Aren't they all?

Because if it's like, horizontal, that's a lot of snow. No. I mean vertical.

Looks like Orik was getting hyperactive for a few minutes there -

This site has some fucked. up. people?

Vertical. It is a hell of a lot of snow.

Today's Newark Star-Ledger has two adjacent articles on its "county news" front page.

Article 1 discusses the latest task force report about the explosion in deer population at the South Mountain Reservation. The five town forested area may have 5,000 deer in an area believed to be suitable for about 700. One group believes that introducing the deer to birth control pills and darts will solve much of the problem. Another, equally loud, group believes that a massive, lethal response will be more appropriate. These groups have been arguing their positions since 1995, when the deer population was about 1,500.

Article 2 discusses the black wolf family which resides in the South Mountain Reservation Zoo. Naturalists are discussing how / if the cubs should be prepared for an eventual release into the forest. Currently, zoo employees bring in deer carcasses generated from roadkill in the Reservation.

Mongo and FB's use of Rose's avatar is quite surreal. A rose by any other name...

The rose is backwards on FB's. I've trained my keen eye to register it.

I dialed my voice mail with my Treo 650, and clicked on speaker.

I enter my password and the phone dysfunctions with one of the digits of my passcode got stuck, blaring out that tone. So I hung up and redialed my voice mail.

The welcoming voice that communicates how many unheard messages I have, instead notifies me that someone from the following phone number xxx-xxx-xxxx attempted to gain entry into my voice mail.

It was my own phone number.

But do they use a dry measuring cup or a liquid measuring cup?

I got an Open Table reminder about a reservation at A Voce tonight, which I didn't make, and it's for someone who's not even in town this week. When I called to cancel, the restaurant had no record of the reservation.

Is Open Table haunted?

i hope something similar will not happen with my manresa reservation on sunday.

I was walking on the Bahnhof Strasse in downtown Zurich earlier today, and I ran right into Daniel Humm. Who asked me for restaurant recommendations in Zurich.

He is adorable.

call Open Table and tell them to restart their computer.

do you have gummy bears?

Anyone else remember that big, grand tat store on Fifth Avenue, around 50-ish Street, which has had the big closing down-everything must go signs up for the last seven or eight years? You know, selling tapestries, large statues of elephants, mock-silver tableware, etc?

Yeah?

Fucker closed.

85% of the time, yes.

My world has been rocked a bit by that news.

A grand tat store, to me, sells tattoos. Find your mock-silver elsewhere.

my kickboxing instructor last night kept telling us to "do it for Anna Nicole," and how she was an inspiration. Great. Tell 200 20 yr old girls that they should use Anna Nicole as a role model. Just wonderful.

Saw the most surreal "Showcase Showdown" ever on The Price is Right. The package was for some couches, a coffee table, a big screen tv and 2 motorcycles. The contestant bid $250,000. At first Bob Barker misheard him and thought he had bid $250, but no he repeated $250,000. When Bob Barker looked at him like he was insane and asked him if that was his final bid, he changed his bid to the still bonkers $60,000. The man was utterly clueless. The actual value of his prize package was about $20,000. He was so far out of the ballpark it was bizarre.

The other contestant knew he had overbid by so much that she would be the default winner, as on the show you automatically lose if you bod more than the price of the package. She bid $1 and of course won her prize package.

I have never seen someone manage to have no clue what anything cost. $250k for two motorcycles and a tv. What planet was that guy from. I'd like to sell him some of those $100,000 kawasakis if that is what he thinks they are worth...

Do they just take anybody who wants to compete? Don't they have to have some mock competition with other prospective bidders before being selected to be on the show?

I was at a dinner party last weekend. Pretty international crowd as usual. You know 'cause like my friends are so cosmolitan and stuff. Anyway, the men were a mix of Italian, French, Latin American, one Asian and a couple of Americans. Over 70% of the women however were East or Southeast Asian. At one point we all looked at eachother and finally one woman said, "wow there are a lot of us here tonight".

There is nothing going on here today. Don't know if it is the snow or the the long weekend, but the place is dead. And I just walked into my bosses office to find him sitting at his desk asleep.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisla...y-top-headlines

TV surrealism: watching "The L Word" immediately after watching a gore-filled episode of "Rome".

That's really quite sad.

Hubby is driving, there is some issue with a woman in another car, don't know what is going on here. But she is pissed, rolls down her window, starts yelling. She has a very, very heavy Middle Eastern or Near Eastern accent. I can't tell from where because she's screaming. He says something back to her. She curses and says something about continuing the argument after he's learned to speak English without his funny accent.

Came across Reverend Billy exorcising a Starbucks on Second Avenue yesterday.

For those who don't know, Starbucks has an injunction preventing him from entering its premises anywhere in the world. So he's out on the sidewalk, with the police. I shall say nothing for or against his political take on the Starbucks empire - but watching someone dressed as a priest, with a full blonde pompadour, chasing the demons out of a coffee bar, is more than slightly droll.

You can watch him exorcising the Astor Place branch here.

But can he make the coffee taste any better?

Anywhere in the world?

Ah, maybe an internal ban rather than an injunction, but yes - it's global.

"A tough-looking man inside Starbucks interrupted my exorcism to explain that I was banned from all the Starbucks in the world. I said, yes, it's true. I had this sudden feeling of mildness when he said that to me. I had a moment of floating in the sargasso sea - it was hard to get back to the prayer. Telling me that had the impact of - maybe I had an image of the day when so much of the world is privatized that a person can be told by a mysterious stranger that you can be banned from everywhere."

I gather he was arrested at the Astor Place exorcism.

Well, he's still got the rest of the known universe.

The bad news is - so does Starbucks.

Farid? A French chef via Morocco has a funny accent? Sacre bleu. Oh, my. Never would've suspected! While we're here in surreal, am home for the holiday and stumbled on the 2003 movie "Jet Lag" this morning with Jean Reno (big favorite). About a chef who now owns a frozen food company who is delayed in a Paris airport and offers to share his hotel room with a self-obsessed woman. Classical French plot of everyone enjoying being miserable except that it ended happy. I think. That's surreal. All subtitles but very easy French. Especially the English cuss words.

Morocco? Never heard of that place. That's Algeria. His parents are from Algeria.

Yikes. Thanks for the correction. I knew that, too. Hope the cephalic drugs kick in soon.

Better couscous in Algeria, so I've heard.

There was a funny incident at a food event when a woman kept saying things like, "What, Nigeria? Oh, ok. Did you say Libya? Yes, yes, but don't they eat couscous in Libya also? Ok, what about Morocco? Ok, I heard you. What was that again? Yes, but they have Tuaregs in Egypt too, don't they??"

She kept grabbing at the food and I told her there were serious hygiene concerns, because I didn't know where her hands had been.

Spotted in Brooklyn this evening: S.T.D. Wines and Liquors.

Makes sense. Wines and liquors are usually the way to get started when engaging in activities that lead to STDs.

That's exactly what S. said!

Great minds, etc.

Hey look! I have my own website and game!

tamar.net

(I also have my own "search conversion agency, but that's less fun: tamar.com)

I searched on YouTube for that famous "agony of defeat" clip to illustrate GG's ski fall (see Annoyances - that goodness she is fine), and the first thing that came up in the search was Patti Smith "You Light Up My Life" on "Kids Are People Too"

Here, how's this? (It wasn't nearly that breathtaking.)

Ouch. Sports are wrong.

There's a little hole in the wall sandwich and snack shop in Chinatown that I've been going to for over 10 years. And in the last ten years I can't say that any of the counter women have learned to speak much English, which doesn't bother me in the least. I was there last week when a very young Asian-American valley girl type walks in looking for something to eat that doesn't have peanuts or derivative products.

The whole thing is a bit surreal because she is in Chinatown for one thing (PEANUT OIL!) and she is having a long drawn out conversation with a woman who obviously speaks very little English. The girl had to repeat the word "peanut" 4-5 times before the woman even understood her and she goes on and on explaining how she is deathly allergic to peanuts and can't even eat something that came into contact with peanuts. The woman tells her, "point, yes peanut or no peanut, nothing here have peanuts." I am eating summer rolls with a sauce that has ground peanuts in it. The conversation goes on for about 10 minutes and continues as I leave.

The Odd Boy lay down by the football field
Took out a slim volume of Mallarmé
The centre-forward called him an imbecile
It's an Odd Boy who doesn't like sport.
Sport, sport, masculine sport,
Equips a young man for society,
Yes, Sport turns out a jolly good sort,
It's an Odd Boy who doesn't like Sport!

R.I.P. Viv Stanshall
(absolutely everything reminds me of the Bonzos these days)

Doubly surreal. Was she buying the peanut oil for a friend?