Experiments In Mediocrity Small, obscure, nocturnal, dizzy and itchy; I tell weird stories and will give you my opinion on everything given the time. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 4 0 54 4978

Articles from Experiments In Mediocrity

I cannot blame the planets. 2007-11-06 19:11:00 Thursday, the day Mercury went direct, returning us the cosmic normality level of a probability factor of one to one, my car died. This was a normal occurrence up until a few years ago, when I realized that the car alarm designed to keep the car from being driven was so eager to do its job, it didn't know when to stop. After we got a new battery, I never had a dead car again. Which makes this latest drain all the more tragic. There's a button, on the doorframe, which lets the car know the door is closed. It never occurred to me--and maybe you've never thought about this either--that the button could break, and when it did, the car would sit in the driveway doing the automotive equivalent of yelling, "Hey! Hey! Hey!"The car, however, is soundproof, and I failed to wait the full ten seconds after I slammed my door to see if the interior lights had gone off. This day the button broke, I guess they didn't, because the lights came on when I recharged the car (OMG, my uncle rocks ...

Yo, Holmes! 2007-11-02 16:04:00 Oh, I'll never get tired of that joke. There's a new comet that just appeared seemingly out of nowhere. I read about it the night it rained, and figured the cloudy weather would continue until this new comet was long gone. But no, I've seen it! I've photographed it! I'm about to subject you to one of the photos I took!What? This is what it looks like. Until I get an attachment for my camera to hook to my telescope, this is my official photo of Comet Holmes. And a UFO.No, no, it's not a UFO, that's a splatter of my brain, caused by too many lights polluting my view.Tags: November 2007, Comet Holmes, photos©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

Trick or Treat? 2007-10-31 13:08:00 If you watch TV for longer than three minutes, you might be familiar with the ads for the new 3 Musketeers Mint candy...thing. The ads show a woman eating a long candy bar that makes it snow or something because mint means snow! Very much like Peppermint Patties bring on hallucinations of ski lifts.For a few weeks, we looked in our stores for these seemingly wonderous things, because if there's anything we need, it's candy. And possibly a blizzard. I finally found a bag of bite-size 3 Musketeers Mint candy things at the Rite-Aid Halloween sugar-fest. Me, buying candy? Something is wrong with the planets.3 Musketeers Mint taste exactly like Peppermint Patties.However, even the small Peppermint Patties are bigger than these 3 Musketeer Mint things. The name is bigger than the candy. The candy is a one-inch square. That's unfair, if you ask me. I just get into eating candy and it's gone.I have eaten five 3 Musketeer Mint things in the past hour. It's not snowing yet, unles ...

Dear flashy television show, 2007-10-30 20:21:00 You know who you are, you crazy show. Stop it. Just stop it with the bright white flash at every cut. Your sponsors need to stop that too, because I don't want to watch your show anymore. The flashing patterns are telling me to kill, they're telling me to maim.I'm coming for you, horrible television flashiness. If I can get off the floor.Tags: October 2007, television, migraines, epilepsy, editing, ADD, ADHD, ADHDTV©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

Is it cannibalism if it tastes so good? 2007-10-26 23:00:00 And a hundred more! (After all, hazmat crews aren't happy unless they have loads of smoke to dance around in. So I've heard.)Tags: October 2007, friends©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

The Great Tragedy. 2007-10-22 16:21:00 The one I looked forward to seeing first thing in the morning, that always guaranteed to wake me up and warm my soul has lost its handle.Twenty-three years is a pretty good record for a coffee mug.Sure, with all the problems in the world, an out-of-season reindeer and bunny mug that was probably coated in lead paint seems small and unimportant, but that was my mug, and that mug fueled most of what I've done since 1984. I remember the Christmas it was given to me, I'd made a load of Pillsbury sugar cookies and for some reason I had the song Free Nelson Mandela running through my head all day. At that point I wanted to be some sort of 5th grade crime-fighting Martha Stewart karaoke champion, and the fact that this mug came with its own coaster that doubled as a lid turned me on.You know I glued it back together. But I have no faith in the Krazy Glue, and not wanting to get completely intimate with a cup of boiling hot coffee, my reindeer mug now sits on top of my computer, but now t ...

Pining for the little birds. 2007-10-16 16:49:00 Halfway through my puppy's walkies, I heard the squawking of many crows. I haven't heard that in a while, lack of trees and loads of West Nile Virus have made my neighborhood vulture-less for quite some time. I happened to look up to see if they were heading right for me, and they weren't...they were busy having a fight with a red-tailed hawk.I think I have noted every time I've seen a hawk on the Internet, so it never gets old. The fact that this hawk was involved in a noisy smackdown in my pine tree just made it that much more interesting to me.I did not get a good picture of the hawk, as it flew away while this one of its butt was saving. Behind those pinecones, I assure you there is a bird that was so big, I could see it a block away.I...can't say I'm sorry it left, but it was nice to see.Tags: October 2007, birds, neighborhood, photos©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

I Like My Environment. 2007-10-15 13:51:00 I became obsessed with not mucking up the planet at a very young age. No one told me to, but I heard some catchy songs about acid rain and people starving in the desert, and my favorite movies were Blade Runner and Planet Of The Apes, plus I had a weird interest in fallen civilizations, so little by little I turned into the flaming hippie I am.As a teenager, I sat around in a darkened room, not because I was moody (even though I was), or because I dug watching the bouncy lights on my stereo (even though I did), but because my house ran on two fuses and if I wanted my stereo and my computer, I couldn't have light. To add light would overload the circuit. My house taught me to be a conservationist. It also taught me to develop a little obsessive feeling that the house would burn down, but I see that as a good thing, because how else would I have seen all those episodes of Monty Python over and over if I wasn't up until dawn all alone every night?My house isn't perfect, there was ...

