I saw a link to the London Review of Books classifieds. Everybody seems to find these things worthy of comment.

There has been coffee table book recently produced that is dedicated to the compiling and commenting on these oddities. People obsessively read these for the personals ads, even though they aren’t looking for a partner. I suspect that many people actually write these as a creative endeavor rather than a means to an end. I decided that since I wasn’t looking at them with any purpose beyond entertainment in mind, I might as well go back in time to look at the old ones. Here is the Archive.org page for the London Review of Books classifieds. Fill your boots.

I’ll see you at the LRB singles night. I’ll be the one breathing heavily and stroking my thighs by the “art” books. Asthmatic, varicosed F (93) seeks M to 30 with enough puff in him to push me uphill to the post-office. This is not a euphemism.

I think it is now officially back to school season. I can tell because every time my kids get on my nerves in between 8am and 3pm, I have a shouldn’t you be in school reflex.

It’s also time to start thinking about school supplies. Identity Direct has all kinds of great personalized items that your child will greatly appreciate as you send them out the door. I think these packs that include a pencil case and colored pencils, pencils and ruler, all with your child’s name embossed on them are a great idea. For younger kids, this will help them learn to recognize their own name. I think it would also help them maintain possession of the items longer.

I am going to put the relevant link at the very bottom of this post because some of you may give up on the Internet for good after reading about this newly unveiled piece of Japanese technology.

The gPod is a vibrator. It will translate the signal from any audio device to a phallic attachment with three motors. Potentially, you could use this in concert with a long distance phone call from a partner. Or you could have it plugged into the 1/8 inch jack on your PC while you watch videos on YouTube.

The gPod

I am not going to use this knife related post as an opportunity to talk about the time that I was lost in the woods. I was planning on doing just that but while I was exercising my brain trying to recall some details I came to the conclusion that I didn’t have a knife with me. It’s no wonder being lost in the Canadian wilderness sucked so bad.

It is possible to gut a fish with a pointy stick. It is possible to break enough twigs off of trees to use as fuel to keep warm at night. I would suggest walking around a bit and finding an area with a few fallen trees that can be dragged to one spot. You can spent the evening breaking branches off these to feed your fire and the pile of trunks can act as a reflector of radiant heat. Having a pile of brush and logs behind you and a medium size fire in front of you is no doubt good for you state of mind as well. Having a big survival knife would have been quite an improvement in the situation. I know that during a happier few days in the woods, my cousin and I used a survival knife and the rope saw that was inside the handle to fashion a comfortable lounger on a huge poplar tree that had fallen across the creek.

If you have ever looked at the saw back on a survival knife and thought to yourself that nobody ever uses them. You would be wrong. What I often did with the saw back on a survival knife was to use it to notch poles when we were constructing make-shift shelters out of trees. Your knife gets really dirty when you use it to cut evergreen boughs. One of the best ways to clean a knife in the woods is to go to a creek bed and scrub the knife with wet sand.

Extremely Sharp is a family owned business. Their online marketing strategy includes a monthly contest and newsletter. The monthly prizes are typically things like pocket knives, martial arts equipment and even swords. This month’s prize happens to be three sets of throwing knives. I have thrown knives before, it is my impression that you get better with practice.

This may well be the Dred Scott of all fair use arguments. I hope Judge Dread gets to hear the case if it goes to court. It won’t go to court, I would take it down if someone pretending to be from Fox asked me. The wouldn’t even have to ask nice.

I am happy about my banking situation right now. My happiness is due in part to having just arrived at a very frustrating few months while I was trying to straighten out a whole bunch of different banking arrangements related to my remote telecommuting and my small business.

We have current accounts based in more than one country. We were shocked when we first moved at the bank charges related to automated teller withdrawals from a foreign bank account. We still need to do this occasionally, but we calculated that the best way to save on bank charges is to always withdraw the maximum amount.

We were cautioned by our local bank manager about maiking transfers using intermediary banks because of the unfair bank charges related to this type of situation.

If you are ever considering moving to another country, I would recommend opening accounts with a bank that has a global presence such as HSBC.

I had the misconception that there already was an Encyclopedia of Misconceptions. I thought that the 1975 World Book Encyclopedia that sits in my parents’ bookcase served quite well in that respect.

The new project is actually kind of interesting. Here is a link for those of you who want to jump right in and contribute a misconception. If you want some back story, check out Global Nomads Group.

These guys pulled off a live video conference between Bishop Desmond Tutu and several US classrooms.

Paris Hilton has Herpes, according to several sources. There is an image on the internet of her prescription for a drug that is commonly used to treat herpes outbreaks. I guess if she wanted to deny that she had herpes she could say she was using the drug recreationally. The side effects include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and/or headache.

Herpes is a disease that doesn’t go away. There are basically two separate goals in treatment. These are preventing outbreaks and treating the symptoms when outbreaks inevitably occur. Some lucky herpes sufferers go for years without an outbreak and may even forget that they have the disease. A herpes cure would be a welcome thing for herpes sufferers

Natural therapies could have a beneficial effect on Genital Herpes. After reading the full list of all possible side effects from the GlaxoSmithKline drug, I would be willing to give natural remedies a shot if I had herpes. For the record, I don’t.

Many of these treatments use oxygen to virtually eradicate the virus locally.

There are currently clinical trials in the USA and Canada involving a Herpes vaccine. Early work indicates that it is 70% effective in woman and that it doesn’t work for men. I’m not sure if that level of effectiveness could ever eradicate the disease from the human population.

Perez Hilton used his photo manipulation skills to perform a bit of wink wink nudge nudge in relation to six very famous people who were hanging out together. He wrote the word ‘Swingers’ over a picture of Tom Cruise, Kate Holmes, David Beckham Victoria Beckham, Will Smith and Jada Smith.

California does have a thriving swinger community. One of the hallmarks of swinging is discretion. While other lifestyle choices are represented by communities who trumpet their right to love who they choose, the swingers tend to keep their choices as a well kept secret from society.

It is a well kept secret indeed. Part of the mechanism of secrecy is that it is highly unlikely that anyone will find out without being somehow involved, in which case they can’t gossip about it openly without drawing attention to themselves. It actually makes sense that A-list celebrities would stay with their own kind with regard to this activity. Fooling around in a broader community would inevitably have them rubbing up against somebody who cared more about media attention than their own reputation. I had heard rumors about Will Smith for years. An LA celebrity that I think can’t keep a secret is Tom Green. If you are a celebrity swinger in LA, do not have sex with Tom Green. Actually, I will broaden that statement to include everybody. Do not have sex with Tom Green.

Edit: I linked to another blogger in an absurd way in this blog post and she asked me to change it because she was talking about a swing band comprised of scientologists, not people who have consentual sex outside the bounds of marriage. I am going to leave the link as is. I don’t want to set a precedent. I do apologize for sullying her Nobel-Prizewinneriness with my absurdity.