merry christmas!

Hope you all had a lovely holiday and are gearing up to shop shop shop tomorrow morning (in which case, you should be asleep and not still up, like me). I do wish I were getting a prize for not visiting a prostitute, though. Would make the holiday season that much merrier. Maybe next year.

teaching them to inseminate and freeload, the Federline way?

ha! I didn't realize Weird Al had interviewed K-Fed...

hooray!

this TOTALLY makes me want to reread HBP over break...

JKR reveals title of final Harry Potter book

Also, I went ahead and did the cutesy little steps on her homepage to reveal the title... fun!

did I subject you guys to this last year?

these christmas lights are c-raaaaaazy. I must have watched it for like half an hour straight at a christmas party last year. it's *that* mesmerizing. enjoy!

Dead fish!

Look! Someone created an Internet game based on my life as a fish owner! Check out Insaniquarium!

P.S. The fish make a particular hysterical noise when they die!
d

l'chaim!

my goodness. there's fun stuff all over the internet.

happy hanukkah!

more holiday fun on the internets

okay, so it's a corporate attempt to take advantage of all the "blogging" and "electronic mailing" we kids do...but it's funny!

kid stuck to a pole talks, sings


edited to add: I hadn't realized that good old dubya was the source of "internets." thanks, wikipedia!

this is so infinitely cooler than 3rd-grade arts and crafts

make your own snowflake

I have no idea what this website is or where it came from, but you can design your own "paper" snowflake and watch it float by. for every 1000 snowflakes created, this website will donate $1 to the salvation army. you can also look at everyone else's snowflakes -- mine is the most awesomely awesome one...or I suppose you could also find it by searching for #3602508. off to make more!

I'm very busy right now...

... and I promise I will look at all the lovely 80s commercials after Friday... but for the moment, I just wanted to let you know something I recently learned: that the stock symbol for Southwest Airlines is "LUV."

In the words of Church Lady: Now, isn't that special?

just because...

...my first attempt at promulgating these ads was met with thunderous silence doesn't mean I won't try again:

50 MORE Great Commercials from the 80s

This one has I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up, Where's the Beef?, and a bunch of those gum ads whose jingles I still remember ("your fresh breath goes on and on--while you chew it!"). You've got nothing better to do for the next hour, do you?

oh, no.

well, there went any hope I had of getting work done for the rest of the semester.

sissyfight is still around, yo

the site's running kinda crappily -- only two schools are open, and it crashed my mozilla, and then it wouldn't let me sign back in until the game I'd initially entered was over, and *then* in the one game I've played so far the other two girls decided to gang up on me because they SUCK (and my lolly only helped so much). but we HAVE to meet up for a rumble -- not tonight, but sometime this weekend? let's email...

ericat13, recalling fond memories of playing (and pissing off fellow students) in CT hall senior year

sad news

jennifer aniston's back on the market

but think about it: married to brad pitt...doing it with *vince vaughn*?? that just screams "rebound relationship."

if only I knew the stuff I will be tested on tomorrow half as well as my celebrity dating histories...

I've only gotten through 10 of them, but...

...I knew this was too good not to share:

50 Greatest Commercials of the 80s

here we go!

enjoy:

boo.

I was going to try to post a clip of barenaked ladies on last night's leno (I didn't even try to stay awake for it -- I was in bed by 11pm), but it's either not on youtube yet or NBC's already cracked down. I'll keep an eye out for it, but in the meantime here's the first video from their new album:



happy friday!

MJ's uninterrupted blog trifecta is now complete

I thought you all might enjoy this collection of reviews for K-Fed's album:

http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/federlinekevin/playingwithfire

Averaging across many different reviews, the overall score is 15 out of 100, which Metacritic equates to "Extreme dislike or disgust."

blerg. eat kitty litter.

I'd just like to announce that the cat litter cake is no more.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing. Or at least, what remained of the whole thing after Thanksgiving dinner, which was still a buttload of kitty litter cake.

I think this proves once and for all that I simply cannot be trusted with junk food of any sort in the house.

Off to moan quietly to myself....

Booyakasha

Eat my shorts, Stephen Meek! Nice to know you, David Hastings! There is a new top settler in Oregon now, bitches!

