- From the Department of Xtra Ultimate Hyperbole +3!!!
Like everybody else, I’ve been getting these for a long time, and I think they’re either starting to lose it or are realizing that the content of the subject has very little to do with whether somebody accidentally clicks through. Or maybe I’m giving them too much credit, and they just believe their own marketing. - From the Land Where Escape Sequences Run Free
The content of this one was mostly an image with a SRC tag that was, again, almost entirely escape sequences; it was followed by a couple .edu URLs, neither of which exist. This reminds me of an old book about spaceships I had when I was a kid, which featured some paintings of “inexplicable salvage” at the end–imaginary empty craft that had been found floating between star systems. This is like one of those: a lonely voyager, adrift, incomprehensible, its purpose forever lost to us. - From the ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha Guerilla Marketing Group
This one’s a little different. The content makes me pretty sure it’s spam, but for some reason–to foil antispam software, I guess–it includes a chunk of well-known (to me) fiction at the end. For the record, it worked; this is the only piece of junk that’s gotten through unscathed to my xorph@xorph account since I installed
From: Feel Younger
Subject: Strengthen your immune systemNow – Powerful Anti-Aging Breakthrough
Claim….Ýours….Nów
As_seen on Oprah, ÇNN, CßS, and_NBC
Free Óne Months’s Supply
Feel Better, Look Yonger, Lose Weight_NówI want to have more energy in the new year
Say good by from us, show me.
“Pages one and two [of Zaphod’s presidential speech] had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form of nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely of papier mache and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no truck with it.”
Candidate dozed off during interview.
Category: Obsessions
The heat appears to operate entirely independent of my control, turning itself on sometime around 10 am and turning itself off around 10 pm. The knobs on some of the radiators don’t turn at all,and the ones that do turn have no effect. I wasn’t under the impression that this was how radiators worked! Evening is interesting, at least, as I have to open windows around 6 and turn the space heater on again by 11.
Things that have distracted me lately:
- “…our machines have to keep grinding over it, the grit in their backwash sandblasting the blood away.”
- “Ah, it’s just someone sitting there, because you don’t see dead bodies, you just don’t.”
- The same girl who recommended
- Also, they have a song about Lion-O.
- As the only one of my friends still here for the break, I’m taking care not only of Idaho but of Meghan’s turtle and Ken’s red-bellied frogs (plus their cricket-based food source). The resulting situation can be seen camwards.
And that’s the news from Kentucky.
Things I Hate About Running
- The way I look afterwards.
- Fucking gnats.
- My legs hurt all the time. It’s my own fault, obviously, for running five days a week. I’m building new muscle, too, which is kind of a novelty, but I think a lot of it is the fact that I’m running on concrete instead of grass. I wish there were something I could do about that. I am alone in my circle of acquaintances in that I’ve had good knees for most of my life, and I’d rather not lose them now.
- Uphills.
- Forgetting my towel for my shower afterwards. I’ve done it so frequently now that I finally taped a sign to the bathroom door to remind me. Running about naked is all well and good, but who wants to drip all over the linoleum?
Things I Love About Running
- The dachshunds in somebody’s back yard at my end-of-West Lexington turnaround. They’re always very excited and concerned to see me, even though I’ve been coming by almost daily for a month.They remind me of our dachshund, Fritzi, who died a couple years ago and who had one of the most expressive faces I’ve ever seen.
- Downhills. The dip between St. Mildreds and Fifth Street is awful on the way up, but on the way down coming back it’s like an obstacle course–a lot of head-level tree limbs and street signs to tap. Also, I’m one of a select group of people the world over who really understand how to run downhill, so I can really cut loose (the secret is to go ahead and start falling, and trust your legs to catch up).
- Showers afterwards, which I like to start pretty hot and end icy. I feel like I’m running on auto a lot lately, so the shock of awareness that comes with the cold water is a rare and beautiful thing.
- And speaking of cold water: running in the rain. I got to do that yesterday, and it ranks high on the list of Best Things There Is. It was hard rain, too, like of significantly higher humidity than your average pond. My clothes haven’t dried yet.
