2/11

Well, the testdrive didn't turn out so bad. Hmm, that 1 with the broiled salmon sounds mighty tasty! I guess I'll try it for real in an Ob or 2, once I find the right form or message board to do it with.
I guarantee that it WON'T be Il Guestbooka Italiano, which wouldn't save this:

SO, here's the idea: you've dragged the death row appeals process out for years, why stop now? Maybe the governor will phone in your reprieve during the seventh course! Once the governor's not the Bushbaby, I mean. (creepy thought while viewing the Last meals Site: there's no way George W.'s Texas could have an assembly line-o-death lie it does without killing a few innocents...are they the ones that order nothing, or a flour tortilla?)
So ask for Mom's apple pie! oh, she's in Spain this month? guess we'll have to wait! I can't wait for her? Ummm...16,000 Big Macs. Hey, there's a McDonalds just outside the gate! I can wait for them to cook them.
No? Ahh...Jello Pudding! no, not those little cups! an Olympic swimming pool's worth! with Bill Cosby as lifeguard, you GUNKY! Or a big steamin' bowl of Red Kryptonite! oh, I'm sure you find some *somewhere*!!

I've got email to answer (but can't--my Hotmail server's down) & a bunch of stuff to put here, which kinda sucks as I'm about to pass out. 12 hour shift preceded by 3 hours sleep, that'll do it. No reason for no sleep, but that happens to me. I used to have at least 1 night a year where I didn't fall asleep at all, & would be up for 36 hours. Last night I just laid there till 3:45AM, when I fell asleep & proceeded to have a frustrating dream about not being able to sleep & going to work half-crazed with exhaustion. Why the liquor store had moved into my parent's old house & why the bags under my eyes eventually covered my entire face in technicolor clown makeup is why dreams are weird.

Some people have to give us lame excuses for buying alcohol, especially when it's 10AM. A woman bought a Sprite & a shot of vodka, telling me "It's for cooking." Yeahhhhh, Cooking With Smirnoff, Martha Stewed's new cookbook. "Replace the burgundy wine in Coq au Vin with vodak, & viola! Cocked au AM!"

An elderly couple reported that there were 2 very young (say, 8 & 12) boys hanging outside the store, peering in nervously. Immediately after they left, the "older" 1 came in to buy 2 packs of Marlboro. *Insert derisive laughter here* Yeah, I'll sell you smokes when you get some pubic hair, OK?

One of the more gnome-like customers left some empties, & this fell out of the bag. I think it's a drinking game. Or a sex game. "6 beers, she jerk me off"? I think I want to cleanse my mind of this now...

Speaking of beer & jerkoffs, Kristen told me a pair of really lame pick-up lines customers had tried to use on her:

"Your parents must have wanted something special!"
"Umm...why?"
"Cuz they had you!"
Your parents must've felt the same way, since they had you drive to school on the short bus.

"Your father must've been a thief!"
"Umm...why?"
"Cuz he stole the stars from the sky & put them in your eyes!"
Your dad must've been a lobotomist, cuz he stole the brains from your head & fed them to the dog.

She considered that last 1 to be the worst line ever. Until I told of the total stranger who walked up to Jess & his 1st words were, "Those are the most perfect breasts I've ever seen!"
He prly figured the reason he was getting shot down was that he needed something less subtle than "NICE TITS!"

2/12

"My GOD! Look at that guy over there! His head! It has no hair on it! Isn't that the freakiest thing you've ever seen?!"
Ever have that conversation? Me neither. There's nothing particularly odd about a bald guy. In a time when a shaved head is considered cool, who really notices that?
"My GOD! Did you see that guy's combover? I didn't even know that they still made Brylcream! Like plastering those few scraggling strands fools anyone!"
Now THAT conversation I've had! I'm mystified as to why someone would try to hide a "problem" by drawing attention to it. It's like trying to disguise your gut by wearing a muu-muu, which would only be worn by someone really obese & is fun to say. MUU-MUU! Whee!
We have a regular nicknamed Toupee-asaurus Rex. He lives in his lil Cloud-Cuckoo Land where everyone thinks he has a full head of hair, while in reality the 1st thing anyone notices about him is his rug. 1) It's about 10 shades lighter than his real hair, giving the impression of a doily on a beach ball, 2) it has a very visible SEAM running down the middle, so that his "hair" seperates into big pizza-shaped slices. Maybe he's secretly a punk rocker by night, & just doesn't gel up his Mohawk during the day. It does stay on during windstorms, so he must've invested in some good-quality scalp glue for his carpet remnant. The fact that he's in his late 30s but wears AC/DC tshirts & sings Metallica lyrics aloud only adds to the self-denial fun.
Today he bought his usual, plus a mixed 4-pack of wine coolers. He insisted that he was being charged too much for it, and he was right: since $3.79 doesn't divide evenly into 4, he was charged $3.80. I think the scalp glue's started seeping into his brain.

