I was eating a bowl of soup and I got caught between a swallow and a sneeze. I almost choked to death and soup came out of my nose at intergalactic speed.
Ok. That didn’t really happen, but I did just eat a bowl of soup and considered the swallow/sneeze scenario while doing so. Close enough, right?
I vow to do this every morning for the rest of 2010.
Just one look at this countdown traffic light and you know it’s a great idea. A progress bar on a stop light? We’re on board with that. Besides alleviating frustration, designer Damjan Stankovi? sees his idea saving energy…
(more)
It’s funny how the mind works. I would not have remembered this product, let alone the commercial, on my own accord if I lived to be 106. But as soon as I saw the first few seconds of this commercial, it all flooded back to me and I not only vividly remembered these, but also knew the commercial almost word for word (note for note?). I’d have been like 5 or 6 back when this ad ran.
I find the fact that the mind works that way pretty fascinating.
I wanted to do just a one-liner pertaining to this video, but there are so many possible plays that I can’t even begin to narrow it down. I can’t believe this is really for real…and current.
Mentioned over at Jeff’s blog today that I dig Betty White. Which, in turn, reminded me of this:
The sad part is I didn’t just do that. I had that lying around, so to speak.
You might remember, it was over two years ago now that I went nuts and started requesting every crappy catalog that I could remember from my childhood. I’d be lying if I said quickly browsing them wasn’t a guilty pleasure. I got tons of them and surprisingly, many just kept coming…and coming…and coming. I thought I’d be safe when we bought the house and moved, but lo and behold, I found a Walter Drake catalog staring me in the face when I checked the mail yesterday. I finally got a chance to look through it this afternoon and it’s full of the usual things that only shut-ins and the elderly buy. One notable exception is that they sell dildos and vibrators now (nonreturnable, mind you – who knew grandma and the weird lady at the end of the street had it in them…literally)
But it was until this evening that my wife found the mother of all craptastic catalog items – The Long Reach Comfort Wipe
I mean, wow! Like holy fucking shit wow! I realize that my life had no meaning before this. This creates so many more questions than answers for me. I don’t even know where to begin with such ridiculous greatness.
All I can imagine is the family making the reluctant visit to great grandpa’s house and little Billy complaining the whole way because it’s so boring there and it smells funny and Grandpa always has saurkraut flavored candies. After a while there, Billy uses the bathroom and finds this thing and comes out swinging it like a sword and making Lightsaber noises, “Zhroooommmmmm Mrooooommmmm” like a kid would do. And Grandpa, all unfazed and ornery would simply bark,
“Billy, put down Grandpa’s wipin’ stick!”
It’s like a little slice of heaven in my mind. Mmmmm.
We finally got around to watching Zack and Miri Make a Porno tonight. There’s this bit at the very beginning about Black Friday being racist. It’s pretty funny. Watch it if you’re not familiar (you only need to watch the first minute or so):
Great, ridiculous stuff, huh?
Here’s the kicker – this has actually happened to my wife…in real life…with one of her managers. They actually had to quit using the term “Black Friday” around the office.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
So here’s the story.
Last night (Thursday) a little after 11pm we get a call from the girl who’s going to be keeping our kids (and our house) for the weekend. Appaprently earlier in the evening her father had a stroke or heart attack or some fucked up shit and collapsed. She apologized, briefly explained she had to head out (she’s from the Cleveland area) to be with her family.
Our flight to FL was schedule to depart Friday at 12:51pm. Give the 30 minute drive and need to arrive early at the slow-ass Dayton airport and we needed to be out of here at 11am at the latest. So we’re talking 12 hours notice.
On top of this she’s one of my wife’s managers at work and was kind of going to be the go-to person for her this weekend if anything needed done.
It was too late to call around and talk to anyone and now my wife had to be at the hotel in the morning to figure out coverage for the weekend.
Long story short – we don’t know very many people around here well enough to leave our kids for the weekend. It’s a short list and it’s a hell of a thing to ask someone with 4 hours notice if they can take your kids for the weekend.
No one was able to in the morning but we had an ‘after work’ offer. So we started looking into changing flights. Let’s just say the Dayton-anywhere in Florida thing is awfully fucking popular right now. No surprise though as the kids are in the middle of spring break in our school district.
AirTran is pretty cool about switching up flights at nominal fees, but you do have to pay the different in available fares. Most flights are sold out and what’s left only has the highest fares or business class available. We tried a bunch of different airports in South Florida and anything that would get us there by wedding time, but the costs are just outrageous.
I love you lots, Jeff and Diana, but we were looking at a total final cost of almost $600 each to fly down in time. It just wasn’t going to happen. I see have rental car and hotel booking that weren’t canceled within the allowable time frame to avaoid a change to deal with too.
