A couple co-workers & I were discussing the Flavor Shot shotgun ammunition that’s made from seasoning (instead of lead) so you can kill your prey & begin the marinating process in one step. As a new parent (and a fan of delicious seasoned meats), it occurred to me that while it’s always sad when a gun owner’s child finds daddy’s gun & accidentally kills themself with it thinking that it’s a toy, it must be TWICE as sad if the gun is loaded with Flavor Shot. Because then not only do you have the whole dead offspring thanks to your own negligence, but you probably develop a pavlovian association between seasonings & tragedy such that you couldn’t enjoy Indian or Thai food anymore.
Archive for September, 2007
Sports Betting Is Hard (part 3)
September 9, 2007Sigh… CURSE YOU HOUSTON TEXANS. And with that, my 2007 NFL online gambling experiment comes to an end. The money ended up being a wash, despite the fact that I bet $55 to win $50, and only won the first of my two bets, because the online casino bonuses new accounts, so the $5 discrepancy between the amount won vs the amount lost is covered by the bonus. So I took my $100 and went back to betting random people around the office carnival style wagers like “knock over the empty soda can & win CASH PRIZES,” which is far more lucrative for me. The highlight of the short-lived online gambling experiment for this year was the lengths online casinos have gone to in order to circumvent the anti-online gaming laws passed by the US Government. The one company I ended up placing the money with used a middle-man who essentially was a “sports stock photography dealer” called “great-sporting-moments.com” that created an account in my name with $100 of value (after charging my credit card) that I could use to purchase sporting images like pictures of the baseball players or whatever. It was, of course, a front. I don’t know if they even actually sold the photos, but what they DID do is create a proxy account with the sports book & tied the value of my account at the sports photo place to the sportsbook. Crazy. Oh, and when I cleared out the account at the sportsbook, they refund my $100 by either crediting back my credit card (if possible) or by cutting a cashier’s check and physically mailing it to me. Damn U.S. Government, making it harder for me to make foolish wagers. I don’t know who I hate more, the U.S. Government or the Houston Texans. No wait, I do. It’s the Houston Texans.
The Day I Walked Into Mexico For Some Tacos
September 8, 2007Patrick & I wanted to go on another roadtrip, but we couldn’t think of anywhere new to go, so we went back and visited the Salton Sea again, this time on the Western shoreline. It was much more organized & civilized than the wild Eastern shores, although the place smelled much much worse than the previous trip. Worst of all, some developer was building homes like crazy just North of Salton City, which made me think of young families just starting out in life, with kids or kids on the way soon, all mortgaging their futures to buy homes next to the Salton Sea, which is a depressing thought.
By the time the afternoon rolled around, the temperature was nearly 110 degrees, and we were hungry so we ended up just taking the shoreline south, and when the Salton Sea stopped we didn’t. We arrived in Calexico (the border town, not the indie band) in time for a late lunch, and we wandered on foot into Mexico (Calexico’s sister city, a town called Mexicali) & got some tacos for lunch. When we were done we stood in line for the great Northern exodus & drove home. As always, there were many pictures taken, and annotations provided.
There Are More Pigeons Than You Think
September 6, 2007Yesterday the missus & I took the LBC out for a walk to the corner bakery, and while we were sitting outside, I threw a piece of bread down on the ground to feed the lone pigeon hungry enough to approach. The missus reprimanded me, and pointed a sign above my head that said “Please Don’t Feed The Pigeons.” I scoffed, which is my default reprimand response, and said “why the hell not?”
In the photo above, you can see the one pigeon, and a swiftly approaching second pigeon in the background. Seconds later…
….there were three pigeons, with a swiftly approaching fourth pigeon in the background. Seconds later…
…there were FIVE pigeons, with a swiftly approaching sixth pigeon in the background. Eventually even more than six showed up, some landed on our table & dive bombed my wife’s head as they took off, many wandered immediately under our feet making me realize that I have a phobia of pigeons pecking out my achilles tendon that I never even knew about. The weirdest part was, there really was only one pigeon when this all started. It was like they were fucking ninjas, all of them dropping out of the sky thanks to some ultrasonic frequency emitted by the lone tiny piece of bread I threw out hitting the ground. Hyper agressive ninjas, too.
The Internet - It Has a Dark Side??
September 5, 2007So, it turns out that the internet is bigger than you think it is. And the worst part is, everything is linked to everything else with little innocent clicks, so you can start out on a site like reddit.com or some other link aggregator and end up somewhere very, very horrible. That has happened to me a bunch of times. Now, I realize I will sound like a secretly gay Republican who KEEPS getting caught trying to bang dudes in public bathrooms over & over, but I swear that through no fault of my own I ended up today at (for God’s sake don’t click any of the following links):
1) My Balls - A photoblog where the artist submits a new photo every few days of his testicles doing something amusing.
2) Got Cum - A photoblog (linked from My Balls, oddly enough) of promotional photos of attractive female celebrities full clothed. Oh yeah, the photos have been printed out & ejaculated on, sometimes quite voluminiously.
