What brand?

Name Brand, of course.

from ilovebacon.com, dumb but fun.

"The last of the Little Guys"

Menlove Toyota Scion of Bountiful, Utah.

Giggle appropriately.

The Log Driver's Waltz

A little bit of nostalgia for a Sunday morning.
I remembered this short while listening to Rufus this morning and poking around on wikipedia and discovering that his mom is Canadian folk singer Kate McGarigle, who's name I remember from seeing this short animation hundreds of times growing up watching the CBC. I still remember all the words to the song. Now I need to go watch The Cat Came Back and all my other favorite National Film Board of Canada shorts, and of course the entire Hinterland Who's Who series.

Awaiting the coming of the Brown Man

A quiet afternoon around the plant, hardly anyone was around after 4, which gave me plenty of time to take some shots while waiting around for the UPS guy.

The reviled Budweiser sign, a garish reminder that even in our city of roses and good beer choices, the big "B" can still throw around enough cash to get this ugly advertisement for their mass produced malt beverage that always turns me into an angry drunk. Don't know what it is, no other beer makes me angry, just the self proclaimed "king of beers." This building used to be a shaped like a giant milk bottle. Up until a few years ago it held an awesome old 7-Up sign that I can't seem to find a picture of.

The Banfield Motel. I think this place used to be "The Dunes." How exotic...

Ever wonder how numbers get on sports jerseys? Here you go!

A rainbow of ink.

Is this where little semi tractors come from?

Ahoy!

A couple of signs from the Swan Island (which is actually a peninsula) boat ramp that I found interesting and entertaining, in that order.

This map of Portland's navigable waterways is quite weathered and crude, but still awesome. Watch out for those "pile dikes!"


This stick figure has replaced "guy busting his ass on a wet floor" as my new favorite. We'll call him "asshole in a little boat who just got himself in a whole mess of trouble." I love how the barge is labeled "barge." By the way little stick figure dude, barges stop just slightly quicker than trains, you just keep waving your spindly little arms, don't bother steering your maneuverable little boat out of the path of that barge.

While Disapproving Rabbits might be the most well known of all disapproving animals, (they have their own book for god's sake) I think this picture of disapproving Mortimer might just start a new internet meme of the week.

Lasagna Cat

I've watched all 28 of these videos from Lasagna Cat and I want more! What is it that I find brilliant about them? Here's the synopsis, each clip begins with a Garfield strip recreated in creepy bizarre live action, followed by a rimshot and laughtrack. Then comes the "tribute to Jim Davis" music montage. I can't get enough. Weird funny shit. Here's my four favorites...
You can watch them all on YouTube, or if you prefer quicktime, watch them from their website. Just watch them!

Nude Hiking PDX

By coincidence, a combination of a couple old posts on Sellwood Street have generated a bit of traffic searching for "Nude Hiking PDX." Here's an abbreviated Nude Hiking PDX guide for all you folks stumbling across my humble blog.
Oregon is one of the more nudity friendly states, the girls can take their tops off pretty much anytime they want, and if dancing around a pole the full bush can show, even if there's alcohol in the room. That's just how progressive we are in the beaver state.
<>
As for outdoor nudity, at least with my experiences in Portland, this seems to mostly interest older gay men. We've got the spot for you! Rooster Rock State Park, about a half hour east of Portland in the Columbia River Gorge has a clothing optional beach, although it seems more like a few miles of clothing optional hiking trails, which is cool in its own right. There's plenty of nude beaches, but how many nude hiking trails are there?
My experience while looking for a place to swim at this park was mostly puzzled looks from the naked dudes cruising around looking for other naked dudes, watching my straight clothed friend and I try to find the river, where we actually planned to get nekkid, but walking around in the woods just seemed too uncomfortable and scratchy.
As a gay man, I was fully aware of what we'd stumbled onto, I'm not sure if my straight buddy was, but the adorable idea that that one space we stumbled onto that kinda looked like a spot where a deer had smashed down the grass and made it into a bed was kinda shattered by the condom wrappers strewn about...
Appropriately enough, the name "Rooster Rock" is actually Oregon State Park shorthand for "Cock Rock," the original name of the stone monolith the park is named after.

