Worth the wait? Wait and see

  Best kept secret of smart rock Nina Gordon has decided that July 18th is a good time to finally unveil her second solo album. If you're unfamiliar with Nina Gordon, she is the less-anger-more-emo former half of Veruca Salt, now lead by other half Louise Post. If you are unfamiliar with Veruca Salt other than Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" character, you really should get out more. If you are unfamiliar with Dahl and CatCF -- I can't do anything to help you with that, Foxnews and Rush Limbaugh must have already eaten the useful parts of your brain by now. On point, you can hear a song from her upcoming album "Bleeding Heart Graffiti" by clicking this here, then click the pic of a chick with a mic. Old tyme microphone, that is. There are several other songs from other artists there, click your choice in the javabox or let the whole list play; you're bound to find at least one song you like that you might never have heard otherwise. You're welcome.

   As far as the song, "The Blue Hour"; I'm not exactly loving it, but I've only heard it twice and I've heard all of the first album just under a jillion times. I'm not sure if I'm being prejudiced by my feelings about the songs I know and this one will grow on me, or if I'm just not ever going to love it. I like it okay, I'll give it a 6 of 10. I'm not learning French so that I can understand it, I promise you that. Oh, WARNING: 75% French lyric content.

  BTW: Veruca Salt (Louise Post) has a September release scheduled for the second 'after Nina' album; apparently neither of these ladies can put out a record in under six years when left on her own. Which is okay, the two separate albums were better than all 2.5 of their albums together.



Duty Freebie: People keep sending me funny stuff from Screenhead; every time I visit there of my own accord there isn't much going on. Give it a try anyway.

All the tea in China? Sounds like a crappy deal; where would you keep it?

  I'm at the job, this is a few weeks ago but I'm just now deciding to write about it, and I am being my usual helpful self (pain in the ass). Isabel sez - you remember Isabel, don't you? Anyway, Isabel says, "You know, Part-time Thinker," (She doesn't really call me that, I'm protecting my anonyminty freshness) "you're really being a pain in the ass; and not the good kind!" Well now, I'm an adult, and I've been asked to do certain things for certain women I've happened upon in my travels; so instantly I was able to comprehend what 'good kind' of PitA she was referring to. However, there were a few slightly more pure of heart peeps in the vicinity, so I had to be sure and clarify for all those that may have otherwise had the comment soar above their beehive hairdos exactly what Miss Isabel seemed to be referencing.

  "Not the 'Good Kind' of PitA?", I asked, as innocently as I could act. "What exactly would that be, the 'good kind' I mean?" She grinned and pretended to not be embarrassed, but the blooming color on her cheeks told me I was going to have some fun. "Are you trying to tell us he flipped you over?" She never said another word, I think she was trying to act as if she had said it purposefully. Isabel can be funny, but she ain't that funny. Plus, if she had blushed much more she would have bled right through her skin.

   One of my more innocent but not clueless cohorts came running, with glee in her eyes. "Yeah, Isabel, what's the 'good kind'?" Several others joined in, exhorting Isabel to elaborate about this mysterious 'good kind' of PitA. It went on like that for what seemed like way too long, as it wasn't that funny to me once I got my larfs, but a good time was had by all.


   Check this out: Honda ad


   And your random blog drop: Fat dude is pretty damn humorous, maybe not the latest post or the one before that, or maybe, I don't know when you are reading this, but don't be lazy; you'll find the funny!

Named after the petri dish manufacturer

In the news, Tom
"I'm-so-ungay-yet-defensive-about-it-if-you-say-otherwise-I'll-sue
-you-until-you're-so-broke-your-grandchildren-will-be-born-naked"
Cruise and Katie
"I-was-on-that-one-show,-the-teenaged-angst-one;-no-the-other-one"
Holmes have a child named Suri. Sigh, that is really not very
mockworthy, kind of a letdown. Then again, I don't want to write
about famous people all the time anyway. Thinking about it did lead me
to hilarity, I'll detail the stream: TomKat's kitten made me think of
Bennifer - then Bennifer 2: The Rhythmless Nation - thinking of
Affleck made me think of Aflac - which is supplemental insurance -
supplemental being something extra - as I learned from Big Ern
McCracken - which made me think of the diner scene when Big Ern
suggests to Roy "Why don't you go eat that outside then come on back in?" - which Roy does - which is a great movie moment - but this combover-undone pic is a joy to behold.

atypicaljoe is a gay new yorker living in the rural south. New to me, completely random subject matter, interesting, thoughtful.

