LMNOP

This Week in Internet: Cats, Crocs, and Rider Strong

Went to Pittsburgh for two days, but I'm back now--with links!

GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle.

I don't know if you can call Crocs a victim of the recession so much as a victim of people suddenly realizing they don't want ugly shoes.

Woman changes name to Princess-Rainbow.com. Natch. (thx, Em)

Muppets!

Filed under "WHOA, SCIENCE:" Girl has one heart, then two, then one again.

Cats "exploit" humans by purring.

Lost wallets have a better chance of being returned if they contain baby photos.

The Historical Rider Strong Hotness Chart

A Polish woman is suing a hotel "because she claims her 13-year-old daughter became impregnated after swimming in its pool during their recent holiday." Let me know how that goes, lady.

Have a good weekend, all you Princess-Rainbow.coms! (Or would the plural be "Princess-Rainbows.com?"  Or maybe "Princesses-Rainbow.com?"  Yikes.)

Quiz: Spammer, or Supreme Court Justice?

Today I decided to revamp a little game I invented a while back in which I list a bunch of obscure names and have you guess whether they are U.S. historical figures or just names I pulled from the sender column in my Gmail Spam folder.  Today, in an oh-so-topical nod to the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, I am focusing on Supreme Court Justices!

Ready to play??  The list below contains the names of 6 former U.S. Justices and 4 people claiming to have the best prices on Viagra.  Can you correctly identify them all?  Answers are after the continuation.

1. Bushrod Washington
2. Salmon Portland Chase
3. Armand Bowden
4. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar
5. Wyatt Harden
6. Moises Koenig
7. Rufus Peckham
8. Mahlon Pitney
9. Marlon Gustafson
10. Felix Frankfurter

I Almost Started an "Atrocities" Category Just for This Post

There are very few non-controversial beliefs in this world, but one particular truth that meets the distinction is the fact that fanny packs are freaking atrocious.  Sure, there are about 84 people remaining out of Earth's 6+ billion people who still wear them, but that's about as small a minority as you can get on a planet the size of ours.  There are more people than that who still believe the Earth is flat.

So yes, fanny packs are near-universally regarded as ugly.  But even so, you have to admit: they are at least practical.  In theory, it is convenient in some situations to have your belongings safely zippered away and within easy reach while leaving your hands and arms free to dance at the New Kids on the Block concert.  Aesthetic concerns aside, it does sort of make sense.  However, you know what is not practical?

The Cap-sac.

The Cap-sac is a new product that is essentially a fanny pack for the head.  It consists of a hideous neon hat with a zippered pocket, which allows the wearer to achieve the coveted dual purpose of looking like a moron while holding about three ounces of stuff.

Seriously--what the hell can you actually hold in one of these things?  A dollar bill?  A fun size candy bar?  A piece of paper that says "I am a stupid person?"  I can't think of anything you could put in the Cap-sac that wouldn't also fit--and be safer--in your pocket.  The Cap-sac is defenseless against such threats as strong breezes, roller coasters, and monkeys who have been trained to steal hats; furthermore, as i have mentioned, it is ugly.  Even a cell phone would weigh the thing down to the point where it would be constantly falling over your eyes, and anything heavier than a phone would probably cause long-term neck problems.

I don't ask for a lot of favors here, but I am asking you all to not buy these hideous hats.  And that should reallllly not be a hard request to fulfill.

Sunday Morning Pancake Breakfast: Best Seat in the House

On top of the couch, looking out the window. 

This Week In Internet: Monkeys, Big Gulps, and World War III

It's good being back on Internet patrol.  This week's links:

Big Gulps, huh? (thx, Matt)

Monkeys + grammar = a Lauren-approved experiment.

A nice shirt to wear to graduation.  And while we're talking about T-shirts, this one is funny as well.

Jilted Hasbro CEO Laughs Coldly As Scrabble Destroys Another Relationship (thx, Phylan)

These are hilarious: The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time (gracias, Tito)

How to take regular fast food meals apart and make them all fancy

WWIII propaganda. Loose Tweets Sink Fleets!

Ralph Lauren will make the opening/closing ceremony outfits for the upcoming Winter Olympics. "For the Vancouver Games, Polo has designed zip-up snowflake sweaters, knit caps and parkas, about half of which will bear its polo-player logo."  Snowflakes?  Yeah . . . that's gonna look BADASS.

