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Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Please pardon the lack of Excitement Machine updates while Bryan and I tour sunny interior Mexico. Also please send us comfortable shoe vibes. If you can protect us against water-borne illnesses by the power of your thoughts alone, that would be mighty appreciated too.

Later skater,
Kim

The Museum of Hoaxes: Gullibility through the ages. (via Dr. Menlo's Good Shit)

(a random Craig)

Mister Pants says plug first names into the Google Image Search to see what people with that name look like. This yields way more fun and satisfaction than Googlewhacking. Here's Laxman, Shadrock, Kevin, Rusty, Wolfgang, Miguel, Sandy, Patricia, Craig, Joost, Festus, Edward, Kenneth, Carl, Carol, and Jebediah.

New today on the Excitement Machine: Selections From the JCPenney Catalog, Fall-Winter 1980.

Chicago's citywide book club, One Book, One Chicago, has been an unqualified success, inspiring other cities to start similar programs. Though OBOC's first selection -- To Kill a Mockingbird -- wasn't without controversy, the ensuing debates (see CNN Talkback Live transcript; NPR discussion) only served to enrich the public discourse, and therefore the program itself. But the struggle to choose a book for New York City is proving difficult, and starting their whole program off on a bad foot in the process. Is it really a question of the cities' demographics, or just a simple matter of timing? (Via Moby Lives)

By the way, Chicago's next pick is Elie Wiesel's Night. I wonder if Austin's thinking of getting all aboard the book boat.

Oh and a modest milestone: this is the 100th Excitement Machine post. Am I established or what?

I just saw this on TV and knew it would be online somewhere. Karate chop kickin chimp.

Killing the Buddha is an intelligent, fascinating, and witty webzine "for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not," and "for struggling honestly with the idea of God." Some finds so far:

• A piece on the Louvin Brothers' struggle with Christianity
• A history lesson on Unitarian Universalists which includes a recipe for Unitarian Beer Bread
• a report from Benares, India during its nine-day festival celebrating the Hindu mother-goddess
• a selection of questions from a 1913 survey of Jewish Folklore (2073. Are holidays observed in Paradise? 2009. What stories do you know about graveyard worms?)

Fish Posters of the World. Samoan Bottomfishes! Trawl Fishes of the Nigerian Continental Shelf!

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on the competition between The Seattle Weekly and The Stranger as the latter approaches the size and circulation of the former. It's an interesting and fairly balanced story (that Tiger Beat-esque concluding sentence really derails it though).

Austin could really stand to have a Stranger. Any venture capitalists out there? My mom, as beautiful as she is, wasn't Miss America, so I'd need alternative funding.

Hungry Charles, silver medalist, 1998 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.

I don't know why everyone is having such adverse reactions to the upcoming Fox show Glutton Bowl. What the hell is wrong with eating? Dude. They just wish they had thought of it.

The Glutton Bowl pits member athletes of the International Federation of Competitive Eating against one another for prizes and glory. I can't tell you how happy I am that there is an International Federation of Competitive Eating. You can be a member of IFOCE or just look like one in your own IFOCE T-shirt (sizes L-XXXXL) while washing down your meal with a beverage wrapped in an IFOCE coozie. And: "Get the latest news from the circuit, follow your favorite eaters, keep up with scheduled events and world records, receive special offers and tips and more -- with THE GURGITATOR, the Official Newsletter of the IFOCE. Published quarterly."

Charles Hardy (aka Hungry Charles) is ranked #3 top eater in the world by IFOCE. Here is a picture Bryan took of him after he placed second in the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest in 1998. Hungry Charles also competed in the 2001 Ben's Kosher Deli Matzo Ball Eating Contest (he came in fifth). I hope Hungry Charles is on Glutton Bowl.

B-May works at the Olympics and has funny, funny stories about culture clashes and portable toilets. (Via Cardhouse)

Remember, he was the dambuilder across the river deep and wide. He'll always be around, and around, and around, and around.

Court TV's exposŽ of Miss Cleo's psychic network. Nothing that you couldn't arrive at through good old common sense, but it's interesting reading (and listening) nonetheless.

Last week brought the only Saturday Night Live skit in the last decade that qualifies as truly hilarious. Argue if you will, and you will probably win this argument, since I haven't watched the show in the last decade. (I just heard somewhere that bold, sweeping, even overgeneralized statements make for more compelling writing.) This skit featured Tracy Morgan as Astronaut Jones and Britney Spears as Kragellera, Queen of Ropeelians, in a fake little TV show called Astronaut Jones: Destination Moon. Poopoochoochoo captured the moment and made an mp3 of the theme song. Look for it there. It is so nice. Note: This doesn't mean I think they should make a movie out of it.

Please behold my new links page, which is all about CSS now. I only have access to the Macintosh computer for the time being, so if you PC people would be so kind as to tell me if anything is freaking out on you, I would appreciate it, no lie! I'm hoping to convert the entire Excitement Machine to CSS-based layouts, which is the opposite of exciting, I know. You know what is even less exciting? That's right, it's backwards compatibility.

