jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec
Above: Travelling Cross-Country By Train; giant engine hall, Henry Ford Museum; travelling case RIP.
2007 items of note: Travelling Cross-Country By Train.
January 2007.
2007jan01. An ebay auction I had a mild interest in ended today. At 7:00am. That's a crazy dose of some drunk-bidding reverse psychology, there.
2007jan08. Theoretically I can still send stuff to my "weblog" from "here." Here's something: Doc talks about the Mojave Phone Booth.
2007jan14. Mail.
Mail.
do you know anything about lucky stikes being discontinued? is it the distrubitors or the company? ive heard somthign about katrina wiping out the lucky stike tobacco crops? any truth to that? all i know is that around november all the stores where i live stopped recieving Lucky Strikes. i think some still recive unfiltered. ive also heard that they are more popular is europe and are now only been sold there.
any info is appreciated. lucky strikes are an american origional, the GI's were smokin them, Sonny Croket (Don Johnson from Miami Vice) smoked them. even this "tiny flowers" advertisement (http://tinyflowers.com/) is blatently copying the lucky strike logo. lucky strike has been imbued into the american psyche whether they know it or not. hit me back dawg!
Yes, I've seen that Tiny Flowers thing, I think it's disgusting the way they've appropriated the regal and sublime Lucky Strikes logo. Even though I bet that wasn't even their intent, nor even conscious of the similarity, though the Lucky Strikes logo is ubiquitous and regal. I also bet that the person who designed it really hates that shade of red because it never looks right on a computer monitor, and hates computer graphics anyway, but keeps trundling on in the misguided hope that he'll be alive to see worldwide deployment of that "e-ink" technology that scientists make squeaking noises about every three years. Then he'll probably be okay with it. I bet he's fully immersed in some cockamamie computer graphics-type project for like, 14 hours a day, these days, when he's not feeding the one-winged turkey vulture, among many other animals. I'd put even money on that. He raises his wing if you get your hand near him, creating a sort of cowl-effect so you can't see the awesome dead food he's totally eating and you're not. "Dude. I wanted that chicken. I know I just gave it to you ... but I've changed my mind. GIVE ME THE CHICKEN"
2007jan20. Spam.
Wooten O. Natalie ‒ Chinese missile shot down USA satellite
Jessy K. Meade ‒ Russian missle shot down USA satellite
Emmie ‒ Chinese missile shot down Russian satellite
Man, things are tough all over. Be careful out there.
2007jan22. The pets I'm taking care of now thankfully don't include the three rattlesnakes, which occasionally move around about two feet away from this computer, in a glass aquarium thing. Sometimes there's a little half-rattle from one of them. Evolution is so incredibly strange. "You know what this dude needs? A PARTY FAVOR!!!!" Then Evolution trashes your living room and accidentally steps on that model of the new housing development you had ready to go for Monday's big meeting with regional. Evolution can be a dick sometime.
One of them is curling around my wrist, so cute! Gotta go.
2007jan28. Mail. I missed answering all of these because I was taking care of pets and pets come first. I AM SORRY I DID NOT REPLY BECAUSE THESE EMAILS ARE ALL SO GOOD
hi,
I would like to enquire about the sangokushi taisen arcade machine. ASAP
Hi, I from GuangZhou Of China I real like u toy and I want to buy. How can I do? Thank so much! I hope you replay as soon as possibility!
I would like to buy a can of dance wax
how much the domokun larg
thanks
*NEW* Mind-Blowing Technology Delivers An Endless Flood Of Traffic To Your Website Automatically At The Push Of A Button! Enjoy Unlimited Hits For Life!
my cousin is at the center on willton mamo i want to call make a appoitment to come and see him i forget the center number.
See, what's so awesomely cool about this website is that even though it's in a completely different medium I still get wrong number calls from potatoes. See that last email? Someone typed that shit in and thought they'd get an answer.
I'm really nice in person though. Unless you're the lead programmer responsible for those "self check-out" things in supermarkets. Then I get one (1) free garroting, is the way I understand it. We'll quibble over semantics later, let's just jet on over to the garrote thing. Now.
Note: If you were in an Oakland Albertson's on January 25th I'd like to apologize for the long string of profanity and the thing with putting my fist through the screen. It's not really like me, ask around.
I thought the rough edges were going to smooth out as I got older, and then when I was eighty, I'd be a happy well-rounded circle-type person. But now I can see I'm turning into something small and jabby, like a toothpick. I don't mean physically small. I've got three or four inches on you. You want me to poke your eye out, then, yeah? 2007: GLOVES ARE OFF
2007jan28. Flickr: Some candy cigarettes. Finally getting around to shooting 'em all. The journey of a thousand miles begins with cats trying to destroy your flakey little lightbox and SITTING ON THE BACKGROUND STRIP WITH THEIR DIRTY DIRTY PAWS OH CATS!!!!!
2007jan28. Stereolabrat: Hardcore Award.
February 2007.
2007feb01. Sugar mail.
Good day
We are an export company currently exporting sugar from Brasil to the USA in containers at very competitive prices.
Hence this to further our business relationship in regards to the procurement and import of sugar in the manufacturing of your end product.
Trust you find this in order
Kind regards
What kind of sugar? How much sugar can you provide in a week's time? When you say containers, do you mean shipping containers? Do you have photos of these containers?
Dear Sir
We have 12 500 mt ICUMSA 100-150 max available now at the port of Paranagua at $355 FOB.
The containers are 20ft and we fit 20mt per container in 50kg pp bags.
Trust you find this in order
Kind regards
What? Paranagua? That's FOB to an East Coast port, I'm not paying to truck it across the U.S., and they're not going to pay to bring it through the Panama canal to L.A. ... No deal. Gotta let him down easy.
Mr. Smith:
We have found another supplier for our sugar. Thank you for being patient.
J. Stondec
Receiving
2007feb05. Achewood: Morgan Freeman calls bullshit on this month's featured tostada.
2007feb05. A swell anti-spambot idea: negative captcha (wow, that's a weird Digg entry, all the words are spelled correctly). I got rid of 95% of my contact spam by limiting the number of URLs you can type in the text body. And that number would be one (1).
2007feb06. I've been wanting to score some of this miracle fruit ever since I first read about it over three hundred years ago. But now the guy that is selling it in the US is jacking his prices and you know how I hate price-jackers. Perhaps someone will ferret out another supplier. There can't be just one guy. One miracle fruit dude. With a uniform. You look at it, it's white, and then again, and it's some sort of rainbow thing that touches your mind, but in a good way, not like tie-dye with its negative cultural associations (ex: hippies).
2007feb06. Here's some miracle fruit pills in Japan ... this article indicates it's 3990 yen for a package of ten ... so, assuming it's ever imported, add some more $$$ on top of that, and you're looking at five, six dollars a pill. Nah, that's okay. But the product is labelled "Mysterious Fruit" which I like better.
Wait, now I like "Miracle Fruit" better.
Back to "Mysterious." Soon there will be a champion.
2007feb07. Two days ago I was flipping channels and came across a documentary about a Japanese scientist who is using catfish to predict earthquakes.
Seems the fish are extremely electromagnetically sensitive, so you put 'em in a tank, put a webcam on 'em, you're golden. Today, completely utterly randomly again, I ran across the Digital Catfish earthquake predicting produkt. Their website: 3Soft. The catfish has a heart on its chest and there is Braille on the front of the infernal device. The Catfish cares. Perhaps one day they will come out with a port to Bowlingual so pets will be warned as well.
2007feb08. DO YOU SMELL CHOCOLATE? WHERE CHOCOLATE!?!???
2007feb08. Mail.
sorry I ever came across this web site. Hope your on the next terroist airplane or other attack.
see ya in hell
I think the terramists are going to attack us with a train next. Mix things up, keep it lively. "We, on the surface, would like to hijack this train and take it to Honduras. But ... we have a hidden, 'sub'-plan. And it's not a submarine! Hahaha, little travel humor there." I've injected a touch of humanity into the theoretical terrorist. But unfortunately the train was delayed for fourteen hours in Moline and the terrorists didn't have enough money for the shitty microwave pizza from the sullen snack bar man and they died of starvation the end. Ghost Train M.D. is now playing at your local cinema, ask the bellboy about times and locations
2007feb11. Interview: Evan Dorkin.
2007feb15. New Yorker: The Origami Lab.
2007feb15. Nut Lady kicked it. RIP Nut Lady.
2007feb16. Joe Rogan is a comic/actor person guy whom you may have seen as the host of thee barrel-scrapin' "Fear Factor" show and in the swell comedy series "NewsRadio." But forget all that. Read his thing about how Santa Claus is a magic mushroom. I know, you can't parse that sentence. Don't worry about it. Read the whole thing, then get back to me. Trust me. Read it.
2007feb16. Discoveries! WAV isn't a format, it's something whispered on the other side of a gym. "What? I think he said 'freml header 207 blurrrrrrrrb.'" Thanks, Microsoft!
2007feb16. Pranking the Super Bowl is madness. The folks at Zug and Cockeyed went for broke and social-engineered their way into the stands ("We're the completely fictitious PEPSI STREET TEAM!!!! YAYYYYY!") to distribute 2000+ "light party packs," claiming that they would spell "PRINCE" during the half-time show. However, the lights were distributed in a non-Prince manner. But ... Half Time is LeakStretchRe-Gorge Time. It appears as though there wasn't enough redundancy in the system to account for the attrition. Horizontally, it looks like a badminton-playing crab about to be run over by an automobile. Vertically, it looks like one of the figures in Guernica enjoying a delicious chicken drumstick.
Perhaps it is a message to space. Whatever it is, I tip my hat to all those involved just for the mind-wracking cojones. The cojones, they were wracked. By the mind.
2007feb18. I'm going to trim the edges. I'm using the edge-trimmer. Look at me go. Trimming. Edges. Now my lawn is a well-defined rectangle. Hot nuts. Woo dog. Neighbor's got a rectangle. Other neighbor's got a rectangle. We all have rectangles. We got it all figured out.
Some edge trimmers sound like dental tools. This makes them 12.3x more awesome. Christ, he's done, now it's too quiet.
2007feb18. Mail.
we are the tin can factory in China.
We are the tin can factory in America. We are sworn enemies, vowing our allegiance to tin cans and to crush all foes. I see you own the Japan advanced PRIMEXP452 printing machine. We own the Japan advanced PRIMEXP457 printing machine. We are four better than you in the area of Japan advanced printing. What is that noise that I hear? Is it your knees, trembling and knocking together? Yes. It is. Watch your back, Shenzhena Baoan District Guanlan Jianmei Can Co., Ltd. Watch. Your. Back.
Cordially,
John Tungsten
Shipping/Receiving/Copulating
2007feb21. On Monday, the department issued an advisory, asking people to not put their cats in the bags. Reference: Pets with Heads in Bags of Food.
2007feb21. I'm all about the Potential Industry Earnings.
2007feb22. Flickr: Filthy Wal-Mart.
2007feb22. Achewood: Secret Menu at Taco Bell.
2007feb23. A list of "Games for the Little Ones/Older Girls Indoors/Outdoors" as seen in The Young Lady's Book: A Manual of Amusements, Exercises, Studies, and Pursuits.
Looby Looby, Water my Chickens, Mulberry Bush, The Hatchet, Goose, Hunt the Slipper, Fly Away, Contradiction, Blind Man's Buff, Even or Odd?, Hissing and Clapping, Hot Broad Beans, Orange and Lemons, The Turkey Merchant, Old Soldier, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, Tin-Tan, Twirl the Trencher, The Angler and the Fish, One, Two, and Three, Yes and No, The Muffin Man, Shall John Marry Sue?, The Quaker's Meeting, Dumb Crambo, A Fashionable Dinner, Can You Guess It, The Bouquet, The Mysterious Circle, My Lady's Toilet, The Lawyer, Cross Questions and Crooked Answers, Game of Eyes, Judge and Jury, Trades, A Blind Judgment, Famous Numbers, Words and Questions, Spanish Merchant, Shadows in Disguise, How, When, and Where?, What's my Thought like?, Proverbs, Making a Will, Ragman's Roll, Consequences, Game of Planting, The Reviewers, Comical Concert, Russian Scandal, Magic Music, Metamorphoses, Stool of Repentance, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Parlour Fortune Telling, Why and Because, The Woodcutter, Piano, Flower Game, Trial by Fire, Ebenezer, do you hear?, Verbarium, Celebrated Characters, Rhyming Proverbs, Confession Book, Names in Disguise, Spelling Game, Buried Cities, Forfeits, Flower Dolls, Flower Chains, Rush Baskets, Melon-seed Birds, "I have a Little Dog," Take Care!, Soap-bubbles, The Snake, Silly Sheperdess, Cat and Mouse, Tom Tiddler's Ground, Hoop and Skipping-rope, Touch Wood, Honey-pots, Touch He, Puss in the Corner, French Roll, Five Geese in a Flock, The Jingler, Catch Ball, Hide and Seek, The Surprise, Follow my Leader, The Stone.