If actual swimming is your chosen naked activity, as is mine, you'll find Collins Beach more suitable and less creepy. One of my favorite places, out on the north east side of Sauvie Island, quite a trip from the city, but worth it on a hot summer night in Portland. Sure, you're swimming near the end of the Columbia, in the drainage of Idaho, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, an international slurry of industrial and nuclear waste, Just try not to open your mouth unless you really have to. The water doesn't seem worse than any farm pond I've swam in, actually the water seems surprisingly clean and fresh and cold.
The southern portion of the beach is more family oriented, with volleyball courts and kids running around. I love the pantsed vs unpantsed matches of volleyball here. Hilarious!
Head a little farther north down the river and you'll encounter the less family friendly portion of the beach. This is my favorite section of beach, this is where there's more drinking, more small groups spreading out, and a few perverts lurking in the brush. If you see some dude spanking it while looking at you, feel flattered and walk away, no need to confront them. That's how Collins Beach works...
Hope this little tutorial on "Naked Hiking PDX" has been helpful.

mmm... fried

I don't like to get political on the internets, and this post isn't really.
I find Mike Huckabee to be a frightening, bible beating, end-times-is-near bigot, but this clip is just so endearing. I too have eaten squirrel, and found it to be quite tasty. We didn't have it on a regular basis, dad usually gave away the squirrels he shot during squirrel season to various neighbors or family, but every now and then Mom would fry one up, and it was good.
It irks me a little to see these national cable news reporters make such a big deal out of it. Although cooking squirrel on a popcorn popper is quite strange, I don't think he deserved that reaction. Maybe I'm just over sensitive because of my redneck past, but even this lefty gives him a break on this one, even if he is a kooky kristian.

Sign Down! Sign Down!

This intersection has always been weird, I remember being confounded by it on one of my first experiences driving around Portland. This is one of at least two Portland intersections where you're instructed to veer right into a special turn lane that allows you to cross the street you just veered off of instead of making a left turn. (Difficult to explain, but it makes sense once you're there.) When the "Sandy Boulevard Resurfacing and Streetscape Project" was finished, this big green sign that tells the driver how to make a right in order to make a left turn onto 4oth ave hung into the street by a good 6 inches. I don't know if it always did, but I really noticed it after all the construction cleared up. Well, it hangs into the street no more. A big white box truck (much like the one I drive) saw to that the other day. I saw the truck signal right to turn off Sandy, and as I started to pass it, I heard a loud bang and slammed on the brakes, thinking I sideswiped a car or something. I look in my rear view just in time to see this sign going down like a fir tree. Seems that truck clipped it at about 10 mph, it didn't even leave more than a slight scratch on the truck, but this sign went down. I stopped to see if everything was ok (and to gawk and take pics). Truck driver dude called the city and reported a sign down, but they didn't seem too concerned about it, the dispatcher just passed the word onto the maintenance crew. It was still down like a wounded soldier when I drove by there this morning. Something you don't see everyday. The sheep in the Starbucks across the street were amused, and the employees at Kinko's and Radio Shack all got a good laugh, so at least a little good came of it.

Balls

It seems ever since adolescence, when sitting around bullshitting with friends, even before we discovered intoxicating substances, the subject of building an adult sized ball pit like at Chuck-E-Cheese has come up every now and then. Perhaps it all started that day when I was 16 and found myself arguing with a McDonald's manager that the sign only specifies a minimum height one must be to enter the ball pit, and says nothing about a maximum height, and for some reason they just couldn't understand my point...
Anyway, some folks at xkcd actually had the followthrough and the funding to do it. So did some folks at last.fm. The results are just about what you'd expect, lots and lots of fun!

