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Giant Poop Terrorizes City
2008-08-13 16:43:00
No, not this, it's a story in today's Metro: BERNE, SWITZERLAND. A giant inflatable dog mess, the centerpiece of an exhibition at a Swiss museum, broke free of its moorings, brought down a power line, smashed a window and landed in the garden of a children's home. The wind carried the house-sized fake poop 200 yards. METRO Forget the creepy eggman, this is the now the best thing ever. I
More About: Poop , City , Giant

My Hometown: The Good, The Bad, and the Completely Made Up
2008-08-12 18:13:00
Every kid that ever went to elementary school in Weymouth has been to Abigail Adams' house. They also went to the state prison for a ninth grade field trip for health class for some reason. I think the moral was "Be sure to wash behind your ears, or a big guy named Angel with a giant crucifix tattooed on his chest will do it for you." Anyway, I'd imagine the the Abigail Adams house has seen a
More About: Wikipedia , Made , Good , The Good

Why, Lord? Why?
2008-08-06 19:43:00
This picture is on my server. I vaguely remember making it, but I can't remember why. I'm sure there was a good reason for it at the time. Anyone from the old days have a better memory? I think it had something to do with NYPinTA. EDIT: Um...found it. Turns out it really was to torture NYPinTA. Sorry about that...
More About: Lord

A Real American Hero
2008-08-04 23:35:00
I got an email this morning, purportedly from "Allah Stemple," with the following subject line: Fat Chinese Man Kills And Eats Brother Because He Was Hungry. So did lots of other people. I was then encouraged to watch the video. Given the recent horrific events in Canada, using this as a subject line for spam is probably in poor taste. Actually, under any circumstances this as a subject line is
More About: American , Real , Hero

My Left Foot
2008-08-01 16:24:00
I started to write this over a month ago, then thought better of it and let in languish in Draft Hell, then later thought, this is a perfectly good post. There are some people that don't have any posts. So here you go... I noticed something this weekend that somehow went undetected for 29 years. Something that shocked and horrified me and left me completely confused as to my very existence. The
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Obligatory Catch Up Post
2008-07-30 17:23:00
I've been a little distracted lately. It's been known to happen. But I'm back now, and nothing is going to, holy crap, what's that little music icon? Is that a new Blogger feature? Oh. Nevermind, it's a Foxytunes feature. I can now insert current track as my signature. But I'm not currently listening to anything, And since you most likely can't see the icon I'm referring to, this entire paragraph probably hasn't made any sense to you. Suffice it to say, if you use Firefox and have Foxytunes, you'll see a little G-clef icon just below "Preview" when you're creating a post in Blogger. I actually almost posted something over a month ago, because something happened that scared the crap out of me. Or, I thought something happened, but it turned out to be nothing. It's sort of embarrassing, actually. Maybe we should move on to something else. A lot has happened in the past few months. Michele finally got the new job she's been trying to get for nearly two years. Some places...
More About: Post , Catch

The Greatest Thing in the World
2008-06-06 20:02:00
I will now attempt a transcript. Unholy Humpty Dumpty Mutant Eggman thing is sitting on a wall... Kinder...yibbo shaky! shakes smaller, non-mutant egg Me unscrabbly. unwraps foil cover to reveal chocolate egg inside. Choca Doobee! opens chocolate egg to reveal yet another egg, this one made of plastic Doubly Choco Doobee, ops wubbo! (laughs) opens yellow plastic egg, tiny plastic man which could possibly be a soldier but on further inspection he's got a red chef's hat on and holding a wooden spoon (also inexplicably red) Tooooyy! Mutant Eggman has apparently just eaten some of the chocolate Yodel yum and choco scrum with multi-pumfabo toys! picks up a small toy airplane from assortment of Kinder Surprise toys next to him Oh, grobelee! moves arms in circular motion; raises eyebrows. outside in the cold distance, a cuckoo cuckoos Me scooble now. Nogo. Wheee! Mutant Eggman does the "redrum" finger thing, and freefalls backwards of the wall. Proper British Announcer says "Kinder Su...
More About: World , The World , Thing , Greatest

But I'm Your Density...
2008-05-12 14:15:00
Why didn't George McFly divorce his wife when his son came out looking exactly like the guy that "helped" him get her to go out with him high school? Once Marty hit puberty, George should have been a little suspicious of the striking similarities. As if that wasn't bad enough, she named the kid after him, just to rub it in! Maybe he just decided to let it slide. Why let one little indiscretion ruin a good thing? Maybe he thought, "It could be worse. At least he doesn't look like Biff."

