Today's events got me thinking about vanity or, more specifically, vanity license plates. Perhaps it was because I was simply more attentive on the road today, but there seemed to be a surfeit of the aforementioned objects in circulation on interstate 84 in the westbound direction.
A lot of them weren't too special, things like GRAMP6 - whatever the hell that means - and GOLDY 1. There were several more I can't recall, but there was one tandem on the Saw Mill Parkway that I won't soon forgot. In front of us was "MMMBOP," which I can only assume was in homage to the original Hanson hit as there aren't too many other instances (read: zero) in which I can recall such a word coming up. Unfortunately, the appearance of MMMBOP, in her silvery late 80s Nissan, was rather disappointing, as she was somewhat generic and dumpy, lacking a certain "je ne sais quoi" as I literally don't know what I was hoping for or expecting from her appearance.
Situated ahead of MMMBOP at the stoplight was none other than an SUV with the moniker "ILOVEBI," or rather, that is what my eyes wanted to see. It did have a delightful Brick Tamland-like flair. It was then pointed out by my cousin that the plate did in fact say "ILOVELBI," a far more sensible vanity plate to witness, especially given LBI's popularity as a vacation spot. Still, I never looked back to confirm these were in fact the letters, and I hold out some hope for ILOVEBI as the second "L" would represent an eighth character, violating what I thought to be a seven-character limit on United States' license plates.
Aside from that, Juno is a kick-ass movie that I highly recommend.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Running: For the Retards
Last night, feeling particularly stiff and sore from a day of standing, I decided a short run was in order. This placed me on the main street of neighboring Highland Park somewhere in the vicinity of nine pm. As I passed a newly minted Papa John's a guy yelled out of his truck: "Retard." Maybe it was because I was wearing shorts? I will forever be baffled as to why the sight of someone running incites anger and/or the need for commentary. I've been called a lot of things while running, had things thrown at me, had cars attempt to hit me, even been stopped to turn on a random family's lights during some Jewish holiday, and retard intrigues me a good deal.
Incidentally, I wanted to make the Papa John's link for something toilet related, because I love puns, and I stumbled upon this gem of a website simply by googling "best toilet." I actually don't know how much of a gem it is, but I'm optimistic and plan to give it a little more attention sometime soon. Lest I not post for a bit, Happy Holidays a few days early to some, and belatedly to the Jews.
That's a wrap.
Incidentally, I wanted to make the Papa John's link for something toilet related, because I love puns, and I stumbled upon this gem of a website simply by googling "best toilet." I actually don't know how much of a gem it is, but I'm optimistic and plan to give it a little more attention sometime soon. Lest I not post for a bit, Happy Holidays a few days early to some, and belatedly to the Jews.
That's a wrap.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Don't I Not Know You From Somewhere?
You know those moments you are walking behind someone and you probably haven't seen them in a while and you keep wondering if you should say something or not since however awkward it might be it's sure to be less awkward than when they inevitably turn around and one of you has to make some move because at that point you're so close no one can continue the denial? It's not like when you're walking towards one another and you both see each other and mutually pretend as if you just never happened to be looking in that person's direction. Only then they turn around and it isn't that person but they give you a weird look almost as if they knew what you were thinking behind them that whole time. Yeah, that is such a relief. Sometimes I worry about strangers judging me but in that situation I'm just so happy it's not some schmuck I have to go through trivialities with that I overcome my standard anxieties. Chances are, if you don't want to talk to me, I don't want to be talking to you either, so don't feel bad when you ignore me because you really are doing both of us a favor.
Great tales like this vacuum cleaner-related incident always brighten my day. Nothing like a first-hand account of the tale. Also, here are some interesting musings on living longer by eating less, among other things. Oh, and because who doesn't like to read about dinosaurs, especially fossilized remains beyond the standard skeleton.
Great tales like this vacuum cleaner-related incident always brighten my day. Nothing like a first-hand account of the tale. Also, here are some interesting musings on living longer by eating less, among other things. Oh, and because who doesn't like to read about dinosaurs, especially fossilized remains beyond the standard skeleton.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Six Pack Abs
Everybody wants them. Your mother, your best friend, your enemies, your neighbor's dog, your girlfriend's cat…everyone. And everyone has them. They just might be hidden under layers of fat, a little thing the fancy medical community likes to call adipose tissue. Sometimes, when I am in to see a doctor, which is pretty often actually, I will throw around big words like that. Also anterior tibialis, fasciotomy, sesamoid, and nerves. These words are to demonstrate my expert medical knowledge.
