Service Has Been Called

Well, I'm glad they're doing the necessary repairs:

But what exactly do they think we do in the office bathroom stalls?

Three Things You Probably Already Heard About

But better safe than sorry:

On the one hand, this seems like an excellent idea. On the other hand, having people dressed in full-body-suits grab children in dark movie theaters seems like it might have the potential to go wrong in some way.

Final, irrefutable proof that having a child makes you insane.

Sometimes, completely excessive setup for a very silly payoff is totally worth it. (I am particularly entertained by the Jenga one.)

Also: Can someone explain why the internet has gone suddenly crazy over the Gangnam Style thing? I mean, it's fun, but it's no cat trying to fit into boxes of decreasing size.

Feet?

This is a sign that's posted on the Caltrain shuttle:

And this is the only type of openable window on said shuttle:

I don't know about you, but I really want to see someone try.

Environmentalism Gets (Unintentionally) Creepy

I'm all in favor of people having an emotional connection to the planet; I'm just not sure I'm ready for that emotion to be lust.

Still, I guess it could be worse. EarthSloth, anyone?

Well, What Is It Then?

Also, the toaster oven is not a dust mop and the refrigerator is not a banjo.

You're welcome.

Proven: That Everything Exists On the Internet

That's not the surprising part. The surprising part is that the proof comes via Martha Stewart.

Last night I dreamed that I was at a party where they were serving delicious home-made marshmallow Peeps. (No, I don't know why. I don't even like Peeps that much.) Today it occurred to me to wonder if such a thing actually existed.

It does.

Peeps: The new cupcakes? It could happen.*


*No, it couldn't.

Ode to the Person in the Neighboring Cubicle

I don't know how to say this, but
I hate you.
Harsh but accurate.

I hate your endless personal phone calls
Your novelty ringtone
Your eternal coughing that
echoes across the empty office space.

I find it annoying everyone else
in your group was laid off.
But you weren't.

And more than anything I hate
the way that every conversation you have
is just you saying, "Right." "Of course." "Exactly." "You're right."
To the disembodied male voice that's talking to you.

That's why I had to write you this poem
in free verse.
The only thing I hate more than you.

A Question

Dear Disney Couture Jewelry,

Are you sure you really wanted to put that pearl right there?

Sincerely,
Me

Fun New Game!

Guess what it is about the following image that fills me with uncontainable rage:

The "answer" after the jump!

The Real Dino-Chickens of Orange County

Remember Dino-Chickens? It turns out someone is trying to do it for real. I'll admit, I have my questions about his genetics methodology, in the sense that he doesn't really have one, but the real reason this annoys me is that now everyone is going to be writing Dino-Chicken books, and I'm going to look like I'm late for the party.

(For the record, I had not heard of this story when I wrote the original post, which was inspired (obviously) by this web comic.)

Bok bok bok RAWR

Yesterday, birds came from dinosaurs*. Today, they're going back.

At a factory poultry farm in Nebraska, someone has been playing with nature. In the ongoing attempt to raise faster-growing, more flavorful birds that can be raised in ever-smaller cages, breeders accidentally activated ancient dormant genes, turning the mildest of farm animals into bloodthirsty killing machines with an oddly familiar taste. And if a narcoleptic USDA inspector and an overeducated tractor repairman can't stop them before they complete their breeding cycle, then the Midwest doesn't stand a chance.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you:


Dino-Chickens



*Yes, okay, not really. But work with me here.

I Think I'm Going To Have To Send This Back

Yes, I know it's what the menu says. It's just that, when I ordered the duck breasts, this really wasn't what I had in mind.





(And, on a related note: AIIEEEEE!)

Business English ≠ Actual English

Actual line from a work email I received today:

"If you have questions about the integration planning efforts underway, please ask your manager, who will liaise with the appropriate function."

Is that even legal in this state?


UPDATE:

In an effort to clarify the statement, I used babelfish to translate it into Korean and then back. The result:

"You about integrated plan effort to the case which is question, demand your manager who will make a contact with the function which is suitable while advancing."

You have to admit, it makes approximately the same amount of sense.

UPDATE 2:

This time, through Greek:

"For the incorporated effort of drawings in the case where it is question, you require your director that will make a contact with the operation that is suitable promoting."

The Man In the Gray Suit

It has now been officially too long for me to continue blogging about the Japan trip, which is probably for the best, really. Not that the trip wasn't great and fascinating, but I think one of the reasons* I never finished writing about it was that my posts were devolving into, "we went here and it was cool, we ate this and it was delicious, you wouldn't believe the things they have in toy vending machines in Akihabara**." But there is one good story from that trip that I really think needs to be told, if only for its cross-cultural strangeness.