Hey, Ponch, you might want to bank some of that

   I got nothing to say, but I feel like posting something, so I'll mock a celebrity. Celebrity in the sense that people have heard of him, not that he is or ever will be all that celebrated. Wilmer Valderrama, best known as lovable porn and candy addicted Fez on "That 70s Show", is one of those guys you just know you're going to hear about years from now when he's had his head caved in by his closest friend, left crumpled in a motel room surrounded by a pile of groupie sex vids he'd made when he was still alive and humping. And you're gonna say to yourself, "Self, I thought that guy was in prison?" I think he was on one of those MTV shows, the p'u'nkie thing, or maybe the Ride Pimper, shit, it could have been Access Hollywood; whichever it was, I've seen one of his vehicles, and if you think his jewelry (seen here in a recent appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live") is ostentatious, you should see his whip. We're talking chromed out black Escalade, 20" spinners, the whole nine.






  Anyway, a bit of advice he'll never read: Save some of that money Ponch, you aren't going much farther than a syndicated sitcom that airs 5 or 6 times a day. Secondly, being on a show that airs 5 or 6 times a day is pretty cool, what's with all the bling? Wasn't this guy humping Lindsay Lohan when she was still good looking (and underage, BTW)? For fuck's sake, this guy should be turning away 7s and 8s and not bothering to call back the 9s; wtf is he trying to prove dressing up like a thugstar? This is almost as funny as when David "Bud Bundy" Faustino actually recorded a rap album. Good day.

  Talking about a wannabe pimp makes me feel like pimpin', so as an apologetic offering for such lackluster postings thus far this year, go read someone funny and/or informative:

  Funwithhandgrenades is the best of the surprisingly numerous "Soldier in Iraq" blogs, by a great margin.

   Maruthecrankpot doesn't like Big Dub any more than I do, and she'll tell you why in detail (with funny pictures to boot!)

   Stefispice is a college freshman, is funny and smart, and I've been reading her since she was in the 10th grade. Tell her she's pretty (she is).

   Willam is a friggin' riot, a drag princess (too young to be a queen) that you might have seen on Nip/Tuck as Cherry Peck . Tell him he's pretty. (I don't like him in that way, NTTAWWT.) I said good day.

Tootsie Roll I Think I'm In Love With You

Update: A search around Giggle.com finally led me to retrojunk.com. I'm not sure where the clip resides; I didn't find it under '70s snacks/foods. Maybe they have it in the 80s? Here it is right here, thanks again retrojunk.com, which is a pretty cool nostalgia wank that I will be revisiting. Oh, the odd thing about search results, I was able to get nowhere by using lyrics, the word 'download', et cetera. What finally got it was 'commercial songs tootsie roll', which seems really obvious now, of course.

I continue to invent things already invented, remain broke

A few years ago, I had the idea of bandages with cyano acrylate to reduce scarring, as I had sealed a number of minor model-building cuts with it; cyano acrylate is the active or only ingredient in most super or 'ka-raaazy' glues. There is little to no danger of subcutaneous absorption and it is widely available, in fact quite handily available to model builders. I was thinking about medical uses, since I had used it on a first aid basis, and have a few scars that might have benefitted from the use of some Ka-razy Glue. I mentioned it to someone, one of the clever people I surround myself with, and was told "Meh". Not more than two weeks later I'm reading the local newspaper and happen upon an article detailing the trial usage of a miracle breakthrough bandage utilizing - you guessed it. Of course, they had been at it since before I thought of it and certainly didn't take any of my research into account, but still; I invented it also, independently and without the AMA. Not to mention that Google says the Canadians have been using a similar acrylate medically for 20 years. Eeep.

