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The classic Science Made Stupid online!

Memory scientist (and author of The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse) Elizabeth Loftus' website ... this is a nice Psychology Today article about her work (via Consumptive)

My periodical visit to Snopes learned me these things today: Turkey doesn't really make you sleepy; Bananas are not near extinction; and there was really a guy who flew a weather-balloon-rigged lawn chair over Los Angeles, and he didn't die, at least not from the flight. Elsewhere: everything you want to know about Larry Walters, the original lawn chair pilot.

"In the first and arguably easiest event, the so-called mental athletes have 15 minutes to memorize 99 color head-and-shoulder photos of different people, each with a first and last name written below the picture. Afterwards, the contestants are given the 99 photos again (in random order, without the names), earning points for each first and last name correctly recalled."

The excellent Failure Magazine (yes, a magazine about failure) has an article about the 2003 USA Memory Championship (aka the Memoriad), which is not so much about failure but about success, but these amazing feats are tainted by a weird self-help infomercial undertone.

Glue things to your car, paint your house crazy colors, and see the
Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. David Cross makes a compelling argument. (hells yeah Cardhouse!)

John Moe, among other things, is a true master of the list-making. Here is a list of my favorites.

Dabney Coleman Overdrive!
Pronoun-Palooza
TURBO!
Bob Dole & Motorhead
People Who Thought They Were Macho But They Were Wrong
The Wonderful World of Pants
That's Not Food!
What My Son Looked Like When He Was a Newborn
What I Found in My Two-Year-Old Son's Playroom
As a Porn Movie Titler, I May Lack Promise
Cancelled Regional Morning TV Shows

The Portland Mercury's guide to buying your first crappy house!

L.A. Weekly article on the newfound success of Sifl & Olly's Liam Lynch

Madelyn Murray O'Hair in Hell: The Secret of the Burning Canvas is up today at the Morning News. I haven't got a chance to read it yet, but it is recommended, sight unseen. I hope the series is released in book form someday.

"'... Dad literally slept with a [police] scanner under his pillow, and the emergency tone on those radios was like an alarm clock. It would go off and we'd all run out in the dead of night, and we'd be changing out of our pajamas in the car. The first guy out of the house got to ride shotgun with Dad.'"

Irwin Norling of Bloomington, Minnesota was a more modest version of Weegee -- an amateur photographer who (along with his wife and kids) documented crime and accident scenes for the local police department. Norling also avidly documented everyday Bloomington from the 1940s through the early 80s.

Brad Zellar stumbled across Norling's collection at the Bloomington Historical Society, tracked down Norling himself, and wrote this excellent article for the City Pages celebrating the man and his heretofore unrecognized work. Norling died just last month, shortly before the story ran. The article includes an extensive photo gallery -- don't miss the link, it's in a little box to the right.

By the way, Mr. Zellar has another article this week on Bernd and Hilla Becher, a German couple who photographed industrial buildings. He also keeps a weblog.

(so good I posted it to Metafilter)

This was posted on The Morning News almost a month ago, but hey, I'm catching up here: "Madalyn Murray O©öHair in Hell: The Mystery of the Antenoran Chant", Part II of Kevin Guilfoile's series. (Part I here.)

If you don't know the real-life O'Hair saga, here's a story package (including a timeline) that ran in the Austin Chronicle a while ago, back when she was merely presumed dead.

Cockeyed and Cardhouse team up in "Color Coded Action Plans for Individual Citizen Terror Alert Response Comedy Piece"

Madelyn Murray O'Hair [murdered atheist activist from Austin, and Irving Wallace, patriarch of the Book of Lists] in Hell, at The Morning News

Other People's Stories: "Every story on OPS is a story a contributor heard from someone else. These stories have been overheard and misheard, told and re-told and sometimes refined over time. They do not shy from hearsay, gossip, myth or guys we knew in high school. OPS is dedicated to the time-honored tradition of stealing other people©ös material and we therefore recognize our debt to those from whom we©öve stolen and acknowledge that these stories do not belong to us.

New stories will appear every Tuesday and Thursday."

Good art, too.

(via Travelers Diagram)

300 Loses Luster: Bowling struggles with credibility as perfect games become routine. Says the good ol USA Today:

"So as the business of bowling reels from the 60% drop in league players the last two decades, the integrity of the sport is in question. A great debate rages on how the scoring boom has affected league participation, and there's even greater debate within the sport on how to restore scoring credibility."

(Via Travelers Diagram.)

How do you think the bowling ante can be upped? I say professionals should have to select from a limited set of house balls instead of using their own specially-weighted custom jobs with "extra hook." And, they should be judged subjectively on their form, e.g. points for a little "hop" at the end of their follow-through. And screw strikes, points should be awarded progressively for increasingly difficult configurations, like the sought-after dinner bucket.

Where do chain restaurants like the Cracker Barrel get all their antiques and flair? Find out in this week's Straight Dope.

