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Two totally random things today that I found on the internets:

The Oatmeal ASCII art: I have no other commentary other than go to that site and view the HTML source.

Well, I have some commentary. It makes me want to drop ASCII art in the web pages I work on...

Nic Cage as Everyone: Funny and odd. Whomever thought this one up has too much time on their hands... of course. That being said, there are some really good image editing jobs on some of those pictures.

CSI:Miami is a pretty ridiculous TV show, and one of the things that makes it so is the opening one-liner. Often I will watch just long enough for this before leaving. They're really cheesy and ballsy—Law & Order usually has the one-liner, but CSI:M really outdoes it. I blame David Caruso.

For a while now I've wished that someone would compile just the one-liners—I'd watch an hour of those—and it seems someone has. Without further ado, I present... the Endless Caruso One Liners:

Best thing I've seen this week.

Snickers Charged: with caffeine, taurine, and "other B vitamins"—essentially the same stuff they put into energy drinks like Red Bull.

Really? Was Snickers not... I don't know... "loaded" enough? Next thing you know, they'll be putting guarana and ginseng and who knows what else into them.

No, I haven't tried one. There's a review here, if you're interested.

FAIL Blog: This is not so much "weird" as "spastically funny."

The horse: I forgot about this til just now. A woman was riding a white horse across the lawn of the Barnes & Noble at 27th and Highway 20 (here in Bend). This was a week or two ago. Right across the lawn and up to the crosswalk at the intersection... waiting to cross, I guess.

Yeah, one of those things I have a cameraphone for, but I was driving, so I didn't get the picture.

Continuing in my series of totally random toy posts... presenting the JUSTICE HEROES LEAGUE!!!

Flea markets and foreign knock-offs of American pop culture are the best. (Via.)

My brother sent me the link to this today: The 10 Star Wars Toys that Unintentionally Look Like Other Celebrities. Everyone must see this.

And I don't care what anybody says, this is the best one:

Jake beat me to the punch on blogging this, but I couldn't resist anyway. I got this comment on my clothesline post the other day:

The rules are the rules. Anyone who doesn't want to live by the rules can go live in the ugly lowlands.

It was signed "Sally Heatherton" and points to the blog "Marvelous Bend!". Intrigued (I mean, would someone really say such a thing?), I checked out the blog and was utterly incredulous for a minute, and then realized that it's a fake. Satire. And it's brilliant! It's freakin' brilliant!

Well, maybe not that brilliant, but it's damn funny. (And sad to say, plausible enough—I actually know someone very much like this.)

Like Jake, I went through searching the web and DIAL and Dex and found nothing.

Almost nothing, that is. It's not an identity or anything like that, but (up until today) the only result I could get for "Sally Heatherton" on Google (quotes included) was a hit on a character in a book: The Barrow Murder by James Huston. Via Google's Book Search (that's good stuff):

I went to the window of a teller I knew at the bank, Sally Heatherton. We had even dated for a short time, until she called our relationship off. "I don't want to get involved with someone who's broke all the time," she announced. "A loser. I want to get married to someone who's a success, who can support me, so I can get the hell out of this teller cage."

I guess the new game around here is "Guess Who Sally Heatherton Really Is."

A random collection of things that... well, the title pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

• "There's two roles I think [Steve] Buscemi was born to play. The first is Cobra Commander in a live-action G.I. Joe movie. 'Retreeeeeat!'" source
• I found the trailer on YouTube for the never-released 1994 Fantastic Four movie... it is so bad. (And wow, what's the deal with the effects/costume/WTF for The Thing? It's hysterical, but at the same time, freaky as hell.)
• The "Expendable" Red Shirt on ThinkGeek ("Just don't stand next to us when you wear that thing.")
• "You're single because you use emoticons." someecards.com - many more much, much funnier but waaaaay too raunchy for me to repeat
• "And then a second and a half later I thought, 'wait, this is exactly how Uncle Ben died.'" source

So have you been exposed to lolcats yet? If not, check out here and here. I can't help it; they make me laugh. I mean really, really laugh. Especially the random ones.

I'm nerdy, no two ways about it: while thinking about the kind of things I would want for Christmas this year, I got to wondering about fictional gadgets and technology that I wouldn't at all mind having. So, as a perfectly goofy/nerdy/idle/self-amusing blog post, I put together a wish list of sci-fi/fantasy gadgets I'd like to get for Christmas (or my birthday).

(Incidentally, I do have an Amazon.com wish list here. It doesn't necessarily match the list I made for my family this year, but I'm just sayin'.)

