One Bad Random

Cote' sent me a link to the world's primary information and support network for and about romantic relationships among cousins. They of course missed the opportunity to give people good pickup lines to use at the next family reunion. Unfortunately I don't have any. But here's my current list of pickup lines that have almost no chance of working:

• You must work at KFC, because I could make a meal out of those breasts and thighs.
• The AMA should warn people about you, because later thinking of you is going to cause me to have a "stroke."
• Can I push your stool in?
• Would you like some sauce on your taco?
• Blood on my knife or shit on my dick.
• Let's have sex in the bathroom. And by bathroom I mean your asshole.

Coming out of a restaurant at lunch today, I spotted a gumball machine with Homies Series 8 in it. I decided to splurge $0.50 and start my collection of toys that reinforce racial stereotypes. I excitedly tore open the little plastic ball, dreaming of an afternoon of re-enacting all of the great gang battles I learned about on the history channel when, much to my chagrin, I discovered I got this instead:

That is not a Homie. That's a fucking redneck. Although it sort of fits in my racial stereotype theme, I was nonetheless greatly disappointed. I made some attempt to use him to re-create all my favorite scenes from the Warriors but ultimately failed since he doesn't match any of the gang profiles from the movie. I finally resigned myself to using him as the subject in my Queer Eye for the Redneck Guy: Cubicle Edition.

At work, the cleaning lady stops by to restock / tidy up the men's bathroom at least once a day. I suspect it may even be a couple of times a day. Naturally, she tries to find out if anyone is in the bathroom by poking her head in the door and saying something like, "hello?"

So far I have failed to find a response with which I am happy. I've tried the panicked "someone's in here" but that makes me feel like a little bitch. Screaming "it burns" also didn't come off too well. I narrowly escaped the quasi-racist feeling "ocupado" so far. And, although I've experimented with variations of "just a minute" or "almost done," these and all my other attempts always seems to completely chase her away, causing her to have to make a second set of rounds later in the day which makes me feel like I'm somehow increasing her workload.

My new idea is a simple I'm-comfortable-with-myself, "come in." Nothing wrong with that that I can see, other than I think it's a George Carlin bit.

Today at work, another of the programmers had the post-lunch sleepys pretty bad. He joked about crawling under his desk and taking a nap. There's nothing like some sweet clandestine nap action at work. The only thing close is getting paid to take a dump. This gave me another of my brilliant ideas.

If you want to catch some shut eye on the job, where's the one place you can go that (nearly) everyone will leave you alone? That's right, the bathroom. Unfortunately, it's not the most ideal place to lay down, what with all that post penile drip flying around. But wait! What about a hammock specifically designed to hang from the hand rails in the handicapped stall? It's the roomiest stall and if your company is like mine you don't hire cripples either, so it's just going to waste.

I can already hear the dull roar of people thinking this is a terrible idea. It's because of all the pervs at your work that'll peek under the stall, right? The tell-tale absence of legs will give you away. That's where the next idea comes in. A pair of fake legs mounted to a board that you can attach to the toilet. Now, since you're in the handicapped stall I recommend a set with one of those big cripple shoes and some sort of metal brace. You know, one of those old fashioned 1950s "look at me, I'm cripple" type of braces that squeaks when you stumble down the hallway. And maybe a cane for good measure. Then no one will bang on the door wondering what's taking so long for fear of being fired for being an insensitive fuck. God, I hate those people.

The final step is to forward your office phone / email / instant messenger to your cell phone. Then if anyone is looking for you, you can get up and splash a little water on your face. Then you just wander into the office and come up with the most uncomfortable, unchallengeable excuse possible. I like to say I was at the doctor with a bad case of priaprism.

I was talking with a co-worker today about the movie King Kong and we had a conversation that led to the following idea. The idea starts with the assumption that the suicide hotlines in this country are likely to be woefully underfunded. That means a lot of people are skill offing themselves because they can't get help. There are numerous suicidals out there going to waste. That's a market opportunity. The idea is to start convincing these people (who are going to die anyway) that they should sacrifice themselves for comedy, absurdity, adventure, etc.

