Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Sunday, February 26, 2006 I really haven’t been following the Olympics at all, but imagine how disappointed I was to learn that I had missed my chance to see the skating of Sasha Cohen. I mean, what I would have given to see this guy out on the ice:  Sascha Baron Cohen, alias Ali G Ever seen this dude? He must be seven feet tall. Plus I'd love to see him being interviewed instead of interviewing someone else. Can you imagine how he'd mess with poor Red Buttons's head? I just hope he’ll be skating again tomorrow. I’d hate to have to wait until next year’s Olympics to see it again. posted by M. Giant 7:37 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:Ha! I thought the same thing when I saw a headline. Too funny -- it should be a skit on Mad TV or something.
By Had Ali G been the figure skating commentator instead of Dick, a lot more people may have watched the Olympics. Can you imagine him announcing Ice Dancing?
By I don't know why, but for some reason I totally hate this guy. By the way, wasn't he the guy in Madonna's video clip?
By Friday, February 24, 2006 Luck of the Draw When I walk through the Skyway from my parking ramp to my office downtown every morning, I can see the Powerball billboard on Hennepin and 9th. You know the one, if you live in a Powerball state. It says, "Don't belittle Powerball. It's always big." This is of course directed at slack-ass gamblers like myself who can never shift ourselves to actually buy a ticket until the jackpot reaches at least nine figures. And probably not even then, unless that first figure is a two. It also depicts a big red ball that's designed to look as if it's just smashed into the billboard like a wrecking-cherry, if such a thing existed, and a large digital readout of the current jackpot. Which I generally ignore. But even I noticed a couple of weeks ago, when the jackpot was edging up towards a third of a billion dollars. I should buy a ticket, I thought idly, and then didn't. I think that's why nobody won that week. I couldn't ignore the $365 million jackpot last week, though. But the problem is that I never go to a gas station unless my car is on fumes, and I still had three quarters of a tank left. And I wasn't about to make a special trip for something that probably wouldn't even have a very long lifetime as a bookmark. But then I remembered that there are convenience stores, right up in the Skyway, that I walk by every day. Like the one in the building next to mine that sells snacks, beverages, and, for some mysterious reason, reproductions of Egyptian artifacts. Surely they'd be able to hook me up with a Powerball ticket. And they could. I stopped in on Friday evening and asked for "a couple Powerball tickets." The (Egyptian, I'm presuming) clerk wordlessly and instantly printed up one ticket with two sets of numbers on it, which confused me a bit. Okay, maybe I buy Powerball tickets even less often than I may have led you to believe. I didn't really want to pick my own numbers, because every time I look at winning Powerball numbers, they're ones that I never would have picked in a million years. Despite Trash's suggestion, I didn't want to pick numbers from my life, because the odds of winning are infinitesimal enough without exponentially raising the odds by requiring the winning numbers to match our birthdays. And I wasn't about to pick the Lost numbers, because come on. By the time the jackpot gets split between all the other idiots who picked them, I'd end up owing money. Looking at my randomly generated numbers that were cranked out by the machine, I noted with satisfaction that they were numbers that I never would have picked in a million years. This was a good sign. I knew I wasn't going to win. I knew with even greater certainty that I wasn't going to be the only one to win. And I was most certain of all that somebody else was going to win the next drawing. But it was fun, for a day or so, to have two one-in-147-million chances for a big, green wad of fuck-you money. I was actually a little worried for a second on Saturday afternoon when I thought I'd lost the ticket. Not because I thought it was a winning one, but because I would never know. That would be so many times worse than losing. I didn't watch the live drawing, but afterwards I went downstairs and looked at the numbers that were posted in the bottom right hand corner of the screen during the local news. I don't know what all the rules are with Powerball. I don't know how many numbers you need to match to get even a smaller prize, or anything like that. There's a little chart on the Powerball homepage giving you the odds for various matches. But I don't think it tells you what the odds are of matching not one single number, which is what my two tickets accomplished. Ah, well. The actual winner needs the money more than I do, and will certainly do better things with it than I would have. That kind of money tends to ruin people's lives, anyway. But I'm reminded of a story I heard years ago. It might even be an urban myth. Seems a guy played the same lottery numbers every single day. For years, he played the same numbers on the theory that they would have to hit eventually. And then one day they did. But the guy had forgotten to buy his ticket that morning. That one morning. And he killed himself the next day. As one of our morning radio show guys said, the moral is to never miss a day of gambling. I'm certainly not going to start buying lottery tickets on a regular basis. But next time the jackpot's over a third of a billion, I might pick up a couple more tickets. Maybe even three. Today's best search phrase: "Frog stomach inside? Outside?" If this is the kind of thing you need Google for, maybe "outside" is a concept you need to become more familiar with. posted by M. Giant 8:30 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:I checked Snopes and apparently the story is kind of true: a Brit killed himself for not buying his usual ticket, but only 4 of his 6 numbers had come up that week anyway.
