A+ 'n Us!

This brilliant flipchart has been posted in our largest conference room all day. While I can't take credit for it, I'm still happy that there's been two large meetings in there already.

What's crazy is Abbott Nutrition United States is a real acronym. They've even got a Facebook Page where they'll presumably discuss the serious economic ramifications of Abbott Nutrition and London Stock EXchange.

Dog Years

It's been a while since I last vandalized Wikipedia, so I went for a big target today. I hit up one of my favorite dimensions: Time. My addition is about halfway down the page, and I think the subtly paid off. After 4 hours, it still hasn't been taken down yet!

Click on the image below for the original size (and read the caption for bonus points).

+25 Points to Slytherin IN MY PANTS

In honor of the newly released Harry Potter film (thank god its over, I can't handle another book with 300 FUCKING PAGES ABOUT CAMPING AND WALKING AROUND IN THE FUCKING FOREST), I bring you this gem of sexting from my personal collection. Ain't no sexting like some drunken Harry Potter sexting! HAWT. And also, yes this is what I'm doing when I'm hanging out in the blue lion in between saving the universe and potty-training my own little adorable Princess of Power. ENJOY. Maybe I'll post more now that baby is not gnawing on my lifeforce every, single day. NO PROMISES, but I'll try.









PS. If this kind of thing gets you excited, TPHD is available for sighs and moans and ALL CAPS TONE POEMS ABOUT LIFE. You can find him here on the twitter machine.


<3 - teh_Beauty aka D_S

Building a Better Mailbox

The RoBeastress has a never-ending supply of Crate & Barrell and Pottery Barn catalogs sent to her. Just once, I'd like to see these arrive in the mailbox instead:

Hello. Is it Steve you're looking for?

The Double D's are no coincidence.

Better Homes and Gardens doesn't show up, but I couldn't resist making this. 

YOU BABY!

There shouldn't really be anything particularly funny about this billboard for the IVF NJ Fertility Center, but it still cracks me up every time I see it.

When approaching it from a distance, all I can read is the taunt: YOU BABY. I've been passing it for six months now, so I know there's more to the message, but I still yell back at it "NO, YOU BABY!"

So insensitive.

   

Green Tree: Trolling Hippie Vegetarians Since 1894

I was behind this hippie-lovin' green tree-huggin' truck yesterday morning:

Wait, THE MEAT SPECIALIST?

Prime Beef? Fresh Fish?? ETC.???

I guess you could sum up that business with the name Green Tree, right? High-five!

  

Dyson Airblade Hand Dryer: SFW, but NSF... Hands?

I only know how to read Internet acronyms and pictures, so that's what the label on the Dyson Airblade Hand Dryer tells me: 


NSFH



To be fair, these things may be totally safe for work and hands, but are they really hygenic and effective? I use them at work occasionally, when I'm feeling guilty about using paper towels, but I'm not completely sold on the machine.

It sort of feels like you're playing Operation, lowering your hands down but being careful not to touch the sides or you'll get electro shocks. Ok, there's no shocks, but what does lurk on the surface? What if the person before you just decided to dry the piss off of their hands instead of washing, and they thought you had to touch the yellow things to turn the machine on? I don't know--I'm a blogger, not a doctor.

Usually, I think automatic sensors are a great feature, but making it a top load for hands seems like it would be a challenge for children, short folks, and people in wheelchairs. Because you can't trigger the blowers to start by putting your hands in the side holes, the only way around this oversight is to mount it very low on the wall. I think it would become awkward for everyone else at that point though. Having the blowers on the bottom seem to make these types of machines a bit more universal, but again, what do I know? I'm a blogger, not an engineer.

All right, so let's say you are able to get your hands in the damn thing. Because the blower doesn't immediately engage, you have to taunt it a bit. And for those few split seconds, you wonder if it is instead going to clamp down on your wrists and bite your hands completely off. The design certainly gives me flashbacks of the castration machine from The Ice Pirates, but what do I know? I'm a blogger, not a terrible movie from 1984.

