Posts in the Humor Category

What is it about the Japanese that they loooove to blend colors?

Lest you think I’m indulging in some sort of bizarre racial stereotyping, I submit for your consideration the Technorati search results for blogs and other sites pointing to my Color Blender.  The Blender been moderately popular ever since its release, but so far as I can tell, the Asian market is just eating it up.  If I see a new Japanese site appear in my egorati feed, the odds are 49 out of 50 that it’ll be linking to the Blender.

So what’s the deal there?  Anyone have insights, specuation, or even translations that might shed some light on this little enigma?

(Note: it turns out that these are Chinese blogs using Japanese fonts, and not Japanese sites as I originally thought.  I’m leaving the original entry intact rather than update it.  Still, this means that the essence of the original question remains, even if the geography was off by a bit.)

• Japanese Color Blending was published on Friday, January 6th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Culture, Humor, and Tools categories.
• There have been thirteen replies.

When you own your own business (or just work independently), there’s an extra-special feeling of frisson when the mailman arrives bearing an envelope from the Internal Revenue Service.  I recently got one, though, that made me laugh out loud, despite being about the possible loss of my third-quarter payment.  No, really.  It still makes me chuckle every time I read the second paragraph:

On Sunday, September 11, 2005 an accident occurred on the San Mateo Bridge near San Francisco, California involving a courier transporting payments to an IRS Payment Processing Site.  A truck carrying tax payments overturned, causing approximately 30,000 Form 1040ES quarterly estimated tax payments to be ejected into the San Francisco Bay.

And people say the IRS has no sense of poetry.

• Tax Relief was published on Friday, December 16th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Humor and Work categories.
• There have been six replies.

After a lovely Sunday morning breakfast at the Farmers Market in Los Angeles, Kat, Carolyn, and I strolled through The Grove to check the sights and pick up a gift card for some friends.  As we neared the center of the main drag, Carolyn suddenly pointed and shrieked delightedly, “Daddy!”

She was pointing directly at the large white logo in the middle of the silver façade of the Apple Store.

I’m thinking that maybe I need to spend a little less time on my PowerBook.

• The Apple of Her Eye was published on Monday, November 21st, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn, Humor, and Mac categories.
• There have been fifteen replies.

This afternoon, I spotted the following sitting in a driving rain on a street corner half a block away from our house.

Uh…

• Somebody Must’ve Been Tanked was published on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been eleven replies.

Now that’s how you package parts.  It’s almost enough to take the fear out of the words “Some Assembly Required”.

• Perfect Packaging was published on Thursday, August 25th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been fourteen replies.

You know the effect where, if you only catch a TV show every now and again, it’s always the same episode?

Whenever I happen to catch Stargate: SG-1, it’s always the episode “Window of Opportunity“.  Seriously.

How awesome is that?

• Thrown For a Loop was published on Monday, May 2nd, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been twenty-seven replies.

It turns out that the reason Durstan wasn’t on the cover of his book is that he’d made his way onto the covers of some other books.  All of them from another publisher, even.  I present the shocking evidence!

Believe it… or don’t.

• Here’s Durstan! was published on Friday, March 25th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Humor and Tech categories.
• There have been eleven replies.

So late this morning—that would make it the fifth and final day of the conference—I was doing what everyone else in the freakin’ conference was doing, and taking pictures of attendees while standing in the hallway.  As I held up the camera to get a high-angle shot of a group of friends, one of the badge checkers was suddenly leaning around me to look at something.  “You don’t have a press tag on the camera,” she said.

“No, I don’t; it’s a personal camera,” I told her.

“You still have get a tag,” she said.

“You’re kidding,” I said.  But she wasn’t.  I offered to put the camera away, but she wasn’t really satisfied with that.  “You’ll just pull it back out again, won’t you?”

She was right, of course, but that just didn’t seem like a problem to me.  She said, “All right, I’ll tell you what.  When you get a chance, go down to the press booth and get a tag.  All right?”

Now, most people would have agreed just to get her to go away and ignored the request.  But me, I’m a little different.  My sense of the totally absurd had been engaged, and I decided to do just as she had suggested and obtain a press tag.  Porter Glendinning, having heard the story and possessing a similar sense of the absurd, came along to pick up one of his own.

So yes, along with Porter, I am now duly authorized and my camera tagged with badge #331 to indicate that I am an official SXSW Videographer/Photographer, and as such am permitted to take pictures of people standing around in hallways talking.  Also, I have official authorization to take pictures of people taking pictures with their own personal non-tagged cameras.  That’s fun too.

• Pressed was published on Tuesday, March 15th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Humor and Speaking categories.
• There have been fourteen replies.