2/14

HOLY SH--

If you're 1 of the 400 people who've looked at this page in the last 4 HOURS, could you drop me a line in the guestbook as to what inspired you to come here all at once?

Oh. OK. Thanks to Pete from the UK, I find out that I'm a Cruel Site of the Day. Gee, now I feel kinda bad for that Turkish model.

2/15

"1 web award I don't want is Cruel Site of the Day." --the New of 12/15
Sometimes, you should be careful for what you DON'T wish for.

KK's currently deciding whether or not the new cat toy, a pole with a technicolor bean-filled mouse, is worth her attention--Oops. It came off the pole as I was typing this. Kwality product, but that's what happens when you shop at an Odd Lot store. I also got her her 1st can of wet cat food, Turkey & Giblets & Unidentifiable Goo. She stuck her head in the bowl & must've eaten nearly her body weight, coming out with it on her face & forehead. I had turkey too, without the giblets but almost as messy. It was rotisserie breast with this damn netting covering it. There to keep it together while it was cooking, I assume, but a mental picture of Farmer Brown chasing a fatassed turkey around the barnyard with a butterfly net is more amusing. "Lemme catch ya, consarn ye!" "Gobble gobble gobble, my fat ass I will, Farmer Brown!" I had to remove the net with scissors & handpower. Delish turkey, but I don't think I'll be buying it again. When the net was off it took a big chunk of turkey with it, so I ate it like the monkey-man in 2001 ate the varmint he clubbed with the bone.

Speaking of looking like something from a movie, Kill Kill attacked my nose last night. I asked for it, as I rudely provoked her by sleeping peacefully. So I have this nice 2-inch gash, giving me that sought-after "Jack Nicholson in Chinatown" look.

Hmm. If you stick the pole into a desk drawer, it goes boi-i-ii-nng when a small cat whacks it. Good toy after all. Also seen at the Odd Lot store: "The Idiot's Guide to Usenet." How redundant.

Speaking of idiots, you know those "Adopt a Highway" programs? St Louis MO decided to let the Klan adopt 1. The signs were up for a coupla days before being ripped down. So they replaced them, & they were ripped down within hours. Me, I would've left them there. And saved up the used cat litter for months, before dumping it 6 inches into the Klan Kleaning Zone. Speaking of human scum, the neo-Nazi site Stormfront is being sued by a woman that they advocated the murder of, due to her evil work on low-income housing for poor blacks. The asshole who runs the site (his last name is "Black"--hmm, some childhood issues being worked on here?) says the suit is infringement of free speech. Yeah, the Nazis, they were big on human rights. I'm all bleeding-hearty on free speech, but if you're a Nazi, aren't you pretty much saying "I think it's A-OK to kill millions for no good reason"? Why's THAT legal?

My Big Laff of the Day: This. OK, maybe you hadda be there. Or, be Me. Or maybe I just should show you Kitty in her fuku...

2/16

Kitty called me a "big suckhead" for that last joke, but I still enjoyed it. Me now being officially named cruel & all.

Things have gotten a little more normal at this part of the site--more hits than normal, but a higher porportion of familiar ISPs. Cool. I kinda prefer this being something read by a handful, rather than the teeming masses that hit the Ob. Kinda wish I hadn't put that scorecard jpg here, as it's sure to become an Ob itself, & all those strangers got their greasy fingerprints all over it on Valentines Day.
Crimeny! It just occured that next Mon is the anniversary of being a Yahoo pick o' the week. Synchronicity again.