Putting the new in news since....I forget. 2007-10-14 16:53:00 I haven't really had anything very interesting to tell you. I mean, last week I aggravated my hernia, and that's not confetti-worthy. I tried to make it funny one night, but if I so much as thought about giggling, my dinner was all up in my ears, and spaghetti sauce does not feel good in the ears. I can't even say it's an aquired feeling.While I wasn't writing I did add three things to the overflowing sidebar, first off is a link to subscribe to an RSS feed of the comments! Why? Um...well, I know I subscribed to remind me how much replying I've got to do (and I will, if I do it when I'm 90, I will).There's also a link to the one article I've written on Helium. My writing is worth exactly one penny as of this moment, and that would make me very warm and fuzzy indeed if my hernia was not giving off more heat that my chest knows what to do with.Hot chests right into nerds. What will happen next? The Formidable Nerd knows what will happen next, yes. RASSM's pea-farmer ha ...

An important lesson for us all. 2007-10-09 15:26:00 Do you know what to do when you start feeling funny? This gem from Japan will make sure you never forget what it means when your bottom feels funny.I am a pants man, you know. I...take pride in that. It's not much, I know, but some days it's all I have.Tags: October 2007, video, silliness, Japan©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

Friday Freakiness 2007-10-05 16:41:00 Okay, I forget if I've mentioned that the neighborhood, having gotten uppity about stray cats, has seen a lot more field mice lately. This is dodgy speak for we had a few mice in the house. They came for the catnip, and stayed for the dog kibble. I swear, they threw catnip all over the place one morning. Which, I guess, is why my slinky guy was so kind to the one mouse he carried out of the house and let go a few weeks back. I never knew a cat that believes in catch and release, whatta guy.We've got these "humane" traps that tip and lock closed when a breeze blows past them, and for a while we've had no takers on the bits of muffin or cookie or cheeto or kibble we put in there, but today...today there were so many ants in the trap that it tipped closed.Why I didn't take a picture, I don't know. You would have screamed along with me. I don't know why I scream at the sight of loads of ants in places I don't expect them, but it's one of those nasty side-effects of being a g ...

Three Thursday Thingys 2007-10-04 16:04:00 Generally I try not to get attached to services on the Internet because they are upgraded to crap or taken away entirely two seconds later. Like the TV listings on Yahoo, which used to tell me what was actually going to be on and it would do it so fast, I'd have time to catch the movie we wanted.I digress. Here are three things I've been using, and I'm not claiming I love them utterly because, you know.Christian Montoya made a neat little timer, and if I type in say, "30" and hit go, it will let me know when I've taken too long looking for the letter that comes after N in my name.Vixy is a service than converts FLV videos, like those you find on YouTube, into DVD-ready AVI and MOV files, or just grabs the audio as an MP3. It's free, and before the RIAA and MPAA takes interest in me, I've only used this to save copies of my neice eating her chair and taking out a water bowl.Speaking of certain snoopy corporations getting stuffed, Anonymouse is a rather helpful website that lets ...

Wayback Wednesday 2007-10-03 16:51:00 If you're like me, your entire life revolved around a show called Soild Gold. Well, okay, maybe not my entire life, that distinction went to the videos on U68. I may not be able to readily tell you why 3 × (d + 4) - 11 = 321 - 23, but by God I can tell you which video had Robert Palmer making the really cool house of cards.Even if you're not like me, the SNL parody of Soild Gold needs to be seen.Tags: October 2007, silliness, video, TV©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

Things I Learned Tuesday. 2007-10-02 17:38:00 The first thing I learned today is that I no longer speak Spanish. I am ashamed. I had a conversation with one of our neighbors, and as he was leaving he said, "Hasta La Vista."I will demonstrate, in handy emoticons, what my reaction to this was::D "Okay, you too!" :DThere is a point when brain auto-pilot just doesn't hack it, and I now feel like more of a mindless hick than I did that time the eye doctor asked me my address. Because, you know, eye doctors don't usually ask where you live unless they want to come to your house and remove your corneas.The next thing I learned is that grass will grow better in areas where it is not needed or wanted. My driveway, for example, had grass high enough to hide a Snapple bottle full of urine (I know what urine looks like, trust me) and when grass gets that high, it's time for fire.I learned that I don't own a flamethrower. I don't even know a fire eater who I could aske to come blow on the junk growing in the cracks.I learned that b ...

Notes from Monday. 2007-10-01 20:24:00 I get my comic strip done while whatever the primetime show o'the day is on, today that's Dancing With The Stars.The only reason for that set-up is that you'll understand why I burst out, "Mais Que Nada is a samba, how can they dance a mambo to Mais Que Nada?! The words are 'Get out of my way, I want to dance the samba,' what kind of treachery is this?!"I never did have the temperament for watching competitions. Depending on what entertains you, I'm either no fun when watching figure skating, or I'm full of comedy gold. The year the Miss America contestants sang the Prince song Play In The Sunshine I think was the most disastrous. I was asked to never be present when another Miss America pageant was on TV. I can't say that saddened me.Tags: October 2007, TV, music©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...