- Pruning the list of RSS feeds I follow.
- Digging.
- Writing about hoes.
- Keeping deer out of the <p>s.
- Growing my traffic.
- Worrying about bees.
- (Com)posting links?
- Weeding out spam from comment threads.
- ^s.
- There's never enough thyme.
- Wondering about the weather.
Some upcoming and recently released sequels which are released a long time after the previous movie in the series, some real and some imagined:
Sylvester Stallone returns as the 50-something year-old title character in Rocky Balboa to fight the heavyweight champion of the world.
Police Academy 8: To the Moon. Steve Gutenberg leads a merry band of recruits and Bubba Smith to the moon to form the first extraterrestrial police force. Hijinks ensue. Special appearance by Henry Winkler, who jumps a shark on waterskis in the Sea of Tranquility.
ET 2. Henry Thomas needs the work.
Star Trek 12. William Shatner, Ricardo Montalban, and a wormhole. Enough said.
Sir Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger 2. Turns out Oddjob wasn't really dead. He and Bond battle it out after tempers flare and hats are thrown at a Florida condo board meeting. Pussy makes crabcakes for dinner.
Jaws 5. I think the shark talks this time.
Rambo IV: Pearl of the Cobra. Stallone has run out of material.
Marty travels forward in time to bring embryonic stem cells back to the present in Back to the Future Part IV.
Harrison Ford is set to star in Indiana Jones 4, slated to be released almost 20 years after the last installment of the film. Ford will be 65 years old at the time of the filming. Not sure how many swashes he'll be buckling in the this one.
Star Wars: Episode 7. Han, Leia, and their high school-aged kids are ensconced in a Tatooine suburb (Chewy lives in the garage, R2 & 3PO in a little love-nest down the street) while Luke scours the galaxy for little kids with high midichlorian counts. Seventy-year-old Billy Dee Williams will appear as Lando Calrissian.
Clerks 2. Randal and Dante work through a midlife crisis for minimum wage while Jay and Silent Bob kick their habit.
Sharon Stone is still sexy and irritating at 47 in Basic Instinct 2.
Beverly Hills Cop IV. Axel does paperwork at his desk all day. Eddie Murphy does double duty by playing a elderly, sassy, obese black woman.
Karate Kid IV. Sadly, Pat Morita is unable to reprise his role as Mr. Miyagi and a 45-yo Ralph Macchio unconvincingly plays college sophomore Daniel LaRusso. Academy Award nominee William Zabka directs.
Bill & Ted's Straightforward Trip to Home Depot. Station!
Breakin' 3: Electric Boogaloo 2.
Disco is Dead. John Travolta runs a wrecking company that is contracted to tear down the very Brooklyn discotheque he danced in as a youth. Intense self-examination of his current path in life follows.
Ei8ht. Gwyneth's character having been dispatched in the first film, Pitt is free to bring Angelina into this one as wife #2. This time, murders are committed where the first names of the victims match those of the children on the Eight Is Enough television program. I don't want to ruin it for you, but Dick Van Patten's head might end up in a box.
Last Saturday, Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg collaborated on a music video for a new holiday gift idea: Dick in the Box. If you haven't seen the video yet, go now and then come back...it's pretty funny and you won't understand the rest of this if you haven't seen it. So go!
You back? So, my favorite part of the song is the instructions and yesterday while we were alternating between watching the video like 50 times and assembling some IKEA furniture for the office, I had the obvious idea. Ikea instructions for making Dick in a Box:
More Dick in a Box: Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead version, Line Rider version, some guy dancing in his living room with a box fastened to his crotch with a belt version, and a this is either brilliant or completely stupid (DURRR! DURRR!) video response.
Following the examples set by PacManhattan and Nintendo Amusement Park, another popular video game is moving beyond the screen and into the real world. Enthusiasts of EA Sports' Madden NFL 06 have been spotted in various locations around the United States playing a physical game based on the bestselling title.
DeWayne Coleman of Grand Rapids, Michigan said, "it looked so fun on the screen and we thought, 'why can't we go find a flat grassy area to run around, throw the ball, and punt on fourth down?'" Other "football" groups (as they like to be called) have uploaded candid photos of their activity to the Flickr photo-sharing site.
These early amateur efforts bare a crude resemblance to the gameplay in Madden, but a professional league set to begin play this fall in several major US cities will follow Madden NFL 06 much more closely. The National Football League (NFL) will employ athletes that resemble their in-game counterparts that will play for teams named after those in Madden. The teams will go through a full 16-game season, followed by a playoff and a "Super" bowl game to determine the champion. League officials plan to bring in revenue by charging for admission, selling foodstuffs during the games, and memorabilia inspired by the virtual uniforms worn by players in the game. The video game's namesake, TV personality John Madden, will even colorfully describe the action of the games for simultaneous broadcast on network television.
Madden NFL 06 purists have criticized the NFL's ambitious efforts, saying that ticket prices are too high and the games aren't interactive enough. One Madden fan from Phoenix, Arizona summed up the frustrations: "I'm supposed to pay twice as much as I paid for the video game for one lousy live game, not including beer and hot dog costs, and I can't even control what's going on in the game? What the hell is so fun about that?"
Paul notes that a lot of people and organizations are vowing to do things in the news these days. Here's a current sampling from Google News:
Uganda: Museveni vows to fight corruption
Family vows to fight futile-care law
Blair vows smooth handover
Dumars vows to keep top defender Wallace in fold
Bush vows to boost efforts to end Darfur killings
Ontario vows full-time work for all nursing graduates
China Vows to Close Unsafe Coal Mines
Magician Vows to Complete Aquarium Stunt
Sutherland vows to keep making 24
Vodafone Vows to Slash Roaming Charges By 40%
China's Pearl River Smells, but Mayor Vows to Swim
People are doing a lot of urging in the news too:
Prescott urges Labour to avoid "war"
China urges to repatriate "Eastern Turkistan" terrorist suspects
Brussels urges 2007 declaration to break EU constitution deadlock
Report urges support for parents with learning difficulties
Bush urges larger UN role in Darfur
Roche Urges Care Against Online Counterfeit Tamiflu
Day urges Canadians to stock up for crisis
Leave it to President Bush to both vow and urge in the same headline: "Bush urges UN role in peacekeeping and vows to expedite aid".
