And to all the grammar geeks out there, it's "has" not "have", since I'm talking about the chain of office superstores, and not individual staples, and they're a helluva lot more fun than the superstores. They would've posted my review.

Staples (the office superstore) asked me in an e-mail to submit a review of a recent purchase. And what I purchased was a 10-pack of blue two-pocket portfolio folders. And I typically don't buy these without first consulting Consumer Reports, but this time it was all impulse. No wonder my credit card bills exceed the per capita income of some less favored nations. (You know I really wanted to put the extra "u" in both "favor" and "humor" tonight. Is that the Brit in me that I never knew was there? Is that even an English thing? Granted it does look better, and so does "colour". Well, maybe.)

So today I noticed that my review was no longer on their website. In the context of this blog it certainly may seem more of a lame stab at humour (ha-ha!), but was downright hysterical over at Staples (the website of the office superstore, not at the website of a collective group self-realizing staples that wrestled the URL from the corporate monolith). Alright, so it wasn't that funny, but here it is. If you can't fill the Internet with crap that has nowhere else to go, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, say it again. Or not.

Staples product review for blue 2 pocket portfolios

By larzini from NJ on 3/7/2008
Your rating: 5 stars
Headline: Holds Papers Exactly As Described!

Pros : Easy To Open/Close, Durable Construction, 2 pockets,
Potty-trained, It's Blue, Nicely textured, Fun for the whole family
Cons : Poor gas mileage, No puree setting, Don't feed after midnight,
Slight metallic taste
Best Uses : Organizing Documents, Conversation piece, Bud vase, Holding
papers, Fanning, Placemat
Describe Yourself : Value Oriented
Primary use of this product : Business

These folders are great. First of all, they are blue. A blue so blue.
And blue is a color. And it is a color I enjoy wholeheartedly. I have
used many of these folders, and each time they lived up to my
expectations of holding my papers. Except one time when I turned a paper-filled
folder upside-down. Guess what? Yep. The papers fell out. Not just one.
All of them. DO NOT TURN UPSIDE-DOWN WHEN PAPERS ARE INSIDE. THEY WILL
FALL OUT! Sorry about yelling, but I cannot emphazise that point enough.
And I can't spell emphazies either. Did I mention there is not
spell-check feature? Well, there's not. Perhaps in the next release.
Unfortunately, Staples have not opened up the next version to users for beta
testing. By the way, the folders are blue. I opened the folder and closed
it numerous times. And it performed every time without fail. Another
nice thing is that there are 10 in a package. I really didn't need that
many, but rather than waste them, I spread whatever documents I need to
transport evenly among the 10 folders. If I have less than 10 papers I
need to transport, I grab magazine blow-in cards or junk mail and put
those in the empty folders. It kills me to have 10 folders and even
leave one empty. If you really need a folder, I would consider this one,
maybe the red model as well, but your insurance rates will go up, so let
the buyer beware.

All proper spacing removed for your inconvenience.

Did that post make this read like a splog? (That's "spam blog" for you home-gamers.)

I should say St. Valentine's Day. Well, not anymore, it's now Friday, but this post somehow disappeared after writing it about 24 hours ago.

I never dreamt I'd someday look back fondly at the Crazy Eddie television commercials. Yet, here I find myself waxing nostalgically over some Northeastern pop culture detritus.



I never embed, I usually just link, but I've reconsidered my position on that. Why send the eyeballs elsewhere when they can stay right here.

I remember buying vinyl records and cassettes at Crazy Eddie, as well as a floppy disk drive for my Atari 800XL computer. These ads actually inspired the Seinfeld episode entitled, "The Junk Mail". Elaine dates a guy who was once the fictional television pitchman known as "The Wiz". Incidentally, The Wiz, later known as Nobody Beats The Wiz, was also an electronics retailer located predominantly in New York and New Jersey. But since their prices weren't completely insane they often used real-life characters in their ads, such as Joe Namath.

This was long before Namath went 0-for-2 in pass attempts on the sidelines, seeking out kisses from Suzy Kolber. (Yep, that link goes to the infamous video. I thought it would look kind of crappy to put two embedded videos in the same post. Especially when the point of this video was to highlight the Crazy Eddie ads, and not focus on the ancillary Joe Namath reference.)

I hadn't visited A Softer World in awhile. You probably haven't either.

Or they just don't like it, is all. So, it's here.



You'll understand if you read my Optimus Hasselhoff post. Perhaps I'll post it to the Capital Bullshit MySpace page.

In a world where Mad Cow Disease is not an illness, but a state of rural unrest. One cow mush rise up and awakens the herd. A herd fattened up and dumbed down by genetically modified feed. Normally docile creatures with a hive mentality that has finally, collectively mooed "Enough!" (Which may actually still just sound like "Moo", but with greater emphasis and intent.) The antibiotics and hormones pumped into this Slaughterhouse Nation has backfired against the government oppressors, who must confront the greatest beef to ever face their unchallenged empire. Special sauce and sesame seed buns are no match for...

...Cows With Guns.

Thanks for the link,...umm...Sebastian?

Wired Magazine's cover story depicted Optimus Prime stepping in as a father figure for those whose father didn't bother. (I guess their Mom was the television. I think in my home the television is more like a deadbeat uncle that pays no rent, runs up our electrical bills, but fascinates the children with wonderful stories and games, in between commercials and a lot of crap.

