Ramblings & ephemera
Scott: Pronounce this word: A - G - I - N - C - O - U - R - T.
Robin: Why?
Scott: I just want to hear you pronounce it.
Robin: Welllll … I would pronounce it the way it’s spelled: Again-kort.
Scott: (starts laughing & snickering) Haha!
Robin: I *knew* that would send you into proxyisms of [...]
Posted on June 8th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, overheard | No Comments »
Denise is talking to our class about how people are slowly giving up their civil liberties, a bit at a time: “It’s like the story about how you gradually turn the heat up on a pot of water and slowly boil the lobster!”
(Hint: she meant frog.)
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Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, True Stories, overheard | No Comments »
“You’ve been hoist by your own retard.”
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Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature, True Stories | No Comments »
Denise & I are in the car, talking about her friend Scott E., when her cell phone rings. It’s Scott E.!
Denise: “Scott! We were just talking about you! Your ears must have been ringing!”
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Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, True Stories, overheard | No Comments »
A coffee shop where the employees all wear platform shoes, glitter make-up, orange spiked hair, feathers, and silver spaceman pants.
It’s name:
ZIGGY STARBUCKS!
My friend Michael Krider made the following suggestions:
Drink names:
The Cafe Young Americano
Caffeine Genie
Sumatra-jet City
When employees hand your money back after a sale, they say, “Here’s your ch-ch-ch-change.”
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Posted on March 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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So a bunch of us are talking at the Central West End Linux User Group meeting. Somehow the topic of surgery during World War I comes up.
Robert: What was really bad was that those guys were operated on without any anaesthetic.
Me: Huh? Doctors had anaesthetic then.
Robert: They did? What?
Me: Ether.
Robert: Huh. How’d they deliver [...]
Posted on December 10th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off
From Timothy Noah’s “Bush’s Fart-Joke Legacy” (Slate: 2 October 2006):
Legend has it that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, once farted in the presence of Queen Elizabeth I, whereupon he went into exile for seven years. On his return, the queen reputedly greeted, “My lord, we had quite forgot the fart.”
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Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, history, politics | Comments Off
From Roger Ebert:
“Because the movie all takes place during one day and Roxy is being chased by a truant officer, it compares itself to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” It might as reasonably compare itself to “The Third Man” because they wade through sewers.”
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Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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We went to see Troy last week. At the end of the movie, the Trojans drag the Trojan Horse into the city. They party, celebrating what they think is the abandonment of the war by the Greeks, and everyone collapses into a drunken stupor. Cut to the waiting Greek ships, hidden a few miles away, [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off
From Chris Suellentrop’s “Scooby-Doo: Hey, dog! How do you do the voodoo that you do so well?” (Slate: 26 March 2004):
The Washington Post’s Hank Stuever concisely elucidated the “Scooby worldview” when the first live-action movie came out: “Kids should meddle, dogs are sweet, life is groovy, and if something scares you, you should confront it.”
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Posted on October 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, art | Comments Off
From Improv Everywhere’s “Missions: Best Buy” (23 April 2006):
Agent Slavinsky wrote in to suggest I get either a large group of people in blue polo shirts and khakis to enter a Best Buy or a group in red polo shirts and khakis to enter a Target. Wearing clothing almost identical to the store’s uniform, the [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, security | Comments Off
From Napoleonic Literature’s “The Court and Camp of Buonaparte: The Ministers: Fouche“:
[Fouche,] who was so profoundly versed in the state of parties, — who was obeyed by one, courted by another, and feared by all; who, by means of his countless agents, could at any time congregate the scattered elements of resistance to the [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Annalee Newitz’s Cracking the Code to Romance (Wired: June 2004):
Moore’s buddy Matt Chisholm chimes in to tell me about a similar hack, a JavaScript app he wrote with Moore that works on Friendster. It mines for information about anyone who looks at his profile and clicks through to his Web site. “I get their [...]
Posted on June 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, security | Comments Off
From Adam Liptak’s “Lawyers Won’t End Squabble, So Judge Turns to Child’s Play” (The New York Times: 9 June 2006):
Fed up with the inability of two lawyers to agree on a trivial issue in an insurance lawsuit, a federal judge in Florida this week ordered them to “convene at a neutral site” and “engage in [...]
Posted on June 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, law | Comments Off
From AP’s “Borrowed books returned to museum — 92 years later” (CNN: 6 November 2000):
The Field Museum of Natural History recently returned 10 volumes to the American Museum of Natural History in New York — 92 years late.
It seems a researcher from the New York museum took the books with him when he accepted a [...]
Posted on June 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, history | Comments Off
From Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’s “Longhorn ‘Wave’ Rolling In” (eWeek: 20 October 2004):
The questions led into a discussion of Linux, with Bittmann observing that there’s a market perception that Linux is more secure.
“It’s just not true,” Ballmer responded. “We’re more secure than the other guys. There are more vulnerabilities in Linux; it takes longer for Linux [...]
Posted on June 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, security | Comments Off
From David Frith’s “Microsoft takes on net nasties” (Australian IT: 6 June 2006):
MICROSOFT executives love telling stories against each other. Here’s one that platforms vice-president Jim Allchin told at a recent Windows Vista reviewers conference about chief executive Steve Ballmer.
It seems Steve was at a friend’s wedding reception when the bride’s father complained that his [...]
Posted on June 7th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business, security | Comments Off
From “Fuzzy maths” (The Economist: 11 May 2006):
Google seems to use betas as dogs sprinkle trees - so that rivals know where it is.
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Posted on June 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From The New York Times‘ “Lew Anderson, 84, Clarabell the Clown and a Bandleader, Dies“:
Lew Anderson, whose considerable success as a musician, arranger and bandleader paled before the celebrity he achieved as Clarabell the Clown, Howdy Doody’s sidekick on one of television’s first children’s shows, died on Sunday in Hawthorne, N.Y. …
“Well, his feet are [...]
Posted on May 17th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, history | Comments Off
A few weeks ago I had my eyes fixed with LASIK eye surgery. So far I’ve been completely happy with the results - it works! In preparing for the surgery, you receive lots of printed materials to read, including a booklet titled “Patient Information”. Inside that booklet is an explanation of the surgery which contains [...]
Posted on May 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, overheard | Comments Off