planetdan

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 :::

Polka Party

Fellow blogger pal Christine came to town this weekend. So we hung out on Saturday night, ate super spicey shrimp, and polkad. Or polkaed. I don't know how to spell the past tense of polka and I ain't looking it up. And we all know that Blogger spell-check is a bonafide moron. I didn't get a picture of me mid-polka (see how I avoided figuring out how to type polka-ing?), but everyone seemed to have a camera, so unfortunately I'm sure one exists out there somewhere.

Christine is cool. Everyone dug her.
See all the pictures of our polka party.

::: posted by dan at 11:27 PM :: [ link ] :: (18) comments

The Crane Game

I love it when this happens. What's awesome is that it isn't even the first time I've posted about this happening:

Boy gets caught in toy-filled 'claw' machine

I wonder if it was one of those "Play Until You Win" versions of the game. Because if so, I would've popped a quarter in there and poked at the kid for hours. Godfathers is yuckers.

::: posted by dan at 11:20 PM :: [ link ] :: (19) comments

Saturday, March 25, 2006 :::

ETPJs

When I was seven I had a minor E.T. fetish. While all the girls were imagining themselves with red afros and dancing around their very own Daddy Warbucks, I was pretending to find an alien in my closet and eating a shitload of Reese's Pieces. I even made my very own E.T. pajamas when the official Steven Spielberg endorsed pajamas at Target proved to be too expensive for my mother. Instead, she gave me some two-dollar fabric crayons and the license to go crazy:

You can see that the iron-on crayon transfer wasn't completely successful, but it's really not bad work for a seven year old, if I do say so myself. I remember the initial design took some pretty intense deliberation. I wasn't sure if I should title it "E.T. Phone Home" or "E.T. Ouch" or if I should just leave it blank and rely solely on solid visuals. If you look closely, you can see I eventually settled on "E.T. Elliott", which was the option that made the least amount of sense. I wore those pajamas proudly, well beyond the growth spurts that should have forced us apart. At the bitter end, the cuffs of the sleeves came to a rest at my elbows. You see, my dedication to E.T. was as strong as Elliott's. Nothing could tear us apart. Until the pajamas literally tore apart.

Did you know that the E.T. video game cartridge for the Atari 2600 has been blamed for single-handedly causing the Great Video Game Crash of 1983? And that millions of them are buried in a landfill in New Mexico? Well it's an interesting story if you're a former E.T. fetishist/nerd like me.

::: posted by dan at 5:56 PM :: [ link ] :: (29) comments

Thursday, March 23, 2006 :::

Eye Hate U, Prince

Eye just can't seem to get out of under Prince's spell. Eye honestly haven't enjoyed a Prince CD since 1990. But my love for him ran so deep in the 80's that eye find myself in constant conflict over his existence. Plus, me and him had a pretty ugly falling out in the late 90's over the ill-fated Crystal Ball fiasco that eye won't even get into. Then a couple years ago, when eye had finally decided that eye had bought my last Prince CD ever, he announced his "comeback" tour. Eye'd never had the chance to see the guy perform live, even in his heyday, so eye went. Little did eye know that the $75 concert ticket was basically forcing me into buying his new CD, as it was "included" (read: added on) to the price of the concert ticket. That CD was called Musicology, and it sucked royal ass.

So news came out he was releasing a new CD this month and eye didn't even bother to look into it. My anti-Prince stance had reached its pinnacle, or so eye thought. Because today eye walked by an end-cap at Target and saw the CD adorned with a sticker advertising a contest where a small number of random CDs contained an elusive "Purple Ticket" that entitled the lucky recipient to a private Prince concert. Eye stood, conflicted.

Oh my god he was pulling a Willy Wonka. Eye had read about it of course, and put it out of my mind, just figuring eye could ignore it, but standing at Target and seeing that packaging and imagining myself being Charlie Bucket and opening the CD to discover my Golden Ticket was just too overwhelming of a prospect to pass up. Eye always wanted to be Charlie Bucket, and here was my chance. Only it wasn't a lifetime supply of chocolate eye was after, but rather an evening of Black Sweat. To-may-to, To-mah-to.

