8/1/02

Well, El Store Neuvo had its nearby armed robbery, and now its had its own petty shoplifting.
A guy requested that we carry nips of Black Velvet (a very cheap Canadian whiskey), and of course we did. This guy pounded them. Like nine a day! That's more than a pint. One day we ran out, and I checked the inventory on the computer. We were missing 16 nips. Not a big pile of money lost at 79 cents retail each, but nobody goes into business to get stuff stolen. He was taking them from the freezer, which was turned so that we couldn't see what was going on when the lid was opened. I warned the owners over the phone about this, then turned the freezer around the other way. And, who should fate pick to walk through the door at that exact minute? Mr Black Velveeta himself. He asked, a bit wide-eyed, "Why are you doing that?" I should have said, "Some pathetic drunk's palming Black Velvet nips!" but just said that it was so we could keep a better eye on it. And, lo and behold, suddenly instead of buying nine nips a day, he'd buy twelve. And the inventory became perfect again.
Today I had to ferry some beer into the cooler. I can keep an eye on the front door pretty easily. But the cooler is very narrow, only about an inch wider than the handtruck. So I had to keep my eyes on it as I pushed it through. There was about 30 seconds that I wasn't watching the door.
I timed it later, and it takes 20 seconds to casually walk to the freezer, open it, and walk out the door. Assuming that you're not wasting any time paying, that is.
I stepped out of the cooler and saw Black Velveeta in his car. Any other customer, and I wouldn't have thought anything of it. Him, and I started inwardly screaming "FUCK!" If he left the parking lot without coming in the store, that meant...
And he didn't. He buys half-pints when we're out of nips, and I'd put one in there the other day when the nips were getting low. And it wasn't there. And the computer showed it in stock, with a last-sold date of Saturday.
Another phone call to the owners, with me actually PISSED OFF. "But it's not your money that was lost!" some people would say. YES, IT IS. If you throw a freakin' paper clip away, that comes off the bottom line, and what's UNDER that line is where YOUR PAY COMES FROM. And there's the simple moral fact that I don't like crooks. Everything I have, I WORKED to get. You felt the "need" to steal $15 worth of liquor? Fuck you! It's not like its bread for your starving children, you goddamn cheap lush.
And guess what--He had the gall to come back a few hours later! With steady voice and steely eyes, I told him that he was no longer going to be served in our stores. He asked why, and I told him that "we seem to missing a lot of Black Velvet products." He was wearing dark glasses, but I could see his eyes through them by his facial expression. He left without a peep of protest. Guilty as charged.
A while later, another regular came in. He always buys a 1.5 liter bottle of cream sherry. But he bought something that he'd never bought before--a half-pint of Black Velvet. You know, if I'd been thrown out of a store for shoplifting, I wouldn't continue to give them my business, even via proxy. Unless, of course, I was a drunk, and every other liquor store had caught on to my thievery before this.
I was talking about the incident with Leroy, our other local crimefighter. We both admitted to stealing candy bars as little kids, and I remembered something about my ancient thievery: That particular candy bar tasted so bad compared to the ones that I'd paid for. It was spoiled by the bile of guilt in my mouth.
But to Black Velveeta, that stolen liquor probably tasted all the sweeter.

An article on Scott Ritter, a Conservative Republican, 12-year veteran of the US Marines, and a UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq, on the "threat" posed by Saddam:

"Technically capable," however, is the important phrase here. If no one were watching, Iraq could do this. But they would have to start completely from scratch, having been deprived of all equipment, facilities and research because of Ritter's work. They would have to procure the complicated tools and technology required through front companies, which would be detected. The manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits vented gasses that would have been detected by now if they existed. The manufacture of nuclear weapons emits gamma rays that would have been detected by now if they existed. We have been watching, via satellite and other means, and we have seen none of this.

"If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof," said Ritter, "plain and simple."

And yet we march to war, and soon. A chorus of voices was raised in the room asking why we are going. What motivates this, if not hard facts and true threats? According to Ritter, it comes down to opportunistic politics and a decade of hard anti-Hussein rhetoric that has boxed the Bush administration into a rhetorical corner.

Entertaining article on sci-fi cliches, and why most of them wouldn't work. But go read that Iraq article. Everyone in America needs to read that, especially Congress.

8/2

MONKEYS!!

8/3

Day Two of No Desire To Typeness.

I got my first hit on the three or four bills I've entered on wheresgeorge.com over the last year. The finder's comments:

Patriots Rule! The Bill was very good. It is buying me lunch right now, mmm!!! I hope Jason does not do bad things to it.

Belated happy anniversary to Vyn and Job! Rumor has it that it all started from a link to Vyn on this very page. Counting Jess and Ron, that makes two couples I've had a hand in forming.
As I really don't have anything tonight, here's a conversation on Job's LJ that I participated in. About tapeworms.
The link there to the page with the Bran Flakes songs is worth investigating.

8/4

Day Three.

"I bid you--VELCOME!"

"Bleah bleah! I vant to drink your blood! Go avay, ve haff no content for you today! Bleah bleah! PULL DER SHTRING, Ed-dy! Bleah!"

(Well, okay, here's some bones for me to throw: this Seanbaby is funny, as is this Something Awful. Yeah, I'm getting real creative in my links. I also spent part of my day reading Strunk's Elements of Style, which I needed to do, being the master of the run-on unparsable dangling-participle sentence fraggings that I am, but which also just shows what a nonstop thrill-ride today has been.)

8/5

If you're wondering why Kill Kill was making that Horrible Monster-Face, I caught her at the start of a yawn.

Well, I'm never going to get anything done anymore for forever. That creaky old game Civilization II never worked on XP. I mean, it worked, but it took 5 minutes to move one piece. But then, mysteriously, it reappeared on my "most used programs" bar, despite my ignoring it for 6 months. And it works! I can play it obsessively again! So don't expect any excitement from me. Which continues the trend of the last few days.

I chatted with Lilly yesterday. She told me of taking a drive in her car, only to hear fearful yowling from the engine, followed by a panicked kitten running out of her hood. And into traffic. She pulled over, ran into traffic, and performed her "best Bruce Willis maneuver" (meaning, Bruce Willis with a toupee). She saved the kitty and left it in the care of some cat-owners in her complex.
That's never happened to me, and I'm quite grateful for its lack of occurence. I'd had a dream last week about a cat being under my hood, and getting killed. It wasn't pleasant.

