Christmas Wish List

Never too early to let people know these things:

The official John Tesh Radio Show hat






















Super pills for my brain



















Private Kabbalah lessons















A Ceebee Falafel from Tommy's












I'll take cash too...

Sentimental Shill

Ah, the PR Newswire... usually a fine repository for poorly written, self-serving press releases which I openly mock. I even have several of their RSS feeds on my Google homepage, for you to get a sense of how sick I am.

A recent press release got my attention in a good way, and actually made me a little misty.

"LAKE COUNTY, Ohio, Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Lake County, Ohio's smallest county, features 15,000 acres of foliaged land, preserved for public viewing... Unlike other east coast popular destinations, where full tree colors quickly fade, Lake County has a more diverse tree stock of red maples, oaks and sugar maples providing up to three weeks of color."

While the Winters I could do without, Autumn in Northeast Ohio was something to behold. Perhaps its just the little Proust in me, but give me one little whiff of crisp autumn air and I am momentarily transported back to my childhood along the shores of Lake Erie.

The release lists some of the attractions of Northeast Ohio, including the "235-acre Lake Metroparks Farmpark in Kirtland is one of Lake Metroparks' 27 parks encompassing 7,015 acres."

We took Petunia there a little over a month ago, during a trip back to visit family. A highlight was her first pony ride. The ride on Sunshine left such an impression that she now calls her rocking horse by the same name.

She also enjoyed saying hi to the pigs and the sheep, and telling the roosters to "Be Quiet!"

As Merseydotes also discovered, there is an actual honest-to-goodness beach in Mentor. The Headlands is a unqiue ecological area that has a freshwater marsh, and a sandy swath of shoreline.

So consider lovely Lake County for you next family vacation.

Now back to our regularly scheduled cynicism, already in progress...

The Bandwagon Effect

The Washington Post ran an article today about how the glossy celebrity magazine market continues to boom, even while circulation figures for daily newspaper and other weekly mags suffers.

What they failed to mention is some of the subtle ways that the declining titles are trying to fight back and grab some of the gossip-hungry dollar.

For instance, take a look at a recent issue of Business Week.

OK, a little sex appeal thrown in to the mix. Trying to broaden their horizons. Not so bad.

But a more extreme example can be found in this upcoming issue of Harper's. As a corollary side-note, Lewis Lapham was recently spotted drinking with the Olson Twins at an after-party for the Teen Choice Awards.

The inside story seems to suggest that Apple Paltrow-ColdplayGuy was also at the party, and in fact bought the beer using a fake ID.


Finally, this one just boggles my mind. First the venerable WSJ goes color, now this...

I mean c'mon, how could they get rid of "Marketplace"?! It was my favorite section.

A Robot for Petunia

Still feeling a bit unclean just having that last post lingering on my blog. So I guess I better write and try to force it down the page.

My little Petunia's 2nd birthday is coming up in less than a month, and I need to focus a bit on her birthday book.

Last year, I created this little story using Microsoft clip art. I found I could "ungroup" parts of the clip art and rearrange the limbs of Larry the Penguin in order to better pose him for each page.

This year, I'm going to take that a little further. We've borrowed a couple fun books about robots from the library which she has enjoyed ("Hello Robots" and "Robots Everywhere"), so I went to MS Clipart online and searched for images I could use.

One struck me, but unfortunately when I downloaded and ungrouped him, it turned out the black outline of his body is one un-ungroupable piece. So no posing.

Luckily, he is actually a pretty simple character, so I've recreated him using simple shapes in MS Powerpoint. (Original on the left, my preliminary character on the right).

Not a bad start. I can easily add in the lights and control-panel in the main body later.

I think I may rework his feet, though, they are a little too claw-like.

Anway, I have established a main character. Now I just need a name, and some sort of rudimentary plot.


I also resorted to mostly premade backgrounds in last year's book, but would like to step up the creativity on that end as well.

Nags Head Quotes Archive

I'm deleting the short-lived Nags Head Beach blog, which was primarily a repository for the annual quote list. In order that such important obscenities are available to the ages, I have compiled them and will save them in this post in my blog. All names have been changed or reduced to initials to protect someone.

“I need a rim job” - B
“I told you the tapeworm joke, right?”-JW
“You have to insert it until the butt sort of accepts it.”-merseydotes
“I think I have a sandcastle in my taint.”-B.V.
“I bet MS is hot.”-JW
“I think B has a dingleberry.”-JP
“Petunia! Do not color C.!”-merseydotes
“What's that at the bottom of P's pajama's?” “It's his diaper!”

JM: "There are some hot high school girls next door."
MS: "Great, that's my demographic."

“Gather round ye children and kiss my Eeyore.”-JW
“The novel is better than the book... I mean the novel is better than the movie.”-WZ
“Hey, you're sitting on my water weiner.”-WZ
“The new Britney Spears fragrance is called 'MouthfulOfCum.'”-BG
“Stevie Wonder's mouth looks like a pocket pussy.”-B.G.

“I have all of these single guy friends, and no one to fix them up with.”
“How about [name redacted], she's slutty.”-JM



Group game called "Pick Up Lines."
One person picks a card and reads a generic pick-up line. Rest of group writes down best response to that line. As the game progress, responses moved from slightly risque to downright nasty. The following are the most memorable responses, completely out of context from the pick-up lines that preceded them:

“I have a tongue that can wet pussy to 2-hole in 0.1 second”
“Tastes like salty fish but smells like lilacs.”
“You are open to skull fucking.”
“Crispy nacho clits.”
“Cameltoe”
“The clamshell taco”
“Have you ever heard of a little something called chlamydia?”
“Why do you say that every time I come in your face?”
“My eyes... Not that you'll see them when I have you bent over taking all nine inches of my man meat in various orifices.”
“Slippery like the exxon-valdez, frisky as a kitten, tasty as a well-aged manwich.”
“You have those ice cubes stuck up your vagina, duh!”
“Elementary school, sir.”
“Thanks for being so sweet- and the crabs, asshole!”
“Maybe. But its always hard to tell who's on the other side of the glory hole...”
“The toyota butt fucker”
“Fucking cheerleaders”
“Deep throating Sage”
“Lord of the Rings on DVD and some sweet, sweet pune [sic]!”
“Because I'm sweet and sticky, like a big and smooth weiner.”
“A unicycle- I beat off a lot!”
“The clean and jerk, but not in that order.”
“A little thing I call 'Hitler's Mustache.'”

All that's left to the blog were a few audio entries, which I'm not sure will make the transfer once I finally delete the previous blog, but here goes.

J.P. tells a lovely story:

B.G. is caught in the act:

and Prurient Interest pontificates: