There are so many intelligent and articulate people covering the hard-hitting
issues in our country these days, that I felt it was my duty to cover the
rather inconsequential bullshit that tends to make up the vast majority of
our lives. Actually, I'll just be griping a lot which, if you weren't aware,
doubles as a synonym for complaining, and as a descriptor for
a sharp pain in the bowels.
Showing posts with label Captchas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Captchas. Show all posts

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Don't Feel Compelled to Drink That Second Cup

Maybe it's a mug of coffee, maybe it's a beer or something a little stronger. Moral: don't ever feel compelled to drink that next beverage. Caffeination, inebriation, make sure not to go past satiation. Caffeination, apparently not a word, so another to be added to my suggested word dictionary. Also, I would advise against nail clippers as a surgical tool.

So I was going through my sticky notes on my Mac Dashboard earlier today, which I have to do periodically because I write about a million inane notes to myself on there. They're never really organized by any sort of logical connection, and rarely is there reference to where some of the information comes from. This is an excellent sign of my organization skills. The thing is, I like having to sort through it in a lot of ways because it allows me to wonder what I might have been thinking. I will end up searching my email and google and microsoft word for these phrases and sometimes much lengthier bits to determine where exactly they came from. Almost always they are unique creations of my own mind that don't exist anywhere else that I can find. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, but that I often don't recognize the tone and the words in there is a pretty fascinating thing to me.

Sometimes these little notes are not completely inane and they will in fact be things like links to articles I want to get around to reading or mildly amusing and interesting other things on the internet. In my recent clean-up, I came upon this old list of the worst captchas of all time that someone sent to me godknowswhen. In case you are not familiar, the captcha is that little ditty that appears when you are leaving a note or logging into a webpage that appears distorted and is a random amalgam of letters and sometimes numbers, whose intention is to avoid having automatons leave notes that get filed under the spam category. This very thing will occur when you attempt to leave a note on this very blog (that's very very isn't it?), but I still manage to get notes with Asian characters (because I am not learned enough to determine if they are Chinese or Japanese) all the time that are absolute gibberish.

Moving on to pop culture, I am a pretty good student of it, maybe like a B+, but I don't actually watch that much TV, I just have a high retention and extrapolation rate. So there is this show Glee that you have probably heard of and maybe seen. I have done the former but not the latter, but I know the gist and that is there is a lot of singing involved. I think of it as a 30 to 60 TV minute (21-42 actual minutes) version of the wildly successful High School Musical, another thing I've never seen. Hell I haven't seen Avatar or even Titanic for that matter. My point is, as always, that many media-related bastards play off the successes of others and incorporate them into their own matrices. One of the few shows I watch religiously, How I Met Your Mother, has recently had not one, but two song scenes, the most recent featuring Ted singing about the concept of the superdate and, earlier, Barney extolling the virtues of suits, or at least saying how much he loves them. This is pretty closely related to my last post, where I might have blamed Glee as well for Neil Patrick Harris's opening number at the Oscars. I'm sad that I have noticed this, and perhaps a little more that I am pointing it out, but insomnia can do that to a man.

Another thing that fascinates me is the suggestions of the most popular searches google will give you just from typing simple prompts, in this instance "how can i." This list is dated, but I had it pasted down on one of the aforementioned stickies and it looks as such:

how can i make my hair grow faster
how can i keep from singing lyrics
how can i get pregnant
how can i lose weight fast
how can i keep from singing
how can i lose 10 pounds in a week
how can i get taller
how can i tell if i am pregnant
how can i watch free movies online
how can i make money

People are, or were, apparently very concerned with losing weight, keeping from singing, and pregnancy. I think there is a correlation here involving pregnancy hormones causing one to sing and we all know a good way to lose weight is to give birth, for some definition of birth.

Finally, I was discussing shoes with a chum and he showed me a link to a Vans shoe called the prison issue. Why in the world would you ever name anything as such? Prison is often on the minds of folks though, clearly, as it is a very popular improv audience suggestion. And because I don't ever want that link to die, here is an uploaded image of said Vans shoe.


Note the velcro, which I can only conclude is for easy fastening to avoid excessive time bent over tying laces.

I am behind pace to fulfill my weekly post quota, so I'll aim to play catch-up shortly. New song parody and short story forthcoming as I do not want to recycle material, but I am somewhat busy with editing a longer bit of stuff and life and stuff. More pictures perhaps in the future, since they're worth like a thousand words and people don't really like reading as much anymore these days or something.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Blogsphemy

In a video interview on Costas Now (a TV show I didn't know existed), Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger (who I'd actually never heard of) gives his opinion about bloggers. The first ten minutes are here and I'd love to see the rest. Credit goes to Eamonn Brennan courtesy of Yahoo! Sports. Sure Bissinger is mainly discussing sports bloggers, but he claims not to read blogs and seems to have a great disdain for the medium of blogging in general and Brennan sums up pretty well what makes Bissinger's irate state ridiculous. Man does he get irate though, and it's pretty sweet.

Speaking of sweet, these cakes look like a decent reason to move to Davis, California. Who doesn't like ice cream cake? Plus, it's sunny California, it's one of the most bikable cities in the US, and it's got this tight arboretum. Why don't I live in Davis?

Initially I started this post in the interest of proving myself correct regarding a certain matter. Years ago I had been mentioning to someone how I used to wear Izod clothing, and that it was an offshoot of Lacoste. They told me I was quite clearly wrong and, while I am often mistrusting of my own memory, Wikipedia once again saves the day. Now that I think of it, this dispute may have been in the last year and in regard to the Izod Center, home of the New Jersey Nets. I actually didn't need Wikipedia for this one as I uncovered this article of clothing in the basement of my parents' home.

I wore that shit all the time when I was a real littler kid and damnit all I'd still be wearing it if I hadn't gone and growed up so much.

I'm fading fast in this post-midnight hour, but before I go I need to get this British skit out of my system and, also, the Salmon Dance. The Salmon Dance I credit to good pal the Boneyard and while it may not do it for you, it makes me want to get up off my gimpy ass and dance. Every party or bar I show up at, once I am fully operational that is, I want people to be doing the Salmon Dance. If Soulja Boy can do it, why not the Chemical Brothers?

Last thing: As I was just on the ticketmaster website, searching for tickets to an event, I was brought to one of those Captcha screens. I couldn't help but note the option for the vision impaired where, if you click the appropriate link, the Captcha will be read out to you. I think you can see where I'm headed with this but, just in case: if you can see the link that provides audio assistance, why would you need to click it? In other words: you can't be blind to see the link, but you have to be blind to in order to have any use for the link. Seems like a regular old Catch-22 to me.
Thanks for stopping by…you stay classy Planet Earth.