Clear Blue Dei

Ever since I found the “Bigfoot” (at best guess) version of my post How to Redirect your Blog to a different URL Part 2: Wordpress (titled “How to Airt your Blog to a different URL Portion 2: Wordpress.“)  I have been thinking of Bigfoot.  Here is a note from my original post that was translated on the “Bigfoot” page:

“NOTE: you will cognize if it is not putted upwards right because you ‘ll get an mistake when assay to add the domain name to your blog.”

Oddly enough, Bigfoot may be Scottish (or thereabouts) since he uses “airt” and “ain” which at least resembles that accent. But he uses it wrong, which is not surprising for Bigfoot, the fact that he speaks and writes at all is pretty amazing (although he does use Windows Live for his blog). Heck, the fact that he exists is pretty incredible, although some people dispute even this.

Bigfoot claims his name is “Dennis”, but then again, he claims to have written my post, too. As a matter of fact, he (or a relative) has a Vox blog called “Alabama Restaurants Info“. There is only 1 post written (copied) so far, but it is a good one and I look forward to more. The post is called “Has anyone ever interrupted into a Eatery to do their ain nutrient?” and here is a sample of the Bigfoot review of a mexican restaurant (near as I can tell):

“here was this Mexican eatery that we seed and we discovered that concern was not good. So we sayed a couple of dishes we believed we would wish. The nutrient was horrific!! The refried beans savour like they came out of a  can, the rice was mush and the carnitas savour like they were a hebdomad old. No Good!!!!”

Who knew that Bigfeet (foots?) not only eat mexican food, but critique it. And in the same post we get some of the Bigfoot wisdom:

“I well-nigh interrupted into McDonald ’s to do a late nighttime Collation Wrapper but i chickened out. Plus they were unfastened.

Nope, I havent have sex….does brand ya wonderthough..I wonderment which resteraunt would be the one that everyone would desire to interrupt into? peace

my friend once assay that. luckily he was simply bluffing about the gun so his sentence is very much lower than it should be.”

After pearls like that, who wouldn’t be interested to know more about Bigfoot? Well, Bigfoot has written several books. The first one I became familiar with is Bigfoot: I Not Dead with this review:

“In his eagerly anticipated follow-up to Me Write Book, Bigfoot returns from exile to share his inspiring, hilarious, and often deeply disturbing experiences as a misunderstood forest gentleman and tragic media darling. These entertaining and often grizzly stories stand not only as a testament to the greatness of the legendary man-beast, but also as a chilling cautionary tale of the downside of a life of celebrity, cannibalism, celebrity cannibalism, wanton violence, and lack of toilet training. As in Me Write Book, full-color glossy spreads depict every intimate, disgusting, and downright insane moment of Bigfoot’s life. Bigfoot: I Not Dead is an unforgettable memoir that will stay with readers long after his foul scent has dissipated.”

I read this out of order, Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir was his first book and he sounds like he was more naive and lovable back then. From Amazon:

“Like many reclusive celebrities, Big Foot is misunderstood. In his touching memoir Me Write Book he wants to set the record straight, proving that although he’s larger, hairier, and more foul-smelling than most of us, he’s really not so different underneath.

Only the most cold-hearted among us could look on without compassion as this hirsute Everyman struggles bravely with parental abandonement, Pringles potato crisps, embarrassing moments with peach schnapps, the desperate loneliness of personal ads, and ‘roid rage.

Readers will never forget the plaintive voice from the wilderness that howls from every page of this searing, intimate account of a man-beast in the promised land.”.

And he also wrote In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot.

Here is a Bigfoot Action Figure which may or may not be what Bigfoot really looks like but “Intricate articulation allows it to be posed just like frame 352 of the famous film footage.”

If you want to see if you can find the elusive Bigfoot, here’s the Bigfoot Observer’s Field Manual: A practical and easy-to-follow step-by-step guide to your very own face-to-face encounter with a legend. If he was a human celebrity, this would be stalking, but I guess all’s fair for a Bigfoot. And like any celebrity, it appears he has moved to California: The Hoopa Project: Bigfoot Encounters in California. I would suggest looking in L.A. first.

~Susan Mellott

Presents for people who are enamored of all things cute and collectible. And some generally amusing stuff to keep it interesting.

Oh hai! If you have been hanging around the internet much, you will have heard of lolcats and have probably visited I can haz cheezburger at least a time or two for your lolcat fix. And if you are even more of a lol head, you probably talk in lolspeak (teh furst language born of teh intertubes.) and know why IS that walrus looking for a blue bucket?” Kthx. And if that is so, you may want to visit the lolmart.  My favorite is the lolrus. He is as cute as a button and if you want to show your love, check out the lolrus tshirt (picture on left).