By You know, I've been a fan of this site since the "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" post, but never have left a comment. But I keep meaning to ask where you find the search phrases. Obviously, I missed that post. Thanks in advance for answering the idiot question, and have yourself a merry little Ash Wednesday, or whatever.
By that poor guy. Poor suicidal-lotto-man. He had the exact same chance with the numbers everytime he played them. Playing the same numbers in different lotterys doesn't change the probability they will come up. It's not like bingo where the used numbers come out. It's reset every damn time. What a thing to kill yourself for.
By I got a happier story. A guy I work with accidentally bought the same number twice and won. He usually buys a number for a few drawings in a row. He just happened to overlap his numbers when they hit five numbers without the powerball so he won $100,000. Since he did it twice, he won $200,000. Very cool. Oh and he didn't kill himself.
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Anonymous at 9:10 AM, if I usually played the same 6 numbers but skipped the week they were drawn, I wouldn't kill myself but I would be upset. If you commit to playing a lottery and play the same numbers every week, the fact that the predicted odds of your 6 numbers coming up any week are about the same as the odds of any other 6 numbers coming up any week is irrelevant.
By Saturday, February 18, 2006 Barrier? I Hardly Know 'Er! When Strat first came to live with us, lo these many years ago, we somehow had the idea that he shouldn't have the run of the whole apartment. Maybe it's because we didn't want him clawing the living room furniture, or because he hadn't been fixed yet and was still spraying. Whatever the case, we decided that he should be confined to the part of the apartment with the bedrooms, the bathroom, and the hallway, while the kitchen and living room would be off-limits. That was the theory, anyway. In practice, what we had to do was block off the archway between the hallway and the living room. One of the bedrooms also opened out to the living room, but that wasn't a problem because we could simply close the door. For the open archway, we had to improvise a bit. So we stuck a low, backless bookcase into the gap, with the books still in it. In theory, this would be ideal, because it would stop the cat, but we'd still be able to step over it easily. I had never had a cat before, so I didn't know what was gong to happen. But we quickly learned that an exuberant kitten like Strat had no qualms about pushing books out of his way onto the floor. And worse yet, leaving them there. Philistine. Obviously our barrier needed to be shored up. So it quickly evolved into a waist-high beaver dam built around the bookcase, including a folded card table and chairs, a number of strategically placed coffee table books, and a laundry basket or two. I'd like to say we recognized the futility of this effort the first time we watched Strat burrow effortlessly through the crap wall we'd put up, forcing us, the humans, to go around through the bedroom door to chase him and get him back on his side of the wall--a wall that was clearly only blocking the humans in the house. But it was more like ten times before we gave up, dismantled the wall, and became a happier household overall. I'm also glad that since those days, Trash and I have learned about the existence of these fabulous inventions called "baby gates." Because once M. Small started walking, not only would one of our beaver dams not have stood a chance before his determination, he would have been much better at knocking them down entirely. And then we would have been spending all of our time reconstructing them. His "free" area has grown as he has. At first, we blocked off the living room. Then one day I was cleaning the kitchen, and suddenly he was in there with me. "He figured out how to get through this gate," Trash told me from the other side of it. So we had to retire that gate, but since it was the only one wide enough to block off the entryway, the entryway was now part of his free area, which now stopped at the doorway between entryway and kitchen. Not long after that, the hallway and his nursery were opened up to his wanderings. We of course kept (and continue to keep) the bathroom door closed when he's awake, because we can't find a toilet lock that isn't completely useless. And then, this last week, we opened up the entire main floor. Living room, hallway, nursery, study, kitchen, everything but the bathroom. And is he happy? No. He keeps getting mad when he bumps up against the gate blocking off the basement stairs, or the one blocking his access to the upstairs, or the closed bathroom door, or the closed front door. That one's a particular irritant, if his habit of bringing us his coat and repeating "bye bye" over and over is any indication. And now that Strat's fifteen and diabetic, he can barely clear the gate at the bottom of the stairs. We're always having to take the gate down at night so he can move around freely. Why didn't someone tell us about baby gates when we were twenty-one? Well, baby gates and diabetes, anyway. Today's best search phrase: "Hoodwinking Google." Yeah, good luck with that. posted by M. Giant 9:18 AM 1 comments 1 Comments:The whole "Kittens know no boundaries" thing is EXACTLY why we haven't gotten another one... and thus have His Emperial Highness, Fynn. If you get a sec, I'm totally tagging you with a meme.
