NEW FEATURE: Game

Gmail sponsored link:

Craving bacon? - www.honda.com - Whatever you're craving, the Crave Reader can guess. Try it out.

Check it out! It's like playing that annoying game, 20 questions, with an even more annoying flash interface! It took me 4 tries to get the it to guess bacon, probably because I answered "sometimes" a lot. My first three tries resulted in Apple (cold), Breakfast (getting warmer), and a Rabbit's Foot (fail). See if you can beat my 4!

NEW FEATURE: free-for-all of facts

[photo from Google Image Search "free for all of facts"]

Although it was an exciting and emotional week, time did not stop for BABE Rally Team Name Challenge. While we were white-knuckled and on the edge of our seats in anticipation of finally deciding a team name for my lazy and non-committal rally team, some other parts of the world slogged on, as if they were unaware of these epic battles tearing and splitting the earth with their maniacal fury. Dedicated to providing my readers with breaking news, valuable commentary, opportunities for future research, and ways to exercise their minds, I feel that a special catch-up post is necessary. I was going to call it "Quick Hits™" because it seems kind of edgy and cool (two words I have hitherto been unable to apply to this blog), but then I wasn't sure if putting the trademark symbol next to a common phrase carries any sort of legal weight, and then after I thought about this a while I got bored of it anyway.

On to the Free-for-All of Facts:

FACT: Kyle S pointed me to this article about rising food costs affecting the price of my delicious, delicious pizza. Here is the relevant bit [emphasis mine]:

Most restaurants have been hit hard by rising ingredient costs, as have consumers at the grocery store. The cost of grocery store food increased about 5 percent in the last year, with nearly every type of food going up except for a few items like oranges, bacon and lettuce.

Most of you probably immediately thought, "I am sad for my pizza, but thank God the Baco is safe!" I did too, and I'm extremely proud that the Baco can help people inflation-proof their food portfolio.

FACT: Speaking of inflation-proofing and portfolios and other economic-y stuff, I discovered that I am under constant surveillance by the Motley Fool. Here is the RSS header for this article:

Wealth is not all beer and Skittles.

Two things: 1) Wrong. 2) WHY ARE YOU SPYING ON ME, MOTLEY FOOL?! This is my exact diet whenever I am working at LG Theater. I haven't felt so paranoid since this article broke the very day after Colin and I invented the penny washer because we were too lazy to go to the store.

FACT: Look how much I'm worth in the sack:

SPECIAL PROMO CODE: mention "bac-log" for 25% off.

FACT: According to his ROFLCon bio, Brad Neely is working on a comedy novel about the American Civil War. This is really exciting news to me being that about half of the random stuff I say is influenced by [read: directly stolen from] Wizard People, Dear Readers.

FACT:

Also, click here.

FACT: Crap, back to work.

NEW FEATURE: Gratitude

I don't know about everyone else, but I think I have a little bit of a BABE Rally Team Name CHAMPIONSHIP emotional hangover (possibly part of a real hangover). I think Kyle S said it best:

Clapping my hands. Crying into them.

If I had to choose only one word to describe the events of the last five days, I would have to go with "Epic". If I had to choose only two words to describe the events of the last five days, I would go with "Epic" and, well, maybe I would see if I could trade the second word for italics and capitalization.

EPIC.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped my wayward BABE Rally team finally choose a name: There Will Be Bacon. This was certainly a lot more fun than I imagined. This is a little sad, but we probably could not have chosen a name without your help. You guys are the best. As a matter of fact, according to a recent scientific study conducted in my head just now, Bac-Log! readers are, on average, 13% more awesome and 17% more attractive (although 6% more likely to be seriously injured in a treasure-hunting related accident) than average blog readers.

I was going to present a special "1th Place" trophy to the ultimate winner of the BABE Rally Team Name CHALLENGE, but I feel like you guys deserve it more.Congratulations!!

I might do a special recap post of the legendary challenge later, but in the meantime, here is the final bracket. Also I need to score the brackets to determine who gets free ice cream!

Again, HUGE thanks to everyone who participated in this craziness!

Victory

Babe Rally Team Name CHAMPIONSHIP!

This is it.

If you feel a charged quiver in your feet it is the very Earth itself beginning to shudder with excitement at this engagement of unassailable fortresses of name-itude vying for ultimate team-name supremacy. As these two stalwart engines of team-name resplendence lock horns amidst a cataclysmic fury of mutual destruction, we mere mortals are treated to bask in the radiance of their endless glory.

This. Is. IT.