If it didn't eat you by now, you probably feel the air blowing fairly intensely against your hands and fingers, knocking them into the sides a little bit, which I would think you'd want to avoid. If your hands aren't too wet, they are allegedly dry in about 12 seconds. That's pretty accurate even if they are really wet, but the extra water tends to drip down into the valley of the machine. There doesn't seem to be any type of drain or anything, so it either sits there, or continues its journey down the side of the machine to the floor. I don't know what normally happens to the water dispersed from a typical hand dryer. I guess it goes directly to the floor, or on your clothes. I think I prefer the ignorant bliss of seeing it magically disappear into thin air as opposed to seeing it sit there pooled up on the plastic. But what do I know? I'm a blogger, not a person who wants to continue blogging today.

Solved Mysteries: Twin Peaks

Bayonne-born actor Walter Olkewicz has a habit of strange encounters in bars. Most people probably remember him from Twin Peaks as Jacques Renault. Here he is trysting with Laura Palmer and shooting off a famous drunken non-sequitor at the seedy Canadian club One Eyed Jacks:

Little did we know, One Eyed Jacks was not the first watering hole where Olkewicz stirred up trouble. It turns out that he made a trip to bar in Boston nearly a decade earlier and shook up the status quo. There, he encountered Cheers regular Norm Peterson (George Wendt), an old buddy from the high school wrestling team.

In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Laura Palmer was the "Muffin," and in this second season Cheers episode, Olkewicz (as Wally Bodell) revealed Norm's infamous "M-"nickname: "Moonglow." He then made unwanted advances on Norm's wife Vera, and ultimately, in one of the silliest fight scenes ever filmed filmed, succumbed to the real Great Wendt on the floor of Cheers.

One has to wonder, was this the point where Olkewicz lost his mind? After being rebuffed by Vera and defeated by Norm, did he assume Wendt's identity and then throw himself into a world of drinking, drugs, and dangerous women? I really don't know--I haven't seen his Mr. Belvedere episode yet.

AKA - Safe for Fatties

Cheap Halloween Costumes: Friday the 13th

Screwdriver + Cherry Flavored Urinal Screen = Jason Voorhees

When Animals Attack Fashion

Do Do Use Double Positives

I don't don't know about you, but doesn't this not seem like the least worst shipping label Staples hasn't never not sold?

 

FuckYouTube?

I really can't wait to find out why this happened.

Advanced Minimally Invasive Surgery

Amputation was last considered minimally invasive in the 1800s, so I think it's time for a new mascot.

CHOLESTEROL OMG!!!!!!!!!

SODIUM OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CHOLESTERLOLZ!!!!!!

Publish Post

Robeast Review - Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

I haven't had time to do this in quite a while, so I'm going to give it a shot while my steak is marinating in the fridge.

The Foo Fighters. I love their first two albums a lot, but each subsequent release has gone downhill. Not that there aren't killer songs on each album--just that there are fewer each time. Probot was a great detour for Dave Grohl and had hoped he would have packed up the Foos Ball Table at that point for good and continued the heavier streak, but it didn't happen.

An odd thing happened after that actually. They put out a double album--one disc hard, and one soft. I loved the soft one, but hated the hard one. Go figure. I didn't buy whatever came after that because all of their hard rock songs had continued bleeding together into one generic mess of recycled bland lyrics.

So now we've got this Wasting Light disc, recorded totally analog from what I understand. It comes out tomorrow and is streaming on their website. I will disclose that I have heard 4.5 songs from this album already. I liked the one full track I heard, liked the half of the one that I heard the half of, liked most of another, and was not so impressed with the other two. Let's see if statistics get even more less articulate as I press play.

"Bridge Burning" - This is the half-song I heard months ago when they first teased the album. The intro is quick kick ass. The verses remind me of a combination of the verses from "All My Life" and an awesome old FF tune called "Winnebago." They sound good and build a lot tension (or that might be the fact that there's no fucking pause button which is giving me extreme anxiety). Unfortunately they build to a boring chorus. No wait, it was just a boring pre-chorus. The real chorus is not amazing, but at least it's not as bad as the "Whatever keeps you warm..." part. Then it starts over. Ok, the real chorus is growing on me thanks to all the harmonies.  By the end of the song, I'm whistling the damn chorus. Good job.