And no, in fact, I do not need to see how points are earned. I think we've established that I'm pretty clear on that already.

the bestest dessert ever

remember this? well, today we experienced its awesomeness in person:

preparing the poo:



























the presentation:




















...and it's a hit! seriously, kat, it's really yummy once you get past the it-looks-like-cat-poo thing. mmm.

I feel all warm and fuzzy (albeit bloated -- there's a LOT of cake in this thing) inside. let the holiday season commence!

to follow up on a previous post...

...this one's a little creepy. the caption?

IM IN UR SHOWER

WATCHIN' U SCRUB

cats are funny.

happy thanksgiving, all!

this is really, really disturbing.

Michael Richards's racially insensitive remarks at the "Laugh Factory" last weekend.

A disappointing corollary: I'll never see Stanley Spadowski in quite the same way again. Wow.

it's always nice to confirm...

... that there are folks in the world WAY nerdier than me:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/fun.games/11/19/nintendo.wii.ap/index.html

Sure, I may be nerdy in the extreme... I may be whiter than sour cream... I may have been in A/V club and Glee Club and, yes, even the chess team... but I feel confident that I am still way more functional in society than this guy:

"The first buyer, Isaiah Triforce Johnson, had been waiting outside the store for more than a week. He wore a Nintendo Power Glove, a wearable controller that came out in 1989, while shaking hands with Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. Johnson said he had legally changed his name to include a reference to Nintendo's 'Zelda' series of games."

or this guy:

"The first to buy the system at midnight was Jonathan Mann, 24, who was dressed in red overalls and a cap like the Mario character from 'Super Mario Bros.'
'I'm a little delirious. I've been up for about 40 hours straight. But I've got it in my hands now and it feels good,' said Mann, adding that he has written more than 40 songs about the console for his gaming Web site, gamejew.com. His song titles include 'Wii Means You and Me' and 'The Wind Whispers Wii.'"

Yikes.

I [heart] my celebrity gossip column of choice

this is why:

"I'm no theologian, per se, but I heard after a wretched case of constipation, God bent over the edge of a cloud and took a giant dump on our planet and that was how Paris Hilton was born."

read the rest of the post here (hint: tina fey hates paris as much as -- heck, maybe even more than -- the blogger does!)

it's drivin' me balls!

Ben Folds's new video for "Learn to Live With What You Are":

you sure about dollywood?

Because we can always trek down to the world's first Creationist Museum instead, just minutes from lovely Cincinnati (but IN Kentucky, thank God).

oh, Jesus Christ.

OJ Simpson: "so...let's say I DID kill them. wanna know how I would've -- WOULD, people, this is totally hypothetical -- done it?"

good lord.

im in ur blog, cloggin ur RSS feed

So, in an effort to discover where the "im in ur x y-ing ur z" meme came about, I encountered this link. And though I still don't know where the phrase came from, I feel content to stop looking, because I doubt it could be any more awesomer.

I must admit...

...it took me the entire article to figure out that they weren't talking about, like, Savannah:

U.S. rejects referendum for rebel Georgia region

after a brief moment of clarity, britney reminds us that she's still not quite all there.

newly single spears went ice-skating after filing for divorce

well, no, that's not fair. were I in her position, I would probably go do something fun to celebrate having finally dumped 180 pounds of dead weight. then again, were I in her position, we would be in an alternate universe where I had failed to develop a normal human capacity for common sense, or else I wouldn't have the dumb schmuck to dump in the first place.



hey, there was an election, wasn't there?

som question for erica

Has SOM received any medium-sized accolades recently? Because if so, and I were writing a news article about it, I would give it the headline "SOM: Kind of Wonderful"

Don't blame me for this joke; I think my brain is forcing spontaneous bad punnage on me as revenge for trying to kill it with beer last night.

for those of you who missed the video...

I present a wiki article about the kid with the i-banking video resume. heh.

shoot! missed another deadline.

kat, you have six weeks:

businessweek's list of the best entrepreneurs under 25, or, young whippersnappers insist on making the rest of us feel old...now, get off my lawn!

awwwwwww.

another couple bites the dust...but after 7 seven years, which is about three lifetimes in hollywood years.

ryan phillippe is now single, and one of these days he will accept my calls

Mmmmm... cake....

... but with a twist:

https://www.dvo.com/newsletter/monthly/2004/october/jest.html

Perhaps this can be my contribution to Thanksgiving this year? I'm sure Greg will love/hate it.