Nonfiction Books: Why I Hate Them, Why I Think Every Nonfiction Author Shou
2008-05-08 20:15:00
Why does every single non fiction book include a colon followed by a friggin' paragraph-long subtitle? That ticks me off a lot more than it probably should. It doesn't help that the two biggest offenders, political hit jobs and and self help books, are the two most deplorable genres anyone could ever write about. It's bad enough they're blood-sucking leeches, but do they have to be so obnoxious about it? One of these days someone is going to write "CHAMPION!: The true story of how I overcame adversity, and against all odds, wrote a book with the longest subtitle in history and scored a bunch of chicks and a sweet movie deal, so look for Champion!: The true story of how I overcame adversity, and against all odds, wrote a book with the longest subtitle in history and scored a bunch of chicks and a sweet movie deal in theaters this Summer. If I ever write a nonfiction book, The title will just be something short, followed by a colon. And the entire inside of the book will be th...
More About: Books , Hate , Author , Hate Them , Nonfiction

Coming this Summer
2008-04-23 15:11:00
Today I learned that if you put Daniel Day-Lewis' head on Will Smith's body and tint the the whole thing orange, you get Vin Disel.
More About: Summer

The Majority of People Are Unusual
2008-04-17 14:41:00
This lands in my inbox every once in a while, but for some reason, this time I started thinking about it, specifically the first paragraph: Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it. Okay, it says that only 55% of people can read this, but then it explains that it doesn't matter what order the letters are in, the human brain will still be able to read them. So sho...
More About: People

Test
2008-04-17 02:33:00
This sucks. where the hell is my website? Edit: Okay, some of it's back. But where's the masthead? And Amazo? I guess it's a start... EDIT: Gah! All the images are gone! EDIT: Hold on, I think everything is back know. I had to switch from posting everything via FTP from my own server to publishing from Blogger using a custom domain name. I don't know what any of that means, but I think it's working again. Except now I've got that stupid Blooger toolbar think at the top of the page. How do I get rid of that?
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Who Am I? Why Am I Here?
2008-04-08 17:55:00
I've lost my memory. Well, half my memory. Well, it's not technically my memory. Let me start over. I'm typing this on my company-issued Powerbook G4 with 15-inch screen, two RAM ports, a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. This particular model has a defect that can render the lower RAM port unreadable, cutting the speed of the machine in half. When this happened to a couple of the computers here a few years ago, they were taken to the Apple store to be repaired and we checked the rest of them to make sure they were using both RAM slots. Mine checked out all right, so I thought I must have gotten lucky and didn't get one of the defective ones. About a month ago, I noticed my laptop was running ridiculously slow. Every command was followed by a lengthy appearance by that stupid spinning rainbow. My browser quit constantly, and even the simplest tasks were met with resistance. Clearly, I needed more memory, 512 MB is much too small these days, especially in th...

Nothing Can Kill the Grimace
2008-03-05 18:13:00
We were talking about the Bourne movies at work and somehow that led me to Yoda backpacks, and then to the Wikipedia page for McDonaldland characters. I don't know how exactly, but I do know that what I saw there confused and frightened me. Tacked on to the last line of the write-up about Grimace, the lovable purple blob that's supposed to represent milkshakes, was the following epitaph: "The character was retained after the streamlining of the characters in the '80s, but was dropped in 2007." What? What?!! Those sons of bitches! They killed Grimace! And by extension, Uncle O'Grimacey! But that wasn't even the worst of it, apparently Early Bird, the McNugget buddies, the Fry Kids, and even poor, mentally disabled Hamburglar have been raptured up into McDonalds heaven. Leaving only Ronald to traverse the desolate wasteland, alone and broken. Some may have seen these characters as cold, heartless corporate mascots that contribute to America's growing obesity problem, but screw...
More About: Kill

You Want One!
2008-02-14 13:59:00
Gee whiz, it's Wuvums, the adorable, marketable rodent thing! Wuvums! Shouldn't he be emblazoned on t-shirts and other cash-flow generating materials? Isn't it an injustice that he isn't? He's so damn cute! His big doe eyes are crying out, "Please slap me on a canary yellow onesy. With feet!" Like last year, I made Valentine's Day cards for Brianna. This time, they feature Wuvums, and more horrible puns. The pirate one says "Arrgh...you gonna be my Valentine?" That's probably my favorite. I guess if I had any forethought, I could have drawn them weeks or even months ago and try to sell them in time for Valentine's Day. There's always next year, right?