Enjoy your weekend!

Crrruuuuise Pictures

I put my cruise pictures up on Flickr and Facebook.  The Flickr set is here.  There are no captions on Flickr, though, because I am lazy.  However, the Facebook set does have captions, so if you are my Facebook friend, you might prefer to view them there.  In case a picture of me standing in front of a boat somehow isn't self-explanatory enough.

This Kind of Blew My Mind

. . . But then again, it doesn't take much to wow me.

Wherein I Spread Rumors of a Ms. Frizzle Biopic

Because I was at sea all last week, I am finding it impossible to get caught up on all the pop culture news I missed.  By my estimates, it would take me about 14 hours of research to obtain, at a satisfactory level of detail, the important information I missed while away.  And people, even I do not have 14 hours of free time in my day.

I decided the best thing to do would be to flip through a week's worth of "Star Tracks" photo galleries on People.com, but without actually stopping to read the captions.  Instead, I have pulled a handful of the photos and captioned them myself, giving my best guess as to what is going on in each photo.  Here's what I appear to have missed.

First up in celebrity news: Katie Holmes aged 10 years for every day I was away.

Meanwhile, after curing cancer, Kim Kardashian took a celebratory trip down a waterslide before returning to her laboratory to solve global hunger.

Elsewhere in Hollywood, Evan Rachel Wood began filming a Ms. Frizzle biopic.

Later, Kate Hudson morphed into Jennifer Lopez and then immediately started trying to punch her way out.

All the while, the Real Housewives of New Jersey continued to exist, thus allowing the sun to keep shining and the world to keep spinning.  (Thank you, ladies.  That shining sun really made the Bahamas excellent for me.)

In other news, something apparently happened to make it OK to wear his-and-hers Ugg boots.

And Mariah Carey continued to be a completely normal human.

Finally, Beyonce misread an invitation to perform at the Sydney Opera House and instead thought she was supposed to perform in a dress that resembled the Sydney Opera House.

I don't know about you, but I feel pretty caught up.  If you can think of anything I missed, please leave me the scoop via comment.

I Vaguely Remember Having a Blog Before I Went on Vacation

After seven long days without phone, Internet, or meals containing fewer than three courses--I'M BA-ACK!

The cruise was great, although if I had to characterize it in just one or two words I would forgo such obvious adjectives as "fun," "relaxing," and "sunburn-arific" and instead go with "completely dissociative."  If you have never been on a cruise, then I don't think I can fully describe the extent to which you become detached from your life at home.  The ship is your world, the people you are cruising with are all you know, and your daily schedule of "lie outside, eat to the point of vomiting, take a nap, eat to the point of vomiting, watch a show, dance, sleep" requires little variation.  By the end of the cruise, even your dreams take place on the ship.  That may sound boring, but as long as you like the people you're with, it's lots of fun--just completely all-consuming.

I have slowly begun to readjust to normal life, but it is harder than you would think.  For one, I have not broken out into organized dance in over 24 hours, which is really throwing me for a loop right now.  To give you an idea of how integral organized dance is to life on a ship, let me just say that I heard the Macarena, the Cha-Cha Slide, the Electric Slide, and the Conga all while I was waiting in line just to board.  From there on out, I would say I was involved in a minimum of eight organized dance experiences per day, four of which were usually the Cupid Shuffle.  (If you have never seen anyone do the Cupid Shuffle before, you should stop by my house tonight, because I now do this dance in my sleep.) 

Below, a picture of us dancing to "Jai Ho" (from Slumdog Millionaire) one night of dinner:

Besides being unable to cope with my suddenly dance-poor existence, I am also suffering from a deep aversion to performing the basic tasks necessary to take care of myself.  I am already pretty lazy when it comes to tasks like grocery shopping, cleaning, and laundry, but right now it's ridiculous.  Did I really take care of these things myself before a week ago?  Really?  Because right now I can only seem to remember a time where I would come home from having my dinner served to me to find that my bed had been made and a towel folded to look like a monkey had been placed upon it.  Turns out this is not so much the case at home.  If I want a towel folded like a monkey, I'm the one that's got to do it.

So, to recap: cruises are fun, and life after you've returned is strange and confusing.