Delayed Opening

March 28, 2008

BARRE, Vermont – The heavily-ballyhooed grand opening of the Plabnox Cures General Store has been pushed back for reasons. Please abide by the good doctors during this pivotal time in lives.

Posting a Comment

Plablognox has recently changed its comment settings so that readers without google accounts may post comments.

Plabnox Health Alert

The good doctors have recently conducted a study, the results of which show that reading in bed causes cancer.

Iraq War Fifth Anniversary Greeting Cards

It’s the wooden fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, and Plablognox is proud to bring you the first collection of greeting cards celebrating our love affair with this noble war.

Just click on the card(s) you wish to give out and you will be redirected to the full-size, printer-friendly version(s).

Bun in the Oven

A fortnight ago I gave birth to eleven healthy, plump cinnamon buns (the twelfth was too small to survive gestation). Labor began Sunday and lasted a mere four hours; they all emerged from my oven simultaneously while the paterfamilias slumbered in the boudoir. As I gazed upon their white, powdery domes, I grew hungry—probably from the birthing process. I quickly slathered them in the sweet, warm liquid I had created while they developed, and then I took a bite out of the firstborn. I named him Hans, posthumously. Over the course of the next ten days, I devoured one per day while keeping the rest of the brood moist in a tin. The runt was the last to go. I now mourn their passing, but the loss is still too fresh for me to produce more baked goods.

Dairy Crème

Nestled in the lush Green Mountains of Vermont is a treasure trove for soft ice cream lovers: the Dairy Crème. The name of this fine frozen custard establishment alludes to the creemee [pronounced “CREAMY”]—the most popular entrée served by the Dairy Crème. The word creemee denotes soft-serve ice cream in Vermont’s vernacular, and creemees come in a veritable rainbow of flavors. The Dairy Crème offers the option of twisting two flavors of creemee together, often in whimsical pairings. Indeed, the Dairy Crème is at the vanguard of the new food alchemy movement with unexpected hybrids like orange creamsicle-pistachio and coffee-blue raspberry.

Perhaps to evoke the amorphous physical composition of the creemee, the Dairy Crème’s marketing division elected to display all three spelling permutations of “creemee”—the common “creemee” as well as the more unusual variants “cremee” and “creeme” [evidently pronounced “CREAM”]—in the window menus.

Although the Dairy Crème frequently bustles with local clientele, its iconoclastic web design team daringly featured a lonely, desolate photograph as the centerpiece of its website [see image above, or visit http://www.dairycreme.com/]. The Hopperesque image depicts the eatery as deserted, vacant, and bereft of any human presence save for the two cars barely visible in the far left side of the frame. Strangely, the parking spaces out front are empty, but the dramatic white lines diagonally lead the viewer’s eye from the lower right corner to a central confluence of primary colors: the blue trash can, yellow rope, and blood-red paint at the counter. Though the colors dazzle visually, they only draw attention to the overarching emptiness of the scene. The washed-out sky conveys a sense of foreboding—perhaps expressing the Dairy Crème’s disillusionment with American capitalism and consumerism.

The Dairy Crème, representing the ice cream branch of Deconstruction, questions the efficacy of language with maverick grammatical usage on its website. The homepage reads, “Whenever a gift is necessary, get a Cash Card to everyone's favorite creemee stand! The anticipation will grow all winter and they'll be thanking you all over again next April!!” This proclamation leaves ambiguous exactly whose anticipation will grow all winter—the giver’s or the receiver’s. Furthermore, will the anticipation grow with regard to purchasing or using the aforementioned Cash Card? Thus, the inscrutable Dairy Crème once again goes above and beyond the average ice cream parlor, this time by presenting the customer with a deconstructionist puzzle worthy of Derrida himself.

Cineaste's Corner: "Getting Wasted"

The following collection of clips present the highlights of Getting Wasted.

Below: An exquisite match-on-action editing feat


Below: The disembodied laugh

Below: Groans at the dinner party illuminated by blacklight

Below: Bleeding Edge Special Effects

Below: Lights Off, Lights On

Below: Dada shot of a moustache singing in a woman’s voice

Temping Agency

By Hesta


I decided to interview with a temping agency today due to my static unemployment situation. The overall experience was unpleasant as the agency appeared to be a front for a totalitarian cabal. Upon entering the agency’s premises, I was directed to have a seat in the waiting area and fill out 10 pages of paperwork, including a contract with vague signifiers like “client” and “leaving an assignment.” Under “Administrative Skills” the form listed archaic technologies like “Dictaphone,” “Shorthand,” and “Switchboard.” I circled nothing under that category. For "words per minute,” I wrote in "unknown." While I labored through the mountain of boilerplate, I overheard nauseating corporate buzzwords emanating from the various offices: facilitate, report, benefits, efficiency, prospect, fiscal, administrate. After I was summoned in for the interview, which consisted of the recruiter instructing me to add bullets to my resume in a generic, undecorated room with ecru walls, I discovered that I would hate temping. As I glanced through a new set of papers, which had been foisted upon me and included advice on how to be a successful temporary employee, I descried some fascist overtones:

“Hair should be clean, well groomed [sic], and freshly trimmed...Use deodorant and avoid overbearing colognes or fragrances…Fingernails should be short and clean; manicured if possible.” [sic].

The hygienic advice seemed to be of prime importance as it was given top billing at the beginning of the “Assignment Protocol” page. The agency clearly expects unemployed prospective temporary employees to spend what money they may have on manicures and haircuts.

Later, the recruiter asked me to produce three descriptive adjectives she could use when prospective employers ask her to paint a word-picture of me. After pondering which aspects of myself I should describe (I passed over “whimsical, insubordinate, and avant-garde,” and rejected “tyrannical, loose cannon, and socialist” as well as “shrill, impatient, and elitist”), I settled on “detail-oriented, diligent, and efficient.” I chose “efficient” because I was unsure whether the recruiter would have appreciated my use of alliteration had I selected "dexterous," “decorous” or “deciduous” instead. She did not notice that “detail-oriented” falls outside the scope of an adjective proper. The interview ended abruptly when the recruiter asked me if I knew how to “get out.” I said yes, and moved toward the door which bore a sheet of computer paper with the word “Exit” printed upon its face in size 64 font.

Whatapa Whatapa

The new board game sensation, “Loaded Questions,” has taken the nation by storm. The intense diversion has been reported to work players into paroxysms of excitement. One notorious episode resulted in a participant’s paralytic exclamation of the incoherent “Whatapa Whatapa!” Cryptographers were able to decode the jumbled scream—apparently the harried gamer was attempting to pronounce one of the loaded questions, which began “What type of…” Plablognox will apprise readers of any new developments in this thrilling story.

Internet Users Prefer Plablognox

A recent survey of the internets revealed that 3 out of 4 internet users prefer Plablognox!