Yes. I'm not kidding. My mom's birthday is today.

And, since it's April First: http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/.

Also, I meant to post this yesterday. Since it's weird.

And there's this, which is old, but still worth sharing.

It's a broken toy. I took a picture of it because it was weird. I think it sets the tone nicely.

After the incident described in the previous post -- a couple of days after -- I ended up at Walgreens for some reason. Mostly because we were on that side of the street, and it was there. I saw this product there that I'd seen before, and just had to take a picture of it, because...it had to be done.

Y'know those annoying plastic packages? They're...annoying. More annoying is this recent trend of selling various products specially designed to open those strangely unopenable plastic packages. Because, y'know, scissors haven't been invented yet.

What's wrong with this picture?

Yes. It's a special cutting tool for opening those annoying plastic packages...contained within the exact sort of packaging it's designed to open.

If you buy one of these, I hope you have the self-awareness to feel very, very stupid while cutting it open with a pair of scissors. If not, please take yourself to the nearest medical facility and have yourself spayed or neutered.

Or, if you suspect pregnancy within the first 72 hours after having sex, you can stop by the Safeway near my house and pick up some Plan B. Because they have it. I discovered this [and took a picture of it] when acquiring some real Sudafed.

I think I'd have been more comfortable buying the Plan B, honestly. Buying the Sudafed made me feel like a criminal.

And, because every post should end with bacon....

Push button. Receive bacon. In your mouth. Also, possibly, up your nose. It's face-bacon.

Yeah, I know, it'd work better if the wavy lines were red. But I thought it was funny. I saw this in a Burger King bathroom.

Update: I think it's officially been named. It's the bacon launcher. That's what Sly called it.

It's...disturbing.

Not much disturbs me, and anyone who knows me should know that. This game...does, a little.

It's rated E for 'Everyone', with notes about 'Alcohol Reference, Comic Mischief,' and 'Mild Fantasy Violence.' No mention of 'More Gayness Than A Gay Pride Parade' or...anything else that happens in the game. I guess the ESRB doesn't concern itself with such things.

I'm not sure if the story from the instruction manual will help, but here it is:

The King of All Cosmos and his family were vacationing on one of their favorite planets.

The King was enjoying a delightful game of tennis with his beloved Queen and Prince.

The King's tennis skills were truly first-rate.

But alas! The King's swing was too strong, and the ball was sent flying into the sky!

The ball flew on and on, and opened up a hole in the sky.

The King and his family gazed up in worry at the dark hole that had popped open...

The Hole began to suck up all sorts of things, for this was that dreadful astrophysical anomalyl; a Black Hole!

The Black Hole hungrily ate up bigger and bigger things.

Growing even bigger, it started to suck up nearby stars as well.

Finally, the very planet istelf was sucked up by the Black Hole!

The King had had enough! He stood up to face the Black Hole.

The King summoned his almighty powers, and in a spectacular fashion, stopped the Black Hole in its tracks.

Harmony has returned to the Great Cosmos, but no one knows when the Black Hole will strike again...

Now, I haven't played much tennis in my life, but I was under the impression that 'tennis skills' included the ability to keep the ball within the white lines....

This game isn't about tennis, though. It's about the end of the universe.

I'm not kidding.

It starts out innocently enough. You're a little green guy with a funny head, and you roll around this ball that has magical sticky-powers...sorta like gravity, but different. Like gravity if gravity were made of strange, size-conditional glue. As the ball gets bigger, you can pick up bigger stuff, and you can access different areas.

There are annoyances. Little mice, at first, that knock you around. Then people. Eventually, you're large enough to pick up both. And then you start picking up whales. And weird nessie-things. And weird T. rex things. And weird stego-things. And weird Godzilla-movie things. Giant squid. Really giant squid. Super-incredible-fucking-giant octopodes. Creepy owls floating around in the street and cows tied to balloons. King Kong. Weather Systems.

...and then the camera's pulled back so far that you're just rolling around on the planet, picking up Paraguay, Belize, former members of the Soviet Union, and Antarctica.

You see where this is going, right?

The ball of stuff gets so big, you're rolling it around in space, picking up planets, stars, and, for some reason, constellations. But I guess that makes sense, since you were picking up the aurora back on Earth.

The game is...frustrating. Enjoyable, though. It's just that there's this part of me that can't look at this giant ball of stuff rolling around on a planet not much larger than it and not think 'y'know, if the ball of stuff were really that big, it'd be turning the planet inside out right now.'

Based on what I assume the goal of the game is -- building a Katamari so big you can plug the black hole with it -- the game seems to be about the 'Big Crunch'. Seriously. You're gathering all the matter in the universe together and cramming it into a black hole...which seems counterproductive, since all you're really doing is feeding this thing that you wanted to stop in the first place. But it's Japanese. Which explains everything, I guess. Only Japan could made an entertaining game that goes from 'clean up this place with a sticky ball' to 'holy shit, ecological disaster' to 'whee, end of the known universe!'

Only Japan could do all that, and make the game in Mexico.

Thanks, Japan.

Edit: I'm going to ruin the nice ending to this post to mention that I'm not sure which little detail I like more -- the Sphinx running away from you when you roll through Egypt, or the screams of all the people when you roll up buildings....

Gremlin found this line in one of the thousands of Russian-language spams he seems to get. The email had something to do with...email marketing [oddly enough], and I'm really not sure why such a phrase as 'Free cheese only in the mousetrap' was at the end, except that maybe it's some strange way of convincing people that free things will kill you, so buy our products!

And here's one of the many variants of th 419 -- the sick, childless woman who just wants someone to inherit her late husband's massive properties.

Subject: hello my dear
From: marysapp111@hotmail.com
Reply to: marysapp11@hotmail.com
Dearest friend,

I am Mrs.Mary Sapp from Spain. I am deaf and has cancer of the breast, I lost my husband 12yrs ago without a child of mine.I have to sell all my properties left by my husband because the doctors say i have less than 2months to live. i have deposited the funds of $3.5m,i sold from my properties into a security company.

I want you to help me use the funds to help the charity,deaf and the motherless babies home before i die.If you are a good and honest person ,i shall give you the contact of the security company,so as to claim my funds before my death.Expecting your urgent response,and may God bless you as you carry out my wish.

yours dying sister

Mrs.Mary Sapp

travis green
kidk1342@aol.com | 68.40.237.98
Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows XP Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0)

hey mr w. i went to school with vince in montana. yea im sure you remeber the place were talkin about. but i am leavin for basic training in a couple of months and i was just wondering how the two of you have been. but if vince sees this respect family what! give me a call if you wish. 2486933250
sincerly
travis green

...which is really weird. I don't know who Travis Green is, I'm not a Mr. anything, let alone Mr. W. I've also never been to Montana, and don't know any Vinces.

It's really, really weird if it's spam, because there are no links. And the phone number is for someone called 'Billy Green' of Lake Orion, MI.

Who the fuck posts their phone number to some stranger's comments?

In other weirdness, I was told that my constantly lurking pet troll recently copied me in posting the information one can get from statcounter.com for childporn-style searches. Of course, being even less popular than I am, it apparently didn't keep up....

On a slightly more important note, I'm not only very bad at transitioning when I'm tired, but I've been working on updating the tags a bit, and getting them on more posts. I think I may've been a little overzealous, though, so I might have to go through and clean a few of those things up....

Excludes Blu-ray and HD movies, defensive driving courses, games and equipment rentals

Defensive driving courses? At Blockbuster?

What?