Categories
Best Of Happened Puzzled Over

“Like A Gay Porn Site With A Mac Bent”

Oh dear. This one is going to haunt me for years.

Google recently introduced some neat free stats for webmasters, and being the eager webmaster I am, I decided to sign up and enable myself.

What I found is that while many of my top search terms are reasonable (“quicksilver os x”, “play asia”, “ny1”), my #5 Top Search Query and my #1 and #2 Top Search Query Clicks are, in the words of Rob Huebel, “un-savory”. And the problem is, I know why – at least partially.

This one is potentially not safe for work. You’re going to have to click through for the rest of the story.

Categories
Reflected

The Cat Is Stuck In Popcorn

Back in February, I detailed one of my few recurring health problems – bloody noses – shortly after I had it fixed. I wrote at the time that I had only two slightly bizarre health problems, and was otherwise normal.

I’ve been reminded of a third after events of last night; a health problem that I am not consciously aware of until it’s too late.

You see, my friends, apparently I talk in my sleep, in a somewhat hilarious manner.

My sister told me once long ago that one time when she was coming upstairs, she heard me repeating “TACO….TACO!!!!” in my sleep. I shrugged – and started sleeping with the door closed.

This isn’t a frequent thing – I’m not babbling every night, as far as I know. Then again, maybe I am and I just don’t wake up Katie half the time. After getting married, I do have someone who has to put up with me next to her each night.

Katie has occasionally mentioned that I’ll wake her up with some babbling, and annoyingly I seem to know how to shake her arm to wake her up while I’m asleep; one time while we lived in Ithaca, I woke her feverishly claiming that “the Chinese were coming”. This becomes problematic because when she starts shouting “WHAT?!” at me, I wake up – and my brain is fully in the context of yes, Kate, the Chinese are coming, yet I have no idea why or what it means or anything. So I sit there, wide awake, trying to explain what exactly I mean, only to inevitably get exasperated and tell her to just forget it.

Last night, I apparently shook Katie awake and uttered the words that will now haunt me forever:

THE CAT IS STUCK IN POPCORN.

Artist’s rendition of my wacked-out brain.

Katie’s retelling of this to me while I was on the phone with her this morning:

You shook me awake really hard, and your eyes were wide open, and you looked so scared, and just kept telling me, “THE CAT IS STUCK IN POPCORN.” I looked at the cat, and he was looking at me as if to say, “I don’t know what the HELL he’s talking about.”

So, needless to say – if you want hilarity, just hang out with me when I’m asleep. I am apparently a freaky laugh riot.

Categories
Best Of Puzzled Over

On The Existence Of Bagels

Since moving to NYC, one of the minor changes I’ve gone through is the change in bagel preference. Living in Ithaca, one gets very used to the Upstate-style bagel; thick, heavy, doughy, fairly chewy. New York City bagels, of course, are thinner, wider, lighter, and a little less doughy. Everyone sells bagels, and they are cheap and filling.

When we place a Fresh Direct order for groceries, we always tend to order a six-pack of bagels and some cream cheese, for the occasional time I want to eat breakfast. The ones that are delivered meet all of the above criteria for a NYC bagel, and also keep very well in the freezer. Strangely, though, it is impossible for me to prepare myself one without having a minor aneurism.

Why this intense pain in the head? On the packaging, the slogan and product name meld together one of the most mind-boggling sentences in human history since “If it weren’t for my horse, I never would have spent that extra year on college.”

The pitch reads:

BAGELS AREN’T BAGELS UNLESS THEY’RE JUST BAGELS.

Just Bagels, of course, is the name of the product. Still, even knowing this, I am forced to read this as: Instances of object X aren’t instance of object X unless they’re simply instances of object X.

Is this a blow against fancy things, maybe? Are they implying that were a bagel all spruced up with fancy seeds and flavorings, that it would stop being a bagel and turn into some other sort of bread foodstuff, such as a bialy? But they sell six varieties, including Just Bagels Everything. Surely that’s not just a bagel, as the combination of poppy and sesame and onion and garlic disqualifies one from saying it’s just a bagel.

Perhaps they’re speaking to the moral sense of the bagels – a sort of superhero bagel, upholding the standards and beliefs of our fair city. I would find this hard to believe, as they do not seem to have any superpowers to resist my desire to eat them, nor do I gain the ability to fly by eating them.

(At this point in the entry, I’m looking at the dictionary definitions for just in hopes of deciphering further. I would appreciate it if someone called for professional help.)

How about “by a narrow margin, barely”? That doesn’t speak well to the product, though, if it only squeaks by the qualification charts for what constitutes a bagel. Ignoring the disqualification of bagels conforming better to the specification, this throws us into even more mental anguish as we are judging the conformance of a bagel on whether or not it conforms to the state of the bagel.

One final possibility is that they are using “just” as a variant on joust. Perhaps these bagels ride into battle and try to knock each other over when…

Needless to say, this is why I often just go out to eat.