"Water my chickens" was a favorite of mine. But I don't see Mr. Tiddly's 3-D Bank Facade, The Game of Hiding Forever, "The Grotto, The Grotto, Oh The Grotto," Eyeballs Come Out, The Water Cure in Reverse, Wilding Freaks Chew on a Governess, Cat King, Braining, Is It Potable?, Digging a Grave, Cutters Extreme, No Pants Dance, "What Am I Thinking NO It Is of the Most Perfect Wedding Ever Which Is Also Mine," Nintendo Wii Sports Bowling, Peaches and Herb, You're No Better Than The Rest of Us Girl Gang Initiation Beat-Down, The Pretzel Twister® World Pretzel Eating Championship 1887, Dog King, We Will Live and Die without Witnessing the Invention of the "Bedazzler" Home Appliance, Morosely Standing Under That Shitty Playground Thing That You Throw Stuff in and it Comes Out of One of Four Holes Big Fucking Whoop, It'll Grow Back, The Random Child Who is Systematically Shunned by Others Under the Guise of Amusement and Develops a Social Awkwardness That Subconsciously Hinders and Haunts Her Throughout All of Her Days, The Unstable Jaw-Cracking Spinning Bitch, Does This Taste Like One of Your Pets?, What's THAT?, The Unwary Shopkeeper and the Barrel of Delicious Rock Candy, A Fancy Druggist's Medicine in Your Mother's Notion Cabinet That is Taken to Temporarily Create Phantasmagorical Images of Hell-Bound Insanity Within the Mind's Eye, Cat Dog King Mixed Regionals, The Creation and Dissemination of Small Published Tracts Expounding on the Futility of America's Burgeoning Thirst for Empire Vis-a-vis the Spanish-American War Even Though That's Ten Years in the Future, Tack Jewelry.
2007feb24. Mail.
i like to know were i can buy GUACAMOLE ( kosher)in n.y
thanks
Mail me pudding.
Mail Me Pudding
[address]
Vanilla. Chocolate. Tapioca. Pumpkin Spice*.
Mail me pudding.
* Offered Seasonally.
2007feb24. Mail. Me Pudding.
Can I know where can I get these candy smokes? I would love to purchase
Mail me pudding.
Mail Me Pudding
[address]
You can put a 39-cent stamp on a 79-cent box of pudding. You can do this. I believe in you.
Mail me pudding.
2007feb24. Mail. Pudd.
Do you know where I can purchase Little Bull Dog candy cigarettes?
Thank you for any help you may be able to offer.
Sincerely,
David and Trevor
Want. Pudding.
Pudding, Etc.
[address]
It doesn't even need its own envelope. I've covered this.
2007feb25. Mail.
Your site is boring
You didn't get my package in the mail? That would have livened things up a bit. Well, give me a holler if ya get it!
2007feb26. I sat at home today knowing that the package delivery service (PDS) was going to make a delivery. Somehow the guy snuck a note onto the door and split. So I was all like "I'll sit around programming for four hours." Then I went to do some errands and saw a PDS truck in the neighborhood. "I could ... chase them down." I'm a fast thinker, on my toes. It's not that I was in a hurry to get this package (it was one of those boxes that you open and a boxing glove on a spring comes out and punches you in the face), but the longer it was with PDS the more likely it would be delivered unto me as a pile of colored grit. So I hit the first truck and the guy gave me a quick overview of their "loops" so I could prowl, much like the shark (special for Brody), and find my prey. It's strange how you can change your worldview so fast ... all of sudden, there were delivery trucks EVERYWHERE. You don't notice them normally, sneaking around the garden, hiding in the pool, etc. The second PDS truck driver explained some more about the loops and the third truck guy got away while I was talking to the second. The fourth truck driver had my package and said some scammer once came up to him with a tag and the truck driver asked for ID and the guy gave him his non-matching ID. Wow, I guess that didn't work out for the tag-stealer. The driver gave me my box. "Lemme just check this ... " [FX: the narrator is punched by a concealed, spring-loaded mechanical device] " ... uhhhwuhhh ... okay, we're good! Thanks!"
I highly recommend this sort of game of "cat and mouse," where the hunter ... becomes the hunted! Perhaps you can hide next time your favorite PDS comes a-callin', sit around sipping your favorite non-alcoholic beverage for a spell, then go out and hunt the most dangerous prey ... man!
"A Victorian handbill found in a book by Renée Huggett called Shops published in 1969." Flickr: Harris's Slap Up Tog and Out and Out Kicksies Builder.
2007feb28. The graphic design of Idiocracy.
Either a designer with a wicked sense of humor was hired to create the myriad of logos of real and invented corporations, or they simply tagged LogoWorks and asked them to do their best work.
BooyaaAAAA! Righteous type designer smackdown! LogoWorks was accurately derided.
March 2007.
2007mar02. I turn to CNN occasionally when I want to know what's happening in my local community. This area, right now, for example, is besieged by helicopters. CNN has the answers.
LATEST NEWS
Smith's body arrives in the Bahamas
Angelina Jolie files to adopt in Vietnam
AP: We ignored Paris Hilton
2007mar04. Hasty, semi-competent design for a recent competition. The fish is from a 1950s issue of Holiday magazine. Note to self: four by six inches is actually quite large. I wanted to go all Dr. Bronner on the shit but thought I had space constraints. Ummm, no.
The mouse is from one of my favorite pieces of internet humorality. It's dry like a desert. Love. It.
2007mar08. From Deuce of Clubs: Dishonest Abe Hanged on President's Day. Dude's launchin' an illegal war, tappin' your line and suspending Habeas Corpus. Someone explain to me why we need government again?
2007mar10. It was very active around here for a good two weeks and now everything has settled down way, way too much. Like, I should be happy that I've got this big wad of free time to stare at dictionaries of dictionaries of lists of dictionaries or whatever, but I've been doing that for five months now and my mind is going cross-eyed. The screaming, that is me. Also the clawing. I'm dreadfully sorry about the clawing. We should go out for coffee sometime, except I don't drink coffee so I'll just have a desserty item if that's cool. I like coffee ice cream though, and that frozen coffee thing, and coffee beans, everything coffee-ee except coffee-coffee. God that was boring.
THEN I WENT TO THE PARK AND THE SYCAMORE TREES MELTED UNICORNS ALL OVER MY ASS
2007mar10. Mail.
doc: so did anyone explain to you why we need government?
No. Answer pending.
I have found that no one answers anything I ask of them on the site anymore. Your readers are still 200x more lively than mine. I think perhaps it's all the turkey we ate? You know, tryptophan plus my great aunt nattering on about the war.
2007mar12. I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT ANDREW RIDGELEY I DO NOT THINK THIS ARTICLE IS LONG ENOUGH
2007mar12. Standing on the Box: Caring.
2007mar13. Flickr: The car is sniffing around for food.
2007mar13. Clips from Frontline's News War.
2007mar14. Mail.
Me and my friends started our own 3 man pool league last year, and this year we developed a game we called "speed pool." After playing for 2 weeks, I got online to see if anyone else had tried this. I then saw your website. We play it a bit differently, we use 1 cue ball. The ball has to be hit while on the move, if it stops, it is called a "dead ball" and the last person to touch it gets a free hit. If the cue ball is knocked off the table or into a pocket, it is called "out of bounds" and the ball is awarded to the person that did not touch it last. We have 15 balls on the table, the first person to get 8 in wins. I think your style is good also, so we will be trying it out one of these nights. We also do a coin flip to see who breaks first. The balls are racked anyway that the referee wishes, scattered, in a triangle, straight line, etc.
Also, have you really played this in a bar? That would be the funniest damn thing to see lol.
Joe M.
Mexico, NY
Joe, thanks for the choice. You are from ... Mexico. No, New York. It's hard to decide. Anyway, thanks for noting your Speedpool variant. We never actually played it in a bar, this was back when I was trying to cultivate more of a "hard ass" image on Cardhouse. Now I don't care, which, ironically enough, makes me more of a "hard ass." Or not. Or maybe this entire paragraph is filled with lies. Maybe this is being typed by a rat. It's an unknown. I have licorice and leftover pizza, though. That much is a given. Do rats like licorice?
2007mar14. Mail.
I know you've tinkered with it before, but something is very messed up with your feed. Whenever there's a new entry, it also sends nine prior ones. Not the nine IMMEDIATELY prior, mind you, nine semi-random early ones. This makes it hard to read, especially when you've written two entries, and they're located somewhere in a mass of posts from months earlier.
Just throwing that out there.
Yours, etc.
Yes, I know this and it vexes me. Perhaps I will dive in again and fix it finally once and for all today. Stay tuned.
2007mar14. Air Traffic Controller quotes of a humorous nature.
2007mar14. Dear Technorati:
What in the hell is that font? Have you gone insane? If so, can I have your CDs?
Years ago I would have traced through the source code to see if this was my problem or their problem. But now, it is 2007, it is their problem. My photo-editing program doesn't recognize my new scanner? Canon's problem, not mine. My new peppy rugged USB-powered hard drive doesn't like my new goddamned Belkin USB 2.0 card? Belkin's problem, Seagate's problem. Not mine. You're all pikers.
I solve all my problems with hammers now. I don't have time for this shit. 2007.
2007mar15. More testing of the feed. Hold on to your hats, sorry for disturbance, etc.
2007mar16. I need to borrow a paper shredder and a burn barrel. Who amongst us has these items? Who amongst us within driving distance? I have sloughed off all pretense of addressing my website yammerings to anyone but people who already converse with me on a semi-regular basis.
"Yammerings." In a real scripty font. Bickham Script and Bickham Expert. And then a big "COUNTRIFIED" slathered over it on an angle in a Westerny font. Or MICR, I'm not picky today.
2007mar16. I've asked the United States government for transport across the country in the near future. The government will provide a diesel-powered locomotive to this end. I will also eat government-supplied food while on board this conveyance. It's an exciting time to be me. I'm so close to giggling out loud. "Oh, this is going to suck so hard ..." I will have plenty of hours to contemplate my error.
2007mar18. I was listening to KLF's Chill Out while waiting for the updated Acrobat Reader (makes frowny face) to download and it started up with the part where you can hear a railroad crossing gate and a train trundling by and when it got to 100% the train blew its horn. I think it should do that for every download that lasts longer than 10 seconds. My OS would be the awesomenest.
2007mar18. I've said this before, at least twice, but this time ... I might mean it: the feed is fixed. You should use this address: [an address you should not use deleted] Let's all hold our breath until I get to 25 entries.
2007mar20. I have a twitter account. That brings me up to 47,392 social networking site accounts. You should "be my friend" on Twitter. Then you can keep up with what I do. Because I know you want to. "What's he up to?" you would think upon rising, or while sipping tea. Now you will never ask that question again.
2007mar21. Occasionally I update the Trader Joe's FAQ. This would be one of those occasions.
2007mar25. Ebay: Zombies vintage tin.
2007mar25. Got to burn a giant wad of old personal and X Magazine business in my friend's brand-new Chiminea (from a random Chiminea FAQ: "Most people are under the impression that they must have a truck or van to transport their Chiminea from the store to their home. This is not the case. In fact it is easier to set the Chiminea in a car seat and fasten a seat belt around it much like a person"). While I was shovelling in checks he grabbed one at random, it had Bill Griffith's signature on it. Good to hang out with my old friend fire for awhile. I was all like "we could totally cook an awesome pizza in this" and my friend was all like "you're smoking crack" and I was like "no, I'm smoking crack and this is a pizza-worthy appliance." The opening is too small for big pizzas, though ... have to fold 'em.
2007mar27. Time Magazine ran a piece about online comics. "Comic strips in newspapers are dying," reads the article. Big slabs of writing devoted to Achewood and other online strips. Now, for all the money, guess how many URLs are in the article. I mean besides the linkbegs at the end.
Time Magazine. You're old. So very, very old. It's time for you to go to sleep. Here, I brought you your bible ... and you can drink some of this warm milk [CUT TO: kitchen counter with CARTON OF MILK and BOX OF RAT POISON on it], it will help you sleep.
2007mar29. The Trader Joe's FAQ has been updated. Words used: contraindication, kicks, aioli, prudent, dignitaries, hoof.
2007mar30. Tony Hawks (the comedian) answers mis-directed email for Tony Hawk (the skateboardist).
hi all.can you please send me some trick tipsssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
Conceal the six of spades up your sleeve.
TH
2007mar30. You need to move cash from one part of your store to another, but it's the 1880s. Our futuristic flying Ca$h$ta$h™ robots are nowhere to be found. What to do? What to do? Jesus, don't wet yourself, get yourself a cash railway. Now who's got a Cheshire Cat grin? That's my little shopkeeper. [pause] I'll get some towels.
2007mar31. Flickr: A box of junk from Chuck Palahniuk.
April 2007.
2007apr02. Ultra Concentrated Dawn Concentrated Dishwishing Liquid wirh Odor Eraser Splash of Lime review.
2007apr02. A selection of corporations registered in the state of New York.
BROCCOLI & CHOCOLATE, LLC
CANDY COATED BROCCOLI, LLC
CHOCOLATE CHOICES INC.
CHOCOLATE COVE CORP.
CHOCOLATE EMOTIONS, LTD.
CHOCOLATE FRIED RICE LLC
CHOCOLATE GALAXY INC.
CHOCOLATE IN HEAT, LLC
CHOCOLATE OCCASIONS, INC.
C.R.A.P. CANDY STORE, INC.
FROZEN HOT CHOCOLATE INC.
INTERNET CHOCOLATE, INC.
OH! CHOCOLATE INC.
STRAWBERRY CHOCOLATE ORANGE OR PEPPERMINT INC.
THE CHOCOLATE MINING COMPANY LIMITED
THE CHOCOLATE ROOM, INC.
THE CHOCOLATE ROOM TWO, INC.
THE CHOCOLATE SOUP, INC.
