Leaden, Lenten

What you should have considered giving up for Lent:

• leather
• those medications you suspect you don’t actually need
• your dog
• that attitude of yours
• your natural musk
• using any bathroom that I might have occasion to use
• walking to emphasize the zoop zoop noise of your corduroy pants
• taking my pens
• always talking about how you're allergic to soy
• talking about me with everyone else the way I know you totally do even though I already explained how what happened in the kitchen was a misunderstanding
  

Rooftops of Brixton

My last day in London, back in 2003, I had to kill a few hours in Brixton while I waited for my Uncle Andy to pick me up. (As near as I can remember, this day occurred somewhere between this post and this post.) Lacking the time, money or energy to do anything else, a snapped a few photos of the buildings near where I had been staying. I didn't actually see the photos until more than two years later. This preceded my age of digital photography, you see, and the roll of film I had taken them on sat in the camera, untouched, until I finally finished it off with the Halloween photo of Kami and me that I posted a few days ago. The photos, Ive always thought, make Brixton look a little nicer than it actually was. Something about these photos seems sad to me, however, and it isn't the fact that not-so-lovingly refer to the neighborhood they depict as "the beaten prostitute district."

What do you think? Do these make you feel anything in particular?

Beneath His Potato Nose

Could Mario still be Mario with another man's mustache?

[ A doozy: Atomike-Studio via FFFFOUND! via 4 Color Rebellion via Kotaku ]

Today's Moment of Fuzzy Animal Sentimentality

And it's as true today as when Jesus first said it thirty years ago.

When You Unravel, the Secret Will Travel

How much do I love Bradshaw of the Future, a blog that entertains solely by offering two or three seemingly unrelated words and then explaining how they're etymologically connected? The answer: a lot. And I jump on each day's new post faster than you can say "Indo-European," which, admittedly, takes a moment or two to say.

Some choice surprise etymological ties of recent weeks:

• viper, whiskey and zodiac
  
• fat and Irish
  
• hangnail and anxious
• fjord and Parvati
  
• Parcheesi and venti
  
• science, shit and Saxon
  
• whore and Kama Sutra
  
• weird, rhombus, worm, and crimson (an unusual four-way orgy of etymology)

Posing No Threat Whatsoever

Easily the best of Cracked.com's most baffling toys.


Credit for this one goes to HammillToe. Also, I had to double check that the "Cracked" in Cracked.com was the very magazine that I disregarded in my youth as a lame Mad magazine wannabe. Who would have thought: me, acknowledging Cracked, years later.

Fall of the House of Worsted-Tex

Ignore the lovely legs of Mary Tyler Moore striding by in the background and pay attention to the name of the menswear provider, which draped the likes of Gavin MacLeod and Ted Knight in spite of the notable handicap of having the most terrible brand name ever.

I don't know if it sounds more like a drunk Texan or just the most objectionable clothes in Texas.

[ From Spencer, who's blogging anew, don't you know ]