She's really excited about her gasoline

She's not even the driver.

Like dyslexics don't have it hard enough

Raised letters? Really?

A neighborhood mystery solved?

I may have mentioned that we have some crappy neighbors at the old house. My pal Samir moved out in the summer of 2008, and it was purchased for use as a rental. The first round of tenants were painfully hip and occasionally rowdy, but generally tolerable. Their replacements.... well, they're something else. They've had a car up on blocks since they arrived in November. They used to pile up garbage and junk outside. They've got some weird pavilion set up on the front lawn. It's the sort of thing that makes you want a HOA (which the new neighborhood has). They have 2 adults and 6 kids between 2 and 14 living in a 1700 sf 4-bedroom. It's nuts.

Anyway. That's not the mystery. For a few weeks, we've been hearing some kind of engine coming from their garage. I've been wondering what it is. Since the man of the house is something of a fixer, I figured it was an air compressor for running pneumatic tools. Still, it was strange how often it was on. At night, for instance, or when nobody seemed to be home. How much compressed air does one man need?

The other day, as we were cleaning out the old house, I heard a clue, perhaps the only necessary clue. A friend of theirs that I'd seen before came to visit. As I was throwing away trash (trying to set a good example) or something like that, I overheard the friend ask a single question (imagine the appropriate Texas redneck accent): "So whaddya'll gotta do to get the electricity turned back on?"

Trophy wife as described by Wikipedia

The term trophy wife appeared in a 1950 issue of The Economist magazine. It referred to the historical practice of warriors capturing the most beautiful women during battle to bring home as wives, even if most modern trophy wives are acquired through other means.

source

My new favorite web comic

You may enjoy it like I do.

If only I had seen this sooner...

 

We've already put our deposits down on the new house, sadly. No minimum! No reserve!

In other news, I don't quite fit The Economist's target demographic.

See anything wrong here?

 

Give it a moment.

Doesn't that mean "senior citizen?"

 

Elderly became senior citizen is now becoming active adult (going by the billboards I see). So kids need to be watched by someone 65 years or older. Or maybe it means that 65-year olds on the play equipment need to be supervised. That makes more sense.

This doesn't seem like the best idea

 

Cheeky ad in the Economist

 

The play set for the children of the corn

 

I saw this at Academy. Check out the creepy children. What were they thinking?

A joke from north of the border

How do you get a group of rowdy Canadians out of a pool?

Say: "Please come out of the pool."

The #1 rule in real estate

I've been eyeballing the local housing market lately in anticipation of a move sometime in the next 18 months. I came across a rather nice looking house just outside our search area. It was reasonably priced, (too) large, and nicely appointed. A big plus was that it was new construction; you generally have to go pretty far out for that in Austin. Then I looked a little closer:


View Larger Map

What you're looking at is David Weekley's demo house. Rather, houses plural. See, they decided to build a couple of houses in a prime location in Austin to showcase their designs, amenities, etc. Basically a house showroom. They built two of them adjacent to each other. For easy access, they built them right on the feeder road of a major highway (spin the street view), and not far from another major highway. The houses are surrounded by massive parking lots, and ringed with strip malls and commercial real estate (my first full-time job was just a stone's throw away). The nearest other residences are on the other side of the highway behind a bunch of business. There's no neighborhood, nothing. It's just two adjoining houses smack dab in the middle of a bunch of strip malls (zoom out to see).

I can imagine someone finding this house on Trulia and not looking at the listing page too closely. I imagine them noting the address, then going for a drive by. And then the jaw dropping. What are they thinking? Who could possibly want that house there? It's hilariously awful.

You ain't got no horns, boy

Back in around 2003, I would regularly see this one distinctive car around Austin every few months. Then for a long time I didn't see it. Until yesterday. I saw it across the street as I was leaving the office. I wish I'd had my camera. Luckily, someone else with a camera saw it. What makes this car so special? Take a look. Only in Texas.

Amazon oops

Screenshot.

My wishes are a lot more elaborate

 

I guess I'm doomed to disappointment.

Baby food idea

One of the baby food books we have suggests one odd possible food for 8-month old babies: cooked parsley. Can you imagine the look on a baby's face after getting a mouthful of parsley? I mean, what the...

Working weekends at The Economist

I used to get issues of The Economist pretty regularly on Fridays. Now... not so much. I guess there's just too much that happens during the week for a Wednesday night/Thursday morning publishing deadline. Now, well, now I don't get it until Monday, sometimes even Tuesday. And since this crisis is 7 days a week, not 5, even that doesn't help, because the issue is often still obsolete by the time I get it. Those poor guys.

