Customer (on the phone): Hey, I'm from out of town. We're staying downtown at the Sofitel and we just wanted to know if you're near anything.
What I actually said was, "I'm not sure I understand the question." What I meant to say was, "No ma'am we exist in a vacuum in the inky black nothingness of space. The only way to get here is through your mind." Honestly, were in the third largest city in the nation were gonna be near SOMETHING!
Labels: Blue Man Group
This story frightened me.
A man from Humble, Texas...let me just stop the story right there. Humble, Texas? HUMBLE? Texas? They think they are their own country! Humility is not in their genetic make up. And isn't naming a town Humble kinda asking for trouble anyway?
But I digress. A man from Humble,Texas was arrested for beating a man to death with a rock at a New Jersey rest stop. (See, I told you Humble was just asking for trouble.) The accused is Brian White, age 25. The deceased is Michail Makarenko, age 70.
What provoked White to lash out so violently against Makarenko? Makarenko refused to buy something from White: RELIGIOUS CD's! I guess White figured he was without sin and so he...well, you get where I'm going here.
In the interest of fairness, White is a DJ who goes by the name of DJ Coldblooded so there were warning signs. But I'm not here to defend the indefensible.
Makarenko had been living in the US since 1982. He was originally from the former Soviet Union where he ran a gallery. He used his gallery to exhibit the works of artists that were banned by the communist government. As a result spent 11 years in a Soviet prison.
He survived the godless Communist's and their prison system only to be beaten to death in America by a crazy religious fanatic.
Shift.
There is nothing inherently funny about the word itself, but the misspelling of it is often hilarious.
Yesterday Jen came home and told me about a computer training that she had to do at work. It was after a long day on the floor (she's a nurse) and she was a little...punchy. Slap happy. Silly. And at one point the program asked her to type the word, "shift." She typed "shift," but the "F" did not register. She giggled and typed it again. Nothing. She nudged the nurse next to her. She giggled too. Jen typed again, again NO "f." She invited everyone within the sound of her voice to try to type it and it kept coming up wrong. They finally decided that the person who wrote the program was either really bored or 13 years old. Both are equally likely.
This reminded me of a story that ran in my hometown paper YEARS ago. When I was in 6th grade the elementary school decided to build a new playground. It was designed by a guy named Bob Leathers. Bob's shtick is that he comes to town and has a "meeting" with all the kids where he asks them what they want in their playground. These being kids of course they shout out things like, "a castle," or "a rocketship" or "a solar-powered hamster launcher." You know, crazy stuff. And Bob just smiles and nods while jotting down all of it and making ridiculous promises that could not conceivably be kept even if the resources and technology were available. (So we settled for coal-burning hamster launchers. Sorry Al Gore, looks like global warming is totally the fault of Grundy Center, Iowa!)
But here's the beauty of Bob's gig: he doesn't build it. The community does. He's just the pied piper of playgrounds. Bob comes to town on a cloud of promises, draws some crap and splits with sacks and sacks of cash. Then the town has to pull together to attempt to keep from disappointing the kids who were promised a dinosaur fighting a shark in a tank of Legos.
So the playground committee places an ad in the paper to drum up volunteers. It stated that you could contact the committee to sign up for a shift. THAT one was spelled right. This one wasn't: "We know once you've done one four hour shift you'll want to sign up for another."
It's amazing the playground got built at all.
Labels: Bob Leathers, Grammar, Jen, Playgrounds, Spelling
April 5, 2006 we lost a valued member of the family. He went suddenly and did not suffer. There was no autopsy to speak of, but we assumed that it was a pretty spontaneous and anomalous occurrence. I mean, that's probably just me trying to put a brave face on it, right? I have to believe that it was a totally random event or else the world would be to bleak to contemplate I guess. Anyway, it turns out that this death wasn't a total fluke that we thought it was. In fact, it runs in the family. I know because this very morning we buried his son, Junior.
I'm not trying to scare anyone, but we all need to face this together. WAKE UP AND START LIVING! Life is precious so you need to value your time with them when you can get it because you never know. You just never know. You can never tell when your iPod is going to crash...or when the replacement iPod is ALSO going to crash! So you need to enjoy every note of every song because you never know when they'll be gone forever. Take it from me. I know, because I didn't do that with the Pea Pod or Pea Pod, Jr. But I'm not making that mistake with P. Poddington, III. He will be cherished.
And Junior? Goodnight sweet prince. May a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Labels: Apple, Computer Problems, iPod, Technology
A woman came to the window to buy tickets yesterday who had the unfortunate name of Sarah Kraut. If that doesn't sound odd to you, try saying it out loud as if it were one word.