He's Toying With Us
2008-02-12 18:47:00
It's been over a year since Joe mentioned Captain Nice. Or Mr. Terrific! I'm a little concerned. Yes, he does still end sentences with "Arrrurrghrgrurrgh!" when he thinks he's said something particularly goofy, or when he's frustrated, or whatever the hell other reason he makes that stupid noise. And he still somehow manages to to add extra syllables to both "hello" and "you" in his stock greeting "Hello-o. How are yew-oo?" when he's making personal calls. I'd commend him for finding a way to stretch "you" into two syllables if I didn't want to hit him repeatedly with my stapler. He even threw a "Holy D'Artagnan, Batman" or two at us recently. I think I heard Hassan chop not too long ago. "There you go thinking again," is another one. Oh, and "They always spoke so highly of you" is another old standby; he even uses it when referring to inanimate objects. Joe's old gems never fade away, they just lie dormant until you've let you're guard down. "What if I don't want to"...

Ode to Kimmy
2008-02-05 22:00:00
Ahora que es un wenis.

Indian Burial Ground
2008-02-02 17:23:00
I always like to check out statcounter to see what kind of weird crap people search for to end up on this blog. This morning, someone in Tamil Nadu, Chennai, India, found their way to the page about my creepy dead people on the lawn dream by doing a Google search for "composting human corpses." Well, that's...unsettling. Sure, maybe someone was searching for a non-traditional, eco-friendly way of putting their loved ones to rest, or perhaps they were even planning for their own final arrangements. But just to be on the safe side, the Tamil Nadu authorities might want to check and see if they've got any missing persons cases open. Someone might have a body they're trying to get rid of.
More About: Indian , Ground

A Trip (And Fall) Down Memory Lane
2008-01-31 17:06:00
You know what's fun and not a cop-out at all? Copying and pasting Revisiting old stories from the FMD days. Since Sean and Sandra Bernard took their hump'n and dump'n act to more hospitable doorways, and the Metro doesn't have any blatant mistakes today, let's take a look back to another time, when cataloging every single event in my life was a suitable, if temporary, distraction to the ad nauseum blather of Joe. Back in December of 2004, we had only just recently moved into our new office on Newbury Street, and most days I walked from Park Street Station to work, via Boston Common and the Public Garden. Let's have a look back at one such cold, December day, shall we? The past couple of days I've had a few close calls with icy patches on the sidewalk, so I guess it was only a matter of time before I finally ended up sprawled out on the pavement. This morning I slipped in the park and landed on the right side of my back. I got up after a few seconds, but my chest, back and...
More About: Memory , Lane , Trip , Fall

Whatsa Mata?
2008-01-30 15:28:00
As I've mentioned before, the Metro is my favorite paper. Both ironically and non-ironically. It's free, it's exactly the correct length to read cover to cover from Braintree to Park Street, and when they run out of space for an article, it just ends mid-sentence. I come for the free news, but I stay for the hilarious typos. While not technically a typo, one thing that always gets me is when a story reads "on yesterday" as opposed to just "yesterday" or "on Monday/Tuesday/Whatever day preceded this one." I don't know if "on yesterday" is grammatically correct (although I'm almost positive it isn't), but it definitely sounds...off. I can only assume all the "on yesterdays" are the result of a computer program that automatically changes the name of a weekday to "yesterday" if it falls on the day before the story was written. My favorite example of this, and the best proof I have that it's the doing of a cold, emotionless computer program and not a living human being that just ...

