Aside from being among the funniest videos I've seen in a while, I like the idea behind the charity. Give them a few bucks, would ya?
Recently in funny Category
In case you haven't heard of Improv Everywhere:
Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 80 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City.
They just threw a Surprise Wedding Reception. I suggest you go to the page and checkout the photos/videos. Very funny stuff.
Take a look at that screen grab I just took. CNN is running some great articles, don't get me wrong, but when they have to encapsulate and article into four bullet points like that, and it's basically the whole story, why bother having the story at all?
Every year for April Fools day, ThinkGeek comes up with some outlandish product "offerings." This year, it included the sleeping bag seen here: a Tauntaun Sleeping Bag. Among the features....
- Classic Star Wars sleeping bag simulates the warmth of a Tauntaun carcass
- Built-in embroidered Tauntaun head pillow
- Glowing Lightsaber zipper pull
- Great for playing pretend "Save Luke from the Wampa" games
- Teach your children about the best Star Wars movie ever
- Fully Licensed Lucasfilm™ Collectable
- Fits children (and small adults)
My favorite part: the pattern on the inside, which looks like Tauntaun entrails (just like in the movie!).
Anyway, it turns out that enough people tried to buy it and complained when they found out it was just an April Fools joke that ThinkGeek has added this message to the page:
ATTN Tauntaun Fanatics! Due to an overwhelming tsunami of requests from YOU THE PEOPLE, we have decided to TRY and bring this to life. We have no clue if the suits at Lucasfilms will grant little ThinkGeek a license, nor do we know how much it would ultimately retail for. But if you are interested in ever owning one of these, click the link below and we'll try!
The link, if you want to know if they manage to make and start selling them, is this one. Click it! You know you want to! I've already signed up and hope that the price is right for me to get one for each of the boys - I know they'll love them!
So, when I was visiting my folks last night, I noticed something odd outside: noise. What with the winter months, it's not something you're used to hearing, but last night the whole gamut was out there: crickets, frogs, ummm.... crickets. You get the idea - it's clearly starting to warm up out there, and even though it's still chilly, I think spring might finally be here.
Let me know what YOU think of it, ok?
Since it was such a lovely day for driving today, I decided to go take care of a customer in New Haven. Initially I didn't want to go, but they were having problems with their router since yesterday afternoon and were rather anxious to get online - a feeling I know all too well.
Traffic was pretty light, considering Tropical Depression Hanna was on the way to destroy life as we know it. I had also just had the struts in the car replaced to alleviate a very expensive sound coming from their general vicinity, so I felt that I should do what I could to pay them off somehow.
About half way through West Haven - ironically near the location of the "Vagina" billboard * - I was passed by an SUV.
As you can see, it's a Hummer H3, one of the more fuel efficient vehicles in the Hummer line. Normally, the black ones don't look to bad, but there was something different about this one. I don't know if it was the brush guards, the "lived in" look that it had (like it had actually been driven off-road), or the vague sense that whoever was driving it had actually served their country and had spent more than a few months behind the wheel of a military Hummer. What I do know is that it stood out - more than a vehicle that gets approx. 14 mpg doing 70+ down the highway does. What you can see in the photo is an arrow pointing to where their lone bumper sticker is.
What does the bumper sticker say?
Now, I shouldn't have been surprised that the person driving the fuel-inefficient vehicle on the road was a Republican, but somehow, I still was. From what I understand, a rather large percentage of the people serving in the armed forces are Republican, despite the fact that their Commander In Chief keeps putting them in harms way. Guess I still hold out hope for some people out there to have a decent head on their shoulders.....
* When the "Vagina Monologs" came to New Haven, they paid for a billboard along I-95 in West Haven that said VAGINA in huge letters, and monologs much smaller. Obviously done to get attention, it made headlines across the state, and, to some extent, across the region. Panty-twisted conservatives across the nation got their panties twisted even more tightly, and there was much griping, complaining and gnashing of teeth. Jen and I went to the show and had a wonderful time. (top)
Over the weekend, we went to go see the Bridgeport Bluefish take on the Long Island Ducks - and no, I'm not making the names up - honest. We got there early to meet up with the rest of our group - some other folks from my sons Cub Scout Pack - and so were in our seats and feeding children by the 6:05 game start (I got to mouth the National Anthem while waiting for a salad and some pretzels, I think). Thanks to our Pack leader, we got upgraded to seats that were just about on the field - and since we were behind home plate, it couldn't get much better than that.
