Wednesday, April 30, 2003

This is a very hilly area. The school campus is bisected by a little stream; we have to cross it and a large gully using a long wooden bridge. Today as I walked across the bridge I saw a duck, a mallard actually, paddling around in a small pool fed by this pitful stream. At first I thought it was a decoy because it was too colorful. There was no one else around. When I came back later it was gone. I didn't even bother telling anyone because I doubt they would've believed me. And if you're reading this and wondering what's so special about a damn duck, well I've lived in this area for a long time and I can count the wild ducks I've seen on one hand and still have fingers left over.
Lecture time! If I ever catch any of you spitting gum out on the ground anywhere ever, I'll stick my foot so far up your ass no proctologist will ever reach it. I just spent ten minutes or more scraping fresh gum off the bottom of one of my Nikes. Not even remotely enjoyable. End of lecture.
My lack of inspiration has lasted longer than I expected. I thought I could just fill up a few days with some old junk from my notebooks and then get back with the swing of things, but it's just not happening. Things are dirt dull in my life right now. Not to mention the fact of that miserable accounting test I have hanging over my head. So now what, more old notebook crap? There's plenty to chose from. I've got 21 volumes of notebooks in a milk crate under my bed. An awe-inspiring 4,000-5,000 pages of idiocy to select from. But, frankly, I'd rather lick the floor than root through that glop.

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

My previous two entries were simply revisions of entries in my "I remember" notebook from summer 2001. (I couldn't think of anything to write because I've wasted so much time reading about vintage electric guitars.) The idea came from the late artist/poet Joe Brainard who did a whole book, (called, appropriately enough, I Remember) using this technique. After a quick Google search, I found an entire blog that uses only this method. I haven't dug into it yet, but it looks interesting. This technique is, at least for me, a fascinating way to accumulate an autobiography.

Monday, April 28, 2003

I remember once in my 11th grade Spanish class we were doing vocabulary words like meat, fish, bread, etc. and the teacher said these words would be useful if we were ever in a Spanish restaurant. So I said, "Wait a minute.You can't just go into a restaurant and say, 'I want meat.'" I got the laugh I was looking for, but the teacher threatened to give me extra vocabulary words for being wiseguy. Bitch. And to this day I still can't speak Spanish.
I remember when I was very little an uncle caught a small aquatic turtle in his pond and gave it to us. My parents put it in a glass bowl filled with water. Not long after, when my sister was at school, I went out to look at the turtle. I put my finger in the water and decided it was too cold. So I poured out the water and refilled the bowl with warm water. Maybe it was too hot, because by the time my sister came home the little turtle was floating upside down. I just wanted the little turtle to be warm and ended up making turtle soup.

Sunday, April 27, 2003

I really don't have the time to waste in front of my computer. I have accounting homework due Wednesday and the final test the next Wednesday. I have a lot of nonsense to memorize in the next ten days of so. God, I hate accounting so much. I could breeze through school if it wasn't for accounting.
I dreamed I bought a new computer. For some reason I was running it with the panel off the case so I could look at the insides. There was no heat-sink or fan over the processor and, as I watched, the processor melted into a silvery glob. Is this covered by the warranty, I wondered.

Saturday, April 26, 2003

And now I give you what is officially the most bewildering search request anyone has ever used to blunder across my blog: "male nipple" -gynecomastia -pipe -shower -plumbing -ring -rings -surgery -piercing -piercings. But on the brighter side, at least Google led the sad bastard to one of my more thought provoking rants. (And by "though provoking", I mean stupid.)
When my sister and I were little we hated the flavor of toothpaste. We brainstormed to come up with a more palatable flavor. Our result? Fried chicken. At the time it sounded like a good idea.

Friday, April 25, 2003

I found a page that supposedly shows all the oddball guitar tuning schemes used by Sonic Youth up to the early 90's. It's about twelve years too late for me, but it's still fascinating stuff. (Unless you just don't care.)
A few minutes ago I was sadly running my fingers over my ever increasing bald spot and discovered, to my horror, that I have a dent in the top of my head.
I have brain lock today. Pity me. Meanwhile, why not learn to play the guitar just like David Fair (formally of the infamous Half-Japanese). And for further inspiration, read this page on Jandek. Then read this page on the Shaggs. In an afternoon you too can be a musical genius.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

I had a dental appointment this morning. Nothing serious, just a bit of scraping, poking, and polishing. The bad part was they were caught short-handed, so I had to spend a lot of time waiting. I waited in the waiting room, where I read a pamphlet on childhood dental care from 1977 (I remember this same pamphlet in the waiting room of my childhood dentist). And I waited in the dentist's chair both before and during the action (such as it was).