THE SOON TO BE FAMOUS LIEDERMAN & SHAPIRO ORIGINAL CHOCOLATE
2007apr03. I've strolled into See's Candies twice in my life, which, as you know, has been universally excellent. Each time, I was immediately offered a free piece of chocolate. Today the place was crammed, I think a lot of people are treating themselves after bending over for the taxman. The take-away bullet point here is "free chocolate."
2007apr03. Odor Eraser™ mail.
I've been meaning to send angry email to Lysol and similar companies that claim to eliminate all odors JUST TO COVER IT UP WITH ANOTHER.
Or they could just anesthetize your nose. I remember when the first "free" detergent came out, I was jumping up and down in the aisle. Now I just beat my clothes on rocks at the marina.
Glad to hear it's not just me.
A number of years ago I was at the kitchen sink at work washing my coffee cup. Two members of my group were there and one of them asked me why I wasn't using the dish soap. I casually said that I used to use it, but it seems to leave some everlasting soap residue in my coffee cup regardless of how much I rinsed it, so I don't use it any more. That soap: Dawn™.
They thought this was hi-larious and ribbed me about it endlessly. They printed off several dozen Dawn™ logos and pictures and hide them about my office. When I discovered them, I scoured the place and tried to find them all. Then they printed out over a hundred more and re-seeded 'em. They emailed Dawn™ customer support under my name asking about the residue problem, and they hacked my home page to have a spinning Dawn™ bottle.
To this day I still find Dawn™ printouts tucked in various books I owned at the time. Bastards!
Cheers,
Jon
Your co-workers are mean. They should be shot. Big Dawn logos on their coffins, gravestones, etc. "Ha ha! Dawn! Funny." [SFX: ratcheting noise]
2007apr03. 1928 candy industry health hazard: Chocolate dermatitis.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1853. Receipts for the Most Approved Summer Beverages, Etc. Etc.: Toast and Water. "Hrmmm ... where's that trusty jug o' mine ..."
2007apr05. Louie Theroux: The Most Hated Family in America. This is like a sitcom ... the timing when the kids come in from music practice, for example. [via waxy]
2007apr05.
Kate: "What's happened to you, John? Where's Jack? Sayid? Have you seen
Rousseau?"
[John STARES at Kate. Five seconds pass.]
John: "I'm sorry, Kate."
I hate this show.
2007apr06. Miranda July's new book website. [via metafilter].
2007apr07. The second-generation airline security system just safely shoots each person as they take their seats. This eliminates on-board meals, freeing up galley space for more dead passengers. More space is obtained by cutting the flight attendant count in half ‒ dead people are much less annoying than demanding "live" passengers. It's win-win-win. [doc]
2007apr07. The dating scene, 2007.
2007apr08. Waiter Rant: "It's a good rule never to eat dessert and dinner in the same place." Mmmm, factory cake.
2007apr08. Match.com ad.
Man, those straight apostrophes drive me insanes!!!!!! Wait.
2007apr10. A "heads up" for the people out there who are out there: google video now searches youtube as well and it knows what a negative search term is. Maybe you knew this. News to me. It reads "Video U.K." but do not be fooled, America. If it doesn't work for you I will return your money.
2007apr12. Toyama Koichi: A troubled man for troubled times. Absolutely essential viewing, stay 'til the end. [via metafilter]
2007apr13. South Korea: Spaghetti cola.
2007apr14. A test.
2007apr14. I was trolling around the net for an egg substitute since I am scheduled to make pancakes tomorrow. I found this recipe for Curried Zucchini Pancakes. Don't write it down, it's dumb.
2 large zucchini
1 tsp salt
1 small onion, peeled
1/2 cup pasteurized fat-free egg substitute, such as Egg Beaters
1/2 cup fat-free cottage cheese
1/2 cup matzo meal
2 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
Cooking spray
Zucchini. Pancakes. Mom says I can't play with you any more because you're "sigh-coatic." What we're going to do here is drive really really close to the ultimate breakfast item then we're going to go full speed off this cliff, how's that sound to everyone? Great.
Cottage cheese. Just thinking about it makes me bristle. When I was much shorter, my grannie the bank robber used to eat large-curd cottage cheese. I had the small curd.
Yeah. I would eat cottage cheese.
Okay, I gotta stop saying that phrase now, getting woozy.
Bachelors can't have eggs because eggs spoil, eventually, is how I understand it. If the egg came in a cute tiny Tetra-pak®, then you've got yourself a repeat customer, pal.
2007apr17. The dream of flight. I'm still pushing for people to be stacked like cordwood. Each person would be strapped to the person beneath them for safety purposes. Make new friends. Re-enact hilarious pseudo-bondage hostage segments from mainstream movies. Wait, no. Gas everyone unconscious, and throw them into a big pile. Think of the profit margin. Or ship people in segments, fit together like recently-living jigsaw puzzles.
2007apr20. SF Weekly: Future Games. I love bees, Cruel 2 B Kind, etc.
May 2007.
2007may01. While in Detroit, I listen to 540 AM, Canada's CBEF broadcasting in French and French. They may be saying stupid shit like "THIS THREE-PEAT ROCK BLOCK WEEKEND IS KICKING MY PANTS OFF" and other cocaine-fueled inanities, but I'd never know. Also, French is the language of love and you know how I am about that. I like love. I don't love love, that would be pushing it.
Also it's even more difficult determining the name of bands and songs that you (I) like since you (I) don't know French. Things shouldn't be handed to us on silver platters all the time. That's how we get lazy and boring. You must fight for knowledge. Not like Keanu Reaves in the The Matrix who was given the knowledge of fighting.
2007may11. xkcd: The Glass Necklace.
2007may11. Mail.
I would like to bring to your attention that making candy cigarettes are inviting children to smoke eventually.....
I'm sure this applies to other filthy habits children engage in, like playing "supermarket checker" and "cops and robbers" as well. If we could just stop children from pretending to be cops, robbers, and grocery market cashiers, they'd never be influenced eventually. You will not stop my ultimate #1 candy cigarette production line!
2007may11. Cardhouse: Cross-Country Travel by Train. Plus photos. I may push a larger train journal onto here in the undetermined future, or I may not. That is how things go.
2007may12. Mail.
i don't know who you are but please leave my computer alone. please.
You got it.
Where can I buy Dr.Mc Lean's Volcanic oil. in the Chicago area. Thank you.
1938.
Finally! Someone who understands that nuts do NOT belong in brownies ... ever! I had a party last weekend. A guest brought brownies... with nuts. I ask her. Do these have nuts? No. I inspected. They did not appear to have nuts. I took a bite. NUTS. I wanted to kill her.
A person brought a nut-infested dessert into your home? That's a High Hate Crime.
Hello, Your site is great. Regards, Valintino Guxxi
Your name is great.
2007may12. Mail.
Valintino Guxxi, although having a great name like Asa Pillsbury or Michael E. Fisher (the Distinguished University Professor), appears to be a character created by some guy who probably doesn't have a really cool name? Also I guess he likes a lot of sites. I'M SORRY TO HAVE TO BREAK THIS TO YOU.
Hrm. So ... theoretically ... first he posts his little innocuous message, then searches to see what sites actually post it, then he comes back and hits them with spam? I don't understand the motivation here.
I've been saying this a lot, but can we just go back to 1999 again?
2007may13. Vending machine for crows: [1 | 2 | video]
2007may17. I finally got me down to the melted bridge in the maze to-day. I travelled on the one below it that was out of commission for a few days. For about seven seconds you could see the work being done on the span above. There's a big vinyl sign hanging off the edge of one of the sides ‒ it's an ad for a company that rents out cranes. I started to write down the number but I lost control of my tanker and crashed into an abutment and well, you can probably guess the rest. I sorry.
2007may18. Cardhouse: Trader Joe's FAQ updated.
2007may19. Free non-shitty vector art. Don't know why it's so hard to find quality vector art/icons. Currently under Dugg avalanche.
2007may21. Someone needs to make a little Clarence Thomas Speaks! online widget for websites. ALERT: Clarence has spoken an additional 27 words!
2007may22. Hoshi Saga. [via Jay is Games]
2007may22. The hot new freak-riding trip amongst at least one member of my inner fake posse is Idlin'. You have to have an automatic for this, and if you have a stick in the bay area you're weird. The rules are simple ‒ don't touch the accelerator. Cruise down the street doing around five miles an hour. You're Idlin'! All the pro-environmental teens are doin' it. See how far you can get before someone honks at you! Watch bikes and joggers pass! Avoid collisions with minutes to spare!
YER IDLIN'
2007may23. C'mon Ontario! Flick Off! Participaction!
2007may27. Here are some newly-added macros. Here they are.
{lt}x{gt} ... also: {lt}x{gt}.
{lt}x{gt} ... three.
{lt}x{gt} without a {lt}y{gt}
{lt}x{gt}, for breakfast?
{lt}x{gt} formerly {lt}x1 ... n-1{gt}
ALIVE ... ALIVE (1995)
And in my homeland. (2000)
At the strip mall of death { again }
Audio Wars
Big beautiful women.
Botulism. Rat feces. Cockroaches.
Cockblock the mouth.
Dive, Tony, dive! Swim, Tony, swim!
Do you feel that?
Finger Waggle (1990)
Home town call! (1981)
I got better.
I like these.
I'll remove his {lt}x{gt} for {lt}n{gt} dollars!
I'm a punk, that's what I do.
I'm not an {lt}x{gt}, but I play one on TV.
I'm sorry!
It's good, uhhhh feeling. (February 16, 1999)
Looks like we got { us
My goddamned Animal Crossing. (September 2002)
No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.
O I C U R A JERK!
Past instances in which I professed to like you were fraudulent. (December 29, 1996)
Quack, quack, quack.
Sarrrrrrrs, matey.
TEXAS. (September 27, 1994)
That's like closing the barn door after the horses have eaten your children! (1981)
These aren't the {lt}x{gt} you're looking for. (May 25, 1977)
Thinking about string
You take care of MY daughter.
Your {lt}x{gt} was murdered by another Jedi knight named Darth Vader, who went over the the Dark Side ... (May 25, 1977)
Your wish is granted, long live Jombi.
{ Hot Fudge, right on! } Comin' at ya { now }! (1972)
{ Sorry ... } Sharers will be charged full price.
{ The black widow ... } First she mates ... then she kills. (February 6, 1987)
2007may31. Ask Metafilter: Air Traffic Controller job. After reading that, you can read Something's Got To Give while listening to [live ATC broadcasts|liveatc.net].
June 2007.
2007jun03. Mail.
what ever happened to waterbeds?
This is the best email I've received all year, obviously. Let's ponder this. One of my friends had a waterbed in college; this was back when a waterbed was just one big sack o' water, not like the multiple tube system another friend had bought into six years later. Now, I don't know anyone with a waterbed, or even anyone who's expressed a desire to own one. A popular search engine indicates that there are 317,000 "hits" for "waterbeds shop store" which means something, I'm sure. Its companion price comparison site has 3029 hits for "waterbed" which is also indicative of ... wait, what does that say?
Waterbed history began with a simple promise. Nothing between you and a good nights sleep but a mattress full of water. It was a trendy idea at first, it now has the credibility of medical support, and millions of satisfied owners. Modern technology has had a lot to do with it.
That reads like something the Chillow guy [1 2 3 4 5] would cook up. Anyway. I think they're around, but perhaps you've moved out of the largest waterbed demographic, college students. I just made that up. Perhaps people just got tired of paying the heating bills and "topping off" or whatever one does with the water component of the bed. Perhaps people are stringing up hammocks in their bedrooms, or making nests or living in ball pits or treehouses or yurts or RVs or sleeping outside on the grass or taping themselves to trees high up so the bears can't get them.
2007jun04. Mail.
we are having a sale and you are invited
This is not from the same person who asked about the waterbeds. But I do appreciate being invited to things, surely. This is going to be the best sale ever! Gonna dress up. Shave, maybe.
2007jun04. China: Someone's gotta die for a recall to make sense. Otherwise, it's not science.
"So far we have not received any report of death resulting from using the toothpaste," fumed China's General Administration of Quality Supervision. "The U.S. handling (of this case) is neither scientific nor responsible."
Who's going to take one for the team? Toothpaste dessert.
2007jun05. The well-mocked 2012 Olympic logo is out of control. It's horrid and it's hurting people. It's like a Christo installation. How do you not vet something that horrendous? "Man, this is shit ugly, better run it past a few people first." Here's another article detailing the problems before the epileptic problem came to light. Loads of comments.
God, that font. You get those types of fonts for free online. Those are the types of fonts where someone is walking with a laptop and hits an icy sidewalk patch, takes a tumble, and suddenly you have a new font in your folder. "Oh God what is it get it off GET IT OFF ..." Wait, I've got one more here, it's a gas ‒ [SFX: rummages through suit-coat]
2007jun05. Fonts ... IN THE NEWS! Not that I really want to provide a link to Time Magazine, but take a look at this article about McDonald's whining about the word "McJob" and how they they want it to mean "reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding ... and offers skills that last a lifetime." Hahaha, I've changed the definition of "bucket" to mean "a cylindrical container that can no longer hold things." Anyway. Take a good look at the word "McJob" ‒ it reads "MoJob" or "MaJob." The type designer's like "no one is ever going to type the 'cJ' ligature, man ... [FX: takes drag off clove cigarette, expresses ennui through lack of motion]" ... though Your Computer May Vary.
2007jun05. Do any of you guys smell pancakes? I'm being serious here. Seriously.
2007jun06. Very Small Array: Number of Residents per Waffle House.