By Saturday, February 11, 2006 The First Sixteen Months M. Small turns one-and-one-third tomorrow, which isn't all that round a number, but since Trash has taken the time to set up my Flickr account and post a bunch of photos, this is probably as good a time as any for a visual retrospective. Also, it's easier than writing. Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?  Here he is the morning we met him. I hope he wasn't too self-conscious about the fact that he hadn't done anything with his hair. Literally, ever.  The first week home from the hospital. This photo's on our fridge and it always fills me with nostalgia. You won't see a moment like this again. Now he refuses to wear hats.  Look how small he still was, just a few days before his one-month birthday. You can't really get a sense of scale from this, but maybe it'll help if I tell you that pillow is the size of a bagel.  I think that right around here is where he decided, Screw this, being this small sucks.  The day after his first Christmas. Just wait till next year.  He lifted his head for the first time on the day after my birthday. Sometimes I still don't know how he does it.  "Here we come to save the daaaaay!"  The Intellitainer® months: the beginning.  Sitting up for the first time at five months. He was probably trying to impress that handsome boy in the mirror.  It's not that he hadn't smiled for the camera before this; it's just that our digital camera's several years old, and in the delay between when we pressed the button and then the picture actually snaps, he tends to grow up and move out.  Turtle thinks she's M. Small's cat. We have no idea where she got that impression.  Strat, however, is under no such illusion.  Trying to teach him to drink from a cup last May. I can't believe we were ever this uptight.  With Trash at his first professional photo shoot, which was a gift from my sisters.  How excited we were for him to start walking on his own. How stupid that was of us.  At eleven months. Dad, how am I supposed to fall and trepan myself when you have this little cushion on the corner?"  Finally, I've moved up to a bigger laundry basket. Also note Turtle in the background, attempting to levitate him with her mind.  Technically not his first Halloween, but that's how we're counting it since he could have fit into his trick-or-treat bucket the previous year. And yes, he hated having the helmet put on.  Jeez, do I have to do everything around here?  At the photo shoot for our 2005 Christmas card. Are you sure this isn't too Anne Geddes?  One month ago today. Too bad he hates the camera so much.  Baby's first self-portrait. We really need to teach him to concentrate on more than one thing at once.  Taken last week. Can you believe how tall he's gotten? Okay, he's standing on something, but still. Thanks for indulging me. I'll try to post more pictures in another sixteen months. posted by M. Giant 11:09 AM 6 comments 6 Comments:
If I only knew what the HTML tag is for a big loud "AWWWW"...
By Ohhh, goodness. Wanna squish him. With glee.
By That was great! It's fascinating to see them grow up and change - so much happens in such an incredibly short time. You have a lovely family.
By Heh, the Intellitrainer pic makes it look like he's got two big plastic globules attached to that hat he's got on.
By Ahhh, I think I am in love. What a beautiful little boy. I love the picture from 1 month ago, with the Christmas lights in the background and the scratch on his nose. He has amazing eyes.
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From one adoptive parent to another, Seriously how cute is your boy? It's so great to see how M.Small has grown. It seems to me that we've had our boys about the same amount of time, it's just the most fabulous thing my hubby and I have ever done, and we've just signed up to do it again!!!! Congratulations!
By The other day I saw a bumper sticker that said "YOUR STUPID." I laughed for like two minutes. posted by M. Giant 9:30 AM 1 comments 1 Comments:Wow! Now I know how long I've been reading here at the velcrometer - I remember when he was about three months old! Yeah M. Small - will he be M. Mid-Sized or M. Medium or summat like that soon?
