Category: No Politics Friday

I have never been big on Halloween, partly because I am bitter towards it as a holiday.

My birthday is October 30, and thus I hold a grudge against Halloween for distracting people from the important task of lavishing me with attention on that date. This year, however, I found the kind of Halloween-related event I can really get behind. A comedian friend organized a cover show in the spirit of the holiday, and several of us did short sets as comedians that have been particularly influential to us. So that's why, for approximately 12 minutes on Wednesday evening, I was Bill Hicks:

It was the most fun I had doing…anything, really, in the past year. Part of that statement reflects how much the past year has sucked for me. The rest reflects how exciting and rewarding it was to play make believe for a few minutes.

Two things were especially interesting. One is how awkward it felt to get silence from some of the material. But in reality, if you listen to any recordings of Hicks before he started to become semi-popular and build an audience, he's mostly met by a wall of silence. Listen to Dangerous with decent headphones and you'll realize that nearly all of the laughter is canned, added during the production process. People mostly just stared at this guy when he performed, excepting his more devoted following in the UK. After the show one of my friends told me "Well, they were all staring at you, which means you nailed it.
buy cymbalta online buy cymbalta no prescription

" Second, it's really hard to do someone else's jokes. Or to adopt someone else's persona.

Or delivery. Or accent. Or whatever.

The previous statement is inapplicable to my friend Nate Mitchell, who did Emo Phillips so perfectly it was kind of scary (not to mention funnier than the actual Emo Phillips):

Way to set the bar high, Nate. Unfortunately I couldn't turn myself into a fat, sweaty, pasty, mulleted Bill Hicks in terms of appearance, but I think I did the material a bit of justice.
buy zovirax online buy zovirax no prescription

Even though most of you don't care, it was a pretty big deal for me. What with the channeling dead heroes and all.

For reasons that I absolutely do not need to discuss here in any level of detail – but may or may not involve an online dating site, deceptive photos from five years/100 pounds ago, and a bitchy objectivist who smoked menthol cigarettes – I need you to comfort me and bring me cheer by telling me the story of the worst date you have ever been on.

A female friend of mine once went on a blind date on which the guy showed up wearing a cape.

Not a costume. He just…wears a cape, I guess.

Who are these people, and where do they come from?
buy flexeril online pavg.net/wp-content/languages/new/where/flexeril.html no prescription

Given the extreme level of cockiness commonly found among the one-percenters and people in the business world more generally, I find the occasional thorough, public humiliation to be cathartic. I get a hearty laugh out of watching the self-styled masters of the universe fail miserably. It goes without saying, then, that I (and presumably many other customers) enjoyed a few gut-laughs when Netflix announced, tail tucked between its legs, that it would not in fact be reaming its customers launching "Qwikster" after all. This is impressive; there have been many product failures and commercial flops over the years, but very few so egregiously bad that they flopped before they even existed.

While Netflix probably is not important enough for this to qualify as the Edsel of our generation, there's never a bad reason to look back and chuckle at the Edsel again. Contrary to popular belief, the Edsel was not a bad car, or at least no worse than any other Ford vehicle of its era. Its failure is often blamed on the inability to carve out a market niche, since Edsels were priced almost identical to Ford and Mercury models. More integral to its failure, in my opinion, was the giant chrome vagina it called a grille.

The 1959 Edsel Cooter

While highly publicized flops like the Edsel or New Coke are part of our lexicon, there are far more amusing examples to be plucked from history. Anyone remember Pepsi A.M., the soda with 50% more caffeine targeted at "the breakfast cola drinker" market? It was released in 1989 and killed almost immediately when they realized that people who slam Pepsi for breakfast aren't that particular and do not require a special beverage.

This existed.

Technologies like Betamax, Sony HiFD, or HD DVD are often the butt of jokes, but their only real sin was losing a format war. Not much shame in that. Isn't it much more fun to mock DIVX (not to be confused with the video codec of the same name), the lead balloon that dragged Circuit City into bankruptcy? The idea was that instead of renting movies, people would pay $3-5 for a disc that could only be viewed within 48 hours of whenever it was first played. To watch the movie again after that, the buyer would need to pay a "continuation fee." The only surprising thing about this monstrous affront to common sense was that Circuit City managed to sell 100,000 DIVX players (incompatible with regular DVDs) before pulling the plug.

