Here's one way to preemptively strike against attacks on your DIY Facebook modeling shots:

• Buzzfeed

Continue reading »

I try my best to keep my business dealings local but this craigslist ad from Atlanta, GA has some pretty great deals in it.

travisdoesanything@gmail.com

My name is Travis Broyles and I will do whatever* you want me to do for less money than whoever you are paying to do it now.

Below is a list of just some of the things I can do. I do want to stress that I DO ANYTHING so email me if your requested service is not listed here.

Things I Will Do For $5:
Stare at you for 5 minutes
Give a hug to the person of your choosing
Call you on the phone and seem genuinely interested for 10 minutes
Draw your face on a balloon
Sing Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" from memory to the best of my ability
6 minutes of copywriting

Things I Will Do For $10:
Write your new theme song
Sing your new theme song on your voicemail
Spin until I throw up or you lose interest
Rename your Pokémon
Host a conference call with you and a person that you've always thought was cool but never really got the chance to hang out with, you know?
12 minutes of copywriting

The list keeps going up a sliding scale including such options as "Star treatment for a month (I'll hide in bushes and take pictures of you)" and "Yell your name every time I wake up for the rest of my life". Before you get carried away, though, read the footnote that goes with that asterisk. Mr. Broyles will do almost anything:

*Prices and tasks are subject to negotiation. I will not murder or steal or perform a legendary murdersteal. No rapes, and the sex has to be unrelated to the payment, like "Oh, after you're done cutting those trees down, do you want some lemonade?" but the lemonade means sex, mostly.

h/t to Fuzzbee Plimpington

It's a scary world. When I graduated college, I walked off the stage an into a crowd of friends, recent graduates, who were still looking for work. But there have to be jobs somewhere....

And there are, and all you have to do is sell out a little bit. If you're up for something mindless, exhausting and relatively well-paying, I found that the Netflix call center in Hillsboro has an average of 60 open jobs at all times, with no experience required (at least that's what they tell me.)

At Netflix, enthusiastic-sounding people (that could be you!) talk to Netflix customers about their issues. According to a friend of mine who used to work there, “The workers there were essentially in two camps: those who hated the job, and those who worked harder to hide their hatred for their job.”

The fun thing about the Netflix center is that many of the calls have nothing to do with Netflix. There is a certain percentage of callers that want help with their account or the Netflix website, but some call in with tangentially related issues. Perhaps your DVD player is broken. Perhaps your computer isn’t connected to the Internet, or your web connection is ungodly slow. Your problem can be Netflix’s problems thanks to a conveniently published customer service phone number.

Continue reading »

A huge earthquake (8.8 magnitude) rocked Chile this morning, resulting in a tsunami that is threatening the entire Pacific rim including the Oregon coast. From the O:

Experts warned that a tsunami could strike anywhere in the Pacific, and Hawaii could face its largest waves since 1964 starting at 11:19 a.m. (4:19 p.m. EST, 2119 GMT), according to Charles McCreery, director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Tsunami waves were likely to hit Asian, Australian and New Zealand shores within 24 hours of the earthquake. The U.S. West Coast and Alaska, too, were threatened.

From the AP:

A tsunami warning — the highest alert level — was issued for Hawaii, where emergency officials planned to wake residents with sirens alerting them to the impending waves. Even before daybreak, lines formed at supermarkets with residents stocking up on water, canned food and batteries. Cars lined up 15 deep at several gas stations.

The first waves were expected at 11:19 a.m. Saturday (4:19 p.m. EST). Most Pacific Rim nations, awaiting further data, did not order evacuations but advised people in low-lying areas to be on the lookout.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa told the Ecuavisa channel that a tsunami has passed the Galapagos Islands, causing a swell but no damage.

Unlike other tsunamis in recent years, emergency officials along the Pacific have hours to prepare and possibly evacuate residents.

More on the American relief effort to Chile here. Careful if you go to the coast today!

So I just wanted to remind you guys that SketchySantas.com posts new pictures daily.

Carry on.

(Thanks for the link, ROM. It's the best thing since "Hamster on a Piano.")

