic-wrapped coco-nuts. That were whole. That means they weren't cut open. A light goes off, which means that it turns on, inside my head, figuratively.
"If I buy this coco-nut ... you'll open it for me?"
The uniformed woman behind the counter answers in the affirmative. I immediately drag out 80 Baht just for the pleasure of the next minute or so, and I'm not disappointed. She fishes behind the counter and pulls out a HUGE cleaver ‒ the other clerks at the kiosk are amused by just how wide my eyes go at this point ‒ and starts hacking the coco-nut open. Deft chops, five or six, then she grabs a straw for me and we're done. Big knife action in a sterile poorly-designed international airport. Best coco-nut I've ever had.
2004jun02. Mail.
A local restaurant had the audacity to place walnuts in its quiche!
Now try to tell me if there are nuts in something if the accompanying placard is written in Japanese. I am back from my vacation. I put all my luggage locks on my keyring when checking in my bag in Honolulu for the second and last time. The reaction I got from various check-in staff around SE Asia when I asked them about their lock-breaking policy was delightful: "Break the locks ... on your property? We would never do that." Yes. I guess that is sort of ridiculous.
In Hawaii the trend is to offer a smaller coco-nut on top of a styrofoam cup. The coco-nut is pierced all the way through, and a straw is inserted snug to the bottom of the styrofoam cup, and then you drink from the cup through the coco-nut. I somehow resisted tearing out my hair right there at the juice stand. This is so wrong. Give me a coco-nut, a straw, and a spoon. End. Of. Story. Get it together, Hawaii.
We went swimming on the North Shore of Oahu, at Pipeline where all the crazy surfers do their surf thing and I have new total respect for the surfers after just keeping it together for awhile in the ocean, swimming-wise whereas your modern day surfer has to do all of this and more with a big chunk of orange-peel-shaped fiberglass strapped to their ankle . And the colors of the water, or the light reflecting the water, or the bottom of the water, however that works, were just stunning and beautiful and I thought "Okay, I can die now." Then, later on the plane, I thought "Okay, maybe not now. Car accident, down on the ground."
2004jun03. I'm starting to sift through the ridiculous amount of photos I've taken in the various countries I am rumored to have visited. This one (seen on the side of a bus) I chased down and sat between polluting buses to capture, 'cause it was so important.
One of who knows how many shots inside a Hong Kong supermarket.
2004jun03. While I was dodging two-stroke motorcycles in various overcrowded SE Asia cities, Dong Resin came back and scored a book deal so make sure you read the site, buy the book, read the book to the site, write the site in the book, then print the site in book form and make the two books fight.
Also perhaps you remember me whining about not being able to find a 36-color colored pencil for the trip. I got one, but it arrived a little too late for me to use. It was mailed from Canada, and somehow got from there, to here, crossing an international border, without postage. None. Try this with all your worldly packages. Imagine a world with totally free postage anywhere. Someone could send me an ice cream sundae everyday! What a delicious future, I'm glad to be a part of it.
When I was crossing international borders most of them (the very imaginary borders themselves) were absolutely shit-scared of anyone even
mentioning the word SARS. So while you're waiting in line in immigration, heat-sensing cameras scan you up and down and if you're running a fever I guess the machine just loads a bullet and fires away. A few places had mass-sensing apparatus set up, and you could see yourself in the crowd of cool, yellow-colored blobs marching past the cameras. One guy from the UK got pulled out of the moving crowd and a woman smacked a small machine tool onto his forehead and was given the okay to proceed in about five seconds and he said "they singled me out because I'm from [the UK {here I can't remember the exact term he used, let's all get jet lag over and over again}]." Then because I like to ride the wave of dangerousness I started to take a photo and somehow all three women that were scanning the crowd ‒ although their backs were to me ‒ rose as a single unit and turned around yelling "NO PHOTO! NO PHOTO!" while pointing at the sign that said "NO PHOTO." Then I got scared-feverish and a machine shot at me.
Part of the new anti-SARS preventive border thing is to hand out a health declaration card or maybe it's old, it's not like I'm a member of the jet set. I can't remember which country it was, but one card offered around twelve different symptoms to check/not check ‒ "are you currently ... feverish? dizzy?" etc, to the point where anyone with jet lag would probably have to check two or three boxes but no one with any symptom is going to check any box unless they're dumb robots. "Yes, please ban me from your country because I have a cold. That would be most convenient. Don't forget to tell the country I just came from, so I can be like that guy who lived in the airport for ten years."
Finally, shouts and props out to Jakarta International Airport. I had to blow through there on a stopover, and I'm glad I did. Unlike every other airport I visited, I actually felt like I was in Jakarta. That retched Airport Modern style (you know, the one where you feel like you're a tiny mouse in a maze being watched over by giant lab people) that's infected airports worldwide was extremely subdued in Jakarta's airport, just like the lighting. I don't know if it was a conscious design decision, or they're really itching to be like everyone else and just don't have the time/money/etc, but now I've put Indonesia on the short list of future vacation destinations. I also had the help of an excellent transit clerk who made sure my bag made the jump from Narita to Jakarta to Singapore and followed up with me at the gate to reassure me that all was well.
2004jun04. Asakusa, Tokyo Japan.
The street right next to my ryokan in Asakusa had numerous stalls featuring numerous little trinkets. The schoolchildren swarms were especially thick here everyday, so you learned to take the vendor alleys to avoid the crush. This one above was from the cat souvenir shop. Some had themes, some did not.
A pachinko-riddled section of Asakusa featured a few of these standup photo-friendly cut-outs, and from the informational placards placed nearby, I am guessing that each of the characters now represented in this 2D medium was at one time a living, breathing person featured on this stretch of road. This fellow, for example, was the 666 Clown. Who needs more confirmation that clowns and devils are related? Not I.
Namco, for some reason, has a mechanical arcade game jones, which is allrighta by me. In this game, "Cool Gunman," you and your opponent each have a light-gun and you use it to shoot flower-shaped pads on the playing field. These "pop," and if you've shot one that the plastic can is resting on, the can will fly into the air. YOUR OBJECTIVE: Get the can into your neighbor's goal.
I played it by myself and it was enjoyable. It's a different sort of feeling. A feeling of accomplishment. "Yes, I was able to shoot the can into my opponent's goal, even though I have no opponent."
If my explanation was not clear, you can look at these informative graphics. There are always informative graphics in Japan. They will even appear on bars of chocolate, indicating exactly what ingredient was used to create what substrate. Information we here in America are never given.
This is a latter version of the Derby horse-racing game. There are small video cameras which provide feeds of the small, articulated horses rounding the track. AND THERE THEY GO!
The game actually "races" the horses even if no one's put in any money, convenient for arcade-obsessed foreign amateur photographers. (see also Arcades in Japan which is this article fluffed out to five pages).
2004jun04. While searching for information on Cool Gunman, I came across a page of arcade games that includes a game called "Magical Truck Adventure" and from the looks of it you and a friend can pretend you're on a railroad hand cart. I ... I.
2004jun04. Fun thing to find! I am looking for a small tatami mat. I got addicted to taking photos of small objects sitting on a tatami mat in my Ryokan in Tokyo, and using the mat as a background pleased me. Unfortunately, the great majority of tatami mats available start at about three by six feet in size, whereas I need something that's maximum three feet by three feet, really two feet by two feet. I found a site offering a smaller mat but it's front-loaded with an array of hurdles not the least of which is that they're looking for business owners to sell n mats, not one guy buying one mat. Ryo-kahn. RYO-kahn. Reeee-oh-can. R-yo-can I just write it down?
2004jun04. More photos. Hawaii.
I AM FATHER DAMIENBOT BEEP BOOP
A tree.
Hibiscus. The state flower, although now the yellow variety is used because of the Red Dye #40 food coloring scare of 1968.
Anything corporate will plaster leis and hibiscus flowers on their products. The colonel of Kentucky FRIED Chicken, for example, sports a lei at at least one KFriedC outlet on Oahu. Hello Kitty, here represented in tile form at the Sanrio store, wears a hibiscus flower and several varieties of suntanned grass-skirted Hello Kitty dolls are for sale inside. These are what are called Corporate Whores.
After attacking the waves at Pipeline on the North Shore, we stopped in at the Shark's Cove Grill and had some really great fish on skewers and what was called a "banana 'protein' shake." Best food on the island that we had, although we did not eat all the food on the island. You would have read about that in the paper. Anyway, these flowers were there.
These flowers were not there.
"Dude, I totally got Melona!"
"Dude ... did you stay out in the sun too long?"
"Dude?"
And now, the sunset on our last day in Hawaii, bringing an exciting, exotic tropical end to my trip report.
Hahahah! Right. I'm going to milk this baby for another three months. Boy, are you going to be sick of me in Southeast Asia at the end of this nonsense ...
2004jun06.
Travelling Sausage Kit
via Everlasting Blort. It's just horrible.
"Oh der glut, I
forgotten to packen der shishkerweinerglöttenintestinalenwurststuffen-
shankkaseblüdBLAGDERDOFFERKAMENSTAGMEINERKRAPPEN-
SCHIKELGRUBERCANINENMITTELSHINKANSENGROBBEN-
ßATURATEDFATTENBURSTENSHISHGRÖTTENBONENGUTZENSCHZGRT-
TNBBZHSMACKSMACKSMACK"
2004jun06. I purchased an Ice Guy at the train station one day, thinking that because it was surrounded by other delicious ice cream bars that it also was a delicious ice cream bar. It was not. You open up the package, and there's (of course) another package, containing a coffee/almond/whatever-tasting slushee drink. Perhaps that inner package looks a little ... familiar ... perhaps Coke's lawyers are going to hand Ice Guy's ass to Morinaga on a sterling silver plate. "Your ass, sir."
2004jun07. So a few days ago I'm cruising through the internet's premiere hide-all-useful-information high school classmate database website using, of course, a fake name and year and city. And someone who graduated from a school the next city over from mine (we used to call our town "Town" and the other town "Other Town" ... seriously) back in the '40s referred to himself using his first name, and his nickname, "Cappy." Whatever happened to nicknames like that? Nicknames like Tugs, Sleet, and Cram? Ol' Cram Johnson, what a character. He used to tape fireworks to Ol' Sleety Sixpence and Ol' Sleety would run through the gymnasium sparkin' and an' a-whistlin' to report Ol' Cram to Ol' Toots MacFrenshendersham the hall monitor ... hee hee hee hurg HARLG HGGGGH OH GOD MY LIVER
2004jun07. Mail.
I am looking to order some Saltlakkris with the label, Trolla (two dots over the 'o'). The label reads:
Saltlakkris
Trolla
TopasThanks for checking to see how I can purchase some of this salted licorice candy.
Thanks for not sending your email address, it makes my job ‒ or non-job ‒ much easier. Originally I wasn't going to look for your precious salted licorice candy. Now, I'm not even going to do that. [sneers]
"Man, that was tight. But that sneer at the end, that seemed a little bit over-the-top." Do people sneer much anymore? Or do you have to take a class?
2004jun07. Misterpants reminds me that the suitcases they sell in Japan are taller than they are wide ‒ that is, the wheels go on one of the two smallest sides of the suitcase, unlike in the U.S. where they go on one of the two middlest sides (don't make me sketch this, you know what I'm talking about. Okay, a suitcase has six sides. 1 & 2 are edges and the same size, 3 & 4 are edges and just a bit longer, and 5 & 6 are the meaty, succulent largest rectangular portions that would never have wheels on them because then you'd have a rolling table although that'd be pretty cool, if you had a remote-control for it) -- so if you decide to roll it the handle is higher up, and thus more comfortable to wrangle through boring empty inhumane international airports. But they cost a lot more. The suitcases.
2004jun07. Slate: Which carry-on bag is best?. Or actually, "Which carry-on bag is the best of the six I tested?" I have tested exactly two bags myself, and because these both were hellbeasts spawned from hell with hellfire dripping from them, I spent a lot of my pre-flight jailtime in nine international airports watching people use carry-on bags. Here are my conclusions which are below that follow.
1) FOUR WHEELS FOUR WHEELS FOUR WHEELS. Okay, that whole thing about dragging your bag behind you with one extended arm? It's over. It's done. Don't do it. At the end of the day, your arm feels like it's been pulled out of its socket. I know. The two bags I purchased both were of the pull-behind type, and I'm never using them again. The reviewer mentions one bag that has two additional "smaller" wheels, but you want four wheels of equal size, because what you're going to be doing is rolling the case next to you. I've seen this in action ‒ both in commercials and LIVE in airports -- it's totally sweet and I was practically drooling. Work it ... work it ... oh yeah, it's rolling so nice ... nicely ... So your four-wheeled rolling case should have a pull bar that is high enough that you can roll it next to you comfortably. Check this in the store, settle for not an inch less of the perfect height. The particular cases that I saw also enabled you to do the standard pulling thing in case you had to go on an escalator or roll it over a dead body, whatever.
2) Backpacks suck. I was watching all of you backpackers, especially in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. Some of you had backpacks that were taller than actual people. A lot of you had backpacks and frontpacks, so you were good and sweaty youbetcha. And I rolled right past you singing my little "I'm not wrenching my back" song in my head because I am polite for the most part. I started my trip out with an overloaded backpack and bailed within three days, purchasing an el-cheapo rollaway I christened "Mr. Shitty" from the only dealer in Macau not ready to bargain. Or was that Bangkok. Anyway, you can pack a small backpack in your rollaway for when you need to do day trips. Most of the world is paved now, you can quit pretending you're scaling Mount Everest, Lord Shackleton.
3) Wide wheelbase. This is essential. The wheels (all four of 'em) should be at the outer edges of the bag, to keep it stable. I don't know why some rollaways have wheels tucked in a bit, but these bags are unstable and psychotic. My bags were like this ‒ the first time I didn't know, the second time I didn't have the option ‒ and they rolled over so much from slightly uneven surfaces that I eventually had to create this awesome disco move where I didn't fight the bag but continued to spin it around 360 degrees and continue down the street as if I meant to do the whole thing. It didn't work anymore after I was loaded down with souvenirs in Hawaii, the bag just wrenched my arm off and so I'm sitting there with one arm trying to grab at my other arm lying on the street which is clutching my carry-on. Weak.
