"I'm not afraid of the End of the World!"
--The Plastics, "Top Secret Man"
11/9
Jessica's father has a job assembling bikes for Toys R Us, & she gave me a pair of kids' shirts he got for free, advertising some sort of EXTREME! bike. I put them aside & forgot about them until a coupla days ago, when I got (also for free) an old 166MZ Pookie from work. I wanted to put the computer on the kitchen table (that's in the bedroom--long story), but the shirts were in the way. I picked them up, & they had an odd stain on them. Huh. I wonder what that's from, I thought as I threw them in the hamper.
It didn't hit me until today that they must've had the scent from Jessie's cat Marjoriam on them. And thus, Kill Kill went wee-wee on them.
They went from the hamper to the trash today.
OK, lots of links, late at night, no time for much commenting.
"Summers certainly didn’t mean to send us into panic and maybe the whole thing is the equivalent of telling a man who’s on fire that his zipper is open, but right now we just don’t need the added stress of a DJ playing stupid tricks on us."
Isaac Azimov's classic series "The Foundation Trilogy" has been a big success in the Mideast, with an Arabic translation selling quite well. The translated title in Arabic is Al Qaida.
In some alternate universe, bin Laden moved to America & became a frequenter of sci-fi coms. And the most terrifying act of his was his personal hygiene.
A long & interesting article on who really wrote Shakespeare. If the subject matter doesn't interest you, it's prly just long.
"In an interview with Attitude magazine in 1995, film actor Keanu Reeves said the project he'd most want to work on is a life-story of Edward de Vere as Shakespeare."
Keanu as Shakespeare. Oh, please sign me up for a big slice of THAT Heaven! And Queen Elizabeth could be played by Britney!
(That last part was sarcastic)
[Not Sarcastic] Hey--that new Tick show was REALLY GOOD! Not as funny as the cartoon, but still. The Tick is actually denser than in the cartoon. This exchange sums it up...
ARTHUR: (after railing about superheroes being shallow) No offense intended!
TICK: (cheerfully) None comprehended!!
Wow, a worthwhile Cruel Site of the Day.
My new obsession: Choline. It appears to prevent Alzheimersish brain problems, especially if your mom got a lot of it while she was pregnant with you (but it still doesn't hurt to take it now). Since it's made in your liver, the best source is...liver. Well, no wonder Hannibal Lecter is so smart. On the other hand, the next best source is an egg.
What?! I have to eat 2 easily-prepared, delicious hard-boiled eggs to get my USRDA of choline EVERY SINGLE DAY?
Well, it's not like eating slimy slices of liver, but I guess that I can force myself...
Note: "Because the best-known choline-rich foods tend to be animal products, especially ones high in fat, he worries that vegans and those who have successfully pared most fat from their diet may be vulnerable." The article's worth your attention if you fall into either of those categories. (Short version: Taking a soy-based lecithin supplement can cover your choline requirements without eating animal products)
11/12
I just got a UPS package from Amazon, & I am now DONE WITH XMAS SHOPPING.
I mention that merely to annoy you.
(Actually, I still have to get something for KMDS, but we've exchanged gifts in February, so KMDS doesn't count)
I went to a party at Scott's Saturday. KMDS was there, & KMDS immediately said "Be careful what you say, it could be on the web tonight!" In fact, KMDS said it more than once. Later on, I met Scott's girlfriend for the 1st time. "You're Bill? The guy with the crazy web page? I'd better be careful what I say!"
I don't think I'll say anything about that party.
KMDS also complained about me calling him KMDS on this page, so I guess that I can't call him KMDS anymore. KMDS's real name is Kevin. Remember that from now on: KMDS = Kevin.
By the way, KMDS stands for "Kinda Mentally Deficient Suckah."
I thought that the current Doonesbury story thread about reporter Roland Hedley going to Afghanistan dressed as a woman was a joke. No, it's based on fact. Interesting article, highlighting that the Taliban are just the big bully in town, not anybody's choice to lead the government. My favorite part: "Mr. Peyrard said the younger guards liked to practice their English with him, repeating: 'This is a jail. This is a cell. This is a mouse.' When the American planes flew over, they shouted, 'This is Mr. Bush!' When the bombardments slowed, they shouted, 'This is Mr. Bush droopy!'"
Aren't we lucky that we don't live in a police state like the Afghani do! Or, at least we WERE lucky: The truth about the USA PATRIOT bill, from a reputable magazine.
"Let's say we go whole hog with our national ID and store 50 pages of text per U.S. resident in the database." Hey, let's say we go whole Magog and just tattoo 666 on our foreheads!
According to this, I have a 6.3% chance of being laid off next year.
Wacky Packages for The 00s: Silly CDs. Heavily oriented towards bodily effluents, but this one's pretty clever. (Or maybe I'm just old!)
11/13
New Blender of Love is up--Congratulations, Luna!
So...Kabul's been captured. War's over now, right?
Well, let's hope that these are the last belligerent links you'll see here.
Mike Snard emailed me (a few days ago--I forgot! Sorry, Mr Snard!) about the headline "Emboldened Afghan Resistance Targets Strategic City." "And my 'pattern recognition' circuits initially told me 'embroidered afghan' instead of the real words. Luckily I'd put down my coffee cup seconds earlier, or I'd be cleaning out my keyboard right now instead of typing this email to you."
Dan at work said that he'd heard that people weren't calling the blankets "afghans" anymore. I don't know if that's true (it was also a joke headline on the Onion a bit back, & some Fundies still circulate their joke about the "Harry Potter" author confessing that she's a Satanist). However, it's a fact that back in WWI when we were fighting Germany, patriotic Ameriduhians started calling "saurkraut" "Liberty Cabbage." And even started coming down with "Liberty Measles." "I got the most freedom-loving pox of ALL!" scratch scratch scratch
(Speaking of Fundies, Spare the Rod & you won't kill the child. "It was his attempt to teach his daughter about responsibility,'' Area 2 Sgt. Stan Salabura said. Yeah, well, if she learned, she's waiting in the afterlife to teach YOU a few things. Obviously, Christians have NO respect for HUMAN LIFE! Where's Christianistan, so that we can bomb it?)
Let's hope the Rebel Allia--err, Northern Alliance is better at governing than they are at Kung Fu!
HMMM...bin Laden claims to have nukes & germs but only in the English translation of his speech. HMMM....That's...odd. Was it subtracted from the Urdu version, or added to the English version? HMMM....
Scott asks "Have you read this? This wacko from work told me I had to read this. He also told me he has been talking to the Postal Inspectors and the F.B.I cause he thinks he knows who is behind the anthrax cases. And to think he's only a Clerk."
It's proof that you can prove anything by looking long enough, & ignoring everything that doesn't fit your crazy theory. Paranoid wackos!