Or for lolcat with a twist, visit the lolcat bible store with tshirts printed with the lolspeak versions of bible verses like John 3:16 (16 So liek teh Ceiling Kitteh lieks teh ppl lots and he sez ‘Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleeves him u wont evr diez no moar, kthxbai!’) and Matthew 3:13-15 (13 Den Happy Cat caem from Garary, to has water baf from John14 But John was all “Ur doin it rong, j00 needz to water baf me” 15 And Happy Cat sayed “STFU and gib to me water baf n00b” and John did.) and a cute sticker with ceiling cat (the goodly/godly cat as opposed to basement cat) that says “Mah God, lemme show yu him”. On the back of the tshirts is a link to the lolcat bible translation site which has most of the bible translated into lolspeak.

Or maybe you’d like a little engrish on your gift.  Engrish is what non-english speakers put on their signs, etc. that is supposed to be a translation into english and usually ends up almost indecipherable and pretty funny. The main site, Engrish.com! Be Juicy! is well worth a stop and is almost guaranteed to help you waste an hour or two (or a whole lot more). And while this doesn’t have a store associated with it, if you like engrish, you will also enjoy Hanzi Smatter – dedicated to the misuse of chinese characters in western culture.

And one last stop for the cute-addict is the hello kitty and friends shop at Sanrio. They have it all. If you can’t get your cute fix here, you can’t get it anywhere. And for the Hello Kitty fans who want to branch out, there are many other characters you can collect as well, such as Charmmy Kitty. “Charmmy Kitty is a white persian cat that Papa gave to Hello Kitty as a gift. She is well-mannered, quiet, and listens to whatever Hello Kitty says. She loves objects that are bright and sparkly! Charmmy Kitty wears a lace-lined ribbon on her left ear, and a necklace which holds the key to Hello Kitty’s jewelry box.”

or Badtz-Maru: “As his April 1st birthday would suggest, Badtz-Maru is one mischievous little penguin. He lives with his mother and his pinball playing father in Gorgeoustown. He attends the first grade at Gorgeous Academy. Batz-Maru attracts a lot of attention as he walks his pet alligator, Pochi. Badtz-Maru has dreams of greatness when he grows up but for now he rolls his eyes at his humorous life in Gorgeoustown.”

Sanrio may not have the definitive collection of all these characters, but with a little searching you should have no trouble finding more. And another place to look for Hello Kitty and other Japanese related items (manga and anime characters too, and other things) is J-List, a wonderful toybox of things from Japan. And they have an adults-only section as well, which has some fascinating things to look at. JBox is the All Ages, Family Friendly site. This site goes on and on with everything imaginable.  Almost too much to take in all at once if you don’t have something specific you are looking for.  A search on my very favorite character, Totoro, turned up 4 pages of items.

And not to leave anyone out, if you hate Hello Kitty and have made it this far in this post, here is a site you won’t want to miss. It is Hello Kitty Hell – One Man’s Life With Cute Overload. This man married a Hello Kitty Fanatic and keeps his sanity by posting about it.

And one last stop not to miss is Kid Robot. If you have any idea what the things on this list are, not only will you want to go to Kid Robot, but chances are, you already have.

From their About Us page: “The products sold at Kidrobot are the centerpieces of a global movement that exemplifies the cutting edge of both pop art and mass culture. Many Kidrobot toys, such as Dunny, MUNNY, and Frank Kozik’s Labbits and Mongers, attract huge followings. Artists that work with Kidrobot have gained celebrity status-these include USA artists Frank Kozik, Tim Biskup, Huck Gee, Joe Ledbetter, Tristan Eaton, Paul Budnitz, and Tara McPherson; the German design collective eBoy; Japan’s Devilrobots & Mad Barbarians; French street artists Tilt & Mist; the UK’s TADO and ilovedust; Australia’s Nathan Jurevicius; Argentina’s DOMA; and many, many others.

A blend of sculpture and popular art, many of Kidrobot’s exclusive toys are extremely rare and collectible. Artists often create a series of only a few hundred to a few thousand pieces, so once a toy is sold out, it’s sold out forever. Kidrobot toys retail anywhere from $5 to $25,000, and many appreciate in value over time.”

I first heard of Dunnies while watching HGTV when they went into someone’s very expensive, very artistic house and they had a collection of high-end, gallery quality Dunnies. Since then, I found out about Kid Robot and the other collectible items.  Here are a few of the 3 1/2″ Dunnies for sale on their site for a reasonable $7.95.

And last but not least is Bibo.  Archie McPhee carried the original Bibo (as far as I know) and both my husband and I got the squeeze toy (see left).  And I had a Bibo t-shirt with the story of Bibo on the back.  I think the shirt is probably gone by now and I’ll bet it is a collectible.  It should be. I’m not sure why the one sold on Archie McPhee is blue now, but ours were red like the photo.

Who is Bibo?

“Bibo is a God Monster with intelligence. He has two big eyes, and he knows very well what people want to do. He cannot speak, but only “Bi-Bo.” When there is any danger happened, he will speak. The top of his head will light up and his hip will makes many colorful smoke to help him survive because this smoke is very stinking and it can hinder the sight of his enemies.

