Why would a banana grab another banana? I mean those are the kind of questions I don't want to answer

It's official this is the new way i will get to work. Segway.

I couldn't help but also post this photo of Mr.Bananagrabber.

More Nike Considered

I know there are a lot of companies out there doing this and I've already posted about Nike doing it with Steve Nash. Here's a new one from them though.

We need some trains

Lets get some good fast, cheaper trains. Seriously. They use less land than roads, consume less energy (that can be supplied by alternative energy sources) and are fun for little kids to ride on.

Be confident. Buy something.

If you read the news this year, anytime this year, anywhere in the world, you'd see that consumer confidence is way down. What does this mean?

Something to do with people being relatively sure that the things they buy won't break, poison them, or come alive and enslave them? Or is it when the country buys sexy tops and thinks its tits look good. The truth is less salacious, but still damn important. The American CCI (Consumer Confidence Index) is defined as "the degree of optimism on the state of the economy that consumers are expressing through their activities of savings and spending."

According to today's Times article, things are worst they've been since the mid-70s and layoffs are imminent. David Blitzer, who manages the index: “There is no sign of a bottom in the numbers."

I think about all this while I await my Stimulus package check. Smarter people than I have called it a stupid measure that will have little effect--the majority of us using it to pay our Visa bills. But I want to buy something American. I want to buy a fucking Ford Mustang. This one.










It would make me confident and save America. Only that's right, they are only giving me $600. Bills it is.

YOU CAN DO IT

Mid-Morning shout out to the Dootz.

Dootz, make that law school paper your bitch. Dominate it, and ride it home.

We love you.
TMT.

Tuesday

Some days of the week are worse than others. For me, Tuesday takes the cake. I didn't realize this until a friend pointed out that I say "Man, this day is dragging" the most on Tuesdays. Seriously, if I say "God, this day sucks," 7 to 1 it's the Laggy Tues. So, I was fully prepared for today to blow, but so far it doesn't and you know why?

This morning, my husband woke up with "My Cherie Amour" in his head. It is now in my head and will soon be in yours. Don't be scared. Just invite it in. Let Stevie Wonder change the day.

Fun Fact: The 1969 classic, "My Cherie Amour," was an autobiographical account by Wonder about a woman he was fascinated with while in school at the Michigan School for the Blind. The song was originally written as "Oh My Marcia" but co-writer, Sylvia Moy, told Stevie to change the name from Marcia to cherie amour.

New Blue

Welcome to the new Giants drafted this weekend. From the NY Giants site.

1	31	Kenny Phillips | BIO	S	Miami	WATCH
2	32 (63)	Terrell Thomas | BIO	CB	USC	WATCH
3	32 (95)	Mario Manningham | BIO	WR	Michigan	WATCH
4	24 (123) #	Bryan Kehl | BIO	LB	BYU	WATCH
5	30 (165)	Jonathan Goff | BIO	LB	Vanderbilt	WATCH
6	32 (198)	Andre' Woodson | BIO	QB	Kentucky	WATCH
6	33 (199)	Robert Henderson	DE	USM	N/A

What's going on in Belgium?

from Core77A record breaking Mentos & Coke Explosion.

My Best Friend's Wedding Anyone?

I mean really. It's the same exact premise. Only oppo-genderfied.

Sean Bell

I'm sorry, but can someone explain to me why this isn't at least manslaughter? I thought if I tripped and hit somebody with my body and they died I could be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Hidden Valley, you are on notice.

Dear Hidden Valley,

Your ranch is delicious. And you are right; it does make everything taste better. Saying that, I have to tell you, your commercials do everything they can to make your dynamite product look ass nasty.

Case 1: The mammoth bowl.
When a gang of little kids run up, veggies in hands, to the bowl of HVR the size of a bathtub, I get queasy. Seriously that bowl has way too much dressing in it. You could serve a family style pasta meal in there. A whole elementary school couldn't finish that bowl, never mind five kids. Do you plan to just refrigerate the 5 gallons of leftover, half-used dressing? Cause that shit will go bad and fast.

