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Nokia BLADE a Painful Tech HitAugust 23, 2004 |
The Nokia BLADE, the first mass market cell phone to offer ear-piercing functionality arents’ groups and otologists alike are up in arms over Nokia’s latest entry into the increasingly cutthroat cell phone market, the Nokia BLADE, an innovative new cell-phone/pocket knife combination that offers users with limited pocket space the best of both gadgets in one sleek package.
“We think the BLADE will be a hit with consumers who are tired of carrying a cell phone and a big, bulky knife everywhere they go,” explained Nokia spokesperson Dalton Hughes. “Or also with people who are sick of having to switch hands to go between talking and cutting tasks.”
“This phone is da bomb!” gushed teen Roger Salmong, bleeding profusely from the ear. “When I’m not hollering with my homies, I can cut shit!”
In spite of a generall...
arents’ groups and otologists alike are up in arms over Nokia’s latest entry into the increasingly cutthroat cell phone market, the Nokia BLADE, an innovative new cell-phone/pocket knife combination that offers users with limited pocket space the best of both gadgets in one sleek package.
“We think the BLADE will be a hit with consumers who are tired of carrying a cell phone and a big, bulky knife everywhere they go,” explained Nokia spokesperson Dalton Hughes. “Or also with people who are sick of having to switch hands to go between talking and cutting tasks.”
“This phone is da bomb!” gushed teen Roger Salmong, bleeding profusely from the ear. “When I’m not hollering with my homies, I can cut shit!”
In spite of a generally positive reaction among consumers, the new phone has raised the ire of parents’ groups who had a hard enough time getting their kids off the phone for family time even before it became a handy cutting implement.
“I thought it was hard to keep Stacey from bringing her cell phone to the dinner table before,” lamented housewife Greta Thomas. “But now she says she needs it to cut her pork chops. What do you say to that?”
Otologists, or “ear doctors” to the unwashed masses, also take issue with the new phone, citing a sharp spike in the rate of ear contusions being reported in hospital emergency rooms since the phone’s release last month.
“It really is a serious problem,” explained a bashful Dr. Dennis Loham, sporting a large white bandage covering his left ear. “You think you’d have to be stupid to forget to retract the phone’s folding blade before trying to take an incoming call, but it really is easy to space out on it. In my office alone, we’ve seen—hold on, I have to take this. Hel—oh sweet fucking Jesus, not again!”
The rise of multipurpose phones in recent years has concerned parents nationwide to varying degrees, having a large impact on concerned parents, yet hardly any at all on alcoholics or other individuals who give less than a shit about their children. For concerned parents, however, the thought of their children carrying a telephone, web browser, video game console, digital camera, personal data organizer and MP3 player around in their pockets has unsettling ramifications. Some even remained concerned after the commune explained that all of these functionalities were packed into a single small cell phone, not a large assortment of bulky devices likely to damage a child’s expensive church slacks. Others needed an explanation of what an MP3 was, or wanted to know if their phone at home could take pictures.
The small handful of parents who understand both the technology and its ramifications share concerns about giving children and teens unsupervised access to the Internet, violent video games, or scary futuristic Herbie Hancock music via their cell phones. Now that a sharp, ridged blade has been added to their list of concerns, many parents are considering drastic measures. The most appealing of these involves sending their children to military school, where they’ll at least learn to handle a knife/phone, and will stop carving “FART” into the banister out in the hallway.
The Nokia BLADE retails for $149 and is available in blood-masking red, surgical silver and camouflage. the commune news is always on the cutting edge of breaking news, a fact we like to bring up whenever it forms a half-assed pun based on story content. Truman Prudy is the commune’s prodigal reporter, back from a recent kidnapping and the general uninvestigated assumption that he was dead. the commune news would welcome Prudy back, but he’ll probably have disappeared again by the time anyone reads this, so nevermind.