So eye bought the CD, and waited, with much anticipation, until the privacy of my own home to open it. Eye peeled back the plastic, slowly, relishing the possibilities, just like Charlie would have:

Eye took a deep breath and flipped open the cover, camera at the ready. This was my moment to shine, and eye was going to catch it on film:

Drats! Foiled again. Eye hate U, Prince. There's nothing in here but an advertisement for the latest underwhelming Prince protege, a booklet of pictures featuring his hideously obnoxious pimped-out Prince pad (that he has recently been sued over), and a CD filled with mediocre music:

How many Prince CDs can eye be tricked into buying? Booo. Even Charlie Bucket had to buy four Wonka bars before finally finding his Golden Ticket. Maybe eye need to go back to Target tomorrow...

::: posted by dan at 11:13 PM :: [ link ] :: (22) comments

Wednesday, March 22, 2006 :::

Blogger's plumbing is gebusted.

Broken pipe? Whatever dude. Blogger is on my bad list right now.

::: posted by dan at 10:50 PM :: [ link ] :: (16) comments

Sunday, March 19, 2006 :::

The celebration continues.

My birthday festivities continued into Saturday, when Cherry Nut and Brent treated me to some spicy chicken and garlic snap peas. I wore cuff links for the first time ever, because Year 31 is going to be all about new experiences for me, I've decided:

The Oscar Wilde T-shirt is from Ireland, but after just one wash it shrunk to skin-tight proportions, so now it's relegated to underwear status, which is kinda cool because it almost seems even more subversive when nobody knows I'm wearing it. Speaking of outfits, don't stare at the gold glittery woman in the background for too long or you'll go blind. She's head to toe sequined and for some reason she reminded me of the wheel in Wheel of Fortune. In fact, I would venture to say that if she wore that outfit on Halloween and somebody asked her what she was and she said "I'm a game show set decoration" they would be like "Oh yeah..."

Actually, I'm not 31 for another nine minutes, so I better take advantage of my last few moments of being even-numbered.

::: posted by dan at 11:51 PM :: [ link ] :: (28) comments

Saturday, March 18, 2006 :::

Paddy Cakes

Last night was a strange convergence of a million different events all culminating into one huge explosion of drunken Irish debauchery. I've never actually gone out to an Irish bar on St. Paddy's day before, and since St. Paul is known for its Irish population and famous Irish pubs, we headed downtown pretty early and parked ourselves at McGovern's, an appropriately Irish-sounding place. There also happened to be some major hockey tournament at the neighboring arena, so the usual drunken St. Paddy's Day crowd collided with the usual drunken hockey tourney crowd and the resulting madness was captured on film by yours truly.

Plus it's my birthday weekend.

Me and T were good sports with the green-hued clothing.

We all clearly had a good time. Especially T:

Cans of beers were shotgunned. But not by me. Being 31 now, I'm far too old for those types of shenanigans. You can even see pictures of T confusingly trying to shotgun a shot. In fact, you can see all the pictures here.

::: posted by dan at 5:21 PM :: [ link ] :: (29) comments

Thursday, March 16, 2006 :::

Olé!

It's my birthday weekend, but the festivities already started a few days ago. My coworkers took me to Chevy's (which is a Mexican restaurant in spite of its very American sounding name) for some burritos, some fried ice cream, and a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday", sung by the very accommodating wait staff. My coworker was kind enough to snap a picture with her camera phone:

And I got to keep the sombrero! You can't beat a free sombrero! Olé!

My birthday celebration will continue well into the weekend, in spite of the fact that K-Mack has gone to Puerto Vallarta and left me in the lurch. Maybe she'll bring me back a free sombrero, too. Just to make up for it.

::: posted by dan at 10:24 PM :: [ link ] :: (20) comments

I think I'm going to shower at home from now on.

You'd think there would be only so many ways to embarrass yourself in the gym locker-room. Especially while naked. I've done them all. Or so I thought until yesterday, when I accidentally snapped a guy in the back with my sweaty underwear.

I hesitated about telling this story, just because it forces one to imagine me naked and in awkward positions. And then I remembered that I have no shame. But anyway, I was removing my drawers after a particularly grueling and sweat-inducing run. That's when the elastic around the legs of my boxer briefs caught my toe, so I yanked, perhaps a little too hard since I was in a hurry to make the nude portion of my locker-room visit as short as possible. I lost my balance, my foot fell, my arm lurched, the elastic gave, and the man a few lockers down from me got a surprise snap in the back. Not hard enough to sting, mind you, but hard enough to make him turn around to see what was going on, only to find me standing naked with a pair of sweaty underwear.

My way of dealing with the situation was to avoid eye contact, pretend it never happened, and rush off to the showers, where I stood and worried about what it must've seemed like from his point of view: some strange naked guy snaps him in the back with some sweaty undies and then turns and runs off to the shower. Real nice.