You'll also definitely want to do your homework and check what sizes your airline will permit for carry-on. Sometimes you can get away with something a little bit larger ‒ they're not really policing the situation ‒ but various international airports are stricter. You'll always want to carry-on in the USA to keep your luggage out of the hands of our nation's trusted baggage handlers who don't steal anything out of bags at all anymore after the n various newschannel investigations into baggage pillaging around the country over the past m years, and all that non-theft isn't any easier now that the TSA breaks locks on your checked luggage. Or it isn't not any un-easier. It's not ... un-not-less easier-anti.
2004jun08. A review of Bebida de Mango.
2004jun08. I'm catching up to all of my crucial web-reading this week. Sarah Jane again proves that sufferin' = good writin'! Please for the love of God won't someone give her a new solid home instead of this geocities/blogspot mess.
2004jun08. I don't know. Reboot and try again.
2004jun08. Mail.
are these cigarettes real, or are they just a simulation made from candy??
really curious!!
please e-mail me
No, they're real, all righty. That's why the url is "..a/candy/candy.htm" ... because of how real they actually are, and totally not candy. You're not voting this year, are you? Really curious!!
2004jun09. The INS, protecting us from intrusive reporters hell-bent on getting the real story from ONJ. Isolationist policies are rad.
2004jun09. In Ko Samui, there is a place you can visit and watch the monkeys pick coco-nuts. It's much cheaper to get monkeys to do it than humans. For whatever reason, sometimes a monkey may throw a coco-nut at a person. I didn't go to the show, I was very lazy in Ko Samui.
There used to be some sort of advertising message in the red area, but for some reason it was totally wiped out by the spray paint tool in an image-editing program. Enjoy.
2004jun09. Jewelboxing. For those of you who require excellence in jewel box design for your various projects. Jewelbox. Jewel box. Box. Box. Box.
2004jun09. Yesterday there was a column of ants trying to get in the house, or to some delicious sap, or I don't know what, by climbing a support pole out on the porch. So I took some regular chalk and chalked all around the pole, about two inches worth, and the ants were stoppered. The ants above just kept on going up, but the ants below couldn't go any farther, 'cause ewwwwwww chalk. It was beautiful.
The next day they were at it again, up another post. So I chalked the two remaining posts. Now they're going from the ground, then on the porch for awhile, then back to the ground. Stupid ants. But are ants really stupid? My conclusion: yes.
2004jun10. The Further Adventures of Scrooge The Cat.
2004jun10. This person does not like cicadas.
2004jun10. 10 Super Foods You Should NEVER Eat This reads more like Healthy Choice® Alternatives Which ROCK! But everyone knows every single offering from Healthy Choice (owned by ConAgra) tastes like ass with a side of ass.
2004jun10. Big Brother 2004. This is such horrific bullshit.
Subscribers to the DirecTV satellite TV service should know ‒ but probably don't ‒ that every pay-per-view movie they order is reported to TIA as is any program they record using a TIVO recording system. If they order an adult film from any of DirecTV's three SpiceTV channels, that information goes to TIA and is, as a matter of policy, forwarded to the Department of Justice's special task force on pornography.
God, I feel safer already. Please protect me from the porno people.
2004jun11. Antique Mouse & Rat Traps [via consumptive]
2004jun11. Mail.
hi there im doing an essay about stress management and how it would affect performing artists. so i was hoping that you would be kind enough to help me out? so if you do know or have anything that maybe godd usse to me then please would you sent it thought to my e-mail address.
thank you very much
When I am on stage, performing directly under Mummenschanz, actually supporting their ridiculous top-heavy toilet-paper bodygear, sometimes the physical and mental stress is too much and find I myself screaming and screaming "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" also "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" The affect is turmoil, and the actors start running this way and that and the toilet paper is streaming from them and the audience thinks that it's a part of the skit and they're all laughing "Gelächter Gelächter Gelächter" and I am deeply ashamed because I know that I will have to sleep in the prop box again.
-- Huey Lewis
2004jun15. The movie The Terminal, based loosely on the life of Merhan Karimi Nasseri, will come out in theatres June 18th. I have no plans to see this film. Mysteriously, the associated website doesn't seem to reference Nasseri at all.
"Executive Producer Andrew Niccol had the initial concept of a man who was detained at the airport and ended up living in the terminal. He developed the story with screenwriter Sacha Gervasi, who recalls, "I thought it was a brilliant place to start in creating a scenario that most people would never believe could actually happen."
That is brilliant. [NYT (Sep 21 2003), Snopes (Sep 19 1999), Geektimes (Jul 14 1999)]
I spent approximately 50 hours in the air during the last month or so. I don't want to think about how long I spent in international airports. In some international airports you get free little carts you can use to lean on if you have a raging blister on your widdle toe, like this one from Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong they also have members of the Hong Kong Tourist Authority who sit on the sidelines waiting for people who are way early for their flight, blisters or not, then they descend upon them and barrage them with questions. My interlocutor had not yet discovered dental floss and had this ultra-smooth way of returning to questions I fobbed off from ten pages previous:
"So you're going to spending ten days in Japan and [flips back]
let'sreturnnowtoyourmealchoiceswhileyou'reinThailandwhatdoyouthinkyourdailymealbudgetwillbe?"
"I told you, I have no idea."
I also didn't tell him about my plans to rob a money exchange in Ko Samui. More on that tomorrow.
TUNE IN TOMORROW WHEN YOU'LL READ ABOUT MY EXCITING AND SEXY MONEY EXCHANGE HEIST IN THAILAND WHILE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING!
2004jun16. WHERE THE HELL ARE MY KEYS?!??? [via waxy.org]
2004jun18. Koh Samui is a twelve-hour train ride plus a two-hour boat ride from Bangkok. I stayed there for three nights, and somewhere in the middle of my stay I realized I was running out of Baht. I gave one of the official bank-related money changers $60 USD, expecting about 2400 THB, as the exchange rate for the day was something just over 40:1. I got back more than 4200 THB. Although I'd never been that far off in my exchange calculations before, I figured I'd just go back to my bungalow and figure things out there ‒ it was late at night, I was tired, that was a lot more money, etc. Sure enough, the receipt indicated that in addition to not asking me for my passport (a money exchange SOP), she gave me the GBP conversion rate instead of USD. It was late at night, I was tired, she was tired. The next day I was circumnavigating the island by grabbing songthaew after songthaew, stopping at various beaches, and the money exchange place was out of the way. I ended up back there around 24hrs later. I stopped just short of the window, off to the side about twenty feet, checking the current day's rates v. yesterday's, so I wouldn't get screwed there. Someone walking nearby noticed me, said something to a group of people at a table and they all turned and stared and one woman got up and went down an alley by the building to sound the Criminal Mastermind Within 100 Foot Radius silent alarm. The clerk comes out, and there's her manager. He smiles, I smile. We are all smiles. He's holding the white copy, I have the pink copy. "Okay, let's do this thing." That was me, as if I needed to say that, or this. He writes down the GBP conversion from yesterday, the USD conversion it should have been, subtracts it, and there's how much I'm to pay him. No big deal. But while I'm peeling off the bills, he starts asking questions, and maybe this is a cultural thing "Where were you yesterday?" Etc, questions that indicated to me he was wondering why I hadn't returned immediately with the money, as if I used the extra ~$30 US for seed money to start a casino or something. Also questions about where I was staying, how long, etc, just to cover his ass in case I was pulling the wool over their eyes again. While we were chatting, I also phoned the guy up from the Hong Kong Tourist Board, handed the phone to him and they had a lot to talk about.
TUNE IN TOMORROW WHEN YOU'LL READ ABOUT MY EXCITING AND SEXY PHONECARD ENCOUNTER IN BANGKOK WHILE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE IN A MEETING!
2004jun19. They said it was impossible to have a pillow that was cool during the entire night. THEY WERE WRONG. The Chillow will take care of you. Don't forget to purchase Mobile Chillow for the car, Couch Chillow, Mini Chillow, Chillow For Kids, Different Colors That Are Named After Fruits Chillow, Chillow Executive, Chillow Jr., Chillow Random Uncle, Chillow NASCAR, Tijuana Chillow, Clear Chillow, Shower Chillow, Chillow for Pets, Bird Chillow, Chillow For The Millions Of Americans Who Continue To Somehow Support The Hundreds If Not Thousands Of Corporations Out There Squeezing Millions Of Useless Products Out Their Respective ... Doors Everyday, Chillow MD, Pocket Chillow, Computer Chillow, Chillow Prozac, Chair Chillow, Extreme Chillow, Chillow Chillow, Chillow Repair Kit, Chillow Friend Finder Dot Com, Chillow Engraved License Plate Frame, Chillow Beer Cooler/Hat, Chillow Midwestern Lifestyle™, Chillow Sub-Atomic Scale Sub, Chillow Court-Appointed Attorney, Chillow Universal Harmony & Shoe Wax, Chillow Plastic Bag That Gets Caught In A Tree, Chillow .38, Chillow for Christians, Cheez-Flavored Chillow, Chillow Botany Flair!, Chillow 2005, Racing-Stripe Chillow, Chillow w/new E-Z Wide Open Pop Top Can For The Big Slam Into The Big Mouth, Chillow 4x4, Chillow Potato Chip Microwave Tray Clip-On Extension, Chillow A.M., Chillow Supreme, Chillow Cheese Curds, Chillow Pseudo Tribal Tattoo Stencil Set, Chillow Codpiece, Chillow: Murder On The Thames, Chillow Reconsidered, TV Snack Tray Chillow, Big Ending Here Chillow.
2004jun20. A woman returning to the U.S. from Mexico via cruise ship was hauled away in handcuffs and later put in leg shackles because of an already-paid year-old "leaving food outside" fine incurred in Yellowstone National Park.
Two things. Actually six.
1) I've said this before. I will say it again. Don't go to Florida. Don't visit, don't live there, don't send mail there. Just don't.
2) "We were acting on what we believed was accurate information." In other words, the handcuffs, the jail stay and the leg shackles were perfectly-matched punishment to accidentally leaving food outside in a national park. I think is sort of the kind of future more and more of us will be facing here in jolly ole' America. It's getting harder and harder to follow every single fricking rule every damned day and as more and more of these wonderful computers start talking to each other, the coffers of the prison-industrial system will grow and grow! And that's good for the economy. Which is good for everyone, somehow. What's it called? Trickle on the poor? I can't remember.
3) Seriously, think about it awhile. I leave some food out ... I'm in leg shackles. Couldn't possibly happen to me, I never leave food out.
4) Who wears short-shorts? Recently-released falsely-arrested S'more-bear-exposing federal-fine-inducing Wyomingites wear short-shorts.
5) How much did all of that hullabaloo cost? Jail time, adminstration, etc? My money is on fifty clams and one cent exactly.
6) This isn't even a thought crime ‒ it's a BEAR THOUGHT CRIME. "There was the possibility of bears coming into contact with humans because you left hot chocolate and marshmallows outside. And this isn't even about that -- this is about your failure to pay the BTC."
"BTC, sir?"
"Bear Thought Crime. You have been charged with the heinous crime of not paying the BTC. That is why you are in leg shackles."
[link via doc]
2004jun21. So I'm in Bangkok, right? In a 7-11. They have them there. But unlike your American 7-11s, 7-11s in Southeast Asia are brutually efficient, because some of them have people coming in and out every twenty seconds all day (hint: the ones near busy transit-oriented seaports). The store is small, there's two aisles (which are small), the door opens automatically (this is pretty much every door in Southeast Asia, actually ‒ two glass doors that slide away either by your touch or by sensing your stinky sweaty touristy body) there's no place to even turn around. So I'm in the 7-11 with my mouth open (Choose one: "AHHHHHHHHHHHH" "UHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" "DUHHHHHHHHH"), trying to figure out which phone card I should buy, even though there's only one. In other countries, there are many, many phone cards, but in Thailand, it seems like everything has a "locality." For instance, my ATM card only worked with two out of eight different banks, but I could only find those ATMs in one certain section of Bangkok completely out of my way. And thus it is the same with the phone cards. There are several international phone cards, but only one type is available in a certain area of Bangkok, etc. So I am staring at my one option, and they have a Baht per minute chart taped down on the counter. To call the US it cost nine Baht/minute, and the card held 300 Baht (300 Baht ~= 7.50 USD), so I would be able to use the phone for thirty-three minutes, approximately (it didn't quite work out this way, there was some sort of round-off scheme in effect, which I should have suspected). There's another guy there, also looking at the phone card. He's from London. His Baht/minute is a bit higher ‒ thirty-three Baht per minute. So he gets nine minutes on a 300 Baht phone card. He notices I'm looking at the same chart, and he says "I actually only want to make a five-minute phone call. So if you're already going to buy the card ..." and I dovetailed in and said " ... then we could split the cost of the card." Here's where it gets funny. All of that math I just ran you through, it's going to put you in good stead for the following exchange.
Him: "But I only want to make a five-minute phone call. It's not like I'm going to use the card and then run away."
Me (thinking "That's exactly what you're going to do"): "You're going to need to put in at least 100 Baht."
He turns his head without saying a word, then slowly backs out of the 7-11. Beautiful. I asked him to do the impossible: put down 100 Baht for a call that would have cost him, if it was indeed a five-minute call to London, 165 Baht. I think he was one of those professional living-in-a-cheap-country types that occasionally scared me while abroad with their haggard drugged-out looks. "Man, I'm beating the system!" Uh-huh. But you're not beating me.
TUNE IN TOMORROW WHEN I SCAN SOME RANDOM TRIP PHOTOS AND MAKE INANE COMMENTS ABOUT THEM WHILE YOU CONTINUE TO PRETEND TO WORK ON THAT REPORT THING THAT'S DUE NEXT WEEK!
2004jun21. Fark Photoshoppe: Extreme Products That Shouldn't Be Extreme. It just started, so maybe check in a few hours. Or tomorrow. I've already seen extreme water (dig that awesome, extreme photo) and extreme duck tape on the shelves of our nation's fine retailers.
2004jun22. I was just outside. It's around midnight here. I heard some noises as I was tightening a problematic water connection ‒ it sounded like something chewing something else. I spent a minute trying to find the source of the sound with a flashlight ‒ turns out it was five or six beetles chewing on an old dessicated mushroom. One of them bolted for cover after I turned the mushroom over and was only able to partially cover up, leaving his butt hanging out from under a leaf.
It's not every day you hear insects eating.