The only thing I've ever looked forward to in a dentist's chair was the slim chance that one of the cuter hygienists would, during whatever arcane teeth abusing ritual she was performing, get me in a headlock and mash her boobs into the side of my head. It's happened before. Twice. It didn't happen today.

While I waited in the chair, I read the titles on the rows of pamphlets placed out of my reach. One title read, "Why your dentist is referring you to a _____" and the last word was blocked by a smaller pamphlet in front. I amused myself with possible candidates: mortician, auto-body shop, exorcist, veterinarian, stone mason, graduate student in the robotics department of M.I.T., etc.

In the end all of this costed me $70.
I'm a sick, sick man. For the past few days I've wasted innumerable hours in front of my PC looking at web pages about electric guitars. I haven't played either of my good guitars on a regular basis in years, yet for some reason I suddenly have the urge to buy a new electric guitar. Why? I don't even have an amp for my old electric guitar. (I pawned it years ago.) This is lunacy. And all of this would make far more sense if all this guitar oriented reading had inspired me to start playing again, but it hasn't. Yes, I did drag my Rickenbacker out of the closet and tune it (badly), but I did little else. My musical skill level is slightly below the Shaggs and Jandek levels. (Look them up on Google yourself, dammit; it's almost my bed time.)

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Volume 22 is listed 89th at Yahoo! for "somewhere in the world right now".
Tuesdays are miserable and Wednesdays are a bore. No, now that I think about it, Wednesdays suck too.

Too many people try to strike it rich online. They should aim lower. Instead of trying to make millions, try to make thousands. My goal is to hatch some scheme where I'd make about $400-$500 a week without having to do anything. I'll let you know how it goes. So far I have nothing.
I'm so far out of the loop it's not even funny. A few days ago, after getting a hit from someone searching Google for kim jong il blog, I joked around about Jong Il having a blog and I even did his Friday Five. Well, today I got another hit for the same thing. After a little digging, I came up with a joke Kim Jong Il blog (at Live Journal, no less). What made it worse was that apparently everybody and their grandma was linking to this last month. Next I'll breathlessly tell you all about the big controversy surrounding the Bloggies.

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Computers are amazing, but not nearly amazing enough. Our computers should know us individually and be able to gauge what we need at a specific time, kind of like that creepy thing at Amazon that makes suggestions on what you should buy next based on what you've bought in the past. At times the Amazon thing's uncanny, but the effect is spoiled when it persists in suggesting I buy stuff I already own. How can I tell it I already have a copy of the first Joy Division album? But I digress. Computers should be trained to seek out what we like. If I sit down at my PC and don't immediately go to a specific page it should just automatically pop up a page I might like. It should gauge my mood, in effect, telling me, "Hey, check out this article on linguistics," or "Look at all this information on urban legends," or "I'll bet a little free porno would cheer you up." But it doesn't do this and, alas, it probably never will. Instead we have to be content with pop-up ads suggesting we get hidden cameras so we can spy on women getting dressed, or, even worse, suggestions that we should install the dreaded BonziBuddy. I'm very disappointed with computers.
Easter's completely over, so that means I can go and buy tons of discount Easter chocolate and gorge myself until I start to hallucinate. Or not. Whatever. My plans aren't written in stone.

I'm so bored.
Ever find yourself sitting at your computer, browser open, bored out of your mind? I do this quite often, as if, like when I'm sitting in front of my TV, there's nothing on worth watching: "Uuuhh... There's no good web pages on tonight. Just reruns." And there's like, what, 400 gazillion web pages, some of which I haven't even seen yet.
This is either persistence or insanity.

Monday, April 21, 2003

I was doing my accounting homework and found out I was a mere $1,200,000 short of the correct answer. And I don't have a clue what I did wrong. Anyone who decides to put me in charge of money will deserve the inevitable financial castastrophe.
No school today. Yay! Lots of accounting homework to do. Baw!

