Me unscrabbly. unwraps foil cover to reveal chocolate egg inside.
Choca Doobee! opens chocolate egg to reveal yet another egg, this one made of plastic
Doubly Choco Doobee, ops wubbo! (laughs) opens yellow plastic egg, tiny plastic man which could possibly be a soldier but on further inspection he's got a red chef's hat on and holding a wooden spoon (also inexplicably red)
Tooooyy! Mutant Eggman has apparently just eaten some of the chocolate
Yodel yum and choco scrum with multi-pumfabo toys! picks up a small toy airplane from assortment of Kinder Surprise toys next to him
Oh, grobelee! moves arms in circular motion; raises eyebrows. outside in the cold distance, a cuckoo cuckoos
Me scooble now. Nogo. Wheee! Mutant Eggman does the "redrum" finger thing, and freefalls backwards of the wall. Proper British Announcer says "Kinder Surprise from Ferrero."
Why didn't George McFly divorce his wife when his son came out looking exactly like the guy that "helped" him get her to go out with him high school? Once Marty hit puberty, George should have been a little suspicious of the striking similarities. As if that wasn't bad enough, she named the kid after him, just to rub it in!
Maybe he just decided to let it slide. Why let one little indiscretion ruin a good thing? Maybe he thought, "It could be worse. At least he doesn't look like Biff."
Thursday, May 08, 2008 Nonfiction Books: Why I Hate Them, Why I Think Every Nonfiction Author Should Die A Horrible Death, And Why You Should Think So, Too
Why does every single non fiction book include a colon followed by a friggin' paragraph-long subtitle? That ticks me off a lot more than it probably should. It doesn't help that the two biggest offenders, political hit jobs and and self help books, are the two most deplorable genres anyone could ever write about. It's bad enough they're blood-sucking leeches, but do they have to be so obnoxious about it?
One of these days someone is going to write "CHAMPION!: The true story of how I overcame adversity, and against all odds, wrote a book with the longest subtitle in history and scored a bunch of chicks and a sweet movie deal, so look for Champion!: The true story of how I overcame adversity, and against all odds, wrote a book with the longest subtitle in history and scored a bunch of chicks and a sweet movie deal in theaters this Summer.
If I ever write a nonfiction book, The title will just be something short, followed by a colon. And the entire inside of the book will be the subtitle. Beat that, you stupid jerks.
Today I learned that if you put Daniel Day-Lewis' head on Will Smith's body and tint the the whole thing orange, you get Vin Disel. I also learned Daniel Day-Lewis makes a great evil Grimace.
Thursday, April 17, 2008 The Majority of People Are Unusual
This lands in my inbox every once in a while, but for some reason, this time I started thinking about it, specifically the first paragraph:
Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.
Okay, it says that only 55% of people can read this, but then it explains that it doesn't matter what order the letters are in, the human brain will still be able to read them. So shouldn't anyone be able to read it? Wasn't that the point of the second paragraph? Also, 55 out of 100 is the majority, so wouldn't the 45 who couldn't read it be the ones with strange minds? Why would the majority, who's brains work just fine according to the Cambridge University study sited in email, be the one's with strange minds? I knid fo gte hte isrimeposn ttha eht 55% nebmur wsa peluld uto fo sooneme's sas.
Edit: Okay, some of it's back. But where's the masthead? And Amazo? I guess it's a start...
EDIT: Gah! All the images are gone!
EDIT: Hold on, I think everything is back know. I had to switch from posting everything via FTP from my own server to publishing from Blogger using a custom domain name. I don't know what any of that means, but I think it's working again. Except now I've got that stupid Blooger toolbar think at the top of the page. How do I get rid of that? posted by John at 9:50 PM
I've lost my memory. Well, half my memory. Well, it's not technically my memory. Let me start over.
I'm typing this on my company-issued Powerbook G4 with 15-inch screen, two RAM ports, a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. This particular model has a defect that can render the lower RAM port unreadable, cutting the speed of the machine in half. When this happened to a couple of the computers here a few years ago, they were taken to the Apple store to be repaired and we checked the rest of them to make sure they were using both RAM slots. Mine checked out all right, so I thought I must have gotten lucky and didn't get one of the defective ones.
About a month ago, I noticed my laptop was running ridiculously slow. Every command was followed by a lengthy appearance by that stupid spinning rainbow. My browser quit constantly, and even the simplest tasks were met with resistance. Clearly, I needed more memory, 512 MB is much too small these days, especially in the graphic design business. I went online and looked for the best deals on memory cards. I found a place where I could get a 1G card for $87, with free shipping. But Joe, who actually speaks in all caps, said "GOOD LUCK GETTING THEM TO BUY IT FOR YOU. THEY ALWAYS TURN ME DOWN WHEN I TELL THEM WE NEED BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH" Interestingly, when I first mentioned finding a cheap place online, he suggested I email our IT guy to see what I should do. I told him I was pretty sure we get charged every time we email him with a question. Joe said he didn't think so, which explains why our employer is always griping about the exorbitant IT bills.