A good tip for those going to a local, or "farm team" type game - go to your local AAA office for tickets or other specials. Our team offers Bluefish Bucks. AAA sells them at 0.85¢ for each $1 in Bluefish Bucks - so for the $85 I spent on Bucks, we got $100 worth of stuff at the game - well worth the extra effort to get the Bucks, especially since spending $100 at the park on food and "stuff" is insanely easy.
Anyway, late in the 6th inning Ethan was being a bit... cranky. I decided to take him and walk around a bit, figuring that if he fell asleep while we were doing that (carrying him is a good way to make that happen, and the hooded sweatshirt he had on wouldn't hurt), it wasn't the worst thing in the world. I had just gotten up to the walk way between the field seats and the cheap seats when I heard a ball being hit, followed by the crowd making the noise usually associated with a foul-tip that's going into the stands. Seeing as how they'd knocked a few others in the same area, I started looking to see where everyone else was looking, then looking in that direction - to find the ball coming down about 20 feet in front of me. It bounced once, then bounced again a few feet in front of me, and then it was in my outstretched hand - I hadn't really thought about it, just grabbed for the ball. It wasn't until I felt someone behind me that I started to think about the fact that I was carrying Ethan at the time - had that been a MLB game, we might have been crushed in the frenzy to get the ball. That was close.
I walked up some more steps to get to the top of the park, acknowledging all the "Good catch" comments, not really thinking about what I had done - I'm not a huge sports person, so it was more than a little surreal - when Cap'n Long Island (one of the mascots) approached me to sign the ball. He then asked me to stay put, and took the ball over to BB, the 7 foot tall bluefish, to get his signature. Ethan was a little put out by the ball disappearing at first, but when I explained what was happening, and then when we had the ball back and he could see it, he was ok with it - and a little excited about it, too.
After walking around with Ethan for a bit, I returned, to find that Noah and his friend were both excited to see (aka touch) the ball. Ethan kept asking to hold it, but he also kept trying to throw it, so that didn't last very long - clearly he had the wrong idea and was trying to help the umpire out with his dwindling supply of balls.
The 9th inning gave us more excitement, but that was in the game itself: the Ducks managed to catch up the 5 runs they needed to tie the game, and then they managed to deny the Bluefish any runs in the bottom of the 9th. We ended up leaving at 10:15 or so, before the 10th inning started. We had wanted to stay for the fireworks, but with two kids asleep, two more on their way, and Jen scheduled to be at work at 7:00 the next morning, it wasn't likely we'd be able to stay for that long - mirroring every other attempt we've made to catch a game that has fireworks after it. The closest that we've come is seeing the Connecticut Cutters fireworks from the parking lot after the game, and that was mostly obscured by trees.
Sunday we went to some kid's pirate themed birthday party. That some kid would, of course, be Logan, my "God-child." I won't get into the reason for the quotes there, so let's just leave that alone for the time being. Ethan, having known about the Pirate theme for days, brought his own hat to fit in - and ended up being the only appropriately attired guest in attendance. Who knew?
After dinner we went to the SBC Restaurant in Branford. We've always had a good time there, and this proved to be no exception: they had hired a magician to go from table to table, keeping the kids happy. This guy did a good job with some little tricks to keep the kids happy, then made a turtle, a sword and a mermaid out of balloons before moving on to another family. It's safe to say that it was the first balloon mermaid he had ever made - and quite possibly his last....
This is me, trying to stay awake while things happen around me. Joy.
Oh, and Skitch! is an interesting tool from plasq that allows you to do screen shots (or images captures right from your iSight or other camera), edit them, and the post them to the web. Right now I'm using their servers, but you can put it to flickr, .Mac (soon to be MobileMe), or right into your FTP account. It's pretty cool to play with, and I'm finding more things to do with it each day. Go check it out!
Daylight savings sucks. First of all, why start it on Saturday night/Sunday morning? It takes a week or so to get used to it - just start it on Friday night/Saturday morning so we have a fighting chance come Monday. Seriously.
I realize that the concept of DST is quite useful - we get up earlier, so there is a bigger "useful" part of the day. Really - it's pretty clear to me. (The US Navy has a write up of some of the details here) But we are no longer an agrarian society. Well, we still farm, but it's a smaller percentage of the population that does it. Not that I mind getting up at "0 dark thirty" to get ready for my day - I'm used to that from the fall and winter months. And while having the daylight on the front end of the day is useful, I was just getting used to the idea of the sun still being up on my ride home.
