Everyone Is Idiots But Me.

Why the hell can't I buy razor blades any more?  Every store I look in has a space set aside for all the different styles and brands of blades, but all the shelves are empty.  And it pisses me off.  No, I'm not going to ask someone for help or head to the counter and wait in line to request them like I'm buying illegal fireworks at the 7-11.  Its little pieces of metal with little pieces of plastic that people throw away after 4 days.  I understand that they're expensive and small and might be a higher shoplifting threat.  But if your precautions preempt people who actually want to pay the ridiculous amount you're asking you need to rethink the system.  The result is that I've used the same cartridge for the past 6 weeks and shaved more and more infrequently.  I failed again today to legally obtain even the most rudimentary face scraping device.  So I'm gonna have to start evaluating my other options.

1. Grow a beard and trim it with clippers (a set of which is ironically cheaper than the 8 pack of disposable Gillette Fusion blades.)
2. Use the power of my impressive cognitive ability to convince the hair follicles on my face that they do not need to insulate that portion of my body
3. Start shaving with utility knives from Home Depot.
4. Buy yet another electric razor and use it for the recommended month to let my face adjust to the irritation before giving it up because I can't stand the pain of even blunt objects against my red, ragged, poorly shaven cheek and neck.
   
5. Break into people's houses and steal their shaving supplies.  (optionally, replace their lightly used supplies with my heavily used supplies)
   
6. Investigate the various waxing options in the ladies' hair removal aisle.  (shudder)
   
7. Order them online from Amazon where I'll be forced to also buy a DVD by my complete lack of self-control.

Random Thoughts.

It would cost $978.65 to buy me at a salad bar.

Look At That S Car Go!

I'll be damned if I get overrun by a bunch of snails.  Giant African Snails were brought to Brazil as a new delicacy, but now they think they own the place.  The gastronomical trend didn't catch on as well as entrepreneurs had hoped, mostly cause few people in Brazil eat snails to begin with.  Now they're an invasive species, inflating the rat and pest populations and displacing other local niches.  Nothing we can do about it?  Bullshit.

Humans can eat a species right into extinction, even by accident.  So don't tell me we can't handle a bunch of tasty animals that we're trying to eradicate.  Granted, they are giant snails so you're gonna be pretty full.  But If everyone would just pitch in I'm sure we could get this done. 

P.S. Don't click to the second page of the article that details possible pathogens and worms that snails can carry.  It'll seriously kill your escargot jones.

• Giant Snails, Once a Delicacy, Overrun Brazil

Fight Or Flight...

...Or dress up like a vending machine.  This Japanese concept or urban camouflage may seem a little silly at first.  But if you think about it you'll soon realize that its very silly.  Great, now I have to choose from three options when I see a mugger coming: Run, shoot, or pull out my vending machine disguise and pray.  Cause if a man was going to rob and injure you before you were an immobile box, I imagine it can only get worse from there.

• Vending machine disguise may or may not fool criminals - Engadget

Flea Lice.

I'm not really sure where they're getting all this rice, but this is a fun little vocabulary game.  You pick the correct synonym and they give ten grains of rice to... well someone who wants rice.  The difficulty level is self adjusting, which means I get to a level where the words are challenging but I know them.  Then I pass that level because I can figure out the ones I don't know.  Then I pass the next level because I can take pretty good guesses.  Then at the next level I'm not even sure we're still in English any more and I plummet back down to where I actually know the words.  Still pretty fun and self-aggrandizing.

Warning: do not click this link if you like to think you're smart but have other stuff to do.  You won't be back for a while.

• FreeRice

Illegal Public Non-Performance.

You know you can't just play TV and radio to the world.  An auto shop recently got caught playing personal music loud enough that their customers could hear it, which is apparently a public performance.  Well, this time the defendant did license the TV content they were playing in truck stops, but they've got this kickass system that replaces standard commercials with their own, trucker targeted ads.  Understandably, the Networks don't like that too much, as their advertisers are getting a little screwed.

However I really don't think the judge who ruled in their favor did the right thing.  Essentially they're legally hosting a public performance and changing the channel when commercials come on.  So suing for copyright infringement seems a little off.  How can it be copyright infringement to NOT publicly display someone's work?  Just cause you don't like something doesn't make it illegal.

