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Friday, December 18, 2009

Happy Holidaze (sic)

I was looking for something on my computer and I found this thing that I only sort of remember doing (in MS-Paint!) in a computer lab in 1996, likely instead of working on an essay about hegemony and/or transgression (these were the only things I learned to write about in grad school) (I was not very good at grad school!).

The Save Date on it is 12/8/1996 so it is a Christmas present from my 13-years-ago self to my current self (Merry Christmas! Also, Memento Mori!), but I'll show you too because I am generous.


Ha ha, nice one, younger self. You don't even notice that it looks like it takes place on Bespin until you look at it for over a minute.
Thanks. There is a giant bottom margin on this thing due to I did it in MS-Paint in 1996.
No worries, thanks again. I didn't get you anything, but here is a link to something that will someday be your favorite non-Jessi thing on BabelPop. It is also Christmasy.
Thanks.

(They make out)
(Fade Out)

(Fade In, several hours later)


(Simultaneously) "You are an excellent lover."

um ok, enough of that.
Have a good holiday if I don't see you, which I won't because I am a blog post.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

BoobieWatch!

Um this was a sonnet I wrote in the comments of a post on The Awl wherein Alex Balk wrote a poem summarizing Lynn Hirschberg's profile on Megan Fox. [?]

I know no one cares about inside-jokey sonnets I write in the comments on other blogs (this is not Recursive Fimoculous! I think Rex Sorgatz used to include his comments on other blogs on his site, but I just looked and he either doesn't now or never did; anyway) or even on this blog, but it's the only thing I've "written" all week, so I'm putting it here mainly because sometimes I forget the last time I typed "boobies" and the answer is this. It was this time. I am sorry you have to read this.

And in fact you should use this whole "post" as a means to just click over to the actual post, because it is great and there are more great things in the comments. I love the Awl comments, maybe even more than Videogum comments; I want Karen UhOh to follow me around saying things.
WE COULD SOLVE MYSTERIES!

So, OK:


That cherry made my brain scream “Sherilyn Fenn!”
When I saw it in GQ magazine.
I never will forget her; then again,
I had to google “Brian Austin Green”.

I guess that Hirschberg’s point is Things Transmute..?
Both crushes and the crushees take a bow.
The kneepad leggings gone that were so cute.
The Jolies meet the Jolier Than Thou.

Red Lobster Biscuits yield to Truffled Fries
And a propensity for bad tattoos
(“We L.O.L. at gilded butterflies”)
Give way to smarts, re: “boobies on read-thrus”

So in this way one changes tit for tat:
There ought to be a German word for that.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Orienting Arrow

A longass time ago, my friend Siobhan wrote a book that was funny and informative. I drew some pictures for it, and I think we all learned a little something in the process (about how I am bad at leveraging opportunities to do things I actually like instead of working for the same company for twelve years or whatever it is now just kidding please keep employing me I need the healthcare: anyway, that is what we all learned).

It was called "30 Things Everyone Should Know How to do Before Turning 30", although you may know it by its German title (interesting sidenote: although they kept the "30" in the title of the German edition, the "How to eat a lot of cabbage before invading Poland in a well-made car" chapter was you know what it's not even worth finishing that line let's just go to the next paragraph. GERMANS, RIGHT?).

AND BUT SO
In addition to looking at archived emailed from the early aughts to remind myself that I'm not as clever/funny/smart as I used to be, I sometimes search for this book, and here is what I saw today: this book, which is $1.54 for a used copy is currently going for between $93.55 and $184.13 for a new copy.



NOW THEN
Later on, my friend Siobhan wrote another book called Hipster Haiku. This book featured zero illustrations by me (whoever's decision that was, I bear you no rancor, I pretty much maxed out my ability to draw hands with the first book).

BUT
Let's see how this book is doing OH INTERESTING IT IS AVAILABLE NEW FOR $4.22.
Look, this is a funny book. This book is funnier than it should be. I think if you were to read it what would happen is you would likely marvel at the funniness therein. But $4.22? I think we see what's going on here.