Case 2: The globby no mix salad.
This one is worse than Case 1. You have a fit young lady pour an excessive amount of HVR over her salad. She doesn't mix it in, but instead, just forks the top. She maybe gets one piece of lettuce in that huge mouthful of dressing. Why don't you let her mix it? Why would you do that to someone?

In conclusion, Hidden Valley Ranch is good. But for the love of god, please market it responsibly.

Lemonade

This overheard conversation in the basement of our building is dedicated to the ladies at BDLR.

Guy (holding door open for his friend): Hey
Friend: You would not believe how much a lemonade costs these days.
Guy: That? How much?
Friend: Well it was full when I got it but still it cost a dollar.
Guy: That's inflation for ya.
Friend: That is some serious Kid Nation Inflation.

Astronaut Photography

I am feeling better now. Mostly due to this: "The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth."

Each week, NASA's Image Science and Analysis Laboratory posts its favorite photogenic images of Earth and its periphery. This week, catch a pan-large Thunderstorm Anvil in Africa (shown), An Australis-Red/Green Prom, Aurora, London at night, and the Brahmaputra River in China.


Thanks to Seed Magazine for the find.

desperate this morning

After last night's results. If Obama isn't our next president, I'm going to be totally disenchanted. I am feeling a little desperate this morning.

But then I look at him.

Vespa S

Yes. We want the Vespa S. It's beautiful, quick, and gets ridiculous gas mileage. Feel free to get it for us.

Flag Pin

Do you wear a flag pin?
Does your mother wear a flag pin? How bout your father and all paternal relatives? Does your dog wear a flag pin? Does a dog wearing a flag pin degrade America? Where do you wear your flag pin when you wear a flag pin? Is it on your heart? Do you wear it upside down like an anarchist? When you take off your flag pin, where do you put it? Do you put it on the floor to degrade America, or on a bureau? Are two flag pins better than one flag pin? How many flag pins are too many flag pins? If your answer to that last question was anything but "there are never too many flag pins," then why do you hate America?

Check out some classic Rove. (from The Huffington Post, transcript of K.R. suggesting that Barack Obama persecutes people who wear patriotic pins).

TMT Loves Apple Juice

from Planet Green

"We found that adults who eat apples and apple products have smaller waistlines that indicate less abdominal fat, lower blood pressure and a reduced risk for developing what is known as the metabolic syndrome," says Victor Fulgoni, M.D

Happy Earth Day

CNN.com, now with headline t-shirts

Get your CNN headline t-shirt, for real. Click on the tiny little t-shirt icon next to one of the headlines on their homepage. And don't forget, *These shirts fit snugly. Size up for a looser fit.

Everyone loves a farmer's market.

We learned about Local Harvest through a great article we read on Planet Green. It is a really easy way to find nearby farmer's markets. You could also use it to find a Community-Supported Agricultural Co-op (CSA) as the PG article suggests. We're checking out what Montana has to offer. Nothing will compare to Grampa Joe's garden, but I have a feeling we'll be visiting our local farmer's market just as much.

Start Your Bots.

Earlier this month, NYC's Javits Center hosted the first ever regional robotics build. Named, "FIRST Overdrive," the event was presided over by M. Bloomberg, and put 64 high school teams and their custom built bots to the ultimate test. The ultimate test: robots race around an elliptical track lifting, pushing, carrying and passing 40" inflated trackballs. Extra points are scored by robots positioning the trackballs on a 6'6" overpass before the end of the 2 minute and 15 second match.


TMT wants to congratulate our hometown heroes. Montclair High's own "Partially Robotic Bulldog of Death, Destruction and Gracious Professionalism," aka Team 555 won!

But big cheers also for their sister team, the lady "Foxybots."

