A Brain Fuckling Package

I got a package in my cube today. From my ol' pal Beth.

Inside were the following:

• one of those journals that has been made out of an old vintage books. Really cool. This one in particular is titled The Mystery at Rustlers' Fort and on the cover is a cougar pouncing on a kid that looks like one of the Hardy Boys pointing a rifle at that mo fo (Who am I kidding? Back then, they all looked like Hardy Boys). It's fucking classic, trust me. Inside reads:

"It probably took you awhile to figure out that no this is not actually a book, but is a super dooper secret journal... for boys. I couldnt find a stick of gum, so please enjoy this strawberry cream Halls. It tastes like candy. You'll see. Here's a map of where I work and a sticker to entice you back to me.

Love you a million times always,
Beth"

• A map of Portland, highlighting all the places we went to when I was in town.
• A bumper sticker that reads, "Keep Portland WEIRD!" (we both think it's lame, so we laughed about it)
  
• A piece of candy

If it was any other person, I'd say I was in. But I'm not quite sure what to think. And no, I'm not secretly sitting here giddily hoping that you'll all write to me with reassuring comments. That'd be really lame.

You also have to under stand that she's a carrot dangler. And it's brain fuckling* me. You could really take it one of two ways:

1. Are you crazy? I say that to my friends all the time! You're reading too much into it.
2. It's plain and obvious what's going on.

But after I opened the package, I sat back in my office swivel chair and took a moment to think about it.

It's a weird thing to receive these kinds of random knick knacks again, even though they might not be "anything" more than what they are. I never thought I'd get a package with random trinkets from anyone else besides Lynn (which was something her and I did a lot), but it actually feels "okay".

I suppose that means something.

...

Damn tickets to Portland are expensive.




* if you don't know what a brain fuckler is... please please please check it out.

The Top Ten Banned Super Bowl Commercials!

One of the most attractive features of the Super Bowl are the commercials and many people who could care less about this American pastime tune in with a few of their friends for Super Bowl parties and hangouts where the game is sometimes upstaged by the clever, ingenious commercials. Big companies folk over millions of dollars for a few seconds of airtime and the opportunity to put their products in front of hundreds of millions of people who will watch this game worldwide. Super Bowl XLII will be played in Arizona on February the 3rd between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots and after the event, many of us will turn into Monday Morning Quarterbacks and second guess every bad decision or play made to death. We will also be talking about the commercials and and the ones we liked the best. Here are a few commercials of past Super Bowls that did not make it and got banned by the station carrying the game because they were deemed to be too racy and raunchy. Some of these commercials are really funny!

Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi: Born October 2, 1869. Died January 30, 1948

Mohandas "Mahatma" (Great Soul) Gandhi is widely respected and revered as the father of non-violent political resistance. Gandhi was born in India and studied law in England, then spent 20 years defending the rights of immigrants in South Africa. He returned to India and became a leading figure against the struggle for independence against the British Colonial Empire of which India was considered the so-called Shining Jewel. Gandhi urged non-violence and civil disobedience as a means to independence. His public acts of defiance landed him in jail many times as the struggle continued through World War II. In 1947 he participated in the postwar negotiations with Britain that led to Indian independence. He was shot to death by a Hindu fanatic on January 30, 1948.

Thai Supermodel: Khemanit Jamikorn

Khemanit Jamikorn has the funny nickname of Pancake. She was winner of the Thai Supermodel 2004 contest and has been making appearances ever since in all the fashion and gossip magazines and at various openings and product launches. She was voted number 40 sexiest woman in the world by FHM Thai edition readers.

Cell Phone Directory Rings Alarm Bells. Customers, Privacy Activists Raise Doubts About Web Service

An online directory that claims to provide 90 million mobile telephone numbers is raising concerns among cell phone users and privacy advocates about unwanted callers who rack up the minutes on their calling plans and the difficulty of opting out of the list.

Until now, cell phone users, reluctant to be interrupted in their cars or in public with unsolicited calls, could try to protect the privacy of their numbers by being judicious about whom they gave them to. But the directory service, offered by Intelius Inc. of Bellevue, Wash., threatens to take away that privacy.

Intelius charges $14.95 a pop for the numbers, which it says it collects from public sources, such as property records and other businesses. The owner of a number has no say in the matter.

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Segregating Women to "Save" Them

The Nation
By Jessica Valenti
Last week Mexico City unveiled women-only buses as a way to battle the increasing sexual harassment on public transportation. Some men treat women so badly that the subway system has long had ladies-only cars during rush hour, with police segregating the sexes on the platforms. But that hasn't helped women forced to rely on packed buses, by far the city's most-used form of public transportation -- until this week. Acting on complaints from women's groups, the city rolled out "ladies only" buses, complete with pink signs in the windshields to wave off the men.

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Sexy Babe: Fukuoka Sayaka

The Giving Tree: A Glimpse Into My Twisted Mind?