Several websites have claimed that the Gummint blowed up the WTC in order to force through Draconian security measures that destroy the Constitution & allow their Corporate owners to take over the country! YEAH, like our own government would even think of killing its own people for some secret agenda!
"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro."
Umm. That would've meant WWIII. Global Thermonuclear War.
So...War's over, right? We get that USA PATRIOT bill repealed now, right? No secret courts, no warrantless searches, no detentions without charges or even evidence, those are gone, right? Good ol' Constitution, right back where that beautiful babe started, right?
Right?
11/14
Silly Miss Kill Kill. Tonight she's done little except stare at me, ignore any thrown toy mice, & retire to 1 of her many beds to nap, before doing it all over again.
Yesterday she was full of cat beans, yelling at the ceiling & jumping on the kitchen counter & demanding entrance to the cabinet. I think that there are real mice scurrying in the attic, as this happens at least once a month. She must scare them away when she does it, but that's not good enough for her hunting instinct. And so the rest of the night becomes the chasing & gutting of toy mice.
I wonder what she would've thought 6 winters ago. We had the Worst Winter Ever, & I heard something in the attic. If they were mice, they were fucking DOG-SIZED MICE. I figured out that the only local wildlife that could climb up 3 stories to the attic were the raccoons from the woods behind the condo. (They quickly sealed off the parts of the attic that were coon-accessible, but there's prly holes big enough for field mice to get it).
I mentioned & you forgot that the heating element for my waterbed burnt out. You forgot because, who the hell cares? I haven't replaced it because 1) I'd have to drain the water out & 2) it can get kinda chilly in there, but it makes every night "good sleeping weather." Even with the 3 layers of covers above me & 4 below & me wearing a sweatsuit with a tshirt & socks. I sleep even better as KK now avoids the colder part of the bed & uses me as a body pillow.
The clock radio went off this morning, & I was so enwombed (new word!) between the covers & the cat that I fell right back to sleep. That never happens. Since I leave NO extra time to get to work, I had to race there. I pulled some high Gs at the corner with the telephone pole sign "I'M LOOKING FOR 10-30 PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GET PAID TO LOSE WEIGHT," but caught something bumper-sticker-sized plastered across it. Going flat out on the straightaway, the "SELF-EMPLOYED? FINALLY AFFORDABLE MEDICAL & DENTAL INSURANCE" sign had the same sticker: "BAN STREET SPAM!" I knew I was about to come up to the "WANT TO EARN $500-$5,000 A MONTH ON YOUR HOME COMPUTER? WWW.JOB-B-GONE" sign. And it occurred to me that there MUST be an url on those stickers...
Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam.
I think that the link's less amusing than the fact that it exists. Though I'd be happy to never see another "HERBAL WEIGHT LOSS FORMULA" sign.
I'm psyched about the upcoming Bill "Zippy the Pinhead" Griffith gallery show at Real Art Ways on 12/1, especially as it includes a talk (& hopefully a signing!). Griffy lives in CT now. I was talking to KMD--er, KEVIN!--about Griffith's penchant for drawing local scenes, especially diners. I remember being startled to see a strip he drew not long after moving to CT from Frisco, with Zippy paddling a kayak past the Hartford skyline. I instantly knew exactly where Griffith was standing when he drew it! "We could be in a diner, & he could be outside drawing it!" I said.
That volcano-shaped church is TWO MILES FROM MY HOUSE!! The path through the woods behind the condo leads right to it!
If I can find a copy of today's paper tomorrow, maybe I can get him to sign it!
Just up the street from the church is the Vernon Diner, where Kevin & I ate about a month ago. I wonder if Griffy got the Meatloaf Dinner.
Noah's flood, the collapse of ancient civilizations, & today's crazy Apocalypse-obsessed Fundies of every stripe may all be the result of
a comet crashing in 2350 BC & blowing everything up, blowin' it up reeeal good! Hey, thanks, Comet Encke! What'd we ever do to YOU?!
It's an interesting article, but I also like that the discoverer of the possible crater is named "Sharad Master," which sounds just like the name of a comic book villain who'd be a-slammin' comets into the Earth to destroy civilization. And also the fact that the crater's in Iraq. How could they tell? Iraq's got more craters than we have Street Spam.
11/17
So there's been another pause in posting. Naught to worry about. As in real life, if I have nothing to say, I say nothing. If only more people felt that way--well, it'd at least be quieter.
I'm surprised that it took me until today to catch this: Know how the Media keeps saying that Big Dick Cheney is being whisked away to an "undisclosed secret location"?
If it WAS disclosed, it wouldn't be SECRET, now would it?!
"The Dickster is being carefully hidden at the Mall food court, near the Nathan's Famous. He's the baldo with the permanent sneer, eating the foot-long with extra relish, and using a oil company CEO as a chair."
"Foreign terrorists who commit war crimes," [Ashcroft] says, "do not deserve the protections of the American Constitution."
"That assertion would make the Constitution's authors weep. They wrote it not to create special rights for Americans alone, but to enumerate and enshrine the 'unalienable rights' the nation's founders considered a universal birthright. The principles it recognizes - that people are born equal, that freedom must not be limited without just cause, that trials must be public and fair, that defendants are innocent until proven guilty - are far older than this nation. The document was written to protect not just SUV owners in American suburbs, but also criminal suspects in poorly lit cells."
Hopefully, Congress will pull its collective head out of its anthrax & start removing the truly terrifying powers Herr Busch & his fellow Nazis have been awarded, before our voting booths are bought from North Korea & have only a one-party lever.
From Kirk: some Sony Playstation ads. Yeah, let me download some ads! It's not like I don't get enough banners & Orbitz pop-ups as it is! No, wait, they're worth it.
How would you launch your new toy?
"Hey, Mr CEO, let's get DAVID LYNCH to direct our spots!"
"Who is this...David Lunch?"
"He directed 'Blue Velvet,' 'Eraserhead,' and that new smash box office hit, 'Mulholland Drive'!"
"Hmm...Let me appear to think...Blue Velveeta? I LOVE Velveeta! I guess that they have a new bleu cheese flavor! And I really appreciate that pencils have erasers, & Mulholland, that's near Hollywood, right? Where top Hollywood stars live, like--"
"Kyle MacLachlan!!"
"Oh, yes! Kyle...Mac...Laff...Keanu Reeves! And where they drink the finest champagne!"
"PABST BLUE RIBBON!!!"
"This David Lump, he sounds like our man!"
(evil cackling) "YEAH...ALL the kids just SO love the damn fine DAVID LYNCH! EHH-heh heh heh!"
"Uhh...What are doing to that human ear?"
"Nothin'."
Lie detectors do one thing: Tell if you're nervous about being hooked up to a lie detector.
I know. I was once hooked up to one. All I did was worry that it would show me reacting wrong, in some way I couldn't foresee.
