"High Quality Daily Amusement"
Friday, August 29, 2003
Links to MTV VMA?
I'm trying to find places, besides mtv.com, that have video clips from last night's Video Music Awards. Wish I didn't miss them - seems like I missed a lot! Go trolling around mtv.com and you can find Snoop Dogg and Adam Sandler in a shizzle-dizzle-athon.
Forseen on The Simpsons
At an Isotopes game: "Are you ready to get Duffed?" (all of the beer drinkers - Homer, Barney, etc - start going wild) "Then please give a warm welcome to teen acting sensation Hillary Duff!" (the ravenous crowd goes silent and quizzical)
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Caption Contest!
 From this CNN gallery: "Waiting to see Mars, revelers dressed in "Star Wars" costumes stand outside an observatory at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California." Surely you can come up with a better caption than that...
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Bad advertising?
Wouldn't you consider this example of a haircut from SuperCuts to be a bad haircut? If I ever came back looking like that, I'd contemplate one of the cide's. This guy knows what I'm talking about. Poor fella.
Monday, August 25, 2003
Google's new calculator
Using the Google calculator, you can get the value of phi (equal to (1+sqrt(5))/2), the number of inches in a meter, and the answer to life, the universe and everything.
Let's play a little Balderdash!
Balderdash is my favorite game - players get a funny but real English word, and they must write down what they think the definitions are. Then the definitions are collected, and players select which one they think the real def is. Let's play this with a new phrase (new to me, at least) I came across today as I was trolling around the Net. In our game, the players have already submitted their definitions, and you have to pick the right one. The word to define is "420-friendly" Is it... 1. An indicator that one is comfortable being around people who weigh 400 or more pounds 2. A way to specify that someone is okay with being around and sharing marijuana 3. Something an employer says, meaning that it's okay if the employee leaves before 5:00 4. An indicator of one's concern for the environment, derived from a highly successful clean-up operation on an Ohio route 5. A signal to photographers that the photograph of an individual may be reproduced without explicit permission [No fair going to Google! Be honest here... submit your guesses as comments, and I'll post the true answer later this week]
Bezos and the Babe
This picture of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with Anna Kournikova is priceless. You can almost actually hear the "Ah-OOH-ga!" when you see the Tex-Avery-esque look on his face.
Friday, August 22, 2003
Tom Lehrer's "The Elements"
Didja ever hear Tom Lehrer's "The Elements"? You can see a Flash animation by Mike Stanfill, or read the lyrics... and each of the elements is linked to a periodic table (Me: "Since when has there been an element called protactinium?" *click* "Oooh, it's an actinide!")
It's Dictionaraoke!
What happens if you take word pronunciations from a site like m-w.com and put them to music?
More praise for Georgy for Gov
That's right, the cute chica that makes available 'Georgy for Gov' thongs has been interviewed by Slashdot. The Governorship has never seen this level of cool! She's also a great compromiser: "Boxers or briefs?" "Boxer-briefs!"; "vi or emacs?" "Both!"
You know it had to happen...
Lord of the Rings Movie Trilogy, coming to theaters December 16.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Is your native language Ewe?
Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.
Initech Merchandise
Well, I had this awesome idea for a CafePress store, but it looks like someone beat me to it! That's OK, it'll save me the effort. Anyway, fans of the movie Office Space can get their very own Initech merchandise right here — complete with motivational motto: "Is this good for the company?" Whoever set it up did a good job — it looks pretty authentic. The mug is a definite must-have... "Mmm... yeah..."
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
ThrowThings.com
I swear, you stumble across the strangest things when doing a Google Image Search. This evening I just happened upon " ThrowThings.com" ("Your source for things to throw."). Oddly enough, it's an accurate name. For on ThrowThings.com, you can buy balls and other things to throw, fake throw up, ventriloquist dummies (so you can throw your voice). You can even throw away your money. However, I think ThrowAwayYourMoney.com pioneered that concept.
Truth and Blame
It's not that movies like Gigli are bad ... it's that people are text-messaging each other declaring that the movies are bad. What this tells me is that movie makers think that it's the advertised image, not the movie itself, that makes or breaks a movie. Que ridiculoso!
Jeopardy the Movie?
