Pancake City

Heard on a cruise ship:
* KID [whining] : “But I’m not hungry though!”

Seen on the D.C Beltway:
* It was a white van for a heating/cooling company. On the back of it was the company name, along with a large foot with a cartoonish, giant toe. The toe was grinning and had a speech bubble coming from his mouth. The speech bubble was empty.

I need to carry a tape recorder with me. There were at least two other things I overheard recently that I would have liked to have remember. One of them was about a unicorn, like “I don’t know why the unicorn does that”.

Daily post…hmmm. Let’s see. Um, how about that local sports team? They’re really looking sporty this season.

I’m at a creative road bump at the moment. A more “kangarooy” writer would be able to hop right over the bump and throw her Joey at incoming traffic (to make an artistic statement about the horrible NBC show, Joey!”) But I am not a kangaroo. At the moment. I’m not tying myself down with genetic engineering progressing at the rate it is.

If I could be any animal for a week, it would be a monkey. There are a lot of people I want to throw poop at. Give me a pair of roller skates, a box of bran, and a pass to the President’s next public appearance, and we’re going to have some fun.

Second on the animal list: a bird. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because—oh, wait. I got it. Pooping on people.

Man, I need some culture.

Third on the list: Grizzly bear. Do they really like honey? If so, how do they get their paws in the tiny jars? I will discover their secrets. And eat a filmmaker or two.

Fourth and last: Triceratops. With omni-directional spotlights on my horns. Wouldn’t it be great if an extinct creature returned to life, and it was already prepared to be mass marketed? Yes, it would! Tricera Tops ice-ceram! Pop the top and gobble down the three-horned flavor.

* The tag line for PG-13 movies is “Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.” There should be an enhanced version of PG-13, like “Some material will be inappropriate for children under 13″. And it should be called PG-13-Mutha-Fucka.

* Almost every preview for a romance shows the entire plot in the trailer: awkward meeting between man and woman, confidential chat with sassy girlfriend, whirlwind courtship, cue the music, the big kiss. It’s like a friend who reads a crappy 400-page book and then tells you it sucks in 30 seconds. Thanks, romantic movie trailers!

* I got a spam email that started, “This is your official notification from Shazam Inc Bank that the service(s) listed below will be deactivated and deleted if not renewed immediately.” Do you know what this means?

1: There exists a bank called “Shazam Inc.”

2: Evidentially, “Shazam Bank” is so popular that it’s profitable for spammers to spoof the bank’s web site.

I like Chevy Chase Bank, but if Shazam Bank ever sends me a mailing, we’re going to appear in a romantic movie trailer together.

You’re never truly bald until you throw away your comb. Or you have no hair on your head. That and the comb thing–those are the two criteria for baldness. And living in an alternate universe where everyone except you has folds of thick, wavy hair and you’re bald relative to them. Kind of like how we’re bald relative to monkeys (that’s why they laugh at us).

* Beauty is only skin-deep. That’s true. Once you get past the skin, it’s all mushy and disgusting.

* On the tee vee, there was a story on a restaurant in California that gives free meals to bald people on Wednesdays. One of the women, whose husband is lucky to have her, described his head this way: “He’s not bald. It’s a solar panel for a love machine.”

Girls Gone Wild: The Music CD

Tributes to the human spirit are either saving kittens or dying of cancer.

* I enjoyed the thoughtful responses in the previous post. And the thoughtless response, “Red truck good war ice cream!”

* You know how some people begin talking about a complicated subject with, “I’m no expert or anything, but…”? Is it just me, or is this the linguistic equivalent of prefacing your sentence, “Now, I’m a dumb ass, but…”?

…about your new haircut.
“Did you do that on purpose?”

…after telling someone that you walk dogs.
“Oh, Jason. Always with the jokes.”

…from an audience member at an open mike after a particularly bad stuttering day.
“What’s the deal with your stuttering? I mean, you don’t really stutter that much, do you?”

Speaking of which, I’ll be in Baltimore at the National Stuttering Association convention for the next few days. It started today; I got back a hour ago. I rented a SUV and I’m commuting from home (60 miles one way) in an attempt to simultaneously destroy the environment and save money. You know how some people in DC sell The Washington Post or bags of fruit while people are stopped at red lights? Today, I saw a man selling hair clippers.