Thanks to Baristanet, the place for all your northern NJ robot news.
Image by J|U|L|I|U|S

Nerd out your desk

Got 80,000 Yen lying around? Why don't you buy this representation of our galaxy etched by lasers into a glass cube. It's based on data from NAOJ, thats the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, for you lame brains. From here.

"Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits. "

The complete works of Charles Darwin
are now online.

Not only can you read his published manuscripts, but you can also get personal with his private journal entries. TMT loves old important shit and this blows us away. Get a load of the first musings on evolution...reads like sloppy, groundbreaking poetry.



highest office in organization (especially in lower animals, where mind, and therefore relations to other life, has not come into play) — see Zoonomia arguments, fails in hybrids where everything else is perfect; mothers apparently only born to breed. — annuals rendered perennial, &c., &c.

(Yet Eunuchs nor cut stallions nor nuns are longer lived. Why is life short, Why such high object generation. — We know world subject to cycle of change, temperature and all circumstances which influence living beings. —
We see living beings the young of living beings, become permanently changed or subject to variety, according to circumstances, — seeds of plants sown in rich soil, many kinds, are produced, though new individuals produced by buds are constant, hence we see generation here seems a means to vary, or adaptation. Again we believe (know) in course of generations even mind and instinct become influenced. —
child of savage not civilized man. — birds rendered wild through generation acquire ideas ditto. V. Zoonomia. — There may be unknown difficulty with full grown individual with fixed organization thus being modified; — therefore generation to adapt & alter the race to changingOn other hand, generation destroys the effect of accidental injuries, on which if animals lived forever, would be endless...

Tipped off by Good Magazine

Twain On...

CANNIBALS/the Poor

I regard the poor man, in his present condition, as so much wasted raw material. Cut up and properly canned, he might be made useful to fatten the natives of the cannibal islands and to improve our export trade in that region.

I shall recommend legislation upon the subject in my first message. My campaign cry will be: "Dessicate the poor working-man; stuff him into sausages."

- "Mark Twain as a Presidential Candidate,"
New York Evening Post, June 9, 1879

Bill: I know this is a ridiculous question before I ask, but you by any chance haven't kept up with your swordplay?

Part of me has been thinking about going to New York Comic Con this weekend. I want to go just to observe all the ridiculous craziness associated with this type of event and also to nerd out a little bit. I was checking out their website and came across this little gem:

CAN I BRING A SWORD? CAN I BUY A SWORD?
If you're bringing, buying, or selling something that could maim, damage, or cause serious bodily harm, we're going to take issue. Please read our Costume Weapon Policy and Weapon Sales Policy before attending or exhibiting at New York Comic Con with a weapon.

You know that when the question 'Can I bring a sword?' is as important as "Can I take pictures?' and 'Who's the organizer?', you are in for a pretty great afternoon. How can I not go?

i'm two.

from Gothamist.

If you are a non-mutant you can learn and remember a lot. If not, get away from me, mutant.

In these past few days, it seems we’ve forgotten a lot. One editor missed a train yesterday because of forgetfulness. A longtime friend of the program, The Dootz, couldn't remember if she took off her expensive earrings, or if they just fell off. And there is a good chance I am not, through a slip of the mind, wearing deodorant. What gives?

In doing research, I found that we may be too busy or not getting enough sleep. Or, according to CT Center for Health, we may have Candida infections (yeast infections that can lead to spaciness). Either way, we all could use a little Brain Age.

Memory, where have you gone?

This makes us look back on high school, when we had to memorize things daily. Some things we still retain to this day (Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do live after them... seriously I could go on. Ask me sometime), and others were forgotten as soon as the exam was completed (gone).

When's the last time you memorized anything?

