From Boing Boing:

A man bought an iPod from a Wal-Mart. It was a Christmas gift for his
daughter. When she opened it, it didn’t contain an iPod. It contained a
note, set in ransom-letter type, that read:

"Reclaim your mind from the media’s shackles. Read a book and
resurect [sic] yourself. To claim your capitalistic garbage go to your
nearest Apple store."

Jay Ellis, the girls father, returned the iPod to the Germantown, Md.
Wal-Mart store where he purchased it. The store manger told him that
another customer returned an iPod with a similar issue.

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry shaves off his chest hair only to have Kramer wig out and explain to him that once you shave your chest hair it will come back bigger and badder than ever?  According to this article which debunks seven common medical myths that whole hair shaving theory is a bunch of bull.  As is the commonly held belief that you need to drink eight glasses of water a day.  Ends up you get most of the fluid you need through what you regularly eat and drink.  Yep, even that juice in your steak counts as do those eight cups of coffee you drink in the morning.

By the way that Seinfeld episode is probably responsible for the delay of the male shaving practice that has become so common today.  I think we would have seen men lazing off their hair in much greater numbers before 2000 if it weren’t for Seinfeld.  Remember the 90s were all about men becoming, well, less manly and the trend of hairless men becoming the ideal seemed to be well on its way until that infamous Seinfeld episode in ’97.  But Seinfeld is long gone and so is any question about what boys think girls want in their men.  These days you’ll have to search far and wide to find a picture of a man with more than token chest hair in a magazine or movie.  The days when Bond was an average built guy  with a hairy chest cooly smoking a Camel (Sean Connery) have been replaced by the days when Bond is a hairless, six-packed fitness freak (Daniel Craig).  Gone too are the days when men reveled in their hairy chests and solid beer bellies.  Don’t get me wrong, we still have them, but now we feel like we have to hide them or maybe even feel a little guilt for not hitting the gym.  I have the feeling that the real men who built this country are turning in their graves.

For the record I’m the owner of prodigious amounts of body hair and a burgeoning beer belly.  A man born way behind his times I am.

The signs in the Balducci’s proclaimed "Delicious for Chunaka".  The problem?  The products are various kinds of ham.  According to the blogger who found and photographed these the signs have since been replaced with signs that say "Perfect for the Holidays". 

Newspaper folks are always embarrassed by bad copy editing.  I think it stems from the fact that they see themselves as differentiated from the great unwashed electronic media masses by their belonging to the world of print.  While no one would define newspapers as literature, most reporters would not be confused with the Brell boys and girls of TV.  Thus it must cause them great vexation when misspellings and poorly formed phrases leach into the bodies of stories, but also manage to make their way into headlines. 

The Sunday, December 2, 2007 issue of the Winston-Salem Journal offered a particularly egregious example of headline excrement in the "The Region" column of the Local section.  Here ’tis:

Trooper’s condition improves whose car flipped during chase

If I’d written that in the third grade I’d have been sent to the principal’s office and threatened with being held back.  Ouch.

Fec, in commenting about Beowulf: "BTW, I’ve yet to meet a woman with a prehensile tail who wasn’t trouble."  Note to self: share this wisdom with teenage son.

There are some family pictures featuring me and my brother sporting what can only be described as horrific clothing ensembles.  When descriptions include the words "leisure suit", "peach" and "lime" you know your in deep technicolor poop. Of course this was a step up from the lederhosen and the little navy suit (looked like a dress with epaulets) Mom dressed me in as a toddler, but not much.  Check out that outfit I’m wearing in the picture on the left.  Sure the picture’s black and white, but for God’s sake it’s a vest with stripes!  One can only imagine the full effect in color.  Check out the photos at the bottom of this post.  Love the stylin’ on my brother’s striped pants.  I think even then he knew those things would come back to haunt him.  And how about the fur fringe on the hood of my coat?  We were sitting ducks.

Now, thanks to a pointer from Ed Cone, I’ve found archaeological evidence of the hell that was mid to late 70s fashion.  A blogger named Johnny Virgil found a 1977 JC Penneys catalog in an attic and it made great fodder for a post he titles Strap in, shut up and hold on. We’re going back.  My friends, if you’ve never seen shag carpet on a toilet then you simply must check out his post.  It’s funny enough that when I visited he had over 360 comments.