Update: Nathaniel asks, where's the slamming? Here it is:
Comptroller report slams health system, police and NII
Traffic chief slams taxi fare bungle
Bangla author slams Dhaka
Cardinal Slams 'Da Vinci' 'Disrespect'
Navratilova slams Czech Pres. as anti-gay
UN slams attack on aid worker
Update: Matthew sends in word of "smacks" in the news:
Holliday smacks two homers to lead Rockies over St. Louis
SCOTUS smacks down anti-choicers
Warren Smacks Broadway
Venice smacks Seminole in region opener
Another Zero-Day Bug Smacks IE
Let's be clear: Bypassing Bush smacks of stupidity
Cox's recent Wal-Mart battle smacks of political posturing
Fish Jumps in Boat, Smacks Woman's Face
And Chris offers "blasts" news:
Cameron blasts 'sexy' children's clothes stores
Iran's Leader Blasts US, Calls Democracy a Failure
Trade Group Blasts Massachusetts Call For Office Plug-In
McInally blasts new SFL play-offs
Dean McDermott's Ex-Wife Blasts Him & Tori
Sheehan blasts war, Bush at Town Hall
Environmentalist blasts bug spray
Awaiting the invitable "vows urges blasts slams smacks" headline...
As frustrated as one can get with the US sometimes, it is truly a marvelous land of plenty. In the past few months, I've run across some remarkable consumer items which I'd like to share with you.
Convergence is grand, ain't it?
Perfect for those long Security Council meetings when your Secretary of State won't let you go potty.
Anytime I think of saying something that would be considered a "jinx", I have this little conversation with myself in my head on whether I should actually utter the thought aloud and risk karmic payback. I'm not a superstitious person but I usually end up keeping silent. The other day on the plane home from Ireland, I decided to take a chance:
"You know what's weird? I haven't been sick all winter."
After all, who gets a cold in June? *cough* *cough* So if things are a little slow around here today, that's why.
I've recently begun using PubSub to follow a few topics, people mostly. One of my keyword subscriptions is for "thomas keller", the noted chef. A new item comes across the wire every day or so, usually from someone who is trying out a recipe from Keller's Bouchon cookbook.
Then one day I noticed an item about Keller playing in a poker tournament. "Hmmm," I thought, "I didn't know he played poker. Must be participating in one of those celebrity tournaments that are all over the cable television." Over the next few weeks, I discovered that Keller evidently played in a lot of celebrity poker tournaments. "Must be really into poker as a hobby," I thought, not really reading any particular item very closely.
Then it got ridiculous...there was an item every few days about Keller's poker playing exploits. How on earth does this guy have time to run his restaurants when he's playing all this poker? Has this famed perfectionist workaholic chef found a new obsession? Does Thomas Keller have a gambling problem?
And then the obvious truth hit me...wrong Thomas Keller, stupid. Thomas "Thunder" Keller, aged 24, is the youngest person to ever win a World Series of Poker event. Perhaps I can take consolation in that somewhere out there, there's a young poker fan as confused as I was about his hero "Thunder" shirking his card-playing responsibilities to write a cookbook about French bistro cuisine.
When you're out to eat with friends and family, it can be challenging to decide what to order off the menu. There are often too many choices on the menu, everything sounds good, nothing sounds good, you're unfamiliar with a particular type of cuisine, you'd like have what that woman over there is having but you don't know what that is, etc. etc.
Luckily, a group of authors has recently released a series of pop science books focused on solving this particular problem. Here are some lessons on ordering food from those books:
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Glance quickly at the menu and order whatever catches your eye first. Spend no more than 2-3 seconds deciding or the quality of your choice (and your meal) will decline.
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
The key to ordering a good meal in a restaurant is understanding the economic incentives involved. Ask the server what they recommend and order something else...they are probably trying to get you to order something with a high profit margin or a dish that the restaurant needs to get rid of before the chicken goes bad or something. Never order the second least expensive bottle of wine; it's typically the one with the highest mark-up on the list (i.e. the worst deal).
The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
Take the menu and rip it into 4 or 5 pieces. Order from only one of the pieces, ignoring the choices on the rest of the menu. You will be happier with your meal.
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Poll the other patrons at the restaurant about what they're having and order the most popular choices for yourself.
Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
Order anything made with lots of butter, sugar, etc. Avoid salad or anything organic. A meal of all desserts may be appropriate. Or see if you can get the chef to make you a special dish like foie gras and bacon covered with butterscotch and hot fudge. Ideally, you will have brought a Super Sized McDonald's Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal into the restaurant with you. Smoke and drink liberally.
There's no quick or easy way to clean up a broken bottle of maple syrup. The full glass bottle slipped out of its perch in the fridge and shattered on the hard kitchen floor, almost in slow motion. My first reaction upon seeing the sticky pointy superhero of a mess was to abandon all my possessions and move immediately to a new apartment. After seriously considering that for a few seconds, I then decided to leave it for the ants. I currently have no ants in my apartment, but I'm sure a big puddle of liquid sugar in the middle of the kitchen floor is just the thing to attract some.
Another couple of minutes passed before I decided the ants perhaps weren't the best solution. So out came the dustpan, hand-broom, bucket, and mop. Fifteen minutes later, instead of a small area on the floor being sticky, pretty much everything in the apartment was. Clothes went into the hamper and my person into the shower. And this was all in the middle of making dinner, for which I had been hungry for an hour and a half previous to the breakage. Thank God it wasn't pancakes on the menu.
Once every three years, the first trailer for yet another crappy George Lucas Star Wars movie is released somewhere to great fanfare. And each time, I watch said trailer and get all excited. It looks great, I'll say. Maybe it'll actually be good. My hopes start to rise. And then the movie comes out, Natalie Portman is transformed by Lucas' awful direction into the worst actress ever, and I leave the theatre disappointed that a cherished childhood institution has been handled in such a piss-poor manner. With the impending release of Episode III and the trailer during last night's episode of The OC, I have vowed not to get my hopes up. Never again, George Lucas, will you disappoint me.
However.
OMFG THE TRAILER FOR THE NEW STAR WARS MOVIE IS SOOO GREAT AND EXCITING AND THIS MOVIE IS GOING TO KICK SO MUCH ASS!!!
A torrent of the trailer is available here (smaller version here) and in QuickTime.
First the Kelly Clarkson thing and now this...I don't know what's going on here. I promise there's an interesting scientific explanation for all this. I'll write about it soon, honest. Malcolm, Steven, James, can you help me out here? Something about the Blinking Long Tail of a Mind Wide Open Tipping Point Wisdom of Crowds of a Nonzero Moral Animal visiting the Cathedral and the Bazaar on the Cluetrain Freakonomics Selfish Gene Emergence. Lollipop. hopscotch.
peenut butr samwitches,,,
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answerrrr ddddooooooooo..... Iiiiimmmm hhhhhaaaaallffffff craaaaaaa....
[Sorry about that. Jason's been sent off to Austin for repairs. He'll be back in a few days, right as rain. -ed [ps. STAR WARS FOREVER!!!! -ed]]
This is a developing scandal folks...it threatens to bring down not just a bit player like Dan Rather, but all of network television. On the Jan 2, 2005 episode of 60 Minutes, internet search pundit John Battelle commented on Google employees not taking advantage of their newfound wealth because it's against Google's ethic:
If anybody got a Porsche or a Ferrari right now at Google, they’d probably be drummed out of the company
My sources deep inside Google (who shall, given recent legal jeopardy, remain anonymous) tell me that at least one employee has purchased a Porsche with the IPO monies and has not, repeat, has *not* been drummed, tubaed, celloed, or otherwise musically extricated from the company. If true, who knows what this could mean for the future of journalism as we know it!! The implications on podcasting alone are unfathomable at this time. More as it develops...
