Boxing Day tedium

It's back to normality. Almost. I don't have to go back to my crappy job until tomorrow. But the smelly, filthy, drooling, shedding, screaming beast has gone back to Richmond--and she took the cat with her.



Also, Americans have no use for Boxing Day. So there.

Infected

Somebody gave me a cold. Or maybe it's the early stages of the flu. Better not be the flu. Who gave it to me? Did I get it at work yesterday during the free meal we had when all 300 of us were shoehorned into the not quite big enough break room? Was it my sister? Was it that damnable, filthy cat of hers? [See below.]



Fat lot of good all that vitamin C did. Might as well have been Chicklets.

Woe is us?

I found a detailed blog post on installing Haloscan in Blogger Beta. Looks interesting. I may work up enough nerve to try it later.

Ooh, I also noticed when I logged into Blogger that the new Blogger stuff isn't beta anymore. I wonder how long those who haven't switched over have before they're forced to switch?

Update: Hey, it works so far. Welcome back Haloscan!

Duh

I can't figure out how to put the Haloscan comments code in the new template. The old Haloscan code is HTML and the new Blogger Beta code is XML. I'm not sure if they'll play nice, so for now I'll just use the built-in Blogger commenting system. But I want the Haloscan comments back; I've got four years of bizarre dialog on that.

Changes

I switched over to the new Blogger Beta a week or two back, but hadn't changed the template. Blogger Beta lets you do all kinda whiz-bang crap with the template where you don't have to soil your hands by touching filthy, nasty HTML. Anyway, since I changed to the new template system, I figured I might as well change the template itself. How long did I have the previous template? Two years or more? This new one reminds me of the first two I had, which also had a blue bar across the top. Exciting, no?

I'll fix the other stuff in a bit.

Fluffed or stiffened?

I bought a cheap Chinese yo-yo at a dollar store yesterday to add to my growing collection. The warning on the back of the package features the following bewildering advice: "Yoyostint is wasting please replacing while it fluffed or stiffened." I think this refers to replacing the yo-yo string. Or at least I hope it does.

Yuletide misery

I hate Christmas. Really, I do. And, sadly, the older I get the more I hate it. I sort of figured I'd get more sentimental and weepy in my old age, but the opposite is true. I'm the grouchy old bastard who tells you Santa got shot down by the Strategic Air Command because they thought he was a Soviet missile. Or something like that. Anyway, I hate Christmas. All of it. Well, I like getting time off. And I like the food--for a while at least. Like I need to eat more. Dick Gregory hasn't shown up to help me yet, so I'm guess I'm in the clear for a little longer. But I digress.

I find the gift-giving thing particularly miserable. The whole process makes me feel both embarrassed and guilty. I'm not sure why, but I just hate the whole thing. I hate buying gifts because I never know what to get and getting gifts makes me feel more or less like crap for reasons it would take a battalion of psychoanalysts to plumb the depths of. It would suit me just fine if I just got some time off from work and got to stuff my face with garbage I don't usually get to stuff it with during the less festive times of the year.

I don't really like getting together with my family either. Sorry, family, but I don't really like being around people that much. I can tolerate my sister and her drooling, shedding cat for a while, but that's more than enough. I don't need to see every single person I'm related to and their mysterious offspring. Go away.

Automation

Thanks to the Point Horror plot generator now I can turn out crap with ease! Writing is so much easier now.

Susan was having a happy normal day in Harvard. She had lunch with her best friends Belinda and Jennifer, and completed her work for Dr. Boeldeke. It was all going wonderfully, until she discovered aphids in her locker - she had a terrible fear of them, and wondered who could do such a cruel thing.

'I bet it was Amy,' said Belinda. 'She's been jealous of you since she heard that you were going to the prom with Ralph.' Susan sighed.

'Did you read the Daily Bugle?' said Jennifer. 'There was an article about Dick Cheney, who shocked everyone when he dropped his pants and showed his horrible arousal.'

'Really?' said Susan. 'Can I read the article?'

Jennifer gave it to her.

The Daily Bugle has heard rumors that Dick Cheney is back after the shock of many years ago when he dropped his pants and showed his horrible arousal. This is not true. Dick Cheney is in Mongolia.

Susan scanned the article and was startled to discover that she and Dick Cheney were alike - They both had the same DNA structure.

Susan walked home feeling very troubled. When she got home, there was a note on her doorstep. She opened in and screamed. It was full of aphids. There was also a letter.

To Susan. Watch your step. Ha ha ha. Signed, Dick Cheney.

Who could it be? Was it really Dick Cheney or someone closer to her? Susan suspected everyone - Amy of course, who always sneered at her. Ralph, even though he was the dreamiest boy in Harvard. She even suspected Jennifer who had a great love for aphids and had been acting strangely recently. The only person she could trust was Belinda who had been her friend since they were small children.

The night before the prom, Susan went with Belinda to the town square, and they discovered it was empty. Susan was pleased to have Belinda with her, because she was very nervous about Dick Cheney, as well as avoiding Ralph, Jennifer, and Amy. 'Isn't it strange,' said Belinda. 'How much we have in common?'

Susan remembered that they both had the same DNA structure. She became uneasy. 'Belinda, don't you have family in Mongolia?'

Belinda laughed manically. She threw some aphids at Susan, then attacked her with a homeless man, and Susan was forced to fight back with litter. She ran away and was found by Ralph and Jennifer, who had a perfectly rational explanation for her strange behavior.

'We came to save you from Belinda,' said Jennifer.

The next day they discovered that Belinda had died horribly. Susan was sad - Belinda had been her friend for years, and becoming a crazed psycho in the space of a few days could happen to anyone. But she placed her trauma firmly behind her and went to the prom with Ralph, much to the dismay of Amy.

#@$% meme!

The shameless Jammies has tagged me to do a meme. Me, a meme! I never do those. Ever. Except that one below from a few days ago. That one doesn't count. Or those other ones either. Nope. Don't look in my archives either. They're broken. Trust me.

Oh, the meme? I'm supposed to list things I want for Christmas. But I assume it's supposed to be stuff I can't get in real life, so the list won't have things on it like new socks and underwear. Although I really do need new socks and underwear.

1. A job I don't hate. I've given up on ever finding a job I actually like, so I'll settle on one I don't hate. And I think I'd be OK with one I hated if they paid me enough. The people who decide what we make at the current job don't seem to comprehend concepts like living wage and not being poor.

2. A hovercraft. Why? Because it's my goddamn list, that's why.

3. A Vox AC30. I can't play the guitar worth a damn, but I've wanted a Vox AC30 for twenty years. Don't know what I'd do with it. Probably just sit and look at it all day. Maybe sniff it obscenely. Rub up against it. Something nasty, no doubt.

4. A high-speed internet connection. Sad, really. I'm supposed to be listing pie in the sky stuff and this is probably what I want more than anything.

5. An alligator. Don't know what I'd do with it and it would probably kill me, but I'd still like to have one. My sister's old enough to remember seeing baby alligators for sale somewhere in Florida on a trip in the early 70's. I don't even remember going to Florida because I was two or three years old.

6. Someplace to put all my books, CD's, records, etc. so that I can actually enjoy them instead of feeling like they're sucking the life out of me.

7. A new laptop. I don't need it, but I want it. In fact, I'd probably drop it if I had one.

8. Enough money to retire. Forget about the job I mentioned above; I want to retire. And then I'll slowly descend into madness!

9. A tank. You know, an army tank. And lots of stuff to run over with it like old cars, houses, etc. I have to do something with my time after I retire.

10. A battalion of trained monkey assassins with which to conquer (yes, conquer) the world.

I'm supposed to tag other people to do this, but I think everyone's been tagged except Xolo, Sara, and my sister. Xolo will say he's too busy. Sara will just say something like, "bleh". And my sister will bellow, "I WILL KILL YOU!!!" Therefore no one will be tagged. So there.