Finalized March's planned trip to the Wadsworth Atheneum (is that the coolest name EVER or what?! ATHENEUM! Woo!). KMDS, Jessie-babyskins & yrs truly are going to see an exhibit of Dali there. I try to go there every 4 or 5 years, as I forget the permanent exihibits by then so it all seems fresh. I went last with Kevin when they had a talk about some contemporary artist hosted by Edward "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" Albee. He was why we were going; we'd never heard of the artist but would get to work "Don't talk about our son, Martha!" into every conversation. We intended to be there early enough that we could view the art before the talk, but Kev was crazy late. We parked kind of far away, & ducked into the 1st door in we saw.
"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!" barked a security guard, as if we were wearing ski masks & carrying bolt cutters. It came so out-of-nowhere that KMDS was taken aback, but I said "We're here for the Albee lecture in the media room." "Oh," she said, softening. "Straight ahead & to your left." We walked about 100 feet talking about that incident, when I said "Hey--weren't we supposed to pay?" The event was free for museum members; we must've walked through their Secret Entrance & spoken the right password. YEAH! Stick it to the MAN! OK, we actually stuck it to a non-profit art museum, which is less gutsy, but there you go.
We entered the media room like the world's sorest pair of thumbs. We were almost the only people under the age of 200, & certainly the most casually dressed: both in jeans, me with shirt untucked & Kev with his Cop Shoot Cop tshirt.
ARTSY DUDE: I can't help but be intrigued by your shirt--Exactly what statement are you making?
KMDS: It's a band.
Hey, free food! And wine! Hog heaven! But it had to wait; we got there just as the talk started. The discussion of the guy's artwork was intriguing. Then confusing. Then utterly baffling, when someone asked "Have you ever used lingerie?" Pretty pretentious, too; we'd had a conversation on the drive there about that. I told him about the phrase "underlying ontological syllogism," which I'd seen in an art review. I looked it up to see what it meant: ontology is the philosphy of philosophy; syllogism is the logic of logic. WHA-A-A-T?! That means NOTHING! The artist was not at all as pretentious as the audience, & seemed more amused than anything else by the whole thing.
When it ended, we sought out the gallery of the guy's work. It was a room of giant 10x10 foot, utterly black canvases.
Canvases with black spray-painted men's underwear on them.
That's all. BVDs glued to canvas & spray painted black, black, black. Underwear. As. Art.
No wonder the artist was amused. He left the same way we did, laughing at the whole thing. Except we were laughing our ways home, his way was to the bank.
And that's how "ontological syllogism" became a regular part of our vocabularies.

2/17

Not much at work today. There's a very good chance that there'll be less tmw, as a big snowstorm hits CT. Here's something to tide you over from Gordon K the Kanadian: A transcript of the label off of a soap bottle.
Sounds dull? Err, no. Let's put it this way: There's 18k of this soap bottle label, & it ain't "Lather rinse repeat" 600 times, either. Enjoy!

2/18

6 inches of snow was on the ground when it stopped right around closing time, which kinda sucked in that the snow stopped so the freezing rain could begin. Since we'd actually done a good grand more than a regular Fri, I just crazy went nuts & closed, not at 8PM, but at 7:58:20. WOO! Next I'll be ripping my clothes off & running through the streets. A minute later, some tardo yanked on the door & yelled "IT'S NOT 8 O'CLOCK!" That's right, stinky, you still have 40 shopping seconds left till Xmas. You asshole.

2 minutes after that, another peabrain yanked on the door 3 times, then yelled through the window "ARE YOU OPEN?" "NO!!" I yelled back. "What? I didn't hear you!" Hey, the DOOR IS LOCKED, the LIGHTS ARE OFF, what's to HEAR?! "Yeah, we're open! But, whoa boy, has business gone down since we started locking the door while we're open! I wonder why?"

