Call me extra Evil...

...but I'm having trouble feeling any sympathy for people who have been flooded-out when they live BELOW SEA LEVEL. I would also not be sympathetic if the Netherlands was flooded into oblivion. Though I would be surprised, since they're way much better at building levees and dykes than Louisianans.
Heh heh... Dykes.

And Isabel is still a better hurricane name than Katrina.

"Colgate" and "Crest" are oldthink. MiniDent is doubleplusgood.

There are too many kinds of toothbrushes. I'm going to nationalize every dental hygiene product manufacturer. They will be rolled into the Ministry of Dental Hygiene. MiniDent will eliminate bad breath by force.

Every single toothbrush scientist on Planet Kip will work together, and they will create a single perfect toothbrush.

Then only one brand of toothbrush will be sold anywhere. Ever. There will be no more agonizing over which of the hundred different brushes to pick as you block the dental products aisle and look like an idiot.

They will come in packages labeled "Toothbrush."
There will be four variations: "hard bristle" and "not-so-hard bristle," for "normal mouth" and "small mouth."
They will all be colored grey.

When there are advancements in toothbrush technology, the new toothbrushes will be deployed to all stores and all old toothbrushes will self-destruct by remote command at 3 AM on the day after the new toothbrushes are released. There will be no warning or advertisement. Citizens will simply continue to buy their preferred size and hardness and will learn to love the new technology. Or not. We won't have to care.

Toothbrushes and toothpaste will be sold EVERYWHERE. Any place that sells food or drinks will be required to stock them. You will be able to get toothbrushes at auto parts stores, office supply stores, Best Buy, McDonalds, everywhere. Sam's Club will no longer stock them in multi-packs, however, since they'd all melt themselves down when new ones were deployed.


I will still allow there to be a bewildering array of toothpastes. Despite my hatred of the toothbrush selection, I find the toothpaste side of the dental equation to be amusing for reasons I don't yet understand.
Plus I'm the only person I know who likes cinnamon toothpaste, and I wouldn't be so cruel as to inflict it on the mint-loving majority.



I plan to do something similar to bread.

Not-Particularly-Deep Thoughts

Did you ever read something that got funnier each time you re-read it, until it suddenly stopped being so funny?

Did you ever have a period where things look sharper and sound clearer, and then everything goes back to normal?

Did you ever realize that if you had a stroke, you probably wouldn't act much different?

Did you ever notice how some people sound stoned when they're perfectly clearheaded, and sound more normal when they're actually stoned? Did you ever realize that you are like that yourself?

Did you ever want to get a lobotomy just to satisfy your curiosity about it?

Have you ever shaken your head from side to side 126 times in a row? 147 times? 168?

Have you ever started saying something perfectly intelligent and articulate and then forget what you were talking about in mid-sentence? Did you ever finish by pretending to speak in tongues?

Did you ever accidentally burp-talk something?

Contrary To Popular Belief...

I believe I have just been bitten by a radioactive spider. Unfortunately, this does not actually endow the bite recipient with super powers, it just makes part of your leg swollen and tender.

Or maybe it was a regular spider.
Or some other kind of bug, since I don't recall seeing any spiders of any kind around the Lair lately.
Or maybe my socks are just too tight.

Whatever it is, it's annoying the carp out of me.
Which is not helped by the fact that I'm wired again.

I have the day off tomorrow. No caffeine for me.

They say you should drink eight glasses of water a day. Does that count the water that is part of Mountain Dew?

Can someone please tell me...

Why in the hell a Toyota commercial is using "What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor" as background music?

Seriously? WTF? Double-you tee eff! It's madness! It's so absurd, it makes my brain itch! I need to scratch my brain whenever I see it!

I call for the immediate destruction of Toyota and the floccinaucinihilipilification of their assets! Floccinaucinihilipilification, I say!

The Kip Recommends...

Mad Croc Energy Gum. Good stuff. 80 mg of caffeine per piece, if what little hard info I can find is to be believed (and once you discount the typo, since the whole pack weighs less than 80 grams).

If Blogger's counter can be trusted, this is my 731st post. It's probably wrong, since it once went a few months with the counter stuck on 666 posts (some people speculate that this was not a coincidence). But that number puts things in a different perspective.
I write a lot. I'm a prolific Blogger, especially compared with people like Andy, who posts something every year or so. Which is rather strange since this blog is directly his fault.

