continuing to mine the past for stuff worth keeping...

• I spoonerized "grilled cheese" and got "chilled grease."
• If you prune a bush to look like a stalagmite, is that karst topiary?
• Following the successful model of icicle lights, what other decorations can we model after design flaws?  Inflatable ice dams?  Painted-on foundation cracks?  Aerosol window ice?  Faux Frank Lloyd Wright signature blocks?
• Just got a wrong number text message: "Frank is heading in with resin leaving tomorrow he is to call you for instructions"
• For "Jack and Jill" to deserve the title of rhyme, the second line should be changed to "To fetch a peal of laughter." Conveniently, that also makes more sense than looking for water uphill.
• I'm amused to learn that the new software I'll be using to submit energy audits to the state is called "iRate."  I wonder if they ran that name past a focus group?
• Walking dogs after the snow melts is like walking a beach with a metal detector, except you're guaranteed not to want anything they find.
• I just mentally remixed "What's New, Pussycat" into Tintin asking Snowy, "What's new, puppydog?" "Wooah! Wooah! Wooah!"
• in the wintertime I saw / a dozen people, maybe more / people driving without traction / people sliding without stopping / and the parts of their chassis are plastered on electric poles / the poor souls / listen for the sound of sirens
• I just encountered the pun "Ghee Whiz" and wonders if anyone has tried putting clarified butter in an aerosol can just so they could use that pun.
• What do you suppose determines whether someone says "a moment" or "a few moments"?  Is one moment among many the same length as an individual moment, or shorter?
• I overheard Faux News saying today that no one "in the history of Western civilization" has ever died from a nuclear power accident.  (Apparently Russia is either Eastern or uncivilized.)
• It is an unfortunate consequence of being paid by the hour, that doing something wrong is an investment in the future.  In this case, someone else invested in my future.  Thanks, I guess.
• Jargon quote of the day: "We now have a highly available master/slave Solr cluster built using a combination of Varnish and Tomcat."
• Successfully made "mocknuggets": fried seitan.
• I wonder if the guy who said the Internet was "a series of tubes" was just revealing that he was steampunk?  'Cause I bet that's how the steampunk Internet works.  With shiny brass pumps and valves and gauges and things.  You have to wear Google Goggles for protection while searching.
• Did it not occur to the designers of SD cards that someone might at some point want to label them or in some way tell them apart from each other?
• I wonder at what point the "saddle" topology will become known as the "Pringle" topology because more people will be familiar with the shape of a Pringle than of a saddle.
• I wonder whether Phillip Glass's name was intended to be a pun. "Fill up glass." Include his middle name, and it's "Fill up more his glass." He was born to be a waiter. Which explains the tempo of his music.
• I wish I was better at remembering people's names. It's embarrassing to have no idea what someone's name is literally a minute after asking them. Foreign language vocabulary? No problem. Names of plant species, movies, and songs? No problem. People's names? I seem to remember I heard them go whizzing out the other ear.
• I'm so glad I work in a field where I get to use words like "adiabatic" and "hysteresis." Not to mention "desuperheater."
• An iPhone for an iPhone, a Bluetooth for a Bluetooth leaves the whole world... um... I got nothing.  Punchline, please?
• Let me see if I've got this right: we looked for Saddam Hussein in a palace and found him in a hole in the ground; we looked for Bin Laden in a hole in the ground and found him in a palace.
• A wannabe standup comic just came to the door and tried to sell us "matter babies."
• Ah, spring... when you can shampoo the rug and get more water out of the carpet than you put in... ecch.
• So... how is it that Sauron's ring of power fit on hobbits' fingers anyhow?  Do hobbits have really fat fingers for their size?  Or did Sauron have elegant slender fingers for his size?  I mean, it's a pretty important plot point... if the ring didn't fit hobbits, a whole lot of stuff couldn't have happened. [a friend replied: "One size to fit them all."]
• The Gibb Institute has released the results of its study of the New York Times' effect on human subjects. Across races and genders, it helped subjects survive earthquakes in an urban setting.
• I wonder if Spanish speakers ever assume Nintendo is a contraction for "no entiendo" ("I don't understand.")
• Ask not how your country can serve you; ask whether it is a cookbook.
