Non-Stop, See-Through Coverage

More important news from Aol

Previously:
this
and this

Between the Acts of Standing and Running

Much hoopla has been made over Ernest Hemingway's super-short story:

For sale. baby shoes. Never worn.

Less well know is Virginia Woolf's even shorter:

For sale. Mattress. Slightly shat.

It won the Newbery Medal that year.

Poison Penpal

I get made fun of every now and again when people find out I have an Aol e-mail account. It's the account I set up when I got my first computer, which of course came with some free months of America Online. I've just never really stopped using it. I mostly use it for filling out online forms and e-mailing stuff to myself from work. I do also have a Gmail account (fancy!).

G-Male

Since I have this account, I also get to see Aol's homepage all the time. They really do provide great content all the time. There was this. And now this:

Um, what the hell, Aol? Did Aol poison me? I suppose "get" is better than "got" or "are going to get". It's still a little troubling.

"Tonight on America Online (I know it's not a tv show, but bear with me)

"Tonight on America Online! Why we took your underpants! We've also been soaking your coffee filters in an arsenic solution, letting them dry out, and then replacing them in your cupboard!"

More to come.

Pillow Fight

God damn it, people who name products. Shouldn't this be easy?

I needed some sort of stuffing for part of my Hallowe'en costume. I thought that using the filling from an inexpensive pillow might be cheaper than buying actual pillow stuffing. I went to Walmart and headed to their bedding section. Most of the pillows were in the $6 and up range. I didn't really want to spend that much. They also had an endcap featuring a product for only $2.50. I did like three investigative walk-bys and stuck my hand inside the plastic before deciding they were, in fact, pillows.

I mean, what the hell is this?

Yes, you can look at that and say "well clearly that's a pillow". But it could be something else. I don't know, it might be a neatly folded mattress pad, or some sort of bed accessory that I'm totally unfamiliar with. But really that name threw me off. "Deep Pockets"? You know how many pockets this pillow has? Exactly zero. Not a single pocket of any depth. Why the hell did they call a pillow, something that as far as I know never has pockets, Deep Pockets? Sheet sets, mattress pads, mattress covers, and all sorts of other shit that I don't know about has "pockets" at the corners to accommodate a mattress. Why would there be a pocket in a pillow? Even if there was one, the pillow goes inside a pillow case, and the pocket would be useless. What would I keep in there? Perhaps a throat lozenge? Maybe a pre-written thank-you note, a mint, and an RU-486.

Further agitating me, the packaging does not have the word "pillow" anywhere on it. Nowhere. It tells me all about what the filling is made from, that I can machine wash it, and that the bag is dangerous, but it never bothers to mention that it's a pillow.

Even this refrigerator box in this picture I found of some chick in a refrigerator box says "Refrigerator" right on it, and those boxes pretty much always have a refrigerator in them(or the occasional chick). In fact, any box about this size and shape is usually called a refrigerator box. But the refrigerator people still have the courtesy to let you know, just in case.

The bag did let me know that whatever was inside was indeed "Standard".

The sign for the end cap was no help either. It just had the Walmart logo and the price. No description at all.

I suppose maybe "Deep Pockets" is meant to imply wealth and luxury. As if someone might sleep on this pillow and think "Wow! The guy that bought this pillow must have some pretty deep pockets to afford such a fine head cushion! This is nice!"

Sunday Cipher #44 - The Tetanus Racket

Oh no! You just woke up, and you're manacled to the wall in some dank pit! That's the last time you party with your 11-year-old niece. Bitch is crazy. How are you going to get unchained from the wall?! Speaking of walls, these ones are closing in! And they have rusty spikes on them! And your tetanus vaccination isn't up to date! Wait! There's a message scrawled on the wall! Maybe there is a way out! But it's in code! Can you figure out the message in time!?

Below is a quote from a famous person encoded with a substitution cipher. Each letter has been swapped for another. Today's hint: J equals B.

"YB/ LDKY/ DRFZEYY/ GRZ/ WKAL/ RZ/ EZLKFE/ DBFYE/ BAA/ LDE/ TFBNZX/ SNYL/ YB/ IBN/ GRZ/ ONL/ ORZLY/ BZ/ KL?/ BD,/ IBN/ XFBOOEX/ IBNF/ OEZGKW;/ K'WW/ TFRJ/ KL."/ - GRLDEFKZE/ LDE/ TFERL

The first person to e-mail me the correct answer at imillermoth@gmail.com wins a prize! If you would like your prize sent to you, include a mailing address with your answer.

Last week's answer:
"'You shall not pass!' Yeah, that's what my rectum tried to say to my first black boyfriend." - Sir Ian McKellen

Dudes and Dogs

Kevin & Friends Grooming Dog & Cat Spa. I'm torn on this one.

On one hand, I don't know Kevin, and who the hell are these friends of his? Just buddies of Kevin's? He could have classed it up more with "Kevin and Associates, LLC" or "Oliver & Company". I suppose "Kevin & Friends" sounded better than "Kevin & Some Dudes I Know".

I can picture the commercial. "Hey, I'm Kevin. And these are some guys I know. Give us your pet for several hours. These people I met are totally good with pets. It might not be these actual guys here. I reserve the right to let anyone I know pretty well do stuff with your pet. Come in today!"

You can tell Kevin to keep his friends the hell away from my dog.

On the other hand, I'm intrigued. The evidently employ a grooming dog, and I would like to know more about this. Is this a breed of dog I am unfamiliar with that can actually groom other dogs? I wonder if the Groomhound decides on hairstyles for the other dogs on its own, or if Kevin has authority. It may just be a normal service dog that went to school for this.

I think I'll just go to Tiny & Nacho's Lavandogia.