I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

Let this set the tone for the coming year…

Some kind soul converted all of the “Science Songs” into MP3s!

http://www.acme.com/jef/singing_science/

The “Space Songs” LP is probably my finest thrift score of my high school years.

Still hammering away at the 102 site. Here’s as far as I’ve gotten on the front page:

(Further screenshots as the site develops are on the 102 Forum)

This is the direction we’re going in for the 102 logo for 2007—

Still hammering out the particulars of the site relaunch.

Spaghetti Ice Cream

I haven’t been this excited about a novelty food product since the octo-dog.

(I wasn’t all that excited, really.)

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I actually was working this fall… at a pharmacutical ad agency, no less, doing shit graphic work for a yet-to-be-released diabetes drug. (I also found out that a rival company’s diabetes drug was derived from… komodo dragon saliva. That’s pretty much the best tagline for any drug—“100% Free of Lizard Spit”—watch those prescriptions fly off the shelves)

Pharma companies are probably number 2 or 3 with a bullet on the grand list of most evil corporations, but at least diabetes exist and is a legitimate cause for medication (even if it was “type 2” brought on my fatty overindulgence)... unlike the other drug being advertised by our floor which I overheard one copywriter describe as “a drug that doesn’t work for a condition that doesn’t exist.” I also learned that most copywriters in the “ad game” are assholes. Or terribly boring. It’s a 50/50 split between those categories.

Anyway, I got about 3 months in before they wanted to cut back the runaway budget by canning every freelancer they could. I just missed the ax before Thanksgiving, but only eked out another week before being shitcanned. They say they’ll ask me back later on, but who knows.

This week I was back to doing nothing, but a little birdie gave me a week of PA work on a Brides magazine photoshoot. I’ll have to squeeze next week’s drinking into this weekend. And get my wedding dress pressed, since I assume that’s the uniform worn by all employees of Brides magazine.

In other news, it’s terribly terribly cold outside.

So, I got these new shoes… from Zappos. Believe the hype, it’s great shopping site—good idea, well run. I assume they’re losing money with the free shipping and free returns jazz or if they are in fact making money, within a year they’ll have some bubble-bursting terrible Kozmo.com-type implosion. (I used to work for Kozmo.com part-time in college.)

In the interest of fair balance, I’d also say that their rival shoes.com is indistinguishable. I also bought shoes there and the service was similarly excellent. Plus, they wrap it with a printed packaging tape with “shoes.com” written over and over, leading to juvenile-hilarious/unfortunate boxes like this:

My shoes are green booties, really… very Robin of Sherwood. They don’t seem very warm or padded, but they’re slip on and slouchy and have ultra-cool extraneous straps on thes. Like keds wrapped in the corpse of Kermit the Frog.

I’ll be taking them on the town tonight to see what the man on the street thinks.

According to iTunes, I listened to “Georgie Girl” by the New Seekers 35 times today.

I may be mentally ill.

This weekend Mitch, Doc and their friends went for dinner and drinks in Williamsburg to celebrate their birthdays (Doc and Mitch, not the friends).

One highlight was having “Better Things” turn up on Barcade’s house music and the friends (not my friends, their friends) call it as “Cakey’s theme” and another was Mitch’s fevered pitch for a new show called Dudes with Attitudes which involved him doing kung-fu in front of a read-projected tsunami, but the conversation inevitable turned to the phenomenon of “smoked vaginas.” Not for eating, mind you… it’s a common “spa” practice in Indonesia that a friend of a friend at the party had tried where in the subject sits on some sort of port-o-potty type chair as a crucible of flaming herbs emits fragrant smoke right up in your business, leaving the subject with a herby, dried-out and one would assume slightly more Prosciutto-like set of genitals.

Well, risking having an easily mis-interpreted cache on my browser (leading to some ‘splaining to do when someone—probably a haughty, easily offended Margaret Dumont type—types an “s” into my google and it immediately suggests “smoked vagina”), I looked it up. It is a real thing. And here’s the info—
http://www.siecus.org/inter/connection/conn0058.html

I went back to Northern VA for Thanksgiving last week and also had the opportunity to meet up with Hunter Christy and Austin Bragg who make Defenders of Stan on 102 for drinks at a depressing Arlington mall I used to hang out in when I was 12. One of the first things Hunter brought up was, “What the hell is that naked woman picture in your blog?”

Well, this is what it is:

As to what “Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden” is… don’t ask.