Need some hilarity for your ears? In 1967, Van Morrison sat down and cranked out 31 songs in one sitting, to round out a contractual obligation. WFMU's blog has the entirety of the collection for download in MP3 format. Absolutely a riot. In case you're wondering whether it's worth it, check out the lyrics involved, such as those for "Just Ball":

Just ball.
Just ball.
Just ball.
Just ball.
Just ball.
Just ball.
That's all.
That's all.
Just ball.
That's all.
Just ball.
Sock it to me.

Believe it or not, all of these tracks are on at least 2 actual, real-life, CD collections that you can buy from Amazon.com, not including a bunch of imports:

• Brown Eyed Beginnings
• The Complete Bang Sessions

Nope, it's not a pico-verson of Tivo; it's Nissan's concept car with a rotating cabin that allows the car to be driven in both directions without needing to put the car into reverse.

I think a cool mod would be to have the car continue on a straight highway, while the riders rotate the cabin - now that would be fun driving!

The CD Lift, an excellent gift for the incredibly anal retentive audiophile in your life:

After placing the CD-LIFT in the center of the CD, gently press down on the rubber bulb and release. By lifting and turning at the same time, the CD can be lifted out of the case. Place the CD into the player. Once the CD has been positioned, gently press the bulb down and move the CD-lifit from the CD

It's an $18 CD picker-upper. Why not?

Via Red Ferret.

Here's the problem. You're fond of margaritas and strawberry daquiris, but all your guy friends pick on you because you're into "girlie drinks". Here's your solution: The Daquiri Whacker - a gasoline powered blender!

Pardon this mini-soapbox rant, but there appears to be a disturbing trend going on. A lot of places that are of interest to children are now banning adults who don't bring one. A woman in Manhattan just received a ticket for sitting on a park bench, without having a child in tow. I wouldn't have bothered blogging this, but I recently encountered a similar situation personally.

There's a place here in Massachusetts called "Davis Farmland". It's kind of an "Uber-petting zoo" containing endangered farm animals, which I visited a few years ago. I had a fantastic time, as I enjoy seeing and photographing rare animals. Recently, I visited their web site to see about visiting again, and it appears they also ban adults who do not bring children. This disgusts me. Is pedophilia so rampant that the problem can't be solved by, oh, perhaps requiring children to be accompanied by responsible adults when visiting a place like this? God forbid a grown-up indulges his inner child with a trip to the zoo once in a while.

I just sent an email to info@davisfarmland.com expressing my opinion:

Hi. Thank you for assuming I'm a pedophile, because I don't have a kid. I used to enjoy visiting and learning about your collection of animals, but you can rest assured that I will no longer visit, even when I do have kids someday. And I will also discourage all of my friend who do have children from visiting. I guess you can sleep better now knowing that you're safe from me and my evil childless ways.


Sincerely,
Jeff Chausse
29 Year Old Non-Pedophile.

I'll let you know if they write back.

Check out this creepy article from Slate. Need to brainwash your entire country? Strategic Communication Laboratories, Ltd. will develop an "end-to-end" propaganda campaign, complete with fictitious video, to, in their own words, "override all national radio and TV broadcasts in time of crisis".

The company speaks of saving lives by avoiding panic in a smallpox scenario, as well as rigging an election - but only to replace nasty, evil, corrupt politicians, with nice and friendly ones, of course. Their services couldn't possibly be used for evil. Nope, no way, no how.

I'm not a big football fan, nor a fan of football video games, but I'm tempted to buy Madden 2006 just to see this glitch in action.

Apparently, some flawed data entry in a software update resulted in the virtual version of New York Jets lineman Michael King being... 7 inches tall.

Don't worry about poor Mr. King getting crushed. According to Madden producer Phil Frazier:

"It wouldn't affect play. He would literally look like a little speck. If he was the running back, the ball would be so big he would literally be inside the ball, and the ball would (look like) it was moving around on the ground (on its own)."

Check him out in these screenshots (They're huge but, um, they kind of have to be):

• In the defensive line
• Blocking someone about 1000 times his size.
• Oh no! He got tackled!

My officemate probably thinks I'm insane, because I've been cracking up for several minutes straight looking at these.

Playing off the nanotechnology "fad", MYMICROBOTS Brand Robots are 500 microns tall, and can be yours for $9.99 each. I'd go for the one that's made out of pure gold, personally.

Interesting thread over at Engadget.

It seems someone sold an XBOX 360 Controller on eBay. Now, you may or may not know that the XBOX 360 will not be available in the "real world" for another couple of months. The seller claims "I got one when I attended a game developer's conference hosted by Microsoft".

The seller, who went by the name tuzik7, changed their name from tojulieharris right before the auction, perhaps to avoid associating her presumably real name of "Julie Harris" with the auction. Unfortunately, eBay doesn't really work that way. The seller (Julie Harris?) lives in Plano, TX. Plano, Texas is the home of Gearbox studios, which is involved in the development of many Xbox games, such as the incredibly popular Halo.

