Leap Year!

There's an extra day this year. That's why I haven't posted on the 27th and 28th..

The Easy Chair

Listen to "You ain't going nowhere" by Bob Dylan.

Vacations

Yay for vacations.

The Talk Box

Made famous by Peter Frampton (click the "click to hear the talk" button) and Sex with no Hands (the accordion-funk and retro-polka band).

(From Frampton's site: "WARNING: The only bad thing about the TalkBox is that it rattles your teeth around!")

Sez Common:

Slow motion better than no motion

Swim!

Pools are great, and so is swimming. Yaaay.

The Champagne of Punctuation

If you had to choose your favorite mark of punctuation, which would you choose? I of course love the exclamation mark(!), but it's not my favorite; instead the semicolon wins this contest. A dear childhood friend of mine says, and I quote from personal correspondence, "I see the semi-colon as special; it is, if you will, the Champagne of punctuation." Quite rightly. Two independent, yet related clauses, joined as one. Ahh.

Today's Haiku (.com)

One of my favorite joke sites (you can seriously spend hours on this site), offers Computer Haikus.

Here's my favorite:

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

I wrote this Haiku:

A favorite a day
Keeps all the doctors away.
Hey! Don't walk away!

But all of this boils down to the fact that it's about time to start a new Haiku Community - TodaysHaiku.com. It is a collaborative Haiku Collective -- please let me know if you'd like to join - simply email todaysfavorite [at] gmail.com! The basic premise is this: Today's Haiku offers the first two lines (a 12 syllable commitment), and all of our readers will write their own final line in the comments section. Check it out. Today is its debut.

Twofer Tuesday!!

Pretty much the chillest thing on every classic rock station is the "Twofer Tuesday!," in which you hear TWO songs, back to back!, by the same artist. It's like hearing "I'm Goin' Down," by Bruce Springsteen followed by "Dancing in the Dark." Or Supertramp's "Logical Song" followed by "Give a Little Bit." Pretty great, right?

Here at Today's Favorite, we don't have our classic rock record collection digitized and ready for the internet. Instead, we have JOKES! And great jokes at that. Here's to the Twofer Tuesday, Today's Favorite flava.

2 Mailmen Jokes that my sister wrote herself:
What do you call a mailman's house before he puts on deodorant?
A B.O. Box.

What do two mailmen do when they get really angry at each other?
They mailbox!

Hahahahaha. Just in case that didn't do it, I'll give you a bonus:
Q: How do crazeee people go through the forest?
A: They take the psycho path!

This might be a regular Tuesday feature if you guys like it. Just let me know.

Pocketed Coil System

I used to really want a Tempurpedic Bed (with the NASA memory foam! Wow!). But because they are rather expensive, I didn't spring for the purchase. I convinced myself that foam is a fad, and instead sprung for springs, in the form of the pocketed coil system. So, I now sleep tight with a Simmons Beautyrest - making for restful, foamless nights.

Noodles!!

In particular, pho ga (chicken noodle soup, Vietnamese style).

Childhood Friends

It's always nice to reconnect with people you've known since you were five. Especially in a bright yellow Mini Cooper Zipcar! Woo hoo. Listen to a song written by another childhood friend. (If you're familiar with Niskayuna, you'll like it - there's references to Crossgates, NiskaDay (best day Eva!!), and Union Street.)

Carpooling!

Apparently, according to a 2000 report, and another 2007 report, people in California really don't like to carpool. This week I've been a passenger in the carpool lane in three communting instances, and it felt pretty good. But in reality, the carpool lane isn't all that effective, as these studies conclude, "As currently operated, the HOV system does not meet its goals except in uses."

Ideally, a carpool lane should reduce emissions, encourage people to carpool, and improve highway flow - by getting more vehicles and people through the carpool lane, per hour. Our carpool lane apparently does none of that, especially not encourage people to carpool.

Despite this, I still think you should carpool! (I know, I know, it's easy for me to say - my car got stolen and I don't drive... but still.)

more than stretching

Yoga is more than stretching. It's like 30 push-ups in an hour, too. And breathing and focusing, and it feels sooo good. I recently started Ashtanga yoga, and it's sooooo good! Best yoga I've done. You learn and add to the sequence, and go at your own pace, your own breathing. I think it will make me a better breakdancer, too -- all of the balancing on ones hands. (I can't do the pose in the picture yet.) So, I'll keep at it. Check out Mission Yoga in SF for fantastic classes with Chad and Devorah.

Blueberry Tea

This tea is really good.

Singer-songwriters

Adam Day is one and he's pretty good. And plus posting him let's me give another shout out to I-Town (Ithaca, NY, pretty much one of the chillest (and chilliest) places eva), where he's based. Enjoy a song of his! My favorite line, "It's ok to cry - cuz I've got blue eyes, too." How cute.

Kiwi

Today's post is a tricky one. Am I talking about

The flightless bird?
The fruit?
An individual from New Zealand?
Or the acronym? (Keepin It Waycool, Ice.)

Feel free to guess. Or feel free to make one of these kiwi meanings your own favorite, tomorrow!