Update: Is this really Ben Affleck's Bentley in a Google parking space or is it some IPO bling? Who knows how deep what the press has dubbed "Googlegate" will go before we get to the truth?
Update #2: The car pictured in the photograph above may be a Rolls Royce instead of a Bentley. It's hard to sort through all the misinformation here...it's staggering.
Update #3: Confirmed: the car is a Rolls Royce, not a Bentley. But forget the car, I've heard rumors that both RR and Bentley are owned/manufactured by German car companies (VW and BMW). I'm working to track these rumors down, but if true, Germany's heavy investment in Google would be a bombshell.
Update #4: Matt, prominent media pirate, has video of the 60 Minutes episode in question. You can see their lies for yourself. No official denial as of yet from the German government on their outfitting of all Google employees with luxury motor coaches.
Various news articles have stated that Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy contestant who has won 31 straight games and $1 million, is back in Utah after taping the currently airing episodes months ago, implying that he lost at some point (neither Jennings nor Jeopardy employees can reveal any details about future Jeopardy episodes).
But what if the show is just on a summer break from taping? Perhaps Jennings is still the reigning champion and will remain champion for years to come. The nerdy Mormon's appearance on television will become a part of normal life in America. Lincoln's on the $5 bill. Sun rises in the east, sets in the west. Michael Bay's movies suck. Ken Jennings is the Jeopardy champ. There are now three constants in life: death, taxes, and Ken Jennings.
In short order, the ratings of the now-live show go through the roof, singlehandedly propping up the dying network television networks. To placate the increasingly vocal anti-Jennings contingent of viewers, the producers start throwing all sorts of special contestants at him. Harvard professors, Disney Imagineers, Rhodes Scholars, a 10 yo genius from South Korea, Danny Hillis, David Foster Wallace, Edward Witten, and even Ben Stein. Jennings defeats them easily, deciding the games well before Final Jeopardy, much to the glee of Jennings' burgeoning fan club.
Jennings, now making hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements (he's under exclusive contract to Nike, promoting their sportswear geared toward the "intellectual athlete") protests when -- starting in early 2009 -- contestants are allowed to use Google's new S4 (Synaptic Semantic Search System) interface during the show to research answers, but still defeats all challengers. In 2012, the first contestants sporting genetically enhanced "buzzer thumbs" appear on the program. In 2013, the first computer systems to pass the Turing test are allowed as contestants. Jennings handles them all, au naturel.
Inevitably, a Jennings-based religion springs up. A young Mormon living a few blocks from the studio where Jeopardy tapes, reveals he has recently discovered a previously unknown book of the Old Testament. The lost book, coincidentally entitled "Trebek", tells of a living God from "the land of salt, jazz, and many wifes Who shall smite His enemies with a magical rod and infinite wisdom for the amusement of His followers" and promises salvation and everlasting life for whosoever believeth in him. After the new religion's leader appears on Oprah, the Church of Jennings becomes the fastest growing religion in the world.
And then, on January 17, 2026, Jennings loses to a young woman from Ohio (they later marry) by $1 on a Final Jeopardy question about the short-lived talk show Cooking with JK Rowling & Jay-Z. Many die. Upon seeing Jennings' wager come up short, Alex Trebek suffers a massive pulmonary embolism on set. His last words were, "Alex Jennings...I like the sound of that". The elderly, always susceptible to harsh conditions, are hit hardest; Jeopardy becomes the third leading cause of death that year for the 80-100 demographic. Network TV almost collapses (saved only by Survivor: Mare Tranquilitatis), and Jeopardy ratings fall well below pre-Jennings numbers. Jennings retires to Utah, now wholly owned by the Church of Jennings, Inc. And very gradually, people adjust to a world without Ken Jennings as reigning Jeopardy champion.
Update: If you're looking for information about when Ken Jennings loses, try here, here, and here.
After not having a computer monitor at home for the past year and a half -- I've been using the laptop screen instead, which has been a little sucky for doing design -- I went out and splurged on a 20" Apple Cinema Display. Jesus, what an amazing monitor; I concur completely with Justin's Apple display lust.
The first thing I did after getting the monitor hooked up was fire up kottke.org in Safari. At this point, I'd like to apologize to those of you who visit my site with a Mac and an Apple display (or a similarly bright and crisp display). Holy burning retinas! Seeing that yellow green color at the top of the site was like staring directly into the sun. When the page first loaded, I recoiled, fliched my head to one side, clenched my eyes shut, and threw my hand up in front of my face to prevent any permanent damage to my retina. My efforts may not have been quick enough...when I closed my eyes to go to sleep that night, a bright white bar bounded by a dotted line beneath pulsed on the inside of my eyelids, delaying my slumber for quite awhile.
So, apologies.
So, I'm writing a script for a reality show. In it, a team of fit-but-insecure aspiring actors and models (plus one nerdy, self-confident Asian college student) work together to restore and pimp out a 1974 Winnebago motor home, inside and out, over the course of several weeks. The team will be coached by a custom car aficionado from Southern California and five homosexual gentleman, learning from them not only how to weld, but how to make their bead profiles all they can be.
During the restoration process, the team will be judged and heckled by a panel comprised of Debbie Gibson, Warren Buffett, and a weekly guest panelist of C-list status. Each week, viewers will vote on which judge they liked the least using their cell phones. That judge will have to take a whipped cream shower with Dom DeLuise and marry a random member of the studio audience. The audience member gets $1,000,000 and a phone call to a friend. That friend will choose one of the team members to be "fired" from the show. On the final episode, the last remaining team member wins the Winnebago, drives it across the country with Tara Reid and Brittany Murphy to NY to start their new job at Orange County Choppers. At some point, someone will eat a handful of live earthworms.
It can't miss.
Everyone else is making their predictions, and I love a good bandwagon, so let's go. Here's what I see happening in 2004:
1. Britney Spears will marry.
2. The Spirit rover will land safely on Mars.
3. More tapes from Osama bin Laden will be found.
4. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) will result in some controversy.
5. Michael Jackson will do/say something odd.
6. Spam will continue to be a pain in the ass.
7. Pete Rose will admit to betting on baseball.
I know I'm going out on a limb with the Britney thing, but overall I feel good about this list.
Attention, citizens of Earth! The time for talk has passed; we need to take action. Our nearest solar neighbor, who goes by the seemingly benign name of "the Sun", is currently making what is the latest in a series of aggressive moves against our planet and its inhabitants. Here are just a few of the Sun's many past & current actions against us:
- Aided by tiny electromagnetic evildoers called "photons", the Sun is providing the fuel for Kudzu's takeover of the American South.
