For those of you who work in a cubicle...

A song..For all the windowless crap you put up with....

1902 SEARS CATALOG

Fascinated by what the consumerists of 1902 were into? This blog features items from the 1902 Sears catalog.

Here's a sampling:


"Well, doc, what's the diagnosis?"

"I'm sorry to say that you're suffering from the condition we in the medical profession call 'TOO MUCH FAT.' It is a disease and source of great annoyance."

"You mean I'm one of the Fat Folks? What's the treatment? Exercise and a good diet?"

"Don't be silly! Just take my Obesity Powder! It will reduce your corpulency in a safe and agreeable manner, with no bad results--unlike those other cures."


And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have the FDA.

The pages of the catalog are full of wonderfully unregulated patent medicines, many formulated by the mysterious Dr. Rose, who surely had a facility somewhere back East full of experimental patients with no next of kin.

Prom, American Idol Style

On the left is a somewhat less convoluted Taylor Hicks at his high school prom, and on the right is Kellie Pickler heading out to her prom, where apparently the theme was "White Trash Moments".

The tooth fairy has claws?

John at Monkey Disaster writes about his kids quite a bit...This was hilarious:

The Impossible Questions of Charlie (Age 5)

1. "How big are the tooth fairy's claws?"
2. "What was the name of the first guy?"
3. "What's bigger than the world's biggest toilet?"
4. "What was Bush's littlest, tiniest mistake?"

The big question is "why?"

I really don't know what to say about this, except God help her. It involves exercise, an odd Japanese woman, and dancing dogs. Really, don't look at it. It will kill you with laughter and dumbfound you with deep thought as to the origins of the universe.

And it's safe for work

Yes, if you don't have enough silly in your life, there's "Superheroes on the toilet."

All you need is Patience, and lots of it

Chuck Klosterman finally gets to hear a bootleg version of the mysterious Guns N Roses album, Chinese Democracy. He's not all that impressed.

Who is it?

Do you know who this is? He once was a HUGE TV star. Now he's in an indie rock band. Have a guess?

Morning Guy

This short film on a morning radio wannabe cracks me up. I hope I'm not that jovial."Stare into the abyss of his own insignificance..."

Bob Staake's Struwwelpeter

Bob Staake is a terrific children's book illustrator (here's a great interview with him at Pixelsurgeon). My kids love all his books. Today, Fantagraphics released Staake's latest book, Struwwelpeter, and it's his best work yet. The art (which Staake draws using his ancient copy of Adobe Photoshop 3.0!) is creepy and happy at the same time, which is my favorite kind.

Struwwelpeter is Staake's adaptation of Der Struwwelpeter, a teach-kids-morality-through-fear book written 160 years ago by Heinrich Hoffman. When Staake was a child, he was exposed to the original book's, and never forgot its frightening and gory illustrations of mayhem and punishment.

The "scissor scene" (top) from Hoffmann's original Struwwelpeter. This is the image that haunted Staake (and others) from childhood on -- and the power of the gruesome scene compelled Staake to reinterpret the Hoffmann classic in 2006.

Staake's Struwwelpeter is both a faithful adaptation of the original and an inspired reexamination. it's my favorite book of the year.

Be sure to check out the excellent website Staake made for the book, which contains many sample pages, and historical notes on the original book and its author. Link (courtesy of boingboing)

Hoosegow Honeys

A striking juxtaposition, wouldn't you agree? On the left is the very image of contrition: 21-year old Megan, held on a $25,000 bond for an unspecified probation violation. Why so glum, Meg? This will be a total bonus for a modeling career at Suicide Girls! In the middle is car-crazy Lacey, who embodies the very spirit of "this totally sucks" busted-ness. This vivacious 5' 4", 115 20-year old lists her hobbies as "grand theft auto," "resisting arrest," and "trying to make my $28,000 bond." Finally, on the right -- restoring our faith in the indominable human spirit -- is the unsinkable April. The authorities can charge this ebony temptress with probation violation and Schedule II drug possession, but they'll never take her hundred-watt smile!

Scary childhood stories

I finally got around to watching last week's episode of THE OFFICE.

I don't know whether to like this show or not. I feel like I'm laughing at real people. Every office stereotype represented on the show is related in my mind to a real person that I worked with at one time or another. The show is almost an existential play in the vein of Camus or Sartre.

Okay, enough overanalysis.

On this week's show, based around "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day", Office dweeb/hall monitor Dwight Shruete reads to the kids a story from "Strewwelpeter", a German book of morose kid's tales. A few years back I brought this up on our radio show and was amazed I wasn't the only kid who had long lasting nightmares on these politically incorrect tales of childhood warnings.

I can laugh at these stories now, but at the time, they scared the every loving crap out of me. This one scared me the worst of all, as I was a nail biter. But this one caused me the greatest anxiety.

Are their any storybooks you read as a kid that scared the crap out of you?

I thought this was all urban legend

Book about buying and selling human remains

Wired News reviews a book called Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains, which sounds fascinating:

In her book, Cheney travels from coast to coast, tracking the fates of the tens of thousands of dead bodies that end up in the "cadaver trade" each year. The corpses -- including those donated for medical research and those left unclaimed at morgues -- "are cut up into parts, not unlike chickens, and distributed through a complex network of suppliers, brokers and buyers," Cheney writes.

In Miami, she watches urological surgeons learn how to remove kidneys by poking into torsos in the Ocean Room of the Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort. In Gainesville, Florida, she takes a tour of a factory where crushed human bone is turned into precision-tooled orthopedic tools. And throughout, she finds plenty of people in the body-part business who really wish she'd go away.