The literary life

Since I've gone and written a 50,000 word first draft of something resembling a novel, I decided to go to a copy place and have them print the thing out. It's all fine and good to have the manuscript on a computer, CD, or USB thumb drive, but I want something tangible. And, of course, I can't spread it all out on the floor and roll around naked in it if it's on a CD. Nope, I need paper.

At the copy place I gave the woman behind the counter my CD and she opened the file. Immediately there was trouble.

"What is this," she asked, with more than a little confusion in her voice.

"It's my novel."

"You wrote this?"

She didn't seem the least bit impressed, only bewildered.

A meme thing involving letters

Ack! A meme! From The Leptard! Involving letters!

OK, I'm supposed to come up with ten things starting with the letter I was issued yesterday. My letter? M. [Warning: Many Wikipedia links below.]

Murphy - Both my surname and the title of Samuel Beckett's first published novel. It's also the maiden name of a certain blogger who comments here often. We aren't related. But I am a distant cousin of legendary late jazz musiciain, Bleeding Gums Murphy.

Michael - My first name, which I rarely use. Why my parents decided to give me a name they didn't like is a mystery still unsolved after many, many years. But why they gave my sister a name no one can spell or pronounce is a far more amusing mystery.

Money - Something I need more of. One day I hope to have a job that pays actual money instead of rejected whoopie-cushions and irregular balloons.

Meat - In short, meat is good to eat.

Monkey - Why not? Monkeys throw poop!

Monkees - I'm not the leat bit embarrassed to be a fan of the Monkees. Nope. I am on the other hand more than a little embarrassed to own a Culture Club album, but since it doesn't have anything to do with the letter M it won't be discussed.

Mullet - I had one back in the mid eighties. And quite recently I was almost rockin' the bald guy mullet. Thankfully there was an intervention by a licensed hair care specialist.

Macaroni - Macaroni and cheese isn't quite the Food of the Gods (that's bacon in case you're wondering), but it is quite darn close.

Mercenary - I wanted to be a mercenary when I was about twelve or thirteen. Thankfully I grew out of that nonsense. Now I want to be a porno magician.

Mongolia - Without the great nation of Mongolia this blog would probably only have a third of the traffic it's gotten. So thank you internet freakos of the world for your undying lust for Mongolian Porn. I just wish I had some to sell you; I'd be rich now.

OK, I guess that's ten things that start with the letter M. I suppose to could count the list, but that's taking the easy way out.

I think I'm supposed to give out letters to people who ask for them in the comments. I don't feel like doing that, so I'll just list some letters here: h, s, n, e, f, o, s, z, i, c, d, v, and q. Have fun.

Enough!

The goal of National Novel Writing Month was to write a 50,000 page first draft of a novel in a month and I've done it. I hit 50,007 words before noon and stopped. Enough already!

I had to pad it out to get there. Yesterday morning I was using Find and Replace in Word to get rid of contractions. That added a few hundred words, but it screwed up the syntax in some parts. I haven't edited those out yet, and probably won't any time soon because I'm sick of looking at this thing.

No idea if I'm going to do anymore work on it. I'm sure there's an actual novel hiding in this rambling mess somewhere, but I don't know if I want to bring it out. This novel wasn't what I wanted to write. I was planning on a weird, funny thing filled with strange inventions and bizarre adventures, sort of like Alfred Jarry or Stefan Themerson, but I ended up with something else entirely. Something far duller and gloomier than I wanted to write.

I'm glad it's over. Thanks to everyone for their support and abuse. Big thanks to Sherri for making me do it and big, wet sloppy smooches to Dr.'s Xolo and Sara for giving me the laptop on which I wrote most of it.

And I'll let any of my regular readers who really want to lance this festering boil of a first draft if they really want to. Just ask in the comments.

Problem solved

This is the only solution to the big city pigeon problem. [Link via my sister.]

OK, I'm going back to bed.

Speaking of crap

I have less than 10,000 words to go in my excruciatingly bad novel. I think I can get that in a week. I'm going to try and write as much of that as I can before Monday because who knows how much I'll be able to write what with my job sucking the life out of me.

And I should probably say right now that I have no intention of letting all of you read this novel. Nope. It's vomit. I'll let Sherri read it if she wants to because she let me read her novel last year. And there's one other person who demanded to read it and I'm going to let him/her read the damn thing because said person is er...persistant. And, no, it's not my sister.

Backup time!

OK, kids, it's time to back up yer blogs. I just found out Brendan's blog went and mysteriously disappeared on him and now it's some kinda spam thing. His blog is over four years old; thankfully he backed it up.

So while I ate my Thanksgiving turkey I sat in front of my computer and backed up what I hadn't backed up since September of last year. Now I have a 430-plus page Word document. And it's all crap!

Ancient blog

On this day four long, tedious years ago I started this blog. Most blogs that are actually updated on a semi-regular basis supposedly last about six months. I don't know what it means that mine has lasted eight times longer than the typical blog other than I have no life and get attached to pointless things.

At first I used to approach this blog sort of like a job; for the first year I wrote something, even if it was a single short sentence, almost every day. I think I missed maybe two or three days the first year. Things rapidly went downhill after that with various hiatuses over the years.

I've thought about stopping doing this over and over, but I still keep on doing it. I still think about quitting, but it seems like too much trouble.

So thanks to all three of my regular readers. Of all the people I know who don't suck, you don't suck the least.

D'oh!

Why didn't one of you overeducated geniuses tell me I'd misspelled the word century in the title of my previous post? Don't you people know I can't spell? Work with me, dammit!

21st century boy

I finally joined the rest of the modern world and bought myself a really cheap DVD player to hook up to my TV. My computer has a DVD drive, but watching movies on a computer screen sucks a big donkey dick. Now I can watch Frankenstein's Daughter while stretched out on the couch the way it was intended. What I need now is an endless supply of really old monster/horror movies.

Lurching

Today's writing goal didn't go as smoothly as yesterday's. It ended up taking almost two hours and was a bit excruciating, but I did get 1,970 words, which gives me a total of 3,662. So I'm on schedule at least.

I'm not writing at my main computer because this computer equals internet which equals major time suckage. So I'm not writing in my office. I have an old Dell laptop given to me by Drs. Sara and Xoloitzquintle that I've set up in my bedroom.

I cleared off all the crap piled on my desk, put the laptop on top of an old American literature textbook (hopefully some of it will soak into the harddrive by osmosis), and plugged a spare desktop keyboard in it. Works great. And I'm doing the whole thing in Notepad of all things because I don't really need anything fancy to simply type text.

And before someone implores me to be sure to back up my work, I do back it up. I'm not relying on a seven or eight year old laptop I got free from people who got it free themselves. Nope. I back it up with a USB thumbdrive and then copy it to my main system and then email it to my Yahoo account. Paranoid? Yep. Totally.

Ugh

It begins! Actually, it begins tomorrow. But tomorrow will be here in less than six hours and I'll be at work. So I doubt there will be much if any working on it since I'll be too busy and miserable. It'll have to wait until after work. I'll be fresh as a daisy when I wake up tomorrow afternoon. A freshly stomped daisy.

And speaking of work, it's gotten excruciating lately. The guy I worked with decided to just stop coming to work, so that means I have to do everything now. My job is mainly doing stuff on the computer in the office, but with no one to help me, I have to move nasty, dust-covered crap out in the warehouse too. The stuff also has to be reboxed, relabeled, etc. It's gotten really anal and bureaucratic all of a sudden. And I think I'm going to have to start wearing my steel-toed boots again since I spend most of the night in the warehouse and have a knack for running over parts of my feet with the pallet jack.

Sweet Mother of God, What Have I Done?

