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]