floorpie

My dental insurance, in a show of good faith, sent me a double-edged toothpick (I know that seems obvious, but this is some kind of super-toothpick with exciting angles and alternate pick settings) and two pink Post-It note pads in the shape of a tooth.

When I first got the pads I thought to myself, “Oh, these are special Post-It note pads shaped like a tooth. Obviously they are very special and I should save them for later. Kewl!” When I came across them in my desk while looking for an eraser, however, I suddenly realized how ridiculous two pink Post-It note pads in the shape of a tooth really are. When am I ever going to use these things? What note can possibly be taken seriously on something like this? “Grandfather in hospital, call Sacred Heart Hospital immediately” just doesn’t carry the appropriate weight when it’s written on a molar.

I have written one note on the tooth Post-Its, though. It reads:

I’m a Post-It note shaped like a tooth. I feel ridiculous.

It’s been broiling in Hollywood the last few days. It’s the kind of heat where your pants stick just so to your legs and you wonder whether there might just be something to that whole “global warming” conspiracy.

I’m not sure what the melting point of silicone is, but you’d better hope that’s it’s more than 95.

Happy Day Afer Labor Day, the day on which we bow down to the all important god, Labor. Conceived not by perpetually pregnant housewives, it was instead contrived by the American Railway Union in what seems to be the strongest example of a political protest ending in actual government action. I would expect to see national Make Love Not War Day and Stem Cell Research A-Okay Day by early next summer.

I spent my Labor Day weekend not laboring at all in Sequioa National Park, eating from amongst the wild berries and indigenous wildlife (ie mosquitos). It was fun, it was carefree, and it made me appreciate cosmopolitan civilization. What the teenagers of Pine Flats, population maybe a dozen, do with their lives is beyond me. I assume a lot of it has to do with chewing tobacco in some form, though. Any also letting your hair grow out in the back while keeping the front neatly trimmed. After all, the party’s in the back, while the business is decidedly in the front.

Bush says that OB-GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women/
Floppy drives going the way of the dodo
watch TV, get laid. Who knew it was simple?

For all the talk of California breaking off and sinking in to the ocean (tectonic plates being delineated by state lines, you see) it seems like God is trying to drown Florida, instead. I think the idea is to streamline the map a bit, or something. There’s just something a bit jarring with that finger sticking out like that… or so the story goes.

In all seriousness, and if I can lend an appropriate tone to the situation: that’s gotta suck. I mean really, really suck. Your whole life is changed, most likley for the worst, by something completely out of your control and that you are powerless to do anything about. And twice in a month’s time no less.
>
I’ve lived through earthquakes and tornados, but never a hurricane… never anything that required a mass exodus of humanity or who’s level of destruction is as severe or wide-reaching. Let’s hope they make it.
>
Also, the Republican National Convention was silly.

Something that you’ve been wondering about, and something that I am willing to tell you is that, without a doubt, and unequivocably, Sour Skittles are indeed very very sour. Not that I won’t go back for more and more, no matter the pain, the loss of fine-motor function, or these extra teeth-shaped pieces of my mouth that keep coming out when I brush my teeth.

They are just. that. sour.

Never let it be said that I don’t care about your health:

Drinking urine can eliminate sinus trouble, turn grey hair black and even cure cancer, a Thai academic said, citing a study of local Buddhists who engage in the unorthodox practice.

Ratree Cheepudomwit, of the Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine Development Department, said hundreds of urine drinkers attested that consuming a daily cup worked wonders for their overall health and helped slow the ageing process.

She said that in June she queried 250 members of Santi Asoke, a strict indigenous Buddhist movement believed to have thousands of followers, and 204 respondents said they had learned from ancient Buddhist manucripts that drinking one’s urine improved health…
>
full article

Or that I don’t care about fostering your conspiracy theories:

An unexplained radio signal from deep space could — just might be — contact from an alien civilization, New Scientist magazine reported on Thursday.

The signal, coming from a point between the Pisces and Aries constellations, has been picked up three times by a telescope in Puerto Rico.

full article

I’m back in the Bay Area again for a few days, which marginally explains my reticence. I’m not in the so-called “hip” part of the Bay, but I am in perhaps the most recently famous one (that being Silicon Valley).

Call me crazy, but it’s a bit depressing here.
>
Nearly the moment I got off my plane, into a rental car, and onto the 101, I drove up next to my old truck. It wasn’t my old truck, mind you; my old truck is safely participating in drive-bys in LA. It was a similar model, year, and color, though. Enough so that I felt like I was looking at myself in a what-might-have-been version of my future self. I didn’t look happy. I looked like I was still bitter from being laid-off, like I was tired of living in an uninteresting suburb, like I was sick of not knowing my neighbors or having anything more interesting to do than go to “The City”. My perspective is skewed, I realized.

One thing I do know, biased as it is: I’m glad to live in SoCal.

The packaging for my Spree candy (a.k.a Wannabe Sweet-Tarts) says, in blue drop-shadowed “crazy” lettering:

This seems like a pretty interesting marketing tactic and I suspect to see Pete’s High-Colonics: it’s like a stab in the eye! any day now.

Spread the word:

Some 1.3 million Americans slid into poverty in 2003 as the ranks of the poor rose 4 percent to 35.9 million, with children and blacks worse off than most, the U.S. government said on Thursday in a report sure to fuel Democratic criticism of President Bush.

Despite the economic recovery, the percentage of the U.S. population living in poverty rose for the third straight year to 12.5 percent — the highest since 1998 — from 12.1 percent in 2002, the Census Bureau said in its annual poverty report. The widely cited scorecard on the nation’s economy showed one-third of those in poverty were children.
>
The number of U.S. residents without health care coverage also rose by 1.4 million last year to 45 million, the highest level since 1999, and incomes were essentially stagnant, the Census Bureau said…

more

How can people keep claiming that the economy is getting better? Vote for Kerry!