Chocolate and porn, part deux

And a hearty two thumbs up I give to Weird Al's latest effort, Straight Outta Lynwood, which arrived in my mailbox today. Sure, we all knew about "White & Nerdy," but unexpected (to me) bonuses on the disc included "Pancreas," a brilliant style parody of Brian Wilson's already brilliant Smile album, and "Close But No Cigar," a style parody of Cake. Don't you just love it when your favorite artists create humorous imitations of your other favorite artists? I thought so.

yeah, I could be flawless too, with the help of makeup artists and liberal use of photoshop.

a-HA! this is PROOF that ads and magazine covers are not at all rooted in reality. it may be a shameless marketing ploy, but darn it, it's a *clever* shameless marketing ploy.

no WAY!

small freaking world:

<<6. The bass player in "Booze Cruise," Hal Cragin, played in a band in NYC with which Office actor?
a. Melora Hardin
b. Rashida Jones
c. Kate Flannery
d. Creed Bratton
e. Ed Helms

Answer: c. Hal and I were in the band Mono Puff with John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants fame. We were in his solo band (you can hear me sing on the song "Extra Krispy" on the album, It's Fun to Steal). >>

find out more trivia about The Office at this quiz on Kate's blog. Wow.

Country Music at its, uh, bes, uh, worstt????

Woah friends, check this out.

And please don't judge country music by it!
d

Like chocolate and porn...

... Weird Al on the Bob and Sheri radio show delectably combines two of my favorite things.

I'll host it here for your listening convenience.

weird al ROOLZ

slate agrees.

existential angst...again!

Oh friends, I am bored in class. And I am wondering why I am doing the things I am doing with my life.

HELP!
d

the horrible resume video may be down, but...

this birthday invite is even worse.

some of my favorite passages:

"A specially made birthday cake has also been ordered and the Ritz
waiters will kindly serve you each a generous slice with Ritz cutleries,
etc...also on me."

"STRICT DRESS CODE:
Gentlemen: Jacket, shirt, and please also bring a tie (no jeans,
trainers, flip-flops, polo-shirts)
Ladies: skirt/top, cocktail dress (no denim, min-skirts, flip-flips, bad
tastes) "

and finally,
"I will be accepting cards and small gifts between 9pm to 11pm...
wink> hehehe"

...okay, maybe the last one isn't so horrible. for my part, I will be accepting cards and gifts of any size between now and 11:59pm tomorrow evening...oh, heck, why impose a deadline? anytime you would like to give me a gift is fine with me.

...and I'm going to kick their asses.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 14 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

d'oh!

the video below accompanied the **11-page** resume this yale senior sent to the investment bank UBS. since then it's been floating around *all* of the i-banks, and methinks he's going to have a few problems getting a job anywhere. thanks, dude, for making yale the temporary laughingstock of the investment banking world. I mean, I'm not planning to actually enter this world myself, but still...you eeeeediot.

aww. Poor Hormel.

So much for their trademark suit.

I am edgy and innovative!

I also have excellent search capacities. wait, no, not like that. ew.

get your own name google-fied (and yahoo'ed, too, if you're into that sort of thing) here.

Biff from Back to the Future is funny

And in other news, who knew that Rural Hall, NC, was worthy of a Wikipedia entry?

Don't even ask me how I found this

How Many Condoms Can You Wear at Once?

Science at its finest, I daresay.

Why My Hometown Rocks

So, cf my previous comment about the top 10 most singable songs, and I decided to google my hometown. I mean, I knew it was a cool place and all, that Howard Stern went to High School there, Doris Kearns Goodwin signed her name in the same Honor Society book that I did, but did you know that ATM machines originated there?

I disagree with this top-10 list.

also -- thanks, fark.com! -- I beg to differ that "who let the dogs out" is one of the "top 10 singalong pop hits of all time." where's "livin' on a prayer"? (or, for matt, "like a prayer"?) "I will survive"? "we will rock you"? there's *so* room for more than one queen song on this list. but instead they give us -- come ON, people -- "smooth" by rob thomas and carlos santana?? load. of. crap.

so that's how I feel about that. any other additions to the list?

