To my undecided friends
Would you be willing to vote this year so that Rick and Danny could share the same legal privileges and responsibilities as the rest of us? Or so my mom could get the research necessary to halt or reverse her Parkinson’s? It would mean a lot to me.
Yours,
Deron
’Scuse me
for not saying nothing today. Hope you weren’t thinking me rude. I was just busy. Had to drive up into Wisconsin and back.
Lena won’t share the good bits
The midpoint of a brief sequence.
She leaves me indigestible viscera and heads with beady black eyes.
Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Male
Sasha Baron Cohen was escorted from a fashion show in Milan on Friday.
After a few minutes of darkness while Baron Cohen, or Bruno, was escorted off the catwalk, the show started again. Models had kept their cool but the designer was visibly upset when she appeared at the end of the show.
an item of business to attend to
A quick note to say we’ve been getting so much spam lately I haven’t been able to get in and fish comments out that might have ended up in the spam filter inadvertently. Used to, I’d scan through every couple hours, but the volume has increased to such a degree, it’s no longer completely possible. If you’ve posted a comment that’s gotten eaten, I apologize. Next time you have a second, write a note to the spammers of the world and see if they won’t leave our site alone.
Now, back to scheduled programming.
whomever
(thanks, Arnold)
Et boive petit a petit / Combien qu’elle ait grant appetit
She should take only small sips; even if she is thirsty, she should not guzzle in a single gulp from her goblet or cup, but rather in small sips, and often, so that others will not say she is swilling down greedily. She should not swallow the rim of her goblet as many wet-nurses do who are so simple-minded and gluttonous that they pour their wine into their belly as if they were filling an empty boot. She should avoid becoming drunk, because neither a drunk man nor a drunk woman can keep private counsel; besides, when a woman is drunk she can no longer protect herself; she prattles her thoughts and is open to everyone’s advances. She should keep herself from falling asleep at the table; it is really improper, and too many indecent things happen to those who let that happen. It doesn’t make sense to doze when you should be awake; many who do so end up falling to one side or the other, or backwards, and break their arm or ribs or crack their head.
—Roman de la Rose, via 18thC Cuisine
YouTube Comment Snob
This is the answer to the problem, but I would kind of miss such helpful comments as “y dun’t u suck a bag of dicks,” when trolling the internets.
YouTube Comment Snob is a Firefox extension that filters out undesirable comments from YouTube comment threads. You can choose to have any of the following rules mark a comment for removal:
- More than # spelling mistakes: The number of mistakes is customizable, and the extension uses Firefox’s built-in spell checker.
- All capital letters
- No capital letters
- Doesn’t start with a capital letter
- Excessive punctuation (!!!! ????)
- Excessive capitalization or Profanity
On the Prostitution and Exploitation of Artists
Today Pinky was hired to paint all day for a client who has a dead bird fetish. Here is the chicken he painted in the morning (wearing only his underwear and cowboy hat). She preferred dead parakeets and pigeons. By the afternoon Pinky had geared up the dead bird painting to paint the sweetest little dead parakeet in a little red dunce cap. It almost made him cry.
When I was, oh, twenty-five or so, I requested of an eighteen-year-old artist I knew that he draw me a picture of a man whose head had been pierced in one side and out the other, Injun arrow-style, by a weasel, then to draw me a picture of Jack Nicholson as an animated cartoon rat. He fulfilled both requests and didn’t charge me nothing. I guess that was some kind of exploitation.
Schoolboys and farting
I was perusing my favourite dictionary this morning while doing 300 crunches to make my abs look awesome, and came across this gem:
randle (răn’dəl) - n. a nonsensical poem recited by Irish schoolboys as an apology for farting at a friend.
What a cool freaking word! So I immediately postponed my crunches and consulted my OED to find out more… but nothing. Nothing more on the internet either—just amateur dictionaries that have the same definition word for word.
