Wow. This is so almost, isn’t it? The joke is just hanging right out of reach, and I’m too tired to jump for it.

(Via Lady, That’s My Skull.)

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Chocolate meets peanut butter. Lightning hits Frankenstein. Bonzo meets Page.

Every so often the universe conspires to bring together disparate awesome elements that combine into something so incredible that the brain’s pleasure centers hemorrhage with white, blinding joy. This video for Zombie Zombie’s “Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free” is a deep soul tickle from God’s favorite finger. It’s an homage to John Carpenter’s “The Thing” — both the movie AND the soundtrack — reenacted with G.I. Joe figures. The song is rocking, repetitive and minimalist earworm, and the video, well … have a look for yourselves.

You can see a sharper, higher-res version here.

This would be one of the best scenes in Carpenter’s film, an absolute motherload of surprise, suspense, and incredible special effects.

It’s always cracked me up, the way that head skitters away like that. Happy Friday, friends.

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I’m one of those people who tries to keep my Inbox relatively clean.  I fail miserably, but at least I want it to be more uncluttered than it is, and I think that aspiration counts for something.  However, one battle front on which I am an unequivocal victor is that of the Spam folder.  I manually delete that shit before Gmail even has the chance to do it for me.  When empty, the Spam folder displays the text “Hooray, no spam here!” and I think, “You’re goddamn right there isn’t.”

But once in a while, the universe sees fit to bestow upon me a piece of electronic junk mail so wonderful and perfect, so beautifully off-kilter in either its subject line or content, that it gives pause to my ‘delete’ finger.  Case in point, this message that I received yesterday:

Such a simple and perfect non-sequitur.

Or is it?

One day later, I received this little nugget from a different address:

Holy christ!
What seemed at first like total random word generation has suddenly turned into a somewhat linear pseudo-narrative!  Whatever the fuck nekkid Britney did in that video to expose the secret trifecta has apparently caused her untimely demise, and set off a chain of events that will undoubtedly lead to the King of Pop having one of his plastic ears bitten off on pay-per-view. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for the next installment of this saga to get caught in my mail filters.

(NOTE: Yes, I blurred the links. And I deleted the messages after I took the screenshots.  If we click on spam links, even in the name of investigative internet comedy-journalism, then the terrorists have won.  Besides, whatever they linked to could never be as good as the stories y’all are forming right now.)

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Muppets performing gangster rap … it never, ever gets old for me. Here’s the Muppets doing M.O.P’s “Ante Up”:

More impressively, here’s the Showbiz Pizza furry robot house band performing Usher’s “Love In This Club”:

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Here it is, half-past 2 pm on a workday and my fly is ALL the way down. Again. I can’t even remember the last time I went to the bathroom here at the office, but it was definitely before lunch. I can, however, remember the last time this happened.

Yesterday.

And definitely a time or two last week, too. It happens to the best of us, but still. At least twice a week since I started this job, I’ve looked down midway through the afternoon to see the zipper on my suit pants gaping open like a grey and hungry Venus Flytrap.

I have absolutely no explanation for this. I’ve been zipping up my pants for thirty-some years now, so it’s not likely that I’ve started forgetting that particular task. I’m not sure that it’s the pants, either. Honestly, I don’t know what it is. I’ve got two suits, one grey and one black — one for laundry days and Fridays, one for the other times — and zipper lightning strikes them both right in the crotch without honor or pity.

Still, it could be worse.

I was in the cafeteria yesterday assembling my lunch at the salad bar when I switched directions unexpectedly, mistaking tofu for chicken cubes and fixing it when I bumped into a woman in line behind me. I’d guess she was just past her first promotion in the marketing department for one of my company’s cooler media properties. She wore brilliant white pants, pants that perfectly matched two rows of blinding shiny Chiclets in her smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” she said. “I made the same mistake yesterday. Enjoy your lunch!” she said, smiling, and turned to walk away, stopping to wave at some friends on her way to the elevators.