 |  Pain in the Ass Hawking Demands Handicapped- Accessible Space Shuttle Al Davis' Shard Reinserted Into the Dark Crystal
New Apple Power Mac G5 to boost user feelings of superiority 20%
Laser pointers shined at plane annoy passengers watching Meet the Fockers
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At Least One Team in SuperBowl ‘Really Came to Play’ War on Terror Finally Focused on Real Threats Who’s the Black Pit That Killed a Night Club Prick? Elevator Shaft — Damn Right Apple iPhone to Contain Real Fruit Filling |
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 March 18, 2002
Make Mine NougatIt's a question that has boggled the bungs of humanity for well over sixty years, and that routinely keeps schoolchildren up on sleepless nights, dooming them to academic lousiness. You may have even blown a couple grand on a research grant yourself, who can remember? It's a question that's stealthy like a porcupine yet insidious as a Mylar toupee: Just what on God's green earth is nougat, anyway?
Sure, it makes candy bars delicious, but where does it come from? Alien DNA? Idaho? Jimmy Hoffa? Who milked it from the space mother's ample tit?
Few will be surprised to discover that nougat is a French word. However, anyone who isn't currently in the process of throwing up will likely be shocked to learn that it's French for "cat's nuts." Can this be correct? Choke back your half-digested Milky Way bar my friends, it's true.
I called the main Hershey's plant in Hershey, PA to confront the chocolatiers with this awful truth, but the representative I spoke too steadfastly denied my allegations, shouting "You are sick, sir! The Hershey's Corporation would never condone such disgusting behavior!" Or at least that's what I think he said, it was hard to make out over the cacophony of cat noises in the background.
Looks like the French have had us again. First it was Speedos for men, and now this nougat. Actually, the nougat joke goes back much further, but to our credit we figured out that they weren't serious about Speedos fairly...
º Last Column: Let the Games Begin º more columns
It's a question that has boggled the bungs of humanity for well over sixty years, and that routinely keeps schoolchildren up on sleepless nights, dooming them to academic lousiness. You may have even blown a couple grand on a research grant yourself, who can remember? It's a question that's stealthy like a porcupine yet insidious as a Mylar toupee: Just what on God's green earth is nougat, anyway?
Sure, it makes candy bars delicious, but where does it come from? Alien DNA? Idaho? Jimmy Hoffa? Who milked it from the space mother's ample tit?
Few will be surprised to discover that nougat is a French word. However, anyone who isn't currently in the process of throwing up will likely be shocked to learn that it's French for "cat's nuts." Can this be correct? Choke back your half-digested Milky Way bar my friends, it's true.
I called the main Hershey's plant in Hershey, PA to confront the chocolatiers with this awful truth, but the representative I spoke too steadfastly denied my allegations, shouting "You are sick, sir! The Hershey's Corporation would never condone such disgusting behavior!" Or at least that's what I think he said, it was hard to make out over the cacophony of cat noises in the background.
Looks like the French have had us again. First it was Speedos for men, and now this nougat. Actually, the nougat joke goes back much further, but to our credit we figured out that they weren't serious about Speedos fairly quickly. Except for our Olympic athletes, but we've always known they were a little fruity themselves.
As with most mysteries, once the main question is answered, it only leaves one with a cluster, or at least a clod, of related questions that spring up from knowing the truth and having the truth be really icky. For those of you who are still reading this after discovering the answer to "WHAT is nougat?" it's time to delve into the sticky conundrum of "HOW is nougat?" For the record, we're not going to get into "WHICH is nougat?" because that phrase has been optioned as a gameshow title by CBS and I don't want to get into any legal trouble here.
Candy bar manufacture is a delicate and fascinating process that dates back to the early 1990's. Some may argue that candy bars were manufactured before then but I assure you that's your memory playing tricks on you. We all like to fondly remember the candy bars of our youth, and few want to confront the fact that our parents just gave us dates and figs and told us they were candy. It's okay, we were naĂŻve then but it's time to move on. Most of our parents have had strokes by now and I'm sure they've learned their lessons. Let's stay strong and discuss candy bar manufacture like adults.
