Sunday, November 25, 2007

With Technology Comes Deceit


Profound Truth #106B: When you're black, Jesus comes with waffle fries.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to business. Since every other day seems to be some sort of minor holiday these days (eg: Take Your Secretary's Dog For It's Yearly Immunizations Day; March 22nd by the way), why not throw one more occasion into the quickly-thickening holiday mix/stew. Maybe we should have used less Mediterranean-style vegetables in this stew, and more of those native to the Americas, because Goddamn this is a hearty stew, but what's done is done.

Either way, Misplaced Apostrophe Day is nearing, and Im' sure many o'f you simp'ly w'ont be able to cope wit'h the shock. See? If anyone actually was able to decode that sentence with all the crazy out-of-place apostrophes, you will be awarded a medal. Of apostrophe honor. And the medal comes with free salad and breadsticks.

There was a story in the news a while back about a girl who was born with the majority of a fully-formed conjoined twin still attached to her body. It was termed a parasitic fraternal twin or something, but apparently that headline wasn't nearly flashy enough to grab anyone's internet-attention (internettention: not a word) who happened to stumble onto a respectable news site while trawling the depths of the web for flesh.

No. The headline that was settled on, and the one that would certainly reel in the curious internetter like a five-inch garlic-scented reaper tail bass lure (Have to stop using nautical and fishing analogies. It has begun to affect my life), was as follows: Girl Born With Eight Legs!

Eight legs?!! That's considerably more than usual, I think. I better check this out.

Did the parents have to build a custom baby-walker with eight leg holes? Do any of these legs have digits that allow the child to hold onto things? How many legs do babies usually have? Did the parents have a name picked out already and then just add "Octo-" to the beginning? That'd be cool.

All these questions ran through my mind prior to the page loading, but as soon as the truth was revealed, all my dreams about the existence of a hideous, real-live X-Men creature were dashed.

Oh, its just a dead twin. Still pretty gross, but kind of a letdown. When you see a headline about a girl who was born with eight legs, what comes to mind? That's right. The next step in human evolution personified by a terrifying, spider-y looking toddler. Not a cute little girl with the body of another cute little girl coming out of her abdomen.

Besides the headline being slightly misleading, it was also not even accurate in its limb classification or inventory. Eight legs? Try four legs and four arms, only 50% of which are functional. The rest just dangling for show. I think the girl was going to undergo a pretty serious operation to remove her side-corpse, but I lost interest in the article.

I guess that's what I get for getting my hopes up.

posted by Arthur Croft Yates @ 10:35 PM 0 comments

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Book-Keepery


Weekending. Apparently two days a week have a special verb all to themselves to describe their existence. After using this verb it seems like I should begin to describe some sort of yachting adventure that devoured most of my Saturday and Sunday, but those would be lies. I would also have to tell the entire story with slightly receding, wind-tussled hair and a employ a condescending laugh to punctuate each hilarious faux pas committed by Julio the Hispanic deckhand. It's a large yacht, and I don't make the rules.

posted by Arthur Croft Yates @ 9:35 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Obligatory, Pre-Thanksgiving List-Post


WOW! This is weird. A new post for the fall season. Or, the post-Halloween,-onset-of-Christmas season. I was gonna go with a total redesign of the front page, but I figured that might alienate readers who have become accustomed to the calming blue effect of the main page. If there was any way I could've made the background bursting with lights and presents and Tim Allen I would have, but alas. Grey and Blue. Oh, and by the way, there is no error. That was indeed a comma directly followed by a hyphen for those of you who caught it back there. I'm re-writing all the rules this Christmas, motherfuckers. (That sounds like a horribly delicious tagline for the next Samuel L. Jackson holiday movie, but I digress.)

Chewy Fruit Snacks. Just to clear up any confusion, they are shaped like the fruits that they are supposed to taste like. Unless they are uniformly-shaped, like Dots, in which case they all taste the same.

Okay, now on to the real meat of the day.

Since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, we (I) here at the QGR thought the best way to get back in the groove (grove) of things would be to put out a list of some sort. Everyone loves lists. So, without further ado (adieu), we present Thanksgiving Traditions from Around the World! (in bulleted, list-form.)

  • Thanksgiving tradition in the United States dates back to 1621. Early settlers of Plymouth Colony, having endured their first serious famine since arriving in the New World, gave thanks to the Native American tribes of the region. The weak Native American immune systems were thankfully unprepared for the vast array of infectious diseases that accompanied the Pilgrims to North America, and they provided the New Englanders with more than enough protein to last the harsh Massachusetts winter.

  • Canada: Maple Leafs/Stars, Sabres/Canadiens, Canucks/Blues, Avalanche/Flames, Oilers/Predators

Does two items qualify as a list? I don't care. I have grown weary of this topic. Another thought has crossed my mind that is not entirely unrelated to the impending holiday season. That is the concept of a man who is absolutely unable to ration his milk consumption when eating a meal.

No. Not just a meal. Anything. Pie. A sandwich. Much funnier. The translation of the image in my mind to words on a screen might prove unsuccessful, but at least if it is a failure I'll have this as a reference and be able to channel the scene in my head at will.

Imagine if you will a man taking his first bite out of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He begins with the squared-off corner on the bottom left, because it is the least aesthetically pleasing to him. He chews, swallows, and moves on to the opposite, rounded corner in the upper right quadrant. To achieve symmetry. A top-heavy sandwich is even worse than a sandwich with one squared and one rounded corner remaining. He takes a small drink from a pint glass of milk to act as saliva and assist in chewing. Upon completion of the second corner of the sandwich, the man suddenly takes four large gulps and finishes off the rest of the milk in his glass.

"Dammit!!" says the man. He must now refill his glass.

He returns to the scene with a glass that is filled halfway with 1%. The man continues on to the third corner of the sandwich: the second squared-off corner. It is then time to move to the straight-edge portions that were created from the consumption of bordering corners. Each is more satisfying than the last. They are all shaped like miniature, symmetrical, breaded anvils, he thinks. The man finds himself to be very clever for thinking this. He finishes his sandwich in four more swallows, takes a large gulp of milk to top it all off, and is left with one-third of his glass still filled with milk.

"FUCK!!" he exclaims.

If only he were able to calculate precisely when, and exactly how much milk to drink, he could have lived a normal life. Instead here he sits. Clutching his one-third glass of 1% in one tight fist, a paper plate with a few crumbs resting in the open palm of his other hand, and his dead mother's head sitting limp and inattentive in his lap.

"Do you see, Mother?" the man asks rhetorically, as no answer will come from the mouth of the decaying woman. "Do you see what has become of your son?!" The man needs to lie down.


Happy Thanksgiving!

posted by Arthur Croft Yates @ 12:03 AM 0 comments