Get ur Gleek on

A snap decision at last friday's hockey game resulted in the topic for today's post, gleeking.

gleek v. squirting liquid (including saliva) through the teeth or from under the tongue; less commonly, squirting saliva directly from the saliva glands or expelling liquid through the sinuses.

Actually, I think the inspiraction stemmed from how I accidently gleeked all over the bald man sitting in front of me, then laughed about it with Senor Rob then remarked that I would, in fact, post about it.

I tried to find some interesting material, pictures or perhaps even a guide online, but alas, there is a positive dearth of e-gleeking. I'm not saying there isn't stuff out there, but I expected much more.

Shame on you Internet! You go home and think about what you are missing!

I did, however, find an interesting online dictionary (from where I swiped the def. above). I'll have to peep that mug when I get some free time.

New Year's Resolution

Coming up with a good new year's resolution is pretty much like coming up with a thesis topic. You want it to be both insightful and inciteful and often wait till the last minute and then blurt out whatever comes to your mind (this is, in fact, exactly how I determined my Master's thesis topic "The profitability of socially responsibile business: An emerging reality in the corporate world." --Brief side note--sweet jebus I wish I could still write on that intellectual level but that is besides the point--back to ye olde post...

Past resolutions have been to be more of an a-hole, grow a rat tale, sleep in a card board box, blow a handful of pepper in someone's eye, throw more salt in peoples game, gain 15 pounds of body fat, poke someone with a stick, ride a mechanical bull, learn how to perfectly execute the figure four leg lock then do so on a stranger, answer any question that starts with "can you" with a loud obnoxious "I DUNNO, CAN I" you know typical resolutions.

Until 5 minutes ago, my tentative resolution was to start drinking coffee. Not just any coffee, but nasty coffee. Partly in protest of Starbucks and partly cause it makes a good story. It's all about the good stories people, c'mon!

Then I saw an email which changed EVERYTHING!

Say hello to my new new year's resolution... growing a hair hat.

My only question is, should I go for the tradional style? Or maybe something a little different like the hat to the back or maybe a berret?

I guess I have a week or so to sort that one out.

The Lost!-Patsy Cline-45 RPM Record-Johnny Cash-Hip hop connection

Wow. Now that's quite a string of random thoughts.

Or is it?

Let's take a wonka-esque trip through the wanderings of my mind from earlier today.

So any of you Lost fanatics out there might recognize that the show, particularly episodes that center on Kate, have a tendency to feature music by Patsy Cline. Now generally chances are pretty slim that I would take an umprompted interest in Patsy Cline's music, but the liberal use in Lost was just the catalyst to make that happen.

Connection 1 = Lost --> Interest in Patsy Cline

While doing some last minute stocking stuffer shopping at Target, I came across a budget hits CD for one Patsy Cline, the last one in stock nevertheless. $6.99 for her greatest hits PLUS a DVD documentary on her life? YESSSSS!

I spent most of the day listening to the cd and it is quite good. The average length of each song is 2:34 seconds which is great cause you never get to the point of twang saturation on any one song. Now how in the world could have Patsy Cline realized that twangy ass music gets old after the 3 minute mark? The fact of the matter is this, she didn't. The length of her songs was most likely determined by the popular medium at the time, 45 records, which on average hold just over 2 and 1/2 minutes of music.

Connection 2 = Length of Patsy Cline's songs driven by the 45 record

Being the popular medium, everyone put there music out on 45's. Radio stations based the programming based on the length of 45 records. As paid advertising became more important/promenient so did radio station's program formatting, thus if you were an artist and you wanted airplay, you were limited to make songs that were only a few short minutes.

There is a parrallel here that I wish make. I once read Johnny Cash's thoughts on modern country music and he expressed that country music was once a product of culture, but now country music produces culture. He didn't feel that one form was necessarily any better or worse than the other, just different.

Connection 3 = 45 records shift from product to producer, as did country music.

Ok, you've probably stuck with me so far, but wonder how the heck do you make to hip hop, right?

Well, stand back and watch.

Connection 4 = Fo' shizzle! Holla! Tru dat!


Yup that's it.

No it's not.