Since yesterday I’ve been trying to quantify exactly what it is about running in the rain that’s so great, and I’ve yet to come up with anything concrete. It’s a certain I don’t know what.
Partly it’s that you stay cool and your mouth doesn’t dry out, and partly it’s the feeling that you’re fighting something other than gravity and yourself, and partly it’s just the sense of abandon you get from realizing that it doesn’t matter how wet you are because you’re just going to get wetter. Maybe it’s the ozone. Or maybe it’s just that you get to look at the torrents of water and the mud and the clouds, and think “what kind of maniac would be out in this weather?” and then think “oh, yeah, me.”
Things I Love AND Hate About Running
- Schrodinger Point. There’s a day, about every couple weeks or so, when I realize I’ve just jogged almost my entire route without taking a break. It’s cool because, well, it means I’m stronger and faster and in better shape than I have been in a while. It’s simultaneously totally uncool, because it means I’m going to have to run longer or faster my next time out. Thus Schrodinger Point: it exists in both states at the same time! (This isn’t technically what Schrodinger was describing, but in this case accuracy is discarded in favor of sounding cool.)
Tonight: Elvis Costello!
Today is my brother Ian’s birthday! Happy birthday, Ian! Ian is no longer a teenager, and if he were predictable he’d probably stop stealing people’s lawn ornaments now. Ian is anything but predictable, though, so he may or may not continue stealing lawn ornaments. He’s a madman!
(I’d link you to his website there, but he currently has a beautifully written and really sweet piece about me on his front page and I’m too embarrassed. Remind me again another time. It’s a neat site, and has dinosaurs and spacemen.)
More ways in which the world is a wonderful place: Ken blew me a new fishbowl! Out of glass! Ken can do anything. The bowl is huge and perfect, and Idaho tends to get lost in it and do backflips. Were I to spontaneously develop gills, I think I’d move in next to him.
ALSO! As you may have noticed from the link above, Ken finally obeyed my
P.S. Today’s IdiotCam© has been one of myfavorite jokes since fourth grade. I’m almost glad Mom bought one of the stupid things, since I cannow finally capture it in low-quality digital form.
Saw Spider-Man (who needs links anyway?). Good; fun; could have been better. Tobey Maguire kicks the appropriate amount of ass, but it’s that infernal Koepp at the dialogue controls again. I kind of hope he dies.
And again, courtesy of Ken and Yahoo! News, comes a brilliant “What’s Wrong With This Picture” (click for a bigger version):
Look carefully. Well, not too carefully. Full article is here. And now I have to go close out a play.
Scanned from the back of a box containing a supercheesy sweatband my primary roommate bought. I want to name an acoustic techno album “Super Super Thick.” Also, itcould be applied to lots of people I know in an entirely different sense, and in fact to the people who designed thisbox, because guess what, kids? “Ultimate” actually means “last.”
Possibly the most exciting spam offer I’ve ever gotten. And succinct!
I think that about says it all. Watch this space!
Two guys are driving past a field populated by a large number of cows. One of the guys turns to the other and says”What a big herd of cows! How many do you think there are?”
“Eighty-four,” says the second guy.
“Wow!” says the first guy, stunned. “How’d you figure that out so fast?”
“Easy,” says the second guy, “I counted their legs and divided by four.”
This is my Discrete professor’s idea of a joke.
Somebody’s been searching a lot for “xorph.com” on Yahoo, repeatedly and regularly–like twenty times in less than amonth. A fine thing, in my opinion, but how long is it going to take him or her to figure out the address bar? Also,somebody found this site by searching for “elephant dildo” the other day. Believe it or not, that exact phrase has cropped up in here before. All the same, I’m hoping it was one of my friends who’s in on that particular joke; if not, I hope it was someone who’s going to get help soon.
Speaking of help:
THAT MISTER HYPNOSIS IS A VERY BAD INFLUENCE YOUNG LADY!!!