I love foreign swear words. Today’s word comes to us from Norway:
Graaaaaaaah! In case you can’t read that, the word is “faen.” Actually, it’s “FAEN!” Graaaaah! It’s Norway’s f-word, and Lasse Gjertsen has provided the world with a handy tutorial for using it. If you’re Finnish or Danish, you’re probably going to get offended:
The following cartoon was made in the heart of the Great Depression. For some reason this is making me think that our current economic situation is going to be good for everybody’s Saturday mornings. Am I being too optimistic?
I was pretty excited when I started perusing the archives for the now-defunct blog Cooking For Losers this morning. It was a community blog, so the recipes ran the gamut. You had something like:
take a whole wheat tortilla. spread half with plain cream cheese and the other half with hummus. drop some cucumber and yellow bell pepper in it.
fold in half. cut in two.
do that all over again.
pack in a ziploc thingy.
add orange, granola bar, and yogurt to the lunchbox.
top with ice packs and closeforget lunchbox at home.
and then the next entry was:
Drink very dark beer and eat Whoppers™ or some other quality malted milk ball product.
There were a lot of recipes for stoned people:
smoke bowl
open bag of sterzing’s potato chips
open jar of applesauce
dip chips in applesaucedo not attempt this recipe with any other brand of potato chips. this is very important.
but also for overwhelmed parents:
2 packets Lipton Cheddar Broccoli Rice for Losers
1 packet hot dogsPut the amount of water it says on the packets in a pot. Realize the packet calls for butter, which you do not have due to a tragic Act of SevenYearOld. Realize the measuring spoons are dirty and there’s no hot water, due to hosing off the SevenYearOld after the butter incident. Add a random splash of oil and call it good enough. Cut the hot dogs into the oily watery faux-cheesy rice crap, put a lid over it and run to haul the kid away from where he’s attempting to pull one of the hard drives out of the computer. Pull the cheesy broccoli rice hot dog casserole off the stove when you start to smell burning. Tend to where you burned yourself trying to keep the child from thrusting his hand into lava hot casserole. Feed the child and count the minutes until the little snot will fall asleep so that you can ferret through your kitchen to see if you have anything alcoholic on the shelves. Think that people who hate children might have a point.
Even the asshole at work who eats other people’s lunches made a contribution:
Dinner at the office
Must be between 9pm and 11pm
20 sugar packets
1 cup of terrible office coffee
15 mints from the secretary’s jar down the hall who went home 4 hours ago and will never find out
Miscellaneous foods left in office refrigerator.Drink terrible (but free!) office coffee quickly. Eat sugar packets to erase the taste. Eat mints, 5 at a time, until nausea sets in. Then peruse the office fridge for food items that have been left and eat everything you can find. Laugh heartily.
But then I noticed that an awful lot of the recipes required planning and effort. Skill. Sauteeing. Overnight marinating. Homemade enchilada sauce. The recipe for Beef Strokin’ Off involved mincing fresh garlic. The unemployed person with a recipe woke up at 7:45 am. The instructions for making fish sticks while doing laundry showed a proper level of loserness when it explained that the tartar sauce in your fridge was years beyond its expiration date, but it suggested that you add dill weed to mayonnaise as a substitute sauce instead of just using mayonnaise. And really, if these people were true losers, they would not have real mayonnaise in the first place; they would be using Miracle Whip. These people weren’t losers; they were fancy.
Some weeks I can’t be bothered to go to the store or wash the dishes so every meal is just something spread on a tortilla and wrapped up. Hummus. Cream cheese. Peanut butter. Regular butter. No heating up, no adding spices; just wrap it up and go. So if these people really were losers like they said, what am I?
But then, I remembered: their website has been dead since January 2005, except for the ad for hoodia that was added in 2007. Permanent links to their individual posts don’t even work any more. I am still here and they are dead. Ha ha. Losers.
Photo by amy b on Flickr
With all the pre-emptions of America’s Next Top Model the past couple of weeks, last night’s viewing party/drinking game of ANTM was a very small affair – just Ross and Benny and I to watch the models as they lurch ever closer to the finale of this lackluster cycle. Ross has brought over some special edition Barack Obama wine, with Obama’s signature replicated on the back. Obama’s signature kind of looks like the Zodiac Killer‘s signature. Hey, wait a minute – did we just elect the Zodiac Killer president? Oh, there’s no time to worry about this right now; Tyra is asking us if we want to be on top. Oh boy, do we!
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Dear Readers,
I need your help. If you frequent this site you may be aware that I have some regular categories into which many posts fit quite nicely. I have the Lost & Found category, which features lost and found pet notices but also veers off track from time to time without too much fuss. I have the Store Front Art category, which features art that has achieved greatness beyond its original intention to attract customers to a business; not all of the art featured in Store Front Art is actually painted on the front of a store, but it fits the spirit of the category. Yesterday, however, I found this flyer on my front gate, and I must admit it confounded me:
Do I put this in Lost & Found or Store Front Art? Or do I just post this to the Flickr group photo pool dedicated to Stick Figures In Peril? Anybody who has ever tried to saw something while not having any hands or elbow joints knows that the contractor depicted above is in a perilous situation indeed.
