September 27, 2007

Consider it curbed

I haven't had HBO for a while, but I do have a prediction to make about the current season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", and here it is: I believe that one episode will feature Larry in a men's room sitting next to someone who has run out of toilet paper. That man will ask Larry to give him some toilet paper, and Larry will think that he is being propositioned for gay sex a la Larry Craig, and he will run out of the bathroom and try to find a policeman.

Yes, this thought was inspired by the fact that every time I hear the name Larry Craig, my brain brings up an image of Larry David instead. Where the show goes from there, I'm not sure, but I expect he finds a policeman, who reluctantly follows him to the bathroom, and the man is washing his hands. There's no arrest, but a very igry argument between Larry and the man. "I just wanted some toilet paper!" "Oh, I know what you wanted."

All of Larry's friends naturally think his behavior was appalling. Later Larry sees the same man at a pro-gay marriage protest and thinks this justifies his position; if the man was gay, obviously he's the sort of person who would proposition someone in a bathroom. His friends continue to be horrified at Larry's absurd cluelessness.

Soon Larry has to go to the bathroom and finds a nearby bookstore to duck into. He realizes that the bathroom is filled with gay men who are attending the protest. Then he notices that he is out of toilet paper, but he doesn't want to ask someone for toilet paper lest his intentions be misunderstood. He taps his foot in irritation, wishing they would all leave the bathroom so he could sneak into another stall. Then he notices a long piece of toilet paper dangling off the roll in the stall next door, so he reaches under the wall of the stall to try to pull it off, but the man in the stall sees him and assumes Larry is trying to proposition him for gay sex, so he waits for Larry outside Larry's stall. Larry is mortified that his intentions were misunderstood, but then he realizes that he is attracted to this man and they begin to kiss. The man from the adjacent stall in the first scene walks in and is aghast at Larry's hypocrisy, but soon he decides he's enjoying watching the action and...

CHRIST I JUST ACCIDENTALLY STARTED WRITING CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM SLASH FICTION AAAAAGH

Posted by Francis at 05:27 PM | Comments (4)

September 21, 2007

The importance of not being earnest

A wonderful sentence from a 419 scam e-mail I received this morning:

Because of my father's sincerity he was poisoned by his colleagues.

But at least he was visited by the Great Pumpkin before he died.

Posted by Francis at 08:40 AM | Comments (3)

September 20, 2007

She could totally poke someone's eye out with that bow

Seems like every day I read something about yet another innocent person fucked over by our embarrassment of a government's indiscriminate trampling of rights in the name of security. I'd like to suggest that Obama, upon taking the oath of office, immediately appoint a Cabinet-level position: Secretary of Fixing Everything That the Previous Administration Completely Fucked Up. That should be a full-time job.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Posted by Francis at 01:34 PM | Comments (6)

September 19, 2007

From latte to shining latte

Lorinne sends this picture of a product whose packaging sports several features to delight or appall, depending on one's point of view:

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Firstly, that slogan: "Icespress yourself." On an American flag. I would say that whoever coined this word should be locked up, but the Bill of Rights does protect freedom of icespression.

Secondly, "American Vanilla"? With "French" crossed out? What the hell, man. Do we as a nation still institutionally hate France or something? I guess it's better than calling it "Freedom Vanilla". But still, once you've done that, why not go one step further and change "Colombian Coffee" to "One of Those Countries with Brown People in It Coffee", to more accurately reflect the average American's understanding of the world?

Posted by Francis at 12:11 AM | Comments (3)

September 16, 2007

Unsolicited career advice

If you really like crack, but would prefer not to be a whore, perhaps you should consider another profession.

Posted by Francis at 01:46 PM | Comments (4)

September 14, 2007

Oh my god, the universe is starting to obey my commands

Which is to say, the complete set of Pogo newspaper strips (daily and Sunday) are finally being published starting this fall. Holy cats I'm excited about this.

Posted by Francis at 04:29 PM | Comments (7)

September 11, 2007

Rare performance opportunity

Hey there, loyal readers and people searching Google for phrases like "picture of studious girls" and "a editor draws a penis on dog". This Friday night my friend Veronica is throwing a benefit party for a charity fund she's starting in honor of her late sister Sara. The fund will provide grants to assist families in northwest Arkansas affected by cancer.