Lightsaber

Forget laser guns, a lightsaber is the perfect all-in-one weapon. The blade is indestructible, cuts through anything, deflects energy blasts, and acts as a flashlight. Plus, when you're done slicing up Sith Lords, it has a ton of household uses.

Tricorder

The ultimate all-purpose scanning device and handheld computer. As the various Star Trek series show, there's really nothing your tricorder can't tell you—from general weather and environmental conditions to the movements and stats of hidden people to the spin orientation of quarks.

Sonic Screwdriver

Doctor Who's miracle tool. There was almost nothing he couldn't do with that thing... repairing any machine... unlocking any door... cooking meals... getting cash from ATMs...

Time-traveling DeLorean... or TARDIS

Gotta have a time machine.

For vehicular transport, I can't decide between these two. If I went with the DeLorean, I'd have to go with the fusion-powered flying version, but then I'd run into various hijinks related to the existence of magical automobiles in the wrong era. And, of course, the hassle of being able to get the car up to (arbitrarily) 88 miles per hour just to get anywhen. Plus, it doesn't travel spatially—you travel to the same corresponding point in space in the different time period. Could be a problem if there's a building there in the future or something.

But, the thing looks cool.

On the other hand, Doctor Who's TARDIS travels both temporally and spatially, and is bigger on the inside than the outside. Drawbacks? Doesn't seem like you actually have much control over where and when you travel. Plus, it always seems to look like a goofy blue police box. Or, at least the Doctor's did. Perhaps I could get one of my own, an updated, working model.

Babel fish

Yeah, this isn't a gadget per se, but man, being able to understand and communicate in any language without having to fiddle around with something as cumbersome as a Universal Translator...

That's all I can come up with right now. Though I'm sure somebody will point out that since I chose a Babel fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that I should choose, well, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as a must-have gadget. Nah. I figure I'll just load Wikipedia onto my tricorder.

For real.

I love this video mashup of Lost and The A-Team. I might even like it better than the actual third season of "Lost" so far!

Random link for the day: Cats that look like Hitler.

Really.

This is absolutely great: Send a free personalized message from Samuel L. Jackson for "Snakes on a Plane." I swear, the thing is brilliant... the audio editing is really good... and it makes phone calls anywhere for free. Even better? You put in the phone number you want it to appear from... and it uses that number for caller ID.

As my brother said, you think you're getting a call from a friend, and Samuel Jackson is commanding you!

Oh, uh, the movie itself? Well, if it's successful, it's because they've been taking the viral approach all along...

Simone noted the humor/frustration level I was having with Dell this week at work. Of course, anytime I mention "Dell" around her she shakes her head in disgust, so perhaps she's not exactly the most objective observer. :)

What happened was, at work this week one of the newish Dell PCs started making a high-pitched spinning/whining noise. At first I thought it was a fan, so I opened up the box, eliminated the fans as a source of noise, and quickly concluded it was the hard drive. Sounds emanating from the hard drive are, generally, a Bad Thing. And sure enough, when I tried to boot the machine up again in order to copy the data to the network (most of the user data is already on the network, except for a few things like email and some accounting data), I got the Windows blue screen and problems booting.

So I got the person set up with a temporary PC (an older one), pulled the hard drive, and called Dell.

(Let me disclaim in advance that in fact all the people I talked to at Dell were very professional and helpful, and the overall service they performed was very good. It just turned into a minor comedy of errors.)

First of all, the machine's out of warranty; it was purchased one year and one month ago. Of course! Even assuming I'd bought the one-year service plan warranty with it, it still wouldn't matter.

Nearly 45 minutes later, after talking to three different people (a woman from India; some fellow with an unidentifiable accent in Tech Support; and a woman from Roseburg, Oregon in Sales), I was finally able to get the order placed for a new hard drive that matched the specs of the machine and drive in question: 80GB Ultra ATA, IDE interface. Pay attention, that's an important detail.

They tell me that yes, even though I ordered the drive with Next Day delivery, it still may not even ship out until Friday the 14th. That's fine, I say, just get it here ASAP. And guess what? They surprise me by delivering the hard drive the very next day! Woo-hoo!

Open the package, mount the drive into the PC chassis, go to plug everything in... and it's the wrong type of drive. They sent me an 80GB Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive, which is incompatible with the IDE interface in this computer.

