Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Another weird art idea that would work as a standalone piece or in a short comic: bowls with capes.

Why? They are decorations for a Super Bowl Party!

Ha ha ha! <groan>

If I had any skill in painting or illustration, I think I’d love to make a series of ironic art. It would probably be similar to what Gary Larson did with the Far Side; but probably not anywhere as good. :-)

I had a random idea tonight: it would be a picture of a guy who was sitting at a table, drinking milk, and about to read a book. But he’d be crying since he spilled milk all over his new, unread book. The title of the book: “Don’t cry over spilled milk.”

Though given my luck recently, this probably already exists and I just remembered it and figured it was my idea. :-(

Q: Why can’t programmers tell Christmas from Halloween?

A: Because DEC 25 = OCT 31!

Ha ha ha! Oh wait, I’m a dork. :-(

Crissy and I spotted a strange sight yesterday on the highway. We saw a lady driving while smoking with her 8 year old in the front seat and baby in the backseat. Sadly, that alone isn’t very notable, but in this case, the lady was driving a Prius.

Normally people will make sacrifices to protect and help their family and then, when it comes to common global things, the tragedy of commons comes into play. This lady had it strangely backwards: exposing her baby and 8 year old to secondhand smoke, but driving a hybrid to reduce pollution and gas consumption.

So, what was the motivation? Was this lady the sort of person that places the larger global issues ahead of her family and herself? Or is it still a self-interested play? After all, she gets the satisfaction of being environmentally conscious and over time saves some money.

I’m not trying to be mean, but I’m still confused by what we saw. :-P

Apparently, I have a penchant for writing about toilets — wait, do 2 posts a penchant make? :-P

Today’s post is inspired with my frustration with low-flow eco-friendly toilets. These contraptions are advertised as using a lot less water than conventional toilets. The implication is that this is better for the environment. Of course, this isn’t true in reality: you often need to flush 3 times to get it to “work” properly. Seems like this is more wasteful than useful.

The toilets in our apartment are based on an impressive technology. It uses lots of water, doesn’t actually flush the contents, and often splashes the user. The only missing thing is the steal your wallet feature. :-)

And now all public places have the stupid auto-flush toilets. Originally designed to “simplify” the toilet using experience, it removes the complicated step of pulling a lever  or pressing a button. However most of these toilets flush when you don’t want them to or don’t flush when you want them to. In entire case, it’s bad.

Apparently these sensors have problems detecting dark colors. The early versions of the auto-sinks didn’t work for people with dark skin (like me) and were often called “racist faucets”. This was solved by placing signs in bathrooms that told people to face their palms toward the sensors.

Finally, here’s my auto-flush toilet sitcom idea. Imagine George Costanza sitting on an auto-flush toilet. Then he accidentally drops a ring in the bowl and realizes it’s an auto-flush. There’s all sorts of funny things here: first he realizes what happened, then realizes he can’t move, then realizes he has to move to get the ring, but needs to move really slowly, and then even calls Jerry for help and advice on what to do.

Admit it, you’re already laughing imagining it. :-)

To finish the riddle story (or to “close the loop” as they say in the biz), Crissy had no problems with either riddle. I mean, no problem at all.

The second riddle she solved way too quickly by coming up with “teddy bear,” ignoring the rest of the puzzle, and looking under my Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal. It wasn’t right underneath Pooh, but once she got on a chair to reach the shelf, she saw the cookie on top of my Ender’s Series books.

That proved to be no fun. :-) That’s what I get for marrying someone smarter than me. Oh well, I’ll get to trick my kids one day. I should be smarter than my kids — at least until they are 5 years old and pass their cookie-hiding old man on the intelligence scale.

Last weekend, Crissy and I ventured to the mall so that I could buy some new clothes. I picked up some new shirts and a new pair of Dockers Cargo Pants. I haven’t had cargo pants in a while and I’ve forgotten how much I like them. I mean, I can carry all my stuff (keys, wallet, cell phone, other cell phone when at work, iPod when on the plane, guns when I need to pack heat, etc.) on me without having to use my back pockets. So I can sit comfortably; it’s awesome.

The pants that I tried on are a fashionable green that would look good with gray or black shirts (so Crissy tells me). The ones I tried on didn’t fit, so on the way to the cash register I switched them for the correct size.

The next morning, I open the bag and found brown pants. Weird, I guess when I got the correct size I picked the wrong color. Oh well, no big deal. So I put them on and when I walked outside I found that I was wearing green pants. Magic! Voldemort lives and is attacking my pants!

It turns out that depending on the lighting, my pants are a different color. Great, now when I get dressed I have to keep in mind the lighting I will encounter the rest of the day. :-)

I have an either incredibly stupid or incredibly brilliant late night thought to share. It came to me at 3 am last night; and when it gets that late it’s either really smart or really stupid, there’s no middle ground.

So here it is, awful is bad and awesome is good. Or to take the words apart, being “full of aw” (awful) is bad, and having “some of aw” (awesome) is good. So what if you have no “aw”? You must rock.

Based on this thorough analysis, I’m declaring a new word to represent having no aw: “awenone”. Obviously this means “leaps and bounds better than awesome”. So kids, when you grow up, you don’t want to be awesome, you want to be awenone!

I’ve had a recent spike in visitors to my blog. Ordinarily, that could mean that people are enjoying my writing. I knew that this was not the case for two reasons: (1) people don’t like my writing :-) and (2) I hadn’t written anything in a while.

But it turns out the recent surge of traffic isn’t from people coming to my blog, but a large amount of bots controlled by spammers. And no, I didn’t need some clever traffic analysis tool to help me figure this out. This one was easy; the 250 spam comments in my moderation queue were a clear giveaway. :-)

In what now can be considered an ongoing joke, my co-workers decided that my recent time off (for Crissy’s and my one year anniversary vacation ) was spent hooking up with Britney Spears. Apparently there was some big celebrity breaking news while I was gone about Britney, so again, I returned to work to find the latest copy of US Weekly with that story on the cover.

They had planned to paste a picture of me over the guy with Britney on the cover. This would have been hilarious, but they never got around to it. While I give them bonus points for the idea, you sometimes just have to execute on a good idea. :-)