I would make the arguement that, believe it or not, Rap and Country music share the same family roots. It's just that one genre is rooted in the farmland and the other on the other side of the tracks.

Both grew from an impoverished seed, told the stories of the source, and sometimes offered a sense of hope or a cap in the ass. Both were 100% products of their culture, both grew in popularity to the point of being raped and pillaged on an industrial scale. Both genres went on to produce culture rather them stem from it. Both genres are considered dead in the eyes of purists or maybe just me. And both can be found on my ipod.

Connection 4 (for real) = Rap music = Country music in terms of the progression/life cycle.

Nothing especially funny here. Just a lot of random thoughts.

Welcome to my mind.

Wu tang muthaf@ckers!

One ticket down the mountain please...

Uncle Liu won't be making it to Christmas dinner this year. He was mildly injured in a log riding incident. He does, however send his well wishes and a fine bottle of saki.

Ok, more lies. My creativity went on strike today along with the NY mass transit system. I don't have an Uncle Liu (but, for what it's worth, I do have an Uncle Lew and as far as I know he doesn't ride trees down mountains). I was just looking for a reason to post this picture.

Doodads.

Oh Doo Dads, Where Art thou?

Just so we are all on the same page here, we are talking about a nabisco snack mix.

If you thought otherwise, congrats on being of the dirty old man school of thought, now get your mind out of the gutter.

Apparently, I am not the only one asking this question.

To the uninitiated, Doo Dads may seem nothing more than 2nd rate chex mix, but to those who remain true to the 80s we know otherwise. And while I am not quite sure why, but just recently the mental ghost of this 80s snack mix has reawoken to haunt my mental wanderings.

For example, in my mind it would make for some great drunken craving ravings. Imagine cruising the aisles of food lion asking random employees where they keep their doo dads? Or the cashier who is forced to ask for a price check on doo dads when you accidently scribble out the bar code? In another demented thought, I wondered what would happen if I went to sit on santa's lap as a 30 year old man and asked for some doo dads for christmas? Yeah, even I think that one may cross a line or two.

Sadly, doo dads are nothing more than a fond memory these days after Nabisco pulled the plug on their production. A google search for nabisco doo dads* reveals the awful truth and the corresponding backlash.

Here are some sample responses:

And then there's Doo-Dads. A thousand curses upon the goat-raping bastards at Nabisco for discontinuing Doo-Dads!

DooDads.... man oh man, right now I'd pay 20.00 for a box. Chex mix that they came out with, I cant stand. It works for now. But man, I love eathing doodads with my mom esp. around christmas time. I thing they took a loss of money they could of made from taking it off the shelf.. unless someone knows where to find ANY!!!!!

More interesting is the following picture I found along my search.

Perhaps it explains the mysterious dissappearance. I guess my only hope is ebay.

*If you decide to google search doo dads, I highly recommend turning on the safe search function. Otherwise, chances are you will end up with a bunch of links to somebody's bean bag.

Merrillze Chistmasdizzle Bizzle

New Christmas Album hittin the streets any day now. We be puttin the holla in holidays YA HEARD!

It's all about the contrast effect...

Before I get too deep into this post, it would serve me well to first explain what the contrast effect is and what it does.

Simpy put, the contrast effect is the alteration of one's perception of a given thing by placing said given thing in juxtaposition (woohoo bonus points for using a big word for side by side) with another thing.

For example, computer literacy/technological saviness were quite different when I was an undergrad. Yes, it's true! Sure we had computers but their saturation was no where near the levels today.

It was a time (albiet the twilight hours) of the DOS prompt, Word Perfect, and a Non-GUI based version of SPSS (scary times for sure). In fact, this was the year before Netscape and other visual based web browsers were even available on campus (although we did have access to the Internet and text based pages).

Needless to say, about the most computers were used for was (a) writing term papers and (b) playing minesweeper.

So on with the story, some classmates and me had to deliver a presentation for our research methods class based on our experiment investigating whether or not people could differentiate Diet vs Regular Dr. Pepper in a blind taste test. Our preparation was rather simply. Get up and talk. We opted to go second.

The first group proceed to pull out a laptop and laser pointer and delivered what, at the time, was pretty much rocket science.

Merlin's Beard! How do you follow that?

