This has got be a metaphor for something
More here.
If you haven’t already
Texting ‘Haiti’ to 90999 will donate $10 through your phone bill to the Red Cross relief effort.
Common life problems
This post from McSweeney’s is ten (10) years old and aging like a fine wine:
S O M E C O M M O N
L I F E P R O B L E M S , W I T H
P O S S I B L E S O L U T I O N S .BY TIM CARVELL
1. Have you ever noticed how, if you are with a friend — let us call him Gary, because I don’t actually know any Garys — and he is doing something annoying, like cracking his knuckles, and you say, “If you crack your knuckles one more time, Gary, honest to God, I’ll kill you right here and now”, and then, of course, Gary — because it would be funny — deliberately cracks his knuckles, and then what you do is, you lunge at his neck and scream this sort of exaggerated, joking scream, because that is what people do in this situation in cartoons. But then there’s always an awkward moment, once you’ve lunged, because you then need to stop lunging and sort of withdraw and compose yourself, because you’re not really going to kill him just for cracking his knuckles, but you did have to follow through on the premise of your joke. And now you’re both in this weird state of not having the joke followed through in a satisfactory manner, like it would be in a cartoon. I have a solution for this. I would suggest that, instead of saying, “If you crack your knuckles one more time, Gary, honest to God, I’ll kill you right here and now”, you should say, “If you crack your knuckles one more time, Gary, honest to God, I’ll gouge your eyes out with my thumbs.” And then, once he’s cracked his knuckles and smirked, you can wipe that smug fucking smile off his face by gouging out his eyes, and you’d be totally justified. Is my thinking.
2. You’ll notice how, when walking down the street, you’ll sometimes find yourself facing someone going in the opposite direction, and each of you is blocking the other, and when you move to the left, the other person (let’s say it’s Gary again) moves to the right, and vice versa, and after you’ve done this, say, twice, it’s almost impossible not to do it, and now you’re having far more interaction with this other person than you really want to have, and you’re both looking at each other all apologetic and embarrassed. It is an awkward impasse. My solution for this is to embrace the situation: If you two are going to keep blocking each other, make a game out of it and actually try and block the other person. Feint, dart, try and anticipate his every move just by watching his eyes, and for every time you block him, you get a point. And if he does manage to slip by, well, then, your awkward impasse is solved, now, isn’t it? It’s win-win. I am a genius.
3. Let’s say the cable installer (Gary) has just come to your home to install the cable. Actually, you had cable already: He just needed to flip a switch and turn it on. Took less than five minutes. Now, the question is, do you tip him for the visit? On the one hand, he did have to get into his truck and drive to your home. On the other, that is what he’s paid to do, and it’s not like he’s in the same situation as a waiter, where the restaurant pays them less than the minimum wage and then expects them to make up the rest in tips. And besides, maybe he’s a professional, and would be insulted by a tip! But on the other hand, does everyone tip, and do you look like a jerk if you don’t? Will he hate you? How do you make the cable person not hate you? There are two solutions here, it seems to me: The first is to simply ask, “So, do you guys take tips?” And if he says yes, give him some money — not a lot, a few dollars. The other solution is to think about all this, then show him to the door, and then feel guilty for not tipping him, and then pray the Hail Mary, over and over, and then touch all the doorknobs in the house in three sets of three, and then pray some more.
angry flies like a banana
“Every time you swat a fly away from your hamburger, it seems to come back to the food more aggressively or persistently,” Anderson said. “People might wonder about whether there’s such a thing as an ‘angry’ fly, but no one would challenge the idea of an angry bee — especially someone who’s been stung by one.”
“We developed the ‘puff-o-mat’ apparatus, with the idea of putting some fly food at one end, and then blowing the flies away from the food with a gentle puff of air every time they got close to it,” he said. “Then we measured whether the flies became more agitated and approached the food more aggressively after experiencing this frustrating experience several times.”