Nah, I wasn't a terrorist. It was a job interview. It was for a job arming nuclear warheads.
Okay, it was for Rite Aid, a drug store chain that NO ONE ON GOURD'S GOOD GREEN EARTH SHOULD EVER WORK FOR. I've disparaged them before in this space. They gave me their stupid lie detector test, & the guy administrating it growled, "Well, I guess you're not THAT big of a liar or thief," which is what he said to everybody who passed.
The joke of the polygraph is that it only measures the nervousness people get being on a polygraph. Very good liars or thieves? They ace it every time.
My assistant manager at my 1st Rite Aid was named Herman Williams. I mentally gave him the nickname "Human Waste," as he was incredibly lazy & drank on the job. On inventory day, my boss, my boss's boss, & even my boss's boss's boss were in attendance. I punched into the security keypad, & weirdly, the alarm went off. That should only happen if the alarm wasn't set the night before (when Herman had closed). I called the alarm company, then opened the safe to get the cash register drawers out.
Human Waste left us the rolls of pennies. Everything above a penny he'd stolen. $4,000.
And guess who had passed the lie detector test with flying colors.
Kitty's sweetheart, thatBoy or Chameleon or Wombat or, I as I like to call him, "That Lucky Bastard!" sent this article on Next-Gen lie detecting. It's either a relief or really creepy. It depends on whose hands it's in--the courts, or Ashcroft's.
11/18
Inevitable:
As I predicted, anthrax hoaxes will not be tolerated by Almighty Ashcroft! Unless they're against abortion clinics! As always, terrorism is in the eye of the government beholder.
Speaking of predictions, you'd have thought that everyone in Ameriduh would've realized that Psychic Powers didn't exist when 9/11 slipped under the ESP radar. But then again, there are stupid, superstitious morons who continue to believe in it. Unfortunately,
they're in the FBI & the CIA. Why would they use them to predict future terrorist attacks when they missed the biggest ever? I already answered that: stupidity, superstition, and the fact that they're morons.
That link goes off into a nice anti-PARTIOT bill rant:
"We all know terrorism is bad and we're all against it, but will we know it when we are arrested for it? How broad is the definition? Is it as broad as the definition proposed for South Africa where there is fear that under the new anti-terrorism law 'young pranksters or ordinary trade union members could be convicted of terrorism and jailed for life.' If it's defined broadly enough, participating in a public demonstration against government policies where someone throws a rock may be prosecuted under the terrorism bill. Maybe terrorism includes criticizing the government as it takes more liberties from the people and moves forward with policies identical to disastrous past policies. For all we know, the government may consider it a terrorist act for the television mass media to do their news without the American flag waving in the foreground."
An amusing Xmas shirt from Cap'n Wacky (that site currently under invasion by Robot Kitties).
11/19
I had another Mall of Earth dream last night.
The Mall of Earth is a recurring dreamscape of mine. In the near future, it's a dozen-story high mall/apartment building; over the decades it becomes 100-story high skyscrapers, & over the centuries it covers every square foot of land on Earth.
What's interesting to me is the internal consistency--When the Mall is new, I'm me; but the last Mall dream I had was set centuries from now, & in the dream I was a bio-engineered cyborg with onboard nanotechnology & thought nothing of the daily rocket flights to the Mall of Mars. (The stores in that Mall were the same as today, except that instead of antibiotics, CVS sold nanites-in-a-jar for your cybernetic healing)
Last night's was set early on in the Mall's history. I was running a liquor store, but it was run out of the front of my Mall apartment. We also sold ice cream cakes. Kill Kill was in it (the dream, not the ice cream cakes). She was neck deep in water in the bathroom sink. "You hate water, you're a CAT!" I reminded her, & so she jumped out of the sink & fell in the toilet. That's basically what happened once when she was a kitten (minus the neck-deep water in the sink).
She popped into bed & woke me just before the alarm was to go off, then decided to jump onto the bookcase that's the head of the bed. In an uncharacteristic moment of stumblebummery, she went head-first into the Iron Giant bank that's up there, knocking my world globe onto the floor. That's the 1st time she's done something that physically inept since the toilet incident.
So the dream was marginally prophetic. Maybe I should brush up on my ice cream cake knowledge.
If that incident with the globe was a 50s sci-fi movie, it'd be called "Earth vs the Flying Killsies" or "Kit Conquered the World!"
Michelle Gleason sends a link:
"Who's the Sanrio brother who's a ba-a-ad doggie?"
"Shut yo' mouth!"
"I'm just talkin' 'bout AfroKen!"
"Then we can dig it!"
Brunching Shuttlecocks on the new game systems. From a guy who's spent a collective 11 years in the video game retail wars, buy NONE of them. Wait until next Summer when there's a clear winner, or consign yourself to being happy to play the same handful of CDs from the discontinued loser system you bought.
"Virtual Boy"! AHH-HAHAHAHA!! I still laff every time I think about that!!
"Britons whose relatives died in the terror attack on the World Trade Center are eligible for financial compensation if they were traumatized by watching television coverage of the catastrophe." $38,600--that should cover the cost of a remote with a "POWER OFF" button.
Where rock bands got their weird names. Interesting! Even if you get explanations like this:
"HELIOS CREED - Helios was an ancient sun god. The Collosus of Rodan (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) was a huge statue depicting Helios."
The Collosus of Rodan?! Is that like the Great Pirramid at Godzilla?
11/20
After 2 on&off hours of me typing, Windows decided to crash! Now it's all gone!
If Windows was a guy, how many times a day would he be beaten to death?
Well, I've been staring at this screen for 10 minutes, & I do NOT want to recreate all that typing. Good Night, Gourd Bless, & Blame Windows.
11/21
This will get you very, very depressed.
From Kirk, something that will make you laugh.
The stuff I lost yesterday was pretty good. Several bits of the old spur-of-the-moment, fit-of-inspiration funny stuff. I even thought that I'd finally ditched the down mood this page's had for the last 2 months. I was going into the editor to save it when Windows crashed & burned. I've been in a down mood regarding writing since, so this is all you get tonight.
11/23
"New Federal Patriot Act Turns Retailers into Spies against Customers"
But only against customers that spend more than $10,000 in cash. And also if they spend a cumulative $10,000 in cash over several sales. And also if they spend LESS than $10,000 "if it's done to keep a business from contacting the government," however the fuck we're supposed to know that THAT'S what they're doing. No word as to the statute of limitations on that $10K. I've prly spent that much cash on food or gasoline over my life.
On the plus side--My desire as a little kid in the late 60s is finally fulfilled!
I'm now a SPY!!
"Gimme a pint of Bukoff!" the toothless bum slobbered. He paid with a greasy, crumpled twenty.
