Weirdest Thing Ever

I read a lot of weird news sites on a regular basis, both for my own entertainment and more recently, also for work. You see a lot of strange shit on there.

Not much shocks me anymore, and I've gotten a bit cynical about ever seeing anything that truly surprises me on there.

Friday, while I was catching up on Fark's backlog, I saw this story: Sons I Gave Birth To Are 'Unrelated' To Me.

Hands down, the explanation of how this happened has got to be the strangest thing I've read in at least the past six months, probably more like a year.

I showed the story to a few people and they had one of two reactions (though occasionally a little of both): 1. "EWWWWWWWWWWW!" 2. "I...didn't even know that was possible!"

All, however, agreed it was one of the strangest things they'd heard in quite some time.

You Know Your Job Is Officially Bizarre When....

You consider this a normal conversation:

Co-worker: Hey, you should come downstairs and see the elephant.
You: Okay, right after Sarah McLachlan's soundcheck.
Co-worker: Cool. It's right outside the elephant doors.
You: Huh, I guess that's why they call them elephant doors, then.
Co-worker: I guess.

Steal These Links

Because I stole them from others.

- Blogger Strikes Back Against Mom (courtesy Linz)

I already posted about the great Onion article that inspired this, but this is quite funny as well. Example:

"You know how faces are sometimes blurred on news programs to protect peoples' privacy? You can go that same route with your blog by searching for potentially incriminating keywords and editing for a softer, more Mom-friendly vocabulary. For example: 'I got really drunk last night' becomes, 'I got really marshmallow last night.' It may not make sense, but it does give you plausible deniability, which could help. Every little bit counts. "

- Best. Fark Photoshop Contest. Ever. (courtesy CheshireKim)

My personal favorite: "Freddy vs. Kramer," if simply for the tagline "Divorce can be hell." A lot of them are great, though.

- Worst. Orioles. Ever. (courtesy Coop)

My vote: Albert Belle. He did okay by most standards, but for the money they were paying him, he should have at least had the decency to hit enough home runs to make people question whether he was using steroids.

Although "The Glenn Davis Trade" is a four-word phrase you should never, ever say to an O's fan without standing back, because we will go into spitting, bilious tirades about what a bunch of fucking morons the O's were to trade for him.

Of course, if you're not a baseball fan, you can avoid this tirade by telling me how boring baseball is. Then you get an entirely seperate tirade.

Viewer Alert

I ended up in the audience when they were a couple people short for the 7pm taping of the show tonight, so look for me in the back row wearing a green plaid shirt and looking like a dolt when the show airs on Monday.

This, incidentally, is why everyone in the audience is clearly trying very hard not to laugh when Ellen talks about what a lovely weekend she had: It has not yet, in fact, occured.

The Onion Has Been Intercepting My Nightmares

Because they are spot-on in their excellent story Mom Finds Out About Blog.

Key Quotes:
"I don't have one of those sites that's a big tell-all about one-night stands and wild parties," Widmar said. "I mostly write about the animation I like or little things that happen to me and my friends. But there are definitely things in there that I wouldn't, well, write home to Mom about."...

"God, my links alone contain unlimited fodder for Mom's neuroses," Widmar said. "She'll have access to not only my life, but the lives of all my friends who have web sites. She'll have the names of all the places in Minneapolis where we hang out, which she can—and will—look up. With the raw materials in my blog, she could actually construct an accurate picture of who I am. This is fucking serious."

Assorted Questions

I had a number of questions pop up today. Here they are, in no particular order:

- Why does it feel weird that Veteran's day is on a Tuesday This year? Tuesday just seems like an odd time to have a holiday. Wednesday, too (I'll get to that in a minute).

Mondays and Fridays are acceptable because they create 3-day weekends. Saturdays and Sundays we tend to ignore because most people tend to have those days off anyway.

But middle of the week holidays really throw people off. You get some shit done Monday, and then: no mail, no real news, a lot of shit is closed, people you know have the day off, but it's kind of anticlimactic.

Thursdays are okay because they tend to create a 4-day weekend. But for some reason, Tuesday doesn't really have the same effect. I guess because it's really a lot more socially acceptable to take a Friday off than a Monday.

And God help us all when something falls on a Wednesday. You either feel like your week got sliced in half or you got shortchanged on a weekend. You can't win.

Why does this bother us so? Or at least me?

- Is it bad that I am irrationally exuberant about the success of my carpet cleaner? I mean really, I'm deriving far too much pleasure from this. Perhaps it's the fumes.

- Have you ever been walking out of the office (particularly if you're ducking out a couple minutes early), and you casually say goodbye to someone, only to notice in the middle of your casual goodbye that not just your boss, but THE boss is standing right behind them?

How dumb did you feel when you did this? Or am I alone in a) doing something that dumb and/or b) feeling this dumb about it?

- I've gotten flu shots for the last few years after getting massively ill the one year I refused to get one. Every year it's given me deadarm for a good two days, but it's worked like a charm.

But I got one this morning, and not even five minutes of deadarm. Does that mean it's ineffective? Will I pay for the immediate use of my arm by going down for a week in mid-February?

- Why am I continually surprised and confused, after years of living on Earth, that it gets pitch-black by 5pm in the winter?


That's everything I can think of right now. I'm sure I'll think of more later. Thoughts?

CSI:...Mi...ami

I'm not sure if anyone reading this has watched any episodes of CSI: Miami. I've pretty much only started watching it since I got TiVo, mostly to see why people like the CSI shows so damn much.

If you have seen it though, have you noticed that David Caruso seems to have spent the time between when he quit NYPD Blue and started this show attending the William Shatner School of Acting?

At first I thought it was a joke, because his delivery is so...terribly stutter-spaced....and....delayed....that he almost sounds...like Kirk.

I don't know, maybe this isn't new. I wasn't allowed to watch NYPD Blue for the sole season he was on it, and he hasn't been in any movies I've bothered seeing.

Is this a new thing for him? Or am I just making this up in my punch-drunk state of mind?

Hee

While writing the last post, I had the Jets-Raiders game in the background, and when a Jets player broke a tackle for a massive touchdown run, the commentator said "Holy Toledo!"

I think he is the first person to use that phrase since 1954.

Oops

Apologies for the lack of posting and for the extremely long time the post about cursing stayed on top. A list of a few of the excuses that kept me from doing so:

- Overall exhaustion based on some jackasses upstairs deciding weekend mornings are the best time to use a circular saw and a power drill in the echoey core of my building, and my inability to locate and kill these people.

- Exhaustion from running around like a maniac at work for the last three days of the week.

- Being so exhausted that some of my insomnia is starting to die off, and said insomnia being a main reason I've been keeping this so up to date.

- Blogger eating at least one post that I can't even remember what it was about right now.

- Watching movies in places other than my apartment.

- Sheer, unadulterated laziness.

The other problem is that outside of work, I don't have a whole hell of a lot going on in my life, and I'm never particularly sure what in work falls inside or outside of the nondisclosure agreement I signed.

Clearly, things that are talked about on the show are fair game, but they're not until after the show aired. I think I can get away with "Watch Monday's show, Will Ferrell's interview is hilarious" (which it is), but I can't give you details or tell you why.

My outside of work life consists of attempts at cooking, then collapsing on the couch and burning cellphone minutes talking to people or watching stuff I taped/TiVoed for several hours until I pass out.

And really, there's only so many ways you can make that entertaining unless your routine breaks. And for some reason, through the end of this week, it hasn't.

So my apologies. I'll try to have something interesting happen to me this week.