Sarah Palin is just like someone you know

The thing I find fascinating is that Sarah Palin was originally popular because people could relate to her as someone they knew from their everyday lives: the bubbly, over-achiever hockey mom who really gets involved in the community. Why she's fallen, hard, is that people realized she was in fact another person they knew from their everyday lives: that crazy mom who turns even the PTA into an insane obsessive power-play and forms weird hostile rivalries she executes through byzantine yet childish plots, seasoned with a dash of Fear of Anything Different.

source

Oxymoron?

 

Hint: it's what's next to the logo on the main label.

Fail Blog

From the makers of I Can Has Cheezburger, the Fail Blog. Adults only. I especially liked Bambi, Air Conditioning, Sophistication, Playground, and Belt, and that's just from the first 3 pages.

Carl Lewis, Olympian

No, Tanya with an 'a'

There is a Tanya Harding on the Australian Olympic women's softball team. I wonder if she carries her bat around in case anyone makes a stupid joke. People always think they're the first ones to notice.

A lovely shot of Hillary Clinton

Taken from this article.

I've always wondered if the media uses pictures like that to show people who's really in control. There are too many unfortunate photographs that appear in the media for it to be anything but intentional. On the other hand, the NY Times doesn't seem likely to take shots at Hillary Clinton, given she's one of New York's senators, and they endorsed her in the primary...

The Economist on Senator Jim Webb

"He looks like an angry potato."

p.46, June 21, 2008 issue.

How many islands?

How many islands does Thousand Island Lake (in California) have? According to Wikipedia, "many."

I am neurotic

Are you neurotic? I won't tell you which ones, if any, are mine, although I'll cop to this one someone else submitted.

I did not submit my constant anagramming, as I consider that a compulsion rather than a neurosis. I did not submit but you will note in this post my inability to quote someone else's spelling errors without interjecting "(sic)."

I know some of you will read this and wonder how there are so many weird people out there. I also know some of you will read that list and think, "pfft, they think they're neurotic?"

Some that I liked (some excerpted... some not):

• 
  When I have to ask for directions and the location is fairly obvious, I'm always embarrassed. To avoid the humiliation, I ask in a British accent so my incompetence is socially accepted.
  


• 
  ...It’s not a germ or hygiene issue, but some deep violation of the symbiotic relationship between a man and his pen.
  


• 
  I have reoccurring (sic) dreams about my mouth being full of an unending amount of hair clippings....
  


• 
  When I eat Starburst, I can only eat them in the following order: yellow, orange, pink and red. I stop eating once I’ve run out of enough candies to complete the pattern.
  


• 
  Someone once told me they HATE the sound of dry toilet paper rubbing together. Now, this sound chafes me to the core and I’m afraid that after reading this blog, I’m going to develop all the neuroses that I read. Please help.
  


• 
  ...I cannot fall asleep if my ears are exposed.
  


• 
  Pain that I can’t see is CANCER
  


• 
  I have an imaginary key board on my hands... when I am anxious, stressed, in an intense conversation, etc.- I will fixate on one particular word, and type it on my fake key board over and over again...
  


• 
  I can’t use the bathroom (even my own) without checking to make sure no one is hiding in the shower. Crap. Now I'm going to do this.
  


• 
  I don’t like eating food that is softer than it looks. Like gnocci (sic). You expect some resistance, but it’s just mushy. It gives me a headache.
  


• 
  I am convinced that if I focus hard enough, I can actually cause an earthquake...
  


• 
  I am completely petrified of colonial times. This includes both the civil and revolutionary wars as well as any and all references to butter churning and red coats and their impending arrival...
  


• 
  When I ride in a car and there are lots of consecutive trees or perhaps a forest, I can’t look at the trees for too long for fear that my eyes are going to get poked out.
  


• 
  My favorite: When I was little, I would apologize to my stuffed animals if I dropped them or something, so they wouldn’t kill me in my sleep. I also tried to evenly divide my attention among them so no one got lonely or jealous, and tried to kill me in my sleep.
  

intimidation tip

"The Senior Partner does not share your optimism." I am convinced that slightly modified Darth Vader quotes are a badly under leveraged asset. I have been using them, and I think with good effect.

I recently found The Sardonic Memoirs of a Private Equity Professional. I quite enjoy it. Your mileage may vary, depending on how mean you are and whether you have a subscription to "The Economist." She thinks Guy Kawasaki is a tool, so points for that.

kudos for the pun

The collapse of an underground salt dome earlier this week is starting to eat away at Daisetta, TX. Some residents have begun calling it "the Sinkhole de Mayo." Whoever came up with that deserves the Nobel Prize, or at least the Medal of Freedom. Never mind that it didn't happen exactly on May 5th.

the midnight golfer

Back when "MadTV" was funny (really, it happened), they aired this classic skit:

twuirrel

A bird-feeder with a twist: when it detects the weight of a squirrel, a motor starts it a-spinnin':



Things didn't go quite as planned, though. They learned to hang on, and they liked it: