Site Mascot Chosen

Funny how the site mascot I've selected was in front of me the entire time. . .Bid welcome to Nose Har Man. There. To the right.

This is an absolutely unPhotoshopped image, captured by my wife Michelle at Upper Mesa Falls in Fremont County, Idaho, this past fall. Nose Hair Man appears as a natural rock and foliage formation on the east bank of the Henry's Fork of the Snake River, just south of the falls. Take that, Old Man of the Mountains.

We have a lot in common, Nose Hair Man and I.

Chicken Man, Or What It's Like to Live In A Used Car Lot

First of all, gotta say the Chicken Man from Woodland Park, Colo., would be a mighty fine site mascot:

Just in case you never visit Fark.com and are not familiar with the situation, here's the story in a nutshell. Or rather, in the form of a link: http://www.gazette.com/articles/chicken_31802___article.html/city_branden.html

Now, I live near a city that could probably use a taste of Branden's decorum, if not its dour sense of humor. We have several businesses in town who employ otherwise unemployable college students to advertise their businesses while wearing costumes. A tax preparer regales us with Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty. A juice bar provides entertainment via a dancing banana. Pizza places, a local big box store that's run like a high school economics class project and other various shops employ people to stand on the snow-encrusted sidewalks, waving signs advertising their wares. Then there are the banners, balloons, blower-powered flappers, and other folderol that conspire to make the town look like a 25,000-people strong used car lot.

About a year ago, a luckless city employee tried to enforce a law on the books prohibiting such advertising. Needless to say, she was run out of town on a rail as the business owners whined it is their right to visually pollute the town with their garbage ads in the sake of pursuing a buck. So we continue to have a city that looks like it just got home from the flea market. And there's no reason to keep secrets: It's Rexburg, Idaho. The only town I know where the local pizzeria can issue a four-page booklet extolling the evolution of their restaurant, the intimate details of the lives of its founders and figure since they bore their testimonies they didn't need to offer any coupons to the unwashed masses. So we never go there. There's no need to keep secrets: It's Craigo's.

Yes, I am a negative vibe merchant. So be it.

Site Mascot II

So, one vote against Cutty the Pig, whom I've decided to re-christen Le Porc Qui Se Coupe, although the "La Vache Qui Rit" people might get a little mad at me.

We can, by the way, now purchase "La Vache Qui Rit" at WinCo. It's kind of weird to se it sitting there, innocently among the other cheeses. I keep waiting to see a "Pere Clement" camembert appear there as well. But alas, not yet. . .

Maybe, in fitting with my know-it-all personality, I could use the site theme -- it's not really a mascot in this case -- gleaned from this photo:

Yes, you Engrish.com people get your due credit, so get off my back.

Know beans. We say often that we don't know beans. So if we know, do we know beans? I think so.

The drama of the weekend continues, fueled by a project director who got 2 hours of sleep in the 48 hours leading up to the crisis. If you think that lack of sleep compounded the crisis, you're absolutely right. But now that we're into the work week when the crisis has to be put on the backburner because we're working the jobs that pay for the time off we use to work the other job which is inciting all the crises in the form of meetings, things are cooling off. Not that anyone but me would understand all that, since we're still sworn to secrecy under pain of, well, possibly thumbscrews.

I'm drinking a Pepsi right now. Non-diet. Don't usually do that, but I needed one this morning. Reminds me that Dad used to drink a lot of Pepsi and once told me and my younger brother that drinking Pepsi was like having an angel pee on your tongue. I'm not sure that would be a successful advertising slogan.

We have our reorg boots on at work. A big bunch of big men from Test Area North are marching their way quickly towards RWMC, bringing their assoretd hangers-on and making a lot of people here quake in their shoes. Everyone tells us our technical writing department is safe. Which scares the hell out of us, because whenever anyone tells us we're safe, we know we're doomed. We've already got one casualty -- Art, our Beloved Leader, is now heading to INTEC to become lead tech writer there. He's being replaced here by Danny, who got hired on after me as a tech writer at INTEC. I have mixed feelings. Not that I want the job. I've seen what the job entials, and I don't want to get involved in that (deleted). I've decided long ago that I'm very happy as an underpaid minion, scuttling around trying to keep my job, rather than working on a higher profile where the money, yeah, is better, but the demands do not fit my scuttling personality. I am a true, living example of the Peter Principle (which states that people generally rise to the level of their incompetence). (If you've never read that book, by the way, I recommend it. There is a lot of hilarity in truth.)

You have to expect this kind of thing when you work for a company whose initials are ICP. There are the ordinary urinary inferences, of course, but the preferred alteration of the meaning of this acronym is Insane Clown Posse. I think it fits.

Maybe they could be the mascots. But I'm damn sure I couldn't get their endorsement. I'm more of the Weird Al "White and Nerdy" type.

Site Mascot

It struck me this morning that this site is in desperate need of a mascot. So I'll be trolling the intertubes over the next few days, trying to find one. Here's a likely candidate: Cutty, the French Pig. The text reads "One eats with pleasure . . . and without getting tired (bored, probably, in this sense). Auvergne sausages -- Absolutely pure food. The good sausages of the Prodigious Pig!" This is, first of all, evidence that it's not only the American advertisers who can put it on with a shovel. And obviously, watching a smiling quisling cut itself up to encourage you to eat its innards is, well, either disturbing or mouth-watering. And defiant of gravity. Why this pig's torso doesn't just flop over is a real noodle-scratcher.

I'm not making fun of the French -- I lived in France for two years, oui. Nor am I going to turn this into an anti-meat screed, since I've eaten a few pigs myself. And snails. Mussels. Frog legs. Horse. Horse is tasty. Mussels are fine in paella, not necessarily on their own. Frogs legs less so, and snails, well, if you like pencil erasers dipped in butter and garlic. . .

Another mascot contender just might be "Wake Up Cat," as detailed in this video:

The video, at first, may not appear to be all that funny. But you have to watch it in context, i.e., three children under the age of eight giggling their heads off as the cat does its thing. Priceless.