Monthly Archives: March 2004

I think they’re trying to tell us something

Posted on March 24, 2004 by Katie

scary sugar packet

I don’t get what it’s saying. Maybe there’s a hidden message on it.

Posted in Signs of the Times | 5 Comments

This is why you plan ahead

Posted on March 24, 2004 by Kelson

It seems that Benton County, Oregon, has decided to stop issuing any marriage licenses until the state makes up its mind who can and can’t get married. For now, straight couples in the area will have to go to the next county over to get married.

The rationale, of course, is that they “need to treat everyone in our county equally” — even if it’s not clear whether they’re allowed to let one class of people marry.

So I suppose gay marriage can negatively impact straight marriage after all: (1) Longer lines at the courthouse might deter spur-of-the-moment weddings. (2) Confuse the clerks enough, and they’ll just throw up their hands and say “Come back tomorrow!”

Not that either is likely to happen here in über-conservative OC, but I am glad we’ve already picked up our license.

Posted in Politics, Strange World, Wedding | Tagged marriage, Orange County, Politics | Leave a comment

Silly Censors

Posted on March 18, 2004 by Kelson

A few weeks ago I was looking at the website error logs and noticed some attempts to access images with names like /flash/images/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20ans3.jpg. I got around to looking at it today, and all of them are the same name, all of them from browsers looking at my profile of the Teen Titans, which includes an image called teentitans3.jpg.

I finally realized what’s going on. Some moronic filter has broken up the name not as “teen titans” but as “teen tit ans,” decided it must be porn, and replaced the “offending” words with spaces (%20 is the code for a space in a URL).

It really makes me wonder how badly mangled the page looks to these people, especially if it turns out that every instance of the team’s name gets pointlessly erased.

Further reading: The Censorware Project, Peacefire, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Posted in Comics, Politics, Web Design | 3 Comments

Stout-Hearted

Posted on March 17, 2004 by Kelson

Decided to try Murphy’s instead of Guinness this year. I much prefer Murphy’s.

Posted in Food | Leave a comment

Apartment snobbery

Posted on March 16, 2004 by Katie

We got home tonight, after a good round of beer therapy and poking fun at the evil that is casual dinnerware, and found that we now live in Aliso Springs. They didn’t change the city name, mind you, just the name of our apartment “village.” We’d been wondering how they were going to handle having painted over the metal number plates affixed to our doors. Now we know: artsy little ceramic number plates affixed to the stucco, using slightly eastern script for the “Aliso Springs” and that much-too-popular raggedy calligraphy one for the numbers.

Gag me. These people need to get a clue. This place was never high-class and it’s never going to be. And, considering how frelling expensive it is to live in the kind of place they want to turn this into, it shouldn’t be, not in this area.

I think I need more beer therapy.

Posted in Annoyances, General | Leave a comment

Registry

Posted on March 16, 2004 by Kelson

For those who are wondering, we’re still in the process of registering. We’ve got a partial registry at Target so far, and by the end of the week, we’ll also be registered at Robinsons-May.

(It’s been kind of tricky, since we already have a lot of the things people tend to register for. You know, toasters and stuff. So we’re trying to choose things we haven’t gotten around to picking up, or things that are worth replacing with newer/better equivalents.)

We keep talking about registering at Fry’s, but we’re not sure they’d even have a wedding registry!

Posted in Wedding | 2 Comments

LOTR caption madness

Posted on March 15, 2004 by Katie

For those of you who haven’t seen these yet:

Green screen and Mr Bean

Hooray for time machines

Obscure My Fair Lady reference

Maybe elves aren't perfect

No RPS intended

Feel the burn

For the Making-Of junkies

Feel free to copy and distribute/re-post these so long as I get the credit.

Posted in Humor, LOTR | 4 Comments

Songs Not to Play at a Wedding

Posted on March 15, 2004 by Kelson

Remember the song “How’s it Gonna Be” by Third Eye Blind? When it was new, a lot of high schools apparently chose it for the prom theme, proving that teenagers don’t actually listen to the lyrics (it’s a breakup song), which should mitigate parental concerns about explicit lyrics.

Anyway, Katie and I were talking about this the other day and started tossing around titles of songs that would be just plain wrong to play at a wedding reception.

You Oughta Know (Alanis Morissette)
Paradise by the Dashboard Light (Meat Loaf)
Song for the Dumped (Ben Folds)
Closer (Nine Inch Nails)
Brick (Ben Folds Five)
Playboy Mommy (Tori Amos)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Deep Blue Something)
Anything But Down (Sheryl Crow)
Back to Good (Matchbox 20)
Me and a Gun (Tori Amos)
Anything by Liz Phair
Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) (Vertical Horizon)
Guys Like Me (Aimee Mann)
Anything by Evanescence or Linkin Park
Melanie (“Weird Al” Yankovic)
Almost anything by They Might Be Giants
Don’t Stand So Close to Me (The Police)
Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles)
I Touch Myself (The Divinyls)
Anything by Rammstein
Gollum’s Song
Anything by the Chipmunks
I Don’t Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats)
Anything by Nirvana
I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying (Sting)
King of Pain (The Police)
I’m Still Remembering (Cranberries)
One More Minute (“Weird Al” Yankovic)
If I Were Brave (Shawn Colvin)
Jumper (Third Eye Blind)
Yesterday (The Beatles)
Roxanne (The Police)
I’ll Never Tell (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling)
Anything by Garbage
Positively Fourth Street (Bob Dylan)
Torn (Natalie Imbruglia)
Taxi (Harry Chapin)
The Freshmen (Verve Pipe)
Power of Goodbye (Madonna)
Waitress (Tori Amos)
Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler)
Uninvited (Alanis Morissette)
Unsent (Alanis Morissette)

We’re not sure about The Highwayman and Lady of Shalott (Loreena McKennit), since the subject matter is wrong, but they’re quiet and unobtrusive.

This is an open list – feel free to add your suggestions! The idea is not just to get something that isn’t appropriate, but something that’s especially inappropriate (breakup songs, twisted relationships, put-down songs, etc.)