planetdan

Saturday, April 29, 2006 :::

A Call to Participate

Almost three years ago, I read a news headline that stated "Who will distribute Mel's movie?" I immediately thought "Huh, Mel Brooks has a new movie?" Then I clicked on the link to realize that, of course, they were referring to Mel Gibson's controversial Jesus flick. It got me to wondering, who else would've made this mistake? Which names get the most common assumptions? Who owns the market on the first name Sally? Struthers or Field?

So I sent out a list of names to a few friends and got my answers. It wasn't exactly comprehensive, but I thought it was fun and interesting nonetheless.

So I want to do it again. If you're interested in participating, you can download the new list of names at the link below, fill in the name of the first person you think of for each first name, and email it back to me at the address provided. You don't actually get anything for participating, but it's really fast and easy, and usually only takes a couple minutes to complete.

The Name Game '06 - Official List of Names (.txt)

There are simple rules:

1. Enter the first name you think of, whether it's someone famous or your next door neighbor or a character from a book you read in middle school. Don't try to be clever or funny or intelligent. The whole point is to get your initial reaction.

2. If it's a personal acquaintance or family member whose name I might not recognize, just make a note that it's a personal person. You don't need to use their last names if you don't want. For example: if the name is Tina, and the first person you think of is an old childhood neighbor named Tina Johnson, then you can just enter "Tina, (childhood friend)".

3. Likewise, if you enter any person, celebrity or otherwise, who you think dan might not be familiar with, then feel free to make a note as to who they are.

4. Don't worry, I won't post your list or your name. It's all confidential and stuff. So feel free to enter the names of old boyfriends, prior crushes, etc. You don't even need to put your name on it if you don't want.

5. Send your reply by Sunday, May 7th, 2006. That gives anyone who is interested a whole week to participate! I'll compile the results into a format that I find interesting sometime soon after that.

Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: As of today, 5/12/06, I am no longer taking Name Game submissions as the deadline has passed and I have officially begun pouring over the data, the results of which are very interesting. I received almost 200 entries, so give me a week to organize my findings. Thanks for playing!

::: posted by dan at 3:42 PM :: [ link ] :: (12) comments

Andy Dick

I came across this photo online, titled "Andy Dick", and it made me laugh out loud:

[FP]

Uncanny. Poor Andy Dick, as if he doesn't have enough embarrassing photos floating around of him.

Speaking of coked-up animals...

And speaking of animals doing flips...

::: posted by dan at 3:02 PM :: [ link ] :: (9) comments

Monday, April 24, 2006 :::

Welcome to my Wedding Cake

I love snack cakes. Little Debbies... Hostess products... Zingers... what have you. Anything super sugary and overly processed tasting, basically. Ten individually wrapped Zebra Cakes in a box for a buck-o-nine. I came home from the grocery store with three different flavors of Zingers the other day. K-Mack thought me to be foolish and obsessive, but just knowing they were in my kitchen and waiting to be sampled made my days a little brighter.

Sno-Balls are my favorite, so when I learned that someone had ventured to make the largest Sno-Ball evar, I nearly lost consciousness:

View the entire ginormous Sno-Ball baking process here.

A few years back, right after he had watched some disturbing Food Network special about the creation of said snack cake treats, Brent actually bet me fifty dollars that he would never ever eat another one. No return bet was required on my part, which makes this deal particularly sweet. All I have to do is catch that fool with a snack cake and I get fifty bones (which if you're keeping track is nearly 500 zebra cakes). So if you ever see this guy with a Twinkie or a processed cupcake of any kind in hand (this includes Banana Flips and Oatmeal Cream Pies), then let me know and I will split with you my zebra cake bounty.

::: posted by dan at 11:26 PM :: [ link ] :: (36) comments

Wednesday, April 19, 2006 :::

Hometown pride, wif teef.

I am from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which according to this site, is one of the best states to live in the country. Perhaps because we are so low-rated on this alternate chart:

A ranking of states by loss of natural teeth.

::: posted by dan at 6:00 PM :: [ link ] :: (23) comments

Planetdan: A Week in Review

Least favorite anonymous quote of the week:

"The good news: the scab finally fell off; the bad news: I don't know where."

For those of you who know the source of that one, don't give it away.