The ebay winner of the item was jhenshaw, of whom, tuzik7 (a.k.a. tojulieharris) left the user feedback "Great buyer, fast payment".

It is worth noting at this time that a certain Jeff Henshaw happens to be "Executive Producer, Xbox Digital Entertainment
Microsoft Corp."

jhenshaw has not yet left user feedback for tuzik7 regarding this sale.

This is interesting: Anheuser-Busch donated drinking water in beer cans (with a different label, of course) to the areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, as seen in this eBay auction.

A long time ago, I bought a computer motherboard, and the included manual's cover was rather, um, weird. That cover has now found a permanent home in the "Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness".

I submitted the picture to the site's owner ages ago, but forgot to check in on it. I just happened to stumble across it today. Hooray!

"In an unusual publishing move, Tom Wolfe's most-recent novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, will be printed without the title on the cover of its paperback edition - just its author's name in giant letters.

Answer: Real World.

When is hot sauce too hot? Probably when it's so highly concentrated in capsaicin, that it's actually sold in solid crystalline form, and when one sand grain-sized crystal renders an entire pot of soup inedibly hot. This is the story of Blair's 16 Million Reserve.

The world's hottest hot pepper (the Red Savinas Habanero) rates 580,000 Scoville Heat Units. Blair's 16 Million Reserve rates, as you may guess, 16,000,000. According to the Scoville Organoleptic Test, this means that you could dilute this single milliliter of crystals into over FOUR THOUSAND GALLONS of water, and still taste the heat. Since capsicum is what causes "heat" in foods, and this stuff is 100% pure capsicum, it is literally pure heat. Want some? It can be yours for just $199.

CatsInSinks.com - Pictures of cats in sinks.

(Though The Infinite Cat Project is more fun...)

If your company is called something like, oh, "Hitachi Global Storage Technologies", please don't even bother ATTEMPTING to be "hip", because you will fail. Hard.

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe

Eeeeewwwww!!!

Agents for the firm [...] say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

Aaaack!!!

This guy set a new Guinness World Record for consecutive time watching TV... 69+ hours. He set a different record for standing on one foot for 76 hours. Seems that watching television for 69 hours straight wouldn't be that difficult - what if I watched all 3 seasons of "24" consecutively?

I'm confused. "Consumers for Cable Choice" is running a contest in which the first prize is a "video iPod". Last I checked, there was no such thing. And if you read their press release (PDF), they openly admit there is no such thing.

The grand prize is an Apple video iPod, a product not yet released but eagerly anticipated as the next “must have” gadget.

So, has fiercely secretive Apple authorized this lobbying group to pre-announce an upcoming product (unlikely) or is this organization giving away something that doesn't exist (illegal, I would imagine!) Either way, this is weird.

Microsoft recently showed a hilarious video starring Bill Gates and Napoleon Dynamite (yes, the "real" Napoleon, a.k.a. Jon Heder) at a developers conference. Unfortunately, the clip online is not the best quality, since it's actually camcorder footage of the movie screen. Still, it's a riot.

Here's a direct link to the Quicktime version

Here's the full iFilm page, if you need a different version, or just really like ads.

Here's an interesting time and money waster - Lastminute-auction.com lets you browse and search through all eBay listings which end in less than hour, and are going for less than $1.00. Happy hunting!

Perhaps the coolest thing ever sold on eBay.

Firstly, I apologize to my longtime readers about the volume of political posts lately, but I'm simply outraged, and since this site never really had a defined agenda anyway, I'm going to use it for my soapbox as necessary. Anyway here goes.

Way back in 2003, George W. Bush openly stated that he doesn't read news.

"The best way to get the news," he explained, "is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world."

I always knew Bush was an ignorant, bumbling moron, but I found it somewhat reassuring that it was possible those surrounding him had some degree of intelligence. Even if Bush was just a puppet, at least he had some halfway intelligent puppeteers.

Therefore, I assumed things in the White House went like this:

• Bad Thing happens


• Bush's handlers tell him about the Bad Thing


• Bush has his handlers figure out how to spin the Bad Thing to make it sound better


• Bush spews the manufactured "spin" about the Bad Thing, to trick people into feeling better

This is not how I'd like my goverment run, and it's horrifying that this is how things seem to have been running for 6 years or so, but the reality is even worse. The truth is not that Bush tries to mislead people. The truth is he has absolutely no idea what's going on.

An article by Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin reveals that:

[...] Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut.

I always thought Bush was ignorant, yet crafty. The reality is that he's not constantly trying to pull the wool over the eyes of America. The reality is that he really believes things are fine - because his arrogant, bullying, frat boy mentality has built a culture of fear in which no one will tell him bad news.