Too hot and humid AGAIN! today to do anything, so I figured that I'd be boring and go to BIG!Lots for some juice and hairspray. I'd made the mistake of parking under a tree at work, so my windshield was all bird-pooped. I sprayed the windshield washer while on the entrance ramp to the highway. At the last second, I could see something dark moving on the shoulder--probably a bag, but fortunately I wasn't near enough to run over it. I once ran over a paper bag, and found that it was full of broken beer bottles. As the wipers cleared, I looked into the rearview to see what it was.
An animal. Flailing its paws in the air, twisting on its back. Writhing in agony.
OHMIGOD! was my first thought. It's been hit by a car but it's not dead yet! OMIGOD! Should I stop?! With a tractor trailer on my ass? No! And what could I do anyway, but watch some poor wild animal suffer?!
I got on the highway, luckily not causng any accidents, as I really wasn't paying attention to the road. Maybe I should call the police animal control? At least they could put it out of its misery...
What the hell was it, anyway? There's plenty of woods around the highway, but every animal you see as roadkill is nocturnal. The only day-active animals are woodchucks, and that was no woodchuck.
It gradually dawned on me: The only animal that size that would be out in the day, and be able to move its spine around as easily as that one did--CAT.
To my absolute shame, I turned around to go back--after three exits. It took almost 15 minutes to get back to the ramp.
I was so pissed at myself. You had to clean the windshield JUST THEN, didn't you?! If I'd had a clear look, I would've seen that it was a cat and stopped! And the animal clinic that Killsy goes to is less than a mile away! Idiot!
The closer I got, the more clearly I thought it through--When my family's cocker spaniel Cinnamon was hit by a car, she didn't thrash around. She was alive, but she didn't move more than her eyes. And the way the cat was moving--it was pawing and nipping at its tail. That's it! She must've ran across the ramp, and gotten hit on the tail! Pretty fuckin' painful, but not fatal, unless she was bleeding. There was still a chance!
I drove slowly up the ramp. Gone. Not a trace. Either she wasn't as badly hurt as I thought, or (more likely) someone who wasn't washing their windshield spotted her and saved her.
I need to work on my inner Bruce Willis.

Kevin's hypothesis on UFOs and Area 51 was this: "Think about the Stealth Bomber. That's technology from the mid-70s. Who knows what technology the Air Force is using today? Maybe that's what UFOs are."
Just as people refuse to believe that the Roswell crash was of a secret high-altitude spy balloon (they didn't have satellites back in 1947, and that's what it was), what do you think the close-minded UFO fanatics are going to think of The Stealth Blimp?

8/6

Signs of the times: A spam from "Nuclear Disaster" selling potassium iodide over the net. Amusingly, it was from ramona@eb.offermonkey.com. ramona@eb.offermonkey.com?! I don't want to buy my potassium iodide from a monkey offering from ramona@eb.offermonkey.com!!
Oh, wait, you're not supposed to put your email on the web because spambots will steal it, right? Sorry about that, ramona@eb.offermonkey.com, ramona@eb.offermonkey.com, ramona@eb.offermonkey.com!
Has someone done that page yet? Put up a page of just the emails of spammers, to catch their bots in their own loop? Probably.
ramona@eb.offermonkey.com!!!

Is it just Connecticut, or did all of America get invaded by riced-out Geo Metro hatchbacks with baby buggy wheels in the last week? Geo Metros are COOL now?! A co-worker had one, and if she had more than one passenger, her top speed became 45MPH!
Geo Metros, COOL! The world's turned upside down, I tells ya!

Okay, I finally have some links. Let's get the only one I found by my own self out of the way first, 'kay?

Remember that Inexplicable Link of the Week, TimeCube? Yeah, I know that it's been a long time, but if you tried to shoehorn your brain into that site, you'd remember. The site quote I used was "God is cornered as a Queer." Remember? Remember, STUPID!!!! It is EVIL to not remember TimeCube!!!! If not remember(stupid!), take a click on that link, and see how far you get before your eyes bug out of your head or milk squirts out of your nose. Then check out the rarified but very funny TimeCube: The RPG!!!!!!! If you don't wanna read TimeCube, don't check the RPG out. You won't get it. STUPID!!

Lileks gives us a hint of his next project, Stagland. I'd count that as "a link I didn't steal," but you read him anyway.

And now, let the link stealing begin! Huzzah!

Kirk points us to Science Made Stupid. Goofily funny.

The moon can't fall down because it is in orbit. An orbit is the interaction of a combination of forces - such as gravity, inertia, centrifugal force and others - that result in a perfect balance.
Nevertheless, it is a good idea to stay indoors as much as possible.

8/7

Oh, just click this. You'll find out why when you get there. However, I OWN this, and believe me--He doesn't even HINT at the insanity behind that cover.

It cost $115 MILLION to make Windtalkers?! The hell?! A list of the Summer movie season's biggest bombs. I'm no Hollywood genius, but maybe--just maybe--if they started making movies that DIDN'T cost over a hundred mill, MAYBE they could be more profitable.

Some reactions to Salon's review of the Left Behind series: "I've always described the series as being a candidate for the book-club equivalent of 'Mystery Science Theater 3000.' To quote Dr. Forrester, the 'Left Behind' series is 'bad.'"

From Mark the Vet: How raw chicken is processed in China. "Employees must wash mouth after deboning!"

Speaking of crazy religious people, a CT archeologist claims to have found the skeleton of--wait for it--John the Baptist! Not found: Silver plate head was served on.

A review of The Hunt for Zero Point. To sum it up:

That fridge magnet I made from an old Johnson Smith catalog was RIGHT! You see?! You see?! You of Earth have stupid minds! Stupid! STUPID!

8/8

The mystery of those "Someone has a crush on you!" emails has been solved--As you'd expect, they're just spam email harvesters.

Mental illness: Is it caused by Nature, Nurture or an as-yet undetected parasite in the brain?

"Copulating couples target of 'Roachman' doomsday attack." "Cockroaches eat human eyelashes. I couldn't think of anything more satisfying than to have somebody wake up and discover a cockroach has eaten away their eyelashes," he tells Donto. "And women hate cockroaches. I'll ruin their mental state by unleashing hundreds of thousands of cockroaches onto the streets. And I'm breeding big American cockroaches, which put Japanese versions to shame." Maybe the Insanity Parasite is spread by cockroaches.

From the GWBush ML:

Bush I. was a star baseball player at Andover.
Bush II. didn't even make the varsity team.

Bush I. got straight A's at Yale.
Bush II. got D's and C's.

Bush I. was a heroic WWII fighter pilot.
Bush II. patrolled the coast of Texas during Vietnam and quit flying when the National Guard began drug testing.

Bush I. went to Texas and built a successful oil business.
Bush II.'s oil business failed almost immediately.

Bush I. fought a short war with Iraq that achieved its objectives with relatively few U.S. causalities.
Bush II....?