Link

Homework

Your assignment this week is to stare at this picture for 2 hours and figure out what the hell this guy is talking about. Or even just the phrase "Gamut Point."

Flickr, Now A Music Video!

I love this song, and the video makes it work. Pure glurg.

Welcome Back, Biatch

USA Today reports that a film version of '70s TV series Welcome Back, Kotter is in the works. Here's your wacky, but not so surprising, twist...

Ice Cube will reprise Gabe Kaplan's title role.

$20 on Snoop as Horshack. He'll be in any movie. Build your own cast of hip-hop Sweathogs in the comments!

Meanwhile, Don Cheadle's been tapped for a Miles Davis biopic. That one's probably gonna be all serious-like.

I wish every show would do this

HBO.com has started posting a list of the music heard on The Sopranos. It's about time.

A movie I live

I know the cast will scare many of you away: Ryan Seacrest, Wilmer Valderrama (Fez from That 70's Show), Matt Siegel (MTV), and Maria Menounos, but I think I know the subject of this movie by name. I'd name him here, except I think he has web access at the library.

You may hear his voice on our show saying, "Good morning, how ya doin'!"

What Is Life

From defective yeti, comes this beautiful tale:

"It's the first sunny day Seattle has seen in a season, and a man in the park is doing tai chi. He performs some maneuvers slowly, methodically, concentrating on his every move. Then he settles cross-legged onto the grass and closes his eyes. His muscles go limp, the emotion drains from his face. He recedes into himself, severing his ties to our world, ridding himself of his Earthly burdens.

He reopens his eyes just as a pretty girl walks by. He cranes his neck to watch her pass. Suddenly the material plane ain't lookin' half bad."

Directors killed the video star

Nobody is safe: In the past 48 hours alone, death (and near-death) has afflicted fan-favorites on "The L Word," "24" and "The Sopranos." "In an already risky industry in which shows get canceled without notice," says the LA Times, "there is no such thing as job security for actors no matter how beloved their character or how long they have been playing him or her -- even on a hit show. The lack of character-centered dramas in film has allowed for a renaissance in television, but the 200-channel universe has made it tougher to hold the attention of the audience, so writers have had to raise the stakes. For stories that deal with terrorism, crime and even the supernatural, death often becomes a logical outcome."

The WHAMMY was the real star of the show

GSN pays tribute to Peter Tomarken
The "Press Your Luck" host, who died yesterday when his plane crashed into Santa Monica Bay, will be remembered on Sunday with a nine-hour marathon of the game show. Also, tonight GSN will re-air "Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal."

To laugh, or to cry constantly

When it comes to late night TV, I've always been a Letterman guy over Leno. (I know what you're thinking: "Jojo, you can't possibly be up that late!" I am. I'm an insomniac.)

But this article about Jay Leno apologizing hit home.

Many times when doing a radio show that is topical in nature I have said things that I wished I hadn't. They felt right at the time, and I was going for the laugh. 99.9 percent of you cut me some slack, maybe chuckle or cringe and move on. But when you get a letter from someone who was immediately impacted by the event you're commenting on, it can be soul crushing, even though your intent my not be evil.

When you're just looking for a laugh, to lighten up the bad news of the day, should you have to apologize? I'm curious as to what you think?

The Horror Ball

Another BoingBoing treat.

The HorrorBall is hands-down the grossest toy I've ever played with: it's a rubber skull filled with icky things -- worms, roaches, rats, etc -- and fake blood, with stretchy membranes over the eyeballs. When you squeeze them, the eyeballs bulge out into grotesque, distended spheres filled with squirming, blood-spattered crawlies. I bought two last weekend in Disneyland, and one of the people I was with couldn't even pick them up. They're awesome.

From BoingBoing comes this goofy item:

TurnYourHead is a service that makes custom-lathed dowels that contain your profile, like an MC Escher litho come to life, starring you, you, you. At Turn Your Head, we fill the space between two opposing profiles of your face. By spinning that space into a three dimensional "visage" that follows the outlined silhouettes of your two profiles, we create the "Pirolette".

Place the "Pirolette" to your face and it will match your profile. Locate it near a wall and the shadow of the "Pirolette" will be your silhouette.

Your profile captured forever in an object of art. An optical illusion of shadow and light, each one unique because it's you!

A joke

A woman was at her hairdresser’s getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded:

“Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It’s crowded and dirty. You’re crazy to go to Rome. So, how are you getting there?”

“We’re taking Continental,” was the reply. “We got a great rate!”
“Continental?” exclaimed the hairdresser. “That’s a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they’re always late.

So, where are you staying in Rome?”

“We’ll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome’s Tiber River called Teste.”

“Don’t go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks its gonna be something special and exclusive, but it’s really a dump, the worst hotel in the city! The rooms are small, the service is surly, and they’re overpriced.

So, whatcha’ doing when you get there?”

“We’re going to go to see the Vatican and we hope to see the Pope.”

“That’s rich,” laughed the hairdresser. “You and a million other people trying to see him. He’ll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You’re going to need it.”

A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.

“It was wonderful,” explained the woman, “not only were we on time in one of Continental’s brand new planes, but it was overbooked and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot. And the hotel was great!

They’d just finished a $5 million remodeling job and now it’s a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner’s suite at no extra charge!”

“Well,” muttered the hairdresser, “that’s all well and good, but I know you didn’t get to see the Pope.”

“Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I’d be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me.”

“Oh, really! What’d he say?”

He said: “Where’d you get the shitty hairdo?