Taster Spoon

Primarily because of the sesame seed duvet

Did you know the Hamburger Bed is my friendster?  Or Facebook stalkee, whatever.

It totally almost made a headline.

http://www.oddee.com/item_96623.aspx

I'm actually a big fan of the molecular bed now.  I wonder if it is accepting Friendsters. 

In other Easter news...

http://www.fiberfarm.com/lambcam

A question for you

So I was commenting over on another site yesterday, and it had one of those spam-catchers like I have here, where you have to type in the random assortment of letters and numbers to prove that you're a real human, with a heart, brains and courage.  Some of them give you real words.  I think the one at Ethicurean is like that, very easy to use.  Some are of the completely unintelligible variety - Wickedly Scarlett's is like that, only particularly bad, because hers is of the random-letter-on-a-smudgy background variety, and my cybertronic eyes can't always make out the difference between i's and r's and t's and l's and the smudges, and sometimes q's look weird, and I have to go through a couple of tries.  I think I have the same one.  Typepad!! (said while shaking fist.)

So I left a note for Tequila Stakes Croquet and the captchkin wanted me to enter SIDS, which I thought was kind of creepy.  Why not SARS, while you're at it?  Or POLIO?  So I superstitiously had to make a new comment just to shake the mojo.

Which made me think of a question for you, the audience.  What would you do, upon buying a new car and registering your vehicle, if the license plate that arrived in the mail was not a completely random letter assortment, but rather said something like

21BUTT

MOIST47

F3TU5

D0U CH3

R3T 4RD

DIA PER

HIV POS

Would you send it back?  Do they even allow you to, without forking over for a vanity plate?  What would you do?

One is silver, and the other, gold.

,Some time in 2002, a friend introduced me to MySpace. 

MySpace seemed nice enough.  (Have you heard of MySpace?  I hear MySpace was pretty popular for a while.  I don't really know, we fell out of touch.)  It's just - back when we started hanging out, MySpace was kind of high-maintenance, you know?  And our relationship didn't really work out.  I guess I felt like MySpace was always pushing me to be cooler than I was.  MySpace was always trying to get me to decorate my page and hook me up with random people I had nothing in common with except that they were trying to promote their band or something.

I'd like to say we had good times, but I guess I mostly avoided MySpace's emails, and we finally just kind of...drifted apart.   I guess I don't really think about MySpace much these days.

And then this morning - totally out of the blue! - MySpace sent me a message, and it was like, "One or more of your friends is having a birthday this week!"

And I'm thinking, "Really?  That's so cool that MySpace keeps in touch with one or more of my friends and thought of me."

And MySpace was like, "Visit MySpace to check out who!"

And I was like, "Wow.  MySpace.  I wonder if I can even remember my password."

So I clicked on the link, and MySpace was all, "COOL NEW VIDEOS! FIND YOUR FRIENDS! MILEY CYRUS! GRADE MY PROF! COOL NEW PEOPLE! CHAT FREE WITH SEXY SINGLES IN YOUR ZIP!"

It was like I was suddenly 28 again, you know?  Like my early 30s never even happened.  And I suddenly remembered how MySpace had been such a pain in my butt that I never checked in. 

So I was like, "Whoa.  I remember when we first met, and I couldn't be bothered to upload/download umpteen photos/videos/music clips/wallpapers to express who I really am.  And now it's six years later and I really can't be bothered to wade through your mess." 

And MySpace was all cold to me, and was like, "Password?"

I mean, did MySpace even miss me?  Surprise, surprise, after MySpace logged me on (second try - oh man, that was a good password), MySpace didn't even tell me whose birthday it is this week.  That is to say - which, of my eight MySpace friends, is having a birthday. 

Seriously, MySpace?  All this time and you're playing hide the ball? 

I know one of my eight friends has a birthday in July, and another in November, so that left six.  I looked up STEEEVE REEEED and his, as I discovered only by scanning his comments, was in February.  (Hey!  Happy belated!  Also happy first child!)  That left five, but by then I was tired of combing through all the garbage to "check out who."

So I went back to my e-mail and clicked on the link and MySpace told me right away it's Adina's birthday tomorrow.  (Yay!  Click on over and say hey!)  Whatever, MySpace.  Too little, too late.

At least Friendster never jerked me around like that.

Friendster!  Jeez.  Blast from the past, huh??  I wonder what Friendster is up to these days.

Spiced Ham for the Holidays

 

I have to say, this is one of the more well-constructed spams I've gotten. 

.

(Although the "To:" line misspelled my name, so I'm not sure how it got to me.  It looks like it was some forwarding program that zombied the email of someone at...Goldman Sachs?  Was this Ahmed character surfing porn at work?  Tsk.  He sounds British, maybe they don't get the same harassment training we do.) 

.

The "I am using my friend's email" line is pretty good.  But moreso than my misspelled name, it was the "Hope you will like my pictures" that tipped me off - with its awkward phrasing.  You'll need a more adept command of American usage to get in MY pants! 

.

That leaves the only remaining question: how did she know I was a lesbian??

NaBloPoWhoa

Wow, I didn't sign up for NaBloPoMo until Tuesday because I didn't want to pressure myself (and also because I don't really care; I participated for the same reason Edmund Hillary climbed Everest), but after I did, my daily hits quadrupled via that ring randomizer thing.  (Which may tell you a little too much about my average volume of hits, but that's okay, I count any day somebody gets here by actually typing out the URL as a successful day.)

