Sunday, June 22, 2003 - Posing the lame joke “Why
is it that DayGlo paint only glows in the
dark?,” I surf onto the DayGlo
site and learn otherwise. Brighter, bolder,
better, they maintain (a) fluorescent color
is three times brighter than regular color
(in any lighting situation), (b) fluorescent
color is seen 75% sooner than conventional
color, and (c) your eyes go back to fluorescent
color for a second look 59% of the time
— it is an advertising tool to lure
your eyes to sales signs in stores and advertising
on billboards! Not to mention, street signs
and orange plastic cones. DayGlo was founded
in 1946 by Bob and Joe Switzer, apparently
not for the purpose of creating blacklite
posters for the 1960’s after all.
Monday, June 23, 2003 - TIME Magazine, March 18,
1991. “Secrecy at CIA headquarters
extends all the way to the courtyard.
Kryptos,
a granite-and-copper sculpture by Washington
artist Jim Sanborn, was quietly installed
last November near a new building on the
agency’s grounds. Taxpayers financed
the $250,000 work, but that does not guarantee
public access. Sanborn’s sculpture
features a 2,000-character encoded message
that is believed to have been penned by
a well-known writer whose name has not
been disclosed. Besides the artist and
the author, only CIA director William
Webster knows what the top-secret phrase
says.” True no longer! 3 of 4 parts
solved. Visit The
First Lady of Online Games for more.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003 - You may remember him as the
brother in Annie
Hall. Or as the suicide king in The
Deer Hunter. Or as the hoofer in Pennies
from Heaven. The one that stands out
for me is psychic Johnny Smith in The
Dead Zone. Some comedians imitate Jack
Nicholson. The smart ones do Christopher
Walken. On The Late Show, Conan O’Brien
compiled a reel of all the comedians who
visited his show and did Christopher Walken
imitations, and afterward, C.W. grinned
that toothy grin he grinned at Dennis Hopper’s
historic comparisons between the Moors and
Sicilians in True
Romance. For years, I’d spent
minutes tracking down the famous music video
starring C.W. and here it is — Fatboy
Slim’s Weapon
of Choice music video.
Wednesday, June
25, 2003 - In 1885, The
Beale Ciphers titillated with a tale
of a fortune in gold, silver, and jewels
buried in the Virginia hills. James J.
Gillogly claims it’s a hoax.
Xenosoft sells Beale
Cipher Software which, for $36.00,
they claim can be used to decrypt all
of the ciphers. They advise “A Note
to Potential Excavators: If you believe
you have solved the cipher, and plan on
going down to Virginia, and begin digging
in some farmers field, then please get
permission from the land owner and explain
what you want to do and what you are looking
for. They may agree to split the treasure
with you. It is very common for holes
to appear in this area, and some residents
are understandably upset in the extreme.”
In the extreme? Totally, dude.
Thursday, June 26, 2003 - Having endured a summer
in Tempe, Arizona (“always shake out
your shoes before putting them on. Scorpions
like dark cool places to sleep”),
I never once had a close encounter with
a cactus. Yesterday, during the sunburnt
splendor of my three hour stroll in the
desert gardens of Claremont, I learned (a)
my hand is incapable of moving slowly enough
to test the sharpness of cactus needles
without injury, (b) I will impale my thumb
on the adjacent stalk of needles while jerking
my hand away, and (c) brushing against a
“jumping cactus” gives the momentary
illusion that all my forearm hairs have
suddenly grown an inch and a half long.
“How can this be?” I think and
I instinctively touch them. See (a).
Friday, June 27, 2003 - “I started my ascent
at 34-7.57, 117-51.306 and found the way
blocked by poison oak. I approached at
34-7.613, 117-51.010 without further obstacle.”
Geocaching
is the apparently popular pastime of discovering
someone’s secreted curiosity at
a given longitude and latitude, claiming
it, and then replacing it with a curiosity
of your own. An electronic device known
as a GPS unit is key to the quest as it
determines your current location within
6-20 feet on the planet Earth. A sample
blog: “We found it, without much
trouble. We took the monster truck and
left a Pepe Le Pew toy. Some trails have
LOTS of poison oak, and there are small
black flies that like to get in your face.”
Saturday, June 28, 2003 - The First Law of Philosophy:
For every philosopher, there exists an equal
and opposite philosopher. The Second Law
of Philosophy: They’re both wrong.
The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre
was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached
him. “Can I get you something to drink,
Monsieur Sartre?” she asked. “Yes,
I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar
but no cream,” he replied. “I’m
sorry, we are all out of cream. How about
with no milk?” she offered. Bertrand
Russell adds “The point of philosophy
is to start with something so simple as
to seem not worth stating, and to end with
something so paradoxical that no one will
believe it.” A route of many roads
leading from nowhere to nothing.