8/9

Today's Comics Page Synchronicity:

Right next to each other, two strips giving their readers their fingers. I'd say "Great minds think alike," but Jim Davis ain't got no "great mind," and neither do his Hydra-headed platoons of ghostwriters.

Christine B. is the latest convert to the strange world of Gonterman. I'd mentioned to her that the real reason his stuff was so bad was because he wasn't a horny 14-year-old, but a guy in his 30s, married with children.
Where I got the "married with children" part is unknown; I thought that I'd seen it either on the Shrine of Gonterman or the Portal of Evil Gonterforum (which started a month a go and now has 8800 posts! With only about 2000 from Daveykins!). But Christine has her own theories, from an email brilliantly titled "I've got Gonterrhea:"

I am officially hooked on Gonterman now. I blame YOU. But I was wondering how we really know he's over 13 and has kids?! Because when you look at the subject material, his portrayal of women, his portrayal of relationships, and even pop culture references, I find it hard to believe he isn't really 22, living in his parents basement, and has never had a date in his life, let alone actually successfully mated with a female. Human. A female human.

Now, I looked up a bunch of stuff he references, starting with Sonic, Rescue Rangers and NIMH (that story he wrote was fucking disturbing). Almost everything he references occurs around 91-96... that horrible Beauty and the Beast movie was in 1991, Rescue Rangers got sucked off the air in 1992, Waynes World Movie 1 was in 1992, sequel in 1993, Beavis and Butthead had their show starting in 1993... Jurassic Park the movie hit in 1993, Sonic TV show was in 1993, the Power Rangers from 1993-1996 with movies in 1994 and 1995, and Star Trek TNG ran from 1987-1994. Sailor Moon was 1995, Mortal Kombat movie was 1995, Pinky and the Brain were 1995. And the Highlander TV series began in 1992, ended in 1997 and had movies in 1991 and 1994. The only oddballs that fall out of this timewarp he's in are NIMH whos movies began in 1982, 1998, 2001, none of which fall in his time period (meaning the movie probably scared the fuck out of him as a kid, like it did me); Back to the Future first started in 1985, then 1989, and again in 1991 (which was the worst movie of the bunch, IMNSHO); and Dune, a classic from way back in 1984.

Here's how I look at it.... I am almost 26. I remember watching "Rescue Rangers" after school with my little brother. I remember watching the "Sonic" cartoon, and we still have the Sonic games. Granted I became aware of Sailor Moon only in the last year or two, but it's been around for a while. And "X-Men" was actually on Saturday mornings on FOX. Gonterman isn't referencing 80's culture, he's going back to the recent 90s, which leads me to believe he's probably around my age, and quite possibly a bit younger. I mean, what adult gets so fucking obsessed with Sonic the freaking Hedgehog?!?! Dreams about Sailor Moon falling in love with him? Wants to actually be a fox, as in the animal? Has violent mood swings and a sense of humor no one gets? I'm thinking post-adolescent trauma: the discovery that the real world is less fun than imagined and that no one likes him there either, so he retreats into a time when things were better (I doubt by much though), probably pre-high school, which would make him around about 11 or 12 back in 1993.... Advancing into junior high and high school would have been difficult for him, so during the 95-98 period he added a few new warps to his cape with a girlfriend in Sailor Moon and a hero in Highlander. By my timeline, he'd be about 20 or so right now. Maybe 21.

More thinking on this brought me to another observation about his portrayal of relationships.The whole desire to work for Disney may have something to do with his view of dating, romance and women, but what normal guy would write "Gee I wonder if can date him!" (the feudal Japan story) and "all chances of me going steady with either chipmunk goes out the window" (the Rescuers of NIMH)?!?! It's like anything beyond kissing is foreign to him. Which it probably is. On the one hand you have a guy who gets hot for stuffed animals and cartoons, and on the other hand you have a guy who uses the Disney excuse so he doesn't have to have an actual sex scene (thank goodness). He doesn't say oral sex, he says Clinton Jobs. What the hell?!? Be a real man, write some damn porn. But he doesn't.

The issue of violent mood swings also cropped up. Another sign of adolescence, or later in life, the inability to adjust to change. I admit I'm a little pissed when they cancel my favorite TV shows, but I don't go writing comics about them. Violent comics no less. I tell myself it's just TV and it's corporate America who knows nothing and cares nothing about what I in particular want to see. Not Gonterman. He goes off the freakin' deep end because his alternate reality has been yanked from under him.

Then I look at his latest comics about Magic the Gathering and that stupid show on Fox about Small Town X and wonder if these were the only things that got through to him in recent years... And I start to cry. Kidding.

Gonterman, married? With children? I have never heard that. He's never said or implied that that I've ever seen. He was amusingly proud some time ago to announce that he was not a virgin. *gag* The way he talked, it seemed to be a very recent development.

As for his age, I do believe that. For one thing, I have a photo of him. For another, he was managing an AOL forum some years back, and they do not let kids do that. (We got him kicked out for incompetence.)

I love the essay. May I forward it to another Gonterrhea sufferer? He would laugh long and loud over it. And they say laughter heals... :)

As a bona fide child of the eighties, I also observe that most of Gontie's pop references go no earlier than the early nineties - Bluth Films excepted. As the resident Sailor Moon fan (I was a fan while it was still in production in '95), Davie DOES have all the trademarks of certain twenty-something Sailor Moon males. I know another almost identical to Davey, but without the psycho mood swings. He's confirmed as in his early thirties and talks JUST like Davey...like a giddy 14-year-old girl. This guy also, like Davey, unconsciously compensates for any discernable mature masculinity by contriving huge weaponry or fortress-like bases to occupy. He also has a thing for mecha, which relates to Davey's android fetish. Both guys are incapable of detecting sarcasm or SUBTLE criticism (read the Gonterman Portal of Evil forum for evidence of this - I swear, 75% of the posters there are laughing AT him, not with him, and he has no fucking idea).

Still, my experiences with this Other Davey lead me to believe that going on vocabulary alone, it IS possible for some guys to progress to thirty and still be immature and clueless beyond all expression.

Not all, but some. And we have the Sphagnum Moss King of them all right here.

I've actually never read Bakabreakers all the way through, so I am now in between typing this, and my god. I think he totally loses his train of thought at the second post. It's PAINFUL to watch!

A near-naked bunny-android takes out the Taliban.

Kill me now.

I'm actually banned from looking up Gontie at work now...my workmates' Gonterman tolerance levels are about a tenth of mine and they got sick of him. You are all I have left to share my sport [sniff]...