There is some argument among scholars, economists, and who knows who else that the change to and from DST costs the economy money (Google search on "daylight savings time money"). I would argue that it does, but only in lost productivity - and that's mostly because of the fact that the change happens on Sunday, not Saturday. It may not seem like much, but I think that the extra day would be very useful.
My experience is always the same: I wake up one hour late on Monday morning. This year the problem was compounded by not feeling well (chest cold that makes me sound like I should be looking out for the Grim Reaper) and being up late the night before. If Jen hadn't come home early today, there's a good chance I would have been asleep until about 9:00 - possibly later. Since I was supposed to have the kids at school at 8:00, that would have been a bit of a problem. In the end, they got where they needed to be and I did what I needed to, but it seems to me that there's a solution to this problem:
Don't use Daylight Savings Time.
If you haven't seen it, watch it. Returning Friday, April 4, Battlestar Galactica is one of the best "remakes" of tv going on. They tried to re-do Bionic Woman and apparently didn't do too well (I haven't had a chance to see it) - I just read that they're releasing all eight of the episodes on DVD, so maybe I still have a chance....
Another thing to be aware of: What the Frak is Going On? is a nice, concise, eight minute recap of the first three seasons of Battlestar. From what I understand, this will be the last season - every now and then it's nice to have a tv show go from start to finish, instead of being canned before it's aired fully (Firefly, Space: Above and Beyond, Good vs. Evil, Invisible Man, or many of the others) or
going on for years and years and years - sometimes past when it should have probably called it quits. Of course, the latter rarely happens. But WTFIGO is good not only to catch up on what you might have missed, but also for some nice commentary - mostly in the form of little snippets slid-in among the recap. You have to watch it to understand, but I laughed more than a few times.
So, to recap: Watch the recap online. Enjoy it. Get ready for season 4 to air on 4/4 (co-incidence? I think not!). And if you need to catch up, season 3 was just released on DVD as a whole set (none of this "Season 3.0", and then "Season 3.5" non-sense!).
I get a lot of spam in the course of a day, but this one stands out as being particularly.... lazy. Like, I'm fairly certain that Ethan - at 2 1/2 - can do better trying to market weight loss products over the internet.
My children - and you know I really do love them - are insane. Honestly, truly insane. I mean, honestly - how else can you explain the "game" they like to play: hitting each other and then being all apologetic from across the room.
Oh wait, Douglas Adams already did:
described as "a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away"
Of particular interest is rule #5:
The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find on hand. Whenever a player scores a 'hit' on another player, he should immediately run away and apologize from a safe distance.
Apologies should be concise, sincere and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.
This morning, when :abby: smacked Noah and then shouted "I'm sorry!" from across the room, it suddenly came to me: it's GOT to be Brockian Ultra-Cricket. Apparently all the times that I read the "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in high-school have somehow subliminally seeped into the kids brains. I wonder if they know what 6 x 9 really is......
Last night Ethan was cranking, so i picked him up and brought him to the kitchen - as he had been mumbling something about the kitchen.
We stepped into the kitchen and i said:
You have entered the kitchen. Cabinets abound. There is a sink and several counters. Exits are south, north and west.
He pointed at the fridge, so i turned, and said...
You are facing the fridge. Other objects available are a stove, sink and microwave. Cabinets still abound, and there are more counters. Exits are north, south and west.
He looked at me.
I said "Time passes....."
He looked at me again.
I did a little face sucker action and said "You have been eaten by a grue"
He didn't care what his final score was (5 points), but I think he might want to play again tomorrow.....
NIKE MISSLE BASE KC-SILO 60 - (eBay item 300156975741 end time Oct-31-07 05:23:14 PDT)
Sure, it's 60 acres. And sure, the Missle silos are filled with water. But there's an 800 sq. ft. fortified bunker you can live in. I'm thinking....
* 1 silo filled with water for free diving
* 1 silo with cargo netting for climbing
* 1 silo turned into a rock wall/climbing area
* paint ball in some of the land
* "agri-tainment" in other bits
* there's still room for the old homestead....
Of course, as Rudi pointed out, it's still in Kansas. Not that I have anything against Kansas - I just don't know if now is the best time to uproot the whole family and move.....
This might be boring, tedious, or both. If you don't have Cablevision for your internet/tv, or if you don't live in an area where they are located, or you just don't care, then move along. The rest of you can read more by clicking the link....
Continue reading Cablevision: how much more can I take?.