2004jun23. The hummingbird feeder has been up for about three months. There have been no hummingbirds visiting. But the level of the liquid was slowly dropping. Then, one day, upon close inspection ... sitting inside the candy-apple-red liquid ... eighty or so swollen flying ants. They were all suspended as if they were standing on their hind legs ... something about the way their body weight is distributed. It's one of the creepiest things I've seen in quite awhile. Mercifully, the girlfriend drained the liquid and got rid of the creepyants. A few days later, I'm outside and I hear this strange throaty engine noise. It's a hummingbird, at the feeder. It pecks once at the feeder's plastic flowers ‒ makes a small chirping noise ‒ pecks again ‒ chirps again ‒ and flies off. I am sorry, hummingbird.
2004jun24. VideoHound's Independent Film Guide. Review, 35 Up.
There was pug-nosed Paul, and Tony who dreamed of being a disc jockey ...
Ummm, he wanted to be a jockey jockey. Horses. "Coming in at Number One, it's 'Mother's Little Helper' ... Number Two, 'Paper Moon' ... wait a second ... wait a second ... 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' has been scratched!"
2004jun25. This is a PDF from Continental's internal "Monthly Operational Update," a magazine for flight attendants. Airline Meals posts photos of airline meals as they are served (I took about ten photos of meals myself, when I remembered and my camera was at the ready and my fingernails weren't dug into the armrests). The author points out the problems with the way the meals have been presented. When you compare this anal nit-picking with the blandness of most airline meals, the juxtaposition is high-larious.
EGGS SHOULD BE AT SIX O'CLOCK GOD IN HEAVEN WHAT ARE WE PAYING YOU PEOPLE FOR THIS ISN'T FUGGING MCDONALDS HERE ... JESUS THE NAPKIN LOGO SHOULD FACE THE CUSTOMER JUST IN CASE THEY'VE FORGOTTEN WHAT DAMNED AIRLINE THEY'RE FLYING FOR HALF A SECOND
The eggs should be at six o'clock. Meal uniformity may be the last line of civility to keep the passengers from rioting.
2004jun26. Stay Free: The Media Made Me Do It.
2004jun26. Let's all be quiet and let the police state continue to roll right over us. Hey, it's Choicepoint! Remember when the one rich guy who was supposed to lose actually threw the election, thanks partially to Choicepoint which scraped the Florida voter rolls?!!? Wow, same company! [link via doc]
2004jun27. Maakies: Small Things League. A beetle got into the bed last night and had the superpower of biting down on my crotch. That was some adventure, let me tell you. Whew. Is this thing still on?
2004jun28. Believer interview with Amy Sedaris (March 2004).
I never worked out the entire plot, but it's more or less about a worm trying to figure out what kind of worm he is. So he goes on these adventures. Maybe he lives in a donkey's ass for a night.
2004jun28. Mail.
i have a friend that i love and i would like to help him stop is there anything you can send me so his sister and i can help him see what he is doing to his body. thank you
becky
As my readers know, I've been involved with interventionismal efforts for many years now. My efforts to prevent people from doing the things that personally annoy me have been well-documented in this dynamic, relevant round-table point-counterpoint anonymous mud-slinging name-calling defenestrating forum. Becky's poignant and thoughtfully carb-free email touched my heart, I guess. I've sent Becky a framed offset lithograph of The Three Tenors (Designer Choice "2") by famed artist Leroy Neiman.
I only hope I'm not too late.
2004jun28. Larry Hiibel on the recent "papers please" decision by the Supreme Court.
2004jun29. I try to avoid eating much sugar, to varying degrees of success. This whole new Sucralose/Splenda thing came at me from left field, because I don't purchase much in the way of new products ... but this sort of fraudulence makes me ill. They'll try to sneak this by, but Stevia, whoa no, that's natural. Could be dangerous.
July 2004.
2004jul04. Ebay: Future Man 2000 prepares for lift-off and/or extreme ironing thanks to Argus 54/120 Power Harness. Now that's convenience!
2004jul05. A Japanese woman disguises herself as a vending machine. [via idle type]
2004jul05. Two signs. Tokyo.
This is the best sign ever. Unlike 99% of all signs, it's (A) not a warning about imminent death or dismemberment (B) incredibly human. We, as a people, will get together and rescue a little girl's hat from the subway tracks. The hat symbolizes my future "career" options in the working world. The grabber device symbolizes acute pain.
Seriously, though, find a better sign. I triple dog dare you.
This really doesn't look like an accident. This is one of those attention-starved babies that grows up to be some crotch-thrusting rock star. We have had enough of your attention-getting antics, rock star baby. Now you will lay there on the cold bathroom tile floor, writing lyrics for your next platinum album, but we're not watching you at all. Oh, here comes a tiny limo to take you away from "all of this shit." Rock star baby has potty mouth.
2004jul09. A comic worth your attention: Fleep. [via doc]
2004jul10. Proposed Photo Ban on New York Transit. A consideration of same.
2004jul11. Comic: Our Hero Battles Twenty-Six Alphabetized Terrors. He really kicks ass!
2004jul13. Mail.
si es posible do you speak spanish si la respuesta es si tengo la necesidad de comprar cigarrillos mapleton escribame if your answuer is no please i need buy cigarrettes mapleton please you send a email its have you?
No.
schulpweg 160
donnenplatz 209
hi, im from england. im doing a reveiw on your game show for geography ‒ it thinks its really cool and sounds funny!
donnenplatz 209 again
I have a question regarding the candy cigarets. Just need to be told whether you are to eat the paper on the cigarets or you are to discard it. A friend said you can eat it and I disagreed with him, can you tell me yes you can or no you can not-is it actual paper? I have a daycare and wish to know this, the children love them.
Thank you for you time.
Norma
Not only can you eat the paper, you can also eat the cigaret box and the cell-o-phane wrapper and the store clerk's hand.
Those Opal candies that look like laundry detergent.. the ones in the blue box actually have chloroform in them. Ideal for giving to small Icelandic children in preparation for dissection. Seriously, they are really dizzying.
2004jul14. Mail.
I imagine you already know this and were making a funny, but just in case not ‒ your typing yakuza brothers are lupin and jigen from 'lupin iii' [1, 2], one of the longest-running japanese animation series, directed by our old pal miyazaki hayao. also, I wish you had found the game where you're s'posed to jam your semi-virtual finger up a semi-virtual ass ...
I was not familiar with the series. I had heard about the ass game, but "forgot" to seek it out. I wanted to run across the game in which you used a metal spoon to bang on actual pots and pans, but did not.
2004jul14. [Cardhouse] From time to time, you will see various photos of arcade games in Japan, with a bit of explanatory text below. I have created such a feature, and I've called it Arcades In Japan. I hope that you will enjoy it?
2004jul15. SELL! SELL FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!!!
2004jul16. Moon landing ... totally fake. NASA thinks we are total idiots but we've got their number. [via doc]
2004jul16. EVERYONE GET ON BOARD THE FRUIT BOAT TOOOOOOOOOOOOT TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT
2004jul17. A man who draws perfect circles. My advanced-algebra/trig teacher in high school could do this on a larger scale via the chalk medium. Sometimes he used his elbow as the pivot point, sometimes they were smaller circles (~10-20 inches in diameter). The entire class found it fascinating enough that one day he drew ten of them on the chalkboard. Nice guy, used to leave the room during tests to let those who felt they needed assistance to seek it from others. In actuality, it was like someone dropped a cheaterbomb on the class while simultaneously flooding the interior with cheatgas.
2004jul17. Willing Slaves of the Warfare State. (C. S. Lewis) [via doc]
2004jul17. Book review: Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruining Our Lives.
Some of Bunting's examples are horrifically comic. One Asda manager, for example, describes an occasion when all employees were asked to wear a pink item of clothing for a breast cancer awareness day. "Everyone joined in, it was a great cause. But there were two dissenters who forgot. I told them to go home. I told them, 'You're not in the team.' They knew what was the right or wrong behaviour, and they went off, bought pink shirts and came back."
2004jul18. Maakies: Toys.
2004jul19. Ad, Nytimes.com.
Did you know that playing online games like chess or backgammon could bring you new friends, love and maybe even a baby?
They have some weird contests over there in NYC, lemme tell ya.
2004jul19. Democracy ... in action!
2004jul20. NABONGA! Wonderful movie title stills. Where's Napoleon Dynamite, I'm hungry.
Also I can send email but not receive email. So if you sent me email, I have not received email. Email, email. Email? No. There will be no email for you today. Whatever I did to deserve this fate, Baby Jesus, I am truly sorry.
2004jul21. Achewood. The taco died.
2004jul21. Ro-bots help you get books out of library [via fark]. Because man, there's nothing worse than looking up a book on the computer and then walking to the shelf and getting the book, or actually reserving the book via the computer, or asking a librarian to help you. Why pay someone money to watch over books when you can pay a ro-bot corporation a lot more money, and a ro-bot maintenance corporation even more money? Ro-bots are here to help us lighten our heavy wallet loads. I'm actually in the middle of Double Fold which details the massive newspaper purge of libraries across the world to make way for horrid microfilm so I'm sort of sensitive to this technology circus horrorshow right now. It's scarier than Vox.
2004jul22. Walking The Talk. [via doc]
2004jul22. LET'S HAVE A PRIVACY PIZZA PARTY!. This is a Macromedia "Flash" file that humorously depicts Our Grand No-Privacy Future. Or wait, that's not even remotely funny.
2004jul22. Places The United States Has Bombed. Forgot Utah.
2004jul23. Complete Peanuts came together thanks to Nicholson Baker's preservation efforts but the sequel is still missing a few strips.
2004jul23. Silke: Voilà ‒ the Magic Castle.
2004jul24. I was mixing up one of my award-winning smoothie drinks in the kitchen when I noticed some movement inside a bush just outside. It was a bird. But this was a large bird. And then, I thought, "No. Not now. Not finally now." And sure enough, a roadrunner came prancing out of the bush and stood next to a tree. It was only eight feet away from me as I blended away, a window open just a crack between animal and animal/loud-machine-that-makes-delicious-smoothies. And time sort of stopped. The roadrunner looked at me and started moving its head back and forth with its mouth open. I've seen grackles walk around with open mouths, perhaps it's a cooling mechanism. The roadrunner swung its head back and forth several times, and perhaps the blender was on and it was interested in this noise, or perhaps it was off. I don't know, I was that dazed and dazzled. Then it ambled away.
Roadrunners are apparently habit-driven birds, and it's said you can practically set your watch by them. So tomorrow I will be in the kitchen, making a tasty smoothie, if you need me.
2004jul24. Mail.
i resale candy and would like a price list from your company
i swim upstream every year to perpetuate my species and would like a fish ladder from your company
2004jul25. Today the roadrunner caught a ground squirrel and then was treed by a rabbit. [FX: shakes fist] DAMN YOU RABBITS!
2004jul26. [poorly-worded Firefox rant put on back burner]
2004jul26. There is a delicious baked good hidden somewhere near you.
2004jul26. Musical mistakes. Between-song banter/arguments by bands ... explored! Featuring examples available for downloading in the "MP3" format.
2004jul27. Pix: Sushi for lunch.
2004jul27. This is why we need governments.
2004jul27. The stink from stinkbugs smells like pesticide.
2004jul28. A few days ago, right after the roadrunner incident, a gila woodpecker flew into the screened-porch area (the residents of Arizona call this the "Arizona Room") and cached a small chunk of dog food in one of the hollows of a bunch of folded-up window screens (which is how he got in in the first place).
I think the law is firmly on my side when I say that if he doesn't come back for it in 30 days ... it's mine.
2004jul29. Mail.
You like that word Chillow®- glad I made it up~
We have Coca-cola in that word.
My references to Chillow appear near the bottom of this page. My understanding of the second sentence is nil.
2004jul30. Crossballs, the fake debate show. See also The Phil Hendrie Show.
2004jul30. Smoothie experiment somewhat of a failure today. Consumer-grade blender cannot blend carrots fine enough with orange juice/soy milk, resultant mix contains dirt-like bits o' carrot. Strainer cannot remove all carrot bits, but does collect a fine sludge. Sriracha not helping things. Back to bananas. Banana smoothies never let me down, banana smoothies never made me go "BLEEEEARGH." My award-winning banana smoothies. Featuring: No carrots nor Sriracha.
2004jul30. Controversy erupts at This is Broken! Could it be a poorly-designed sign? Or is the business owner trying to pull a fast one over the public? Whatever the case may be, it's sure to get your dander up!
August 2004.
2004aug02. Mail from The Chillow® Marketer.
Again regarding Chillow® -
we are not a giant corporation....in fact, we are the entrepenuers that are actively creating the US economy for you to enjoy.
So it's YOU guys! You're the only ones keeping the economy afloat. You're going to have to work a lot harder, we're outsourcing the tech and service economies to Gambia.
Why does the United States have 10X the GNP of any country in the world? Because of people like us.
You should pat yourself on the back once in awhile. Your modesty is embarrassing to people like me. Also, are you sure the CIA doesn't have anything to do with it?
and living in AZ you might understand the merits of a personal dry powerless cooling technology that can not only make you SUPER comfortable for sleeping, but also save you $$ by enabling you to turn down your a/c at night and be more comfortable??
I have the a/c on at night because my entire body is hot.
You oughta see what people say about Chillow®- it is an up and coming superstar, you wait and see. It (and SoothSoft® Comfort Technology) is going to change the world. It's a new level of personal comfort.
Things can't be superstars. I know you've been swimming in vats of marketing-speak for years, but trust me on this one. I personally think the era of superstars has ended, now that the number of media outlets has skyrocketed exponentially.
Also, the best that the Chillow can do is cool my head down as much as the a/c does. That's not a "new level of personal comfort," Eric. That's a "familiar level" of personal comfort. A "new" level of personal comfort, for example, would be like those sleep numbers. I fell like a stack of bricks for that nonsense, you betcha. My sleep number is negative twenty-nine.
As far as changing the world, the Chillow is going to have to get in line behind the microwaveable potato chip rack, pantyhose, the Salad Shooter, the Salad Spinner, and those little plastic inserts that you used to put in the middle of 45 rpm records.
In a world of dwindling resources, exploding populations, global warming, etc. a powerless cooling and comfort technology makes sense to us.
Regarding your second point here ... let me get this straight ‒ Chillow is a form of population control? Am I supposed to put one between my legs or something?
Anyway, best wishes,
Eric XXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX Marketing XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Good on ya, mate,
Jeff.
2004aug02. [Cardhouse] Sometimes people go to Japan and when they come back they create a five-page web "feature" called Toys In Japan.
2004aug03. Vote for me because I'm trying to scare you. Maybe we'll go to red alert just before the election! Collect all six berrylicious colors!
2004aug03. The Gila Woodpecker returned for his dog food. He fooled everyone, putting it in the screen like that. I'm going to hide valuables there.