So there's not much else to do but get on the phone with Dell again, spending exactly 31 minutes on the phone this time (our office telephones have a call timer). I spoke with the Customer Service department (again a woman from India, as near as I can figure), got the return processed (UPS would pick it up in the next three days), then transferred to Sales, where I made sure to order exactly the right type of hard drive. I hope. This was Thursday.

The new drive hasn't arrived yet, so the speedy Next Day delivery that accompanied the first hard drive hasn't recurred. Hopefully Monday? But, the UPS guy did pick up the return Friday morning, so that's something.

Simone did warn me.

While I can't say as I've found much use out of MySpace, my sister-in-law did post an amusing bulletin that I had to steal. I'm sure we've all seen variations on the name game... here's a collection of rules for generating ten of them (along with my results).

Your Spy Name: Middle name and current street name
Travis Desert (only part of my street name, so it wouldn't sound so goofy)

Your Movie Star Name: Grandfather/grandmother on your mom's side, your favorite candy
Guy Snickers

Your Rap Name: First initial of first name, first two or three letters of your last name
J-Ab (Jab?)

Your Gamer Tag: A favorite color, a favorite animal
Purple Chicken

Your Soap Opera Name: Middle name, city where you were born
Travis St. Helens

Your Star Wars Name: First 3 letters of your last name, last 3 letters of mother's maiden name, first 3 letters of your pet's name
Abeittbob (or Abe Itt Bob as they tend to do names in Star Wars)

Your Jedi Name: Middle name spelled backwards, your mom's maiden name spelled backwards
Sivart Rolyat (I made up the maiden name... no way I'm posting that online for real)

Your Porn Star Name: First pet's name, the street you grew up on
Curly Deer

Your Superhero Name: "The", your favorite color, the automobile your dad drives
The Purple Chevy

Your Action Hero Name: First Name Of The Main Character In The Last Film You Watched, last Food You Just Ate
Popeye Radish

So, what are your names?

I've been exploring YouTube a bit more lately and just thought I'd point to some of the videos I've found that amuse me...

• Crazy Cat Pinky - the cat in this video wigs out and I actually laughed out loud.
• This Place Sucks - Superfriends - the classic Superfriends/Office Space mashup.
• Deadwood Swearing - nothing but two and a half minutes of swearing edited together... even if you know Deadwood, this might be kind of surprising...
• Ryan vs Dorkman - A really well-done lightsaber duel between two goofy looking guys... really good amateur choreography and great lightsaber effects.

Go and check out today's Pearls Before Swine comic strip. It's the good stuff.

I'd seen this before, floating around the net, and should've linked to it then; but now is as good a time as any: People over 30 should be dead.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

You have to go read it all. Love it! :)

Jeez, come back from vacation to find Shannon's latest post:

"some gal on myspace.com contacted me. offered me a free silver bullet. how could i refuse?"

You'll have to go read the entire post for context...

I just hope Shannon doesn't think the silver bullet refers to Coors Light...

I've been liking the remixed movie trailers I've been seeing lately, but this one made me laugh tonight: 10 Things I Hate About Commandments. Someone's remixed the Charlton Heston movie as a teen comedy... I especially like the surprise addition to the cast at the end. :)

Via Boing Boing.

I've seen this name show up a few times now in my email spam filter: Natalie Gadzooks. Perhaps it's not the best spam name ever, but every time I see it, it makes me laugh.

Oh, this is such a twisted, twisted thing to laugh at, and yet I couldn't stop laughing: The Easter Bunny Hates You (video).

I wouldn't let the kids watch this one, lest they be scarred for life...

Thanks, Shannon!

This is pretty cool: Dummies Book Cover Generator (via eMusings). Now you can generate a fake "For Dummies" book for any occasion (which would have been handy when I originally created this and this). Imagine the mayhem...

At the very least, I can now mockup my For Tards ideas:

I can't help but notice that this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod seems to be lifting from my "For Tards" book idea I blogged about back in 2004... :)

If you enjoyed the Chuck Norris Facts site, and like the TV show 24, well then, this is the perfect mashup for you: Random Jack Bauer Facts. Same exact premise (some are even lifted from the Chuck Norris Facts!), and some are really funny:

The city of Los Angeles once named a street after Jack Bauer in gratitude for his saving the city several times. They had to rename it after people kept dying when they tried to cross the street. No one crosses Jack Bauer and lives.

If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he'd shoot Nina twice.

Jack Bauer's calender goes from March 31st to April 2nd, no one fools Jack Bauer.

Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.