By Sunday, February 05, 2006 Travel-ugh Thursday evening, I was flying to Michigan for one day. One of the things I hate most about flying in winter is the issue of what to do with my coat. I wear this giant, wool, Dickensian overcoat that, with me in it, is roughly the size of a phone booth. Not really compatible with an airplane seat, exit row or no. It's barely compatible with an overhead luggage compartment. It's fine when I'm flying someplace warm and I can just leave it at home, but not so much when I'm going someplace that's as cold in winter as it is here and it has to come with me. And then on Thursday the gate agent comes over the loudspeaker with those magic words, "completely full flight," which generally means "every inch of overhead space between the nose cone and the tail fin is going to be packed tighter than an aerosol can before you even step on the plane," and I groaned inwardly. But then I remembered what was in my suitcase: one change of clothes, a Ziploc bag of toiletries, and a laptop. I folded up my coat down to the size of a vacuum cleaner, rolled up my ten-foot scarf, stuffed both into my suitcase, and congratulated myself on my incredible cleverness. But then I changed planes at O'Hare and discovered that, since I was completing my trip on Buddy Holly Airlines, the dinky little craft I was going to be riding over Lake Michigan didn't have room for any normal-sized suitcases in its carry-on bins. So I had to check it at the jetway. And then wait for it at the foot of the jetway in Flint. In case you live in a warm climate and don't know this, most airports don't bother heating their jetways, no matter how cold the icy wind blowing off the Great Lakes may be. So waiting the ten minutes for the baggage handlers to unload our carry-on bags was a rather chilly experience, and one that didn't make me feel clever at all. At least I'd held onto my laptop so that I could do revisions on my recap during the fifteen- and twenty-minute chunks of time that one is allowed to use portable electronic devices on a three-hour, two-leg flight. Like last time, I purposely hadn't brought any entertaining reading material along to distract me. That's what inflight magazines and SkyMall are for, after all. You pick one up, and have no trouble shoving it back in the pocket when you reach 10,000 feet. Except this month's magazine had a couple of articles that were a) written by someone I kind of know and b) interesting. I wasn't quite done when we pulled into the gate at Flint, but I figured I'd grab one on my way home. Forgetting, of course, that my return trip was on a different airline. Oops. By the way, thanks, Different Airline. Theoretically, I had a lot more time to do revisions on my return flight, because this time I was changing planes in...wait for it...Atlanta. Thanks, other airline, for schlepping me to a hub that's twice as far away as my actual destination. Of course I would have liked to call up Al to see if she'd meet me for a drink, but I would have had to buy her a plane ticket to get her past the security checkpoint, and then we'd have to chug our beers while walking from gate C37 to C21, and I don't think they let you do that. I had about five minutes to charge up my laptop before the final boarding call, and then the battery died during boot-up about 11,000 feet over northern Georgia anyway. At least I hadn't lost any work. On the other hand, I refer you to a couple of paragraphs previous, where I mentioned that I hadn't brought any reading material to entertain myself. Having already exhausted the entertainment possibilities of Other Airline's in-flight magazine (which absolutely none of you contributed to, you losers), I was looking down the barrel of two hours of forced idleness before wheels-down. One of the scariest dreams I've ever had was a nightmare wherein I was about to get on a fourteen-hour flight to Iceland without a damn thing to read. I'll take the naked/late/not-ready-for-the-final dream over that any time (and frequently have). And now here I was, looking at two hours of nothing to do, with no chance of waking up and (as has been previously documented in this space) even less chance of falling asleep. I didn't even have headphones. So I just replayed Green Day's American Idiot in my head from memory. That should have killed an hour, but I came up a few minutes short thanks to not being able to remember a few passages, and also on account of completely spacing "Letterbomb." I was only about six tracks into The Who's Tommy (thanks to the sweet, sweet distractions of the beverage service and some scary-ass turbulence) when I spotted Des Moines out the far window and mentally tracked our progress for the rest of the trip. Yes, I had the best intentions of spending this time polishing my recap to a shiny jewel, but it just didn't work out. Next time I'll bring back-up entertainment. Another thing I won't do? Tell myself it's clever to stuff my overcoat in my carry-on. Other Airline wouldn't let me bring it on either plane. By the time I was standing on the open tarmac next to the rickety little wind-up jet in Minneapolis (something that never happens), in twelve-degree weather, riffling through the luggage cart with shirtsleeved arms that were quickly freezing into useless stumps, I was feeling downright stupid. Today's best search phrase: "My toddler can read blog." Too bad, I'm not going to quit swearing. posted by M. Giant 7:08 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:
Layers...dress in layers, they are your friend and can be used as a pillow for the nap you might need to take. Besides.... you Midwest types don't like to wear coats.
