Brain Dump

Each hearing file discards a sacked associate lecture with a frown during monthly integrity convictions. The chair has a disconnected buffer handle that pushes reserved persons into blogging accidents and passe video-accented evenings of abusive left-wing demonstrating. This formatting is a sort of kindly recursion of roof melt, a long-lasting river traveling though a doubtful autobiography, conveying a mystic, messy sigh. A band with forceful toes appears outgoing, posing as rejects with their reserved dynamic murder buckets. Impossible inaccuracy is then announced, as they capture stringent manifesto machines with solid equivalent price dodges. Next, hardy, obligatory pints are examined with reservations, owing to drastic expressions of overflowing torrents and terrorist scenarios. Such hallucinatory bombing is suitable for a parity schedule network, yes?

....

When I plugged the first sentence of this masterpiece into Google Image Search, the result was this. Photos of Abu Ghraib and Dick Cheney? Ugh...

When I plugged the fourth sentence into Google Image Search, I got this. Again, lots of politicians, but also an onyx skull (I think), a guillotine and Michael Jackson. Hmmm.

The last sentence generated this: a choking victim, more Cheney (with W, this time), and at least two atomic mushroom clouds.

I'm starting to scare myself.

Word of the Day: panjandrum

panjandrum (n)

An important person, a VIP -- or someone who thinks he or she is. Sometimes capitalized.

"Some people claim that we are just part of a bigger story that we can't see. Others maintain that we were created by the Great Panjandrum, and still others that we are merely in the mind of the Great Panjandrum."
--Jasper Fforde, Well of Lost Plots

Here we see "Panjandrum" being used as a synonym for the Supreme Being, I think. I prefer to refer to Him/Her/It as The Cosmic Muffin. (I suppose that makes me a crumb, eh? You too.)

Let me take you down....

Or in.... I'm not in the mood for whirling, but the Spiral Photo Gallery induces a pleasant vertigo.

Here's a pic from me of a stairwell at Ellis Island. Click it. Weee...

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Saw Avatar. Amazing technical accomplishment: It made a double life as a giant 3D Smurf seem semi-attractive.... Haven't shaved since 12/18. Feel scruffy.... Received a colorful book about cars of the 1950s for Christmas. Astonished at the bizarre styling permutations that were accomplished with sheet metal and chrome in that decade. Bat-wing tailfins.... Ate too much sugary glop on Xmas day. Felt sickish. Mostly steered clear of it today. Feel purified.... My teenage nephew received night-vision goggles for Xmas. Why? He spent some time in a closet, trying them out. I'm mystified....

And so this is Christmas....

Yay -- my shopping is done. Click the pic above. This store in my neighborhood always makes me laugh at this time of year.

Word of the Day: gormless

gormless (adj)

Stupid, naïve, foolish, bone-headed

"'Come real, Jakob.' 'Get real is what you mean. Another gormless phrase.' 'Gormless?' Tom said. 'I dunno,' Jacob said irritably. 'Stupid, naff, silly."
--Aidan Chambers, Postcards from No Man's Land

I am very gormless sometimes, usually when I'm distracted. For example, I once drank some cleaning fluid that was kept in a water bottle that someone had put in the refrigerator because.... I don't remember why; I guess it had to be kept cool. Now, it might seem stupid in itself to put such stuff in a water bottle and keep it in the fridge. But the bottle was clearly labeled as cleaning fluid and the label said "DON'T DRINK". As usual, though, I was thinking about work or some errand I needed to run, or a cult TV show or film, or some song was playing in my head. I just reached in, pulled out the bottle and took a swig -- and spit it out, though I swallowed a little. Luckily it wasn't caustic, just terrible tasting. I didn't get sick, but I did make the further gormless mistake of telling someone what I had just done. I was called "absent-minded Michael" for about a week after that.

What Were They Thinking?

Popular Mechanics has to be the most unintentionally funny magazine ever published.

(via The Presurfer)

Flashmob Follies

This looks like fun....

Citizen Betacam

Is there no end to quirky stories about Orson Welles? A guy at work sent this one via Facebook. (Thanks, Mauro.) It involves the famous filmmaker's attempted embrace of video...and what happened to his ashes. The man was truly cursed with being ahead of his time.

Zentences

"Our tragicomic dialogue can make everything beautiful"

At zentences, you can generate a seemingly endless number of gnomic pearls (as above) and rhetorical questions (requires Flash). They might even serve as prompts for quirky essays (or daydreams), if you're a philosophical sort. Examples:

Sanity approaches the infinite?
Diligence has its roots in the earth.
Silence is seen by the Third Eye.
Perserverance seems to be a mad dance of electrons.
Wonder feels warm?
The Garden of Eden cannot be a majority decision.

That last one struck me. I don't think the "Garden of Eden" (meaning paradise, nirvana, utopia or even "the good life") can ever be defined by a majority. We all have to find our own little island of satisfaction, even if it takes a lifetime. Your heaven might be my hell, or purgatory. And vice versa.

Random Acts of Poetry

My Xmas List

The drugged buzzing of winter flies
spiraling downward in a dream.

Loons in some Scandinavian night,
the woods full of moose.

An old ship, crossing the ocean,
cold waves slapping steel.

The sky pricked by stars
and exhaling frost.

A blaze of leaves dieing in a bonfire,
salting warm stones with ash.

Sing Along with Webster

Dictionaraoke.org, aka "The Singing Dictionary," is a collection of downloadable mp3 files created by combining karaoke versions of pop songs with audio pronunciation clips from online dictionaries. Pretty amusing. I especially enjoyed the site's versions of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" and the Beatles' "Martha My Dear." You. Silly. Girl.