Ever wonder...? (part one of a series)
Feb. 18th, 2004 01:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneEvery day there are plenty of entries in the strange news category. I tend to memorize stuff without trying, so I recall these every so often and I wonder what happened after the two-inch news clipping.
Remember the guy in England that legally changed his name to all the members and albums put out by Level 42? I read about this in a Dubious Achievements issue of Esquire about a decade back. I went searching for the guy in Google and found fabulously nothing. I hope he did better than the band's career.
What is Grimace really supposed to be? He's purple and dopey, yet McDonald's never sued the Barney people. Why not?
Does it ever scare you that human beings, specifically men, have been to the Moon? The computers in use on the Apollo spacecraft could easily have been outclassed by a $20 calculator (let alone my old PDA) yet everyone came home alive and well. How?
Has anyone heard from the rich idiots that wanted to circumnavigate the globe in hot-air balloons? Do these guys get sat down and told "you have too much money. Stop it. You're too rich for your own good and we're giving your money to a real cause."
They've cloned humans. I wonder how fucked up those kids'll get. "We grew up in a lab until we were three, when the funding ran out. Some asshole sent us to an orphanage and used our food money to fly around the globe in a Mylar penguin. A biker took us in and taught us how to love." Speaking of all that: the original test tube baby turns 26 this year. How's she doing?
Ever get so pissed off at a customer that you decide you need to wield a punishment outside work? You know -- get the schmuck on a subscription list for the Watchtower or Shit Dildos? My buddy briAn did this back when we worked at Sears and it made me idolize him even more. "Wait a month for the event to blow over. Then..." He's a cunning runt.
What the fuck is so scary about Adam and Steve? Two guys. You know they would've sent Cain and Abel to better schools than the "hey, God loves sacrificial products" one. Maybe that's what it was: it really was Adam and Steve, but they didn't fuck up the way God wanted, so he got a woman involved, and then she didn't fuck up either so he turned Steve into a snake. Steve went into marketing and the rest is the Bible.
If you could go back in time and bring a laptop computer with you, what would you do? I think about this one a lot. If I went back to 1966 with my laptop, I'd have more computing power than the entire Earth but no network to log onto. Could I set it up to record amazing live shows and let those bands hear their future selves? Then I wonder how I'd make enough money to eat, since my cash looks funny and no one would accept a driver's license with a birthdate in the future. I'd have to keep explaining who I was and hope my story would earn me some perks. "He's from the future! You gotta hear this techno stuff he's got. Cut him in on a sandwich, man."
My mother likes to remind me that the price of gas was above $2 a gallon at one point in the Second Oil Embargo (1979-1980) and that we still haven't topped that. When you factor inflation (which was steep then but leveled off to 3% per year around 1983), that's equal to $3.50 per gallon. We pay about $1.70 per gallon right now (I have to buy the 93-octane or my engine knocks like nutty, so I pay more) and the minimum wage is $5.25, not the $2.35 it was then. Can you imagine how effling impossible it was to fill up an 8 mpg beast? No wonder Toyota and Honda happened. I miss 1999, when gas was still $1.05 a gallon and I'd just bought a 29 mpg VW. I drove so many places.
Why is milk $2 a half-gallon in Malden but only $1.65 per half-gallon at the same supermarket in Woburn, about ten miles away? The Malden supermarket can sell alcohol (full off-license, not just wine and beer) but the Woburn one can't. Shouldn't the Woburn one be more desperate for cash?
Las one for now: why do we say "head over heels"? My head is over my heels all day long. We have a mental image of a person doing a cartwheel but we never get the right words for that. It's like "have your cake and eat it too": we mean the converse but the only person that got it right was the damn Unabomer.
-cup of tea take time to think, Ps/d
Remember the guy in England that legally changed his name to all the members and albums put out by Level 42? I read about this in a Dubious Achievements issue of Esquire about a decade back. I went searching for the guy in Google and found fabulously nothing. I hope he did better than the band's career.
What is Grimace really supposed to be? He's purple and dopey, yet McDonald's never sued the Barney people. Why not?
Does it ever scare you that human beings, specifically men, have been to the Moon? The computers in use on the Apollo spacecraft could easily have been outclassed by a $20 calculator (let alone my old PDA) yet everyone came home alive and well. How?