We closed at noon during the final inventory at Lechmere, before the chain's corpse was turned over to the flesh-eating bacteria of the Liquidation Company. All 6 of the front doors had an eye-level sign that said just that. About 25% of the people walking up would almost crash into the locked automatic doors, then, as they reached for the locked manual doors, they'd read the signs, turn, & leave.
75% didn't.
They'd walk right up to--sometimes right INto--the auto doors, then yank on ALL 6 DOORS, then read the signs. Then they'd do the hokey pokey & shake themselves about. NO, REALLY. They'd do this really odd waggle-the-arms, take-a-stumbling-two-step-backwards, look-of-utter-bewilderment dance. Then they'd shade their eyes to look into the store, then they'd pound on the windows, yelling "ARE YOU CLOSED?" until someone came over & verified the obvious. It got incredibly comical after the 1st 20 times we saw it.
It got incredibly fucking irritating around time 100. Eventually, we just let them pound the windows until they got the idea that maybe, just maybe, "Closed" meant closed.
1 group just stood out there for an HOUR, despite the signs saying we'd open again tomorrow. About a dozen people ignored the 6 big signs & focused on 1 small 1 that read "RGIS Inventory Crew Use Side Entrance," referring to the Retail/Grocery Inventory Specialists people that were doing the inventory. Store security had to stand at the side entrance corralling these morons as they walked in. "What do you think RGIS Inventory Crew meant?" they eventually started demanding out of pure disgust. The most common answer: "I didn't know what it meant, but I figured that it must mean me!"
Maybe. RGIS could stand for Really Grotesquely Idiotic Shitheads, y'know.

2/19

From the mailbox...
1 thing I didn't expect from beng a Cruel Site was someone offering to buy an InExOb! Namely, the Xmas in July poster of the Santa Claus movie that had been on MST3K. Sorry, I liked that ep too, & it has special memories just from being an Ob (such as Jess's boyfriend bitching at her for appearing "on the Web in a skimpy dress." Yeah, I don't think too many porn sites snagged that out-of-focus image). He signed his email "Inky," & me being the eternal wiseass asked, "So, what happened to Blinky, Pinky, & Clyde?" Adam "Inky" Greene wrote back:

As for Blinky, Pinky & Clyde, we're all to be the subject of an upcoming
VH1 "Where are they now" special. In it Pinky discusses his turbulent
love affair with Dig-Dug, Blinky his crippling addiction to power
pellets and Clyde's and his failed attempt at an acting career (he's
bounced back and is now hosting "FX" on the Vegas strip).

The Iron Chef made me bust a gut laughing. It's a Japanese cooking/gameshow
that they are presently showing on the Food Network. It varies wildly
between English voice-overs and English subtitles, often in the same
episode, with no rhyme or reason that I can see. The beginning of the show
is total Mortal Combat... they give you a very quick history of "Kitchen
Arena", the battle zone in which the show takes place. They go on about the
show creator's love of fine cuisine and art, and how he wanted to bring the
two together for the good of mankind. At one point he walks slowly by a
table piled with vegetables - his hand darts out and grabs a yellow bell
pepper, and when he bites into it, it gives off the loudest fucking crunch
that any vegetable has ever made. He slowly turns to the camera and gazes
at you; by now I'm usually standing up, the excitment is so great that I
can't bear to sit. I'm not exaggerating, I'm that easily amused. Anyway,
they then show you the master chefs that are the resident "Iron Chefs",
each in a powerful pose, clutching food that is important to their
discipline. They are Iron Chef Chinese, Iron Chef Japanese, Iron Chef
Italian, and the other one which escapes me at the moment. Then they give
you a little history about the Challenger Chef. This part always makes me
think of Indiana Jones for some reason. Then the focus changes to the
Kitchen Arena, where the challenger picks which Iron Chef he's to do battle
with. I kid you not, when the Iron Chef is chosen, he rises up from a hole
in the floor, complete with dry ice and ominous music. Then they introduce
the panel of judges, which generally consists of a famous Japanese
musician, a male and a female actor, and this lady who is a fortune teller.
The fortune teller seems to be in a lot of the shows, and it is her who
hurt me so badly. Now comes the time when the creator of the show waxes
poetically about whatever theme ingredient the chefs have to use; he
tailors his soliloquoy so that you don't know what the ingredient is until
it too rises from the floor. Then the contest begins! The chefs have an
hour to create five dishes based on the theme ingredient (including dessert
- one of the Iron Chefs once made ice cream out of fish, and the panel had
to use the fins as spoons), and they are marked on flavour and artistic
quality. There is a roving reporter with a camera that walks around the
arena while the panel discusses what's going on. Someone on the panel will
say something like "Is he using guinea fowl with the bamboo shoots? Does he
not know the flavours don't complement each other?", then the reporter will
say "I asked the challenger, and yes, he is using guinea fowl, but he says
that it's an American dish and the flavours will come together nicely at
the end, and that the Iron Chef had better hustle if he's to make a dish as
artistic as this one!" By this point I have pissed myself and I can't stop
smiling. Well, the show goes on like this for an hour, then the panel of
judges sample the meals, and decide on a winner. To me, the ending is
always anti-climactic. Well, that's the history, and now here's the
specific story that I wanted to tell. One night I was watching the show,
and the theme was asparagus. The show was called "Asparagus Battle". The
Iron Chef wasn't prepared for asparagus - I think he was Iron Chef
Japanese, and I guess they don't use asparagus too much - so he was going
more for artistic presentation than flavour. The whole thing was so stupid
that I was laughing almost constantly, asthma inhaler nearby. One of the
dishes he came up with was asparagus steamed in lobster and rock salt or
some such monstrosity. When the fortune teller sampled that dish, she spat
it out and yelled "You have offended our taste buds!" I couldn't handle
this and lost it, it was so Kung-Fu movie. As I laughed, I felt a twinge in
my stomach, and then I started to throw up. It was really weird, I didn't
feel sick at all, but I couldn't stop puking. I thought nothing of it; I
figured that it was just over excitment. Well, about a month later I
noticed that while I was once an "inny" (belly-button wise, natch) I was
now quickly becoming an "outty". I went to my doc, and sure enought, when I
was laughing I had ruptured my abdomen, and I herniated my belly button.
When I threw up, it was because a nerve was involved as well as a few feet
of intestine, and that triggered the upchuckerism. So the Iron Chef
literally made me bust a gut laughing.