The first step in making any candy bar (and I'm not talking about Almond Joys here, I said "candy bar") is preparing the chocolate. In the early days of candy bar manufacture this was accomplished by having armies of third-graders chew up chocolate Easter bunnies and spit them back out onto a conveyer belt. Things have come a long way since those days and now the process is much more automated, now that we have machines to take the Easter bunnies out of their wrappers and insert them into the third-graders' mouths. Once the third-graders have made the chocolate soft and malleable, it is conveyed to a storage tank to await the preparation of the other candy bar ingredients.
On the other side of the factory you have two rooms: the peanut room and the nougat room. Inside the peanut room, scores of workers in white hairnets toil endlessly, picking peanuts out of chunky peanut butter and tossing them down the peanut chute. Across the isle in the nougat room men with goggles and wooden mallets go in one end, bushels of live cats go in the other, and the only thing that comes out is nougat. Perhaps one day Oliver Stone will make a film about the mayhem that takes place inside, but until then I say we leave it alone.
The nougat center is first formed into very large slabs, which are cut to size after being strafed by the peanut gun. After the centers are formed they are coated with thick, rich milk chocolate, through a process called "enrobing." The actual enrobing process begins when the centers pass through an explosive shitstorm of liquid chocolate, which coats the top and sides of the bar. At the same time, a rotating chocolate-covered collie beneath the mesh belt coats the base of the bar. To ensure an attractive, glossy, smooth coating, the bars are continuously licked by Swedish children throughout the entire process. The fully enrobed bar is then cooled and prepared for the wind tunnel.
So the next time you're strolling past a vending machine, stop for a minute and think of all of the hard work that's gone into the candy bars you see displayed before you. Not that you'd actually eat the nasty things, but you could at least observe a moment of silence for the cats, and the Swedish children destined to die of "Black Tongue" just so we can have our Snickers. º Last Column: Let the Games Beginº more columns
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|  March 12, 2007
Driving My Life AwayOmar Bricks here, writing to you from the seventh ring of hell, or as it is known in mapese, Nashville. How'd I get here? What am I doing here? All fair questions. If you come up with any plausible answers, let me know.
It all started, if these kinds of things can ever be attributed to simple cause and effect, with a 12-hour repeat listening of the Eddie Rabbit tune "Driving My Life Away." This was caused, I assure you, not by conscious choice but rather Foghat putting the CD player on one-track repeat when he was listening to the new Counting Crows album the other day and I'll be damned if I know how to switch the thing back. By the way, I won't be held responsible for my dog's taste in music. As long as he limits his crap-listening to the hours when I'm not at home, well, that's his own deal with the devil and not my problem. Most people that visit Bricks Manor are impressed enough that my basset hound knows how to operate the CD player at all, but after I have Foghat make everyone omelets they usually forget about how impressed they'd been by the whole CD thing. Because they're too busy throwing up half-cooked omelets.
To be perfectly honest, I was so wrapped up in working on the development of my latest invention, a pneumatic fly-stunning air cannon, that I didn't even realize the song was on repeat for the first six hours or so. And by then my body rhythms had so completely melded with the song that I couldn't very well shut it off without risking...