2004aug04. Mail.
Putting a Chillow® between your legs would not be a prudent method of population control, since, if anything, it would help breed harder, faster, stronger sperms and lead to a generation of children who look up to the Chillow® as a third parent.
An excerpt from one fertility site or another: "For those who are afraid of surgical intervention, a newly invented testicular-cooling device is available. This device is best described as a pair of modified jockey shorts with a coolant circulating in the fabric that intimately surrounds the testicles. The device can lower the testicular core temperature to the desired level. Thus, if a man can accept the discomfort of wearing the device for a three-month period, he may be able to avoid surgery, except if he desires a longer-lasting correction of his infertile situation."
The Chillow¢ marketer said I was a "sorry sorry pup" so I don't think he will play fun Chillowchillow games with me anymore. Here I've replaced the word "chicken" with the word "Chillow" in some of the lyrics of the Jazz Butcher song "The Best Way." Perhaps now he will like me.
Which came first the Chillow® or the egg?
They get so damn crazy they eat their own legs
They get so damn crazy they eat their own legs
They get so damn crazy they eat their own legs
They get so damn crazy they eat their own legs
They get so damn crazy they eat their own legs
They get so damn crazy they eat their own legsStuff 'em full of fishmeal, put 'em on the table
Make 'em into gravy, get it on your shirt front
Make 'em into gravy, get it on your shirt front
Make 'em into gravy, get it on your shirt frontIt's disgusting!
There's Chillow® on your shirt front, greasy and thick
Someone tell the manager the Chillow® is sick
The whole idea is sick. Have another drumstick.
Chillow® in the basket is the ladies' pick
Sick!
Chillow® in Camden, Paddington too
They even got Chillow® in the Regent Park Zoo
There's Chillow® in China, Chillow® in Nepal
Chillow® over there dead hanging on the wallThere's Chillow® in Syria, Daar-es-Salaam
The whole population wants to do them harm
There's Chillow® in Dublin
Chillow® in Spain
Chillow® in the slaughterhouse
Chillow® in the rain
There's Chillow® in the library and on TV
World-wide symbol of stupidity
But if you ask me, they never had the chance to start with.
2004aug04. Today's Nature Lesson: The Fiddler Crab.
2004aug04. Desert Update. Today is a nice mild day. Lots of cloud cover. The ground temperature is moderate, which means it's a fine time to drive over ground squirrels. Not that you want to. They want their little adrenaline rush, you want to avoid them, they triple backtrack as you're trying to swerve around them, you roll your vehicle, they chuckle while returning to their burrow. After swerving away from a stationary squirrel, I saw a road runner bolt across the highway. I pulled over, right on the other side of the road. The road runner thought about this for awhile. It took a running start and flew up into the air in a burst of craziness and flipped its underside toward me while spreading its wings ‒ thus appearing as huge as possible in attempt to scare me ‒ then landed on the ground. I shut off my engine. The bird made a quick little "buubuuluubuu"-type noise. I repeated in kind. We went another round. The bird then crossed the street again, over to my side. I got out of the car to consider it while not sitting behind the wheel, and it took this time to run around a bush, momentarily confusing me while it made its escape.
2004aug04. There is an online ad floating around that features a moving bag of groceries and a gun target. "Shoot the grocery bag and get $1000.00 in grocery coupons." I've been asked by marketers to shoot monkeys, kangaroos, ducks, cars, targets, and now, food. Can we just stop the violence? Why can't I just lasso the groceries? Or place them in a cart? Perhaps one day with some futuristic technology I may be able to take a computer-generated image of groceries to the zoo. "Oooh, penguins!"
2004aug05. [Cardhouse] [Ebay] Back on the ebay horse. I was clean for six months, then a friend was all like "C'mon, just do one ..." and you know how I am with peer pressure.
2004aug05. Mail.
I Want to non denim jeans for womean.
Man, this is so freaky, it's like you're reading my MIND.
2004aug05. Mail.
See, there's been some big, big things, and some are bigger than others, And when one might get up and go out of the room, he gets replaced with another. Now some of these are monsters, the kind that live in the lakes (WHEURRRR!) And other kinds are like Metal Men, and other kinds are BIG SNAKES. But they don't look like nothing, they don't look like nothing at all. They don't look like nothing when you put them up against Chillow®.
I was unaware that the Jazz Butcher was so into Chillow®. And who wouldn't be, with its seventeen-button touchscreen control nook, nano-stain-resistant WeatherAll™ cowl covering, and interlocking force-feed granulator?
2004aug06. YOU WHORES!!!!! What is your price? What do you want? Those of you who are following the path of Mr. Bill Drummond formerly of the KLF / Jamms / etc will probably already have arrived here. I am a much slower detective.
2004aug09. Aqua Velva Man contest. Seems like a good pranking opportunity.
2004aug09. Five Things has been updated.
2004aug10. I thought the Museum of Food Anomalies™ would have built another wing by now. I am sad.
2004aug10. I went tubing on the Salt River (horrible website, beware) with nine other people, some of whom I actually knew. You pay $12 for tube rental and the bus ride there and back. They hold onto a driver's license for anywhere from one to five tubes. We ended up with thirteen big ole' tubes, since we had three coolers. At the river's edge, all the tubes were lashed together, the coolers were jammed into the tubes, everyone put towels down on the hot rubber, and we shoved off into an unknown future. Of tubing.
There is a "party-like" atmosphere to the tubing experience. Other tubers bring along their jamboxes and lash them to the tops of coolers. Some tubers construct large boxy pyramid-type enclosed stereo systems with big speakers and it's not clear how the whole thing doesn't just tip into the water. One homegrown stereo system was the same size as my last apartment's stove. These stereo-encumbered people "share" their music with the rest of the tubing community, at no expense. Jimmy Buffett? There is a god.
The river's current was pretty fast, and we were occasionally shoved into shore by an uncaring system of rapids. At one point there was a cliff area which was used for diving. Here the undertow was pretty fierce, and it required two people to "anchor" the system of 13 tubes while a few members went off to try to crack their skulls. While we waited, three sixteen-year-old girls sputtered up the river from downstream, sharing one tube between the three of them. One of them was rescued by a guy from our party, as she kept getting water in her lungs. Then they passed us, then the tube came floating back by itself, then the girls came back to get it, then the one girl was saved again, then they started upstream again, then the girl was saved, then the tube got lost again. Theoretically, at least lung girl was drunk, but I think everyone including the tube was soused. Our party members bailed on the cliff action -- too dangerous ‒ and we cast off again, into an unknown future. An unknown tubing future.
When we got to the "exit point," you had to pull off the river to catch the bus back. The river was about two feet deep there and about 40 feet wide. I stationed myself out in the middle of the river, grabbing a multitude of discarded beer cans as they went by ‒ submerged or floating. The current was strong enough that if you fell down, you'd be carried off downstream before you could get a foothold. Then three other people in our group started collecting cans as well, and we ended up grabbing about 100 cans, plastic bags, footwear, cigarette butts, and other debris -- we also scored two full uncracked cans of beer, one big full uncracked Wiper Fluid Gatorade jug, and two full uncracked bottles of water. Missed the underwater camera, lost some sunscreen. I felt like a bear letting piss-poor corporate beersalmon come to it. RARRRRRRR BUD LIGHT RARRRRRR MGD RARRRRRR BUDWEISER
2004aug10. Poster. Kuala Lumpur mall.
"Uhhhhhhhhbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb ... I wonder what I'm thinking right now."
2004aug12. Landscape Coin Project is coming along nicely.
2004aug12. Achewood: Poor Philippe.
2004aug13. A warning from the FDA. Al-Qaeda may be attacking the illegal imported prescription drug supply. You fucking self-serving big-pharma-toadying fear-mongers.
2004aug15. Mail.
For smoothies and daiquiris, my frind Katie bought a Vita-Mix 4000. I thought she was looney to spend $450 on a blender and originally thought it was some sort of infomercial scam: regular blender in new casing.
I was skeptical until she made me a frozen drink. She dumped in the big tray ice cubes, and I was expecting a chunky mess. But one flip of the switch and the house lights DIMMED. The Vita-Mix 4000 let out an inhuman roar. Katie's long brown hair blew upwards from the exhaust blowback. Just a few seconds and everything was pulverized ...
The drink was buttery smooth, as uniform as those slushie machines that make slurry all day. Later I found that the Vita-Mix has to have a Lexan pitcher to withstand the speed of the particles inside.
I don't know when I'll have that money to throw around, but damn! I'm convinced.
I use my girlfriend's 900-year-old Osterizerer, which has two settings: ANTIQUE and ANCIENT. But it gets the job done inside a pitcher of clear glass until it explodes in my face, turning me into the new superhero Glass Face Guy. In the meantime, I don't use ice cubes, I freeze bananas chopped into thirds ‒ too small they all stick together, too large and the blender makes a sad face. At least 1.5 bananas, rice protein, 1 cup of soy milk, maybe 1 teaspoon of honey, maybe 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon.
I want one of those 4-cup milkshake mixers. I have a photo somewhere, I'll e-dig around.
2004aug15. The headline for MSNBC's article on the death of Julia Child is Julia Child: bon appétit.
2004aug16. Achewood: The Invention of Photoshop.
2004aug16. Hawiian Inter-island boat transportation available by 2006. [via doc]
2004aug16. Allah is everywhere . [via doc]
2004aug16. DRIFT SEEDS!!!!!!!!!
2004aug16. When Ray Kroc went to see the McDonald brothers, it's a little-known fact that he briefly applied Chic Body & Talcum Powder to his various areas for good luck:
2004aug16. Here it is. The Multimixer.
This Multimixer is used at Dot's Diner in Bisbee, Arizona. The Multimixer has an ominous history, as a large order of them is what brought Ray Kroc out to meet Joey and Otherjoey, the McDonald brothers. Article also noted for the following sentence: "These refrigerators used poisonous gases as coolants, and caused several deaths." I think that's how Napoleon bit it.
2004aug17. Opening ceremony of some drug-fueled sports STUNTSPACULAR!
2004aug18. Total Mirna Elimination Sequence: COMPLETED
2004aug23. Greg discusses breadbox cars in Japan. Below is the squattiest Lapin I ran into while in Kyoto.
When I got back to the states I started seeing the Scion around town and I thought to myself using my brain "I've seen that car when it was smaller and not in this country." Then I had a delicious churro and forgot about it. But then, like a hazy daydream I recalled seeing an even smaller vehicle in Japan.
The Daihatsu Midget II. Bonus important "cats moving" logo on truck behind the Midget II.
2004aug24. Poster. Inside a Tokyo shop called "Smokers Style" for smokers which is where you go to hang out and smoke if you smoke and buy smokes if you'd like to smoke and smoke. Or perhaps you would like to buy a portable ashtray.
2004aug25. Smokers Style graphics. Do not forget to check out the SmoCar.
2004aug25. Some anonymous crack whore sent me a "pass-along" email that included the phrases "THIS IS NOT A JOKE" and "You must send this on in 3 hours after reading the letter to 10 different people" and describes all the wonderful things that have happened to people that follow the instructions. If I find out who sent this to me, I'm going to gut them like a fish. A lit cigarette is carried at the height of your face.
2004aug25. Poster. The same poster from Smokers Style. It was a big poster.
DROP
2004aug27. Tropical Fruit Rules.
Banana.
best: frozen, blended in a smoothie.
good: as is.Pineapple.
best: grilled.
good: as is.
eh: frozen, blended in a smoothie.
worst: canned.Coco-nut.
best: young, yurt-shaped. use machete.
good: older canonical shape.
eh: bottled drink w/sugar and floatin' coco-nut bits.
2004aug30. So I'm out here in the middle of the desert, in a small town which is also in this same desert. There's a bit of farming, so sometimes I get stuck behind a slow-moving truck hauling a horse trailer. The other day I was driving behind a trailer that was constructed solely out of metal tubing, like a skeleton. So I could see the horse inside. The truck came up to a street and as it was going into a left-hand turn the horse leaned into the turn, hard. It was awesome, I can think of some people who aren't even smart enough to do that. I was laughing all the way home, just like last year when that husky's ass got pressed against the back glass of a station wagon after it accelerated. Remember, I told you? Animals + vehicles = big laffs.
2004aug31. Florida: The racket. [via doc]
September 2004.
2004sep02. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Seriously, "AHHHH."
2004sep03. Doc visits Detroit. Action group "313" would like to push forward a motion for representation.
2004sep03. Shitbegone toilet paper now has a "weblog."
2004sep06. Guvmint done right thoughtful, protectin' us in that way.
2004sep08. Awhile ago I was talking about a roadrunner visiting me perhaps because it was interested in the sound of the blender ... I found this passage in
Arizona and its Bird Life (1951) by Herbert Brandt. Dude seriously needs an editor, but let's muddle through it:
"Then begin to squeak in a high-pitched, mild manner with periods of silence [...] with practice the squeak can be drawn high-pitched and shrill, which refinement often is useful in attracting smaller fry, especially hummingbirds; whereas a wide range of lower strident tones, imitating groans and the dire distress of an unfortunate bird, brings posthaste larger creatures, especially roadrunners, hawks, owls, jays, rabbits, and even the coyote and snakes."
2004sep09. End of spam email.
newcastle defrock ramify gamesman spurn plover lundquist strenuous inhumane castor mastodon complimentary heptane centrifugal persimmon recess aborning scapegoat intimater flank olympia soup interpol angelica edwin claus blanchard antacid dorothea attributive dilettante walgreen spent bucknell plutarch orthopedic ashmen andorra attributive nationhood bryn carbondale alumnae neva elmira addressee deprave booth
2004sep09. Mail from India.
gj;lf9pllj
2004sep10. How To Flip Quarters & Dollar Bills On Your Belly
2004sep11. Burning tribute to 9-11.
2004sep13. I have an old Sears Craftsman variable-speed electric drill. There is a tiny "lock" button on it, next to the trigger on the left-hand side, which allows you to drill at top speed without holding the trigger in. If you are right-handed, drilling in an "unlocked" manner and the drill bit "catches" on a piece of wood, the drill itself will loosen from the drillbit and begin to spin clockwise out of your hands and the drill will stop because you're no longer holding the trigger.
If you are left-handed, drilling in an "unlocked" manner and the drill bit "catches" on a piece of wood, the drill itself will loosen from the drillbit and begin to spin clockwise out of your hands, and your finger will drag against the "lock" button and the drill will continue to spin wildly, bucking to and fro and eventually will pull its own cord out of the socket and whip your ass in the arm as punishment for relying on shittily-designed products.
