Splats of barf surround the empty Stanford Professional Bookstore building at 135 University Avenue, Palo Alto.
Anyone who has played RollerCoaster Tycoon knows that this is a clear sign of needing more janitors.
Also, food courts should not be placed near high-nausea rides like Miyake’s and Rudy’s.
Happy New Year! This year, I resolve to create macaroni pictures for the Tron Moses Coconut. Four out of five seagulls think that the Tron Moses Coconut is more worshipable than the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This is largely because seagulls are self-conscious and can not reliably spell spagetthi.
Macaroni, on the other hand, is easy to spell and is captivating when glued to colored construction paper and dusted with glitter. Speaking of glitter, I would like to thank my sexy helper monkey for posing with the Tron Moses Coconut.
Having over-discussed glitter, let’s move on to Things that Suck. Today, the Thing that Sucks is Bistro 412 in downtown Palo Alto. Once again, this bar has lowered itself. While the rest of downtown was classing it up for the holidays—despite a weakened economy—B412 was tagging its windows with nasty-looking, ozone-depleting, penis-deflating fake snow.
I peeked in once, half expecting to see “bitches on poles”. Instead, the TopNotch ENT was only a frumpy-looking woman who we’ll call “Charrise” for the sake of conversation. Anyways, Charisse was standing next to “Edgar” at the bar and both were laughing, but looking around uncomfortably—as though they knew they’d made a bad choice and would make several more before morning. I shook my head sadly at Charisse and Edgar, but they couldn’t see me because B412’s windows are darker than an Escalade with really fucking dark, trashy windows.
Religion and society out of the way, let’s discuss economics. Like the rest of the world, I don’t understand economics. Maybe someone could explain to me the economy of free coffee with purchase of lotto.
Are retailers’ lotto margins especially high? Even if they are, this deal sounds backwards—it seems like you should throw in a free $1 lotto ticket with the purchase of a $4.95 mocha, where said mocha is really 2¢ of Chock full o’Nuts. You’ve burnt the crap out of the Chock full o’Nuts and frothed in some soy milk to make it taste strong & gourmet.
Of course, I don’t understand economics, which is why I’m not rich. I’m a poor seagull with a website. I make snarky comments about struggling bars and blaspheme the FSM. Oh, and I hate Prius drivers—but that’s really just a hobby…like emdash abuse.
It should be an interesting new year. May yours be full of free coffee and lotto.
In Palo Alto, we throw out Cisco 1700 series routers with our Häagen-Dazs wrappers and bubble tea cups.
And by “we”, I mean Bistro 412—the hoochie bar for Palo Alto’s bridge & tunnel crowd.
Real Palo Altans rush to Green Citizen with our Cisco 1700s. But Bistro 412 (who can’t make a decent Margarita to save their lives, BTW) has opted to perch theirs atop their makeshift vomitorium. So befouled does this trash can on weekends become that the bank adjacent had to close due to customers dying of communicable diseases after stepping over the mess. Actually the bank moved. But still, Bistro 412 is pretty rank. When they’re not holding go-go dancer casting calls for Kid Rock, they’re sticking big ole’ searchlights out on Emerson Street—a class act.
But, I mustn’t rant all day about B412 when I promised miscellany. Here, figure out what this package of fish-flavored crackers is trying to convey:
All I can tell is that it depicts a big Canadian, nudity, and exclamatory girls in a Laundromat. Weird, but I encourage this on fish-chip packaging.
What do you think is going on here? Tawk amongst yaselves.
The Palo Alto post office at 380 Hamilton Ave. has decorated one of its outdoor collection boxes as R2-D2, the lovable rapscallion droid from the Star Wars movies.
The USPS is known for its boundless creativity—always pushing the envelope, they are. Having already brought us Voting for Elvis in 1992, the term “go postal” in 1993, a streamlined new eagle logo in 1994, and statutory monopoly, we weren’t sure where they’d go next. But the reaction to the latest promotion has been mixed.
