Dec. 13, 2008 @ 7:38 pm

Best disease ever: Black Hairy Tongue

Fortunately, black hairy tongue (a.k.a. lingua villosa nigra) is “completely harmless” and easily treatable.

Click here or here for pictures (warning: may be disturbing to individuals who are disturbed by black hairy tongues).

We return to our regular non-blogging non-schedule with 3:47 of bunny redonkulousness. I’ve been dropping by a friend’s every day or so over Thanksgiving week to take care of her utterly adorable new rabbit, called “Butterscotch.” The other day I shot some video with my digital camera so my friend could show her off to hometown friends and family. Here it is.

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Wrong winner, though, in this quarter-on-quarter face-off, for me anyway:

California vs. Massachusetts

Sep. 30, 2008 @ 11:00 pm

How to indoctrinate a toddler

This came out pretty well.

Ohhhhhh-BAMA!

Sep. 28, 2008 @ 4:25 pm

Facebook statuses for the ages

[Name removed] is regretting sleeping with A. last night, given that A. is a petri dish full of germs, many of which appeared to jump ship during the night.

Not what it sounds like.

Harper’s Magazine, as a tribute to the late David Foster Wallace (he was a contributing editor or some such to the magazine), has posted an archive of what I take to be all his pieces that they ever published, all apparently free for download. If you have A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, you already have some of these pieces in longer form, but not all.

The July 1994 issue, containing Wallace’s essay on the Illinois State Fair (also represented here by a video of a live reading) was the first issue of Harper’s I ever read and the first DFW piece I ever read too. It made me a lifetime fan of both.

Sep. 5, 2008 @ 11:47 pm

I felt this one!

Just a wee little 4.0 centered in the East Bay near Walnut Creek. It felt like sitting in a boat when a couple of small waves pass beneath you.

Aug. 17, 2008 @ 1:11 am

Zombie mob attacks San Francisco!

Streetlight zombie

At 2:05 p.m. yesterday, Pacific Daylight Time, a terrible mob of zombies struck downtown San Francisco. Starting in the vicinity of Yerba Buena Gardens, the throngs of undead maimed and killed their way through SOMA, the Financial District, and Chinatown, turning unlucky victims into more zombies as they went, as zombies will. I was fortunate enough to survive (translation: I’d only heard about it the day before and hadn’t had time to plan, dammit) and got away with some great photographic evidence. Just a few of my pictures are posted below; lots more at my photo site or on Flickr.

Best chant: “What do we want?” “BRAAAAINS!” “When do we want ‘em?” “BRAAAAAINS!”

Rampage!

Best overheard question from a passerby: “Is this, like, National Zombie Day?”

Zombie guy
Go zombies go

Second worst overheard question: “Excuse me? What’s this for? Excuse me?”

Worst overheard question: “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?” (arguably a good question actually)

Wow, that’s gross
Zombie attack

Here’s a zombie dog getting a nice treat near the start of the rampage and really going to town on it. This might have been the funniest thing I saw all day.

Snausages!
Go get it!  Go get it boy!
OK a little scary now

At one point, a guy stopped at a light asked me what was going on. I told him, “Well, I mean, they’re zombies, right? They’re doing what zombies do, you know, looking for brains and stuff. I wouldn’t get out of your car if I were you.” This is what happened to one unfortunate driver.

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At the Transamerica building, in an great case of serendipity, the zombie mob ran into a rocking anti-Scientology protest with a great bass beat. The result, of course: instant zombie jamboree!

Zombie jamboree

And of course, what zombie rampage would be complete without the requisite bad pun?

Get it?

Again, lots more where these came from, at my photo site or on Flickr. And a lot of them are good. (As I’m sure will be the other 850 million photos other people have no doubt already put up on Flickr. In the early stages, there had to have been at least two photographers for every zombie.)

Aug. 15, 2008 @ 10:18 pm

CVS coming to northern California

Sad news for native west-coasters, I guess, but happy news for me. I never did get used to Walgreens.

The sale of Longs Drugs Stores Corp., the 70-year-old chain based in Walnut Creek, to the East Coast’s giant CVS Caremark Corp., spells the end for the last major regional chain drugstore in the country. After the transaction closes at the end of the year, CVS will slowly start converting the stores, and the Longs name will fade into retail history.

(via Medialoper)

Bay Area Relaxed Transit

The good folks at the science-fiction blog io9 have posted a story about artist Mona Caron’s murals in San Francisco, focusing on a pair of nearly-completed paintings adorning the parking lot where the Noe Valley Farmer’s Market goes up every Saturday. I was a little startled to see the post, because that happens to be only a couple blocks down 24th St. from me. (The Google Maps folks were good enough to get their aerial pics while the market was in session.) I’ve seen the not-quite-finished murals and they’re amazing.

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