ok i’m back now…
i know it’s been a while, and you’re prolly all pissed at me for depriving you of your favorite thing in the world (this blog) but, see, i can explain. i was on vacation! look - i even have pictures! i swear i wasn’t ignoring you. i know you worry when you think i’m acting distant (like that time you pouted for a week because i fell asleep during The Notebook), but i’m telling you the truth. between playing on the beach and cooking experimental tacos and petting beautiful wild ponies and working on my putting game and riding really small carousels, i just haven’t had time to care about all your needs and feelings and junk. i mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but the world doesn’t revolve around you. i dunno… maybe you should look into getting a life, ya know, do your own thing for a while. just sayin…
1 year ago
(photo: Kara DeVlieger, London)
2 years ago
2 years agoA New Addition to the Free Thee Animals Family
We here at F-thee-A are committed to tirelessly working for the safety of small playthings everywhere. However, we recently put our efforts temporarily on hold for the duration of one standard lunch hour to celebrate Administrative Professionals Day at the local Chuck-E-Cheese. Aside from Lois the receptionist drinking too much Mountain Dew and skinny dipping in the Pool-O-Multicolored-Plastic-Balls, it was a fun and uneventful afternoon… until we passed the grabby claw machine on the way out and saw a single toy sitting all alone at the bottom. We decided to adopt him right then and there. It took a lot of quarters, (luckily Jim from corporate always has a few rolls in his pocket for some reason) but we were finally able to grab him by his misshapen head. He’s been hangin out at the office ever since.
OK Time to Freak OUT!!!!!!!!!!!
2 years agoFrom Telegraph.Co.Uk: The Funniest Airline Passenger Complaint Letter Ever
Sent to Sir Richard Branson who I guess owns Virgin Airlines
REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008
I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.
Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.
Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].
I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?
You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in: [see image 2, above].
I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.
Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.
I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.
Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this: [see image 3, above].
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.
Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.
By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation: [see image 4, above].
It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.
I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.
Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on: [see image 5, above].
I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel: [see image 6, above].
Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.
My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations: [see image 7, above].
Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.
Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.
So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.
As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.
Yours Sincererly
XXXX2 years ago
MICHIGAN STATE FINAL FOUR OMG!!!!
This is a clip from the Lansing State Journal from back when I was still gestating in the womb of the above-named institution. I grew up in the Lansing area, and I’ve been a rabid Spartan fan my whole life (although I think my love for the basketball team reached its maturity during the Mateen Cleaves era). Anyway, I won’t get into the intricacies of my devotion (Tom Izzo = God, and Andre Hudson was so dreamy, and who could forget BOGRAK-ATTACK!!!!), but hopefully this article conveys some of the history of my long-term relationship with the team in green and white!!
*Note: the Peanut Barrel is not a restaurant; it is an actual barrel of peanuts soaked in beer and the one thing I miss about living in Michigan (sorry, family!)
*Nother Note: this article got my quotes all wrong - I remember that day (I was mangling an olive burger and wearing a BOGRAK-ATTACK shirt I’d made myself which was awesome of course) and there’s no way I actually said “the ability to win” or “knew it would be a challenge.” These phrases are far too articulate for a person who is in the process of totally freaking out, which I was. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because the part about the high-fives and the screaming is completely accurate :)
2 years ago
2 years agoIkea. It’s a wonderland of misbehaving children, primary colors, Swedish meatballs and careless check-out clerks; a place where one man’s haphazard bar-code scanning method is another man’s free desk. But there’s a dark secret hiding below the bright blue and yellow laminate surface: It turns out the furniture biz is merely a front for an underground black market stuffed animal trafficking ring! Evidence of this unsavory practice, the above photo was taken by an F-Thee-A informant as prisoners from the alligator sector tried - and failed - to escape through what they believed to be the building’s sewer system. Unfortunately had they seen Shawshank Redemption, they’d have realized that Morgan Freeman alone possesses the pure inspirational underdog mojo required to attempt scrappy, against-all-odds feats such as this. Plus, sewer pipes don’t hang from the ceiling.
Allllllllllqjkha;j;kihdnzxkllTheseMoreIdeas: Crazy Word Vomit Edition
as you know, the things i put on here are products of my own personal brain that is mine. the brain, that is. the brain is mine. it lives in my head. the brain. i mean my brain. ANYWAY all these things come from ME ME ME ME.* itsa justa buncha original essays, photos, etc. (for the most part). in general: shit i wrote. BUT NOW, brain is thinking: hows-about a new site where i’ll put shit i did not create, but that i love nonetheless? ya know how sometimes you come across stuff other people need to see? they NEED to see it because you are the DECIDER! well, this other site would be a receptacle for those things… like this video for example. it’s from craig ferguson. the end.
*(see: Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde when she finds out she got selected for an internship by her law professor - there’s like 5 internship openings for law students, and the prof posts the list of the chosen ones outside his office, and a group of hopefuls are all gathered around excitedly reading it, and you hear them muttering like, “Yes!” or “Shucks!” as they learn their fate and then it’s like, oooh one spot left, who got it?!? and Reese bursts through the crowd, finds her name (at the bottom of course) and goes “MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” and it’s funny. and, so um… yeah…)
2 years ago
Just Say No
the miniature pony gangs of assateage island are becoming bolder than ever, menacing innocent sightseers in broad daylight in the beach parking lot. if you’re ever approached by one of these hoodlums, stay calm and summon the authorities.
2 years ago
All These Junkyardy Projects: Do-Over Edition
ok so the first junkyardy project was a junkyardy lamp. at first i was quite proud of said junkyardy lamp. then i looked at it some more. then i tried to hang it up. then it kinda fell apart. then i fixed it with tape. then it made fun of my shoes and invited its cousin from nebraska to crash on my couch. then it kinda fell apart again. then i looked at it some more. then i decided it was a pile of crud obviously constructed from office supplies and it must be terminated. then i crammed its guts into a soup can and stuck a bunch of feathers on top, and behold - IT LIVES AGAIN!
2 years ago
…yeah but what are frites?
2 years ago
2 years agoEven Plushes Get The Blues
Haunted by memories of happier times, Pink Panther wonders where it all went wrong. How did he end up in this dead-end job, coffee mugs accumulating on the window sill? Most days he is conscious of nothing but the slow blur of passing time punctuated by occasional bursts of silent rage. Perched up there on its shelf, his globe exists solely to taunt him with the lore of places he will never go. Meanwhile, here he sits atop the mini-fridge…

