Thursday, April 28, 2011

WTF Pictures! - 3: A very unique proposition

UCLA's student newspaper, The Daily Bruin, is hardly the beacon of true journalism. While the paper serves its own, limited purpose well, let us not pretend that its news will bring about earth-shattering changes. Which is why it was hilarious when, a couple years ago, they featured a massive front-page ad by ice-cream specialist Haagen-Dazs and then promptly condemned its own decision in a very solemn editorial. 

Anyway, this ad caught my eye today and I thought it would make a great installment for my new series (plus, it saves me the effort of writing some new and original):



Now I have seen my fair share of ads that are weird, but this one clearly wins the award for the most bizarre ad of the year.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

WTF pictures! - 2: Are YOU unlucky in love?

Are you a scientist (or a budding one) who happens to woefully unlucky in the department of love? Are you a master of DNA preps but not of date preps?

Banish away your fears and qualms ye mighty and embrace this newfangeled dating website so coyly advertised in Scientific American:





Oh right I must have been dozing off in my Marketing 101 class when they taught us how tactful placement of a few choice scientific words like probabilities and wavelength will attract flocks of love-hungry, desperate scientists to your website.

A friend actually went on this site, that brave soul, and found this:

"Why are we here? The world is a crowded Petri dish, and yet for those of an intellectual bent who happen to be single, it's not easy, especially past university age, to find that certain microbe for a great symbiotic relationship. Enter Science Connection."

I am dumbfounded. Speechless. Aghast. Hmm let me trudge up a few more thesaurus words: mortified. stunned. That should be enough. 

Wednesday morning rant: Trader Joe's

Last night I stepped inside a Trader Joe's for the first time in my whole entire total life. A friend of mine wanted to do some shopping so I tagged along.

Now I've heard quite a few good things about the establishment over the years from a number of folks.

Including, but not limited to, the following:

"Trader Joe's has naan!" or

"Their chocolates are soooo good!!! :) =) " and

"Trader Joe cookies. Oh yeah!"

Obviously, I went in with obscenely high expectations. I was already imagining myself as little Charlie in the gargantuan chocolate factory, swimming in delicious pools of molasses and caramel, watching oompa loompas party it up and all that. Instead, my oversized expectations were roundly booed off the stage like Charlie Sheen's lame act. They wilted like day-old marigolds and melted like a shitty wax candle.

They sell legitimate items like milk and eggs as a shameless ploy to hide their true motives: peddling overpriced junk to boisterously enthusiastic college kids.

Palm-sized packets of Trex mix for an astronomical $4?
An embarrassingly normal-sized swiss chocolate bar for $3? GFTO! I can easily buy ten cartons of delicious KitKat for that at Walmart!

The only thing TJ's has going for them is the free stuff. There is a cozy corner at the far end of the store where a bubbly fellow in a Bruin apron serves up bite-size delicacies for free every day, ala CostCo. Resting merrily right next to him is a comfortable pot of freshly brewed coffee.

Some day I will camp out in that corner and drink free coffee and munch on free food all day long.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Happy Easter!!! and some Thoughts on Palm Sunday

Hey Everyone!

Just wanted to give a quick Easter shout-out to all my peeps.

This Easter was really one of the best ever - nothing quite like waking up early for Church, singing your favorite songs, and then coming back for pancakes and bacon and eggs and chocolate and taffy and yum!!!

Also, I want to take this moment to share some thoughts on another powerful holiday, one that came exactly one week ago - Palm Sunday.

For those who don't know, Palm Sunday commemorates the day Jesus entered Jerusalem during the week before his death. Throngs of people turned out with palm fronds (which were used to revere royalty back then) and waved them and laid them at his feat as he rode in on a donkey.

However, less than a week later, the same crowds turned on Jesus and shouted for his crucifixion.

So every year on Palm Sunday, Catholics are issued palms to hold during Mass. It's an extremely powerful double-edged symbol - we wave the palms to praise God, conscious of the fact that we will all deny and turn away from him before the week (or day, or hour) is out. The fact that we read the part of the crowd during the extended Gospel reading just drives the point home. We all say "Crucify Him!" together in unison - Wow.

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In other news, I just finished filling in sink-holes, trimming and gluing on tassels (cut from sci-fi helmets), and spraypainting my 24-man-unit white. Pics up soon, I promise! :D

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

"Limited" stance

Read the news today, oh boy. Seems like a majority of tea party supporters oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid payments to balance the budget and cut deficit.

Yes, those very patriotic Americans who are so vociferously and eagerly fighting for limited government are against what is perhaps the biggest help our government provides.

Seems like they are for limited government as long as that limited government also provides them substantial help with rising healthcare costs. Something about eating and having cakes comes to mind.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

WTF pictures! - 1

Every so often, in our routine and exceedingly boring lives, we chance upon scenes of such horrendous proportions that our delicate senses are severely offended and temporarily depart in due haste.

Where does this leave us? At a stupendous loss, of course. Some of us stand there, gaping stupidly at the thoughtless culprit, that sore sight for our eyes. Others? Well, they post it on their insignificant blogs.

Fortify your senses. Throw in enough canned food to last a platoon. Fasten your seat-belts.

Presenting the first installment of this ambitious, occasional series "WTF Pictures!":

At my local Barnes and Noble

 WTF?! This is a genre now? These books dare rest in the same store as Kant, Mamet and Frost? If this is what's going to save the dying publishing/reading industry, may as well let the whole thing die out.

Allow me to reply to this hideousness with another picture, this one courtesy of the internetz:


Wait, wait, wait. I feel like that's not enough. How about this?



Or better yet:

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

While Rome burned

While Rome burned, good ol' Nero played the fiddle.

Something similar is going on right now.

Libya is falling apart at the seams. Japan is reeling from a terrible cocktail of earthquakes, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. The American government almost shut down over budget tussles. Protestors across the middle east are getting hammered by security forces. Ivory coast just completed its own mini civil war and managed to depose their tyrannical leader.

And what do our esteemed news channel talk about?

THE FREAKIN' ROYAL WEDDING. The guest list was leaked? Who cares?! Kate is getting five hairdressers? Big deal!

Look don't get me wrong. I am happy for the royal couple-to-be. This is going to be a big occasion for them.

And obviously I am not saying the news should be all about gloom and doom. We should allow a little bit of levity in our lives too. But can somebody please tell me why news channels are covering this ad nauseam? It's not even our frickin' country.

And don't get me started on the bullshit telemarketing companies loudly hawking replica rings by employing some schmuck with a phony British accent.

Excuse me while I move this blog to...the nearest urinal

This blog is relocating to a bathroom urinal because the great genius Stephan Pastis thinks random stuff written on urinal walls gets more readers than blogs in this hilarious Pearls before swine comic:






Kilroy was here,right?

Saturday, April 9, 2011

MCAT: The gateway drug to despair

My local library has a used book store and as I was merrily browsing the various sections, this disturbing image caught my eye:

ACCKKK!!!!!

Now having taken the MCAT and having gone through all the assorted misery that comes attached with it, I gotta say the screaming face is pretty accurate. Alas, this image must have scared the life out of the original buyer because the CD was still in its original shrink-wrapped condition!

Blast you MCAT, you took yet another victim...