Let me introduce myself:

Alma D. Godwyn
394 Pike Street
San Diego, CA 92123

Email Address: Alma.D.Godwyn@spambob.com

Phone: 858-587-0732
Mother’s maiden name: Kelly
Birthday: December 18, 1976

MasterCard: 5549 2498 7861 5947
Expires: 9/2009

SSN: 552-26-8186

Actually, that’s a complete lie. We created Alma with the click of a button, thanks to the Fake Name Generator. (found via lifehacker.com_

Here’s another one….

Kacey B. Vanmatre
2057 Rosewood Court
Mankato, MN 56001

Email Address: Kacey.B.Vanmatre@mailinator.com

Phone: 507-340-3517
Mother’s maiden name: England
Birthday: April 6, 1943

Visa: 4556 5390 5569 1049
Expires: 9/2010

SSN: 470-03-9324

Why is this remotely useful? Well, we don’t really know. If you’re neurotic about your privacy and you like to fill out forms or go to webpages that require personal information… or if you’re a con artist, a fiction writer… or just really, really bored.

Here’s what they say about themselves:

Need LOTS of random names?
We’ve generated millions of names for hundreds of companies and individuals! We can provide test data in several formats (including MySQL, CSV, tab delimited, and Excel) absolutely free through our Order in Bulk page.
We can also provide custom test data. E-mail us with your project requirements for a price quote.

Why you would want fake names in bulk is beyond us. Are they selling fake marketing lists? Who knows? But for some reason, we’ve spent the last hour creating fake people and adding them to our address book. Now we have lots of friends.

The website Lifehacker led us to a series of articles on the website Hotel Chatter. These articles rank the best and worst hotels for WiFi Service. Why in the world all hotels don’t offer free WiFi is beyond our limited intelligence. Maybe some hotelier out there can explain it to us? Please? We can’t stop thinking about it… seriously.

Whether you just prefer smelling like your (well-scrubbed, exfoliated, thoroughly washed) self or you’re a full-fledged aromaneurotic who feels put upon every time you inhale, you’ve probably considered purchasing some products of the unscented variety. The problem? THEY LIE. THEY ALL LIE. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s the “unscented” products that are the worst offenders. Last time we rinsed our silky mane with unscented conditioner, our significant other asked why our hair smelled like rotting produce. Thankfully we editors here are both obsessive AND flush with time, so after much searching (and not a few gagging sounds from our smell-testers), we located the one in a hundred moisturizer that stays true to its name: Kiehl’s Unscented Moisturizer. Do they test on animals? We have no idea. Does it actually moisturize? We couldn’t care less. But rest assured, obsessive reader: it does NOT smell. Not like tulips or vanilla cake mix or day-old tomatoes. Be free and slather!

What could be worse than saving up for a 10+ hour flight to somewhere fabulous, somewhere life-changing, somewhere soul-restoring and you board the plane and the cute FA leads you to your luxurious first class seat that reclines into a bed and the world is glorious, miraculous, nothin’ but smiles and applause–only to tilt your seat all-the-way-back and realize the mattress-thing is too hard/soft/lumpy and alas, once again, the world is a cruel joke with you as its sorry punchline?

That’s when you get criminally drunk and curse yourself for not checking FlatSeats.com before you booked your ticket.

FLATSEATS is the world’s only specialist site for “premium” airline seats - for passengers, airlines and suppliers with independent, professional seat reviews and analysis. Customer reviews of airline seats - results of seat Surveys and seat tests. Check out the comfort of seats - find out which airlines offer lie-flat seats and flat-beds ……. and much more.

They may not be brand new, but the Bitter With Baggage chickens are worth revisiting. Bitter author Sloan Tanen offers all sorts of free Chicken stuff–screensavers, book extracts, and e-cards–on her website, making it the perfect one-stop-shop for all your pissy friends. (Hint: skip her boring bio and move right to the chickens). A recent scouting trip to the Union Square Barnes & Noble for the clever notecards left us empty-handed. “We sell out the second we get a shipment,” a clerk responded when one of our editors asked for “the stationery with the angry chickens.” Which means, of course, that we HAD to have it. Our favorite book is in Our Online Store (see tab above).

Maybe it’s because I just bought a ridiculous camera, but I despise the posed candid photos. They just remind me how phony and insincere we all are. Now, I kind of love this photo here, except for the title of the book the kids are reading. I mean seriously folks. That just makes me mad. You’re trying to tell me that photo wasn’t posed? Still there are some good tips here. Like…

8. Shoot from the Hip
If your subject is aware that you’re there and that you have your camera out they might tense up or act a little unnaturally as they see you raising your camera to the eye. The beauty of digital cameras is that it doesn’t cost you anything to take lots of shots and it can be well worth shooting without raising your camera. To do this most effectively you might want to set your lens to a wider angle setting to make up for any aiming problems you might have.

11 Tips for Better Candid Photography

There’s a long article in New York magazine about Highline, a new park that runs the length of some abandoned train tracks in New York City. A boon for developers and grass-starved Manhattanites, but what caught our eyes was the proposed Eleventh Avenue apartment tower. Each apartment, apparently, comes with a one car ‘garage.’ You drive onto a car elevator, which lifts you to your floor, and then you drive off the elevator into your very own parking space. And there’s your front door.

Now of course, we love the idea, being obsessive and neurotic and deeply fearful of street parking and all parking attendents. But then we think: will the building be a symphony of electronic beeps as people lock and unlock their cars? What about all the engine noise caught in what amounts to an acoustic chamber? And what happens when some drunk idiot drives through a wall and crushes a gaggle pedestrians below? And…what about car alarms sound randomly through the night? The more you think about it the worse it gets.

For fellow ear-plug-wearing noise-machine-dependent obsessives this seems like unmitigated disaster.

The High Line: It Brings Good Things to Life

obsession |əbˈse sh ən| noun
the state of being obsessed with someone or something : she cared for him with a devotion bordering on obsession.
• an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind : he was in the grip of an obsession he was powerless to resist.
DERIVATIVES obsessional |- sh ənl| adjective obsessionally |- sh ənl-ē| adverb ORIGIN early 16th cent.(in the sense [siege] ): from Latin obsessio(n-), from the verb obsidere (see obsess ).