8/12

AGAIN my days off are hot, humid and horrible, and thus again I can't go hiking in the state parks. So I figured that I'd do the next best thing. I paid a guy to fondle my balls and stick his finger up my ass.
ln other words, I had a complete physical.
Unless the blood work comes back saying that I have snakes gestating in my colon, or that the bubble gum I swallowed as a kid is about to inflate and explode my stomach (ah, the urban legends of childhood!), I'm in good health. At my optimum weight, blood pressure 120 over 70, pulse 60, nothing obvious growing on my nads or up my pooper.
I was just up the road from BIG!Lots, which already has the Xmas crap on their shelves, and a new place called Dollar Dreams. Dream is right; it's in a giant old Walgreens. It's the biggest dollar store EVER! The merchandise literally runs 12 feet up the wall--on pegs; I'm not talking stacks of boxes but tiny carded crap.
I didn't find anything that I wanted to buy, not even in the Strangely Named Chinese Toy section. Did you know that in Spanish Mr Clean is called "Maestro Limpio"? They had lots of amusingly named rip offs of popular brands--No Palmolive, but there was a "brand" using the exact same package design and font called "PalmAll."
They also had stuff that I'd never seen in a dollar store before. A dollar Sexy Lingerie section? After you bought that, would you trust your partner's dollar-a-pack condoms? If he couldn't get it up despite your $1 thigh-high fishnets, would you snap "Well, looks like Maestro Limpio's come to play!"
I also hit up the local SalvArmy.

HOW AWESOME IS THAT! Cat included for scale. It's gotta be a good 45 years old, and yet I snagged it for $4.

Latest interesting hit in this page's counter: burtonfuneralhome-gw0.cust.stargate.net. It's the "cust" that gets me. It must mean customer. Are they making Web-ready caskets now?

We all know how Bill the Splut loves his "The Customer is NEVER Right!" sites! Here's one about the most oppressed of service workers, the restaurant staff! "And always remember kiddies… it takes 47 muscles to frown. It only takes 4 muscles to raise your arm and bitch-slap that motherfucker."

War with Iraq is a stupid idea, say those bleeding hearts at that ultra-liberal Commie rag The National Review.

The Vivian Girls. Not exactly news to me, but a good encapsulation of the...whatever Henry Darger was. Artist, janitor, possible child-murdering lunatic.
I first came across his very disturbing work over ten years ago, in the pages of the sadly long gone "graphix magazine" RAW. They featured work by the true alternative comics artists, such as Burns, Friedman, Panter, Griffith, Barry, Deitch, and Tardi, with reprints of Golden Age wackos like Wolverton, Boody Rogers, Herriman...drooling yet? It was edited by Art Spiegelman, the guy who paid the bills by drawing the Garbage Pail Kids, while using RAW for the first publication of "Maus."
And "Maus" is a good example of the tone of RAW. It was variously subtitled as "The Graphix Magazine for your Bomb Shelter's Coffee Table," or "...of Abstract Depressionism." There were moments of humor, but it was often pretty bleak. Henry Darger fit right in.
I first thought that Darger was an elaborate hoax, but it was just too damn weird to not be real. I thought the same about "The Super Wizard STARDUST," but it really was a 1940 bizarre version of that new comic book character, Superman.
The very whacked plot involved a mug named "Gyp" (referred to with "quotes" every time the name his used), who planned on robbing the entire world by stopping the Earth's rotation and causing every last person to float off into space. Exactly how much all the money on Earth would be worth without anyone to buy things from never occured to "Gyp." He even kills his partners ("Why should I share it with these mugs?"). Here's a few excerpts, and believe me when I say that the whole thing is exactly this hallucinogenic.

I can't find much of anything about this strip, although I suppose that it goes without saying that the only real info comes from Don Markstein's Toonpedia--The creator of Stardust also created the first female superhero.

Hmm. I just checked my mail, and there was a spam titled "Asian Anal Action!"
My doctor is named Minh Han.
Thanks, had mine already.

8/14

We're on track for the hottest Summer on record, and these are the hottest days of our hottest Summer. The power company is setting a record of its own, one for the greatest amount of amperage pumped through the lines. A power surge came through at 5PM last night, and that knocked parts of town into the dark. But only parts--our plaza was completely out, but the buildings literally a few feet to either side of us were unaffected. The Swiss Cleaners across the street was the only building on that side to lose power. That must've been frustrating; there's not much a dry cleaners can do without power, and the building right next door to them had electricity, and that's where Swiss used to be located. But as long as it was daylight out, I was staying open.
Evidentally you are legally required to say one of 2 things when a store has no power: One is "Are you closed?" which is said after you walk in a door that's propped open. The other is "Did you lose power?" Three people actually asked if the lights were off so we could "keep the store cooled off." I'm not lying under the McDonalds' heat lamp here. If I wanted to cool the store, I'd turn the air conditioner on, not off.
So I stood next to a dead computer with a pad of paper and a pocket calcualtor until it got too dark to see in the store. Fortunately, that was 5 minutes before we were going to close anyway. I don't know how late the rest of the plaza stayed open. And they're all restaurants, so every minute without power put them that much closer to throwing all their food away. The place that really lucked out was the used bookstore, which closed just a coupla minutes before the power went.
I had power when I got home. But no webpage. I'd received an email from some company I'd never heard of insisting that I pay them to mantain control of my domain. I emailed Readyhosting asking "Is this a scam?" They didn't write back, so I assumed that it was. Until thoughtviper.com went away. I ponied up the cash and everything's back. "DUH!" you probably just said.
At work today (100 degrees out), I punched in by hand all the transactions I'd done in the dark the night before. As soon as I finished, I noticed that the used book store was closing hours early. And the power went off again a coupla minutes after they did. I think that I should call the TIPS line on them...
Fortunately, it came back on after only 75 minutes, so I only had to answer those same dumb questions for an hour and a quarter.

Here's Komedy Koven, a communal blog that Space Waitress is part of. Except she's not a Space Waitress anymore; she's more of a Surface Secretary. She could also be called Ground Temp, but that sounds like something that'd be served on a lightly toasted bun. At any rate, they link to a song I'd heard about, but never heard before: "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins," sung by someone with equally pointy ears. It's a music video! The song's not as bad as I thought that it'd be, but check out those go-go chicks and their developmentally-disabled dancing! Do the Pants-Loaded Hobbit Wobble, baby! Who choreographed this, Busby Gonterman?

Funny entry in Russiagirl's Diary about tattoos and dumb people.

Karl sends us another review of the Henry Darger book, this time focusing more on the controversy around the author's treatment of the subject.

