K-Squared Ramblings

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Spotted a “for sale” sign in front of an office building, with a tricky-to-type website. No, nothing has been blocked out:

So, how many spaces is it? Or is it a tab?

Maybe they cancel each other out

Found in a new area next to the foothills outside of Irvine that’s clearly being set up for a new housing development. I think the street was Portola Parkway, somewhere around Sand Canyon.

Only in Vegas - Double or Nothing

While they may tell you that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, they’re not entirely correct: some of it escapes onto the internet!

So here’s the lighter side of our recent trip to Las Vegas.

Let’s start with the drive out. Somewhere between the Cajon Pass and Victorville, we saw a warehouse with this banner. We had to wonder what “really living” furniture was. Trees grown into the shape of chairs, perhaps? A topiary table? We didn’t get the camera out in time to snap a picture, but we caught it on the drive back.

Then there was the moving truck. Somewhere around Barstow we got caught behind this veeerrrryyyy sssslllooooowwwwwlllly moving truck, with the company name and phone number spray-painted on the back. We joked that it was “Henry’s Moving… slowly.” (About 45 MPH on a 65 or 75 MPH highway.) What was really odd was that, two hours out, we’d run into a car from our own area code. Once we could get out of the lane, we passed them and left them way behind. Perhaps 45-60 minutes later, we made a stop in Baker. Bathroom break, new drinks, top off the gas tank, and stop at Alien Fresh Jerky. We pulled onto the freeway…. and there was Henry’s Moving.

Speaking of Alien Fresh Jerky, perhaps they get their supplies from the flying saucer perched above Las Vegas’ Fashion Show Mall.

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Sushi…Coffee?

I was catching up on my brother’s Flickr posts and found this photo:

©Brion Vibber, used per the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Not a combination I’m used to seeing…

He’s got a handful of other photos tagged wtf.

The Market Ace!

Actually the Lake Forest Market Place, spotted a few weeks ago.

Only in LA

It seems fitting that I’d eventually write a post with this title, seeing as how the regular LA Times column is where I got the name for the Only in San Diego series.

We were up in Los Angeles for a wedding on Wednesday and Thursday. Since we were both involved, we stayed in a hotel instead of driving up and back two days in a row. (I’ve made that drive in 40 minutes. It took us nearly two hours on Wednesday.)

First up: the hotel. You may recall we found an interesting combination in the nightstand drawer the last time we stayed in Las Vegas. Here we found another combination, somehow appropriate for LA:

The Bible, of course, had been provided by the Gideons. The name plate on The Teaching of Buddha indicated it had been placed there by the Society for Buddhist Understanding.

Then, of course, there’s this place. We’ve been told that “Happy cows come from California,” but they never tell you where they go…

I had a few hours free the morning of the wedding (the bridesmaids had an earlier call time), so I walked around downtown Los Angeles a bit. The Disney Concert Hall is weird, of course, but it’s well-known weird.

Now, to a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the name “Angelus” has a somewhat sinister connotation:

Finally, you may think you’ve seen truckloads of FUD coming from places like Microsoft, but we actually saw a literal truckful of FUD.

It turns out to be a Mexican company that sells meats, playing on the pronunciation (“fud” in Spanish would sound like “food” in English). They’ve recently licensed the brand in the US, focusing on “areas of heavy Mexican immigration where the brand name is already well known”—in other words, areas like Southern California.

That’s it for now. Maybe I’ll post some of my sightseeing photos next year (i.e. tomorrow).

Stranger than Borat?

Though of all the things I’ve heard Borat called, “queen” isn’t one of them.

Not quite botanical

Attended a friend’s wedding last weekend, held at the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas (north of San Diego).

One constant feature of botanical gardens the world over is the collection of placards identifying each type of tree, shrub, or other plant. In the walled garden where the ceremony was held, they took it a step further:

Quantum Home

The only problem is, you can’t be absolutely certain of where the home is and what direction it’s going at the same time.

Flip-Floppers, all of ’em!

Spotted on a school marquee:

Gee, I hope none of them ever runs for office. Some opposing PAC group will dig this up as evidence of constant flip-flopping!

The Call of the Wild Noodle

The name of this restaurant reminds me of two things:

1. A “Get Fuzzy” comic strip in which Bucky Katt proclaims that tofu tastes better in the wild. (Rob had to tell him it was an animal to get him to eat it, and of course Bucky had to boast about his hunting prowess.)
2. The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest April Fool’s broadcast.

In Your Office

A long row of furniture stores sits in the city of Lake Forest, on a frontage road alongside the 5 freeway. Among them is this:

I can just see the exchange at the workplace:

“Nice chair! Where’d you get it?”
“In your office.”
“Hey! What’s the big idea!”

Pirates ’n’ Prada

Wow, they’ll take anyone in that crew!

Somehow, I’m not convinced!

The following movies were not harmed in the making of this blog post: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Beerfest, The Devil Wears Prada, and Barnyard.

Going Semipostal

Found on a stamp vending machine:

OK, it’s not hard to figure out from context that “semipostal” simply refers to the fact that some of the cost of the stamp goes to the Post Office, while some of the cost goes to the chosen cause.

But given the prevalance of the term, “going postal” as associated with violence, perhaps using the label with the “Stop Family Violence” stamp was not the best choice. Now, I’ll apologize in advance for the gallows humor here, but would “going semipostal” be what happens when you want to go to work and shoot people but decide to stay home instead?

2 to 5

Notice anything odd about this Flashback Features movie marquee? (Hint: Look at the dates.)

I think I can see a solution to their problem…