• My 18-year-old self is totally grooving on the open-source decor of Java Break in Lawrence.  Every surface has been written & drawn on by customers.  My 35-year-old self feels kind of like I'm visiting someone's psychosis.
• I think there should be a release of Silent Football for the new Wii U game system.  Imagine trying to talk about your mii on the Wii U if you can't use any personal pronouns...
• I just overheard Hoda Kotb coin the word "in abstentia."  I guess that's when you're not present, but people can still smell you.
• Our printer reports that its paper tray is "almost empty" when it is still half full.  Does that make it a pessimist?  Or is it optimistic to think that I might call on it to print 50 pages at any moment?
• Geologists should wear buttons that say "Ask me about the moon-sized iron sphere."
• The music in this coffee shop is TOO DANG LOUD.  Earplugs are not enough.  Wire cutters are in order.
• Strong enough for a bat... pH balanced for a wombat!
• A foolish consistency is the main selling point of Silly Putty.
• Can't believe we just have a week left before heading to DC.  I swear that trip was *months* away when we planned it.
• How is it that no one has apparently ever made a video of King Missile's "It's Saturday"?  Are they too busy protesting nothing in particular?
• I have a dream... that someday all electronic devices will agree on how to represent curly apostrophes and quotes... so that a receipt from McDonald's will not say THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING MCDONALDΓÇöS... just for example...
• Am I on Candid Camera? That would explain so much.
• Do nuclear families have valance levels? Are the children analogous to protons or electrons? If they're protons, then what are the electrons -- pets? If they're electrons, then how do they go on to form nuclear families of their own? And who are we calling a neutron? I'm confused.
• Once you've gone from "apocalypse" to "Alpocalypse" (the title of Weird Al's new album), it's a slippery slope from there to "alpaca lips."
• I wonder if people named Dweezil are unusually likely to go pop.
• I wonder what % of people understand that the reason those switching from company A to B saved money, and those switching from B to A also saved money, is because those who didn't stand to save DIDN'T SWITCH COMPANIES.
• "speed dating" = estimating how old an astrological body is by its red shift
• OK, so as I was falling asleep last night, my mind made the leap from the phrase "a little ridiculous" to "Little Red Oculus."  On a whim, I just searched to see if anyone had made that leap before.  What do you know, an outfit named OculusStudios made a rather pretentious (bordering perhaps on a little ridiculous?) teaser for a re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood (apparently unrelated to the major motion picture).  Coincidence??
• Wouldn't Random House make a great name for a surreality show?
• I wonder if Chee-tos are a favorite of reflexologists. (Chi toes)
• Anyone who asks if you're doing something "seriously?!" should be prepared to hear that no, you're doing it sarcastically.
• Pun of the morning: "quesadilla" should be abbreviated KÇ. And its motto should be, "whatever melts cheese, melts cheese."
• I have to wonder, when a forwarded email says "93% of people won't forward this -- will you?" what percentage of people who read it believe that statistic is actually based on some sort of fact.
• You can lead a horse to water, but you can't stop him from taking a dump in it.
• With all due respect to Sammy Hagar, I'm pretty sure there's more than one way to rock.
• [link to an article about how Bert and Ernie were never a couple] So wait, let me make sure I've got this right.  Bert and Ernie have no sexual orientation because they're puppets.  Therefore *none* of the puppets have a sexual orientation and none of them can ever be married, right?  So Miss Piggy was just being really friendly, in a totally platonic way, with Kermit, and what appeared to be their marriage was just part of the fictitious roles they were playing at the time.
• Sign on a flea market stand: Reasonable offers will be entertained. Unreasonable offers are entertainment.
• You know those disclaimer signatures on some people's emails saying the contents are confidential and blah blah?  I want to reply with one that says A) the email may well be forged and you have no way to know whether I am who I say I am, B) you have no way to know how many people I BCC'd on the message or forwarded it to, and C) even if I didn't BCC anyone, the message is INHERENTLY INSECURE and could have been read by anyone who wanted to intercept it.
• Now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is no longer in effect, all those FBI and CIA agents can finally come out of the closet and tell us whom they've been working for, and on what, and where, right?  What a burden it must have been keeping their lives secret from the world all this time!