Before I continue I have to say that I recently received a comment telling me that I was an idiot and to do more research. The first part is true and I don't believe in research, just hearsay. It is for that reason that everything preceding and post-ceding this interlude paragraph is pure, hard, researched fact. For some reason comments go to my spam folder, as do all those great bride ads. Periodically I have to scan my spam for this very reason and as a result I've got things in the works to take the hand of a fine Ukranian bride who isn't Oksana Baiul. When she told me she was a "woman-fire" who could fill my life with "bright impressions" promising "mornings' breakfasts in the bed," I was sold. The last line was the clincher because I need someone like me, who just can't do breakfast at any other time than the AM, no matter what diner's and IHOP have to say.
Right, so since with good lighting and an airbrush two years ago I had something akin to six pack abs, I feel I am fully qualified to tell the rest of the world how they too can have a wondrous midsection. The first secret is diet. You must always eat whatever you want, whenever you feel hungry. Binging will be a key component of your ab diet, but purging is not a good idea unless you are on the verge of alcohol poisoning and would otherwise need hospitalization. Hospitals are expensive, even when you have health insurance, and none of that money is likely to go towards six-pack abs. Like I was saying, eat whatever you want, so long as you don't actually want to eat anything. That's not true. For your regular diet you'll want cereals. Costco is a good place to get them, although the variety can be spotty. If you have a Wegman's in your area: jackpot. I really like Frosted Mini-Wheats as a staple. Peanut butter and banana, peanut butter and jelly, turkey and muenster: they will be your closest afternoon associates. Doritos and Edy's ice cream are also essential. Cycle flavors of both to reduce boredom. Another little trick is 1,000 plus abdominal related motions per day. These must all be done at once. Any incidental and inadvertent abdominal motions, like humping, that you may do throughout the day are optional, but not discouraged. Cardiovascular activity, often deemed cardio by the n00b fitness community, on the other hand leads often to injury and is widely discouraged.
The last key component, which actually surpasses illicit drug use, is genetics. But until you can get your hands on a Delorean, and enough plutonium and speed (velocity, not the drug, though amphetamine will boost your metabolism, but be sure to hydrate Carlton) to create 1.21 jigawatts of energy, you'll just have to be jealous of the bum in Central Park who has the body of a Greek (not Roman) sculpture. Everything in this article is verified by fitness professional John Basedow.
Before I continue I have to say that I recently received a comment telling me that I was an idiot and to do more research. The first part is true and I don't believe in research, just hearsay. It is for that reason that everything preceding and post-ceding this interlude paragraph is pure, hard, researched fact. For some reason comments go to my spam folder, as do all those great bride ads. Periodically I have to scan my spam for this very reason and as a result I've got things in the works to take the hand of a fine Ukranian bride who isn't Oksana Baiul. When she told me she was a "woman-fire" who could fill my life with "bright impressions" promising "mornings' breakfasts in the bed," I was sold. The last line was the clincher because I need someone like me, who just can't do breakfast at any other time than the AM, no matter what diner's and IHOP have to say.
Right, so since with good lighting and an airbrush two years ago I had something akin to six pack abs, I feel I am fully qualified to tell the rest of the world how they too can have a wondrous midsection. The first secret is diet. You must always eat whatever you want, whenever you feel hungry. Binging will be a key component of your ab diet, but purging is not a good idea unless you are on the verge of alcohol poisoning and would otherwise need hospitalization. Hospitals are expensive, even when you have health insurance, and none of that money is likely to go towards six-pack abs. Like I was saying, eat whatever you want, so long as you don't actually want to eat anything. That's not true. For your regular diet you'll want cereals. Costco is a good place to get them, although the variety can be spotty. If you have a Wegman's in your area: jackpot. I really like Frosted Mini-Wheats as a staple. Peanut butter and banana, peanut butter and jelly, turkey and muenster: they will be your closest afternoon associates. Doritos and Edy's ice cream are also essential. Cycle flavors of both to reduce boredom. Another little trick is 1,000 plus abdominal related motions per day. These must all be done at once. Any incidental and inadvertent abdominal motions, like humping, that you may do throughout the day are optional, but not discouraged. Cardiovascular activity, often deemed cardio by the n00b fitness community, on the other hand leads often to injury and is widely discouraged.