Tokyo, despite its warm summers, is not exactly overrun with outdoor cafes. But we did find one, on Omotesandō in Harajuku, a street that would be considered a city's major shopping corridor, if that city was not Tokyo. The cafe was on the second floor, overlooking the sidewalk on a block between two major subway stops, and serving a variety of cheesecakes and lattes with pictures drawn in the foam.We got a table at the edge of the patio, where we had a good view of the street below.

There was a lot to see.

For the most part, it was what we were coming to recognize as the normal Tokyo street scene-- kids in school uniforms, pairs of girls in matching outfits. young men in loud plaids with dyed and gelled hairstyles, office workers in suits, the occasional teen girl dressed as Strawberry Shortcake or a reasonable facsimile thereof-- everyone on the move. But after we had been sitting there for a while, a few anomalies began to emerge. There was the nicely-dressed woman who came out of the train station and stood by the curb, looking up and down the sidewalk, clearly waiting for someone who never came, and who eventually gave up and went back down into the station. And the young mother who let her small son, dressed in a sort of watermelon costume, stop to pee in one of the planters. There were the guys handing out packets of tissues printed with advertising slogans (popular apparently because toilet paper was uncommon in public bathrooms, according to the guidebook, though it was not a problem we ever had***). And there was the man in the gray suit.

He was standing off to the side of the sidewalk, which was fairly wide. A young man, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties,**** well groomed and reasonably attractive. His suit, it turned out, was not actually gray, more of a fine black-and-white check, three pieces and well-fitted. He would stand there, sometimes for quite a while, and then, picking someone out of the crowd, he would move in.

It was always a woman, and she was always alone. Mid-twenties to late thirties, not too trendy or too professional-looking. Not on her phone or walking like she had to get somewhere. (After a while, we started looking ahead up the street, trying to guess which ones he would go for, based on his apparent criteria.) When he spotted one, he would join the flow of the people, walking fast enough to come up and fall into step with her. He would greet her, apparently introduce himself and then, most of the time, get the brush-off and reset to start again.

Every once in a while, he would get one to stop and listen to him. If she stayed for long enough, he would take an accordion-folded pamphlet or photo strip (or something) out of his pocket and show it to her, talking very seriously the whole time. She would nod, and look serious too, but he would do almost all of the talking.

Mostly the exchanges only went on for a minute or two, though he got one to stay for close to ten minutes, just talking. At the end of a successful exchange, they would both bow, he would hand her a business card and she would walk on. And he would set himself back up-- usually in a slightly different spot-- and do it again.


We had all sorts of theories as to what was going on. Panhandling, at first, because when a someone is approaching random strangers on the street, what they generally want is money. But if he was, then he was the only one in Tokyo, and he wasn't very good at it, seeing as no one ever gave him anything. We also thought he might have been agitating for some cause-- just a little further up the same block some earnest young people were doing the petition-and-collection-box thing for earthquake victims. But he wasn't handing out pamphlets or asking anyone to sign anything, and why, in that case, would he be focusing on young women? I was big on the con artist theory; that he was spinning some story to these people, complete with heartwarming pictures or evidence of some sort. Letting them just walk away seemed a little odd and ineffective, and it still didn't make sense why they all had to be women, but maybe they do cons differently in Japan.

It wasn't a perfect theory, but its best competition was that it was a technique for getting over a fear of speaking to strangers. Which, while no less outlandish, makes for less of a story.


We went back to the same cafe a few days later.***** We hoped to see the man there again, but he never made an appearance. Someone else did, however, and finally threw some light on our questions. Which, in a way, was almost too bad.


WARNING: Do Not Read Past This Point If You Don't Want This Story To Get A Lot Less Interesting

The new guy was working about the same section of sidewalk as Gray Suit had before. He was older, with long, frizzy thinning hair and oversized, skinny shoes that turned up at the ends. And around his waist he was wearing a short apron with pockets full of hairdressing tools. That was when we remembered the other thing we had noticed about this area: that it was absolutely lousy with hairdressers, five or ten shops to a block in some places. There was even one connected to the cafe. There was no con here, no terminally shy guy working through his fears. Just a striving stylist with a wallet full of haircut pictures and a good eye for a potential customer.

I suppose I should be relieved. I mean, I don't want nice people getting conned. But, well, it would have been a better story.



*Well behind "lazy."
**I mean, if you're old enough for that sort of thing, aren't you a little old to be collecting plastic figurines?
***Though it did end up coming in handy at one point in the Bloomingdales in the city.
****Shut up, that totally still counts as "young."
*****This was towards the end of the trip and we were somewhat run down. Or hotel, which was very cool and Japanese and surprisingly affordable, unfortunately had a bed that was so hard that neither of us was sleeping very well. Which meant that, as the trip went on, we spent a lot less time bouncing from one place of interest to the next, and more time sitting around having snacks.

I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

A collection of instances in which people on Twitter* have failed to fully grasp the definition of the word "literally." (Handles have been removed to protect me from angry, if poorly spelled, comments.)