So, please:
Last week I posted a photo that I found on another website, a photo of a menu from Thailand. This menu described magical things – demon moustaches, shrimp conflagration, an eternity of lumber… it was a veritable ninth circle of eternal seafood damnation.
Well. My friend Randy was rather shocked to see this photo, because he and another friend had visited this very Inferno, and he had taken another photo depicting even further glories and torments:
Yes, it is here that we are introduced to the Splendid Squid and a crustacean fire, if we are to look carefully in the lower left-hand corner. This particular Avici appears as a humble food stall in Thailand near the border of Laos. Travelers, adventure with caution.
Photo © Randy Horton
Last week the Strong National Museum of Play announced its 2008 inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame, and one has been getting a lot of attention: the stick. From the museum’s press release:
“Found in all sizes in nature, sticks inspire spontaneous, unstructured play and can be used in unendingly imaginative ways—to draw in the sand on a beach, or to use as a magic wand, slingshot, light saber, fishing rod, or walking stick; not to mention playing stickball, toasting marshmallows, or playing ‘fetch’ with your dog.”
Congratulations, stick! I know some people said that you were inducted due to some heavy lobbying by the dog board, but I think you’re every bit as entitled to your place as some previous inductees like the kite, marbles, and the cardboard box. Of course, the latter had its own lobbying effort by another popular animal group, so let’s not throw stones. Hey, stones. When’s the rock lobby going to show their muscle here?
Photo by SMN on Flickr
I will never understand the reinventions of certain cartoon characters, particularly Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck. All three started their lives out as lunatics who succeeded in the world by being oblivious to it, but they fairly quickly shed these personas; the first two became mere smart-aleck bullies, and the latter became a bitter, jealous coward. What was the thinking behind this? Aren’t cartoons supposed to be funny? What’s funnier – Daffy Duck’s “woo hoo woohoowoowoohoo!” or his “that’s dethspicable!“? My mind is made up on the matter.
The following is Woody Woodpecker’s first starring role, following a triumphant supporting role in an Andy Panda cartoon. This cartoon has nearly everything: a male bird laying an egg, gossiping squirrels, Woody’s fantastic buck teeth. Unfortunately, this version does not have the last minute and a half of the cartoon, so you’re going to have to use your imagination or huff some ether or something to get to a satisfying conclusion:
For some reason, actual etiquette regarding hair is hard to come by. Most of the etiquette books I perused either had nothing to say on the matter or beauty and grooming advice rather than etiquette. If I’m looking for beauty tips, I’m not going to go to an etiquette book; I’m going to go to my favorite book on the subject: Polly Bergen’s Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm.
Mona Rosario, my best friend during freshman year of high school, left this book at my house once when she slept over and I never got around to giving it back to her. I kind of feel bad about that, but I also love this book so much that I’m glad I still have it. It has really interesting advice about treating sunburns and acting your age, and the book still smells like Mona. I smelled and smelled my bookshelves last night trying to find the book, but I was unsuccessful. So for now, you have a straight etiquette tip direct from my very own unfinished etiquette book:
ETIQUETTE: If you are an overnight guest in someone’s home and use the bathtub or shower, be sure to rid the bathing area of any hair that may have fallen off your body during your ablutions. Nothing sickens people more than having to clean up somebody else’s hair from the drain or, worse, a bar of soap. You will never be asked back to this person’s home if they have to pull your hair out of their soap. Do an extra hair check in the tub area after you have completely dried yourself off and you should be fine.
SUPERSTITION: You should keep track of your hair for a few reasons. #1: When you die, you don’t get to go into Heaven unless you have all of your hair and nail clippings with you, and if you have to run around Earth finding all of your old hair and nails it’s going to be very time consuming. #2: If a sorcerer gets a drop of your blood along with some of your hair and a nail clipping, he will have complete power over you. #3: If a magpie uses some of your hair in its nest, you will die within a year and a day.
Mona, you can have your book back if you really want it. Just let me know.
Hare hair shown above and other animal coifs can be found at uchu-country
Today’s fashion post is dedicated to Tyra Banks. Here’s a little thing designed by Tobias Wong that can make your most intimate parts every bit as glamorous as your earlobes and fingers:
Silver pills. You swallow them and your poop sparkles. Yes! Of course, I’m sure Tyra believes that her poop already shines silver; otherwise why would she allow her show to be pre-empted two weeks in a row in Los Angeles by a local team vs. local team basketball game without worrying that she might be alienating ANTM viewers? Yes, Tyra, I’m aware that I could have caught the east coast feed of your program, but only if I have premium cable instead of my basic cable and I’M NOT GOING TO PAY FOR PREMIUM CABLE JUST TO WATCH THE TOP MODELS. I know you probably think I should be directing my anger toward KTLA rather than to you, Tyra and well, maybe you’re right.
Okay, don’t take the silver pills. I don’t want my TyTy turning blue or anything. You don’t need them anyway; your shit probably does sparkle. Just don’t let it happen next week.
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