This year's last installment of IT comes with my greetings for the season. Here, in this most festive of seasons, is a picture I took at Six Flags America a year or so ago, which I think summarizes the spirit of the holidays:

Peace

Seen at a Wal-Mart:

So they purified the water by adding minerals in order to give the water an enhanced flavor. Because normal water is neither pure enough nor has it sufficient flavor.

I have often contended that there is something perhaps culturally or perhaps linguistically straightforward about the Spanish language. I had assumed at first this was simply because my knowledge of the language is based on two semesters in high school and my vocabulary is mostly limited to "things found in a classroom", but from time to time I have seen evidence that this trend may exist out in the real world. For example, and I an finding it hard to believe Google when it tells me I haven't already told you this story, I once caught a commercial for some spanish-language comedy show, and, where an American show might use a word like "zany" or "laughtacular" or "supercalifragilisticexpialiawacky", the whole of their sales pitch seemed to be "Es muy divertido." (It's quite entertaining).

Which is why I found this sign at a JC Penney's in New Jersey, a lot of fun:

In English, we sugar coat it. In Spanish: Extra large sizes for ladies. I am reasonably sure that I once saw a similar sign rendered as Tallas para damas mas grandes.

Smoking this area may be hazardous to your health

Seen outside a Ruby Tuesday in Columbia:

I have a new expression to describe someone whose intellect is suspect: Two motorcycles short of a Power Ranger team

Seen in the Tremont Grand hotel in Baltimore:

This is a neat visual effect wherein it looks like the hot french maid on the mural is interacting with the strange cabinet, which almost makes it seem like the maid is in the room with you. And by "the room", I mean "the mens room," which is where this mural was.

Years ago, when I was in High School, the paper covers we were required to put on our textbooks started featuring advertisements from various local businesses. On the inside cover, it said "These businesses have contributed to your local board of education. Please patronize them." And so I did.

On a note not entirely unrelated, when I was young, there was a restaurant in my home town called "Golden Corral". It was a normal family style restaurant, sort of similar to Sizzler. The things I recall the most were their very nice salad bar, and the incredibly delicious buttered toast slice you got with your meal.

Well, Golden Corral closed down at some point, after being robbed at gunpoint like three times in as many months, and the restaurant has since been converted into a sporting goods store.

So when, a few months ago, Leah and I went into a Golden Corral restaurant, I was surprised to find it was nothing like I remembered; it's just a supergiant buffet now, which is awesome in its own way, though I do miss the toast.

But as a buffet, the rules are a bit different than a traditional restaurant: namely, you stand in a line at the door and when you get to the end of the line, you pay a rate based on the number of diners, and are led to a seat, and this is pretty much the end of the waitstaff's involvement with you, other than to clean up your wreckage from time to time.

Here is a sign posted by the register, where you pay your bill before you have received any service:

If on the other hand, you don't want good service, make sure you tell your server and feel free not to tip.

That doesn't even make sense

More graffiti from my occasional treks through the park.

Political activism FAIL

Graffiti seen under a bridge in Wyman Park, near Hopkins:

Quick Quiz: Does the symbol above represent:

• Evil Garlic
• C'thulu
• (cf. IT 3) Vagina Dentada

If it becomes necessary to purchase your pregnancy tests from the dollar store, you may need to rethink your sexual habits.

From the pages of Smithsonian magazine:

As it turns out, both seals and humans have exactly the same facial expression for "Oh fuck, I'm about to be eaten by a shark"

Leah digs dollar stores. A few months ago, we visited one, and I snapped a few pictures of interesting (and cheap) products. Today, we present the first in an IT miniseries, Tales From The Dollar Store

For just a dollar, Janet Jackson could have avoided that huge Superbowl scandal of a few years back.

Seen in downtown Baltimore:

JJ Cummings is one of the few people to successfully make the transition to mainstream florist from the adult floral industry

Part of an apartmentwarming package Leah found when she moved:

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this roll of toilet paper was a gift created especially for you, Bozzuto Management has apparently trademarked the phrase "A Gift Created Especially For You."

Seen on a wall ad above a urinal in a restaurant in Timonium:

You may be thinking that seven hours seems to miss the definition of "Happy Hour". But look at what's being advertised. There is no such thing as unhappy hour at the strip club.