I don't know what the fuck to do with this, but for some reason, I feel like it needs to be seen. Via some press release I just received:

Crystal, star of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, makes friends with Karl Rove on Fox and Friends in celebration of the Blu-ray and DVD release on 12/1.

Do with this information what you will.

So how was your weekend? Mine blew chunks. First, Friday afternoon I come down with some fucking head cold. "IT'S NOT SWINE FLU," my boyfriend tells me every time I ask, BUT HOW WOULD HE KNOW? He's not qualified to rule out swine flu. He's not a doctor, you know, even if he does play one during certain role-play scenarios that I'm not allowed to write about, per his you-can't-write-about-our-sex-life fatwa. (He's actually not into medical role-play scenes; I only tossed that out there to throw snoopers off the scent. He's an adult baby.)

Okay. By yesterday afternoon I thought I was feeling well-ish enough-ish to get out of bed-ish and go see Zombieland with my son—his first R-rated movie, my first zombie flick since Sean of the Dead—but I was wrong. Modern zombie movies are loud and pounding headaches are fickle. You think it's nearly gone and then it comes roaring back when you trust your skull to the magic that is Dolby Surround Pound Whatever. (So how did that loud R-rated zombie flick work out for the kid? I'm pleased you asked: Zombieland wasn't all that violent, except for that scene where the zombie clown is dispatched with a sledge-hammer blow to the head. I empathized with the zombie clown. No sex, no boobies, thoroughly cartoonish gore. Zombieland wasn't a problem—the preview for Saw XXXXVIII, on the other hand, was extremely problematic.)

Came home from Zombieland, crawled back in bed, and only just got up to discover that... it's beautiful outside. And I'm too ill to go outside and enjoy it. Sick in the head, sick in the stomach—which is interfering with the work I brought home with me this weekend: writing up the short synopses for HUMP! films [GET YOUR TICKETS FOR THE PORTLAND SCREENINGS, WHICH I'M HOSTING, NOW], which requires me to watch some of these videos again... which are stacked up next to the bed... but I'm not in right place—I'm already nauseous—to watch HUMP! films or write up HUMP! films.

So I decide to read the paper, which the boyfriend left outside the bedroom door before taking off to enjoy the day with the kid. And I feel all miserable and dehydrated and hotzone and I'm feeling really sorry for myself and then I read this:

Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes. Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

What was wrong with Ms. Smith? She ate a hamburger.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

And those scraps and ammonia-soaked mash are supposed to be tested for E. coli contamination... but aren't. Because some slaughterhouses won't sell meat to grinders that test for E. coli. And that's not illegal because the U.S. Department of Agriculture "allows grinders to devise their own safety plans." Sounds like a plan. And meat processors don't want to test for E. coli because, if it's found, that could trigger a recall. So lots of ground beef is only tested for fecal contamination when it reaches the mouths of American consumers: if someone gets sick, and if the illness can be traced back to a hamburger, then we'll do the recall.

Anyway. I'm glad I don't eat ground beef... very often. And I'm glad my kid doesn't... very often. And I'm no longer feeling sorry for myself, but rather feeling sorry for Ms. Smith.

And you know what? If we're not gonna have universal health care then we need an uncontaminated food supply. If we're going to have a contaminated food supply, then we need universal health care. But no health care and a contaminated food supply really seems like a bad plan. But I'm all hopped up on Theraflu, so... what do I know?

Scientists have discovered a man-sized fossil of a dinosaur that is essentially a 1/100th scale model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. From the Smithsonian's website:

In this week’s edition of Science, an international team of scientists describes a new, diminutive precursor to the more familiar Cretaceous giants. It was discovered in approximately 130-million-year-old rocks in China. They have named it Raptorex kriegsteini.

At first glance you could be excused for thinking that Raptorex was the juvenile stage of one of the later tyrannosaurids. At only about 10 feet long, it had long, gracile legs, a slender-looking head, a large eye socket, and ridiculously small forelimbs which terminated in claws. While it was not quite a fully mature individual, it was not the juvenile stage of an already-known dinosaur. It was something scientists had never seen before, one that can tell us much about how its giant cousins evolved.