For future reference, if any family members of friends of ours want to die or toy with death, please do it on your own time and not ours?
I’m not trying to make light of the situation and I do hope the girl’s father is ok (we still haven’t heard anything), but I’m royally jacked…and then on top of that I feel like an ass for telling Jeff and Diana we’d be there and not delivering. Shit like that pisses me off.
No party on a boat for me this time. Shit luck doesn’t come my way often, but when a situation plays out in my world, it’s usually fuckered up and huge.
Sigh. Sorry, guys. :(
I dreamed that I bought a pickup truck last night. It was blue.
Even weirder is that I bought it at the volunteer fire department building in the small town I grew up in – I didn’t actually dream about buying it, I just knew that I had bought it there in my dream.
…
Man, I really enjoyed driving that pickup truck.
The bouquet of flowers my daughter got for Valentine’s Day (the one that put the cute little roses I got my wife to shame) are on the table in the entry. That means as I type this, they’re about 15 feet behind me over my left shoulder.
Something must be fucked up with my senses or at least my sense of smell because for some reason the scent the lillies puts off kind of smells like lillies sometimes, but if I catch it just right, it kinda smells like hot dog water and it’s making me a little nauseous. Some serious wires getting crossed in my head – too many drugs. At least I’m not hearing colors…yet.
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*not to worry about the bouquet for my daughter, it’s not a boy – it’s a tradition from Aunt Rebecca
So we’re set to fly to Orlando in two weeks. I’m not a good flyer. That’s not to say I get on a plane and freak or need sedated or that you’d even know I don’t like it. But I don’t.
When a flight gets close, it’s always in the back of my mind and I start noticing more and more flight-related things. Usually bad things.
Just last week I read an article that mentioned something along the lines of 2007 & 2008 being fatality free for the commercial airlines…it was the first time in the history of American commercial aviation that that’s happened. Never before has no one died on a US commercial airline for two consecutive years. (yeah, that’s reassuring) In fact, only 4 years since the 50’s have gone fatality-free.
I mentioned it to a few people (including my wife and mother) along with my normal close-to-flight paranoia comment of “We’re overdue for one.”
No shit when that plane went down today, both my mother and my wife mentioned how creepy it was that I just brought that up.
Of course, it’s not really creepy at all – it’s a coincidence.
The thing is, there were no fatalities…
…we’re still overdue.
I enjoy some really bad entertainment. I enjoy some very cheesy entertainment. I dig 80’s stuff.
With those credentials you’d think I’d know the All Sports Band, but I don’t remember them. I guess I’d only have been 8 at the time, but that’s no excuse.
You’d think I’d love this and I do love the story, but the actual product is really bad. Just one of those things that makes me smile.
And after that if you’re interested in how such an atrosity came to exist, check out the article on Retrocrush
No more worry about losing your virginity. With this product, you can have your first night back anytime. Insert this artificial hymen into your vagina carefully. It will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover penetrate, it will ooze out a liquid that look like blood not too much but just the right amount. Add in a few moans and groans, you will pass through undetectable. Its easy to use, clinically proven non-toxic to human and has no side effects, no pain to use and no allergic reaction.
Lately I’ve been blowing time at night just using StumbleUpon. Not a lot of time. A few minutes late at night when I don’t feel like doing anything else.
I had to chuckle today when for the 2nd time in three days, Tyler posted something that I stumbled upon the night before and happened to stick out in my mind. (and that I almost considered posting myself)
The latest entry to mirror my late night stumbling the next morning is the Lil’ Jon “What” Pic
It was Things Bears Love on Monday.
I’m convinced at this point that my late night stumbling is controlling Tyler’s life, but that’s probably just the cabin fever talking.
Forgot I snapped this a week or so ago and just rediscovered it on my camera. Nothing technical to speak of. I looked out the window, saw a gazillion birds, grabbed my camera as quickly as possible and fired off a few shots.
click for bigger photo
We didn’t head out to Indiana Beach. Instead we waited until a little after 10pm and went shopping. We needed to pick up some essentials like milk and bread and shit like that and Meijer seemed like a good choice. It was a weird mix of people for a Thursday around 11pm.
Anyway, our Meijer has a junk aisle. Well, I call it the junk aisle. It’s one aisle between the outdoor stuff and the toys that just has junk. It’s tons of outdated, oddball, damaged and discountinued items marked way down hoping to pawn the crap off on the masses. Some things you’ll find in the junk aisle include CO2 cartridges (whippets!), tons of blank VHS-C tapes, a damaged box of vaginal itch cream (the tube inside is intact though), random hair products of various ages and conditions, open box coffee makers, a set of cookware that is clearly a return because no one has bothered to remove all the wrapping paper from one side of the box where it was taped on – things like that.
