"I grew up in Long Island, and visiting friends in New Jersey and Massachusetts, and all these states just have beautiful diners, one after the other. I just took it for granted," Griffith said between bites of an avocado-free health salad. "But California is not diner country. San Francisco has one actual diner and one fake nostalgia diner. Even modern diners I kind of like."
Which is not to malign perversion for perversion's sake. Heck, given the modern standards of beauty, longing to have sex with a full-figured otter woman is only slightly less realistic than wanting to have sex with a supermodel. And the otter lady is probably more fun at the sushi bar.
Jasper watched, and when I was done with the backlawn we played ball. Haven't done that in months, but he can still fly up and catch it in midair. I tried to bang one off the fence, and it flew over the fence into the alley: dog's expression is just priceless. Deadpan. Looks at the fence. At me. At the fence. At me. Short bark: FIX IT.
totem
blues
Inspired by preliminary research by physicist Karl Kuszelnicki of the University of Sydney, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's science website "The Lab" has been conducting a nationwide survey into the characteristics and causes of belly-button fluff-- known in Australia as "lint". Why does the fluff in people's navels tend to be blue, even when they are not wearing blue clothes? How is fluff affected by such factors as shaving, piercing, unusual underwear, the colour of one's hair?You can participate in the survey, too-- respond before October 27 if you want your data to be included.
scientist
The 10th annual Ig Nobel Awards Ceremony took place on Thursday, October 5th at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University. This year's theme: Intelligence. This year's sponsor: Duck® brand Bubble Wrap®. We stayed up exceedingly late fashioning bubblewrap garments to wear to the ceremony. Yes, we're geeks. We had a blast!At the awards ceremony, someone from Duck told us that there was a company manufacturing clothing made from bubble wrap. I just looked at their site-- what a scam. Our stuff looks nicer, and we didn't have to pay ludicrous prices. (The wedding dress is amusing, but not worth $250+. And I don't even want to think about how hot it would be.)
lunacy
"More warning signs. From Diane in Sacramento, Calif.:
On the way to work this morning I saw a license plate holder on an old Toyota pickup. It said 'Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me.'"
wisdom
Doonesbury on the difference between Democrats and Republicans."It's been instructive. Reminds me why I love my Macs. There is a transparency to the Mac interface & OS that you just don't get with PCs. Windows put up a big show to keep you from poking in the guts - for heaven's sake, it won't even show you the contents when you open the Windows folder, lest you RUIN THINGS. And it's so infantile - My Computer runs WindowsME! My Computer! My Briefcase! My Documents!
It's DeeDee's computer, not Dexter's."
"Ah, but Stephen King was onto something. His novel "It" contains perhaps the creepiest image in his entire oeuvre: A child looks down a sewer grate and sees A CLOWN standing there. This unnerved me so badly I haven't looked down a sewer grate since. Wedding ring slips off while walking the dog, pings down the grate into the drain? Sorry. Not going after it. Might be a clown there. I even plug my ears when I walk past a sewer grate on the off chance I might hear calliope music…"
[…]Mr. Diamond called it "laughable" that the Justice Department, while struggling to assure the public that Carnivore does not intrude on individuals' privacy, could not protect the privacy of review-team members.
"It's an irony that's too good to be true," he said.
news
"Exactly what happens inside the brain is only imperfectly understood, but the magnetic field seems to induce electrical current in areas of the brain -- particularly the left and right prefrontal cortices -- that are associated with mood disorders. Mysteriously, the current can stimulate or disrupt cortical activity depending on which side of the brain gets zapped. Stimulating the right side causes happiness, while stimulating the left causes sadness, says Mark George, one of Lisanby's colleagues."
Doonesbury riffs on Bush's dyslexia.
User Friendly offers the Techie Career Track Flowchart.It's preferable to the hold music at Apple Computer this morning: scat singing. And it was bad scat, too: booby-dat-biddly-bup-bagdadily bipdipily dang! It was like listening to someone drown Ned Flanders. Trust me: The more irritated you are at a company, the angrier scat will make you. One more hour on hold and I would have strangled someone. I would have pleaded scat. No jury would have convicted me…
Everybody's doin' it: we finally broke down and bought a TiVo (the 30-hour model). The $100 rebate pushed us over the edge. We are now set up to record more TV than we will ever humanly have time to watch, barring major incapacitating injury or bouts with the flu."What's your Tivo capacity up to-- 2.4 terabytes?"(A tip of the pen to Sean, for the great set-up line.)
"Yeah, we think it's attained sentience… Mostly it seems to sit around watching Gilligan's Island, so we're not too worried about it."
Ruth Shalit on Olympic advertising:"OK, so it's a bit of a stretch for Wieden to spin a chain-saw-killer ad into a victory for postmodern feminism. Nonetheless, Nike's evolution away from "Our Sports Bras, Ourselves" agitprop seems a milestone worth cheering -- especially when you consider how mired other brands are in the same old first-wave formulas…"
