Archives for category: Weird

Acquisitions and Movies

April 15, 06 //
18

Update #3: (drum­roll) Arno is/was Andy “Malarkey” Clarke. What a crazy — but funny — bloke!

Update #2: Jeremy Keith responds to Arno after receiv­ing a sim­il­iar email, but for perfume.

Update: Arno responds to this post. (read below first if you haven’t already for the full scoop)

You know, I’ve sifted through a truck­load of emails in the past few years about instant credit reports, money-making oppor­tu­ni­ties and not to men­tion sales­peo­ple inter­ested in sell­ing me every­thing from pet rocks to laser-guided golf ball retreivers.

In all this time I’ve never once received a domain acqui­si­tion email, until today of course.

Not more than 8 hours ago, I received an email from an Arno Zim­mer­man in regards to pur­chas­ing, or actu­ally acquir­ing this domain for a “well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dio”. The email was a bit hazy, but to keep this on record for future con­ver­sa­tions I’m pre­sent­ing it here in it’s entirety.

Read on as I really can’t make this kind of stuff up:

Dear Mr Sagen,

My sin­cere apolo­gies for writ­ing to you unan­nounced. My name is Arno Zim­mer­man and I am CEO of an Inter­net domain name acqui­si­tions agency based here in Los Ange­les, California.

My agency is cur­rently engaged by a well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dio. The stu­dio is pro­duc­ing a new action movie called The Kar­tooner. The movie has an all star cast, includ­ing Bruce Willis in the title role, and will be released in the fall. My client is there­fore very keen to pur­chase the rights to the domain name kartooner.com from you.

I am sure that you will under­stand that I can­not pro­vide you with much in the way of infor­ma­tion about our client at this time. How­ever I can assure you that they are sin­cere in their offer, and that they are keen to con­clude this pur­chase quickly.

I would be inter­ested to learn how much you would require for this trans­fer of ownership.

Many kind regards,

Arno Zim­mer­man

Okay, admit­tedly, you caught me off guard Mr. Zim­mer­man. If some­one were to tell me — like you just did — that Bruce Willis would be star­ring in an action movie called The Kar­tooner, I’d be hes­is­tant to believe such a thing.

How­ever, if you want to talk about the green­back, I might be will­ing to budge for about $66,000 dol­lars, give or take.

Let me know, alright? In the mean­time, I’m going to try and fig­ure out what I’d pur­chase with that kind of money.

Arno Responds

Dear Mr. Sagen,

My client’s legal team have informed me of your arti­cle regard­ing our offer to pur­chase your domain name. While I was a lit­tle sur­prised, as I have not yet had a reply from you directly, I do not think that this will cause us a prob­lem as The Kar­tooner is now in full pro­duc­tion, cur­rently shoot­ing live action in Manhattan.

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous email, The Kar­tooner will star Bruce Willis in the title role. Bruce plays an impov­er­ished artist in New York who pays his bills by draw­ing car­toons for the New York Times. Through a series of unfor­tu­nate acci­dents, Bruce’s char­ac­ter mis­tak­enly becomes the tar­get of a Mafia hit squad and must use all his wits (as well as his artis­tic skills) to stay alive. Need­less to say I can­not divulge any fur­ther plot details.

You men­tioned in your arti­cle today that you would be pre­pared to accept a sum of $66,000. Unfor­tu­nately this is over the bud­get that my agency has been autho­rized to pay for the aqui­si­tion of your domain name. How­ever I won­der whether you would accept a smaller sum, in addi­tion to a small walk on part in the movie?

Would you please be so kind as to let us know your deci­sion as my clients are keen to con­clude this pur­chase quickly

Many kind regards,

Arno Zim­mer­man
CEO and Inter­net domain name acquisitions

 

Newborn in a Bottle

February 19, 06 //
10

Ever think you suf­fer from too much sleep? That your nights are never really rest­less and that you might have too much energy? Would you like to change this immediately?