The Uncanny Valley "represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness. The slope leading up to this first peak is a province of relative emotional detachment Ü affection, perhaps, but rarely more than that." [Metafilter thread, with more interesting links]

Related: a less principled treatise on the creepiness of dolls, cymbal monkeys, ventriloquists' dummies, and becostumed people, at the World Anti-Mimimic League.

If you are entertained, puzzled, or annoyed by scarequotes, you will feel the same way about the Gallery of Misused Quotation Marks.

Charles Nelson Reilly Alert! He's one of the Old Troupers That Late-Night TV Has No Use for Anymore, laments the Wall Street Journal. (Thanks, Merlin.) He's also The Queen of the Match Game! Naw, it's really Betty White, but, duh. Don't miss the video link to the right -- Jane Clayson asks CNR and Brett Somers if the celebrity panel was drunk all the time, and Gene Rayburn's long skinny microphone is brandished! I can safely declare that, in terms of the recent spate of old TV show reunions (that has mercifully died down lately), this one is almost not butt-cringingly embarrasing ... and Ms. Clayson is the only one to blame for tipping the scales.

Via Cardhouse: the Great State Puzzle. Will there be a straightforward yet obscure answer? Or is this one of those trick questions with a Zen answer? A hoax? A stunt? Who cares because it's from Microsoft so turn around and run and don't look back? Apparently it's been around unsolved for 20 months, and nobody on Google Answers has come up with a solution since it was first posted a few weeks ago. No headway at the Straight Dope Message Boards or Metafilter, either.

The following is the ordered list of states so far, the task is to complete the order with the remaining "48 or 50 states" (whatever that means).

1. Delaware
2. Connecticut
3. Massachusetts
4. Rhode Island
5. New Jersey
6. Illinois
7. Wisconsin
8. Texas
9. Arkansas
10. Louisiana
11. Indiana
12. Ohio
13. Iowa
14. Arizona
15. Alabama
16. Mississippi
17. Florida
18. Minnesota
19. West Virginia
20. Maryland

Other clues:
· It is not a ranking, rather it reflects the order in which something happened
· The answer is on the Internet somewhere
· The answer was "in a publication with many colorful pictures" (pitchers? No word as to whether these clues were spoken or written)

Not enough frustration in your life? Take a crack at it. The prize pool is supposedly up to $2,000, but you're not going to see any of that if you come up with the solution unless you're a Google Answers researcher or work in the Microsoft department that's holding the contest.

The Great Epinions Constipation and Diarrhea Products Write-Off (via April Winchell)

New in PopCult: The Decline of Western Magazine Design aka Single-image covers killed the illustration star. Depressing.

Dans l'Onion: Wedding Enjoyed by No One but Bride

"Although his law can't be broken, a misdemeanor fine of up to one-tenth of a cent would be imposed on anyone or anything caught being unidentical to itself within city limits." (via Metafilter)

My fascination with the grocery clerk profession has been trumped by McSweeney's, those bastards. If I pursue the "ask the grocery clerk" column idea that I have been entertaining for a long time, it will be seen as mere imitation.

Harrison Ford is a dick. Interviewing stars sucks more often than not. This one sucked more than most. (Via Romenesko's Medianews)

Someone has finally written a biography of the late great Carter Family: Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?: The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music. Actually, two someones, Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg. Here's the related NPR story that aired this week.

Austin egg roll cart a front for crime. If you've ever been a UT student, the egg roll cart was your friend. Damn, I wish I'd known they were hawking Vicodin!

Finally, my hometown puts itself on the map.

Slow Boil: Hell©ös Longest Continuously Published Journal of Writing in the new Whaleane #2

Nutty sports ideas at Halfbakery. Start a league in your town!

Tri-sketball
"Why are sports limited to only two teams competing at a time? Wouldn't it be great to change a basketball court from a rectangle to a triangle with three baskets? Three teams could compete simultaneously ..."

Mob Rules Soccer
"Mob Rules Soccer is a game of soccer played on a large scale. It is played with a standard ball, on a standard field. There are 256 players (128 per side) ... The goalkeeper is chosen at random at the beginning of each round, by a referee with a bullhorn. Drinking is not allowed on the pitch ..."

Ball Dogs
"Next time Wimbledon is about to be held, organise 4 or 5 of the sort of dogs who are insanely obsessed with retrieving balls to fill in for the ball boys/girls ..."

The 'Miniature Golf' version of (anything)
"Think about your favorite sport. Now think about your favorite sport with a giant windmill in the middle. A lot better, isn't it?"

Hello Kitty Has No Mouth, and yet in space you can hear her scream. And other aphorisms. (via Larkfarm)

On Amazon: entertaining reviews of David Hasselhoff's greatest hits album.

"When I was first approached to write a porn screenplay, I thought it would be easy."

"You've probably seen the ads in this paper for free screenings: drop by a business, get a free pass, and see a film before it opens. And if you've attended one of the free screenings you've probably seen the film nerds. You arrive early because the pass says seating is not guaranteed. You think you may be getting there too early, but lo and behold there's already a small line of too-serious people camped out. You probably see them and wonder, 'What's up with them? What must their lives be like?' Meet the passholes."