Dr. Piotr Woznia says, in his findings on Memory and Learning that, "A healthy, intelligent and non-mutant mind shows a surprisingly constant learning rate" and that it doesn't necessarily decrease as we get older. Sure, as we age, we lose neurons and have an increased risk of Alzheimer's, but, Piotr says, "a well-trained memory is quite resilient and shows comparatively fewer functional signs of aging than the joints, the heart, the vascular system, etc. Moreover, training increases the scope of your knowledge, and paradoxically, your mental abilities may actually increase well into a very advanced age."

Great news! Now if I could just remember where I put that great news.

Image by MEOMI.

TMT Plum Tree watch - Day 1

TMT has planted a plum tree. Actually the other day at work after eating a plum, I spit out the pit and stuck it in a pot of soil I happen to have on my desk. So far, no results, but stay tuned.

This is really just the first part of TMT's initiative to become entirely self sustaining. Soon we will grow all our own food and supply our own water and electricity. Let us know about your favorite gardening techniques and secrets. If they're good enough we might let you into our bio-dome.

Frommers Calls it "an invention that borders on miracle status." We agree.

Do you remember where you were the first time you slept on a Westin Heavenly Bed? Probably at a Westin.

But seriously, this is not just a bed. It is 10 layers of unimaginable comfort, what the Westin store calls a true "bed experience."

For around $3,000 you can...

"experience the Heavenly® Bed in all its extraordinary glory with a custom-designed 13" pillow top mattress with 8 3/4" box spring , five pillows; two feather and down pillows, two hypo-allergenic pillows and one boudoir pillow and cover , duvet cover with an overstuffed polyester insert, down blanket, bed skirt, top sheet, middle sheet, bottom sheet and pillow cases."

The result is a pleasure monster. It's heavy. The linens, though breathable, way down on you like a dead body (only nicer). It is plush, yet firm, and I haven't even mentioned the pillows--they're fucking BOUDOIR! I have no idea what that is, but I want it on me.

Oh and even Dick Branson loves it.

ROBO CLOCK

Check out these bad ass, hand made robot clocks. Via The Watchismo Times.

Letter to the Pope

Dear Pope,

Can you please not come to NYC? You are still days away and already this morning, before I got on the PATH train, a large police officer handed me a bright yellow notice. It said, "The Terror Alert Has Been Raised to Yellow," and not much else. I threw it in a pile on the floor and got on the train. I mean what else was I supposed to do with that information?

Thankfully, I watched Band of Brothers all the way to the World Trade. I didn't die, but instead, my civic pride overflowith.

You will not win, Pope. You cannot kill me in the subway or elsewhere.

Sorry for the lack of posts, readers. I got stuff on my mind. Which reminds me…

Conventional bananas are so much better than organic bananas. There is such a major difference, in my opinion, between the large, firm, yellow pesticide-laden variety, and the small, bruised, chem-free ones.

If I don’t like organic bananas, does it mean I don’t really like bananas? That I just like synthetic banana-tasting fruit, fruit that has been chemically altered to taste like, what I imagine to be, a real banana? When in reality, it seems I don’t really like real bananas.

These are the questions of our age.

Food?

'one in a series of food that takes the shape of its container'
Check out this Flickr set by Zach Kowalczyk.

DOPEPOSE

There was no way I could avoid posting this. They are mostly from Germany (like homeboy above) and eastern Europe, with the occasional photo from D.C. Check out DOPEPOSE. And more importantly here are their rules for how to get involved.

HOW TO DO A DOPE POSING PHOTO:

1. first of all you simply have to look good!
2. There are different types of posing: (you can choose one of these examples)
- "Bad Boy": the face makes the look. push your bottom lip forward. bend your brows. (Tim Dog)
- "Gangster" : cars, money, nacked women and guns are very important. (NWA)
- "Vaughn Bode" : bend your body backwards, it makes you look more gum. (Cheech Wizzard)
- "Outta Space" : send laser blasts with your hands. (Flash Gordon)
- "Think about it" : direct your forfinger meditative to your head. (Def Jeff)
- "Bodybuilder" : forget it, if you dont train your body at least once a week. (LL.Cool J)
- "Holy" : in view of the sky below, fold your hands in front of your chest. (Afrika Bambaataa)
- "Adidas" : Pose your feet in the right position (make the three stripes seenable.) (Run DMC)
- "Pointer" : Your finger points at something. (good for graffiti writers to point on their piece)
- "Freeezer" : You stop to dance and freeze to please... (Crazy Legs)