I'm struggling to find a way to conclude this post. I just want this madness to end. I have no idea what it will take. Bush's symbolic claim of "responsibility" for the failures of the Katrina rescue efforts are an interesting development. I'm sure this was a highly calculated move by Bush's handlers, but the marketing guy in me thinks it will do more damage than they've anticipated. We'll see. Meanwhile, keep fighting the good fight, blue staters, wherever you may live.

If you haven't heard of the Telezapper, it's a device that attaches to your phone and automatically tells telemarketers that you don't accept unsolicited calls, and then hangs up on them.

Someone thought that got them off WAY too easy. Thus, the Telecrapper 2000 was born. The Telcrapper 2000 automatically carries on an entire (pointless) conversation with the telemarketer. Thus, annoying them as much as they annoy you. I want one.

Apparently, on September 11th, there was a march in Washington D.C. to serve as a memorial to the 2001 terror attack victims, as well as a show of support for our current military actions (how those two things are related, I still don't understand)

Lest you think this was a stirring showing of America coming together in a glorious show of unity, consider these facts:

• The walk was organized by the Department of Defense.


• People wanting to participate had to register online - initially having to submit their home address, until the Pentagon was accused by the media of using registrations to recruit for the military.


• Reporters and cameras were forbidden outside three enclosed areas.


• The route was lined with the entirety of the U.S. Park Police's Washington force. Officers were instructed to arrest anyone without "credentials"


• The route of the walk was walled off by a 4 foot tall fence to keep it "sterile".


• The route itself was unspecified until the actual event.

So, bravo on a carefully choreographed attempt to continue linking Iraq with 9/11 - but what's the point if no one could see it?

Interesting what you might find on Wikipedia. The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War ended in 1986. Not a single shot was fired. It was the longest war in history, and the one with the least casualties. Ahh, you gotta love technicalities.

This "Blame Game" nonsense from the Bush Administration is positively driving me nuts. Replacing the word "accountability" with a silly rhyming phrase does not make it any less relevant, you jackasses. Fortunately, reporters are finally starting to grow some cojones and demand real answers.

Here is an awesome, AWESOME video of reporter David Gregory beating down on White House press puppet secretary Scott McClellan. It's a glorious bit of "irresistable force meets immovable object" drama. You must watch it.

And here are some more goodies relating to American reporters' newfound spine in the wake of Katrina, not to mention the administration's plummeting approval rating.

Boston.com has a graphic that superimposes the area flooded in New Orleans on a map of the Boston area. The flood region stretches all the way to Sudbury.

Allow me to share a piece of spam I received today:

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!

I don't understand spam. Is this the result of someone's email system being commandeered by malicious code? Or is it a clever marketing ploy, anonymously delivered but by googling "Gourgana" I find a link to Grand Theft Auto? Or a hint that I should look into Hare Krishna ism?

[Update: Wikipedia to the rescue... this entry talks about both my spam message, and the Grand Theft Auto connection]

I just got an email with the subject line:

Show your team you appreciate their hard work for under $1.60

If I'm ever working at a company that distributes these to their workers, please shoot me.

Oh, and next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day... so, you know, if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.

This just pisses me off. SomethingAwful.com, a Internet "humor" site with an incredibly active user community raised over THIRTY THOUSAND dollars in a mere 11 hours, for Hurricane Katrina relief. This caused an automated "suspicious activity red flag" in PayPal's systems which, I suppose, is reasonable.

However, instead of having a human being contact SA owner Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka" to discuss the situation, he was locked out of his account and entered into a Kafka-esque hell of impossible-to-complete automated web-based "resolution" processes. He only found a phone number via PayPalSucks.com, and then things only got worse. End result: $30,000 of aid has to be refunded to the senders (though he's not entirely sure how to do it, since PayPal obviously isn't an option), and who knows how many people went without food for another day, thanks to PayPal's boneheaded automated bureaucracy.

Do read PayPalSucks.com for some really scary information. It's not just the generic griping many "CompanyXSucks" sites are known for. PalPal is demonstrably evil. Their terms of services are carefully worded to enable to them to literally steal your money for any reason, and give you NO right of appeal. Scary stuff.

Want to see some of the most amazing origami ever? Of course you do!

I learned about Lang Origami after listening to an episode of This Week In Science, a podcast show which takes a quirky look at the previous week's science news. Specifically, the July 26, 2005 episode had an interview with Robert Lang.

At SupportOurRibbons.com, you can order prefab or custom-designed sarcastic (or, if you must, non-sarcastic) magnetic ribbons to ironically express your feelings toward the easy-to-remove-when-political-tides-change, no-actual-effort-involved, benefits-no-one-except-Chinese-sweatshop-owners, ferro-magnetic, poor-excuse-for-actual-activism plague that has infested our roadways in the last few years.

In an effort to guarantee that Massachusetts citizens can open and read electronic documents in the future - "something that [is] not possible using closed formats" - the state of Massachusetts has a plan to move its workers away from Microsoft Office applications by the start of 2007.