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"*What* cock and balls?" in Idaho Springs

I ordered the spaghetti with meatballs *and* sausage in a restaurant in Idaho Springs, CO, last week. This is what "the guys in the kitchen can never resist doing" with the presentation whenever anybody orders both meats (according to our server):

That reminded me of a story Jacob told us the other night about an awesome-sounding game that some friends played on a van road trip called "*What* cock and balls?"

The rules are simple: Person #1 draws a cock and balls on a piece of paper. Person #2 then takes the drawing and incorporates the cock and balls into some bigger drawing, of a sunset or a unicorn party or a famous historical battle or whatever. Person #2 then shows the drawing to whoever they can, declaring incredulously, indignantly, "*What* cock and balls?"

Portrait vs. landscape

Why isn't landscape the default for all documents, given that most business docs are now read on computers (and other screens oriented more like a computer screen than a book)? Is there any benefit to everything still being portrait? Why is it the dominant format anyway?

It seems like there aren't any real-world barriers to switching to landscape, since it's just the way you hold the paper that changes. You'd still print stuff from the same printers, use the same notebooks and folders and envelopes, etc. And when you viewed a document on a screen (esp. smaller screens, like laptop screens), you wouldn't have to always scroll back and forth to get the tops and bottoms of pages. Devices like the iPhone are already making page orientation less relevant, by letting you jump back and forth to whichever makes more sense.

I bet some smart design firms will start doing all their creative briefs and other client-facing docs landscape and that will slowly trickle to the rest of the world, until one day all the Word templates and restaurant menus and credit card offers and who know maybe even books in the world are wide instead of long.

Junior Sand People of America

Silas was watching me assemble a patio heater this morning, so like any good dad I let him play with all the exciting pieces of metal that came out of the giant box. I'm proud to say that the kid took to the gaffi stick like he was born with it. (Now he just needs to learn the appropriate bellow.)

Heath Ledger comment spam

You have to love (i.e., hate) humanity. How long did it take for misspelled Heath Ledger comment spam to appear? Not very. I want to cry a hole day. Drugs are bad!

Wal-Mart: they're no Costco, but they're not quite as bad these days

ECB breaks it down, why Wal-Mart isn't sucking quite as much these days. And the first commenter has a good point that applies to all kinds of businesses: "I can see a kind of corollary to the McDonald's equation: Because McDonald's is the single largest purchaser of beef, if McDonald's insists on better farming practices those practices will quickly become the industry standard. Therefore lobbying McDonald's is one of the more effective ways to bring about large-scale changes in the way that industry operates."

Popular Mechanics on Terminator v. Terminator

How did I miss this? Popular Mechanics nerds out on which Terminator would win an all-out, intra-storyline Terminator brawl. If you're way too busy to read this (as, admittedly, I probably am but what are you going to do?), here's the final analysis:

[I]n a grand robotic battle royale, which one would prevail? As far as we can tell, it would be a close match.

The T-X could, in theory, take over all of the others—and that’s it, fight’s over. Or it could assume control of the T-1000, which, so long as the cage match isn’t happening in a foundry or near an active volcano, would get knocked down a lot, but like a robot Hulk Hogan (or possibly Hollywood Hogan, his later, evil incarnation) always, always get back up. Without firing a single shot or throwing a single punch, the T-X would become mistress and commander of its Terminator opposition, either by assimilating the competition, or having its shapeshifting champion clean house.

But if a single suicidal T-850 shows up, the T-X’s party is over. With an overloaded fuel cell constantly up every T-850’s sleeve, the question becomes, Can a T-1000 survive that sort of devastation?

Of course it could. Since the T-1000 is such a world-shattering technological breakthrough, capable of perceiving without creating sensors, moving without constructing actual joints or subsystems of any kind, and, most important, functioning without any discernible power source, there’s no way to limit its potential. Blown to smithereens, it would simply collect its smithereens, brush off its police uniform, and march off to the next massacre. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” From our perspective, the T-1000 is 100 percent magical, and the most dangerous and capable Terminator in history. And it’s to everyone’s benefit that the modern world is full of catwalks, and grenade launchers and glorious man-made lava.

Lasagna Cat is insane

Sorry, it's taken me a while to catch onto Lasagna Cat. (I blame Rob, who says he couldn't bring himself to blog it.) This one is as good a place to start as any—and, as promised, it is insane.

Lovely image cap from another clip (thank you, Flog):

"Monorail officially dead"

Okay, now that all this ugliness is behind us, can we start getting a new monorail on the ballot again?

It was not my understanding that you were to eat them

I just happened to notice: my 600th post!

Not if you count putative.pitas.com, but who remembers that, really? (Although, wow, archived blogs makes for a nice time capsule.) I only hope that I may blog long enough to embarrass my child.