Beneficent Bowllah

(Guest Blogger: The BENEFICENT Allah)

Berkeley, CA

Sometimes I feel like God is using his mouse to drag the arrow over my baldspot in a fictitious Youtube video of me in a convertible whilst he murmurs: "Aging, man, aging..."

This past week has not been one of those times. Katie lives in an idyllic Berkeley apartment surrounded by three seminaries ("to keep the Jews away!") with an office and a walk-in closet. Surrounded by feminine splendour, I have sprouted a perfect, mid-sized clitoris in hushed olive...when I was little, I thought that women don't have anything there, just missing-a-penis. Now I know...

To make me feel more manly, Katie (or somebody) left the kitchen stove's gas on. I entered the apartment - sniff sniff - "I smell gas!" which is silly since gas has no smell except the smell we give it. I opened the windows (which could have caused an explosion) and then I heroically strutted around shirtless all day long until I Googled the situation in the evening and realized my error: I should've ran out screaming "Gas, Gas!" and called P,G & E from across the street like a pussy.

No fire though. Today I went to Berkeley Bowl to fetch some discount Komboocha (for the missus! I don't drink that gayjuice...) Walking back I passed a hospice. I peeked inside: a man-nurse was sitting at the piano, playing a rink-a-dink rendition of Take me out to the Baall Game while a bald white guy drooled like he was meant to enjoy it. Next to him, a fat black woman in a wheelchair dismissively regarded the drooler's obligeance, which was nice.

Bootlegs turning out to be the originals

After reading a certain online profile last week and doing some research about Heathcliff the cat, I was surprised to discover that he actually predated Garfield! My world was flipped upside down. Growing up, I had always considered Heathcliff to be the bootleg, grungy version of Garfield, a low-end knockoff (with an amazing intro). Then today, while typing one of my favorite exclamations, "Heavens to Murgatroyd!", I looked up the spelling of it and found out that Snagglepuss predated the Pink Panther! What is going on here? I guess it never made total sense that the most popular necessarily had to be the original, but still...Are there other characters like this that y'all can think of?

The Masses (are they really thirsty and rejoicing due to this post?)

As a self-styled urban elite who surrounds himself with a similar crowd, the subjects of what "the masses" really like and what they really think about various issues are always coming up. In light of that, I would love to be in the mind of one of these "folks" from Oklahoma and know what it's really like, just for one second. Anything longer might make me nauseous.

Rain Myths

Since I will be in Seattle soon and I've heard it rains a lot there, I decided to do a little investigation. Turns out that I've been lied to. It only rains a lot in the late Fall and Winter!

Oh, and that April showers bring May flowers thing sure doesn't hold water in New York, where April showers just bring even MORE May showers.

Update (7/14/09):

Of course after I wrote this, the only overcast/rainy day we had in 10 Pacific Northwest days was in Seattle.

Total Meme

How many times have you heard about the big-shot Jewish [insert finance guy, lawyer, movie executive, etc...] who spends $10 million dollars on renting private jets to fly around until they run out of fuel, but who also earnestly fishes golf balls out of lakes? I mean enough already. We get the point, [insert long magazine article writer]. Jews are cheap. Always have been, always will be.

BeRiched Keyboard Cat

This was inevitable:

Koi Pond in Baltimore

Ceci n'est pas un meme

Your Kids Will Love It

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Imagine you are watching Game 1 of the NBA Finals, but thanks to the beauty of the DVR, you've recorded it in advance and are skipping all the commercials and catching up as the game is still being played. You've just seen Kobe make another crazy jumper to give the Lakers a 34-33 lead in the middle of a tense second quarter. You go to hit fast forward and speed through the commercials, when your finger slips and...it's 90-65 Lakers in the fourth? Wait, what?

Look at the DVR controls area. The Fast Forward button is directly below the Live button. Your finger has hit Live and your plans are ruined (although in this case it was probably better that you didn't sit through the blowout). This kind of placement makes it seem like the standard Time Warner Cable remote was designed by someone who has never used a DVR before! How could no one have figured out that this is a bad idea? Pressing the Live button is never something you want to by accident, so it should clearly be placed in a safer position, maybe at the top like TiVo has it, or just about anywhere else away from the most commonly pressed DVR control buttons!

Modern Nostalgia

This Project Natal thing looks amazing, but in addition to new games, what part of me really wants is the ability to play new versions of old games. Could you imagine actually acting out the motions of Mario, Mega Man, or Contra? Especially that part where you lie down on the in between levels of Contra...

I noted this dream on my iPhone as it was weird

INT. UPPER EAST SIDE COFFEE SHOP - AFTERNOON

Leighton Meester and Rich sit eating chocolate cake together.

LEIGHTON

Rich, take a look at this game on my BlackBerry. I can get to the fifth level every time without losing a life. I'm always playing it between takes on set.

Leighton shows Rich her BlackBerry with some sort of incredibly cool Tetris/Arkanoid hybrid that might convince him to buy a BlackBerry in addition to his iPhone.

RICH

Oh yeah, well if you like that, you will love this!

Rich shows Leighton the game Flood-It! on his iPhone.

Petulant Hiatus

Ever since nobody bothered to share/comment/tweet/re-blog/tumbl/email/instapape/lolcat my last post, I've just been busy hangin' out.

Internet Trackbacks

People discover some weird shit on the internet [imagine link to something really weird]. Don't you always wonder how they found it?

Imagine if you had a Firefox extension for Google Reader or e-mailed links that showed the person reading what you sent them the history of the previous sites (3? 5?) that you visited before you got to the weird shit in question? That would be cool, right? Browsing history is easily accessible, now all we need is a programmer (Tom?) and a cool way to visualize this graphically. This won't be good for everything you find on the internet, but I bet there are some great paths out there, especially in the classic Wikipedia vortex situation (e.g. where you go from Object-Oriented Programming to Adolf Hitler to Last meal in fewer than 10 clicks).

Note to Self