Still, I knew it would be a hard sell to ask for more RAM, since everyone else was getting by with what they had, but my computer was barely functioning and affecting my work. Then, by chance, last week I clicked on "About this Mac" and discovered that my computer wasn't running slow because it only had 512 MB of RAM, but because it only had 256 MB of RAM. 256! It's like I'd been transported to 1997!
Checking the system preferences confirmed that the lower port was shown as being empty. After all this time (and after the warranty conveniently expired) the defect finally kicked in. Super.
Joe said, "TAKE THE APPLE CARE CARD AND GO DOWN TO THE STORE! THEY'LL FIX IT! HASSAN CHOP!"
The Apple Care card, which is expired, wouldn't have done me much good anyway, since all it does is bump you up to the front of the line if there's a wait. But I did go to the Apple Store on Friday. I was hoping they would fix the problem for free, since they did that for the other computers a few years ago and there's a whole page about it on Apple's website, but no dice. They said that the warranty on the laptop had expired which voided whatever free stuff I would otherwise be entitled to. They did offer three solutions. The first was to get the motherboard replaced, which would set the company back a grand and leave me without a computer for a couple of days. The second option was to send it to their "depot" for at least a week, during which time they'll fix any and all problems with the computer for a flat rate of $320. The final option was to say, "Screw the lower RAM slot!" and just put more memory in the upper one. I went with that one.
So I reported my findings when I got to work Monday morning, and given the other two options, my boss was happy to go with option 3. So I went back to the website I found that had the memory for $87 with free shipping, but Joe, well, Joe orders everything from our sales rep at a certain retailer, thinking the guy gives us deals. He kept saying "I'LL SAVE YOU THE HASSLE OF USING THE COMPANY CREDIT CARD! I'LL JUST CALL WHAT'S HIS NAME BECAUSE WE HAVE AN ACCOUNT!" I was too busy and tired to object, so Joe made the call. In the end, going through what's-his-name we have an account with cost about $150, versus the $87 I'd originally priced out. Good thing we have Joe and his connections to help us save money, am I right?
Wednesday, March 05, 2008 Nothing Can Kill the Grimace
We were talking about the Bourne movies at work and somehow that led me to Yoda backpacks, and then to the Wikipedia page for McDonaldland characters. I don't know how exactly, but I do know that what I saw there confused and frightened me. Tacked on to the last line of the write-up about Grimace, the lovable purple blob that's supposed to represent milkshakes, was the following epitaph: "The character was retained after the streamlining of the characters in the '80s, but was dropped in 2007."
What? What?!! Those sons of bitches! They killed Grimace! And by extension, Uncle O'Grimacey! But that wasn't even the worst of it, apparently Early Bird, the McNugget buddies, the Fry Kids, and even poor, mentally disabled Hamburglar have been raptured up into McDonalds heaven. Leaving only Ronald to traverse the desolate wasteland, alone and broken.
Some may have seen these characters as cold, heartless corporate mascots that contribute to America's growing obesity problem, but screw them. The rest of us saw our childhood; memories of a simple time when Saturday morning was the highlight of the week. Commercials debuted between our favorite shows, revealing what the new Happy Meal toys would be for the next few weeks. They were almost as enthralling as the shows themselves. Sure, most of the time the toy was disappointing, I think one time I got a stencil, but the excitement, the mystery of what would be the next promotion was the driving force. And the "off weeks" when the toy was something lame like a single-color lump of plastic shaped like Ronald McDonald flying a helicopter, only strengthened our interest and wishes that in just a few weeks time, a cooler new promotion would take it's place. Maybe it'd be a tie-in to the latest Disney movie, like Little Mermaid bath toys. It seems like it was usually Disney movies, but I remember (and still own) American Tail Christmas stockings, which never really occurred to me until just now as sort of inappropriate (why is a Jewish mouse on a Christmas stocking?) Sometimes the toy would be McDonaldland-specific, such the Changeables, cheeseburgers and milkshakes that transform into robots accented with late-eighties bright green and purple trimming, or the adorable yet slightly disturbing when you think about it McNugget Buddies.