HENCE
For a limited time, I will draw a picture on any book you want for the jaw droppingly low price of like I don't know a dollar or something (higher if I have to draw hands).
I can basically guarantee (definition 4: "v. to guarantee sarcastically") that the book will increase in value TENFOLD within six years. I am contactable at pmortensen at g ma i l dot com (ha I just tricked some spambots SUCK IT SPAMBOTS I AM ONE STEP AHEAD OF YOU LIKE BOBBY FISCHER ONLY A NONANTISEMITIC VERSION, although I do plan to die of renal failure in Reykjavik, like him, so. OK call it even).

This is a limited time offer. Once I am a millionaire I will probably stop to focus on damaging my kidneys and/or working on my parody of that Beyonce song tentatively titled "Shingle Ladies (Put Some Acyclovir On It)". That joke should probably have gone on Twitter and not here; I think that's how Twitter works. SO CONFUSING. Anyway, go ahead and send me money. THANKS

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

This guy made me laugh


This guy made me laugh
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd
What IS causing it? About three seconds more of pondering should crack this nut.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

I'm at the Greek diner

The one on the corner and Willie Nelson walks in and I'm totally freaking out. IT IS REALLY WILLIE NELSON. He orders a gyro and the guy makes it and Willie Nelson takes a bite -- I'm like twittering this the whole time: WILLIE NELSON JUST CAME INTO THE RESTAURANT I WAS EATING IN #willienelson -- even though I'm getting gyro grease on my phone it is worth it, so crazy WE ARE BOTH EATING GYROS! and Willie Nelson turns to the proprietor and says, "Say, what's in this, anyway?" He is pretty short, actually. So he has to like climb up on a stool to be seen? And the guy behind the counter says, "Lamb, mostly?" and then Willie Nelson turns to his entourage which is weird but I don't know what else you would call them, these outlaw looking guys that he came in with, but he turns to them but really you know he is addressing everyone in the diner and it gets totally quiet and Willie Nelson says, "Well..." and then he just lets it hang there like a PERMANENT ELLIPSIS and I am swearing to God right now if he doesn't follow this up with, "My gyros have always been cow, boys," I WILL TOTALLY LOSE MY SHIT Actually I will totally lose it anyway, but OK he's about to speak. This is too long for Twitter so I'm putting it here this is it you guys he's about to talk you guys this is it

Saturday, August 29, 2009

When I Squeeze My Mind Grapes, the Resulting Wine Metaphor Trends Toward the Upper Echelons of the Middle Brow

On the bike path today I was behind a guy with extremely localized butt sweat such that if he had been wearing Winkers, it would have been like in Henry and June when Maria de Medeiros taps Fred Ward on the shoulder during Un Chien Andalou (or maybe Heddy Lamar in Ecstasy Featuring Heddy Lamar I can't remember) and anyway Fred Ward turns around and his face is blanked out by tears.

OPEN LETTER TO WINKERS CREATORS: PLEASE MAKE FRED WARD BIKING SHORTS

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

this is just in case you forgot

what it felt like

Tom Delay to Appear on Dancing with the Stars

Respect.


Presumably dancing to La Cucaracha will be deemed a little too inside baseball.


Whatever, SUGAR LAND PRIDE Y'ALL!!!!!!111!11
Also, Baylor pride.

Full disclosure: Tom Delay was an exterminator in Sugar Land and I grew up in Sugar Land and later went to Baylor and Tom Delay is whatever you call the cancer that cancer gets.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Adwear

This is only allowed to work once every fifteen years[*], specifically I refer to:
USING POETRY TO SELL ME PANTS

And I don't know how they (= advertisers) know when the fifteen years is up (maybe Start>All Programs>Accessories>Calculator? I DON'T KNOW) or whose turn it is to employ said advertising technique, but Max Blagg shilling for GAP from 1992:



..has toootally been replaced by Walt Whitman unknowingly (?**) shilling for Levi's, a pants concern:



(N.B. remember when Gap was called "The Gap" and remember when they announced they would no longer be selling Levi's and would instead sell their own brand and our moms were like, "Whaaaaaat?" and then it turned out to be a good idea (for a while)?)