We love Bibo very much because he always survive by using some funny ways.”

To get the full Bibo story, and other interesting and humorous thoughts, visit the Archie McPhee Blog.

For other cool ideas for gifts, take a look at my list of posts filed under shopping.

Enjoy!

~Susan Mellott

Here comes another Christmas and we all wonder what to get the hard-to-please among our family and friends.  Well, good old Archie McPhee still isn’t letting us down! Despite the fact that they no longer carry the Illustrated Librarian  line of temporary tattoos (perfect for the librarian on your list), they do have a nice “Read or Die” shopping bag  which is new.  For other librarian(and zombie)  related items  you can check out my post Librarians and Zombies: Novel Presents You will Love (and some librarian trivia)

And while I am mentioning past posts with shopping ideas, here is my post on the Keyringer, a useful item for finding your keys and other lost things. I got one and used it to attach to my dad’s remote at the nursing home so I could find it when it got lost (as it frequently did). It worked well and was a good idea, however, the batteries seem to have died pretty quickly and I have to reorder some more. Update: got batteries and opened the non-working one and it only had 1 battery in it. Not sure where the other one went, possibly taken out for something else at the nursing home? In any case, I think the batteries would still be working in both of them if the one had both batteries!  The beep is louder now though since I put new ones in. So I still like and recommend them.

And have you (or a “friend”) ever felt uncomfortable going “commando” under your gloves or even worse, having your whole hands, just as the good lord made them, flapping around for all to see?  Then you will definitely want a pair of handerpants for Christmas.  And you can wear them under gloves for a little extra warmth and security. Now if only they made handdresses. Or handskirts, that would be pretty! Hear that Archie? A little lace handskirt would be very nice.

Moving on, my next pick for a great place to shop is ThinkGeek.  For a practical gift, this really caught my eye.  Who wouldn’t want a watch with a built-in USB drive? Well, maybe not everyone, but I know I would. Seriously, I really would. I think this is really neat and I especially like that it is an analog watch. Digital watches just tell you what time it is now, analog watches tell you where you are in relationship to the daily flow of time.  At least that is how I see it.

Or for a more esoteric (yet still fun and definitely geeky) idea, there are the interactive t-shirts. My favorites in these are definitely the Electronic Rock Guitar shirt and the Electronic Drum Kit shirt.  Get a couple of people wearing these and you have a band! I like the idea of the guitar shirt, but I have to admit, I think the drums are the bee’s knees!  I almost got one until my husband mentioned that I might not want to be messing with my “cymbals”  in public.  I guess that is a good point. I hadn’t really thought of it. Anyway, here is a video of the Electronic Drum shirt in action:

And if you know someone whose look would be complete if they only had a grill, here are some very reasonably priced grillz. And they are all one-size-fits-all.  I am partial to the golden style blue domination premium grill. Only $49.99 and unique enough that your friends probably don’t already have this. But hurry, they are almost sold out! Or if they have all the grills they need, maybe a pimp cup would be the thing. Again, extremely reasonable prices, for the budget conscious pimp. These are all from IcedOutGear.

And for those of us who live and breathe social media and who need a little splash of color for their chair or couch, visit Craftsquatch, for all the social media icons, in pillow form.  They have the twitter bird, the RSS icon, the facebook icon and more. Show your love of your favorite social networking sites and tools, through interior decorating.

And  if that all wasn’t enough, here is a whole bunch more geek (gamer) related items from Split Reason, Gear for Geeks and Gamers.  The +15 frost resistant beanie is one of my favorite items from this store. Who doesn’t need one of those?

And one last idea, one that my husband has on his wish list. How about a nice bow tie from Absolute ties?  Sean wants one in his school colors (which “coincidentally” is also the Hogswart school colors. He “says” he went to school in “New Zealand”…) For the true bow tie person, they would only want one that you tie yourself. Sean still takes a while to get it tied, but he is working on it. Practice makes perfect.  I’ll bet you didn’t know that the bow tie is going to be the next big thing in men’s office apparel. Well it is if Sean has any say about it.  At least it is becoming a trend among the male library types. Well, it might…

Happy holidays and take care,

~Susan Mellott

Here is the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

The winners are:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
12. Karmageddon: It’s when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes, and it’s a serious bummer.
13. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you
14. Glibido: All talk and no action.
15. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
16. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
17. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
18. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:
1. coffee, n. the person upon whom one coughs.
2. flabbergasted, adj. appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. abdicate, v. to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. esplanade, v. to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. willy-nilly, adj. impotent.
6. negligent, adj. absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. lymph, v. to walk with a lisp.
8. gargoyle, n. olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. flatulence, n. emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. balderdash, n. a rapidly receding hairline.
11. testicle, n. a humorous question on an exam.
12. rectitude, n. the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. pokemon, n. a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. oyster, n. a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. circumvent, n. an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

Enjoy!

~Susan Mellott