• I wonder if Peter Jackson was trying to prove Xeno's paradox, or to disprove it?  (i.e. the closer you get to the end of The Return of the King, the slower it goes)
• I wonder if it's occurred to the conservatives that universal health care might help reduce the demand for gay marriages?
• Perhaps "sales can go through the roof" is not the best choice of words when talking about sales of roofing.
• Hypocrisy is just government by hippos, right?  Legislators should change the dictionaries and history books to reflect the fact so we can avoid the word fitting anyone who is obviously not a hippo.
• It's a beautiful day to sit on the front porch, but until the possum in the street is done decomposing I guess I'll stay in my office.
• Dreamed that Tinky-Winky exploded. His insides smelled of old vacuum cleaner bag. The smell (in the dream) was so strong it woke me.
• 14 hours later, still feeling deeply let down by the Doctor Who season finale. Is this what it feels like when you care about a sports team and they humiliate themselves in front of the whole world?
• I'm a little creeped out that all the news reports say Steve Jobs's death was announced *by Apple*. Did he die during a meeting or something? Were his brainwaves being monitored by iPhone?
• I think Obama should rename the Jobs bill as the Steve Jobs bill in recognition of the fact that Jobs created the most profitable corporation in the world -- not the other way around.
• Corporations ARE people... in much the same way as Soylent Green is. All I'm saying is that the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations are people doesn't necessarily mean corporations have rights. It could be a cookbook.
• On the one hand, it's cool that people have had the idea to organize a Talk Like a Dalek Day. On the other hand, it's problematic that they can't agree on when it should be. CONSOLIDATE! CONSOLIDATE!!!!!
• Obama's campaign slogan last time asserted he was able... Now his likely opponent, Cain, takes pains to say he's not a brother's keeper... Anybody heard this story before? I don't think it ends well.
• Maple pattern baldness: your hair turns orange and red, then gradually falls to the ground
• I want to see House Hunters International done like Ghost Hunters... "We've had reports there's a house around here somewhere... we brought our sophisticated house detection equipment..."
• Last night Jessie asked if she could borrow my 3-hole punch.  This morning I notice there are little paper circles in literally every room.  And thus our house becomes an art project.
• Steraoke, n. Instrumentals on one track, vocals on the other.
• OK, so explain something to me.  Why does economic demand for fossil fuel get described as a "need?"  The world's population NEEDS clean air and water.  The majority of that population has gotten by just fine without fossil fuel for all of history, so how can it be a "need?"  Economic demand is just a WANT.  When demand exceeds supply, the price is SUPPOSED to go up.  That's how the market works.  So why is the increasing price of fuel being presented as some kind of unimaginable tragedy that must be averted at all costs to the environment?
• Everybody TALKS about using a chainsaw to cut butter, but nobody DOES it.
• This morning I made up a portmanteau word, "precognito."  Google says it's already a magazine, a consulting firm, a software package, and a band, among other things.  Guess my definition of the word is destined for obscurity. That's it, that's my definition: "destined for obscurity."
• If you say people have yet to do something, it means they haven't done it.  If you say few people have done it, it means most of them haven't done it.  But if you say few people have yet to do it, that also means most of them haven't done it, even though it seems to say the opposite.
• I think it's funny that we use "limited mobility" as a euphemism for physical disabilities.  I'd like to meet someone with unlimited mobility.  Unless it's Q from Star Trek.
• I think it's funny that desiccant packets say "do not eat" even when they're in non-food packages. Hey, I was just unpacking this light fixture and found a packet of crystals. Free snack!
• All those childhood hours spent pretending Russell Dysinger's floor was lava sure do come in handy when I'm working in the attic.
• Celebrated the end of the Iraq war by removing bumper stickers from the car. It's a small thing, but it's what I got.
• I wonder if Native American particle physicists used every part of the boson.
• ...'cause we NEED a little patience, RIGHT this very minute...
• I suppose with a name like Benedict Cumberbatch, he pretty much had to become famous, just to show all the boys from school.
• It doesn't inspire confidence when the contractors working on your house start practicing their Three Stooges impersonations.
• Just misread "The Toll War Takes on All Who Are Called to Serve" as "The Troll War Takes on All Who Are Called Steve."