2007jun06. Garage sale find: patternmaking chest. Always a sucker for the "dream find" article.
2007jun06. A desert story: Sleeps with Coyotes. [via metafilter]
2007jun06. Paintings: Josh Keyes.
2007jun07. PISMASHIO!!!! On a 2006 episode of Conan O'Brien, Amy Sedaris demonstrated the proper use of candy glass breakaway bottles. "They're expensive." Not that expensive. Lot of variety here, eight pages of bottles, vases, dishes, and so much more. Life is about experience, not owning things ‒ but with candy glass you can own things and experience an outlet for your repressed violent fantasies. Fool your friends. How to make candy glass.
2007jun07. I forgot to provide a pointer to the April Fool's page for this year. There it is. Wow. That's what it looked like, back then. Well. Scroll down to the bottom. Whoa. Also, please consider hiring Der Bluezen Brotherenrz Doppelgangersenden for your next mid-life crisis or emergency evacuation drill. Thank you.
2007jun08. Mail.
what ever happened to friday freeday?
Much like waterbeds, the decline of Friday Freeday is shrouded in mystery. No. I am working on a "very large" project. Thus, I don't paddle around the lake as much. When this project is done, you will be glad that I took the time. I care ... about you1!
1 Caring not included.
2007jun08. Friday Freeday. I found some junk in my trunk.
Good Magazine: How Much Advertisers Pay For Space.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Duckling. Personally I think it's worth it just to see the shot of the duck sweating during the Mexican standoff. But I like ducks, so there's that.
Baby Panda Sneezes. In this video, a baby panda sneezes.
Pete Beeman: walker | about walker | skittish
Singer: ysabellabrave
How to work on power lines while travelling by helicopter. From the helicopter documentary "Straight Up." I like the near-serenity of the whole package -- the music, the narrator/worker ‒ juxtaposed against your reptile brain screaming that's the most insanest thing ever.
Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart
Parrot uses parrot-based tool [via Preworn]
Poster: Gazelle Illustrated Price Paper 1938. Jaw-droppin' good times.
2007jun09. If someone has a spare Dell DVD R+W module they want to sell, then I'm the guy who's interested. Just the module, not the warm, enveloping box.
2007jun09. Bicycle crank that makes you work for both halves of the cycle: Powercranks. Cranks.
Crank.
2007jun09. Video: Japanese Tetris game show. Life size. Must see.
2007jun09. Mail.
crunk!
any vaguely competitive cyclist knows that proper pedaling technique (hammering aside) consists of concentrating motion of each foot parallel to the ground (i.e. exerting 100% of the time, forward and backward) rather than up or down. this is why halfway decent cyclists have peculiar lower-laig musculls never seen in ordinary mortals.
love,
random uncleps I need to buy a stuffed animal of an indian(asian) elephant. not african! suggestions?
I am not a vaguely competitive cyclist. I have stepped out of my sphere of influence which is a very small sphere indeed! It looks like a bath gel. Or a paintball. It's between those two sizes.
Stuffed elephant: I do not know where one can procure such a delightful item. Perhaps someone out there can suggest a place or two.
2007jun10. So I'm watching pet #39 today and there's this toy cellphone laying around and I flip it open and press a few buttons then put it back down and a few seconds later it starts ringing so I answer it "Hello?" and I have this great pretend conversation. I think I'm going to buy one to take around with me, use it in public because really what's the difference as far as everyone else is concerned. Or carve one out of wood, hollow it out, keep some marbles in it and they keep falling out onto the ground ... "Oh, sorry, this phone really sucks ..."
2007jun11. Here's a fun item that perhaps will increase your chances of having your bag searched by the TSA.
2007jun11. Achewood: Ayurvedic Tapas.
2007jun14. Mail.
Hey, I was just looking at your page and noticed that "Random Uncle" asked about a stuffed elephant toy. Anyway, tell your late night sneaky uncle to look here...
Random Uncle: You should "check out" the American Museum of Natural History. Don't go into the wing with the birds because they haven't put the fake eyeballs in a lot of them yet so there are real stuffed birds there with tufts of padding/batting/cotton/excelsior/bunting/whatever sticking out of the eye sockets, v. scary!
They dont have any on the website but they usually have a zillion stuffed animals and dinosaurs in the actual shop. Tell him to call them and see what they can ship.
Random Uncle: Blah blah website blah zillion blah shop. Call 'em.
Who the heck is Random Uncle anyway?
Dunno. Just some uncle, I guess.
2007jun17. A recent issue of Wilson's Journal of Ornithology has a small article entitled Corvids in Combat: With a Weapon? that describes a Stellar Jay snipping a stick off a bush and attacking an American Crow with it. Then the jay dropped the stick, and the crow fought back with the same stick. The ornithologist then comes to the only rational conclusion from these observations: if birds can wield sticks, they can also use guns. When you're out on the mean streets, start thinking three-dimensionally.
2007jun22. It is a cardboard tank boat built by seven-year-olds. Everybody bring your crowbars!
2007jun25. Hey, it's the wacky neighbor! The movie, though fascinating, could use a "time" indicator.
We of the overarching Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy have finally come down next to, and even with the massively powerful spiral armed equatorial plane of the Milky Way Galaxy
BLEEP BLORP WE COME IN PEACE
WE HAVE TELEVISION / HOT POCKETS / GENOCIDE / PLASTIC THINGS
BLORTCH
2007jun26. Flickr: Weasel Coffee. "Picked and regurgitated by a weasel ... surprising delicious chocolately taste." Wiki: "Some sources erroneously claim that the beans are regurgitated instead of defecated."
We are here at Le Belette Merde where we've secretly replaced the fine coffee they usually serve with coffee made from beans lovingly hand-picked and defecated by dedicated weasels. Let's see if anyone can tell the difference!
Wiki continues: "A synthetic process intended to simulate the weasel's digestive system is used to meet demand." Gotta get me some of that Surprisingly Delicious Chocolately Synthetically-Weasel-Defecated Coffee.
2007jun28. So I was working on revamping my links page and I showed it to a friend and he was all "hey that reminds me of Xerpi" and I'm all like "yeah, well they don't know how to cram, is all I'm sayin'." I don't really understand how people get by without a TODALLY CRAMMED link page, by my way of understanding, a lot of you are just using a big long list of bookmarks, scrolling up, scrolling down. Look at all the value I bring you. You can tell I care. I'll be adding links and whatnot to the Cramlink System, The, as the months and years roll by. We will walk into this crammed-link future together, hand-in-hand. Look, a rainbow!
July 2007.
2007jul01. Barack Obama.
"I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breeches of the president's authority"
Well, maybe one will come up. Also, here are some articles detailing Mitt Romney mit der dog torture und child torture. He is a busy man.
2007jul01. Corn. Eat it. EAT IT
2007jul02. xkcd: Extend extend extend.
2007jul02. Achewood: Lyle's baseball card.
2007jul05. Mail from someone from American Apparel.
Hi there I just need to get some info on your trader joe's bottle water, How is it purified?
X, thanks for writing. Our natural spring water is purified by a small, insular platform group of sultry barely-legal teens, constantly writhing in a continuous stream of our water while occasionally posing in sexually provocative positions. These sessions are then photographically documented and turned into print advertisements. We find we sell a LOT more water this way, and the water just seems to taste better as well.
Sincerely,
Trade 'R' Jeff
Customer Service
No reply.
2007jul05. A conversation.
"I am not sending anything to-day, I just want to get prices. How much does it cost to send this to Berlin?"
"Berlin?"
"Berlin."
[FX: stares at computer for 13.721 years]
"Berlin?"
"Berlin."
Computer: POLAND
"Berlin."
"Berlin?"
"B-E-R-L-I-N."
Computer: STILL POLAND
"Does that thing have cities, or just countries? [FX: neck crane] Ah. Countries. Germany."
"Germany!"
Berlin.
2007jul12. Years ago, I had a foot injury which required me to wear slippers for a short while. Then, after the injury had healed, I kept wearing slippers. Outdoors, driving, wherever. My friends thought I was nuts. I did as well ("I are nuts"). I didn't really understand it. "They're comfortable," I said ("They're comfortable"). Which was sort of what was going on ‒ but the main thing was that I was unconsciously fox walking and really didn't know how to describe it. A friend of mine had some trouble with blown arches after fox walking for awhile, so if you're going to try this, you read it somewhere else, like on CNN. I think Wolf Blitzer was talking about it, is what you remember. Eventually I got rid of my slippers after almost breaking my neck on the stairs that used to go down to the Musee Mecanique. One day I'll get some moccasins and see if I can BLOW SOME ARCHES YEEEHAWWWWW FUGGIN' BLITZER!!!!!1111!!!!1
He's goddamned turning into some groovy love hip ‒ SHUT UP I AM NOT A HIPPIE I MADE THIS BEADED BRACELET FOR YOU LOOK THE CHARMS ARE LITTLE TIE-DYED T-SHIRTS
2007jul12. Found I important entry in an generated automatically is weblog.
Star pop from Canada, avril lavigne, middle face song plagiarizing exercise demand. She is chargeable has changed version from the original song, without lisense the creator. A band group Rubinoos, declare that single avril have a title girlfriend their song imitation of at year 1979, i am wanna be your is boyfriend.
Temporary, avril spokesman, Terry McBride, dispute sloping news. "This a song not ever he hears previous. Ever, the song not so popular and created before he borns," explicitly McBride in interview with CanWest News Service.
"news really not has strong proof," he said.
Soon after that accusation is throwed to public, McBride admit to charter music expert, to compare second song. and the result, the expert say that is that song second genuinely far differ.
Song Rubinoos have a title I WANNA BE YOUR BOYFRIEND that has chorus: "hey hey you you, I wanna be your is boyfriend, temporary avril sond liric sound: "Hey hey you you, I want to be your girlfriend.
Although fourth he said similar, but McBride state that word "hey you" have been used in many songs and he even accuse to return that Rubinoos can imitate property song rolling stones, has liric: "Hey! You! Get off of my cloud."
Up to now, McBride, which is CEO from Nettwerk Music Group, say that he still not has plan to demand to return, because he is very sure that that accusation is absolutely not has proof.
Temporary, Rubinoos self up to now still not yet can be met to confirmation.
Controversy strange reminds of Ramones "I Wanna Be Your Is Boyfriend" only one "hey" liric throw unshouted.
2007jul13. The Friday. The Freeday.
Pix: Traffic light.
Isle of Flowers
(10min). Brazil 1989. wiki
The gumdrop is angry: Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie "intermission"-type introduction.
Old Daily Show (Colbert): Faith-based Gravy Train.
Tunnels no Minasan no Okage Deshita: Human Tetris. A new episode.
Cat Scratch Fever. This dude
was at the Sound Factory, right, and all the trannies were like "WOOOOO"
and the beat just dropped. It was in you.
Finding your place.
Pix: Grandma is not a meal. Grandma also comes
in a handy "to-go" six pack.
2007jul15. Families Separated by the State.
2007jul21. Spam. From 2000 (the future).
The Webcam phenomenon.
In AN exponential growth since the launching of the general public Internet, the Webcam phenomenon is only beginning.
Go around the the world from its armchair, control circulation, the weather, the state of the beaches, to meet and discuss with unknown ones at the end of the world it was already yesterday.
Today the webcams make home shopping possible as well as following the News, watching the international events on line. Last word, to take the remote control of the webcams, to increase, move the image, to build the program with its own way...
But in the jungle of the webcams (how much are they, 10.000, 50.000 ?) it's necessary to have a guide. For more than one year Spycamera.com presents its choice of the best webcams on the Net.
Before including an address, one needs first : to find (!), to check the quality and the originality of the contents (perhaps it's not necessary to have 12 webcams which films the basket of the cat), to check the " refreshing " of the webcam (a " live " image which did not change into two years it is equivocal), finally to choose a relevant image (it's more cool to choose with an example) and a small comment (funny if possible).
Today Spycamera.com, the gate of Webcams " of quality " invites you to come to discover his new formula:
- a new presentation of its headings simpler and clearer.
- a new sections for the amateurs of sports and nature or webcams robotized.
- traditional or funny animations for watching today the tomorow's webcamsAnd, off course, you find our " basics ," search engine (to find quickly webcams of a city or a country), our Girlcams selection (Girlcam with " attitude "), and our presentation of the best Webcams of the moment.
If you like Webcams, you will like [lapsed domain].
The Webmaster.
2007jul21. Old Sean Tejaratchi article on PingMag. Gotta keep up with the PingMag. Work the glutes.
2007jul22. Spamderworld: one comment spam message with line breaks added and/or lines duplicated to emulate Underworld compositions.
young pencil young pencil young pencil young pencil
garden state do not call garden state
do not call toyota tacoma
beeswax toyota tacoma
beeswax trapt closet doors
trapt closet doors
mujeres mujeres
pills pills prince harry prince harry
three doors down pool party three doors down pool party
coconuts eels coconuts eels
expert witness terror
expert witness terror
pose pose criminal records duct tape criminal records duct tape
house of representatives tanzanite
house of representatives tanzanite
amc amc amc amc amc amc amc amc
where are they now where are they now
cherry pie cherry pie
2007jul22. Mail.
i luv u
I love you too. You know that. You can feel it, right? The love? That's mine. I mean, I'm giving it to you. Or really, we're sharing it. It's our companion, we don't own it, I guess. Something. Look ... this really isn't working out, okay? No, it's not you, it's me. I'll get my records this weekend.
