Category: WTF?

Cotuit and Gommorah

Fred in the comments of yesterday’s post noted that his wife foraged 24 of these suckers during her perambulations of Cotuit. Today, expecting a minor haul of litter, I set out down the same walk as yesterday and found 47 of the little bottles of fun, most strewn in a single spot near Loop Beach, others scattered randomly around Main Street and Oceanview.

Here’s the scenario behind the evidence in my Sherlock Holmesian mind:

  • The perp is an alcoholic.  (Durrr. No way!) As a former bartender I know serious vodka drinkers are the real deal.
  • It’s two people. Maybe three, but most of these belong to the vodka man
  • The vodka man likes flavored vodka. Primarily cranberry and orange flavors
  • The cranberry preference points to a local who wants to be a localvore and drink the native fruit
  • The second perp likes Jim Beam
  • The third is an occasional schnapps drinker, though I suspect Schnapps Man and Vodka Man are the same
  • The perp drinks these at Loop Beach while parked and looking out at Nantucket Sound
  • He is a he
  • He has a drunk driving arrest on his record which is why he tosses the empties as he drives away, as he doesn’t want to be nailed under the open container law
  • He may do this during the day, preferring to drink the more economical version from a bottle at home.
  • It wouldn’t make sense for him to do this in the evening, unless he is concealing his drinking from his wife or girlfriend.
  • He does not live in Cotuit.
  • I bet he buys these at the Coop.
  • I bet he drinks two, maybe four at a time.

YouTube Blog: Viacom uploaded its own videos

Via Clay Shirky – YouTube claims that Viacom was uploading its content to the video hosting service via several “marketing agencies” while beefing in public that its rights were being violated.  If true, then Sumner Redstone and friends are jerks of the first degree, giving further proof of the mainstream media’s guaranteed penchant for doing the wrong thing digitally whenever given the opportunity.
From the YouTube blog:

“For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.”

via YouTube Blog: Broadcast Yourself.

Vitalic – new fave video

Elevator Plunge

You know the theory that if you are in a plunging elevator you should jump into the air at the last moment before impact? First of all — take a physics class. Second of all, don’t try it in a Turkish elevator because it doesn’t work in one of those either.

Here’s the setup. Turkish elevators are pretty small by American standards. Four people are cozy. Six intimate. Four of us climbed into one on the Asian side for an appointment on the sixth floor with an agency. It was the style with the door that swings — not slides — open. We climbed aboard, I made my obligatory “little Turkish elevator”  remark and pressed “6”.

We go up three floors, watching them roll by the doorway which I am standing against. Then we stop. We are not there yet. Have I pressed the wrong button?

We start to descend. More like: we start to slip. Then the lights go out.

Then we plunge.

[insert whistling sound here]

We hit. Major bang. I keep my feet but that sucked and we land three feet under the first floor. Pitch black darkness.

I declare: “I have a flashlight” and I unzip my most awesome Patagonia bag and pull out the Qualcomm combo-laser pointer LED flashlight.

My colleagues are very upset. Thank heavens no one broke wind or worse. I turn on the laser dot and that gets a laugh. then the light. Light is good. Then I find the alarm button and I push it a couple times.

I hear muffled Turkish sounds like “copchik?” I don’t even try to reply. I hit the alarm again for good measure.

And then the claustrophobia strikes. Will we be there for 30 seconds? 30 minutes? 30 hours?  A couple minutes go by, we make little jokes but none of us are excited. Then the door opens and up we climb to fresh air and I immediately think about those poor souls stuck under collapsed buildings in Haiti.

I guess the guy on the roof with the crank was tired. If we were in North Carolina Cherie Berry, the lady who’s face is on the elevator inspection certificate would have saved us. There’s even a song about her.

Tarantino Japanese Cell Phone Ad

Thanks to CNET and Technically Incorrect. Just too much weirdness to do anything but admire.

Rotating kitchen

Thanks to Nano

The $178 Turkey

I’m a food snob with the best of them — but I am not necessarily an organo-phobe who demands to know whether my steak died happy and fed on grass. I am also a customer of D’Artagnan, the specialty butcher supply house that can provide everything from armagnac duck sausage to wild boar. Being an occasional customer I receive their email offers.

I just had to ask, who would pay $178 for a turkey? I mean, turkey unto itself is not up there with Kobe beef and Bluefin tuna as one of life’s essential delicacies. What’an equivalent Butterball cost? $40?

I’d expect this thing to play the accordion and entertain me.

“Enjoy the natural goodness and delicious flavor of a traditional Heritage Turkey at your holiday meal.”

via Thanksgiving Turkeys, Buy Fresh and Natural Turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner Online.

FSJ is back

“I will tell you this about iLiver 2.0: It’s nanoengineered, and it kicks ass. I wake up every morning feeling like Shaft, Superfly, James Bond and Kung Fu all put together. I’m bench-pressing twice my body weight”

Life is better again. Dan Lyons brought back Steve Jobs, this time with half of David Pogue’s liver.

via The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

My kind of party

College roommate and professor of pre-columbian archaeology at the University of Kansas, John Hoopes, writes me on Facebook about the mounting online lunacy of the end-of-the-world movement that is based on some Aztec Mayan calendar saying 2012 is when it all goes down.

Professor Hoopes sent me a link to a profile of a new age end of world visionary named Pinchbeck — the new Timothy Leary — who in a Rolling Stone article was described as preparing for a forthcoming drug trip thusly:

Pinchbeck wore Depends and a blindfold, and kept a plastic vomit bucket by his head.

Classic! Reminds me of a college drinking game called “The 100” — where the aim was to drink four cases of Budweiser (and four singles) between 6 pm on Friday and 6 pm on Sunday. This looks easy on paper, but is nearly impossible as it requres two beers per hour (assuming zero sleep). Whatever, I was never in the same league as Pinchbeck, though I did know some guys who donned hockey helmets before opening a bottle of surgical ether in their room in the event of unconsciousness and head injuries.

Update: It is midnight Thursday to midnight Sunday according to drinkwap.com. I recall it was 48 hours, not 72.

Good luck John with dispelling the end of world stuff. We’re all counting on you.