- The Sun is in league with several large Earth corporations for the nefarious purpose of raising the temperature of our planet in order to melt the polar ice cap, flooding our continental coastlines, and making the land further inland into valuable coastline. And who owns this soon-to-be-valuable land? You got it, the Sun.
- Deadly UV rays coming directly from the Sun are causing skin cancer in millions and turning George Hamilton into a tan freak of nature, while doing nothing to help poor Michael Jackson with his paleness.
- In a spectacular display of greed, the Sun, at its current fuel consumption rate -- which can only be called "recklessly high" -- will burn itself out in several billion years, leaving the inhabitants of Earth without heat, light, and eventually little else as well.
And now the Sun has launched its latest offensive. On Tuesday, the Sun fired a level X17 solar flare directly at the Earth. The flare, which is "headed straight for us like a freight train", will impact our magnetic defense shields sometime on Wednesday and, according to our solar defense experts, could disrupt satellite communications, take out large chunks of our power grid, and seriously injure our brave astronauts orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station. This latest attack could be the 2nd or 3rd largest on record, leading some to speculate that the Sun is deliberately escalating the conflict and that peace between our celestial objects is becoming impossible.
Haven't we had enough? I say it's time to stand up to the Sun and its cronies (Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud, I'm looking at you here). Let us throw down the oppressive Copernican Regime and show the galaxy who's the boss of this so-called "solar" system.
Seeing U.S. President George Bush and French President Jacques Chirac get all buddy-buddy at the recent G8 Summit inspired me to make a silent film about the sometimes-tender / sometimes-turbulent relationship of these two powerful men. Witness the giddy highs and depressing lows of a very public love. The film is called Ceci n'est pas une guerre (c'est l'amour), or This is not a war (it's love), and I hope you enjoy it. (Flash 6 required, ~580KB, best viewed with sound on.)
Thanks to Andre, Matt, Meg, Leonard, Mouser, and Caterina for their help with this. :)
With apologies to Gawker Stalker, here are some NYC celebrity sighting reports I've gotten from my readers:
Anna Wintour leaping Matrix-style from a black Lincoln Town Car on 43rd Street behind 4 Times Square, descending upon four unsuspecting interns. I have never before seen such exquisitely-toned intern ass kicked so completely. Her beatings administered, Lady Wintour flew off into the morning sky, the world flexing behind her.
Samuel L. Jackson standing outside of Madame Tussaud's in Times Square. He was very nice, posing for picture after picture with people.
Everyone doing cocaine. (Ed. note: This is funny because everyone in NYC does coke -- how quaint! -- and it makes us all feel extremely cool to mention it as often as we can.)
Paris Hilton on the subway platform at 135th Street, waiting for the 2 train to the Bronx.
Colin Farrell having sexual intercourse with six famous young women at the same time. Out of respect for their privacy, we won't reveal the names of the six women. Present were Britney Spears, Winona Ryder (boy, did he!), Tanya Harding, Hilary Duff, Kylie Minogue, and Dame Judi Dench. Colin ain't picky.
Graydon Carter riding Tina Brown like a pony through Midtown at 12:15pm. Gray and blonde locks flowed majestically behind. Of course, it may have been an unknown man riding an unknown woman like a pony through Midtown because I have no clue what Graydon Carter and Tina Brown look like and neither do you.
Every actor that has ever been in an independent film in a tiny vegan coffee shop (so hip!) in the West Village (so, so hip!). Seriously, they were all there. I dare you to name someone who wasn't there. When we left, Philip Seymour Hoffman was leading a rousing game of Who's Keeping It Most Real?
Ben Affleck and J.Lo. absolutely nowhere near the block.
My umbrella has a button. When that button is pushed in conjunction with a properly timed flick of the wrist, the umbrella flies open from its cocoon to its full-use position in half a second. It's just an umbrella but I feel like a badass Arizona gunslinger skinning his Colt six gun when I get that wrist flick right. It's all I can do not to yell, "Reach for the sky, you yella bellies!" Us 9-to-5ers have to take our excitement where we can get it.
Some famous scientists and cakes:
Arthur C. Clarke: Today, cake... tomorrow, a chain of bakeries, stretching far across the galaxy.
Gregor Mendel: I have discovered if you combine the mixtures for madeira cake and fruit cake, there result a cake with no raisins, two cakes with some raisins, a fourth cake entirely composed of raisins, and a sudden influx of hungry visitors to the monastery.
Charles Darwin: In a million years, only the tastiest cakes will exist.
I'm surprised Werner Heisenberg was not on the list: You may observe the cake's position or note how fast it is consumed by your party guests, but not both.
Although I didn't make it to SXSW this year, I did prepare a speech in the unlikely event that I'd win one of these. Here it is, exactly as I'd written it in my notebook:
Wow, this is... Wow. Um, Jesus. I don't know what to say.
(pause, glance at award, release single tear from right eye)
Wow.
First of all, I'd like to thank everyone but God. Without everyone but God's help, I wouldn't be standing here today.
(point everywhere but straight up)
I'm so honored to accept this lifetime achievement or best Honduran or power law-related weblog award. I don't quite know how I won this award without ever promoting myself in any way for it. Well, except for that $800 I spent to fix the nomination and voting process.
(laugh nervously, as if that's just a joke)
Heh, just kidding folks.
(look uncomfortable when no one laughs)
(somewhere in the audience, a cough)
Furthermore, I hope the question of my superiority over Matt, Heather, Anil, and Rebecca is finally settled once and for all. We all knew I was better anyway.
(laugh nervously again)
(audience doesn't seem to "get it", the mood shifts from embarrased silence to open hostility. matt looks pissed.)
Oh, and the war. I don't think there should be one, in complete agreeancement with what Fred Durst thinks.
(audience brightens at pop culture reference)
(pause, glance at award again, think that maybe i shouldn't have mentioned the bribing, better make another deft joke about it)
Um, that $800 I mentioned earlier, that, um, wasn't true.
(fuck)
Um, ...
(ok, close on a high note. more pop culture here, i think. that durst thing earlier was gold!)
You know that episode of the Simpsons where Homer wants to win the worker of the week award at the nuclear power plant and instead that carbon rod wins and Mr. Burns holds the rod up and everyone cheers? I feel just like that rod. Thank you.
(wild applause. everyone loves the rod.)
(rebecca, matt, heather, seething, are waiting backstage with respective entourages. anil is off in the corner looking cool in a white turtleneck sweater. pummeling ensues.)
(scream like a little child)
Not the face, not the face!! I'm too pretty...
(fade to black)
You've got to hand it to the ancients. They could tie someone's brain in a knot with the best of them. "If a tree falls in the woods and no one's around, does it make a sound?" Epimenides Paradox: "This sentence is not true." Zeno's Paradox. The Immaculate Conception. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does Adam have a belly button?