2007jul22. PBS: Interview with Mark Klein. Klein was the first one to call attention to the loathsome AT&T/NSA internet spy rooms.
2007jul23. I don't know that I'll ever be able to explain to my pretend children that I lived through an era that was apeshit for jizzing gum. I ponder this, from time to time. "How to explain ... the spurting?" Lord, help me through my conundrum.
2007jul25. The most hilarious thing about wading through all the photos on Office Snapshots is seeing that practically every "Web 2.0" company represented there is devoted to the cubicle model. Some even have shortened cubicle walls. Um. Here's the thing. Programmers? Yeah. Privacy. When I'm grinding code, I want to sit inside an enclosed room, with no distractions (FX: puts off job search for another twelve years). You know what? That's not just programmers. At my company, everyone gets an office! YAYYYYYY!!!!!
2007jul25. Comics: 200 Bad Comics. [via titivil]
2007jul25. Book: [52 McGs.: The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Writer Robert McG. Thomas Jr.|http://deuceofclubs.com/randumb8.htm#25jul2007].
August 2007.
2007aug03. When I was eight years old, I was playing Monopoly against some of my relatives. I started to win, so my great-uncle began secretly siphoning money from my grandma, the compliant banker. I consider it a more-than-adequate Life Lesson™. I've played several Monopoly games since then, but I don't think I've ever played real Monopoly.
2007aug04. Ordering off the menu.
1995 was about the time that John Woo's movies were breaking big, with Chow Yun Fat's two-fisted pistol stylings, and Jose Garcia of Daedalus Games showed me that it was possible to emulate this in Area 51, with one person playing both Player 1 and Player 2, a pistol in each hand. Later, in a London arcade, I worked through the game this way and turned away from the machine to find ‒ for the first time in my life ‒ a crowd of onlookers, who all now wanted to try the same thing.
I have seen the author in question performing this very thing and it certainly caught me by surprise. It reminded me of my habit during video driving games to turn my vehicle around 180 degrees to play 300mph chicken with the rest of the networked competitors, except for the implied part about still working toward the goal of the game. All video games should have undocumented mode hacks. I decree. I'm going to go play "Rip Off" against myself. GUARANTEED WINNER
Have I ever driven an actual vehicle 150mph? That's a good question. I drafted a semi-truck at 110mph in a sporty tin can once for a ridiculous amount of time. The car wanted to go 110. Hahahahah, youth.
2007aug04. Deuce of Clubs: excerpts from God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.
2007aug13. RIP Merv Griffin and Tony Wilson. I think the traditional third celebrity death will be Milton Berle again.
2007aug18. Two dudes solve the Adobe tower semaphore puzzle. It was an entire book. The accompanying PDF is also a hoot for amateur cryptographers.
We would not have to plant a fake newspaper box in front of Adobe after all, nor would we have to face up to the resulting interrogation from Homeland Security after they blew up our unexplainable black box with a water cannon.
Hahahaha, America!
2007aug19. DailyWTF: The Time-Space Continuum v. MENSA Boss.
2007aug20. Achewood: Ain't nothing I can stand less than those pseudo-Mexican craphole joints that try to blow sunshine up your ass at premium prices. There are things I miss about Arizona, low-cost kick-you-in-the-face-but-in-a-good-way taco joints are like three of these things. Other things: road runners, barrel cactus, javelinas, a horned lizard parked over an anthole for infinite take-out, saguaros.
2007aug20. Americans Place Poorly In Collectivist Games. This is tatty nonsense. Americans, having been poked and prodded for generations now, intrinsically sense that the director knows exactly what the entire playing field looks like, and respond accordingly. The Chinese, they're just starting to get a taste of marketing, so they think everything's on the up-and-up, that A=A. If I was being tested like that, I'd assume that the test wasn't even about the game at all, that someone behind a mirrored glass was watching how I reacted to subtle hand motions of the director, or whether or not my answers were different if someone handed me a glass of water outside the testing area, how many times I adjusted my hair, and how much I'm interested in appleplay all to create a new organic anti-oxidant herbal-scented brand extension of a popular ketchup product.
2007aug21. VW pool table. Cool + dumb = comb.
2007aug22. I was sitting in traffic behind a motorcycle and the guy/gal was standing up. Then he/she crouched down, and his/her long hair under the helmet sort of cascaded over his/her backpack and to me looked like a giant tarantula coming out of the backpack. When I say "looked like" I mean this is what I thought in my mind: "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH oh." This is why I don't take drugs, it's redundant.
2007aug22. Penny Arcade: My Comeuppance.
2007aug22. Achewood: A nice present.
2007aug23. Wired: Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe.
2007aug24. Super Freak-Out Friday Free Day. Use the length/existence of Friday Free Day to inversely gauge how much I'm working.
The Century of The Self
(1
2
3
4)
[4 hrs total].
The history of public relations vis-a-vis the application of Freud's
theories on the unsuspecting masses. This is 100x better than previous
sentence sounds. It's a must-see. From the 1928 PR stunt to get women to
start smoking through the first banana republic, EST, etc to
Clinton/Blair's shared playbook.
"Here you see a very female aspect of Guinness." "Add an egg." I
could not stop laughing and cringing
while watching this.
The Great Happiness Space
[1 hr 15 min].
Documentary on Japanese Host bars. This is like Japan's hostess bars but
whereas hostess bars are places for high-rolling businessmen to enter into
high-priced transaction-based false deluded relationships with multiple bar
employees, Japan's host bars are places for mainly high-priced prostitutes
to enter into high-priced transaction-based false deluded relationships
with multiple bar employees. Needs like 10-15min of cuts.
This Film is Not Yet Rated
[1 hr 37 min].
Director releases private detective unto the wholly-unneeded MPAA to
determine who's actually rating the movies, then submits the movie to the
MPAA for review.
Flight of the Conchords: A Texan Odyssey
[41 min].
This Flight of the Conchords band is the same Flight of the Conchords band
that has a cable-based television show also called Flight of the Conchords.
I have stayed at the swanky Four Seasons Hotel of Austin which is a "key"
location in the documentary, at least in the first ten minutes of it. I was
there earlier, not when this was happening. Not earlier as in between then
and now, earlier as in before the documentary was filmed. Not just
before, much earlier, actually. The pool's bathroom was tricked out with
hygienic things you don't usually see in a bathroom like cotton swabs and
combs inside a jar of blue liquid. A man gave me a towel. I wore a bathrobe
at one point, but not in the bathroom. Perhaps the room's bathroom, just
not the pool's bathroom.
Eddie Izzard: Definite Article [46 min]. There's a bit wherein he discusses learning French via audiotape but luckily there's Dutch subtitles, so if you're monolinguistic like me you can feel dumb in two languages.
Some things I haven't seen or have seen before in other formats at other times in other places: Ong Bak, Daft Punk, Mean Girls, Princess Mononoke, Richard Feynman ‒ The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, His Girl Friday.
Other small things.
Minilogue/Hitchhiker's Choice
Pan-kun travels in the city with his trusty sidekick.
A very large rubber duckie
which is fun!
Tex Avery: Symphony in Slang
Jessica the Hippo. [via
boingboing]
Old but essential: J Otto Seibold's Mixulator interactive mixin'
experience thing.
Spoon: Don't You Evah featuring Keepon
Earl Scruggs, Steve Martin, etc: Foggy Mountain Breakdown
2007aug26. Book: Look Homeward, America
2007aug26. There is nothing ... nothing in this crazy ding-dong King Don mukluk Tim Tam razzmatazz world that rubber-faced slack-jawed creepy-CPR-doll-lookin' kids go nuts for more than Tiki Energy-Decreased Mineral Water Cubes with Strawberry Flavour.
Send me pudding:
Cardhouse
[address]
2007aug27. Portugal?
2007aug27. Ask.metafilter: "How many calories can you eat in one day?" Noted for this:
I know of some people who were going for a speed record on the Continental Divide trail (a mostly off-road bike route from Mexico to Canada). They did the whole thing in 11 days and were drinking vegetable oil pretty much the whole time ‒ it's the most densely caloric thing a human being can easily consume. I'd guess you could get up around 20k calories/day pretty easily if you wanted to drink vegetable oil.
I've done that with Karo syrup during a "Twilight Zone" marathon. Commemorative pendants are available in our plush, carpeted lobby.
2007aug31. Mail.
I saw you at burning man, nice tux.
Yeah, I was there, but then I left early, 'cause they burned the man. That's how I know when it's time to go home.
September 2007.
2007sep01. Hilarious article about Russian doomsday devices and American ingenuity.
The details of this top-secret Soviet system were first revealed in 1993 by Bruce G. Blair, a former American ICBM launch control officer, now one of the country's foremost experts on Russian arms. Fearing that a sneak attack by American submarine-launched missiles might take Moscow out in 13 minutes, the Soviet leadership had authorized the construction of an automated communication network, reinforced to withstand a nuclear strike. At its heart was a computer system similar to the one in Dr. Strangelove. Its code name was Perimetr. It went fully operational in January 1985. It is still in place.
[...]
You just shoot the other guy and "rig up a thing where you tie a string to one end of a spoon," he told me, "and tie the other end to the guy's key. Then you can sit in your chair and twist your key with one hand while you yank on the spoon with the other hand to twist the other key over."
This is why we have governments.
2007sep03. Boots on the bed??? Statist?
2007sep05. Esquire: Radical Honesty. Starts slow, then funny, then incredibly lame, then back to funny.
2007sep05. Excerpts from the book Fireworks: A History and Celebration by George Plimpton (1984).