Boy, have I got a solu­tion for you! Fresh from the aroma-scented boxes sit­ting on our shelves comes a new one-of-a-kind prod­uct for those who don’t suf­fer from sleep deprivation:

 

Inconsequential Thoughts

October 26, 05 //
14

Have you ever had those moments where you com­pletely for­get what­ever it was you were sup­posed to do? Despite metic­u­lously jot­ting said “to-do” item in an event plan­ner, jour­nal, online app or just a plain piece of paper you still for­get. It doesn’t mat­ter if you used a blue pen, if you were prac­tic­ing yoga at the time or fly­ing 2,000 feet over the Indian Ocean, we rarely remem­ber every­thing we need to accom­plish, even when we write them down.

Then, out of the blue, some­one says some­thing com­pletely ran­dom like, “Gee, I really like scrub­bing the mold off three-day-old bread with the edge of a but­ter knife.” and sud­denly that lit­tle light­bulb turns on over your head, blink­ing on and off like a busted neon sign, and you remem­ber that you needed to pick up but­ter from the store.

I can’t remem­ber what I said the other night to my wife, non­cha­lantly, as I was adjust­ing the cush­ions on our couch. What­ever it was it inad­vert­edly reminded her that she needed to call her mother about some­thing impor­tant and all because I made an off­hand remark about some­thing com­pletely ran­dom and incon­se­quen­tial but oddly rel­e­vant to our dis­jointed conversation. 

Snuggets

July 10, 05 //
13

As far as blog­ging is con­cerned, I’ve been a bit out of the loop lately. You could attribute it to the daily rit­ual of let­ting life’s respon­si­bil­i­ties take focus or another excuse could be that I really haven’t had much to say of as late.

Hon­estly, I could wag, point or wig­gle a fin­ger in the direc­tion of either excuse if it really came down to it, but instead I’ll just relin­quish any excuse and steer my atten­tion towards main­tain­ing a sense of sta­bil­ity in regards to the life­line of this site.

That said, I’d like to share with you a few snip­pets, which in some sense could also be nuggets of infor­ma­tion, so I’ll call them “snuggets”. If you’re like me and love using com­pletely made up words in every­day con­ver­sa­tion, then feel free to use that in future dis­cus­sions around the water cooler.

And now, I present this week’s worth of snuggets:

Blingo

As it says in the About sec­tion on the Blingo site: “Blingo is a search engine with a twist. Each search on Blingo is also a chance to win a prize.” It’s really that sim­ple. In fact, just moments ago I was ran­domly selected to win a free movie ticket and because Colin Devroe invited me ini­tially he’ll also receive the prize.

The Case of the Burnt Grilled Cheese Imprint

Word to the wise; when cook­ing a grilled cheese sand­wich at your inlaws remem­ber to check the pan to see if it’s non-stick. Last week I made the mis­take of prepar­ing a grilled cheese sand­wich and then cook­ing it on a reg­u­lar pan.

It didn’t help that the stove was gas burn­ing and that I had set the tem­per­a­ture on high. As soon as I slapped the bread into the pan, it stuck to the bot­tom of it like glue and left behind a burnt toast-shaped imprint.

After dous­ing the pan in vine­gar and an esti­mated 20 min­utes of furi­ous (elbow grease) scrub­bing it looked close to as good as new.

Eat­ing Bugs for Protein

I’ve often thought about and won­dered why cer­tain tribes eat bugs for pro­tein. Ask a tribe mem­ber and he or she will tell you it’s for nour­ish­ment, good health and vital­ity or, sim­ply, that it just tastes good.

I once ate a hand­ful of chocolate-covered ants and thought it was one of the most dis­gust­ing things I had ever eaten, taste and tex­ture wise. Ask your­self this ques­tion: Would you ever eat a bowl­ful of cock­roaches for $1,000,000 dol­lars? The money aspect is tempt­ing, but could you endure just how utterly dis­taste­ful that would be?

