Category: Life

As someone who peruses the society page of a couple of different magazines here in town, I’ve got a bit of a pet peeve. You have a guy that is dressed nicely, at a high class function, stone cold munchin’, and standing next to an attractive woman who’s a date/spouse/person whom he’d like to impress enough into one or the other, and he’s got a beer bottle in his hand. Worse, given that this is St. Louis, it’s usually an Anheuser-Busch product of some sort. Some examples:

Jeez, boys, show a little class. Put it down for the photo. I know you don’t want someone else to get your precious beer, but even if someone else grabs it, it’s only a Budweiser. Look at it as a sign from providence, and get something real to drink.

Notice those people amongst you, your betters, who understand that a cocktail glass doesn’t make you look like a frat boy. Take the hint.

Also, a quick note to recruiters: if you find my name on LinkedIn, Google my name, visit this blog to get my e-mail address, and then try to tempt me into an entry-level position at Anheuser-Busch for which you think I’m suited, please, take a moment to search this blog for what I say about Anheuser-Busch and its products. Rest assured, someone there will, and you’ll find they don’t think I’m suitable at all. Thank you, that is all.

Once, when I was young, a young lady to whom I was rather attracted told me I looked sinister. I took it as a compliment.

Explains a bit about how well I got on with the young ladies.

There’s just something slightly macabre about the little Gerber baby offering payouts if some disaster should befall your baby.

So I acceded to the query by the disembodied drive thru voice and partook of the two hot apple pies for a dollar, but not without difficulty. For you see, the instructions are to open the box containing the pastry on the left side of the box:

Oh, but no; if I opened the box on the left side, that would violate the instructions on the right side of the box:

I am not a dumb man; I understand that opening the box on one side would violate the instructions, because that would open the box in such a fashion that I was not opening the box properly. That is, if I were to open the box on the right side of the box, the box would be open by the time I got to the instruction on the left side; therefore, I would not correctly open the box on the left side, as the box would already be open.

No, verily, I could infer without any further written instruction that, to satisfy this short end user license on the box and to not violate the warranty of my apple pie, I must open both sides of the box simultaneously; that is, I would open both flaps marked Open here at once so that I would not merely break down an already open box by one of the motions. Fortunately, it was a small box, and I could break the structural integrity of the box on each side with only one hand, and it was thus that I enjoyed my nice cold apple pie knowing that I had correctly interpreted the directions and acted according to the box designers written and explicit intent.

Sometimes, my wife says I overthink things, to which I reply, “You certainly think that, and perhaps I am a bit deliberate in my actions at times; however, I do think that by taking a more reflective approach, I can suss out things and correct interpretations of disconnected and often unintended meanings to ensure that I do not have to learn by trial and error or failure, but rather by rational application of what Hercule Poirot called the little grey cells.”

So I was reading my oatmeal packet the other day, and this politician’s answer to a question leapt out at me:

Notice how the answer doesn’t actually apply to the question asked.

Well done, copy writer, well done. You’ll be in Washington doing your true calling soon.

My poor children will be the only ones in school who identify this creature:

The Callmeplissken

While looking up the lyrics for the song “Fred Bear” by Ted Nugent (referred to below), I saw something in the corner of my screen that I thought was a little….suspicious.

Click for full size

That little layer that pops up with the butterfly and offers you the opportunity to download ringtones based on the song you’re looking at has been crafted to look like a Windows / MSN Messenger alert, but it’s not; its target is login.tracking101.com, which is apparently some sleazy adware serving company.

You know, I’m duly suspicious of any ad that masks itself as a function of another program. Suitably so, in most cases.

Sure, most parents teach their toddlers to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”. However, very few do so by making the toddlers watch Dirty Harry over and over again until they get the song right.

In case anyone wants to know, if you’re about 5’11” and a size 5/6, your inseam could be about 33″. Difference in your trunk vs. leg length could make for variation.

Apparently, someone does want to know, so I asked my sainted mother, who has those dimensions.

Also, please note that my sainted mother wouldn’t mind a whole box of Ho-Hos, if you’re sharing, but they nor the copious amounts of junk food she already consumes seem to alter her basic mathematics. Fortunately, I inherited something of that metabolism myself.

Because our bathrooms lack certain amenities, like storage, my sainted mother bought us a pressboard over-the-toilet storage cabinet that has a two-door cabinet, a shelf, and then a cubby with a drop-down door that was supposed to be held in place by a magnet on the cabinet and a metal disk affixed to the drop-down door. However, the adhesion between the magnet and the disk exceeded that between the disk and the door. Several times. It outlasted the original adhesive, it outlasted double-sided tape, and it would probably have outlasted the next glue I used to bond it.

Except I hit it with a laundry basket, breaking the chipboard at the two screws that acted as hinges. Irreperable enough, but now as another shelf, it will not be a problem. So I threw the pressboard door out, but, wait a minute, it has a plastic knob in it. And you never know when you might need a ten cent plastic knob. I mean, it wouldn’t be worth it to run out to the hardware store for it.

So I took it out of the pressboard door.

And I threw it in a drawer in my work area where I can amply forget about it, not that I’ll ever need a knob like that in the future. But I have one.

On the plus side, I did actually throw out the pressboard door, so I’m not that much of a packrat.

The Anchoress celebrates the semicolon.

As regular readers and any users of documentation I’ve written know, I use it because I can. Also, it shows readers that I am one of the Haves when it comes to grammar sophistication and wealth.

Kinda like my relationship with the blink tag.

I attended friend gimlet‘s birthday party and provided him with a rather pedestrian birthday card.

Here is the card he should have gotten, arrayed so you, gentle reader, can download it and print it for your own friends:

Click for full size

To save it, right click and save the image to your local drive. Print it centered on your page and fold. Wah-lah!

Kudos to whomever designed the label for the new Gillette Clinical Strength Antiperspirant:

Yeah, let’s go with the hexagons and make it all scientific and stuff. If anyone noticed something amiss or astray with that initiative, that person was overruled. Too bad, too. When you’re going all scientific and whatnot, you’ll find that the hexagon is the chemical representation of benzene:

No, branding experts, benzene is not the cheaply photocopied collection of angst-ridden poetry and inky vampire drawings that Ben publishes. Benzene is:

Benzene exposure has serious health effects. Breathing high levels of benzene can result in death, while low levels can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heart rate, headaches, tremors, confusion, and unconsciousness. Eating or drinking foods containing high levels of benzene can cause vomiting, irritation of the stomach, dizziness, sleepiness, convulsions, and death.

Fortunately, the target audience is probably just as clueless.

Rachel Lucas is right; anything with a British accent is funnier.

Here are 18 Stunning Bridges From Around The World.

(Link seen on Dynamist Blog.)