My five and two year old literally lost their mind when we pulled up to the sign that said Welcome to Disney world..
Ah, yes, a day in the Heart of Disney with mindless automatons. These truly are the magic years. (Also: They only had one?)

SHES MAD PUMPED RIGHT NOW! her eyes literally popped out of her head! she wants to know if they have pictures?
Of her eyes? Wouldn't be my first concern, but okay.

I literally want to die lol
Considered a McQueen joke, decided against it. Too soon, and not really that funny.

Falling up...literally
Forgoing the traditional path of refereed journals, researchers in Bern decide to announce their anti-gravity breakthrough via Twitter.

Now im literally walking through hell for her
Say hi to Hitler for me!

I literally just DIED at Geri's walk. ZOMG
Maybe you can meet up with the last guy?

Ive got ants in my pants! Literally!
Another picnic goes horribly wrong.

Hatsumomo is on fire! Literally!
Stop drop and roll! Stop drop and roll!

Are you kidding? I'm stuck with the angel I literally ripped out of a higher plain of existence and interrogated for an hour.
I don't know what this means, but I'm pretty sure it's at least a short story plot.

lol sure u was! All I can say is! U got saved by the bell literally!
Did it block a bullet?

Omg I just turned to the game and my heart literally shattered. UGHHHHH!!!
Yeah, I guess that is the noise you would make.

today was a fairytale. literally.
Did someone have to cut off their toes? Die and turn into seafoam? Marry someone who turned into a bear?


And finally, a moment of hope for the future:

whats uppppppppp people.. bout to bounce in the shower.. not literally. just figuratively.


*By the way, if you spend any amount of time reading the way people in general write on twitter, your brain will melt and dribble out your ears.** Word of warning.
**Not literally.***
***But you'll wish it had.

Dino-Night

(Excerpts from the yet-to-be-written book based onthis actual headline.)


It was past midnight in the Cancun Museum of Science and Juan, the obviously expendable security guard, was making his rounds. Humming La Bamba, he played his flashlight across the exhibits on soap bubbles and rainbows and 11-dimensional M-theory, in the bored manner of doomed security guards everywhere.

When he came to the traveling exhibit of animatronic dinosaurs, however, he paused. Not because he was interested in the mot advanced examples of robotic dinosaurs available for public exhibition, but because his shoelace had come untied. As he stood back up, he heard a noise, like giant metal feet trying to sneak quietly across linoleum.

"Hola," he said. "¿Que es eso*?"

Then he saw it, and before he had time to scream, or even form an upside-down question mark, the giant metal teeth lunged out of the darkness and ripped through his flesh in a way that was nothing at all like breaking open a piñata.

Somewhere in the distance, the surface of an unattended glass of water rippled.

* * * * * * *

"My God, man, what have you done?" said Rick, the well-muscled American expat, living in Mexico for reasons having nothing to do with "tax evasion" or "outstanding warrants."

Dr. Benson, the older and much less attractive scientist, leaped up from his chair. "I was finishing my work! They wouldn't fund it as science, but for a travelling museum exhibit the money poured in. I was able to create the world's first perfect robotic dinosaur replica!"

"But what went wrong?" asked Carla, the hot and caring dolphin researcher who found Rick's machismo annoying but secretly attractive.

"Nothing went wrong. It worked perfectly! Except for the off switch," Dr. Benson added. "That went a little wrong."

"I'll say," said Rick. "It's killed three people so far, and Spring Break starts tomorrow. This place is about to be crawling with drunk kids."

The scientist went pale. "College students? Oh, no."

"What? What is it?" said Carla.

"Well, you see, I had some bad experiences when I was teaching undergrads, and it may have slightly influenced the programming. . ."

* * * * * * *

"Dude, I am so drunk," said a drunk college student.

"Dude, like, me too," said another drunk college student.

"Dude, we should get a reality show where we get drunk and, like, get girls and stuff."

"Heh. Yeah. Awesome."

"Dude."

"What?"

"Is that, like, a dinosaur?"

"Dude, you are wasted!"

"Yeah, but, du-- AAIIIEEEEE!"

Moments later, blood with an alcohol concentration of about 0.07% gushed down the street and flowed into the darkened city's well-maintained gutters.

* * * * * * *

Rick looked across the table at Carla, or more specifically at the unbuttoned shirt she had thrown on over her bikini top when she heard the news. "It's up to us to stop this thing," he said. "The police don't believe us, they think it's the drug cartels. We're the only ones who can save these people."

"But, how? And by the way, my eyes are up here."

"Yeah, so? Anyway, we're gonna need something big to stop this thing. Bullets don't hurt it, and it'll tear right through anything smaller than a tank."

"Okay, well, do you have a tank?"

"Nope. But I can get us something better."


