here's something to appease/entertain you while i continue to recover from my everyman binge. in explanation, this is a re-version of this all-time great video (my opinion) that changes the lyrics to match what is actually happening in the video. super-neat.
this phenomenally witty and entertaining short video about a font conference where the font's are personified is gold. this runs the risk of only being interesting to people who deal in design and formatting, but for those who do it's a must see.
sunday the everyman had 324 visitors. thanks to a link from a site called stumbleupon, monday saw a slight increase in interest to over 7,000 daily visitors.
and speaking of the power of the web, check this site out which went public wednesday.
this was one of my more entertaining finds so far:
and in the event you also live in a home without cable or television and haven't yet discovered this, it's brought many laughs to my house:
i'm holidaying in north carolina this weekend. this is my third cross-country trip of the year and it has been as issue-filled as my previous two outings. because of this consistency, i will not be crossing the saint louis city limit again until year 2008. for sure the only smile to cross my face during this ill-fated twelve-hour drive to NC came when i pulled up behind this car from texas at a construction slow down.
there's nothing artificial about that intelligence
my work often takes me into the infinite world of stock photography. anyone who has poured through the online stacks knows how the hours drift into the air while you look for that one image which meets the need. fortunately today's search engines do much to help you find that one perfect graphic. that is they are a great help except when they aren't.
the below page was the result of a search on the term 'statue'. the main image at the top seems spot on. it's the SIMILAR IMAGES at the base of the page which raised my brow. i can't say if i find their system's intuition to be highly flawed or impressively intuitive on knowing what my mind was really looking for. although, what the hell is up with the solitary pic of glasses?
i'm a big kevin smith fan. have been since i saw clerks in the theater.
here is a short film (20min) of him at a college speaking gig where he fields a question about his early involvement in the new superman movie. in the event you haven't seen it and like smith, superman or hollywood silliness you may enjoy the yarn.
may not be safe for work or your home depending where you live. watch at youTube.
you're young, you got your health, what you need with a job?
If there is a recurring theme in (President James) Garfield's diaries it's this: I'd rather be reading. That might sound dull and perfunctory, but Garfield's book fever was a sickness. Take, for example, the commencement address he delivered at his alma mater Hiram College in the summer of 1880. Traditionally, these pep talks to college graduates are supposed to shove young people into the future with a briefcase bulging with infinitive verbs: to make, to produce, to do. Mr. Loner McBookworm, on the other hand, stands up and breaks it to his audience, the future achievers of America, that the price of the supposedly fulfilling attainment of one's personal and professional dream is the irritating way it cuts into one's free time. He tells them,
It has occurred to me that the thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing that you care for the least, and that is your leisure - the leisure you have to think; the leisure you have to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet into your mind, and sound the depth and dive for things below.
the only thing stopping this address from turning into a slacker parable is the absence of the word "dude." Keep in mind that at that moment Garfield was a presidential candidate. The guy who theoretically wants the country's most demanding, hectic, brain-dive-denying job stands before these potential gross national product producers advising them to treat leisure "as your gold, as your wealth, as your treasure." As Garfield left the podium, every scared kid in the room could probably hear the sound of the stock market crashing him back to his old room at his parents' house where he'd have plenty of free time to contemplate hanging himself with his boyhood bedsheets.
excerpt from sarah vowell's assassination vacation
when i laid down in bed a few nights back marty said that while she was looking for something on my computer she saw an email message from a girl saying she saw my profile online and wondered if i wanted to chat or get together. it is one of my more prevalent pieces of spam mail that i haven't filtered for yet. i laughed it off saying that i get those all the time. after about thirty seconds marty said, 'so where do you have an online profile?'.
the better question is, where don't i have an online profile.
and speaking of spam, my most cherished piece of unsolicited correspondence of recent time follows. for the sake of this presentation i've replaced every reference to a phallus with the phrase 'self-esteem', every reference to a stimulated phallus with the word 'confidence' and every reference to the fleshy skin towards the top of the phallus with the word 'ego' (mostly b/c not all of the semantics used in this message were exactly professional and/or scientific, and no one is ever going to accuse me of not conducting myself with the utmost of decorum. i mean really, if you can't bring yourself to use the proper term for an erection, engorged manroot, then perhaps you ought not be talking about the subject.)
