What Have You Done Krazee-Eyez?

Dauber's World has been a fan of Chris Williams (interesting fact: Chris Williams is Vanessa Williams' brother) since November 3rd, 2002. That's the day that Chris Williams' episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm aired. Williams, you see, is none other than Krazee-Eyez Killa himself. It's a great Curb episode (official TV show of Dauber's World), but Williams practically steals the show (of course the best scene is probably Larry calling directory assistance trying different spellings of the name "Killa"). Over the years though, Dauber's World has watched Williams' career with dismay. He's never been able to capture the genius that was Krazee-Eyez. Then, the other day, to the horror of Dauber's World, Dauber's World saw Williams hawking KFC's new Smoky Chipotle Wings! Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

While on the subject of KFC, why is it that they're always coming up with smoky this, or barbecue that? Can't KFC just make decent chicken? Maybe they should go to Popeye's. Not the most glamorous of chains, Popeye's still has (in the opinion of Dauber's World) the best fried chicken out there (but you have to get spicy). Popeye's is also one of the few places where you can say "breast up-charge" in public without people thinking you're weird. Well, maybe not.

Another Geeky BlackBerry Post

Yes, Dauber's World can hear the groans already -- another geeky post on BlackBerry's? Many a loyal Dauber's World readers who are also loyal Verizon Wireless customers commented early last week that BlackBerry always releases the best new phones for AT&T while Verizon subscribers have to make-due with older phones. That is no longer the case. Late last week the WSJ ran an article about the new 9500 known as the BlackBerry Thunder (side note: in Robin Williams' stand-up routine when parodying Condoleezza Rice he refers to Colin Powell as "Chocolate Thunder"). This is an exclusive deal with Verizon to combat the new Apple iPhone which is finally (a year late) coming out with the 3G version on June 9th. So now all you Verizon Wireless customers will have a new BlackBerry that will leave Dauber's World drooling.

In other, dorky cell phone news, a loyal Dauber's World reader (Dauber's World always appreciates help from loyal readers) pointed out that Jawbone (maker of the best Bluetooth headset ever) has just come out with a new (gen 2) Bluetooth headset. The new version seems smaller and has a feature called "noise assassin". Dauber's World would like to give kudos to the marketing manager who figured out how to get the word "assassin" into the name of a product feature. Dauber's World will now scour the Earth for other (regular, non-lethal products) that contain the word "assassin". For a future post Dauber's World will try to come up with possible product ideas leveraging assassin in their name (side bet: Clarence will post in the next two days with an idea for a product using the word "assassin" just to show-up Dauber's World).

No Comment

Dauber's World doesn't even know how to comment on this other than to say that Dauber's World feels sorry for the penguin. Note this is a REAL news story. Thanks to loyal Dauber's World reader "Manimal" (aka Clarence) for the forward...

Seal caught on tape molesting a penguin
Scientists study rare example of interspecies sexual harassment

By Charles Q. Choi
updated 9:12 a.m. PT, Tues., May. 13, 2008

A seal has been caught on camera trying to have sex with a penguin.

This seems to be the first example seen in the wild of a sexual escapade between a mammal and a different kind of vertebrate such as a bird, reptile or fish, "although some mammals are known to have attempted sexual relief with inanimate — including dead things — objects," said researcher Nico de Bruyn, a mammal ecologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

One summer morning, scientists observing elephant seals on a beach on Marion Island near the Antarctic spotted a young male Antarctic fur seal subduing a king penguin.

"At first we thought it was hunting the penguin, but then it became clear that his intentions were rather more amorous," de Bruyn recalled today via email.

The roughly 240-pound seal subdued the 30-pound adult penguin by lying on it. The hapless bird of unknown sex struggled, rapidly flapping its flippers and attempting to stand and flee, without luck.

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin and thrusting its pelvis at the bird in vain attempts to insert its penis for 45 minutes. Natural, unsuccessful sexual escapades by this variety of seal with members of its own species may last as long as this penguin assault did, "but yes, it is quite a long time and thus unusual," de Bruyn told LiveScience.

The seal then abruptly gave up, moving to sea and completely ignoring the target of its affections. The penguin apparently did not suffer any injury. The scientists detailed their findings in the May issue of the Journal of Ethology.

Sexual harassment is common in the animal kingdom — "Homo sapiens are often testimony to that," de Bruyn said.

Many species perform some form of sexual harassment on members of their own species, "for a variety of reasons many of which are hotly debated," he added.

Many species of seal are polygynous, where one male mates with many females. The males often fight each other to control females.

"This system thus promotes extreme aggression in males towards each other, and if a male cannot control a beach, this aggression may spill over to sexual aggression directed at outlying females, pups or even in rare cases other seal species," de Bruyn said.

And this sexual aggression apparently might leap well beyond the species gap.

The Antarctic fur seals of Marion Island are the only seals known to eat king penguins. The thrill of the hunt felt by the seal the researchers saw may have channeled into its sex drive, as the mating season had just come to an end.

"It may have wanted to eat it and half-way through the chase changed its mind," de Bruyn speculated. "I personally believe the link between aggressive and sexual behavior is evolutionarily far closer linked than we currently believe. This has obvious implications for humans."