By I randomed across you and promptly put you into my bloglines.com feedreader thingie. Thought you might like to know I'm there. :P
By Ugh, I have the long-flight-no-reading-material dream ALL the freaking time. In mine, I always forget to bring Xanax, too. I have a terrible fear of flying. Reading this entry made me break out in a cold sweat!
By I also have that nightmare of being on a flight with nothing to read. I compensate by bringing an over abundance of reading materials (lIke 3 months of New Yorkers) which weigh my bag down considerably but are well worth it. Plane rides are one of the few times I reserve exclusively for reading. (unfortunately.
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Totally random: my husband pulled out an Alaska Airlines in-flight mag out of his backpack tonight saying, "There was an article in here on blogs that I thought you might want to read, so I kept the magazine."
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Was this the article you were talking about?
By Wednesday, February 01, 2006 Mothers of Inventions, Part 2 Trash hasn't given up on finding that patent I'm supposed to be telling you about. But when she does, it's going to be kind of a letdown after some of the other ones she's found recently. For instance, patent application #2005011000: I have invented a unique apparatus similar to the hot water bottle, except that it uses tap water. Oh, well, it's about time. I stopped using my hot water bottle years ago because keeping it filled with Evian was getting cost-prohibitive. Tell us more, #2! Those embarrassing brown spots on your underware are proof positive that feces, acids and ammonia are present on your private body increments after a bowel or urine movement. Wait, what? What does that have to do with a hot water bottle? Oh, God, I think it's going to tell me. This invention is the answer to a new method of cleansing your private body increments and predicting a bowel movement. It relieves constipation, bloating, irritation and embarrassing brown spots on your underware. Okay. I see. Great. Now I'm embarrassed for my species. And possibly all vertebrates. But I can't exactly stop reading now, can I? Like it or not, this patent application has got me by the increments. Description [0001] I. My invention is an apparatus that attaches to toilet, shower or bathtub water supply with the intent of rinsing or cleansing vaginal or anal cavities. Actually, I don't have a problem with the first half of that sentence. [0002] II. Water is injected into vaginal or anal cavities for rinsing or cleansing. Really? Actually, If that's your plan, I'll just have my water before you cleanse it, if it's all the same to you. [0003] III. My invention consists of the rinser ballcock adapter, plastic or rubber hose, cut-off valve, pressure regulator and the rinse head. Of course you need a rinser ballcock adapter. Without a rinser ballcock adapter, all you have is a hot water bottle that you have to fill with Pepsi. [0004] IV. The rinse head may consist of several sizes and configurations. And for God's sake, buy a separate one for every member of your family! I'd rather share a toothbrush than one of these. [0005] V. My inventions purpose is similar to a hot water bottle except that it uses tap water. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and I can't blame the guy for trying to come up with something that'll spare him the expense and inconvenience of constantly filling his hot water bottle with Goldschlager. But the funny thing is, I've been laboring all this time under the apparently mistaken impression that a hot water bottle is something you use to warm yourself up or ease aches and pains. Not give yourself an undercarriage rinse. Maybe this guy lost the cap off his hot water bottle years ago, and now all he thinks it's good for is filling it up with Lemon Fresh Joy and squeezing it between his knees. I understand that the Patent Office isn't too selective, but I hope they will do this: put out an APB to every drugstore in the country, telling them to never, ever sell a hot water bottle to this man. Today's best search phrase: "How old is Gary Dourdan's daughter and what is her eye color?" Ma'am, I can't blame you for trying to prove that Warrick from CSI is your dad, but I think the way you're going about it is a tad oblique. posted by M. Giant 8:29 PM 8 comments 8 Comments:ROTFL.. as much as I can while I'm at work anyway. For a while there I got confused as well on what a hot-water bottle is originally used for.
By I'm confused as to why on earth this is different from a bidet. And if this person is so obsessed with shooting water up his or her ass, why he or she hasn't ever *heard* of a bidet?!?!
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I'm just confused on how he use his current hot water bottle.
By Finally! Someone on the Internets that is brave enough to fisk enema patents.
By I thought the last set of patents were strange, but I have to agree with the Maven and Michelle -- doesn't he know what a bidet is? And how is he currently using his hot water bottle. Actually, how is this in any way like a hot water bottle?
By hot water bottles will sometimes come with a rubber hose to use the bag as a enema bag or douche bag , i used to to work in a drug store ,
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Yikes. As if they don't stink enough after they've been filled with hot water a few times...
By Dude has never heard of a bidet, nor a tap water enema. Modern healthcare system is in shambles. Coincidence? I think not.
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