Last year, Sherri took part in NaNoWriMo and actually wrote a novel (which I read). She told me that I'd do it next year. (Apparently I had no choice in the matter.) Well, I planned on doing it, I really did, but work dragged me into the depths of misery and apathy, so I decided not to do it. I felt guilty about deciding not to do it, but since I was running out of time, I really didn't feel too bad. And then suddenly last night I decided to do it. So I signed up. Now I have to write a 50,000 word draft in a goddamn month. That month starts in a little over a week. I have no idea what the hell I'm going to write about. Plus, I'm illiterate!

I'm counting on all four of my regular readers to heap abuse on me (I mean more abuse than normal) if I fail.

Euphemisms

I love euphemisms, but even more than euphemisms, I love phrases that sound like euphemisms when taken out of context. Yesterday morning I was watching a cooking show and the host was cooking Halloween themed fair. One item was a large cheeseball thing made up to look like a goblin. As she prepared it, she said something like, "Now I need to frost my goblin." Naturally, I've thought of little else since.

Damn Norwegians!

Why is the above crummy photo I took a couple of years ago now on the website for some Norwegian radio station?

Oddly, I also found another photo of the same Black Sabbath promo 45 that's very similar to mine.

Exciting, no? No.

Palpable stupidity

Since I can barely function on even the most basic levels these days, I can't come up with a proper blog post. So that means I have to fall back on my old standby, stupid crap from my referrer logs:

undersized porn
Just how undersized? Would I need a magnifying glass?

grow a gigantic schlong
You mean like in a pot or an acquarium or something?

goth elder
My sister's an elderly goth. Does that help?

pressure on whoopie cushions
Such is the stressful life of the whoopie cushion.

what insides of male nipple
Magic!

"spanking machine"build plans
Uh-oh. No good can come from this.

how do bodyperks stay in place?
Duct tape and plenty of it. [Obligatory link to Bodyperks.]

can i brush my dogs teeth after being sprayed by a skunk in the face?
After the dog's been sprayed in the face by a skunk or after you've been sprayed? I can't think brushing a dog's teeth would be a big concern after it's been sprayed in the face by a skunk and if I got sprayed in the face by a skunk I'm not brushing any damn thing.

porno nazi comics -movie -gay -hentai -anime -film
If you find these, please let me know. Seriously.

largest nipple on record female
You just need this information for research, right? Sure. Heh. But seriously, if you find out, can you let me know? It's for research. Heh.

enema horror
The most infamous of the 1950's EC Comics titles.

Men and women making whoopie
Here's a possible reason why it's not a good idea to teach really old people how to use the internet.

wanking in front
Beats the heck out of wanking in back. Or something.

sister enema explain orgasm
I'd rather not hear that explanation if you don't mind.

making hair crunched without any wavy in hair
Please, no wavy in hair! Just crunched!

edible furniture
But if you eat it, where are you going to sit?

huge cocktube
I have nothing to say here except that cocktube is now my favorite word.

bald spot no luck dating
I'd say something witty, but I'm too busy mouring my bald, dateless head.

videos of bastard men ejaculating
You bastard! Look what you just did!

freedom of ass
There's nothing like the freedom of ass!

i ejaculated at a urinal
Probably not something you should say on a first date. Or ever.

Groan, mumble...

I haven't been posting because I haven't felt like writing (or doing anything else). So instead, enjoy this charming photo I stole off Metafilter of a little girl and her opossum.

Dirty money

This morning I got $200 in shiny new $20 bills out of the ATM. They smelled like feet.

Activated by a cellphone?

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I've been busy contemplating the pointlessness of existence.

Anyhoo, ever wonder where they make sex toys? Well, wonder no more. My own personal favorite from the list is the MiEgg, some sort of cellphone activated vibrator: "A simple call or text to your partner's cellphone will fly her off into a world of orgasmic bliss!" But what if it's a wrong number? Is that like cheating?

Fresh?

Earlier this week I noticed the office smelled odd, then I saw that there was a urinal cake hanging under the table holding one of the laser printers. Yes, a urinal cake. Actually, it's not a urinal cake, but one of those disinfectant things that attaches to the edge of a toilet bowl and hangs down so that when you flush the stream runs across is to keep the toilet from looking (and smelling) like hell. Since the toilet cake thing is hanging under the laser printer used only by the nutty woman who always sprays air-freshener when she comes in, I'm guessing this was her idea. So now the office smells like a public toilet and for the first time in my life I have the urge to whizz in a laser printer.

Damnable book meme!

The accursed Sherri has tagged me to do this meme thingy. [Shakes fist at the heavens in outrage.]

1. One book that changed your life?
Ulysses permanently changed how I looked at fiction. I had no idea you were even allowed to write anything like this book. Suddenly all the stuff I'd been taught in school was blown up in front of me, and as a 16 year old, that was a pretty intense experience. But it's all been downhill since then, so you might say this book ruined my life. Thanks, James Joyce, you dead bastard!

2. One book you have read more than once?
I've read lots of books more than once. I used to read certain books almost annually, but I don't do that much anymore because these days I feel the need to spend my spare awake time on the internet looking at porn or random Wikipeidia entries. One book I still keep rereading is William S. Burroughs' Junky.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
It'd have to be something I could endlessly find meaning in. Maybe Shakespeare's Compleate Works (which I've never read), or perhaps the aforementioned Ulysses. But I doubt I'd read either volume. I'd probably use the pages to start a fire and then go completely apeshit. Actually, now that I think about it, forget Shakespeare and Joyce. If I were on a desert island I'd want a survival manual of some sort.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is probably the funniest book I've ever read. And it holds up to rereadings.

5. One book that made you cry?
It didn't quite make me cry, but the Benjy section of Faulkner's Sound and the Fury kind of got to me. But overall I didn't like that novel because it just didn't work.

6. One book you wish had been written?
Reader's Block by David Markson. More clever than me by miles.
[Note: Oops, I misread this question. I thought it said, "One book you wish you had written." I'll have to get back to you on this one because I'm only minutes from leaving for work at Scumco.]

7. One book you wish had never been written?
There's too many to list, but Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves particularly annoyed me. It also annoys me that it's so acclaimed in some circles. I'll stop now or else I'll start ranting about how much I hated this book.

8. One book you are currently reading?
One day I hope to finish Zane Grey's Man of the Forrest. I could've finished this well over a week ago, but I didn't. So there.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
Way, way too many to list. And I just keep buying them. They're just for show apparently. Perhaps I'm trying to impress myself with my well-stocked shelves of highbrow literary fiction. Well I'm not impressed, self, so stop it!

10. Now tag five people:
I think the handfull of blogs I even bother to read anymore have all been tagged, with the exception of the ever frightful Severina. Although, I'd like to see Qov do it because she'd write it in Klingon which would be like the coolest thing ever. Well, kinda.

Ejaculations

Because I have no life at all, I went through the Zane Grey novel I mentioned below and found every mention of ejaculation. (And, yes, I used Word's Find function to do it. I'm certainly not doing it manually.)

"A-huh! ejaculated Anson, dubiously.

"Milt Dale, you'll come down here an' work out that fifty head of sheep!" ejaculated the old rancher, incredulously.

"Well!" ejaculated Helen, contritely, half sorry, half amused. "What a sudden young gentleman!"

"Make off with me?" ejaculated Helen, bewildered.

"Gee!" ejaculated Bo. "He looks like a devil. But I'd tackle him -- if you think I could."

"Broke in!" ejaculated Bo, with a little laugh. "I'm all broke UP now."

"Me! Where'd I ever see any girls?" ejaculated Dale. "I remember some when I was a boy, but I was only fourteen then. Never had much use for girls."

"Doggone the luck!" ejaculated Roy, red in the face, as he worked the lever of his rifle. "Never could shoot downhill, nohow!"

"A-huh!" ejaculated Bo. Then she rolled over, not without groans, and, once upon her face, she raised herself on her hands and turned to a sitting posture.

"Under the sea!" ejaculated Helen.

"Bo's followin' the hound!" ejaculated Dale. And, lifting his hands to his mouth, he sent out a stentorian yell that rolled up the slope, rang against the cliffs, pealed and broke and died away.

