OMFG

I think you all should come to Ohio for the weekend, where we have this:

Eddie Izzard, star of the TV show The Riches and one of the fore-most Stand-Up Comedians of his generation, will interview Dennis Kucinich, America's most courageous Congressman, and moderate a Q & A with the audience. Questions will span from American politics, to entertainment, to the world at large. Come laugh, ask questions, and be entertained by two amazing minds at work.

You have until Sunday to get here :)

Imagine a little old lady - maybe 75 years? Curling gray hair and a sweet little cardigan. On a segway, circling around and round in front of the atlanta underground entrance as she tries to manage a cigarette, a digital camera and a machine spinning 3 miles per hour. I could have watched her for hours...

Funny Shirts and Stuff

I completed the Breast Cancer 3-Day this past weekend and there were some awesomely hilarious shirts and sights...let me share:

Shirts
1. Walkers for Knockers
2. Yes these are fake (the real ones tried to kill me)
3. Freshly Squeezed
4. Sisters with Blisters
5. Buttercups (they wore yellow bras outside their clothing)
6. Tutus for Tatas (wore pink fluffy tutus during their walk)

Sights
1. A man with gigantic (and I do mean gigantic...as in larger than my head) fake boobs under a "wet" t-shirt
2. motorcyclists in pink kilts and the ribbon shaved into their skulls
3. motorcyclists in purple fairy wings and tutus dancing atop their pink feather boa decorated bikes to "I will Survive"
4. Sweep van theme: Halloween - scare away breast cancer, one boo-bie at a time!

It was fun and I was laughing the entire time : )

That donkey, again

Apparently, Cleveland's Scene magazine was at the same Chagrin Falls rally we walked past. And they saw it much the same way! The lead paragraph of their story:

Overcast skies hang stagnant over Chagrin Falls, contrasting with the festive scene outside the old Town Hall. Red, white and blue bunting droops from the walls. A quartet of middle-aged women stands on the steps, singing patriotic songs in four-part harmony. Cardboard cutouts of President Bill and Senator Hillary Clinton greet visitors. Only the red eyes and strangely sneering smile on the papier-maché donkey seem out of sync with the excitement that's in the air as local Democrats gather inside.

Josh Corgan? Smashing Groban?

You've loved them both, albeit at different times in your life.  You've wanted to bear their sons.  Now, at long last, they have combined their powers (much like Capt. Planet and the Planeteers) to bring you one, euphoric performance: Disarm performed live at the Bridge School Benefit 2008.

I can do that

Someone sent me an e-mail with the subject line "I can do that." Since then, I've had Meatloaf's I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) stuck in my head.

You're welcome.

At least the financial crisis can provide some amusement

As in this WSJ story about the Stock Market Game (which I totally played -- and sucked at -- in high school).

Playing the Market, These Kids Are Losing a Lot of Play Money
This School Year, Short Sellers Rule; Avery Maxwell, 11, Dreads Monthly Statement

By JENNIFER LEVITZ

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Michael Ashworth slumped by his computer, weary from another rough day in the stock market. All his favorite picks -- Domino's Pizza Inc., Hershey Co. and Gap Inc. -- were down.

"I'll be honest with you," he confided. "Before all this, I asked my mom to get me stocks for Christmas," but then "I told her not to do it. I asked for a parakeet instead."

Michael, a 13-year-old at Wilmington's Skyline Middle School, is one of 700,000 players in the "Stock Market Game," a scholastic contest in which students from grades four through 12 get a hypothetical $100,000 to invest in stocks, bonds or mutual funds.

Welcome to winter

I decided this morning to wear my slightly more appropriate for winter coat when the radio said there would be a high of 43 degrees. But I couldn't find my gloves, which I've wished I could put on at work for the past few days. It's cold in here!

Unexpected, though, was the blanket of snow on the lawn and my car when I went outside. An inch and a half! It was beautiful.

Luckily, it was also fluffy and therefore easy to wipe off the windshield. Hardly late at all.

Plus, the Peanuts theme song on the radio. And last night, the Great Pumpkin.

To the point

A white cargo van, blank on the outside except -- in all caps and blue -- the word FISH on one door.