If this has piqued your interest at all, rejoice in the awesome thing that
is the web.

I should mention that Inky said that I could"name my price" for the Santa poster, then offered me a box of Happy Meal toys in trade. Uhh--I'll pass! If I ever do sell it, I'll just do what the guy who sold it to me didn't: Put it on eBay, but this time with "MST3K" in the description. And watch out for snakes. Chili peppers burn my gut.

SHAWT: I need some cheap wine for cooking.
ME: Right here (shows her pints of chablis & burgundy)
HER: Red or white, which 1 am I supposed to use?
ME: Well, it depends on the recipe.
HER: I didn't read it that far. (buys 1 of each)
"How much beef did it say to use?" "I dunno, just give me a whole cow."

Kill Kill has a new Adorably Cute Thing--She jumps into the living room window to watch me drive to work. With such a tiny head , at 3 stories up she looks like someone crouching behind the window, popping a hand up with a sock puppet. It's so funny. I keep expecting Shari Lewis to stand next to her & wave. Which would be unwelcome, what with Shari being dead & stuff.

SHAWT: Where's the sherry?
ME: In front of you.
HER: Where?
ME: Right in front of you.
HER: Oh! I looked eveywhere but there!
...As she said to the cops after plowing through kindergarten...

The torrent of hits from cruel.com continues--I have no idea why; it was a week ago. I've noticed that the Archive of old Obs saw this big spike in hits about 3 weeks ago--hmm, I wonder why that was. So, again, I browsed for my page. Never found out, but--Jeez, there are a lot of links to it. Most are of the free page pile-of-links variety (1 page had a good thousand undescribed links on it...who wants to wade through that?). Another had the Survival Taxidermy pic, which amuses me in that it also immortalizes my car. The 1 that threw me: A mention in the LA TIMES! Funny, I don't recall any increase in hits that week...
So I spent 20 minutes filling out damn forms in order to pay $2 to read the article. Here it is in its entirety, as I want my gourdamn $2 worth:

Thursday, December 9, 1999 
Home Edition 
Section: Business 
Page: C-6 

The Cutting Edge / Personal Technology 

Your Internet Guide 

Click Here 

By: ROBERT BURNS 

A roundup of recommended Web sitesWorld view: UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies
offers up Conver- sations With History (http://globetrotter .berkeley.edu/conversations), a series of
interviews with distinguished men and women from all over the world and from several different fields.

No luck: There are no good fortunes at the Bad Cookie: http://www.badcookie.com. Bad cookie!
Bad! And get your Chinese characters right. 

What were they thinking? The Inexplicable Object of the Week (http://www.geocities
.com/vienna/9938/objec.html) proves why some things are better left unexplained. 