Dot-com failures were pretty epic, and we tend to remember Pets.com for some reason. I find the saga of WebVan more amusing, wherein the company principals spent over one billion dollars building warehouses (to meet demand!) before any sales or customers existed. The home grocery delivery scheme has later been copied with limited success (Is PeaPod still around?) but WebVan, shockingly, did not make it. I cannot fathom the amount of cocaine these guys must have been doing to make the billion dollars in overhead spending seem like a good idea before the company had earned its first dollar in revenue.

In honor of Steve Jobs, we should also mention the Apple Newton and, in the spirit of fairness and balance, Microsoft WebTV. Hell, there are just too many gigantic failures to name them all. Coors Rocky Mountain Spring Water (!!!). The Bricklin SV-1, the car so bad it brought down a government. Montreal-Mirabel Airport – so enormous that it's visible from space, yet vacant from almost the moment it opened. The XFL. You're not alone, Qwikster.

I've done what I can here. Now it's your turn to take the ball and run with it.

In 1953, the rivalry between Harvard's two student newspapers was spiced up when Crimson partisans stole a statue that sat atop the Lampoon's office. Not content with Level One mischief, the Crimsonites contacted the Soviet embassy and offered them the statue as a peace offering between nations. The USSR accepted (and was probably somewhat confused). In a brilliant response, Lampoon staffers contacted Senator Joseph McCarthy and demanded that he launch a full investigation of the Crimson for its Communist sympathies and dealings with the enemy. Sadly, McCarthy crashed and burned before he could inadvertently help the students close the Prank Circle of Life.

In 1896, Auburn students prepared for the arrival of the arch-rival Georgia Tech football team (I guess Auburn vs. Alabama was not yet a thing in the 19th Century) by covering several miles of railroad tracks into the campus with lubricants. When Tech's train came rolling into town, it helplessly slid several miles out of town in the opposite direction. Legend has it – although this part may be apocryphal – that the Yellowjackets had to walk back to town in the heat and, exhausted, lost 45-0.

In 1961, Caltech nerds sabotaged the preparations for the Rose Bowl. When fans in the stadium held up cards that were supposed to spell "Washington" (whose Huskies were competing in the game) the TV audience saw "Caltech", which has no football team let alone one that would play in the Rose Bowl.

This week I overheard a group of undergraduates talking about pranking our arch-rival, coincidentally also Georgia Tech, before this year's football clash. One proposal involved swiping the beloved Ramblin' Wreck (a golden 1930 Ford Model A, the school's unofficial mascot) and parading it down the Interstate to our stadium. Ultimately they concluded, and I had to agree, that they'd probably all end up in jail, buried under a hundred charges for trespassing, theft, damage to public property, and so on.

I don't want to get all Andy Rooney "Ya Can't Do Anything Without Someone Suing You Anymore" on you, but I do think it's somewhat sad that college students are no longer encouraged to express their creativity like this anymore. Instead they grew up in a post-Reagan America in which the threat of every incident being blown wildly out of proportion by law enforcement ("Tough on crime!

Grr!") is greater than their sense of fun. I mean, can you imagine the Auburn-Tech prank today? Good lord, those Auburn kids would have Homeland Security and a dozen SWAT teams all over them for sabotaging the nation's transportation infrastructure. When we do see "pranks" today they look like malicious acts – like the idiot Alabama football fan who poisoned and killed Auburn's 150 year old oak trees – as often as they look like fun.

So please, restore my faith in humanity and convince me that all is not lost. Use the comment section to recount great pranks from recent years – whether or not you were involved – as well as any clever hijinks you may have observed or engaged in during your college years.

I need to believe that the beautiful art of being a clever bastard while doing no real harm is not yet dead.

Here's a scenario.

You're an astronaut in the early decades of the space program. You're orbiting the Earth alone in a tiny capsule when suddenly you and the folks on the ground realize that some technical problem will prevent you from returning to Earth.