Apparently, [Charles V] simply loved noise. He dined in the blare of military bands. Once, when Catherine, his consort, had secretly built a country home for him fifteen miles from St. Petersburg, she arranged that when she raised her glass to toast the master of the new house, at the exact second the glass touched his lips, eleven cannons hidden in the garden would suddenly boom out just beyond the french windows. She knew he would like that. (pg 29)
The Ruggieris have been in France for centuries. Originally from Bologna, the family settled itself in Monteux. The patriarch of the family, Claude-Fortune Ruggieri, was an early experimenter with rockets. In Paris he staged a number of displays in which mice and rats were sent aloft by rockets and came down under little parachute canopies. [...] Ruggieri even had plans to send up a small boy attached to a rocket cluster; he too was to be equipped with a parachute, Ruggieri was careful to point out to the authorities, but the French police intervened and this particular experiment was never carried out. (pg 34)
According to Vasari's biography of Leonardo da Vinci, the artist created a great lion which was designed to walk a few steps, roar, and then out of its chest a display of flowers and birds would burst ‒ all of this done largely with the use of various types of fireworks. (pg 48)
[...] I have always thought that would be a wonderful position to retire to -- thinking up names for Oriental fireworks shells. You'd become a specialist and travel around to different fireworks factories in China; at night you'd sit in a bamboo chair in the middle of a field with a notebook on your knee and they'd send up these great chrysanthemums for you to name. You'd say, "I'm not inspired. Send up another one just like the last." So they'd do that, and after some pondering you'd write down "The Great Frog Leaps Off the Lily Pad and Frightens Ten Silver Minnows" or "The Blue Ox Comes Down the Turnpike." (pg 49)
Well, I was thinking especially of Hollywood directors, who have on occasion used fireworks to illustrate the consummation of a love affair. Do you remember Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief, their union symbolized by a great crash of fireworks outside their balcony overlooking the harbor of Monte Carlo? The only thing wrong with that scenario, it has always seemed to me, is that any normal couple would be out on the balcony enjoying the fireworks, and not inside tumbling around on a bed. (pg 50)
The complex is typical of the fireworks compounds I have seen. It consists of twenty-five separate workshops. For safety's sake the workshops stand apart from each other by thirty yards or so, each brightly painted in white with red trimming. At the side of every entrance is a copper plate set in the outside wall which everyone who enters the building must touch in order to ground themselves and thus eliminate the chance that a spark might jump from one's person to the worktables. The procedure becomes an ingrained habit. In winter, of course, the danger of static electricity increases sharply. Apparently, women tend to carry more electricity than men. They are never allowed to brush or comb their hair on the job. The rules at the Grucci compound are that no one can ever wear silk underwear. (pg 60)
An extraordinary incident took place on the occasion of [the fireworks display celebrating the self-coronation of Napoleon (1804)]. The show ended with the ascent of a vast hydrogen balloon. Unmanned (un ballon perdu), it was built by Jacques Garnerin and carried a huge golden crown hung with three thousand colored lights. A freak storm carried the balloon all the way to Rome by the morning of the second day, where it finally came to earth, the crown breaking up against the ruins of Nero's tomb ‒ of all places ‒ and what was left tumbled into Lake Bracciano. The newly-crowned Emperor, a very suspicious man, and short-tempered as well, became extremely upset by the incident ‒ to the point of firing the balloon maker, Jacques Garnerin, and thereafter forbidding all mention of this odd occurrence. (pg 81)
I did quite a lot of research to see if any mortar (much less the firework it was about to fire) could equal ours. I even checked out a large mortar I had read about as a child in Philip Gosse's History of Piracy. Large enough in the mouth to contain a man, it indeed had one in there; the illustration in the book showed a man stuffed in up to his shoulders. He was (as one read with eyes popping) the French consul in Algiers who in the Pirate Wars of 1830 was captured by the pirates and, in an act of horrid derision, fired at the French fleet. For years the mortar graced the walls of Algiers (it is now in the Musée de la Marine in Paris) and in honor of the man who was fired out of it was named as only the French would have the flare to do: La Consuliére. (pg 84)
Neither of the Grucci brothers thought much of having chemists around a fireworks compound. "They're more hazardous to work with than someone who doesn't know anything," Jimmy once told me. "They're always fooling around with their little bottles, trying a little of this, a little of that, usually trying for a better color or a faster burning effect, and suddenly they haven't got any hands." (pg 104)
[...] The first firecrackers (p'ao chu) did not have black powder in them. They were simply joints of bamboo thrown on a fire. The noise of the their exploding is graphically described by Marco Polo, who reports that if the young green canes are put on a campfire "they burn with such a dreadful noise that it can be heard for ten miles at night, and anyone who was not used to it could easily go into a swoon and easily die. Hence the ears are stopped with cotton wool and the clothes drawn over the head, and horses are fettered on all four feet and their feet padded and the ears and eyes covered, for it is the most terrible thing in the world to hear for the first time." (pg 164)
Perhaps the most infamous mishap was during a fireworks celebration of Queen Victoria's Silver Jubilee. A huge portrait (it was 200 feet long and 180 feet high) of the Queen and the Royal Family had a small but devastating technical problem: the right eye of the Queen began to blink uncontrollably, as if she were winking at the enormous throng. (pg 176)
In Philadelphia's baseball park, with a huge crowd on hand in anticipation of Pete Rose's surpassing Stan Musial's total of 3,630 lifetime hits, the Phillies' executive vice president, Bill Giles, who was to give the signal for a considerable fireworks celebration when it happened, shouted "No! No! No!" as a roar went up in the first inning when Rose's ground ball was boggled by the Cardinal shortstop. The fireworks people out beyond the ballpark's walls heard the roar and thought Giles had said "Go! Go! Go!" They sent up the display -- without doubt, the largest response ever produced by a shortstop's miscue. (pg 177)
In 1886 a man named Wilson P. Foss, the manager at the Plattsburgh, New York, plant of the Clinton Dynamite Company was standing twelve feet from nine hundred pounds of nitro-glycerin sitting in a wash tank when it exploded, set off by an accidental gush of live steam from a faucet. The building in which Foss was standing completely disappeared, leaving behind a crater thirty feet deep. Mr. Foss himself ended up around the bend of the Saranac River on the ice. When the plant employees hurried to the site of the detonation they assumed they were not likely to find more of Mr. Foss than perhaps a bit of shoelace. To their astonishment Foss appeared, striding around the river bend. All of his clothes below the waistline had disappeared. He had approximately two hundred spruce splinters in him. According to witnesses his first remark was, "What's the matter?" (pg 193)
One of the particular lethal firecrackers of the time was a foot-and-a-half-long cardboard casing filled with saltpeter, carbon, and sulfur that went off with a blast that shivered the leaves on trees for an acre around. Because of such devices, nearly as many people died celebrating independence -- around four thousand over the years ‒ as actually died fighting in the War of Independence itself. The glorious Fourth became known as the "Bloody Fourth" and, because of the large number of severe infections from burns, the "Carnival of Lockjaw." (pg 194)
Every firework shot up along the length of the Rhine is purportedly German-made. The reason for this is that Herr Moog, the official pyrotechnician to the Nazi regime, once ordered a whole shipment of shells from Japan which were supposed to contain swastika flags suspended from parachutes. Instead, with Adolf Hitler on hand at some vast ceremonial occasion, the shells popping open high above the stadium displayed hundreds of Japanese Rising Suns. Hitler was apparently furious as the parachutes drifted down. Ever since, so it is said, no fireworks have been imported into Germany. (pg 228)
I have listed twelve of the largest major fireworks companies below -- whose offices would most likely give out the locations of the next scheduled show worth traveling to watch. If this does not work ‒ as mentioned, fireworks people sometimes tend to be cagey about their schedules ‒ you can always call me. I am in the Manhattan telephone directory. I would always direct someone to a good fireworks show. It would make me feel as if I had accomplished a good deed for the day. (pg 264)
2007sep08. Headline of the year: Mystery Hamster in Epic Voyage
2007sep09. Stop looking at delicious Swedish porn for half a second and find Steve Fossett, wouldja?
2007sep09. In the resulting confusion I forgot all about international treasure b3ta.com. Take for example sleepwalking. Chok full o' sleepwalkin'/talkin'/etcin' goodness.
I woke up fully dressed but with all my clothes on inside out, no shoes, socks that had no feet in them (+ very sore and cut feet) and a garbage bag that contained 800 cigarettes, 10 copies of the local Sunday paper and 2 large pizzas. I checked my wallet, found that I had about $65 more than I started out with. Where I woke up was the strange part though, on a jetty in a little fishing village, 260 km from home.
Sleeping Husband: I'm going for a 70s wee.
Awake Me: What's a 70s wee?
Him: A wee with flares on.Mid game, one of the sleepers suddenly sits bolt upright and screams, at the top of his lungs, "POUND OF APPLES. POUND OF APPLES. WALKING DOWN THE STREET WITH HER KNICKERS 'ROUND HER ANKLES." There was silence, as we all stared at him. Then; "Fucking hell," said he, as he lay down and slept again.
2007sep09. Oh, I'm just going to keep quoting this sleepwalking thing ...
One time my mate stayed over and I scared him shitless. I have a habit of talking in my sleep which teamed together with a fear of the Krankees made for one very strange dream.
I dreamt that I was being attacked by the Krankees and started screaming like crazy in my sleep. However, by screaming so loudly, I'd kind of woken myself up but I was strangely unable to stop dreaming.
The part of me that was half awake found it hilarious I was dreaming about the krankees and was pissing myself laughing but the part of me that was still asleep was still screaming at the top of my lungs. Hence a very scared mate who said I was just manically laughing one second then screaming the next, over and over again.
One morning I also woke up to a very grumpy boyfriend who asked me very nicely 'did you sleep ok?' in which I was very hesitant to reply 'yes...what did I do this time?'. It turned out I'd started screaming in my sleep then punched him several times right in the face. Probably from dreaming about the Krankees again.
2007sep09. Celebrities slumming at Burning Man. [via peacedividend]
2007sep12. Life in These Here United States Vol MMXIV. I feel safer already!
2007sep13. Mail.
What's with bandaids, are they back in style?
Here's the thing. You don't get the metal box any more, you don't get the red string anymore. That's where it was at, but they blew it. The box, the string. Gone. So now you go to the drug store, and you sit looking at fifty kascrillion options for bandages ‒ sport bandages, office bandages, bandages for pets, extreme bandages, bandages for the recently deceased, scented bandages including grape which never smells like grape because what does grape smell like, Chillow™-branded bandages, clear bandages, new classic regular flavor bandages, dyspeptic bandages, mouth bandages for the B&D curious, transparent mystery glo-in-the-dark bandages, feral bandages, Shinto splints, bandages with caviar creme centers, bandages featuring tiny representations of inane plotless cartoon characters du jour, bandages 2.0 (these have rounded corners and simultaneously no one gives a shit), variety-pak® bandages that have one type of bandage you have no idea how to use so it's always the last one you use like putting a tiny round bandage on a sucking chest wound, dazzle camouflage bandages from the 1940s, 3-D bandages ‒ and none of them are right for your current wound and they all cost so much money. I am recommending ‒ as a doctor ‒ a potent salve of Miracle Whip® mayonnaise immediately followed by a slice of high-quality bologna. The bonus thing here is that if your wound is actually caused by a botfly, the botfly will wriggle out of your flesh, hungry for delicious bologna, as we all are. The hot new style is actually casts that you can hide foodstuffs in. So you're talking to a friend about your skiing accident and suddenly you're chomping down on a mouth-watering sammich. Your friend has no idea where that sammich came from. What a corker.
2007sep14. I use Peepod as my main text font. See also earlier related photo/discussion.
2007sep17. Greenspan! Out of control. Both from Reuters to-day.
Greenspan says U.S. not headed for recession
Greenspan: Recession risk up
Also from Reuters:
Greenspan: Everyone who reads this is invited to my bitchin' beach house for a killa B-B-mother-scratchin'-Q!!!!111!1
Greenspan: Who are all you people? Get off my property before I call the police!
I knew that fucking BBQ thing was too good to be true.
2007sep19. Someone has sent me pudding, many boxes, including vintage pudding and Jell-O® Brand Americana® Tapioca pudding. I'm not sure what happens with those little tapioca balls when you get boxed pudding. Are the little balls dehydrated? Little balls ... [thought trails off] ... anyway, thanks for that, certainly. My new giveaway is called "Send Me Chocolate."
Send Me Chocolate
[address]
The winner of this promotion will have sent me chocolate.
2007sep19. Blank Top: A very special day for someone.
2007sep19. Trashing Teens: article condemning the continually increasing infantilization of teenagers. Followed by timeline, including this bit: "Proposals for longer school days, longer school year, and addition of grades 13 and 14 to school curriculum under discussion" ... the poison isn't working, here, have more poison.
2007sep20. Interview: Barry Alfonso.
2007sep23. Some quotes. [via digg]
2007sep24. Book: [Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy|http://deuceofclubs.com/books/193reclaiming_amrev.htm].
2007sep30. Mail.
Are you planning on off-shoring some of your cardhouse labor?
You joke, but you don't even know. Since I'm on a slow-boat program-wise, I looked into outsourcing programming via one of those cheap foreign programming sites. Apparently you get what you pay for from them, so it's not happening. What is happening is that there is gel in my hair, which happens once every 80 years or so when I attend an "80s" party. Do you remember the 80s? Now I really do. I guess I didn't drink enough.
2007sep30. THE CHILDREN MUST LEARNS
October 2007.
2007oct01. Fabric-based dimmer switch. [via jon]
2007oct01. Ftrain: Five-dollar chocolate bar.
2007oct01. Food photography entropy: Bad Food Gone Worse. Reminds me of drive-ins. The article features an interview with the authors.
2007oct04. My friend taught me a trick for flying. "How about you have a drink before you go on the plane?" This is great. Keeps me loose, and gets me through TSA without any major incidents as I subvert my principles. I think people should push the whole fake safety circus a little farther into brilliant absurdity ‒ take off your shoes, take off your belt, and make sure your pants fall down. Enough people do this, that requirement will mysteriously disappear. That's my theory, anyway, I have a million of them. Here's another one: flirting with a married woman on a plane is Dangerous.
2007oct04. On the Jetblue flight back home, the crew was having problems with the DirecTV service and announced that they "may" compensate the passengers with free movies. Then about ten minutes later I noticed a lot more people watching movies, so I used my two remaining brain cells to process this new information and switched over to Die Harderer. And there I was, 30 minutes into the movie. What? They can't deliver a "fresh" movie to each seat? ... so then it looped and of course I had to watch the first bit because I needed to burn fifty-three hours in the air ... then I noticed my seatmate (the ghost of Lee Miller) was watching the Simpsons movie so after I was all caught up with the laffs and love of Die Hardening I flipped over to that and there I was 30 minutes into the start of it as well. Also amusing: the in-flight status map has a header that is a semi-poor estimate of where you are (the plane icon itself takes up half of Nevada) and there's apparently a large swath of land directly east of Livermore California called "SOUTHWEST." So for about 1.5 hours during the flight, Jetblue is advertising the name of their direct competitor. Does anyone miss the old days of flying when everyone wore suits and dresses and the flight attendants would suck you off? Boy, I sure do. I'm Andy Rooney.
2007oct04. On re-consideration, the best part of my Boston trip was The Bodega (more pix). I am not in the market for fancy fly sneakers or hats, and I spent very little time in there, but the concept is so delightful I was giggling to myself for 15 minutes afterward. They could use a grumpy guy manhandling the cash register with his meaty fingers. "Get out of my store!" That sort of thing. I could put on some pounds.
2007oct04. Deuce of Clubs Book Club: Mr. Show: What Happened?!
2007oct04. A bio of Lee Miller. She told me some of this on the plane.
2007oct04. Metafilter: The paternoster. Eventually metafilter will lovingly document every single nightmare scenario I've successfully repressed over the years. I saw it in a b/w movie that was neither Swedish nor a comedy nor Our Man Flint nor any of the other films mentioned; it just appeared in the background and was not "involved" in the story. Businessmen were filing in and out of it, and I thought "well, good thing those don't exist anymore."
2007oct05. There are no more licorice whips. Let me explain. Currently, America's leading purveyor of licorice-based products, the American Licorice Company, produces several types of rope-like licorice products under the strange moniker "Red Vines." There has been an internal war at ALC for awhile now concerning product nomenclature; currently the website seems to indicate that "Twists" is winning ("Original Red Twists" etc) and "Vines" is being engulfed (the package reads "Sugar Free Vines," the header reads "Sugar Free Vines Strawberry Twists" etc). At one time, some of these "licorice twists" were called "licorice whips" (this makes this item entry doubly wrong -- there's no licorice in the strawberry variety and they're no longer called "whips"). But we really know what licorice whips are, they're those long pieces of licorice that hang on wooden poles at your local ole' fashioned general store ain't they now? Like the one that Smithers expertly handles during this cartoon segment? Like the ones Ernie disproportionately segments on a Sesame Street segment? No, no, and also no. Hold on to your butts, my internet friends. I'm going to show you a real licorice whip. History ... comes alive!!!
That's right. A licorice whip was shaped like a whip, not a rope. The image comes from this page of the Confectioner's Gazette from December 1922.
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. The other half? Trying to stitch this info into witty cocktail party chatter when you're also half in the bag. "D'you know that lickrish ... lickrish ... where'z my drink?"
