Oxymetazoline nasal spray.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 3:44 PM on November 12, 2009

There's an H-Mart "near" Dunn Loring/Merrifield Metro on the Orange Line. I say "near" because it's about a ten minute walk down Gallows Rd, but that's the closest major Asian market I know to a Metro stop. There's also a smaller Asian market somewhere near Wheaton Metro but I forget the exact location now.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 8:57 PM on October 22, 2009

There's a Filene's Basement on Connecticut Ave. near Farragut North and the Mayflower, and Marshall's at Pentagon City and Columbia Heights.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 8:12 PM on October 12, 2009 marked best answer

From the Salon archives: Porn star hair removal secrets.
(via this much older thread on the same topic.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 7:51 PM on October 1, 2009

Man, I am closing on a condo two days before 9/20 so I have a feeling I'll be too buried in moving boxes to make it this time. But I will try.
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 9:22 AM on September 8, 2009

My brother and his GF (now fiancé) bonded in the years they were apart (he in Chicago, she in Manila) playing network Starcraft against each other. It seems to have worked. Were it me and my now-wife today I might recommend hanging out in Second Life, where you can even virtually cuddle.

(Also thirding the advice against hiring a buddy to run vicarious romantic errands.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 1:29 PM on September 2, 2009

Floam, you pretty much described my ears to a tee, minus the high-pitched static. I've gotten very good at eustachian-tube-fine-tuning via jaw movements and controlled yawns, and I think of it as a feature rather than a bug, brought about by years of conditioning from clearing ears while scuba diving. I do get the tinnitus, though, which has caused me some concern.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 7:32 AM on September 2, 2009

Yeah I'll have screenshots up tonight.
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 12:51 PM on July 17, 2009

See, where I grew up beans meant the pork and beans you get in a can, served in a bowl. And yes, there actually is a camera.
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 8:29 AM on July 18, 2009

Update: The MeFi Museum is now at a new, better, shinier location.
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 10:48 AM on July 24, 2009

Godzilla is Japanese. Hong Kong is in China.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 1:23 PM on July 13, 2009

I want to go to there.
</lizlemon>
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 6:14 PM on July 9, 2009

Washington, DC: The Half-Smoke.
We're not a state, though. :'(
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 9:46 PM on July 8, 2009

This is wonderful. So wonderful. I feel like a kid in a candy store, except the candy is made of LUTES AND COUNTER-TENORS.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 9:20 PM on July 8, 2009

I can host one in Second Life. Does that count?
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 8:36 PM on July 3, 2009

I've flown Emirates a couple of times. Absolute luxury, even in coach. What struck me most about the attendants was that they wore the "veil" attached to their hats while on the ground in Dubai, then the veils came off as soon as the plane was in the air. Just a little detail I wondered about.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 4:26 PM on July 3, 2009

Hey, I'm there.
posted to Tenth Anniversary by brownpau at 4:30 AM on May 19, 2009

Sadly I cannot be there as I will be visiting family in New Jersey that weekend.
posted to Tenth Anniversary by brownpau at 10:45 AM on June 30, 2009

Goodbye, Captain EO.
Now who will deliver the Gift of Beauty to the Supreme Leader of the Cosmos?
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 4:16 PM on June 25, 2009

Bakshi did a similarly rotoscoped Lord of the Rings feature in 1978 which left a lasting impression on me right up till Peter Jackson's films. Thanks to Bakshi I could never stop visualizing Boromir as a Viking, or Aragorn as a hunkier version of Chief Sitting Bull.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 1:36 PM on June 2, 2009

BIBLE DOCTRINE NEWS

YELLOW ORBS and AEROSTOCKIANS

AAAAAAAAAlex Jones

Teabaggers.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 5:05 PM on May 22, 2009

The single amusing aspect of this debacle is that it's partly the fault of Twilight.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 4:41 AM on May 15, 2009

That was fun. Pics.
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 8:13 PM on April 25, 2009

Also check Dean Van Druff's classic "What's Wrong with MLM?" -- also written from a Christian perspective.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 8:22 PM on April 8, 2009

I once found a standard 120V AC power outlet behind a panel right by the emergency exit door while sitting in the exit row of a UA 747-400 while flying to Hong Kong. Kept me entertained with Futurama episodes on my iBook G3 (this was a long time ago) through the flight.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 7:49 PM on April 8, 2009

OP also posted this to Digg 11 days ago, another link to the same weblog in General Mayhem last month, yet more SuperTightStuff to Digg in February, and so on and so forth. Big SuperTightstuff fan or spammy contributor?
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 6:49 PM on April 5, 2009

I forget where I read this, but the producer of "World Builder" later said he was startled at the flood of positive feedback he got from Second Life users. Turns out he had never used SL himself before, but now would have to check it out.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 9:35 AM on March 28, 2009

Just now from SL: "Bettina Tizzy declined your friendship offer."

