Oh joy. A scam.

Among the items in my mail today was an envelope that contained a "Notice of renewal/New order" for "Consumer Reports."

I do subscribe to "Consumer Reports" magazine, but I was immediately suspicious of this item because it looked nothing like renewal notices I have received in the past for it. So, I found the customer service phone number for the magazine, and they quickly confirmed it's bogus.

Before I started this entry, I looked up on Google the name of the firm that is on the return envelope: "Magazine Payment Services." The first page of results had several items from other publications that had similar stories, such as this.

So, immediately after I post this I'm walking to my shredder and running this so-called renewal notice through it.

That's something you don't see every day...

...or at least I haven't seen it before, that is. I'm just back from an exercise walking session, and while out I saw something like one of these being worn by the driver of a motorcycle that went past.

Yes, a motorcycle helmet that has a mohawk. That was rather startling, I must say.

(Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page I linked to, by the way.)

Creative license

There's a commercial for Kohler that has an architect walking a client couple through his office, during which he shows them photographs of his work. He then takes them to his office and he asks "Now, what can I do for you?" The woman pulls a (Kohler) faucet out of her purse, plunks it down on the architect's desk and says "Design a house around this."

That last bit is not what this entry is about.

When the architect is showing the photographs of his work, one of them he describes as "...headquarters in Kyoto."

BZZZT. Wrong! That is the very unique main library at the University of California at San Diego. Which is formally called the Geisel Library after Audrey and Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss). (See the link for a UCSD page about the building and links to photos of it.)

That's an interesting bit of creative license Kohler's ad agency did.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Found a page on a UCSD alumni site that also takes note of this.

License Plate Watch 6

Seen while driving home from work today: "ODN GOD".

I did a Google search for "ODN" to see if that would give me a clue about the meaning of this plate, but didn't see anything that immediately made sense when used with "GOD".

So, another license plate mystery!

Whoa

Image via Wikipedia

This morning when I stopped at my neighborhood post office I was amazed to see in the parking lot a Ford Pinto. Before today I had not see a Pinto, in working condition or not, in many, many years.

My amazement was not just because the Pinto was basically a vehicle of the 1970s. And now the history lesson: the things became infamous because their fuel tanks had a nasty tendency to rupture and start a fire in the spilled fuel if the car was hit by a rear-end collision.

Due to that I would have expected all Pintos to have been retired to junkyards long ago. Think again!

License Plate Watch 5

Seen yesterday on what appeared to be a relatively new Jaguar: "XSKUZ ME"

Heh.

Keeping one step ahead of the ants

Last week I discovered ants were returning to my kitchen. After doing some observing of their movements I realized where they had to be coming from: A slight opening between a wall and the counter backsplash.

Caulk to the rescue!