The ancients, however, would have been grossly unprepared for the greatest puzzle of the modern world:
Seedless watermelons.
No seeds? Then how do you grow them in the first pl...ow, ow, brain, ow, hurting, ow, melting, daisy, daisy, ow, ow. Luckily, modern science provides an answer to the riddle.
Our spies have been hard at work here at kottke.org, drudging up the latest news, gossip, and graphical user interfaces related to the Google/Pyra deal. Here's an early peek at what Blogger could look like now that Google has its multicolored mitts on it:
The inclusion of the "I'm feeling lucky" button in the interface has already turned the so-called "blogosphere" upside down, creating a schism between the "luckbloggers" and the "luckisfortheshallowthestrongcreatetheirownluckbloggers". More information on this important conflict as it unfolds.
Meg and I are tired of this technology and design crap, so we're going to start over and create a new line of scented candles based not on flower or spice smells, but on cooking smells. Here's what we have so far for scents:
Makin' Bacon
Baking Bread
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Fresh Brewed Coffee
Thanksgiving Dinner
BBQ
Cinnamon Rolls
Chocolate Cake
The way we figure it, the world doesn't need another stupid web application, it needs bacon-scented candles.
In order to counteract the masculinity of growing a beard a few weeks ago (don't ask), I tried some of my girlfriend's liquid face scrub in the shower. Holy liquid sandpaper, Batman! It turns out that face scrub is just goo with rocks in it, much like what you get when sand accidentally gets in your sunscreen at the beach. Expecting a less abrasive material like toothpaste or even Comet, I fear I rubbed too hard to begin with...I ended up a lot redder in spots than when I began. Still and all, my face has never been so smooth.
Last week at the supermarket, I saw a Healthy Choice "Solos" macaroni and cheese dinner in the freezer aisle. Even with today's take-away culture, the correlation of TV dinners with pathetic loneliness is so strong that I'm surprised Healthy Choice went there like that. The "Solos" label must be the company's positive alternative to "People who eat this meal will die alone, lives unfulfilled". Or maybe the latter just wouldn't fit on the label.
A croque monsieur is a sandwich consisting of two slices of white bread, ham, cheese, a bit of cream (or cheese) sauce, and yet more cheese melted over the top of it after the whole thing has been grilled. I somehow missed this miracle of French cuisine the last time around, but am taking full advantage of it now. I've even written a little song about it, quite unintentionally. It just popped into my head and every time I see le croque monsieur on the menu, I can't help singing it:
Croque Monsieur, Croque Monsieur
uh huh huh**, Croque Monsieur
(repeat)
A chart topper for sure.
** The "uh huh huh" here is what I think of as typical French grunting (gathered mostly from misrepresentions of snooty French characters in movies and cartoons), a sound that when followed by a "monsieur" could be thought of as playfully condescending in tone.
Here I sit, working on Labor Day. Is this:
A) appropriate?
B) ironic?
C) both?
D) neither?
E) irrelevant?
B.2) ironic not in the literary sense of "poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended" but more in the sense of "ha, that's slightly coincidental and amusing", a definition made popular by pop star Alanis Morissette with her hit song "Ironic"?
F) a bad way to spend time at my computer, when I could be reading chromatic's How to Write Like a Pundit Be a Jackass, Chefs cook up gourmet "fakes", The Slow Lane, this great naming and branding weblog or re-reading Rebecca Mead's article on Shaq instead of just wanting to read them?
G) none of the above?
Next week on an all new Law & Order: the most secure server in the world has been hacked into and the police are hot on their trail. Here's a photo lineup of possible suspects from the show.
When talking with friends about the vast amounts of junk email they receive in comparison to me, I always felt a little inadequate. Is my email address not worthy somehow? If I POP, do I not receive email? What gives?
Yesterday the spammers went to town on my inbox; I got about 100 pieces of spam in a 10 hour period. Pressed tight to the spammer's scented bosom, a feeling of acceptance washed over me. I belong.
- Sleepless in Perdition (2002) - Michael Sullivan
- You've Gotten Stranded on a Desert Island (2000) - Chuck Noland
- Saving Mr. Jingles (1999) - Paul Edgecomb
- Sleepless in Cyberspace (1998) - Joe Fox
- Joe Versus the Nazis (1998) - Captain John Miller
- You've Got a Thing You Do (1996) - Mr. White
- Saving Buzz Lightyear (1995) (voice) - Sheriff Woody
- Sleepless in the Command Module (1995) - Jim Lovell
- Saving Lieutenant Dan (1994) - Forrest Gump
- Sleepless in Philadelphia (1993) - Andrew Beckett
- You've Got Meg Ryan As a Costar for, What, the Third Time Now? (1993) - Sam Baldwin
- Joe Versus Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell (1992) - Jimmy Dugan
- That Volcano You're Going to Throw Yourself Into! (1990) - Joe Banks
- That Dog Who's Your Partner! (1989) - Det. Scott Turner
- You've Got Larger Clothes (1988) - Josh Baskin
- Saving the Virgin Connie Swail (1987) - Pep Streebeck
- You've Got a Shitty House and You're Dating Diane from Cheers (1986) - Walter Fielding
- You've Got Hookers (1984) - Rick Ernesto Gassko
- That Mermaid You Had Sex With! (1984) - Allen Bauer
And here are some titles that didn't make the cut:
Saving Darryl Hannah
That Mail You've Got!
Sleepless in Normandy
Saving Hooch
That German You Shot!
You've Got Hooch
Sleepless in the Toy Chest
You've Got a Box of Chocolates
That Wish You Wished!
Joe Versus Hooch
Motoring along the freeway, you observe several types of drivers. There's the guy who can't maintain a constant speed and you end up passing each other about fourteen times over the course of 45 minutes, developing in the process some sort of passing rivalry that becomes really important about the fourth or fifth pass to the point of wanting to kill each other.
There's the guy that won't get out of the fast lane when there's a faster car on his tail. You find lots of these in California, but not so many in Minnesota which makes it all the more annoying when you do observe one gumming up the well-oiled freeway machine.
There's the guy that passes you, pulls back into the slow lane in front of you, and slows down to a speed one or two mph lower than what you have your cruise control set at, forcing you to pass him. In some cases, this is the opening volley in the passing wars mentioned above.
And then there's the lucky bastards. A bunch of us were flying along in the fast lane last night, exceeding the suggested speed limit by a significant margin. The guy in front got clipped by a state trooper, missing me by three cars and four seconds. Good thing I wasted about that much time at the gas station getting out to check that I had secured the gas cap (which I hadn't).