Since we were talking about King Kong at the time the first one would have to be a televised recreation in which the volunteer dresses up in a gorilla suit and climbs to the top of the scale model of the Empire State building at the New York New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jesus, what better place for this spectacle than Vegas, baby? It was meant to be. We time it to coincide with some sort of convention for radio control enthusiasts. We let them fly RC airplanes around the guy in the ape outfit until he plummets / jumps to his spectacular death. It's a gold mine.

For those of you playing One Bad Random – Home Edition, the post title is a reference to a Guns N' Roses EP. If you guessed correctly, advance to the next level.

I'm listening to a podcast about mashups today and the funniest (presumably unrehearsed and unintentional) exchange happened between the host and his guest about 6 minutes in:

Host: So for example if I were looking for let's say playgrounds in a certain community. That could be an example of what you would do by mashing up a playground directory with google maps.

Guest: Exactly. And taking that to the other extreme, crime is a popular one. So people have been taking crime incident data and plotting it. So if you wanted to find out where a level 3 sex offender is in your neighborhood, people have taken that governmental data and plotted that on a map so you could put in "here's my zipcode" and show me those…criminals…

The 2006 Olympic Games is going on right now. People always laugh when I say this, but it is my second favorite Olympics right behind the Summer games and just ahead of either the Special Olympics or the Analympics, it's too close to call.

During these games, I've been watching a ton of curling which I developed a taste for during the 2002 games in Salt Lake City. It's a really enjoyable sport. During the curling coverage they also covered the biathlon quite a bit. Now that's a sport I've never been into. It makes sense if you look at the hunting / warfare history of the combination, much like the hodge-podge of events that make up the pentathlon.

I was talking with JP today and he had a great suggestion to add some excitement to the biathlon. Rather than shooting at targets the competitors should be encouraged to shoot at each other. This would have to be done with something non-lethal of course. Paintball is a fairly obvious choice, but I think the dissimilarities with real bullets would hurt the sport. That's why I recommend rubber bullets. Sure there is a chance of death, but come on! This is a sport, people. There's always an acceptably small chance of injury.

It would of course be key to limit the amount of ammunition, say 5 to 10 rounds. The addition of a moving target, with time penalties for getting tagged, and time bonuses for finishing with unused ammunition is bound spice up an otherwise boring and seemingly senseless combination of sports.

I'm not set on changing the existing biathlon either. This could be a totally new sport. Maybe call it "extreme biathlon" since all the kids love things that are extreme. Whatever form it takes, I think that if this happens it would be better for the biathlon, and the Olympics in general, than if they used real "bi-athletes."

At work, the group I'm in got a demo from another team in the organization. During the product demo, the guy was showing some of the screens which listed customers like "BigCo" and "ACME." During the demo, everyone in my group kept interrupting to ask random, meaningless questions. My favorite was when one developer asked, "Now, is that ACME, Inc a real customer, or is that something we made up?"

Nevermind that it doesn't particularly matter for the purposes of the demo, but I thought it should be fairly obvious, given the company names, that we were looking at test data. Although I really wanted to say it, I managed to keep it to myself: "Yeah, they're a company that deals in small arms, primarily in the American southwest. Right now they sell primarily to a Mr. Wile E. Coyote, but they're hoping to expand the business…"

I'm sitting here at work and the place just reeks. It smells like the inside of a bachelor's refrigerator–a conglomeration of several "past their prime" foods. I was just thinking that we need some baking soda to absorb some of this funk. That got me to thinking about the marketing genius behind baking soda. They sell a product that they recommend you pouring in your garbage, flushing down your sink, and just leaving in your refrigerator. How much more brilliant does it get than, "Buy our product and then throw it away. After that, buy some more!!" Genius, I say.

Side Note

After I've been marching around the office screaming how it smells like "meat cake" in here one of my co-workers pointed out that it could very well be someone's lunch and that I might be offending some poor soul. Some pour soul with a unique taste for hot garbage flavored noodles. I think it's safe to put me on their enemies list.

Update

Yeah, it was someone's lunch. What the fuck happened to that guy's taste buds?

According to this article, scientist are one step closer to realizing the vagina on a mouse idea of mine. Keep your fingers crossed.