Also from Karl, "Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist vs. Zed, last of his species. Like funny animal meets Ted Rall. So LomBORG is someone who corrals the media into believing that all environmentalists are worried about nothing, and the Earth is getting better without help. His book supports this by fudging or misinterpreting the sources he cites." Lomborg also has no educational background in ecological issues, yet he thinks that makes him the exact same kind of "expert" that non-biologist William Shockley thought he was back 20 years ago, when he "proved" that them Negroes were biologically inferior to the White Folks. You can "prove" anything by carefully choosing your evidence.

Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision.

8/15

The power didn't go out today.
Of course, Thursdays are the days that the used book store doesn't close until after we do.
hmmm... !

I got a box from American Science & Surplus with my usual choices of random oddities. Hey, their acronym is A.S.S., so they're gonna be pretty random. A flashlight/Swiss Army Knife/keychain, some pads of paper cut up from old maps (Kickapoo river!), and some Punching Puppets.
"Sadaam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro or Mikhail Gorbachev – or wait! Maybe Spock, Mr. T, or Rocky! The heads are terrific rubber caricatures, the punching mechanisms are first rate, and they’re enough fun that you can learn to ignore the cheesy pajama–style costumes they’re wearing."
I bought 2 pairs, and got NO MR. Ts!! I received a Saddam, a Fidel, and 2 Arafats, each with different PJs. One was wearing camoflauge, but the other puppet (which put Kill Kill into retreat after only a few punches, none of which connected) was wearing lil' jammies with TEDDY BEARS on them.

Okay, we've got Mr T and Hulk Hogan on the left side, but who are the guys on the right? I assume that they're something from the 80s, like Hulk and T. Damned if I know who!
thoughtviper#hotmail*com if you have a theory...

8/16

The power again stayed not-off. The used bookstore closed at their usual time.
But they didn't turn their neon "OPEN" sign off when they closed. hmmm!! That must be the SIGNAL they use!

Man, you'd think that a beer named "Golden Monkey" would taste good. I should've picked up on the fact that it's 19 proof (about twice the proof of regular beer). The only beer with that kind of punch is barleywine, and that stuff tastes AWFUL. Like some other liquid a monkey might produce, which is also golden in color.

'kay, let's run the punch-puppet theories down:

Kiru says: "It is unmistakably Lex Luthor, and mistakably that guy from Rocky. You know, Adrian or something. What do I look like, someone who's lived through the majority of the 80's?"

Saint Gally thinks: "Get some more sleep, you've forgot which side is left and which is right.
Can't help you id the mystery puppets, except to say maybe that's lex luthor? and for that other guy, is that hair or a russain type cap?"

Govynda theorizes: "one looks like it might be sylvester stallone (other half of my brain says, "bob dylan!" but i told it to shut up).
the other...i dunno...telly savalas? mr. clean? who can say?"

Mark the Vet opines: "One a' them puppets is Paul Reisner, star of the hit T.V. series "Mad About You". The other I believe to be Helen Hunt, his co-star on the emmy award winning series. What do I win?"

That's not hair or a birthmark on his head, it's a tattoo of dots, like that bald guy on "Draggin' Balls Z."
Okay, so if that's Rocky, and that's Mr T, and that's Hulk Hogan...They're all characters from "Rocky" movies! I've never seen any of those, and sure don't wanna, but that's what IMDB is for. So...Is Baldy a character from a Rocky movie?

The thing I learned from IMDB today: Hulk Hogan made a movie called "Santa With Muscles." I wonder how that slipped by me in the theaters...

Dumbya's Amazon Wish List.

"May I say something about Ann Coulter? She is a half-wit, a termagant, a dimwit, a blowhard, a worthless silicone nothing, physically ugly and could be likened to Eva Braun, who was Hitler's mistress. As it happens, these are all descriptions or characterizations Coulter uses for others in her book, 'Slander.' It ought to be called 'Mirror.'"

8/17

Language Gene Is Traced to Emergence of Humans: "The gene came to light through studies of a large London family, well known to linguists, 14 of whose 29 members are incapable of articulate speech but are otherwise mostly normal."

Mind the (Romer) Gap:
You know this automobile symbol, right?

...And maybe you know this one...

Guess which one has been proven literally right. That high-pitched scream you hear is from the Creationists.
Darwin Fish from this site, which is pretty entertaining. I like the sticker of Bush with the phrase "LIKE A ROCK (only dumber)"

A look at the crazy characters of San-X, as interpreted by someone who doesn't speak Japanese. Afro-Ken makes the cut, but where's Beer-Chan?

Break out the tinfoil hats and welcome to the end of human freedom: The Government is going to use some secret NASA technology to READ YOUR MIND. "He likened the proposal to a super lie detector..." Oh, that's just great, since LIE DETECTORS DON'T WORK. They don't tell if someone's lying, they only tell if someone's nervous about being hooked up to a lie detector. GOOD liars, especially sociopaths (the type of person who becomes a serial killer) ace the tests every time.

Want to book Vanilla Ice for your next party? He's a bargain at $5,000!! It's only $20K for Weird Al, but $100K for Whoopi Goldberg?! I'd pay her that, but her act better consist of smashing herself in the brain with a pickaxe.
I gotta wonder about the "Call for Pricing" acts, especially when they include such megastars as Lisa Loeb. I'd think that she'd work for cab fare and a Happy Meal. (From Karl)

8/19

I know that no one's going to believe this, but I haven't posted because I have a life.
But don't worry; it's only temporary.

We live in the Golden Age of Hoaxes.

That article mentions a site that (stupid) people believe is real: Boilerplate, the robot made in 1893.

I don't know how real this site is, but it was kinda inevitable if it is: Crop Circles, the cereal! Quisp for the gullible.

8/20

That's the cover illustration from a 1958 cookbook I bought Sunday. And, no, it's not called "Don't Toss That Lunch: 101 Uses for Vomit."

I think.

Protective headgear is recommended when eating these meals!

Use them as deadly weapons!

Hey! Who's responsible for this awful cookbook?

There was a whole stack of these Good Housekeeping cookbooks, but this was the..."best." Jess looked through one, and when she put it down, she said "It just hit me that I went through that entire cookbook, and nothing in it registered on my brain as food." The others had their moments, such as an appetizer that consisted of strips of raw bacon draped over cantaloupe. Here's a fun party game--Before you eat it, have your guests guess who'll get e. coli and who'll get trichinosis!
Similiar was the "Cannibal Sandwich," made with raw beef. Of course, it was accompanied by a painfully caricatured African cannibal.
I also picked out a shotglass that had some liver-lipped cannibals throwing a white woman into a pot with human bones sticking out of it. "Down the Hatch!" it said.
A cool-but-not-cool-enough-at-$35 thing I saw was a "Get Smart" Thermos bottle.