Facts on Farts. This seems like something that has probably been passed around e-mail a million times, but I've never seen it. My favorite questions:"If you were in space without a suit, would a fart have the energy to propel you forward?" and, "Is it possible to freeze farts, and would they still be smelly after they are defrosted?" The Fart Thesaurus is also entertaining. Cheese Toasty! (via Will Chatham)

The committee recommends this paper be taken out back and shot. The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference was this past weekend. In its wake, we get the Admissions Committee's colorful commentary on this year's prospective members. (Out of 14 papers, only one got in.) If you want to see what AAN likes, see this year's award winners, with some links to the winning stories.

Congratulations to 13-year-old Pratyush Buddiga of Colorado Springs, Colorado, who took the championship title at the 75th annual Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee yesterday. In the 11th round, he correctly spelled "prospicience," knocking out his opponent, the formidable Steven Nalley of Starkville, Mississippi, who had misspelled "morigeration" in round 10. Round-by-round results may be examined on the official site. Buddiga advanced to nationals after some controvery at his state competition reminiscent of the Canadian Olympic figure skating snafu.

"Former clerk Brenda Woodson rang up and bagged porno tapes and DVDs at New Fine Arts Video West. Then the vice squad bagged her for selling what they alleged was an obscene tape." The Dallas Observer's Thomas Korosec covers the unusual trial -- a mini People vs. Larry Flynt, only the article is way better than the movie. (Also via Alt-log)

The use of the word "porno" instead of simply "porn" thoughout the piece bothered me. Seems to me it's the equivalent of flipping someone off with all your other fingers tucked down tight vs. keeping your thumb up and the rest of the fingers casually slouched over. "Porno" just sounds juvenile, uncouth, and bawdy; "porn" sounds comfortably dirty, confidently sleazy.

Two stories about priceless archives being trashed or almost trashed: in Arkansas, a TV station sent 15 years' worth of news footage from the early 60s-70s (Civil Rights era in the south, hello) to the landfill because they thought nobody wanted it. And the Center for American History at UT Austin is struggling to preserve an enormous photographic archive covering a wide swath Houston life in the mid-20th century. The 300,000+ negatives nearly disintegrated while awaiting an institution with the means and desire to care for them. (Via Romenesko's MediaNews and Alt-log, respectively)

Since the Excitement Machine is more "task-oriented" than "self-motivated," the how-to themed story collection called Manual is right up our yes-man alley. Even though all but one of the writers are chumps*.

Anime: Japanese term, translates loosely as "fetishize the sexuality of cartoon schoolgirls."
Auteur: French for "pretentious control freak."
Award-winning: Synonym for "I couldn't think of an adjective that describes this film."
Celebrated: (See "Award-winning.")
Critically acclaimed: (See "Celebrated.")
Heartfelt: Nauseatingly sincere.
Heartwarming: Sincerely nauseating.
Noteworthy: (See "Critically acclaimed.")
Oeuvre: French for "egg."
Pastiche: A combination of elements recontextualized from other sources. (See also "Plagiarism.")
Peerless: (See "Noteworthy.")
Semiautobiographical: Autobiographical.

From The Stranger's glossary of film terms.

An American's Guide to Canada, written by an expat, covers everything to the most popular cigarette brands to roadside attractions to immigration. (via Larkfarm)

Xocoatl, aka Mrk's Chocolate Site. Most people don't know what chocolate tastes like, including me. Here's a direct lift of links to some of the other subjects he addresses:

Is a chocolate shortage imminent?
Why are Fair Trade and Organic chocolate so important?
Chocolate does not have caffeine.
Milk chocolate is candy.
The happy results of the Chocolate war.
Should i worry about eating Chocolate harvested by slaves?
[His reviews of] over 100 real chocolate bars!

(via bread, coffee, chocolate, yoga)

A Westside resident called the cops Monday to report an allegedly phallic tree. God, I miss Santa Cruz. (via Boingboing)

When I lived in der Vaterland, I attempted a Mexican banquet for my peoples. My assistant cooked the rice like pasta, with tons of water, draining in a colander, the whole bit. "This is surely wrong," I thought, but I have an open-minded constitution and I wasn't about to enforce my American ways on anything. (The favorite hobby of some of the Germans I knew was obsessing on how stupid and staid Americans are. It got tiring after a while.) Besides, in terms of the vast array of German quirks, this one barely registered. Turns out the multiculturalist mantra "it's not wrong, just different" applies to rice-cooking methods just like it does to toilet shapes and the social acceptance of leather-pants wearers. (Via Plastic)

So we mosey on over to Flak, now, and its Why They Hate Us weblog was nice enough to point us to this Time.com article on NBC's fall season preview gala, at which network execs speechified about the magical post-9/11 healing powers of must-see TV:

"NBC's West Coast President Scott Sassa, in between pitches about NBC's 'upscale audience,' waxed self-serving about how NBC salved the nation's wounds after 9/11: 'Like so many life-changing moments... it was television that brought us there [to the disaster]. After Sept. 11, Americans tuned in to ease the pain, and NBC was there.' You may not have known in how many ways NBC helped to salve your wounds. For instance, the portrayals of effective cops on 'Law and Order,' said Sassa, 'must have been just what America needed' -- as were Rachel's pregnancy on 'Friends' and the 'messages of inclusion' on Will and Grace."

