The USPS notified us on saturday that since we are new occupants in the house we bought that this is as good a time as any for them to "upgrade" the neighborhood with streetside mailboxes. Our house is in an older neighborhood where it is common to see those old style mailboxes that are attached to the house, where the postmen of yore would come up and lift the hinge and drop in the mail, while carefully stepping over the glass bottles the milkman left, trying not to slip on the large block of ice from the icehouse.

So, in an effort to save the USPS $55 dollars a year¹, we are now expected to furnish our own mailbox and install it at the curb, during which time they will conveniently hold all our mail hostage until it is done. I want to just call their bluff and say fuck it and not install one, but D isn't quite as prepared as I am to abandon the Postal Service. I swear, all I ever get in the mail is advertisement packets, so it'd be no loss for me.

So now I'm thinking of sculpting up a novelty mailbox. Afterall, if I have to save them $55 a year, I can at least do it in style, right?

Here's what I was thinking:

The pants would be hinged so it can open and close, but I was too lazy to make it animate. Thoughts?

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1: I'm not sure how they come up with that $55 a year figure. I mean, if we round it down to $52 a year, that'd be a dollar a week. Considering the mail is delivered on 6 days of the week, that's $0.16 a day. Considering it would take at most a minute to get out of the jeep, walk the 8 feet to our box and back, that $0.16 means they'd be making $10 an hour. Does that seem about right? Do they even get paid hourly? I kind of doubt it.

It seems as if I had mentioned this before, but a quick search shows no results, so I must not have.

I've been recently dabbling with gene splicing. Nothing too fancy yet mind you, I am after all a beginner, it's just that I keep running into the same problem over and over. See, I'm trying to combine a lobster and a lemon to create a lobster which doesn't require any lemon garnish¹. The problem is that I keep ending up with lemons that taste like lobster, and that's just nasty. I mean, who wants to boil a lemon before eating it?

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1: Phase 2 will involve splicing my lemobster with butter, but I'm not far enough along yet to start work on that.

I'm a bit late on this, but I enjoyed participating in the little meme game Marcus invented.

Here's my entry:

To see everyone else's, head on over to his livejournal. There's some really good stuff in there.

I'm sure by now you've heard the story of Lindsay Lohan's breakfast adventure at Bryan Adams' London home.

However, according to my anonymous source, the official story is omitting several details. First off, there's the quickly mentioned fact that Bryan Adams wasn't even in London at the time. Then there's the laughably specific information as to what they were having for breakfast; the only time someone gives that much information is when they're lying. You don't say "I cooked breakfast, you know, with eggs and everything... and bacon, and, um toast" unless you don't want people to know what you really had for breakfast.

So why be quick to point out that the only concievable male to be in the house isn't there, and lie about what you had for breakfast? Simple: there was a famous male in the house, and he has very specific tastes when it comes to women and breakfast foods.

Here's a photo sent to me by an anonymous source, taken in a park near Bryan Adam's home on the evening before Lindsay's emergency hospital vist.

Click to enlarge

Do you still believe the story that Linday's mom has been feeding the media? I sure don't. Do you think maybe Charlotte Church is jealous of all the attention Wilford is lavishing on Lindsay, and it is she who sent me the photo? I think it is most definitely a possibility.

Today while thinking of Arlen Specter, two trains of thought did quite a bit of rambling from place to place: first I began to wonder if he was bald, then eventually my thought train got to the concept of a hypothetical future where baldness is in fact the sexiest one could get. This made me think of marketing bald caps to those who want the sexy bald look, but dont want the hassle of constant upkeep (shaving your head daily is a pain in the ass.)

These convergent thought trains eventually came together in a spectacular collision and all at once I had one of those glorious "eureka" moments. You know the kind, where something becames startlingly clear?. See, I've always had an interest in alien visitation phenomena, so I'm constantly thinking about "greys" in the back of my head and today was no exception. In a blink of an eye, I suddenly had the answer to all the similar sketches people from around the world have drawn of "alien" visitors: Phil Spector in a bald cap.

Visual aid:

EDIT 5/18/07: I realized I spelled Phil's name wrong, making the number of hits this is getting somewhat miraculous. Maybe now that the trial's in the news and I've spelled his name properly, more people may come this way.

It seems as if Charlotte Church and Wilford Brimley brought along a guest on their recent trip to an unnamed beach. Based on photographic evidence, that guest appears to be Natalie Portman. This photograph, which was taken with the disposable camera Wilford Brimley brought along to document his adventures with Charlotte and Natalie, was given to me by a source that wishes to be unnamed. "Anonymity is the right thing to do," was my sources only reply to my request for permission to name him.

Click to Enlarge

It is unknown whether Natalie was introduced to Wilford by Charlotte, or to Charlotte by Wilford, but one thing is certain: the trio were nearly inseparable throughout the course of the long weekend. Much time was spent in the cabin the three shared, while Cabana boys reported demands for pot after pot of boiling water to be brought to them. The only clue as to the use of the boiling water is perhaps the box of "hot grits" (manufactured by the company Wilford gained most of his public notoriety being the spokesman for) being held by Charlotte as Wilford snapped this photo.

UPDATE: Has Wilford sewn his oats even further?

UPDATE AGAIN: Holy moly! Wilford seems to be crankin' out baby-mammas like they're going out of style!

I recently learned that my great great great grandfather was a travelling snake-oil miracle-cure potion salesman who had some mild success in his declining years. It seems that people trust you more when your hair and beard are mottled with white. In any case, I was going through some of his things in this old steamer trunk that I was sent after he passed away and discovered a poster for one of his most successful campaigns. I hope you don't mind me sharing it with you, but please check out the high resolution version by clicking on it as I he spent alot of time on it.

Click to Enlarge (pun intended)

This is a crappy quality visual aid that I cranked out tonight for D's speech class. This was all done with my mad thumb-on-trackball skills, since I was too lazy to hook up my Wacom tablet.

Cinematical is having a Photoshop contest to 'help pick a new James Bond'. Since Quentin Tarantino came up with the idea of remaking Casino Royale in the first place, the natural pick is a Tarantino star. Just a minor change to the title is necessary.