New York City in the 1980's

Like many people I'm a fan of found items. The other day I was at a thrift store and I found a photo album that still had some pics in it. They all come from New York City in what appears to be the 80's. Here are a few of them.

Craigslist finds

So everyone is familiar with Craigslist, its the internet's largest online classifieds and it really has everything. Recently I started browsing the "Strictly Platonic" sub-section of the Personals. I browsed the latest listings of all the major cities in the USA and Canada and I discovered some interesting facts:

• There are a surprising amount of people looking for complete strangers to get high with and go watch the movie "Pan's Labyrinth" (I'd never heard of it until now but its getting a really good rating on the imdb.
• There are a hell of a lot of Women looking for gay men as friends and many of them talk about having a gay friend as if they were some sort of a pet or accessory. (I think we can thank Will and Grace for this kind of shit.)

The following is an unedited collection of other random stuff I found in the "Strictly Platonic" section.

---

infomation guzzler - m4w - 29

I NEED WOMEN WITH THE SMART TO ASSIST ME IN THE ART MAKING CASH FAST.DO WHAT EVE IT TAKES WITH THE EXCEPTION OF DESTROYING OTHER

The guy included a pic of himself. Two words: Big Pimp

---

looking for help from friend - 20

apt fot fired and i wanted to trade for tab
it got fired good
you be : similar, observant, safe

**yay friends**
green is the magic
for the rainbow

for the most part those are English words but none of this post made any sense to me at all. It looks as if it was created by a random sentence generator.

---

those shoes are mine betch!

if you enjoy miller high life, gold lame, and area rugs with animals on them, we should hang out.

your myspace gets mine.

Come on, who doesn't like rugs with animals on them?

---

anyone have info on boob jobs? eg, price, good surgeons, etc

also curious as to if there's any way insurance would cover some of it or if some doctors do pro-bono work for anything that isn't disfiguring. i have body dysmorphic disorder.

If you have body dysmorphic disorder like Jenny (from the "Why I hate plastic surgery article") and you know and admit you have it wouldn't it be better to be posting looking for help rather than surgery (I know I'm being glib, I'll stop now)

---

Act Like A Dog - m4w - 28

I'm looking for a woman to get on all fours in public and act like a dog. I will put a leash on you, and you will walk, sit, stay, roll over at my command. When strangers pass by, you will leap onto their legs and pant with your tongue out. When you are disappointed, you will make that cute little sound dogs make when they are told go. Please make sure that you are attractive. Serious responses only!

Serious responses only ladies.

---

Friend Handy With A Sponge - m4w - 20

Hi, I need a friend who's handy with a sponge. I've been having medical problems on and off for the past couple years. You see, sometimes, I wet myself, sometimes I puke myself, and sometimes I just juice all over the floor. I need someone who's willing to be my friend and help me mop up after some of my episodes. I promise lots of good times. You: bring rubber gloves (if thats how you roll), and bring some plastic bags (we can try to trap my juices before they become a mess). I: will give you a dry place to sleep, and endless fun as we try to anticipate my next fruity explosion

Really?? Who the hell would respond to this??

The Tiling of a nation

So recently I did some re-tiling here (the bathroom and the kitchen) and seeing as I wanted the highest possible quality product I went off to the dollar store to buy some vinyl tiles. The tiles were 3 for $1 and with any product with such a steep price tag they come with a 1 year warranty. Now the funny thing is according to the packaging the tiles must be installed in a very specific and precise method for the warranty to be valid.... The funny part? The packaging is fraught with so many spelling and grammar mistakes that I don't think it would be hard to make a case for any installation job.

I scanned the instructions and have included a few of the best parts (with mistakes highlighted). I know I'm probably the last guy who should be pointing out spelling and grammar errors (as evidenced by this site) but these are too good to leave alone.


- ok fair enough, that may be an honest mistake.


- I fried all the paint on the cement before installing the tiles but for some reason they didn't seem to stick.


- I gather that "must be clean" is an important point. Its a good thing the kitchen and the
bathroom don't have any varmish on them cause the living room is infested.


-Are dust dirts the byproduct of dust?


