It's pouring rain out and has been for the last 2 days. The fire alarm went off about an hour and a half ago. We all went out for 20 minutes, got soaked, and then they told us we could go back in, but the alarm "wouldn't reset for 15 more minutes." It went on for another 55 minutes. Jon made a video of office antics so you can get a taste of what it was like. I'm the one with tissue in my ears. It worked.

My latest @eatBoston event is today and tomorrow. Ice Cream Showdown! The best ice cream shops from the Boston area setting up in a parking lot to support deserving local organizations. This year is 2 days in 2 different parts of town. Full info including participants, T Shirts, etc at the link above.

My latest @eatBoston event was this past Wednesday, Guacaholics Anonymous. It was pretty awesome. 8 restaurants, 7 amateur chefs showcasing the best guacamole in the city. There was traditional guacamole, guacamole with fruit, guacamole with bacon, cowboy caviar... If you like guacamole, it was pretty awesome. Additionally, we raised some good money for Community Servings, Share our Strength, and Lovin' Spoonfuls. There still a few tshirts left over If you are a guacamole lover, it goes without saying that you need one of these.

Hope you all enjoyed the Kottke.org guest editing this week. If so, you should subscribe by RSS or email or check out Unlikely Words on Twitter, Tumblr, or on Facebook.
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Hi all. I'll be guest editing Kottke.org this week, so posting might be a light to non-existent over the next couple days.

For all you new visitors, welcome to Unlikely Words! Take a look around, there's plenty of internet here. To get you started, here are a few of my favorite posts: Jason already told you about Everything Don Draper Said, Everything John Locke Said, and the Comprehensive Election Round Up, but you might also want to check out Everything Tracy Jordan Said, Marshmallow Peeps On the Internet – A Study, and the Jersey Shore Nickname Generator. I also write @eatBoston about Boston food, and 815 Sentences About Lost, which is self-explanatory. If you want to get in touch, say hi here.

It's not clear why this performance isn't more heralded. Break My Stride was the first song I remember thinking of as my favorite song and it was on the radio incessantly when I would be riding in the car with my mom. But this video. Wow. It's from Matthew Wilder's appearance on Solid Gold, which explains the numerous backup dancers. But there's absolutely no explanation for his crazy shirt. Also, the 3 keyboards? WHAT THE HELL DOES HE NEED 3 KEYBOARDISTS FOR? Anyway. Enjoy.


Fun fact, Matthew Wilder was the producer for No Doubt's 1995 hit Tragic Kingdom. I wonder if he's available for interviews. Or if he was in the No Doubt Behind the Music?

Lost is ending this year and I've stuck with it through the entire series - from the exciting beginning to the rudderless middle and finally the rejuvenated last season and a half. I figured one way to celebrate this would be to take on an overly ambitious project. If you watch Lost, you'll know numbers play a big role. I'm going to find 108 people to write 815 Sentences About Lost.

To help with this project, I got Scott designed a great looking home for the project even designing some custom Lost buttons for use on Tumblr.

If you'd like to submit something please click here (submissions should be 7-8 sentences each and include a 1-2 sentence bio about you).

I'm pretty happy with how it's going so far. You should check it out.

I've learned from the government that if you have to release something embarrassing, you do it as close to the end of the day on Friday as possible. Well, here you go. Mind the cursing. (By the way, I put tape on the lock so it wouldn't happen to anyone else.)



Thanks to Zack for helping me get out documenting the situation.

Last year, I enjoyed putting together a post documenting my favorite posts of the year and thought I'd do so again. For you newer readers, this can function as an Unlikely Words primer. This year's post took a lot longer as I had to go through about 550 posts compared to around 150 last year. What were your favorite posts of the year on Unlikely Words. Let me know in the comments.

2009 was a big year for Unlikely Words. I set a goal at the beginning of the year of increasing daily traffic 5.5 times from where it was during 2008. The year was rounding out well and we were on track to miss the goal by about *this much*. However, thanks to the amazing viral success of the Jersey Shore Nickname Generator daily traffic is set to increase 20 times from where it was in 2008. From a visual perspective, we finally pulled the trigger on a long talked about site redesign. Emdash did a little customization of Derek Punsalan's Grid Focus theme and incorporated 3 logos designed by Unlikely Words favorite, Chris Piascik.

