chuggnutt.com

Just offloading some things and ideas that have been rattling around.

• CNN ran a story last week entitled, "Nine cool jobs that pay well." (Paying "well" is relative in their article, I guess.) Top of the list? Brewmaster ($42,430).
• And good news if you want to take advantage of how cool it would be to be a brewmaster: Beer is recession proof.
• Where are the open source MySpace/Facebook clones? Are there any? In particular, I'm wondering if there is an open source social networking application written in PHP. There didn't seem to be any last time I checked, so I was half thinking of writing one myself.
  
  ...not with the intent of competing with MyFaceSpaceBook or anything like that; for that matter, anyone can create a free social network on Ning. I was more thinking in terms of, what if I wanted to create a separate, private social network site that didn't rely on the Ning shared hosting paradigm? Or plop that software down on an intranet somewhere, behind a firewall? Any PHP apps out there I can just download and install for that?
  
  Hence my thinking on writing one. Mostly just because.
• "Digital nostalgia." Not sure where I'm going with that yet, but it's sparked by William Gibson's comments about eBay in this interview.

Not a hangover in the literal sense, but it sort of feels that way because I'm not sure where March went and I'm sitting here looking at the calendar thinking, "Where the hell did April come from?" Like it's already starting out with that thick, muzzy-headed pounding that you have with a hangover.

Seriously, what the hell did happen to March? St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Spring Break... everything seemed off this year. I blame Easter. It was far too early. And Spring Break went by too fast.

And April... well, April. No, I don't do April Fool's Day; at least, not online. (Not really in real life, either.) I can't stand April Fool's Day online; I find it's just an enormous waste of time. Look, it's been done; I get it, ha ha, now move along, there's plenty of other oddball and cool stuff to see online that's for real.

See? I told you, March hangover: I'm coming across cranky as hell, fumbling for a brick of aspirin while gulping down coffee and squinting against the inordinately bright light.

Okay, I'm being too clever even for myself. More later with some real content.

This is kind of random, but see if you can follow my thinking. Though I suppose if you weren't geeky familiar with the TV shows in question, it may not make sense to you; carry on.

Back in the 70s, when "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman" were on TV, the "bionic sound" became somewhat iconic (still is). You know, the sound effect they used when they used their bionics for running, or throwing something, or whatever. I don't even know how to describe it—ratcheting?—other than the completely lame "na na na na na" slightly-onomatopoeic phrase, but to my mind that bionic sound is the "tech sound" of the 70s.

Similarly, I think the iconic "tech sound" of the 80s was the sound of Transformers, er, transforming. From the cartoon, of course. It was just something that worked, on an almost intuitive level; and I can't think of many people I've run into who wouldn't instantly understand what it meant to hear that sound effect.

(Both of these meanderings were jarred loose one day when I was musing on the fact that there was both a Transformers movie and a new "Bionic Woman" series this year.)

My theory here is that it seems to be decade-oriented, like everything else. So, what's the "tech sound" for the 90s? Sound of a modem dialing and handshaking? "You've got mail," courtesy of AOL (ugh)? I can't think of what else could be drawn from pop culture that had an impact like the bionic and transforming sounds.

Same thing for the 2000s—what's the iconic sound?

I know I'm a day behind on this, but every now and again, Slashdot posts a story that is so incomprehensibly gibberish-sounding that I point and laugh. Yesterday was one such: Time Dimension To Become Space-like.

'We show that regular changes of signature on brane-worlds in AdS bulks may account for some types of the recently fashionable sudden singularities. Therefore, the fact that the Universe seems to approach a future sudden singularity at an accelerated rate of expansion might simply be an indication that our braneworld is about to change from Lorentzian to Euclidean signature. Both the brane and the bulk remain fully regular everywhere.'

What the hell is that? I can't even follow it. I can't even pretend to follow it. I think Slashdot is trying to write dialog for a Star Trek episode again.

Before I get asked by anybody: No, the person who signed "Chuggy" to the "Web Rant" section at the bottom of page 5 of the latest issue of The Source is not me.

I feel the need to preemptively clarify this because my own wife asked if that was me.

So there you have it. Ain't me. I'd sign either "Jon" or "Chuggnutt," never "Chuggy."