I'm all like:
On the one hand it would seem that in the course of using a poem for advertising jeans, anything is likely to happen.
But on the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding similarity between poems used for advertising jeans collected in widely different ad agencies.
Therefore the problem: If the content of advertisements for pants is contingent, how are we to explain the fact that ads from different agencies are so similar, LOL?

(You guys! Did you know French anthropologist L
évi-Strauss is different from jeans maker Levi Strauss?)

(Develop this thought.)



*(Shaggy's "Boombastic" doesn't count)

**Or maybe knowingly; I may be confused.
SPOILER ALERT: DON DRAPER'S REAL LAST NAME IS "WHITMAN"!
SPOLIER ALERT II: RACHEL MENKEN REJECTS DON DRAPER NÉE WHITMAN AND MARRIES A GUY NAMED "TILDEN KATZ", WHICH IS LIKE THE 1960S WAY OF SAYING "ADAM GOLDBERG" SO THIS MAKES ALL OF THE DEUTSCHER GRUß IN THE ADVERTISEMENT AT 0:27 OK? OR MAYBE IT MAKES IT NOT OK IT IS SO HARD TO TELL WHAT TO THINK WHEN I AM THINKING ABOUT BUYING PANTS


Anyway, this just makes me want to wear more pants.

SORRY, FANS OF ME WITHOUT PANTS.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Cavalia


Cavalia
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd

These ads are on top of every cab in Chicago. It's hard to read the yellow text in the bottom of the ad, but I'm 90% sure it says:

"Hi guys! I made a stop motion version of Coraline, only instead of using Polyjet matrix technology, I just took a bunch of photos of my Barbie Horse (Tawney), thanks come see my show!!! <3 <3 <3 "

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

I can't stop watching the trailer for the new Harry Potter movie

I am sort of excited?
Even though I haven't enjoyed any of those movies, except sort of the third one (#CuarónFTW: I think the most geniusy thing in that movie was that they were periodically wearing street clothes and it actually seemed like they were imperiled, which when they were wearing wizard robes, it was easier for me to just say, oh, they're fine; they're wearing robes).

Note that I am aware:
Trailers aren't movies (unfortunately), but this was easily the best book in the series, and look at the trailer! Street clothes! Eeeeeeeee!

But so anyway with the new movie coming out tomorrow, one's thoughts turn to Choire Sicha's comments on the original trailer at Radar.

Except one can't:
I had a post ready to go (and if you read this in an RSS reader, I had a post, fullstop) that linked to the old Radar piece which continued the above thusly:
Still worth reading

But also:

(1) It is weird to read it now in the new post-human Radar format with what is CS's "voice", but without any credit given to him (although I give it liiike one more year before the whole internet will be using that "voice") (which means he really should get his book out soon before it's too late) (Choire Sicha: take off your robe!) (metaphor).

(2) It's totally crazy to me that it was only a year ago that those guys were at Radar. It seems like FOREVVVVER ago.

Maybe it's different for you!

(note use of SichaPoint (tm) at the end of that sentence to prove my earlier point about the whole internet.)


Except, wait, because then I actually read carefully, and I was wrong?
The post on Radar is actually not that post anymore (with the exception of the title, which no longer makes sense?) -- it's been pruned of the Ian McKellen misattribution that allowed people to dismiss the whole thing, as well as a lot of other fun stuff that caused people to look for an easy way to dismiss it.

And so to Google (sorry, Bing)!
To search for key phrases I sort of remember from a year ago!
Internet Archive: I am sorry to tell you that you are not helping me today.
Today, helping me was Queerty.com, which my spending time on, in trying to track down some of the original text, will assure mistargeted google ads for me for about a week. You know what, I can take it, because: haha that url made me laugh although it took me a minute to get it so I also felt stupid.

Anyway, some partially reconstructed text from the post, from Queerty.com:
Now we find that Voldemort's own sense of evil came to him as a torture in the night of his youth. And then there's the train chugging its way to Hogwarts, and all the boys in the private school jostling in the halls, and there's Ian McKellen [sic] handing Harry Potter some big crystal memory dildo, seriously


Unfortunately, the rest may be lost to history
just kidding probably not, I'm probably just bad at the internet.