º Last Column: Christmas: Don't Try This at Home º more columns
Omar Bricks here, writing to you from the seventh ring of hell, or as it is known in mapese, Nashville. How'd I get here? What am I doing here? All fair questions. If you come up with any plausible answers, let me know. It all started, if these kinds of things can ever be attributed to simple cause and effect, with a 12-hour repeat listening of the Eddie Rabbit tune "Driving My Life Away." This was caused, I assure you, not by conscious choice but rather Foghat putting the CD player on one-track repeat when he was listening to the new Counting Crows album the other day and I'll be damned if I know how to switch the thing back. By the way, I won't be held responsible for my dog's taste in music. As long as he limits his crap-listening to the hours when I'm not at home, well, that's his own deal with the devil and not my problem. Most people that visit Bricks Manor are impressed enough that my basset hound knows how to operate the CD player at all, but after I have Foghat make everyone omelets they usually forget about how impressed they'd been by the whole CD thing. Because they're too busy throwing up half-cooked omelets. To be perfectly honest, I was so wrapped up in working on the development of my latest invention, a pneumatic fly-stunning air cannon, that I didn't even realize the song was on repeat for the first six hours or so. And by then my body rhythms had so completely melded with the song that I couldn't very well shut it off without risking serious epilepsy, so I rode it out until I fell asleep on the floor in a pile of freshly unwashed laundry. When I woke up, the song was still playing, but I don't count those hours in my total even though it thoroughly infiltrated my usual Driving Miss Daisy-themed dreams. Before you start asking why in the hell I put that song on in the first place, let me explain that it's the only halfway decent track on the disc. The rest is all Bulgarian folk music and European techno, which is every bit as shitty as it sounds. The CD itself came in a Discman I bought for seven dollars at the Salvation Army, I didn't realize there was a disc inside until I got home. Even before this all came up the Discman purchase was revealed as a mistake, since I'd envisioned Foghat using it to listen to his shitty musical tastes in a way that didn't crawl up my own ass like a hungry banana slug. But if you've figured out a way to get a dog to wear headphones, you're handier with a roll of duct tape than Omar Bricks, that's all I can say about that. Anyway, the song repeated for another hour straight after I woke up, by which time I couldn't even hear it any more, it had so completely rewired my internal landscape. But then the CD started skipping, probably the disc glues coming apart after so many hours of constant spinning, and the skipping music was causing Foghat to freak out, running around and pissing on everything at a slightly higher rate than he normally does. I had to get the disc out of the player with the toilet plunger, though from the way Foghat looked at me there was probably an easier way, maybe a button on the CD player or something. I don't pretend to have a PHD in consumer electronics. At first it was a relief that the music had stopped, but then I started to feel my insides twist around like two snakes at an orgy, and I began to feel an irresistible compulsion to drive my life away. It was sort of like that scene in Naked Gun where Reggie Jackson gets hypnotized and runs around shooting everybody with a machine gun, yelling "Say hello to my little friend!" It was like my brain wasn't my own, I was just holding onto it while a buddy was in the can. Before I knew it I was behind the wheel and out on the open road, with Foghat riding shotgun. Then I put the shotgun in the back seat because I'll be damned if that dog hasn't been freaking me out with his marksmanship as of late. All was well out on the open road, except for the fact that I didn't have any Eddie Rabbit tapes in the car, and none of the Mexican oompa-oompa tapes that came with my car were scratching that itch. This distracted me so much I didn't even realize I was driving to Nashville. I'd had some vague visions of Vegas in my head, maybe the sunset strip or Baja California... in all honesty it wasn't that well-planned of an excursion, but I think Nashville is too harsh a punishment for such minor indiscretions. Everything you've heard about this place is true: it's full of rednecks, everybody moves slower than Ed McMahon getting up off the couch, and everyone's got real shit taste in music. Not to mention the high asshole-to-Bricks ratio. When I cruised the Bricksmobile IV through the pedestrian entrance at the CMA Music Festival, you wouldn't believe the number of assholes who were yelling at me to turn down the Mexican polka tunes. Look, Slocum, you think I'd be listening to this shit if I could get it out of the tape deck? I left the toilet plunger at home and I don't trust Foghat with that shotgun after he tried to use it to open a can of Kibbles 'n Bits back in West Virginia. Don't hate a player just because you weren't smart enough to get around the cover charge, Hoss. You'll get yours when I get behind the microphone on the main stage. Bricks out. º Last Column: Christmas: Don't Try This at Homeº more columns
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Quote of the Day“Love, love will tear us apart again. So quit telling those jocks we both like it in the butt.”
-Joy DivinskiFortune 500 CookieYou will spend so much time with your foot in your mouth this week, people will mistake it for performance art. Beat the living shit out of the first person who calls you "buddy" today—best to nip that shit in the bud. Your only remaining shot at true happiness now is joining a cult or getting hooked on heroin: your call. This week's lucky midgets: "Stretch" Svorsded, Suitcase Mike, Jimmy "Dogslapper" McVaughn, Upskirt Kilgore, Ross "The Toss" Ramstein.