We always take a look in the junk aisle and tonight was no exception.
Tonight I scored. There was a pile of children’s valentines boxes. Not a bunch, but more than a handful – maybe 20 or 25 boxes. A bunch of Pirates of the Carribean, a few High School Musical, even a Power Rangers or two in the mix. I was just sorting through them looking for a winner and I joked that we needed to buy a box and send valentines to everyone in July. Next thing I knew, I had found it. I had to buy them – the only ones in the whole bunch:
Homies valentines! For 12 cents!! How could I not buy them? What the fuck are homies and who would buy this crap? Valentines featuring generic pseudo-urban characters? For 12 cents!? Sign me up.
Now I’m not sure whether to keep them forever boxed – my 12 cent treasure or to send them to people. Because, face it, receiving a Homies valentine in mid-July would be pretty awesome.
I have them sitting here on my desk staring at me. We’ll be up surfing the net tonight, just me and my homies.
Back when I was a kid, Sesame Street was awesome. There’s so many classic 70’s Sesame Street moments that I couldn’t even begin to list them.
One that has always stuck with me was the short “Milk” film that ran over and over during my youth. To this day I still find myself singing the haunting, “Milk, Mi-ilk, Milk” thing (about 40 seconds into the video) when I pour a glass of milk. So much so, that my family knows that little bit.
I thought I was the oddball as I’ve yet to meet someone who truly knew and remembered that clip.
So this afternoon has been particularly boring and I was getting little man a bowl of cereal and started singing the “Milk” thing and figured I’d do a search. Turns out the film is indeed on YouTube in all 4 and a half minute of its original glory – just as I had remebered. Watching this makes me 4 again:
Even better, in the video info a link is provided to an interview with the composer of the song. Which begins with:
“Milk” is one of the most strange and powerful episodes to come out of the Children’s Television Workshop. It is impossible to imagine this film being made now. Here’s the pitch:
“Yeah…Jim. Look, I thought we would show how milk gets made with no script and no dialogue. Yeah. Let’s just go shoot footage of farmers and the milk truck, maybe throw in a crying baby and some weird, monotone music crafted by some composer who likes jazzy stuff played by a chamber ensemble. Sunny day? Nah. Let’s not make it cheerful or happy. We should make it gloomy and unsettling. Oh, and Jim? To do it right, we need some crane shots, a huge decal for the truck, and about four and a half minutes running time.”
That’s so true. Something like this would never get made these days. It’s weird…almost creepy. Haunting and bleak, really. The opening shot of the man and the ominous chord as it cuts to the cow – that’s right out of horror film 101. I cannot express how much I love this.
I feel like the Bee Girl in Blind Melon’s “No Rain” video when she finds all the other bee people. I had no idea so many people my age remembered this. Too awesome!
If you weren’t born in the early 70’s your life must suck.
Went home for the weekend to see the family and take care of some stuff. Some highlights and lowlights:
1. The HHR is averaging just shy of 30mpg up to this point.
2. I could’ve totally taken home the 60-something lady sitting beside me at the wedding reception…she wanted me.
3. Finally saw the Angus burger at McDonald’s – meh.
4. Stopping by Grandma’s.
5. Ring Bologna from Miller’s. Mmmm…old-school.
6. Driving by the house I grew up in and the whole neighborhood seeming smaller and crummier than I remember.
7. The unexplained light*
8. “You’ve been Skunked!”
9. Running over a squirrel. (I didn’t mean to…fucking suicidal squirrel)
10. Scoring karma points for hooking up the dude at the rest stop with directions.
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* Along this stretch of 38 at about 10:30 at night. I was driving and my mother was the only other one in the car. We’re blowing up that road at about 70 and I noticed a really bright light gaining on us quick. Mentioned it to mom as the 70 I was doing was too fast for that road and this catching up fast. We watched as a single rectangular light centered in the lane caught quickly up to us and stayed right on my ass. We spent a moment wondering what the hell it was as there were no other lights – just one very bright, white, rectangular light centered behind us – at first we thought it was a motor cycle, but it made no noise catching up to us and a bike winding out at that speed would’ve been loud. The light was so bright that I joked that I could’ve turned my lights off and still seen just fine. We wondered for another moment what it was. Truck with a headlight out, quiet motorcycle…
…then it just vanished. Gone. Nothing at all behind us.
We pondered for a second whether it turned onto Hohn Rd (see map), but it was still right on the ass-end of the HHR when it disappeared. That turn is from a two-lane road to an even smaller two-lane road at more than a 90 degree angle – no way any vehicle could’ve taken that at 70mph and if it slowed and turned we’d have seen it. It was just gone. In that 1.5 mile span the weird-ass light caught up to me doing 70, rode our ass for like 30 seconds and fucking evaporated. It was weird.