Still, New Watered Down Posts on the Current Version of Radar Online: You are my own personal Person from Porlock.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Friday, June 05, 2009

The Franzen/Munro Debacle of 2009

Good tip: stop at the end of the first page, so your hate can continue to fuel you like a cancer.

That's how cancer works, right?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Kallisti!

Despite the fact that DC Comics are totally the worst ever, I love this [nsfw] painting (fourth down) by Isabel Samaras, The Judgment of Batman from 1996, that replaces Hera, Athena and Aphrodite with the only true Catwoman, Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether and Julie Newmar.

Discovery that there is someone alive in the world named Isabel Samaras who paints things like this via: 
the deeply awesome Learning 2 Share where those of you who came here by searching for "nsfw batman" should head now in order that you may also enjoy Batgirl -- Too Torrid For Tots! and the (literally) jawdropping Boy Wonder I Love You (which, just when you think Batman kissing on Robin is all played out (apologies to Isabel Samaras and the fifth one down (ibid.): maybe it wasn't in 2002), this song will make you want to see nothing but Batman kissing on Robin for the rest of your life in hopes that this will somehow irritate Burt Ward).

In conclusion, DC Comics are totally the worst ever.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

how to make me sad

It makes me sad when I try to make a joke and people (1) take it seriously and (2) respond to the joke earnestly; therefore, this post on this "collaborative" blog that hasn't been updated in over two years due to lack of energy and/or interest by two of the authors and the fictionalness of another author makes me sad.

Someone should really do something, or something.

Friday, May 22, 2009

get experienced

Choire Sicha deconstructs AO Scott's review of The Girlfriend Experience in The Awl.

Good stuff in both links. However! Left out of both the review and the translation are the following important points:

(1) You are not allowed to see the film unless you have sat through a minimum of five mumblecore movies.

(2) "Grey's Anatomy" remains a good title for a movie review; why hasn't anyone done this?

(3) In an effort to leverage off of existing irony, Sasha Grey just secured the contract to be the new face of Ivory Snow (along with a resurrection of former taglines "Will Wash Anything" (!), "No chapping" (!!) and "it floats" (..?)).

(4) I think if I saw this movie I would feel gross and sad, but I still think I want to see it more than Che.

(5) "It's nice to be liked, but it's better by far to get paid."


Tangentially Related:





about which, : (

Friday, May 15, 2009

spacial neglect

Just getting around to this now, but the New Yorker profile on neurologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and mirrors and phantom limbs from a few weeks ago was pretty fun, especially all the slams at Freudians!

(And as a sidenote, the Rotating Charlie Chaplin mask mentioned in the article is truly fucked and will surely be the prion-laced fodder for many sleep disorders to come. But how much better would a rotating cortical homunculus have been? Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, you have dropped the ball. Resurgent Community of Brooklyn Artists living near the Gowanus, get on this.)

We found this phantom limb article to be a nice expansion on the other time The New Yorker talked about phantom limbs in “The Itch” (mostly memorable for the proximity of the word “itch” to the word “annals”, but still). It also dovetails nicely with the July 2007 article about phantom limbs that was in The New Yorker, oh and also that Richard Ford story that was in the March 2008 New Yorker where he talks about phantom limbs and the Edwidge Danticat story that talks about phantom limbs in last November’s issue.

By our estimate this is the 704th time The New Yorker has talked about Phantom Limbs since mid-2007.
Just what is going on here?

While the Freudians have theorized that David Remnick wishes his mother had a penis (source: Janet Malcolm), the coördinated (diaeresis joke) effort on display implies someone on high is trying to cry out for help!