Lets hope this ruling gets capsized in appeal lest big media start to think they have control over what we watch.  Pretty soon there'll be no talking, blinking, or going to the bathroom during commercials either.  Heck, I'm not watching ads right now, I hope none of the executives at ABC find out about it.  I could find myself in the middle of a copyright lawsuit.

• Techdirt: Is It Copyright Infringement To Skip Commercials?

Bullet In Your Bubblegoose.

Strange Maps is kinda like Damn Interesting for maps.  They've got lots of strange but true type content like this nubbin on Kentucky that is surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee.  Of course they've also got odd-ball fantasy maps like Russia's third empire and how drunk Japanese see America.  But no matter the content, they've got a wealth of knowledge and a hearty explanation of the visual aids.  Go ahead and check some of them out.

 

• The Kentucky Bend; or Bubbleland, Not Far From Monkey's Eyebrow « strange maps

Oh, and I thought of a slogan for the map industry to use in their ad campaign.  You know, like how milk and cheese decided to start promoting the concepts of milk and cheese?  Well if the map lobby ever gets its act together, they can go with:

Maps are where its at.

Muwahahaha.

Yes, that's my evil mad scientist laugh, which means something devious is going tremendously.  My sophomore year of college I put a plan in motion so diabolical, so gooily genius filled and circuitous that not even Dr Honeydew could have conceived it.  I took as many of those free AOL discs as possible and I never once signed up for service from those punks.  I taped them to my walls, I used them as coasters, I played Frisbee golf with them, the list goes on.  The main point of this was to make their shotgun style marketing campaign and "free" "internet" service as unprofitable as possible.

Yes, it took several years and various other factors to help parlay my gambit, but at last the downfall is coming to a head.  AOL no longer deems its ISP business as a viable tool and is trying to focus on its "Services."  Laughable, since the only reason people used to use their "services" was because they didn't know any better.  Now that people have to enter the walled garden on purpose instead to starting there by default, AOL is finding out that lots of other companies are already filling the nich they hope to provide.  Well, darn.  I guess maybe you could take another look at you business model, and recede a little further into the darkness while you're at it.  America doesn't need America Online and we're starting to realize it.

• Techdirt: AOL Struggling With Life Outside The Walled Garden
• Download Squad: AOL to lay off 2000 employees
  

ARH SEE ENN!

Son of a whale nipple.  I was waiting around last night for my Tivo to tape Heroes so I could watch it with no commercials.  (yeah, I like superheroes, big deal.  Wanna fight about it?)  But, horrifically, when I flipped the TV on there was no new episode in my list.  Shock.  I switched over to my roommate's Tivo (yeah we have two tivos, big whoop.  Wanna fight about it?) and his Tivo hadn't recorded it either.  Horror.  Skip over to live TV and I find nothing at all coming through the pipe.  Agast.  So the cable is out and my show wasn't taped.  Except everything else I wanted recorded that day came in just fine.  Turns out all the other channels come in fine, its just NBC that has crapped out.  I know, that doesn't make any sense; but equally vexing, NBC has been the only channel that consistently comes in terribly over cable.  WTF?

So I emailed RCN cable and they got back to me with a phone number to call and a series of buttons to press on the handset that's sposed to do a reset.  I personally don't get how that's gonna work and why the dude can't just call the number and press the buttons for me.  Anyway, I went on Amazon and threw down the two bucks for that episode of Heroes on Unbox.  So it'll be waiting for me on my Tivo when I get home tonight.  Course, if I'm gonna end up paying (you know, besides the cable channel I'm paying for) to watch my NBC TV shows I'm just gonna stop watching and buy the DVDs when they come out.  I don't know what I'd do with a Tivo full of content I actually paid for and don't want to delete.

Suck On This.

I'd like you to imagine a lollipop for adults.  Ok, got a picture in your head?  If you're imagining a stainless steel disc on a keychain, congratulations.  You win.  If you were thinking of something else you lose.

Apparently sucking on the Zilopop is sposed to eliminate the smelly gunk living in your mouth.  But somehow I think it would be strangely like licking the handrails on the metro.

• Strange New Products: Zilopop - Stainless Steel Lollipop