"Dale, it's thet damn cougar!" he ejaculated.

"Spring!" ejaculated Auchincloss. Then he shook his head sadly and a far-away look filmed his eyes. "Reckon you'd call some late."

"Dotty! Me? Dotty!" ejaculated Auchincloss. Then he swore. "In a minit I'll tell you what you are."

"Wal, I'll be doggoned!" ejaculated Roy, feelingly.

"Wal, the half-breed son-of-a-greaser!" ejaculated Carmichael, in utter confoundment. "He wanted you to marry him!"

"Lung trouble!" ejaculated John. "With thet chest, an' up in this air? . . . Get out!"

"An' let her shoot!" ejaculated Anson, nodding his long head. "Me, too!"

"Thet's the kid sister of the woman I wanted!" he ejaculated.

"Shot his lamp out!" ejaculated Moze.

"Busted!" ejaculated Anson, with a curse, as he slammed down his cards. "If I ain't hoodooed I'm a two-bit of a gambler!"

"She wasn't there!" ejaculated Anson, in wondering awe.

"One man!" he ejaculated.

That's twenty-three ejaculations, far more than the average porno movie (not counting bukkake videos). Not even a Henry Miller novel has this many erruptions.

It's kind of sad Zane Grey didn't have the use of Find and Replace. But even without a high tech tool you'd think he'd have noticed what a rut he was in with his language.

(And I still haven't finished this novel, by the way. I was going to try an knock the rest of it off this weekend, but I decided to spend my waking hours online and the rest of my time happily unconscious.)

Squid?

Yesterday I bought another bag of animal crackers. (Actually, I bought two.) Anyway, here's the latest anomally. What is it? A squid? The digestive tract of one of the other animals? And it's not a broken off piece either; it had smooth edges for the most part. Sadly, we may never know what it was. And I can't even take anymore pictures of it because I accidently crushed it right after this photo was taken by dropping something on it.

Um...

The two oxygen wasters I worked with quit in the past couple of weeks, so now I'm at work all by myself. To help combat the crushing tedium and misery of my shitty job I've been reading a Zane Grey novel of all things. I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg, so I can open it Notepad and have it in a small window at the bottom of the screen. It looks like I'm actually working instead of malingering. I do love to malinger.

Anyway, the point of this ramble is to mention an odd bit of dialog in this ancient novel:

"Me! Where'd I ever see any girls?" ejaculated Dale. "I remember some when I was a boy, but I was only fourteen then. Never had much use for girls."

OK, whatever floats your boat, Dale, but there's quite a bit of ejaculating in this novel. Also, men stand errect on occasion as well. If I encounter a passage where someone stands errect and then ejaculates I don't think I'll be able to contain myself. It's distracting, I tell you!

Male models beware

Hey, there's a photo of me on the internet! Well, kinda.

Cryptozoology

I bought a bag of animal crackers this morning. Most of the animals are readily identifiable: donkeys, horses, cats, lions, camels, etc. But then there's things like in the photo. Sheep? Rhino? Diseased cow?

Tasty

It's been quite hot at work, even at night, so I've been enjoying the ice-maker in the break room. A few nights ago I got a cup and filled it with ice and then put water in it from the fountain. (The water in the fountains is far better than the water in the coolers. For some reason the water coolers reek faintly of sewage.) I drank all the water and then began to eat the ice. After I was about halfway through, I noticed a dead bug in the bottom of the cup.

Why I'll never get to design anything

I'm still wracked with sloth these days, but I did manage to come up with an idea. My loathsome employer sells many types of piñatas, most of which are fairly dull things like movie/TV characters or bland things like racecars and cacti. Why can't we have an interesting piñata for once? So I thought up a piñata that's shaped like a toilet and it would have an electronic doo-dad inside that would make a loud flushing sound when it was hit hard enough to bust. I'll leave it up to the consumer as to what type of prizes would be in a toilet shaped piñata.

Sloth

Ugh, I'm wracked with sloth these days, so I don't feel like posting anything.

Things could be worse, though. At my job last friday, a guy on first shift got fired for stealing someone's lunch. Of all the things to get fired for. If you're going to get fired then go out with a bang and punch somebody in the nuts or steal a computer.

What happened to Cubby?

Last night while reading celebrity gossip on Usenet, I came across one of the more bizarre vintage rumors I've ever heard:

When I was a kid, there was a rumor that all the Mouseketeers but Annette had been killed in a bus crash, and that Annette was left paralyzed and would have to perform as a puppet (with strings holding her up).

Best costume ever

This ghost cup is one of my employers many tedious Halloween designs. Friday, while languishing at my desk, I looked over at this cup and noticed that the ghost actually looked more like a resevoir tip condom. The ghost's head also looks kind of like a breast.

I think that when you work third shift the world is your Rorschach inkblot test.

Sporks!

I'd always thought the name spork was a slang term, but apparently they really are called that. In the breakroom at work there's a box of them and on the side of the carton is "sporks".

This all seemed far more fascinating in my head; I guess it should've stayed there.

Yuck it up, funny boy

I have nothing to post, so here's some of the latest idiotic things people have searched to end up here:

vagina's falling out
Well, that's no good. But do you really think Google's a better option than a doctor?

Cremation Fetish
Quite possibly the ultimate perversion. Or maybe just the strangest.

giantess fart
I don't make these things up. Really, I don't.

monster furzkissen
Furzkissen is German for whoopie-cushion, so the searcher is looking for a monster whoopie-cushion, which I guess would be either a really big whoopie-cushion or simply a whoopie-cushion intended for monsters. I wish I could be of some help to this seacher, but sadly I can't.

How do i find the free website for men that like big beautiful black women?
Ordinarily I'd suggest using a search engine, but it seems you've already tried that with remarkably little success.

why men wear bras blogs
I hope there's no blogs dedicated to men wearing bras. Anyway, I don't know of any, but there's one that features cats that look like Hitler.

what does ronald defeo do all day in the insane facility
I'm sure I have no idea. [Obligatory link explaining who Ronald Defeo, Jr. is.]

make penis last longer homebrew
If I had such information wouldn't I be selling it and making my fortune instead working the stupid low-paying job I have? I'd never give away free information on making penis last longer. No, if you're going to make penis last longer you're going to have actually spend money, not just make something out of ordinary household ingredients or items.

free books about cunnilingus techniques
So not only is the searcher bad at performing cunnilingus, he/she is cheap as well.

Kevin nu bite porno gay
I'm torn between confusion and curiosity.

wikipedia "hoop skirt" toilet OR outhouse
Here's a radical idea that might actually work: why not try searching at Wikipedia?

vagina's+porn
Porn owned by vaginas? Now that's kinky.

+bird +shit +hit +head
Having a bad day?

carrying unconscious women monsters
So is this monsters carrying unconscious women or someone carrying an unconscious adult female monster? The second option is the far more interesting one.

largest protruding nipple enhancers
"But I was just doing research! Honest!" Sure you were, perv. Sure.

Excerpt from Daddy Takes Us Psychic Battling

"Oh, how powerfully enhanced your psychic powers are!" cried little Mabel Blake, one day, as her brother Hal came running out of the school yard, where he had been having a telekenetic battle with some other boys. Mabel was waiting for him to walk home with her as he had promised.

"Yours are powerfully enhanced, too, Mab!" Harry said. "It's as powerfully enhanced--as powerfully enhanced as some of the brains we boiled with our minds at our seashore cottage this summer."

"Are my psychic powers powerfully enhanced?" asked Mab of some of her girl friends.

"They surely are!" replied Jennie Bruce. "All our psychic powers are powerfully enhanced!" she went on. "It's the planetary alignment that makes 'em so. It's very cold today, and soon it will be the time of the assassins, with lots of blood and violence! Oh! I just love the time of the assassins!"

[Note: This is another of my find and replace travesties.]

Yes, please take my money

Wost spam subject line ever: "Do you want to see the fountain of sperm? Try our new Soft Cialis Tabs."