Translate this: Now you can e-mail the Fatherland in the Mother Tongue. Translate Mail
(http://www.t-mail.com) will convert your English e-mail into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or
German (or any of those languages back into English).

How bored are you? Not as bored as Eric, I'll bet. Eric Conveys an Emotion
(http://www.emotioneric.com) showcases the innate evil of the digital camera. Eric, does your mother
know you're doing this?

Home repairs: If you can't fix it with duct tape, it's probably time to replace it. Duct Tape on the Web
(http://www.octane.com /ducttape) has everything you always wanted to know about the miracle tool.

Home is where the tin is: Sure, you can order your Austin Powers/Billy Bob dentures at Dr. Bukk's
(http://www.drbukk.com), but the real treasure at this Web site is Great Mobile Homes of
Mississippi.

Want to suggest a Web site? E-mail click.here@latimes.com. 


           PHOTO: (no caption)
           PHOTO: (no caption)
           PHOTO: (no caption)
           PHOTO: (no caption) 


            

           Copyright (c) 1999 Times Mirror Company

Speaking of the net: YAY! etoy has beaten hateful eToys! (thanks to spotti@trunkhose.com for the good news!) Not that I had much to do with it...All I did was what a bunch of pages did, suck their bandwidth over Xmas week with a graphic linked to their server (mine on the InExOb). Coincidentally, that's the same week it was a Yahoo Pick of the Year & got over 10K in hits. Maybe it didn't do much, but it didn't help eToys either. Lazy-ass Americans like to justify not raising a pinky to do anything with the excuse, "What difference can 1 person make?" But an army of millions is really only millions of raised pinkies.

SHAWT: (after I refuse to sell to him cuz he's using an expired ID) You've lost MY business!
I lost the business of someone I can't sell to?! But that's our main demographic! Man, this could hurt us as badly as it did the Pork Palace when they stopped doing bar mitzvahs!

2/23

The Cooler Drone at the main store went home sick, so I had to go over there to cover for him. On the way, I passed a sign on the rental place: "Hurry In To Reserve Your Fall Lawn Care Products!" I didn't realize that there was an 8-month waiting list for leaf blowers...
And I make fun of people who still have their Xmas decorations up.

On a bottle of Fruitopia: "Not a significant source of fiber." Well, yeah, being liquid & all, I can see that. Ya know, now that the baby Boomers are becoming Senile Tumors, that might be a direction the soft drink industry should move into. (WARNING! PUERILE COMEDY AHEAD!!) Sell Bran-ada Dry Ginger Ale, maybe. Dr. Pooper. Mountain Doo-Doo. Crapple. Shite (UK only). I'll-be-out-in-a-Minute Maid Juices. Surge (which would still be called Surge). And, of course, COCA-COLON!!

2/24

An old guy wearing a brimmed 1950s hat & fuzzy slippers with black dress socks shuffles into the store, so I already know that I'm in for a treat. He's bringing in empties, & I can see he has some wacky ones we can't get credit for. ME: We don't take those, & these don't have any deposit on them.
HIM: Do they have deposit anywhere?
ME: I dunno, prly in Maine they do.
HIM (tone of excitement): I go to Maine sometimes!
Woo! 3 hour drive, but you'll clear 15 cents!
He puts his empties in the box & says "I have 16." It looks like more than 16 to me, so I start to count them.
HIM (tone of anger): 16! I said 16!!
Whatever. I give him his receipt.
HIM (pointing at a 6 pack of his): What, don't you carry these?!
ME: Yeah.
HIM (tone of someone being ripped off): Then why isn't it on the slip?!
ME (tone of someone who deals with too many idiots every day) Cuz you kept saying you had 16!!

2/25

The guy who left the drinking game thing (BTW, it'll prly be the next InEx, as I'm lazy) was in. I think he had a new game, 1 called Get Drunk & Try To Cut Your Hair With An Electric Razor While Looking in the Mirror. He lost. It ranged from 2 inches to none in length, looking like aliens left a crop circle on his head. Maybe he finally caught up to the 10-yr-old fad of shaving words in your hair, & decided to do 10 or 20 sentences in Arabic.

Man, 2 weeks. This was the fastest-filled New ever.