Turn Your Child Into a Horrible Warning

Pageant Winners

Here, look at this, it's kinda gross!

They're child beauty pageant winners. One of them, Alissa Anderegg, is in a new Steve Carrell movie about this guy who takes his family in a VW bus, determined to get his daughter entered in the finals of a pageant. Interesting, how they used a girl actually from the child beauty pageant circuit.

But anything to do with child beauty pageants? Kinda gross.

The children's faces? Kinda creepy.

The way they're holding wads of bills, presumably their winnings? What is UP with that?!?

The only thing skeevier than the page itself is the kind of people who would visit it. Except the parents. No, they're skeevy too. Except US, I mean. We go only to mock.

Mockery. It's the only thing keeping this country from, um, turning into a country with a lot more child beauty pageants. (Sorry. Got nothin'.)

Big Brother Poll Trends

BB Love 'Em or Leave 'Em

Here's a visual graph showing relative popularity levels of the househamsters of Big Brother.

Gee, I'm so surprised that Jennifer is very low, here. Why would that be, hmm.

(For people who don't waste their time watching the U.S. Big Brother, yes, Jennifer is potsy. You don't care, but if you did, you would know that she's potsy.)

Mmm, Taste That Sweet, Sweet ElectricitPPPSS* Snap!

Cord-biting cat (not mine)

Damn it. They got to it again.

I do not, for the life of me, comprehend what is so damn attractive about adapter power cords. To cats, I mean. To me, they feel soft and rubbery and...

Back to the subject! We're talking about cats, here!

I just can not own a single power adapter without risking its integrity. I have three cats. For some reason, they can't keep themselves from chewing, chewing away. Every time they see that serpentine black wire, it's exciting-happy-biting time! I could try using capsaicin, the chemical that makes food taste hot to people, as it's recommended to prevent animals from chewing things... But Chully has developed a disturbing love for all things jalapeno, and I just have my doubts about whether that would work.

So, with my latest cell phone, I've been wary of their wily cat ways. I've taken special pains to keep the adapter stored away. I unplug it as soon as my phone is powered up, and I put it away in a clear plastic box that my tiny desktop fan came in. It's been working fine, despite the inconvenience of having to unbox it whenever I need to recharge. I thought I was being overly cautious.

But I just went to use the adapter, and I noticed the phone wasn't charging quite right. It STARTED to charge, but then stopped. It seemed to have a power interruption every time the power cord was moved. So, I examined the cord itself.

Teeth marks. They got me again! I must have stepped out to the bathroom at some point, last time I recharged. Damn that hydraulic distress!

New Euphemism

"I said I have to pee!"

For those people who need a new euphemism for when you have to go to the bathroom, and it's number one, here you go:

Hydraulic Distress.

You might think this wasn't needed, but believe me, it was! "My back teeth are floating," is tired out. "I have to pee," is too kindergarten. I gotta "take a leak," "drain the main vein," and "piss like a racehorse," are all very tacky. So, now we can say that we're in "hydraulic distress."

Gee, it sounds really stupid, now that I've written it down.

Sigh.

Who ARE You People?

I'm always curious to see how people reach this blog. I personally think it appeals most strongly to: Me. I write it, so it has a high level of relevance to things I'm interested in! This is the most interestingest blog I read! Well... that's not true. It's really not.

But anyway, I sometimes look at the stats and see where peoples are coming here from. Many times it's friends, just looking at the blog because they know me, and that makes it way interestinger for them than otherwise. (Plus, they don't want me to feel like I have a boring blog. Heh.)

But sometimes people search Technorati or Yahoo for the weirdest things. Today, someone in Chicago searched Feedster for "bologna." And came HERE. Because, you know, this is really the place for bologna news, updates, and gossip. It started with the "Mail Meat to Me" post, and spiraled wildly into a massive pork-based meat snowball. Or, uh, meatball, if you prefer.

No, seriously. That's how they came here. Searching for "bologna."

Well, you gotta give the people what they want. So, that's why this blog will now be all bologna, all Big Brother, and all celebrity-bad-plastic-surgery! That way, I'll get lots of hits! And people will love me! And my life will have meaning!

Which is good, because I'm unemployed, and making sure the cats have clean kitty litter and fresh water just wasn't doing it.

Mail Meat to Me!

Buy some bologna

You can buy bologna from Amazon.com. Seriously. Someone call Jeff Bezos and tell him that things have just gotten way out of hand.

Okay, they're shipping meat in the mail. Fine. You can also get a product called "Sixteen pair of Frog Legs." Or, shudder-inducingly, a "Fresh, Whole Rabbit." Or even "New Orleans Alligator, 'Sirloin Tail Meat, 1 Tray', 5 lbs"."

But what really sells this kind of product from Amazon is the smart-ass customer reviews. An example:

I likes to play me some banjo and rape city folk whiles I eats me a rabbit. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. If you cyber-folk wants some good eatin', order up some rabbits. That way all them bunnies I runs over with the pickup truck don't gets wasted. If you still ain't convinced, then maybe this'll make ya a rabbit-eater: The King himself--the honorable Elvis Aaron Presley--always loved him some good-ol' rabbit meat. And if it's good enough for the King...

Was this review helpful to you? Why yes. Yes, it was. Somehow, I'm even gladder to be a vegetarian.

The Poor Shlub Stuck in the Airport for Over a Decade

The Straight Dope article
Snopes.com article

Anybody who's seen "The Terminal" would have to be impressed (negatively) by the magnitude of the beaurocracy that could keep somebody in an airport for over nine months. The movie is engaging and charming, and it shows how a clever, industrious man could possibly survive, and even thrive, despite being stuck in an untenable situation.

But of course, "The Terminal" is only a movie. It was inspired by an actual guy who was stuck in an airport, and the real guy didn't fare so well as Tom Hanks' character.

What's nice about this is that the airport is in France, so anybody not from there can bitch about it freely. Yay! I think that's the only thing that's nice. Boo.

I won't go much into how he got stuck in the airport, which the Straight Dope covers much more thoroughly and accurately than most people probably care. He's from Iran, expelled for protesting the shah, in 1988. He tried to get refugee status. He lost his documents... and he fell into a legal-definition hole. He's still there.

He seems like a perfectly nice guy. He goes by the nickname "Sir Alfred." He keeps himself well-groomed, follows the news, talks to people, has friends in the airport, and even gets his mail there. You can send him a card! You could visit him, if you go through Charles de Gaulle airport!

But he's been there so long that he's afraid to leave. Friends in the airport wonder if he could make it on the outside.

The worst thing? They never even gave him, like, a locker or something. You would think, if you were in the airport for a decade, somebody would give you a little place you could stash your stuff. He sits there with it stacked next to him. Like he needs it handy in case his plane comes?

Send him a card at:

Sir Alfred Mehran
Terminal One
Charles de Gaulle Airport
Paris, France

Hey! Another nice thing! Dreamworks paid him a rumored $250,000 for the rights to his story. Yay! Now he can buy his own french fries.

Mullet Hunting

Mullet Hunt

As Iowa State Fair events go, the mullet hunt is certainly one of them.