Did it raise a welt? [checking] No. Not this time. Yes I had eye protection, but the instructions didn't tell me to wear full-body padding.
2004sep13. I saws me a boatload of bellydancin' the other night, including "erotic" bellydancing but we'll talk about that at the end. This was at a Chinese buffet restaurant, which is not where bellydancing should be. I have decreed this to be true. Anyway, there were good bellydancers and average bellydancers and knock-out bellydancers and bellydancers with amazing costumes. A bellydancer drove me to the bellydancing, bellydancers sat at my table, a bellydancer who wasn't bellydancing that day asked me about the bellydancing and then the first bellydancer drove me to some more bellydancing elsewhere bellydancing bellydancing bellydancing. At the end of the Chinese buffet bellydancing I got to see how to flip quarters and dollars on your belly which was not my belly but the belly of the woman who wrote the article. Much later I put nine quarters on my belly and after working my belly muscles for a good long time I was finally able to take all of the nine quarters and do my laundry. Some bellydancers used those little hand cymbals and I love 'em, they're just the greatest. Also the hand cymbals are nice. I should wear a pair around the house, rhythmically commenting on events in my life. I'd like to see more hand cymbals in the workplace as well.
Jim, I'm turning in my report rather late
ching ching chinga chinga ching
If you ching don't like it ching it's me chinga chinga you can fellate
chingchingchinga ching
So we were way late for the second bellydancing show which might not have been such a bad thing because it was sort of gang bellydancing. For the half-hour we were there, anywhere from eight to twelve bellydancers occupied the stage at one time. And then, when it couldn't possibly get anymore surreal, they all donned Sino Conical Headgear formerly Chinese Conical Hats formerly Chinese Fisherman Hats formerly Coolie Hats. It brought us all to mind of an earlier bellydancing experience in a Chinese buffet restaurant from the previous paragraph. And then, when it couldn't possibly get anymore surreally surreal, one of the dancers doffed her top and exposed her creamy breasts unto the audience, who enjoyed them in a visual manner while she continued to bellydance. This was the erotic portion of the bellydancing.
Unfortunately Simiana! was not in attendance for the evening, but if you are in the Phoenix area in the near future you can enjoy the mystery that is monkey bellydancing in the privacy of someone else's place of business. I am recommending this to you.
2004sep15. I have joined the Google "gmail" mail service. I have five invitations that people are supposed to forward to other people so Google can keep tabs on who knows who. But I'm going to keep them all! Hahahahahahaha! You'll never catch me, coppers!
2004sep16. The Titanic continues to haunt us from beyond its watery grave (enter "titanic").
Patron planted both feet on railing, raised arms up. Shouted something about being "king." Slid length of ship into water while clutching Oscar®, presumed drowned.
2004sep17. A phone booth??!??? In the desert?? That's unpossible. [via doc] I fixed it! Haw haw!
2004sep18. Yes, it's Hawaiian Product Week still a day early. Still showin' off ice cream.
The ice cream package design of the Foremost Corporation is reassuring in these times of horrific rainbow-heavy logos and scary ultra-realistic sneering mascots.
Soothing.
Let's step away from the freezer section for a little bit.
This, I don't know what this means. My cookies are ready for adventure. Intrigue. My cookies are more macho than I am.
Noted without comment.
2004sep18. We're officially starting Hawaiian Product Week a day early because everyone's on the phone going like "Hey, Cardhouse man, when is Hawaiian Product Week going to start up because like" and then there's another call and I'm like "hold on" and the next call is like "Are you going to start HPW anytime soon 'cause my gramamaw is in the hospital and visiting hours are --" and then I'm off answering all the dings from my IM program and then the cellphone and answering machine go off and then the intercom and then the refrigerator communicator device rings and it's the stove and it's all like "Hawaiian Product Week" and I'm like "I know, I know, Mr. Stove! Please cram it. All y'all."
I love this. That composition reminds me of those old vending machines that would offer you some sort of brown slurry ‒ the machine was labelled "coffee" ‒ and you'd always have the hot chocolate option, and the big photo would always be sun-bleached and would show some cinnamon sticks stacked right next to the cup o' hot chocolate and you'd be like "cinnamon sticks ... right. Is this even chocolate?" And you'd start rocking it back and forth because back then we didn't have signs to warn us that we could be crushed to death by this simple, sustenance-giving machine and the liquid would shoot all over the place and the ice and wooooo what fun we had back then, huh? Not like now.
2004sep19. Question: Does anyone remember the weblog that was called something like "Diary (or Weblog) of a Five-Year-Old"? Does it still exist?
2004sep19. And by "Hawaiian Product Week" I mean to feature products I ran into in Hawaii. It doesn't mean that these products were necessarily manufactured in Hawaii. But I don't know why I'm mentioning this, that would just sort of slip by without comment otherwise, because what I've discovered is that by occasionally telling little white lies nobody's really sure what's real or fake on this website. But what really is the real truth, anyway? Is there an objective, real truth? I mean, yeah, getting punched in the face is an objective truth, I'm not falling for that one again. So let's take a look at what we're offering today.
Vindaloo!!! Wow. That is some crazy-ass coloring decision tree there. I think I've seen this stuff on the mainland occasionally. "Just add water" ‒ but not the amount of water pictured. Because that's way too much water.
I tried to find a Hawaiian pirate product for Talk Like A Pirate Day and this was the closest I could get. You can pretend that's Captain Cook showing an islander how best to bean him on the head after they argue about the stolen boat (For Humorous Purposes Only. Writer Not Interested In Debating Captain Cook Death Theories. Fool Your Friends).
I'm not sure I would like the coco-nut pudding. I'll have to sleep on this one.
Just when you thought you had it all figured it out ... here comes Mendo maté yerba maté energy-like beverage and cultural drink of ancient origins. No, seriously, this is like an energy drink but they get all in-your-face with the regular sugary energy drinks on their website (Mendo Maté). It is a tea from Paraguay and I know nothing about it. It is a stimulant, so watch out, my friends. I am neither endorsing or unendorsing this concoction that brings with it its own legend, its own folklore, its own t-shirt series, its own traditional gourd.
2004sep20. Serious Toyz has one of the most annoying splash screens (seriously, mute your system) and some great old toys.
JUMPPING RABBIT MUST DESTROY YOU
Wood Doh by Play Doh. "Dries hard like REAL WOOD!" Feature, not a bug.
"President Reagan is on the line for you, sir." "You tell that doddering old shit to just WAIT, I'm bringin' in a 747 via ELECTRO-PHONO COMMUNICATIONS!" Also, bananas cost seventeen bucks each there, from what I remember during my layover.
Buying the White House, gleaming white plastic, eight presidents arguing with each other, etc etc. Write your own.
The hallowed Spunky Dogs also known as thee Spinning Pups.
2004sep20. It's a tire. Get over yourself.
2004sep20. Oh my god, what a bunch of mirror-gazing idiots. CBS News reports that the Post reports that CBS News plans to issue a statement, but it may not apologize! Seriously.
CBS News: Hard-hitting News About CBS News From Other Sources.
2004sep21. Must see: Pongmechanik. The videogame Pong in real life. So incredibly amazingly wonderfully nuttycool. The movie (Quicktime) will help you to understand the concept in mere seconds. [via everyone]
2004sep21. Mail.
Have you ever heard of the "secret society novatech"? they send letters of inventation into their secret society based upon their oberservation of your " special gifts and talents." they give you three days to respond no fees no money but promises of untold future success and wealth when you come into your "second phase of life " of which you are about to enter.
I sent the letter-writer a short reply that contained my opinions about how wholesome and truthful such an organization would probably be. There is this small article written by one of those Action Line people, but I couldn't find much else about it. ''Shockingly powerful secrets." Wow. Lastly, I don't know why I was asked about this, it seems more in line with Cockeyed Action News Reporting. Maybe ... maybe this is going to be my special niche ... Cardhouse, busting the
secret societies popping up in your mailbox: "We Care!"
2004sep21. You rarely see any mention of celebrities here on Cardhouse because it is my belief that they are collectively similar to truckloads of poo. You don't see 'em everyday, in the end who cares, and: "what's that smell?" However, I am making an exception for the hot new clueless-go-figure celebrity trend, Feng Shui Hair.
2004sep21. Let's go back into the freezer section for more of Hawaiian Product Week.
"Okay, I want you to re-design our product line ... but it still has to look like it's from the '60s."
That box end makes this photo look almost 3D. Please do not stare too long at the ice cream product. Thank you.
Dip.
2004sep22. Cat Stevens: Potential Terramist. This is the guy that wrote "Peace Train." "I'm on the peace train ... also I just wanted to mention my ties to terrorists, whoa whoa peace train." The no-fly watch list is now named Advanced Passenger Information System, which should be pronounced "a-piss," since that's pretty much what the government is doing. Between APIS, CAPPS 2, and US VISIT soon the United States will have no tourists and no airplane passengers and the skies will be safe again.
2004sep24. Steven Johnson: Very clumsy in the kitchen.
2004sep25. McSweeney's: History's Notable Films, Reconsidered.
2004sep26. I am moving away from the cakes. Yesterday I ordered a cake and it had nuts on it and this was not indicated in the menu description. The nuts continue to vex. I don't understand this ‒ some people are allergic to nuts. They cannot eat nuts. And yet, nuts are hiding, coat-tailing on various confections all over the world. Just tell me. Tell me about the nuts. That is all I ask.
2004sep26. Back in the olden, golden days when I was publishing a minuscule, flabby-muscled low culture magazine called X, Dr. Berk and I wrote up a bowling timeline for the bowling issue. I think Scott tackled all the facts and then my job was to add spurious, useless blue specks to the article. This is the entry for 1959, for example.
Ed Lubanski from Detroit scores 700 pins for his five-men team in the ABC all-counts championship; later that year, Grock, the Swiss music clown, dies (b. 1880).
Fourteen years pass, and no one thought to tell the Russians they probably didn't need to translate the entire article. I am starting to see the promise of the internet everywhere. People from halfway around the world, reaching out to touch us in bad places, maybe plagiarize us. You cannot stop me, American, for I am Russian. Now I am stealing your WIFE'S articles of writing! What you say about that? You are emasculationed! Ha HA!
I wrote the bit about Grock back in 1990 ‒ I couldn't find any information on him on "the net" though there was no "world wide web" back then. I hope I'm not hurting your brain. I felt so sad about this little one-line orphaned piece of information I found in a history book I thought I'd throw him in there. Now he's all over the place also here. Ham. Dead ham. Dead clown ham. Dead clown ham, now with 17% less nitrates. Fewer nitrates. Dead clown ham, now with Smylex.
2004sep27. A Customer Service Representative who cares. [old]
2004sep27. In Which I Wring Amusement From Telemarketers, But With The Added Challenge Of Not Being Mean Or Degrading In The Process.
2004sep27. Cross-country road trip in a few minutes. Gondry video. Excellent.
2004sep28. So I'm watching a DVD documentary called Friends Forever which is the name of the band that consists of two guys and the gal who runs the light show, and one of the guys is talking about getting stuck riding the Zipper twice in a row when he only wanted to ride it once. He's not good with the thrill rides and he's stressing out. So he finally stumbles out, and his hands start going numb, then his arms, then his legs. While he's talking about it, he's showing what happened to him. The paramedics that showed up told him he was hyper ventilating and said it was "normal" and said he either needed to puke or pass out and then, no problem. Which totally sounds like bunk. Back ten years ago when it happened to me, I wasn't given any options. I was in a remote, faraway place where medical advice is difficult to obtain: I was in the waiting room of a hospital. I was there for something else and wasn't taking it so well, and that's when I started hyper ventilating. No one really gave a shit, after I asked two different people about my condition I gave up. I had to sign some papers and by that time I was in a wheelchair (because of the numb legs, see), signing with the wrong hand, trying to hold it with the other one which was even weaker, failing, apologizing. "Sorry I'm hyper ventilating even though no one apparently can offer me any advice at all on how to stop it ... sorry." At one point I had my friend Tom wheel me out of the TV room because I looked so pathetic curled up into a little ball. "I don't want to scare these people, they got enough going on already." It never happened to me again, but now I'm armed for future battle.
Please keep your numb hands and legs inside the car at all times.
2004sep28. The troubles of a li'l toilet paper called Shitbegone. "How can that be legal?".
2004sep28. REAL CONVERSATIONS WITH TRUCKERS AT THE DAYS INN IN RED OAK, TEXAS.
2004sep29. Maakies: Ach! Der kittens!
October 2004.
2004oct01. [Cardhouse] Shop Hawaii. There are many products in Hawaiian grocery stores. These are some of them.
2004oct03. Mexico. Yesterday. Magdalena De Kino during Fiestas de San Francisco. As we drove South, we saw many, many people walking toward Magdalena with various day-glo safety gear, all on their pilgrimage to see the statue of St. Francis Xavier and to try and lift his head. One woman was making the journey (up to 115 miles) on high heels. Some rode in on horseback. We were there to just get a feeling for the interior of Mexico ‒ I've only been to border towns.
Bad timing. The whole town became religious trinket/carnival HQ. There was a guy walking around -- and I've seen him in every border town ‒ with a little wooden box. This box has two cables running out of it, ending in metal handles. From what I understand, it's some sort of shock box. And I guess you pay the guy for allowing him to shock you. Sort of like this game (scroll down a bit).
A bucket of something for a game, ten pesos (approximately USD 1). Most of the carnival was shut down, probably because it was way too hot to be exerting yourself on rides and such.
A house.
Cowboy was totally like "vote for me because I was the biggest do-nothing on the show." I thought Marvin should win, he seemed like the only one with actual, living brain cells.
If I was a kid, I'd be all up in Carlota's face, squishing all of those whip cream tresses. "And THIS! And THIS!!!"
2004oct04. Eyesore of the Month. Oooooh, ahhhhhh ...
2004oct04. Okay, it took about an hour, but I figured out the dice puzzle. There is an automagic Petals Around The Rose dice roller that will help you to solve it without hints.
2004oct04. Petals Around The Rose A dice puzzle is presented to a large amount of geeks. Some solve it instantly, others take awhile. The last person to solve it is a young man who sometime later adjusts his bathtub's temperature from his car as he drives home.
I haven't figured it out. If you send me the solution, I will hurt you sometime in the near future.