Funny mashup goodness! Now, I need to set about creating a similar ripoff mashup site with some other larger-than-life character...

There's a whole bunch of stuff I'll bet you never knew about Chuck Norris.

Guns don't kill people. Chuck Norris kills people.

There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.

If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, "Two seconds 'til." After you ask, "Two seconds 'til what?" he roundhouse kicks you in the face.

Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves.

Chuck Norris originally appeared in the "Street Fighter II" video game, but was removed by Beta Testers because every button caused him to do a roundhouse kick. When asked bout this "glitch," Norris replied, "That's no glitch."

Chuck Norris CAN believe it's not butter.

Some people wear Superman pajamas. Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.

Chuck Norris is currently suing MySpace for taking the name of what he calls everything around you.

If at first you don't succeed, you're not Chuck Norris.

Google won't search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don't find Chuck Norris, he finds you.

When Chuck Norris does division, there are no remainders.

Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse-kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.

I just had to point to this: The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed. You gotta love it when he opens the Star Wars section with:

Everyone remembers the exact moment when they realized that their Phanom Menace sandwich was filled with shit. For me, it was the scene on Tatooine where Qui-Gon is talking and Jar Jar is snatching fruit from the bowl with his tongue, eating like an insect. Annoyed, Qui-Gon reaches out and snatches his tongue out of the air and holds it in his fist while he talks. That was when I realized I was watching a cartoon.

Good stuff. Via... I actually don't remember where I first saw this. Oh well.

Okay, in light of all the Dick Cheney hijinks, I saw this on Boing Boing the other day and I finally succumbed. What can I say? This makes me want to laugh out loud every time I see it:

For the record, my favorites are "Telekinesis," "Raining blows down upon you," and "With his bare hands."

It's amazing what they're publishing in For Dummies books these days... I almost wish I had made this up:

Pit Bulls for Dummies

This just makes me laugh. The fact that it's for real just makes this that much more irrationally funny to me...

So, yeah. Go check it out. It's funny.

So first a mouse set a man's house on fire, now a puppy has done the same thing here in Bend:

A frisky puppy left in a laundry room apparently sparked a northeast Bend house fire that almost claimed his life. Investigators said Friday the dog caused an aerosol can to discharge vapors that a water heater pilot light ignited, setting the room ablaze.

It's like When Animals Attack, but weirder. Awesome.

As an aside, I really like the new NewsChannel 21 site. Barney done good!

Okay, this is kind of an awful story...

No, scratch that. It's a story that seems like it should be awful, but I just can't take it seriously. It just makes me laugh. I can't help it: Mouse takes down house.

On Saturday, a Fort Sumner man's home fell victim to a mouse fire.

Homeowner Luciano Mares said he caught a mouse inside his residence and discarded the creature in a pile of garden refuse he was burning on his property near the home.

"I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," he said.

The. Mouse. Was. On. Fire.

Update: Snopes debunks it. It almost happened, but the mouse was already dead.

Update #2: According to CNN, the story may be true after all:

Is that plausible? Fort Sumner Fire Chief Juan Chavez said Tuesday he thinks so.

"There's no reason for him to lie about what he told us," Chavez said. "I don't doubt it at all."

There's hope!

Okay, not so much really since it's only the beginning of January, but go watch this. It's surprisingly hilarious.

Is it just me, or does this particular ad placement on the Bend.com article pictured below seem really... I don't know, juvenile? Not to mention, wrong.

Click for full size

It just hasn't been the same since Barney left.

You know those car commercials where the car is driving through the mountains or somesuch, and to show off its safety features, the commercial usually shows the car swerve gracefully around a fallen tree, or a boulder, or something? You know, to show how the tight steering and antilock brakes and everything make it the Safest Car Ever.

Well, I'm thinking instead of a car swerving around a fallen tree, I'd much rather see the car swerving around a chainsaw-wielding maniac running out of the forest... I figure if the car can help you avoid that, then it really is the Safest Car Ever.

I can't help it, but this is just so weirdly funny. Bend man robs liquor store: this is not the funny part. The funny part is the guy's mugshot:

This dude looks like the love child of Rodney Dangerfield and Bob Marley or something!

Okay, this is getting crazy: my Burger King mask post is up to 236 comments, and there's currently active discussion on where to find a Burger King mask online, and a guy named "John" is even making his own masks and selling them on eBay! In fact, I grabbed a couple of his pictures of the homemade mask—click through to see...

More...

