Kim thinks I look like her Uncle Rick. She first told me this a few months ago and had her mom come look at me during our softball game. When Matt and Joel went over to her house for Thanksgiving, she made her Dad try to find a picture of Uncle Rick to show them. Then a week or so ago she brought me pictures of Uncle Rick. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Uncle Rick; he’s a great guy as far as people I’ve never met go. I would be honored to resemble him. As I do for all of life’s tough questions, I leave it up to the internet to decide.
I’m not sure I have the words with which to describe the curious mix of hilarity and horror engendered by the House of Cosbys. Created by Justin Roiland, the basic premise of the show is that a huge Cosby fan and apparent cloning expert creates a house full of Bill Cosby, each displaying unique attributes and driving the, ahem, plotline…. wow, only on the internet.
It lasted 4 episodes before ceasing and desisting at the request of Bill Cosby’s attorney. You would think Cosby would be flattered… yeah, well, not so much.
I’m definitely in the wrong business. Looks like Mitchell forgot to tell his legs this was an action shot though. Watch your back, buddy, I’m working on my “le tigre.”
Um, yes, actually. How weird is that? According to an article in Popular Science, the Cavendish, the only banana most people are aware of is under attack:
In 1992, a new strain of the fungus—one that can affect the Cavendish—was discovered in Asia. Since then, Panama disease Race 4 has wiped out plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan, and it is now spreading through much of Southeast Asia.
Experts are saying there’s not a whole lot that can be done, given the Cavendish’s remarkable genetic uniformity, the product of a few decades of perfecting “quite possibly, the world’s perfect food.” No more banana splits? Bananas Foster? Are you kidding? Even weirder, it’s turns out it’s deja vu all over again for the poor banana.
Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or “Big Mike,” accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest. … Growers adopted a frenzied strategy of shifting crops to unused land, maintaining the supply of bananas to the public but at great financial and environmental expense—the tactic destroyed millions of acres of rainforest. By 1960, the major importers were nearly bankrupt, and the future of the fruit was in jeopardy.
In a related note, it’s beginning to dawn on me that I’m a culinary infant. Gurgling and squawking, oblivious to my environment and totally helpless in the kitchen. Not only did I not realize there was more than one type of banana (I do love fried plantains however)
Got some ghettofabulous news in ye ole inbox today. Woolley Andrew says…
O.W.W.W
The Organization of World wide web
Barnby Worldwide Business Information
9 Leapal Road, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 4JX
Dear Sir/Madam,
We the Organization of World wide web is happy to inform you that you
have luckily log in to the one million timer count. This is to mark the
years of internet existence on earth and to inform you that you have
been selected for a cash prize of
£1,000,000.00 (one Million,Great British Pounds)
This is in line with the first ten lucky winners and the Big cash prize
of ten million Great British Pounds goes to the overall winner picked
from the first ten luck winners.
The selection process was carried out from all web site in the world
through one million timer count computerized email selection system
random selection from a database of over 10 000 000 000 email addresses
drawn from all the continents of the world. This is the first of its
kind since the years of internet existence on earth
Prize collection:For the processing of your prize you are to contact
The D.C.V.D for the winning Prize using the contact as stated below
I’m not sure how I ‘luckily log in to the one million timer count’ but I can only figure I’m just a heva lucky guy. I’m waiting on pins and needles for my one Million Great British Pounds.
Kinky Friedman really is running for governor. This is a bit weirder than I can really fathom. I suppose I should be prepared for this kind of thing, in this Schwarzeneggerian political-era, but… now this is just weird. The New Yorker is hot on the Texas Jewboy’s campaign trail…
“The Governor has decided on pancakes!” he barked, finally. “Jewford, are there pancakes at this buffet? Do you see any kind of pancakes anywhere?” “Pancakes for the Governor! The Governor will have pancakes!” Little Jewford shouted, and promptly did nothing about it. Little Jewford—who was born Jeff Shelby—was one of the original Jewboys, a conservatory-trained pianist who played keyboards, accordion, clavieta, toy trumpet, and kazoo. In this new road show he acts as Kinky’s driver, all-around bodyman, and voice of reason—or, often, a sort of profound unreason. They have known each other for almost fifty years, since they were children, and they play off each other in a continuous Marx Brothers-style high vaudeville—Kinky does Groucho, Jewford does both Chico and Harpo. Kinky, who has never been married, often introduces Jewford to crowds as “very possibly the next First Lady of the state of Texas”; when asked about it, Jewford tends to shrug and say things like “I need a gig.”
What is it about human nature that makes this phenomenon inevitable? A Flickr stream has been collecting pictures of (relatively) ordinary folks from all over the world who visit the leaning tower of Pisa and all decide to take the same wacky picture, positioned between the camera and the tower in such a way that it appears they are holding it up. What prompts people to do this? Is it some deepseated instinctual response? Do they simply see others doing it? Beats me. Pretty funny though.
Well, so technically all games we play have been made up by someone at one time or another, but I’ve decided to record for posterity the games I’ve encountered at or near their conception. The Game of Bottle is one such.