Going out in style
Donald Jack Wickman
WICKMAN Donald Jack Wickman – A truly pulchritudinous man, Donald Jack Wickman gallivanted off to a new adventure January 12, 2010. While he made the peregrination alone, he was surrounded by and given a rousing valediction by so many of the ones who loved him: his wife, daughters, sons, daughter-in-law, and a plethora of friends. Yet, he was greeted by those who had gone before him: his mom and dad, brothers and many more of the friends he made during his undaunted life. Some of these multitudinous friends were made amidst jumping out of perfectly good airplanes as a member of the 82nd Airborne, and others while shellacking criminals as a cop in Boulder and Thornton, Colorado, and writing himself tickets (and taking himself to court.) Don made many friends after arriving on Dauphin Island in a blue limousine, and as he travailed with his wife, Lynn, to spawn the world famous Treasure Trove. Copious friendships were also developed as he hunted down antiques and refurbished them into pristine status, while debating with the people of Mars Hill Church, and during the creation of flabbergasting paintings. All of these friends and family are invited to gather in his and his wife’s home on Friday, January 15, at 7 pm to celebrate Don’s superlative life. He may be gone from us in body, but he is surely not forgotten. So, tell your friends about him.
I hope that when I die, somebody has the awesomeness (and worthwhile material) to post such an exuberant notice for me. Rock on, Don & company.
(Thanks, sc!)
Frank’s story about Pierce
Them’s the breaks, as my half-brother Pierce used to say a lot. He’d spit it out like you had earned that bad thing comin’ and why didn’t you just get outta the way but nobody said it out loud when he got so drunk and walked in front of an F-350 dually. Twenty four breaks as I recall although that’s skipping the bones that got all crushed up like oyster crackers.
Even Satan has standards
This appears to be legitimate:
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll. You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.
Best, Satan
from the spam
His privy chamber was provided and furnished with a chair of state placed upon a carpet, with a cloth of state hang’d over it, newly made for the same purpose.
spam names
Francesca Mclain.
Mabel Latham.
Update: Blakey Kader.
Cardboard Tube Art
Anastassia Elias makes still-life art out of toilet paper tubes.
(via)
Statistics Out of Context
U.S. population: 307,006,550.
Population for the 20 least-populated states: 31,434,822.
That means that in the Senate, all it takes to stop legislation is one guy plus 40 senators representing 10.2 percent of the country.
(via)
Don’t Stare; You’ll Go Blind
Solar eclipse, seen from Kalfeng, China.
(Here)
paraphrased quote out of context
Journalist: “The journey from Santo Domingo to Port Au Prince which normally takes five hours took twelve because there was so much traffic.”
Larry: “Aid coming in?”
Journalist: “I saw a lot of journalists, not much food and water.”
Hadj M´hamed el Anka | Chaabi algerien
By way of Excavated Shellac, where you’ll find more groove booty.
This sounds really good at 2:00 am here in the Driftless Region.
Submitted without comment
[via Denver Egotist]
What Cindy Just Said
Well fuck my rubber anus under the fold.
Clustersource
Without thinking, comment: What’s the first thing you think when you see…
VC?
I never see that day as very far away
Drunk or Southern?
More from the unseemly world of blog-book deal fishing. This one hits a little close to home.
proof that healthcare is too expensive
While my Jeep was rolling down a hill in Wyoming, I remember, very clearly, that I hoped for death since I was uninsured and would probably become a financial burden to my family. I walked away with a scratch on my thumb and glass in my hair.
True story.
two reasons I am most likely done with laptops forever
1. the smartphone, obviously.
2. the laptop can turn any place into an office desk and the office desk, by my reckoning, is the worst invention in the history of the world.
Perforation Problems
Handwritten wisdom and a heart full of soul from Iggy Pop, circa 1995.
it’s been a long road since then, but pressure never ends in this life. ‘perforation problems’ by the way means to me also the holes that will always exist in any story we try to make of our lives. so hang on, my love, and grow big and strong and take your hits and keep going.
all my love to a really beautiful girl. that’s you laurence.
iggy pop
(Thanks to Kate Theimer of ArchivesNext for pointing to this by way of Facebook.)
Cache’s (Hidden) Mystery at 20:39
Roger Ebert decided to throw a big monkey wrench into the meaning of the ending in Michael Haneke’s 2005 film Cache. Ebert states that the film provides a glimpse of something unusual at minute 20:39. Now, I have seen Cache and enjoyed it in that way you enjoy and simultaneously hate french films but I don’t recall what happens at that exact moment. Nor do I own a copy to refer to. But maybe a flocker can help end this madness and illuminate us all.
A Distinguished and Natural Cat from Norway
An informational video.
Brick Tumblr
For any of you that loved Brick, the 2005 teen noir film by Rian Johnson, he recently started a tumblr to put up various images. Focus Features had taken down the official Brick site for a while, and the Tumblr is filled with goodies.