(About the quotes: friends told me the first two, and I was instantly amused. The third happened almost a year ago, and while I think about the comment rarely, part of me hasn’t yet released the Anger Bird so it can fly over the ocean and eventually drown in the Sea of Forgiveness due to starvation, the lack of food caused by overfishing of the Carp of Seething Resentment by the Wharfing Boats of Willy-Nilly. )

I believe there should be balance in life. That’s why I drink expired Kaopectate.

Occasionally I list interesting tidbits that I learned during the day. I do it mostly for myself because if I don’t repeat what I learn either through telling it to someone or writing about it, I usually forget it. I suspect my friends wonder why I start random conversations about the Ugandan porn industry, but my friends are patient folk, so they deal with it.

What I Read Today
On the firing of George Tenet: “One George down, one to go.”

Quote of the Day
Do your best not to say, “I told you so.” Instead, say what you really think: “If I’d ran your life, we’d both be happy.”

Company Names of the Day
(for a dog translator): Bowlingual
(yes, it’s a real site) : Egay

What I Learned Today
Dolphins use whistles as names for each other. They get their whistle-name from their mothers when they are born. Males get whistles similar to their mothers; females get whistles different from their mothers. So some times, when a dolphin whistles. he is saying the equivalent of, “Hey Bob. Are you there?” And if Bob is nearby, he’ll whistle Charlie’s name. “Charlie, I’m caught in a tuna net. Help!” And Charlie will respond, “Hell no. They already named their mascot after me. I’m on Starkist’s Ten Most Wanted list. When Starkist renames their “fish” Bob, give me a whistle.” (book)

Theory of the Day
A few years ago, I had a powerful sense of déjà vu when I was talking to a clerk in a camping store. I had a gut feeling that I had met that person before but I didn’t know where. In the car ride home, I realized that I had met someone the week before who looked very similar to him.

What made me think about déjà vu today I do not remember, but I have a theory about why it happens. Déjà vu occurs when someone is in a situation similar to one he has been in before but can not fully remember what the original situation is. As a corollary, people who can store a lot of information but are poor at recalling it experience déjà vu more often than people with better memories.

In other words, when one feels the sensation of déjà vu, there is a good reason for feeling it.

1. One Lender’s onion bagel for breakfast is delicious. Two is absolutely disgusting.

2. To make a new line within a cell in Microsoft Excel, press Alt-Enter.

3. A person can get used to a lot of things, like a faucet that gives cold water when turned left, hot water when turned right. Or, in this case, wrong.

4. An inkling of the health measures the porn industry takes to prevent disease from unprotected sex (although I still don’t understand why the average life span of a porn actor isn’t 27.)

5. I didn’t learn five things today.

Being different in the right way.

* I never understood how dumb Colin Quinn is until I was watching the first few minutes of Tough Crowd and realized: “Oh my god. This is with cue cards, dress rehearsals, and professional writers.” Do you realize that Colin Quinn on Tough Crowd is five levels of dumb above Colin Quinn in real life? How does real-life Colin Quinn put on his pants? Can he open doors? What about jars? I’ve seen guys with spears stuck in their heads that are smarter than him. If Colin Quinn entered a debate with a man with half a brain lobe and a two-foot javelin sticking out of his head, I’d bet on the javelin guy and toss a horseshoe at his head for good luck.

* I meant that to be a lot shorter. I’m surprised at how angry I got. I haven’t felt like that since Ann Landers was alive.

* Democrats want to beat Bush so desperately that they’ll support anyone who they think can beat Bush, including Jeb Bush and Anheuser-Busch.

* I’m tired of waiting for a majority of Americans to push aside their bigotry and support gay marriage. Here’s my compromise: gays get 10%. We get five out of the 50 states in America, selected at random from a giant bingo ball after next year’s NBA draft. Straight people can still live in those states, but gay marriage and related rights gets automatically approved, with no way to repeal it. The other 45 states can throw all the stones they want.

* Cats hate dogs.