A good deal of the spam I get is for Viagra or penis enlargers. Sure, I get a lot of prescription drug spam, the occasional female-targeted sex toy or breast-enlargement spam, but probably about 70% of the spam I get relates to the penis in some form or another.

Of late, I have been distressed at how crass some of this spam can get. "Rock hard cock," said one of them. Others were even more graphic. Not what I want to see in my inbox.

Today, however, I got the absolute sweetest Viagra spam ever. Really, compared to the other Viagra spam, it was like a love letter. "There's always the option of virility," suggested the subject line. Isn't that nice? It was so subtle. The sender's name was Sebastian Singh, and he sounded very calm and concerned about my erectile dysfunction. Not that I'm in the market, me not having a penis and all.

Speaking of spam, I've decided that if I do NaNoWriMo again, I'm going to name all my characters after spammers. In fact, the main character might just be Sebastian Singh.

8 comments | link

I started reading The Da Vinci Code the other night, and I must say I'm really getting into it. I'd like to point out, though, that some of Mr. Brown's facts may be incorrect. For instance, he says that you can make ninety-two words from the letters in the word planets. Today, with some help from Doug and Philip, I found one hundred and eight. I also thought of three more that might not be on our master list, so it could be as high as one hundred and eleven.

Actually, I didn't look, but I have it on good faith that the word builder out at scrabble.com came up with 166 of them. A far cry from a paltry ninety-two.

2 comments | link

Wow. The soapbox derby was so much fun. SO FUN! There were some really crazy cars out there, and I'm sad to say that although I had two cameras and a tripod with me, I only managed to take a few photos with the digital camera. I was too tired and having too much fun to worry about serious photography. Sometimes, that's just the way it goes.

As far as the soapbox cars are concerned, there was some amazing ingenuity on display. My friend Matthew's team was riding a contraption they call Zayabiis II. Zayabiis is reportedly a Russian word meaning "fuck yeah" or "fuck no," depending on the inflection. They did much better than expected and turned in presentable times, but didn't make it to the finals. They did let me ride down with them for the parade run at the end, and that was a whole lot of fun.

My favorite car was, sadly, the one that crashed off the side of the hill, taking out a hay bale and a child (who was reportedly fine, just a little scraped up). It was very sleek and well-engineered and insanely fast (which was probably the problem).

The road they raced down is like this: There's an S curve, and then a little straightaway and I think another little curve, and then there's a really long (180°), tight curve that is called "the learning curve". This is where things are most likely to go wrong. It was on this curve, right past the mid-point, that the car went off the road. Despite the fact that the driver was going head-first, he managed to walk away from the accident and wasn't hurt, as far as I know.

Okay, so aside from the huge crash, there were some other cool cars. There were two chickens -- one of them was really fast. It was fun to see a chicken flying down the road at breakneck speeds. There was also a car fashioned after a Winnebago, which was hilarious. They even had a sink in the thing and a spare tire on the back. They weren't very fast, though. There were quite a few others -- I'll have to find a link to someone who did a better job of taking photos and send you there. It's something you really must see to believe.

My friend Jessie and I, we're working on putting together an all-girl team next year to make us a Wonder Woman car. The plan for the moment is that we'll dress up like Wonder Woman and build us an invisible airplane. It will be SO COOL.

6 comments | link

I am so excited about the Portland Adult Soapbox Derby this weekend. It promises to be an amazing event, full of peril. I didn't know about the races last year, but did get to see the documentary, Nothin' But Excitement. Also, if my friend Matthew's performance is anywhere up to par with last year's three-wheeled bicycle, there should be some spectacular crashes. I have a feeling it will be: this year's contraption involves pogo sticks.

2 comments | link

If there's one thing Portlanders love, it's a good protest. If there's one thing they hate, it's George W. Bush. Today, the two are combined as Bush finds himself in the city his daddy dubbed 'Little Beirut'.

14 comments | link

The wheels of capitalism go round and round, round and round, round and round...

2 comments | link

If you're ever in a bowling alley and it catches on fire, run really really fast. The pins, it turns out, are made of maple (not bad) and coated with a very toxic plastic that will kill you within 24 hours if you inhale the fumes. So says Jerry at 20th Century Lanes. He gave us a tour of the bowling alley, and we got to check out the huge machines that handle the setting of the pins, the ball return, and all that good stuff. It's pretty neat stuff. Except for the part about the toxic bowling pins. Yikes!

8 comments | link

Ew. Tom sent me a link to potatobugs.com. I'm pretty sure they're actually aliens. It sounds like most people outside of California have never seen or even heard of potato bugs (or that's what they call sow bugs (a.k.a. pill bugs or roly polies)). But I'm here to tell you that big orange and black yucky crawly potato bugs really exist. And they're creepy as hell.

Speaking of time travel, have you heard about this John Titor chap from the future? Interesting reading in a 'what if' kind of way. Before you all accuse me of being gullible, I'll state that I don't necessarily believe it's true. It is fun to think about, though. I totally want to time travel when I get older and then meet myself and freak me out. That would be so cool.

11 comments | link

Dear Bread and Cereal Group,

You are my favorite. If I had to pick just one food group to last me the rest of my life, it would be you. I would miss Fruit and Vegetables Group, sure, but you are the substance in my diet. You are what makes eating worthwhile.