3) PopThatZit.com - A videoblog of people filming their own zits (actually, usually a friend or relative is holding the camera) being popped. This one, for me, was the weirdest. I mean, I don’t film my balls, or masturbate onto printed out photos of The Olsen Twins, but even if I did, I’d have the good sense to do it alone in the privacy of my secret shame chamber. The zits one seems to be a social collaborative affair, and that is perhaps its most creepy aspect. I have a bunch of friends (no seriously, I do), but I don’t have any friends I feel close enough to that I would film them in popping their zits.
So, I just want to warn you all, the internet is not all about meeting delightful childrens authors & placing delightful sports wagers. There’s balls out there, people. Strange, hairy balls.
God Bless The Internet
September 4, 2007In addition to allowing me to wager on sports, the internet keeps putting me in touch with my favorite authors. Roger Bradfield is one of the icons of mid-century advertising, having worked on the design for the Trix rabbit & Mr Bubble, among others, but it’s through his work as a children’s author that I first heard of him. The Flying Hockey Stick was a favorite of mine, and my brothers before me, and now it’s a favorite of the LBC. I read it to her at least two or three times a day, at her insistence, and when I’m not around, she grabs it off the shelf and reads it to herself.
Note the growling for the lions, as well as the “eat!” exclamation. Also note that she has the main character say bye to his mommy. She’s really capturing the key details. So, I found Roger Bradfield’s website, and he’s still alive (having just turned 83). I took the opportunity to write him & thank him for the many hours of enjoyment I got first as a young child reading his books, and now as a parent sharing them with my own daughter, and he wrote back telling me I had made his day & that he was delighted that I wrote him, which put a huge smile on my face. It was like the 9 billionth time I paused to reflect on ways in which the internet has made stuff possible that just wouldn’t have happened when I was a kid.
P.S. unlike with the sports wagering, the missus was consulted & approval was granted for this rare video appearance of the LBC. Don’t get too used to it, legend has it if she sees her shadow online it’s six more weeks of winter.
Sports Betting Is Hard (part II)
September 4, 2007…and so the gambling begins. Despite the ban on online gambling by the US Goverment, it was insanely easy to find a online bookie who would take my wagers. While I’m in violation of some law for even discussing this, I would encourage any feds reading this to scroll down to my post about wanting to shoot the President for better material for a big bust.
So, let’s just say that allegedly, I placed two bets this weeked on the opening of the NFL season. First, I hypothetically bet on the Kansas City Chiefs plus three points to beat the Houston Texans, because my grandfather’s dying words to me were “if you ever see the Houston Texans GIVING UP points against a team, put all your money on that other team.” Secondly, I may have placed an imaginary wager on the hated New England Patriots (much as it pained me to do so) to beat the New York Jets by seven or more points. I feel like the Patriots are the best team in the league this year, and although I’d probably rather get catheterized than see them win it all, I’m not above hoping they beat the New York Jets of New Jersey by a touchdown.
Astute fans will note that the teams I’m picking to lose are historically terrible. I know Shakespeare wasn’t referring to the NFL when he said “past is prologue,” but that’s only because he was British, and those queers play Soccer.
As with last year, this experiment continues until I lose one bet, at which point I withdraw all imaginary funds from my ficticious offshore gambling haven and put them back in the emergency fund that I stole them from (note: just kidding honey*). Also as with last year, I will feel lucky if I even make it past the 3rd bet. You could fill a thimble with what I know about making money through sports wagering, but only if the thimble was most of the way full already.
*… or AM I???
Mad Men is the best thing on TV
September 4, 2007If you’re not watching Mad Men on AMC, you really should be. There’s a lot to love about the show, by the Exec Producer of The Sopranos (as well as the criminally overlooked Andy Richter Controls The Universe), but the opening credits are an absolute highlight. Set in 1960, right as everything is about to fall apart for a bunch of Madison Avenue mid-century men who drink & smoke as though liver failure & cancer didn’t exist (or at the very least, no one ever told them not to drink & smoke so damn much), and casually demean & harass every unmarried woman with the misfortune to work in the office (married women, of course, don’t work at the office, they stay home & raise their children while their husbands work).
The rampant racism & insane levels of sexism basically establish the world as belonging to these white men of privilege in Manhattan, with no idea of what’s coming to them in the next few decades. It would already be a mesmerizing show if that were the only reason to watch, but like The Sopranos before it, it quickly stopped being about the job & became about the characters, each of whom seems profoundly fucked up in different ways, but none so much as the main character, Don Draper, who seems to be just about to fracture at any moment from the pressure of being several different people (adulterer, executive, family man) while failing to commit wholeheartedly to any of the roles, revealing nothing about his life or his past with an almost compulsive fear of being discovered. It’s a great show, and hopefully enough people will watch so it doesn’t meet the fate of many other shows I’ve really loved (Firefly, Andy Richter, Arrested Development, Rome, Deadwood).
links for 2007-09-04
September 3, 2007-
Every single object on Earth, battered, deep fried, and stuffed inside another object that has been battered & deep fried.
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Freakin’ talented hobo artists!!
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Amazing, gruesome footage, the collision is so smooth it almost looks deliberate.