I'm trying to play catch-up by posting some pictures that are from the last couple of weeks, but I don't know how many times I can post pictures of me drinking with T-Bone and still find people interested in looking at them, although this picture in particular is at least a little bit intriguing:

That's me in the background sporting a T-Shirt that says "I Make Stuff Up". T-Bone bought it off a sweaty bartender for whatever cash he had left in his pocket. I was in a state where it wasn't hard to talk me into wearing it. In fact, it was probably my idea. The blindfold had something to do with a Red Bull taste test that I didn't participate in and the entire night of drinking was in sponsorship of some softball team that I am not a part of. The rest of the pictures from that evening are here:

Beer Bust + More

One week later was T-Bone's surprise birthday party, which he barely survived:

Enjoy: T-Bone's Surprise

On a related note, it's too bad scientists can't work faster.

So, lots of picture of T-Bone, but to be fair it was his birthday. Oh, I also worked a lot during the last week, celebrated Easter in spite of my previous posts (although some people celebrated that one a bit harder than I did), successfully assembled an "Ab-Lounger", and enjoyed our beautiful Minnesotan Spring weather by taking out my new bike, who I've christened the Judy II, for a ride around the lakes.

Bonus link: ewww.

::: posted by dan at 5:24 PM :: [ link ] :: (26) comments

Friday, April 14, 2006 :::

Dirty Thirty Shirty

T-Bone turned thirty yesterday, so I gave him the T-shirt that I made for myself last year:

I think it's a pretty nice gift. Granted, I've been using it as a workout shirt for the entire last year and it's totally pitted-out to a really nasty degree, but I'm sure he appreciates it nonetheless.

Happy birfday, T-Bone.

::: posted by dan at 11:26 AM :: [ link ] :: (28) comments

Thursday, April 13, 2006 :::

Meth Kills

I've had a sinus headache for a week, so yesterday I went to Wallgreens for some Sudafed? Apparently, Sudafed?is a semi-controlled substance these days, so purchasing it requires permission from the pharmacist and you have to register in the "I'm Not a Meth-Head, I Swear It" book. I wasn't aware of this change in policy, so when I walked up to the pharmacy counter and requested two boxes of the illicit drug, the lady pharmacist practically gasped. "Oh no! You can't get TWO boxes of Sudafed?" So I lowered my request to one box, but it was too late, I had already aroused her suspicions. Then she asked for my ID, and when I gave it to her, she looked back at me with perplexed stupor and disappeared into the pharmacy dungeon. A minute later, a brand-new and even more concerned-looking pharmacist appeared.

"Sir, this ID says you are 6' 4" tall."
Turns out I had accidentally handed her T-Bone's expired license. This wasn't boding well for promoting an "I'm Not a Meth-Head, I Swear It" persona.

Forget the fact that I'm barely 5' 7", we don't even look remotely alike. (At this point you might ask yourself "Why does Dan carry around T's expired license?" but you'd have to know T-Bone to understand why it has come in handy on more than one occasion.)

I got flustered and stammered "Oh sorry, that's my friend's ID, here's mine." He furrowed his brow, took my license, and disappeared back into the dungeon for what seemed like an eternity. I was certain they were calling the cops, or "dropping a dime on me" as they say in the movies. When he finally returned, he approved the Sudafed?purchase, but I saw him mark my name in the Sudafed Registry book with an asterisk. I've been flagged at the Wallgreens. Whatever, dude, I ain't no meth-head.

Speaking of meth-heads, I drove by the Kid Rock concert last night and woah. Nothing against Kid Rock, but he either has a large leper fan base, or there is some strange connection between his brand of southern rap-rock and meth addiction that I'm just not understanding.

::: posted by dan at 10:12 PM :: [ link ] :: (23) comments

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 :::

Speaking of dead bunnies...

[FP]

Happy easter week.

::: posted by dan at 5:04 PM :: [ link ] :: (19) comments

Saturday, April 08, 2006 :::

Easter Uncancelled

Happy easter week. This makes me sad. Poor 'lil bunny.

Frankenbunny

It's like a John Woo directed version of Watership Down.

When I was really little I found a nest of 'lil baby bunnies in a hole in the backyard. I wanted to keep them in a box in the garage, but someone, either my mom or my sister, told me I couldn't touch them or their mom would abandon them. So I left them alone. The next day I went out to peek at them again and it was just a big mess of shredded fur. Something had obviously found the nest and eaten them all up, but I was too young to really comprehend that sad fate. After much thought, I remember deciding that the baby bunnies must have simply shed their baby fur and grew brand new fur before hopping off into the sunset as adult bunnies. I'm happy I was able to delude myself at such a young age.