Jack: What did you pick up at Barnes and Nobles again?
So@24: A book on Greek mythology, Aesop's fables, and The Giving Tree.
Jack: The Giving Tree is heartbreaking man.
So@24: It's fucking deep.
Jack: Makes me really sad. I hate the boy, selfish prick.
So@24: Did you know there have been some really intense debates about the meaning of that book? Some say the relationship is supposed to be that of a parent and a child: the parents always gives and the child always takes. The relationship is inevitable!
Jack: I almost don't want to know, it's such an intregal part of my childhood.
So@24: Damn. That tree gave so much.
So@24: I remember when I was little, I wondered if the tree was sexually interested in the little boy.
Jack: Wow. Really? How would that even work?
So@24: I have no idea.
Jack: You're a weird dude sometimes, So@24. I think about sex constantly, probably more than most people and I'm aware of that and "ok" with it. Sometimes I don't think you worry about it as much, then you say shit like that and I don't know what to think.
So@24: I often think the same.
Jack: This fascinates me.
So@24: I remember being a little boy and being ashamed I thought that. I sat in the corner in my Oshkosh B'gosh overalls and a single tear rolled down my cheek.
Jack: Dude! What do you think that means? Maybe that was formative part of how you view/treat women now.
So@24: Who can really say for sure?
Jack: You never know. I bet the Giving Tree is the root of all this. That's my new theory at least. Godspeed, Oshkosh.

Ito Hitomi

Ito Hitomi is a gravure idol. She is from Kanagawa.

50 years of Lego. Where the heck has our imagination gone.

Lego celebrates an amazing 50 years today. With 7 Lego sets being sold every second. If we use $15 as the average cost of a Lego set, then this works out to about $105 per second. To put this in context and show you how amazing it is, that’s just slightly slower than the rate at which a fat ass Australian Rail Corp executive would make money from bribes and commissions

Lego has changed a lot. In the good old days Lego sets had a lot less specialized pieces. You had to use your imagination along with the bricks to build something. You could build a car, house, boat, spaceship with one good reasonably sized set. But now, the child's imagination has been sucked out of their heads by big media companies and fed back to the now brain dead kids in the form of vinyl wrapped video game and DVDs. I curse the day Steven Spielberg created Jurassic Park. This was the movie that paved the way for the whole hearted raping of our imagination. The only thing that's left to the imagination now is the grand parents having sex..... er maybe not. I'm sure that on a sticky shelf, in some run down DVD parlour, in some rat infested back-alley there is a movie titled "grandpa goes anal on grandma."

Lego has had no choice but to evolve to keep pace with this change in children's thinking - or lack of. Lego now comes with a story or is associated with some franchise. Bionicle, Star wars, Batman, Emmanuelle etc. The list goes on and on, like an impotent man on viagra i.e. Hugh Hefner. Sad as it may seem this is the only way to capture the imagination now. The imagination that was lost in the glossy packaging of mass digital media.

It's really sad that Lego has to give kids the bricks and then tell them in exact detail what to make with the bricks. Gone are the days where the Lego sets had lots of pictures of things you could make on the boxes with a very few directions- giving you ideas instead of instructions. Toys like Lego should enhance and challenge our imagination not replace it. However, we should also actively challenge our imagination. So let’s start today with a small exercise.

Before I go. I have to bring up the point of multiculturalism, and Lego's assiduous avoidance of it. When are we going to see black criminals, Asian prostitutes, skanky sheilas, homosexual hairdressers and child abusers in the Lego Man lineup? Sorry, I mean Lego person lineup. On second thought, let's leave out child abusers because I think there are Lego Priests.

The imagination test.
To test how creative you are, see if you can imagine what the union of the couples listed below will result in. The further away you are from the listed answers, the more imaginative you are.

1. Katie Homes and Tom Cruise
2. Batman and Barbie
3. T-Rex and a Whale
4. 50 Cent and Paris Hilton
5. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton


Here are the answers. So how imaginative were you?
1. L. Ron. Hubbard's love child - Suri Cruise.
2. Pink batmobile with two soft airbags, a cute tail and dents on all the corners of the fenders.
3. A whole bunch of Japanese whalers ending up as Sushi for once instead of the whales.
4. Paris Hilton with a new appreciation for the phrase "Pain in the ass."
5. Bill Clinton having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. Because Hillary has a dick and Bill is not a homosexual.

The testament in the language of Lego.

A Quarter Of Apple iPhones "Unlocked": Analyst

Published: January 28, 2008
Filed at 8:51 p.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - More than a quarter of people who bought Apple Inc's iPhone are using them on wireless networks other than AT&T's, the exclusive iPhone carrier in the U.S., a "stunning" number that will pressure the company's business model, an analyst said on Monday.
Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi said analysis of sales numbers from Apple and AT&T Inc revealed about 1.45 million phones were "missing in action" at the end of 2007.
About 480,000 of those were believed to be held by AT&T as inventory, leaving another 1 million phones, or 27 percent of the total, that Sacconaghi said were "unlocked" so they could work on non-AT&T networks.