*tap tap* is this thing on?

maybe this'll get us talking:

finally, a restaurateur who loves chocolate as much as I do

we're talking bagels with a chocolatey center, coffee cups with a special pocket to hold your chocolate, and a 10-page dessert menu. I...I mean...it's just so (*sniff*) beautiful...

some people have too much time on their hands.

but this guy takes it to a whole new level. someone find him a hobby that requires leaving the house!


but this *is* pretty cool.

have we all seen this?

because it's freaking awesome. Chamillionaire ain't got nothin' on Al, yo'.

hideous or awesome? you decide.

I was hoping this website linked to patterns so I could make my very own bacon 'n eggs scarf, but alas, she only sells the finished products. I may be able to figure out a couple of them, though, if one of you wants to add a SuperCrazyPizzaSupreme scarf to your winter wardrobe...

OMG POE YHHABOR!!!!!

In honor of our acronymious (but not acrimonious) summer and Talk Like a Pirate Day, I give ye:

http://www.karateparty.org/content/view/419/37/

Arrrr,
MJ

Scattered musings on life and roller coasters

Okay, true to form, I am once again having a crisis of mental well-being. So I'm eliciting your help. I am currently unnerved by the following issues:

1. My looming age and the fact that I really want a baby;
2. My sagging income and the fact that I really want a house;
3. My doomed good looks and the fact that I really want a husband.

Let's focus on the third for a moment. The issue isn't so much that I want a husband as that I really just want someone to follow me around all day and absorb all my memories. I'm convinced this would make me substantially less lonely. (Aside: this is not to say that I am a walking, talking pathetic lonely individual, but lonely as your average person goes). Is this totally insane? I just find it horrendously depressing that we go through life, move, change venues, meet new people, stop sharing our lives with the old ones, and the result is basically that no one really knows you over the longterm! Is anyone else troubled by this?

In lighter news: I just found out that Dollywood has an AWESOME policy whereby if you enter the park after 3pm, you get the whole next day free! Isn't that awesome? I also found out that there are discounts for military families, so that might be worth looking into also.

st

well, if we're linking to mcsweeney's today...

I present these charming updates to the obnoxious we're-better-than-you mac ads (even if the guy who plays the mac is borderline cute...and fine, here are the original ads for your perusal).

so there.

erica, whose pc may spontaneously forget how to start windows but can still be used as a lethal weapon

yes, another edit: if you haven't read the most recent YAM, let it be said that the guy playing the PC is a yalie, whereas the mac is currently starring in a movie in which he makes up his own college because he's rejected from all the real ones. who's smart now, huh? huh??

I'll stop with the hyperlinks now.

I'm blogging from NYC!

And I have for you The Complaints Choir of Helsinki.

Also, Refreshingly Honest Crate and Barrel Catalog Descriptions.

Also, if you make me be the french fries, I'm so not playing Monopoly with you. Ick.

part of me wants to cry at what this says about our society.

the rest of me calls dibs on the prius. maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get to buy LAX!

edited to add: when I grow up I want to be a media evangelist. I will exorcise the demons of stupid commercials!

smoke 'em if you got 'em, mozart fans...

...but hip-hop fans are more likely to have sex. Country music fans, not so much (sorry, Dani!).

hee.

I think I have a new webcomic obsession.


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

unintentional comedy, part eighty-seven

discovered on my rounds 'cross the internet this afternoon:

since no one's posted in a while...

...I checked the news over at fark.com and here's what I found:

facebook's about to get real crowded

discussion question: is this a good idea or further evidence that the facebook is preparing to jump the shark?

tea partay

hollllllaaaaaaa trust fund kidz!



(I'm pretty sure it's a Smirnoff ad, but it's funny anyway)

oh, this is bad. this is very, very bad.

I did *not* need to find out this exists the night before starting a new school year. I might as well just tell my professors now that I will be failing their classes because this game will have taken over my life. it's very simple: you and an internet-based stranger are paired up and shown the same pictures at the same time, and you both type in as many potential keywords for the pictures as you can. you get points every time your words match, and google uses the results to determine the best keywords to use for these photos. each game is 90 seconds long, which is juuuuuuust long enough to make you automatically hit "start again" at the end of each game. arghh...

hey, Matt...

here's something you could do with your neuroscience skillz...

oh, crap.

you know how the big joke about the crocodile hunter was that one of these days he would get too close to a croc and that would be the final episode of the show?

uh, well, it happened. only it was a freak acccident with a stingray.