We therefore helpfully posit that the following is what we’re talking about when we talk about phantom limbs:
  1. That feeling that overcomes the guest chair across from Charlie Rose on the two nights a week that Gopnik is not a guest
  2. Calvin Trillin’s copy editor since 2001
  3. Anthony Lane Week during David Denby Week (felt by everyone)
  4. The “Shout” part of “Shouts and Murmurs” whenever Steve Martin phones one in.
  5. The little bit I crumble inside when they fill the whitespace with a “Block that Metaphor” (bump up the leading; only Tobias Frere-Jones is going to notice and Sasha’s three years older, so he’ll keep him in check)
  6. Something about Malcolm Gladwell pulling off his wig and it’s really been Christopher Walken this whole time but he still feels like he has crazy hair or something I don’t know
But these have all been with us for a while now, so there must be some other reason for the up-tick, and we now get to the point where we light a candle instead of cursing The New Yorker’s darkness; i.e., we have a solution!
  1. Hold up a mirror to the Dan Baum Twitter.
  2. The pain will all soon go away.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Buy one for Ron Mallett today

I like this Sam Pottsesque shirt from Qwantz. It would be useful for when it all goes down.

But there is a basic problem:
There should be instructions for how to make a mirror at the top and then everything else below it printed in reverse, Memento-stizz.

This way, I won’t have to take my shirt off all the time to read it and I can thereby avoid frightening the old-timey people with my sixpack.

All that aside, a great effort and I can't wait to see cowpox up close.



(also with a backwards shirt, you could also potentially take credit for backwards writing before da Vinci does. TAKE THE CREDIT)

Monday, March 23, 2009

INVISIBLE SKI HELMET





um: hey video editors, please think twice before using the "Impact" typeface, is all we're saying

Sunday, March 15, 2009

time flies like an arrow



fruit flies like a banana

Stan Apps, at whatever his blog is called today, has a post about reading text backwards.

which post brings to mind an Anecdote:
When I first moved to Chicago (the first time) (in 1996), I went to the Loop to what was then Marshall Fields to look at the Christmas display and not knowing that the window displays would tell a narrative, I started on the wrong end and worked my way backwards. The window display that year was based on A Christmas Carol, and so the story went something like:
A repentant man buys a goose, then grows increasingly cynical.

(I did this in subsequent years; all Christmas stories backwards are depressing, which is to say more accurate, except for The Nutcracker, which evades explanation in either direction.)

I am also reminded of sitting in a movie theater, which I would have spelled "theatre" at the time, with my friends, waiting for Arachnophobia (‽) to start and talking about running movies in reverse (Kurt Vonnegut does this in Slaughterhouse Five, but we didn't know that): my friend said, "Jaws is about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they open the beach."

This is great!
But is it too great? It seems stolen from something he would have seen on HBO, which I did not have. Googling it now, I find references to it in basically these exact words, though not many, so maybe it is true that we were all funnier a long time ago. Reading old Outlook archives seems to confirm this.

n.b. The picture above of Stan Apps holding a sword is one that I found looking through an Outlook archive. He is not holding a sword because he is about to cut some Gordian Knot of Poetry by reading it backwards; but he is holding it hilariously because this is around 1994, a time when everything was hilarious.

W/R/T poetry, though
Other than liiike Philip Larkin, who for some reason I find hard to get enough of, I don't read much poetry, unless it's in the NYer and it's short enough (sorry, @Erato!) and is hopefully about someone who used to be a dog, but if a poem does manage to get itself read, I usually forget I'm supposed to be paying attention and when I get to the end, I definitely read it backwards (but it's cool: I think we all know that Leonhard Euler figured out the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem by starting at the end and working backwards), based on my misunderstanding of the way "poetry" works, viz--:

(1) a good poem is one that has a real sockdolager at the end
(2) find the sockdolager, and you will "unlock" the "key" to the poem (note: these are metaphors)
(3) then you can go back and reread it with "what you were supposed to have gleaned from it" the first time through in mind

BECAUSE APPARENTLY POETRY IS THE DEATH STAR
It is all defensive and tricky, but there is one hole you can shoot your "photon" into and then it explodes (it is possible I read that narrow fellow in the grass thing too many times in school).

AND SO WITH THIS IN MIND WHAT CHANCE DOES READING FORWARD HAVE:
For: reading bottom to top will increasingly be the practice as we all start going through old email threads in our Outlook Archives to see how funny we used to be and to try to figure out what happened (I was really funny over email in 2000.) (i.e., before the events of 9/11) (but after Kurt Cobain died! Strange!)

