• Another question from Aardvark: Why is eastfield college so ghetto?    (Because you’re far too classy)
• From Twitter: Im at red lobster and I got the two numbers that looks like my zodiac sign, 69 the cancer sign, the crab.. What are the odds. Lol.. (I’m as surprised as you are, buddy.  Never saw that whole see-a-crab-at-Red-Lobster thing coming…)
• From Twitter: fukkin this iced coffee from Mickey D’s up  (Ah, the further wussification of the American wanna-be gangster)
• From Twitter: I just saw this guy that looks like this I guy I used to have a massive crush on. Huge mindfuck right there…  (That is a great story. Totally didn’t expect the M. Night twist at the end.)
• From Facebook: Did the OJ Simpson through the airport. We are the last to board. Nothing but blue skies ahead…  (I’m assuming that this was the OJ Simpson running thing, not the OJ Simpson cutting people’s heads off thing.)

Hurray for social web!!

This is my Twitter account.  After I talked about the Wubbzy encounter I got a couple of new Twitter followers.  The first was TwittMarketing.  His bio:

Name Twit Marketing
Location California
Web http://tweetvirus.com
Bio Want your Tweets to go Viral? Click the link above to learn how.

This stuff makes me sad.  Twitter is a slick communication vehicle.  That always seems to drag in the exploiters.  I don’t want my tweets to go viral.  I certainly don’t want to get followed by random folks with Twitter bots.  This is exactly the sort of behavior that forces folks to move their communications out of the public discourse and lock things down.

Another follower turned up about the same time.  http://twitter.com/socialnetmarket Wow!  Could this be true?!? “Major Web 2.0 training lauches Thrus Jan 22 2009. Private Invitation Only – tweet me up soon to get signed up”  That sounds fantastic!  I’m gonna get in on the ground floor.

Anyway, this is what it looks like when authentic communication starts to get undermined by profiteers.  Believe me, I know a lot about how dangerous these guys can be to a community.  They’re insidious not because they are flooding, but because they are attempting to proliferate the idea that lots of people should engage in this sort of behavior.  Don’t get me wrong, most of the people who will buy and use this stuff are nice people just trying to make some extra cash.  But when enough amateur marketeers get involved, the larger signal to noise ratio of the entire community can skew the wrong way.  

Dang, I really liked Twitter…

The porno convention was in town!- It’s an odd thing to be walking through the casino and have a porn star go walking by in an outfit that can only be described as a creative use of dental floss and postage stamps.  There were a lot of them running around.  It got to the point where I was basically afraid to touch anything (its almost worse to touch it if you do know where it’s been).

Can I pay with PayPal?- I’m not sure if this means that their brand is incredibly strong or if it’s tanking.  

Even to dorky for me- Star Trek fans are an odd breed.  Lacking even the respect of other sci-fi dorks, they wander aimlessly from convention to convention desperately hoping Shatner can fill some sort of hole in their life.  Now in between conventions, they can gamble away the hard earned dollars they would normally spend of models and phasers.  I give you, Star Trek slots.  Well done, gambling industry.

Journalists need a sense of irony, not depth perception- I really really like this poster.  Norm!

About that time Kim’s friend showed up with her 3 year old for a play date.  You may not know this, but a 3 year old has a couple of interesting properties: (1) they can be stuffed through a doggy door, (2) they often can talk enough to understand that you want them to unlock the door once you have stuffed them through said doggy door.  Big thanks to Kim’s friend and her B&E baby for getting us back in.

Ron’s gig is debating atheists.  He’s all about intelligent design.  Here he attempts to prove the existence of God with a banana  (a Christian god that is. Bananas provide no evidence of Allah or Buddha, so don’t even try it).  The fundamental design excellence of the banana must indicate a higher power.  Here, you’ll see.

An excellent point, Ron.  Allow me to rebut.  This is my friend the pineapple.  It has a ridiculous amount of segments around it’s circumference perfectly shaped for a plastic grocery bag.  On top, there isn’t a tab for easy opening, but rather a giant spiky crown that would desperately love to take an eye out.  The wrapper isn’t a good indication of ripeness necessarily and if you eat it at the wrong time acids in the flesh can literally sear the inside of your mouth and throat.  The pineapple a fruit intent on killing you if you attempt to eat it.  WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, RON??!?