The benefit is at Hurley's (232 West 48th Street, between Broadway & 8th Avenue) and runs from 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. There's a $10 cover and a cash bar, and there will be various performers, including yours truly and the lovely Lorinne. The theme of the evening is "Celebrate Life", so Veronica asked me to prepare a 20 minute set of life-affirming songs, which turns out to be about the amount of time it takes me to play almost all the life-affirming songs I have ever written, and I'm still writing one of them. Not sure what this says about me. Probably not as much as the fact that one of the aforementioned life-affirming songs is about radon and three-bean salad. Anyway, you should come check it out; it'll be fun.

Posted by Francis at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)

A bowl of filk for my cat

Something possessed me. I apologize.

Whatcha gonna do with all that fish?
All that fish left on that dish?
You're-a gon' grant-grant-grant my wish,
Grant my wish of eating fish

Some fish, some fish, some fish, some fish,
Some fish, some fish, some lovely fishy fish

That is all.

Posted by Francis at 10:06 PM | Comments (3)

September 07, 2007

For those of you who don't subscribe to my Flickr stream

...two advertisements, with comments.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have synesthesia. It sounds kind of fascinating, even though some synesthetes report that what sounds sort of like a superpower to me can be irritating when they're receiving conflicting sensory information -- like, if they associate a word with a particular color, and then the word is printed in the wrong color, it bugs them. Anyway, when I saw this ad, I knew what they meant:

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I don't have synesthesia, but as a New Yorker, I do have strong color associations for white numbers surrounded by colored circles -- especially when they appear on an ad on a subway platform -- and 2's are not supposed to be black, and 7's are not supposed to be red. It's very disorienting.

Also along similar "making my brain unhappy" lines, there's this ad, which substitutes various world currency symbols for letters in the text:

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Now, that's all well and good, but why is the symbol for the British pound replacing an E and not an L? If there were no L's in the ad, I could see someone saying, "Well, that horizontal line sort of looks like the crossbar of an E, let's just go for it." But there are two perfectly good L's in "Wall Street" just sitting there! Mystifying.

Posted by Francis at 11:57 AM | Comments (9)

September 03, 2007

The Tie Project, days 180 to 187

Apologies to tie fans who've waited so long for another Tie Project installment, and apologies to tie haters who had been lulled into a false sense of complacency by the long gap since the last installment and who thought I had finally given up. I have not, so too bad for you, suckers!

Day 180. I've had both of these for quite a while. This is the other tie I was talking about on day 154.

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Day 181. It must have been unseasonably cool today, since this is a rather heavy corduroy shirt.

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Whenever I wear this tie, I try to wear these socks with it, which match both the spots and the background perfectly.

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Day 182. Sort of a belated addendum to solid shirt week. This is an outfit I was planning to wear that week, but I got tired of not wearing patterns. Here it is now, though, like a soothing sorbet between spicier courses.

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Day 183. I haven't worn this shirt in a while, because it doesn't match much, but this recent tie acquisition has rehabilitated it.

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Day 184. Newish shirt from Daffy's with the tie from day 176. There's probably a better tie out there somewhere for this shirt, but this isn't bad.

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Day 185. I bought this shirt the same day as the one from yesterday. I love this shirt and wanted to wear it right away, so I went with this tie even though it wasn't perfect, because it was the best I found before deciding I'd spent enough time looking for ties. But then the next day I noticed a much much much better one, boo!

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Day 186. I bought this shirt in the Boston area at some big store whose name I forget, but it was near an outlet Rockport/New Balance shoe store or something. And I remember that they were playing Hall & Oates's "You Make My Dreams Come True" while we were shopping, and I thought, damn, I'd kind of forgotten about this song, and it's an incredibly good pop song! And then the next week I made two Hall & Oates mix CDs (one of my favorite hits, one of my favorite non-hits). Welcome to my world.

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Day 187. So day 186 was the last day before the National Puzzlers' League convention in Ann Arbor. I wanted to wear outfits to the convention that hadn't yet been seen on my blog, so I picked recent outfits that I'd liked but hadn't posted yet because I'm running so far behind. Except for this one; this outfit is the shirt from day 185 with the tie that should have gone with it all along.

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Next time: The outfit I bought in Ann Arbor.

Posted by Francis at 01:50 PM in Ties | Comments (7)