The other day Dave posted a story riddle with a creepy punchline: the people who answer it "correctly"—i.e. a certain way—think like psychopaths. (Sorry to spoil the surprise.) It's meant to illustrate a particular way of thinking that pyschopaths exhibit: that of other people—even family—as impersonal tools to be used for their own benefit.

(Fortunately, I didn't answer the riddle "correctly.")

Of course, I make random connections, as I am wont to do, and I remembered this older post on Boing Boing about psychopathy:

Are psychopaths genetically adapted to survive by exploiting the rest of us?

[CBC's Quirks and Quarks] talks to research psychologists about the biological basis for psychopathy — and the fact that psychopaths are sexually profligate and have lots of kids. Psychopathic rapists target fertile women — not children or old women.

Dr. Marnie Rice is a psychologist with the Mental Health Centre Penetanguishene, in Penetanguishene, Ontario. She studies criminal psychopaths who are incarcerated there. She views psychopathic behaviour as an evolved survival strategy. She says that there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that psychopaths are mentally ill but there’s good reason to believe that their disturbing behaviour is an evolved trait. She says psychopaths have evolved to capitalize in a particular environmental niche — namely preying on the rest of society.

Yeah, it's kind of an odd thing to be ruminating about. But it's a weirdly compelling idea to imagine that psychopathy is a possible result of natural selection. It makes a certain sense. I wonder what the "particular environmental niche" is referring to—large cities? Seems to me (from a purely layman's perspective) that's where this particular trait would take hold and be successful in an evolutionary context.

For reference, here's Wikipedia's article on psychopathy.

Anyway, cheery thoughts to take you into the weekend.

I find it rather surreal that the Oregon Lottery is now offering Space Invaders lottery tickets. Seriously. It's part of their "Travel back" line of Scratch-Its. They look rather complicated though, and cost $3 a pop.

Now they need to come out with other classic arcade games: Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Asteroids...

Just a collection of links to things I like and/or found amusing recently.

• dive into mark: Spaceships
  "Parenting is like an ongoing episode of CSI. You’re always following the evidence back to the crime."
• The Bend Bigfoot stuff:
  • Jake's original link
  • The KTVZ story
  • My Hack Bend post
  • My photographic evidence of Bigfoot on Pilot Butte
• YouTube: Discover Card "Scissors"
  Is anyone else as freaked out as I am by the image of thousands of scissors coming to life and swarming the streets?
• Project Gutenberg: The London and Country Brewer (1736)

I realize I'm about a week late blogging this item (should have been around Halloween), but I just can't resist: Count Dracula not in the numbers, physicist says. A scientist is playing Scully to scientifically disprove the existence of monsters—vampires, zombies, ghosts, and so on.

Articles like this make me amused and irritated at the same time. I always get a kick of out it when a goofy, kooky topic like this shows up in the "serious" mainstream news, but it annoys me when they purport to have The Answer to things and get their science and logic wrong.

Case in point: his proof against the existence of vampires is flawed:

[Costas] Efthimiou takes out the calculator to prove that if a vampire sucked one person's blood each month — turning each victim into an equally hungry vampire — after a couple of years there would be no people left, just vampires. He started his calculations with just one vampire and 537 million humans on January 1, 1600 and shows that the human population would be down to zero by July 1602.

Now I'm not saying that vampires do exist, but that's weak. Yes, you've shown us that repeatedly doubling a number increases it exponentially very quickly, but this "proof" is hardly proof. First of all, why the assumption that vampires always make more vampires? If the vampire doesn't kill you outright, then you become a vampire. I think it's up to the "source" vampire. No exponential increase.

Second, couldn't some of these vampires be feeding on animals instead of humans? (Digression: wouldn't vampire cows be funny?)

Third, I'm sure vampires are reasonably intelligent enough to have figured out that if they keep making vampires, there's no more food left. I imagine they plan accordingly.

Fourth, where did this "one person per month" figure come from? That seems rather arbitrary.

So his reasoning is flawed. I think he would be better off arguing against the more implausible vampire myths, such as the physical impossibility of their not casting reflections in mirrors.

Or, you know, doing real science.

I'm not sure what this might say about me, but when I was reading this KTVZ story about the utterly ridiculous Measure 37 claim on the Newberry Volcanic Monument, I couldn't help but think the image filed with the story looks like a skull:

See the eyesockets? Yeah, that's messed up.