Seen in a Pastablitz in Ellicott City (Contrast enhanced):

Personally, I'd prefer the food be fresh and the service be good, but I'll take what I can get.

And now, here's a picture which taken out of context, looks like a prominent political figure having an orgasm.

OH NANCY PELOSI NO!

Stuff? Sweet! I love "stuff".

Today's IT can't be safely scaled down to fit the width of this column of text, so go ahead and click on it to enlarge.

FAIL.

Aww. My wife and infant child look so cute and loveable and carefree as I am about to back over them with my SUV

Not too long ago, I found a pile of digital camera pictures from some time back. Today, I'd like to juxtapose two that I took at the National Aquarium in Baltimore on or around the beginning of November, 2006.

This is a little funny, because here's an adventurous outdoorsman in a playset with a bunch of wild animals, and look: his arm's missing. O for fun. Now, look at what was directly under it:

Monastic monks. As opposed to the other kind.

This may be one for the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks

Actually, those scare-quotes aren't wrong; it was a zombie band.

Bakelite is plastic. Bakelite is the original fake material. Faux-bakelite is imitation fake material. Costume jewlery is fake jewelry. Reproduction costume jewlery is fake fake jewelry. Faux-bakelite reproduction costume jewlery is fake plastic fake imitation jewlery. I think this means it's actually made of gold.

Dink dink, dink dink dink dink-dink. Dink-dink, dink ding-dink ding dink dink. Dink-dink. Dink dink-dink dink-dink. Dink dink-dink, dink dink-dink, dink-dink.

He's a group of 553 mostly white guys with a penchant for sexual indiscretions. She's a haven for angsty teenagers, garish backgrounds, and indie bands. They fight crime!

Found this in my pile of funny Google News Pictures. Little known fact: before getting into politics, Sarkozy used to do modeling for educational publications. I believe this was actually the picture from my French 1 textbook to illustrate the concept of "Zut allors!"

That or "And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids and your dog.*"

*Et je m'en serais tiré si ce n'est pour l'ingérence de vous les enfants et votre chien. More or less.

Isn't it a hair redundant to clarify that the "Age Champ"'s title was revoked due to death? How many other ways are there to lose ones claim to be the "oldest living person"?

How many pixels is too many? This many pixels is too many.

If you don't get today's joke, please read this, and then do not google what it's about. wikipedia

I'd totally not be TSA-Man

1. I totally read this headline as describing the strange case of creationists trying to prove that the dead body had not arisen through natural processes.

2. I don't care if you're dead, sir. We still need you to take off your shoes and provide two forms of identification.

Trivia Question: In this picture, is the president sad because (a) The public has cottoned on to the fact that Global Warming may indeed actually exist, (b) The recent school board decisions in Florida that schools don't have to teach the "scientific controversy" over evolution because there actually is no scientific controversy over it, (c) Someone just explained that "stunning" does not mean "very pretty" in this context, or (d) because he heard the name "Welch" and thought there would be delicious grape jelly?

IT 111 has been pulled for not being funny.

According to their president, Iran does not have any homosexuals. They do, however, have a sizeable population of Drag Queens, each one of them prepared to start a prissy little slap-fight with any bitch that gives them shit.

Clipped from a flash ad that ran some time ago on Bank of America's homepage...

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a six inch heel stamping on mortgage rates - forever.

You know, it has oft been noted that the Swiss Army Knife, while incredibly handy, contains tools oriented more toward, say, a boy scout than to a soldier in the field. A number of reasons have been proposed for this, including the fact that Switzerland hasn't been to war in hundreds of years. But things could be worse:

Behold: The French army knife.

In Google Russia, TV watches you

So, you may have guessed that I actually stockpile these months in advance. One side effect is that by the time I actually post them, I've had time to realize that they're less funny than I thought.

So here's a bunch from my backlog that, upon reflection, are not funny...

I was going to make a Face/Off joke here, but it seemed to be in poor taste upon reflection

And here, I was going to make a vibrator joke, but it got exponentially less funny as I thought about the fact that there were children in the picture

And this one, now that I think about it, is total pants.

Why can't political news writers write like this? Could you even imagine seeing a headline that read "(insert-political-leader-here) says that tax cuts for the rich benefit the poor too, but he's wrong"?

