BPDW.COM » Unintentionally

BEST BUY: The Text Adventure

Britain — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:16:09 +0000

I feel this Best Buy pricing phenomenon is best described in the terms of an Infocom text game:

> LOOK
You are at a Best Buy. There is a Blueshirt and 3 Memory Cards here.

> LOOK BLUESHIRT
A thin trail of spittle glistens on his chin.

> KILL BLUESHIRT
You heartless bastard. Just look at the memory cards.

> LOOK MEMORY CARDS
They are all Sandisk SD memory cards. One is 2GB, one is 4GB, and one is 2GB Ultra High Speed. Which one is the most expensive?

> TAKE 4GB
Wrong. It’s on sale for $24.99 this week.

> TAKE 2GB ULTRA
Also wrong — it’s on sale for $19.99 this week.

> TAKE 2GB REGULAR SPEED
Hey-ooo, big spender! $26.99!

> INVENTORY
You haven’t bought it yet.

> CHECK OUT
The clerk rings you up and offers you a 3-year Protection Plan for… $26.99.

> SOUTH
You are at the exit. There is a yellow shirt here and a gate. The yellowshirt asks to see your receipt.

> SAY “I KNOW MY RIGHTS”
You are forcibly removed from the store. Local police are called, refuse to arrest, but bemusedly ask you why you didn’t just show them the damned receipt.

Abort, Retry, Fail?
>IGNORE

Okay, this kind of wandered a bit, but you get the idea.

Tags: money, SD, retail

Wet cats - a set on Flickr

Britain — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:51:22 +0000

Wet cats - a set on Flickr

There are probably more of these, this is just the first one I noticed… oh wait, here’s the motherlode!

Totalli Knorrli Dude

Britain — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:18:49 +0000

Some companies design their mascots from the get-go to look like a man in a suit. When I was a kid, the Putt-Putt mascot “Buster Ball” was a particularly solid example of this, with arms too short to hold a putter. As Happy Gilmore might suggest, he was too good for his home.

Knorrli, pictured here, is the spokessprite for Knorr soup in Europe. Seems harmless enough, doesn’t he? Imagine running into him in your favorite supermarket.

Heaven help you Switzerlanders if The Laughing Cow ever decides to do a victory lap.

Cheer Up, VIacom.

Britain — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:49:03 +0000

It’s kind of like Viacom is her next-door neighbor who yelled at her to turn down her stereo.

On The Hunt For The Extra Letter on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Britain — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:06:29 +0000

Test.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Britain — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:36:04 +0000

Did you ever hear of me screwing?
No, I spend my money like a man.
- William Makepeace Thackeray, “The Newcomes“

Me, I’m a pimp / I ain’t payin’ for no sex
Man, I’d rather buy a car / Or a new Rolex
- Li’l Flip, “Like a Pimp“

Sioux City’s Airport Code is SUX

Britain — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:42:59 +0000

The Associated Press: After Fight, Airport Embraces SUX Code

This really should be Atlanta’s airport code, amirite? No disrespect intended to the ATL, but that fishbone-shaped airport is like the parallel circles of hell.

Photo of the Week?

Britain — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:58:27 +0000

For a few more days, you can see my mug over on the StudentNation page at thenation.com. After that, you can still see it on flickr, or right here in the header.

I’m not sure why they picked me exactly, I’m guessing it’s for the book I was holding. Either that or they really like fluorescent lighting, over there at The Nation.

Many more attractive library staff than I are featured with more classical examples of banned and challenged books. Most of the “good ones” were already taken by the time I got in on the project. In fact, another librarian is seen in the series with the very same copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook, on a table, as if to say “I will begin smashing this bigoted power structure right after I finish ‘Song of Solomon.’”

I halfway thought about posing with a copy of Howard Stern’s autobiography, featured on the ALA list, but I gave my copy away years ago and wasn’t sure I even wanted to be seen with a naked portrait of the King of All Media. Then I discovered that we keep a copy of the Cookbook tucked away on the seventh floor of the Hatcher. So I dashed upstairs and got the presiding Special Collections librarian to snap the photo.

The page I am reading was some kind of recipe for homemade soup. It’s not just a title, there are actual cooking recipes in the Anarchist’s Cookbook, which intrigues me. I probably know most of the homemade weapons instructions already from the Internet anyway.

Daddytypes.com, the Robb Report for New Dads.

Britain — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 05:08:31 +0000

In a spellbinding display of arrogance, Greg Daddytypes offers a dollar — no, make it two — to his readers who are presumably too cheap to buy his preferred brand of bodysuit. As for me, If I’mma afford a five-hundred-dollar stroller to load into my Audi A6 Avant, something’s going to have to give. I nominate the quickly outgrown and easily disposable ~~onesie~~ ~~bodysuit~~ spit-up formula catcher.

You know what, DaddyTypes.com? My New Year’s Resolution was to slim down the number of RSS feeds in my NetNewsWire, and… New Year’s just came! Keep your two dollars. Babycenter may not be powered by MovableType, but at least it’s given the wife advice she can use and a place to trade Enfamil coupons.

For those keeping track, this takes me down to 120 feeds. =(

UPDATE July 11, 2007: Daddytypes actually really took it to the upscale-baby-furniture folks today. Yes, this means I’m reading it after all.

technorati tags: baby, blogs, wantlist

Your humble correspondent listens to too much talk radio

Britain — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 03:58:39 +0000

I feel compelled to note East Bay, a condominium community in Walled Lake. They have made awesomely cheesy radio spots which run relentlessly on the local irreverent talk-radio station. In the East Bay Village of the ads, the guys are all incredibly excited to be living so close to Walled Lake and are particularly jazzed about the volleyball court and the hot tub. Meanwhile, the women residents are near-catatonic, particularly with regard to “all. the. hot. guys.” that live in the neighborhood.

Everyone, however, is just delighted that they don’t have to live in Royal Oak, when Walled Lake is so close to Somerset, downtown Detroit, Michigan Stadium, and possibly the Outer Hebrides. [Yes, Bob Shuman is fond of noting that "Walled Lake is ten minutes from everywhere and five minutes from you," but come on. I drive through Walled Lake nearly every day, and it is a rather convenient location, but let's not get carried away. The closest Starbucks are still in the three towns bordering Walled Lake, although I suspect a Domino's may be on the verge of opening. Not that I'm saying that these are the superior choices, just widely accepted standards.]