I'm still searching for a blog written by someone in my hometown. Don't ask why. Periodically I'll check Google and see what comes up. Tonight I found this blog, which isn't from here, but it was written by someone who had the misfortune to spend a couple of weeks here. The best quote: "As for Danville, lets just say if I were going to give Virginia an enema I'd stick the hose in Danville." I couldn't have put it better myself after living a lifetime here.

Sunday, April 20, 2003

My favorite stupid spam subject line of the week: "No more small pee pee - We Guarantee it". ( I know we're only one day into this week, but I can't possibly get anything better in the remaining six days.)
I used to love Easter, now it passes by almost unnoticed. It's nice to get a day or two off from work or school, but beyond that the holiday holds no interest to me. When I was little I loved it because of the chocolate rabbits, jellybeans, and the egg-hunt. Who wouldn't love a day where you get to pig out on candy? And I absolutely loved, and was fascinated by, boiled eggs. This is where the holiday starts to get weird in my memory. The more I think of the whole egg-hunt thing the more strange it seems. My cousins, my sister, and I would run around in my grandparents' yard looking for stinky boiled eggs that had been sitting on the ground for a half hour or more, and then we'd eat them. To my adult ears this ritual sounds disgusting and incomprehensible. What genuine appeal did it hold for us? I just don't get it. Boiled eggs? They might as well have hidden cans of baked beans.

Saturday, April 19, 2003

Finally, a use for all that duct tape we stocked up on because of the Bush Administration. [Link via Gretchen.]
Spent way too much time here today.
I'm having a long, dull day. I can't think of a thing to write about and can feel wind whistling through my empty head.

Friday, April 18, 2003

Is this a bad idea or a good idea? I just can't tell anymore.[Link via Daypop.]
My new bad habit is grinding my teeth. It started a couple of weeks ago, why I don't know. I usually do it in time to music running through my head. And since I got that stupid Beatles book last week, I've been grinding in time to the entire Beatles catalog. So I can blame those loveable moptops if I grind my long-suffering teeth down to nubs. I'll see you in Hell, Ringo!
Kim Jong Il's Friday Five.

1. As a child, who was your favorite superhero/heroine? Why?
The Great Leader President Kim Il Sung! Why? Because The Great Leader President Kim Il Sung would have you shot for asking such an impertinent question!

2. What was one thing you always wanted as a child but never got?
The destruction of the imperialist stooges of the south.

3. What's the furthest from home you've been?
I don't get out much.

4. What's one thing you've always wanted to learn but haven't yet?
Tap dancing.

5. What are your plans for the weekend?
Oppressing the masses and watching hours and hours of porn.

Thursday, April 17, 2003

Earlier today someone hit Volume 22 after searching Google for kim jong il blog. Now there's a blog I'd like to read. Actually the idea of Kim Jong Il having a blog isn't that outrageous. Saddam Hussein's son Uday has (had?) a free Yahoo! email account, so why can't Kim Jong Il sign up for a nifty free Blogger account?
Bored? Agitated? Well, read this. When you get done, have a look at this. [Links via Metafilter.]
I went to school this morning and in the space of about an hour and a half managed to freeze up two Windows 2000 machines. And what makes it worse was that I was doing two totally different things. I'm on a roll.
This morning I saw this boxy little car puttering down the highway. It had the word Charade printed across the hatchback lid. I'd never heard of this make of car before. Charade? My dictionary defines that word as, "an absurd pretense". Was the charade, I wondered, that this glorified golf cart would be passed off as a street vehicle? Or maybe the people who came up with the name didn't speak English natively. The car could just as easily been called Fester, Travesty, or Pancreas. Later I looked it up online and found out it was made by Daihatsu and has something of a fanatical following worldwide. To me it just looks like a Yugo. Not to put down Yugos, because they're so rare these days it's like seeing an Edsel or a Delorean. Ah, the glory days of the mighty Yugo. I've cleaned bigger stuff off the windshield of my Buick.

I once saw a Delorean on display at the local mall. They had it cordoned off so you couldn't lean on it, and there was a prominant sign reading, "DO NOT TOUCH". So, naturally, I touched it. The mall was practically empty at that time of the morning, therefore there was little chance I'd be caught. Anyway, to make a long pointless story even more long and pointless, I reached over and touched it quickly with the tip of my right index finger. Deloreans have stainless steel bodies and aren't painted; it was like touching a fork or spoon.