When she turned, I saw the copper-colored streak creeping up the back of her perfect white pants. It spread slowly, a Rorshach blot that every lady reads as her worst nightmare.

I was able to grab her just before she got on the elevator. “Uh, I think you’ve sat in something,” I said. “It’s urgent.”

She blushed and said “Oh God. Thank you so much,” backed her way onto the elevator and vanished. Then I noticed my zipper, right as a crowd of people came around the corner.

That’s how it goes. You think you’re so cool, so put together with your unassailable public armor on. Then it turns out you’re the king of a crumbled castle and everyone knows it but you.

There’s this guy in my neighborhood. He’s an older guy, maybe in his sixties — always dressed sharp in creased slacks, a guyabera and a fedora. He stands as tall as his posture will allow. Age is creeping in, but he’s ramrod-straight, always looks you in the eye when he says “hello.” And he always says “hello.” He’s got a really, really large fatty tumour on the side of his face.

Like this, but much bigger. I’d say the side of his face is at least a C-cup. But there he is, walking upright, looking people in the eye, taking that walk all the same.

We’ve all got flaws. Big ones, most of us. They’re like scars for the soul, the spirals that give our personalities their fingerprints. So what’s better, really … primping and preening up a big lie about how slick you are and having everyone else see the truth? Or just getting that tumour out in the sunshine and tanning that thing until you’re laughing in your coffin?

My fly’s still down, and it’s staying down. And when I get bored I’m going to feed that hungry flytrap bits of burger meat, just to see what happens.

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I lived in Baltimore for a couple of years after grad school, so when someone sent me this video, it truly warmed my heart: (NSFW)

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This story appeared on here a while ago in a slightly different form. I’m working on it to perform at The Moth, but figured it would go okay on here …

The keyboard players in my band were spacier than Sun Ra, more abstract than John Coltrane and brought more sheer, squalid anarchy to the stage than GG Allin and the Sex Pistols combined. When they weren’t playing music they were either feeding, fighting, or shitting on the floor – and they managed to do a lot of that onstage, too. But they didn’t just act like barnyard animals, they were barnyard animals: the keyboard players in my band were two chickens named Kitty Wells and Patsy Cline.

I played percussion on a modified vintage typewriter miked up loud enough to sound like the thunder of an angry God. At that volume, the space bar and shift keys rumbled like a kick drum, and the letter keys snapped like a tight snare. My friend Tim Gordon (the band’s other human being) played the guitar and bass semi-simultaneously, wearing the guitar up by his collarbone and the bass slung low at his hips – he’d loop the bass notes through a pedal and play rhythm guitar against himself while I thumped and cracked the typewriter. Once we hit a stride of sorts, we’d pull a blanket off the top of the cage where Kitty Wells and Patsy Cline sat with two little Casio Keyboards.
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Continuing our love-fest for extraordinarily costumed people in ordinary settings, we bring you the Land of the Free series from UK-based portrait and documentary photographer Steve Schofield:

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I didn’t used to understand why BoingBoing posted unicorn chasers and cute stuff after high controversy, but now I totally get it. There’s been far, far more outrage over this whole coffee incident than the incident merited. Sure, I behaved badly and stirred the pot, and for a little while I thought it was funny. Now that everyone involved’s completely embarassed themselves, it’s time to move on and just look at something cute before getting back to work:

The photo comes from Gwen Turner Juarez’s Flickr stream, and it’s far from the only good one on there.

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Maybe condescending service from a patronizing millenial at a DC coffee shop isn’t news to anyone else. But the only way I’m ever coming back to Murky Coffee in Arlington is if I’m carrying matches and a can of kerosene.

I just ordered my usual summertime pick-me-up: a triple shot of espresso dumped over ice. And the guy at the counter looked me in the eye with a straight face and said “I’m sorry, we can’t serve iced espresso here. It’s against our policy.”

The whole world turned brown and chunky for a second. Flecks of corn floated past my pupils, and it took me a second to blink it all away.

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