On the other hand, the amorous seal may simply have been sexually inexperienced and playful, and wanted practice, the researchers conjectured.

"There are many things that we do not understand about ourselves that are mirrored in other species," de Bruyn said. "Thus by continuing with research efforts on other vertebrates we could learn a great deal about the whys behind human behaviors."

Dauber's World Attempts to Add Value

This isn't a very exciting post, but Dauber's World hopes it's a somewhat helpful one. Dauber's World tries to balance the typical gripes and complaints with an occasional piece of information or two that is somewhat useful.

Yelp is certainly a well known web site, but Dauber's World is amazed at how many services Yelp is good at finding. The official cleaners of Dauber's World was found via yelp as was the official movers (ask for Viktoria and tell her you found it on Yelp). Cleaners and movers are just the type of services that Yelp is perfect for (on top of restaurants, which Yelp is also very good for).

Odds 'n Ends

Every time Dauber's World drives an American car Dauber's World is mystified by how unbelievably poorly it compares to cars made elsewhere. Current car rental (complete with EZ Pass) is a Pontiac G6. Egads! The interior is cheap and the design is awful. For the money there are plenty of Toyotas and Hondas that are significantly better. Dauber's World knows this is an often-repeated point but will belabor it one more time: what the hell is Detroit doing? Maybe engineers from GM should be forced to drive OTHER cars so they realize how much theirs suck.

On the topic of rental cars: why do they force you to have both keys in the key chain when you rent a car? Presumably they don't want to lose the other key, but it's really annoying as the car renter to have a giant key chain with TWO huge keys. Dauber's World is all about pocket optimization. Only critical components can be carried in a pocket. A single car key is needed, but not two.

In other news yesterday BlackBerry released their much-anticipated BlackBerry 9000 (also know as the "Bold"). Dauber's World's official response: "oooooh, it's pretty." Dauber's World just bought a phone in late February. Nuts! BlackBerry is betting that Dauber's World won't want to wait two full years to get an HSDPA-enabled BlackBerry -- and they're probably right. The move by RIM to announce the phone in advance of it's release this summer is clearly a move to try to make sure that someone notices. In a month Apple will announce their much-anticipated (though not by Dauber's World) 3G phone and RIM wanted to make sure someone was paying attention.

More interesting than the BlackBerry Bold release yesterday was the news that RIM is also creating a $150M venture fund for BlackBerry Apps. This sounds familiar. Almost like the $100M fund that Kleiner Perkins made for iPhone apps. Dauber's World doesn't really understand these funds. As corporate development projects they make sense, but why would such a narrow fund make sense to KPCB investors? What RIM should do is give $400 to Dauber's World to buy a new phone. Dauber's World would then take it upon himself to make sure all friends, family and co-workers new all the super-cool features of the new phone. That would be money well spent.

What Took Them So Long?

There's an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer hires an intern because he feels he has a number of good ideas that were "stolen" that he didn't have time to act on. Dauber's World feels his pain.

On Friday night Dauber's World went to the Sundance Kabuki Theater with official ex-boss and ex-boss' wife Ryan and Melissa to see Iron Man (Dauber's World won't comment on the film other than to say actor/director John Favreau appears to be back in his "Singers" physique). The Sundance line of theaters actually allows you to reserve seats! Where on Earth did they come up with that idea? Virtually every other entertainment event requires some form of seats (with the excepting of things like the floor space at a rock concert). For years when Dauber's World was waiting in lines for an hour and then getting seated 30 minutes before the show. Dauber's World thought that theater owners were missing a golden opportunity to extract more money from customers who valued their time. The additional cost is $1.50 which is nothing when you consider that the theater is also incredibly nice, w/ spacious seats AND they have a bar in the balcony so you can drink beer at your seat. Dauber's World is an instant convert. Incidentally if you don't show up to the theater 15 minutes before show time the theater will give up your seat assignments -- a perfectly fair system in Dauber's World's opinion.

This morning Dauber's World landed in Logan Airport and picked up a rental car from Avis. Dauber's World hates renting cars. Among the many stated reasons is that in cities with lots of tolls (Boston, Chicago and Dallas were common offenders in the past) you pay a real penalty for not having a toll transponder device. Well, imagine Dauber's World surprise this morning when he learned that all the cars now come equipped with an EZ Pass. It's in a clever little shielded box -- you don't have to use it. If you want to use it just slide the EZ Pass out of the box and you're charged $1.50/day plus the toll charges. Dauber's World has been clamoring for a service like this for years and finally has it. Some cities expect that everyone has a toll transponder, but since there isn't a standard travelers are almost forced to get a different transponder for each city they travel to regularly or pay the price. Dauber's World doesn't know what other rental car companies or cities offer this feature, but it's certain to catch on quickly.

As happy as Dauber's World is at the release of these two, long-awaited services Dauber's World wonders what could have possibly took the respective industries so long to satisfy what is an obvious customer need? What other needs are going unfulfilled? Dauber's World will ponder this hard and bring ideas back to you, the loyal reader.


Bonus note of the day. Dauber's World likes to read the comments that readers leave on the blog. Late last week official father of Dauber's World left a message on the blog that Dauber's World thought was pretty funny, so it's being given additional airtime. You can look at his message here

Product of the Year Candidate that You Can Actually Use

Dauber's World is sometimes criticized (unfairly) that the Dauber's World Product of the Year Awards often go to products that no one would ever actually use like the wine rack (though Dauber's World would still love to see more women using the 2007 Product of the Year award winner). Dauber's World is, if nothing else, a man of the people so in the spirit of providing you (the presumably loyal reader) with something useful Dauber's World presents the Travel John.

Before even describing the product (which is probably somewhat obvious anyways) Dauber's World wants to give kudos to the graphic designer who came up with the genius logo for Travel John (pictured). Not only are the traditional bathroom logos squeezing their legs together (presumably because they need to pee) you can see sweat coming from their heads! Ahh yes -- everyone has been there at some point in their life. Dauber's World feels your pain.

Travel John actually has a few products, but look at the description of the bread-and-butter disposable urinal product:

Each Bag is made of strong plastic, that is puncture resistant and contains our Revolutionary LIQSORB® polymer pouch that solidifies liquids instantly into a Leak-proof, odorless, spill-proof gel that is non-toxic and safe for disposal in any waste bin.

Other features include a "unisex adapter" (does Dauber's World even need to make a sarcastic remark here? This is the best ever use of that phrase) as well as a volume indicator and spill guard.

Right now you're probably thinking that it couldn't possibly get any better, but it does. They actually have (Dauber's World is not making this up) a video demonstrating how it works (note you have to hit the pause button, then play to see the video on the site)! Whoever designed this product actually thought quite a bit about the problem and did a commendable job devising an almost perfect solution. The real downside of the product is that there's no way to discretely use it. Just think of how much more useful this would be if it could be used without anyone knowing that you were using it. Imagine being stuck in a meeting and needing to go to the bathroom, but you can't leave (for whatever reason). The way the disposable urinal is currently designed doesn't afford you the ability to use it in that situation. Solving this problem would certainly catapult Travel John into the class of other life-changing inventions such as the steam engine, the light bulb, the airplane, penicillin, the transistor and internet porn.

And Down The Stretch They Come!

Dauber's World spent part of Saturday watching the Kentucky Derby. Of course the Derby only lasts about 2 minutes, so Dauber's World watched the anticipation of friends who had numerous bets placed on the race followed by their dismay when they lost. Seinfeld has a good routine that he did a while back on horse racing that perfectly captures Dauber's World's opinion of the "sport".

For those of you that don't know the horse that "placed" (came in second) yesterday had to be euthenized after suffering compound fractures in both of her front ankles minutes after the race concluded. Dauber's World has long disliked NASCAR. Among the many reasons cited (not including the boredom of watching cars drive around in circles) is the simple fact that there's a very real chance that the drivers can get killed (see Dale Earnhardt Sr at the Daytona 500 in '02). But at least in NASCAR the drivers are both aware of the risks they take and they're compensated for them. Dauber's World is reasonably sure that none of the horses (to Seinfeld's point) have any idea that breaking a bone in their leg results in them being killed. Dauber's World isn't going to make an argument about whether horse racing is humane, but rather the horses are not given a reward commensurate with the risk that they take. The rewards all go to owners, jockey and trainer. They're all important, but far less so than the horse.

One of the parts of horse racing that Dauber's World does like is the names. People come up with some pretty clever names for these horses. The winner of the Derby (pictured), however, is clearly an exception. Big Brown? Aside from being incredibly uncreative it's reminiscent of either a UPS ad or a giant piece of sh*t. Considering the risk that Big Brown is taking, couldn't his owners at least come up with a cool name?

One interesting note from the Derby that Dauber's World noticed: the commercials. After the race was over Dauber's World noticed an unusually high number of financial planning/retirement ads. It's almost as if they were telling you that since you didn't hit any of your bets maybe it's time to think of another way to pay for your retirement.

Brick Walls

"Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things."
-- Prof Randy Paunch

I normally don't do blog posts like this. Many of you have noted (or complained) of my typical 3rd person writing style in Dauber's World. I wanted to share something with all of you that really touched me -- Randy Paunch's last lecture that has been making it's way all over the internet. Many Universities today have "last lecture" series where professors give a hypothetical last lecture that they would give if it was the last lecture they had to give. Unfortunately in Randy's case this wasn't a hypothetical talk. He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer last August and he gave his lecture in September. He was given 3-6 months to live, but he's managed to fight off the cancer for a little while longer. Since giving the lecture he moved his family back to Virginia so his wife could be near her family to help her raise their three children after he dies.

The lecture is long (75 minutes), but well worth it. If you're really in a rush at least watch the last ~10 minutes. Here's a link to the whole speech.

I don't want to say too much about the lecture itself -- I can't aptly describe it. I'll just say that he focuses on three topics: his childhood dreams, how you can help others achieve their dreams and the lessons he's learned in the course of his life.