2004oct04. So here we are in the 21st century. And I have about 40 tabs open on my browser, and only one of them is playing some background music. So I get to play hide-and-seek and try to figure out which one it is, since I don't need background music. Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, I like to read webpages in silence, without looping music files, even if they're not MIDI. Found it. Just add a little checkbox to the preferences menu for all browsers: "would you like annoying, looping music playing when you access certain 'home' pages?"
2004oct05. Shots Fired into Knoxville Bush/Cheney Headquarters. Forget this non-news, look at WBIR-TV's slogan: "Straight From the Heart." In a nice flowing pukey Harlequin-romance font.
In an unexpected twist, a bank directly across the street from the headquarters was robbed as KPD officers were busy investigating at the scene of the shooting.
Straight to the heart.
2004oct05. Mail.
The Tucson airport thing ‒ "Bomb dog alerts on vehicle near airport"
You can read that headline to mean there is an explosive dog at the airport, but instead it is an ordinary story about a bomb-sniffing dog that has smelled something on a vehicle at the airport.
Oh yeah, I forgot -- make sure to overreact to every little thing that happens. They haven't even confirmed it's a bomb and they've evacuated motels. This is like -- what was it ‒ the exploding flashlight at LAX? Man, we got a snoot full of FOXnews during that scene, we were feeling ill for the rest of the day.
2004oct05. From what I understand, anything with an official insignia around here is jetting over to the Tucson Airport ‒ Apache helicopters, police cars, fire trucks ... Anyone getting anything official about this? I'm getting delightful daytime soaps here.
2004oct05. The current person occupying the White House ‒ is he a ro-bot? Check out the comments.
2004oct06. Excellent lite news segment on letterpress. (quicktime movie)
2004oct06. Is Bush a Ro-Bot? (Part 2)?. Blade Runner, Being There name-checked. Is Bush a Ro-Bot? (Part 3)?. Another datapoint for the solipsistic Bush sub-theory as presented in Part 2.
2004oct06. The story of the magical floating three little piggies.
2004oct08. Goin' to the Arizona State Fair again. This time I'm going to eat something. A snack-type item. I'm ready to step up to the plate. Maybe they will have cake there. I like cake. Please review our earlier State Fair selection at your earliest convenience.
2004oct08. And now ... my famous imitation of the director of the Radiohead documentary "Radiohead: Meeting People is Easy" speaking with one of his flunkies.
Okay, here's where we're going to cut away from the song twenty seconds into it. Right.
Reverb?
Reverb and echo. It will distort the interview to the point where it's just obvious it's the same old thing. But we'll do that twenty, thirty times, just to make sure the point gets across.
Should I cut in a shot of an escalator?
Yes, that would be good here. I want to portray our dystopian cityscapes in a negative, harshly-lit way. Nothing is interesting. Everything should be glaring and sickly colored or black and white surveillance camera.
More echo on the audio track?
We need echo, reverb, and feedback. I want the shittiest audio you can give me. Because really it's all about the music that we keep cutting away from.
2004oct09. The coco-nut in the fridge was too far in the back and it frozened up. Now I have an iceball of delicious coco-nut juice thawing out on the desk in front of me. These sorts of things probably don't happen that much in the tropics.
2004oct10. Soft.
2004oct10. In honor of Derrida packing it in: How To Desconstruct Almost Anything.
2004oct10. [Cardhouse] Two pages featuring two diners. Dot's Diner and Welcome Diner. These are diners.
2004oct11. "Wow, I'm going to store all my links at del.icio.us!" "So, how's that working out for you?"
2004oct12. Some crabs like coco-nuts 1, 2, [3].
2004oct12. Seriously, you two, stop yer blabbing away about the silly ole' Constitution.
2004oct13. Shhhhh ... quickly read this. Or get the zip here.
2004oct13. Hey There Cupcake. A book about cupcakes by the woman who knitted that sushi, remember?
2004oct13. Free allofmp3 musical tracks.
2004oct13. Allofmp3 is an online music catalog located in Russia. The downloads cost about three to ten cents per mp3, depending on the size of the file, and how high of a bitrate you've selected ‒ apparently you can get CD-quality lossless, but then, this will cost more per song. This site is apparently "legal" in the U.S. as (non-lawyer summary coming up, warning) it's legal to buy the songs in Russia and it's legal to move legally-purchased songs to your hard drive located in Mallpoisoned KBShithouse Nosidewalk Caraddict Suburbia. Some people have expressed a concern (unsupported by any evidence whatsoever as we go to press) that this service may be run by the Russian mafia. Ultimately, this is a two-tiered moral choice: are the artists getting paid enough, and am I funding illegal activities in some way? We are living in exciting, dangerous times, eh, comrades? [More: 1, 2, 3
2004oct14. McSweeney's: On Being The American Husband Of A Peruvian Diplomat Living In China.
There is always the possibility that the conversation will become interesting at some point, but tonight the first couple with whom you have it is Serbian, and, in your continued attempt to be a good diplomatic spouse, after mentioning that you have never been to Serbia, you refrain from saying the only thing you can think of, which is, "I was in Croatia several times, though, back when Serbia was in the process of invading and pillaging and ethnically cleansing as much of it as possible."
2004oct14. I have a dinner plate in one hand. A piece of tissue in the other. I approach the garbage can. The hand that carries the tissue is not in my field of vision. The plate is. My brain whispers: throw the plate in the garbage. One day I'm going to knife that bastard.
2004oct18. It's very fitting that Trader Joe's uses turn-of-the-century clip-art on their website, because you can't contact them electronically. "You can just talk to the stock boy/girl! Or, send a tele-gram to our head-quarters."
2004oct21. [Cardhouse] Now, the suffering begins. Pig Parts: The Arizona State Fair 2004. It's just like last year except this time it's different photos and ha-ha funny text captions. So funny. Bringing the funny. Did you order some funny here? Because I remember this table ... you're a bunch of yahoos, and you're not sticking me with the tab for this one ‒ you definitely ordered this shit. So eat it.
2004oct21. Excellent take on Bush's bullshit "internets" crap.
2004oct22. Yeah, I could put a big marquee on every webpage that said I AM NOT A CORPORATE ONLINE STORE and I'd still get mail like this, because people are zombies.
Can you tell me the price of your money house blessing cologne, and your blessing water.
No.
hi
im looking for a tortilla machine!
are u sale one
contect me pls
tnx
No, no.
Concerning the derby Mark VI from Sigma, i want to know if this device has replacement because in hotel el panama of the Fiesta Casinos has a derby mark damaged and they say that this derby mark it cannot be repaired because there is not replacement. please inform me if you have replacement for this machine. sincerely,
Actually ... no.
Dear Sirs, I am calling from Turkey...a toy that we made ourself from tinplate...it's were work out with 25 gr parafine about half hour or 45 minute... 150gr tin boat goes 3 mile/hour speed... I am wishing to sell plans of this toy mechanism... can you find any producer that will concern with this classical toy... that had been forgatten... thanks...
Nope.
A quien corresponda: Mi nombre es Carlos Conde, me gustaria saber si Ud. cuentan con repuestos de una maquina slots Sigma Derby Mark6. Por favor responder a [email] Desde ya muchas gracias.
No.
Is there anyway to order boxes of candy for personnal consuption. We used to live in Cudahy, WI and are hooked on your candy raisins. My wife just returned from a trip to Milwaukee and all 6 bags are gone already. We now live in fort myers fl, and cannot find them down here at all. Thank you, [name / address]
No.
I just wanted to let your company know that I think it is horrible that you sell candy cigarettes. That is basically you trying to get kids hooked on the idea that smoking is fun and cool. That is absolutely horrible of you. So many kids smoke these days you should be making some other from of candy that isn't in the shape of cigarettes and you should try to promote or at least make the effort to get kids not to smoke. Thanks Erin E.
No.
To Whom it may concern,
I hold a 7 year accounting background. I'm looking for employment in your corporation.
Please notify me if there is opportunity for employment.
Thank you,
[name]
No.
Dear Sir or Madam,
Let me introduce our company. Our company is experienced, in wholesaling and retailing of food products , one in Mongolian market.We are looking for a long term partner who can supply us Japanese chocolate and confectionery fron Japan. We need responsblity and trustful partner. Can you help us to have the partner? We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Best Regards,
Import manager.Ulaanbaatar,Mongolia.
SKYLAND BRIDGE Co.Ltd.
Tel: 976-11-363011
Fax: 976-11-365754
No.
I have a question regarding the candy cigarets. Just need to be told whether you are to eat the paper on the cigarets or you are to discard it. A friend said you can eat it and I disagreed with him, can you tell me yes you can or no you can not-is it actual paper? I have a daycare and wish to know this, the children love them.
Thank you for you time.
[name]
Stop feeding "your" kids shit. It's "cigarettes," are you from Chicago? Yeah, go ahead and eat that paper. All paper is edible. Mmmmmm.
2004oct23. Do the red monkeys have to get flu shots this year, yes or no? [via titivil]
2004oct25. Masonic Lodge photos. Roll over the larger photos after you've clicked on them, there is additional commentary.
2004oct25. Deuce: Empires vs. Empiricism.
2004oct31. Although my privacy nuts are usually pretty tight, I'm going to take the torque wrench to them so I can tell this story. Sorry if it sounds maddeningly vague.
A relative of mine lives near a library. On a non-determined day sometime this month, she was walking toward the library to return a DVD and it was a bit dark out. The walk takes her through a lightly-wooded area, with a bridge, a river, etc. There are a few curves to the path, and it is at one of these bends that she suddenly came upon a stationary bicyclist. This person was apparently startled and agitated to see her, although it wasn't completely clear that this was the case because of the bicyclist's black ski mask. The bicyclist also had black clothing. A black bicycle with all of the reflectors removed. A head-mounted LED light. The bicyclist rode away.
My relative lives in a "swing" state. Our pretend president was apparently stationed in the hotel across the street, and my non-military-trained relative somehow got the drop on Tactical Secret Service Bicycle Patrol Perimeter Drone #217a.
I suppose the drone might have been agitated by the only weapon my relative was sporting during the encounter ‒ a large "Kerry/Edwards" button.
[Later in the day, the president had a big hoo-ha in the town, blocking off entire streets, motorcading and such, begging decent folk everywhere to just let him run crazy without a leash for four more big ones ‒ and there in the back of at least two SUVs were many similarly-dressed tactical folks.]
2004oct31. So twenty minutes after the cable guy leaves after installing ... cable, Jon Stewart is on CSpan Book TV or whatever reading from America: The Book along with other members of the Daily Show. Best part: Q&A with scary Green Party representative who won't shut up. So look for that in a video "file format" on the internets. Cable TV: It gives, and it gives.
November 2004.
2004nov01. When I was a young, go-get-em squeaky clean youth attending college in my youth, one of our professors had us youths use a pre-Linux operating system known as Minix. Many years later, I find myself obsessively checking the electoral-vote website created by the guy who wrote Minix. He also put a stick about to save San Francisco Bay, a bay which I personally lived near for a number of years. Also, our first names have exactly the same number of vowels, I think. Don't forget to read the Votemaster FAQ for an enlightening view from someone who's getting the "411" on how the world views the US right now. [via scott]
2004nov02. Where are the tiger teams? WHERE ARE THE TIGER TEAMS?
2004nov02. Saw a report that Guam went to Bush. Heh. THIS JUST IN: Fort Knox is Bush Country!
2004nov03. Mr. O'Brien sums up this sodden mess in one concise paragraph.
2004nov03. Another happy-time election summation.
2004nov04. There. Now you have plenty of rope.
2004nov05. A Review Of The O.C.. I cannot afford the diamond bullet.
2004nov05. Achewood: A sensible plan for one's passing.
2004nov05. BEEP BOOP I'LL TAKE SOME OF YOURS AND ADD IT TO MINE. Story here.
2004nov05. Cardhouse: Political Billboards in Arizona. Does this count as "healing"?
2004nov08. Mail.
hey i hate food ciy in knoxvill 4302 asville
hwy the black women are stelling !!!!!
I've decided to fire them.
2004nov09. SUPPORT OUR DISCO TROOPS C'mon everybody! Doo doo doo dee doo doo dooo doo deee dooo awwwwwwwww DO THE HUSTLE! doo dee doo doo dee doo la la la
2004nov10. F-ing with collectors [via deuce o' clubs]
2004nov11. So I'm concentrating intently on not doing anything online and there's this noise that sounds like a gigantic vacuum cleaner slowly approaching the house. Yesterday night the house was shaken by some weirdo distant unknown explosion-like reverberation, and I wasn't going to let this one get away. I raced out of the house and there's a blimp outside in the air. Of course it's got this giant American flag graphic on it ‒ it is an American flag in the shape of a blimp-shaped cigar ‒ just in case I sit down for two seconds at any time and think to myself "Am I in Sweden?" So then I raced back inside to get the camera and came back out and of course it was in the same place and after I took the photo I thought, "why?"
Didn't everybody crap their pants in the sixties when Abbie Hoffman wore an American flag shirt?
what are you some unpatriotic commie why don't you shut up
No, it's not that, it's like, yeah, I like pancakes a whole lot, but you don't see me wearing a trucker cap with a big pancake on it, do you?
what now you're saying that pancakes are better than the united states of america you commie
No, it's just that ... yes. Yes. Pancakes are better than The United States of America.
2004nov11. I'm Free Because I Voted, Right? [via deuce o' clubs]
2004nov12. World's Largest Donut Wedding Cake. Okay, you know what, Krispy Kreme? You can cram it sideways. Hey, look, I'm making the world's largest wedding cake comprised of cupcakes. Now I'm making one out of meatloaf. Wait ... wait ... it's the world's largest tortellini wedding cake. A donut wedding "cake" is for people too cheap to shell out some money for the most important part of the wedding. Cutting the cake, remember? And the face-cramming? Always delightful. Wait ... this just in ... now I'm stacking fishing magazines and broken lamps into a wedding cake configuration. It's a world's record!
2004nov16. Japanese game show.
DOTCHI NO RYORI SHOW (COOKING SHOWDOWN)
Saturday 8:00pm ‒ 9:00pm
Changing all the cooking rules ~ They are not kidding we say you'll never look at another cooking show the same way again. It changes all the rules. Welcome to a survivalist cooking game show where only the winners get to eat. Supplemented by on-site preparation with professional chefs, 2 hosts pitch rival menus to a panel of celebrity guests. The side that wins over the most panelists eats!
So here's my idea. CRAZY SUPER REALITY SHOW. Several people are dropped off on an island in the middle of nowhere. They have just three months to work out a business plan, get makeovers, plastic surgery, build a chopper, gut their huts and re-design them, cook an array of food for judges, and then for the amazing final episode, jump into a volcano. The winner? You, the home viewer.