Also see this vaguely related video from Italy that just happens to be making the internet rounds at the same time as these ball pit stories. Not sure what its all about since its all in Italian, but balls are fun.

"That's America to me"

Things you just can't make up...
I can't think of a better symbol for our country.
19 bald eagles gorge, sink, then die in Alaska

Stories...

From the streets and freeways of Portland Oregon, always an entertaining read.
This Fare City of Portland

The Oozinator (Bukkakinator?)

Wow, I almost forgot about this little gem of internet video from a year or two ago.



I'm surprised that this thing is still on the market, and that Hasbro still has the description of it on their website.

"Just when they think you’re coming at ‘em with water, blast ‘em with a shot of icky bio-ooze! Shoot out globs of gooey bio-ooze and then drench ‘em with water!"

Leave it to Wikipedia to make it sound boring.

"Critics claim, that through innuendo, either purposely or innocently, the toy is an approximation of a sexual act portrayed in some pornographic movies, known as the money shot. Because of that innuendo, they believe the marketing and promotion of the toy may be reminiscent of, or subliminally promoting inappropriate sexual activity among children even though most prepubescent children cannot ejaculate."

You can still buy it at Amazon, but they've ruined all the fun and deleted all the original reviews, but thanks to the Consumerist and their digging through the google cache, we can relive those first few days of Oozinator glory.

Oh, and the Metafilter comments are perfect as well, down towards the bottom of the comments, wise MeFi user youarenothere thought to copy and paste a handful of the reviews from Amazon before they were deleted by the powers that be.

Patriotic Paper

Maybe its because I'm still feeling a little weird from my last two days of some sort of stomach ailment and eating very little solid food, maybe its because I worked an hour of overtime while feeling a little loopy, but these boxes in the recycling bin amused me to no end as I was on my way out of the plant tonight. Quality! Performance! Absorbency! (Or Death!)
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, ou la Mort!

And the other box on top, with the Stars & Stripes is a box of one of the most American of all table wear, the paper plate. In an excessively American quantity of 1200! Thank you Costco.
When our next revolution comes, I'll be right out there on the front lines, defending our rights of over-consumption, and Absorbency.

David Lynch on the iPhone

Awesome plates

Somewhere in North Carolina, a horrified commuter is stuck behind this guy in traffic, having a poo-related flashback...
Spotted at Jalopnik

Let's get Peronal

Just browsing my photo collection tonight. Since anonymity on the internets is such an antiquated concept, I thought I'd post a few pics of myself and the family that make me laugh...

Nosehair self portrait

G in the Cascades

Myself and Mortimer

The Parental Unit

The best wedding picture ever. Thanks for looking so appalled Lizbone, also thanks for having an open bar at your wedding. Apologies to Andy for violating his wife...

Cincinnati is boring...

But the Local 12 News "Dance Party Friday" traffic report cracks me up!
In Portland, we have an outdated freeway system that makes "rush hour" last about three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening, even though a huge number of us are riding our awesome transit system to and from work!
In a lot of cities in the midwest, there's more freeway than you know what to do with... If I remember correctly, 75 North out of downtown Cincinnati has six lanes and a "minimum speed limit" somewhere around 45mph. What a concept! You can theoretically get ticketed for going 20 mph under the limit? This is why this Traffic Reporter has time for "dance party Friday."
Even on a normal traffic morning in Portland, its like a mantra, "I-5 South is almost completely stopped from Mill Plain past the Interstate Bridge, and slow all the way to the Fremont, The Sunset inbound is slow from the top of Sylvan down through the tunnel, and the Banfield Inbound is stop and go from 82nd avenue all the way down to the I-5 split."
I can't believe this actually aired on television. I wish our channel 12 took a few minutes away from reporting about sex offenders and murders and had a dance party. I want to see Andy Carson and Pete Ferryman shake their stuff!

4 ever

For Slammin' Sam...


Come to think of it, this is on a wall about three blocks from where he works. Curious...