Category: categories

Gratuitous Blogger/Web Techniques Plug: Have I mentioned I love my job, and my boss? The magazine I work for just donated a new server to Blogger, the exceptional and free service I use to update my page. Here’s the announcement from the Blogger home page:

Woohoo! Remember I mentioned there would be more good news about the Server Fund? It’s this: on top of the huge contributions you all made, WebTechniques magazine bought us another server. That brings our total Server Fund contributions over $15,000 and gives us enough fire power to last a long time — or enough to hurt ourselves, we’ll see.
Here’s the official press release. Yay! WebTechniques rocks.

-Ev. [1/23/2001 10:43:23 AM]

10:58 a.m.

The best headlines from this month’s Martha Stuart Living:

  • Collecting Pincushions
  • Remembering Brioche
  • Finger-Puppet Master
  • Crocus: A little flower packed with big surprises.
  • President’s Day Pretzel Log Cabin

10:19 a.m.

After you’ve had your aura cleaned, consider having your ass read. You send Jaqueline “a fanny gram,” she tells you what your buttprint says about your soul. Well, at least now you have an excuse when your boss catches you perched on top of the photocopier. (Click on the “rumpology” button in the upper left corner.)

3:14 p.m.

This is creepy Web art. Childlike drawings with hostile-man score. If you’re at work, bust out the headphones before you click.

12:36 a.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: College friend reminisces about his youth.

Excerpt:

My mother would frequently record tape cassettes and send
them to my grandparents, uncles and aunts, et al. to
mark our progress (this was before the invention of
the motion-picture camera). On one these tapes, my
mother tells me “stop that” seventy-eight times in a
matter of fifteen minutes. One of my favorite lines is
when she yells, “you better NOT pee on the couch.”

9:55 a.m.

Amazing article about an abandoned National Security Association spy station.

5:20 p.m.

My friend Sam blogged about a bumper sticker he saw that said, “Shake Your Ass for Jesus.” That’s fairly in line with my personal philosopy, which is that Jesus is a big fan of joyous booty motion.

2:44 p.m.

I cut this out of Newsweek a few years ago, and just came across it again:

“A mistake was made by a junior staffer who is no longer with the campaign.”

Dole for president deputy press secretary Christina Martin, on a letter Washington DC resident Irv Rastin received thanking him for his contribution, which began “Dear Cheetoh Breath”

9:49 a.m.

“It is no coincidence that you cross your fingers when you say ‘ready’ in sign language.”

From “Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross” by Melanie Bogue.

2:56 p.m.

Another reason I love Jane magazine, this review of the “Buttkicker Shaker”:

A $700 device you can attach to your couch to electrify your movie watching and music-listening experiences. Let’s say you rent Vertical Limit. When snow roars down the mountain, your Buttkicker-enhanced sofa will shake like you were actually in an avalanche, except without the death part. When I watch movies, I never think, “I’m missing out because when the bombs go off onscreen, I don’t feel anything in my butt.”

12:20 p.m.

I had a dream last night that a ’50s-dad type was telling me about taking his family on a trip out to California: “Yeah, we went to Silicon Valley to see the Internet. I thought we’d be able to just walk right up close enough to touch it, but they kept it behind about five feet of glass. The kids were disappointed.”

10:39 a.m.

Yes, it’s a poem, but it’s a good poem. Besides which, there’s a link to pornographic balloons below it. So humor me:

Sentimental Moment or Why Did
the Baguette Cross the Road?

     Don't fill up on bread
     I say absent-mindedly
     The servings here are huge

     My son, whose hair may be
     receding a bit, says
     Did you really just
     say that to me?

     What he doesn't know
     is that when we're walking
     together, when we get
     to the curb
     I sometimes start to reach
     for his hand

     Robert Hershon

1:12 p.m.

You thought clowns were scary before. Wait until you check out these balloons
9:55 a.m.

Great post from Metafilter:

Four out of Five Americans Know Earth Revolves around the Sun. I certainly wish this was an Onion Headline. Should we all know this? I’m inclined to think so. Elsewhere in the article, 2% of Americans believe that Independence was won from France. Shoot me in the face.

posted by liquidgnome at 11:00 AM PST

1:09 p.m.