Enjoy and please send us your dope poses too.

you know something's up when you are eagerly awaiting Iron Man and Speed Racer

Is it me or have there been no good movies released? The last time I went to the theater was to see There Will Be Blood 3+ months ago. I have a bunch of free movie passes, but there aren't even any mediocre movies good enough to make me use them. What gives, moviemakers? make me some movies.

Days like this make you think of...

Remember when you would dig in the wet sand on a beach and those little fish/crab things were in the water? What were those?

Bad Big Blacks

Emily Zeugner, of the AP, has exposed the general hatred of big, black dogs. "Animal shelter officials say big, black dogs have more trouble finding a happy home than do other dogs. Some shelters even have a name for it: 'Big black dog syndrome.'

Let's face it people, black dogs are inherently more aggressive and angry than their lighter furred cousins, wouldn't you say? When we are playing in our cul-de-cac with Toby, our golden, we do not want to see some pack of big black dogs approach. No way, no how.

But, Zeugner says, it's not just the fear the big blacks bring about. "Animal shelters say black dogs of all sizes are difficult to photograph for online listings, and are hard to spot against the shadows of their crates and cages in dimly lighted kennels."

That makes a lot of sense. I mean you would have to get a white drop cloth or something to see any detail, and once you could make out the features, you would probably only see their tremendous fangs.

Probably best to weed them out then. Survival of the fittest and so on. "At the city animal shelter in Rogers, Ark., big, black dogs almost always make up the bulk of the animals put to sleep each month. Last month, 13 of the 14 dogs killed by the city were large and black..."

(RED) & Girl Skateboards

I thought this was pretty cool because it's one of the first relatively smaller companies that have partnered with (RED). So far it seems to me like its mostly been corporate heavy weights like Apple, Gap, and Motorola. You can check out their Girl Skateboard (RED) page to see a little video with art director Andy Jenkins and Eric Koston talking about the project and doing a little skating.

Girl Skateboards : (PRODUCT) RED

The Pope is coming, the Pope is coming!

April 15-20, Pope Benedict XVI will being the US leg of his tour. He hasn't been here since 2005, and so his American followers are excited.

Laurie Goodstein, The NYTimes’s national religion correspondent who plans to interview Benedict says that the padre will probably comment on many issues pertinent to Catholic Americans, including our nation's many "sexual abuse cases involving priests." Involving? Let's get real for a minute here. It's not like in some cases the young boys raped the priests, or the priests happened upon the crime, or any other scenario in which they weren't the criminals, but I digress..

But, Goodstein writes,

"The pope’s primary purpose is to tend to his flock. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States is in flux. Demographic changes, along with a shortage of priests and financial pressures, have led dioceses to close urban schools and parishes and open ones in suburbs and exurbs."

In fact, one American follower asks Goodstein to relay this question: "With so many American families discouraging their sons from entering the priesthood, what is the Church prepared to do to not only retain dwindling numbers, but also to provide His flock with willing, learned and blessed shepards?"

Catholics, can we talk? Do you ever take offense to the sheep metaphor? (Dictionary.com defines sheep as "a meek, unimaginative, or easily led person.") Good lord.

A note to our older, more formal readers:

Sorry for all the f-bombs. Personally, this editor does not like cursing in everyday speech. I mostly just drop em when I am drunk, trying to sound tough/cool, making a point about Die Hard, or I am really fuming mad.

AP on the other hand would use nothing but profanity if I let him. Save that talk for the locker room, I say, or you won't get any supper.

Readers, have you potty mouths?