2007oct05. I maded some posters for the 1980s party with associated froofy art gallery-type info cards. Let's look at a few, shall we (A: yes)?
2007oct07. Jimmy Cauty (ex-KLF): Car Crushing: A Bad Art Experience.
2007oct07. Now suddenly we are looking at more posters I made for the 1980s party w/the beloved art gallery info cards. Why are we doing this? It is a good question.
2007oct07. A kind correspondent pointed out something to me I hadn't noticed about the Licorice Whip advertisement: you got a hell of a lot more licorice at the same price with the Big Twist. The licorice whip is a little more than 1/3rd the size of the Big twist, if you don't count the puny one-strand whip part hanging off of the end, but even if you do, you don't even get up to 50% of the Big Twist. The Big Twist also looks more capable of doing damage to your candy playmates, if whipping is indeed your goal. Me, I'd buy the American Plug, because doin' tobacco plug is cool, man, and this is as close as I can get to it, as a theoretical kid in the 1920s, that is. I also had a newspaper route and visited the whorehouse regularly.
2007oct08. Achewood: only the last panel matters.
2007oct08. Finally we are wrapping up the three-part series of posters for the 80s party. The first two are just large "overviews" of 1980 and 1989; the third is a completely non-rigorous reproduction of the "Crazy Climber" video game with associated art card.
2007oct10. [Cardhouse] Trader Joe's update. I think this will be it for that for awhile. I don't think there's mutual respect anymore. An understanding. That. You. Don't. Discontinue. My. Jalapeno. Bean. Chips.
2007oct11. Cardhouse.com statistics. I just want to reach out to you, the other ethnicities. I too, fall under this category, unless I don't. Together we can do this!
2007oct12. Online faro game.
2007oct12. Help me to understand the mysterious world of multi-product packaging.
Recently a globally-positioned snack corporation released a three-edged chip product that was actually comprised of two different flavors. Why is this "variety pack" format such a novelty for foodstuffs? Was there some scary K-T-like event that has cowed manufacturers and marketers? Is it always financial suicide to take product A and similar product B, shunt x% of both product lines into one newly-designed bag and have a colorful cartoon character dancing around it with a shit-eating grin? Doo dee doo, dah dee doo?
Extra credit: Name hybrid/multi-products. Goober Grape, cereal Variety-Paks, mayo and ketchup, ketchup and mayo, mustard ketchup, Aquafresh, etc.
2007oct14. Mail.
After spending some time on your site, i have to say that i don't care for your attitude.
thank you,
Anne
Line forms at the back, please enjoy our complimentary cheese plate while you wait. Toothpicks are provided for your ... sanity? What's this say? Sanitation. Sorry, it's smudgy.
2007oct14. Excerpts from the book Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confectionery, and Consumers in Nineteenth-Century America by Wendy A. Woloson.
Consumer insensitivity or naïveté about the larger political issues engendered by labor and production realities characterized sugar's presence in the marketplace throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Notwithstanding the pleas of abolitionists, people on both sides of the Atlantic continued to consume sugar in ever-increasing quantities. The abolitionist newspaper the _Pennsylvania Freeman_, for example, carried many advertisements for stores selling "Free Groceries" (i.e., produced with free rather than slave labor) in the late 1830s. Robert M'Clure's was one among a number of enterprises that offered such staples, and his stock included "Double Single and Lump Sugar, Canton Sugar in bags and boxes; old and green Java Coffee, St. Domingo, Laguira, and Jamaica do. [ditto]; Eastern Island and N. York sugar-house Molasses; East India rice; Free Chocolate, made from St. Domingo Cocoa, &c." These shops, however, were short-lived; regardless of conscience, people's desire for and consumption of refined sugar and the products made with it continued unabated throughout the rest of the century. (pg 25)
Significantly, penny candies counted among the first things that American children ever spent their own money on, since merchants offered these treats in their shops long before other marketplace diversions appeared. But penny candies remained attractive to children even decades later, at the turn of the century, when other cheap entertainments like arcades and movie theaters were available, especially in the urban landscape. Candy shops became places where youngsters gathered and socialized among themselves, away from parental control, where "they were allowed, even encouraged, to act more grown-up than was good for them." The pragmatic retailer understood that his financial success relied on the patronage of children; he was at their mercy. "A Curious Candy Store Boycott" took place in a rural Pennsylvania town at the turn of the century, for example, because the sole candy shop proprietor forbade loitering. "The children are organized, and have held several torchlight processions," the Confectioners' and Bakers' Gazette noted uneasily. (pg 44)
Temperance workers kept stressing a connection between liquor and candy. In 1906, a writer in the Ladies' Home Journal invokved scientific and moral theories that warned women against letting their children eat candy, saying, "The first craving from ill feeding calls for sugar; later for salt; then tea, coffee; then tobacco; then such fermented beverages as wine and beer; and lastly alcohol." (pg 62)
Many fountain devices incorporated nude female figures, glass domes with spurting jets of water, and gas lights. Fountain manufacturers took advantage of people's fascination with the triumph of technology that miraculously delivered fizzy water to beverage glasses by offering other gadgets that used water in novel ways. For example, the countertop Revolving Tumbler Washer and the Crystal Spa, both illustrated in Charles Lippincott's 1876 trade catalogue, washed and rinsed dirty tumblers right in front of the customers. The drudgery of cleaning dirty dishes, usually hidden in the private back room, became a public attraction performed in plain view. The Crystal Spa, topped with a gas light, cleaned tumblers "inside and out." The ad copy continued, "its novelty and beauty must be seen to be fully appreciated ... the value of an article like the Crystal Spa can only be justly realized by regarding it as a thing of beauty merely, apart from its mechanical character." (pg 92)
Prescriptive literature aimed at late-century soda fountain operators continually emphasized eye appeal as a way to communicate more abstract ideas to women, like cleanliness. "Daintiness" served as a common euphemism for cleanliness. "Thin, sparkling glasses, bright, shining silver holders, new daintily designed spoons, clean tables, spotless jackets, immaculate serving counter" ‒ all contributed to a successful fountain. Yet the clear message was this: "You may talk to a woman until you are blind about Pure Food beverages, about chemically pure carbonic acid gas, about ice cream made from rich cows' cream and nothing else, and you may give her all these, but if you do not serve them daintily ‒ you lose." (pg 95)
Later in the century, when manufacturers began making chocolates and bonbons on a grand scale, advisors' warnings gained stridency as they clarified the interconnection between food, sexual appetite, self-gratification, and "self-pollution." Masturbation in the nineteenth century threatened the social fabric because people considered it "the ultimate symbol of private freedom and atomistic individualism," Karen Lystra points out. Eating alone and reading alone, then, were both deemed unhealthy solitary pursuits because they quickly led to the sin of onanism. The popular and prolific nineteenth century health and diet guru J. H. Kellogg shared with Slyvester Graham the belief that "self-abuse" in women was expressed through "dreamy indolence" and gluttony. Outside temptations led women to "perdition": "Candies, spices, cinnamon, cloves, peppermint, and all strong essences powerfully excite the genital organs and lead to the same result [vice]." (pg 139)
Sweets had become so prevalent in the culture that they registered not just eating habits, but reading habits as well; people well understood the comparisons men like Alcott were making. William Greenleaf Eliot, another popular advisor, wrote: "One might as well expect to gain strength to his body from sweetmeats and confectionery, as for his mind from works of fiction." Joseph P. Tuttle took the comparison one step further, suggesting that a life of luxury for a young boy, expressed by sweet-eating or book-reading, would irreparably feminize him, alleging that a boy living a life of "luxury" and "indolence," "ends up being effeminate," and "daintily avoids all unnecessary exertion." Putting a finer point on it, he wrote: "You cannot develop a vigorous manhood by stuffing a boy with confectionery and deforming him in a rocking-chair." Women were not supposed to engage in novel reading or bonbon eating because it was indulgent and sinful; boys were not supposed to engage in these activities because it made them like women. (pg 140)
Even though home production helped democratize ice cream, class distinctions associated with it remained; even versions of homemade ice cream differed in appearance and quality depending on one's particular class. The middling classes most likely "put up" their ice creams in ubiquitous steel melon molds. In contrast, the rich served their homemade ice creams in fanciful shapes formed using elaborate molds of tin-plated copper or cast iron. Often imported from Britain, the molds enabled the rich to emulate the professional confectioner's product. (pg 201)
2007oct19. Friday Freeday. Please set aside a block of time for these "moving pictures." Perhaps you can put some of them in your scrapbook.
This is kinda like my old commute to school except for the insane zipline 1200 feet in the air part. Special thanks to "vidmax.com" for their mysteriously large yet poorly-designed logo covering up the subtitles ... you go to bed without dessert.
Feed the head. So good, so stylish. Not sure how i missed this, it's from the vectorpark people. See if you can get him to cry (I mean, besides poking him in the eye) when he's got the elephant nose.
How camera lenses are made. I did not see as many elves as I thought were involved in the process.
How katanas are made: [1 2 3 4 5]
Conventional Wisdom: Prison Food Convention. "No sticks." [via boingboing]
Fanta mini-ads. I would have learned more in class with Mr. DJ at the helm. See Mr. Blackbeard inaction.
In Soviet Russia things skate at YOU
Those Awful Hats (1909).
Vice Magazine: David Cross in China [1 2 3]
Tim & Eric: Cat Film Festival
Fresh Air: Stephen Colbert.
Mirror Problems: German TV show. Marx Brothers. [via metafilter]
Call & Response: defining the fine line between catchy commercial jingles and mental paralysis.
Photos of people exiting turnstiles: MT4.
2007oct19. Mail.
Dear sir: Having obtained your address web site from internet .We are writing you in the hope of establishing business relations with you . We are an international purchase center in Guilin of China . Now we are interested in your products, are you an agent or the manufacturer? May I have your catalogues and quotations? If you your prices are in line , we trust important business can materialize .We are looking forward to receiving your early reply . Yours sincerely
[Name]
Here is our info:
[Company]
[Address, phone, website, etc.]
Okay, here's the thing. I don't have any products. I'm all out of products. I never had any. No products. What I want, however, is for manufacturers to contact me, offering products. I like products. That's probably where the confusion lies ‒ by featuring products on my business website cardhouse.com, it would be natural for one to assume that I sell products. This is wrong. But I want products. I want free samples of Pakistani barber scissors, strange hats, and horsie nasal patches. Please tell all of the other companies this. I am like your competition! Yes, tell them all that I am also a "purchase center," as you say. We can crank call each other when things are slow. Lemme know if you're okay with that.
Thank you,
Simon Templar Banana Crisp Jr.
Cardhouse Purchase Center of Purchasing
Bay Area Ltd., California7
USA 90210
By Wireless
"Take it from me or I'll kick you in the junk!" ‒ Dr. Sebastian Meyercord, world-famous horsetologist, horse
2007oct21. "One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques."
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
2007oct23. Picture: Look at this dog.
2007oct24. The Independent: Studs Terkel.
2007oct25. Free personalized old-school metal typer souvenir coin.
2007oct27. There's ... a telegram service ... that ... advertises ... on the net. [FX: breaks into ridiculously wide smile]
2007oct28. I am consistently astounded every time I see a reference to the Kitchen of Tomorrow. It's there, just beyond our grasp, if we could only reach out have our refrigerator tell us what our eyes already do. This futuristic excerpt appears in an Discover article about The Coming Internet Data Jam:
The current packet-receipt feedback system (known as TCP) has worked wonderfully for years to control the flow of Internet traffic, but it won't be able to cope with the coming jam, when fridges will scan the RFID chip on a milk carton and send an alert when the expiration date arrives. "Whether we like it or not, [Internet equipment giant] Cisco will network everything. Soon our glasses will tell the kitchen they're empty," Doyle says. That vast amount of traffic will make the Internet catastrophically fragile. "We could wake up one morning and nothing works."
Our glasses will tell the kitchen they're empty. Please explain to me why this information needs to be transferred to the kitchen ... at all ... and once you've done that, lemme know why that information needs to go out over the internet. Is that so some goddamned advertiser can suggest a product that would adequately fill the newly-created void the glasses suffer from? Is it so I can call up my house from my car as I return home from work, curious whether or not the glasses are empty yet ("oh boy oh boy oh boy, I bet they totally are!!!")? Will this information appear on my myspace page?
OMG DUDE YUV GOT MT GLAZS!
You gadgetwhores can keep your networking crap out of my kitchen for the rest of my life, thanks. I've got it under control. I can "see" the expiration date on products with my eyes, and I also use these appliances to confirm the emptiness of my glasses before I pour an adult beverage into one or more of them. The way this is supposed to work is that the futurists come up with a problem, the technologists create a gadget, and then the marketers sell the "solution" by repeatedly explaining the "problem." The problem here is that there is no problem, which is usually the problem anyway with most of the junk pushed in our face.
2007oct29. Books of the Weak: I don't think this guy likes hanging.
2007oct29. Ebay: Waffle House Iron Cross t-shirt. Whuh?
"Rumor around the Waffle House counter is that this particular design was intended to be part of the Waffle House uniform but was nixed for being a bit on the controversial side." Whuh? [via doc]
S'up.
Not much.
Yeah, same here.
Well then.
Gonna rain to ‒ oh. Never mind.
Auto-pilot.
Yeah. You holding?
November 2007.
2007nov01. Achewood: The hot new trend ... children as infectious ad vectors. The accompanying text indicates that the cartoonist's family received three of these business-cards-taped-to-candy-bars yesterday.
