The Mystery of the Shamed Businessman

You know those Google Doodles, where they alter the Google logo to commemorate some thing or another? Once in a while I know immediately what they are, but most of the time I have to click on it to figure out what it's suppose to represent.

Last summer I saw one that completely baffled me. It looked like a guy with a box on his head, wearing a dress shirt and tie, bending over with his hands on his knees, the way kids stand when they're in left field waiting for the ball to come their way. Here's an altered version of the picture, to show you how it looked to me:


I thought maybe it was some disgraced CEO or something; maybe it was the anniversary of the Enron scandal. Even when I clicked on the image to find out what it actually was, I still didn't see what I was supposed to see at first. I see it now though, to the point where I don't know how I could mistake it as anything else, but sometimes I still see the guy with box on his head. Maybe not it box; it might be his briefcase.

Now here is the actual image:



Does anyone see the box head guy? Or could you tell what it is right away? It was August 29, which would have been Michael Jackson's 51st birthday. Jackson's socks are the business man's shirt, and the space between them is his tie. Actually, if you look closely, it looks like the box head guy is wearing one of those frilly flamenco dancer shirts. But who wears those with neckties?

So do you see the businessman, Michael Jackson's feet, or both?

Read more »

Moral Conflict

So, everybody...oh who am I kidding? So, LL, here's your question for the the day.

What if you could go back in time and prevent World War II from ever happening, but here's the catch: the only way to do it is to have sex with Hitler. You can't trick him and say that you'll have sex with him and then kill him or something, you've got to go through with it. But if you do, he won't invade any other countries or kill Jews or anything. Millions of lives will be saved.

Instead of genocide and world domination, Hitler will focus on music. He'll form a folk group called Der Flying Deutschmen. A protegê of Woody Guthrie, Hitler will write songs about peace, magic unicorns and a night of passion with a mysterious stranger whose name he refuses to reveal.



In 1959, he'll be mourned by the entire world when his plane crashes, killing him, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly. In this WWII-free universe, the Big Bopper took a different flight and later opened a chain of successful fried chicken restaurants across America's Southeast.

I actually have a theory that this was Hilter's ultimate goal all along: To do something so despicable that he'll be seen as the most hated man in history, in the hopes that one day hot women from the future would travel through time to have sex with him to prevent it from ever happening. In fact I'm pretty sure Bin Laden heard about Hitler's idea and co-opted it.

Oh, and don't worry, you can't inadvertently erase yourself from existence in my hypothetical time machine. Technically, you aren't re-writing history, you're branching out from the moment you changed to create a new history. The original still exists, because it can never be changed, like a write-only CD. But you've created this new history in a different location, as if you made changes to the CD file and saved it as a new file on the desktop. So even if preventing the war caused you to not be born in the new timeline, you still exist in the original timeline.

Of course that means when you show up in the present of the new timeline, no one will know who you are, because they have no record of you ever being born. In fact, you might be thrown in jail for not having any ID or proof of citizenship and for fabricating stories about beloved folk singer Adolf Hitler. No one would be able to appreciate what you did, because for them, it never happened, and for the original timeline, it will sill always happen no matter what you do. Or you run into the other you, and that presents a whole other set of problems. Man, time travel is hard. Okay, for the sake of this exercise, we'll say you change the original timeline and definitely cannot negate your own birth.

So...would you have sex with Hitler to prevent World War II? I couldn't do it myself. It's not because of the gay sex that would be involved, it's just that we got a lot of good movies out of that war.

Read more »

On This Day in Squeegee History

DATE: MARCH 22, 1998 (more or less...)
LOCATION: PIZZA HUT. QUINCY, MA

I was sitting in a booth with Nick and Jose. Jose noticed a clown sitting a few booths behind me. I don't mean the "oh boy that guy's such a clown! kind of clown, I mean the rainbow wigged, floppy shoed, balloon-animal-making kind of clown. Jose told me to look over my shoulder because he continues to think that I'm afraid of clowns, when in reality, I merely would just prefer to avoid them whenever possible.

Anyway, forget about the clown. When the waitress brought us our pizza, she asked me "How's your headache?" And I thought "Well that was cryptic. I don't even have a heada----ahhhhh!" To this day I don't understand what happened. I felt fine until she said anything, then all of a sudden I got a sharp pain in my temple. She was some kind of...voodoo waitress.

This has been On this day in Squeegee History. Brought to you by Pringles.

Pringles. Taste the hyperbolic paraboloid.™

Read more »

Missed Opportunities

Yesterday would have been a good day for a rousing speech. Because it was March 4th, and you could have been like "March fourth...TO VICTORY!" or something. March fourth...TO ZERO DOWN PAYMENT ON A 2010 KIA SORENTO! And it would resonate with people, because it was the date, and it means to move forward. Now we've got to wait a whole year for the opportunity to come around again. It's a shame, really.

Kind of like how I never got around to writing the second part of my friend's wedding story, and now it doesn't matter, because they're friggin' divorced. Oh, did I just casually throw that out there? Yes I did.

Read more »

A Brief Conversation

For Lent, Michele is eating nothing but some kind of seaweed soup thing, so I went to my mom's house for dinner on Friday.

MOM: I think I'm going to go to the gym Saturday morning.

ME: What gym do you go to?

MOM: Planet Fitness.

ME: Oh, you know who lives right next door?

Mom: No, who?

ME: Jim Nabors.

See, it's funny, because...well, I'll let my brother explain.


GLENN: It works on two levels.

BRIANNA: I don't get it.

MOM: They are gym neighbors, like Jim Nabors? You know "Well Gaw-aw-aw-lly!"

GLENN: Wait, what?

MOM: You don't know who Jim Nabors is? Gomer Pyle?

GLENN: Oh.

ME: Hold on, then why were you laughing?

GLENN: I thought you just made up a name for the joke.

Read more »