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.