2007nov02. A Very Special Charlie Brooker (wiki) Friday Freeday. Mr. Brooker appears to be somewhat responsible for the sadly inert TVGoHome website and has a hand in all of these things and can be partially blamed for the also dead "Unnovations" Sharper Image parody which featured this bit that I personally found just wonderfully delightful. He is the host and the main writer person for "Screenwipe," a series which is now in its fourth cycle ("Cycle 4 ... that's for overweight adult dogs") on the BBC. Let's take a look at some, shall we?
Episode 1. TV from friend to enemy. [1 2 3]
Episode one has a quick cut-away of a magazine mock-up which appears below. I grabbed this special-like for a friend who is a sharktologist.
Episode 2: TV Credits. [1 2 3]
Episode 3: TV news. [1 2 3]. If you only have time for one segment, choose the second one, it features a short film from Adam Curtis (The Century of the Self). "We saw reporters outside the airport interviewing other reporters. In fact, if you were quick, you could amuse yourself by watching a van drive past Kay Burley then change channels quick enough to see it pass behind Jane Hill on News 24."
Episode 5: TV reality shows ‒ Who will be ... The Unloser!? [1 2 3] "At the moment, okay, there's three of you. At the end of the day, one of you will be walking away with a prize. The other two are going away with _nothing_. That's the world of competition for you. It's not a cozy little world, it's not the cozy little world you're used to full of pom-poms and dumplings, no. It's blood on the carpet. Concrete and piss. Jackals shitting in stairwells."
Screenwipe Guide to TV
[29min, chopped].
US TV
[8min].
2007nov02. I ran across a more complete version of the Screenwipe USA special thing [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 ].
2007nov10. Book excerpts: The Big Con.
2007nov11. Mail.
I can't find my socks.
They might be under your bellyachin' from last month about how you didn't like my attitude. Start with that, then work your way outwards from there.
2007nov13. Reading the label for Bragg Raw Unfiltered Organic Apple Cider Vinegar.
Directions, Ideal pick-me-up at home, work, sports or gym. Perfect taken 3 times daily upon arising, mid-morning and mid-afternoon. 1 to 2 tsps Bragg Organic Vinegar in 8 oz Glass Purified Water and (optional) to taste 1 to 2 tsps Organic Honey, 100% Maple Syrup, Blackstrap Molasses or 4 drops herb Stevia.
Okay. Back when I thought it might be a good idea, I was knocking down a teaspoon a day. It's only now, years later, that I've noticed the large amount of text devoted to diluting the mixture and also disguising it. If you are looking to have some fun, try swallowing a teaspoon straight sometime. This would be the opposite of fun. It's like a vector that guides you by being horribly wrong.
2007nov16. My Search for Donna Delbert by Teller.
2007nov18. Mail.
your an idiot
DEAR GOD YOUTUBE IS LEAKING
2007nov18. This is how Skynet starts.
On the other hand, in 39 per cent of cases the robots, despite being programmed to prefer a lighter shelter, joined the cockroaches under the darker one.
2007nov20. From a Cardhouse consigliere: X for All or Nothing. I found some more!!!! Hahahahahahaaahahahahahahaha ahem.
2007nov26. Cultural guerillas restore Paris "masterpiece" clock.
2007nov26. At the clinic today there was some guy in line ahead of me and he was telling the receptionist that he didn't have a pulse. He was adamant about it and the receptionist was handling it like any other malady. They went back and forth on it for a bit. Little older than I was, organized with a folder and everything. I spoke with him briefly when he motioned me to the front while he was getting some papers. I've never talked to a zombie before. I guess my brains weren't delicious enough for him. "Seriously man, this is grade-A chuck you're missing out on. 'Rarrrr'? 'ArrrRRrrRRRarrr'? No?"
2007nov26. I think you know what's good and right.
2007nov28. Mail.
used to love visiting your website, and i don't even know why i don't any more.
It is like a lot of things that don't make you think much ‒ it becomes "familiar." After you read this twaddle for about a year, you can even write your own Cardhouse-type entries in your head, and you've probably just finished this very sentence before me. So what's the point of visiting? I agree wholeheartedly. You wrote that one too, didn't you, you li'l scallywagger. And that. You've got the chops, kid. I'm turning over the keys. You write this thing for me for the next week. Your reward: come on, you know this part. [prods you] "The satisfaction of a job well-done." There you go.
2007nov29. Mail.
How can I get my URL listed?
[URL: somethin' 'bout JETS!!!]
Thanks Adam
Probably not like that.
2007nov30. Operation Cat Drop. Of course they had individual parachutes. Yes. Re-visit earlier Simpsons quote about freezing gorillas.
December 2007.
2007dec01. "My toxicology tests indicate that the victim died of mesothelioma." Now available at Toys 'R' Us.
2007dec01. The Sneeze Investigates: Unlocking the Secrets of Cake Face [1 2 3].
2007dec01. Deuce of Clubs: Automatic writing.
2007dec04. Exciting New Advertising Technology Yearns For Attention From Slew Of Baseball Bats
2007dec05. Upkeep of cable cars.
2007dec07. Friday Freeday. By state law, you don't have to actually work today, you just sit on your little seat there and click on things that show you other things. Apologies to those who normally stand in front of the computer.
Japanese game show: treadmill madness. What makes the game is
the starter's pistol. "Okay, everybody get ready ..."
Imogene Heap: Just For Now.
Mr. Show: Van Hammersly
French v. German Nutella: CRACKING THE CODE
Cartoon gaming reviews by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw.
I rarely "game" these days (two hours a year, say) but these videos are
swell, think "Screenwipe" which I discussed earlier. Recommended: MOH Airborne
and
Peggle.
The McGurk effect.
[wiki] Absolutely disquieting.
And then there's this optical illusion. I no longer
trust anything I see or hear, or you. Your mouth is filled with lies! I
will not believe you anymore. Wait ... am I lying ... to myself?
[30 minutes of glances around the room] [Later, in the
institution] RRRRARRRRRGGGGG!!!
A tour of the Mythbusters shop. This is just for anyone
who has watched the show more than a few times ‒ it's Jamie showing the
best bits of one room of tools and gadgets but then there's the realization
that one of the standard telephone stations is improperly stocked.
Two calculators? No. One calculator. Bonus points: the camera
operator is the station stocker. A shop is only as good as its access to
Sharpie® pens. Singular. Pen.
Chocolade Haas. Apparently
made for pre-schoolers ("NOOOOOOOOO BUNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE").
Filling a hole.
2007dec10. I had to get my blood tested to make sure there was blood in it (and also that I had a pulse [shakes chains, makes "WoooOOOOO" sounds]) and the receptionist gave me a list of blood-taking places. I ended up at one that was inside a family clinic. "You just need to walk down that hall there." So I started walking down the hall and I'm halfway down the hall and there's someone noodling inside a closet. But then I looked again, and it's a full-on miniature blood-taking place; it's got counters, a chair, the blood-taking person, various things to stick in one's arm, cupboards, etc ‒ and it's about four feet by four feet. Bloodplace Jr. There was no one else around for miles, and she asked me to sign in. Then she checked the sign-in sheet and it turned out (CRISWELL PREDICTS!) I was next. Soon you'll be able to pull up to a re-purposed Fotomat booth and get phlebotomized along with a good cup of joe.
2007dec11. Mail.
I hope oneday I can speak Englishi very fluently
So do I. I mean, I hope that I will be able to speak English fluently. Right now I'm somewhere between LOLcat and a really staticky telephone conversation that keeps dropping out. Good luck to you in your Englishquest (English tip: any two words larger than 3 characters each can be compounded).
2007dec12. Occasionally in the past I had considered joining "Linkup," a primarily Bay Area social networking site that included a type of reputation meter as to how likely you were to show up to events. Then I read this article and I'm glad I didn't bother. I have way too many authority figures in my life already, thanks ... I don't need someone obsessively policing my social habits.
2007dec13. I was walking on a Berkeley sidewalk, coming up on a 17ish-year-old girl headed the other way. About 20 feet back, a guy roughly the same age. She's about to pass me when she exclaims in a sarcastic/obnoxious voice, "OHHH! EXCUSE ME! SORRY!" as she's forcefully chucking a paper grocery bag into my leg. I don't know what was in it ‒ felt like magazines. A friend figured the pair were pickpockets but there was no attempt to distract me into helping pick up the bag, she just kept on walking. He looked in the bag, didn't see anything he wanted either, and continued on his way as well. Moments later, she was hit by a bus while crossing the street and I rifled through her purse. Karma: it'll _gitcha_! I'm sad though, because I didn't get a chance to tell her she was a cock. Gotta grab those moments, life is improv. Though ... if I _had_ told her about the cock thing, we would have gotten into it and then she would have missed her bus ... and I'd be short some cash. So I think everything turned out okay.
2007dec16. Mail.
I love ends and pieces but none of my southern California stores have them!!! What store did you get them at and what was the art of getting them there?---Crissy
This was a Northern California store. They no longer have them. I think because I asked about them and the stocker elevated the question to a manager, they put the item on their "offer tentatively" product list ... but then they disappeared three weeks later and were never seen again. Ends & Pieces is going to be flakey like that because it's a product that is the remainder of another product, namely their fruit bars. Now, what happened with their fruit bars recently? Anyone? Yes, exactly Jimmy, there was a re-tooling ‒ the bars are thicker now, in different packaging. So perhaps we can conclude that Ends & Pieces has gone the way of the Dodo and deely bobbers if deely bobbers have indeed gone the way of the Dodo. It's a high-trafficked route. My best advice would be to manufacture demand -- have a bunch of your friends request Ends & Pieces at random intervals. Not from stockers, but from the little manager nook. Write letters. Stage protests, burn a large Hawaiian-shirted scarecrow in effigy. Instill panic, foment discord and chaos. Lead hordes of dispossessed, riot in the streets, eat the rich, topple an amoral empire built on fiat currency. Blow bubbles, pet a kitty.
2007dec16. Usually I open my trancepoptrash set with the Wikipedia audio pronunciation of [Hors d'oe]uvre on infinite loop, then I smooth the board into some de-classified oven-baked technosmazz regrex. I used to think the kids were totally into it, but now I realize they were jamming on the free crudités.
2007dec19. I am getting xmas junk for a 5-year-old kiddle. She's learning to read, and her mother said her fav-rit character is Superman. But all of the soft cover "learning to read" books center around the Safe Happy Mundane Near-Adventure of the Fuzzy Talking Animal. I can sort of see why they don't have a learning-to-read book for The Man of Steels.
Look! It is Superman.
There he is.
Strong!
Can lift whole horsies!
He found something! Ding!
What is?
Is kryptonite! A rock. A special rock. A very big rock.
Is pretty. Green! "Green."
Oh!
Superman is tired.
So sleepy!
Sleep, Superman.
He is very tired.
Let's go visit Batman now.
I would make an awesome children's book author. Or a pastry chef. Or a bowling ball manufacturer. But I am more tired than Superman! Let robot sleep. Ding.
2007dec21. I have one of those electronic things I see crazy people walking around with, talking into them like they're little gold bugs. Mine is white. White gold bug. First I turned off all the goddamned noise on it, then I tried to turn the swirlee graphics off but it was only a choice between tepid graphics and flaccid graphics, so I stuck with the tepid scheme. I'd post the number if I had a good plan but I'm a cheapo prepaid guy. Mostly it's for emergencies, so I can gently gurgle to the 911 operator while being tasered by the police in Beefsteak, Nebraska for not having enough patriotic flair on my vehicle. If you need my number, just let me know. I'm all about the numbering.
2007dec24. Wiki: Christmas truce.
2007dec25. What the Deuce: Liberty Above All, For All
2007dec26. Look, I'm not the most organized pencil on the chopping block, but I am totally gearing up for one of 2008's most important holidays, National Pie Day, which is January 23rd. To celebrate this most suspicious occasion, I am holding another contest. The last contest, "Send Me Chocolate Contest," was won by 9-year-old Tex K. of New Orleans, New Orleans, who sent eight different bars of exotic non-office chocolate which were all immediately eaten, wrappers and all. In the same spirit, the new contest is called "Send Me Pie Contest," wherein you would send me a pie to commemorate National Pie Day 2008. The address:
National Pie Day Contest Sweepstakes Rally Final Elimination Heat Trial
2008 Jr.
c/o Cardhouse Wish Fulfillment Center
[address]
As always, the winner will be eligible for having sent me the winningest contest entry, in this case, an awesome pie.
2007dec29. Well, that was fun ... I had a little Thing, a little This Is All So Very Overwhelming Thing. So I went for a drive. Driving always seems to calm me, for some reason. Driving around the Oakland docks at night, looking at the giant cranes poised for another round of Deficit Ratcheting tomorrow. We need more things. More.
2007dec31. My lo-cal Office Supply Store That Unexpectedly Starts With The Word "Office" (OfficeSQUANTZ. OfficeKITCHERKITCHERKITCHER. Officedoooodeeeeloooooooozroooo) is like a weird ghost town, every time I go there. I'm a nite owl, so I guess I miss out on seeing the harried assistants scurrying around during business hours. What I'd like to miss out on is the insistent, constant loud beeps that emanate from different departments in the store. Once every twenty seconds or so, per department, always and forever. This has been going on for a year, at least. A cashier I queried didn't know what they were supposed to represent, but I get the feeling that it was one of those things she learned to push to the back of her brain (like almost all other aspects of her job), until some pindick customer reminded her of it.