Finally!
I have always worried about the size of my self-esteem. When I have sex, even though she says that the sex is good, I know that what she really wants is an extra inch of my self-esteem!
I saw the advertising for More-Size on TV and was really impressed by the customers reports. The pills work by enhancing the hormone that instructs your body to fill your self-esteem with blood. More and more blood gets pumped into the two large chambers on top of your self-esteem, making said self-esteem harder than ever before. Your self-esteem is very very flexible, and adapts well to the increased pressure, getting longer and harder.
The best thing is that once the hormones have been enhanced, they get used to it and you keep your enhanced size for many months after you stop taking the medication
This is the only method that is said to work other than mechanical stretching! Pumps and creams do NOT have the same long-lasting effects.
I could tell that my self-esteem was getting longer and heavier, but I thought that when I stopped taking them that my confidence would shrink back to its original size. I was really surprised!
I have been 4.5" long since adolescence. Since I have been using this formula my self-esteem has been 6.5" long, and my confidence is nearly twice the size. Just be careful not to take too much to begin with as the skin needs time to adapt to your new improved self-esteem!
The lengthening is permanent!
I could not believe the results of this prescription. I am back to taking them again and my self-esteem is still getting larger! My girlfriend says it is the best product I've ever bought, and she ALWAYS reminds me to take them if I should forget!
Take a peek... We know they work. There's a total guarantee with them, too. If you are not completely satisfied with your length gain and comfort you get your money back. Every penny. No-one sends them back!
Please be aware that if your ego is already tight or if your confidence is already too hard and causes discomfort, you should consult the advice of your doctor before taking these pills, as the extra size could cause added discomfort
and lastly, one of the more genuine parts of this message is that its sender was a female.
there's a lot of words floating around this here internet. of the loads added daily, the ones this guy is stringing together make me smile more often than most.
and i quote, haphazardly ...
somewhere outside of hillsborough, i realized that i was in a really good mood. it was that same kind of clarity, that surprised self-awareness, that babies and hippies get when they discover their hands.
the last few frames of FISH! flickered across the screen and the consultant, hired for the day to talk to us about how we could incorporate fun into the workplace, felt his way across the back wall in the darkness, his meaty paw pat-patting for a light switch.
i met a boy named fate yesterday. as so often happens when i think of something to write about in the middle of a workday, i scribble the idea down on a slip of paper and stuff it into my pocket.
for the rest of the day, i thought about how interesting it would be, if i were in a car accident or run over while crossing the street, for the medics to arrive and, while searching my pockets for identification, they would find a single piece of paper that just had the word FATE written on it in block letters.
last month my momz was in the newspaper. you see, there's recently been a syphilis outbreak in saint louis and when stuff like that goes down, people give my mom a shout because she's all over knowing the score about broken and malfunctioning genitals.
in the articles my mom referred to some 'sex-oriented social events' that took place late last year which were thought to be the source of the city's current dilemma. one thing that people will never be able to say about me is that the phrase 'sex-oriented social event' didn't grab my attention. so when mom was over for bella's birthday party i asked about her comments.
let's just say i got 20 bucks that says my mom has uttered the phrase 'spanksgiving' and your mom has not.
With my pride in one hand, I walked balls first, brains last, into over extending myself.
dutch engelbrecht
(what with my brain's workers still on a full work-stoppage given their mistreatment over the last few months, i thought i'd share the words of someone whose cerebral employees have not left him in a lurch.)
bella places a pen and sealed envelope on my desk and says she needs me to address it to someone for her. i pick up the pen and tell her to shoot. she dictates the following:
sarah.
your face is in this envelope.
open envelope.
we love you.
if i were sarah, i'm not sure if i'd be really pleased or terribly pissed.
i've been waffling on whether or not to address a question i get every six months or so. it deals with what most refer to as my bifurcated chest.
to a newcomer, it appears my nipple lives below my pectoral muscle. those posing this question admit they find the nipple's placement odd. i'm not squeamish about fielding such queries because it is akin to asking jeffrey dahmer if he knows he doesn't fit in well at dinner parties. and to address this and many other questions asked or even thought, let me put it all on the table for you to digest and come to terms with.
i have ...