I read somewhere that it took 20 years for nascent basketball players to figure out that they needed to cut a hole in the bottom of the peach basket so they could quit climbing up the ladder to fish out the ball. Games gestate. In 50 years there will be a world-champion bottle team and their star player will have more endorsement contracts than he knows what to do with. Any megacorporations want to get in on the ground floor with some start-up capital? Coke? Pepsi? … Fanta?
Following up on “Bless Me, Blog, for I’ve Sinned” (NY Times), I’ve been reading the PostSecret Blog for the last half hour. So the idea is that you create your own 4-by-6-inch postcards out of any mailable material which confesses some sort of secret which is (1) true and (2) hasn’t been shared with anyone before, and send it to PostSecret at an address in Maryland. Some of them make great use of graphics…
This one is hilariously pretentious…
I can’t help thinking these are suspiciously well designed. Do graphic designers have more to confess than normal people?
Someone named Alastair, who is currently something akin to the internet fairy to me at this point, flittered across the internet to leave me a comment on this earlier post, to let me know that yes, my spidey-sense was indeed correct, pantsketch was referring to the infamous voicemail, but not from the This American Life segment but rather from a sample on “If Not Now, Whenever” by The Books.
For those keeping score at home, the voicemail Fred Schultz’s mother left on his answering machine at Columbia in the early nineties first travelled from voicemail to voicemail attaining cult status among columbia cognoscenti. Then someone told a This American Life producer who tracked down Fred in question, obtained a recording and did a 15 minute segment on it that aired on NPR. Now it gets sampled by The Books, which Pantsketch is listening to and references in a blog post, one of the readers of which (me) notices it, posts a mention on his own blog. Then Alastair, who is aware of both posts, answers the question posed in my post - is this really what pantsketch is referencing here - in the comments and tells me yes, same origin, but different path… so freakin’ six degreesish my head just popped….
So that’s cool & all, but here’s the real upside… I’d never heard of The Books before, but I just checked out their website and now I’m thinking why the heck haven’t I hear of The Books before? This is killer shite… so I bought it off Amazon. (iTunes struck out on this one) and I get to thinking about Pantsketch and I mosey on over there for a second and read about this documentary called the Devil’s Playground and so I think that sounds cool. I just found out about some really cool music and a documentary that will give me something to do tonight. Seriously, before the internet, what did people do? Just talk to each other?!?!?!? God bless you Alastair, whoever you are.
Just happened upon this exceptionally bizzare interesting post on Ebay selling a leather satchel. And I quote….
Following is a series of questions. Answer each honestly and remember, your first response is usually the most accurate one.
* Will your grandkids fight over your present bag when you’re dead?
* Would you ask to be buried with the other bag you are considering?
* Would Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford or Indiana Jones ask where you bought your bag if they saw you with it?
* Have you ever told someone that you love your bag?
* Have you ever strategically placed your bag where people could admire it?
* Are you getting ready to declare bankruptcy and one more charge really won’t matter that much? That reminds me, did you know that Paypal accepts credit cards? Just thought I’d pass that on.
If you answered yes or no to any one of these questions, then you and I both know that you need this bag. You will never be content with any other bag in your life once you have read this description and admired this bag. If you miss it, you will forever kick yourself.
And later… “You’ll be known as “The one with the cool bag” wherever you frequent.” and “I don’t have a big name or a crack marketing team. It’s just me, Dave, and my dog Blue, but he doesn’t really do that much. I don’t have massive warehouses around the country to stack my pallets of products in. The space between the sofa and the wall is just right for my needs.”
It does look rather nice, by the way, though perhaps not $600 nice. The post is going into my copywriters hall of fame file, however. Well, maybe not fame, hall of significance, perhaps. If you happen to have $600 to blow on a bag or are considering bancruptcy (I can’t imagine why) why not give old Dave and Blue a break.
Fruita, Colorado is home to quite probably the weirdest of the weirdly strange annual celebrations - the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival. The festival celebrates the hapless tale of Mike the Chicken, who might have languished in obscurity if not for a botched butchering that left poor Mike headless but alive.
A more complete tale of the unfortunate Mike is available on this Lovecraftian Wikipedia post. Impossibly, Mike’s brief show business career is even weirder:
Mike was on display to the public for an admission cost of 25 cents, and at the height of his popularity was earning a princely $4,500 per month. A pickled chicken head was also on display with Mike, but it was not Mike’s original head as that had already been eaten by a cat.
In the past two minutes I have found not just one but TWO strange and wonderful things. Exhibit One via tangentialism’s flickr stream
Exhibit Two via the pants press sketch blog. Pants Press Sketch blog post contains enigmatic phrase “I can’t find the books, they must be in La Jolla.” which may or may not be a passing reference to the “little mermaid voicemail” from This American Life except I thought it was La Hoya, not La Jolla, each of which is a town in California as it turns out so now there is a mystery or it could just be something entirely different altogether.