The last key component, which actually surpasses illicit drug use, is genetics. But until you can get your hands on a Delorean, and enough plutonium and speed (velocity, not the drug, though amphetamine will boost your metabolism, but be sure to hydrate Carlton) to create 1.21 jigawatts of energy, you'll just have to be jealous of the bum in Central Park who has the body of a Greek (not Roman) sculpture. Everything in this article is verified by fitness professional John Basedow.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
First Snow
So the first snow of the season was actually this past Sunday, at least for the mid-Atlantic, but it's snowing right now too and so I figured why not say a few words on it. Snow really is beautiful when it first falls, but becomes almost universally hideous the moment humans interact with it. I am not denying the wonderful joy and purity of things like the snow tunnel or fort and snowball fight, but when a car rolls through and turns snow to slop that quickly accumulates filth, the magic has been pooped on. It's this sort of ultimate contrast between purity and beauty one minute, and filth and depravity the next. Sort of.
As a onetime and now sometime runner, I must say that a run through the snow is a glorious experience. Long distance running can be a rather solitary endeavor as it is. I consider it a sought after solitary. So when you add in temperatures so cold that there is an eerie silence, where the crunch of a foot through snow sounds like Cap'n Crunch inside your head, its a wonderful and humbling moment. This is inevitably more enjoyable at night when the lights of houses are one of the few signs that there is civilization besides you out there. And the signature crunch I described happens only when the temperature teeters around freezing to create an icy/crystalline snow more akin to a massive accumulation of miniscule pieces of hail than the soft powder that gives barren trees their Christmasy allure. There's something glorious in leaving the first indents in fresh snow and then turning back to see now one set of prints. Sometimes I would match my strides in reverse to land in those first marks. Of course, there wasn't really enough snow for that this time, but I'm calling on the past.
And since I've no place to go, let it snow.
As a onetime and now sometime runner, I must say that a run through the snow is a glorious experience. Long distance running can be a rather solitary endeavor as it is. I consider it a sought after solitary. So when you add in temperatures so cold that there is an eerie silence, where the crunch of a foot through snow sounds like Cap'n Crunch inside your head, its a wonderful and humbling moment. This is inevitably more enjoyable at night when the lights of houses are one of the few signs that there is civilization besides you out there. And the signature crunch I described happens only when the temperature teeters around freezing to create an icy/crystalline snow more akin to a massive accumulation of miniscule pieces of hail than the soft powder that gives barren trees their Christmasy allure. There's something glorious in leaving the first indents in fresh snow and then turning back to see now one set of prints. Sometimes I would match my strides in reverse to land in those first marks. Of course, there wasn't really enough snow for that this time, but I'm calling on the past.
And since I've no place to go, let it snow.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Radio Shack
Every now and then I'll get an e-mail with some questions and, since I don't get many of these e-mails, I feel obliged to answer them. A recent question was: "why don't you write more in your blog." I wasn't sure if this meant in terms of consistency, or simply length, but on both bases I found myself surprised. I'll be honest, I write my damn entries and sometimes I don't want to read them. It's why I stopped blogging for a long while: it loses its novelty and sometimes you find yourself forcing out entries because you think that's what readers want. Maybe it is, but with the wealth of information disseminated on the interweb, I'll be the first to admit there are better ways to spend time than reading my blog. Basically, then, I'm going to continue to write when the mood strikes me and force out some garbage periodically as well. As you might have been able to tell I was alluding to there, increased readership is a double-edged sword (more readers, more pressure to write and maybe even write well). We pride ourselves on integrity over here at Awkward Backhair (yes, it's true there is only me, but it sounds better when you use words like we, as opposed to Wii, something much more popular than my blog) and that is why I refuse to use keywords and post pics of boobies just to up my readership. Besides, I manage to get enough bizarre hits here without actually trying to.
