In a pickle...

Wow. Here's one disturbed woman with a pickle phobia. Only on Maury Povich can we have such fun! So what do they do? They drag her ass to a pickle factory! Then they chase her around the studio with a big old plate of pickles. Unreal. I love the comments on YouTube - they are right, Freud would have a field day with this one! Who knows if it's staged or real, but it makes for a fun watch.

Fun links from Ed

Ed sent along another discussion of the hyperbolic plane and how it can be represented in crochet. I'm such a nerd, I find this interesting. I blogged about it previously.

Actually, Ed's been an excellent source of links lately. He sent me this video of a drunken fool yesterday - too too funny! OMG the thought of this guy behind the wheel is simply too much to take! How about this story, about a guy who pimps himself to be your carpool person in the morning? Pretty sweet way to make a buck, if you can.

Ed also found this link to a Depeche Mode story. A number of years ago, when we were first on our Bong mailing list (for Depeche Mode fans) there was a list member who was soliciting stories, artwork, poems, you name it about the different members of DM. In any case, she assembled them all into a big book she dubbed "The Bible of Depeche Mode" and presented them to each member of the band during the current tour (I think it was "The Singles Tour".) There was much debate and criticism on our list since this member was using other member's work to basically gain access to the band. There were questions whether or not the individual artists were given proper credit for their contributions to the Bible. In any case, they must have made an impression, because here it is 8 years later and Martin Gore still remembers the project. Pretty neat, in a creepy kind of way.

A BS in, well, BS...

Want to be a "Toilet Specialist?". I think I'd want to, only to proudly proclaim that I graduated from the "World Toilet College" Them Singaporeans are a strange bunch indeed... must be nice to use a facility without fear of what you might find on the floor though.

Upon further searching, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who finds this whole concept amazing!

I swear, I can't make this stuff up if I tried.

The wonder that is Richard Simmons...

Oh boy, I had to post an old favorite of mine - Richard Simmons on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" doing a skit called Living Scenery . How these guys were able to get throught this is beyond me. He also did another one, Moving People, but it was nowhere near as funny. Still a good chuckle though.

Poor Richard has been a source of laughter for quite a long time. We used to stay up late in college and watch his Deal-A-Meal commercials on late night TV. He was horrible, coaxing the poor previously fat ladies into a sense of comfort then flashing a "before" picture of them exclaiming "Do you know who THIS woman is?!?!?!" Then they'd sob uncontrollably - "That... was... me... before I found your Deal-A-Meal!!"

It's always fun to watch David Letterman torment Richard. Dave's got a thing for hitting him with a fire extinguisher. Too funny.

Don't forget, Richard loves you.

Very punctual I am rarely ever late. For MacGuyver.

I love this - some guy bought a laptop on eBay, it arrived broken, and the seller dissed him. What does one do in this situation? Humiliate!! Here's the story about the situation, and this blog is where the guy decided to post all of the stuff he was able to find on the laptop once he paid more money to have it fixed. You know, nothing big, just some porn, leg fetish pics, resumes, passport scans. No big deal. The thing that killed me were some of the things he said on his resume, in his personal statement. Like "Very punctual I am rarely ever late. The last time I was late for anything is an estimated two years ago" Bwahahaha! I think I would be laughed at if I ever put this on a resume (for more than one reason...) I dunno, maybe that's what is expected to be placed on a resume by Brits, WTF do I know. Love to see how this one will turn out.

Not that I ever watched the show, but who doesn't love the fact that MacGuyver could fix most any situation with nothing more than pocket lint? Here's a Wiki site that lists the problems solved by MacGuyver. Excellent!! He's even got his own MasterCard commercial. Excellent.

Do-it-yourself Blue Man

Ed just sent me info on this line of Blue Man Group inspired PVC tube music makers. How freaking cool is this?!?! I want one. Or two. Or all of them. I can see Baby Girl having a field day with these. Not to mention her parents. No blue face paint required, but somehow I would imagine the experience would be more fun!

Speaking of Blue Man Group, they are coming around with another concert tour on the fall - How To Be A Megastar Tour 2.0. I'm super excited. Bortz is going to come with us this time out. Last tour was great, and it introduced us to a really cool electronic group, Venus Hum.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday - Bush style!

Oh my - someone out there has actually taken George Bush's speeches & edited them together to have him sing U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday". Woah.

Boy, I was doing so well keeping this up to day and it's been a week since my last entry. A week! I'll try to be better this week. I've been spending a lot of time at my Dad's house so not as much time to blog (and a dial up connection to boot - horrors!!).

I'm feeling jiggered with a noggling pain in the trotters...

Just came across this link for a Glossary of Yorkshire Medical Terms. According to the page, it was devised to assist European Doctors coming to work in the South Yorkshire area. Rather funny & interesting stuff. I don't think I'd be able to keep a straight face if I were a doctor in that region. Contains some crude descriptions, read at yer own risk!

Let's Hug it out, Bitch!

Well, the Sopranos & Big Love may be over, but that just paves the way for our favorite summer indulgence, Entourage. Clearly, the high point of watching this show is Ari Gold, the aggressive agent as played by Jeremy Piven. He's crude, wisecracking, and a pain in the ass. But you gotta love him! Last year, the big catchphrase from him was "Let's hug it out, bitch!" accompanied by his very own website extolling the same. Now, to celebrate the new season of Entourage, beginning this Sunday, you may virtually interview with Ari Gold to be his assistant. Excellent! Apparently Piven ad libbed most of the material that they used. Too funny.

Noah in 2006 - Hi Ya!!

