It appears to be an energy drink, which is kind of ironic, considering how closely Bacchus was associated with wine. On the other hand, his followers would work themselves into a frenzy.
A word of advice: If any Maenads drop by with a few cans of this stuff, run. They may look cute, but they’ll tear you apart.
The Leather Factory sign was missing a few letters one night:
So whose factory is it, exactly? She Who Must Be Obeyed? Can guys even buy stuff there?
The Los Angeles Times website had an interesting way of describing the results of yesterday’s state election:
It’s hard to believe that all eight propositions failed. Even the four Orange County measures failed. Every item on the ballot in our district was rejected!
On a related note, I still don’t like the voting machines we have in OC. The interface is cumbersome and the display is godawful slow. The controls consist of a dial, which moves the cursor, and a button, which selects the current item.
The display is so slow you can watch it redrawing the title and summary of a ballot item when it highlights it. First the rectangle turns blue, then it redraws the text, line by line, in white. It’s like watching print preview in Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS on a 386. You just don’t see that kind of performance on modern computers unless they’re massively bogged down.
As for trying to use the machine, it’s kind of like entering your name in the high score list on an arcade video game with only a trackball and a fire button. I’m sure they chose it for durability reasons—a touch screen would be much more usable, but much easier to break—and went with the low-powered processor to keep the costs down.
I actually liked the punchcards we had before. It was so much more satisfying to slam down that lever.
A recent post on What Were They Thinking? reminded me of a panel from the original Teen Titans series. In it, Robin and Wonder Girl have just been gassed and tossed out of an airplane, waking up in mid-air.
Yes, Robin once uttered the words, “Holy ozone!” And, like the “holey rusted metal,” the words proved accurate in an entirely different way. This was Teen Titans #7 (1967), the issue which introduced the Mad Mod. (Think of him as Austin Powers as a villain.)
Who knew comics could be so prophetic? 😉
How often do you get to revisit an old in-joke? Six years ago, Katie and I were driving past the Inn-N-Out by UCI and noticed the sign was only half-lit. Katie exclaimed:
It’s an inn! The out is out on In-N-Out!
Last Friday we went back to UCI for a play and had dinner at the Indian restaurant across the street. As we left the parking lot, we saw this:
Ah, nostalgia!
You know how some restaurants always give you a pickle with their sandwiches? Well, at Ruby’s today I finished, picked up the toothpick flag that had been stuck in the hamburger, turned the pickle over and planted the flag, declaring it to be a boat. Katie immediately took her pickle and a leftover onion slice and turned it into an outrigger. A bit more manipulation, plus a napkin for a sail, and it became a catamaran.
Our waiter did a double-take when he picked up the plate, then set it down on the counter. We like to think it was so the other waiters could see it.
Over the last few days, I’ve heard more than one reporter at NPR slip up and refer to Lewis Libby (is it just me, or have people stopped calling him “Scooter” since the indictment?) as Libby Lewis. (On a side note, that name always makes me think of Libby Lawrence.) Well, I think they can be excused given that they work with a reporter by that name! Add in the fact that she’s reporting on the Plame case, and you can see the confusion…
This morning I caught Morning Edition’s listener comments segment, and I’m not the only one who noticed. They signed off as “Edition Morning.”