When a 25 year old French guy dropped the Mercury a line and asked if we'd be interested in talking to him about his hitchhiking tour around the world, I thought he was lying. But Frenchman Jeremy Marie has an elaborate binder of maps and photos of himself on camels and boats and he has a website, too, so as far as I can tell he's telling the truth. In 2007 Jeremy embarked on a project to travel around the world while paying $0 for transportation. Two years later he's made it to Portland via Mexico, Central America, Cape Town, Ethiopia, the Middle East and Southern Europe (in reverse order). Here's a condensed and edited interview with the expert couchsurfer.

• If you see this man, give him a lift and some fine brie

Were you ever surrounded by sharks?
No. Sea lions, dolphins but I was never lucky enough to see a shark.

Have you had any trouble getting rides in the U.S.?
When I cross the border from Mexico to Texas, I tried to get to San Antonio and it took three days. The area was grass and dry and I was tired. I found lifts, but it was only one mile, two mile. The thing of my project is to show that there are good people in every country. In Texas, the good people are more difficult to find.

Five more questions below the cut.

Continue reading »

Hat tips to WTFoodge!

It's the kind of place where an old couple can run a roadside store called Cooterville.

Which itself is the kind of place where creepy ceramic unicorns go to die.

Our intern Rachael is having quite a tough time this summer, having taken off on a two-week trip around Europe. Because we pay her nothing, we insisted she continue to blog from abroad. Here’s her first post.

In Portland, I'm used to being accosted by skinny hipster kids asking for money to save the trees, save the children, save the ocean, save music in schools, save their mother. And when I lived in Florence as an exchange student last year, I got used to being accosted by other American kids passing out flyers for clubs, parties, and pub crawls. But last night, sitting on the patio of my favorite bar in Florence, I experienced something new. What they were peddling, I wasn't expecting.

The pouring rain had stopped, and sipping on my Martini Bianco, I was enjoying watching all the designer Italian shoes walk by. I noticed two pairs of identical shiny black pumps authoritatively walk up to a group of young men on the patio. I looked up. Two women with shiny black dresses and shiny black hair were giving some sort of spiel to the boys. Clearly they were taken in. Italian men are famous for their drooling over lovely women, so I would expect nothing less than full-on ogling when two thin, beautiful women wearing tight, shiny black everything approach them. Shiny black haired girl number one reached into her shiny black patent leather bag and passed around some little boxes. Smiles all around. The women moved onto another group.

What was going on? No flyers, no petitions, no exchange of money. I watched a few minutes longer until they hit up my table.

more after the jump!

Continue reading »

Today as I was frantically searching for something interesting to post about, I found something even better: Harrison Ford.

The above web ad was so compelling, that even though I had no idea what Mr. Ford was supporting, I had to pause... “Wait. Harrison Ford supports it? The Harrison Ford? Then, you’re right, there is absolutely no reason I should not support this "it" you speak of. After all… 1.2 million jobs? Why, that’s a completely disassociated number that I can totally stand behind!”

Turns out that “actor, pilot” Harrison Ford is supporting general aviation and a petition that asks congress to re-think “a poorly conceived user fee plan.” I’m assuming that general aviation is all the aviation outside of big commercial and military aviation, and likely includes ultra-lights, para-gliders, and these guys…

You bet I’ll sign that petition. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that this web ad is so compelling, and so powerful, it could be used for just about anything. Check it.

This is a dress made of meat. Yes, actual meat. It was built by Jia Jem as a one time costume meant to be a riff on Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Some might balk at Jem’s use of meat in fashion. But that could all be solved by Harrison Ford:

See? Problem solved. In fact, you look into the sweet, soulful eyes of that sainted man and you think to yourself: “Give me a pattern and 50 pounds of sirloin. I’m making a freakin’ meat gown!”

Let’s try another example!

This is the amazing work of Slovania’s Slovenia's only jazz choir Perpetuum Jazzile. It’s hard to imagine that there would be anyone out there who would not enjoy the vocal stylings of Perpetuum Jazzile, especially after reading this sentence from their web page:

Happy faces give us energy and confirm that we are devoted to what we do with our hearts and souls.

But some people just don’t dig Toto, or jazz choirs. I’d like those people to consider the following:

You see? Now, aren’t you ready to watch that again? Not only watch it again, but move to Slovania Slovenia to join Perpetuum Jazzile, or at least follow them on their next tour? I know you are.