In The Morning News: Clay Risen of Flak Magazine writes about The New York Stub Scene -- student classical music groupies who vulture for departing patrons' seats:

"The hardest part about stubbing, both Goldman and Bedlington say, isn't the patrons, but a group of eccentric old men who occasionally show up and crowd out the students. 'They're really aggressive,' Bedlington says. 'They bar the bottom of the escalator and pester every other person, even after they've gotten a few tickets, because they want the best ones.'"

An old New York Times Magazine story on the proliferation of Indian-owned motels goes some way in explaining what the author calls a "nonlinear ethnic niche":

"I don't mean Italians owning pizzerias, or Japanese people running judo schools. I mean, to use an obvious example, the Korean dominance of the deli-and-grocery sector in New York -- a city where the Chinese run most laundries and Sri Lankans, in case you didn't know this, run most porn-video stores. Or the Arabs in greater Detroit, who have a stranglehold on gas stations, or the Vietnamese who monopolize nail salons in Los Angeles. Farther afield, I could mention London's taxi drivers, sharp-tongued in their big black cars, many of whom are Jews from the city's East End; or the security guards outside New Delhi's more affluent residences, virtually all of whom are Nepalese; or the prostitutes in the United Arab Emirates, who are so often women from Russia."

"On July 1, 1999, Billy Mitchell of Florida scored the world's first (and only) perfect game of Pac-Man. This means he cleared all 256 boards, ate all the bonus fruit and four ghosts with each power pellet, and didn't die. His final score was 3,333,360 points." But that's not good enough for him, as this interview reveals. (Via this Plastic thread)

Oooh, I LOVE this! The alt-weekly publishing world, like any other kind of business, is tough, so anniversaries are rightly a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, it too often translates to smugly assured self-congratulation and romanticization of the past. But on the occasion of the Baltimore City Paper's 25th anniversary, their media critic Michael Anft turns his critique on his own employer and to the business as a whole. Oh man. Here's some quotes:

"I have some suggestions as to how the paper (and alternative weeklies elsewhere) should view itself now that it's only five years away from becoming untrustworthy ... : Make your staff younger, forget institutionalized news sections, tell your critics to kick ass, and make sure your cover stories aren't the dreary, liberal clichŽs that have bored alt-weekly readers for years." ZING!!

"Readers don't need more perfunctory 1,000-word appreciations on nonprofit do-gooders, police helicopters, or feuding neighbors." ZING!!!

"[T]he 2000 convention of the industry trade group ... was spent at a posh freakin' spa in Arizona. Um, think some of that money could go to salaries that lure talented young people who could rejuvenate staid arts pages and reintroduce graying editors to attitude? If not, alt-weeklies--City Paper included--will soon become little more than the equivalent of aging hippies and balding, paunchy punks." ZING!!!!!!

"Alternative papers should be nothing but unpredictable, yet they tend to stick to health trends/think pieces/plug-ins ("Best-ofs"/end-of-year issues) that should be trashed in favor of exercises in culture-jamming or pieces that palpably demonstrate the compelling lives of others." ZING!!!!!!!!!

"Scocca & MacLeod's recap/critique column covering syndicated newspaper comic strips, Funny Paper, is just the type of creative, original idea I'm talking about. In comparison, other columns make you wonder when their writers lost the will to live." OK, that's my quote.

Oh, oh oh. Anyway. DizzZAM! Somebody give this guy a load of venture captial and move him to the city where I live.

Also, this is the Excitement Machine's 200th entry. I AM DRUNK WITH POWER!

The L.A. Times relates the story behind the florid prose antics of the Arcata Eye Police Log. If you don't know what I'm talking about, work backwards. (Via Romenesko's Media News)

Reviews of bars of soap: "All that was left was the field test. I wrote "MEATLOAF" on my hand with a black ink pen. I was amazed to find that it took a full 2 minutes and 23 seconds to completely remove the ink from my hand. ... I was saddened by this failure." Wait till you see him get all up in arms about the Kirk's Original Coco Hardwater Castile packaging. (Via The April Winchell Show)

Michael "Mucko" McDermott Found Guilty, Sane. No surprises there. The alliteration ... the drama ... someone should write a song.

Scripps-Howard News Service has pre-fab "tribute" sections ready to go when Ronald Reagan and Bob Hope kick the bucket. The Metafilter thread is interesting: someone said their news agency has rented a rooftop in Rome for years so they can have live footage when the Pope dies.

Austin is doing the citywide book club thing: You have till fall to read Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. This choice breaks the first rule of book club, however.

