The eff word

Perfume name: In-eff-able

via flickr.com

Were I to manufacture this, I would support it with a sleazy marketing campaign.

Posted via web from Poor Poor Thing

#poguetwitterbook

David Pogue has published a new book called The World According to Twitter and my alter ego Grinning Skull has a grand total of three entries included. There is lots of amusing stuff between the covers by my multitudinous co-authors.


Here's a picture of the autographed copy that came in the mail today

The book is available where books are sold, and is not available where books are not sold.

I'd make a bid and call it Team Holstein

From Reuters today:

I assume that Formula One is fortified whole, not 2%.

Purely descriptive

I was chatting with my buddy Daryl today and this concept for a T-shirt came up.

It is suitable for nursing mothers and for the strictly childfree alike. If it's been done before, I have been unable to find a citation to the concept.

SQL nerd alert

Drop,
originally uploaded by mag3737.

It's Mr. DROP TABLE;

Guide for former vegans

How to Hold a Drumstick

When I first saw the title, I thought it had to do with etiquette for barbeques. I mean, it might be conceivable that a person unaccustomed to eating poultry might pick one up by the meaty end (perhaps thinking that this is the best way to do it if one were actually planning to play some drums with the thing), though it is hard for me to picture the scenario. Anyway, perhaps one should start a new wikiHow article with this in mind, going into all the regional variants, sauce vs. breading considerations, dipping technique, and so forth.

A post for the informed customer

When considering a major purchase such as a router, it is important to consider the pluses and minuses of the different offerings. So as a public service, here's a rundown of two major manufacturers' offerings.

Cisco ASE 1000 series	Festool OF 1010, OF 1400, OF 2200, MFK700
Processing power in 1U format	Dust collection
High availability	Depth adjustment
Scalable service intelligence	Guide rail compatibility
Granular real-time policy and traffic management	Tool-less changes
Quantum Flow Processor	Ratcheting collet
Scalable and flexible packet processing	MMC electronics
Unified firewall	Engineering & Design

I was a little disappointed that neither vendor addressed the really important questions posed by average consumers: Does it come in teal or in burgundy? What kinds of questions will you get from TSA when you try to bring on onto an airplane? Which one would reach the ground first when dropped from a second-storey window?

Baby-shaped bath oil beads

Oily Beads,
originally uploaded by gorgeosity made flesh.

Yes, little squishy beads in the shape of little babies that you throw into your hot bathwater, just so that you can say that you did in fact just now throw out a couple of babies out with your bathwater, ha-ha. A sure-fire gift idea, not only for Christmas gifts but throughout the year for baby showers, with only one problem: it seems impossible to find the thing ready-made anywhere. On the net I can find heart-shaped beads, duck-shaped beads, rounds and ovals, stars, even bath oil beads shaped like frogs (broken link), but not those shaped like infants for some reason.

And that, friends, is why I started this idea blog: so nobody else need ever be disappointed in this way again.

(Last year's holiday gift ideas)

I'd like to teach the world to whine

We went on a lightning holiday to western Massachusetts and I came back with threetwo tiny little issues to carp about.

1. I thought I'd be prudent and rotate out the Sprint phone card that I kept with the jump bag I prepared last summer. The idea was to use it to call my parents in California and avoid the extortionate rates commonly charged by the motel we were staying at. Neither the card nor the folder it was attached to had any date on it, but deep in the fine print was a line about how the card expires "15 months from the date of purchase/activation." When I input the number on the card, a synthesized voice informed me that the account I used was "invalid," so I called up the Customer Service number about this. I was prepared to pay some kind of fee or other in order to recoup some of the minutes I thought I'd bought, or at least be told how I could recharge the thing with more minutes, even at a rate just about as exorbitant as the room phone rate. Instead, I got the voice of a rep nearly as cold as the computer voice, informing me that the number was not in the computer and there was no provision for refund.
   I know the Nextel merger was a costly one, but would it really have been too much to expect them to keep the number on record a month or two longer, if only in hopes of extracting more money out of your consumer? Was it so important to take my $20 and run with it with such unseemly haste? Doesn't it actually make good business sense to put an expiration date on the product if only to encourage a repeat sale when the time draws near? But no, the unfeeling telecom sees fit to do none of these things, and for that they deserve my scorn and rancor, now and for a long time to come.
   In the same vein, only with regard to gift cards, I point out the public service announcement: Don't Give Your Friends Fees this Holiday Season!