P.S. It didn't ever work on Netscape 4 and its bitch browser ilk. It still doesn't. But it will, oh, it WILL.

Has anyone been to the northeast-ish quadrant of Mexico? I seek advice as a first-time traveler. We'll be taking the bus from Austin. Money is a concern, time isn't. Much. So. Please! e-mail me privately or leave a comment below for the world to see.

Things That Have Been Sold in Vending Machines include holy water, peeled oranges and grapefruit, live bait, and plastic models of submarines and Lincoln made on the spot. Japanese vending technology, of course, makes you say, "Oh those wacky Japanese and their Robo everything."

LINGUISTICS TERMS THAT SOUND DIRTY, BUT ARE NOT.

Clitic
Uvula
Bilabial
Penult
Oral
Deixis
Insertion
Domination
Ejective
Stripping
Binding

If walls could talk. The Detroit Metro Times has a new column called Abandoned House of the Week. Funny what people (over)value and what people throw away. (Via Alt-Log.)

Metafilterers unleash their inner Republicans, and how!

What have the ex-Excitement Machine Bowling Team members been up to lately, you ask?

Kevin Fullerton, since fleeing to Seattle, has somehow been suckered back into his old habit of writing politics stories for alternative newsweeklies. This week, he shows us that there's more things to worry about when getting on a plane than freak accidents and terrorists. But only an alleged thing, mind you: A flight mechanic (ironically surnamed Trusty) may have sabotaged cargo planes so he could work overtime to fix them. Only sometimes the planes took off before he or anyone could repair them. Woohoo!

And! Greg Beets is concerning himself with the future of Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars, and so should you. I've thought long and hard about this, and have decided that the hot new rhyming catchphrase to sweep the nation should be "dude, that sucks like Indonesian Chucks."

I am so confused. I am not clear on which beer brands have the rebus caps these days. I think Lone Star got them after Pabst bought them out a few years ago. Pearl used to have them. Rainier, Lucky, and Ballantine apparently have them: Here's a page with some puzzle answers but it's just text. I haven't been able to find a site with pictures of the actual caps. Clearly, this leaves me with no choice but to drink lots of cheap beer and create my own site. Or go down to brewery in San Antonio and do some investigative reportage.

Found Art with focus: Keaggy.com collects other people's grocery lists. (Via Pop Culture Junk Mail).

Someone to fulfill your model horse photography needs, and an association to meet the needs of model horse photographers. The photos are so beautiful. (Via Consumptive.)

The Ewok Song is the extra-special mp3 of the week (click the link to your left there). Acoustic unplugged version performed on The Late Late Show. Here are the words. Read that translation! Ol' McCartney shoulda sung that instead of his dumb freedom Superbowl song.

BANDS UPON WHICH I AND MY FIRST COLLEGE ROOMMATE, Who Was a Deadhead, COULD MUTUALLY AGREE*.

Led Zeppelin

Cat Stevens

Pink Floyd

Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians

Van Morrison

*this was 1990-91

Kung Fu Grippe's future site mycasserole.com has a section called ephemerabilia that's kinda like what I'm trying to do with my pictures section. Only his is better.

Rip Taylor's website ought to be used as a weapon of some kind. Read Rip's patriotic message. Ordering a back issue of Mean Magazine #14 is worth it just for their interview with Rip. (Or you could axe me nicely and I'll send you a photocopy.) And their interview with Roger Lodge, host of Blind Date, the popup videos-meets-dating reality show that has spawned so many imitators.

In The Stranger this week: writer Hannah Levin on The Power of Positive Poverty. It's Seattle-focused, but the moral of the story applies anywhere:

"It doesn't matter whether you're a disgruntled ex-Enron employee or a perpetually underemployed artist--in an economy going from bad to worse to kablooey, the sane and stylish survival of poverty is every self-respecting American's duty."

That NFL or "the NFL on Fox" theme song is a total ripoff of "Sleigh Ride."

Giddyup, giddup, giddyup,
let's go, Let's look at the show,
We're riding in a wonderland of snow.
Giddyup, giddup, giddyup,
it's grand, Just holding your hand,
We're gliding along with a song
of a wintry fairy land.

Only the words would be:

Giddyup, giddup, giddyup,
let's go, Let's pass and throw ...

That's the best I can do because I don't know any football terminology. Please, if someone can do better, do.

I don't know about your local Furr's Cafeteria, but our local Furr's Cafeteria is having a special Valentine's dinner with 50 couples who have been married 50 years. Now take a moment and think this over. What a scene that will be. We're TOTALLY going. If they allow younger unmarrieds past the door, that is. Anyone game?

A field guide to poop.

Even though this is a joke, I SO wish it were real. It would be the greatest film ever made. Somebody give these people $100,000 and make this movie please.

We are heart-warmed that a gentleman or lady named "beef" of fuck-you.org has described Bryan's drawings as "Jean-Michel Basquiat meets Matt Groening-esque," and that someone misread Excitementmachine.org as "ExcrementMachine.org." Thanks, fuck-you!