The Inven­tor of the Slow Cooker (a.k.a. Crockpot)

Who­ever invented the slow cooker, thank you, from the bot­tom of my “I really didn’t feel like spend­ing a great deal of time prepar­ing din­ner” heart. Who­ever you are, you’re right up there with the inven­tors of Silly Putty (NASA, I believe) and water-expanding, insta-grow dinosaurs.

If you’re ever in a bind for time; cut up some round steak, toss in a can of stewed toma­toes, sweet pep­pers, a drop or two of Red Hot and switch to ‘High’ and in 5–6 hours you’ll be enjoy­ing pep­per steak.

Choco­late Shell Ice Cream Topping

On a sim­il­iar note to the above snugget, thanks to whomever came up with the choco­late shell top­ping. If you’ve never tried this, it’s basi­cally the same choco­late solu­tion that you would get in a real ice cream shop, that hard­ened choco­late coat­ing on an ice cream cone. In this case, it’s for home use and makes a bowl of vanilla ice cream that much more tantalizing.

That’s it for this round of snuggets. If you’d like to add your own, please per­suse the com­ments because we all love tid­bits of what some would call use­less bits of infor­ma­tion, but what I like to call Snuggets.

 

Odd Thoughts: Part Two

June 11, 05 //
5

There are some posts through­out a blogger’s time­line that beg for revi­tal­iza­tion or per­haps, as in this case, a chance to revisit and expand upon. Around two months ago, Odd Thoughts was posted for one sim­ple and yet obvi­ous rea­son; for me, to share with you, a few thoughts that ram­ble and bounce along in my mind.

Some are quirky, oth­ers just down­right silly and implau­si­ble, yet as a whole they are a col­lec­tion of ran­dom spurts that to some might seem inco­her­ent or use­less in some capac­ity but to oth­ers are the key towards hap­pi­ness and con­tent­ment, a break from the per­ils of real­ity. To me, these thoughts, while not nec­es­sar­ily life chang­ing by any means, are still impor­tant to keep a sense of san­ity in a world where seri­ous­ness is abound.

Every­day we are faced with that per­son who we come across, whom at first glance, seems pouty or sour in some way. You know who I’m talk­ing about because these indi­vid­u­als always seem down-and-out, rest­less or grumpy. Our first gut reac­tion to this might be to either ignore the per­son in ques­tion or attempt to make them smile, to fill their mind with lyri­cal and hope­fully humor­ous non­sense that actu­ally serves a pur­pose; to enlighten their hid­den but whim­si­cal self.

Life is too seri­ous to not take a step back, breath in and laugh at your­self and laugh with oth­ers, it’s impor­tant to not only your own sense of mind but to oth­ers. Laugh­ter and humor is in fact con­ta­gious and for each per­son that smiles and shrugs off any feel­ing of despair­ity, solem­ness or begrudge­ful thoughts, will emerge from their shell and real­ize that life is much too short to for­get about what makes us feel good inside.

On that note, I’d like to share with you some addi­tional “Odd Thoughts” and if you’d like, please share some of your own or you could even answer a few.

If George Jet­son and Homer Simp­son were in a box­ing match, who would win?

If you woke up tomor­row and every­thing was made of clay, would you be afraid to shave?

Why isn’t there a jump rope made of licorice?

Why is children’s music (like the Itsy, Bitsy Spi­der) typ­i­cally used as creepy back­ground music in hor­ror movies?

Why do some peo­ple take care of grass as a plant when there’s plenty of it outside?

If paper can cut as eas­ily as it does, why hasn’t some­one come out with non-paper-cutting paper?

What would Orco (from He-Man) look like with­out his cape?

What did Tashi Sta­tion look like? Luke never got the chance to pick up some power converters.

If you could choose any movie to be mag­i­cally trans­ported into, what would you choose?