I think I'm going to go smash something now. I'm exceptionally caffeinated, to the point where I'm basically a more articulate version of the Incredible Hulk.
Rarr! Kip smash!

Joke that only someone who knows about both cars and cell phones will get: The only time I would want to buy Nokia is when I'm car shopping.
(Get it? "No Kia?" Because Nokia phones and Kia cars both suck, so you don't want to buy a Nokia phone and you should buy "no" car by "Kia.")

One day I'm going to go back to the beginning of this Blog and Wikify every post. This will require about three times as much caffeine as is currently in my system, and the project will probably end prematurely when I have a heart attack.



I can never decide how many blank lines to put between my paragraphs. Is this a problem for anyone else?

Basic Kipish Foreign Policy:

It started out as a bad Bush joke, but I actually I think that a main foreign policy objective should be the obliteration of any place with a name that Americans find difficult to pronounce.
Starting with Oaxaca, Mexico. Only the ancient ancestors of the Mexican people could conceive of a place named Oaxaca but pronounced wa-ha-ka. They must be punished.

We should also invent a "time bomb." Not a bomb with a timer, but a bomb that destroys everything that has ever occupied a given piece of land, retroactively. Not that we'd ever actually use it, since it would be more dangerous than the History Eraser Button (the jolly, candy-like button!), but we should have the option.

Secrets You Never Knew (Or Wanted To Know) About...

Saturday morning cartoons, part 1: Inspector Gadget

Inspector Gadget seemed like a rather formulaic kids' cartoon, right? Wrong. Here's what you never knew about MAD, Metro City, and more.

1. Inspector Gadget was never intended to be a super-cop.
Inspector Gadget was created as a distraction. A dupe. A decoy. Need I go on?

2. The "Metro City Police" were not the force behind Gadget.
In fact, a secret intelligence organization which was never named in the series created the Gadget project. In their ongoing war against MAD, they needed new weapons and tactics. I shall refer to them in this document as the "Unnamed Intelligence Agency," or UIA.
Why do you think a man employed by a city police department would travel to the other side of the world to solve crimes? The UIA compensated Metro City handsomely for playing along with this plan, and Inspector Gadget was too stupid to raise questions of jurisdiction.

3. The UIA made no mistake when they made an idiot into a cyborg.
They knew that if they used anyone with even average intelligence, they would inevitably use their new abilities for evil.

4. Penny solved the crime every time for a good reason: She was the secret agent.
Gadget was the decoy for the UIA's actual plan: using super-smart children as secret agents. Penny's Japanese friend Atsuko (seen in episode 29) is also a member of the UIA.

5. Penny was in no way related to "Uncle Gadget."
As part of the Gadget project, their guinea pig's memories were manipulated to make him think he was Penny's uncle and legal guardian.

6. Brain wasn't just a smart dog.
Brain was genetically engineered by UIA to supplement Penny. Operation Prodigy would call for the deployment of an innocuous-looking helper animal with each child agent.

7. Dr. Claw's pet, MADCat, was genetically engineered in a totally independent MAD project.
MAD's resources for Black Projects rivaled those of the UIA whose main job it was to fight them.

8. MAD is far more dangerous than anyone believed.
How do you think Dr. Claw was able to watch every plan of his on closed-circuit TV? MAD's tentacles extended into areas of society and the economy that could never be fully explained in the scope of the TV show.


And there you have it. The Kip's Unified Theory Of Inspector Gadget History.

Timeline of symptoms, Patient Zero:

I think I just had an alien disease organism use my body as a testbed for a plague that will wipe out humanity.

My superior immune system fought it off, because I'm just better than you. But I'm sure it will start killing off the rest of you soon enough.


Thursday: Everything is perfectly normal. Nothing unusual at all. The last meal I eat before my ordeal is a Target snack bar pizza and some Almond Joy bars.

Thursday night: Still perfectly normal, until around 9 PM. Then I get inexplicable chills all through my body. I turn off the air conditioning and wrap myself in blankets even though it's 85 degrees out at night.


Friday, 9 AM: Headache, fever. No problem, I think, as I take some Tylenol.

Friday, 10 AM: Tylenol has been regurgitated into the toilet along with most of the water with which it was washed down.