In 2009, I continued tracking plastic bag bans around the world and reviewing, in 3 sentences or less, all of the media (movies and books) I consumed. There's a backlog of about 40 reviews that need to be written and/or posted, and I'm trying to think of a creative way to get these out. There were several posts about Michael Lewis and the movie version of 'Money Ball', and I remain saddened by the lack of a 'Liar's Poker' movie. I post about Michael Lewis so much because people are interested in what he has to say, but he doesn't keep a blog to make it easy to find what he's saying. This applies to Chuck Klosterman, as well.

Sharks made their customary frequent appearances (including this post about a hero shark fighting dog). This spring, I even got an opportunity to interview George Burgess, one of the foremost shark experts in the world. I also had the pleasure of interviewing 2 of my favorite rockers Blake Schwarzenbach of forgetters and Ben Nichols of Lucero, as well as author Davy Rothbart and ‘V’ Creator Kenny Johnson. These conversations were a lot of fun and I hope to interview more folks in 2010 who are equally out of my league. (Though, according to this LinkedIn rejection, everyone is out of my league.)

I, of course, talked a lot about Television this year, including many posts about Mad Men and The Wire. Lost is a show that I don't LOVE, but end up posting a lot about, mostly because the stuff the fans create is so awesome. You all really seemed to enjoy Everything Tracy Jordan Said Seasons 1, 2, and 3 as well as Everything Don Draper Said Seasons 1, 2, and 3. I was shocked to find out Jericho Reruns Get More Viewers Than Mad Men, but the concept of cell phones killing the sitcom makes sense when you think about it. "24" received more words than it deserved, but I had fun liveblogging it, and will probably (oh, crap) do it again this year.

Some projects I was relatively proud of: The Tiger Woods Mistress Generator, a study on the idea of an official state sandiwch, and then writing to every senator and representative for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts asking their opinion on making the Fluffernutter the Official Sandwich of the Commonwealth. I did an Appreciation of Rickey Henderson on the occasion of his induction to the Hall of Fame, conducted an Unscientific Survey of Books People Love Annoyingly and Books People Hate, compiled 208 Facebook Status Messages from the 24 hours of Obama's inauguration, created a 10 part Free Barcelona, Spain Travel Guide, and in Marshmallow Peeps On the Internet, I collected practically every single website of note about Marshmallow Peeps. Plus, I answered What a Zombie Looks For in a Woman.

My favorite vandalism of the year, along with my favorite effort by young people, interview by someone else, cat video, urban wildlife sighting, fan made music video, Mad Menspoof, movie posters, Boston music video, character assassination, single serving site about bad art dedicated to Barack Obama, and picture of Smart cars parked sideways.

This is a fake list of Reasons I Gave When Asked, “Why Are You Growing a Mustache Again?” and a real List of Facebook Usernames I Wish I Had Gotten.

Here are a few cultural events that I reviewed: forgetters at Great Scott, Lucero at The Middle East, Ann Coulter vs Bill Maher Debate, Shepard Fairey at the ICA, Al Gore at the Wang Center, Karl Rove vs James Carville, and blogger day at Taza Chocolate.

Did you know that there's No Apostrophe in “Veterans Day”, You CAN Eat Quinoa during Passover, or anything at all about Patriots’ Day? RCN started a DNS redirect, but here's How to Opt Out, The New York Times killed itself and the bacon meme at the same time, and Allessandra Stanley Had a Bad Day. James Brown Saved Boston, McLean Stabbed Mingus, Buddy Rich Yelled At His Band, and Susan Boyle knocked it out of the park. David went to the dentist, The Roots watched 2 Girls, 1 Cup, ESPN featured the Konami (Contra) Code, Matt Lauer hit a deer, ON HIS BIKE, and the internet cheered the cultural impact of 1984 (the year, not the book).

Michale Jackson had mad pull at one point, but then, a proposed auction of his stuff turned into an allegory of the economy. (Another allegory of the economy? The Snot Boogie Rules.) Media is changing, "Twitter is a media/marketing vehicle disguised as a social network”, I missed how big of a deal Snuggies would be this year (only four million sold as of the end of January).

In June, my little cat dude, Charlie, died and it about crushed me. If you've read this far, you may as well check out that post if you want to read about him. Except for that, 2009 was a great year on Unlikely Words. I hope we have as much fun next year.

Feels like a Monday, though. Here's a picture of James in the sink. But also, how many of you put a clip on the end of the toothpaste? Makes toothpasting much easier. Believe.

The Hungarian site Comment.hu linked to Everything Don Draper Said Season 2. Since the write up is in Hungarian, I used Google Translate to figure out what they said. And actually, it's just a more artful way of saying what most other people say about the Everything They Said series.

Click the image below to see what they say about me in Hungary.