Todays drive into work was pretty atypical for several reasons. One was that I left the house when I meant to - since Jen was long gone when this happened, and the kids weren't actually fighting me (for a change), this was a pleasant surprise. Drop off went well, so that was good. A left, a right, a left, another left, and one more right and I'm on the highway - but the iPod is coming up with nothing but things I just don't want to hear. I had yesterday off so the family could visit my Aunt and Uncle who are visiting from Australia, so today is my Monday. I needed a little something to pick me up and get me going. It was a long hard road to finding something - I was 3/4 of the way to work when it finally happened: "Hot for Teacher", from Van Halen's "1984".
That song is only about 3 or 4 minutes long, so I had to find something else to fit into the remaining 5 minutes of my drive. What to do, what to do? The iPod was picking out more stuff I didn't want to hear - including several passages from an audio book that really, really needs to come off there - when suddenly I heard "Angry People" by Barenaked Ladies, off of "Are Me & Are Men Deluxe Edition". It's a double CD set that I got off of the iTunes Music Store, and it's chock full of BNL good-ness. Keep in mind that it's called "Are Me", but it's supposed to be read like "Barenaked Ladies Are Me" - or, as they put it on their podcast, "Barenaked Ladies Army" since their fans are so very loyal. Just a fun little tidbit for you there. Anyway, "Angry People" is kind of a happy, upbeat song, despite the name, and it helped continue the momentum built by "Hot for Teacher" to get me into a mindset that I'd be able to tackle the day.
Of course, when I remembered that today isn't Monday, and that I still have a piece of go-suh work cell phone and I have no idea when or if a replacement is coming. It works, but the battery won't hold a charge anymore - I need to charge it about once a day, and I don't use it to make more than two or three calls a day. BAD CELL PHONE!
But then I get to the office and there's good news! The new phone - a nice, shiny new phone - has arrived. A phone call, some idle chatter w/ the Verizon rep, and an activation later, and I'm playing with my new RAZR V3m
phone. So far, it's working quite well - I've managed to get around to updating my address book with all the important phone numbers and email addresses, and then sync the phone to the work computer via BlueTooth. The biggest downside: Verizon crippled the phone. They don't let you do OBEX data transfers from the phone - which means if I take a photo with the camera, I either have to "PIX" the photo to myself (and use up messages that I think we pay extra for) or use the Micro SD card that the phone has - only you have to dis-assemble the phone to get at the card. OBEX, on the other hand, allows you to take and put data right from your computer to the phone and vice versa. Most other carriers offer it, but Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that you don't want that - they know what you want, and instead of being able to take your photos right off your cell phone, or play YOUR MP3 files on your phone, you really want to pay them to let you do it.
I don't want this to turn into a giant "Verizon is evil" rant, so I'm going to stop here, but point out that it's my phone, and I think I know what I want better than they do. Well, ok, it's the State of Connecticuts phone, but I have the same issues with my personal phone. Anyway, that's enough of that.
If you haven't see Shaun of the Dead
Simon Pegg teams up with Nick Frost (among others) to bring us Hot Fuzz, another brilliant comedy. How brilliant? The tagline says it all: Big Cops. Small Town. Moderate Violence.
As usual, there's more than a bit of tounge-in-cheek joking, lots of action, and I'm sure just as many references to other movies that will miss if you're not paying attention. If you want to watch a trailer (which includes an extra mustache joke, just for US viewers!) check it out at Yahoo!.
BBC NEWS | Americas | Rare stamp 'used on US post vote'
A rare stamp worth as much as $200,000 may be on an envelope sealed in a ballot box after the US mid-term elections, poll officials say.
Officials in Broward County, Florida, say they saw a famous "Inverted Jenny" stamp while reviewing postal ballots.
About 700 of the stamps were mistakenly printed in 1918 with an upside down illustration. Just 100 went on sale.
But it will be 22 months before laws will permit the box with the envelope to be reopened and the stamp checked.
The original stamps bear a picture of a Curtiss JN-4 plane, known as a Jenny, which was used for training pilots in World War I and later became an airmail plane.
I can only imagine that any and all philatelists (stamp collectors) in Florida are rushing to their collections to see if their stamp is missing. Well, if they had one in the first place:
Four "Inverted Jenny" stamps sold for almost $3m last year
So, on October 4, I was browsing a site, checking out pricing for some computer gadgets. As I occasionally do, I decided to do a price check on some network cameras. I don't _need_ one, but they're kinda cool, and I'd like to get one if the prices ever come down below $50 - they might be handy to have so I can see what's going on at home when I'm not there - enough said.
I noticed that one of the adverts on the search results page was to get a free camera. "Sure, but what's the catch" I said to myself - I've been down this road before, and never bothered to go past the page where they explain that they'll spam you and everyone you know if you sign up.