Hail, hail!

It's not snow, but there were definitely small chunks of ice falling on my windshield as I drove home tonight. And landing on my coat when I got out of the car.

And you may think I'm weird (OK, I guess you guys just know I'm weird), but I love hail. Love it. And fog. I just think both are so cool.

I mean, ice, falling from the sky! Clouds you can walk through! Amazing!

Also, I apparently didn't sound like a total fool on the radio (although my grandparents *have* to tell me that I was supercool), and someone I know heard the show and sent me an e-mail. So at least five people were listening :) You can, in fact, hear it online if you want to, but I didn't talk all that much, so you may have better uses for an hour. I'm a bad interrupter, a trait the publisher told me I need to improve upon.

Also also, mom was featured pretty prominently in a Plain Dealer story. Today is the day of media whoredom, it seems!

My sister is a dinosaur

"I rawr more than anything all day," she says.

I got skillz

I have a magical pony who jumps over waterfalls and sunshine. But the real story is how I acquired the pony.

However, I'm not going to tell you that story now. That's a story for later.

Instead, I'm going to tell you that my boss handed out gift certificates to a certain Italian eatery for the awesome job we did on a breaking story on Friday.

And that because of it, I'm going to be on the radio tomorrow!

If you want the details, let me know and you can listen live at 9 a.m. Or on a podcast, later. I think.

More politics.... and cupcakes!

Last weekend, I took my sister and her friend to picturesque Chagrin Falls, which is the home of Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson and where I interned (at the local newspaper) in college.

Driving into town, there was a road where nearly every house had McCain-Palin signs, one on each side of the driveway. There was a lone Obama-Biden sign.

But when we were wandering around, there was a Rally in the Valley for Obama. Interestingly -- and hysterically -- there were cardboard cutouts of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, but Obama was nowhere to be seen. There was also an animatronic donkey that twitched its ears, blinked and opened and closed its mouth. It was pretty freaky. Neither my sister nor her friend wanted to get their picture taken with any of the aforementioned Democratic props.

Everyone was much more excited about the cupcake case in a men's clothing store across the street. No, I can't explain it either. But the pumpkin spice one was delicious.

Most concise letter to the editor, ever

From today's Plain Dealer:

I invite all uncommitted voters to join me in supporting Sen. John McCain's candidacy for president of the United States. Thank you.

There was one Obama letter that was only two sentences long, as well, but the first sentence had 43 words in it and referenced a previous column (that I hadn't read), so it does not win the prize.

In other news, warm banana bread is delicious.

Ben met Anna

Made a hit

Neglected beard

Ben-Anna split

Burma Shave

And now xkcd shares my joy!

(Here's a whole collection. I could read these things for hours.... and hours and hours.)

Ha -- this would be so funny!

See you later, alligator

Most super-awesome cutline:


Police think this 7-foot alligator was used to guard a massive marijuana-growing operation.

The picture was slugged "large_alligatorthatguardedpot."

The whole place looks like a rainforest (scroll to the bottom for a slideshow).

Perhaps it's a kindness

In one of the many, many performances I saw this weekend (OK, it was only two, but both were "backstage" plays, so it's as if I really saw four shows) this song played during intermission.

I think it's just hysterical... if maybe a tad bit evil, too.

Lyrics are here.

And that additional last verse (as sung by Jeremy Irons!) can be heard here.

The weather *is* unpredictable

A girl with a buttoned-up wool coat and scarf, on top of... capris and sandals.

Greenspan

I find this picture ridiculously amusing.

Hopefully, it's not just my computer and he lacks a mouth everywhere.

Home, sweet home!

I signed a lease today :)

This is my home to be:

NPH, pumpkins and Joss

This, via Danny:

Dr. Horrible, alone, is amazing. And now you can carve him! (And I do mean you. No way could I ever make a pumpkin look like that.)

Meatlessness

This song actually creeps me out a little, but as it was playing at a restaurant I walked past this afternoon, all I heard were these lines:

Tell your boyfriend / If he says he's got beef / That I'm a vegetarian / And I ain't fucking scared of him

and that was kind of funny.

