The following diverting media have been making the rounds. Check ’em out:
Internet gamers poke fun at themselves in a music video titled World of Warcraft is a Feeling. Originally from PurePwnage.com.
A hilarious German advertisement for a 1-hour optician is over at AdRants.
Finally, NeoBike has a slideshow of what can happen if someone stops too suddenly during a motorcycle rally.
One of the great things about Redbones BBQ in Davis Sq is the counter. There’s the bar, where the bartenders are friendly. There’s the basement, where there’s plenty of room. There’s the main dining room, where you’re sure to get your fill. But the counter… aaah, the counter.
Seats five. View to the kitchen. If they fry an order of appetizers, anyone seated at the counter is sure to get a taste. And recently they have added, dear god, pickled pig’s snouts.
I ate some. It doesn’t taste bad. Not exactly good, mind you, but there’s a flavor of tanginess and salt from the pickling, and of fat and umami from the pig, and that’s about it. Best washed down with beer. Lots of beer.
There’s a restaurant review in this somewhere, I’m sure of it.
Yesterday I went to the land of retrograde masculinity, Leavitt and Pearce in Harvard Square. I bought some mustache wax and a hand-operated nickel-plated nose-hair trimmer.
Then, last night, I dreamed I accidentally shaved off the middle of my mustache. I was heartbroken.
Comedy comes to you in strange ways. For example, look back in my archives at the timeout option ranges for the hdparm command. (That post also illustrates, should you be a potential employer, my facility with engineers and their aberrant logic.)
Or, read the following text message I just got from a friend:
DUDE I AM IN A STANDOFF WITH POLICE IN PROVIDENCE. I NEED YOU TO COME DOWN AND NEGOTIATE MY SURRENDER.
This is a joke. He is really in Cambridge.
Ms. Ironic is out of town this weekend, so I get the house to myself. That means I get away with all the shit she doesn’t let me do otherwise: turning off the radiator in the living room and shutting the door so we don’t pay to heat that room, keeping the thermostat low enough that I need a hat at all times, making tea that smells like smoked tires, and cooking smelly fish-based foods. To start, I made miso soup that begins with bonito broth. Later, there will be chicken wings and copious flatulence.
Par-tay!
Jeff Stryker is the original gay cowboy.
45 minutes down on 93, choked with traffic. Ten minutes inside store: record time. I knew exactly what I wanted and where it was (Expedit, 58″x58, in black-brown), and used the self-checkout lane. Then I stopped for gas and everything went wrong.
I couldn’t get the gas flap open on the car– it was either frozen shut or broken. I bought a soda and as I pulled out, it popped out of the cupholder and spilled all over my coat in the front seat. As I finally got onto 24 North, I noticed that the trunk was ajar.
However, now that I’ve made that harrowing journey three times in one month, I am prepared never to speak or think of furniture ever again.
According to Threadless, handlebar mustaches are the new mullet.
I think it’s spelled mustache, and not moustache. Anyway, it’s the next mullet.
I’m gonna grow one.
I failed at my earlier beard attempt, because I bailed when it got stupid-looking. But not this time. The point, this time, is to grow something that looks like I’ve fallen asleep in front of a glue gun and then rolled over onto the cat.
Details: do I cut it even with the middle of my mouth, or do I grow it lower– like, down to my jawline? In a few weeks, I’ll need to find some mustache wax, too. But those are implementation concerns I can address later. For now, I need only wait.
Different socieities have different problems… in Japan, one problem is young men who just refuse to go anywhere or do anything.
In other societies the response from many youths would be different. If they didn’t fit into the mainstream, they might join a gang or become a Goth or be part of some other subculture. But in Japan, where uniformity is still prized and reputations and outward appearances are paramount, rebellion comes in muted forms, like hikikomori. Any urge a hikikomori might have to venture into the world to have a romantic relationship or sex, for instance, is overridden by his self-loathing and the need to shut his door so that his failures, real or perceived, will be cloaked from the world. “Japanese young people are considered the safest in the world because the crime rate is so low,” Saito said. “But I think it’s related to the emotional state of people. In every country, young people have adjustment disorders. In Western culture, people are homeless or drug addicts. In Japan, it’s apathy problems like hikikomori.”
That’s not entirely right, because of course there are drug addicts and homeless people in Japan, just as there are shut-ins and recluses in the West. But the particular form of the phenomenon, and the particular response to it, seems to illuminate something about what it means to be Japanese. Of course, what it really illuminates is what Western media and its consumers think about Japan.
Taiwan Cafe. Also, note the coolness of Google Local.
Secretly Ironic 