But before the big reveal for the latest Happy Meal, we'd get a little slice-of-life vignette featuring Ronald and any combination of characters from the McDonaldland stable. Some characters were phased out before I was born, or shortly after, so I never got to see Mayor McCheese, the Professor, or talking, paper-eating trash cans(!) in action. And I wasn't around for Grimace's debut as an evil, six-armed shake snatcher. But the McDonald's near my house did have a hollowed-out fiberglass Big Mac, the beloved constable and best friend of Ronald McDonald, that you could climb into and peer out of his giant burger-shaped head.
I can still remember Birdie learning to fly, Grimace's epic adventure to regain his voice, or the McNuggets taking on Ronald in a sporting event. Those were carefree times, times of vaudevillian puns and talking food who seemingly had no fears of being devoured. Whether they were oblivious to their fate, exempt from it on account of their sentient nature and giant eyeballs, or masochistically looked forward to the day they were chewed into pieces was never really made clear. What is clear, is that those Halcyon days are over. McDonaldland is no more. Queue the sad montage of characters being forced from their homes, as McDonaldland itself crumbles from Utopian magical kingdom to harsh, boarded-up ghost town.
Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys
and they ain't coming back to your hometown...
With his friends and home ripped away from him, good-natured oaf Grimace could very well revert back to his evil nature. In fact, last year a police sketch artist released a picture of someone who'd been attacking women in the North End, and I couldn't help but think he looked awfully familiar...
Thanks a lot fat kids, you've ruined McDonaldland and precious childhood memories for everyone. I hope you choke on your Apple Dippers.*
* I don't actually hope anyone chokes on anything. Things change, circle of life and all that. But if someone gets the runs because of all this, I wouldn't mind that.
Gee whiz, it's Wuvums, the adorable, marketable rodent thing! Wuvums! Shouldn't he be emblazoned on t-shirts and other cash-flow generating materials? Isn't it an injustice that he isn't? He's so damn cute! His big doe eyes are crying out, "Please slap me on a canary yellow onesy. With feet!"
Like last year, I made Valentine's Day cards for Brianna. This time, they feature Wuvums, and more horrible puns. The pirate one says "Arrgh...you gonna be my Valentine?" That's probably my favorite.
I guess if I had any forethought, I could have drawn them weeks or even months ago and try to sell them in time for Valentine's Day. There's always next year, right?
It's been over a year since Joe mentioned Captain Nice. Or Mr. Terrific! I'm a little concerned.
Yes, he does still end sentences with "Arrrurrghrgrurrgh!" when he thinks he's said something particularly goofy, or when he's frustrated, or whatever the hell other reason he makes that stupid noise. And he still somehow manages to to add extra syllables to both "hello" and "you" in his stock greeting "Hello-o. How are yew-oo?" when he's making personal calls. I'd commend him for finding a way to stretch "you" into two syllables if I didn't want to hit him repeatedly with my stapler.
He even threw a "Holy D'Artagnan, Batman" or two at us recently. I think I heard Hassan chop not too long ago. "There you go thinking again," is another one. Oh, and "They always spoke so highly of you" is another old standby; he even uses it when referring to inanimate objects.
Joe's old gems never fade away, they just lie dormant until you've let you're guard down. "What if I don't want to" is still as strong as ever, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. It's almost enough to make me open the windows and shout "Shoot me now and get it over with!" But I mustn't stoop to his level. Mustn't I?
He still lives and dies by the word of Howie Carr, still hates the font Palatino because it has "Latino" in it (speculation, of course, but still, I'll bet he avoids using it) and insists there are "Asian Agents," a secret organized union of illegal Asian pan handlers in New York City. Asian Agents. Really.
He still has a grotesquely forced laugh that makes you want nothing to be funny ever again, ever. He still stands unimaginably close while he talks to you, and absolutely cannot walk past your desk without commenting on what's on your screen. It's usually a drawn-out "Oooohhh, pretty", or, "Oh, that looks really good." To be fair, he's trying to be nice, but many times the layout you're working on was designed by someone else in the office, or even by a third party, so his praise without the slightest knowledge of the history of the project rings hollow. He still lingers too long after awkward pauses, seemingly unsure when to clomp away. He still hovers around your desk asking personal questions all day, and just doesn't understand the concept of personal space in general.
He still doesn't wash his hands after he uses the bathroom. He'll still lie about it if confronted. He still can't go a day without exposing us to lethal levels of hairy butt-cleavage.
But he hasn't brought up Captain Nice or Mr. Terrific. Not since last January. He started rambling on about old TV shows a few weeks ago, and I thought for sure they'd be peppered in there. But, hold on, sorry, he did his idiot machine gun laugh while I was typing. Anyway, he was talking about some old show, and my ears perked up and suddenly I got all excited, just waiting for him to say "Hey, here's one, Meeester Tay, do you remember Captain Nice? But it never happened. But the fact that it didn't, and that I was actually disappointed about it, kind of horrifies me.