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Why am I making up stupid stuff when I should be studying?
Why am I rounding up all the neighborhood dogs and shaving symbols into their fur when I should be studying?
Why am I riding a canoe through the sewer system of my fair city when I should be studying?
Why am I rolling around naked in my collection of mannequin heads when I should be studying?
Why am I looking at my vast collection of Britney Spears photos and weeping silently to myself when I should be studying?
I have two tests today, so why I am I wasting precious time posting something utterly pointless to my equally pointless blog when I should be furiously cramming? I dunno.

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Strike Tuesdays off the calendar, please. I hate Tuesdays. And now that I think about it, I hate Wednesdays too. I have two tests tomorrow, including an accounting test I'm not prepared for. Well, in about three weeks this school semester will be over, but I'm taking classes this summer, so I'm not going to have much of a break. Life is dreary, so I'll retreat into my fantasy world where I'm attended to by my wacky robot servants. Another Hershey bar, Jeeves-bot!

Monday, April 14, 2003

I love the Extreme Tracker stats thingy, but occasionally it gives me suspect information. Several times when checking my stats to see where people are linking from, I've seen these oddball links that don't have anything to do with me. Today's weird link is from some school in the UK. I looked, but I couldn't find any reference to Volume 22, unless there's a class being taught on it: Survey of Self-Indulgent American Jackasses.

I get a little excited when I find a school web site listed as a referrer because of that bizarre incident back in December when I found out a bi-lingual school in Cali, Columbia had assigned my blog and several others as homework. The site seems to be down now, but a couple of days ago it was still up. Weirdest thing that's happened because this blog so far.

A couple of days ago I decided to go to Google to look up Syd Barrett, madman former leader of Pink Floyd before they got boring. I don't know why I hadn't done this before, I suppose it just hadn't occurred to me despite the fact that a copy of Barrett's Madcap Laughs sits in the front of a pile of CDs only three feet away from where I'm sitting now. Anyway, I out found from this site that Barrett's very much alive and apparently far better off than I expected. I thought maybe he was in an institution, catatonic or raving, lost to the world. Nope. He lives alone and basically functions like anyone else. Well, kinda.
Last night, in a fit of boredom, I typed "homemade x-ray machine" at Google. (I love Google.) Surprisingly, I actually found sites that have instructions on how to build x-ray machines. I won't be building one, but it is nice to know that somewhere in the world right now some lunatic is building an x-ray machine in his garage and preparing to test it out on his pets and wife.
Have I mentioned before what a scaredy-cat I am? The ceilings here are low and there's ceiling fans I can't get near because the blades will hit the top of my head. Well, this morning I was standing under one these fans while finishing off my coffee. One of the blades touched the top of my head, I jumped, and coffee went everywhere. Thankfully I don't drink hot coffee. When the blade touched me I immediately went into panic mode, thinking, "Snake! Rat! Spider! AAAHHH!"

Sunday, April 13, 2003

I found the perfect reason to have broadband. This guy has lots of peculiar combinations (not the right word, but I wouldn't call them remixes either) of various songs. I downloaded a combination of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" with Radiohead's "High and Dry". And it actually works. Sort of. Anyway, since I live in the boondocks and only have a dial-up connection, it took me forty minutes to download one song. Kill me now.
I was moping through some blogs and stopped by Jodiverse. She has an interesting entry on library books, musing on what disgusting things may have been done to them by previous borrowers. It reminded me of some vile encounters I've had with soiled library materials.

Once I saw a William Saroyan book I wanted to check out. I took it down from the shelf and immediately noticed some jackass had deposited his gum in the pages. (I wrote "him" because it just had to have been a guy.) I could never bring myself to check the book out even though I thought about it several times. Years later I found the very volume at the local Salvation Army, gum still in place. I thought of buying it and carefully removing the gum, but I just couldn't make myself do it.

Another time, at my school library, I checked out a copy of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, because I wanted to hear Dylan and the Band do "The Mighty Quinn". I pulled the record out the sleeve (this was at the tail-end of the vinyl days) and there were dried boogers embedded in the grooves of the very song I wanted to hear. And, believe it or not, as squeamish as I am, I cleaned the record because I wanted to hear the song that badly. It was actually worth it. This wasn't my only run it with dried mucus at libraries either.