2004nov17. Mail.
Are you considering an RSS feed? That would be teh cool.
Yes. Want it. Want. Cardhouse is currently using Dr. Berk's Patented Auto-Weblogger/Cider Masher Systemtronic V1.7 (2017: I made a new thing called "Flow" for now). Unfortunately I'm too lazy to add RSS to it (2017: still too lazy, working on it), especially since we're moving to Movable Type (2017: hahahah no) and then RSS would be a snap, it would.
Wait ... what does "tea cool" mean?
This is a display from a Kuala Lumpur vending
machine. I tried some later on in my trip, it's pretty good. It's sweetened,
I suppose that's primarily the reason. You could sweeten cinder blocks
and make 'em taste swell.
2004nov19. Submitted Macros. A new "feature" here.
If
you're going to bring it to nationals, you better bring it on!
Ok,
this quote (or quote as I remember it) from the epic cheerleader competition
film
Bring It On was MUCH funnier when said in repetition while drinking
beer. Can be said in response when a friend asks what to bring to a party
("oh sure, bring some beer, but if you're going to bring it to nationals,
you better bring it on!"). Can also be blurted out randomly for no apparent
reason, especially to emphasize the importance of any given statement.
"I've got a big test tomorrow in class"
"Yeah, well if you're going to bring it to nationals, you better bring it on!"
Again, it was funnier when we were hopped up on beer. -- Brody C.
What IS the fuck?
Met some french doods working
at Intel (supposedly working on robots, but I digress), one was particularly
funny, named Benoit. They all kept saying "what is the fuck?" to each other
so Stephanie and I asked what they were trying to say and it turns out --
they were making fun of a fellow frenchie working with them, who thought
he mastered engrish better than them. So instead of saying "what the fuck?"
he'd say "what IS the fuck?" emphasis on the "IS" part. He also was fond
of saying "I catch you" instead of "gotcha!," but we don't use that as
much as "what is the fuck?" which has worked its way into our everyday lingo.
Example: As we realize SOMEONE drank the last PBR, we'd exclaim "what
IS the fuck?" then trudge off to the likker store ... --
Max
Are you an organist?
My girlfriend and I recently
made a pilgrimage to an English celebration of freakery ‒ Biddenden, a
small village where siamese twins were born in 1100. They died together
and left their money and estate to the poor and to this day the local poor
can get a cookie in their image (along with bread, butter etc) at Easter
which is despatched from their old house. The village sign is great and
features the twins. Anyway ‒ we went in to the local church and found
that it has all these knitted prayer mat covers ‒ one of which features
an image of the twins. I was trying to avoid eye contact with the crazy
church lady who wanted to tell us its entire history ‒ so I looked at the
organist who was practising. As we were leaving (and buying a mug featuring
the twins) the old church lady noted my interest in the organist and her
more withered accomplice piped up "are you an organist?" Probably one of
the more bizarre questions I have been asked. To be used as code to denote
crazy/crazy and old person in vicinity/ridiculous situation. --
Iain A.
Au-to-mo-biles may be-come death cham-bers.
I
recently encountered a much scarier cousin of the DECtalk weather robot
(see It was sunny, Macros2000 #7),
on AM radio in Delaware. This robot was talking about how hot it was going
to be, but he wasn't only describing the weather, he was kind of preaching
about it ... "light co-lored clo-thing may be help-ful," "drink plen-ty
of wa-ter," that kind of thing. Naturally we inferred from this that somewhere
in the broadcast was the coded signal for "kill all hu-mans." We didn't
have to look very hard for it, though ... the last bit of hot weather advice
Mr. Robot offered was "au-to-mo-biles may be-come death cham-bers." This
was terrifying, as we were in an automobile at the time, so we immediately
put on some Kraftwerk, in the hopes of fooling the marauding robots into
thinking we were family. "Au-to-mo-biles may be-come death cham-bers"
became a macro for the rest of the trip. --
Jess H.
2004nov22. Hot celebrity fashion trends for fall '04 include barrels with comical suspenders, cardboard boxes for shoes, and large diamonds jammed up your nostrils. "Barrels are so 1930," one fashion reporter sniffed, accidentally sucking twin zirconiums into her nasal cavity.
It's hard to figure out who to hate more in this article. I don't mean hate, exactly. Loathe? Abhor? Loathe. Loathe is good.
2004nov30. Doc and I were cranking along at 80mph down the freeway after a long road trip and we coincidentally had our heads down looking at various reading materials and/or tactical gauges when we drove through a swarm of bees.
Sounds like mad rain. Leaves a slick of honey on your windshield. Don't try to lick it off at the truck stop, people will see you and the windshield smells like chemicals anyway. Suggested invention: HoneyPro® edible organic windshields.
2004nov30. Cockeyed: Fake traffic tickets being mailed to random people. In California, at least. Watch out!
2004nov30. Pledge Bait. Kempa describes the Ira Glass/Chris Ware collaborative DVD available only to pledge pledgers. It sounds a-pretty nice ...
December 2004.
2004dec01. Image: Mansfield's Choice Pepsin Gum. $2195. Blood orange gum didn't really catch on, I guess. Other old candy ads/machines.
2004dec01. More on crappy ribbonfest USA. For the record, the shitty script font on the ribbons is ITC Edwardian. It's so sophisticated! [grasps corn likker jug while extending pinky]
2004dec01. Beginning of journey. Gas station.
Feelin' pretty special, here.
Needles, Calfornia. Closed, rotting.
Tehachapi, California. Open, dirty. Shame, it's a nice sign. Forgot the chainsaw. Ended up at the Santa Fe Motel instead.
2004dec02. Fofoshoppe tutorial: Partial Black 'n' White Photos
2004dec02. Costco cocktail arcade cabinet with 35 games: $2299. What a total ripoff. What the freak is that money paying for? The rights to Bombjack Twin? Buy a stand-up cabinet with a horrible game, gut and paint it, throw in a cheap PC with Mame. End of story. Cocktail cabinets suck for gameplay anyway, unless it's Warlords. Feeling very old now.
2004dec03. Mail.
I'm thinking it's time for someone with paintballs.
Oh man, did you you NAIL it. I am so with you on this one. Someone ... with ... what? Someone? Paintballs?
I'm from south africa and looking for a Baby Born Doll for my daughter I believe the doll can cry you can feed it and it wee's too could you find one and if so how much
thank you
Natalie May
[phone number]
AHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH WEES
2004dec04. Lots of mail to-day. Lots of italicized and capitalized responses to-day.
Un-fucking-believable!
I am beginning to have serious doubts that our nation can be fixed. Perhaps, it just needs to implode, and then in another 60 years or so, something better will, hopefully, arise. Maybe a more humble, caring and humane nation, the citizens of which have learned their lesson regarding greed, gluttony, deceit, fear which leads to fear-mongering, and most of all, I hope we will have learned, once and for all, that Religion and State should never mix.
We have people running this country who believe in Santa Claus. That is like giving the car keys to a 3 year old.
God save us from your people!
It's "our" nation, "this" country, but "my" people? [motions with Heston-as-Moses-like sweeping arm gestures] THESE ARE NOT MY PEOPLE. Wait, maybe you meant God's people? But then that would be "Your people" and not "your people." And I'm assuming you're reacting to this and not [randomly points] this.
Say, are those last four digits on the DEA hotline number a shorthand for "Phoenix," or the phonetic spelling of "Finks"?
Just wondering.Well photo'ed and mocked, my friend.
Kevin
Someone else spotted that as well. Sometimes I miss the meatballs. Thinking too hard, obviously. Rocket science humor.
This is great stuff. Thanks for doing all this.
You may have heard of his site, but another artist has been equally generous with his time, zefrank.com, I believe it is.
Wait, I'll check that....
...Yup, zefrank.com. If you haven't seen it, you in particular will enjoy wandering around an checking out some of the stuff there. It's not all as mature or insightful, but there's a lot of good work there.
The billboard commentary is pretty funny. Glad to hear there are some folks in Arizona who are so clear in their thinking. This Blue state, Red state nonsense is getting a lot of people confused. Or is it the human being's natural tendency to want a simple means of inflicting pain on others that's doing it?
Great site!
I am hip to the Zefrank.com. I can out-immature Zefrank anyday. PUT UP YOUR DUKES ZE FRANK
Great Site.
The picture/word things is excellent. Pig parts ....whod a thunk it?
Its the coolest thing I've seen for a while. The Arizona billboards are too scary yet you made them so idiotic, I could get my head around their message. WOW
Seriously, I'll check back frequently given this excellent content - ps saw it on buzzflash.
Dave
I thank Buzzflash for the traffic, but man, that format hurts my eyes. MR. AND MRS. AMERICA AND ALL THE SHIPS AT SEA! THIS JUST IN BY WIRELESS! Maybe it would be better routed through an RSS feeder thing. And now I can see that Cardhouse is down. Well, if you can't read this message, that's probably why. Wrapped it all up with the classic "if you're not here, raise your hand" vignette.
2004dec06. Mini-bar, Sunburst Hotel, Scottsdale Arizona.
Chips, candy bars, camera, mug cozy, wine corker, go cup, crappy health bars, peanuts, monogrammed hats, wine cozy, etc. Soon hotel mini-bars will conveniently take up an entire wall of your room and tastefully monogrammed snack items will fall from the ceiling onto your bed as you sleep. They also crammed the refrigerator full of drinks (none of this was labelled with a price -- if you have to ask, you're not hungry/thirsty enough), barely had enough room for our bizarro fun-time drinks acquired at the Pop: The Soda Shop:
For some reason, one of these bottles featured a man with a head wound rolling around in a wheelchair. Banana nectar! It was from Belgium. It wasn't that good. It's very difficult to make a good banana drink, something I discovered countless times while travelling around Southeast Asia. "Surely this won't be the seventh bad banana juice drink I've had this trip."
It took me half the day to figure out that he's in a wheelchair because he's slipped on the banana, torqued his ankle, landed on his head. I'm slow today, have a nasty cold. If you're really nice you'll send soothing words via electronic mail.
In other news, I'd been meaning to add a billboard to the billboard collection ... it's been around the town for over a year:
Peek-a-boo! I'll get a better shot of it when the ground dries up, it's swampy back there. That's all it says. Another Clear Channel production number, apparently. I'm praying that this whole billboard mess gets sorted out and they're all gloriously destroyed ...
2004dec07. I am trying to find out what the name of this plush "animal" is, and who makes it. I took a photo of it in "Kiddy Land" in Harajuku in May. Someone has written in expressing a desire to own one. Apparently the name is not Chokefriends®. I was so confident.
2004dec07. About five skrillion years ago, I was going to publish a big, big page in X Magazine just listing the names of hair styling locations that were based on puns. Like Prime Cuts, or Shear Ecstasy. Ha. Ha ha. Love the puns. Can't get enough of them. Anyway, there was also going to be a sidebar: Doc was rummaging around in the phone book one day and in the middle of all the hair styling places there was an erroneous listing for "Skynet Communications." So he called the place, hoping to get some supreme stylin'.
Sky-Not -or- Accents Will Happen
SKYNET: [Lady with Vietnamese accent] Skynet, can I help you?
D: Is this "Skynet?"
Yes.
D: I'd like to make a styling appointment.
What you need?
D: I would like an appointment.
Yes?
D: Can I make an appointment?
For what?
D: Stylin'.
For what?
D: Stylin'. You know, like a ... a haircut.
Oh no, this is not the ... this is, uh, Skynet
D: Communications --
Skynet. --a different place.
D: Excuse me?
We sell the beeper.
D: Right ... I need to get an appointment.
[The conversation lags]
D: You're in the --
This is not a haircut, this a beeper place.
D: A WHAT?
A beeper ... pager.
D: Well I'm just lookin' here in the yella pages.
Yeah, I-I-I don't know, maybe they have a mistake them. Cos' this is the, you know, we sell the pager.
D: And you're called what?
Skynet.
D: "Skynet." Right, right, right. So I need to get an appointment.
For a haircut?
D: Yeah.
No, we, we don't, we don't do haircut over here. We sell pager.
D: I don't understand. You're called "Skynet," though. Right?
Skynet COMMUNICATIONS.
D: Right. Like, you know ... HAIRnet, or --
No we have no nail, er, hair, over here.
D: ‒ AQUAnet --
No. We don't have over here.
D: The hairspray. Aquanet.
[Barely audible breathing]
D: "Skynet" ... isn't that the name of ... did you see the Terminator movies? With that fella Schwarzenegger?
No.
D: Well, that was the name of the evil ... computer ... corporation ... that took over the WORLD!
[Complete silence]
D: "Skynet." Right? S-K-Y-N-E-T. Can I make an appointment?
No! We over here, we don't do the hair!
D: Well, when did you stop?
Huh?
D: When did you stop doing hair?
We don't, we never do a hair over here. We never do it.
D: Really.
Never.
D: How did you get in the yellow pages, then?
No! We don't know!
D: Did you --
Maybe they have the same name!
D: ‒ so you --
A different business!
D: Y'all went out of business?
Okay, b'bye!
D: What, now? You're going out of business?
[click]
Sky-Not Part II: Lightning Strikes Twice
[Man with East Indian accent] Skynet Communications.
D: Yeah, is this "Skynet?"
Yes.
D: Yeah ... I was talkin' to somebody there and I think we got cut off.
Yeah.
D: This is "Skynet?" S-K-Y-N-E-T?
That's right.
D: Okay, I want to make an appointment.
Uh-huh. Yeah. We open till six. Thirty.
D: Can I make an appointment for tomorrow?
You come here tomorrow?
D: Sure! Can I make an appointment for like, say, one o'clock?
Yeah.
D: Okay, great. Now do you do shaves also?
Huh?
D: Do you do shaves?
Uh ... what? Oh, [multiple unintelligible syllables] thinking of ... no, we uh, we uh, communications, not, not, a hair, hair ... cuttery.
D: Well --
We don't do anything, we have nothing to do about hair. We are a communications.
D: Well --
Okay?!
D: Well, I got it--
You got the wrong number.
D: Well, I got it right out of the yellow pages, here. It's S-K ...
No.
D: ... Y-N-E-T
They gave you the wrong number. Okay?
D: But it wasn't the operator, it was out of the yellow pages there.