Free Words, another guerilla book-dropping project. (Via YayHooray)

The Fort Worth Weekly reports on the uneasy relationship between adult ads and the alt-weeklies that publish them. I hope the cigarette and prostitution industries think their money was well-spent on my salary.

I happened upon Michael "Mucko" McDermott live on Court TV today taking the stand in his own defense. Dude. As he testified about his history as a role-playing gamer, his stint in the Navy where he manned a nuclear submarine, his career as a Duracell(?) battery quality assurance tester, and how he believed that when he shot up his officemates he had actually traveled back in time to kill Hitler and his Nazi sidekicks in order to obtain a soul, he had to pause a number of times to define words like "theophany" and "nadir" to the lawyers. Follow the case here, it's a doozy.

Perhaps you have just finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and aren't bummed out enough. McSpotlight is a weblog/watchdog site keeping you current on the multinational corporate antics of Mickey D's, borne from the infamous McLibel trial in the UK.

I joined BookCrossing.com, the guerrilla book-drop project that's been getting some attention lately, and am about to scatter a few books around Austin. Some I loved, some I hated. You can find out which books, and where I left them and go hunting for them if you're so inclined.

I rely on others to do my Wired reading for me. "A Collection of Discards.com", about the proliferation of "found object" websites (via Consumptive); and "A Truly Unfortunate Development"; about exciting new MIT-developed karaoke technology that automatically adjusts the pitch of the music to match the singer's voice (via Travelers Diagram).

The Onion: New Roommate Has Elaborate Theory About How Kenny Rogers Is a Genius. "Added Haltigan: 'He also said Kenny Rogers is "long overdue for the sort of critical reappraisal that Burt Bacharach has enjoyed of late." Who says shit like that?'" (thanks Teresa!)

Retrocrush's 100 Coolest Actors of All Time. Joe Don Baker beating out Elvis almost makes Brandon Lee beating out Bill Murray forgivable, but not quite. (Via Fark)

I'm been sort of peripherally aware of this John Edward phenomenon, but only since they've been running Crossing Over after Kilborn has it graced the boob toob in my home. Even then it was only background noise to accompany my bedtime reading ... until a couple weeks ago, when the ballroom dance instructor-turned-psychic did a reading for Adrienne Barbeau! It was not John Edward's trademark rapid-fire reading, either. In this one, Ms. Barbeau sat with her back to Mr. John, and, bathed in white light, they spoke sweetly of Barbeau's loved ones who had crossed over. Now, that caught my attention. There goes the valuable bedtime reading time! Oh well!

So I wonder how many Excitement Machine readers have seen this guy at work. He's clearly a total charlatan, the question is whether he himself believes in his own "powers" or not. Naturally, there is plenty of Edwardsiana on the web, which I've spent a good part day reading:

• The New York Times Magazine's interview with Edward.

• On the site Generation sXeptic: "Talking to Heaven Through Television: How the Mass Media Package and Sell Psychic Medium John Edward" is a scholarly analysis of Edward's appearance, along with a panel of skeptics and fellow psychics, on Larry King Live, to discuss the topic "Are Psychics for Real?". (Here's a transcript of that program).

• On Skeptic.com: "Deconstructing The Dead: Cross Over One Last Time To Expose Medium John Edward". An excerpt: "The advantage Edward has over [James] Van Praagh is his verbal alacrity. Van Praagh is Ferrari fast, but Edward is driving an Indy-500 racer. In the opening minute of the first reading captured on film by the ABC camera, I counted over one statement per second [...] Think about that--in one minute Edward riffles through 60 names, dates, colors, diseases, conditions, situations, relatives, and the like. It goes so fast that you have to stop tape, rewind, and go back to catch them all. When he does come up for air the studio audience members to whom he is speaking look like deer in the headlights."

But I do believe in Adrienne Barbeau, and how!

Google presents misspellings of "Britney Spears" entered by at least two different unique users within a three month period. This would make a nice poster. (Via Kelegraph)

Fametracker :: Galaxy of Fame :: Special Speculative Edition: What If They Win Their Academy Awards?

This bookmarklet thing is making me big-time lazy.

Austin is launching a One City One Book program next month during National Library Week, April 14-20. They'll be announcing the book of choice on the Austin Public Library site sometime soon.

In other APL news, the History Center recently opened up the 1966 UT Tower Massacre records to the public. The archive includes everything from Charles Whitman's letters confessing to the murders of his mother and wife, press clippings, news reels, oral history interviews, and death certificates of some of the victims.

Could this be ... Satan?!

Look upon my gaze, Ashcroft, and despair!

(Via Bat's Brain, whose page I sometimes load up just so the music can accompany something ridiculous that I'm doing.)

From the site Interesting Ideas, a big list of The Best Store Names Ever ("We do not make these up"). Some of them:

Beepers and Human Hair
Buy-N-Leave
Come As You Are and Eat in Your Car
Fill Ya Belly Deli
Helpee Selfee Chinese Laundry
Let's Pet Puppies
Murder Burger
Philippino Five - O
Shop & Shop
Spout 'N' Toad
Touristic Nightclub
We Sell Fried Catfish and Fix Flats
Your Snappy Shop

Interesting Ideas also has a gallery of depictions of Gyros. This is my dream.