He stumbled through the door of the liquor store & into an alley. He glanced around furtively as he unscrewed the cap to the cheap vodka. He held the bottle to his chapped lips, hands shaking...
A shuriken flashed & the bottle was broken.
"God fucking DAMN!" he yelled. "Who the fuck spilt my Bukoff?!"
A man in a tuxedo stepped from the shadows. "My name is Young," he said, pausing to eat a Skittle. "Bill Young."
"W-who?" mumbled the bum, his toothless gums trembling.
"Don't play games with me!" said Agent Double-Oh Nothing. "You've spent $10,000 on Bukoff vodka! You can still smell the Downy dryer sheets on the money--You're laundering it! That makes you a terrorist--Doctor Smirnoff!"
The hunched back of the aged bum abruptly straightened. He gained a foot in height as he ripped away his filthy rags to reveal his muscular build & his own tuxedo. He opened his mouth, & a full set of razor-sharp titanium fangs sprung out of his gums. "SO, Young! We meet again for the last time! This time, you won't be defeating my EVIL PLOT to turn the whole world into pate-eating, Jerry Lewis-loving, ill-mannered FRENCHMEN, throwing me off the Eiffel Tower, smashing my teeth & forcing me into--"
"--Drooling a lot? Yeah yeah, cut the plot exposition already."
"I was NOT going to say DROOLING!" raged Dr Smirnoff. He raced towards OO0, with his jaws agape like a shark & full of shiny teeth of really grim, pointy import.
Young scooped up a handful of garbage & threw it into Smirnoff's piehole. "Hey, McGOOF! Take a bite out of GRIME!"
Smirnoff spat out the old coffee filters & used condoms. "What? THAT'S your best spy witticism?"
"Sorry. I was a liquor store manager up till now. I only became a spy today. Though Q did give me one of these!" The toes of his black Converse All Star sneakers opened, & 10 little buzzsaws came out.
"Feh! I, too, have a buzzsaw!" Smirnoff's bow tie began spinning at 12,000RPM. "Now you shall DIE, 00O! You shall DI--"
And Smirnoff cut his own head off.
Young shook his head in disbelief. Then he shook Smirnoff's head just for the hell of it, before tossing it through a basketball hoop. "Bow tie buzz saw. Who comes up with stupid shit like that?" He took a step forward and his sneaker buzz saws chewed into the asphalt, throwing chunks everywhere as he fell face-first into the garbage.
"Q is an asshole," he thought.
He rifled Smirnoff's pockets as he dabbed his tuxedo hankie at his bleeding nose. He pulled out a business card. "I knew it! Smirnoff was working for the sinister secret evil organization of B.U.K.O.F.F.!"
B.U.K.O.F.F.! The Brutal Underground Killing Organization For F! Too evil to be believed! Too powerful to be escaped! Too drunk to come up with a word for the 2nd F!
He activated his ponytail jetpack & flew away, thankful that sinister secret evil organizations still gave out business cards.
Now it would be a face-to-face battle against himself & B.U.K.O.F.F.'s leader, Ernst Stavros Bukoff. The odds were against 00O, but he had an ace in the hole. Or, at least, a cat in the bag.
He opened the bag & a little face poked out. "Mew?"
"Kill Kill! Want to save civilization as we know it? Wanna save civilization as we know it, huh? Huh honey, huh little white cat?
"You know, Bukoff has a white cat, too. Gay fag looser longhaired persian. You wanna kick its ass, huh honey?"
"MeeeeOW!" KK affirmed.
"Tonight at Bukoff's secret base, there'll be a showdown between you & his dumb longhaired cat! There will be--PUSSIES GALORE!"
Groan, thought Kill Kill. THAT'S a spy witticism?!
Last week I bought a keyboard at Big Lots, & today I returned it. Nothing wrong with it; it had a PS/2 plug, whereas my Pookie takes an AT. (I tried Radio Shack for an adaptor, but it cost almost as much as the keyboard.) The place was jam-packed with the Xmas rush, packed as jam could be packed. Kind of a sad thought, actually; a treefull of presents courtesy of Jerry Van. They actually had a couple of plush "Close-Out Guy"s (JVD's predecessor, the Insane Smelly Fat Guy in his Underwear.) I REALLY wanted one, but they only had 2--One with a face stitched so cheaply that it looked like half his jaw was blown out during the Price Wars. The other guy looked okay, but when I put him down to ask how much he cost, his glasses & eyes fell off.
Even Big Lots' Chinese prison labor knew that this was a toy not worth putting any effort into.
A month or two ago I asked if "Tourist Guy on the WTC" was the next "All Your Base." The answer is Yes.
Ever wonder what happened to those British synth-pop bands of the 80s, like OMD, Betty Boo or Cathy Dennis? They're making a good living, but maybe you don't wanna know how. S Club 7?! YIG.
Welcome to Bill's WORLD of SCIENCE!
NASA looks at the first real step towards making human colonies in space possible:
SPACE BEER!
"Using a trillion living cells, a group of scientists have developed a computing device small enough to fit in a drop of water." Wow, this could be the future of PDAs! You could call it the "Sweaty Palm"!
11/25
After posting that last entry, I read the Big Lots flyer I got yesterday. In typical Van Dykeian fashion, it enthused over the fact that Big Lots would be open early Friday & Saturday, with free giveaways for the 1st 300 customers--in a flyer that didn't hit anybody's mailbox before midmorning Saturday. The Close-Out Guy plush was prly 1 of the freebies. If I'd asked how much he was, I coulda had one!
I briefly thought about going there today, but another freebie was a $5 gift certificate, which was only redeemable today. So every Big Lot would have an extra 300 customers, since $5 at Big Lots can almost fill a shopping cart.
I kid the Jerry Van, but I LOVE the Big Lots!
Instead I went antiquing & bought something.
Well, I think that i'm going to watch "Star Wars: Crapisode One" for the 2nd time ever, & see if I still agree with my original opinion (About halfway down at the 6/9/99 entry).
11/267:06
"Final SCOOORRE! Patriots 34, Saints 14!"
SHUT UP & SHOW THE DAMN MOVIE ALREADY!
7:10
Racing F15 jets, huge aircraft carriers, men in uniform, waving giant flag: "This program brought to you by Fox Sports!" Huh? Wha? The football players? The soldiers? What's the connection??
7:11
I was going to blog Episode 1 yesterday, but that's as far as I got.
I read a book review today that referred to 70s author Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods":
Kiru on Sister Smile: "You think the singing nun is odd, eh? Well, let me tell you something about 'Dominique'.
St Dominic, in addition to founding the Dominican order of monks and seeing the virgin coat unfurled, whatever that means, also founded the Inquisition, killer of around a quarter million people in Europe. So, the next time you hear that lilting chorus, think thumbscrews, think the rack, think the Iron Maiden.