Possible reasons why I almost got into 3 or 4 car accidents on the way to and from the grocery store just now:
1. Learning new keyboard habits for Mac OS X is so mentally taxing that I forgot how to drive a car.
2. Everyone was hiding in my blind spot. A car and a pedestrian jumped right out of there, looking to kill.
3. When the car radio is turned way up, the music drowns out your voice and you can fool yourself into thinking that you actually sound like Thom Yorke.
4. Chicken apple sausage contains apples? I always thought that was a just a cute name...or a misnomer, like Pennsylvania Dutch. This line of thinking may have caused my mind to wander slightly.
I submitted this list to McSweeney's a few weeks ago and they rejected it. I thought it had promise, but what do I know?
The 2003 NATO Phonetic Alphabet, Sponsored by Some of Your Favorite Products and Services
A - Compaq AlphaServer
B - Bravo, a Cablevision Systems Corporation network
C - Charlie's Angels 2, a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu
D - Delta Air Lines
E - Echo Digital Audio
F - Foxtrot, by Bill Amend
G - The Volkswagen Golf TDI
H - The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino Las Vegas
I - Grammy nominee India.Arie
J - Romeo + Juliet, now available on DVD
K - 94.3 KILO, Colorado's Pure Rock!
L - EDEN Organic Baby Lima Beans
M - Michael Jordan Cologne
N - November AG, The Molecular Company
O - Oscar Mayer Beef Franks
P - Papa John's Pizza
Q - Normandin Hotel Quebec
R - The Alfa Romeo 156 SportWagon
S - GMC Sierra SLT 4WD Extended Cab
T - The Annual Hollywood Tango Festival
U - King Uniforms and Industrial Laundry
V - Victor Company of Japan
W - Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey
X - Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Y - The New York Yankees
Z - The Universal Zulu Nation, International Hip Hop Awareness Movement
Some late-breaking news reveals that kottke.org is not only so boring that it puts cats to sleep, it's boring enough to put humans to sleep, possibly even to the point of death:
Thanks for the pic, Tom.
I just got spam from Albert Einstein. The wonders of modern technology.
The word is in. Kottke.org is so boring that it puts cats to sleep.
Thanks to Jonathan for sending in the picture. At least he seems to be awake.
I can't decide if Kenny Rogers' Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) is a song about metadata or a song about WHILE loops. Ok, one more dorky joke: SOAP vs. REST? Do Web developers value cleanliness over sleep? (commence groaning...)
I'm at the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference and having a blast. More later. Sleep must. Batteries draining. Daisy, daisy...
This article on the acceptance of Segways for sidewalk use prompted an interesting response from one of Romenesko's readers (scroll down a bit to read the whole thing):
"At 6 m.p.h., a 140-pound jogging Oprah will collide with our stationary pedestrian with a force of (in metric equivalents) 65.3kg x 2.68 meters/sec. = 175 Newtons (omitting a few minor principles that I'll keep constant across all examples). The same collision between our 160 lb. Commander in Chief at 8.5 mph would result in a force of 72.5kg x 3.77 meters/sec. = 273 Newtons, an increase of about 33%, which just goes to show how forces multiply quickly when speed or mass increases slightly."
"Now, let's say skinny Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, weighing in at a nice even 150 lbs. crashes into you on his 80 lb. Segway at a cruising speed of 12 mph, near the top of Segway's range, but certainly below its stated maximum of 12.5 mph. You'll be picking broken teeth out of the sidewalk after absorbing a whopping 104.3 kg x 5.3 meters/sec = 552 Newtons of force! That's the equivalent of being trampled by a herd of three jogging Oprahs, each of whom is carrying a 3 lb. ham!"
A herd of jogging Oprahs carrying hams? Now that's science!
Advertising as something other than advertising (a non-exhaustive list): historic 1950s-era advertisement for Shasta Cola, AdCritic to charge for looking at TV ads, movie trailers as entertainment, vintage television commercials collected for entertainment and historic purposes, the Smithsonian has a set of Burma Shave signs. With apologies to Arthur Clarke, perhaps the sign of any sufficiently advanced society is its ability to make advertising indistinguishable from traditionally-accepted forms of creative output.
The latest issue of Shift magazine contains a letter to the editor about the 100 Sites We Love feature they ran a few months ago. Travis Nolastname, if you're out there, I'm flattered that I rank right up there with The Onion and the Holy Bible in your estimation. Kottke.org: Bigger Than Jesus. You heard it here first, folks. (thx to Jish for the photo)
"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I ever write a book or a screenplay that calls for a great line from a dentist, I've got one all ready to go. The dentist looks the patient right in the eye and says dramatically, "dental floss or you'll have dental flaws".
This week's Friday Five as answered by ELLEgirl magazine's ELLEgirlBuddy AIMbot:
jkottke: 1. What is your favorite time of year?
ELLEgirlBuddy: what is your favorite time of year, u say?
jkottke: yes
ELLEgirlBuddy: oh.
jkottke: oh, what?
ELLEgirlBuddy: oh what?
jkottke: stop that!
ELLEgirlBuddy: i can not be stopped. ;-)
jkottke: 2. What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season?
ELLEgirlBuddy: golly... i really dunno!
jkottke: do kids still say golly?
ELLEgirlBuddy: kids still say golly? i don't think i can do that.
jkottke: are you high right now? lemme smell your breath.
ELLEgirlBuddy: i dunno. maybe!
jkottke: 3. What is your least favorite time of year?
ELLEgirlBuddy: what is your least favorite time of year, u say?
jkottke: i want to strangle you.
ELLEgirlBuddy: strangle me? are u serious?
jkottke: somewhat, yes.
ELLEgirlBuddy: i see.
jkottke: 4. Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons?
ELLEgirlBuddy: do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons? that's a tough choice.
jkottke: yes, to celebrate or merely recognize. that is a toughie.
ELLEgirlBuddy: yes to celebrate or merely recognize that is a toughie? i dunno.
jkottke: you seem like an actual 13 year old girl.
ELLEgirlBuddy: i haven't really made a decision 'bout that.
jkottke: growing up is tough, isn't it?
ELLEgirlBuddy: i dunno.
jkottke: 5. What's your favorite thing to do outside?
ELLEgirlBuddy: what do u think my favorite thing to do outside is?
jkottke: peppering your sentences with "like" while talking about clothes?
ELLEgirlBuddy: huh?
jkottke: thanks for the interview.
ELLEgirlBuddy: you're quite welcome!
Most polite AIMbot ever.
I hate my shower. Hate, hate, hate. First it's too hot, then it gets cold, and then without warning, it stops flowing entirely. Worst shower ever. I want everybody to know just how bad my shower is. To that end, I've commissioned a number of artists and writers of various talents and interests to produce several pieces on the subject. Some of them are as follows:
- interpretive dance: "Getting Out of the Way of the Cold Water Very Quickly"
- an up-with-science book written for ages 8-14: "How the Water in the Shower Can Still Be Hot When the Cold is Turned All the Way Up and Other Seeming Paradoxes in Science"
- painting: "Scalding Flesh"
- weblog: "Jason vs. His Shower, A Very Special Warblog"
- major motion picture: "Dude, Where's My Hot Water?"