They just don't make enough kids items featuring bondage scenes these days.
Jessica grabbed all sorts of stuff, and all of it cheap and on sale. She got so much, I can't remember what it was. Although there was a "Cola Kid" doll, some old ad art and a blue necklace.

That's the necklace.

That's me looking like a big-nosed crosseyed dork because of the camera flash. Normally, I just look like a big-nosed dork.

After 4 hours in one store (Jess is very thorough), we were ready to cash out. They take your stuff to the front register counter as you pick it out. They'd added my things to Jessica's; I always forget that people assume a man and a woman together are a couple, even if only one's wearing a wedding ring. The problem was that they'd already tallied our things together, and the huffy woman ringing us up had to fill out another slip. She got mad again when Jess changed her mind on something, then again when she wouldn't sell me the shotglass. "The guy who took it out of the display case said that it was $10 like all the other shotglasses," I said. "He's not authorized to do that!" she snapped, as if I'd asked Bush if I could play with his nuclear launch codes. Then she wouldn't give me the sale discount on the cookbook, claiming that it wasn't on sale, and that someone must've put it in the wrong booth. A dozen books, all in the wrong booth? Neither of us were at all argumentative with her, but she was a real snit. The joke, of course, is that this was "Customer Appreciation Day," and we didn't feel very appreciated by the end of it.

Last night I went with Kevin to see "The Producers," the old Mel Brooks "Springtime for Hitler" movie. It really holds up after all these years, even if it does have hippies in it. Maybe it'll play in some art theater near you, but it's also worth the rent. Here's Ebert's "Great Movies" review.

"The Producers" has a middle-aged acid burn-out flower child, a pigeon-loving Nazi, a flamboyantly Gay cross-dressing Ed Woodish director, and a dozen horny very old ladies. The President For Life of Turkmenistan would fit right in, except he's for real.

"What's the harm?
This is probably the most frequent question asked of skeptics, and it's an excellent question. The simple answer is, No, you won't die from reading your daily horoscope, unless you do it while standing under a large falling rock. BUT, superstitious beliefs and paranormal thinking easily leads to poor decision making, needlessly living in imaginary fears, and mass hysteria when these beliefs are held by groups.
This site will highlight the costs, in lives, families, and nations affected by this type of thinking, not only in the past, but the present as well."

8/21

Monty Python stuffed animals. The Black Knight plush comes with "Detachable Arms and Legs!"

A new personal best for Gonterman: PainsintheassWalker is incomprehensible only 10 strips in. Christine found a poll on the strip. I voted "It's Great!! I love it!" because there was no "It's Great!! I hate it!"
The Egomaniac himself says "You see those 5 trolls [who said that it sucked]? How typical of cowards who flame something they consider outside of their elitistic little minds without any thought or explanation. I think they're on something illicit :)" Yeah, that's it. Of course, since it's an anonymous poll, I guess that I'm a coward for ...er, "praising" it. And there's nothing ironic about "DVK" rejecting their criticism "without any thought or explanation."
As Christine quotes from PlanesWanker:

"'...who coldly berated the attacker with a stare and voice that easily froze the blood of both men...' First of all, you can't berate someone with a STARE. If only Davey had spent more time reading and less time watching cartoons, he might have a basic grasp of the English language. Secondly, the irony of one of Davey's characters punishing (with painful death, no less) a thief with ego and hubris apparently escapes him completely, don't it? I mean, whooooosh right over his head.
"So 18 people were favorable, and 27 people were unfavorable. Hmmmmmmmmmm.... If he were Bush, he'd be president by now!"

Mike in the UK says "Intriguing to finally see what you look like!" "Intriguing," of course, is British for "AUUUGGHH!"
He sends a link. Part of it reminds me of the best job application I ever had handed to me. His current job was as a "truck diver" on a "grabage truck," and I couldn't even pronounce how he spelt "maintenance." The position he wanted was "Ass Manger." Well, that may be your prefered position, but I'll bet that the manger's sheep have a different opinion.

"While the Earth burns, Bush will be fiddling away in Waco, puttering about in his little golf cart on his little play ranch in his cowboy costumes and smirking at the rest of the world."

Pat Boone tells the story behind that InExOb'ed heavy metal CD of his.

8/22

Karl caught an earlier, uncorrected version of that last link:
">Pat Boone tells the story behing that InExOb'ed heavy metal CD of his. You've taken too much of some of that stuff from Dr. DaveyKins' medicine cabinet."
I wrote back:
"Behing," I'll have you know, is the latest "hep" slang that all the "kids" are saying. It's a combo of Beijing, bling-bling, and badda-bing, with the "ing" functioning as the adjective modifier. i.e, "Pat Boone tells the story of the Chinese Mafia money that funded that InExOb'ed heavy metal CD of his." You, my "homie," need to get what the "kool kats" call "road smarts."

Mimi found this, for you fellow Phrack Whores: "Someone please translate that top cartoon. Anyone? I think it's a verbatim conversation with the voices in his head."
And I think she's hit the Gonternail on the head! The highlight is the reference to "a toon with 64DD's." I'm not female, but I have some vague idea of the Women's Metric System, with the size ones and stuff. Isn't the letter part of a bra the cup size, while the numeric part is like the circumference of the ribcage or such?
64DD? Wouldn't that be like Quasimodo's build?
Of course, that implies that DVK has even less intimate dealings with women than me. But I don't find that very hard to believe.

WOW, this is great! A comic set in an alternate reality post-9/11 world...Well, I don't think it would've gone like this, but it's a great read.

8/23

Not interested in writing tonight.

I got a postcard from Lilly today. "Saw this, thought of you, natch." she said.

Do you believe that it takes 8 days for a postcard to go from CA to CT? And that the PO stamps that black barcodey thing on the front of it, even on a B&W picture that totally obscures it? I should talk to Scott the Gruntled Postal Worker about this!

There are still rational voices in the Government: "The secretive federal court that approves spying on terror suspects in the United States has refused to give the Justice Department broad new powers, saying the government had misused the law and misled the court dozens of times, according to an extraordinary legal ruling released yesterday."

There are still morons in the Government: De Lay gives us his reasons why we should invade Iraq. Reasons that would, if applied to the world in general, require us to invade the world in general.

Maybe you remember my...umm, Internet-sponsored preview of "One Hour Photo" a coupla months back. Here's Ebert's review. Definitely worth seeing, although it won't be hurt by being seen on video.

From Karl: Hit Charade, a look at the real cause of the decline in music sales. And it's not Napster, much as the Music Industry would like you to think. Of course, blaming Napster for that would be like blaming...something on something. No interest in writing tonight.