::: posted by dan at 9:47 PM :: [ link ] :: (21) comments

Wednesday, March 15, 2006 :::

Can't sleep... baby will eat me... can't sleep... baby will eat me...

The other day, K-Mack left me a surprise on the kitchen table; something she thought I might enjoy with my morning breakfast. She had found it in the weekly mailing supplement. His name is William, and he's your newborn baby boy, captured forever by the miracle of GentleTouch™ vinyl:

He's also one of the scariest, most repulsive things I've ever seen, and not only because he kinda looks like Angelina Jolie-Pitt:

Gross. Who would buy that and what would you do with it once you had it? And why does it need an introductory price? Are they trying to reel you in by offering the first one at the deleriously low price of $24.98 and then – before you know it – you are hooked on hideously ghoulish newborn baby replicas? The first hit is always free.

Then the very next day I was reading the Presurfer when I came across this link to a collection of classic Horror Masks. Some are quite disturbing, indeed, but the worst – BY FAR – is this one, simply titled "Baby":

Seriously, if someone wanted to make dan shit his pants for real, show up at his door wearing that mask on Halloween. Or any other day of the year for that matter. I won't be able to hold it in. It's worse than that guy in the Burger King mask. My face turns white just looking at it.

::: posted by dan at 11:23 AM :: [ link ] :: (25) comments

Monday, March 13, 2006 :::

Dantle

Hey! What's that on my usually inauspicious mantle?

Why, it's me! With a candle on top!

I have the ugliest profile, evar. And now I have a cherished keepsake to commemorate it for always.

It's my own personal pirolette.

::: posted by dan at 5:15 PM :: [ link ] :: (28) comments

Esoterica

Myspace is just the latest in a long list of internet fads, starting I suppose with AOL, and then followed in quick succession by Napster, Friendster, Blogger, and god knows what else. It's so faddy that even I had to sign up. Can't be the only one without a Myspace listing, of course!

Anyway, I saw this T-shirt for sale today, which made me laugh out loud, because as a Myspacer, I'm in on the joke. If you don't get it, then perhaps it's time to jump on the bandwagon. You can buy the shirt at bustedtees.com, but hurry because you'll only be able to wear it for like two weeks before it doesn't make sense to anyone anymore. I love esoteric stuff like that.

That model's myspace emo hair has got to go, though.

::: posted by dan at 3:51 PM :: [ link ] :: (16) comments

Thursday, March 09, 2006 :::

I'm blinding you with science!

There's been a rumor going around in my circle of friends that eyeballs do not grow over time. Rumor has it that you are born with the very same sized eyeballs that you die with. This rumor was met with some skepticism, so I googled it, and thought I would share my findings. From BooksBigQuestions:

Do eyeballs grow and, if so, how much?
At birth, the head and structures within it, such as the eyes and brain, are more developed in proportion to the rest of the body. The head and eyes increase in width by only 1.5 times up to the age of 5 years, and after that only a very small proportion more until early adulthood. So the eyes do grow slightly, probably only a matter of millimetres, and only up to age 5 or so.

So yes, eyeballs grow, albeit very slightly, and less so than most other organs. On the other hand, there is also a rumor that the cartilage in your nose NEVER stops growing, which if true explains Karl Malden, and makes me fear for my own future:

I'm hoping that rumor proves to be false.

And while we're talking about bones and stuff, I was reading (in that seemingly never ending science book that I mention far too often), that only about one bone in a billion becomes a fossil. This means that the 6 billion people currently on the planet with 206 bones each will only produce a couple thousand fossils max, which really doesn't seem like much. And they'll probably be hopelessly scattered. And they'll probably all be fingers or teeth or boring bones like that.

This kind pisses me off and shatters my illusions, because I used to worry about worldwide nuclear holocausts and extinction level events and all that end-of-the-human-race mumbo jumbo, and the only thing that would ease my mind was daydreaming of a probable future, millions of years from now, where space aliens or maybe even some other indigenously evolved lifeform would discover our bones, under all the earth and soil. And they'd be all, "holy crap, whoever these beasts were millions of years ago, they sure kicked ass," and they'd rebuild and study us in museums and then some future species' version of Steven Spielberg would make a blockbuster movie featuring computer generated humans and it would be a phenomenon that would spark numerous subpar sequels, and their version of children (assuming they procreate sexually) would wear pajamas and sleep on sheets emblazoned with tiny little humanoids in funny poses. And they would collect our fossilized droppings and use them as paperweights on desks (assuming they have paper and desks). But I don't know how this new super-evolved species is going to manage all of that with just a couple thousand measly bones. I guess that childhood scenario I baked up to soothe my overworked nerves wasn't so probable after all.