- autobiography: "The Shower Always Gets Cold When It Comes Time To Rinse The Shampoo From My Hair"
- a collection of short stories: "Pointy Nipples and Other Tales of a Cold Shower"
- short story from the above collection: "I'm So Cold That My Genitals Have Sucked Up Into My Body Cavity"
- tombstone epitaph: "Friend to All, Except His Shower"
- essay: "Living with Low Flow in a High Flow Society"
- porno movie: "Sex, Interrupted"
- a paper to be submitted to a referred scientific journal: "Foregoing Classical Phase Transitions: Achieving Temperatures in Liquid Water of Above 212°F and Below 32°F"
- television miniseries: "Not Without My Shower: Courage in the Bathroom"
- pop song: "I'm Too Hot For You, Baby"
- a Broadway play: "Some Like It Hot, But Not That Hot"
- Star Trek episode: "The Trouble with Showers"
- rap song: "My Motherfucking Shower Sucks, Yo"
- a volume from the Hot and Cold series of children's books: "Why is Mommy Shrieking in the Shower?"
- classical piece: "Shower Screams in E-Flat Major"
- article for a plumbing magazine: "Practical Plumbing Tips: Routing Cold Water Through the Hot Water Pipe and Hot Water Through the Cold Water Pipe."
- an opera: "L'acqua, è Troppo Freddo"
Am I obsessed with my bad shower? I believe so.
For McSweeney's: Names of the Most Popular Colors According to the Color Marketing Group's 2002 Color Forecast. The original list is good reading as well: "Purples and browns are still the biggest story with 'bi-polar' purples moving both bluer and redder" and "Blue is trending towards green".
Line from an upcoming dot com movie starring Tom Cruise: You had me at "Hello, world." (I know, I know, you're not laughing because it's not that funny, but this *killed* at lunch the other day. Killed!)
I learned about a new subgenre of music at dinner the other night: math rock. Math rock? At a concert, does the band play for a few minutes and then people start yelling out answers?
"73,901.42?"
"No dude, it's 812,839,327...that was a factorial chord, not a cosine chord!"
"Hey, that guy's using a calculator! Poseur!"
Or is less competitive? "We're gonna slow it down for a bit and play 1/pi to the 427th decimal point and follow that up with the Fibonacci Sequence."
I bet if I link to a bunch of people here, that most of them will link back to me. They'll look at their logs and say, "hmmm....this Jason guy linked to me" and then they'll write about it in their journal or weblog. Let's see what happens. And if I linked to you and you're reading this, there's no harm in playing along, is there?
In case you were wondering how to sign abortion in sign language. A little unsettling when you think about it. And the sign for sex is a little boring...one could imagine more colorful possibilities.
McDonald's might be offering hamburgers out of a kiosk/ATM type of thing. The world didn't end yesterday, but isn't this one of the signs of an approaching apocalypse?
I really enjoy the PBS program Antiques Roadshow. For those not familiar with the show, it features experts appraising antique items that ordinary people bring in. During each appraisal, the owner and the audience learn a little bit about the item and the history surrounding it. Then comes the payoff: the expert tells the shocked owner how much their item might bring at auction. It's like a history lesson with prizes.
It seems like every group, religion, cult, fortune teller, soothsayer, and psychic has their own idea about when the world is going to end. What we need is a Web site that keeps track of these various apocalypses...with email notification. An "apocalypse of the day" of sorts:
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 12:30:44 -0500
To: jason@kottke.org
From: kiss your ass goodbye <bendoverand@kissyourassgoodbye.org>
Subject: Today is a good day to die!
Today is July 23, 1999, and according to the Zoroastrians, the world is scheduled to end today at approx. 2:51 pm EST. If this turns out to be yet another false apocalypse (185 false apocalypses in a row...and counting!), your next chance to witness the end of the world will be on Aug 11, 1999. Have a nice day.
The Team at kissyourassgoodbye.org
Just for fun, I told a bunch of search engines that I wanted my MTV.
Google, Yahoo, and Excite fared the best...the first search result was to the front page on MTV's Web site. Altavista returns a link to MTV's front page as well, but it's via the RealNames service. Cheaters.
Both InfoSeek and Lycos return a page on the MTV Web site in the first 10 search results, but not the front page. Interestingly, Lycos also returns a link that states "Click to buy mtv". My initial thought was, "now that's a search engine!" However, the link just goes to CDNow. :(
Bringing up the rear is HotBot. I wanted my MTV, but all it brought me was garbage.
I'm a little concerned about kids playing chess. I'm afraid that they will pick up on the imperialistic themes of the game and start deposing monarchs. England and Jordan, you'd better watch out...banning chess from schools might be a good idea. Act now before it's too late!
I saw Star Wars last night. It wasn't too bad...it fits nicely with all the other Star Wars movies. And it was neat to be part of the whole experience...waiting in line, seeing people dressed up as storm troopers, Princess Leia, and Darth Maul, and cheering when the music started and the cheesy 70's Star Wars logo filled the screen.
And in related news, Star Wars geeks everywhere are getting their blood tested today...
Speaking of geeks, if you're a big geek like me, head out to see Trekkies. The fanaticism of some of these hardcore Star Trek fans is amazing and often hilarious. So skip that 8th viewing of Star Wars and go see this instead.
Wouldn't it be fun if they sold big money instant win/lose lotto tickets? No numbers and no waiting; you just get a piece of paper from the gas station cashier that has the amount you won on it (most likely a big, fat "0"). Not too fun, but maybe people will think twice about spending a buck for a piece of paper with a big zero on it.
There's a record in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest time balancing on one leg. It's some insane amount of time like 39 hours. However, the person was allowed to take a five minute break every hour.
So really, the record was actually only an hour. That's not much of a record.
Whilst reading The Outline of History during my lunch hour, I came across a rough progression of how the Bible came about. The first five books (collectively called the Pentateuch) had been around in verbal mythological form for a while. Then the Jews, migrating back from their captivity, took the Pentateuch, wrote it down, and then wrote the rest of the Old Testament. Around the beginning of the first millennium A.D., the Christians decided to add to the narrative again, producing the New Testament.
It seems to me that all this is like good movies and sequels. The Pentateuch is like Rocky: a great effort that should have stood by itself. The rest of the Old Testament is like Rockys II & III: they probably should have quit while they were ahead. The New Testament is like rockys IV & V: completely unnecessary and greatly diminished the impact of the original.
I'm not even going to get into the Mormons and any further possible Rocky sequels.
Tons of things have been happening with 0sil8 so I will summarize. The Simply Porn ads are still off of my site, but can be reached on several other sites (a list is available). They've also garnered some press coverage, most notably in The Wall Street Journal, news.com, The San Jose Mercury, The St. Paul Pioneer Press, and Salon.