Update 12/12:

Leah points out that I should not be so hasty in my praise for the headline writer: Ehrenberg may be wrong, but at least he can tell an XBox 360 from a Wii

You can lead a whale to water, but you can't... Eh. I got nothing.

Months ago, I saw, via BoingBoing or some other cool-stuff-blog, an advertisement for this motorcycle helmet:

I believe this is the helmet for which the term "asshat" was coined.

Don't cry Condi: There's still North Korea.

Also, Pining for the cold war? Pining for the cold war? What kind of talk is that?

As is typical, the fact that we've hit a BIG ROUND NUMBER merits some sort of celebration. I'm thinking about it.

Mars, on the other hand, is full of nougat.

Oh, and your IT Centennial present is that I didn't make a "Uranus" joke.

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Sharko the Lord.

You think this is just a random image tossed up by the googlebot, but it's actually a prediction of the future. If MSN, Time Warner, or Google acquire livejournal, they'll be able to form Voltron.

The first and only time anyone will ever be comfortable describing anything Hamas related as "a real Mickey Mouse Affair"

So, I looked at it95 just now (here) and realized that it wasn't especially funny. So let's just skip it and move on with our lives, shall we?

HAVING CONSULTED WITH MY COLLEAGUES AND BASED ON THE INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE NIGERIAN CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY, I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE TO REQUEST FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE TO TRANSFER THE SUM OF 4 FOREIGN OIL WORKERS (FOUR FOREIGN OIL WORKERS ONLY) INTO YOUR ACCOUNTS. THE ABOVE SUM RESULTED FROM AN OVER-INVOICED CONTRACT, EXECUTED COMMISSIONED AND PAID FOR ABOUT FIVE YEARS (5) AGO BY A FOREIGN CONTRACTOR. THIS ACTION WAS HOWEVER INTENTIONAL AND SINCE THEN THE FUND HAS BEEN IN A SUSPENSE ACCOUNT AT THE CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA APEX BANK.

Inappropriate Thoughts

By Ross at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have it on good authority that the last one, how can I say this, blew. So here's a free replacement

Police are seeking Ralph Kramden for questioning in the affair.

In other news, the losing party candidate actually lost the election.

I don't think airport security will let you in if your companion tries to use one of those as a ticket.

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you odd...

In a thousand years, our descendants will all take a break from eating food pills and flying in jetpacks to observe a moment of silence in memory of those who died in the great porn war.

Also...
Based on that picture, I assume the key point of contention is: Do we really need high definition to appreciate grainy, low-quality, camcorder-filmed amateur porn? Yes. Yes we do.

1989, apparently.

(PS: I actually thought The Wizard was pretty cool.)

You'd think they wouldn't care, but they do.

Oi mate; I think you should lay off the beans.

I believe the follow-up to Vienna, tentatively titled "Windows Nukem Forever", is officially scheduled to be released "When it's done." Or whenever.

There are more things wrong with this headline than I can comfortably quip about.

You can tell this photo is from my backlog by the way that the photo clearly shows a Moscow winter.

Insert Obligatory George Allen Joke Here

I hear that happened to Moses once.

This news from Sony, already famous for creating the Camcorder NightShot feature, best known for the fact that under the right lighting conditions, it can show you your subject's nipples.

Pervs.

[1 point]

Because this one is so cheap, I'll give you a double-dose.

First, I just really like how it appears in this news snippet that Bush's reaction to Congress growing some ethics is the pouty-face look.

I think Google News must have some sort of clever algorithm for deciding which President Bush Expression to assocate with each article, because this one threw up the same image:

Actually, I don't think her sad expression is the fault of finding out that the middle east doesn't enjoy endless and senseless war. I think it's something simpler:

I think she went momentarily dyslexic and thinks the headline was "Peace: Whole of mideast wants Rice"

This is one of three things the Democrats are skeptical of: Secondly, they're skeptical that he had an old Iraq plan. And thirdly, they are skeptical that President Bush's "pouty face" routine is really sincere.

Once again, the US Border Patrol proves itself invaluable in the fight against the zombie apocalypse.

Today's IT will be a fairly lame South Park Reference. Sorry. Been busy

Their first tragedy was, of course, the tragic death of Chef.