*Eso no es queso.

My Top Five Names For My Band, If I Had One, Which I Don't

5. The Abashed Romantics
4. Crazy-Eyed Monkey*
3. The Human Phenom Project
2. Self-Titled Debut**
1. Shoetember!


*I have this necklace
**Only for the first album. For the second one, we would change our name to "Self-Titled Follow Up"

Patton Oswalt and the Robot Dancing Girls*

In Which I Take a Famous Comedian To Task on Grammatical Matters and Wonder About The Kids Today

Last Saturday** Cameron and I went into the city to see Patton Oswalt do a standup show at the Masonic Auditorium. It was a great show, and his success was made all the more impressive by the fact that, though a lovely place with an amazing view, the Masonic has no bar, making it less than ideal as a comedy venue. I mean, I'm not saying that you have to drink to enjoy the labors of comedic professionals, but it helps.

One of the openers came out on stage with a Stella Artois, and a good half of the audience turned to the other half and said, "Hey, where did he get that?"

But it speaks well to Mr. Oswalt's comedic prowess, that he was able to do so well to an almost totally dry house (except for that one opener). I liked some of his stuff more than the other (Cameron's the big fan), but there was only one bit I really took issue with.

At one point during the set, someone in the audience (as I suspect many people in many audiences have been doing lately) shouted out, "You lie!" This got a good laugh, and Oswalt ran with it. I don't know if it was really off the cuff or a bit he had on hand for when this happened, about how that wasn't even a sentence, it was just stupid caveman talk, which was all well and good, but the problem was, it was totally wrong.

There are a lot of points whatshisname, the shouter (I can't quite bring myself to look it up) can and should be criticized and mocked on, but I'm sorry, grammar just is not one of them. "You lie" is a perfectly functional sentence, with both a subject and a verb, that accurately expresses the point the speaker wished to make. Stupid, pointless and rude? Yes. Grammatically incorrect? Sorry, no.

You'll be glad to know that I made this point at length to Cameron after the show. I think he really appreciated it.


That settled, we toddled over to the Tiki Bar at the Fairmont for some post-show drinking and kitsch. Quite a few other people from the audience had the same idea, including David and Kyros, with some of their friends, who I ran into in the hall when I went to find the bathroom. They decided against, due to the cover charge, and all I can say is, boys, did you ever miss a show.

Though I would have called the place primarily a bar (what with it being in the name and all), it serves food and must be an all-ages place, because there was a group of girls who could not have been out of their teens there celebrating an apparent birthday. They were all dressed essentially identically, in short black dresses and flat sandals, variation apparently only allowed in hairstyles. Which is all well and good, teenage years being when one typically learns that success depends on your ability to conform, but then they started dancing. That's when things got strange.

The band started playing an uptempo number, and it was like someone flicked a switch; suddenly all the girls were lined up in an orderly formation, dancing a perfectly synchronized routine, like they expected Zack Efron to show up with a basketball any minute. I thought it was line-dancing, someone else claimed it was the electric slide. (The bar at this point was heavily tilted towards people who had come from the comedy show, and I would say the general mood of the room was "flummoxed.") And the crazy thing, the truly mind-blowing part, was that they didn't seem to be doing it ironically.

I wonder if our generation used up all of the irony, and today's children are left to march through life with nothing but clear-eyed sincerity? Terrifying thought.

Look, I get that I am not a "young person" any more. I turn thirty-two in a couple of weeks, which is not exactly old-old, but it is definitely reaching the point where the actions of current teenagers confuse and disturb me. But it's not supposed to be like this. They are supposed to be doing things like stapling live skunks to their heads and writhing around on the floor to Ukrainian emo rap-rock, not engaging in activities more commonly used in retirement homes for light exercise.

Honestly. Kids these days.***

*Sold Separately
**Yes, more than a week ago. This shoe thing is taking up a lot of my blogging time.
***Neither of the preceding were complete sentences.

Jane Eyre and the Jackalope

(In an effort to hop on the classic literature/monster bandwagon (See: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and the upcoming "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters") I present you with the opening lines to my new literary masterpiece, which I expect to earn me the adoration of the adoring masses and a honking big advance within the next week or so.)







Chapter 1

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Which was much lamented, because Eliza had spotted tracks the night before, and left out some whiskey to inebriate the beast, but now the chance of a hunt seemed lost. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning (poor cover, that, and a waste of time, since the creature rarely rose before midday); but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further hunting was now out of the question.

I was glad of it: I was a miserable shot, and the sorry little sawed-off shotgun I had received as a hand-me-down from John paled in comparison to his gleaming new rifle, or Georgiana's sleek crossbow. I never liked long hunts, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, an empty sack and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

Well, Duh

There is a link on the bottom of the Zappos website that says Don't Ever Click Here. Needless to say, I clicked.