(via Tom Mangan)

Point-counterpoint on the Shins' song New Slang appearing in a McDonald's commercial, from the band's hometown paper. (Via Tim O. Thompson.)

Failure Magazine is an online magazine dedicated to failure. There's a book dedicated to failure too: Banvard's Folly: Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck. Chapters from this book by Paul Collins have run in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. For a sample of what it's all about, here's a Fortean Times piece by Collins about Solresol, a universal language "translatable to colour, melody, writing, touch, hand signals, and endless strings of numbers" that a gent named Jean Francois Sudre tried to create.

My layoff in bizarro world. (Via Romenesko's MediaNews.)

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?

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.

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."

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."

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.

Roger "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" Ebert is such a smartie!

100 Great Story Ideas brought to you by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in preparation for the Winter Olympics. They do all the work, so journalists don't have to!

Houston's Art Car Museum (and other gentle hippies) investigated for anti-American activities. Chilling! (Thanks, JR!)

Space Ghost participates in a celebrity round table on the Survivor Africa finale. I'll just go ahead and quote his contribution here so you don't have to actually visit E! Online, but if you want to, knock yourself out.

"Well done, Ethan, well done. It appears you've won -- for now. Your aluminum teeth and your distinct lack of elbow and knee joints may have fooled the rest of America, but it did not escape me. I saw you hover. Did you really expect us to believe that the jet-wheels on the bottom of your feet and the base of your skull were simply decorative? I know how your kind craves the blood of the cow. It is a well-documented fact that robots use cow platelets in their bizarre mating ritual. Fortunately for CBS, television isn't documented. It's recorded live before a studio audience. What am I insinuating? I think you know. Don't make me spell it out."

Today, let's talk about pneumatic tubes. Is there anything more terrific than pneumatic tubes? Hardly. My only first-hand experience with pneumatic tubes (beside bank drive-thrus) was at the University of Washington hospital, where I temped for a while back in '95. Their system was used to transport documents around the gargantuan, sprawling building. They aren't just vestiges of the pre-computer age, though. The newly built Austin Costco has a pneumatic tube system, which I'm pretty sure is used to whisk away large bills from the point of sale to a secret central location. Yes, that is kind of Orwellian, but don't blame the tubes, dude! Isn't Costco Orwellian enough without them?

A hundred years ago, visionaries like Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith envisioned tubes leading to every residence in the U.S. for the purpose of mail delivery. It never got that far, but smaller systems were in place in Manhattan, Paris, and other large cities.

Others dreamed on a larger scale: Scientific American editor Alfred Ely Beach proposed a pneumatic mass-transit system for New York City in the late 1800s. After being denied a permit to start building, he did it anyway -- the New York City Subway FAQ has that wacky story. Beach's vision lives on in Zapatopi.net's modern paranoid-utopian blueprint for a pneumatic individual transport system which "operat[es] on Internet-based protocols." I would be happy with a pneumatic sandwich-delivery system.

And maybe that's a possibility -- according to this Wired article, "the very things that helped kill off demand for pneumatic tubes may be responsible for bringing them back." That is, if the various pneumatic tube companies can quit their infighting and unite in their common goal of re-tubing the world.

Here's what a bunch of British weirdos (like Clara Greed, Member of the steering group of the British Toilet Association; Anne Dray of the British Hamster Association; Bob Whalley, Co-ordinator of policy for the National Council for Metal Detecting) forecast for the ought two. Brought to you by the Guardian, brought to me by Metafilter.

One of the most inspired moments in the history of the The Austin Chronicle is the Dec. 31, 1999 issue, the theme of which was "Party of One: Your Guide to New Year's Home Alone." Though the story package was more a response to the pressure of having to do something spectacular for the big millennium shift, its themes apply to any New Year's. Master food writer Greg Beets' "I Eat Alone" is a classic:

The good folks at Marie Callender's make a tasty Yankee Pot Pie that contains 60% of the RDA for sodium and an astounding 105% of the RDA for saturated fat. This is the kind of foodstuff I want to end a century with.

More suggestions for losers' New Year's activities: Do laundry, wallow to music of Nillson, or "Find mates for all your single socks. Fail to see the irony."

And Happy New Year to you! May this one not be as jerky as the last two have been.

John Guedel, an early television pioneer (with emphasis in the game show and comedy arts), died earlier this month. His obituary in the New York Times is excellent and hilarious. On his early years:

Mr. Guedel came up with the idea of writing a few words of advice and encouragement to anyone who appeared in the papers. President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded. He also began sending off short stories to magazines, and received 116 rejection slips.

These were followed by "a long stream of successes -- two," he told TV Guide. "I sold a joke for $5 and a story for $15," he said. "I was in."