Thank you, Mr. Ford.

Despite living in the U.S. for my entire life — including the Midwest for four years — I have never, not once, ever touched a gun. Until today! I was hanging out in Hawker's Lockers pawn shop on 82nd Avenue for a story about the economy and, of course, conversation with the good-natured young woman behind the counter turned to her surprising love of guns. While some reports says gun sales spiked dramatically before and after the election, the Hawkers Lockers workers say they haven't seen any difference. According to pawn shop employees, you should forget the stock market. Gold and guns are your surest investment bets, since (at least in this country) they never depreciate in value. "Though a few weeks ago, I was at Dutch brothers and the coffee guy started asking me about where I work," offered Cassie, the young woman, "He said he wanted to buy a gun before the 'Barackolypse'!"

I asked Cassie to show me her favorite gun in the store. The walls and counters were lined with rifles and handguns, but Cassie headed straight to the back and brought out this $1200 semi-automatic Bushmaster. "I was that little redneck girl who just liked guns," she explained, looking over the huge gun and then handing it to me. Oh geez.

Why have I never touched a gun? Because I'm terrified of them. Everyone talks about media desensitizing kids to violence but I think growing up on Terminator and True Lies has made me possibly more wary of guns: if there's one in the room, it means SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE. The gun wasn't heavy and it looked like a prop, but I still can't wrap my head around why it's acceptable for someone to walk into a store and buy a Bushmaster any day of the week.

"Can this be like a hunting gun?" I asked. Cassie and the other worker, an older guy named William, laughed. "That's not an animal gun!" said William.
"What's the totally legitimate, non gang-banger reason for owning one of these?" I asked, my finger on the trigger. Cassie shrugged. "There isn't one."

The crew got a kick out of my gun jitters and a minute later I looked up and William was aiming a fancy sniper gun at me, a red laser sight beam dancing over my sweater. "You see that dot on you?!" William laughed. haHA!

Last night saw another installment of the OMSI After Dark program, where the museum stays open for extended hours for those 21 and up. Beer and wine were served, and free vodka samples were given away (one per person, although each sample confusingly required two tickets to redeem). It's a good opportunity for those who like science but don't like children. Judging by last night's packed attendance, there are a lot of people who fall into this category.

Now, unlike a certain movie would have you believe, the museum does NOT come alive at night. No Egyptian mummies brought to life, or kindly bespectacled Teddy Roosevelts as played by Robin Williams, or T-Rex skeletons comically maurading the premises. Instead, almost all of OMSI's regular exhibits were on display without much enhancement. The most fun part was the physics room, filled with toys, gadgets, whizmos, and whirligigs, like that shocky ball thing that stands your hair up on end, or the fan tunnel that you can stick a paper cup on top of and watch it shoot up in the air. But again, the place was utterly packed, and you're trading the presence of little kids running around for a mob of adults. I'd say it's a fair trade-off, in that you can play to your heart's content with all of the whatsits without feeling self-conscious or looking creepy.

The Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, including "Secrets of the Mona Lisa," however, I thought was a bust. It was pretty slow going, with the first part showing endless wooden replicas of possible inventions from da Vinci's sketchbooks. You could only touch a small fraction of them, and many of them weren't that interesting. The Mona Lisa part was even more tedious, with facsimiles of giant zoom-ins of various parts of the painting, shown through different lenses (infrared, etc).
There was one useful replica, that showed how the painting might have looked in da Vinci's day (brighter, bluer), and I got the sense that the painting's mystery and fame is largely due to its deterioration over the years: It began life as a beautiful but perhaps not all that exceptional work, and grew stranger and murkier as it got older. Even her mysterious, all-seeing eyes were at one time vibrant, aimed in a single direction. But in the end, it was frustrating to wade through all this hype and promotion about a painting that is actually located thousands of miles away.

Still, the science-y stuff was fun, and although I doubt you'll learn much, it's a good way to see OMSI when it's not flocked by kids.

OMSI After Dark continues on the fourth Wednesday of every month, from 6-10 pm; upcoming dates include April 22, May 27, June 24, and July 22; $10