Mmm...Floor Chocolate
2008-01-24 18:38:00
I'd never heard of Amy Vanderbilt, but she was one of those Annie Cavanagh-type purveyors of etiquette and taste until she fell out a window. Does my ignorance of Ms. Vanderbilt mean that I'm uncultured? Perhaps. For example, I had no idea that black suits are only proper for servants or the dead. That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, and why lump servants in with dead people? Apparently this obscure rule that most people have never even heard of came about as a result of President Abraham Lincoln being assassinated in a black Brooks Brothers suit. According to Brooks Brothers' Wikipedia page, anyway. Incidentally, that's the second instance that someone's made a point to mention that Lincoln died in a Brooks Brothers suit. The Duck Tour guides usually mention it when they drive by the Brooks Brothers at the corner of Newbury and Berkeley Streets. Is that really a big selling point? "Brooks Brothers reminds you that if you're going to be assassinated, why not go ou...
More About: Boston , Chocolate , Floor

Sweet Tapdancing Jesus!
2008-01-23 01:42:00
Heath Ledger died! I did not see that one coming. And Michele did it to me again! People really need to stop dying before I find out about it. It messes up my whole day. I wonder if they finished all his scenes as the Joker? What if they left the ending open-ended for the Joker to return in future installments? I mean no disrespect, I feel terrible for his family and his daughter, and the whole this is very tragic, but it seems like they finally got this Batman franchise right, and I wonder what kind of effect his sudden death will have. Do they keep the Joker out of any further Batman movies, or do they find a new actor to fill the role? And could replacing him kill the franchise? Well, it hasn't seemed to hurt the Harry Potter movies. And The Dark Knight already has one cast change since Batman Begins; Katie Holmes has been replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal in the role of Rachel Dawes, much like the real Katie Holmes has been replaced by a zombie-like Scientologist Pod person. Oddly...
More About: Jesus , Sweet

Things I Found Out In My Twenties
2008-01-22 21:43:00
The first in an ongoing series, unless I change my mind and don't do any more I've got less than a year and a half before joining the creaky ranks of the thirty-and-over crowd, so now is a good time to reflect back on some things I've learned in the past decade. For example, while there very well may be someone named Annie Cavanagh somewhere on this planet, she is not mentioned by name in the J. Geils' song Love Stinks. For the first twenty-odd years of my existence, I'd thought Annie Cavanagh was someone who'd spurned Peter Wolf, and calling her out by name was some sort of revenge. Take that, Annie! You got served in a top 40 radio staple! The other idea was that maybe Annie Cavanagh was a noted romance or etiquette guru with a weekly advice column/radio show, like Dear Abby or Dr. Joyce Brothers. I'd never heard of her, but lots of songs name-drop people who were famous when the song came out, but lose their relevance as time goes on, like Sir Edward Heath in Taxman, or...
More About: Things

And If You Should Die Before You Wake...
2008-01-16 20:28:00
Thank you, University of Sheffield. The school, which I totally heard of before reading the BBC News article, recently concluded a study of more than 250 children between the ages of four and sixteen, and discovered that they all saw clowns as "frightening and unknowable." The study showed that hospitals "decorating children's wards with paintings of clowns to create a nurturing atmosphere could backfire," because, according to child psychologist Patricia Doorbar, "Very few children like clowns. They are unfamiliar and come from a different era. They don't look funny, they just look odd." A companion artilce asks "Why are clowns scary?" And it probably comes as no surprise to horror fans that a University of Sheffield study of 250 children for a report on hospital design suggests the children find clown motifs "frightening and unknowable". One might suspect that popular culture is to blame. In It, made into a television movie in 1990, Stephen King created a child-murdering mon...
More About: Wake , Clowns

Soak it in Dishwater!
2008-01-15 18:54:00
I found this joke online: A young bride and groom-to-be had just selected their wedding rings. As the young lady admired the plain platinum and diamond band she had chosen for herself, she suddenly looked concerned. "Tell me," she asked the rather elderly salesman, "Is there anything special I'll have to do to take care of this ring?" With a fatherly smile, the salesman said, "One of the best ways to protect a wedding ring is to soak it in dishwater." I've got to be missing something here. Where's the punchline? Are you not supposed to get dishwater on wedding rings? I feel like there needs to be another paragraph or two. Maybe a genie or a talking goat could also give her advice. There could be some wordplay at work here that I'm not picking up on. Soak it in dishwater. Maybe if you say it really fast it sounds like something else. Soakitindishwater. Sew kitten this otter? That doesn't make any sense. Anyone? They made a point to say the salesman was elderly, so his answer m...

