Archaelogy

I've been de-junkifying my office over the past few days. I took two loads of books, magazines, and other unidentifiable detritus to Goodwill. Also, I threw away a bunch of stuff. Did I really need to keep every single box I've gotten in the mail over the past couple of years? Probably not. The room is now four times the size it was at this time last week.

The great thing about getting rid of lots of unwanted junk is that you end up finding interesting stuff you forgot you had. While getting rid of all those photography and auto racing magazines, I stumbled across several vintage girly magazines my sister gave me a few years ago. I totally forgot about these. The cool thing about them is that they were all obscure competitors with Playboy who have long since fallen by the wayside. Ever heard of Cavalier? Gent? How about Dude? No, me neither.

I'd love to have a big collection of 50's and 60's girly magazines. So if you were wondering, gently used vintage girly magazines would be the perfect gift for me. No, actually the perfect gift for me right now would be a new camcorder. Maybe one of those fancy ones with the hard drive. But I digress.

The ads, cartoons, and articles are probably the most interesting things about these magazines. For example, this bizarre cartoon from the February 1967 issue of Rogue:



Seriously, what the hell's going on here?

But my favorite is this deranged ad from the May 1964 issue of Carnival:



Did they really think this clumsy drawing of a freakish, grinning weirdo would sell a product about reducing wrinkles? Sure, I'd buy a product that will make me look like I should be fighting Batman.

My first short film

I've been secretly toiling away for a long time on a short film. I've had to do lots of difficult things like learn about writing a script, shooting video, editing, sound, lighting, etc. It's all been very trying, but I think the finished result is worth all the effort, frustration, and great expense.

Yuckity-yuck

In lieu of actual content, here's an old joke I found someplace online:

A salesman's car breaks down, so he asks a farmer to let him spend the night, and the farmer agrees. In the middle of the night, the salesman wakes up and is really thirsty, so he decides to go to the barn and get some milk from a cow.

Soon, the farmer hears noises coming from the barn and goes to investigate. He then sees the salesman coming out of the barn-soaking wet and with a white liquid dripping down his face. The farmer asks, "What happened to you?" The salesman says, "I just got thirsty, so I milked your cow. It was so dark in there I don't know how I did it. But I'm telling you, that cow has great milk! I must have drank a gallon of it!"

The farmer then stares at him with a puzzled look and says, "But we don't have a cow. We just have a bull."

Too much of a good thing?

I got a penis enlargement spam a couple of days ago with the following sentence:

Penis Enlarge Patch can enlarge your dick so much it would be hard for women to have sex with you.

Yes, I need another reason for women not to have sex with me. Sign me up for that!

Look, Grandma, I'm on the You Tube!

I put a new (and very short) clip up at You Tube. Consider yourselves lucky I don't have a fast internet connection.

Help me, I have no life

I know all of you have been on the edge of your seats about my recent claim that Nissan's Top Ramen and Aldi's Jehling brand of ramen were the same thing.



Look at the flavor packs. Not only do they have the same printing on them, but they have the same number on them. But, you say, that proves nothing. Maybe both companies buy their flavor packs from the same place. Yes, I suppose that's possible, but what about the photo below?



The same illustrations appear on the back of each package. And they're not just similar either; they're exactly the same drawings.

Also, the ingredients are the same, right down to the punctuation.

That's a painting?

Photo realistic art has always impressed my simple monkey brain, but this painting by Dru Blair is maddeningly detailed. It's so realistic that it's kind of pointless. If you can't tell it's a painting, then why go to all of the trouble?

Mystery Hill

Yesterday's post about a local gravity hill inspired me to see if I could find that ancient brochure I mentioned in the comments. For many years my parents have had a drawer with nothing in it but travel brochures and maps. Some of this stuff is older than I am. Since my family never throws anything away, I figured there was a good chance this brochure was still in there even though I probably hadn't seen it in twenty years or more. Well, after a bit of digging, I found it.

I thought this place was in Florida, but it's actually in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. My mother said everything was built on an angle and it made her physically ill. (Which probably explains why we never went back despite the fact that my sister and I really wanted to go.) She's also never heard of the local gravity hill.



I don't know if I could stand the terror of that "Spooky Spigot."



Looks quaint, huh? Wish you go there, don't you? You're all sad because stuff like this doesn't exist anymore, aren't you? Don't lie! Well, guess what? It still exists and they have a website. They even still feature the "Spooky Spigot!" Run for your lives!

Ooooh, scary road!

In the newspaper this morning there was an article about a new book called Weird Virginia. (The book's part of a series, each dedicated to a state.) Apparently here in Danville there's a "gravity hill", one of those places where things (namely vehicles) seem to roll uphill. Often these are tourist traps, but the one here is just an obscure section of road. I've always wanted to experience one of these and had no idea that there was one in my own hometown. Of course, the gravity-defying effects are just an optical illusion, but the newspaper article didn't mention that. Typical.