Apple executives said last week the number of unlocked phones was "significant" but declined to give an estimate. Most analysts had estimated the portion of unlocked phones at under 20 percent.

Spokespersons for Apple and AT&T declined to comment.

The higher number is worrying for Apple because the company receives a cut of AT&T's iPhone service fees, revenue that carries a high gross margin and has fueled optimism over its earnings potential.

For example, Sacconaghi said, if Apple hit its sales goal of 10 million iPhones by the end of fiscal 2008 but 30 percent of those don't result in any carrier payments, its revenue and profit would be $500 million and 37 cents per share lower than expected.
If Apple cracks down on unlocked phones it could preserve its high margins but miss its sales target, whereas allowing them could erode profitability and make it tough to sign more carriers to similar revenue-sharing deals.

"Besides the financial implications, we believe the prevalence of unlocked iPhones presents a significant strategic dilemma to Apple," Sacconaghi wrote.

Apple shares closed unchanged on Monday at $130.01. Over the past month the stock has fallen 35 percent on concerns over consumer spending and what some analysts say are a lack of must-have products Apple has lined up this year.

Reporting by Scott Hillis; editing by Carol Bishopric

Lil Boy with No Toys

"You know, I've been thinking. I cannot envision any circumstance in which I'll ever have the opportunity to have sex again. How's it going to happen? I just don't see how it could occur."
- George Costanza, Seinfeld "The Pony Remark"

There are nights when it's great to just be out with "the boys". Playing drinking games, sitting
around, shooting the shit about a variety of subjects: our careers, insights into the dating world, venting about our problems with the female gender... and sex.

Oh lordy. Sex.

Saturday night was definitely one of those nights. The more Natural Light cans piled up on the ground around us, the bolder and more graphic the discussion got.

But I felt like that kid on Christmas who didn't get a Sega Genesis. Or the lovable, but inexperienced protagonist in the locker room of an after school special. There was once a I time I could have contributed to this conversation, but to be honest, I felt awkward and uncomfortable in my own skin.

"Doggystyle is by far the best position. Seriously."
"Are you kidding me? No way. Reverse cowgirl*."
"When was the last time you've guys had sex when you were really, really hammered? Probably one of my favorite things to do."
"Man, I'm on my 3 month pinch right now. It's certainly been awhile."

Everyone in the room was contributing their own anecdotes and opinions. I sat crosslegged on the floor texting anyone I could think of hoping to completely hide myself from having to participate.

It's not like I'm a virgin. But it's certainly been awhile and I got a funny feeling in me reminiscing about my sex life with Lynn (I quickly slammed another beer to change my thoughts to something else). I used to be able to talk to the guys about what I preferred, what she liked, bring my own personal opinion to table. This just caused me to actually perspire a bit.

Being out of the game just made me scratch my head and blush, silently hoping the conversation would go somewhere else and no one would realize that I haven't uttered a single word in the last 20 minutes.

Sex. I've forgotten what that is. I feel like there's a vagina involved at some point, but I might have to Wikipedia it.





* Yes. This is in fact the second time I've used the "reverse cowgirl" in my blog.

The Blight of Bigotry That Is Still With Us

South Carolina is a disturbing example of how difficult it is for people of good will to dispose of toxic layers of bigotry. Audience members listen to US Democratic presidential candidates debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on Monday.

The political mantra this year is "change." But South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies on the grounds of the State Capitol, is a disturbing example of how difficult it is for people of good will to dispose of the toxic layers of bigotry that have accumulated over several long centuries.



On Saturday, in a cold, steady rain, voters turned out for the Republican primary. Nearly all of them -- close to 100 percent -- were white. At a dinner here Saturday night, I was reminded ruefully by one of the guests: "It used to be the Democratic Party that was the white man's party in South Carolina. Now it's the GOP. The black people vote next Saturday."



They still honor Benjamin Tillman down here, which is very much like honoring a malignant tumor. A statue of Tillman, who was known as Pitchfork Ben, is on prominent display outside the statehouse.



Tillman served as governor and US senator in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A mortal enemy of black people, he bragged that he and his followers had disenfranchised "as many as we could," and he publicly defended the murder of blacks.

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Japan Sexy Babe: Yuko Ogura

Name: Yuko Ogura 小倉優子
Birthdate: November 1, 1983
Zodiac: Scorpio
Birthplace: Chiba
Blood type: B
Height: 162 cm (5 ft 4 in)
Weight: 43 kg (95 lb)
Measurements: 80-56-83 cm (31-22-33 in)
Cup: C
Shoe size: 23 cm
Hobby: Karaoke
Special skill: Piano, flute

Taiwan Supermodel: Bianca Bai Xin Hui

Name: Bianca Bai Xin Hui 白歆惠
Profession: Model, Actress
Date of birth: 1982 October 23
Horoscope: Scorpio
Place of birth: Taiwan
Height: 176cm
Blood type: O