Which, I should also add, is not to say I read too much into my stats.  Vaguely Urban started her blog (and mentioned it) nearly a year before I looked it up, and it wasn't because I wasn't utterly interested in what she was up to and what she had to say.  I just didn't "get" the whole "blogging" "thing."  Then one day a mutual friend related some incident of which I was unaware because I had just completely forgotten about the blog.   

But the next day I looked it up, and whammo, it was like falling down the rabbit hole.  Not only did I spend the afternoon reading the entire thing (and commenting - I didn't realize at the time that comments were popping onto her Manage screen and into her Inbox all day long - I thought I was being stealthy), but I followed her links and discovered: a whole new world, a different set of people, a keyhole view into all of these different lives, expressed in all kinds of ways.  (I don't know what I did with my time before I discovered the blogosphere.  Sudoku?) 

It's like a different life stage now, like that summer I listened to Whitney Houston and Elvis Presley again and again and again until the tapes unraveled, or the time when I was looking for a job but was actually spending a majority of my waking hours making the Sims way more successful and productive members of society than I was, or even the couple of years when I was trying to get my hands around religion. 

Where do you begin, where do you end?  There are people I started out reading whom I never look up anymore.  Some because their lives were too divergent, some because they didn't update (I still don't have a reader, I'm stuck in 2004!), some because they intimidated me, some just because they were big names who were out of my league and wouldn't notice if I came or went anyway.  (With one exception, I don't think I read anyone who regularly gets more than ten or so comments.) 

I think everyone I read nowadays is someone who genuinely impresses me one way or another, but also someone I would be tickled to meet someday.  (But of course it's unilateral.  They may think I'm numbingly boring.)  Some blogs are invariably good for a snuffle-laugh, some blogs have good ideas for self-improvement, some blogs have neat cooking or crafty ideas that let me domesticate vicariously, some blogs are just like comfortable friends you don't have to change out of your sweat pants to enjoy spending a little time with.  (I'm pointedly not making these descriptions into links, because I know you're all, "Wait, am I sweat pants or am I snuffle-laugh?  I wrote about painting my toenails that one time...does that mean I'm not funny?  Why don't you think I'm funny?  Is it because I'm always going on about my job/ diet/ baby/ wedding/ pet/ backyard/ book-in-progress/ neighbor's Christmas decorations?"  No, it's not.)  It's nice to know you all.

My mom won't read my blog unless I've been radio silent for too long.  I kiddingly gave her a hard time for 'revealing' Ace's name in a comment early on (when I don't care that much, you all know who I mean, and if you don't the sidebar provides a pretty generous hint, and also, did you know you have cancer if your palm is bigger than your face?) and she got scared off.  And a couple of Real World People have mentioned that they check in now and again but never leave a note.  I guess I don't really know who's out there, but I'm glad you stopped by.  For what it's worth, I aspire to be in the sweat pants category.

So anyway, a shout out to anybody who's visited here today on purpose - right back at you!  Leave a comment, or better yet - give me a call.  I'm going to get way less frequent now that this NaBloPoMo obligation is off my back.  A Super Shout Out to the Queen, for her phenomenal participation in NaBloPoYe.

Jazz hands.

Google a Go Go

I'm wikkid bizzay so I'll let you do the work today. 

[A prize of some kind] to whoever can guess either 1) the most frequent text search term from which people link to this here blog, or 2) the most frequently clicked image which brings you to this here blog. 

[A somewhat better prize] to whoever guesses both!

Unless you're really killing time, I imagine it's a pretty obscure egg hunt (is that giving too much away?) so unresearched guesses are encouraged.

Know what?

I feel better about myself when I peek in at all the blogs I love and discover that they haven't updated recently, either.

I know, filler. I left my camera cord in the car.

46%

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

Google me.

This morning, as I was driving to work, minding my own business, about to merge onto 101 ("the" 101, for you Southern Californians), a green minivan wearing a stovepipe hat pulled into my lane in front of me. 

It wasn't really a top hat, it looked kind of like a home-made gun turret, something vaguely sci-fi, whipped up by an area nerd.

I stared at the metal box and cylinder for a few moments, and noticed that the stovepipe was actually an octagon, with cutouts through which eight lenses were peeping.  It dawned on me, "It must be a Google Streetviewmobile!" 

If you don't already have it in your town, it will be coming soon.  Streetview is a button you click on Google Maps to allow you to not only plot your route, but actually see, through photographs, what the storefronts and houses en route and at your destination look like.  Kind of like the "satellite view," only, you know, street level.

Ace already spooked me by asking why my car was still parked in our driveway on an - apparently - weekday morning.  Maybe I was doing your laundry.  Scooter creeped me out further by e-mailing a closeup on my license plate.    

Apparently Silicon Valley has worked itself into a tizzy (I use the term "worked" loosely - if there's anything these people are doing, it is not that) collecting all the humorous and racy closeups inadvertently captured by the Streetview gremlins: the girl in the thong in San Francisco, the sunbathers at Stanford, the cyclist changing a flat on the side of the road.  If Scooter ever emails me the website, I will embed the links here.

I stopped fooling with my makeup, fluffed my hair and wiggled my fingers and blew kisses at the van.  We both took the same exit, but I went West and the van went East, so who knows.  My commute is already covered by the existing Streetview.  But you know I'll keep checking that stretch of road for a couple of months, anyway. 

I promise, if I become a weblebrity, I'll totally remember the little people.  I mean, for a while, anyway.  There are just SO many PEOPLE, right?  JEEZ!  Leave me alone already!  Yeah, okay, one picture.