8/24

From World War II Japan, helpful hints for kamikazes. Parts of it are unintentionally funny, and parts of it as weird as you'd think this how-to manual would be. I thought that it was funny when it said, "Proceed straight ahead on the airstrip. Otherwise you may damage the landing gears." On a plane that's going to blow up? That'd be like the 9/11 hijackers saving their peanuts "for later." But later it tells the poor pilot when it's time to abort the mission, come home, "Discard the bomb at the area designated by the commanding officer," and land. And psych yourself up for tomorrow, when you try to kill yourself again.
The Nazis developed a rocket plane designed to attack bombers. It'd blast off, point itself in the general direction of a flight of bombers, then let loose a barrage of unguided rockets. The pilot was supposed to bail out (at almost 600MPH in the days before ejection seats) and parachute to safety. The Japanese used rocket technology to basically make a manned cruise missile, an idea that lay forgotten until about a year ago. The US Navy had a very appropriate nickname for the rocket kamikazes: "Baka Bomb." "Baka" meaning "fool."

8/26

I had a flashback to my days managing a Rite Aid drug store Saturday, when I found a pill on the floor of the store! Sadly, it turned out to be Premarin, which is a menopause drug. Back at Rite Aid, I'd find pills on the floor all the time, between the pharmacy and the front door. Unfailingly, they were either Valium or Tylenol 3 (with codeine). One time I found a nitroglycerin pill, which old people took for heart conditions, but every other time it was for the controlled substances. They couldn't even wait to hit the parking lot before taking them, and their hands must've been shaking enough that they'd drop them. And, late-70s high school/college student that I once was, I could catch a free buzz.
Oh, so that sounds pathetic. Now I work in a liquor store, and if I found a bottle of Bukoff on the floor, I'd throw it away. Unless I needed to remove paint.

I had dinner with my Mom last night. Typical of her, it was a small, frugal home-made meal. A crab meat appetizer, Filet Mignon, onion rings, flavored mashed potatoes, sweet corn on the cob, a salad of baby lettuce and strawberries, and apple pie. I had to take the pie home, as there wasn't any room left in my stomach.
I spilled a bit of the pie, and Who Knew! that little white cats eat apple pie?

If that "dirty bomb" dork Padilla is an "enemy combatant" with no rights under the law, why isn't this guy one, too? Oh, that's right, he just wanted to massacre Muslims! Them's just like shootin' squirrels!

What the Bible says about abortion.

Christine reminds us of the existence of the Acts of Gord page, wherein a Canadian game store owner talks like the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy. There are updates!

I know that there's only 3 of you fellow Phrack Whores who care (Hello, Kim, Mimi and Christine!) but here's pages 11 and 12 of PlanesDorker. Is it just me, or do they totally contradict each other?

8/27

Okay.
I spent a lot of time looking at this, and I think (one can never be sure on FerdnWorld) that the kid broke the mirror, and now he plans to unleash his army of hell-spawned rats to kill his mother. "Ben, you're always running here and there/Now devour my mom with her weird old hair."
But I could be wrong. He's so short, how'd he break the mirror? And how'd he train his Army of the Night, as he still sleeps in a crib? Obviously, he was driven mad by that picture above his crib of...What the hell is that, anyway? And has he been stockpiling rodents just in case he broke a mirror?
And why does his mother's reflection appear in a broken mirror?! Does this harken back to Li's theory (6/4 post) that this is a family of vampires? Since they don't show reflections in mirrors, maybe they DO reflect in broken ones? And yet...the mirror reflects not her true facial expression or hair color! Is it the window...of her soul?
Theories, as always, go to thoughtviper#hotmail&com. Interesting theories, that is. Funny. Creative. Theories!

A 1949 comic book ad for a Slinky imitator. WHAT is with that kid's FACE?! He's bleeding at the mouth!
"WOWIE! Look at him go flop-flop!" Wowie, look at meesa speak like Jar-Jar. There actually was a time when kids wore Jughead hats?

One of my favorite words is Schadenfreude (SHAH-den-froy-dah), or "Amusement at other's misfortune." Or, as an author cleverly named his book on the subject, "When Bad Things Happen to Other People." Here's the psychology behind it.

"Verb: It's what you do." Yuh-huh. I verb. Ooh, watch me go verbing! Man, I am SO VERBED OUT!
It's the Gummint's latest lame slogan, this time on the War on Fatness. Supposedly it's based on the "Truth" anti-smoking campaign, which are truly the only ads on TV that I actually find interesting enough to watch. But this new anti-obesity campaign seems to be borrowing a page from the other failed ad campaigns. I still remember the start of the incredibly successful War on Drugs, when Nancy Reagan proclaimed "Just Say No!" What? That's it?! Your plan to have people not use drugs is to tell them not to use drugs? Is your plan to end world hunger going to be called "Just Ask For Seconds"? Maybe they ran with that plan, and that's why we have all these chubby kids. Why not make the slogan, "Just Say No to Fast Food"? Is it really inactivity that's causing obesity, or the fatty, calorie-bloated diet of America?
As to why that isn't the slogan, read to the end of the article.
There's a dopey web page, too. Via AOL, which just multiplies the campaign's "rad xtreme kewl street cred to the MAX!!" by the power of zero.
At least use Moby's cover of "Verb: That's What's Happening" from the "Schoolhouse Rock Rocks!" CD. Ain't nobody not gonna be moving during that song.

8/28

'Nkay, we're running a bit late tonight. I went over Scott's to see "They Saved Hitler's Brain." Maybe more tomorrow, although today's Oddball Comic gets it all wrong! YES, Hitler survived the war, but as a brain in a jar that got nowhere NEAR the Moon! READ A HISTORY BOOK ALREADY!
In the meantime, here's a photo Scott took of me interacting with one of his toys. It's here because I doubt anyone wants to look at it more than once. I sure don't.

Ferd'nand! Thanks to Aldo and Amy for responding, but, yeah, I knew it was a picture, not a mirror. Scott (not THAT Scott, the Rogue Five Scott) says:

First off, I have to assume that you realized that it's a picture on the wall and not a mirror and you were just going for the funny. (If I don't assume that, it means you managed to notice that the woman and her "reflection" don't look alike and that the mirror continues to function after being broken and still failed to put the pieces together.)
The thing that gets me the most is even if you take the cartoon straightforward (Boy breaks mirror. Boy hides in room behind platoon of mice to avoid punishment) you have to ask yourself, "Where the heck did he get all of those mice?" Mom obviously didn't get them for him, since she is supposed to be petrified of them. I guess there house is infested enough that even a toddler (who, as you pointed out, still sleeps in a crib) can just reach down and fill up a shoebox.
Ultimately, I'm going to have to go with this as the dialogue:
Panel 1 -
Her: Broken Mirror on the wall, who's the cutest of them all. Oh yeah, and who ate all of my Cheez-Its?
Mirror: With that hair, it sure isn't you. Look in the kid's room for the answer to both.
I'll leave panels 2 and 3 to you.