"Rope" - Here's the one I've heard a lot on the radio. My first impression of this was "Great song--terrible chorus." This chorus has NOT grown on me. I still hate it. The lyrics feel generic and tacked on. I loved Dave Grohl's nonsensical lyrics and rhymes from the debut album, but once he started trying to communicate a message, I felt that it often felt bland and forced. It's a shame because the rest of the song is really awesome. From now on, whenever the Foo Fighters blow a chorus in an otherwise good song, it will be known as Wasting Light.

"Dear Rosemary" - This song is special to me because I plan to name my first daughter Rosemary. Rosemary Parmesan. This track is all right. The hook (the beginning guitar lick and subsequent vocal melody) sounds very familiar, but I can't place it yet.  In fact, I refuse to go on with this review until I figure out what the hook reminds me of.

All right, I've got it. It's actually two songs. Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want To Be With You" and Oasis' "Acquiesce." Now I can eat my steak...

Other parts of the songs sound like Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out With Him?", Tub Ring's "No One Wants to Play" and the "Got away/got away/got away..." part reminds me of another song that I'm not going to waste any more time trying to figure out. Someone is singing backup vocals.  The whole song is catchy, but mostly because it makes me think of 15 other songs.

"White Limo" - This is another one I've heard and like. I actually heard it on WSOU, a metal radio station, most likely because of all the screaming vocals, which sounds pretty awesome. The vocals remind of "Watershed" from the debut album. The music is more straightforward and steady though. Not bad necessarily. The chorus is pretty safe (and again, catchy), but at least there's a blood curdling howl later on.

"Arlandria" - Some crappy generic rhymes in the beginning and a vaguely familiar 4-chord progression that builds to a couple more parts with some more crappy lyrics and more vaguely familiar progressions. Every time I hear these progressions I can't figure out if they're from a song I've heard, or if I've used them before myself. That's not good. Familiar IS NOT good. I need to be surprised to be impressed. Anyway, the production and recording here is still top notch. Surprising and impressive.

"These Days" - Great verses. Very pretty. But then another chorus that I'm just not crazy about. The arrangement is pretty stereotypical Foo Fighters. That's not good.

"Back & Forth" - The opening melody could be addressed in this post. It gets less predictable after a bit at least, but once again, the chorus Wastes Light. "Back & Forth," "Now & Then," "Down & Out." These phrases all appear in the chorus. I feel like these aren't in there to ironically exploit cliche phrase--I think Dave's just running out of shit to say.

"A Matter of Time" - Fun guitar play and vocals here. I think this is the first time I was really reminded that there are three guitarists in the band now. In fact, the awesome 3-guitar spread over the stereo spectrum here is making me completely ignore the lyrics, which probably suck. This track is probably a throwaway, but I think I mostly liked it.

"Miss the Misery" - The guitar reminds me of early Pearl Jam. It's a Leslie cabinet, I guess? I think this one will be mostly unmemorable, but I still can't say anything bad about it.

"I Should Have Known" - Lo-fi intro. Dave opens the lyrics by rhyming "way" with "way," the motherfucker. This is heavier than anything on the softer side of that dual In Your Honor disc I was talking about before, but with acoustic guitars, it probably would have fit in there nicely. It actually builds to a much heavier place than it started, so maybe it could have been the perfect song to bridge the gap between disc 2 and disc 1 back in 2005. It ends with another everybody-stop-then-Dave-shouts-something line that I feel has been used already a few times on this album, but I'm not going to go back and confirm, so you're on your own.

"Walk" - When I heard this one the other day on the radio I wasn't too crazy about it. I think I like it better the second time around. Well, almost. Halfway through the song, there's a string of lame rhymes and cliches that are eventually delivered with the exact same phrasing as "Best of You." It also sort of sounds like "DOA,"  another late period Foo Fighters song that I don't care for, despite it's catchiness. It's also got a really abrupt, non-epic ending for an album closer. I can get on board with that. I'm glad they didn't drag it out because they felt obligated too. I mean that in a lot of ways.