RIP, steve. we hardly knew ye.

dani looks like drew barrymore...and batman

this one took two tries -- first I tried a picture where you were wearing glasses, and the website couldn't find any matches. maybe celebrities are too cool for glasses? hm. but here you go...

OH MY GOD!

Can we rent Snakes on a Train and compare?
d

a time-wasting website about time! spooky.

I just stumbled across this website, and it seems to have a fair amount of procrastination potential. so far I've learned that I'm finishing up my 9091st day of existence, and I will turn 25 in approximately 41 days, 1 hour, 6 minutes and 29...28...27 seconds, so there's still plenty of time for you to buy me presents :-D

wait -- did we already know about this??

I just saw this on the shelves of blockbuster and nearly fell over. looks like the SoaP sequel will need to be slightly more original...

the Intarweb is strange indeed...

... and yet, it mesmerizes me:

http://macgyverpluto.ytmnd.com/

http://bradpittisended.ytmnd.com/

http://conneryhunt.ytmnd.com/

http://snakesoncosbysplane.ytmnd.com/

http://whatis88.ytmnd.com/

silly me and my very, very basic cable

I don't actually have MTV, but for those of us who do (*cough* *cough* kat), OK Go will recreate their "here it goes again" video LIVE at tonight's video music awards. so kat, let us know how it goes, 'kay?

okay, kids.

I still think it's a load of crap. I mean, david letterman?!? in what universe do we look ANYTHING alike?? also, who the heck is this fabio dude? and serena williams scares me. like, really scares me. like, if I woke up in the middle of the night to find her looming over me with her ginormous muscles and her awful self-designed fashion sense, I would scream, like, a lot.

Find your celebrity look-alike

The site is kind of slow and weird to navigate... and I have serious doubts about the quality of their face-matching algorithm (cf above, where I am mainly matched up to chicks and Clay Aiken, with nary a Tim Curry to be found in all the land), but still a fun idea.

comedians take on chemistry sets, rodeo clowns, and genocide

this quick essay is neither particularly relevant nor earth-shattering, but I just ran across it in the mcsweeney's archives and am quite amused.

OOOOOOOOOOOH.

who needs books on tape/CD when you can have snakes on a pl--I mean, FREE books on your ipod?

erica, wondering when the snake madness will stop

Question and comment

Man, that sucks about Pluto. Poor Pluto.

In the meantime, who wants to enlighten me: why does my mozilla browser not update our blog (as in, it hasn't showed a new post for about 5 days) but internet explorer does?
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Question and comment

Man, that sucks about Pluto. Poor Pluto.

In the meantime, who wants to enlighten me: why does my mozilla browser not update our blog (as in, it hasn't showed a new post for about 5 days) but internet explorer does?
st

*GASP!*

but... but... what about the children????!!!!!ONEDAMMIT

Everything's better with bacon! And... Tang?

I think for our next baking adventure we should make these:

http://www.kraftfoods.com/recipes/BreakfastBrunch/SandwichesBreakfastBars/BaconSnackBars.html

They sound kinda gross, but you never know... they could turn out to be fantastic.

relive the glory...

...with a minute-by-minute recap of Snakes on a Plane. Just like being there in the theater again. Only without, you know, live snakes.

dani's beloved in his awkward phase

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA


- ericat13, who plans to destroy each and every copy of her elementary and high school yearbooks should she one day become famous

PS--more bad celebrity photos are available here.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine....uhh....uhh....

Make sure to listen to this hilarious article! Makes you wonder why Karen every would have dropped out of her program!
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awe. some.

I'll be watching this over and over until I download the song to my ipod. my favorite part is where the snakes are in the luggage.

I'm Shylock, who are you?

Check out this neat Shakespeare character quiz! Did you know I'm more evil than 99% of people who took the quiz? Freaky!

Harry Potter continued

Okay, cf my second comment on the last post, I decided to do a bit of research and happened upon this. What do you think?

Matt--can you puhhllease read the books so you can get in on the conversation?
d

Harry Potter, dead or alive...

Okay friends, here's what the guy who wrote that song Matt hates, who reads the audio version of the HP books, has to say about Harry's fate,
st

...to say nothing about use of a knife and fork!

Eating at the wheel doubles crash chance. You crazy kids are lucky you made it to Sandusky alive.

Matt, your dream woman needs some biology lessons.