RATS! I want to know if the nonsense poem has specific words or any nonsensical uttering will do. Am I allowed to rip one into the face of my good pal and then recite Jabberwocky and everything will be hunky-dory again? Also, why would this randle placate the poor feller who has just been farted upon? It would have to be a pretty awesome poem to keep me from wailing on my assailant.
Dear Mike Dougan
(If I’m remembering your name correctly.) I fished your comments out of spam and clicked the necessary buttons but somehow your comments disappeared. Our apologies. I don’t know what happened.
It’s nice to know somebody out in the blogosphere is smart.
Why more people don’t have Jason’s perspective is beyond me:
Never will kottke.org updates be pushed automatically to my personal Twitter account. I am not a dick, I would never do that to you.
Mouse in the Copier Room
One of the mice who works here thinks it’s funny to make photocopies of his butt.
Blow torch. Just because.
Senator John McCu*t
Why isn’t this piece of 1992 McCain history being Reverend Wright-ed all over TV and the headlines?
(video via Cyn-C)
Speaking of Anger Problems
At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day.
See the Raw Story piece here.
Meanwhile, in a completely different country . . .
About four out of five UK businesses believe the type of biscuit they serve to potential clients could clinch the deal or make it crumble, a survey says.
The outcome of a meeting could be influenced by the range and quality of biscuits, according to 1,000 business professionals quizzed by Holiday Inn.
The chocolate digestive was deemed to make the best impression followed by shortbread and Hob Nobs.
Lawyers were most impressed by good boardroom biccies, the survey added.
Biscuits ‘key’ to clinching business deals, BBC News, Monday, 2 June 2008.
Mmm. I think I will get me some Plain Chocolate Hob Nobs at lunchtime.
Read more
Today at the Diner
1. After some discussion, Daryl and I decided that the English language should appropriate the Spanish word for “choke”–ahogo. We should just take it, like we took Texas.
2. The man next to us ordered only white foods: scrambled egg whites, sliced bananas, two bowls of oatmeal, milk. I’m pretty sure he’s nuts.
3. Some new guys started complaining that it was taking too long to get their hamburgers. All of the other patrons glared at them. Everyone knows that the cook watches sports on Sundays, and you get your food only during commercial breaks. What a couple of assholes.
“You say liar; I say poet.”
composure bench
mirdle
crate training
occasion
faulty male introspection
collaborative thought leadership
federal building
intense greeting interaction
These are just a few of the handy terms you can learn from Buckle up your mirdle! Euphemisms from heck by Mark Peters, who’s guestblogging over at OUPblog.
Dear Neighbor
Your car alarm works really well.
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
things that chap my ass
People who don’t use the turn lane.
People who don’t check behind them when walking through a door.
oh shit
When I was mowing the lawn today I realized I have ready access to all my high school poetry journals and I’m this close to finding the worst thing in there and posting it. If I do that, would others join me? Or would I be left pissing in the wind?
Culpa Biboe
…ergo sumthin’ anyway…
Seinfeldian
One of the women who live in the four-plex next to us has been very kind to Amy and me. She invites us to dinner. We chat sometimes in the evening. She is recently divorced, just turned fifty, has wonderful, beautiful children and is filled with generosity.
The other night I was pulling out of the driveway on a beer run and saw her with a friend on the sidewalk in front of the apartments. Caught up in the moment — drinking? smoking? a general exuberance? — my headlights captured her in some sort of idol-worship in front of the other woman; flopped on the ground, arms extended, sort of praying.
It was a beautiful moment. She waved in the darkness as she rushed to her feet and, I fear, was unable to see my return.
I bring this up because I saw her in the grocery store the other night and she seemed to be hiding. We were a couple aisles away from each other during check out and I called her name. She smiled and said hello but hung back once I moved forward — no more eye contact.
The thing I’m wondering is if she’s embarrassed now because of the scene I witnessed a few weeks ago. For me, it was a pleasant moment on my way to the beer store. For her? Who knows.
How does one broach this kind of subject?