Oh and FYI, Measure 37? Only one of the most retarded ballot measures ever passed in the state of Oregon.

That's the new toy in the house from this weekend: a garbage can whose lid opens automatically (via infrared sensor). It was from Costco, but I can't find it on their site to pull up a picture; and since I'm too lazy to go look at the brand on the actual thing itself, you'll just have to use the awesome power of your imagination for now.

So far, the sensor has been tripped by standing too close to it; walking by it; intentionally (via Jedi hand-waving magic); and the dog. That dog one only happened once; he sniffed too close to it, it popped open, and he jumped and scrabbled away. That was pretty funny.

Now, what is that goofy phrase they always use on Slashdot and the like? ...I for one welcome our new robotic garbage can overlords...

...because really, it's just a matter of time at this point.

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

Really.

Now, this story is just silly: Fanged killer kangaroo roamed Outback.

Forget cute, cuddly marsupials. A team of Australian palaeontologists say they have found the fossilized remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon duck of doom".
...
The species found at the dig had "well muscled-in teeth, not for grazing. These things had slicing crests that could have crunched through bone and sliced off flesh", Hand said.

I have this absurd image of saber-toothed kangaroos hopping around... Hey, maybe somebody will make a horror-thriller-scifi-Jurassic-Park type movie where killer kangaroos are brought back to life and terrorizing Australia! And if you can come up with a dumb enough name, Samuel L. Jackson will star in it!

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.

So can you hear this ringtone? It's supposed to be too high-pitched in frequency for the ears of people over 30 to hear... but I can hear it. It's via Shannon, who seems to be alternating between thinking she's too old to hear it, or she's just been exposed to too much loud music over the years.

...she also wants me to use this quote for her quote of the week: "next thing ya know, i'll be wearing depends and drooling." I don't know, that seems too easy to me. We'll see.

The sixth day of the sixth month of...

Yeah, are we really doing this?

I got nothin'.

I admit, when I first saw this skull, I would not have guessed what animal it ultimately came from. I mean, that is some crazy wicked toothwork...

So, who can identify it without cheating?

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.

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

Okay, this will permanently brand me as the geekiest dork ever (I fully expect a "geek" comment from Shannon), but perusing WinAmp's SHOUTcast Radio list today, I found the ultimate station:

...wait for it...

Commodore 64 remixes. From SLAY Radio.

Yes, you read that correctly. Commodore 64 remixes.

I've been letting it play in the background. It totally kicks ass.

This strikes me as being a real Long Tail kind of thing.

Pril is wondering what the deal is with shoe trees. I've been curious about that myself, since seeing one on my Walla Walla trip. I know of two (that I've seen personally): the one I just mentioned, on highway 97 south of Grass Valley, I believe, and north of Shaniko, and another one on highway 26, between Prineville and John Day (which may even be this one, but I can't say for sure).

Very strange.

Some Googling turns up a number of shoe tree sites. Here's one. Here's another.

A coworker emailed me this today. It's a classified ad that appeared in the Bulletin on Sunday. Anyone looking for a career change? Want to get out of the high stress, tight deadlines and sedentary lifestyle of the technology industry?

Sheepherder with 3 months of experience. Immediate Openings Available. Attends sheep grazing on range or pasture. Herds sheep using trained dogs. Guards flock from predators and from eating poisonous plants. May examine animals for signs of illness and administer vaccines, medication and insecticides. May assist in lambing, docking and shearing. May perform other ranch duties incidental to goat/sheep production. Large flocks with single/pair herder. Free food, housing, tools, supplies and equipment provided. May be on call 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Maximum of 11 months employment. Employment for -3/4 of workdays guaranteed. Workers compensation provided. Transportation to job and subsistence provided, deducted from wages until 50% of employment contract completed, then paid to worker. Return transportation provided at end of employment contract. A reference is required. Employment is available in several Western States including: NV, AZ, CA, OR, ID, WA, CO, UT, MT, WY, Minimum salary varies according to States. From $650.00 to $1200.00....

"May perform other ranch duties incidental to goat/sheep production." The mind reels.

Now this is some kind of crazy:

The hobbit holes will hold lawn mowers instead of diminutive, barefooted halflings from J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but The Shire aims to bring some Old World styling and a fantasy setting to Bend's east side.