Unlike an airplane pilot, you can't simply strap a parachute on your back, eject, and float safely to the ground.

Or can you?

The good folks at General Electric have designed a neat, compact emergency bailout system called MOOSE ("Man Out of Space Easiest") for the astronaut on the go who likes being alive. "But Ed, you can't just jump out of a goddamn spaceship," you say. Well here's how it works.

The astronaut unfolds the compact kit, dons his spacesuit, and exits his wounded capsule. Then, floating untethered in the icy blackness of space, he crawls into a 6' long plastic bag (You know, like a body bag.) Next he zips himself into the plastic bag and activates two cans of condensed polyurethane foam.

So he is now floating aimlessly in space in a sealed plastic bag, completely blind and immobilized in hardening foam. Then, via a rocket pack poked through the exterior of the plastic bag (Does burning rocket fuel melt plastic?
buy lasix online buy lasix online no prescription

Nah.) the astronaut decelerates himself enough to begin reentering the atmosphere. He is protected (or "protected") during this process by a heat shield consisting of one-half inch of flexible plastic on one side of the bag in which he is enclosed. Can 1/2" of plastic withstand the 500-3000 degrees Fahrenheit generated by atmospheric reentry?

Sure! Why not! Assuming all of the previous steps went flawlessly, the final stage was a 150,000 foot atmospheric free-fall slowed by a single parachute – you guessed it – poked through the plastic bag.

The MOOSE, detailed in this obscure NASA technical report from 1969, was never sent into space. Perhaps NASA realized that slowly running out of oxygen would be strongly preferred by most astronauts when the alternative was attempting to reenter the Earth's atmosphere in a goddamn trash bag. Were I in that unfortunate position, I'd gladly go the 'phone call from the President, bring my wife to the control room to say goodbye' route before I would attempt something so cockamamie. And likely to end in fiery death.

Don't ask me why I know that this exists.

I'm on my way to the Konczal wedding, so this will be somewhat brief.

Long-time readers know that 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of my favorite films. Among its most recognizable scenes occurs toward the end of the second act, when Frank Bowman shuts down (euthanizes?) the sentient supercomputer HAL. As his "higher brain functions" are shut down, HAL reverts to his most basic programming: a short speech introducing himself, explaining his origin, and offering to sing the listener a song, "Daisy Bell." Embedding is disabled, but the whole fantastic scene is available here.

It turns out that Arthur C. Clarke was visiting a friend at the Bell Labs facility in Murray Hill in 1963 when one of its supercomputers, the IBM 704, demonstrated the first ever instance of programmed, computer synthesized speech. Among the tricks IBM 704 was programmed to do was singing the chorus of 'Daisy Bell." Here is the original recording – some famous quotes are spoken first (including "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you," the first words ever spoken by telephone) and the song begins around 0:48. I advise against listening to this immediately before trying to sleep.

Bell Labs based its accomplishment on technology that, surprisingly, was old even in 1963. The first analog Vocoder was demonstrated as early as 1935.

Today, vintage analog Vocoders are worth thousands of dollars, having won a cult following due to their use by early electronic music pioneers like Kraftwerk and Big Black…not to mention cementing a place in the heart of every American male of Generation X by providing the voice of Soundwave.

Just a quick pair of links to occupy your minds during the drudgery of another Friday afternoon at a job you probably hate but cling to desperately.

It's that time of the year again, the time for Ed to apply (fruitlessly, no doubt) for another batch of jobs.
buy stromectol online buy stromectol no prescription

I am hardly the only person who works in a field in which jobs are disappearing. In many professions, technological advances are responsible for the disappearance of jobs that used to be considered desirable and rewarding.
online pharmacy clomiphene best drugstore for you

When I daydream about the big picture beyond my personal circumstances, I often wonder what will become of us when we can no longer avoid the contradiction between a growing population and a shrinking need for human labor.
buy xenical online buy xenical no prescription

Are jobs, in short, becoming obsolete?