Try again later.Top Samuel Berger Excuses for Hiding Documents in Pants| 1. | Was hoping only hot babes had clearance to read pages. | | 2. | In early stages of making a nest for baby starlings. | | 3. | Not everybody can afford a snazzy briefcase, Rockefeller. | | 4. | Trying to conceive children; needed to keep the boys warm. | | 5. | Classify this, motherfucker. | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY French Hammond and Teddy Eddie Blister 11/24/2003 How to Write a Contrived NovelVerbs. Nouns. Direct objects. Pro-Nouns. Indirect objects. These are friend to the aspiring contrived novelist.
But writing is more than a mish-mash of words formed into sentences, then into paragraphs, then back into sentences for dialogue. All culminating in "The End." It is more than an exploration of language, of culture, of self, a fascinating journey through your own self-conscience meant to make you a better person. More than all this, even more than an intriguing story and fresh characters. Writing is a short ride to a big fat check.
For centuries authors existed entirely by the good graces of the wealthy—patrons of the rich, writing exactly what they wanted for one particular audience. Writing was an act of compromise to satisfy the whim of a...
Verbs. Nouns. Direct objects. Pro-Nouns. Indirect objects. These are friend to the aspiring contrived novelist. But writing is more than a mish-mash of words formed into sentences, then into paragraphs, then back into sentences for dialogue. All culminating in "The End." It is more than an exploration of language, of culture, of self, a fascinating journey through your own self-conscience meant to make you a better person. More than all this, even more than an intriguing story and fresh characters. Writing is a short ride to a big fat check. For centuries authors existed entirely by the good graces of the wealthy—patrons of the rich, writing exactly what they wanted for one particular audience. Writing was an act of compromise to satisfy the whim of a demanding and imbecilic blueblood. That was a sweet deal. But that time has gone by, and to make a fortune in the modern age the modern novelist mustn't compromise himself for any single individual, but bunches of them. The book-buying public. The beginning to every good book is a winning idea. An idea someone thinks is worth publishing. People ask us all the time, "Where do you get ideas?" Screw you, hobo, we're not telling you the source of our goldmine. Get a job already. But if you have a place to get ideas from, especially ideas you could turn into a book, even better a bestselling book idea, jump on it! It's not as hard as you might think. You see authors all the time who are struck by the muse, punched in the balls and thrown by the stairs by inspiration, and they come up with a brilliant can't-miss idea people find genuinely interesting. We hate these people. Luckily, people also by books with lame, repetitive stories and paper-thin characters you can toss out in ten seconds. In fact, most of the publishing world exists entirely on these books. And you can easily be one of their authors. One good way of finding the perfect idea for your trite novel is to take your favorite book and re-write it with your own disappointing characters. Love Jane Eyre? Write your own historical romance and diatribe on the role of women in Victorian England! Make her an exciting well-read debutante instead of a frumpy governess, and turn that subtle discourse on feminism into modern catchphrases and moralizing. People will eat it up. Or maybe you're a fan of 1984, but you find it horribly depressing. What would happen if Winston Smith got tired of taking orders from Big Brother and started kicking some major butt? Hmm? Now you've got a bestseller! It doesn't have to be stealing someone else's creative idea, if that's not your style. It doesn't have to be creative at all. Take a familiar literary situation, like a neurotic thinly-disguised version of yourself returning home to your dysfunctional family. Not only is it a critical favorite, but you can delude yourself into thinking it's therapeutic. Save on shrink bills and throw in some psycho-babble you found on the web and you've written one smart—if trite—book! Don't think it's easy to write a novel just because it's crap, though. It's still hard work. You have to write hundreds of sentences, one after the other, and when you think you've written enough you still have to write the easiest ending you can think of, or borrow it from someone else. Then we get into the next part of it all—publishing! That'll take up the remaining 287 pages of this book. For more of this great non-fiction, buy French Hammond and Teddy Eddie Blister's How to Write a Contrived Novel   |