Month: February 2001

Caterina linked to this site awhile ago, and I’m addicted. The objective is to tell a computer very basic things (Fire can burn you. Trees have leaves.), as though you’re teaching a young child. My mission is to give the machine some poetry. Want to help? I’m going through books and simplifying statements by my favorite authors. For example:

  • People look mostly the same as they did 100 years ago.
  • Love can be so strong that it resembles appetite.
  • A violin can sound as though it is singing because it aches.
  • When you are unhappy, the night seems longer.

4:42 p.m.

Sweet ‘N’ Low makes everything taste like cancer.

11:46 a.m.

Hat-Baby is my new favorite term of endearment. I don’t even know what this is, but it’s such a happy little link. A commercial? Some kind of odd joke? Watch the first thirty seconds, it gets redundant after that. Here’s a partial translation of what they’re singing.

8:33 a.m.

Great post from Plastic Bag:

” I received a referral today from Google via Yahoo!. Someone
had typed in “load urge rectum girl”. I was, of course, the first
result. Which fills me with worry. Am I fulfilling the needs of the
Load Urge Rectum Girl community? Are they satisfied with the
information on my site? How can I turn their initial browsing into
a recurrent user pattern? Will they become a repeat visitor? Oh,
user behaviour analysis is so very tiring…”

4:35 p.m.

Chocolate truffles and tango music while you watch animals mount each other? Only in San Francisco:

Valentine’s Day Sex Tour (Sat/10-Sun/11)

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

What does Valentine’s Day mean to you? Candy conversation hearts? Frilly
cards scrawled with gushy poems? A diamond tennis bracelet on your pillow?
Perhaps you are the unconventional sort who would rather watch animals mate
at the San Francisco Zoo with your beloved. Yes, picture yourselves holding
hands and sipping champagne while you roll through the zoo on your very own
private X-rated tram tour led by an animal care professional, sampling
chocolate truffles and listening to tango music. Not a bad way to feel the love. — Jan Richman

San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo Road, SF; Sat/10, Sun/11; 9 am and 3 pm; $50; (415) 753-7080.

(Update: Errr… Make that “Only in San Francisco and San Diego.”)

2:51 p.m.

So this guy is driving a sports car with a license plate holder that says, “Get in. Sit down. Hold on. Shut up.” Charming. He probably has a matching one hanging above his bed.

12:12 p.m.

I am so sick of reading blogs by women who pepper their intelligent, hilarious posts with frequent mentions of how ugly/fat/flat/unwantable/unloveable they are. (As if pointing these things out weren’t the least attractive thing they could do.) But recently, I came across Accidental:

“In my old age, I am getting vain. I find myself walking the extra 100 yards or so to the bathroom with the mirror so I can check my coif. And let me tell you, I did not realize how cute I am. Hello world, I am cute. Check me out, bad boy.”

I love this woman. As for the rest of you, I’ve seen the photos, girls. Ninety percent of you have bodies that would stop passing traffic and/or eyes big enough to signal planes. Shut up! Shut up! Before I reach through the monitor and thump you.

3:03 p.m.

“Multitudes succumb to the sorrow induced by an inexact vocabulary.”

(From “Doubt” by Fannie Howe.)

9:35 a.m.

Great post from memepool:

“Nothing says ‘My business is all about wretched excess’ more than stainless
steel business cards.”

2:41 p.m.

Short conversations with people who should be slain:

  • -Did you get your hair cut?-I got all of ’em cut.
  • -What a mistake.-You can say that again.

    -What a mistake.

  • -What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.-What?

    -I said I couldn’t hear you.

    -What?

    -I COULDN’T HEAR YOU.

    -WHAT?

2:19 p.m.

So you know, the yellow conversation hearts are banana flavored. I’ll be over here, scrubbing my tongue with sand.

2:34 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: In which I send encouragement to an aspiring artist and am rebuffed.

Me: “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.”
-Charles Horton Cooley

Dave: I would posit that I must first
be accepted, or slightly talented, to actually be an artist. If all
I had to do was call myself something to also be something, then I would
suggest that I am, in fact, a raging porn star…

12:19 p.m.

This Slashdot article highlights a North Carolina service that lets high school kids call in and report students that cause them concern. (Someone has a BB gun in their locker? Call in. Someone seems bummed a lot? Call in. Someone just stole your girlfriend and you’d like to screw them over in any way possible? Call in.) The article also mentions that “81 percent of Americans said they believed the Net was responsible for the Columbine massacre.” Right. If you need me, I’ll be under my bed.

10:19 a.m.