You, Bread and Cereal Group, are the best. The absolute best. I know that Meat Group has been rather haughty in the past, but don't let Meat Group bully you. You've got it all over him. As for Dairy Group, puh-leeze. Dairy Group is seriously wimpy -- it's all you Bread and Cereal Group, hands down.

You've even inspired me to poetry, in the form of (what else?) haiku:

wheat, sourdough, rye
french loaf, butter top, pre-sliced
love you best as toast

open a fresh box
cheerios, crispix, and chex
yummy without milk

Love,
Rebecca

8 comments | link

Ruben, I'll tell you more about Portland later, but in the meantime, I'll merely state that Portland really does tend to attract people like this.

Also, one of the weekly local papers asked Portland authors to write about Portland. This is what they had to say. I especially like Zoe Trope's love letter to Portland, but she makes references to a lot of things you might not know about if you've never been to this fair city.

And, Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon just came out. It was written by Chuck Palahniuk, who is probably best known for writing Fight Club. At the beginning of F&R, Palahniuk recounts a discussion he had with Katherine Dunn (author of Geek Love). Here's a little exerpt:

Katherine's theory is that everyone looking to make a new life migrates west, across America to the Pacific Ocean. Once there, the cheapest city where they can live is Portland. This gives us the most cracked of the crackpots. The misfits among misfits.

"We just accumulate more and more strange people," she says. "All we are are the fugitives and refugees."

15 comments | link

Congratulations to Meghan and Nick! They just got engaged, and will be getting married next summer. Way to go, you two!

1 comment | link

Some things you should know about if you live in or near Portland:

• Krispy Kreme is here, at long last. It's only been, like, four years since they started talking about it. Not sure why they picked Clackamas, though.
• Wil Wheaton will be at the Powell's in Beaverton on Wednesday, August 13th to promote his book, Dancing Barefoot.
• And, of course, Celebrity Shoes for Orphans makes a stop in Tigard. Okay, I like shoes, but, well, this just seems stupid. (But stupid for a good cause, I guess.)

4 comments | link

So, I've been reading some of the letters on Real Ultimate Power, and they reminded me of the letters on Black People Love Us. So many of the letters surprise me -- how can people get so worked up over these things, which are clearly jokes?

See, I guess I was of the impression that the web surfing audience generally has a finely tuned sense of irony, and that sites like this are funny and harmless. If anything, I think Black People Love Us makes a pretty good point about the different kinds of racism that can exist, even when people think they're being cool (or especially then).

What do you think? Some of the letters I've read make pretty heavy claims about what kind of content people should put on their websites. Others think web sites should include disclaimers -- to what extent do you think this is true? Should people have to dumb down their jokes, or point them out just because others don't get it? In the case of Real Ultimate Power, a woman wrote in stating that her sons flipped out after reading the site and one of them injured another. Is this the fault of the web site, or bad parenting skills? Where does the ability to present something as a joke end and moral responsibility begin?

10 comments | link

Ninjas are totally sweet. Which reminds me: the absolute best part of Pirates of the Carribean was the stealthy ninja zombie pirates. (Well, ninja like anyhow). How cool was that?

6 comments | link

So when's the stupid economy going to get better? Anybody? I mean, it was fine for awhile, when it was all new and it didn't seem like anybody would be out of work for that long. But now... I'm tired of seeing my friends put out of jobs, I'm tired of worrying about my own job. Of course, there's nothing I can do and complaining doesn't help, but what else can I do? Anyway, as you may have guessed, there were layoffs at work last week. We're down to five people in the Portland office -- used to be ten and will soon be four. Damnit.

4 comments | link

I had a great time at my mom's 50th birthday party. We stayed at Coram Ranch with about 30 other people who showed up to wish my mom a happy one. It was a weekend-long event on the other side of the Shasta Dam, right by the Sacramento River in Northern California.

One of the highlights for me was getting to see the band play. This is the band that my dad used to play with when I was a kid, so my sister and I grew up listening to them. They were called Savannah back then, but that was somewhere around sixteen years ago. For the weekend, they set up on the front porch of one of the houses where we all stayed. It was great to hear them play again, and they even took a few requests from Brooke and me because they're cool like that.

Above is a photo of the band, the only one I took that has all of them in it. There are more photos of the band and the party here. You'll notice that it was raining pretty hard, but that didn't stop us from having a great time -- it was a nice, warm summer rain that actually felt really good.

Aside from the band, it was just really good to spend time with so many of the people my parents have been friends with for forever. In a lot of ways, I think of them as the kids I grew up with, since my mom was pretty young when she had us and often dragged us along when she went out to play with them. They tell some pretty good stories about my mom, who was a bit wild in her youth (which still hasn't ended, as far as I can tell).

Good times, good times.

2 comments | link

Despite the temperatures, I'm having a lovely time in Chico (due entirely to the fact that my family and my friends are a lot of fun to visit with). It's amazing how easy it is to acclimate back. Yesterday, I was thinking how much it had cooled down -- only 98°! Of course, it's been pretty hot in Portland, too, so I'm actually better off here. At least in Chico, everybody has air conditioning. The trick is to stay indoors as much as possible and walk slowly when you can't. I forgot how slowly everything moves when it's that hot out. It's kind of a nice, lazy pace. The word 'languid' comes to mind.

Today, I'm off for the Lake Shasta area for my mom's 50th birthday party. Should be tons o' fun!

no comments | link