No, no, no, a thousand times no, I don't want to see the fountain of sperm!

Sadly, there's no scenes with Potsie

I know this probably isn't an original idea, but it's a shame no one has ever staged Samuel Beckett's play, Happy Days, with Marion Ross and Tom Bosley.

Enter the fotdella

Many, many, many years ago I bought a record (yes, one of those big black flat round plastic things yer grandma used to listen to music on before she got an iPod like a civilized human being) by Tav Falco. On the back cover of this rockabilly oddity, the legendary Jim Dickinson was credited with playing something called a "fotdella". What's a fotdella, you ask? For more years than I care to mention, I wondered the same thing. Often I imagined it was a sort of flatulent rhythm instrument, possibly played with a bellows. Anyway, this morning I finally looked it up on Google and, much to my surprise, actually found an answer.

The fotdella is a stringed bass that you play with one of your feet using a crude keyboard. Oddball bluesman Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller invented it for his one man band. [Note to self: Look for some Jesse Fuller MP3s, pronto. I must hear the fotdella played by the master.]

So now that I know what a fotdella is, I want one. In fact, I believe I was born to play the fotdella. Where can I get one? So far my search for an online fotdella dealer has been fruitless, but did find a guy who had made an improved model. Ah, but my fotdella dreams are sure to be dashed.

Victoria Regina Tarot

The Victoria Regina Tarot is a tarot deck made entirely by collaging 19th century engravings. It's somewhat like (but nowhere near as marvelously strange as) Max Ernst's surrealist collage novel, Une Semaine de Bonté. (A book I still don't own, even though I first saw it more than ten years ago.)

The bad thing about the Victoria Regina Tarot is that it's out of print. But the illustrations of each card seem to be viewable at the site.

They're inflatable!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Such disappointment

There was some kind of fire near my job last night. All night we could smell wood smoke in the warehouse because the fans in the ceiling were sucking it in. The smell gradually died down so that it wasn't that noticeable, but around 6 AM it suddenly got strong again and I could actually see smoke haze in the air inside the warehouse. I wondered if the smoke alarms would go off. Then I wondered if the sprinklers would go off. That would've been interesting, but, sadly, it didn't happen. Fun stuff never happens at work.

What?!

This morning my boss was yammering on about something or other (I wasn't really listening) and she said what sounded like, "I couldn't get my bowels to move." I suddenly looked up at her and thought, "Did she just say what I think she said? And, if so, why in the name of all things decent is she telling me?" Then I realized she'd said, "I couldn't get my mouse to move." She was having computer problems in the new area where she's got her office set up.

Postal humor

Contained in this mashed box is the best deal I ever got on Ebay. For a mere $20.83 I snagged a Schick adjustable injector in the original case, a razor I've seen go for over a $100 more than once. There were also six other vintage razors, one of which was also in its original case. Of course both cases were smashed. (That's plastic for you.) Thankfully the razors weren't damaged.

The seller put a big label on the box reading, "Handle With Care", but they would've been better off with a label reading, "Please crush this box with some big heavy shit!" Jackasses.

The Chuck Yeager of stupid

Does stupid have a terminal velocity? I'm beginning to think I'm on the brink of finding out.

Last night at work as I left to go to lunch, I somehow managed to lock myself out of the office. Naturally, no one had a key. That's not as surprising as it may seem since there's only half a dozen people on third shift. So a supervisor from the only other populated office and a security guard did much poking and proding with various implements in an unsuccessful attempt to break into the office. I just stood there like a big doofus and ate my lunch since I'd already achieved professional levels of stupidity by locking myself out in the first place. Eventually someone showed up with a screwdriver and we took the damn door off the hinges.

I'd like to say that locking myself out of the office was a rare occurance, but last Friday I locked myself out of my car. So, it begins... Next I'll suddenly find myself out in public with no pants on.

Vacant

Monkey Chow!

The Monkey Chow Diaries: "On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: 'a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes.'" [via Metafilter]

Who knew there was such a thing as Monkey Chow?

The Monster Show

In the comments of my "Monsters want our women" post I mentioned a book I read a few years ago that had interpretations of horror movies from the silent era to the present. The title's The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror and there's even an official site.

Stupid comics

I love websites about old comics, particularly if the old comics in question are seriously fucked up. So much time was happily wasted when I found Stupid Comics a few weeks ago. How stupid are they? Pretty stupid. And in one sequence Dick Cheney makes a surprise appearance.Women of the world, I don't let Dick Cheney carry you back to his lair!

Monsters want our women!

A few weeks ago I watched Creature from the Black Lagoon again. I wasn't planning on watching much of it, but I ended devouring the whole thing instead of napping like I'd wanted. (I live for napping.)

It's a great monster flick, but it made me wonder why it was that in so many of these types of movies the monster killed the men and carried the women away? What were the monsters going to do with the women? I, and all the other straight men watching Creature from the Black Lagoon, know what we'd like to do to Julie Adams, but did the gill-man harbor similar urges? Apparently, he did, but it's never mentioned in the movie at all. There's no scene where any of the male characters say anything like, "The monster wants a mate, so we better lock up whatshername and tell her to stop jiggling around in that bathing suit." But the original movie posters leave nothing to the imagination. One states bluntly, "Terrifying monster of the ages raging with pent-up passions! ...with every man his mortal enemy ...and a woman's beauty his prey!" And on another poster, "Centuries of passion pent up in his savage heart!"

So, in the 50's there was this deep-seated fear that monsters would be canoodling our womenfolk? I thought the 50's was all about commies. You know, commies canoodling our womenfolk. (Oddly, in the poster for one of the two Black Lagoon sequels, The Creature Walks Among Us, the monster appears to be wearing pants while on his rampage in some big US city after he escapes his captors. I can imagine a scene where the guy running the zoo/freak show/whatever says something like, "Somebody put some pants on that thing!" Of course he ran around nekkid all through the first movie.)

So monsters do want out women! Somebody should make a website about this! Oh, look, they already have. At least two of them actually. Giants and Girls [not all safe for work] is devoted to monsters, aliens, mutants, etc. chasing and carrying away beautiful women. Lots of nice galleries if you just stick to the old movie stills and ignore the creepy computer "erotic" art. It's more of fetish site than a purely movie buff site, but interesting none the less. The other site, In My Arms, is devoted to the "carry phenomenon", which is basically just monsters, aliens, robots, mutants, and just regular old run of the mill human men carrying unconscious women. Needless to say, this is also a bit of a fetish site and probably not all safe for work.

Filler!

Since I've fallen into a bottomless pit of work-related misery and have the energy of a drugged tree sloth, I haven't been blogging much. My job sucks, but it doesn't even suck in an interesting way. Don't hold your breath for wacky posts about how stupid things are at work. So in lieu of actual content, here's my latest collection of stupid search requests that people baffled by the internet have used to blunder across my tedious blog:

free latin porn without popups
I'm pretty sure they were looking for porn featuring folk from Central and South America, but I like to imagine they were looking for porn in Latin, because nothing says arousing like a dead language.

cat smash through window
Just when you thought Fluffy couldn't be any more annoying.

tickling vagina clips
Movie clips or clips that would actually tickle one's vagina? But you'd think clips would pinch rather than tickle. OK, I've dwelled on this far too long already.

hee haw women doing
This searcher doesn't care just what the Hee Haw women are doing, just that they're doing something: movies, yard work, hard time, etc. It doesn't matter as long as they're keeping busy.

"wanking in front of"
Wanking in front of anything: cars, elephants, bricks, trees, Communism, tropical fish, lawn furnature, etc. The searcher doesn't care as long as someone is wanking in front of something.

good teacher porn clips lengthy and free
I never had a teacher that good.

free foreskin sites with photos
I don't want a free foreskin!

man wanking in front of computer
Well, at least he wasn't wanking in front of a dehumidfier. Or something like that.

does going to the toilet relieve stress
For me it does. Unless someone's in there and then my stress increases.

pee shy successful medication
See above.

uk wanking blogs
The searcher isn't interested in wanking blogs from any other lousy country.

Honey Bun robbery
Was a honey bun stolen in the robbery or used to perform the robbery?

eel barrel
More fun than a barrel of eels!

toilet lid cartoon
A cartoon about a toilet lid or a cartoon on a toilet lid?

undulate paragraph
I hope this is a new feature in Word.

john wayne autopsies
More than one?

english majors are stupid annoying
Possibly, but I'm not comfortable with gross generalizations.

"shoot a woman in the ass"
I really have no idea.

invented the spanking
Sadly, we'll never know.

What is going on in Iceland now reffering to the headlines of articles in the newspaper.
This just in: People in Iceland speak a language called Icelandic.

bubblegum blowing porn
Talk about your lame fetishes. Somewhere out there a person is desperately searching Yahoo for "cuddling porn" or "non nude porn".

enema horror stories
Get a mop!

photos of kids 11-12 with shaved heads
Hmmm... Pervert or a kid looking for photos to show his parents? ("See, Mom. There's kids my age with shaved heads!")

Boohbah Zone

I can't stop playing with this.

Mit der whoopie!

I learned something new at work: furzkissen is German for whoopie-cushion. (We stock them.) Anyway, I looked up furzkissen on Google just to see what came up. I found an article in the German verions of Wikipedia. The Google translation is too good not to reproduce in total:

A Furzkissen is a joke article. This concerns an inflatable hollow body, which consists of plastic, and over a valve it is so fillable that the air filling cannot withdraw after filling independently. When sudden escaping of air by an outside load a flatulenzartiges noise is produced. The Furzkissen serves for, notionless humans who itself unintentionally on it-set and thus by its weight the necessary pressure apply to bring in embarrassment. It is put down for example camouflaged on seat opportunities.

The first Furzkissen consisted of two equal, ballonförmigen rubber skins, which were stuck up to the opening in the place at the edge, typical for a balloon. There the gap developed, by which the Furzkissen is filled, and which could be squeezed together due to its detention characteristics, so that the filling remained containing.

Furzkissen of newer date are manufactured frequently with foam material filling and a mechanical valve. If the pressure is reduced to the hollow body, then the foam material filling relaxes and leads to the fact that the Furzkissen takes up air over the valve again and so that a renewed emptying with side effects mentioned without intervention of the user becomes possible. Also fast successions of the developing noise are in this way possible.

According to the Guinness book of the records took place in Illinois with 3164 persons the largest common Furzkissen seats.

The Germans seem to take whoopie-cusion technology quite seriously. I've never seen any of these more advanced whoopie-cusion designs they speak of.

Oddly, the English version of Wikipedia has no specific article on whoopie-cushions, but they do have a nice one on flatulence humor. (While you're at it, they have a nice article on flatulence as well.)

And to digress slightly, who wouldn't want their child to wear a whoopie-cushion costume for Halloween?

Get a job

Since I'm so miserable in my current job, I decided to start searching the various online employment sites for something else. I have a degreee, so surely there's something halfway decent out there for me. Right? Well, maybe not. All the jobs seemed to want years of experience I don't have and can't get because the jobs require experience. AARRGGHH! But I did find one that I think I'm qualified for:

The employee's activities primary include processing and preparing paperwork, assisting in preparation of human remains for cremation, assisting with placing remains in cremation chamber/retort and facility cleaning and maintenance. Activities may be in a crematory or at a funeral home/crematory. Requires learning and familiarization with SCI policies and proceedures, including review of SCI operations Manual and applicable state/provincial law. Regulatory certification may be required in some states/provinces. Works under general supervision.

I'm not sure what "SCI" stands for. Maybe Scary Corpse Industry.

I don't know why I even bother getting out of bed anymore.

Chain of fools

A big site devoted entirely to chain letters? How come I've never seen this before? I know I've looked at damn near everything on the internet (because have no life), so you'd think I'd have seen it before.

Grazing the con

I took the blog on the road this weekend. Well, kinda. Sherri and husband went to RavenCon in Richmond, so I went up to meet them. Since my sister lives up there, I figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal to go up one day, stay overnight, come back the next day, and go to work. Of course it didn't go quite so smoothly.

The bus was supposed to leave at 10:30 AM saturday. By 10:35 the bus was nowhere to be seen. Then we got news that it had broken down in Greensboro. Typical. This basically screwed up everything. So much for my tight schedule. I ended up waiting for two hours for a replacement bus to show up.

In Richmond, hours later, my sister (who for some reason stayed at the bus station to meet me rather than leaving my two hour late ass there) and I walked to her new apartment. Oh, and it was pouring down rain. Also, her apartment was almost two and half miles away. And I had no umbrella, only a light jacket with a very non-waterproof hood.

After walking forever, we paused in front of 7-11. My sister said, "If you want anything to eat, you better get it here because I don't have any food in the apartment." Lovely. We both got sandwiches. The guy behind the counter put everyone's purchases in plastic bags except mine, which went into a paper bag. Yeah, it's funny giving the soaking wet guy a paper bag.

By the time we got to her apartment and out of the soaking wet shoes and socks it was kind of too late to go the convention. So that meant I wouldn't get to gawk at chunky girls in chainmail bikinis and snicker at bad costumes. Crap. And I brought my camera for nothing.

I called Sherri and had a difficult conversation because cellphones suck and conventions are too damn noisy for phone conversations. We decided to just get together at their hotel and have some takeout.

So after six, we met at their hotel where a lot of the convention folk were staying. Sherri's already covered part of this episode at her blog, so I'll try to touch on the stuff she didn't mention.

I was totally exhausted by this time and had only slept maybe an hour in the previous 24, but it didn't really start to hit me until after we'd talked about an hour. I was really starting to get out of it. My eyes would close and I would immediately start dreaming, then jerk awake.

We talked a lot about god knows what. There was another girl there whose name I can't remember. She had three pairs of Doc Martins for some reason. There was Chinese food. I had beef lo mein, which I'd never eaten. Quite good. Sherri gave me a pen that lights up in different colors and had the word "Gatorland" on it. Sherri's husband Jay was making a ridiculously intricate ring out of wire. Sherri and my jewelry-making sister talked about making jewelry quite a bit while I struggled to stay awake. At one point, I found myself face down on the bed and Jay was giving me a massage. (He's a masseuse, among other things.) I've never had a massage before and never really wanted one, unless of course it was given to me by a beautiful naked girl covered in oil, but that's another story. I was too tired to be tense, so giving me a massage at that point was probably like massaging a rump roast. (Speaking of which.)

Eventually the evening wound down and we left. Outside the hotel two guys had a slow light saber fight in front of a shuttle-bus. I wanted to take a picture, but I was too tired to bother.

The guy driving our taxi was from Africa, I think. I couldn't figure out why there was no bulletproof window between us and the driver like the ones I'd always seen on TV and the movies, but we didn't rob him, so it didn't matter.

Back at my sister's apartment I slept on the cat hair-covered futon. The next morning I ate Pringles for breakfast.

Later at home I passed out on my bed and didn't wake up until about five minutes before I usually leave for work. I quickly got dressed and left. Somehow I managed to stay awake the whole night. Well, kinda.

So, how was your weekend?

Out of touch

This morning my supervisor (who works first shift, while I work third) asked me, "What's the date? Is it the 12th?" I glanced at the date on my watch and said, "It's the 19th." She's a week behind everyone else; this explains so much.

Woot!

I heard today that my former writing teacher, Claudia Emerson, just won the Pulitzer. It's about time someone I know actually did something that wasn't lame, boring, or simply embarrassing.

Hare today, gone tomorrow

I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I forgot. It doesn't matter anyway now because he's now in Chocholate Rabbit Heaven as of early this morning. Sad really. Actually, I don't care.