This idea takes me back to a 1993 essay by mathematician and sci-fi author Vernor Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity," which asks us to confront a future in which technology advances to the point of approximating or even surpassing human intelligence. We often doubt that any such artificial intelligence can be created, and based on current technology I share that skepticism. But look at where we are today and give it another 50-75 years or so. Tell me we won't get there eventually.
online pharmacy bactroban best drugstore for you

People tend to keep socially unacceptable thoughts to themselves. You might still be a racist, but you're less likely to say racist shit to other people.
online pharmacy propecia best drugstore for you

There's a degree of public shaming involved in saying racist things – ask Michael Richards, Katt Williams, or James Watson – that makes people think twice. That's not a bad thing. It's how social norms are enforced and the boundaries of acceptable conduct are enforced.

Like many people out there in internet land I am head over heels in love with White Whine, which bills itself as a collection of First World Problems. I suspect most people like it because it's funny. And it is. Consider these two examples:

Subject: Snack Time.

Hi Becky!. This is Kaylyn’s mum :-) . I have a concern about the snacks that you’re serving to kids.
buy zoloft online langleyrx.com no prescription

Today we were in the store and Kaylyn pointed out the type of cookies that you served at the teddy bear picnic. Much to my dismay they weren’t a name brand. My husband and I pay very good money for childcare and we expect that corners won’t be cut in the care of our child. That and we don’t want to instill the sorts of values in her that make her think that it’s okay to settle for less than the best. That might be hard for you to understand but it means a lot to me.

Her email signature has a Deepak Chopra quote in it.
online pharmacy prednisone best drugstore for you

Then there's this:

The popularity of White Whine has exploded rapidly – its creator is no doubt the next person in line to get a seven-figure advance for a book deal on his free Tumblr – in part because everyone has one or two of these yahoos in his or her social networks. You know, the girl who whines about going on too many vacations or the guy who goes on venom-laced rants about immigration when his domestic servants displease him. My hope is that over time, a good dose of public mockery will condition a generation of people who grow up on Facebook to think twice before they start putting their impulsive thoughts on the internet. You know, that format that preserves everything you say. Forever. More importantly, maybe people will start to realize that they don't really need to spend as much time whining about trivial First World Problems. As Daniel Tosh says, "It's time you learned that your ranch dressing is not that fucking important." Indeed it is time, internet. Indeed.

Last weekend a comedian-friend and I went to see a group of four touring comedians making an appearance at our favorite local venue. They were unknowns, but they all had TV credits and other vaguely impressive credentials. I will spare you the details of how awful it was – I later noticed that many of the TV credits were from MTV; imagine the kind of comedy that a person who enjoys Jersey Shore would like – except to note that about 30-40% of the words used on stage that night were "dude", "bro", and "fag."

Yes, one of them imitated an Asian accent for about 2 minutes.

More annoying than the set was their persistence in asking nearly every person in attendance how he or she heard about the show. No doubt this was for cynical if casual market research. These guys were the kind for whom the phrase "selling out" has no meaning, as they enter the world of comedy with no integrity to sell. They were quite curious, apparently, which of their marketing methods had been most successful.

It got me thinking (not their comedy, of course, which inspired thoughts about nothing except homicide and escape) about the same question for Gin and Tacos. There are lots of readers now. I can still remember the days of getting 50 hits, mostly from my friends, and calling it a success. Over time things have grown considerably.

The purpose of this question is solely to satisfy my curiosity and will be used for no sinister marketing purposes nor to attract a corporate sponsor: What brought you here initially? Was I suggested by one of your friends? Did you arrive from a link on a different site – especially Crooks & Liars? Random internet search? Internet search specifically for gin and/or tacos? Saw a sticker on someone's car? Wrote three words in the search bar, hit ctrl-Enter, and hoped for the best?

I'm glad you're all here. Some of you have been here for many, many years. Some of you are brand new. Regardless, I am at the point at which I am looking at the traffic and wondering where in the hell all of these people are coming from. Incoming links are easy enough to track, but I'm not interested in who visits once for 60 seconds via C&L links. I'm curious about how the people who come back again and again were introduced to this site – how the addiction began, so to speak.