Police are still seeking the alleged culprit in the case, described as wearing a black cape and top hat, twirling a handlebar moustache

A PEN that's made out of SOLID METAL? And instead of ink, it leaves a trail of metal residue? AMAZING! No. Wait. Isn't that what us old-timers used to call a "pencil"?

Seems like every few months, we discover a way to accidentally let rodents take over the world. Hm.

1: We can rebuild this mouse. We have the technology. We can make it stronger; faster; better.
2: I for one welcome our new mouse overlords.
3: (For the image)Hiya skipper! Looks like you're trying to do some genetic augmentation! Would you like me to open the Microsoft Gene Splicing Wizard?

Okay, so I just noticed that what with my blog crashing all around me, I skipped ahead a number last week. Bending the space-time continuum, I now bring you the missing episode. IT71 will appear as expected next week, and IT72, as a result of my skilled manipulation, will appear on March 30, 1942.

And now we see the root cause of the New York City ban on using a certain racial epithet.

YHWH, if you've got something to say, why don't you share it with the whole class?

Is it just me, or is salvo possibly the most unfortunate word choice evar?

Next week, ABBA stares down Hummus.

Today's IT comes to you from the "Internet Adverising Leads To Funny Juxtapositions" department.

If this medium was ammenable to my doing my GWB impression, I'd say "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them. *snicker* *snicker*" in my Bush voice. Frankly, the punch lines for this one are endless, but the funniest ones are all sound-gags, based on associating your choice of politically important entity with characters from Lord of the Rings (Dick Cheney referring to Haliburton as "My precious" might make a good one) But since I can't, here's your punch-line instead.

Even Bush could not have anticpated Mordor joining the axis of evil

Am I the only one who finds the word "spat" to be incredibly inappropriate in this context?

You might think this is a funny juxtaposition of an article and a not-very-accurate keyword-based image search generated image. In fact, it's apropos. It's the last thing a Toyota sees before it's Found On Road, Dead. Have you driven a Ford lately?

As you may have guessed, I had fun with Google News a few months back and built me up a little stockpile.

But he will be rushed into choosing hot, delicious apple pie. Mmmm.... Pie....

A couple of weeks ago, the IAEA and ISO put forward a brand new symbol to makr areas where the danger of ionizing radiation is present. The new symbol is to supplement the classic black-on-yellow trefoil you so associate with radiation hazards.

Basically, it was felt that the classic symbol on its own did not really carry any semantic meaning: it wasn't clear from looking at it what it meant. The new design has been extensively tested on various groups to ensure that, at just a glance, its meaning is absolutely clear:

If your ceiling fan starts dropping tapeworms on pirates, run like hell.

I believe "Summon Seattle Office" is a level 9 spell.

Today's IT is brought to you by the fact that BBC News is reporting that "A Chinese company chairman has been sentenced to death for running a scam involving giant ants." Seems he rooked investors into sinking lots of money (About 3 billion Yuan, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million US) into a company on the claims that they were breeding medicinal ants.

I think the BBC has this a bit wrong. Compare their lead with that of Spain's EiTB: Chinese man sentenced to death for giant scam to breed ants. It wasn't the ants that were gigantic, it was the scam.

All the same, here's the thing that popped into my head:

I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords.

Senator Ted Stevens (R- Alaska): The Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Nathanial Mayweather: These pipes are clean!

That page: the one that says "This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual places, events, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental."

So, I looked at the previous Inappropriate Thoughts on a computer with a bigger screen, and it turns out that the alligator in question is typing on a keyboard, and not savagely rogering an umpire after all. My bad.

As a result, I feel I ought to offer a free replacement:

That is a refreshingly honest and direct headline. I just wish I could work the phrase "savagely rogering" into your replacement comment.

I've actually got several friends in the insurance industry. Not that it's germane or anything. But I saw this a while ago:

I'm not going to tell you what an alligator savagely rogering an umpire has to do with insurance reform. You're just going to have to read the article for yourself.

Seen outside a Circuit City...

<Comic_Store_Guy_Voice>Worst. Mozilla. Clone. Ever.</Comic_Store_Guy_Voice>

From google news...

They're Pro-Bush and Pro-Kerry at the same time? He's also accused of BLOWING MY MIND

And in this corner, weighing in at 2.2 tons, Colossus "The Forbin" Project!