Can you believe they still publish Tumbleweeds?

I got Douglas Coupland’s latest, Hey Nostrodamus yesterday and finished it today. It’s fantastic. I’ve read most of Douglas Coupland’s stuff, and I think this is is best book in a long time. It’s written in several different voices, each completely believable. It’s moving, it’s shocking, it’s a slice-of-life that doesn’t resolve everything but is somehow much more satisfying. Plot is not a conceit as in the last few books, but the stories clip along in a really engrossing fashion.

I joked earlier today that it’s head and shoulders above Shampoo Planet. Ha!

Here is a blog from someone that went from a vegan diet to a highly artificial diet. For a period of time, supposedly ending in April they ate all sorts of crap and logged it, and their general health and other thoughts. I dare you to look at the pictures they took of their stool. Yes, poop.

Gross.

Tags: diet, pictures, stool

Tokyo Bob Dylan

I mean, if this isn’t enough motivation to make sure I return to Tokyo sooner rather than later….

It’s a four-year old article but I still love the investigative journalism that uncovered the identity, and the story behind this guy who was in every ad imaginable for a couple of years

Holiday Inn has declared today its first Towel Amnesty Day, a chance to forgive guests who have ‘borrowed’ towels.
No, the hotel chain doesn’t want its towels back. It wants the story of why you took the towel and what you’ve done with it.
Mark Snyder, senior vice president of brand management for Holiday Inn, is the first to admit that Towel Amnesty Day is a thinly veiled marketing campaign. ‘It’s about celebrating the brand,’ he says.
Stories have been coming in since the campaign was announced Aug. 18. ‘They are priceless,’ says Snyder, who is considering posting some of them on the hotel chain’s Web site. ‘They are everything from very funny to very touching.’
‘I believe my towel comes from the ’50s. In fact, so long ago I don’t remember how I got it, but I suppose it did follow me home,’ wrote Marcelle Roise of Alamo. ‘It is my dog’s towel, and she is the third generation of dogs to use it.’

Olsen Twins Fight Plaque
Mary-Kate and Ashley, the toothpaste, noted as mary-kateandashley in official correspondence, shipped to stores last week courtesy the makers of Aquafresh, retailing for an average price of $2.77 per pump-dispensing tube.

The teen titans were described as being closely involved with the development of their toothpaste selves, right down to the selection of the flavor.

“They absolutely tested it out,” says Michael Pagnotta of the Olsen twin-controlled Dualstar Entertainment Group.

Aquafresh is looking to lock in the preteen set with the brand, billing it as a “landmark in the history of toothpaste marketing,” and not just because the Olsens, now 17, appear as 13-year-olds on the packaging.

Tammy Szatkowski-Reeves, curator of the Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry at the University of Michigan, points out adult celebrities, including Pepsodent purveyor Bing Crosby, were frequently seen on toothpaste tubes in the 1940s and 1950s.

And unlike Olsen twins detangler, Olsen twins nail polish and Olsen twins soothing eye gel masks, sold exclusively at Wal-Mart, Olsen twins toothpaste, Lukas says, “will be distributed everywhere.”

Most inappropriate blog posting I’ve ever seen. Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing posts a close-up photo of an oozing sore on his body in the hopes that someone can identify it.

Warning: really damn gross.

At my gym is a hand-colored (pencil crayons, I believe) advertisement for day care. It starts off:

Grandma Birdie’s
(formerly Hansel and Gretel Private School)

Mini Kiss, a Kiss cover band, staffed by little people. More pics here
(also Mini Elvis )

Tags: cover band, entertainment, kiss, little people, mini kiss, music, rock

Here in the SF Bay Area where it all started, the water bed business is down to one retailer. Nice history-to-date of the product and the industry in the NYT.

The SF Bay Area is populated with all these “Joe’s” restaurants, including many “Original Joe’s.” This article has a great and gritty description of the true original, as well as a follow-on story that explains some of the different variations around the area.

Gross New Jersey Blob story:

The uproar over the blob began about 10 days ago, when a local boater noticed a giant blue and white sulfurous formation floating in a narrow lagoon about 50 yards from the backyard piers of Daddy Tucker Drive. Ocean County health officials and the State Department of Environmental Protection were called in. With some poking, the environmental agency declared it a nonhazardous “organic material, probably algae” that, in decomposing, had risen to the surface.

Amidst all the media coverage, people may miss out on the fact that this newspaper arranged for Gary Coleman’s candidacy, rather than him coming up with the idea on his own.

Ms. Eggum is among a growing number of women who spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars adding extra horsepower to their cars, along with 17-inch wheels, custom racing seats and other accessories. Attributes like safety, security and reliability still appeal to women, automakers say, but women are increasingly drawn to power, speed and hot looks, just as men are. Full story here.