Do you know that absurd “Cami Secret” product advertised on that even-more-absurd commercial?  No?  Well, neither did I, until I found out my In-Real-Life friend Allison Mosier stars in it:

Three days ago a hilarious spoof of the commercial was posted to YouTube:

In just that little time, it has almost surpassed the actual ad (there’s a term for this phenomenon that I’ve forgotten) and is on its way viral.

Allison?  Is not only an awesome sport about this, but would like to be the actual person to appear on SNL for the (inevitable) spoof.  There’s a Facebook petition to get this to happen.  Just go and “Like” it.  That’s really not a lot to ask of you, right, if you were tickled either by the original or the spoof?

Again, here’s the link!

Referring to my beard, that is.  The quote I gave to the original inquirer was “a full beard in two weeks and a very full beard in three.”  Use of the words is up in the air, but this is 22 days:

Take midnight on the day I was born, in the time zone I was born, as my personal “epoch”

As of this timestamp — 2010-08-19 23:51:40 UTC — I am one billion seconds old.  I believe that takes everything into account, including leap seconds and Daylight Savings Time; but if not, one might need to subtract 00:00:15 off the number.

Even measured in microliters, a DYA attempt would be very poorly-advised.  But if anyone has reasonable suggestions, I’m up for it.

New adventure time!  I’ve gotta be out of my apartment by the 1st, and I have NO PLANS yet!

“They said timing was everything. Made him want to be everywhere.”

and

“And my ties are severed clean.  The less I have the more I gain.  Off the beaten path I’ll reign.”

Eventually Galen will figure out where the bug in his Ruby on Rails code is that explains why each of my stories seems to get hugely more hits — and insanely quickly — compared to almost any other author’s, but until then, I will revel in the delight that this one — “A Tensile Moment” — seems likewise to be soaring in site views.

Enjoy!

When Niall was three years old, and he would be inconsolable, I would try picking him up, turning him upside down, laughing, and tickling him.  Low-tech, and sometimes it failed.  But sometimes it worked.

When an adult is inconsolable, the techniques that occur to me are not much more sophisticated.  Whether I do or not, I am tempted to try a joke.  Being inconsolable is scary for me.

But is that remedy or manipulation?  Am I trying to find purchase to generate enough leverage to change the other person?  Give me a place to stand and a joke funny enough and I will move his or her world?

Maybe.  Perhaps it is an attempted remedy for me, and my fears.  It could make things worse; I always fear that, too.  And would distraction be a remedy, after all?  Maybe it would just hide the sadness for a bit.

Well, maybe that’s the point.  If time heals all wounds, perhaps that time would best be spent laughing.

(Three Word Wednesday is an effort to create a distributed online writers’ collective by, once per week, giving a uniform prompt to writers.  This week, the words were joke, remedy, and leverage.)

My third effort at Six Minute Story is up, and is entitled “A Lonely, Lonely Wasteland”.  This strikes me as a bit of a weak title, and it’s moitié-moitié among the readers who have contacted me so far whether I made any sense in using the word “forked” as a metaphor.

One clicks a box, sees a prompt (in this case an image), and, simultaneously, a 6 minute countdown timer starts.  In the case of this image, what I thought was a forked stick was … um … a pair of legs.  So the story will make more sense if one “fixes” the image.  To match.

This message is primarily useful for young men who are reading this (although young women should have an idea of how to help select the appropriate size for their male partners.)  Young men, please pay attention.  This could be some of the most important advice you ever receive.

The most-cited figure for latex condom breakage under proper use is 0.4% – 2.3%.  If you have just begun to have sex, and you are seeing rates on the high end of that, or especially a dramatically higher breakage rate — say, upwards of 10% — the most likely solution is that you need to wear a “Magnum” or “Large” size.  In my experience, no one thinks to tell young men this.

I think the main culprit is that for most young hetero men, the only erect penises they have seen, other than their own, are in pornographic films.  Almost without exception, professional pornographic actors have sizes far in excess of the mean and median of the human population — and I assure you that they are wearing larger sizes (when they do wear them — an upsetting topic for another thread).  A male porn star’s erect penis size is no more representative of typical men than female porn stars’ breast size (many young men don’t realize this either, but that is an upsetting topic for yet another thread).