Friday, 11 AM - 2 PM: Most of this time was spent alternating between vomiting and pooping.

Friday, 2:10 PM: I try to suppress my gastric problems long enough to take a shower. I am only partially successful, and vomit in the shower.

Friday, 2:40 PM: I declare victory in one small battle as I manage to keep down some Tylenol and an Imodium AD caplet.

Friday, 4 PM: I arrive at work running purely on stubbornness.

Friday, 4-9PM: During this time, my stomach cramps get worse, I feel progressively weaker, and I'm so tired I can barely stand. I force myself to take regular sips of Gatorade and I halfheartedly nibble on some crackers, but I still haven't successfully eaten since Thursday night.

Friday, 10 PM: I try to go to sleep, and get about 30 minutes of sleep at a time 5 or 6 times during the night.


Saturday, 8 AM: I try again to take some Tylenol.

Saturday, 9 AM: This time, the Tylenol is vomited into the shower drain.

Saturday, 9:30 AM: I tell myself that this time the Tylenol AND the crackers are staying down. I manage to stop myself from vomiting for an hour.

Saturday, 10:40-11:00 AM: Sitting on the toilet with a bucket in my lap. My digestive processes have accelerated at one end and inverted at the other, and I feel like there's an angry porcupine sitting in the middle.

Saturday, 12:00 PM: I arrive at work looking less lively than a Romero zombie.

Saturday, 1:00 PM: My boss realizes he's not going to get any work out of me, but he needs a body on the floor to close, so he lets me take the middle of the day off.

Saturday, 1:00 - 6:00 PM: My diarrhea seems to have exhausted itself, perhaps thanks to regular attempts to take Pepto Bismol, but I still throw up half of everything I eat or drink. I manage to get about 15 minutes of actual rest during this time. I invent a new word for the color of vomit made of Gatorade and Pepto Bismol: Plegish. It's a play on "plagueish," as clever as I can be under the circumstances. I hope never to use it again.

Saturday, 6:00 - 9:00 PM: I attempt to work and not look too plague-ridden while doing it. A minor sinus blockage triggers a vomiting fit, in a cause-and-effect that still boggles my mind. I learn I can spew used Gatorade over 3 horizontal feet.

Saturday, 10:30 PM: I force myself to take some Tylenol PM. I want some sleep and I don't care if it's artificial.

Saturday, ~11:00 PM: Approximately the time I go to sleep, again wrapped in blankets.

Sunday, 9:30 AM: I awake not wanting to vomit or poop for the first time in days. I still have a mild headache and a somewhat sore stomach, but I don't feel like I'm tied in knots. I take some Tylenol and Pepto Bismol, and it doesn't even try to come back up.

Sunday, 12:00 PM: I actually feel almost OK. I eat the soup I bought at Target yesterday and hope for the best.

Sunday, 5:00 PM: I feel more like myself than I have since Thursday. I suspect the alien organism has moved on to cause suffering and death elsewhere.


And that's that. I figure most people will be dead by the "Saturday, 6:00 PM" stage. But you'll be wanting Morphine long before then.

I've just noticed that I shake almost every non-carbonated bottled beverage I buy.

Even if they don't need to be shaken. I shake plain non-chocolate milk.

And I don't know why. I just do it. And now that I've noticed it, it kinda bothers me.

Wouldn't it be funny...

For some odd reason, I have the sudden feeling that guacamole is somehow more important to the overall cohesion of the universe than has been previously revealed.
I think it would be hilarious if the entire universe collapsed into a black hole, and the singularity was in Mexico. Rather, the precise point in space formerly occupied by Mexico.

If I had a time machine, I'd take a modern military force back to 753 BC, I'd take over the world starting with Rome, and I'd make English the official global language. Anyone who spoke any other language, especially Latin, after my decree would be publicly tortured.
Actually, that's not true. If I had a time machine, I wouldn't go back any further than November 9, 1988. A few events occurred prior to that date which I wouldn't want to jeopardize with the chaos effect.

Grover Cleveland's full name was Stephen Grover Cleveland. Why in Bob's name would you go by "Grover" instead of "Stephen"?
I think after being elected for his second (non-consecutive) term he should have called himself Steve.
Nobody would vote for a "President Steve" nowadays. But I think that if the candidate changed his name after the election the country would be more relaxed under a Steve administration.

I like the word "nowadays."