I ran across this last night, and it's the funniest thing, hands down, than I've read in awhile: Top 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time. Picked it up via Boing Boing, and it's totally, utterly random. Vulgar as hell, too, but that's part of what makes it so funny.

Disclaimer: I don't understand so-called "black metal," never listen to it, don't believe I'd care for it if I did. I mean, really, it just looks like those whiny, narcissistic goth kids from high school haven't grown up yet.

My brother sent me this video the other day, and it's the funniest thing I've seen in awhile (you have to be nerdy to really appreciate it though): Leeroy Jenkins (Windows Media File, 5MB). I've been laughing over it for days. It's a clip from the World of WarCraft multiplayer online game, of a group of players talking (over headsets) about a strategy for fighting a bunch of dragons—typical nerd game stuff—when suddenly one of the players jumps up, screams "Leeroy Jenkins!" and takes off, getting them all killed.

Repeated watchings and listening to the comments make it funnier. I imagine drinking some beer while watching it would be even better :). As a bonus, check out LeeroyJenkins.net.

I've got a copy of the file, but I'm afraid to serve it because of bandwidth issues; but if the one I link to above has problems, I'll consider uploading mine.

Heard about this on the radio this morning, and I wanted to blog it before I forgot about it. On the front page of the Bulletin today there's a picture of three people floating the river (a popular summer activity here in Bend)—which by itself is no big deal. However, the focus of the article that accompanies it is on the excessive alcohol consumption that goes along with the river floaters.

Back to that picture. Three people floating the river with booze in hand. Here's the picture:

Photo courtesy of The Bulletin

I'm not against drinking, rafting, drinking while rafting necessarily, but damn! That's some hard drinkin' in the picture. The guy on the left is drinking some kind of hard liquor, the middle guy a beer, and there's at least two more bottles visible with them. The girl has a Jagermeister. I like Jager and all, but that's way too hardcore for me.

Besides, everyone knows the proper way to drink Jager is chilled, ideally right out of the freezer ;).

I've been seeing lots of referrer hits from MySpace on my site lately, so I thought it was apropos to point to this article on Kuro5hin: MySpace: A Place for Dolts. It's just too funny not to, and it's full of great soundbites.

You see, when you sign up for MySpace, you instantly have your first friend. You're immediately best buddies with the most popular person on MySpace: Tom. Now, to understand the stupidity of this, you have to understand that this is a social networking mechanism; if I'm friends with John and John is friends with Sally, then Sally is syllogistically my friend, and if I visit her profile it will tell me just that: "Sally is in your extended network". But if EVERYONE is friends with Tom, then there might as well not be an extended network feature at all, and he is defeating the purpose of his time and his website. Basically what I'm saying is, Tom is a dumbshit.

But there's a reason why none of this matters. There's a reason why he wins even though he programs in Cold Fusion (I have yet to meet someone who uses Cold Fusion and isn't a complete moron), even though he has no sense of style or ergonomics, and even though he's lazy as hell: he gets an enormous amount of money from the website. Movies, bands, dating services, clothing companies, non-profit organizations, and even the US Army advertises on MySpace.

Ah, you gotta love cynical internet rants.

See also Movable Type Rant, a pointer to another great Kuro5hin piece.

Get your pimp name right here. This is classic! Here's some of what it gave me:

Suede Jon Shmoove
Pimp Daddy Jon Wicked
Trick Magnet J. Ice
Stealth Maestro J. Glide
Delicious Jon Wicked

Via ongoing.

Last weekend as a treat we picked up Burger King for lunch. To go. When we got home, inside the bag we found this incredibly poorly done "help wanted" flyer. It's so bad it's funny! So of course, I had to scan it in and post it here. Enjoy!

(Click to see larger version)

It was inevitable, I guess: Bend has its local Star Wars superfans who dressed up in costumes and lined up outside the theater for the premier of "Revenge of the Sith" last night. I know this not because I was there, but because Z21's Christian Boris (one of the weather guys) did a live broadcast from the theater to cover the event. However, Christian did more than just cover the event...

He was dressed up as Darth Vader.

Thus began the funniest, most surreal Z21 broadcast I've seen in a long time, maybe ever. And it was such a short clip! First there was the shock and awe of the Darth Vader costume... on the guy reporting the news... whose helmet looked too small... I honestly couldn't tell if he was dressed up because he was doing a piece for the news, or if he's really into Star Wars. Either way, it was gutsy, but just seemed so, so wrong.

And, when you think it really couldn't get any better—aside from just showing some of the various costumes people put together for the big night—Christian wisely decided not to interview any particular people and opted instead to just let the camera do the talking.

To my utter amazement, these two guys dressed up as Jedi start lightsaber dueling in the parking lot. I mean, full-on theatrics, and the taller guy with the more elaborate costume was really, really into it—leaping in the air, spinning around, the works. It was a bonafide jaw-dropping moment... followed by laughing uncontrollably and utter disbelief.

Back in the studio, both Nina Mehlhaf and Jason Carr were laughing, too... I got the sense that Nina was this close from losing it and descending into maniacal laughter, but she reigned it in in time.

You know what's even better? When the moment was selected for the Bulletin's photo of the day:

Photo courtesy of The Bulletin

In the science fiction world, "technobabble" refers to the use of technical or scientific jargon strung together so that to listeners unfamiliar with the language, it sounds like made-up nonsense. When relating to Star Trek, a derivative and more derogatory concept shows up: "treknobabble," which, in the words of Wikipedia, "is used humorously by fans of the various Star Trek television series, and disparagingly by its critics, to describe the infamous amount of pseudoscientific gibberish inserted seemingly at random into many episodes of these television series."

Well, on Slashdot tonight this article contains the most ridiculous real-world treknobabble I've ever seen:

A one-dimensional [Bose-Einstein condensation] in an optical lattice is rapidly rotated, causing a quantized vortex to form. The bosonic part of the superstring consists of this vortex line. Inside the vortex, they would trap an ultracold cloud of fermionic atoms. Hopefully this will allow observation of the supersymmetry between bosons and fermions, thus providing the first experimental evidence to support superstring theory.

That makes no sense to me whatsoever, and yet it's the funniest thing I've read all day.

Holy cow... you must go read Jack Bogdanski's blog entry titled The short hairs!

This is classic: Sesame Street: 25 Of My Favorite Memories. I kept reading it and nodding. And you've gotta give props to someone for coming up with possibly the funniest line I've read in a long time:

Oh yeah, & if there's one thing I hate more than those stickers of Calvin peeing on something, it's the jokes about Bert & Ernie being gay, or Bert being evil, or whatever. Next time you mention it, I'm going to unearth a skyscraper with my bare hands, wear it like a brass knuckle, & punch you in the face.

Yeah, I'm funny that way.

Via Boing Boing.

Appropriate humor for April Fool's, but it's a real site: Superman is a Dick. Yes, those are actual covers from various Superman comics; the comments below each are the best part.

My dad made this joke up. It's a groaner, but I thought it was funny.

Q: Did you know Darth Vader has a sister?

A: Her name is Ella.

Updated, see below.

A while back, Jake posted about a public restroom in Switzerland that was made out of one-way glass. Well, apparently there's one in Houston now; my friend Kerry sent me the pictures in email this morning.

Here's what it looks like from the outside:

And, here's the view from the inside:

Man, that's just wrong. I just couldn't use it, no way.

Update: These are the photos from the original Switzerland toilet; looks like they're being recycled again. So, take this all with a grain of salt. What's funny is that I first heard of this (and then got the email) from people at work, and it's making the rounds on other sites as well (a quick search on Google pulls them up), so there may be an actual Houston toilet; who knows.

(Thanks, Jake!)

monkeyinabox: "Mind you, this was back in the days before bottled water was all the rage. Water came from the tap, unless you bought gourmet water, Perrier, or whatever rich people drank. Growing up in a place with good tap water, it makes that kind of stuff seems pretty stupid."

Great bit on being a "soda pop junkie." I remember back in the days when I worked graveyard shift in Spokane doing (essentially) data processing, I'd take a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew to work and often finish it before I left.

And yeah, I never really got the bottled water thing, either. Growing up, we had a well, so our water was pretty pure and uncut.

Well, except for this one time in the cistern... that's a story that almost turned me off of water for good, but I think I'll save it for another day.

I was thinking last night (during our blogger thing at McMenamins) that if McMenamins really wants to capture the feel of a school, they should fill the soap dispensers in the bathrooms with that pink powdered soap I remember using in grade school.

When I was reviewing the server logs, I kept wondering why there were occasional searches for "green bean casserole soda" leading here, which seemed totally random. I figured it out today; it's part of the new Jones Soda Holiday Pack, which is related to the Turkey Soda post I made last year around this time.

Holidays can be busy and down right stressful. How can you squeeze in eating when you have much more important tasks like shopping, decorating, and partying? Well the makers of last year's popular Turkey & Gravy Soda have come up with a solution: the complete holiday meal replacement set equipped with a square meal, a straw, and a toothpick.

Introducing 5 new, flavor filled, tasty holiday sodas:

• Turkey & Gravy Soda
• Cranberry Soda
• Mashed Potato & Butter
• Green Bean Casserole
• Fruitcake Soda

It's only $15.95 per case! I think I know what I want for Christmas...

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party. What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves. What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.

What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

That sounds about right.

Just a braindump of some ideas I have that wouldn't really be considered very politically correct...

Like a series of books like the "For Dummies" books, only these would be "For Tards." They would be much more simplistic; with titles like "Keyboards for Tards" and "Books for Tards" I think they could really be successful...

Then there was this idea for a sitcom that I had—a homophobic ex-Marine, a flamboyantly gay man and the ex-Marine's mentally retarded brother are roommates sharing an apartment in a big city somewhere (maybe San Francisco). Man, that would write itself.

I saw this headline from Reuters in Bloglines today: "FedEx to Build 2nd-Largest U.S. Private Solar System" and of course I immediately wondered if they were building a model of the Solar System and why that would matter to FedEx (and why would it be private?), before realizing what was meant was Solar Powerered System. Very odd alleys the mind wanders into some days.

Found on Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Ad Graveyard, via Boing Boing. Pretty much speaks for itself.

How's this for disturbing?

I was just at the Evergreen Village (Bellevue) Safeway this morning, doing my little shopping thing. I was late — I usually do it on the weekend. While wandering around getting my goods, I noticed that the shelves in the produce aisle were looking a bit empty. I didn't think much of it. I never come in on Mondays. Maybe this is what things look like after a weekend rush. Maybe they're expecting a delivery soon. Maybe they had taken all the little fruits and vegetables on a field trip (AHAHAHA).

Well, just heard on the news, the reason the shelves were empty was because they found (and I quote) "a pile of fecal matter was discovered on top of some produce" (from NWCN channel) on Sunday night between 7:30 and 10:30PM. Safeway immediately shut down the produce section, turfed out the produce, disinfected the shelves, and brought new produce in. They're also offering refunds on produce purchased last night.

Via Metroblogging Seattle.

I don't remember where I originally read this, but it was awhile ago, from a list of "life lessons" that someone had compiled. The only one that stuck out in my head is insanely funny to me:

Never lick a steak knife.

You know... while he's onstage at the Republican National Convention, someone should present Bush with a bag of pretzels.

This is good stuff: Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out at campground.

A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer....

The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers' coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds.

It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge.

The only way this would have been better if it had been Hamm's Beer.

Well, it's not going to go down as one of my all-time greatest image hacks, but here we go anyway:

Chicken Gizzard Blizzard™ for y'all.

Via Boing Boing tonight comes the Fool's World Map. Brilliant.

This is a project visualizing the world map which many fools in the world imagine. If you can see this map comfortably, you are definitely a fool.

One day, a Texan asked me a question when I lived in U.S...

The question was "How many hours does it take to go to Japan by car?". (true story)

He didn't know where Japan is, and even bofore that, he didn't know that Japan is an island. And then, I thought. "What kind of world map is pictured in his mind?"

This was a beginning to think that it might be fun to gather those mixed up recognitions of countries and visualize it as a world map imagined by the fools in the world.

I love the map, although it's kind of depressing how dumb the world seems to be in general...

Told you I'd do this. It's a bit of a hack job, but oh well:

Every now and again I catch the beginning of Iron Chef on Food Network, and man, that is one weird show. The original Japanese version, anyway; I haven't seen Iron Chef America.

My wife found this somewhere: the most amazing car accident ever. Damn. I'm just speechless.

My wife pointed me to this article today, and I thought it was funny.

Specially rigged Coke cans, part of a summer promotion, contain cell phones and global positioning chips. That has officials at some installations worried the cans could be used to eavesdrop, and they are instituting protective measures.
...
"There's things generals should stay up late at night worrying about," he said. "A talking Coke can isn't one of them."

Somehow I doubt the GPS-enabled cell phone Coke can will make it into the next Bond movie.

Totally wacky article on Kuro5hin: Using Quantum Cryptography to Find Invisible Men:

But is it truly a myth, or do invisible men walk among us? And if an invisible man were to be created, how would we detect him and track his movements?
...
Invisible man detection has gone a long way, from the clumsy mob actions of a hundred years ago to the sophisticated mob actions of today. The time has come to step into the 21st century with a quantum solution to a threat you'll never see coming.

