Tonight, while visiting a friend at some local company's headquarters, I finally got to try a Choco Taco, which was decent if not slightly disappointing for all the anticipation. However, it was notable for coming out of such an unintentionally overwrought Rube Goldbergian vending machine. While I didn't shoot this video, it could very easily be ( Read more... )

Thank you, Internets, for giving me things like this. (And toraneko for this particular internet.)

Not that I participate much in the holiday, but I encountered two respectable tricks played by businesses today.

Local coffee gods Barefoot advertised an espresso exchange program with Starbucks. With the staff all decked out in Starbucks garb, including some with the "Consumer Whore" logo, they touted their Starbucks espresso roast today, ( Read more... )

Spam subject line du jour = "Spam Morton". Nice of them to preemptively identify it as spam. Kinda sounds like a third-rate noir detective...

She stood silhouetted in my doorway, cigarette in one hand, a shotgun in the other. "Are you Morton?" she asked tersely ( Read more... )

One oddity I observed in Boston was restrooms labeled "Mens" and "Womens". Had it been only in the hotel, I would have chalked it up to a single apostrophobic signmaker, but this nomenclature appeared in several restaurants too. It's true that they are frequently called this when spoken -- as in "going to the men's room", but why eliminate the ( Read more... )

This is not targeted to anyone on this list, just a general observation ( Read more... )

Some days I'm tempted to have an invisible dog named Godot, just so I could spend my days kneeling at the edge of a dog park, staring into the distance and calling "Heeeeeere, Godot Godot Godot..."

Right now I have no excuse.

Tonight we took a visiting Australian to Outback Steakhouse, at -- I hasten to add -- his own explicit request. He was almost totally unoffended at the overboard Fauxstralian kitsch, benign but still something of an Uncle Tom's Diner of national stereotypes, if one is determined to take exception to such things. So that slight fear of mine proved ( Read more... )

I haven't had a chance to say Happy New Year in this venue yet, so... consider it said.

Many extremely stupid variants of the chorus of "Rock Me Amadeus" are scampering through my cranium for no discernible reason:
Ambidextrous ambiDEXtrous, ambidextrous...
Pay to play-us...
Ham and egg-is...
I'm-a Trey-us...I ask not for pity, only understanding ( Read more... )

A bunch of bananas I purchased last week featured what looked at first like the usual set of banana-borne branding stickers. Closer examination revealed that one of the stickers advertised that Pirates of the Caribbean was coming to DVD on Dec. 5 (sur DVD le 5 déc ( Read more... )