Unless we found out the Dr. Pepper cures cancer or maybe the clap, we were pretty much guaranteed a 2nd place finish at best.

My feeble recourse was to open the presentation as follows...

Me: "Before we get start, I just wanted to say two words: Contrast Effect."

The teacher laughed and I knew that we at least had a shot at taking those damn techies down or at a minimum not failing, which was fine by me.


As a second, more contemporaneous example of the contrast effect, for as much of a turd I thought Fantastic Four was, it was pretty much Citzen Kane* as compared to the remake of the Dukes of Hazzard.

As much as I enjoyed the original TV show, truth be told they did not set the bar exceptionally high. So to screw up the movie is the equivalent of screwing up the task of boiling water.

A blonde Daisy Duke? A dark, brooding Roscoe? An uncle Jessy that smokes pot out of an apple? Hazzard County THIS IS NOT! Tom Wopat** is rolling over in his grave right now.



* I never saw Citizen Kane, but I once read it was good. BTW Rosebud was his sleigh. He musta been a weirdo or something, I mean the dude is about to punch out and he starts going on about his sled? I hope he was drugged with Hippo Tranqs or something.

** Technically speaking Tom Wopat is not dead, but if he were, you bet your ass he'd be rolling like it was his job.

Fantastic Four Questions

I watched Fantastic Four last night and as far as I am concerned, it raised far too many thought provoking questions for the mindless sort of action film genre from which it comes.

In fact, the final confrontation includes a question that asks something to the effect of "Do you know what happens when you rapidly cool super hot metal?" No, actually I don't. Thanks for making me feel stupid and thanks some more for not answering the question you hoser.

There are others as well. For instance, when Ben Grimm becomes "the thing" where does his forth finger go? God only knows.

Let's not forget Dr. Doom. After becoming a supervillan, where in the world would Dr. Doom go grocery shopping? I can't imagine he would stoop to paying someone to do it for him. After all we KNOW Dr. Doom is NOT a diva!

It just doesn't add up. They really need to go back to the drawing board and recast this movie using the four horsemen. No not those bloody footballers, rather the epitome of 1980s wrestling villanry (is that even a word?)

Yes, a movie featuring good ole Nature Boy Ric Flair WOOOOOOOO! and his delightfully devious sidekicks Tully Blanchard (watch out for the sling shot suplex) and the Minnesota wrecking crew...Arn and Ole Anderson.

Now that would be some good watching.

Friday's Helpful Hints...

Good Grief, have you seen the news today?

Grandmothers being tasered, kids being kept in boxes (maybe they should have read yesterday's blog) and planes running over babies, how can I compete with that?

I won't!

Instead here is some helpful information...


STROKE IDENTIFICATION
During a BBQ a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) and just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food - while she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening.

Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00pm, Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ - had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke perhaps Ingrid would be with us today.

It only takes a minute to read this-A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed and getting to the patient within 3 hours which is tough.

Field Diagnosis of a STROKE. The "3" steps.
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
1. *Ask the individual to SMILE.
2. *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
3. *Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (i.e. . It is sunny out today)

If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

After discovering that a group of non-medical volunteers could identifyfacial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems, researchers urged the general public to learn the three questions. They presented their conclusions at the American Stroke Association's annual meeting last February. Widespread use of this test could result in prompt diagnosis andtreatment of the stroke and prevent brain damage.

And in case you were wondering, here's how to indentify THE STROKES:

PS is it me or does diet coke with lime taste better when you close your eyes and pretend it's green?

Warning!

So I was getting out the wrapping paper and noticed this handy little warning on the inside of the lid.

Apparently, the rubbermaid tote is not suitable for storing Webster or any other small humans. Damn. I was totally thinking I could avoid the whole nursery thing some day by storing my baby in that thing. I mean come on, it is semi-transparent, so I could totally see if the kid was misbehaving.

Here's another, not so obvious warning I came across.

Look closely. See that purple moon and stars? Bet you think that signifies "nighttime" right? Hellllll no. Drink one or two swigs too many in the alotted 4 hr period and that's the sort of stuff your are liable to start seeing. In fact, that's exactly how general mills comes up with new marshmellow ideas for lucky charms.