Who is this MAN-UG-ACTURER?


-My favorite line in the whole thing "Stilet to heals". That's fucking gold


-Well seeing as that sentence makes no sense to me I choose to disregard it.

Anyway for reasons beyond my comprehension some of these high quality tiles have begun to crack after about 1 month. I explicitly followed the instructions when installing them so I don't know what the problem is. It must be a manufacturer defect. So I'm going to write a letter to the company as follows:

Dear Capri Tile
I recently purchased 30 tiles for my bathroom and after just 1 month they have become defective. I am very upset. When someone spends $0.33 on a tile there is a reasonable expectation of quality. I feel that I should be compensated for my out of pocket expenses and distress from this whole tiling ordeal. I am asking for $11.27 to replace my 30 tiles (total with tax) and $50,000 in pain and suffering. As you can understand I will not ship the defective tiles back as that would be further undue expense to me. Please remit a cheque in the amount of $50, 011.27 ASAP to resolve this issue.
Thank you.

Ultra rare Velvet Underground and Nico LP un-earthed

This is the kind of story I love. In Sept 2002 a guy from Montreal named Warren Hill was at a Chelsea, New York Street sale where he picked up a couple records: a Leadbelly 10", a Modern Lovers LP and a record marked "Velvet Underground. 4-25-66. Att N. Dolph". He paid 75 cents for each album.

So after doing a bit of research it turns out that the record is extremely rare. It was created with a record cutter in the scepter studios where VU record their first record in 1966. It turns out this is a copy that Andy Warhol used to shop around record labels looking for a deal, also this is how he intended to record to be released.

The record has completely different versions and mixes of 9 of the songs that would appear on "The Velvet Underground & Nico". This is pretty amazing, VU are definitely one of the most important and influential rock bands of all time.


The record is on ebay so if you have more than $110,000 lying around you can grab it.

Really Bad Tattoos Part 5

are those the floor plans to a house? Or am I missing something? Maybe the low budget version of Prison Break?
I wonder what Freud would say about this image. Woman on top, Sausage on the bottom. Transsexual desires?

---

One thing is for sure. A tattoo will definitely make you more BAD ASS!

---

A couple of monster chest pieces. I dont really get the deal with the zombie James Brown (from his mugshot pic) and the butterfly/moth, is it really necessary to make it 20 times actual size?

---

Tattoos directly on your face seem to always work out really well. It looks like "the Dude's" was done by a first time tattoo artist, probably his buddy. I think its funny to imagine that his buddy had done D-U-D and then refused to do the E.

---

Why?

---

You know, I always thought that the tazmanian devil/looney toons tattoos were really over done but its nice to see someone put a fresh spin on the whole idea.

Check out:
Really Bad Tattoos Part 1
Really Bad Tattoos Part 2
REally Bad Tattoos Part 3
Really Bad Tattoos Part 4
Really Bad Tattoos Part 6
Really Bad Tattoos Part 7
Really Bad Tattoos Part 8

unblock my ear (to the tune of "unbreak my heart")

So my left ear cleared up today after spending 2 WEEKS with it blocked. I will spare you the details of the affair but it was like having an earplug in only one ear for two weeks... it totally sucked and I'm thankful its over. So I haven't updated because I've been feeling uninspired and have just moved to a new place in a new city so I've been trying to get a lot of stuff sorted out. But I definitely plan on updating this site more often (famous last words... usually when someone says that there is an extremely long period of inactivity). I do have a bunch of new article/projects planned.

Chocolate Lucky Charms with Chocolate Milk

I've mentioned before that you can't get Count Chocula around here anymore so I was surprised to learn that Lucky Charms are now available in Chocolate. Which lets face it is the exact same fucking thing as count chocula. I also figured that if I was going to be putting this shit into my body I might as well take it to the next level and make it with chocolate milk.

Oh yeah the Leprachaun may be in the running as the "Cereal Serial Killer" I mean maybe he "took care of" the count to get his chocolate recipe.

Straight outta the box.

The Chocolately mess.

The aftermath.