Michael Bay is not alone on his mission to destroy these latchkey kids' kindergarten memories of their surrogate father. Capital Bullshit has beaten Mikey to the punch. Doesn't hurt that another childhood television legend, (I can't believe I just called him that) and German rock god (maybe I just justified that last comment, and no, I'm not talking about Klaus Meine) has provided the fodder for their celebrity parody mashup.

LINKY LINKY.
Optimus Hasselhoff.
David Hasselhoff's fall from grace.

Tasty spoon, indeed!

BONUS LINK:
Huge freakin' statue of Optimus Prime. Thanks, Karate Party.

I had something that resembled a blog slightly more than it did primitive cave paintings at one time. It was actually updated less frequently than this blog. There was no blogging buzz and the tubes weren't getting too slowed down, but every now and then I would post when I wasn't destroying CDNow's bottom line with web coupons and different e-mail accounts. And now they're gone and I miss them and it's all my fault. Not to say I wouldn't have done things the same way. You had to save a buck here and there. Was Napster around yet? I don't recall.

Anyhoo, I found a link to The Blair Family Circus Project in my archives and thought I'd share, since amazingly it's still up. I didn't know the Brunching Shuttlecocks had the stamina.

Jessica Alba and the Pee Gun

Nice use of Flav's clock as a plot device.

What the world needs now,
is an overweight,
Misfits tribute band,
like I need a post on my blog.*

I see. I chuckle. I link. The Misfats.

Waddle among them.

They fill the void. Literally. The world needed an overweight Misfits tribute band.

* Did this post need a Cracker reference? Not sure, but I started humming the tune as I wrote this. (Scroll down, the link worked at posting time.)

What's This? No more Amanda Congdon at Rocketboom. Will there be a reason to return? There seems to be some he said/she said business going on. Amanda says they didn't want her anymore. Rocketboom (a.k.a. the other guy) says she wanted to move to L.A., and they couldn't acommodate her.

The only thing we know for sure sure is that I'm still not sure how to spell acommodate.

Let the blogosphere be my spellchecker, I say. Comments are always open.

I'm sure we'll see Amanda again. So, might as well bookmark Unboomed in the meantime. I've only been visiting Rocketboom for a short time, and although the content and writing works well, her personality and delivery has made it more interesting. Is Rocketboom done? Has there been a job posting on Craigslist yet? Who knows? Maybe you.

...in the same posting.

I can't read or speak Italian. And I know I probably could translate the page somehow, but the 2 videos speak for themselves. Inkiostro has featured both a Live Action Simpsons Intro and Natalie Portman...no,no,no, not that Natalie Portman...the other one...the gangsta rapper.

Today I was attempting to catch up with some work, but then my short-attention span kicked in, like 30 or 40 times, and now I don't know why I'm here, but I don't get paid for blogging, yet I'm still here, for some reason or another.

Anyway, getting back to work I was going to stream some tunes from The Hype Machine. If there were only 10 web sites left on the Internet, this would need to be one of them. Small problem, with that theory though. The Hype Machine is like an mp3 blog aggregator. (Ed: Dropping the like from the previous sentence would still result in a true statement with a slightly less conversational tone.) (Ed: That means Editor right, well there's no editor, just me. Don't get the impression that this blog is actually proofread.) Although if you've read it before it's probably become quite clear to you that it's not.

What was I saying about my attention span, again?

Oh yeah, 10 sites left on the Internet. The Hype Machine being one.

Well, it would be completely useless if the other 9 weren't mp3 blogs. And that's highly unlikely. Because the other 9 sites left would probably just be porn anyway.

I hope the Internet is never reduced to 10 web sites. Kind of like I hope the Vice President never comes to my house and shoots me. But if he came to my house he probably wouldn't. He'd probably just raise my thermostat to about 94 degrees. Because somehow him and his friends will make more money that way.

Ok...I was trying to find The Hype Machine site today, and I accidentally stumbled upon their blog. And through that blog I found A Softer World. I was greatly amused. Joey Comeau makes the funny captions and I suppose takes the pictures they accompany. (Ed: WRONG! Emily takes the pictures.) But I cannot confirm or deny that part.

When I read Overqualified, also by Joey Comeau, I was also amused. I also used also twice in that sentence. And look I just did so again. I was again amused, but not as greatly. Remember how I was mentioning that short attention span. When the words are many and the pictures are few, that tends to kick in.

Words + pictures = amusement.

Words - pictures = amusement - 1.

So I guess I need to stick a picture somewhere in this posting, huh?

As seen on The Daily Show.

A special report from Demetri Martin.

The video must be Joel Trussell's commentary on all the rock bands coming from Scandinavia in recent times. Or is that old history dating back to 2001?

His video for Jason Forrest's track, "War Photographer" is lots of fun. Vikings, guitars, robots, cowbell, what else do you need?

Joel has some development sketches on his blog as well.

I've been sleeping on Strong Bad's latest creation at Homestar Runner.

Teen Girl Squad. No description necessary. Watch and laugh.

Thanks, Ted Leo. I've been sleeping on Homestar Runner for awhile. Now I can lose some sleep and catch up.