Stephan Carroll is clearly an AMAZING digital composer... FARK ran an "audio edit" contest for people to tweak the Jeopardy theme song. Steve not only "hit it out of the park", the ball orbited the planet several times before landing on my car. Check out his "Jeopardy Suite" (a medley of "Jeopardy: Main Theme and Fanfare", "Trebek's Run", and Alex's Theme "What is Love? (In the Form of a Question)". You'd swear it was done by John Williams. And, if that wasn't enough, he also made a Spanish guitar version, and a jazz quartet version. Amazing stuff!
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Napster Bits
In the likely chance that you haven't visited Napster.com lately, check it out because they have some really cool animations featuring the Napster logo/mascot. The sequence of cartoons tell the metaphorical tale of Napster's troubled past, and where it is headed in the future. There are only four cartoons so far, but the site implies that there may be over 20 more to come. I, for one, have high hopes for Napster's future. I remember seeing a glimpse of the "for-pay" version they were working on way back when — and it looked promising. With Apple proving there is a future in legitimate paid music downloads, and with the incalculable "brand equity" of the legendary Napster name, theirs (whoever THEY are, at this point - a division of Roxio, I believe) is an enormous market to lose. My hope is that, in all the time that has been spent determining Napster's legal fate, their programmers have been plugging away at the Killer App for music downloads. They've had PLENTY of time to "get it right". Though I love the iTunes music store, there's a special place in my heart (and those of millions of others) for that little cat with headphones — and the Napster Bits animations are brilliantly designed to take advantage of that. Check them out.
Friday, August 15, 2003
Mini-KISS
Check out these pint-sized powerhouses of rock! A big thanks to Jay "No Web Presence" Murphy for the link.
Caption Contest!
I spotted this scene while coming in to work from the parking lot this morning. It struck me as quite amusing, but I'm not sure why, so maybe you can help, by providing a caption in the comments page.  Click on the image for a bigger version. Incidentally, the car is a BMW Z8. My friend bought a split-level house for less than the base price of one of these.
Unsolicited Money Laundering?
From the Spam Files: I got this in my inbox today: Important notice
We have just charged your credit card for money laundry service in amount of $234.65 (because you are either child pornography webmaster or deal with dirty money, which require us to layndry them and then send to your checking account). If you feel this transaction was made by our mistake, please press "No". If you confirm this transaction, please press "Yes" and fill in the form below.(The form then asks for my credit card number and expiration date) Now, that's what I call good customer service! Seeing imminent trouble for one of their valued clients, they're layndrying my dirty money* without my even having to ask for it! Bravo! *Note to feds: This post may contain sarcasm.
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Place your bets...
I bet that someday soon, we'll see a movie called "Blackout", an action flick in which the power goes out in a major city. Incidentally, I saw a fighter jet depart from Hanscom AFB while playing tennis today. Man, can those flighters bank! It took off and headed directly to Boston. I wonder if it was dispatched just in case terrorism was a part of the picture. Someone interviewed on the news just said, "This is the darkest the city has even been." Duh.
From the "ummm, why?" department
You'll all be thrilled to know that scientists in China have created a human-rabbit hybrid embryo. Although it seems bizarre at first, the science behind it is that the rabbit eggs, with most of their lagomorph DNA removed, simply serve as a vehicle to create human stem cells.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Redesignification
I've updated the layout for the site. DO NOT PANIC. Of course, a good amount of redesign time was spent getting it to look the same in various browsers (web "standards" such as they are). I got everything looking pretty good in Mozilla 1.3, Safari 1.0, IE 5.2 Mac, and IE 6.0 Windows. One small catch... Mozilla 1.3 (and presumably its Netscape brethren) insists on keeping the left part of the page VERY wide, for no good reason. If anyone *cough* Kieran *cough* has any suggestions as to how to fix this, I'd be happy to hear it... I know I've run into this before, but I forgot what the deal was. Otherwise, enjoy the new layout and, hopefully, some new features soon to come. I'm feeling feisty...
Is it real or is it Photoshop?
Greg Apodaca is a digital retouching artist. In addition to his obvious duties as an airbrusher of ladies, he also serves as an enlarger of noses and an afro fluffer.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
OctoDog
 It's a hot dog, it's an octopus, it's OctoDog! The fun new way to eat a hot dog! Why settle for depressing, ennui-inducing hot dogs, when you can use the OctoDog "Frankfurter Converter" to partially slice the hot dog into eight equal parts, thus simulating an octopus made of porcine byproducts?! WHO WOULDN'T WANT AN OCTODOG? WHO, I ASK YOU!!?!?!?!?! Sorry, got a little excited there. Anyway, they actually link to this product mention (PDF) in Autoweek (of all places), which winds up it's mini-review by saying that it may "thoroughly and completely nauseate you". Yes, I do believe it may.
