February 18, 2005

• Hmmm... on my computer at least, that punctuation is all messed up. Aside from that, it's a pretty cool idea once you click the link. I'm not sure if this is Candid Camera, or maybe a new wave in McD's culture- if I were a McD's corporate wank, I would propose this for real!
• Nice!
• Improv everywhere are great - their pranks (missions? scenes?) are benign and very imaginative and funny. )
• Doohickie - let me guess... Internet Explorer? I've been wondering about the prevalence of garbage characters in some monkeys' posts, and decided to investigate. Warning: technical stuff ahead! The character encoding for MonkeyFilter is supposed to be UTF-8. However, this is only specified in the XML prolog. The HTTP headers don't specify an encoding. As IE doesn't like the XML prolog, it apparently doesn't bother and assumes that it's Windows-1252 or something like that. The solution is twofold. First (optional), the prolog can safely be removed, which will have the side-effect of causing IE to render MoFi in standards-compliant mode. Second, the encoding needs to be specified somewhere that all clients will respect it. This can either be in the HTTP headers, or it can be done with a meta tag in the head section of the HTML for the page. I'd recommend both, although the HTTP headers take priority over the page content. I'll also send this to tracicle in case she doesn't pick it up here.
• That's just awesome... Went to the Hammerstein for a show recently. Couldn't smoke inside, and there were no re-entries... Since I was drinking Coors Light anyway (which goes through you like nothin' else) I tipped the attendant 2 bucks every time I went in. After about $20 in tips, I made some comment about how bad it is to not be able to smoke for 5 hours (including opening band, and general wating around before the show), he showed me to the very last stall which had an exhaust fan in it... Like heaven on earth... (All in all I ended up tipping the guy about $45, made his night, and I got to sneak 3 or 4 cigarettes)
• Some great 'missions' there. I think i liked their wedding mission the bestest. And they RSS!
• I'm sorry for the mangled punctuation for non-Maccers. I just copied the qoute verbatim from the article, didn't expect any problems. For some reason the 'URL Description'- field of the POST form didn't (doesn't?) get encoded. tracicle (and number 2) might look into this. Or it might be that curly quotes just need to be added to the list of characters that needs to be encoded. TEST follows: “This quote uses some curly quotes. I’m sorry if this messes up in your browser/operating system.”
• Thanks for the answer, Monk. I hope that this gets fixed, but if not I adds to the charm of the site.
• A great post... enjoyed it.
• This is wonderful. Thank you Doohickie!
• This is wonderful. Thank you Doohickie! Hey.
• Shit! Sorry. I scanned too quickly. Mare, thank you for the really funny post.
• Yeah!! Doohickie, much naners to you!!!! Great post!!! Thanks Doohickie!!!
• ))) for mare, and ))) for everyone else (^_^)
• Grrrrrrr. And thanks Alnedra, although size doesn't matter.
• omar, so that "wedding mission" is just a big prank also? hmmm. don't know how i feel about THAT one. does it strike anyone else as mean-spirited to fool people into thinking they're participating in a proposal?
• This is an awesome post. I love that the British kids now have this view of at least one McDonalds in America having a bathroom attendant. It's "let's make up crazy traditions" taken to the nth degree. I genuinely believe that this is what every place does. "Sure try the bull penis, it's a local delicacy."
• SideDish, I think it was kinda sweet. First off, they got a real married couple, so it wasn't a total scam (ie, two people who are just acting as a couple). Secondly, these people felt really good about being part of the proposal. It would have been mean-spirited only if the team turned around later and told everyone, "Nyah, gotcha! You all were so stupid!" So the effect was that a trainload of people walked away smiling for the day, having been part of a little joy and sweetness. Perhaps that's what the mission was intended to achieve. Ah, just me and my naivete here.
• it's interesting, because although the concept is the same as the mcdonald's mission -- fooling an unsuspecting public -- i found that one hilarious but the wedding one too mean. maybe because proposals seem too intimate to make fun of? maybe? who knows. it's a great link!
• I can see your point, SideDish. But agreed, good link (^_^)
• Great link! I love the little British boy: "Heather! They've a butler in there, and he gave us sweets!" Very charming!
• That was nice, getting thanked for a post I didn't make. Now I need to find something postworthy so I can get thanked for real.
• My favorite part... He made small talk with everyone who entered the room...He also peppered McDonald’s slogans in to his banter. "We’re lovin’ it today and we hope you are too." "You deserve a break today." "We like to see you smile, sir.” Some of those seem like they would be creepy if he said them while people were occupied. But I suspect that with his professional bathroom attendant experience he would know better than to do that. Barbicide sounds like some kind of hair product that defeats the purpose of barbers, and just generally intriguing. It, and all the other products were set out on top of a lacy cloth placed over the changing table. I wonder what tuxedo man would've done if someone had needed to use the changing table. Perhaps some Boudreaux's Butt Paste and wet wipes would've been a good addition to the amenities.
• 'Boudreaux's Butt Paste'. That's the best product name ever, at least until someone starts marketing 'Lucky Pierre's Crack Caulk.'