I thought of Judson

In an article about why monasteries and convents are better than hotels:

And if it’s disconcerting to think of men and women of the cloth chasing after tourist dollars, for some orders it’s a matter of economic survival, according to the Association of Superiors of German Orders, whose German-language site, www.orden.de, lists 311 cloisters in Germany that offer room and board (and, in some cases, housemade beer and marzipan). “The income from overnight guests is a necessity,” Arnulf Salmen, a spokesman for the organization, wrote in an e-mail message.

I'm a winner

Our offices are being renovated sometime in the next few months, and my bosses are taking the opportunity to clean out drawers. Who knows why they have what they do, but they've taken to giving out prizes for random things.

One person won an oven mitt last week when his question was selected for a "man on the street" type feature. And today, the big boss had a grab bag of items from Marc's, only the best store there ever was. I swear to God, you can find everything you ever need at that store if you go on the right day. They sell organic vegetables and rugs, outdoor grills and small boats, Halloween candy and live birds. It's incredible.

But I digress. One person, who organized some awards ceremony, pulled out a cooler. Another one got a knife set and a thermos for scooping the competition twice. A third took home a Christmas pillow and a set of four champagne flutes for breaking a story that the Wall Street Journal later covered on its front page.

And I pulled out first a shaving cream dispenser (it was returned to the bag for something more female-appropriate) and then a cheese board for two stories I wrote about a speech by the head of a local bank last week.

Alas, the cheese board was supposed to come with all sorts of cheese-knife accouterments, but they were missing from the package. So my boss threw in a combination peeler/slicer for good measure.

Amusing.

Heaven and hell

Sunbeams through the clouds, looking like ladders to the ground. Distracting (in a super way!) in the rear-view mirror.

And one of my co-workers, working on a story, had someone tell him that banks are running from loans (in a particular industry) "like the devil runs from holy water."

First!

Some of you may have met me. You may know that I tend to be, uhh, tardy. On just about everything.

So imagine my surprise when -- having turned in just moments earlier the last of my five profiles (everyone was assigned five for a large section we're doing), when I thought I was already more than a week late -- another reporter asked if anyone had turned all theirs in.

My hand shot up. I received death glares. I was the only one.

In fact, the reporter who asked hasn't even done all his interviews yet!

So here I thought I was too procrastinatory and had already missed deadline by a substantial margin. Turns out I'm early!

Go me :)

How cool

The Chicago Tribune (which was then the Chicago Press and Tribune) endorsing Lincoln for president in 1860.

Moreso, makes my jaw drop

Full story here. From the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette:

Voters allege ballot trouble
More say machines changing their votes
By Paul J. Nyden
Staff writer
WINFIELD - Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.
This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain."

Bubble tea

I introduced my sister to bubble tea tonight. She was utterly fascinated. She kept spitting the tapioca balls out to see what they were, sucking up three at a time and trapping them between her upper lip and her gum so it puffed out, biting them in half so they stuck to her teeth, then baring her teeth in a wide grin, while laughing maniacally. It was pretty hysterical.

She got to the point where she was ignoring the tea (taro, my favorite, though I got coconut to try something new) and simply pulling the tapioca out with the super-huge straw (she also got excited when they looked like stripes in the straw). Of course, when I tried to skip the tea and pull the beads out, using the straw as a spoon, I spilled it all over the place.

But we knew that was going to happen, didn't we?

Komodo dragons

First of all, the name Komodo dragon is just awesome. And although this situation is really horrifying, I couldn't help but laugh at the lead of this story, from the Wall Street Journal. And the fact that they have an artist's sketch of the lizard.

You can read the whole thing here. The original article was called... When Good Lizards Go Bad: Komodo Dragons Take Violent Turn. More about Komodo dragons here.

KAMPUNG KOMODO, Indonesia -- At least once a week, an unwelcome intruder crawls under a clapboard wall and, forked tongue darting, lumbers its way into Syarif Maulana's classroom.

"Then, everyone screams, there is no more school, and we all run away very fast," says the 10-year-old boy. "We are very afraid."

Grooming

I told Resa this story earlier, but I think it's good enough to repeat.