Just don't think about Monty Python."
If I had any programming skills, a coupla months ago I would've made a "Mad Libs" kinda thing that took Dubya's speeches about evil terrorists & replaced every "evil!" with a random word, like "peppermint-scented," "free-range," "Born Again," "floppy," "cum-gargling," or "dumb as a frat boy." It wouldn't have worked, since he uses evil also as a noun, usually within 5 words of evil as an adjective. The next best thing: The Evil Synonym Generator. "We all know that President Dubya is having a hard time coming up with words to describe 'terrorists' other than 'evil doers.' So where do you go for help? Why not to the indisputed master of darkness himself? Use the handy online 'evil thesaurus' below to automatically generate a random phrase that H.P. Lovecraft would have used in this time of national crisis."
 | Saruman If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Saruman, Wizard, the leader of the council of wizards. In the movie, I am played by Christopher Lee. Who would you be? |
11/27
A thoughtful article on The War: "The Constitution is not a naive document. It was written by men who had just gone through a nasty war. The framers knew about spies, secrets, sabotage and treachery. They created a document designed to protect the union from tyranny.
They knew a lot about tyranny too.
Tyranny always wears the garments of necessity."
Funny Lileks Bleat reviewing Planet of the Apes: “We’re entering a monkey intensive phase of space exploration.”
Yeah, why would you use chimps instead of computers to fly your space ship? It's like how Star Wars: Psychotic Episode 1 had slaves slaving for a GUY WITH ROBOTS. What, did robots have the right to vote or something?
When "some writing" on a poster is investigated by federal authorities. Wilkommen to der future.
11/28I remember when 1984 came, & there was all this talk about how "wrong" the novel "1984" was "about the future."
"1984" was written in 1948, get it? It was about what Stalin or Hitler would've done if they ran the present world of 1948 with the proper technology.
THOUGHTCRIME, 2001: "A list compiled by a conservative nonprofit group accuses scholars, students and even a university president of what they call unpatriotic behavior after Sept. 11.
"The Rev. Jesse Jackson made the list for remarking to an audience at Harvard Law School that America should 'build bridges and relationships, not simply bombs and walls.' Joel Beinin, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Stanford University, earned a place on it for his opinion that 'If Osama bin Laden is confirmed to be behind the attacks, the United States should bring him before an international tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity.' And Wasima Alikhan of the Islamic Academy of Las Vegas was there simply for saying 'Ignorance breeds hate.'"
WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Founding member of The American Council: Mrs Cheney.
The Council says that these improper thoughts can be fixed by teaching more American history, but I'm sure that they mean "teach American history" in the same way that Japan "teaches" the history of WWII. Throw those history books down the Memory Hole; they don't teach the right history.
"The War on Terrorism will take years or decades."
"Oceania will always be at war with Eurasia."
Watch this brief video, then click on the link. 11/29 Karl sez:
My response: "Rudolph, the cross-nailed reindeer, All of the other reindeer 11/30 A week ago, I walked into to work & heard "Mack the Knife." And I was so happy. 12/1 I almost said yesterday "Now he's REALLY the Quiet One!" but that would've been a tasteless thing to say, so I won't even mention it.
"I had my first assault of Christmas music at the laundromat I did a load at tonight. Do we need another excuse for consumption here in America, now that it's in the name of patriotism?
S A N T A
B L E S S
A M E R I C A"
Huge honky in the sky, white beard, knows everything that you do & rewards or punishes you accordingly, has magical helpers, send to him your deepest wishes & he may/may not answer them...I think that you're on to something!
Santa's favorite reindeer died for our sins!
Had all these stigmata red;
And if you ever speared him,
You would say that he was dead!
Rolled a big rock on his crypt;
When they saw that he had risen,
They built a mall & sold a ton of shit!"
Not that I'm any fan of the Bobby Darin version. "I'd like to do a happy, fun song about a cold-blooded killer--and dedicate it to all of Sinatra's Vegas Mafia buddies!" Though I do like the ref to Lotte Lenya, the wife of composer Kurt Weill...even if the only mental image of her I have is when she was quite old as the SPECTRE agent with pointy poisoned shoes in "From Russia With Love."
Sting's version of the tune, with a creepier translation of Bertolt Brecht's lyrics on the compilation "Lost in the Stars," is much better. (Although the original "Threepenny Opera" lyrics are REALLY creepy--can you picture Darin gleefully singing about Mack being paid to rape a widow? "The line forms on the left, babe, now that Mackie's--back in town!"}
But I was glad to hear Darin extolling the virtues of contract killing, only because it meant--THEY TURNED OFF THE LITE FAVORITES STATION FOR THE OLDIES STATION! I love the oldies station! At least I do when I hear it at work, instead of the Shite Favorites. I'd rather hear Aretha sing "Natural Woman" than Celine. Everytime Celine did it, I mentally changed her lyrics to "You make me feel like an absolute moron."
And today I got to hear my fave oldie group! Great Beatles' songs all day! But not for any reason I'd want.
George Harrison, dead at--58?! That's not even old!
Dammit, 50% of the Beatles are down now, but 100% of the Rolling Stones are still around! Half the Beatles are dead--not even counting Linda or Brian or Stu--but Keith "More Blood Please" Richards is still alive.
THINK ABOUT IT. Lennon & Harrison died relatively young, but the Guitarist of Reanimator still stalks the world of the Living. Why is that?
When the Beatles were doing "Sgt Pepper," the Stones did "By His Satanic Majesty's Request."
They sold their pathetic souls to SATAN! THEIR EVIL PACT WITH SATAN ruined Apple Corp! It caused the breakup of the Beatles! It put the voices in Mark David Chapman's head! It allowed Mick to have sex with Bianca, a woman who looked like MICK! If you want final proof, it allowed the Stones to record A DISCO RECORD!!
And how else could Keith Richards still be alive, unless all those tranfusions were full of BABY'S BLOOD?!
 | If I was a James Bond villain, I would be Max Zorin. I enjoy horse racing, pretending to be sane, and setting off cataclysmic earthquakes. I am played by Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill. Who would you be? James Bond Villain Personality Test |
December in New England: Jack Frost nipping at your nose, lovely weather for a sleigh ride together, it's a marshmallow world in the winter, so let it snow let it snow let it snow, folks riding bikes in the woods wearing shorts & tshirts.
It's 70 degrees out. Have a global warming Christmas!
I looked at the week's weather ahead, & grumbled that it was going to only hit the mid-50s on Sunday & Monday, my traditional days off, but was going back into the 60s during my work week. Then I realized that it should be only 40 out, & if it hit the mid-50s during the work week, I'd be making the same complaint.