Today’s not-good thing:

My fly has been open for several hours. My pants are tan. My underwear is red.

5:03 p.m.

Thanks to this what-happened-on-your-birthday-type site, I now know that the first shipment of fresh oysters came overland from Baltimore on the day I was born. Well, about a kazillion years before I was born on that day, but still. Crucial.

12:57 p.m.

This is a seven-year-old body builder. I’ve been there once, I’m never, ever going there again.

10:42 a.m.

I’m reading Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, a short story collection flavored with lots of details about Indian life. I don’t usually like short stories, but Lahiri is an uncommon writer. My favorite passage so far is a child’s description of what “sexy” means:

“It means loving someone you don’t know.”

4:43 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: Friend tells me to use his car while he’s gone.

Excerpt:

You are perfectly welcome to drive my car around. Just remember to turn the lights off and you should be fine. Oh, and I’d probably prefer it if I could say that I’ve had sex in it more than you have, so try to keep the numbers down.

2:04 p.m.

My dentist supplies headphones for her patients. When you’ve got some quality tunes playing, you hardly notice the smell of burning tooth enamel while she drills. I selected Louis Armstrong.

Two masked dentists leaned over me, backed by a glaring, operating-table light, while I tried not to gag on the spit collecting at the back of my throat. At the peak of my discomfort, Louis sang, “AND I THINK TO MAHSELF, WHUTTA WONDERFUHL WAHHHLD� (cue strings).” I swear, it was like stepping into a Quentin Tarantino movie. I found it so absurd that I had to control the urge to laugh (funeralsbreakupsthethingsIwishI’dknown). But the more depressing things I thought about, the worse the juxtaposition became. When “Life is a Cabaret” came on, I lost it. With my mouth stretched open like a gasping trout, I started to guffaw.

They, mercifully, assumed I was choking. I tried to cover my lunacy with a few well-placed coughs, and hit stop on the CD player while I was sitting up. I shoulda gone with Korn.

10:55 a.m.

Tantara– The blare of a trumpet or horn.


3:13 p.m.

Best responses from a magazine blurb about what women call their knockers:

  • The Pointer Sisters,
  • Laverne and Shirley,
  • and, my personal favorite, MacNeil and Lehrer.

Still can’t believe no one suggested the Olson Twins.

11:34 a.m.

MARKETING WORKS!

I recently bought some lipstick because it was named Jezebel. I mean it’s a good color, but mostly the name cracked me up; also, it came in a container that looked like a bullet cartridge. Somewhere in New York, a marketing team is slapping fives. They changed the name from Crimson Punch to Jezebel, took it out of the tortoise-shell tube and packed it in a form of weaponry, and sales rocketed among urban twentysomethings. I am yet another unwitting victim of their plan to dominate the red-lipstick market. Anyway, it was totally worth it. Tomorrow night a bunch of us are getting together to run off a cliff, and I want to look hot.

8:39 a.m.

This is a calendar featuring women with beards. Friends, family members: if you have a birthday in January, you know what you’ll be getting from me.

2:15 p.m.

I’m wearing a new lemon perfume, and a friend told me I “smell like dish soap.” In guy-speak that means, “I want to rip your clothes off with my teeth.”

12:21 p.m.

I booked tickets to Indonesia yesterday because my life is rad. The only problem is, I’m terrified of the vaccinations. I know no one likes needles, but I don’t like them more. One of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever done involved a blood test when I was 14.

In the waiting room I swallowed repeatedly trying to conquer the excessive panic-saliva. When they tried to take me into the room, I grabbed either side of the doorjamb. It took three men to pry me off and hold me down while they drew my blood. My mom was stunned and mortified. “I can’t believe this, you’re practically a grown woman! What are you doing? This is really out of character, I’m so sorry. This is really out of character.” To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking, I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that they’d fight me.

So, yeah. The vaccinations will be a highlight.

10:45 a.m.