If Nig­gles are Noogles and Pas­tries are Grob­bles, what is a TiddlyWiki?

If tomor­row they rename Fire­fox to Fire­cow, would peo­ple still use it?

 

Down the Rabbit-Hole

April 27, 05 //
8

Alice in WonderlandEver notice when you have a head cold, like I do now, that every­thing seems out of bal­ance? This sense of insta­bil­ity is attrib­uted to equi­lib­rium, defined as a “con­di­tion in which all act­ing influ­ences are can­celed by oth­ers, result­ing in a sta­ble, bal­anced, or unchang­ing sys­tem.” It also makes every­thing seem as if you’re an inhab­i­tant of Won­der­land. I’m expect­ing that any moment now a white rab­bit will clum­sily hop in front of me, wav­ing his pocket watch exclaim­ing, “I’m late! I’m late!”.

When I was younger and to this day I’ll usu­ally lie on the couch, when I can find a peace­ful moment, and just stare at the ceil­ing. If I con­cen­trate on the ceil­ing long enough, it will sud­denly warp and roll as if it were made of taffy, expand­ing and snap­ping back to its pre­vi­ous form. If I lis­ten to music, the tune will per­me­ate into my thoughts and some­times I’m left with an end­less rep­e­ti­tion of that tune in my mind. Believe me, I love music but not when it takes over and becomes a fix­ture in my mind. I’d only allow that to hap­pen if it were a theme song, my own per­sonal theme song, as I strolled the streets wav­ing to passer­by­ers, offer­ing high fives and thumbs up gestures.

Tak­ing all of this into account, I rather like the def­i­n­i­tion of sick­ness which describes it as a mal­ady, which fur­ther defines itself as “the mal­ady of dis­con­tent”. It has a cer­tain ring to it and cer­tainly describes my con­di­tion at the moment. I feel as if I’m falling down the rab­bit hole; past reversed mir­rors, cack­ling chia pets and giant goo­gly eyes.

How about you? What hap­pens when you’re inflicted with the “com­mon head cold”? 

Odd Thoughts

March 31, 05 //
28

Odd ToddSome­times strange phrases, thoughts and ques­tions lurk around in my head, to the point where I have to either write them down or tell them to some­one in order to pre­vent myself from for­get­ting them.

At which point I either receive a stiffle of laugh­ter or in most cases the typ­i­cal “roll eyes and shakes head” response. I guess you just have to get my humor, it’s not always off the wall, but it’s cer­tainly not of this world, as peo­ple have told me. It just proves a point that odd peo­ple are either accepted or shrugged off in this soci­ety even­tu­ally hud­dled into var­i­ous clas­si­fi­ca­tions like come­di­ans, “cre­ative types”, odd todds and loonies.

These strange phrases and thoughts that hud­dle in my brain, wait­ing to pounce and dig their fin­gers into an unsus­pect­ing per­son involved in a con­ver­sa­tion with me are dif­fi­cult to shake off. Instead of ignor­ing them I typ­i­cally just blurt them out and see if it might add any­thing to the con­ver­sa­tion. For instance, right now here are a few thoughts I’m having:

I’ve often won­dered if squir­rels have mini laser beams built into their heads?

If I were Super­man what would I pur­chase at Target?

What would I do if I were face-to-face with a sea ser­pent? Make a dash for it? Have a star­ing contest?

If I could make any draw­ing come to life, what would it be?

Shaggy car­pet con­ceals a lot of secrets. Reg­u­lar car­pet isn’t as secre­tive as it’s shaggy cousin.

What do you call two farm­ers on acid? A field trip.

What would Big Bird look like with­out his feath­ers? Also, was Big Bird male or female?

I’d imag­ine that I’m not the only per­son in this world that has these kinds of unusual thoughts, so if you could please share some odd thoughts of your own, or maybe some­one might even pro­vide an answer to your questions.