Stoopit name

OK, I've got the intellectual stuff out of the way with the previous post, so now it's time for something really stupid.

A few days ago I was walking through the parking lot at work and noticed the car beside mine had Kumho brand tires. Kumho? Is that actually pronounced, cum ho? Did no one even toy with the idea of changing the name of this brand for the US market? Didn't anyone even consider that the brand name would basically be a filthy joke?

Nope, I don't want a set of those on my Buick, thank you.

Beckett's voice again

The 100th year since Samuel Beckett's birth was yesterday, so I suppose it's time for another tedious Beckett post. Actually, this one's sort of interesting. Sort of.

The always interesting Ask Metafilter has a post asking the question, Are there any extant recordings of Samuel Beckett's voice?. So far there's no answers that excite me, although there's a link to a 150 MB .avi of Not I.

I've previously written about my search for Beckett recordings here, here, here, and here.

The most exciting bit of information I've turned up in a long time was actually found in my own damn comments about twenty minutes ago. In the next to the last post I mentioned above, I just saw an anonymous comment I'd overlooked left by someone in 2004 with a UK email address:

There is a recording of Beckett's voice on VHS: "Peephole Art: Beckett for Television" it was put out by Global village NY telephone 212 925-7751

I don't know if this still works

The British library in London also had (has?) a sample from this film on its Voicebox in the foyer

Beckett for Television is available, but for a terrifying $45. (Don't the people who put these things out realize that cheapskates want this stuff, too?) The description doesn't seem to mention a recording of Beckett himself. It's also available (and described) here.

Stoopit ad

I saw a strange banner ad over the weekend. It wasn't as strange as past ones I've seen, but it was still kind of odd. Western Union is holding some kind of contest, but they chose an illustration that not only doesn't quite make any sense, it's also vaguely obscene. I can understand the guy wearing a crown because he's just won a million dollars, but why is he holding yarn? Why does the yarn look weirdly like a penis? And I don't even want to get into the knitting needles jabbed into the nuts of the yarn dong. (Wasn't The Nuts of the Yarn Dong the title of an old Marlon Brando movie from the very early 60's?) Is he also giving me the finger? Or is that a thumbs up? Or maybe it's that stupid sign language gesture that's like a thumbs up, but with the pinky extended as well. It's usually displayed by morons trying to be cool while screaming, "WOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

But now that I think about it, if I won a million dollars, I wouldn't have any trouble at all strolling around town wearing a crown at a jaunty angle, holding a huge dildo in one hand, and flipping the bird with the other.

Philosophical distillation

To pass the time at work during those long periods where I either have nothing to do, or just don't want to do anything, I have a collection of books in a folder on my computer that I've downloaded from Project Gutenberg. It's an odd assortment of novels, short story collections, children's books, sappy poetry, marriage and hygiene manuals, religious texts, and studies of criminal behavior. I sometimes play with these texts using things like Find and Replace, sometimes I randomly cull senteces from various volumes and put them together into incoherent collages of prose, and sometimes I even read them.

Last night while bored out of my cotton picking mind, I started playing around with a few volumes using Find and Replace, but I quickly got bored. Then I remembered that Word has a fascinating, but ultimately quite useless tool called AutoSummarize. I tried it on the marriage manual and got some vaguely amusing results. Then I loaded up Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I ended up setting AutoSummarize to its absolute minimum setting:

propositions.

proposition. proposition. 4.12 Propositions

proposition. propositions. proposition.

proposition. propositions.

propositions.

I've never read Tractatus even a fifth of the way through, but this condensation seems quite accurate to me.

Gainful employment

This morning at work I was looking at a listing of various products we distribute and saw an odd abbreviation. I got up and went out into the warehouse to one of the production areas to actually see the product in question. I found it quickly enough. The box label read, "Squishy Potty Putty". I opened the box and saw little plastic toilets. On the lid of the toilet was a label with a cartoon of a horrified man being confronted with a dung-filled toilet. This is the kind of item I exhaust myself moving from one place in the warehouse to another.

The box label also had the name of the product in French: "Toilette avec Excréments", which I found amusing for some reason. And if you don't know, avec means with.

Also, while looking for an example of this fine product online, I found out that what we in the US call Silly Putty, people in the UK inexplicably call Potty Putty.

Some of the other wholesome, tasteful products we distribute are joke fart horns, fake vomit, and fake doggie poop.

And for no reason, here's a link to a site with pictures and video of people with too much time on their hands dropping a 50 pound ball of Silly Putty off a multi-story parking garage.

Why don't we do it in the road?

As I lurched home from another tedious night's work, I came upon a strange scene. I saw what appeared to be a bird simply sitting in the road furiously flapping its wings. Actually, I wasn't sure if it was a bird at all. Perhaps it was just something flapping in the wind, but, no, it was a bird. Why was it simply sitting in the road, ignoring my oncoming car? It suddenly it flew away revealing a second bird. This bird seemed dazed and didn't fly away as I drove past, missing it only by a few feet. What was going on? Then I realized the birds were having sex right there in the goddamn road.

They were cardinals, if you're interested in that sort of thing. It doesn't really improve the story knowing what kind of birds they were, but I just thought I'd let you know since someone with even less of a life than I have is bound to ask. But the story's not that interesting anyway.

Now if they'd been Cardinals, then it would be a really interesting story, but only if they were in full regalia.

Overdue

I haven't done one of these idiotic seach request posts in a year probably. I'm just too lazy. Or busy. Or something. Anyway, here's another lame collection of stupid search requests people have made to end up at my humble blog.

HAIR STUCK THROAT
It must be bad if it's affected the language center of your brain so severely.

hair stuck in throat
It's an epidemic, but I still don't have a useful solution.

korean sticky bun cartoon merchandise
Oh, please, god, let this exist.

did hitler eat chocolate
Looking for a subject for your doctoral dissertation?

chimpanzee cooked alive photo
I'm curious, but I don't want to be.

gigantic wiener
Wow, you're really at the wrong website because, you know, my member's very tiny.

mules + jackass art
Are they paintings of mules and donkeys or by mules and donkeys? If it's the later, put me on the waiting list.

album covers with robot holding tree limb
There's more than one album cover with a robot holding a tree limb? Other than the Tennessee Ernie Ford one, I can't think of any others. Oh, yeah, the Barbara Streisand album. I forgot.

odd smelly marsupial
I think that pretty much covers all marsupials, doesn't it? Although, I've only ever smelled an opossum, so I shouldn't make gross generalizations.

sucker sticks,stuck in throat
God, more than one? Be more careful. And Google isn't a doctor. You need a trained medical professional, not the asinine ramblings of some dork with a blog.

big ass spankings
Are the best kind of spankings. It's money in the bank. The spanking bank. Heh-heh.

men with men naked pichers only of men
So, you're looking for pictures of men? Just men. Naked ones. Right?

birds poo damaged my car paint
This seach came from Australia. You'd think they'd have more important things to worry about in a land where virtually every bug and animal there can kill your ass.

"dukes of hazzard" and "uncle jesse" and "whip" and fiction
This searcher was watching an entirely different show than the rest of us on Friday nights back in the early 80's.

"wanking for fun"
As opposed to what, wanking for profit? I'd be rich!

wanking in front of japanese
I can't imagine it would be that different from, say, wanking in front of Albanians. Or even Icelandic folk.

My hometown

Earlier this week while procrastinating in front of my computer at work, I discovered that there was a Wikipedia article about my hometown. The final sentences of the "Demographics" portion of the article are my favorite: "Many Danvillians just sit around collecting checks from the government, and not doing much of anything. It's been all downhill since 1865."

Update 4/16/06: It's gone now. Ah, Wikipedia, such a warzone of opinion.

Dammit

Damn you to hell, cactus dick man!

