Incredible Melting Snowpersons

It runs in the family, I guess. My mom and dad saw the Melting Santa Extravaganza, and felt they had to one-up me with a little Xtreme Xmas Xorcisms of their own. I present to you... the Incredible Melting Snowpersons, along with my dad's commentary.


Not to be outdone by your Santa, Mom and I decided to reign fire on a couple of decorative snow men that have been sitting in our closet for a while now.

This is how they looked at 7 p.m.

Flame on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A "tip of the hat" to those in Snowville...Muahhhhhhh

7:35 Unfortunately....these guys will never get ahead!!! A head! Get it?

8:40 Well, these guys were pretty small to begin with.

The Santa has melted.

Our favorite Christmas activity so far has been watching this Santa candle melt, head first. It's like a cross between an advent calendar and a bad sci-fi film from the 60s. This is the first installment of Melting Santa -- expect more as this festive season continues.





Looking good there, Santa. This is before I figured out that the flash didn't help. Don't worry, I capture the ghoulish reality of Melting Santa much better later on.
















Do you smell something burning?























It's eerie how long his face stayed intact. Santa's little beady eyes accused us mercilessly from across the room.




Headless Santa. Fantastic. Thanks, Chris' mom!

Christmas at the beach

Here at the beach, we've got quite a large number of hobos. They're pretty harmless, and they're an excellent indigenous source of recycling.

The other night I managed to get this photo -- excuse the blurriness, I was trying to get the photo without this guy turning around. He's got a trash bag over his shoulder and he's wearing a Santa hat. It's kind of sad, but also just very Pacific Beach, in a bizarre and somewhat joyous way.



We bought a tree from the lot that's about 3 blocks away from our house, which meant that we could walk it home. Between my handmade ornaments, and the boxful of ornaments so thoughtfully supplied by Chris' mom, we've got quite a nice little tree. Very sincere.

You will notice that it's handily located next to our front door. This arrangement is compliments of TinyHouse. Don't worry, we've actually taped a note over the deadbolt outside that says "Use back door. Xmas tree behind this one." Good thing we did, too. Our landlord had to come over last Friday to check on the pipes -- that would have ended in tears.

Bad Copy of the Day award

Today's award goes to a completely non-work-related website. I was on Disneyland's site looking for the last day of their holiday decorations, and came upon this beauty:

"From the 100-foot goldenized tree on Main Street, U.S.A. in Disneyland park to the illuminated Golden State Bridge of Disney's California Adventure park, to the Yuletide decorations in the Hotels of the Disneyland Resort, you will find yourself wrapped in the spirit of the season."

Yeah. Goldenized. I guess "gilt" was too much for the common people. If they were worried about the comprehension factor, they should have just dumbed it all the way down to "shiny." Goldenized. This is why marketing people need copywriters to keep them from vomiting crap like this onto their sites.

P.S. -- Dear Disneyland marketing people. Cool it on the capitalized nouns. You are not in Germany.

Word Vault

I think today marks the beginning in yet another occasional feature. I'm calling this one Word Vault. You know how everyone has at least one song that they hate so much that they'd like to lock it up in the song vault, never to be heard ever again? For me, that song is "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang.

I am of the opinion that the world needs a Word Vault as well, and I'm going to start it with the word "hubby." You tend to see instances of "hubby" concentrated anywhere on the internet where overweight housewives tend to congregate. The two examples I can think of are Christian message boards and cruise passenger message boards. So really, message boards. Even worse is the corrupted version, "DH," which apparently stands for "dear hubby."

So please, I beg you. Stop the hubby madness.

UPDATE: I am a bad ass. editor. Thanks for the typo alert, Nathan.

Bad Copy of the Day award

From a website called obesityhelp.com, describing one of the forms of bariatric surgery:

"Laparoscopic -- Abbreviated "Lap." Operation performed using a laparoscope, a thin fiber-optic scope introduced into a body cavity through 4 or 5 small stab wounds."

Product rants and raves

Today's cautiously optimistic product rave is in support of Head On, a new headache medication that is applied directly to the forehead, Chapstick-style. I saw a crappy commercial for it, and was intrigued. I got a really bad tension headache today, the kind that sticks with me for two days, and figured I'd give it a try. They've got three flavors -- extra strength, migraine, and tension headache. The box said "Homeopathic!" which made me want to put it right back down. But the scientific-looking glowing grid head on the box had little snowflakes around it, which spells tension headache relief in any language. I figured that as a white, middle-class American, it was my duty to spend $8.99 on this space-age technology.

I felt kind of dumb smearing it across my forehead, but you know what? It works. At least a little bit. My forehead feels tingly and cold, kind of like when using IcyHot or something, but it doesn't smell and is only about a 3 on the greasy residue scale of 1-10. If it reduces my tension headache discomfort by half, which it does, then I'm a fan. The best part is that I can apply it as much as I want. The box says I can. Because it's homeopathic. Which is possibly Latin for "placebo." Don't care.

Now, for today's product rant: bubble lights. Chris' parents thoughtfully supplied us with a couple of strands for our tree. I've always loved bubble lights, but never had any myself, and I've certainly never had to install them on a tree by myself before. Bubble lights can go straight to hell. They're a bitch to put on a branch, they're hot, and a half hour later, half the damn things still aren't bubbling. I'm going to let Chris mess with them if he wants, but I'm over them.

Christmas at the beach

Last night we had one of those moments that really belongs in a commercial for either Hallmark or beer. We walked to the Christmas tree lot that's strategically placed between two bars on Garnet, picked out a tree, and carried it home along the boardwalk. Living close enough to a tree lot that you can walk is nearly unheard of in southern California, and taking a tree home via the beach is unimaginable in most of the rest of the country. So it was a touch surreal.

