Eric Busboom

Here is a list of the top surf towns in Southern California. The list is computed by taking the number of web searches for the area name plus “surf shop” and dividing by the population of the area. All percentages are expressed relative to the top result. The area names come from Zillow.com, and are the named areas that are on the coast or adjacent to an area on the coast. We only considered areas between Tijuana and Santa Barbara.

Would you be my Friend?

Here is Google’s Friend Connect Widget:

And Here is Facebook’s. Facebook requires a lot more work, because you have to program in XFBML

Your picture, if you are logged into facebook:

Here are a bunch of your friends:

Posted via email from Eric’s posterous

With a lot of help from the InStyle Makeover, I stole George Clooney’s hair. I don’t think it helped:

I think I’d trust Bald Eric or Hat Eric much more than Clooney Hair Eric.

Hey! I caught a naked boy. He thought he could escape from a bath, but I got him with his own butterfly net.

Mummification, human vivisection and live burials in a format children can understand. Yes, really.

You Wouldn’t Want to Be an Inca Mummy will let parents address most of the uncomfortable questions that don’t involve sex, including human sacrifice, what happens when you yank out someone’s heart, the various ways of clubbing someone to death, and how the commoners should prostrate themselves before their rulers. The authors certainly aren’t operating under a belief in the concept of the Noble Savage. And,  it has a cartoonish format and simple text that is suitable for first and second graders.

While the book really is disturbing (and disturbing for someone who used to read alt.tasteless on Usenet ), and I’m still not sure when I’d read it with Max,  that I’d find this prominently displayed on the “New Books” shelf in the children’s  section of the library absolutely thrills me. When the media seems to be failing in its critical role as defenders of open, free expression, we still have librarians who will fight to put whatever they damn well want to on the shelves.

Here is another example. F’d Companies is the most profane, nearly obscene,  book I’d ever admit to reading, but it is also an important chronicle of the insanity of the late 1990’s. I nearly howled with joy when I saw it on a public library shelf. I could imagine the librarian placing it facing outward, thinking to herself that it would be a poke in the eye of every sanctimonious prude that passed by. God bless her.

Don’t forget, kids, child sacrifice is a privilege.

Five angle grinders means I don’t have to change the wheels during a large job. For most jobs, I only use the smaller four. I only paid $11 for one of them; It has been grinding gears like it’s last day for 5 years.

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Lately Max brings us sticks and says ” make me a hammer.” Of course I do. Notice that mortise and tenon joint.

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Yes, we play golf to get away from you:

Secret #2: We actually do play golf to get away from you

More than 21 million American men play at least one round of golf a year; of those, an astounding 75 percent regularly shoot worse than 90 strokes a round. In other words, they stink. The point is this: “Going golfing” is not really about golf. It’s about you, the house, the kids — and the absence thereof.

“I certainly don’t play because I find it relaxing and enjoyable,” admits Roland Buckingham, 32, of Lewes, Delaware, whose usual golf score of 105 is a far-from-soothing figure. “As a matter of fact, sometimes by the fourth hole I wish I were back at the house with the kids screaming. But any time I leave the house and don’t invite my wife or kids — whether it’s for golf or bowling or picking up roadkill — I’m just getting away.”

But maybe you don’t get the hint?

Fit to a Tee
“My grandmother insisted that I learn how to play golf. ‘If your husband loves to play, you can go along and spend hours together,’ she said. So I took lessons, and now my husband and I hit the links once a month. We both love the game and are thrilled to share a hobby, even when we spend half an hour looking for my out-of-bounds balls!”
— Aimee Borders, 27, Houston, TX