Drifting

I am 76% sure this is a Toyota Camry. I am 100% sure a Toyota Camry shouldn't be driven like this.

Birthday Shenanigans

Let's review friday night (or what I remember of it).

1. Blacking out -- Check
2. Finding a shot glass in my pants when I got home (in fact 2) -- Check
3. Booting -- negative ghostrider

Well 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Many people fear the 21st birthday, but in reality, the true danger is the 30th. You see, several forces (ie increased discretionary income among your friends, your own decrease in tolerance ect ect ect) combine like Voltron and generally work against your favor.

Plus there must be some kind of unwritten rule that no two people can buy you the same drink. I basically had the Whitman's sampler of booze. The night started out gently enough with an oatmeal cookie (that's a shot not an actual cookie) courtesey of D. Magical.

Things quickly progressed and before I knew it, I received my first cement mixer. Not too bad when it starts out, but after 10 seconds of shaking, things start to get ugly. After about 30 seconds, it's like having a mouth full of battlecat's litter.

As time passed, my memories started to have a strobe-light effect. Yeah, you know what I am talking about. Dave Attell call's it time travel.

In one of my lucid bouts, I ran into some unexpected friends from high school and elementary school which was a nice surprise. It pretty much completed my collection of friends from different eras.

Soon after I was hand another shot (big surprise). It was red and fruity. Was it the fabled woo woo? I don't know. Did it contain a ruffie? Probably. Was it a catalyst to frank the tank? Yes. bang bang bang bang load it up again!

I think a game of edward 40 hands was tentatively scheduled for the second week of January. The game will be held in the woods, far away from sharp objects.

In all, it was a great night. Probably the best birthday ever. Much better than the bowling alley party I had when I was six.

1980licious

If any guilty pleasure trumps that of propaganda, it would have to be the 80s (as if you couldn't guess by the random pictures of transformers, he-man and people setting themselves on fire--a true mark of excess).

So, thinking back to the 80s, does anyone remember Laser tag? I mean OG real deal laser tag?

I have one of those very same game kits stuffed away in my parent's attic along with several boxes of 1989 Topps baseball cards full of worthless roiders and some dude named Bo Jackson.

Laser tag is an excellent example of "great in theory, retarded in application."

You see, getting a single set is kind of like getting a dart board with nothing to throw at it. Sure you could hurl your mom's Ginsus or maybe even your compass from school, but that's only if you were good at thinking out of the box. For most kids, the best you could do is train to be kurt cobain and shoot yourself.

We played Laser tag at recess and by we I mean me and this rich kid named Garun as we were the only two kids with sets. The rest of the smucks had to sit and watch. Not only did Garun have the same set as me, but he also had the official laser tag vest and helmet. These two items, while cool in looks, served no functional purpose aside from giving me additional targets to shoot at, which would explain how I regularly kicked his ass at a ratio of 3:1.

So you probably assume I was a spoiled rich kid too. How else would I have the much coveted (think of an xbox 360) toy? Did I steal it? Hmmm, I guess that is a matter of personal definition and ties closely to whether or not you agree if certain politicians steal elections.

You see the local safeway had a drawing for one of these sets. And I was determined to win. I have always considered myself lucky, so I just knew I would win. My confidence, however, did not stem from my faith in luck as much as my ability to read fine print (enter as often as you like) and kathy lee gifford sweatshop dedication of filling out every damn entry in the store approximately 4,358. I burned the remaining 642 for good measure.

A few weeks later I got a call from the manager informing me that I won. I informed the manager that I knew. He seemed puzzled. I quickly feigned that I was merely joking and enlisted my thespian skills to show my excitement.

Yeahhhhhhh Wooooooooo I can't believe it*

*it being the silly enter as often as you like clause

Oh 80s, you so funny!

I pity the fool who doesn't turn right in 200 yards!

Holy mackeral!

Voice guided GPS just got real interesting!

Lost--SPOILER ALERT

While surfing around the net I discovered some interesting information.

Apparently a disgruntled gaffer from the set of Lost start dropping all sorts of juicy secrets about that dog-gone mysterious island.

Most notably, he revealed in great detail the island's security system/monster, Battlecat.

Yeah Battlecat has steez like you wouldn't believe!