  Three XMASs ago, December 2002; I was fumbling around for something personal to do for friends that might show a little more personal interest than the average gift, and I wanted to spend less money. If you don't know, Tootsie makes other flavors besides the chocolate ones that I see no matter what I look at *.  They have lemon, cherry, lime, vanilla, and cherry packaged under the name 'Flavor Rolls', although the last bag I bought says 'Fruit Rolls' despite the vanilla being included. Anyway, I decided to cut them into tiny pieces, place them on a foil-covered baking sheet, float an aluminum pan full of chocolate in a water-filled cast iron frying pan, and carefully spoon melty chocolate onto the tootsie pieces until they were all covered. Once cooled, they were easy to pluck off the foil, and as a bonus, they had one uncovered side for easily picking out your favorite flavor. As expected, the cherry was the best, that must be why chocolate covered cherries do so much better at the market than the chocolate covered lime wedges. Seriously, I liked them all, the orange was pretty rockin', I didn't bother with the vanilla but now think I probably should have.

  As you can see from the picture above, Tootsie Roll Industries Inc. has introduced chocolate covered mini tootsie rolls. They are incredibly good, as long as you don't let them get cold. Of all things to eat frozen, stick to bananas or custard; do not eat anything tootsie frozen unless you have nothing better to do than make extra trips to the dentist. You might notice that Tootsie Inc. hasn't gotten around to chcolate-coating the other flavors yet, but give them time; apparently this is the first new product line for them in 100 years!?











*re: the song, "Whatever it is I think I see" (becomes a tootsie roll to me). You must be this old to remember this, I had found the song online years ago, no such luck today.

Amazing, perhaps. Interesting, perhaps not.

Things that amaze me. I am easily amused and amazed, so this is going
to be another one of those things that you might want to bang your
head into a wall or take a hit of your drug of choice before you read
it. Or skip it and go play online poker.

This thing (pictured) was once the best idea anyone could come up
with for a two-wheeled, man-powered vehicle. It reminds me of a not
famous person's famous quote that everything that could be invented
already had been invented. This was before television, and long before
pacemakers, microchips, and oral contraception. Chump. That kind of
thinking is what is wrong with 99% of all science fiction books, tv
shows, and movies. Granted, a lot of those simply use other worlds or
the future as settings for traditional storytelling, so for whatever
reason they don't use present day Earth; they aren't intended to
predict technological advances so it doesn't matter much that they
don't.

Then you have the so-called 'Hard Science Fiction', where they
intend to confine themselves to the fictional laws they create, and
then they don't if it conflicts with a plot point or they simply
forget. Some things are must-give-aways, everyone in the Universe
either speaks English, has some device to interpret one another
instantaneously, or some sort of seventh or eighth sense that allows
them to understand each other. I'm okay with that, I'm not likely to
learn a new language some hack made up so that I can read his book, no matter how great anyone tells me it is. Time travel = worm holes, food = synthetic recreations with super-science nutrients, standing around upright = "artificial gravity"; a quick dismissal or scientific gobbledy-gook - they usually get over the big ones quickly or don't address them at all.

One thing I've never understood about science fiction is the
numbering of planets. The theory that other inhabitants of the
Universe could be advanced to the point of travelling great distances
through space, but would lack the imagination and the respect for
their own homelands to name them instead of numbering them. You're
telling me there is nothing special about this 50,000 mile wide planet
you colonized to inspire any other name than "Glagnar 4"? What about 2
and 3? Are these planets even worth visiting, much less moving into
(onto?) if they don't significantly affect the imagination to get a
name of their own? I suppose it is to imply a massively crowded
interstellar community, so thickly populated that all the good names
are taken. Right. People say that about their Yahoo-id names too, so I
guess I am beginning to understand after all.

Back to that friggin' bicycle, how could it possibly take so much
thought to make the wheels similar in size, and especially, closer to
the ground? Sure, you give up some speed, but that 'not falling to the
ground from great heights' part had to be a motivator. Don't forget
the 'being able to get on without a stepladder' part. Eventually, as
we know, they trimmed that first wheel down and switched to rear-wheel chain-drive, but it certainly took long enough. Interestingly (I
think), it was a pair of bicycle makers that first attained flight, so
there were some progressive minds in the bike biz.

I guess my point is, I'm nothing like the patent office jerk that
thought everything had already been invented. I tend to look backward
and wonder what took so long for things that have been invented to get invented. I see limitless potential for creation, it just takes more
imagination now than ever when there are the Chinese to compete with, and the dwindling number of items one can infuse with chipotle.