A year or two later I checked out Kenneth Tynan's Show People (I wanted to read the chapter on Louise Brooks), and a couple of the pages were stuck together with dried snot. I fought against mounting repulsion so I could read that chapter. Years later I bought a copy of the book at a library sale. It seems to be snot-free, thankfully. But on those rare occasions I take this book down from my overloaded shelves, I wash my hands when I'm finished with it.

Saturday, April 12, 2003

In years past I suffered the works of would be poets in various writer's workshops, but it's been several years since I've been in a workshop, and I find myself missing the inanities of my fellow writers. That is until today when I discovered a poetry generator that not only seems to work, but produces poetry every bit as bad as my classmates did all those years ago. Ah, nostalgia...
I wish there was some kind of utility you could put on your web page that would tell you the previous page a visitor was looking at. Sitemeter, Extreme Tracker, and other similar services will tell you what page a visitor linked from, but what I propose is more intrusive and diabolical. It's probably also illegal and technically impossibile without installing a trojan horse, keystroke logger, etc. on other people's PCs. But it'd still be neat. For a little while, anyway. (And don't worry, I don't have the technical know-how to even attempt anything like this.)
Useless link of the day.

Friday, April 11, 2003

Ever look at your site's "similar pages" at Google? You type in related:, your page's url (minus the http://), and then Google presents you with a bewildering list. I looked at mine for the first time today, oddly enough at Israeli Google. (Don't ask.) The listed sites, that were in some mysterious way "related" to Volume 22, were an odd mix of pages that I link to and link to me, pages I link to that don't link to me, and pages I don't link to and don't link to me. I can understand listing sites that link to me and I link to them, but what about the sites that I don't link to and who don't link to me? How are these sites similar to mine? And who makes the decision that that such-and-such site is similar to mine? What criteria is used? Is it somehow vaguely based on links? Vauguely based on content? Google doesn't list everyone I link to who links to me, and only a couple of sites I link to but don't link to me. Confused? Welcome to my day-to-day life.

Jeez, I just reread the above paragraph and sections of the middle look like they were written by Gertrude Stein. In my head the above paragraph actually made sense.

Israeli Google reminds me of El Goog because it reads from right to left.
Well, people, it's finally happened: the wellspring of inspiration has run dry. I can't think of a damn thing to write about. And what's even more tragic is that this had to happen on the five month anniversary of Volume 22. I'd hoped to make it at least to the sixth month anniversary before I ran out of stupid things to write about. I even went shopping this morning, always a great way to find inspiration in the past, but nothing stood out. Even the stupid people who got on my nerves didn't inspire me. Failed even by own deep-rooted misanthropy. How sad. Maybe I'll get sued, win the lottery, or get attacked by raccoons and that will blast me out the doldrums. Dare to dream.

Thursday, April 10, 2003

Need a life size cut-out of a Japanese woman in her underwear to hang your clothes on? Hell, who doesn't. But seriously, who would would buy this? [Link via Order of Randomness.]
I got a really cool discount book yesterday, Beatles Gear by Andy Babiuk. It details every guitar, amplifier, drum, keyboard, etc. used by the Beatles. Utterly useless, but fascinating. Ever wonder what kind of guitars they used when they were a jerkwater skiffle group called the Quarrymen? No? Well, it's in here. Ridiculous detail. It even tells stories about what happened to some of the actual instruments. I've been drooling over the photos of vintage Rickenbackers, Gretches, Fenders, Vox AC30 amps, etc. Meanwhile my own thirty year old Rickenbacker rests unplayed in its case in my closet. My cheap Fender amp was pawned years ago and was never replaced.
The following bewildering search requests have led unsuspecting (and in some cases, utterly clueless) people to my blog:

North Korean celebs
something'stupid parts
the thing I hate about Esperanto
german grannies
kim jong-il pornography porno
"good gibberish"
naked women in late 60's
porn night class
spanking on tv
Berserk volume 20
my great manhood photos
spam hotmail enlargement
blog porno grannies
freakish penises
"giant children"
mangina enlargement
Plaster penis's
homemade hovercrafts

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

I'm going through a period of crapiness. I have a sore left hip that I don't know the cause of, my allergies are flaring up, school is boring me to tears, and it's both cold and raining.