But nice. In a couple of days, when it's all fancied up, I'll take a picture so you can see TinyHouse, Christmas Edition.

Second-Best Typo Ever.

Remember the beef panties? That was the best typo ever. But this one is still pretty good. It came from a doctor who does laser tattoo removal, and he was describing one of his patients as having removed a "professional tattool."

Right up there with the word "prostitot," used to describe the underage whores who run around the bar scene in this neighborhood, I think "tattool" is an excellent moniker for their boyfriends.

Bask in the glowing warm warming glow of "tattool" with me. Thanks.

ICQ Madness

Do you ever wonder what writers talk about during the day in between coming up with synonyms for "dazzling," "rejuvenating," and "shallow rich old women"?

Here we go, kids. Here's today's installment of ICQ Madness. Just so everyone's well aware, I don't print these to entertain others as much as I do to entertain myself. When I look back on this job and wonder how I wasted entire hours on ICQ, I'd like to be able to remember some of the better nonsense to come out of it.

[09:13] Elizabeth R.: Do the Germans, or Dutch, or any other of those clever language people have a word for the crippling feeling that washes over one when one realizes that one should not have so glibly answered "No" when the question was "Do you want to revert to the saved document?"?
[09:14] Brian: Scheiße
[09:14] Elizabeth R.: LOL Yeah, I think that's the one.
[09:16] Brian: Did you lose much?
[09:17] Elizabeth R.: Technically, no. Just one web page of the evil Matt setup doc.... about 2 word pages of terrible copy that I had corrected and SEO'd anew.
[09:18] Elizabeth R.: "Objects loom larger in soul than actual size."
[09:18] Brian: Well, you and I both know how much work that really was. Crap. I'm sorry.
[09:18] Brian: Well, well, well said.
[09:19] Elizabeth R.: Thank you. I have finished the mourning process and am moving on.
[09:19] Brian: In fact, the first real bit of genius I've encountered this week. Cut and paste and into my "phrases that impressed me" folder it goes.
[09:19] Elizabeth R.: Heh. Thank you.

Worst. Local commercial. Ever.

It's Christmas. I'm prepared for a certain amount of crappy senseless product tie-ins. However, I was not prepared for the Liquid Stucco ad. It is quite possibly the worst commercial I have ever seen, including the one for the muffler shop in Fort Lauderdale that also did "brakes and alligment."

Let me set the scene. Liquid Stucco is a product that can be sprayed on the exterior of your home, and is supposedly superior to other stucco type products. The footage is mostly of Liquid Stucco being applied to houses, and the whole commercial is framed in a bright blue "snowflake" theme mat. There are translucent animated snowflakes falling across the screen for the duration of the commercial.

The Liquid Stucco ad excels at its intended purpose: to extol the features and benefits of Liquid Stucco. However, the ad chooses to do this to the tune of "O Christmas Tree." And the lyrics just don't fit. I invite you to sing along, right there at your desk, to get the full impact of the inappropriate nature of their diction.

Oh Liquid Stucco, Oh Liquid Stucco
How I love you, Liquid Stucco

You're waterproof
In times of rain
And fire resistant
In summertime

Oh Liquid Stucco, Oh Liquid Stucco
How I love you, Liquid Stucco

Your 25-year
Warranty
Is head and shoulders above what others
Offer me

Oh Liquid Stucco, Oh Liquid Stucco
How I love you, Liquid Stucco

The Liquid Stucco website has a bad commercial on it, but it's nowhere near as bad as the Christmas version. It will live in my heart forever.

Stuff On My Cat

Tim brought the best website ever to my attention. It makes me giggle.

Stuff On My Cat

As their tagline so succinctly puts it, "Stuff + Cats = Awesome"

Do you ever do that thing

... where you rub your eye, and a little air bubble or something gets stuck beneath the eyelid, and it just kind of sits there for a second before it makes its way out with the tiniest of pops? It's kind of gross but probably one of the many things that Jesus wanted to experience while he was a person. That and the piss shiver. Oh, and... wait, here it comes:

Top Five Things That Jesus Probably Looked Forward To Doing As A Human Being

5. Eyelid air bubble
4. Piss shiver
3. When your nose and sinuses are all stuffed up, and then suddenly everything decompresses, and it kind of makes a sound but you're not sure if anyone else can hear it
2. Cleaning out ears with Q-Tips and putting them in deeper than the package says to because it feels good (Please back the hell off. I know there were no Q-Tips in Jerusalem back in the day. But I figure he could have worked something out.)
1. Making the vwip-vwip-vwip noise with corduroy pants

This is by no means an exhaustive list, as I'm sure Jesus wanted to do some other stuff as well. But it's a good start, and a fitting beginning to the Christmas season. Or something.

Why does God hate me?

Here it is, December first, and it appears that Jeffty Jeff and Heidi still live next door, with nary a sign of moving boxes, moving-stress-induced tantrums, or anything else remotely moving related. I am crushed. God has made the additional taunting gesture of parking a Budget moving van outside at the curb. But considering that it's the first of the month, it's probably just someone else moving into another apartment around here.

Today is also day 1 of my new position as an assistant editor. Yeah. Life has changed a whole lot, let me tell you. Now, as an assistant editor, I spend my days getting shat upon by sales and whinged at by clients. Completely different from when I was a staff writer. That was more along the lines of getting whinged at by sales and shat upon by clients. A change of pace is completely refreshing and exactly what I needed. To celebrate, I'm going to go out and blow my raise on something crazy like a Kit-Kat.

Aaaaand, there it is. My cranky-meter just hit 11. Goodnight, Gracie.