Piggy stopped leaving the house when I started nursery school. Now he only comes out for very special occasions—like my first blood donation.

I should start by explaining that the last time I tried donating blood (sometime last year) I was disqualified under dubious circumstance. The Red Cross has a history of dubious disqualification, in case you didn't know. Most of their elibiligity requirements  make sense but their ban on donations from any male who has had sexual contact with another male since 1977 is grounded in homophobia, not science. Needless to say, they were totally excited about my heterosexual female blood despite my record of unprotected sexual contact with males (monogamous, tested and clean—not that they asked).

On donation day everything looked fine on paper, but when the nurse sensed my fear she told me I didn't have to go through with it. She asked if I was going to faint (hope not) and told me I could still take a gift bag and snacks even if I backed out. Talk about misreading motivation: I was there for the courage and honor, not the blood-cell plush-toy and Nutter Butter fun-pack. When I assured her "no no, I want to do this!" it occurred to me this might fall into the category of "being difficult." (Potential-fainters are unpopular on the blood bank circuit, probably for good reason, and I was neither backing down nor bucking up).

The nurse pricked my finger and announced that my blood's iron level was the smallest possible increment below acceptability (we're talking hundredths decimal-place here). I'm sure she was fudging it, because I eat enough spinach to shit nails, but I wasn't about to argue with someone who could potentially hook me up and drain me dry. (They'd find me tossed in the corner, skin lifeless and slack, my blood bagged, shelved, and bound for transfusion into those less fortunate, stubborn and squeamish. "Oh her?" the nurse would say. "She insisted I hook her up, and she was such a piece of work I decided to leave it in...") I turned down the goody-bag and sheepishly accepted their offer to swab the roof of my mouth with a giant q-tip to enter my cells into a database of potential bone marrow donors.

In retrospect I'm glad the Red Cross donation didn't work out. I got too entranced by altruistic motivation to realize that donating blood to them would violate my policy against sharing fluids with homophobes. Yesterday when I saw a poster advertising a Stanford Blood Center Drive at work I decided to sign up because they're separate from the Red Cross and although their website FAQ notes that you're ineligible to donate if you've "engaged in activities that may put you at risk for AIDS," their eligibility requirements section defines their grounds for HIV/AIDS disqualification as "You are a person with symptoms or laboratory evidence of HIV virus." The fact that this text (unlike all the rest on that page) appears in boldface gives me the impression that Stanford differs from the Red Cross on the matter.

I planned to ask about the details of this today, and was pretty nervous about the whole situation. I had a big breakfast and arrived early with a cup of tea and a freshly washed orange to stave off any fainting. And I opened the door and found the room empty. And I realized I was a week early. Looks like Piggy's coming to the office again next Thursday...

Who would've guessed that the most disturbing find from my first trip to Japantown would be a 2009 Silicon Valley mousepad calendar? 

The other day I was listening to this and this and then Pandora showed me an ad for this. I don't know how granular they get with their ad targeting (educated guess: not very) so I'm chalking this gold up to chance.

I was enjoying The United States of Logos and suddenly realized—aha!—why the new Stop&Shop logo looked so familiar (and yet so wrong). The New England institution's reinvented identity seems to be riffing off (or ripping off) Georgia's Bureau of Tourism. Or is my paranoid yankee mind imagining things?

Click the little thumbnails to see both logos for Stop&Shop (old and new) and the state of Georgia

(download)

Click here to download:

New_StopShop_Logo_Must_Die.zip (24 KB)

Just because I'm friends with a ton of assholes who mock other people's grammar fails doesn't mean I don't occasionally seek a little something on the side. So I wandered through the peanut galleries of the world wide web and dredged up this for your perusal:  The Gallery Of "Misused" Quotation Marks.

This site won me over with its hilarious content and the fact that it was last updated in July of 2000. It's a little museum of the internet! Click on over and remember what it was like to live in a simpler time—in a world of straightforward frames and background images, without ubiquitous Flash animation, where instead of subscribing to an RSS feed you would give out your email address to receive notification when the the site was next updated (somewhere, someone has been waiting almost nine years for that).

Sure, it's not as flashy as the more recent and popular "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. There are no "images" and it's impossible to leave "comments." But there are gems in them there frames. Behold just a few of the many that caused me to make an ass of myself by giggling on the commute home:

On one of our comment cards, a customer wrote the following:
Laura and Joann are always so very professional and courteous "human being" type people.

A local clinic advertised in the paper as follows:
"Prostate Screenings"

Saw this one on a freeway in Houston:
ROAD "WORK" AHEAD

Every greeting card that I receive from my Aunt Joan and Uncle Bruce is addressed to "John" and signed, "Aunt Joan & Uncle Bruce."
What do they think my real name is? And who are the cards really from?

Our local pub in McKeesport, PA (outside Pittsburgh) has some unusual "offerings" as well as some misused quotations, such as:
Fish Sandwich "Haddock"; "Polish Style" Halushki; "Ho-Baked Rolls and Bread" for sale.

Here's one that got my stomach churning. Seen in a local grocery flyer in Charlotte, NC, the bold proclamation:
"Save Big" on"Fresh Meats"!!

A sign in the deli I used to work in read:
"Hot" "Italian" "Sausage"

I got this "auto"-reply e-mail from Bizrate.com:
Just responding to let you know that a "human" reads each and every comment to BizRate.com!

As a tangentially related closing note: don't you think http://peanutgallery.com would be a clever domain name for a collection of funny stuff? Unfortunately it appears to be parked, but GoDaddy recommends a few alternatives such as http://peanutgallery.net (Premium domain price of $988/year) and a couple sweet bargains that someone ought to snatch up soon:

Out of the box, Android uses one LED alert for all notifications. New missed calls, voicemail, SMS and email all trigger the same blinking green light--projecting a stream of ambient information that could be a lot more, well, informative.

Enter "Missed Call," a nifty little app that lets you customize LED notifications for incoming calls, missed calls, SMS, and Bluetooth by changing the color and blinking interval for each. It's not perfect (as I'll explain below) but you know what this app does? It makes the status quo (one notification for everything) just a little bit better. And I am no enemy of incremental progress.

Nitty gritty: Version 0.4.9 doesn't yet support customization for voicemail or email notifications, but nothing's stopping you from keeping the default green LED notifications for those. Also, when multiple notifications appear at once it looks like the earliest notification's settings trump the others, e.g. if I miss a call (pink) and then receive an email (default green) I'll only see the pink. In a case like this there should be pink-green blinking, with orange thrown into the mix if I suddenly receive a call, etc.

Will "Missed Call" tell you exactly what's up with your Android device at a glance? Not quite (not yet, at least). But its mixed signals reveal more than the one-size-fits-all notifications--so hurrah!

Submit bugs, share feedback and learn about new updates through http://twitter.com/missed_cal

I recently linked to a clever set of visualizations showing most common locations referenced in Craigslist Missed Connections for each state, broken out by gender ratio (m4m, m4f, etc). Brett wondered why the visualization shows "home" as the top Missed Connection location for some states (good question).

My stab at what's going on: the person who put this together ranked all the location-word frequencies from the whole batch of postings, including all mentions of "home" where posters refer to something other than the spot where the missed connection actually happened. This could be considered an oversight, but it also hints at something interesting...

"Home" ranks as the number-one Missed Connection location for a few states in the W4M category (Texas, California and Vermont) but not in any the other gender categories, except for M4M in WA. I decided to take a look at the Dallas listings to get a super-tiny sample of the Missed Connections falling into this location-bucket.

Of the ten most-recent listings I found, none involved people actually meeting each other at home. Instead, many involved "missed connections" of a deeper sense: heartbreak, betrayal, and revenge--not just sideways glances at the Dairy Queen and L.A. Fitness.

Why are more hetero women in TX, CA and VT posting so many Missed Connections mentioning "home" instead of Wal-Mart, Target, Starbucks, and the other big-box cruising spots so popular in other states? It is just a hiccup in the data? Mysterious...