::: posted by dan at 11:21 AM :: [ link ] :: (18) comments

Tuesday, April 04, 2006 :::

Danny Loves His Granny

I made my gramma a belated birthday card last week and I printed up this photoshopped image to accompany it, so that she might have something interesting to hang on the fridge:

I know, it's kinda creepy, and my gramma probably won't appreciate the subversive evil-clown humor with which I made it, but that's not the point. The point is that I put the picture in my work bag when I was running late this morning, hoping to get a chance to mail it off after my big work meeting. You may not believe it, but I try to convey a professional demeanor in client meetings, so I don't like it when homemade cards featuring the phrase "Danny Loves His Granny" fall out of my work folder and slide onto the conference desk for everyone to scrutinize, which of course is exactly what happened. Hopefully, I scooped it back up before anyone had a chance to read it. I'm not sure, but no one said anything. I did see one person give it a perplexed glance, but maybe that was just because I was in such a panic to cover it up.

I'm actually surprised that I never thought of rhyming Danny and Granny before. It only took 31 years for me to come up with that one.

::: posted by dan at 12:06 AM :: [ link ] :: (18) comments

Monday, April 03, 2006 :::

The Shrink Is In

I don't know who made this, but it's kinda mind-bending, in a screwing-with-my childhood kinda way:

[FP]

I always pictured Lucy as being more of a prude than a slut. But maybe I'm forgetting about this. And I'd be way more interested to see what they would do with Peppermint Patty.

::: posted by dan at 11:57 PM :: [ link ] :: (15) comments

Sunday, April 02, 2006 :::

The Game of Life

Today I got a call from my credit card company. Apparently I used my credit card so much this weekend that it got flagged for abuse. They just figured some carefree thief had gone on a wild spending binge. But really it was just me acting with utter disregard of my New Year's Resolution to curb my spending habits.

The fraud protection agent asked me to verify my purchases, and it was rather embarrassing to hear them read back to me over the phone:

"The suspect charges occurred on the first of April. On that day did you spend $270 at Target?"
"Yes."
"$140 at Circuit City?"
"Yes."
"$30 at the gas station?"
"Yes."
"$4.24 at Burger King?"
"..."
"$4.24 at Burger King, sir?"
"...yes."

My shame was audible. And it only got worse from there. In my own defense, the first two seemingly large purchases were actually a combination of returns, exchanges, and price matches gone wrong, so not that much money was actually spent.

Ironically, I am still a winner at the game of Life. Blog-friend Sarah visited town this weekend, so T-Bone and I took her out for lunch and a board game at one of my favorite local watering holes. I mopped the floor with both of them. I was spinning tens left and right. Even an unrealistically massive payment to repair unforeseen flood damage couldn't hold me back. It was quite a scene. Witness me in my victory pose:

::: posted by dan at 11:15 PM :: [ link ] :: (15) comments

Non-sequitrekkies

When I'm crabby I like to look at this to cheer me up.

I don't know why. It makes no sense to me. I don't know what the connection is between Star Trek and those Saturday Night Live Roxbury guys, but I don't care.

Of course, I had to add my own face into the mix, but I'm clearly not as talented with animated gifs as the original creator. I put myself in the Chris Kattan position, which is not entirely without purpose, since Stacy often tells me that I remind her of him. Him and Spongebob Squarepants. I'm not kidding, she says that with utter sincerity. But that's okay, because she wasn't exactly happy when I compared her to Kelly Osborne, so I guess we're even.

::: posted by dan at 10:59 PM :: [ link ] :: (15) comments

Saturday, April 01, 2006 :::

April Not-So-Fooled

My sorry attempts at April Fool's pranks this year were pretty lackluster. First I planned to convince K-Mack that her car had been stolen/towed from the street in front of the house. But when I looked out the window and coyly asked "Hey, where'd your car go?" she simply walked over, and pointed. "It's right there." So maybe I could have planned that better and actually moved it before she woke up. Oh well, hindsight, etc.

Then Brent called. New mark = new angle. I acted all mysterious and secretive on the phone and then I hushly whispered "Guess what? K-Mack is pregnant. She missed her period." I was expecting shock and drama on the other end of the line, or at least a properly emphasized "Oh... my... god...", but instead he just got all serious and chastised me, "You know, you really shouldn't be telling other people's secrets like that." Booo. Talk about taking the wind out of my sails.

So I'm not so good at April Fooling. This list of The Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time pops up every year, and I think the Taco Liberty Bell joke is kinda funny I guess. It's not "Hey your car got towed!" funny, but it's funny.

::: posted by dan at 10:22 PM :: [ link ] :: (4) comments