And even worse, I can't think of anything clever and mildly amusing to write about. Man, I suck.

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Uuuuuunnnnnhhhhh... It's Tuesday, which means I have to endure yet another one of those interminable PC upgrade and repair classes. I'm going to have leave for school in the next ten minutes or so. How can such an interesting and useful subject be transformed into the dullest three hours imaginable? I can't wait for this semester to end.
I have a rash in the palm of my right hand. Is it possible to give yourself a "social disease"?

Monday, April 07, 2003

Announcement: There's no such thing as North Korean porn. North Korea is a deeply repressive communist dictatorship and these types of folk tend not to make much porn; so if you were directed this site by a search engine, I'm afraid there's nothing here for you. And with the wonderful cornucopia of pornography available to today's internet surfer, why would anyone want to limit themselves to such an obscure and/or non-existant variety?
I'm sick of this yo-yo weather. Yesterday it was in the low seventies and today it's in the low forties and pouring down rain.
I'm nearsighted and have worn glasses for about eleven years or so. I rarely wear them when I'm at my computer. Sometimes the typeface on web pages hard for me to read, but not drastically so. I could wear my glasses, but a more logical solution would be to simply increase the font display size on my browser. Of course I rarely bother with the font size; so this leads to my misreading things, like today when I read group lunch as grouch plug. At the time a grouch plug seemed perfectly logical. Who among us hasn't felt the need for such a device at times?
I checked my blog this morning to see if anyone left any comments to answer the question I asked in my previous post. There were two comments. Unfortunately, thanks to Haloscan, I can't read them right now. Bite me, Haloscan.
I need the help of my UK readers (either one of you). My sister, like me, watches The Office on the loathsome BBC America, and she wants to know what the word benny means in the sentence, "Gareth is a benny." I couldn't find it in my usual place to look up oddball British slang. If none of you know, you can just make up something since my sister's almost completely convinced that when it comes to slang, British people make a lot of it up as they go along.

Sunday, April 06, 2003

Email from my sister: "I had like 245 e-mails to download and delete. Looking at what they were all about somebody must think I'm a flat-chested she-male with erectile disfunction who's looking to buy a diploma."
I can't believe that it was pouring down snow last Sunday at this time. A couple of days ago it was in the mid to upper 80's and I saw a bid dead snake flattened in the road.

Last night I dreamed I met Jason Shellen. Why can't I have interesting dreams? You'd think my unconscious mind would have me meet a nude Jennifer Aniston, but no, I meet Jason Shellen. Not that there's anything wrong with meeting Mr. Shellen, mind you, but he's no Jennifer Aniston. At least he wasn't nude.

Saturday, April 05, 2003

Everybody and their grandma has linked to this over the past week or so, but if you haven't read it yet it's definitely worth a look.
When I get obscenely rich in a few years after unleashing my revolutionary super secret invention on an unsuspecting world, I'm going to build a big house. But by big I don't mean big like a mansion, I mean a lot of it will be larger than normal scale: big doors, high ceilings, wide spaces, etc. I'm so sick of banging my knees, shins, elbows, head, hands, and feet on everything while trying to navigate my too tiny world. I even bang my head getting in and out of my car occasionally. I need huge things: big bed, big car, big chairs, and big closets. All of my bumps and scrapes would make more sense if I was the size of some basketball player, but I'm only 6'1". Mainly I'm just a klutz, but I'm also a big galoot and big galoots need plenty of room to romp and frolic. So I dream of the day when I move into my giant house, and then I can start the search for the perfect giantess to wed. Naturally steps will be taken to prevent the production of any giant children; I don't think it's prudent for anyone to be dipping into my gene pool.

Friday, April 04, 2003

It's a nice warm day, so I opened the back door to get some fresh air. Bad idea. It smells like there's a dead dog in the yard. Probably the rank bouquet of yet another vile popular flower.

I went to Goodwill to dig through the old books (even though I have enough books to last me for the rest of my miserable days) and found an Olympia Press edition of J.P. Donleavy's Ginger Man, printed in France in 1955. A real collector's item and I got it for a buck.

It was such a nice day out that I actually bought a new CD (White Stripes' Elephant), even though I still haven't bought a new CD player to replace the one that bought the farm before Christmas.