I present to you the BABE Rally Team Name CHAMPIONSHIP!! 64 teams have been boiled and reduced down into a 2-team soup-base of pure awesomeness. These two remaining names have survived five grueling rounds of grinding competition under the hungry, searching eyes of millions* of astonished and terrified onlookers. These two teams stride now into the teeth of the Championship Round, but only one will walk out alive.

On one side we have Clap Your Hands Say Bacon, fresh off the merciless obliteration of this year's Cinderella story, Goingly Challenged, who shocked the world by taking down Final-Four favorite, Manwich. On the other side we have the well-balanced attack of There Will Be Bacon limping into the final round after narrowly edging this year's Rumpelstiltskin story, Dream Unicorn Sparkle Sparkle Squad. Two worthy opponents whose ultimate fate is in your hands.

Vote now on the sidebar. Tell the person next to you to vote. Tell all of your coworkers to vote. Tell your entire family to vote. Email your favorite teacher from elementary school and tell them to vote. Call an old lover and say you're sorry and ask if they'd like to get coffee sometime and also tell them to vote. Tell your barista to vote. Tell the crazy guy at the bus stop to vote. Call your Grandma for once and thank her for the sweater she made you for Christmas and promise to call her more and then tell her to vote. Rent a megaphone and crawl onto the roof of the tallest building near you and spread the word to vote. Borrow an Ouija board and contact your dead great-aunt and tell her to haunt the body of your least favorite sibling in order to vote. Tell your pet turtle or ferret to vote. THIS IS THAT IMPORTANT. This is the most important thing you will do today... no... this year... no... EVER.

You have until 10:00AM (PST) tomorrow to secure your immortality as a Voter in the annals of BABE Rally Team Name CHALLENGE lore. This is something you will be proud to tell your children about.

And.... GO!

UPDATE: Surrendering easily to the demands of people who want to know what the hell is going on here, here is an explanation of what this rally is all about and here is an introduction to the tournament.

*estimated

FINAL FOUR!

Whew! Almost there! The original field of 64 possible BABE Rally team names has been narrowed down to four Titans of Nameness, whose inspirational resilience in this most epic of challenges is the stuff of pure legend.

Vote on the Final Four on the sidebar to the right. Tell everyone you see at work, on the bus, in the cab, idling next to you at the stoplight, at home, and in your dreams to vote. Send an email to your entire address book at home and work. Post a bulletin or Myspace or Facebook or Livejournal or whatever telling people to vote. Voting will conclude at 10am PST tomorrow. Hurry!!

UPDATE: Here is the updated bracket.

Elite Eight!

After a weekend of intense sweet-sixteen team-name battles, the dust has settled to reveal the BABE Rally Team Name CHALLENGE ELITE EIGHT! You have until 2:00pm PST to vote on these epic match-ups on the sidebar. Vote! Tell your family, coworkers, friends, vendors, customers, telemarketers to vote. When you go out for lunch today tell the cashier, waiter, and busboy to vote. Shortly after 2:00pm PST we will reveal the FINAL FOUR match-ups available for voting over tonight and into tomorrow. Tomorrow may be the most important day in the history of time, for it is the BABE Rally Team Name CHAMPIONSHIP.

GO GO GO!

UPDATE: Here is the updated bracket!

Mobile blogging

Kid at bus stop: "mom, does it taste like penguin? Mom? Tell me if it
tastes like penguin, ok?"

-if not back in 72 hours, avenge
death

Sweet Sixteen!

The Sweet Sixteen round of the super-exciting BABE Rally Team Name CHALLENGE is up on the sidebar! Vote now! PASS IT ON! Tell everyone you see this weekend to vote. Polls will be open until 10am PST on Monday.

Here is the updated bracket.

This has got to be the best way of choosing a team name EVER.

ROUND 2!!!

Round 2 of X-Treme BABE Rally Team Name CHALLENGE is up! Vote on the sidebar. Tell your friends, family, coworkers, and parole officers to vote. We had an amazing response for round 1. KEEP IT UP!

UPDATE 1: Round 2 will wrap up at 3:45 PST (about 2 hours from now), after which I will post the Sweet-16, which will be available for voting over the weekend! It will probably conclude at 10:00am or so on Monday. I hope to then be able to deploy the Elite 8 and Final 4 on Monday, with the championship round coming on Tuesday. Stay tuned!

Oh, and we have two lovely ladies who were crazy enough to turn in brackets! Good luck to Courtney and Alison on their quest for an ice cream trip in the soon-to-be-named chariot!

UPDATE 2: Here is the updated bracket!

HUGE thanks to everyone who is indulging me on this crazy bracket idea! You guys are THE BEST!

BABE Rally Team Name CHALLENGE!!

Question: Have you ever had what seems like a really great idea when you're drunk but then it turns out that your idea requires wasting several hours at work when you actually have things to do and also your fingers are sore from copy-and-pasting in order to make 32 separate polls on Blogger? Just wondering.

BEHOLD: BABE Rally Team Name CHALLENGE!!

After diligently collecting suggested team names for our BABE Rally team, I had the stupid AWESOME idea to decide the final team name based on a NCAA -tourney style bracket. That's right, folks: Gather all of your work-mates around the water cooler and prepare to waste some time voting on a single-elimination team-naming challenge!!

Please vote now on the 32 match-ups on the sidebar of this blog. Full bracket is here. If you are really hardcore, you can download and fill out your own bracket and email it to me. The winner of the best bracket will win a free trip in our sweet-ass $1 Honda Civic (now running!) to go get ice cream!!

Tell all of your friends and coworkers to vote. First round voting ends at noon PST (two hours from now) Next round will be posted shortly thereafter.

GO GO GO!

UPDATE: I reset the poll-closing time to 1PM (PST) to give you all an extra hour to vote!

Kids < Pets < Other humans

For those of you who like the original Pet Vs Kid smack-down (read: ALL OF YOU):

Check out this dazzling sequel:

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA! Does anyone want me to save them a seat in hell?

Mobile blogging

ALERT: the silver Saturn in the Hooverville parking lot is about to
get towed. Also: drunk.

-if not back in 72 hours, avenge
death

OMG!

FRENCH-FRY-COATED BACON ON A STICK!

You can't out-clever THIS product name.

Sometimes, things make me laugh for no reason. Today, it was the Kit-In Box.

I think the reason why I love this picture is the cheesy infomercial before-and-after shots. Look at how sad the pre-Kit-In Box world is!

Kitty! You are depressing me so much! All you do is type "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"! What does your furry heart desire?

Fortunately everything is resolved in the end, thanks to Kit-In Box.

And everyone lives happily ever after.

Popcorn Shirts Are Magic (yes, yes they are)

Gmail sponsored link:

Popcorn Shirts Are Magic - www.popcornshirt.com - One Size Fits Everybody Beautifully Wholesale Pricing Available

I just can't bring myself to follow the link because it will probably only ruin it for me. I'm going to let this one live forever unspoiled in my imagination. Also, next time I purchase something wholesale I am going to ask, "yes, but is it beautifully wholesale?"

NEW FEATURE: Desperate plea for help

As many of you know, next month Vik, Kyle H, Jason and I will be participating in the most amazing event of all time; the BABE Rally. The short story for those who we haven't gushed on and on about this to yet is that the BABE Rally (Big Apple to Big Easy) is a beater car trip from New York to New Orleans in a car that costs less than $250. Since we live in Seattle, this will also require driving our sweet $1 1987 Honda Civic to New York first. All in all we expect nothing less of this experience than a spectacular adventure full of non-stop mirth, merriment, and self-fulfillment.

So far everything is going rather well except for one important detail (two, if you count the car not running yet); we don't have a team name. You would think that among the four of us we would be able to come up with something clever that we all agree on, but we've been "trying" for months with no success. I think the primary problem is that we are sort of obsessed with our name being the perfect mixture of wit and understated cleverness that we have created a standard to which we will never ourselves be able to meet. Whereas I'm sure that we have many skills between the four of us (like eating and making snarky comments), naming things is apparently not one of them.

You are probably thinking, "what a tragic situation! Is there anything I can do to help?" Yes there is, and thank you for your concern. Here's what you can do:

• Think of awesome teams names (you can look at other team names for inspiration)
• Post your awesome team names in the comments
• Pass along this desperate plea to others

Some [read: ALL] of you are probably thinking, "what's in it for me? As a team-naming mercenary, I demand payment for my services." Check out this awesome suite of amazing prizes that could be yours upon our selection of your team name:

• Warm fuzzy feeling which you should probably get checked out
• A homemade tee-shirt featuring original art inspired by your team name
• Jason will wash your car or bicycle*
• Our friendship [note: friendship awarded retroactively only]
• You will achieve fame as our team's "Patron Saint", unless there is a more obviously applicable patron saint in which case you will receive a consolation prize of a bag of fake gold. [note: pending availability, "fake gold" may be substituted by "Oreos" and "bag" may be substituted by "partial bag"]
  

Perhaps you are shy or worried that your team-name ideas are not good enough. To assuage these fears, you can be assured that your suggestions will be better than my only to-date contribution of "Dream Unicorn Sparkle Sparkle Squad". If you are worried that we will make fun of your ideas, you may rest assured that yes, we will make fun of your ideas, but it will probably not be to your face and may only involve snickering.

Let's get us a team name!