Continue reading Free? But is it really?.
Yet another web test:
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak. | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The Inland North | |
| The Midland | |
| Boston | |
| The South | |
| The West | |
| North Central | |
| What American accent do you have? | |
Tube Lines - Any old iron? Disused tube carriages being turned into studio space
A startup company over in the UK is taking old Tube cars (subway cars for the Americans) and turning them into studio space for muscians.
How cool is that?
Once upon a time, during college, I was given an assignment. I didn't like the teacher, and it didn't help that we were like oil and water - we just didn't click. The assignement was to paint a famous figure. Everyone else in the class was choosing athletes and politicians and actors, but not me - I had to be different. It was supposed to be someone significant, and someone well known. I don't recall exactly why, but I managed to choose someone that was all of the qualities: Mr. Potato Head
Granted, this didn't go over to well with the instructor at first. When the other folks in my class heard about my decision, however, they all tried to bully him to accept my choice, and quite a few expressed regret at not thinking of him themselves.
So, now I had managed to get permission to use him - the teacher had to approve the choice, of course - but now I had to get my hands on some subject matter. I surfed the web for some decent photos, but there wasn't much there - small images, or just stupid poses....
So a class-mate and I decided to do a little road-trip. Amanda was a partner in crime in several of my classes, and we had lived in the same building during a previous year. She was also a resident in the building I was a "resident advisor" in during that same semester, so it made it easy for us to get together and help each other with assignments, and just generally hang out. She also had a car, which made getting around a bit easier....
Anyway, we hoped in the car and drove to a mall - interestingly, one that I now live about 10 minutes away from. We went inside with the intention of buying a Mr. Potato Head doll/figure/whatever. Amanda was also in some photo classes, so she always had her camera with her to snap interesting shots. This proved to be our downfall....
There were quite a few families there, and Amanda needed to get some shots of kids with parents or something. We're walking along, talking, occasionally stopping so she could take a photo or ask for permission of the parents to take a photo - no big deal, right?
Wrong! We were using the escalator to go downstairs when one of the security guards walked on behind us. Amanda was lost in thought, so I happened to be listening to him when he said something about being "Behind the suspects" and "confirming the camera" into his radio. I got a little nervous, and tried to get Amanda to come back to planet Earth when we got to the bottom and....
The guard asked us what we were doing. Amanda politely explained the situation, and we were then asked to leave. It seems that the mall, in it's infinite wisdom, is super paranoid about people coming in and "copying" their ideas. So, the fact that we were there with a camera was a Bad Thing(tm), and they wanted us gone. The guard didn't say anything about coming back, but it was pretty clear we could only do that without a camera. At this point, we had been to all of the shops that offered toys, and were basically Potato Head-less, so we bailed. Laughing the whole way out, of course.
I ended up getting a subject at a local toy shop, and painted one heck of a portrait.
Woody from Dateline Hollywood managed to get into the media lineup for the "Snakes on a Plane" premiere. The results? They boggle the mind:
Now that's a monster California Roll if I ever saw one!
The third rendition of my BTTF Delorean. A newer and more detailed model is now up.
If you haven't seen this, check it out - a model of the DeLorean from Back to the Future made out of Lego. It's quite impressive.
YouTube - The Pipettes "Pull Shapes"
When I first got this link, I figured it would be usual YouTube fare. And it was.
But the video, which at first seems to just be a movie clip they stuck in for the video, actually seems to be the video for the song - so it's either from some movie in the 60's or a well done spoof video. Either way, it's kind of enjoyable. The song is kinda "pop"-y, and spunky to boot.
Having just received confirmation that it's an actual group and this is them having some fun. Nice.
Todays edition is quite funny. If only that was my problem - I'm getting about 100 spam comments a day lately....
picturephoning.com: Netizen Debate Ensues Over 'Dog Poop Girl'
It all started with a Korean woman who didn't want to clean up after her dog. Someone posted a photo of her, then of another passenger on the same train cleaning up after she got off the train. It then got a little... out of hand. People were trying to identify her and the dog - they did - and started posting information about her and her past. It ended up, allegedly, with her quiting university - all because she refused to clean up after her dog.
Wrong? Right? Either way, welcome to the Brave New World we all live in. I'm not saying that I'm capturing anything too weird when I post photos on my flickr account (except the occasional shot of Elvis crossing the street), but with the prevelance of all these pocket sized toys out there, it won't be long before public nose-pickers are being villified on nosepicking.com or something (and yes, that is a website, but no, don't go there since it's a advert based site.....).
Photos!