Why I'm Afraid of Clowns, Part II
2008-01-12 13:26:00
Cave paintings recently discovered in Lascaux depicting a Clown Hunt Clowns . Clowny clown clowns. Man has feared clowns since the dawn of time. Whether we're pitting them against our super heroes, or turning them into sewer-dwelling giant spiders, man has looked to clowns as inspiration for dredging up our darkest fears. But clowns are funny, you say? Clowns are harmless. Well then, riddle me this: whenever you think of circus clowns, what song instantly plays in your head. It goes something like this "Do do doodle-oo do do do do do...", right? Do you know what that song is called? Entry of the Gladitors by Julius Fucik, a Czech military orchestra composer. The clowns are mounting an army. On Bozo's command, unleash Hell. Incidentally, if you've ever wondered the name of a classical piece that you always hear in movie trailers or when Jerry is setting Tom's tail on fire, check out kickassclassical.com.
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The Stinkening
2008-01-09 19:11:00
There was a weird smell emanating from our pantry. So Michele asked me to go find out what it was and get rid of it. I walked over to the big white cabinet, but before I could open the doors, before even getting within a foot of the thing, my nose was assaulted by the most foul smell it had ever encountered. I opened the doors and to my horror, the stink was even worse, but I couldn't immediately find it's point of origin. It could have been coming from anywhere, so I'd have to...ugh...sniff around. I started with the top shelf. Some time during the summer, the shelf had collapsed, cascading all manner of dried and canned goods all over the other shelves and onto the floor. We never did find the last of the four tiny L-shaped bits of plastic that hold the shelf in place, so ever since then, it's been teetering on three pegs. To keep the whole thing from tumbling down again, the heavier stuff was moved down the the lower shelves and the top shelf held mostly spaghetti and other ...

Nuts to You
2008-01-09 19:08:00
Let's say you're walking down the street, when suddenly you see a car parked alongside the road with a license plate that reads "NO NUTS." It's probably the best thing that's happened to you all day, perhaps all month. Now, you have you're trusty camera phone with you, but all around you are... PEOPLE!!!! And you suddenly feel a bit awkward whipping out a camera to take a picture of a vanity plate, regardless of how hilarious said vanity plate is. You briefly consider a cover story in case someone wonders why you are taking a picture of someone's license plate (apart from the obvious, "It says NO NUTS"). You'd say that you were involved in an accident and you need photographic evidence for insurance purposes. But that won't work, because the car doesn't appear to have sustained any damage, and you are on foot, so there's no second car. You suppose you could say you were run over, but then you'd have to start limping until you turn the corner. And what if you run into t...
More About: Nuts

His Hair Was Perfect
2008-01-07 17:25:00
Welcome to this, the first full week of 2008! I think I've let enough time roll by to throw Kimmie off my scent. What, that was my plan all along. I can't have people ripping me off-- inserting their wenis wherever they see fit--and the best way to prevent that is to not write anything at all, right? Sounds like a perfectly reasonable excuse, err...explanation to me. How about you, LL? Okay, so back to business. The Friday before New Years, we gathered at Nick's house to exchange Christmas presents. No, we don't do anything on time. Nick gave Jose that little robot guy from FOX NFL Sunday that jumps around and points at people. Well, the CGI one does, I don't think this one does anything expect look like the one on TV. Actually, did he get that from Nick? I thought Wah-Kee got Jose in the name-pool, because then Kee handed him a Carolina Panthers jacket to wear when he moves down to South Carolina later this year. Oh yeah, Jose's moving to South Carolina because he met some g...
More About: Hair , Perfect

You Don't Know What I'm Up Against
2007-11-07 15:45:00
Well, the good news is I didn't have to wait until Wednesday. This email was waiting for me in my inbox last night. Thank you for your interest in an opportunity with Apple retail. At this time we have chosen to move ahead with candidates who better meet the business needs today. We wish you the best in your future endeavors. Thank you again for your time and interest in Apple Inc. So that's it. I'm boned. I did really good Friday, I know I did. I mean, I would have bought something from me. But it wasn't good enough. They tell you that you don't have to pressure customers and selling isn't a big deal because people come in four times before they buy something, but they're full of shit. All they care about is if you can get someone to buy their overpriced crap. Clearly having an extensive history using the product first hand holds no bearing. I've been using these stupid computers on a daily basis since high school. Whenever one of them starts acting wonky at work, I'm us...