29 February 2008

Craig's List

Here are some more goodies from Craig's List (I have quoted from this site in the past).

I occasionally check out the "Missed Connections" section of Craig's List, an area where people write anonymously to people with whom they have felt a "missed connection". For example, if John makes meaningful eye contact with Jane in the grocery store but does not try and speak with her (and later regrets it), he may place on ad on "Missed Connections". It might read something like, "I saw you in the grocery store. I was wearing a wig and you were wearing a blue shirt with red pants. We looked at each other near the mustard. I'd love to see you again."

Or something like that.

Anyway, there is some character that seems to often post on this section of the site, writing amusing and amazing posts chock full of surreal images and interesting people. Below I have included the text from two such posts:

Subject: OMG the accident, I forgot about the accident

i swear, i don't know how, but i forgot all about the accident. of course the latvian/macedonian bint from ohio isn't carrying your love child. she wishes! don't we all, don't we all.

i told sigrid her jackal pants were confiscated at the border by irritable monkeys along with the tire rims and peanut butter cups. i think she'd rather believe they're being worn by some canadian sex-toy factory worker than torn and greasy and marked with the evidence of your alteration. (when do you get the stitches out, by the way?)

i hope you don't worry about your recent loss. you still radiate your special aura of sweet pickle relish and frothy lattes, and we all still want your crystal blessings, even benny, even after you unintentionally led him on with your talk of sensory deprivation tanks and organic radishes. how was he to know? thats what multi-level marketing does to a feller.

uncle jimmie said to tell you that wasn't him wearing the gladiator shoes at the klan meeting, he had lent them to his neighbor george, the one with the four daughters and the goat farm.

namaste


Subject: did you get the KFC and the craft foam I sent you?

u know how fond i am of dandelions so it only makes me wonder why you stayed on the ferris wheel so long. you missed the pony rides and drinking cherry hi-c behind the garage. lulu asked where you were and someone told her you'd joined the foreign legion because you like their hats, so she told the audience about when she used to be a mermaid. they all believed her because of how she smells. uncle jimmie said to tell you he's been getting treatment for his bunions and that you can borrow his humidifier any time as long as you promise to marry that latvian girl you knocked up. he doesn't know anything about the gold medal you won at the tractor pull that you took to the pawn shop to trade for that electric guitar and you can trust i won't mention it! drop me a line sometime and let me know if chartreuse really is your favorite color.

28 February 2008

Jail

Reported in the NY Times today:

1 in 100 American adults is behind bars.

Perhaps we're doing something wrong?

27 February 2008

Art

Update: Sorry the pictures below are so annoying "landscape" (in some cases). Hopefully I'll be able to fix this problem soon. In the meantime, turn your head to the side.

Xavi and Laura have been out of town in Peru recently, and I've been holding down the fort. I've spent my time taking care of the dogs, trying to keep the place clean, and creating strange and random works of art.

Some of my recent projects have included (pictures below):

1. A strange giraffe type animal. Unfortunately, the head was too heavy for it to work as planned (on a body), so it became a strange head atop a dowel.

2. An entire family (or army) of small black bottles with funny eyes. I plan to continue this piece, and eventually hope to make two entire armies of different colors.

3. A cast of my face. Note the blood--I had two short lengths of drinking straw in my nostrils to aid in respiration. I accidentally knocked them with my hand (my face was completely covered in plaster of paris). Once shoved back into my nasal cavity, they caused a great deal of bloodshed. I'll be back soon with pictures of the actual wound. In the meantime, enjoy the now brown blood on the mask itself.

4. A commissioned piece for a local bookstore/cafe. My friend David Earl built the sign in his metal shop and asked me to take care of the creation of the stencil and the painting of the whole sign.

More to come soon, as long as the manic energy and creativity hold strong.









20 February 2008

Musician-Nerds

When I went to college, I didn't have a cellphone. I had a slow computer and had never really used the internet before. Email seemed mind-blowing. People still looked a porn magazines and sometimes even sent letters. Ten years later, you have these guys below, jamming on three tiny super-computers.

19 February 2008

Cuttlefish

I just read this article in the New York Times about the camouflage protective measures of the cuttlefish. Below, you can watch the video of an octopus (both animals are cephalopods) using a similar survival technique.

Castro

Fidel Castro, the socialist dictator of Cuba since 1959, has resigned from power in Cuba. After nearly fifty years of American anger and belligerence, silly Euro-lefty deification, state-sponsored torture and censorship, the bearded one has finally relinquished his hold on Cuba's collective short and curlies.



George Bush, in a statement apparently without irony, commented that “The United States will help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty." Perhaps now the important work being done at Guantanamo Bay can spread to the rest of the island, just as democracy and peace have spread throughout the Middle East.

Unfortunately, it is Raul Castro to whom power falls, at least temporarily. Raul, the much less cool-looking brother of Fidel, was personally responsible for the summary executions of over 500 people in the days following the success of the Cuban Revolution.