"We call it the place of enchantment, and we are building to that (motto)," said Ron Meyers, the developer whose business card identifies him as Lord of The Shire....

The application submitted to the city for development calls for a mix of 31 cottages and townhomes on 6.2 acres off Benham Road east of the Parrell/Sisters Mobile Home Park. The project also will have 1.5 acres of common open space that will include trails, ponds, landscaping and an amphitheater, some of which are in place.

Hobbit holes already are cut into the side of the hill, and Karl Anthony, whom Meyers describes as a "spiritual artist," held a concert at the amphitheater a few weeks ago.

It will be the homes themselves, however, that give The Shire its unique look.

Cottages will evoke English country homes. Townhouses will be built to look like medieval city streetscapes.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

...actually, I'd be real curious to see what it looks like when they're done. Jeez, just when I thought the real estate market around here couldn't get any weirder...

One thing the Bulletin forgot: the web site address for "The Shire." Kind of important, there.

But that's okay, I found it: The Shire of Bend, Oregon.

I don't care if it's poker terminology or not, the expression "bluffing into the nuts" is just so, so wrong. It's simply the gayest phrase ever.

I guess I shouldn't really be surprised when the oddball stuff happens around here anymore, but... Bend.com is reporting that during next week's Great North American RV Rally in Redmond, participants will attempt to build the world's largest s'more.

The S'more will consist of about 40,000 marshmallows, 40,000 graham crackers and 14,000 chocolate bars, and it'll be built by volunteers on Wednesday, July 13, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Construction is expected to take approximately three hours, with the final product covering 1,600 square feet. The World's Largest S'more is sponsored by Reserve America, and is expected to break the current record of 1,600 pounds, which was established in May, 2003....

People from as far away as Florida and Nova Scotia are expected be on-hand to construct, watch and maybe even eat the S'more.

The world's. Largest. S'more.

Sigh.

Check out this Flash animation. It's creepy and compelling! It's a mannequin falling through an infinite sky of spheres. Realistic. And you can drag the thing around with your mouse, too...

Via Boing Boing.

Okay, this is damn freaky. Apparently US scientists have succeeded in reanimating dead dogs—yup, bringing them back to life by replacing their blood, cooling them down, and shocking them with electricity.

They claim the zombie dogs are "perfectly normal, with no brain damage." Riiiiiight.

There is no way I would trust a dog—or any animal really—to be normal again that died and was brought back to life like Frankenstein's monster. I've seen Pet Sematary (just the movie; ironically it's one of the few Stephen King novels I haven't read), that just ain't happenin'.

On the other hand, when I clicked through to the article I just about wet myself laughing so hard at the totally inappropriate stock photo they used...

Via Slashdot.

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

I thought this was funny: Morse code trumps SMS in head-to-head speed texting combat.

93-year-old telegraph operator Gordon Hill delivered a resounding ass-whoopin' to his rival, 13-year-old Brittany Devlin, using Morse Code.

Man, there's retro, and there's retro.

This is crazy; a 15 pound hamburger is being offered free to any two people who can eat the entire thing in one three-hour sitting.

the "Beer Barrel Belly Buster" weighs in with 10 pounds of meat molded into a 20-inch patty on a specially baked, 17-inch bun.

The balance of the weight comes from 25 slices of cheese, a head of lettuce, three tomatoes, two onions, plus copious quantities of mayo, ketchup, relish, mustard, and peppers....

The 15-pound burger can feed a family of 10, according to Liegey. He has sold two so far to teams of two people, and neither team did much more than put a dent in it.

Wow. Just wow.

I don't know whether to file this under "weird" or "science" or "brilliant": MIT is hosting a time traveler convention on May 7.

What is it?

Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Why do you need my help?

We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

Great idea, I'd love to help! What should I do?

Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

You can also make an absolute commitment to publicize the convention afterwards. In that case, bring a time capsule or whatever it may be to the party, and then bury it afterwards.

I wish I'd thought of that. :)

My brother finds the best links. Check out artist Brandon Bird, who produces unique and totally random (in a wacked-out way) art work; I particularly like his paintings page. You have to click through and view them. That's an order.

I rather like the painting of Christopher Walken building Optimus Prime in the garage, I mean that's just weird. Or the one named "Two Warriors Come Out of the Sky", that one has to be seen to be believed.