Merry Christmas, everybody!

These people are very sad- The Disney newlyweds are not uncommon. They are, however, tragically sad.  Thank god they found each other.  Now if only we could keep them from propagating…

This is brilliant- When I was in high school we had a class trip to Disneyland.  It was one of those overnight events.  The evening was notable on two fronts: gross misbehavior and the opening of the Indiana Jones ride.  Let’s talk about the Indian Jones ride.  While we waited in the two hour line, we all got special decoder cards.  They associated to the hieroglyphics throughout the ride.

Here’s the crazy part.  Do you remember the scene from “A Christmas Story” when he decodes the radio message and gets “Don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine”?  These are exactly the same.  AT&T was the launch partner for the ride.  All of the script decodes to messages about choosing the right long distance provider.

The amazing bit is that when AT&T obviously didn’t renew the promotion agreement, Disneyland just stopped handing out the cards.  They didn’t remove the ads from the ride.  They just stopped having them be decodeable.   So brilliant.  I wonder if AT&T wanted to cut another check if they’d start passing them out again.  Now that is a cool integrated marketing program.

I’ve been pretty excited about Spore for a while.  It is one of the more hyped games of the last couple of years. You basically get to play god, and you can imagine how that might appeal to me.

I have a MacBook.  It’s less than a year old.  The game’s box clearly says MAC compatible on the front.  This is a blatant lie.  First it wouldn’t install because my OS was not the super-duper most current.  Ok, EA, I’ll play your little game.  I snagged a copy of Snow Leopard and upgraded my operating system.  Consider that box checked.

Does it work now? Judging from my desire to strangle some EA monkeys, there seems to still be a problem.  My graphics card is not high end enough so the game just won’t run.  End of story.

Here’s what I don’t get.  The release was delayed for over a year.  The hardware required to play it didn’t exist at the time that this thing was coded. WTF?  Seriously, I’m pissed off that I have a $50 game that is unplayable on a 1 year old machine.

So screw you, EA. And screw you, Spore.  I’m done with this.  You have officially crapped on my parade.

Now I’m just torn on whether the correct course of action at this stage is to put the disk up for grabs to you guys, or send EA a package filled with burnt hair (yeah, that is a terrible smell).  Thoughts?

Wiley had texted me for a pick up.  If you know Wiley, you’ll know how sick he’s been lately.  His yet undiagnosed illness is characterized by cycles of uncontrollable vomiting that usually last 3-4 days and end with us taking a trip to the ER when the dehydration really sets in.  It is not cool. (Full details are available on his blog).

Anyway, I was prepped for some hard core puking while I drove since that’s how things go when I drive Wiley lately.  I loaded up Ben and headed out about about 5:30 AM across town to Silver Lake.  I figured I’d take the boy and let Kim sleep in.  That’s where things went horribly wrong.

About 5 minutes on the freeway, Ben pukes.  Everywhere. For a while.  There is no smell quite like semi-digested milk.  Being the good parent I am, I figured we probably had another round or two in our immediate future and continued on to Wiley’s apartment.  By the time we got there, he was covered.

When people talk about having kids, they always tell you how magical and fulfilling it is.  They’re lying to you. Or at least glossing over what it’s really like (I’m not sure if this behavior is some sort of instinctual drive to help perpetuate the species, or if all parents secretly hate/resent the childless).  I find that a lot of parenthood revolves around being wrist deep in things that are awful. And there’s screaming.  It’s good they’re cute or they’d be in serious trouble.

So I pulled up a Wiley’s and had him bring down paper towels.  Here’s where it got tricky.  Wiley is on a vomit bender and has a hair trigger when it comes to smells.  Ben is covered in baby puke which is like the atomic bomb of puke smell.  I had to quickly wipe down and strip the baby while and unsteady Wiley waited away from the car.  Did I mention that parenthood involves being wrist deep in schmutz?

The ride home was surprisingly uneventful.  Thankfully no one decided to grace the car with any more bile.  Now we’re all back at my house trying to keep it together.  Ben is watching Pooh playing with blocks after a bath.  Wiley is sacked out in our bed looking like hell.  I’m drinking copious amounts of coffee.   I’ll be shocked if there isn’t another hospital trip in our future.  Bah.