Heh.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 9:41 AM on March 28, 2009

Ah, it feels like just yesterday when Tim Murtaugh built SEED running almost entirely on Movable Type, which inspired me to keep on with MT despite the travails and limitations of the3.x iteration. And now those days are done, it seems.
posted to Projects by brownpau at 9:33 PM on March 12, 2009

I saw this a few days ago, but dismissed it as possible linkbait due to "SEO" being in the guy's weblog header. There's something sad about that; I'm not sure what.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 3:56 PM on February 27, 2009

31d1's stuff is good instrumental.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 2:31 PM on February 24, 2009

Oh man, if I see ONE MORE of those stupid "one rule to reduce belly fat - OBEY" ads I think I'm going to reduce credit to lysistrata @ MetaFilter some of my brain matter all over the walls.
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 12:27 PM on February 23, 2009

Well, while we're at it:

I tried to pass off Amazing Grace as my own original melody in a sixth grade music composition assignment. I didn't even know Amazing Grace was a widespread classic, I'd just heard Scotty playing it on his bagpipe at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and figured our music teacher probably didn't watch Star Trek so he wouldn't know some obscure sci-fi musical interlude.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 1:56 PM on February 23, 2009

Then crap, stupid video.
posted to Projects by brownpau at 11:18 AM on February 18, 2009

Previously, on No Reservations: Anthony Bourdain discovers that the guy who won his viewer contest is a lot more fun on the internet than he is in real life with his emotionally distant Asian family.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 9:44 AM on February 17, 2009

I like his letter to the president, especially the line about "9/11 being a tough decision to make." Maybe he knows something we don't.
posted to Projects by brownpau at 4:14 AM on February 5, 2009

Playing Topple on my iPod last night has prepared me for this.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 9:06 AM on January 29, 2009

Get a generic tuner box and some bunny ears (or a coax splitter for cable) and you have an extra TV.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 12:24 PM on January 23, 2009

Good show, sir! I look forward to seeing it at the show, and it works great for me cross-eyed even without the viewing glasses.
posted to Projects by brownpau at 10:21 AM on January 22, 2009

Yay, museum meetup! Wife and I will try to be there.
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 7:19 AM on January 15, 2009

The secret password is "EXCUSE ME SIR WHERE IS THE COLBERT PORTRAIT I CAN'T FIND IT"
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 9:59 AM on January 19, 2009

There were so many of you I barely scratched the surface conversationally (except with Katullus) before we had to skip out of Rocket Bar. We must do this again sometime, perhaps at the Huckabee-Palin inauguration in 2013?
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 6:59 PM on January 19, 2009

Can those of you who were there and are on Flickr add a note to yourselves in this panorama? (I was gonna go around and get the other side but then MrMoonPie told me Gandalf was around, and shortly after we had to vacate.)
posted to MetaTalk by brownpau at 3:02 PM on January 20, 2009

I'm going to rebel a bit against the general tenor of the discussion and say that most of the time, locals and visitors alike tend to be pretty good about standing to the right on Metro escalators. And I live in the vicinity of Union Station Metro.

What really Hulks me out is people's behavior immediately after stepping off. It's only common sense that you should leave the escalator at a rate equal to or greater than the velocity of the movement of the escalator itself,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 8:27 PM on January 18, 2009

We're having a mild La Niña this year, and that plus a combination of factors has led to some short-term cooling, just enough to break the long-term warming trend for a few years, thus producing a brief uptick in LaRouchie/Libertarian "SEE IT'S COLD NOW SO GLOBAL WARMING IS A LIE" bleatage. Like climate change itself, the denialism declines on an inversely proportional line, on a general trend so gradual as to be impercetible unless observed over the course of decades.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 7:46 AM on January 16, 2009

Oh yeah, I remember "The Fox and the Forest" from an old grade school reader. We never actually got to it in the course of the term, but I distracted myself in boring classes reading it over and over because it was the only real sci-fi story in the whole textbook.

"Sample" text from the story here and here (wink wink).

Until I read it I had been unaware that not pulling up one's pants legs to sit down were such a giveaway.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brownpau at 7:16 AM on January 16, 2009

While we're scrutinizing the legislative branch's participation in social media, check out SenateFloor and HouseFloor on Twitter. They're actually pretty useful for people who need to watch proceedings from a distance.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 6:33 AM on January 15, 2009

Later in life, Wernher von Braun would have a biographical film about himself which naturally glossed over his work for Hitler, portraying him as a conscientious objector forced to produce the V2 under great duress from the Third Reich. The film was titled "I Aim at the Stars." Comedian Mort Sahl suggested adding the subtitle "But Sometimes I Hit London."
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 11:40 AM on January 13, 2009

Trivia item: The Day After was directed by Nicholas Meyer, who also directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The mushroom cloud effects were created by injecting dye into a tank of water -- the same tank used to create the Mutara Nebula.

Nov 2003 article on Lawrence, Kansas, the iconic American town which served as the backdrop for the story.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 10:28 PM on December 13, 2008

@WCityMike - It's an instrumental rendition of the hymn How Firm a Foundation, a traditional tune Meyer picked specifically for its strong "good ol' American heartland" associations.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 10:46 PM on December 13, 2008