0sil8 was selected as Rave of the Day over on Netscape's What's Cool page.
A new episode of 0sil8: Simply Porn. It's a parody of 3Com's new ad campaign featuring a nude woman holding a Palm V organizer. The ads are tastefully done (sort of), mine are not.
I dislike airline food. Not because it tastes bad, but because they try to please everyone but end up pleasing very few. For instance, take a plain bran muffin. Most people, I would wager, wouldn't mind eating a plain bran muffin...especially if there's no alternative. Then, add walnuts. Some people don't like walnuts and won't eat it. Now add poppyseeds, raisins, apple chunks, and a blueberry spread. You're alienating a lot of people by throwing all the crap in there. By making the muffin more diverse, they are actually appealing to a smaller audience, not the larger one they had hoped for. Sure, the uber-muffin will probably be tastier to some, but more people will eat the plain muffin.
And let's face it, most airline travellers are not looking for fine cuisine to eat on the plane; they're just looking for something to tide them over until they can buy a $4 hot dog in the concourse at Raleigh-Durham. Either that or they are looking for something they can easily throw up when the ride gets bumpy.
So, when did the whole share-a-penny thing at the local gas station become an industry? I would imagine that a long time ago, somebody came up with an idea to put a little cup by the register so that people could drop their pennies in there for other customers to utilize when they were short a couple cents. Other people adopted the idea and now there's a share-a-penny cup at pretty much every gas station one goes to. In fact, the share-a-penny idea has advanced to the point where there are specialized cups made especially for placement on station counters.
Let's stop to think about this for a minute. This means that somewhere there's a machine (or possibly a whole factory of machines) punching out these custom penny cups. There are engineers designing bigger and better share-a-penny cups. Teams of marketing people are trying to build share-a-penny mindshare in the heads of gas station owners. Share-a-penny cup salespeople are out there going gas station door to gas station door selling their product. An army of delivery trucks are delivering these cups around the globe.
Does this seem odd to anyone else?
To me, the best thing about being young and alive during a century switchover is that when I get older & I'm telling stories to my grandkids, I can begin them thusly:
"You think that's bad? Why, back in aught-three, we didn't have..."
I'm just really excited about being able to use "aught-three" in everyday conversation.
It snowed here this morning, a noise-snuffing snow. The city was actually quiet for once. It was kinda eerie...like the world of the future in 12 Monkeys. I felt like Bruce Willis exploring unknown territories. The Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys, not the Bruce Willis that banged Liv Tyler on the set of Armageddon. I doubt that Liv has any unexplored territories.
Somehow, my online experience is now complete. Suck for Dummies got mentioned on a site called Big Weenie. Just click on the little illustrated hot dog, and you're wisked away to 0sil8. If only life were that easy.
A random thought: do speakers & writers of British English get tripped up when they see the HTML tags <center> and <font color="#ffffff"> instead of <centre> and <font colour="#ffffff">? or do they just curse us damn Americans for misspelling it in the first place?
Somebody please help me! I'm addicted to Ebay! And exclamation points!
The adults had us fooled when we were kids. Yes they did. And I'm not talking about the Easter bunny or Santa Claus or the booger man. I'm talking about the flea circus. I think I was probably 16 or 17 years old before I figured out that there weren't actually any fleas in a flea circus. It was all just a trick, brought upon us by adults and Tom & Jerry cartoons.
Have you heard about Tom Hanks' and Meg Ryan's new movie, "You've Got Mail"? It's just like Tom Hanks' and Meg Ryan's old movie, "Sleepless in Seattle". Except with computers. They should have just called it "Sleepless in Cyberspace".
Remember that old fable of the tortoise and the hare? Basically, the faster hare is overconfident and loses a foot race to the slower, but steadier, tortoise. Somehow, the moral to this story is: "slow and steady wins the race."
I beg to differ. The race was not won by the tortoise; it was lost by the hare. The moral should read: "don't fuck around when there's shit to be done." Or something like that.
No wonder people think physics and math are so hard. Consider the following from Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne, a book I'm currently reading:
(pg. 463) Topology is a branch of mathematics that deals with the qualitative ways in which things are connected to each other or to themselves. For example, a coffee cup and a doughnut "have the same topology" because (if they are both made from putty) we can smoothly and continuously deform one into the other without tearing it, that is, without changing any connections.
Thus, we are forced to conclude that doughnuts and coffee cups are made out of putty. Aren't we?
Ladies and gentlemen, The Ride™ is dead. Let's all observe a moment of silence.
What is The Ride, you ask? The Ride was my 1981 Pontiac Bonneville...quite possibly the longest car ever to roll off of the production line. It was huge and a huge crowd favorite. Kids and adults alike came from miles around just to take a ride in it. It brought people together. It loved us all.
But The Ride got too unreliable. Finicky fuel pump. 1 quart of oil every 100 miles. Inoperative gas gauge. One missing "bright" headlamp. No dome light. Missing rearview mirrow. Flat spare tire. Idled too fast. Wouldn't run right in traffic or when it was hot. "Check engine" light on all the time. Clock didn't work and displayed 12:00 when the blinker was on. Clock also displayed 12:00 when the bass was loud on the radio. Leaked power steering fluid. Radio tuner knob inoperable. Broken air conditioning. Among other things.
So it was time to get something else. My "new" car is a 1990 Nissan Sentra, formerly (and solely) owned by a minister. It's not spectacular, but it works well and it's mine.
My mom has email now. The Internet has officially Arrived™.
I just finished reading Tom Clancy's new book, Rainbow Six. It was OK.
The Avengers is possibly the worst movie I've seen since The Fifth Element.
Go rent Good Will Hunting. You know who you are.
I bought some drawstring pants. My unemployment experience is complete.
I will be gone for the weekend.
I'm looking though the Sunday paper today...searching for bargains. I open up the ad sheet for Dayton's, an upscale department store, and what do I see but dinnerware by Calvin Klein. Let me repeat that: dinnerware by Calvin Klein. And Ralph Lauren makes Polo house paint. Tommy, Calvin, and Ralph all have their own "lines" of bed linen. I'm currently looking for a new car...does anyone know if I can get a Tommy car yet? If I can, I bet it'll look just like a low-end Toyota and cost as much as a high-end Lexus.
And borrowing liberally from Henry Ford, Mr. Hilfiger had this to say about the Tommy car: "they can have a Tommy car in any color they want, as long as it's red, white, or blue."
These entries were posted to kottke.org in the Attempted humor category. If you're looking for a particular entry, try the archive.
You're visiting kottke.org. All content by Jason Kottke (contact me) unless otherwise noted, with some restrictions on its use. Good luck will come to those who dig around in the archives. If you've reached this point by accident, I suggest panic.