Labels: Names, Weird News
According to my trusty Google homepage, on this date in 1869 Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev unveiled the first periodic table at the World Science and Sciencey Type Stuff Bazaar and Bake Sale. In honor of this great achievement (and because I am exceedingly LAZY) I am rerunning an old favorite: "Congratulations, It's An Element!" It is a blog post from July of 2005 that showcases the best of Russia and America. From Russia we get staggering works of scientific advancement and from America (or more precisely from ME) we get the very philistine ignorance that we are known for all over the world! (But ESPECIALLY in the middle east!)
Enjoy this one from the vaults!
-Management
*****
So I was taking an on-line quiz today that asked something about the periodic table of elements. When they revealed the answer to that question it turns out I'd gotten it wrong, but they provided a link you could follow and learn more about the elements and the people that discovered them. Well, as I perused the table (that's right, I PERUSED! I used to ogle tables, but I was young and impetuous then and those days are behind me.) and I found out that the two newest elements (Ununquadiurr and Ununhexium) had been discovered in 1998 and 2000. When I found out I was giddy as a school girl. I had only one thought, "Where do I send the presents?" So I looked up the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia (the place where the elements were discovered) and found an e-mail address for the director of the institute. His name is Vladimir Georgievich Kadyshevsky. So I e-mailed him this letter...
"Dear Director Kadyshevsky,
I understand that congratulations are in order! Ununquadiurr (114)AND Ununhexium (116), wow! Boy, just when you think the periodic table is full, huh? "Nope, no more room for elements here, we're closed for business. Thanks for your interest, we have all the elements we need!" But then you and your team come along and say, "Oh yeah? I don't think so! I'm coming to this party! I think you hear me knocking and I'm coming in with my friends Ununquadirir and Ununhexium! Get me some Buffalo wings!" Yeah!
Sorry these congratulations are so overdue. Your baby elements are now 5 and 7 respectively, right? Wow, do you have any pictures of them from their first day of school? Ha, ha, just kidding! I JUST found out about this! Can you believe it? I mean, if Tom Cruise blows his nose it makes the news and I hear about it. But this I miss...and keep on missing for seven years! Man, can I get on your e-mail list or something? I don't want to miss the next big element! I feel just awful. Is there somewhere I can send a card or some flowers or a nice ice cream cake? Please let me know as soon as possible!
Anyway, I don't want to keep you. I know you're very busy...and probably overdue to discover another element! Congratulations.
-Chris Gummert
Chicago, Illinois
USA
PS- Is there anywhere you'd recommend for the ice cream cake?"
To learn more here's the link to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, click here.
And to annoy the director of the JINR, Vladimir Georgievich Kadyshevsky, email him here: kadyshev@jinr.ru
****
For the record, I have yet to hear from anyone at JINR. *SIGH*
Labels: Chemistry, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, News, Russia
Have you been feeling a little smarter than normal lately? It's like due to The Associated Press' week long ban on reporting about Paris Hilton. The wire service giant decided to run a little experiment because, "...editors just wanted to see what would happen if we didn't cover this media phenomenon, this creature of the Internet gossip age, for a full week. After that, we'd take it day by day. Would anyone care? Would anyone notice? And would that tell us something interesting?"
The answers, across the board, were a resounding "NO." In fact, the only reason anyone knew that the AP had stopped reporting on Paris Hilton was that they read about it in a news story FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS! In a still more perplexing feat of journalistic gymnastics the story then went on to recount every minute of Paris' life from the past week. (Selling perfume to Puerto Rico you say? DO TELL!) Fox News, which ran the AP story, even went so far as to add a link to even more stories about Paris Hilton. Say what you will about those compassion deficient bastards at Fox News (Don't mind if I do. AHEM! They eat the hearts of newborn children!) but they knew how badly you've been needing a Paris fix!
What finally broke the Paris news embargo? Paris got ticketed for driving with a suspended license, a bit of information that, by the AP's own admission, is not news. And yet they readily admit to putting out a 300 word story on it. So in one sentence they can deride other news sources for awarding this talentless pile of steaming entitlement her celebrity status and in the next sentence cater to the celebrity junkies who want to pick through the contents of her latest bowel movement. (And by bowel movement I mean "album." She doesn't make the distinction, why should I?)
Well rest assured that our long collective nightmare of informative news gathering is at an end and soon we can settle back into the comforting rhythm of nursing at the tit of celebrity news. The irrelevance WILL be televised!
Labels: Associated Press, Fox News, Hollywood, Internet, News, Paris Hilton