Okay! No! Sorry! [click]
2004dec07. Ohhhhhhh! I get it now. That earlier mail, the "it's time for someone with paintballs" one. For the billboards! Ha! Ha ha! C'mon people, I've got five skrillion pages here. Reminds me of the email asking "WHEN IS THE NEXT BAND DAY?????? AND HOW MUCH IS THE BANDS??" and it was because I posted photos of the Arizona State Fair. Which means to many AOL users that I am of course the Arizona State Fair website. Lemme get right on that one.
2004dec07. Mail.
I was reading your article on Food City, and when I came across the picture of the "Gold Silver Offering Spray"), and I was struck by the similarity of the image on the can, to something I came across while reading the other night. "In 1581 the Emperor Rudolf II gave Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, a piece of virgin rock in which were embedded sixteen emeralds, of some great size (only ten remain). It came from Columbia in South America. The Elector commissioned the sculptor Balthasar Permozer to make a setting for it in the form of a South American Indian, adding other jewels on his body: rubies, sapphires, topaz, garnets and tortoiseshell." From the book Cabinets of Curiosity, by Patrick Mauries. The guy holding the huge chunk of gold on the can, is the same one made for Augustus the Strong, which can be seen at
Odd.
Cabinets of Curiosity is on my reading list. It is indeed wonderful that the riches of the Elector of Saxony now come in a spray-on form. We live in the best of times.
2004dec08. There used to be an egg here. Now it is gone. Its constant quivering vexed me. Sure, it was a larf for you, but I'm checking this page a lot more than you. I had to look into the soul of the egg. It wasn't pretty.
2004dec09. The actual name of the Chokefriends! is "Mee," made by microbead-obsessed pillow manufacturer Mogu. Unfortunately I cannot find a U.S. distributor, but thanks to everyone who wrote in!
2004dec09. I'm sorry, we ... we lost him.
2004dec09. They're not just assholes in power creating fictions of fear, they're serial assholes in power creating fictions of fear.
2004dec10. Quitting the Paint Factory. Idleness, the Futurists, Bush. It's all coming to-gether.
2004dec11. Day Three begins and the builders return to the shop to discover that Koko has hidden all the tools. Ani-mal, Animal Garage. [via molly]
2004dec12. PEOPLE CONFINED TO BED SHOULD EAT 3 INFANTS
2004dec12. The actual Funky Pirates. Had no idea. Looking forward to the Funky Pirates ice cream binding agents.
2004dec12. Word Mark: Funky Pirates.
Filing Date: March 11, 2004.
Goods and Services: IC 014. US 002 027 028 050. G & S: Precious metals; keyrings (trinkets or fobs); tableware of precious metal; nutcrackers, pepper pots, sugar bowls, salt shakers, egg cups, napkin holders, napkin rings, trays and toothpick holders of precious metal; boxes of precious metal for needles; boxes of precious metal for small articles; candle extinguishers and candlesticks of precious metal; jewel cases of precious metal; flower vases and bowls of precious metal; trophies (prize cups); personal ornaments of precious metal; purses and wallets of precious metal; unwrought and semi-wrought precious stones and their imitations; powder compacts of precious metal; shoe ornaments of precious metal; clocks and watches; smokers' articles of precious metal
IC 016. US 002 005 022 023 029 037 038 050. G & S: Pastes and other adhesives for stationary or household purposes; sealing wax; printers' reglets (interline leads); printing types; addressing machines; inking ribbons; automatic stamp putting-on machines; electric staplers for offices; envelope sealing machines for offices; stamp obliterating machines; drawing instruments; typewriters; checkwriters; mimeographs; relief duplicators; paper shredders (for office use); franking machines (stamping machines); rotary duplicators; marking templates; electric pencil sharpeners; decorators' paintbrushes; babies' diapers of paper; industrial packaging containers of paper; food wrapping plastic film for household use; garbage bags of paper (for household use); garbage bags of plastics (for household use); paper patterns; tailors' chalk; banners of paper; flags of paper; indoor aquaria and their fittings; hygienic paper; towels of paper; table napkins of paper; hand towels of paper; handkerchiefs of paper; baggage tags; printed lottery tickets (other than toys); table cloths of paper; paper and cardboard; stationery and study materials; calendars and other printed matter; paintings and calligraphic works; photographs; photograph stands; poster panels
IC 020. US 002 013 022 025 032 050. G & S: Meerschaum (raw or partly worked material); yellow amber; loading pallets (not of metal); beehives (hive boxes or honeycombs); hairdresser's chairs; barbers' chairs; valves of plastic (not including machine elements); storage tanks (not of metal or masonry); containers for transport, not of metal; wedges, nuts, screws, bolts, rivets and casters (not of metal); washers (not of metal, not of rubber or vulcanized fiber); locks (non-electric, not of metal); cushions (furniture); Japanese floor cushions (Zabuton); pillows; mattresses; straw plaits (braids), industrial packaging containers of wood, bamboo or plastics; drinking straws; trays (not of metal); embroidery frames and hoops; nameplates and door nameplates (not of metal); flagpoles; hand-held flat fans; hand-held folding fans; stakes for plants or trees; beds for household pets; dog kennels; nesting boxes for small birds; step ladders and ladders (not of metal); letter boxes (not of metal or masonry); hat hooks (not of metal); shopping baskets; water tanks for household purposes (not of metal or masonry); hanging boards (Japanese style pegboards using positional hooks); tool boxes (not of metal); towel dispensers (not of metal); portable medicine receptacles of plastics (not filled); receptacles for small articles, of wood or plastics; furniture; indoor window blinds (shade) (furniture); blinds of reed, rattan or bamboo (Sudare); bead curtains for decoration; oriental folding partition screen (Byoubu); benches; advertising balloons; upright signboards of wood or plastics; artificial model food samples; cradles; infant walkers; mannequins; costume display stands; sleeping bags (for camping); picture frames; plaster sculptures; plastic sculptures; wooden sculptures. ferns (unworked or partly worked material); bamboo (unworked or partly worked material); bamboo skins (unworked or partly worked material); rattan (unworked or partly worked material); reeds (raw or partly worked material); rushes (raw or partly worked material); onigaya hay (raw or partly worked material); sedges (unworked or partly worked material); straw of wheat, barley or oats; rice straw; whalebones; shells; artificial horns; ivory (unworked or partly worked material); animal horns; animal teeth; tortoiseshells (unworked or partly worked material); animal bone (unworked or partly worked material); coral (unworked or partly worked)
IC 021. US 002 013 023 029 030 033 040 050. G & S: Dental floss (floss for dental purposes); unworked or semi-worked glass (not for building); mangers for animals (troughs for livestock); poultry rings; cooking skewers; tub brushes; metal brushes; brushes for pipes; industrial brushes; ship-scrubbing brushes; gloves for household purposes; cooking pots and pans (non-electric); coffee-pots (non-electric, not of precious metal); Japanese cast iron kettles, non-electric (Tetsubin); kettles (non-electric); tableware (not of precious metal); portable cold boxes (non-electric); rice chests; food preserving jars of glass; drinking flasks (for travelers); vacuum bottles; ice pails; whisks (non-electric); cooking strainers; pepper pots, sugar bowls and salt shakers (not of precious metal); egg cups (not of precious metal); napkin holders and napkin rings (not of precious metal); trays (not of precious metal); toothpick holders (not of precious metal); colanders; shakers; Japanese style cooked rice scoops (Shamoji); hand-operated coffee grinders and pepper mills; cooking funnels; Japanese style wooden pestles (Surikogi); Japanese style earthenware mortars (Suribachi); Japanese style personal dining trays or stands (Zen); bottle openers; cooking graters; tart scoops; chopsticks; chopstick cases; ladles and dippers; cooking sieves and sifters; chopping boards for kitchen use; rolling pins (for cooking purposes); cooking grills; toothpicks; lemon squeezers (citrus juicers); waffle irons (non-electric); gloves for gripping pans, of cloth; lunch boxes; cleaning tools and washing utensils; ironing boards; ironing boards (Kotedai); stirrers for hot bathtub water (Yukakibo); bathroom pails; candle extinguishers and candlesticks (not of precious metal); cinder sifters for household purposes; coal scuttles; fly swatters; mouse traps; flower pots; watering cans; feeding vessels for pets. brushes for pets; bird cages; bird baths; clothes brushes; chamber pots; toilet paper holders; piggy banks (not of metal); boxes of metal for dispensing paper towels; boot jacks; soap dispensers; flower vases and bowls (not of precious metal); sculptures of glass or ceramics (indoor); upright signboards of glass or ceramics; perfume burners; cosmetic and toilet utensils; shoe brushes; shoe horns; shoe shine cloths; shoe-trees (stretchers); portable cooking kits for outdoor use; pig bristles (hog bristles for brushes)
IC 025. US 022 039. G & S: Clothing; garters; sock suspenders; suspenders (braces); waistbands; belts for clothing; footwear; masquerade costumes; clothes for sports; boots for sports
IC 028. US 022 023 038 050. G & S: Wax for skis; amusement machines and apparatus for use in amusement parks (other than arcade video game machines); toys for domestic pets; stuffed toys and other toys; dolls; Christmas tree ornaments; go games; Japanese playing cards (Utagaruta); Japanese chess (Shogi games); dice; Japanese dice games (Sugoroku); dice cups; diamond games; bingo games; chess games; checkers (checker sets); conjuring apparatus; dominoes; playing cards; Japanese playing cards (Hanafuda); Mah-jong; game machines and apparatus; billiard equipment; sports equipment; fishing tackle
IC 030. US 046. G & S: Binding agents for ice cream; meat tenderizers for household purposes; preparations for stiffening whipped cream; aromatic preparations for food (not from "essential oils"); tea; coffee and cocoa; ice; confectionery, bread and buns; seasonings; spices; ice cream mixes; sherbet mixes; unroasted coffee (unprocessed); cereal preparations; almond paste; Chinese stuffed dumplings (Gyoza, cooked); sandwiches; Chinese steamed dumplings (Shumai, cooked); Sushi; fried balls of batter mix with small pieces of octopus (Takoyaki); steamed buns stuffed with minced meat (Niku-manjuh); hamburgers (prepared); pizzas (prepared); hot dogs (prepared); meat pies (prepared); ravioli (prepared); spring rolls; yeast powder; fermenting malted rice (Koji); yeast; baking powder; instant confectionery mixes; sake lees (for food); husked rice; husked oats; husked barley; flour for food; gluten for food; dietetic foods of cereals as the main material
Can't wait to get my hands on Funky Pirates franking machine. Or the Surikogi. Either one.
2004dec12. DER INTERNETSHOPPEN VON AMPELMANN KOLLEKTION IN IHREM GESICHT "der Plätzchenscherblock! der Plätzchenscherblock! ich arbeite Schnitte Ampelmann des Fleisches um! Oh ‒ die Menschlichkeit!"
2004dec15. Cat Brand Tobacco. Purchased on Koh Samui, Thailand, May 2004.
Reminds one of the old Eveready cat logo, does it not? Yes it does.
2004dec17. FOX news subhead.
WHAT WILL SCOTT PETERSON'S LIFE BE LIKE IN SAN QUENTIN?
God, marry the guy already.
2004dec17. Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" is on right now. As I alighted on the channel a young American soldier who was being held captive is striking a prone Japanese soldier repeatedly about the head with a rock. His buddy comes up and shoots the Japanese soldier in the face. Just a few inches down and to the right of this touching scene is the logo for the "ABC Family" channel. It has a little Santee Claus hat on it, so cute! ABC Family: No Tits, Total Carnage. Happy holidays. [Special to Mitch: We didn't put that quartz next to the desert phone booth. Ass.]
2004dec19. Wasn't there some guy who was selling ukeleles made out of gas cans? Weren't there some photos on the net of these gas can ukes? Where were they? Uhhhh?
2004dec20. Babs is censored by Bebe writing to Babs.
2004dec21. And now ... a special message from all of us at Cardhouse, to you ... and yours.
2004dec23. HAHAHAHAHA FUN TIME DO-NUT DOLLS JUST IN TIME FOR GIFT GIVE [via cute things I LIKE THE CUTE THINGS YOU SHOULD TOO!!!!!!111!!!1]
2004dec23. Sears catalog. 1927.
2004dec23. Another discovery in the 1927 Sears catalog. More gruesome than Rat Killer.
Brrrrrrrr ... I feel cold inside ...
2004dec24. Mail.
send info on this diner
For more information on the Welcome Diner, please see the following webpage:
Thank you!
2004dec24. Interview: Penn [via doc]
2004dec24. Mail.
Would you believe I just saw the Mc.Leans Volcanic Liniment at [store] in Connecticut of all places!!! $2.97 a bottle ... and it is that same old packaging! I opened it to see what it smelled like and nearly passed out! Leads me to wonder ... is chlorothymol 1800's lingo for chloroform! That's how I found you ... trying to find out what the heck it was! Smelled awful! But a lot like a horse liniment we used to use at the farm.
I would believe it because I photographed that bottle not a year ago. If they hadn't changed the label in 114 years, I don't think a year is going to kill them. Dr. Berk responds RE chlorothymol: "Nope ‒ it is a completely different molecule. Much more complex than chloroform." Thank you, Dr. Berk.
2004dec25. Child's Play II: Children play old video games. Again. [via mono211]
If Mike Tyson was in this game, his special move would be to bite people's ears. Then he'd be all gloating about it, but then the sound's all low because you can't hear him because your ears are gone.
2004dec25. Google has indicated that no one online has used the word "sweettocks" -- a deft combination of the words "sweet" and "buttocks" ‒ before. Noted.
2004dec28. Mail.
Hello. I am needing a fresh picnic ham for new years day. At least 25 pounds with lots of skin...can I order this from your meat department?
Thank you
Yes. Yes you may. You will find that our picnic hams are the "skin-iest" hams around! Ha ha! A little grocery joke, there.
Thank you for shopping!
Frank Stephenson
Head Butcher/Livestock
Killer
2004dec28. Cone top soda cans.
2004dec29. Attacking a company.
2004dec30. I rushed outside of the house today to get the garbage cans before the rain picked up and I startled two bunnies in the driveway. We all froze ... twitched our noses ... moved slowly around each other ... and made our various ways to our various destinations. It's good to live somewhere that's SUDDENLY BUNNIES!
2004dec30. The Night Cabbie chucks it in.
2004dec30. New Kantacky Fried Chicken. This reminds me of usually-poor comedian Richard Lewis on Letterman one day discussing third-party operators taking over actual chain stores then making minor changes to the signs. The one that I remember him mentioning was "International Shouse of Shancakes."