Since we've moved into a brand-new development, we don't even have a mailbox yet so we have to go to the Post Office to pick up our mail. The location for this is their warehouse in the industrial part of town, and when you go in, there's simply a tiny lobby and a doorway that leads to the rest of the warehouse.

While waiting for the postal lady to retrieve my mail, I noticed a whiteboard leaning up against the wall inside the warehouse. It was a chart, and the heading at the top was, "DCU FLASH (PERFORMANCE)". It seemed to mark down delivery times/speeds.

Of course, any self-respecting comics geek would recognize that "DCU FLASH" refers, of course, to DC Comics' Flash, and is entirely appropriate for a chart about delivery speeds.

Well, at least I thought it was kinda funny.

For some reason, these kind of math gimmicks always remind me of upside down calculator spelling. They're amusing, but I really have to wonder who sits around and thinks these things up? Anyway, here's what I just received via email from a friend (slightly edited):

"Chocolate mathematics"

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate. (Try for more than once but less than 10.)

2. Multiply this number by 2 (Just to be bold)

3. Add 5. (for Sunday)

4. Multiply it by 50.

5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1754. If you haven't, add 1753.

6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.

You should have a three digit number.

The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).

The next two numbers are:

Your age! (Oh yes, it is!!!!!)

This is the only year it will ever work, so spread it around while it lasts.

Incidentally, yes, it works.

On the radio today I heard a commercial for the Obsidian Opera, with possibly the dumbest choice of words for promoting opera that I've ever heard. They said, "opera is like going to a topless bar for your eyes and ears." Aside from the crude juxtapositioning of opera and topless bars, wouldn't something that's like a topless bar for your eyes and ears be... a topless bar?

At work today a couple of us were jokingly speculating as to what earlier versions of The Matrix would be like—or, more accurately, what we would imagine they'd be like—and I came up with Half-Life. Basically, imagine the Matrix v1 as a first-person shooter.

Makes perfect sense! All they essentially do in the Matrix is run around fighting, with or without weapons. Matrix Savants (or whatever the hell the people like Morpheus and Trinity are called) have managed to hack the command line and discover some cheat codes. But The One not only knows all the cheat codes, but is also able to change the server environment. Flying? Simply set sv_gravity 0.

Ever since someone at work talked about VH1's "50 Worst Rock Songs" special, with "We Built this City" as the number one worst, I'm having a hard time getting that song out of my head.

Why is it anymore that when Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has a celebrity guest star (which seems quite often these days), they're predictably always the Main Bad Guy? (It's getting stale!)

Ever had a bird get stuck in your chimney and get out via the fireplace? We did, tonight. (Although we have a wood stove and not a true fireplace.) How the bird got in the chimney, I don't know; I imagine it must have fallen in, but I didn't think birds were that clumsy. At any rate, it kept scratching and scraping around in the chimney pipe, and when I finally figured out how to open the flue between the stove and the chimney area, out pops this bird.

Before I could catch it (I was wearing gloves), it escaped and flew around the house for a few minutes before being herded out through the skylight. That was quite a sight. The other animals were quite excited (three cats and a dog); I suppose after years of watching birds taunt them through the windows this must have seemed like winning the lottery.

Since I subscribed to Reuter's Oddly Enough RSS feed the other day, I've noticed that about a sixth of the odd news involved biting in some way. Weird? Yeah. Creepy weird.

Here's a link I found from Scoble, which was too good not to post: violent pong. No, it's not a game (how many of you even remember pong?), which is what I thought at first; it's a Flash movie. Watch it. It's crazy and philosophical!

Great rant on Kuro5hin titled "Why your Movable Type blog must die". Made me laugh. Worthy of Dennis Miller during his ranting heyday.

You are all pretentious twats

Every last one of you. You're all latte-sipping, iMac-using, suburban-living tertiary-industry-working WASPs who offer absolutely no new insights on anything whatsoever apart from maybe one specialist field if we're lucky. Most of you think that you're writing original content and that you're making a contribution by licensing your spewings under Creative Commons "Some Rights Reserved" licences, just because it's the hip thing to do. You think you know all there is to say about blogging because you understand the concept of HTML and CSS, but the horrible truth is that 40% of you are all using the same shitty default layout. Then you take pictures of yourselves looking pensive or making vague allusions to mythology.

Of course, I can't claim to be much better as a blogger than some of the caricature portraits in this rant, but at least I don't use Movable Type. :)