This whole penis-enlargement spam thing is getting out of hand. While deleting loads of garbage from my ever loathesome Hotmail account, I was assaulted with subject lines such as, "Grow your personal manhood safely", and "Get a jumbo thing withour delay". And if those weren't bad enough, some lunatic claims they can increase the size of my mangina. Yes, mangina, a word that's probably not in a single dictionary on earth. What the hell is a mangina anyway? Would that be some sort of freakish, vagina-like orifice that occurs in rare instances among males? If I had one of those I certainly wouldn't want to make it larger. Honestly. Then I'm asked, "Would you like a king-sized wiener?" Are we still talking about penises or am I buying a hotdog? And then there's "Would you like a gigantic j wiener?" Don't ask me what the j in between gigantic and wiener is for. Maybe it's the penis's middle initial. I've also been getting spam asking if I want to increase my breast size, because you know nothing goes better with an enormous schlong than a pair of stupendous knockers.

I did a search at Google for mangina and actually found a definition and something else. Unfortunately reading this stuff just made the spam more disturbing.
Is this good or bad?

Thursday, April 03, 2003

I wonder if there are any nudist malls, not that I'd go to one or anything. Really, I wouldn't. I'm just curious. You gotta believe me!
I know everybody's been linking to this lately, but I didn't get around to looking at it until just now. It's near genius. Sort of reminds me of what a blog written by Samuel Beckett might look like. In fact, it's so good I wish my blog read like this. (Stupid hindsight!) [Link via Daypop.]
Yesterday someone left something in Icelandic in my comments. My curiosity got the better of me, so I searched and searched for free translation site the could handle Icelandic. Eventually I found one. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but at least it was free, and I was able to find out that the comment read, "Hæhæ. What are accustom snuggle up to irrational number about on this side? chicken pasta Myself Finnish you completely superb gaur, maybe you return what I mean. Skilurðu orð with accordingly whom I is snuggle up to say?" And to that I reply, "Huh?" (I like that "snuggle up to".)

At the same web page you can read automatically translated news from various countries; one Icelandic newssource had the following: "policeman try snuggle up to forbid scrape together after Molotov cocktail var throw snuggle up to him into mótmælaaðgerðunum into Aþenu today." Lots of snuggling up to in Iceland apparently; I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm also not sure if either of the two translations above technically count as actual translations.

I was just "reading" through the translated Icelandic news web site and saw the following in a story called, "Liv Tyler Wedding Swagger": "kvikmyndaleikkonan Liv Tyler hast plaster of paris breska poppsöngvaranum Royston Longitudinal while they á brjósti verið gather into - þrír year. Spokesman Tylers sayest snuggle up to youthful married couple hafi marry swagger 25, March river eyju into Karíbahafi while reception worth supposed pay lip service to nánustu kinsfolk into New York after into þess vegna month." This was just too stupid not to post.

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

Haloscan deleted all my comments; I hope this is only temporary. (We should focus our combined mental energy and give the CEO of Haloscan an ingrown toenail.)
Tomorrow I'm going to write about buying new shoelaces; it'll be so exciting.
Yesterday I dropped a Tic-Tac on the floor, so I got down on my stomach with a flashlight to find the thing because I didn't want it rotting in some hidden corner. I looked under my dresser and immediately found it, but I also saw this other thing. It was sort of mottled; I thought it might be a rock. I pulled it out and immediately knew it was something that at an earlier time of its life had been edible. It was all blotchy, moldy, and had hair stuck to it. I turned it over and saw a white M printed on one side. It was an M&M. It was so moldy that I couldn't even tell what color it had originally been. Brown? Orange? Did they ever make grey M&M's?
OK, it was an April Fool's joke, I don't have a wife (estranged or otherwise), nor do I have any kids. And, yes, I know it was a pretty lame gag, but I've been feeling pretty lame lately.

I think I've found out the name of the stinky trees: Bradford pear.

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

This morning I tried to post the drivel below, but Blogger was bogged down because everybody and their grandma was trying to put an April Fool's joke on their blogs. Typical. I don't have time for this nonsense. I just wanted to post something and go, but I ended up having to wait four hours or more. It's infuriating. My free time is limited, especially now since my estranged wife came back from Montana with the kids.
First Blogger, now Metafilter! Diabolical. Or something like that.

Here's a timely article.

And just because I can't think of anything else, have a look at this. [Link via Daypop.]