::: posted by dan at 10:44 PM :: [ link ] :: (23) comments

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 :::

Midget Wrestling : A Moral Quandary

The other day I got a phone call from T-bone:

"Midget wrestling. Wednesday night. You in?"

I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm intrigued. I'm sure that midget wrestling would be quite a spectacle. And it seems like an opportunity that might not come around too often. But on the other hand, I'm disturbed. What kind of circus sideshow are they selling? Can I, in good conscience, pay a three dollar cover to watch midgets wrestle? There seems to be something inherently distasteful about that concept.

It reminds me of the circus sideshows at the old Midway at the Minnesota State Fair. Most of them were fakeries or mirror tricks like ape men and snake ladies, but one of them featured the "World's Tiniest Lady." I remember we paid our two dollars, walked up into a trailer, and looked into an oven-sized box, where a tiny little woman sat on a stool, knitting and watching TV, ignoring the crowds of people staring down at her. I instantly felt sick that I had paid to get a peek at a midget. And she clearly didn't like being gawked at, because she was quite surly. Not that I blame her, but when someone asked her to stand up, she angrily snapped that it would cost another dollar.

But it's possible that these midgets make a good living, taking their wrestling show on the road. I still can't decide how exploitive the whole thing is. So I did a Google image search for Midget Wrestlers, and found this picture:

Afros and mowhawks to boot! Sadly, the decision will probably be made for me, as I am still sick as a dog and really can't leave the house for any reason whatsoever. But what do you think? Midget wrestling: good for midgets or bad for midgets?

::: posted by dan at 12:40 PM :: [ link ] :: (40) comments

Tuesday, March 07, 2006 :::

Ah, the simple pleasures of watching a kid get kicked in the face.

Not that I should like watching a kid get kicked in the face, but...

...the spinning is mesmerizing. [FP]

Sure, the kid is young, but I bet he'll remember that particular moment in time forever, and in slow-motion. I have a million slow-motion childhood memories of swingset accidents, flipped bicycles, moonboot mishaps, and one particularly vivid moment involving a teeter-totter, Cory Hendricks' sister's looming backside, and a frightening lesson about the disastrous possibilities of mismanaged weight distribution, but describing that incident would be way too complicated and might require diagrams and storyboards.

It kind of reminds me of one time, way back in high school, when Stacy was forced down a dangerously steep sledding hill by a stranger with the stranger's young child in tow. The resulting crash at the bottom of the hill was an insane explosion of relentless momentum, flailing limbs, and lost mittens. They literally tumbled on top of one another, head over heels, at least a dozen times before skidding to a halt. When the cloud of snow finally settled, the child was stumbling around, confused and crying, but no worse for the wear, and Stacy was kneeling upright, herself confused by the red winter headband that had fallen across her eyes, unsure of whether or not she was seeing the crimson shade of blood. She wasn't, of course, and besides a pinched nerve or two, she seemed to come out of it okay. Luckily, K-Mack was at the bottom of the hill and was able to snap this picture, seconds before complete loss of sled control:

If you look really close, you can see the little kid getting dragged behind her. I wish I could see that kid's slow motion memory of those events. Better yet, I wish K-Mack had been carrying a video camera that day instead of her purple Le Click. Ah, good times.

::: posted by dan at 5:43 PM :: [ link ] :: (19) comments

Sunday, March 05, 2006 :::

A detriment to my own health.

I've been pretty sick for the last week. But I'm too busy at work to take off any time. So I was feeling a bit run down. And then this weekend, when I should have been resting up, I decided instead to pretend like nothing was wrong with me. So Friday night I went and saw Rogue Wave in concert, and they were excellent, so it was worth the risk, in spite of my throbbing sore throat. We secured a good position to view their performance, with no loud bitches anywhere within listening distance:

Of course I bought a concert T-shirt. Then on Saturday we celebrated Cherry-Nut's birthday, so I had to pull it together long enough to give her a much deserved birfday spankin':

And to eat some Ichiban:

Of course it was a lot of fun, but now I'm more sick than ever. It will all have been worth it, unless I die. So let's keep our fingers crossed that I had a good weekend.

::: posted by dan at 11:35 PM :: [ link ] :: (25) comments