Has anyone heard from the rich idiots that wanted to circumnavigate the globe in hot-air balloons? Do these guys get sat down and told "you have too much money. Stop it. You're too rich for your own good and we're giving your money to a real cause."
They've cloned humans. I wonder how fucked up those kids'll get. "We grew up in a lab until we were three, when the funding ran out. Some asshole sent us to an orphanage and used our food money to fly around the globe in a Mylar penguin. A biker took us in and taught us how to love." Speaking of all that: the original test tube baby turns 26 this year. How's she doing?
Ever get so pissed off at a customer that you decide you need to wield a punishment outside work? You know -- get the schmuck on a subscription list for the Watchtower or Shit Dildos? My buddy briAn did this back when we worked at Sears and it made me idolize him even more. "Wait a month for the event to blow over. Then..." He's a cunning runt.
What the fuck is so scary about Adam and Steve? Two guys. You know they would've sent Cain and Abel to better schools than the "hey, God loves sacrificial products" one. Maybe that's what it was: it really was Adam and Steve, but they didn't fuck up the way God wanted, so he got a woman involved, and then she didn't fuck up either so he turned Steve into a snake. Steve went into marketing and the rest is the Bible.
If you could go back in time and bring a laptop computer with you, what would you do? I think about this one a lot. If I went back to 1966 with my laptop, I'd have more computing power than the entire Earth but no network to log onto. Could I set it up to record amazing live shows and let those bands hear their future selves? Then I wonder how I'd make enough money to eat, since my cash looks funny and no one would accept a driver's license with a birthdate in the future. I'd have to keep explaining who I was and hope my story would earn me some perks. "He's from the future! You gotta hear this techno stuff he's got. Cut him in on a sandwich, man."
My mother likes to remind me that the price of gas was above $2 a gallon at one point in the Second Oil Embargo (1979-1980) and that we still haven't topped that. When you factor inflation (which was steep then but leveled off to 3% per year around 1983), that's equal to $3.50 per gallon. We pay about $1.70 per gallon right now (I have to buy the 93-octane or my engine knocks like nutty, so I pay more) and the minimum wage is $5.25, not the $2.35 it was then. Can you imagine how effling impossible it was to fill up an 8 mpg beast? No wonder Toyota and Honda happened. I miss 1999, when gas was still $1.05 a gallon and I'd just bought a 29 mpg VW. I drove so many places.
Why is milk $2 a half-gallon in Malden but only $1.65 per half-gallon at the same supermarket in Woburn, about ten miles away? The Malden supermarket can sell alcohol (full off-license, not just wine and beer) but the Woburn one can't. Shouldn't the Woburn one be more desperate for cash?
Las one for now: why do we say "head over heels"? My head is over my heels all day long. We have a mental image of a person doing a cartwheel but we never get the right words for that. It's like "have your cake and eat it too": we mean the converse but the only person that got it right was the damn Unabomer.
-cup of tea take time to think, Ps/d
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 07:40 am (UTC)It's not that hard. It's a big place.
money to a real cause
They're giving it to the balloon builders. That cause isn't real enough for you?
How's she doing?
She's fine, and wish people would stop making a fuss about it. You missed the 25th anniversary articles?
He's a cunning runt.
Read
Steve went into marketing
Steve is scary because he's something to hate. People need something to hate, and gays are everywhere but they look JUST LIKE US.
No wonder Toyota and Honda happened.
Also, reliability and parking. Now, the average gas milage is 20.7 mpg, down from 23 in the 90s. No one wants efficiency. Earth Day is dead.
only $1.65 per half-gallon
Price fixing. They're under State indictment, if I remember correctly.
head over heels
Because heels over head implies something indecent.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 08:51 am (UTC)Personally, when I was growing up, I thought Grimace was grape soda...
Dein Pflicht
Date: 2004-02-18 02:32 pm (UTC)Short story. Now.
head over heels
Date: 2004-02-18 05:41 pm (UTC)I always pictured somersaults, repetitive somersaults, thus giving that weird fluttery dizzy stomach feeling that I strangely associate with being smack dab in luv.