This comic is a clever play on the old Grimm fairy tales. The captions should read as follows:
"Mirror, mirror, on th-- HEY!"
"Damn those bears! You give them one bowl of porridge and they think they own the place."
"Oh no! My coach horses have reverted back into mice! And my husband has turned back into a frog!"
Actually, now that I look at it, he's more like a tiny Bond villain. "Do you expect me to laugh, Ferd'nand??" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to WRITE A WEB PAGE ABOUT IT!"

Sorry, but you totally missed the boat with your explanation of this rather straight forward Ferd strip. The framed thing on the wall is not a mirror. Notice that Ms Ferd is angry/startled and yet the "reflection" is not. See, this is a picture of Granny Ferd (Notice the gray hair). So it is the framed portrait of Granny Ferd that has broken glass.
Now, any long time Ferd reader knows about Granny Ferd's obsession with the Rastafarrian lifestyle, and in particular her love of anything related to Bob Marley. Knowing that, and recalling that Mr Marley died of metastatic cancer, the primary tumor being a malignant melanoma puts the rest of the story together.
You may recall the recent news story about the protective effect that caffeine has on skin cancer in mice (Ferdnand's Son Discovers Cancer Cure). Look at Ms Ferd's face when she sees her son using the shard of glass to scarify the mouses skin in his ongoing experiments to cure stop skin cancer and ultimately to BRING BACK BOB MARLEY!!
The painting over his crib, now that's a whole other story.

8/29

"A heavy black cloud is looming over my head as September 11th fast approaches. Not at all triggered by flashbacks of fire and mangled steel.

"Slowly I'm seeing more false patriots bringing out their tattered and forgotten flags to once again prove their love for this dandy nation. Slowly I'm seeing more and more Jeeps with "Kill them all and let God sort 'em out" scrawled on the windows. Slowly I'm seeing the news stations hinting at the lovely computer generated intros and sappy violin-laden memorial segments they've prepared.

"Now, before I'm labeled as an evil, insensitive puppy-kicker, let me give you this: I lost twelve friends and relatives in the WTC that day. Thirteen if you include an unborn child. The panic, the crying, the frantic unanswered phone messages. I know it firsthand." More.

8/31

Shelley and I did the key exchange today. Key to the store, that is, because she's in charge while I use up my remaining vacation! 135 hours straight of not-work!

Hey, anybody remember the SHAWT? Wow, that was a long time ago (if you don't know what that stands for, it's the "Stupid Human At Work Today") . I had a conversation with a customer that reminded me of something that happened, oh Gourd, months ago. Back in the day this guy would've been SHAWTed immediately.
Shelley called me over to look at a $50 bill a customer was paying with..."It looks weird." Indeed it did. And the paper felt weird as well. I held it up and the watermark of General Ulysses "The S is for Stinkin' Drunk" Grant was all fuzzy. And that vertical magnetic strip was missing. "Sorry, but we can't take this. I think it's counterfeit."
"WHAT?! But I got it from Wendy's! How do you know it's counterfeit?"
I told him why, and he admitted that he couldn't find the vertical strip, either, after I showed him a real 50. He debated about what he should do. Wendy's had given it to him a few days ago, so he couldn't go back and yell at them. Then he left and sat in his car.
And came back, and we went through the whole thing again. He seemed to be having trouble with the whole "vertical strip" and "watermark" concepts. "Where's this strip supposed to be?" Then he left, and sat in his car, looking at the bill in his lap. Doing...something.
And he came back 5 minutes later. "There's a strip on it!" he insisted. I held it up to the light. And, as Gourd is my witless, there was a vertical strip.
"This was drawn with a pencil," I said.
When he left again there was much laughter.

Mo' money-related SHAWTery from Govynda's last day at the bank.

An eBay auction from Chris S: "It almost makes me ashamed to be an Arizonan. I also find it doubly humorous that the seller's handle is 'left-winger'." From the auction: "He's revived the chain gangs for men and women. He serves 35 cent meals to inmates featuring green bologna sandwiches. He's famous for his "Tent City" in the scorching Arizona heat and his neon "VACANCY" sign that's always on. The inmates wear pink underwear, can't smoke cigarettes, can't drink coffee, and can't have girlie magazines. They can watch the Disney Channel, The Weather Channel and C-Span for recreation. Sheriff Joe also offers Bedtime Stories narrated by himself for the inmate's nightime listening pleasure." Hey, he don't look all that scary to ME! Punch him in the head, watch him WRITHE!
Writhe, bobble, whatever.

Mark the Vet sends a pair of pics that almost makes us wish the InExOb was still around:

He explains:

Actually the spray is way funnier when the story is told. A girl I've gone out with is a dog groomer. These cans of anti mating spray were a part of the business that she purchased. She is blond. She read the label as anti matting spray. People would pick up their long coated dogs, looking great but smelling like shit. She told them it was a spray to keep their coats from tangling. One day I stopped to see her and started laughing about the anti mating spray. Once she realized what it was (it says right on the damn label it masks odors that attract male dogs) she told me what she thought it was.

Cheryl sent a news story on this new CD, and then Other Mark the Not-Vet sent the actual homepage for it. So I guess that I should post it!
Hey, the samples sound just like that Friskies CD I got a while back--and that was free, not US$20 each! And it made Kill Kill leave the room. Until the samples ended and I turned the classical station back on. KK's review: "Save your $20 and buy me toy mice!"

Nice work if you can get it: "GEEK SQUAD! In Color! A Quinn Martin Production."

Today's mission requires deployment to a place called Studio Atlantis, located in the netherworld of Western Avenue. It's a blocky concrete mass near where the 101 freeway hits Santa Monica Boulevard. Inside, the place has high ceilings and long corridors and furniture stolen from Alice's rabbit hole. In the bathroom are little blue soaps shaped like seahorses. This is definitely the kind of place for a special agent.

Via Cruel.com: The wind-up self-spanking monkey! HOORAY for TECHNOLOGY!

From the Things That Only Interest Me (But Whose Damn Page Is It Anyway?) Dept: Former Communist nations have discovered the InExOb (at the bottom)...and the one with the kielbasa and the language that uses "z" every other letter has learned the horror of JERRY VAN DYKE!

        Hey, I learned how to make paragraph indents in HTML without using the < ul > tag today! No, YOU shut up!! I now know more than you!