Sunday: Day of Rest?

Probably.

(If you're following closely, you'd realize that I backdated this post, to make it look like I didn't really miss a day. Sorry!)

The Random Food Card

You've probably heard the term "the Race Card," which our trusted Wikipedia defines as an "allegation raised against a person who has brought the issue of race or racism into a debate, perhaps to obfuscate the matter."

Similarly (or not so similarly), the "Random Food Card" (or RFC as we sometimes call it) is when an individual, typically a comedian or humorous individual, makes reference to food in a completely random and seemingly nonsensical way. Woody Allen is perhaps one of the most well-known individuals for deploying the RFC. Take for instance these excerpts from his writings:

"Do I believe in God? I did until Mother's accident. She fell on some meat loaf, and it penetrated her spleen."

"..why am I so guilty? Is it because I hated my father? Probably it was the veal-parmigan incident. Well, what was it doing in his wallet?"

"...Relieved, I walked home, but learned later that the old man had slipped on a chicken-salad sandwich and fallen off the Chrysler Building."

I once tried to argue that Allen overuses the RFC. But as I was stating my claim, I stepped into an open pot of beef stroganoff and burned my pinkie toe so badly I forgot what I was going to say.

Good Copy

I used to think noone could compete with the WSJ in terms of good, clever, witty copy. Today, Gongs-Unlimited has proven me wrong - they put up a good copy fight on their site, and we should pay attention. Take, for instance:

“We can’t change the world, but we can sell you a gong!” Or,

“Don’t you hate it when you’re all psyched to bang your gong and you discover Grandma used your gong beater to whip up some meringue? Or your houseguest from Sydney used it to clean his ear, “cause Gong Mallet is Australian for Q-Tip!”“

You should take a few moments and read through the site. And hopefully you’ll also want to take a gong hit, and buy one for yourself. I mean, as they say, "Can you control yourself when you see a mallet lying there next to a gong? No, you can't. You have to bang a gong. HAVE TO!"

Snooze Bar

by Velvetron. I used to really like this song ("Snooze Bar" - listen to it) a few years ago. I still do, but not with the same play-on-repeat passion. I actually wanted to start a bar (the kind of bar that sells drinks), and call it the Snooze Bar. Anyway, the second line in this song is, "We write the meaning in the bathroom stall." And for some reason I was in a Safeway bathroom stall today, and there were some really interesting meanings written in there. I mean, I-wish-I-had-a-camera, kind of interesting. Oh well. So I post this song instead.

Roll-up Sunglasses

(aka, the day of unwanted gifts) are all the rage. Let's say you go to the eye doctor without sunglasses, as you aren't expeting to have your pupils dilated. But in fact you DO have your pupils dilated, in which case even dim indoor lighting suddenly appears very bright. So to equip you for a mile walk home through the streets of San Francisco, and a quick stop at Safeway, your eye doctor provides you with roll-up sunglasses, pictured above. They easily unroll and nestle themselves underneath your existing eyewear.

Let's really be honest about how cool and normal these look. I tried to wear them to my afternoon jury duty to avoid being selected. And Happy Chinese New Year!

Get Your Vote On

It's Super Tuesday! So voting is today's favorite. Check out Google maps for live primary result updates.

ps - I found the Organizing for Dummies book that I referenced yesterday!

Getting Organized

feels really good! I wish I did it more. Today was a good organized day. My sister got me an Organization for Dummies book, but I forgot where I put it. I'll find it tomorrow.

Asking Questions, and Listening

You know what it's like when two people start a conversation. First one of them does all the talking, then the other breaks in with "That's just like me, I..." and goes on talking about himself until his partner finds a chance to say "That's just me, I..." It may look like a form of agreement, a way of carrying the other person's idea a step further, but that is an illusion. What they really are is... an attempt to free one's ear from bondage... All man's life among men is nothing more than a battle for the ears of others. The whole secret of Tamina's popularity is that she has no desire to talk about herself.

- Milan Kundera, The Book of Laugher and Forgetting

Mass generalization, but interesting to think about our need to share information about ourselves. It's true that not everyone listens. Naturally there are some people we are genuinely interested in, and care about knowing, and ask questions. Other times, sure, it's more fun to talk about yourself.

Kundera later writes that "love is a constant interrogation." To which his friend/critic points out, "Then noone loves us better than the police." Haha! Kundera responds with, "Absolutely. ...I wouldn't be surprised if lonely people secretly yearn to be taken in for cross-examination from time to time to give them somebody to talk about their lives."

That's My Powerdrill

There's not much else you need to say about the powerdril. It's powerful. But you already knew that.
(In case you were wondering, that's not my Good Housekeeping underneath. Well maybe it is. But I don't subscribe.)

That's My Gong

The gong is an instrument like no other. I played it once in my high school band. You have to warm up the gong by ever so lightly tapping on its outside edges. (The head of the gong banger (that wooden stick, don't know what to call it) is wrapped in a soft felt-like fabric, so that you can do this quietly.) This gets the gong vibrating so that when you finally do smack the center of it, the sound is strong and loud and fantastic! Buy one for your home today!