Spears says 2nd pregnancy "just happened."

(And Britney, melted chocolate qualifies as a liquid, so you'd better keep that off your plane. Love and kisses--the TSA.)

awwwwwwww.

coffee + cream = art (but can't be taken on planes)

if you think the first few are cool, wait until they break out the chocolate syrup. it's -- dare I say -- extreme, but closer to "moderately risky" extreme than extremely extreme.

Riding the Rapids

Day Three: Supplies still high. Textiles and dry goods plentiful--meringues abound. Cotton candy still 25 cents.

Amused ourselves with a new game, the celebrity chain game, in which we linked various celebrities to one another via their movies. Our biggest accomplishment to date: linking Gene Hackman to Dakota Fanning. Arachnaphobia was involved in the process. Matt was so thrilled he danced his way out of Cedar Point. Dani discovered that absolutely everyone could be connected via the film Broken Flowers, which wasn't even any good (though Kat disagrees). After that, the others put a moratorium on all ensemble films, which was unfortunate, as Ocean's 11/12, Magnolia, and Love Actually had also come in handy.

While Kat has now faced her denial concerning the deaths of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, Dani took a turn for the worse in Botticelli (and provided much amusement to all) when she did not know that the Osmonds were Mormon and also managed to think that John Lennon was someone named Michael McCartney.

We experienced some bad karma on the Dragster (aforementioned roller coaster). Kat, Matt, and Dani waited on line for an hour and a half, Matt spent $4.50 on a bottle of Pepsi, we bonded with a friendly body builder, and then they closed the ride down. But our desire for eXtreme thrills was satisfied first with Ripcord, pictured below, and then with our final ride, Millenium Force, where we waited on line for 1.25 hours with a DJ playing awesome music. We danced the night away with all the other crazy folks willing to take a 310 foot drop on a roller coaster!

Re: Ripcord. Matt, Kat, and Dani decided it would be a good idea to take a 156 foot drop to earth (though we cannot confirm whether it was from the peak of the parabola to the stand or to the ground) via Dani pulling a ripcord, which we discovered she was rather inept at doing. Erica (cf previous post), who does not like vertical drops, served as photographer for the occasion. Observe our descent to earth:


Tomorrow we ride the rapids to reach our final destinations. We remain concerned about the looming airport crisis concerning liquids and gels. We are pleased to announce, however, that snakes must be in the clear for flight.



st

PS. To those of who might have checked this blog during our trip, feel free to continue to do so, and you are always welcome to send comments. However, please don't spread the word. We enjoy the irony of having our own private corner in the most public of human domains.

News Update

Further debate rages, spawned on by Kat, on the definition of gel and liquid for aircraft travel. Please ruminate upon the following items:

1. Dry ice
2. Snakes
3. Lactating mothers
4. Gummy bears
5. Someone who has to pee
6. Yogurt
7. Pico de gallo
8. The liquid crystal display on some laptops
9. Glass, which, yes, is a liquid (cf: any house older than 300 years old where the windows were never replaced and the glass has started to sink to the bottom)
10. Lychees

And while we're at it: C,F, or M--liquid, cream, or gel?

Day Two at Cedar Point

2 rounds of mini-golf (in which Dani lived up to her reputation and finished dead last the first time but proceeded to disappoint all involved parties by finishing second in the next),
countless battles of DDR,
2 tracks of Go-Karts (where the two pioneers with names rhyming with bat dueled it out for victory),
1 go at bumper boats (where Dani proved to be water fiend),
and perhaps 7 roller coaster rides (including 2 rounds on Magnum) later, we have this to report:

Erica's cholera worsens. She found herself unable to ride one giant roller coaster, but fear not!--she did ride all the others that were gianter.

Matt has laryngitis from screaming on many rides. He also caught 1038 pounds of meat, but turns out we could only fit 100 on the wagon. Pity.

Kat beat out everyone, including several middle-aged men, at Go-Karts. She served as our native guide to the Ohioan (a new word for Dani) terrain as we scoped the wilderness of Cedar Point. She has been christened Pattering Screaming Cat.

