Pets,com was an online enterprise that sold pet supplies. It was founded in February of 1999 and went belly up when the dot-com bubble burst in November of 2000. The spokesperson for pets.com was a sock puppet. The sock puppet commercials were extremely popular. The pets.com sock puppet appeared in ads during the 2000 Super Bowl. I got my Pets,com sock puppet before the dot-com bubble burst.
Rocketships. The golden age of science fiction is generally described as the period from the 1930’s to the late 1950’s. My adolescence was spent reading authors like Ben Bova, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Lester Del Ray, Frank Herbert, Robert Siverberg, Clifford D. Simak, and my favorite Andre Norton. The golden age of science fiction was all about technological adventure. Heroes starred in space-operas and futurists told us what the future would bring. Well, the future never arrived. The golden age of science fiction was replaced with tales of the apocalypse, many different variations on the end of civilization, and with tales of living in the post-apocalyptic worlds.
Spiny Norman is probably the most famous hedgehog in the world. The Piranha brothers, Doug and Dinsdale, were career criminals in London. They were born, on probation, in 1929. They formed a gang, which they called “The Gang”, and began their reign of terror with extortion, violence, and the use of sarcasm. They were very fond of nailing people’s heads to the floor or sometimes to coffee tables. They were also known to screw people’s pelvises to cake-stands. Dinsdale was very frightened of Spiny Norman an (apparently) imaginary hedgehog that lived in a hangar at Luton airport. Spiny Norman was said to be twelve feet from the tip of his snout to his anus. I have a beanie baby hedgehog and a portrait of a hedgehog made for me by my daughter.
I blame a lot of my problems in life on Carl Sagan. I went to college as a Physics major because of Carl Sagan. I thought I was going to be an astrophysicist and by studying the cosmos I was going to learn the “truth”. I was going to learn the scientific truth behind the meaning of life. I was going to answer the age old question – why are we here? It didn’t pan out.
My alien collection. I don’t believe. I don’t believe in much of anything but I like to speculate. On or about July 8th, 1947 something crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, and debris was recovered by the U.S. military. It was either a high-altitude surveillance balloon or it was an alien spacecraft complete with alien corpses. The incident gave birth to whole lot of conspiracy theories. My alien fetus in glowing extra-terrestrial amniotic fluid isn’t real. It is a prop.
The X-Files. “The truth is out there” and “Trust no one” were catchphrases for one of the greatest television dramas of all time. The series ran from 1993 to 2002. We were introduced to the characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. We got conspiracy theories and the Lone Gunmen. Series creator Chris Carter acknowledged a big debt to the 1974 TV series “Kolchak; The Night Stalker” which starred Darren McGavin as a newspaper reporter.
My wife refers to my computer room as "Scott World". When she's complaining to her girlfriends about what a geek I am (she married me) she says, "I think he should be able to launch the space shuttle with all the computer crap he's got in there”. No, not yet, I tell her. And while someday I maybe could launch the shuttle I’d certainly never be able to land it.
Scott world
CatDog was a cartoon that aired on Nickelodeon from 1998 to 2004. CatDog was half Cat and half Dog conjoined at the middle. We knew from various episodes that they shared a digestive tract. If Dog ate something spicy then Cat would get heartburn. The show used to drive my wife Karen insane because she said that while they had intestines they had no anus and so nowhere to poop. She said that they would have just died and not survived long after their birth. I argued that they were a cartoon and cartoons don’t require an anus. And it was a damn funny cartoon at that. For a long time my stuffed CatDog resided on my desk at work. They kept me company and shared in my misery. Whenever I went on vacation I took CatDog with me because CatDog hated my job as much as I did and I couldn’t stand to leave those guys behind.
Bananas in Pyjamas was an Australian children’s show that became popular in the U.S. The two main characters were the bananas B1 and B2. There were three teddies Amy, Lulu, and Morgan. And there was a rat called Rat in a Hat, “Oh, cheese and whiskers!” When the show came to America the pyjamas were changed to pajamas. I don’t know why but I really enjoyed this show. My kids wouldn’t watch it because it was too juvenile for them. So, I can’t say I watched the show because of my kids. I liked the way the bananas talked. I have a stuffed B1 and a stuffed B2.
Godzilla and Taco Bell. In 1998 the Roland Emmerich film take on Godzilla was being promoted by Taco Bell. I have really fond memories of time spent at Taco Bell during this period of my life. We had “Taco Bell” night at least once a week. I really really wanted to win the Taco Bell million dollars. I wanted to win the Taco Bell million so bad that I confessed to Karen that I would rather win a million dollars from Taco Bell than two million dollars from the NY State lottery. Karen characterized my statement outlining the depth of my desire to win the Taco Bell contest as “just plain stupid” and it actually led to a fight. Fortunately I never had to choose between a million or two as it was always just an intellectual exercise. I loved the little Taco Bell dog and his commercial where he tried to capture Godzilla with free tacos as a lure. That is a true American classic.
The boys from South Park. The Comedy Central TV series “South Park” is truly inspired comedy. The single greatest piece of political satire I have ever seen in my entire life aired on October 27th just before the presidential election of 2004. The children of South Park elementary are forced to elect a new school mascot after the school is attacked by the eco-terrorists of PETA. As Kyle says, “I don’t want to vote if I have to choose between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.” The boys learn an important life lesson; every election is ALWAYS a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
Does anyone really know what time it is? That was a hit song by the band Chicago. Well, I really know what time it is because Scott World has an atomic clock. An atomic clock is a type of clock that uses an atomic resonance frequency standard as its timekeeping element. The Scott World clock is actually a radio clock. Many retailers market radio clocks as "atomic clocks". The radio signals they receive usually come from true atomic clocks but they are not atomic clocks themselves. Modern radio clocks are referenced to atomic clocks. The radio clock gets high-quality atomic-derived time using inexpensive equipment. Radio clocks are not appropriate for high-precision scientific work. Close enough for the work I do though.
Where does Khan Tiki Mon create this nifty website?