All of this to say:
if you sometimes find yourself missing the Silver Age of the Internet when everyone was funnier (before they "bought the goose") (see what I did there?), and regret specifically the deletion of the entire tmftml blog at popfactor ("popfactor"!) and more specifically regret that the Elizabeth Skurnick "Ballad Of The Love-Scorned Anywoman" post is gone: fear not, it is also here on her own blog.

Note: even though it is poetry that is not about a dog, it should be read forward, due to the sockdolager.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Afterthought

On post-hipster.com, which I'm going to call post-chipster.com in my head startiiiiiiiiiing now, Chip has put up some tracks from the Little P-Slope Band that Could, The Sacred Monkeys of Bali. In particular, may I direct you to the first track, Bob Ross.

As you'll recall, the choice to change the song's focus from Werner Herzog stunt double Bill Alexander to Doug Henning stunt double Bob Ross has long been regarded as the point at which the band jumped the shark (source: SMOB: An Oral History, With the Emphasis on Oral, Just Kidding, there wasn't actually much Oral) due to the band's attempt to access a more "mainstream" demographic, to say nothing of the loss of the "Rootin' Teuton" line).

STILL: worth a listen if only to speculate on what might have been.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Um, doy

"Dad, do you want to sit on the couch under a blanket and draw robots?"

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

This is how it works

Once every two years or so, the Extensis Community Blog, in a transparent attempt to drive up pagecount, has a contest wherein the participants write typeface haiku (or typeface senryū for sticklers. Hey, um, sticklers, we all think you're kind of bringing the party down).

I see through the attempt (due to it is transparent?) but I am not made of stone.

Although I am, apparently, made of honorable mentions.

Here are the contest winners.

And here are my submissions, for posterity:
(with the last one being the honorable mention one)

Here’s Palatino,
But look, there’s Book Antiqua:
Like two Captain Kirks

“My essay’s too short.”
(clicks Control-A; Courier)
“There! Ninety pages.”

For Bob Marley fans,
You want Gothic, not Roman:
“I shot the serif”

You use Lucida,
I will kick your ass so hard.
Please. Do not test me.

I composed this one
On a Linotype machine
ETAOIN SHRDLU


Be sure to check this blog in roughly one biennial for more strained hilarity.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Now Playing

The double bill I've been waiting for my whole life.


Now Playing
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd


At the Museum of Science and Industry in [the great city of] Chicago. This was in the "Yesterday's Main Street" exhibit.
I'm kind of thumbs down on the MoSaI because a lot of the exhibits are like "Cows Actually Enjoy Eating Corn", sponsored by Archer Daniels Midland, but I had never seen the Yesterday's Main Street exhibit.

CHARMSVILLE.

I have Total Nostalgia for this period, which period equals anything before 1953 or so and which period I'm capable of having nostalgia for due to television dating from this period was on in the afternoons when I was a kid..? (and which period in turn had nostalgia for Les Georges Herriman et Méliès, or so the MoSaI would have one believe.)

I think we need a national law that says kids must work their way up through the history of television chronologically. No one gets to see
The Wire unless they've displayed proficiency in Your Show of Shows, Twilight Zone, Green Acres, All in the Family and the "Jose Chung" episode of X Files.
Maybe an episode of Alice.

Kids these days need to get schooled by some Vic Tayback.

STOW IT, BLONDIE!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

a new day

This made me laugh.
(although I wonder if there are implications we're not considering).

And this? From like two Augusts ago?
I read it every so often to feel better when I read stupid things.

David Rees please turn into a woman and marry me in an alternate universe where I am single, not that I want that because I love my wife and family I am just trying to convey you are awesome, sorry I started talking before I had thought out the implications.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Self Development


Self Development
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd


(Hodgman looks lonely by himself there in "Self-Development"; maybe I'll buy the audio book for this to keep him company. YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH SOUP OR HORSES OR LOVE OR PASSION OR ACHIEVEMENT OR DEVOTION)

Amabo Kcarab



(by Sam)

(that's the Washington Monument on the left)

(also: BLUE SHOES!)