We rekindled our skill at Botticelli (Erica stumped all with Theodore Geisel and Dani got everyone on Gerhard Schroeder who may or may not be over 40, according to her; Matt does not seem to know whether Charlton Heston is still alive, and Kat had what must have been a momentary brain blip when she assumed that both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had yet to kich the bucket). We also explored the realms of Chuck, Fuck, or Marry. We showed our expertise at the latter by entering into the world of the abstract: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Mary-Kate and Ashley/Jessica and Ashlee/Britney and Jamie Lynn, Betty T., Brodhead, and Levin particularly peaked our interest.

Tomorrow we take on the roller coaster that goes straight up in the air and then straight back down (see photo to your right). Ah, aren't we eXtreme!

Fondly,
Your friendly midwestern voyagers

Day One on the Oregon Trail in Ohio!

Supplies low.
Ritz crackers almost gone.
Erica has cholera.
Cannot decide whether to ford river or take ferry.
Matt went hunting yesterday but only came back with a squirrel.
Kat traded liquids and gels for an axle--unclear what kind (for Wheel or Rose).
Aside: Debate about whether Ez-cheez is a liquid or a gel. Suspect it is a cream. Unclear whether cream is a liquid or gel or fits into the platonic ideal of the cream. If cream, then allowed on airplanes. If liquid or gel, then not. If not, then unfortunate as this means that Boston cream donuts are also not allowed on planes, which makes Matt very sad. Also curious about whether Cool Whip qualifies as a liquid or solid as it begins as a frozen solid yet segues into a liquid. The same problem holds for ice, which is much more natural, much less fun, and certainly less delicious.
Danielle may have until we pull out disc A and insert disc B for something interesting to happen to her.

Over and out.

I haven't even *gotten* to the weird al version yet.

if you can stand hearing this insipid song twice in a row, here are a couple of chuckle-worthy parodies:



"beautiful"



"my cubicle"

(apologies if this post is all wonky. I'm trying to "embed" the "html" "code" and I don't really know what I'm doing.)

freakin' sweet.

once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, a theatre company attempted to condense thirteen hours of sci-fi awesomeness into a twenty-minute play.

they are my new heroes.

- erica, wondering how these performers can top themselves. _lord of the rings_, maybe?

some humor for you music nerds.

A "C", an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. The bartender says: "Sorry,
but we don't serve minors." So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G
have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks,the fifth is
diminished and the G is out flat. An F comes in and tries to augment
the situation, but is not sharp enough.
A "D" comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom
saying, "Excuse me. I'll just be a second." Then an A comes into the
bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not
a minor.
Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar
and exclaims, "Get out now. You're the seventh minor I've found in this
bar tonight."
The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next
night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender (who
used to have a nice corporate job until his company downsized says,
"You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major
development." This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the
suit, and everything else, and stands there au natural.
Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he's
under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of
contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10
years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On
appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even
accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless.
The bartender decides, however, that since he's only had tenor
so patrons, with the soprano out in the bathroom, and everything has
become alto much treble, he needs a rest, and closes the bar.

stop me if you've heard this one.

I had a brainstorm for an awesome website last night, and a glance at the first few google results doesn't reveal anything *quite* like it, so I'm not sure it's been done but let me know if it has:

let's say you're planning a road trip (CEDARPOINT!!!!11W00TBBQOWL), and you're not sure yet when you want to stop but you know that you want to visit a certain type of attraction (e.g., a waffle house, barnes & noble or megachurch) along the way. with this website, you would plug in the endpoints of your trip, select or type in the places you want to visit, and the website would either return a route which includes one of each place (say, the closest waffle house, piggly-wiggly, etc.) or show you a direct route and plot ALL of the places you picked. either way, you would then print out the results and bring them on the trip.

then, continuing the example, once you were in the middle of pennsylvania and craving an ice cream break, you would just look at your map and say, "hey! there's a dairy queen just 3 miles from the next exit" (i.e., just far enough from the highway to not be included in the road signs). think of it as a printable version of a car GPS system (and also one which does not require purchasing and/or installing an expensive piece of equipment in your car).

so...assuming this idea makes ANY sense, do we know if this has already been done? if not, this could be an excellent way to establish our brand before publishing our "Amusement Parks of the US" travel guide/memoir. what does everyone else think?

JK Rowling is a cruel mistress.

more Harry news.

Also, Icky Helena Bonham Carter got a Q&A in the back of my most recent little Time Magazine or whatever it's called. She sounds like a totally bizarre person. Probably why she's been Tim Burton's consort lo these many years.

edited to add: OK Go on the treadmills