In general, research shows that atypically long penises have a higher rate of slippage failures, and atypically wide penises have a higher rate of breakage failures.  The penis circumferance for which standard condoms in the United States are intended is 5″ (~13cm).  The formal measurement is the average of the circumferance at the base, in the middle of the shaft, and directly below the glans, but don’t let formal measurements keep you from taking this measurement.  Take this measurement as soon as possible.  It is important — it could change, or even, save your life, to know the proper condom size you need.

Don’t use an excuse that you need to buy a fabric tape.  The cord on your earbuds will suffice.  Don’t use an excuse of not having a ruler.  If you have a piece of printer paper, that will do.  Fold it in half lengthwise.  5″ is a half inch shorter than the folded paper along that axis.

I don’t have any idea the range of sizes, outside the median, for which the condoms are considered appropriate.  But if it’s not even close, you need to investigate larger options.

Thanks for paying attention.

This has been a præternaturally wonderful day, with an even awesomerer end.  I’ve written about it scattered about various sites, and I’ll consolidate it all tomorrow, probably — for my own later reference, if nothing else — but I wanted so kinda *sigh* in satisfaction here at mcgees.org, and to thank those blog readers — including today’s new ones — that helped make today so great.  You all rock.

When I shaved my beard a week ago, I got a number of responses.  I was told it took a “little” age off my face.  I was told it took “10 years off my face”, and, by a freshman-year-of-college roommate, that I looked like that 16-year-old boy from that year.

I was told by someone that, as much as she hates facial hair, and even given that most of the time we were close I had been clean-shaven, that I looked bizarre without it.

I was told I looked scary without it.

I was told that it was “just like a man” to grow a beard and then shave it arbitrarily.

I was told by n people, where n was surprisingly large, that I looked much cuter with the beard.  n-1 of those comments were by women.

I got exactly one comment that I looked better without it.

But all of those, as interesting data points, were entirely outweighed by the fact that I looked strange to myself, and that I really missed what it did to the shape of my face, and I missed being able to stroke it thoughtfully.  (Bearded men do that not as an affectation.  It’s more like having a worrystone in our pockets, and turns into a tic.)

I announced that I was growing it back.  And I got two inquiries — from women, of course — wondering how long it took to grow a beard.  One would be an answer by email.  Two — blame my education if you wish — suggested a study.

So, skip this post, of course, if you don’t care.  But I decided to document it.

I have the first six days’ pictures prepared, which I will put in the comments, so that it doesn’t overwhelm people who read this on a feed.

So, here we go:

ScratchDate.com: A Place for People Who Enjoy Dating Cats is a hilarious site ironically exploring the tropes of online dating.  It is (probably?) SFW.  I am much less sure if it is “Safe for Sanity” or “Safe for Brains”.

You can contribute your own, if you have the sort of mind good at combining Rule 34, lolcats, and The Simpsons.

To x-post this to Facebook or not to post this to Facebook?

This is so worth a whole post.

At my pharmacy today, the pharmacist (himself, and not a tech, as is more typical) was helping a customer and was quite embarrassed that he didn’t remember her name.  The sentiment he meant to express was that he spent so much of his day on the pharmaceuticals side of his job that personal relationships fell by the wayside, and that he was sad about that.

But what he said was “I’m sorry, my head is so full of drugs that I can’t always remember people’s names.”  He was a very good sport, if rather embarrassed, when he realized how it came out sounding.

The best review of my new comedy show was “My face still laughs from hurting.”  Granted, the reviewer was a jovial masochist with ADD who had wandered off-topic, but I’m hoping if we flash the review fast enough people might switch the words around.

It will go well alongside the reviews “Very amusing that McGee was able to find someone to produce it”, which we’re editing down to the first two words, and “Four stars — obviously — turned down the leading role, before McGee was forced to attempt carrying the show with his pathetic performance.”  We are likewise truncating that one.

(Any readers good at drawing laurel leaves?  I can pay you in 2-for-1 ticket coupons.)

I don’t have a comedy show.  I just thought this was clever.