I'm hoping for a repeat of the winter of 2 years ago. It was in the 50s straight up till that day it hit 70 in January. Then we had 6 weeks of 40-below-zero windchills. But I've seen winters that have lasted 6 months here (like LAST winter). Everyone was kinda chipper even when the weather resembled Alaska more than Connecticut, because we knew we'd lucked out. And Spring came nearly a month early. crosses fingers.
America's Taliban: Satan banned by official proclamation from a city in--where else--Florida. The mayor's proclamation was put into hollowed fenceposts at the corners of the town, with "Repent, Request and Resist" painted on them. "The proclamation is not a reference to a single event, Risher explained, but an overall sense of concern. She speaks of drunken drivers, fathers who molest their daughters and people who steal from their neighbors.
"Town Clerk Sally McCranie, who signed the proclamation, offered another observation: Kids in town, she said, have taken to dressing in all black and painting their faces white, a style known as Goth.
"'We are taking everything back that the devil ever stole from us,' Risher wrote. 'We will never again be deceived by satanic and demonic forces.'"
I guess that if the crime rate doesn't decline, & sales of N'Sync CDs don't climb, they'll have to hollow out more fenceposts. Certainly their heads are hollow enough already.
I only have today off through virtue of going to see Bill "Zippy th' Pinhead" Griffith at RAW tonight. YOW! So I may add to this, if I don't get home too late.
YOW indeed. Good thing I suggested getting there early. Me, KMDS Kevin & Jay were among the 1st 10 people in line at the Griffith lecture when there were about 15 people in line. The line continued to grow. Given the amount of people standing along the back wall of the theater, there must've been 400 people there.
It was interesting & funny; a slide show of Zippy strips with Griffith commenting on them. Since he's the model/voice of "Griffy" in the strip, I was semi-surprised that he wasn't as angry as Griffy always is. But he described Zippy & Griffy as the "right & left halves of his brain," & he seemed like an amalgram of the two.
The name "Zippy" came a Barnum "Wild Man of Borneo" named "Zip the What-Is-It." He had a page from an old book, giving some details on "Zip." He was born "William H. Jackson" in 1842 (and not in Borneo). "My full name is William H. Jackson Griffith," he said, "named after my great-grandfather, William H. Jackson...who was born in 1842! If there ever was such a thing as predestination, I'm it!"
Among the slides were the original photos of the Real Places he uses in his strip, here focusing on the ones in CT, where he now lives. I was surprised how many were in CT, especially the strip's semi-iconic Muffler Man! (His website has a Zippy Site Locator if you want to know where these places are. It lists upcoming strips, & apparently, on 1/15/02 that church up the road from me makes another appearance)
I'm sure that I have it somewhere among all my Zippyana, but I can't find a strip he did for the New Yorker that he showed as a slide. The subject: Jerry Van Dyke!! I'll keep looking. It was funny, & JVD was the butt of the joke!
First in the theater means last out, which means "Go to the end of a half-hour long book signing line." I bought the latest Zippy Annual--Glad that I found out about the lecture before I got my Fantagraphics catalog; not only was it free of shipping & handling or taxes, a bigger percentage of the cash went into Griffth's pockets. And I assume, also into RAW's, given the look of triumph the woman collecting the cash had when they sold every copy. (You can buy your Zippy books signed without standing in line by clicking that last link)
The line was slow, as Griffith was chatting with every signing. It must be weird to be a celebrity in such brief spurts. Behind me was an agitated conversation between a very short, annoyingly-voiced fanboy (on his mylar-triple-bagged 1978 YOW comic: "I bought it at a comics convention!" Yeah...kinda figured.) & a college professor who used Zippy strips in his classes on music history ("He cuts across all the disciplines!").
Ahead of me was a young art student type with a figurine of a rabbit dressed as a cowboy. He asked Griffith to pose with it so he could take a picture. "Let me guess," Griffith said, "you have a web page." A web page that's been done a thousand times already, I thought. Griffith mugged it up with the toy, & the guy--dressed all in black, of course, I mean, he's an artiste, doncha know--handed him a photo of the bunny with the WTC in the background. He expressed polite interest. As the art student walked away, he looked at the picture again, & put it aside shaking his head.
"Who would you like it made out to?" he asked me.
"Bill the Splut. S-P-L-U-T."
"Splut? That sounds like a sound effect of something falling into a vat of...Velveeta."
"I've actually seen it used as a sound effect in a few comic strips. It's a made-up word that a friend of mine named me, & it just stuck. Like Velveeta!"
Everyone else got their book signed with a little word balloon of Zippy saying "YOW!" This is what I got:
I did some pretty stupid things when I was 20 years old. But at least they weren't as dumb as joining the Taliban.
As an equal-opportunity basher of bad sci-fi movie franchises, let me say that "Star Trek 7: The Subtitle Escapes Me" sucked even worse than "Star Wars: Episode One." I was searching for a video & stumbled across an old copy of it, taken off of some pay-cable service's free weekend. Even at free, it was a ripoff.
What did I expect? It was an odd-numbered Trek movie. But I thought, hey, it has Malcolm MacDowell in it, & he kills Shatner! And--Shatner dies TWICE! How cool is that?!
Not nearly cool enough.
I don't get this odd-numbered Trek phenomenon. Not even Ed Wood delibaretly made bad movies. But this had everything stacked against it: The Next Generation cast, most of whom don't try to act; cheezy special effects; Whoopi "I Nair my eyebrows" Goldberg; Shatner's mandatory "I Get To Ride The Horsies" contract clause; & that damn plot. Ya see, Malcolm's immortal, & he really wants to get sucked into this difficult-to-believe-in-even-for-Trek "Nexus," which is not a giant space shampoo but a magical flying rift in the sky that causes one to "be bathed in pure joy." It was basically Space Heroin. "Liquid Sky," literally! (Ha! A sci-fi movie AND heroin ref! I am a genius! [see below]) Malcolm was in the Nexus for a while--if there was an explanation as to how he ended up outside it, I was yawning when they gave it--and now he wants to get back so bad that he crashes spaceships into it & even blows up whole suns by shooting them with rockets that look like something Estes would make if they ran a scrap yard. You'd think, the blowing suns up, that'd be some major weapon that Bad Aliens would use all the time, but I guess not. Klingon: "Tak poo! Arrgh! There are no Estes model kits on the Klingon Home World! Toy Saturn Fives are without honor! And we brush our teeth with all the scrap metal! ARRRR, matey! Pass the blood!"
So he's blowing up all these suns, blowin' 'em up real good, so that he can alter the path of the Nexus onto this planet. He alters it SO PERFECTLY that it doesn't just cover the whole planet, nosiree, it just barely grazes him standing at the top of a tower 12 feet off the ground. Nice shootin', Tex! (The tower, of course, is also made of scrap metal. He must be from the star system of--wait for it--Planet Sanford & Sun!! Ha ha ha! I suck!