One postal employee spoke on the condition of anonymity:
“It’s terrible. Just terrible. What were we thinking? This town is full of dorks. Now they think we’re one of them. It’s made service counter wait times worse because they all want to talk about Star Wars. I didn’t even think the movies were very good.”
Two dorks had this to say:
“Why does it have legs? Artoo doesn’t have legs. He has rocket thrusters and a triambulatory wheel-based drive system.”
“Yeah. But triambulatory isn’t a word.”
“Is so. It’s just not commonly used.”
“My iPhone says it’s not a word.”
“Your iPhone is wrong.”
“Take it back!”
And a woman from Casa Olga worded a common confusion:
“I thought it was a stamp machine. I don’t watch the Battle Bots show, so I didn’t know it was a joke. This branch still doesn’t have a stamp machine. You have to buy a whole book from the window. Now what am I going to do with that many stamps? Plant them in a garden? HAH! I think not.”
The R2-D2 box sports the URL, www.uspsjedimaster.com, which appears to simply bounce to usps.com. Perhaps it did something more at the promotion launch, but it’s rather boring now.
Once the Star Wars stunt has ended, there is but one final frontier for USPS promotional creativity: Vote for the Seven of Nine stamp design — Borg or Bust.
My one New Year’s resolution this year was to be a more positive seagull. Instead of ranting about things that piss me off, I was planning to post fuzzy bunnies and people helping each other and kittens and run-on sentences that ooze cuteness from their rambly-toddler structures alone. Alas, I’m a negative bird at heart—and something pissed me off.
I was wandering around A.G. Ferrari’s Palo Alto store, wondering how to justify the $12 sandwich I’d just ordered, when I came across a $21 tube of cookies.
In the off chance you can’t read that price tag, here it is embiggened:
Now, my first thought was, “for $21 they could spell ‘pistachio’ correctly…or at least consistently” My second thought was, “I’m horny.” My third thought was “HOLY FUCK THESE COOKIES ARE 21 DOLLARS!” And indeed they were. A.G. Ferrari was trying to sell about a half a pound of cookies for $20.99. Prompted by my outraged squawks, an employee chick snootily informed me (as snootily as is possible when one is on one’s hands and knees, arranging almond biscotti), “well, they are imported from Italy”.
“BITCH!” I screamed, “Aerogel is less expensive and it’s imported from OUTER SPACE.” (it’s not really imported from outer space, but she didn’t know that & the situation required some major hyperbole). I continued, “And I’ll bet Aerogel tastes better than these nasty-ass pistacccccchio cookies!” She started crying and between heaving sobs she admitted that I was right and that she was so sorry and that she was going to quit her job right then and return to prostitution because she couldn’t stand to work for someone who charged $21 for a tube of nasty cookies.
Actually, I didn’t say anything. I wish I had, but when someone says something snootily enough, I feel too put-in-my-place to respond. I should go to therapy for that. I need a lot of therapy. And A.G. Ferrari is a total rip. My $12 sandwich was mostly stale bread. There was hardly any Tuna Capresioli Venti Pompino—or whatever their bastardized Italian word for tuna & mayonnaise is. And I hate them for making me break my New Year’s resolution.
Damn them. Well, here’s a bunny:
It’s January 20th and there is a Christmas tree sitting in the middle of a street in Menlo Park, CA. Ostensibly, someone from the Menlo Park Parks Department placed plywood traffic barricades around the tree—but left it in the middle of the road. I wish I could offer more context, but I’m afraid I can’t. What you see is what I don’t get.
Maybe I’ll sneak out tonight and cover it in crime scene tape to add to the surrealism.
The absurd laziness of the tree exhibit reminds me of Palo Alto’s Pole on a Pole program. Resident Dobrogost Kowalski singlehandedly executed this public works effort of upgrading Palo Alto’s telephone poles without touching the legacy cabling. To abbreviate city council meetings, the program name was changed from the original, “Pole on a Pole on a Pole” to the more concise, “Pole on a Pole”—which we’ve all come to know and love.