And he said "God, make it a dream!"
as he rode his last ride down.
And he said "God, make it a dream!"
as he rode his last ride down.
And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars,
clipped off thirteen telephone poles,
hit two houses, bruised eight trees,
and Blue-Crossed seven people.
It was then he lost his head,
not to mention an arm or two before he stopped.
And he slid for four hundred yards
along the hill that leads into Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Ten points if you recognize. C'mon, I made it easy.

Random fun fact for the day: Sorrell Booke, the actor who played Boss Hogg in the Dukes of Hazzard television show, was fluent in five(!) languages and served in the Korean War as a counterintelligence officer. Who would've guessed? All I could dig up for what languages he was fluent in were English (obviously) and Japanese; I'm curious as to what the others are.

Sources: IMDB, Wikipedia.

This is one of those links that's too wacked-out not to post... Back in the late '60s, Leonard Nimoy—riding high on his Star Trek fame, I'm sure—released an album of music called "The Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy." My friend Justin in Portland found the album at a thrift store or something, I've heard part of it. It's pretty awful, but the craziest song on it is "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins."

Yes, you read that right.

What possessed him to sing such a song, we'll probably never know... but what further possessed him to make a video from it—well, it's really too messed up to think about much.

Oh yeah. Not only do you get to hear the song, you get to watch the video too: The video for "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" (QuickTime).

One of my new favorite Wikipedia pages is the Unusual articles list. You gotta love that. Where else could you learn about such things as Heribert Illig, a German historian crank who claims the Dark Ages didn't exist and the years 614 to 911 AD are invented? Or that some guy legally changed his name to Optimus Prime, after the Transformers character? Or that the smallest park in the world is in Portland, Oregon?

According to this article in the Bulletin, a woman in Prineville gave birth to a 14 pound, 1 ounce baby. Holy c-section, Batman! Still, as big as that is, it doesn't quite beat the 16.7 pound baby born last month. And then for some bogglers check out these Guinness World Record entries for heaviest births.

Well, it's that time of year again: In one of the strangest (yet surprisingly most effective) promotions ever to grace marketing, it's Free Beef Month at Les Schwab!

(Thanks, Jake!)

Speaking of the ice storm, what's up with this story out of Portland? Woman dies after jumping out of taxi:

And a taxi passenger died Saturday after she jumped from the vehicle as it approached her home on Mount Scott.

The victim, Nancy Johnson, 61, was returning to her home on Southeast Johns Court from Portland International Airport when the Green Transportation Co. cab started sliding down the steep street.

She was pinned beneath the cab's rear axle as it slid more than 100 feet. The cab driver called 9-1-1 to report the incident at 10:34 p.m.

Johnson "just flat panicked. I think she was worried that (the vehicle) would go out of control," said Capt. Jamie Karn, Clackamas County Fire District 1 spokesman. "This was just a freak accident."

I mean, who the hell jumps out of a moving car at all? Especially when it's sliding out of control and you don't know where it's going? I'm sorry, but people need more common sense. I wouldn't be surprised to see this show up as a Darwin Award.

This is interesting: Sims 2 hacks spread like viruses, where hacks that people have made to their Sims 2 game has unintentionally spread among unsuspecting users. In-game virus?

Entire neighborhoods of Sims are being mysteriously graced with eternal youth, while some characters are finding all their needs fulfilled by a single shot of magic espresso. Others no longer need to empty the toilet after potty training their toddler. Some Sims are being abducted by aliens when they glance through their telescope — every time, instead of just occasionally, which is normal.

All this mayhem is the work of a community of experimenters wielding hex editors, custom programs and reverse-engineering skills who began mastering their own Sims 2 worlds immediately after the game's release last September. The hackers share their weird science with one another through public websites and forums.

The article also goes on about how the hackers have created a type of antivirus software to scan for and remove the hacks. That's cool.

An odd thought struck me as I was reading about this: it must seem to people getting these hacks that their games (their Sims more specifically) are starting to exhibit emergent behavior. (You know, emergence. New patterns or behaviors from complex systems...) How spooky would that be? Just wait til the first hacked Sims figure out they're merely simulations in someone's computer...