The Lean, Mean, Boredom-Reducing Blogging Machine
Ever wonder why George Foreman looks so gosh darned happy when he's plugging his handy dandy little grills on TV? Perhaps it's because Salton paid him $110,000,000 for the perpetual rights to his name. If anyone wants to make a Jeff Chausse Spatula, or a Dave Koelle Can Opener, please have your people call our people. Thank you.
Monday, August 11, 2003
Concentration diversions
As part of a promotion for The West Wing re-runs on Bravo, the Bravo website has this game of Concentration. The interesting thing about this game is that there are two poses of each character, which make the game pretty tough. "I know I've seen Martin Sheen in here somewhere!" - and you're right - but he's in a different pose. I explore other thoughts about the game of Concentration on my webpage... you can set up a game where you have to match 3, instead of 2, cards. It's much tougher!
Thursday, August 07, 2003
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Behind the Spam
Wired did some digging for info about a penis enlargement pill spammer, after the spammer's website inadvertently(?) revealed its order logs... Highlights: - This one spammer received 6,000 orders, at $50/bottle, over the course of four weeks. - The owner of the enterprise is a 19 year old high school dropout named Braden Bournival. Here's my favorite part: - Bournival's mentor and business partner is Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a chess expert and former neo-Nazi leader who turned to the spam business in 1999 after it became public that his father was Jewish. Nice to see this Hawke fellow is climbing the evolutionary ladder... Very slowly, mind you... I mean, I'm fairly sure "spammer" is at least slightly above "neo-Nazi"... I think.
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Oh no, not grab-assing!
Interesting data: Here is the email that is the root of the accusations of inappropriate behavior against Episcopalian Rev. V. Gene Robinson. I wish people expressed more accuracy and clarity instead of saying things like, "he put his hands on me inappropriately every time I engaged him in conversation." What does that mean? Did the guy touch his genitals during casual conversation? Or did he pat him on the back a couple of times, and this guy had bad memories of back patting from other adults in his lifetime? Maybe the accuser is the guy who's messed up. I get so irked hearing things like, "so-and-so sexually assaulted Jane Doe in Aisle 5 at the supermarket." Huh? What could someone have possibly done in a supermarket aisle? I'm not looking for sordid details, I just want us all to be on the same page.
Monday, August 04, 2003
The Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products
Will You Marry Me...
...and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and the other 196 of you?
Sunday, August 03, 2003
These critics make me feel all Gigli!
Now that Gigli is actually out in theatres, check out the reviews at RottenTomatoes.com. It takes a very specially bad movie, indeed, to score a 5... out of 100. "I had a brief thought that the mundane inanity might be some Samuel Beckett-style commentary on the existential void. Then I realized that watching the movie put me closer to the existential void than they ever were, and that Godot would arrive long before this movie went anywhere."Wow. That's BAD.
LaserMonks.com
More proof that you can find anything on the Internet: 1. FARK posts an article about overpriced printer cartridges. Article suggests refilled cartridges are one option. 2. Farker b0rg9 posts an amusing comment: "I just avoid printing and use a sweatshop monastery scriptorium." 3. Farker Magorn locates LaserMonks.com, an actual abbey of monks who who earn their living selling refilled printer cartridges! I know there are several refilled cartridge dealers on the Internet, but most of them are spammers who will never get a penny from me. Now I know where I'll be buying my next cartridge! Dominus Printerink Providebit
Friday, August 01, 2003
Hilarious stag night prank
Bomb note in checked luggage
This seems ridiculent... at Logan airport, a teen was arrested because his checked luggage contained a note that said, "Have you found the bomb yet? Nope, just clothes." [ read the article] This is obviously a commentary on the status quo. It's not even a prank. Why is this arrestable?
Reporting from the front lines
I went to be a part of Boston's first flash mob yesterday in Harvard Square. Actually, I arrived a little late, and didn't get to take part in the flash mob. But in a way, that was more fun. Herein lies the tale. [ read more]
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