the hair of a 70's era diana ross, the face of many people,
the upper body of E.T.,
an ass more voluminous (and voluptuous) than jennifer lopez,
the thighs of larry csonka,
the calves of stephen hawking,
and the feet of one fred flintstone.
all of this and i still found some girl to walk down the aisle with me.
granted her navel resides about two and a half inches above her pubic bone.
and to answer your next question, yes, we are selling tickets but sadly you can't afford one.
sadly, i wasn't here for the original conversation or even the retelling. i heard about it third-hand from marty so the players will have to forgive any kluged details (and, should that happen, walt is to shoulder the blame).
e-love and dr. j have a dog, hattie. they also have a new baby, alison. trying to gauge his wife's commitment to their family members, e-love recently posed the following questions to her.
if crazed terrorist broke into the house and said you had to cut off your pinky finger or they would kill hattie, what would you do?
if crazed terrorist broke into the house and said you had to cut off your baby's pinky finger or strangle hattie to death with your bare hands, what would you do?
let's just say you don't want to be hattie, or any other canine for that matter, on dr. j's watch should crazed terrorist break into the home looking to grow their collection of finger-pieces.
One day in the future, George Bush has a heart attack and dies. He immediately goes to hell, where the devil is waiting for him.
"I don't know what to do," says the devil. "You are on my list, but I have no room for you. You definitely have to stay here, so I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I've got some folks here who weren't quite as bad as you. I'll let one of them go, but you have to take their place.
I'll even let YOU decide who leaves." Bush thought that sounded pretty good, so the devil opened the first room.
In it was Ronald Reagan and a large pool of water. He kept diving in and surfacing empty handed. Over and over and over. Such was his fate in hell. "No, George said. "I don't think so. I'm not a good swimmer and I don't think I could do that all day long."
The devil led him to the next room. In it was Richard Nixon with a sledge hammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing that hammer, time after time after time. "No, I've got this problem with my shoulder. I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day," commented George.
The devil opened a third door. In it, Bush saw Bill Clinton, lying on the floor with his arms staked over his head, and his legs staked in a spread eagle pose. Bent over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best. Bush took this in disbelief and finally said, "Yea, I can handle this." The devil smiled and said "OK, Monica, you're free to go."
making older ladies smile uncomfortably from the start
a week before bella was to begin preschool she said she wanted to make valentines for her teachers. for those who don't live with this girl, valentines are the common world equivalent of a homemade hallmark card.
bella valentines typically involve of a complex formula only fully understood by her. they are diverse in style but do have certain common threads. for instance, rarely are people drawn without a browneye. allow me to swing your attention to exhibit a which i will call the 'grandparent anal valentines debacle' which fostered several silent dinners at my parent's house. given her past record, walt and i were a touch concerned of what might be in store for her new teachers.
you can obviously imagine our anxiety when bella announced her creations were complete. we hesitantly took them from her outstretched hand and eyed them carefully. no anuses, check. no penises, check. no ginas, check. (gina is pronounced like china only with a G and is how bella says the word, yes you guessed it, vagina). relief poured over us. it was important that the teachers' first impression of our child was not a jaded, or real, perception. we felt this was a pivotal component of our eldest girl's success in the classroom.
on the morning of the first day, bella was super adamant that her valentines not be left behind. we assured her multiple times we had them, clapping my hand on the three sheets of paper in my back pocket. once at school it was her single and immediate mission to distribute them to her teachers. i only saw the first of these transactions. she gave it to the smiling educator who leaned down to thank her.
teacher: oh my, isn't this a beautiful picture.
bella: yes it is. it is a person being chased by a shooter.
teacher: oh. well, isn't that ... interesting.
yes it is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the parallel story of how marty and i became the newest names on missouri's department of family services watch-list fifteen minutes after that exchange took place.
i'm confident we just witnessed the beginning of what is certain to be a rollicking academic career.
when i email people for the first time, i sometimes worry about the subject line i choose and if it will be thought of as spam and consequently discarded. emails i've sent that fostered this sentiment:
i wanted to introduce myself
have you seen my latest photos
you're not going to believe this
i think i know you
and lastly ...
do you wish you had a larger penis
don't ask me to expound on that last one ... bookguy asked me not to.