Last night on News Channel 21's (gack, Z21 to us locals) "Hometown Forum" program, I was surprised to see none other than Bend.com's own Barney Lerten as the guest! Did anyone else catch it? It was about the year in news, I think, but I was also finishing up dishes and enthralled in an exciting game of Chutes and Ladders with the kids, so I wasn't able to pay close attention.

Came off good, though. Go Barney! :)

I love Wikipedia and all, but sometimes I really have to shake my head in amusement/amazement when you compare the amount of content in something like the Doctor Who article (and supporting articles) to the amount in the esotropia article. One of those things that really highlights the weird imbalance of content that critics are always going on about.

This is cool yet random and kind of freaky at the same time: Skeletal Systems of Cartoon Characters.

Animation was the format of choice for children's television in the 1960s, a decade in which children's programming became almost entirely animated. Growing up in that period, I tended to take for granted the distortions and strange bodies of these entities.

I decided to take a select few of these popular characters and render their skeletal systems as I imagine they might resemble if one truly had eye sockets half the size of its head, or fingerless-hands, or feet comprising 60% of its body mass.

I like Charlie Brown's skeleton a lot, but nothing there is quite as alien and disturbing as Buttercup's (the Powerpuff Girl) skeleton. And this is cool: "Twenty-two of these are currently on show at Stumptown Coffee/Belmont in Portland, Oregon the month of December 2004." I wish I had time to see them since we're in Portland right now, but oh well.

Via Boing Boing.

This is too insane not to link to: Ballooning into the Sky. This guy actually ties himself to a bunch of balloons and flies around. I smell a Darwin award!

Via Slashdot.

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...

Warning: this post has no redeemable value, other than how it points to my potential for being a cyberstalker. And, it amuses me.

So anyway, one of the fun things about living in Central Oregon is watching the Z21 news (or NewsChannel 21, or whatever the hell they're calling it these days) and, well, making fun of the on-air talent, especially the ones that are just starting out.

See, our little local station here is pretty much bottom of the rung, as I understand it, for journalists who want to have a career on television. They typically get hired right out of college and Z21 becomes the training ground within which they learn the trade and work like dogs so that they can move up the ladder. And when a Z21 reporter gets their wings, they leave Z21 and pop up somewhere else, like Eugene.

Maybe you see where I'm going with this. At any rate, Libby Beaubien, one of said newscasters, recently disappeared from the news and I figured she'd moved on. Yep. She surfaced on KESQ News Channel 3 in Palm Springs, California, under the name Elizabeth Beaubien. Seems like it's a good move, though I wonder if the name "Libby" was too colloquial for the station. Anyway, the part of this that amuses me the most is comparing the KESQ highly-staged, over-colored photo with this much more down-to-earth candid one:

(Found via kasey and TextAmerica.)

Hey, it's all good. Just remember though, folks, the internet sees and remembers all.

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

Okay, here's a picture of the scariest dog I've ever seen—come to think of it, the entire picture is pretty freaky:

(Picture found on Strong Gundogs)

Holy shit, that looks like something that would come from Doom or something...

Apparently people breed dogs like these to hunt wild boar. Jeez...

Okay, this article on a living tissue jacket is just disturbing and yet darkly funny. Basically, some guys are literally growing a jacket from living tissue...

Grown using a combination of mouse and human cells, the jacket is currently quite tiny (about 2 inches high and 1.4 inches wide) and would just fit a mouse....

"One of the most common and somewhat surprising comments we heard was that people were disturbed by our ethics of using living cells to grow living fabric," said Zurr, "while the use of leather obtained from animals seems to be accepted without any concern for the well-being of the animals from which the skin has been removed."

Hey, I'll concede they have somewhat noble reasons for doing this, but hello? We're talking about wearing jackets made from living human flesh. Um... Hannibal Lecter? Skinsuits? This guy? Ringing any bells?

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.

So here's something odd. While driving to work this morning, I noticed a chicken wandering around in someone's driveway. It was on 8th Street, near the 8th and Revere intersection, and here was this Rhode Island red hen nonchalantly strutting across the driveway, as if this were normal routine.

Can't say as I've ever seen a street chicken in town before (we used to have unintentionally free range chickens growing up, but we lived on five acres out of town). Damn, I wish I had a camera phone.

This has got to be the scariest picture I've ever seen.

Just in time for the holidays comes Jones Soda's newest beverage—Turkey & Gravy Soda!

Wow.