NAC EW SEY!

Monday, January 19, 2009

0sil9

I don't know when this happened, because I usually read it in the RSS Reader, but Jason Kottke redesigned his site:

Do not bother trying to turn off your greasemonkey script -- it is supposed to be like that.

Initial Questions
  • Is the red/white/blue just up for the inauguration?
  • Or is it just up until the first disappointment from the new president?
  • Did he use dozens of spacer gifs and five concentric tables, and was it a bitch to code?
  • Is he going to change the "burn-your-eyes-out yellow-green" favicon to match?
  • If not, why does he want our eyes to burn?
  • If our eyes are burning, can we still use ClearEyes even though its spokesperson is Ben Stein, and Ben Stein sounds like kind of a dickhole?
  • Is Public School Intelligentsia still up for some hardcore half-naked hand holding or has Kottke taken it too far?
  • If Jason Kottke were really good at the internet, then why is the olliekottke.com domain still available?
  • Some other questions I'll have to think of later because we're out of eggs and this is preventing the making of cookies
Regardless, happy almost eleventh anniversary, kottke.org

v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
Update: Oh.

Friday, January 16, 2009

"View From Below" / "Rugs by Style"

Alex Balk linked to this this Naomi Wolf piece in New York; therefore I was reading it.

If you like synergy, read on!

Here is a line from this piece:
In my gym, the 40-year-old women have adult pubic hair; the twentysomethings have all been trimmed and styled.

And here is the ad I had at the top of the page:

View From Below... Rugs by Style
RUGS BY STYLE = SO HELPFUL. THANKS, NEIMAN MARCUS!

For a follow-up article on prostitution, the store plans an ad referencing the "Neiman Marcus $250 Cookie".

Checkmates

This is sort of funny (youtube link), I guess. Kind of.
I'm going to say: worth it for the understated last line.

OK, But: check out around 1:29! I have that coffee mug!

When we registered at Crate & Barrel, due to we were getting married? These green mugs were the only thing(s) I wanted, and my mom bought them for me! Only 20% are now broken which is way beating the average for Crate & Barrel beverage containers.

This is the most excited I've felt since Family Ties when the Keatons would drink juice out of the same juice glasses my family had.

Now that I've typed that, I realize these are sort of similar events.

Also, I was excited to get married, I should say.

And look, I happened to find this picture of one of the mugs on my computer:




This is a pretty typical game for me, actually.

I usually go 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bb5+ Bd7 4. Bxd7+ Qxd7 5. c4 Nc6 6. Nc3 Nf6 7. O-O g6 8. d4 cxd4 9. Nxd4 Bg7 10. Nde2 Qe6 11. Nd5 Qxe4 12. Nc7+ Kd7 13. Nxa8 Qxc4 14. Nb6+ axb6 15. Nc3 Ra8 16. a4 Ne4 17. Nxe4 Qxe4 18. Qb3 f5 19. Bg5 Qb4 20. Qf7 Be5 21. h3 Rxa4 22. Rxa4 Qxa4 23. Qxh7 Bxb2 24. Qxg6 Qe4 25. Qf7 Bd4 26. Qb3 f4 27. Qf7 Be5 28. h4 b5 29. h5 Qc4 30. Qf5+ Qe6 31. Qxe6+ Kxe6 32. g3 fxg3 33. fxg3 b4 34. Bf4 Bd4+ 35. Kh1 b3 36. g4 Kd5 37. g5 e6 38. h6 Ne7 39. Rd1 e5 40. Be3 Kc4 41. Bxd4 exd4 42. Kg2 b2 43. Kf3 Kc3 44. h7 Ng6 45. Ke4 Kc2 46. Rh1 d3 47. Kf5 b1=Q 48. Rxb1 Kxb1 49. Kxg6 d2 50. h8=Q d1=Q 51. Qh7 b5 52. Kf6+ Kb2 53. Qh2+ Ka1 54. Qf4 b4 55. Qxb4 Qf3+ 56. Kg7 d5 57. Qd4+ Kb1 58. g6 Qe4 59. Qg1+ Kb2 60. Qf2+ Kc1 61. Kf6 d4 62. g7 1-0, and if I'm not winning at that point, then I knock all the pieces off the board like this.