Foiled by fowls

Now that I have this hacked CVS camcorder, what can I do with it? Sunday morning I went down to the river with the camcorder and a bag of crushed pretzels. I put the camera on the ground facing up and poured pretzels around it. I hoped to get a great video of the geese sort of attacking the camera, but they wouldn't go anywhere near it. Next time I'll bring a shotgun. That'll be a great video.

Discoveries

A few minutes ago I was digging through a desk drawer and I found a note card with the following written on it:

"Nuns and knives are standard equipment among teenagers.[...]"

Maybe it's a typo from a newspaper years ago. Google turned up nothing. I only vaguely remember writing it down.

Milestone? Millstone?

Sometime today I passed the 70,000th hit mark. Which means this pitiful blog has been looked at at least 70,000 times. Of course the overwhelming majority of those folks were looking for weirdly specific porn or something even more bizarre.

And for no reason at all, here's a photo of a praying mantis I took this afternoon.

Ramen!

Don't ever let anyone ever tell you the Jehling brand of ramen that's only sold in those weird Aldi grocery stores is crap. Nope. Not crap. It's the same thing as Nissin's Top Ramen. I can't prove it, but I'm almost completely convinced that Nissan makes it. Even the flavor packet inside has the same printing on it. And you can get a 12-pack for $1.39.

Wanton You Tubery

Since I'm stuck on a crappy dial-up connection I haven't spent too much time at You Tube. I've looked at a few things, but it just takes too long for the clips to load when I'm poking along at 33.2 Kbps. Also, it really sucks when you're halfway through loading some stupid video clip and the connection dies. Yay, I get to start all over again! Kill me now.

Anyway, since I'd been shooting more video clips lately I decided to upload a few short (very short) ones for your amusement. So, here's some infrared trees, some infrared yard, some geese and some more geese.

Don't expect me to embed the You Tube viewer in my posts ever. I hate those and almost never look at them because they take too long to load for the reasons explained above. So there.

The awkward stage

This morning I went down for my weekly trip to the river to check on the goose family I've been watching for nearly two months. The above photo is one of the goselings. They used to be cute little fluff-balls, but now they're just ugly. Damn ugly.

They're down to three goselings now. Much to my disappointment, the smaller one with the black legs was missing. I was really looking forward to seeing that one grow up to verify if my guess about it being an adopted Canada goose was right.

Stick it to the man!

A few years ago CVS started selling these "disposable" video cameras and still cameras. The idea is that you'll buy one of these things for around $20-$30, use it, return it to CVS, pay a fee, and get your video on DVD. Then CVS recycles the camera; you don't get to keep it. It's kind of stupid idea in my opinion, but no one asked me. I'd rather buy a cheap digital camera and own it instead of basically paying what amounts to a rental fee for a cheap camera. Naturally geeks found a way around giving the cameras back and paying for a DVD, prints, etc.

So this morning, inspired by this website, this forum, and using a free program from this website, I hacked the cheap-ass CVS one time use video camera. I got it for $20 this morning and by 1:30pm I was done with the hack and watching the first video on my computer.

I actually had to solder tiny wires from a USB cable to the circuit board because I didn't feel like tracking down a Palm cable to modify. For someone who knows what they're doing, soldering isn't a big deal, but I have the soldering skills of a chimp. Somehow it worked. The program to unlock the camera worked as well. Everything worked, which never happens for me. I probably should've just bought a lottery ticket today instead of a stupid, cheap camera.

The video quality? Well, it kind of sucks, but it's not horrible. What do you expect for $20?

The sound of stupid

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An all reptile post

No birds, I promise.

This morning I was down at the river looking at the [deleted]. When I was leaving I noticed a lizard sunning itself on the concrete. It kindly posed for a picture.



After I got home I saw something out of the corner of my eye as I walked to the front door. At first I thought it was a lizard's tail, but when I looked I saw it was a little black snake. It was out in the open and began rearing up and making threatening movements at me, which weren't particularly threatening considering the snake was less than a foot and half long. I watched it for a bit and then it took off for an azalea bush. There it started vibrating the tip of its tail in the dry leaves making a rattlesnake-like sound, something I'd only ever seen on nature programs.

I got one good picture, but the snake disappeared before I could chase it out of the bushes. What I would've done with it once I got it out of the bush isn't clear. I didn't really want to pick it up since it was fairly agitated and would've certainly bit me. If I could've got it by the very tip of its tail I probably could've gotten it far away from the house and flung it away, but I didn't really get a chance.