What will happen now remains to be seen.

18 February 2008

Punctuation

I just read this article on the NY Times website and thought that I would share it with all who visit this site. Enjoy.

Read it here

Romney

Okay, so I know that Mitt Romney is old news, yesterday's leftovers and whatnot. Perhaps the video that I share below is old news as well to many of my readers. It is new to me, however, and just too good to keep all to myself, other readers of Frank Rich's column in the New York Times, and dedicated YouTube watchers.

Watch below as Mr. Romney, whitest of the white men, attempts to connect with young blacks through his arrhythmic and sad quoting of a once-popular rap song. I wonder, only half in jest, if he sings Sinatra tunes when hanging out with Italians, or "Feliz Navidad" when consorting with Latinos. My guess is that he doesn't.

While I do understand that candidates are so incredibly scrutinized that they must, without fail, stick their proverbial foot in their mouth on occasion, I'm still amazed by the ways in which they do so.

Enjoy.

15 February 2008

12 February 2008

Beeline

Unfortunately, not every visitor to this blog comes looking for what they find. In light of this realization, I thought it would be fun to take a brief look at the ways in which some people do end up here. See below a short list of some of the more interesting google searches that have brought people to my site. Enjoy.

Is camel meat any good
pancho villa born female
girls tea party panchos
staten sucks
asheville massage parlors
peanut butter bumpers
paper mache sperm cell
tattoos of turkeys
poncho via cut white peoples eyes out

In the Light

From a NY Times piece on the upcoming military tribunals at Guantanamo:

“I wish they had as coherent a strategy for fighting the war on terror as they do for politicizing the war on terror,” Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said on Monday.

AND

"Just last week, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, became the first government official to acknowledge publicly that those interrogations, in three cases, included the technique known as waterboarding, which simulates drowning and is regarded by many as torture."

If you know nothing or little about waterboarding, check out this Wikipedia article on the topic.

How long would it take you to confess to 9/11?

08 February 2008

A lovely day

Tis a lovely day here in Asheville. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the mercury is standing tall and proud, and people are smiling with good will and cheer.

Somehow though, I can't seem to enjoy sunny days like I used to. Moments of joy and ecstasy are inevitably interrupted by thoughts of global catastrophe, rising sea levels, massive drought, terrible storms, and drowning polar bears.

If you have not yet seen "An Inconvenient Truth", please go out and rent it today. It is well worth watching. While you're at it, go read "The Omnivore's Dilemma", a book by Michael Pollan that I have previously mentioned in this forum.

Finally (and I don't mean to sound high and mighty here, as I too am an environmental sinner in many ways), might I suggest taking a few steps toward lessening the impact of your carbon footprint? I'll merely mention a few things that I (and my roommates) have been attempting to change about our daily lives.

1. Don't get shopping bags at the grocery store. They are completely unnecessary, non-biodegradable, silly, annoying, and flat-out ugly. Buy a reusable bag (many grocery stores now sell them). Paper and plastic are both terrible, and are filling up our landfills and streets at an alarming rate.

2. Throw away your light bulbs and buy the new energy saving fluorescents. The light is not nearly as ugly as the old-school ones and they use something like a quarter of the energy.

3. Unplug your laptop chargers and cell phone chargers when you aren't using them. They continue to suck power even when not being utilized.

And that's that for today. Enjoy the sunshine (but ponder its provenance).

The Daily Show

Lily posted a comment on my last post and directed me to this video. Apparently I'm not the only one to have read Mitt Romney's speech and declared, "Ay Caramba! This man is a lunatic!"

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney announced his decision to depart from the presidential race yesterday. In a move that was as arrogant and bellicose as the rest of his campaign, he announced that he was leaving because, "Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding the surrender to terror."

Simply incredible.

06 February 2008

05 February 2008

Earworm

Go check out the latest post on www.njhipster.blogspot.com. My brother Brian has been reviewed.

See his MySpace Page here.

In other music news, my brother PJ is now playing guitar with the band Charlotte Sometimes.

In wholly other news, I'm currently enjoying a delicious Lox Bagel for $4.50 at the Clingman Avenue Cafe in Asheville. Quite an improvement from the $11 Lox Platter at Livingston Bagel, my hometown bagel shop. Speaking of which....

When Brian (of mention above) and I visited Livingston Bagel over the Christmas holiday, we asked about the price of the mentioned Lox Platter. When we were informed of the extravagant amount of money being asked, Brian responded eloquently, asking, "Are you f#$*ing kidding me? That's f$%&ing ridiculous!"

Quite nice. Well said.

04 February 2008

Geography

According to a Gallup poll:

-1 in 7 American adults cannot locate the United States on a world map

-25% of a sample of Dallas high school students did not know that Mexico was the country bordering the US to the south.

'Tis a frightening thing to consider ignorance.