Now, in case you were looking for a few more reasons to be glad you do not hang your hat in the lone star state*, I present for your perusal the ten most-recent Dallas Craiglist Missed Connections listings that include references to "home":

*Full disclosure: I am Texas-phobic, despite knowing and very much liking several real live Texans (Texas-phobic != Texan-phobic) and should warn you that reading these postings could increase your Texas-phobia as it did mine. However, if you are into "playas," pick-up trucks or doing "the wild thing all night long," then you might feel differently (and also might consider making your home in Texas). Or you could move to my neighborhood in San Francisco, where "home" listings aren't so grim but do include postings like this:

Jan 9 - To the guy who caught me having sex in his driveway - 25 - (mission district)
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/mis/986319306.html

Anyway, on to the Dallas listings! Each of these subject-lines is begging to be turned into a song. I didn't cherrypick to sweeten the slice of data, either; these were just the 10 newest when I checked:

Re: you only care about me when you are drunk - w4m (FTW)

Reply to: pers-989320217@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-11, 9:38PM CST

Sounds like my guy....or soon to be ex I should say. I was hoping you would take him off my hands but kudos to you for realizing a playa is a playa is a playa and you could be in the position of the girlfriend that sits at home while he does all his dirty deeds.
   
***
   
Patiently Waiting...... - w4m - 36 (My House)
Reply to: pers-989530580@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-12, 6:45AM CST

Just want to let you know that I can't wait for you to come back home.

I hope we can start something great when you get back.

And if not, then I hope we can still be great friends.

Til then, I love talking to you as much as I possibly can.
 
***

You only care about me when you are drunk - w4m (FTW Old Enough)
Reply to: pers-988256125@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-10, 10:50PM CST

The only time you say sweet things or really care about me is after you've been drinking. When you are home with your girl it's nothing. I've figured that out, and am stupid that I haven't seen it before. Thank GOD I didn't actually cheat with you. I've screwed a lot of things up in my life, but am thankful I didn't fall for you and cheat with you. Stop the flirting talk, cause I know what you are and who you are. God help your girlfriend.

***

I dont understand - w4m - 34 (Home)
Reply to: pers-985791724@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-08, 10:15PM CST

I dont know what happened, why you decided I wasnt good enough for you but I guess I'll just have to get over it. I almost have...I guess my ego is bruised. You knew what I was about, what I looked like, etc.....I thought we had fun together. I guess thats what I get for thinkin! hahaha Good luck in whatever you do but I hope one day you'll realize the way you ended things so abruptly with no explanation was a mean thing to do..........oh well.....

***

To The Woman That Moved My Husband In
Reply to: pers-985433857@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-08, 4:32PM CST

Well, you do not know that I exist, because you were lied to and told that he was divorced, guess what? He's not divorced, and he is back in my home. But, thank you for giving him a wake up call that the grass was not greener, and money doesn't buy happiness even though from what I was told, you tried keeping him with your money. I must thank you for trying to take good care of him while he got his crap together and realized a few things. If you had known his track record and how many times he had done this, maybe you wouldn't have gotten involved. Good luck to you.

***
   
re: oh, baby - w4m
Reply to: pers-984461978@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-07, 8:54PM CST

On second thought you need to move on, I met someone last night at the club and went home and stayed overnight. Needless to say we did the wild thing all night long and was even late for work today and am never late. I think I'm in love

***   
   
RaceTrac at 380 and Airport - w4m
Reply to: pers-989487492@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-12, 3:17AM CST

2 in the morning. We were the only two pumping gas. You said hi to me as you walked out of the gas station.
Kept thinking about why I didn't talk to you my whole drive home.
Here's your chance... :)

***
   
atmos energy guy - m4m - 48 (lancaster)
Reply to: pers-984452690@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-07, 8:46PM CST

You came inside my home to do something for me, i wish i could have done something for you . I know this is a LONG shot but you were just incredibly hot, i would have loved to have brought you to my bedroom and undressed you , if you ever want to get together strictly on the DL please let me know. Let me know what you came in for so I will know it is you .

***

Missing Home - m4w - 45 (East Side)
Reply to: pers-984377050@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-07, 7:33PM CST

I'm overseas and missing home. I would like to email back and forth trading sexy stories anonomously, married preferred. We will never meet, just trade stories.

***
   
lube me up - m4m - 42 (grapevine,dfw apt)
Reply to: pers-984229322@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-01-07, 5:24PM CST

just got home from having oil changed by tyler and cute short redhead. you guys are so hot--would luv to play--let me know, i was the 1 with a white truck