I should add that I'm 20 years too old to be eating shit like this and I always feel ill by injesting this amount of sugar, but I kinda promised myself when I was 8 years old that when I was an adult and had money to do these ridiculous things that I actually would. Its too bad that younger version of me doesn't know the toll this stuff has on my system. Oh well a deals a deal and I really should honor my end of the bargain.

Hot item up on eBay

You have a chance to own a piece of art history. Check the link to this item on eBay

Ketchup Chips

I want to talk about ketchup chips for a moment. In the food world Ketchup chips are quiet anomalous as they are two degrees of simulation. Ketchup is a simulated tomato sauce product and ketchup chips are simulated ketchup flavor. I've always believed that if we moved to three degrees of simulation the world would instantly implode. So if there's any food scientists out there working on a product that is simulated ketchup potato chip flavor please stop now and save us all.

The strangest thing about it is to imagine how far away the potato chip ketchup seasoning is from a tomato growing in a field (or on a vine??? I don't know how the hell it grows (which kinda proves my point about how disconnected we are from our food)). Its not even close. Ketchup doesn't taste anything like a tomato and ketchup chips barely taste like ketchup.

Why all this talk about ketchup chips? Well I recently started eating them again after spending 8 years avoiding them. Why avoid them? You may ask (despite the fairly obviousl reason I mentioned earlier)

let me tell the tale:
The year was 1998 and I worked a job that ended at 11pm, naturally I would stay up all night and sleep all day. One average day at about 2am I was hungry so I went to the 24hr supermarket to buy food. I bought 1 bag of ketchup chips, 1 bottle of cherry coke and most important 1 sub sandwich from the deli counter fridge that had been reduced to clear because it had reached its expiry date. When I say it reached its expiry date I don't mean that at the stroke of midnight (2 hours earlier) it had expired I mean that it had past its prime the day earlier at probably 8am, which is also most likely when it was slapped with the reduced to clear sticker. I figured what the fuck I save $1 (I was 20 at the time and a lot more hapless, nowadays I'm pretty fucking neurotic about food probably due in large part to experiences like this one). Anyway I went home to eat my food. The sub had reached the point where the bread was really soggy from the moisture of the lettuce and tomato and mayo and all the flavors of the thing had sort of melded into one another so each individual item of the sandwich tasted exactly the same and generally had the exact same texture. Seriously, I probably would have failed a blind taste test trying to guess what was a tomato, an onion or a slice of ham. But I ate it anyway along with the ketchup chips and cherry coke. It didn't take too long before I realized that it wasn't sitting well and so it all came back out. Now if you think that those food items seem like a disgusting combination to eat just imagine what they're like on the return voyage.

Why quit eating ketchup chips for so long because of this? I believe that we have some inherent instinct in us to avoid foods that make us sick. I often think about the thousands of years of trial and error that we (as a race) must have gone through discovering what could and couldn't be eaten. Fuck we even know down to which herbs and spices are edible so obviously there was a hell of a lot of experimentation going on. Even if you don't believe in evolution I don't think you can deny this. Its not as if God held a banquet and laid out all the plants on earth and said "these one's are edible and these ones are poisonous". Well in Genesis he first says "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;" (minus the knowledge one of course) but then when we (mankind) get banished from Eden he says "cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field." Maybe by the thorns and thistles he was saying that some of the shit out there will make you sick. Who knows. Anyway we obviously developed defenses over time to protect ourselves from the things we ingested. When we smell something that is rancid or rotten we instinctively know that it is bad its not as though we have been taught that. I don't remember the class in school when they taught us that a rose is a good scent and rotting meat is bad.

So that's the deal and now I'm sitting here eating ketchup chips with a glass of coke (not cherry coke, I wont touch that shit).

Severance - Toronto International Film Festival

Severance has been described as "the office" meets "Deliverance", a comedy/horror/thriller where a group of British office workers go on a weekend retreat in the mountains of eastern Europe for a team building workshop only to be hunted by a bunch of psychotic ex-militants.

This film mixes the comedy and horror pefectly (unlike black sheep which I saw earlier). Both elements are balanced nicely without one over shadowing the other. The film also purposely goes in the opposite direction of every horror cliche without blatantly speaking about it (like in Scream). Good movie.