Climatic fight involves a rickity bridge made of Guess What Material (hint: scrap metal), & a fistfight to the death between Kirk & MacDowell. Kirk volunteers to fight him, & Picard must'nt like Shatner much either, as he doesn't say "Uh, the bad guy's not exactly a young pup anymore, but he's pretty hard-bodied for a guy in his 50s. And it's Alex the Droogie versus a fat wheezy senior citizen. It's a bit of the old ultraviolence vs the strength of your Depends & toupee glue. Maybe let someone 20 years younger who at least admits he's bald take a toss at it, hmm?"
Brent Spiner did the best he could with the "Data's emotion chip" subplot, & I did get a little choked when he wept with joy on discovering that his cat Spot had survived, but I was just projecting at that point. I taped the Ebert show over it.
"Hey kids, make sure you clean up your plate,
so mom and dad will have
to stop in the candy shoppe and buy some Candy!!!!"
I tried to bore myself back to sleep by searching for "thoughtviper" & "bill the splut." I found not a lot, but I did find a pair of pages that referred to me as a "genius." Some people would take that as as compliment; I take it as proof the world's gone mad. One was a blog that looks interesting, but it ends, literally, in midsentence at the bottom of the screen. Weird.
Then I searched for "Dawn Wells," which was something I put on the old page simply as spider bait. It was buried in the middle of 120 hits. Strangely, there were no porn pages! So I tried "Dawn Wells nude" & found a bunch. But it seems that at some point porn pages stopped being a horde of Java popups that sprang up like you'd just fallen face-first into a darkened room full of mousetraps. Now, every page made this weird frame-jump before redirecting me to some German site that automatically tried to get me download some file. Uhh, NO.
I realized that the previously mentioned Jerry Van Dyke Zippy strip was prly in my copy of Zippy Annual #1. I also realized that I had no idea where that was. After fruitless searching--real, actual, looking around the house kind of searching--I tried the web. Didn't find it, but I did find--wait for it--JerryVanDyke.net! (He was beat out of the .com by a real estate agent) Go look at that; it's...Van Dykeish. My site's nothing to brag about, but this is 100% pure Big Lots web design. The menu at Jerry's House of Foodstuffs has sandwiches named in that cute, Hollywoodesque way after characters from his sitcoms. I sense sibling jealousy in his naming a ham sandwich after his brother. My fave: "The Courtship of Eddie's Chicken Fingers." Even an infinite typing monkey would pull that page out of the typewriter & toss it away.
That type in bold point at the start of this entry is also on the menu. I just think it's funny. Err, I mean Funny!!!! Free fries & exclamation points at Jerry's diner!
"Unprotected Water"
I read an interesting article on the Masons last week, who either SECRETLY RULE THE WORLD AS ITS HIDDEN MASTERS or are a bunch of old farts with dwindling members--err, a dwindling membership. Really, I hope that they're the latter. I prefer my Secret Evil Overlord to be a tentacled nightmare from across the dimensional planes, not a geezer in a fez & a clown car.
The article explained something I'd seen in the antique area of Sturbridge, MA: An odd fellow's portrait, with odd arcane metaphors about him, & from the Odd Fellow's League. It was a group that copied the Masons in the 19th century. Being an odd fellow myself, I thought that I'd check the price. Turned out that my memory was faulty (like my clear memory of the tornado sequence in "Wizard of Oz" including a guy in a bathtub--Wonder how that was imprinted on me). They did have the strangest Halloween mask ever: "Mr Peanut," the monocled mascot of Planter's, without a top hat but with a Santa hat. Wow, you can use it for more than 1 holiday! Wear some green, carry chocolate eggs & firecrackers, & vomit beer & turkey at midnight & you've got 5 more!
It was 55 & sunny, so I went to recon another state forest. Bigelow Hollow is a fishing spot, so I'd avoided it so far. I figured that any time I'd go there, I'd be wader-deep in old farts looking for trout & dwindling their members. Actually, that might be a plus; the trails aren't well-labeled, indicating that away from the ponds there are few people. I went in about half a mile; it was a pine forest, so it was nicely green, but the shade dropped the temperature into the low 40s. Too cool even if I was the only human on Earth hiking the woods in a trenchcoat. The trails were so poorly marked that I got semi-lost on the way back. I followed the lakeside to the car, & knew I was near when I saw the "Unprotected Water" sign I'd seen coming in. It was a 100 feet at least from any water. Does the Protected Water have snipers in the pines above it?
"Trash Can is not to be used for Household Trash!"
I have no interesting stories about doing my laundry, though I did get their seconds before someone else, & those seconds meant getting it done almost 2 hours sooner. Though there was that odd sign. The difference between household & laundry trash is, what again? There were empty bleach & detergent bottles outside it--I would call those "recyclables," but otherwise, they'd be "laundry trash." Maybe they mean "dryer sheets"--but wouldn't those be--wait for it--"white trash"?
Ha ha ha! I'm a genius that sucks!
Nothing to say about my trip to the grocery store, except that every line, even the weird robotic self-serv checkout line, was packed solid. But I had the same luck as with the laundry: A new clerk flipped on his light just as I walked by his register. And, behind the eggs there was the Sign of Signs for today:
"Please Don't take My Juice U-boat!"
I completely understood that sign, but I'll leave you to puzzle out its mysteries.
From Starchaser, on that Florida news story above:
I am 40% ADDICTED TO THE INTERNET.
I could go either way. Deep into the madness of nights filled with coding CGI-Scripts and online role playing games, or I could become a normal user. Good luck!
Take the INTERNET-ADDICT Test at Fuali.com!
40%? That's IT?!
I was half-listening to the radio news today when they said that some national hi-speed ISP (excite@home, I think?) went bankrupt & shut down. "It could be 10 days before all Connecticut subscribers are back online." I'd be a smelly, shaky-handed guy living in a Noho internet cafe with Kill Kill & a sleeping bag by the end of day 3...
Cat treats & tea! Yeah, that's all I'd need! Just cat treats & tea...& this sleeping bag. And this chair. And this paddleball! That's all I'd need...
 | If I was a work of art, I would be Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. I am extremely popular and widely known. Although unassuming and unpretentious, my enigmatic smile has charmed millions. I am a mystery, able to be appreciated from afar, but ultimately unknowable and thus intriguing. Which work of art would you be? The Art Test |
 | If I was a work of art, I would be Man Ray's The Gift. With bitter memories of beatings at school, I am pointy but also useless in any real sense. I bite when provoked, though it takes much provoking. I dropped out of college in order to serve my various corporate masters & be an inexplicable sore on the average person's bed. I am cold like old iron, but kind to animals. Which work of art would you be? Man Ray! |
Oh, Bill Young! It's me, Sky! May I call you Bill Young? I hope so, as I will call you that repeatedly in this personalized form letter.