2. We went out to the movies Thanksgiving evening, and as our group could not reach a consensus choice, split according to gender, the ladies seeing the latest Disney movie and us guys opting for medieval fare.
   Please note, kids, the book is different.
   I give the moviemakers credit for including the side stories about Beowulf's swimming-race early on (gory though the depiction of it was), and didn't even find too much to object to with regard to the repurposing of Grendel's mom which made the final climactic battle a struggle between father and son. The thing I did not much care for was the way Zemeckis mistrusted the audience to pick up the bit of foreshadowing regarding the proper way to dispatch a dragon: the B-man is helped out by having the weak spot picked out in vivid color, as if it were made of the stuff of mood rings perhaps, a "plot point" which by all rights ought to have been labeled "break glass in case of dramatic climax," then having the old hero reach in to fool with his offspring's viscera in a way that reminded me to much of this:
   
   
   
   So actually, that part's not like the original poem. But maybe if this does well at the box office, they'll do a cinematic version of The Elder Edda.
   
   Edited to add: I think this happy fellow has the right idea - don't go into battle with a sword that's too damn short.

Mix 'n match

I think if I were to start a gaming store which included products of a military sort, I could do worse than to name it Rocket Propelled Games.

Alternatively, please enjoy this picture

of a Role-Playing Grenade.

Caution, military-grade earworms ahead

I would love to be able to do a mashup of a 1970's sitcom

with a stately funeral march

just so that it could be titled Marcia Marcia Marcia Funebre.

Tattoo

When I saw this, I wondered "Does this wrist belong to a girl named Ester Bond?"

(via)

Though I think that if one wished to use a tattoo to cheat on Organic Chemistry exams one might be better off using a programmable one for versatility.

You may groan now

1. Yet another unclaimed tubey domain name: wootube.com


2. If there's a group of psychopathic environmental maniacs looking for a name out there, might we suggest Helter Swelter


3. I learned that you can request a free personalized phone or email message from Optimus Prime. This gave me the idea to launch a copycat site, where you would receive a phone or email message from the robot's subclinically depressed sibling, Pessimus Secundus.

Cosplay Prime,
originally uploaded by downbeat.

My new album

would be entitled God Saved the Queen and Won a Valuable Prize.

If only I were an English punk rocker thirty years ago.

Diamond Issue: The State Crown,
originally uploaded by diamonds.iceforever.

Tiny Ural

I did a search on "Ural" in Flickr and was rewarded beyond all my imagining. Sadly, the domain seems to have been already snapped up.

Ural Dnepr,
originally uploaded by Max le ferrailleur.

A sculpture I want to see

It's Omnia Vincit Armor, in the Smithsonian Archives. Based on the description as "A nude male and female figure, with winged scarab, symbolic of immortality.", I would guess that it doesn't look too much like this modern version (Link broken).

I think that shirt should come with Kevlar plates attached. It should be quite popular among our troops.

In every handyman's toolbelt

I'm a little surprised this joke seems not to have been done before.

What to do when encountering snakes on a beach

I would like to promote the adjective laocoonic, meaning one who seldom speaks except to say 'aaah, get them off of me, get them OFF!' Have we not all had days like that?
IMAGE NOT AVAILABLE

My rebus won!

David of Ironic Sans had two Joost invitations to give away, so he set up a two part contest for his readers. I posted my movie-themed rebus and won part II! (Mouseover the link if you need a hint on what it means.)

Have a rebus to share? Post a link to it in the comments. Maybe I'll do the same. Just don't put anything up that looks like you're sending encoded messages to a terrorist cell which might attract unwanted attention by the authorities. (Hmmm.)

I shall give Joost video-on-demand beta a whirl and post something here about my impressions. You can find out a little more about Joost over at Ironic Sans or by doing a search. And if I need to give away any invitations, you'll find out about it here on the blog.

They smile in your face

The TSA's new backscatter X-ray scanning system might be much more popular if they put out some TV spots with a fabulous vintage background audio track.

As long as people don't listen to the words, that is. Let's see the mashup, people.