Actually that's really what got me set to throw down textually at the moment. I do have an ip tracker on my blog, but I contend that is mostly so that I can block ip addresses when I notice I am being spammed in my comment section. In reality, these robots are a little too clever and will always find a way to spam. But one of my favorite features on the tracker is the referring url. Oftentimes this will be a google search that mistakenly brings up my blog. I mean, hell, the same thing happens to me and I end up reading a bunch of random blogs as a result. I have to tell you, though, I have no idea why some of these people were searching for the things they were, and why it is my site was a top search result. That said, a few of the more amusing (albeit not always PG) searches include the following: buttholes, crotch on coffee, tap foot restroom, not another boy band, shit the bed synonym (which I thought read "syndrome" and had me chuckling), can you get aids from anal sex, things to do in a public bathroom, and youtube backhair.
The last was my personal favorite. I liked it so much I had to do the same google search myself. The top result was of little surprise, a hairy beast of a man being shorn, but then it had me on a youtube crawl that dealt with funny commercials. I have to admit, I am a sucker for such things, and mostly to see the commercials for other countries. Plus, there are those commercials that simply end up being banned. Still, if you're planning a vacation, you'll want to take this flight, check yourself in at this hotel, and maybe stop in at this bar. In general, beer commercials do seem to come up pretty clutch, and allegedly, this was the finest of 2006? That question mark is intentional. For some reason I tend to get a lot of hits from the Netherlands and, I'm not gonna lie, that makes me happy. I'm guessing that English is spoken fairly widely there, even though the official language is Dutch, but just in case, here is a reminder to learn English. I really only did that to include one last shitty commercial link.
Instead of watching any of those, however, I suggest reading this (I've got to find another word to link to). The article is authored by close chum the Quabbin Qountry Querier. Sure I've referenced him before, and he's one of the few sites I link to, but a little extra publicity can never hurt. For some it might be a bit lengthy, but it's also a lot more articulate and insightful than anything you'll read here, or probably most places for that matter.
Some will note that I have succumb to a profile picture. There is a lot to be said for even relative anonymity but, after much (whole minutes) deliberation, I decided to put one up. In the end I chose to do so as part of a social experiment to see if random readership increases or decreases as a result of posting my picture. That's not actually true, but it would have been a neat idea since lots of opinions are formed based on name and physical appearance. So it goes.
Actually that's really what got me set to throw down textually at the moment. I do have an ip tracker on my blog, but I contend that is mostly so that I can block ip addresses when I notice I am being spammed in my comment section. In reality, these robots are a little too clever and will always find a way to spam. But one of my favorite features on the tracker is the referring url. Oftentimes this will be a google search that mistakenly brings up my blog. I mean, hell, the same thing happens to me and I end up reading a bunch of random blogs as a result. I have to tell you, though, I have no idea why some of these people were searching for the things they were, and why it is my site was a top search result. That said, a few of the more amusing (albeit not always PG) searches include the following: buttholes, crotch on coffee, tap foot restroom, not another boy band, shit the bed synonym (which I thought read "syndrome" and had me chuckling), can you get aids from anal sex, things to do in a public bathroom, and youtube backhair.
The last was my personal favorite. I liked it so much I had to do the same google search myself. The top result was of little surprise, a hairy beast of a man being shorn, but then it had me on a youtube crawl that dealt with funny commercials. I have to admit, I am a sucker for such things, and mostly to see the commercials for other countries. Plus, there are those commercials that simply end up being banned. Still, if you're planning a vacation, you'll want to take this flight, check yourself in at this hotel, and maybe stop in at this bar. In general, beer commercials do seem to come up pretty clutch, and allegedly, this was the finest of 2006? That question mark is intentional. For some reason I tend to get a lot of hits from the Netherlands and, I'm not gonna lie, that makes me happy. I'm guessing that English is spoken fairly widely there, even though the official language is Dutch, but just in case, here is a reminder to learn English. I really only did that to include one last shitty commercial link.
Instead of watching any of those, however, I suggest reading this (I've got to find another word to link to). The article is authored by close chum the Quabbin Qountry Querier. Sure I've referenced him before, and he's one of the few sites I link to, but a little extra publicity can never hurt. For some it might be a bit lengthy, but it's also a lot more articulate and insightful than anything you'll read here, or probably most places for that matter.
Some will note that I have succumb to a profile picture. There is a lot to be said for even relative anonymity but, after much (whole minutes) deliberation, I decided to put one up. In the end I chose to do so as part of a social experiment to see if random readership increases or decreases as a result of posting my picture. That's not actually true, but it would have been a neat idea since lots of opinions are formed based on name and physical appearance. So it goes.
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