Nestled in lovely downtown Palo Alto, the Sehbali Cafe and Hookah Shop shares a storefront with Mills the Florist. The food at the cafe is remarkably good despite being prepared by a single, greasy teen at the breakneck speed of one femtosandwich per hour. But why worry over ridiculous units when you can kick back and smoke from a decorative hose? Hookah is, according to some, the art of sucking fruit-infused mundungus from an ornate bong while maintaining one’s dignity. The practice’s appeal seems derive solely from the involved and illegal-looking apparatus from which one snucks*. Oh, but I digress from the unmentioned topic I really wanted to discuss: the “i” prefix blows iGoat e-penis.
I can tolerate a glory hole or two, but “i” prefixes don’t belong in bathrooms. They belong on prissy little purselike laptops and anorexic cell phones that connect to Edge networks and desktop computers that reflect makeup application more than good design. They should dangle on Life and make marketers swoon, waxing reminiscent of innovation, internet, and i999—when days were better. Little i’s should not blindly precede nouns in bathrooms in hookah cafes. These walls are sanctuaries for “fuck”s and “boobs” and pornographic descriptions of what someone did to Bill’s mom last Thursday and numbers to call when Craigslist is down.
BTW, Happy New Year. Keep your “i”s out of my stall. If you’re really that bored, call 1-800-336-8478 for a good time.
* to suck…but more involving of the roof of your mouth…and no teeth. It’s a tad onomatopoeic, and, like most things, you have to remove your dentures to really get it right.
Palo Alto has its share of crazy inventors—everyone here has a ridiculous-looking self-built recumbent bicycle that’s 30% more efficient than yours because of its reciprocating axial talcum sport cam. And we have the guys who sacrifice both form and function to produce hideously geeky transporters, bordering on steampunk:
As the above dog-riddled example illustrates, Palo Alto is quite dorkily stupid. But it’s not usually this hippily stupid:
No. No, that’s a new one. That mess appeared on University Ave. a few days ago. It was piloted by an equally spastic-looking guy (He wasn’t actually piloting it at the time though. I wanted to say “owned by”, but you can’t own things, man…things own you). I’m not sure how the thing moves, but I’m guessing he gets out and straps that blanket-covered area to his back, towing the whole thing donkey-style. So, I can only assume he’s from Berkeley since Santa Cruz is a long uphill haul—even for someone hopped up on goofballs and peyote.
Luckily it wasn’t around long. I didn’t see it the next day, so it probably moved on in search of Burning Man, or bio-degraded, or simply disappeared because the universe made a correction.
Hope you have your inhaler.
Brought to you by Mandarin Gourmet. Located at 420 (stoned laugh) Ramona St., Palo Alto, CA 94301. It’s the restaurant with excessive tracking.
I was going to make a Halloween UNICEF reference, but I realized I have no idea what UNICEF is. I just know I have a negative association with UNICEF and Halloween. I went to their website to find out what they are, but was overwhelmed by broad, vague claims and stock art of suffering children. On a whim, I searched for “suffering children” (no quotes) at GettyImages, and found that there are over 3,500 such images available. I think UNICEF licensed them all and sprinkles them liberally around their site—intertwingled with photos of happy people who donated money to their ambiguous cause. The Getty Image search results are pretty entertaining too…check out that one white trash kid with the black eye. OMG. For that matter, try searching for “White Trash” (no quotes). They have photos of toilet seat horeshoes and a Budweiser-can flamethrower. WTF? Okay, I think browsing stock art is my new hobby.
To the chagrin of the landscaping industry, Palo Alto has instituted a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers due to environmental and noise concerns. Unfortunately, battery-powered electric blowers have a limited running time and aren’t very strong. Don’t worry though, we’re back to shuffling leaves onto our neighbors’ lawns at full power—thanks to corded electric blowers and portable gas generators.
We still have to wear ear protection. Those generators are loud.