Yes, I'm working from home today.
Why?

It's not the temperature; it's the haze


When I got up, it was negative 11, and the glass of water by the window had frozen at the top. Thanks, storm windows and halfassed weatherstripping. Nice work.
NOTE: I AM BEING SARCASTIC.

If this were a Forgotten Realms campaign, I would totally pray to Auril, the fickle Frostmaiden who crouches at the edges of the Great Glacier, LOL.

Um, I mean: NEEEEERRRRDS!

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Almost Two-Year-Old Interview with Tony Millionaire Travels Through Time to Make Me Laugh

Would you be interested in taking on a full Batman book?
Yeah, I’ve actually pitched them a few before.

What kind of stories did you pitch?
I had one where Batman went completely broke. His corporation went completely broke. He was like, ‘should I throw this Batarang? These cost me $550 each. I’m not really sure I can afford to throw it. I should probably just run.’

More here and here.

Advanced Hokey Pokey

(1) Nostril

(2) Hernia of Morgagni

(3) Islets of Langerhans

(4) Lunnule

(5) Canthus

(6) NetShare App

(7) Copy of 1997 Kevin Klein vehicle In & Out
(extremely advanced due to potential Epimenides paradox)


(8) sack (in the bottle); then bottle (in the sack)
(Zork joke; proceed)

(9) Ambition

(10) Idealism

(11) Joy

(12) Hope

(13) Sense of Wonder

(14) Glans

sometimes a great notion

Following the one-two punch of a Wall-E viewing and a reading of The Lorax, my four-year-old and I have been talking a lot about recycling and taking care of the Earth. It's a frustrating business, but Sam had a plan to make everyone except the people we know leave the planet.

Tempting!
But we explained why that wouldn't work.

A few nights ago, we were talking about it again and he said, "I don't like it when people cut down trees to make paper," and I said, "Yeah, I know, but that's where paper comes from, mostly," and he said, "That's the part about the environment I don't like."

Last night we talked about it again, and he said he wanted me to email everyone and tell them, "Don't chop down trees to make paper. Just use recycled paper."

So that's what I'm doing (putting it here because I don't have your email).

Hey you: Stop chopping down trees.
Just use recycled paper.

Idea #2: you could also just read everything for free on the Internet and continue this millennium's practice of undoing all the work of the last millennium.

Friday, January 09, 2009

new math

Queneau's "Exercises in Style"
[times]
Michael O'Donoghue on a Good Day
[minus]
sort-of-racist-toward-Chinese-people?
[minus]
True Love Waits
[plus]
finishing school
[times]
awesome
[equals]

The Recently Deflowered Girl
by Mel Juffe and Edward Gorey

Not in any of the Amphigoreys, and I never saw it upstairs at Gotham Book Mart (which I knew had closed, which was sad, but I didn't know how severely it had closed) and just really really amazing.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Mysterious Sweet Smell from 2005 Returns to Manhattan

Via NYT.

Fear not, New Yorkers! I think I have the answer:
The entirety of the city’s homeless have come down with branched-chain ketoaciduria.


All of these places are to be avoided until further notice unless you want me to make the joke “Urophagia? I don’t even know ya.”

Don’t make me make that joke

v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
Update: Oh.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Here you can see how much I have invested emotionally in GoodReads.com Part II

Tickle Me, Pooh! (Touch-and-Feel) Tickle Me Pooh! by Walt Disney


rating: 1 of 5 stars


From the title, I thought that this would be a book about a pirate who was into coprophilia.

NOT SO. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY IF THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE AFTER.


[previously]

Friday, January 02, 2009

Why is Dora crying?


Is it because she's an Indian?
And someone littered?


I meant: "Native American".

This ad is tricky! Because really it is Viacom threatening to pull its content from Time Warner if Time Warner doesn't pay them more for Viacom's programming.

Hey, Viacom, we do not inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children, LOL.


Alternate title for this post: Viacom Dios.