Let's start with our cast of characters. All are straight males. J is in his mid-20s, blonde and lanky with a booming voice, a bit of the class clown type. He's an instigator. S is in his late 30s or 40s, is more understated, has a very dry sense of humor. M is in his mid to late 50s, is a quiet but very present presence and likes to poke people. Not physically, mind you, but in that "I'm not touching you" sort of way. He's in charge of the place.

Monday, the office had some reception to honor business leaders after work that these three were going to. A little after 5, J pulls out a toothbrush and toothpaste and asks if the others are almost ready to go. He's going to brush his teeth.

M pokes his head out of his office. "You're going to brush your teeth? I'm going to brush my teeth, too!"

J gets a little flustered. It seems that he doesn't want to share the bathroom with someone else during this very personal moment. "That's so not fair!" he says. "I totally got my toothbrush out first."

But M is not deterred. He walks out of his office holding toothpaste and a toothbrush.

Then S looks up. "Hey, are you guys going to brush your teeth?"

They say yes, but J reiterates that he wants to brush his teeth alone, without company. Is S going to brush his teeth, too?

S says no. He pulls a razor from his desk drawer. "I just hate being stubbly at these things," he says.

At this point, it took everything I had not to fall out of my chair laughing. Another co-worker, C, who is J's roommate, started digging into him about having a toothbrush at his desk. J was honestly horrified. "You mean, you don't brush your teeth after lunch? What if you have an interview? What if someone smells your breath?"

C responded that the people he talked to weren't important enough that they couldn't deal with a little lunch breath.

In the end, M and S went to the bathroom together to brush and shave. J went into the breakroom, where he could tend to his teeth undisturbed.

Scoot

I was talking to a friend this morning who drives a scooter. He was out last night and had a bit to drink and was on his way to retrieve it, he said, because he had been too intoxicated to scoot home.

Scoot home makes me giggle.

They cancel each other out

On the way to work this morning, I saw a car that had (on its left side) a sticker that said Women for McCain (it was pink) and (on its right side) a sticker that said McCain Palin.

Driving home, I saw a car that had (on its left side) a sticker that said Obama Biden and (on its right side) a sticker that said Women for Obama (it was blue).

Housekeeping

I promise, gazillion-post days will not be the norm.

But! Tanya wanted to know if she could post things, too. So I've added her. If anyone else would like to, just let me know. As long as you promise to post random/happy/shiny things, you're welcome to.

And I promise that the phone calls will keep coming :)

By the way

You can listen to the Big Band station (and should!) here.

Music and lyrics

Cleveland radio rocks.
This is because, in part, we get stations from Akron, Toledo, Detroit and even Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Canadian radio is fun because in addition to saying "aboot," they give traffic updates that include how long it takes to cross the border. And that's just awesome.
But Cleveland has some good stations, too. I've taken to listening to college radio (four stations! No commercials!) and heard the lyrics "whores don't cry" this morning. I can't find the song, though, which is disappointing.
My favorite station, though, is the Big Band one. The songs on there are just gems. Take, for example, Strip Polka.
How can you not smile at that?

Pizza on wheels, plus

I was riding the trolley to a meeting today and got off at E 9th and Euclid. There, in front of the trolley, was a bike messenger (+18 points for starters). He was holding a thermal bag for pizzas in one hand and going in circles in front of the trolley to keep from stopping at the traffic light.

A bike messenger! With pizza! And dizzyness! I enjoyed.

Later (on the way back to the office on the trolley), there was a man in a police uniform with big glasses and a Sherlock Holmes pipe. How often do you see one of those?

The answer, of course, is not often enough.

The point

I'm going a little bit American Beauty and taking a chance to write down some things I think are amazing about the world around me.

Back in the day, the Sphere -- who remembers Sphere? -- had a subconference called "Makes Me Smile." In the years since it's disappeared (the loss of LearnLink hampers everything!), I've taken to jotting notes on scraps of paper, calling friends in amazement or just walking around with a grin on my face whenever I've seen something incredible.

Well, I want to keep my incredible moments somewhere where they can continue to make me smile weeks after they first make an impact. And in talking to many of my friends, those smiles are getting harder and harder to find. So I want to share them.

And that's why you're here.