Try Earthlink DSL for 3 months & I'll send you a free DVD player! YES, Bill Young! A free DVD player! I'm so desperate for business that I'll give you--Bill Young--a free DVD player!
Look at my picture! I am so sad! Sadder than the saddest sad person, on his most sad of days. Please send me money! Then my sadness will become mere deep depression. I will even take this pistol out of my mouth. This mouth that used to smile......smiled so long, long ago...And you'll get a DVD player out of it!
Not just any DVD player...My daughter, she collected pennies off of the floor at the grocery store. She'd wait until the rich people would take out their fat wallets to buy this thing the rich call "food," & a penny or 2 might cascade from their pockets like manna from Heaven. My daughter, Cloudy is her name, as she is from Sky, which is my name, poor sad Sky is my name, she would chase the little pennies as they swirled about the Slim Jim display, and the little pennies she would grab. She'd grab, she'd save those pennies. And my son, Cumulus Nimbus, which is also a cloud, from the sky, would save them up with the tips he made from his paper route, which isn't any normal type paper route mind you. No, he would painfully copy the entire newspaper that my wife had bought with the money that she'd made selling her organs on the black market, he'd copy that newspaper by hand, using the hand not crippled by his palsy, a disease that only poor people get, on the paper that my aging grandmama made from milk cartons with lost children on them, but only after the children had been found, God bless them for being found, and this hand-copied hand-made newspaper would be sold by my poor, aged blind wiener dog. That also had a limp. Being a mere dog, though not a mere dog in the eyes of my poor children, these children dressed in clothing bought from the Salvation Army, clothing so old & tattered that it wasn't even bought from the Salvation Army but the Salvation National Guard, no, he was more than a mere dog to my children, who are really poor I might add, he was their Godsend sent from God, in this time of national trauma, but there he was, selling newspapers copied by hand on paper made from hand, and this truck hit him. No, not a truck, but an SUV. My SUV, that is, as I was in a rush, as I was so poor & was going to get free Government cheese to use as tiny yellow blankets for my freezing children, but I loved that dog as much as I love you, Bill Young, who I hope will sign up for Earthlink & take this DVD player, Yes, THAT DVD PLAYER, the one my OWN CHILDRENS bought for me, as a gift, to ease the pain of the dog that I runned over. Oh, the pain! But yes, I don't want to lay any guilt trip on you, Bill Young, just take --SOB!-- the DVD player that my children bought for me with their pennies, and why don't you also take the 3 months of free service while you're at it! It's only my AGED FATHER that we're using to relay the signal via his METAL HIP JOINTS!
SOB! Bill Young, you are my last hope! Look again at my sad face, etched with lines of sadness! I look like a sadder, younger Morrissey! Cuter, too, don't you think? Like my hair? Shara at Hairmaster's did it. She's the best.
With poverty,
Sky Dayton
That would mean more to me if I'd actually seen the movie. Where's the "Road Warrior" character quiz?
I was thinking yesterday about doing an internet quiz ("What Inexplicable Object Am I?"), until I took a look at the source codes these things use. Uhh, never mind.
12/6
The radio's started running ads assuring me that I'll know about every weather alert, school cancellation, or snow delay that happens.
It would've been more effective if it wasn't 71 degrees out today. Only 30 degrees above normal.
There is a chance of snow in the upcoming forecast. Followed a day or so later by mid-60s temps.
I'm glad I didn't put any effort into figuring the Java behind the internet test--
![[If I were an online test, I would be The 'Which Online Personality Test Are You?' Test]](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paulspeller/onlinetest/mine.gif "Click to find out which test you are")
I'm The 'Which Online Personality Test Are You?' Test!
Oh irony of ironies! I just can't get enough postmodernism, so of course I'm this same test I've just taken. Ho-ho!
Internet tests are so 12 hours ago.
12/771 degrees yesterday, 2 inches of snow sleet freezing rain tomorrow! Arrrgh! I hate driving in that shit, & there's a party at Kevin's tomorrow night, 25 miles away in the boonies...
From serial InExLink submitter Theresa Fuller comes Stadium Pal. It's the "printable sizing chart" that makes it!
Maybe they could market a version in Mexico, called "Montezuma's Pal."
"Look for awesome changes in the layout and content in the next few weeks" says an email I got from Next Planet Over. The email has navy blue letters on a purple background. I'd settle for readable changes in your layout.
Ginger is not so Spicy.
"Kamen predicts his invention will ultimately lead to a rethinking and redesign of cities where cars become subordinated to scooters. Grandiose, maybe, but then they laughed at Edison."
They did? When? Did Edison hype the media for over a year about "IT," the lightbulb? "I've just got a few more thousand materials for filaments to test, then you'll see!"
No, they laughed at Edison when he became grandiose. He spent his last years working on a telephone that would let you talk to the dead. And I'll bet that he named it "Ginger."
As to this stupid device, a powered version of those Razor scooters clogging the discount racks, all I can say is: Further proof that no Ginger will ever be as good as a MaryAnn.
We got a dumping of about 3 inches of wet sloppy snow last night, but that's not why I didn't go to Kevin's party. It was just too damn busy at work, & I was just too damn tired. Ran around nonstop for 8 hours. I was in bed at midnight, which is about 2-3 hours early for me. Or 4AM tomorrow in Auckland!
I was out of it enough that when I took my break to deposit my paycheck, I drove all the way to the bank before I realized that the check was still at the store. Since I was on that side of town, I went to the Salvation National Guard Army. This was around 7AM in Tokyo! Yeah, I found a clock there that gives international time. I'm sure that Auckland NZ only turns up as they wanted to fill up the dial with places somewhere, even if they're in the middle of the ocean. Want to know what time it is in the Azores or Midway? I got ya covered. It gives the time in Iceland, Holland, & Canada in addition to New Zealand, so that pretty much covers every country that I've fantasized about moving to. It also gives the time in Kuwait, so I think that we can safely date this clock to 10 years ago.
I also bought a little ceramic "Kilroy was Here" thing. It peers over the edge of a shelf. Unlike Kilroy himself, it's a sickly green, has eyeballs instead of just black dots, has fingernails, & what looks like a big pustule on his nose. Cute. Well, maybe in Leper Town it's cute.
I picked up a pair of highball glasses that are sadly scanner-resistant. The front is frosted, with the legend "The LIGHTHOUSE Inn" with "Sand Bar, West Dennis on Cape Cod" under it. 2 seagulls are drinking a martini. "Sand Bar," geddit? A piano key pattern runs across the rim. There's a window in the middle, & on the inside of the glass is the smiling face of Philo Rockwell King III. The picture looks to be from the early 70s, given the grease in the bad hairstyle, but it could've been from as late as the early 80s, if Philo was clueless enough. I tried running a search, in the vague hope that it might help me date the glasses.