Everyone knows and loves clip art, but have you experienced the magic that is clip content? If you feel uninspired to write, say, a weblog entry of your own, Napsnet is here to help. Here in the ol' sweatshop we get Napsnet's awesome retro-looking monthly newsletter called "News to Use," from which you can clip the articles for use in your own print publication. One April Fool's Day, back when we were still in the days of pasting up copy onto flats, our publisher filled up all the editorial holes in the paper with these stories, and I so wish we had gone to print with it, but he was just playing a clever game of brinksmanship.

Here's just a sampling of the free and copyright-free content (plus matching clip art/stock photo) that is yours for the taking:

• Horseradish: The Garlic Of The 21st Century!
  
• Driving Safely While Aging Gracefully!
  
• On the Look Out for Yellow Jackets!
  
• Diaper Sweepstakes!
  
• Contest Calls for Creativity -- And Dried Plums!
  
• Roofing: A Rewarding Career With Lots Of Perks!
  

[Exclamation points mine.]

I remain this afternoon a little emotionally drained from spending last night tending to Boutros-Boutros Collie, as she required frequent trips to the outside to vomit (this was of course after unloading the bulk her poor stomach's content at our sleeping feet after first trying unsuccessfully to wake Bryan, who had fallen asleep on the couch, and me, who was cocooned in bed). At 5am I huddled with the only remaining unbarfed-upon blanket watching he Candian station Newsworld International's coverage of a big cricket match between England and India. The dog seemed fine after an hour or so. But, as you well know, once you're confronted with doggie upchuck, it's one of those things that haunts you all day long. So in honor of the occasion, let's read the transcript of a well-known but worth-revisiting call from Daniel Manus Pinkwater (the best children's author in the world) to Car Talk on the topic of canine mobile eructation.

The Empty Bowl (The Definitive Source for All Your Cereal Needs) this month interviews Dan the Automator about his relationship with cereal, past, present, and future. A sample:

What's the most popular cereal in the year 3030?
Dan the Automator: Microsoft

More proof that Scrabble is inferior to Boggle. (Link via Boing Boing.)

Slate has an entertaining article about fake meats. Author Dahlia Lithwick gathered friends and served a three-course meal of faux pig, poultry, and beef products: "The trick is, as I quickly learned, not to explore all of them at once. While some fake meat products are in fact pretty tasty, attempting to eat 13 of them at one sitting is an activity best undertaken with a fake stomach." See now I've been a vegetarian for over a decade because of one too many traumatic encounters with gristle during my childhood, so you won't exactly see me cheerleading for the Soysage team. I do, however, wish to take this forum to defend the Morningstar Farms "Breakfast Strips." The trick is eating it hot and crisp off the grill, even though it is true that the stuff "bear[s] a rather distressing resemblance to something Play-Doh might have generated in its Fuzzy Pumper Barber and Beauty Shop, in that they are engineered with a strip of fake white pig fat down the centers."

Even though it shouldn't have, the article reminded me of my ex-comrade Meredith Phillip's experiment making a turducken. This season, why not throw a tofurkey inside the chicken inside the duck inside the turkey, making it a tofurducken?

Every once in a while the Hill Country Nudists have an "Introduction to Nude Recreation" talk. My writer who processes these listings tagged the blurb with "Winter be damned, family-oriented nudity for all!", and that's why I love her. And then today, I come across this: A study showing that nudists are mostly white, middle-class people who are, despite their party line, just as snotty about other people's bodies as the next person. Yeah, buddy! NO FAT CHICKS!

BoingBoing pointed to this great and rather cheeky Washington Post article that delves into the mysterious world of the Freemasons, focusing on the organization's rapid decline in membership. An excerpt:

Bored, I leave my seat and wander around the hall. A lot of bored Masons are wandering around, too. They wear caps of various colors -- black, white, red, blue -- each indicating a different Masonic rank. But they all have one thing in common:

I look around for anyone who appears to be under 40. No luck. Under 50? Maybe one or two. Despite the Kramer factor, the TV generation just isn't there.

Generation X is a particularly tough demographic for the Masons. Could it be, though, that Austin has its own recuiting center? Let's see ... an indie record store, owned by a gentleman older than your average indie rocker. The word on the street is that the name of the store has something to do with "RPMs" of "vinyl" ... shyeah, right.

Dozens of captioners (yes, the people responsible for the "closed captioning for the hearing impaired") talk about their experiences working marathon shifts to cover the events of 9/11. (Link via Metafilter)

My interview with Ralph Stanley is up on the web today. I will probably post the unedited version on the site soon. Getting to interview him was a huge and lucky thing for me. I hadn't written anything for a while for the paper, but the music editor bestowed the story upon me because I was the only bluegrass fan available at the moment. I had lots of weird dreams leading up to the phone call. In one, I asked Dr. Stanley's publicity agent if there was anything I should or shouldn't ask him about, and he replied: "OH, you've GOTTA ask him about his involvement with the Kennedy administration." I actually told the publicity agent about the dream, and he said, "Well, I don't know about that, but he is a democrat, he played at Carter's and Clinton's inaugurations." Hmm! In another, my list of questions was represented by a huge dirt field, and Bill Monroe was plowing the questions into separate categories.

