Just what I always needed! Proving that “you can sell anything on the Internet,” it’s Prairie Tumbleweed Farm [archive.org], purveyor of “organically grown,” “100% Y2K-compliant” tumbleweeds.
It wouldn’t be much use here in Orange County, where all you have to do is pull over to the side of the road at the right time of the year. Maybe in the off-season.
(Via the Daily Sucker. You have been warned.)
I don’t remember when, where, or how long ago this was—or even which of us saw it—but I found it while cleaning the piles of junk off my desk this afternoon.
I mean, what’s not to like about this position? You get to work half to death for a “nasty boss”—he’ll even kick you around! Such thoughtful consideration, especially to tell you about it up front!
A while back I received a strange spam containing a quantum physics paper. At the time I wasn’t sure what to make of it, although someone suggested it might just be a randomly mailed document sent by a virus.
Someone else who received it referred to it as Idea Spam—spam designed not to sell or advertise a product, but to promote an idea. Basically, spam as a meme vector.
Another person characterized the paper (or rather, the paper’s author) as a crank. Apparently it’s not unusual for pseudo-scientists to indiscriminately send their “findings” to anyone they think might listen. My favorite quote from this discussion:
i heard that one professor (i can’t remember whom) has a folder in his cabinet titled “public relations” where he stuffs things from these maniacs. when he was asked why he didn’t just label the folder “nut cases,” he replied that “then they’d get mad. this way, they will feel like i might look at it later and just go away.”
And so the mystery is solved.
Some odd searches through which people have found this site over the last two weeks:
Unfortunately there are too many phrases for the stats program I use to show anything that hit less than twice — and that’s where the really odd ones to show up! I’ve skimmed the logs a bit, and some of the choice items include: Continue reading
Well, we made it to San Diego, and if you’re reading this, we managed to scrounge up an Internet connection. The drive down was fairly uneventful, and we arrived too late to do much sightseeing, but we still managed to find some interesting sights.
For example, when we walked into our hotel room, we found a pizza flyer shoved under the door, and the following stand-up card on our table:
![[Long card all about how illegal garage pizzaa parlors are pushing fliers under doors and you should rely on the hotel to choose your pizza place]](https://hyperborea.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2004/07/illegal-pizza1.png)
OK, so they have deals with some places, but come on! Garage operations with “unsafe” pizza?! I suppose it’s possible, though.
For those Babylon 5 fans, here’s an excerpt from the dining guide:
![[Ad for the Zocalo Grill]](https://hyperborea.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2004/07/zocalo-grill.png)
And we encountered another relative of Boba and Jango Fett at dinner:
![[Part of a receipt indicating Medit Fett]](https://hyperborea.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2004/07/medit-fett.png)
While driving back to the hotel, we missed a turn and ended up driving through the seedier part of town (we passed no less than three nudie bars). We also spotted a restaurant calling itself “Extreme Pizza” (which might explain the card in our room) and a movie theater with an interesting cross-section of Hollywood:
Sadly, we didn’t have a chance to capture either on fil– uh, pixels.