Working for the man

I hate my job. No surprise there, many of us hate our jobs, but most bloggers don't have jobs where they have to crawl around inaccessible areas and move tons of boxes of dusty garbage no one wants to buy from one part of a warehouse to another. (God, did anyone really think that all this King Kong merchandise would sell?) And I'm an office worker. Oh, and did I mention that I'm third shift this week, so I get to do all the above at 3:30 AM.

Last night I checked my work email and my boss left me the following cryptic message:

There is no easy to move the inventory the process sometime seems length but the end result will come together. Follow the protocol move the items into location and make the Inventory moves accordingly. Please make sure that all inventories are moved. You guys are doing a good job we must stay on top of high movers you are able to make the moves if you guys stay focused.

Yes, this bizarre missive was written by the person who tells me what to do. Those thousands of dollars of my own money I spent on tuition was well spent I must say.

Milestone or millstone?

Earlier today I passed the 50,000 hits mark. Sady, there's no prize for the person who was the 50,000th visitor to this blog. I'd be more excited by reaching this milestone if the majority of my traffic over the past two or three months weren't jackasses finding that stupid picture of cactus dick man while doing an innocuous image search.

The endless slog of existence

I haven't been able to work up enough enthusiasm to do any posting here recently.

And I had a birthday yesterday, so I'm not too happy about being all old and everything.

Also, I was informed yesterday that I would have to work third shift all next week.

So bite me.

RIP, Buck

Continuing my recent Hee-Haw-related posts, I just read that Buck Owens died today.

Eeph aaph

I've mentioned before about how on Saturday nights we'd watch Hee-Haw when I was little. Eventually I quit watching this show and started listening to proper music like DEVO that better spoke to my special needs, but I digress. Back to Hee-Haw, dammit.

They had a guy on Hee-Haw named Jimmy Riddle (which is also, oddly enough, cockney rhyming slang for pissing) who basically made a career of going "Eeph-aaph! Eeph-aaph!" in various permutations. Very retarded, but sort of entertaining. Anyway, NPR did a piece on him and the "the Lost Art of Eephing". In the article, eephing is described as, "the hillbilly equivalent of the hip-hop human 'beat box'."

I'd forgotten completely about Riddle until a couple of months ago I was watching TV early one morning and caught an infomercial for Hee-Haw DVD's and saw him having an eephing fit of some sort.

The only reason I'm even doing this post on eephing at all is to encourage everyone to go read the NPR piece and listen to some of the sound clips they have. "Little Eefin' Annie" may be familiar to some of you and it's so seriously messed up that it's worth listening to, but I really want you to hear the demented "'Eephunky' Remix". There's also a "eephing tutorial" recorded by Riddle himself.

The other one

Here's the other drawing of the bald, pipe-smoking crossdresser from the weird 19th century we never get to hear about.

Oh, my aching brain

No, I haven't died or been dragged off by giant frogs to mate horribly with their giant frog females to bring about a horrible mutant race of frogmen, I've just been diligently working at my job. And by diligently I mean involuntarily. Dang, I hate my job. Anyway, on to the blog-post.

My sister's recent post on vintage graffiti she found in a book reminds me of some strange drawings I found years ago in an ancient Bible I bought at a thrift store. The Bible was printed in 1864 and has a handwritten inscription dated 1869, but the most interesting thing about this book are drawings of bald women in hoop skirts smoking pipes.

These drawings are the types of things that may cause a concerned teacher to ask, "Is everything OK at home?" Or maybe the teacher would just drag the kid in front of the class and savagely paddle his/her ass with a freshly cut pine board. They had to cut this kind of nonsense out early or it could lead to even worse things like self-pollution or even dancing.

Maybe grandma strolled around with no wig on and smoked a pipe. Hell, maybe dad strolled around in a dress. These types of scenarios never turn up in those sappy, sentimental made for TV movies about American life in the 1800's.

I like how the arms are straight out as if the bald, hoop-skirt wearing, pipe-smoker were sleepwalking. Imagine coming upon that on your way to the outhouse at three o'clock in the morning.

This took way too much time to write

A meme-type thing cribbed from the one and only Leptard-type thing.

Pick ten bands and answer questions about them afterwards.

1. Television
2. New York Dolls
3. Wilco
4. Velvet Underground
5. Led Zeppelin
6. Black Flag
7. Sonic Youth
8. Yardbirds
9. XTC
10. Dead Kennedys

What was the first song you ever heard by 6?
Rise Above

What is your favorite album of 8?
Oddly, it isn't Roger the Engineer, but Cumular Limit, a hodgepodge of live tracks, demos, outtakes, and rough mixes from the Jimmy Page era. There's also a neato black and white video included of them playing live circa 1967 on a German TV show called Beat Beat Beat (or something like that).

What is your favourite lyric that 5 has sung?
Zeppelin wasn't exactly known for their lyrics, but I'd have to pick Dazed and Confused which, oddly enough Jimmy Page basically ripped off during the Yardbirds era from a guy named Jake Holmes, but Zeppelin changed the lyrics. Also, on the Yardbirds album above there's an earlier live version of this song with different lyrics than the Zeppelin version. Confused yet? How about dazed?

How many times have you seen 4 live?
None. They basically stopped being relevant when I was one year old after Lou Reed left to go solo. Yes, I could've seen them during their sad reunion tour opening for U2 in some goddamn stadium, but that wouldn't have been enjoyable at all I don't think.

What's your favorite song of 7?
Hey Joni probably.

What is a good memory you have considering the music of 10?
My sister coming home from visiting some college with a friend and their family and bringing home a French import copy of In God We Trust, Inc. It was vinyl (this was 1984) and neither of us had ever seen a 12 inch 45 rpm record before so we just assumed that it would played at 33 1/3 rpm. So we ended listening to it, and totally loving it, at the wrong damn speed for a week probably. We'd play it two or three times a day. But what did we know, we were just a couple of stupid redneck kids listening to BIG CITY PUNK RAWK! Plus everything on the label was in French. Anyway, eventually one of us said, "Hey, maybe this isn't on the right speed."

Is there a song of 3 that makes you sad?
Yes, all of them. Or most of them. Except for a few tunes, Wilco isn't exactly a peppy, happy bunch, which is probably why they appeal to me so much.

What is your favourite lyric that 2 has sung?
It's hard to beat Jet Boy:

Jet Boys fly
Jet Boys gone
Jet Boy stole my baby

Actually, now that I think about it, Frankenstein has better lyrics:

Is it a crime, is it a crime
For you to fall in love in with Frankenstein
Wrong, could it be wrong
Baby, don't you want a friend
Well, Frankenstein, oh, Frankenstein, Frankenstein
You're gonna get it, you're gonna get it
You're gonna get it, from Frankenstein

What is your favorite song by 9?
Probably Senses Working Overtime, but it's just too hard to chose just one XTC tune.

How did you get in to 3?
I was watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien to see a Winona Ryder interview and Wilco, who I'd only vaguely heard of, was the musical guest. They did How to Fight the Loneliness which I really liked, so I got a copy of Summerteeth. For some reason the album didn't strike me as that interesting and for two or three years all I'd ever play was How to Fight the Loneliness. Eventually, because I kept reading stuff about them, I got the CD out and started playing it. For awhile there I played everyday.

What was the first song you heard by 1?
I don't know. For some reason I think it may have been See No Evil.

What is your favourite song by 4?
Heroin, maybe. Or perhaps Some Kinda Love

What is a good memory you have concerning 2?
Nothing comes to mind, except discoving how catchy Jet Boy is.

Is there a song of 8 that makes you sad?
No. Not even Still I'm Sad. Well, maybe some of the studio versions of stuff from the Jimmy Page era makes me sad because it's so inanely produced. It's a shame they didn't have management and producers during that period to capture the loud-ass brutality of their live stuff and BBC session material done during the same time.

What is your favourite album of 5?
The first one.

What is your favourite lyric that 3 has sung?
Either Poor Places or Handshake Drugs.

What is your favourite song of 6?
Again I'll chose Rise Above. Or maybe their debut single, Nervous Breakdown.