*Not confirmed

Experiment in mobile blogging

Yes! This is an experiment to see if I can mobile blog a picture via email. Here is a photo of the oscar meyer wienermobile doing laps in the penske parking lot across the street from my work:

Bacon Spacesuit

Kyle S pointed me to this comic. Instead of a rigorous review, I'm just going to bullet-point the important highlights. Think of this as a Cliff's Notes guide to this comic:

• Bacon spacesuit
• Bacon spacesuit is self-defense against pandas
• "Brent Sienna and his Amazing Nitrate-Free Porknicolor Dreamcoat"
• Porknicolor
• Porknicolor
• Concept/Script by Wesley Crusher
• Even creepy anthropomorphic pigs enjoy binging on bacon
• Porknicolor
• Wesley Crusher
• Bacon spacesuit

I'm not really sure I get the plot, but it's probably because this is the kind of high culture that is only taught in the AP classes at Starfleet Academy.

OH NOES: we has polling fail

Five votes. Five votes to determine the outcome of the most anticipated death match of all time. This is no sample size- this is a travesty! And worst of all, despite the odd number of voters, we somehow managed to end up with a tie.

Fail. Epic polling fail.

I just don't know if I have the energy to keep polling after this crushing defeat, but I think I owe it to myself to try one more time.

Please vote on the poll to the right.

Another gift idea...

Anyone? Maybe as an "Administrative Professionals Day" gift on the 23rd? (You don't have to be administrative OR professional to enjoy this holiday, do you?)

He he he, I love his agape little beer-opener mouth and awkwardly gratuitous beer dispensing wand. He he he. And his little hardhat. Safety First! He he he. COME ON PEOPLE I WOULD LOVE HIM SO MUCH.

[trumpets] BACON LINKS [more trumpets]

NSFW Bacon bra!!!! (thanks Nadia!)
Meatscapes
Meat Water "High Efficiency Survival Beverage"
Homemade hot dog assembly machine
Homemade hot dog maker
Meat cereals
Bacon Cream Cheese Pinwheels (thanks Laurel!)
Maple Bacon Lollipops
Candied Bacon Ice Cream
Bacon Griddlecakes
Sappymoosetree's bacon Flickr set, which is AMAZING
Bacon cup followup with exciting future bacon cup advice and naming suggestions

Meat on, my friends, meat on.

Photo by Flickr user Sappymoosetree

NEW FEATURE: kids

OK, I have to get this story off my chest before I forget about it. I just got home from the grocery store where I witnessed an 8 or 9 year old boy approach the meat aisle and begin rapid-fire pummeling a poor defenseless ham. Like, I couldn't even see his arms they were moving so fast. I tried to remain calm and carry on, but then his mom started yelling at him, "HEY BILLY*! I TOLD YOU NOT TO HIT THE MEAT!" Billy* slowed down for a couple of seconds and contemplated this advice before re-engaging the enemy meat, this time accompanied by an awesome machine-gun sound. Seriously, I think this kid has a promising career in sound-effects. And boxing. Against hams.

*the names in this story have been changed to protect young meat-punchers, and also because his mom's voice was pretty shrill and I couldn't really distinguish all of the syllables.

I've been doing it wrong

Look! This is how the internet says to pour ketchup:
What? I'm supposed to hit the bottle on my fist? But that's where the food is! Am I supposed to have my fist in my food? *SIGH* I guess I've been doing it wrong.

NEW FEATURE: Quiz

Here is a quiz for you, dear readers. You may think of it as a poll but with less work required to participate.

1.) On a scale of "1" to "I wish I was dead", how fucked up is this couch:

a) 2
b) cabbage
c) where did you put the rest of the internet? I want to go there instead.
d) eyeball gouge
e) FUZZY
f) I ate paste

2.) This couch is better than the tiger couch (T/F):a) True - I love cross-eyed, hump-backed, scary-ass dog couches. With chains.
b) False - I wish I was dead. Or whoever made this couch was dead. Dead before they made this couch.
c) Ice cream

3. With the option of a $400k, 30-year-fixed loan at 5.75% with 0 points or 5.5% with 0.965 points ($3860), considering that the tax deduction on points only applies in the first year of the loan as opposed to the perpetual tax deduction on the additional interest from the higher rate, and the alternate savings rate is currently only around 3% but with possible upward movement even over a short time-horizon, at what point do the benefits of the lower rate outweigh the initial cash outlay required to purchase the points (assuming a 28% tax bracket)?

a) True
b) Do you think they have a polar bear couch? Or a buffalo couch?
c) chk chk chk chk [tank motion] chk chk chk chk
d) 4.168 years
e) Half-man on a skateboard

Answers will be posted at a later date, but feel free to leave your ideas in the comments.