In other bluegrass news: Bill Monroe's estate is being auctioned off right before Xmas at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Mandolins, furniture, ties, posters, miscellany, get yours today!

Get to know your kalansuwa from your dulband from your ekal with the Seattle Times' taxonomy of turbans. Speaking of upper-body male fashion, every Friday on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn is now "Ascot Friday." I tried to find out more about it on the show's website, but the search returns only this: "To find ascot look deep within yourself and find a place that is full of power, strength, and confidence. Now call that place 'Craig.'" Speaking of late-night talk show hosts, David Letterman has been keeping an Oprah log, chronicling his seemingly futile dream to become a guest on her show. Speaking of people who are snubbed by Oprah, the world breathlessly awaits the National Book Awards ceremony Wednesday night to see if Jonathan Franzen wins the fiction category despite the Awards' Oprah-lovin' track record.

The Oprah-Franzen bitchfest has been immortalized by the Onion.

The Stranger has a powerful cover and one really fucked-up eyewitness account.

I got a press release from the American Association for Nude Recreation regarding the 26th Annual Nude Recreation Week (July 9-15). It's a nationwide thing, with nekkid activities ranging from clothing-optional Survivor (in Malibu, Calif.), BBQ Cookout (Naples, Fla., watch out for them splatters!), a Flashlight Dance Party (Warm Springs, Ga.), Naked Volleyball just about everywhere, and, puzzlingly, a canned food drive (Lutz, Fla.). AANR's website has a must-read Nude Recreation FAQ and Tips for the First-Timer (in the tradition of Douglas Adams, R.I.P., always bring a towel).

This is the most fucked-up press release I have ever gotten in my whole career.

STRYPER EXPO CELEBRATES IMPACT OF LEGENDARY CHRISTIAN METAL BAND
ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. - Planet Rapture Productions is bringing its annual Stryper Expo - a two-day celebration of the legendary Christian heavy metal band, including a reunion performance - to the Felix Event Center at Azusa University in Azusa, Calif., on May 18 and 19.

Stryper, which hails from Orange County, has played only two shows in the past year. Formed in 1984, the acclaimed group stayed together for seven years, releasing six albums, breaking through typical Christian music boundaries, and proving that a Christian band could rock as hard as any other.

"I just thought we were doing what God wanted us to," said guitarist Oz Fox. "I didn't think people would take us seriously. I enjoyed the garage days in California. A lot happened to kick off our ministry there. I saw God work there in very cool ways. It was very simple and beautiful."

The band broke up in 1992 and its members have since gone on to record solo projects. To satiate the group's still-loyal following, the first Stryper Expo was put together last year in New Jersey. Fans flew in from the all around the world, including Puerto Rico, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina, Sweden, and Australia. The group later went on to perform one show in Costa Rico.

"I felt that Stryper and its fan base lent itself well to an exposition format," said Rich Serpa, organizer of the Stryper Expo. "I can't sing or play a musical instrument, but in a small way, I feel I use the skill sets I do have in business and organizing events like this to contribute to a higher cause. These Expos are a celebration of the band's existence, the music they have created and continue to create, as well as a forum to support and promote the band members' new projects and other bands with a similar type of message."

The 2001 installment of the Stryper Expo will again feature a live 90 minute performance by the band, as well their current projects. There will be an autograph session with the musicians; a Q&A session with Janice Sweet, former manager and mother of the band's Robert and Michael Sweet; Wesley Hein, one of the people responsible for signing the band to Enigma; and Michael Guido of PR Ministry, a pastor who ministers to bands on the road.

Additionally, other talent will perform, including: Oil, Priesthood, Ultimatum, Joshua, Solid Mind, East West Disciple, Irene Kelly (with Stryper's Tim Gaines), and Sin Dizzy (featuring Oz Fox). Attendees will also have access to the exhibition hall and a skateboard exhibition, with a street course (fans who wish to skate must bring their own boards and pads).

"If it's going to be anything like the last Expo, you can expect to see people crying from the emotion created by us playing again," Fox said. "Heck, I cried too! Just when you think it's over, it's not!"

Added bassist Tim Gaines: "Every time we do one of these things and I see the reaction of the fans, I wonder why the heck am I working a 9-5 job when I could be out doing what I love and making a decent living to boot. This is what we were meant to do."

Doors open at noon on Friday and 10 a.m. on Saturday. Tickets are $35 for both days. Tickets are available at the door, through www.styperexpo.com, or at Christian Discount Book Centers in Covina, Ontario, Whittier, and Westminister. All ticket sales are by cash or check only. Christian Discount Book Center may be contacted at (626) 967-2893.

Clipping your nails in public, I think, is worse than picking your nose. They seem to agree.

God bless Dr. Dean Edell, whose objectivity encompasses not only marijuana, medical and otherwise, but also rhinotillexomania.