Well, I swore I was taking a break from blogging tonight so Ed & I can watch The Sopranos & Big Love that we missed yesterday. But Faithfullee sent me this joke that I've seen a million times before but it seemed appropriate since my sister-in-law is renovating her house & just had to wait 3 months for a building permit. This one also hits home since I was a civil servant for almost 10 years. Enjoy!

In the year 2006, the Lord came unto Noah, who was now living in the United States, and said, "Once again, the earth has become wicked and over-populated, and I see the end of all flesh before me. Build another Ark and save 2 of every living thing along with a few good humans." He gave Noah the blueprints, saying, "You have 6 months to build the Ark before I will start the unending rain for 40 days and 40 nights."

Six months later, the Lord looked down and saw Noah weeping in his yard - but no Ark. "Noah!" He roared, "I'm about to start the rain! Where is the Ark?" "Forgive me, Lord," begged Noah, "but things have changed. I needed a building permit. I've been arguing with the inspector about the need for a sprinkler system. My neighbors claim that I've violated the neighborhood zoning laws by building the Ark in my yard and exceeding the height limitations. We had to go to the Development Appeal Board for a decision.

Then the Department of Transportation demanded a bond be posted for the future costs of moving power lines and other overhead obstructions, to clear the passage for the Ark's move to the sea. I told them that the sea would be coming to us, but they would hear nothing of it.

Getting the wood was another problem. There's a ban on cutting local trees in order to save the spotted owl. I tried to convince the environmentalists that I needed the wood to save the owls - but no go!

When I started gathering the animals, an animal rights group sued me. They insisted that I was confining wild animals against their will. They argued the accommodation was too restrictive, and it was cruel and inhumane to put so many animals in a confined space.

Then the EPA ruled that I couldn't build the Ark until they'd conducted an environmental impact study on your proposed flood.

I'm still trying to resolve a complaint with the Human Rights Commission on how many minorities I'm supposed to hire for my building crew. Immigration and Naturalization is checking the green-card status of most of the people who want to work.

The trades unions say I can't use my sons. They insist I have to hire only Union workers with Ark-building experience.

To make matters worse, the IRS seized all my assets, claiming I'm trying to leave the country illegally with endangered species.

So, forgive me, Lord, but it would take at least 10 years for me to finish this Ark."

Suddenly the skies cleared, the sun began to shine, and a rainbow stretched across the sky. Noah looked up in wonder and asked, "You mean you're not going to destroy the world?"

"No," said the Lord. "The government beat me to it."

In other news we went to my friend Greenlawyr's new house for a party celebrating her graduation to blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do. We had a great time, and are super happy that she achieved this rank after two long years of hard work. We all had a grand time watching the videotape of her graduation, where she broke a block of concrete with her bare hand. Also a source of great entertainment was the practice DVD of Tae Kwon Do forms that Green got off of eBay. It's so funny - it was basically a home video of some guy standing in a park going through the forms. However, they added all the cheesy video game sound effects of his hands slicing through the air ("Whoosh! Whoosh!"), kicks, and the occasional "Hi Ya!" We nearly peed our pants watching this thing. Char I think has a thing for Green's boyfriend - she basically followed him around all day long. God help us - she likes the older men. All around, a fun day indeed. I'll have to add a few pictures soon.

A nerdy stroll through the blogosphere

OK, it's a rainy Saturday afternoon, and I find myself Blog-surfing again. When you go to the Blogger homepage they list 10 blogs of interest and the last 10 blogs that have been updated. So I usually check some out if I have the chance. Here are some of the cool ones that I found today.

As I'm typing this up I'm listening to "My Life With Bad English", which is a series of video clips from Andrei, an immigrant from the Soviet Union. He talks (so far) about learning languages, his trip to America, and the fact that his video has a pixel that doesn't work. Plus he uses Kraftwerk as incidental music. I'm finding it quite amusing. It was does for a class, and I'm hoping he continues it after the class is over.

Did you know that Captain Picard has an online journal? So nice to know that he can take time out from heralding a starship to blog. Thought that I would link it here for all of my Trek loving friends/relatives.

I haven't tried it myself, but a new type of poem taking the blog world by storm is the Fib, which is just like a haiku but instead of using the standard 5,7,5, syllable line, you use Fibonacci sequence to determine the syllables (0,1,1,2,3,5,8). I could be wrong, but it seems to have originated from this post at GottaBook. I'll have to try it one of these days, when I don't have a two year old clamoring all over me for attention!

This blog probably led me to The Purple Crayon site, on children's book publishing, which led me to The Crockett Johnson Homepage (the author of Harold & the Purple Crayon, one of my favorite books when I was a kid). I have to give this site a good once over, it looks like fun.

I also found a cool blog posted to one of my crochet groups, written by a fellow area crocheter, called "By Hook or Needles". What really caught my eye was this post discussing geometry & crochet. I'm such a dork, I was so excited! Then again, in the spirit of fiber art & math I also stumbled across this site on Fibonnaci knitting. It's a nexus, I tell you!!

I think it's time to get out of cyberspace and jump back into Saturday schlubbing around with the family. We are all so full of energy today (ok, let me rephrase: Char is all full of our energy today, because Ed and I basically have none. Nada. Zilch.)

Browsing through YouTube

One of my favorite surfing activities of late is checking out all of the videos at YouTube. What a great repository for all things video! I thought I'd share some of my recent neat finds. I'm just going to link to them instead of embedding the videos since I have more than one today.

It started today with this cartoon extolling the wonders of our founding father, George Washington. Has some foul language, but funny. "He'll save children, but not the British children." Bwahahaha!

Then I found this experiment showing the effects of sound resonance on rice. Pretty nifty.

I absolutely could not pass up this Hard Rock Hallelujah. Thought Bortz especially would be interested in this. It may have been part of the Eurovision song contest this year, but I'm not sure.

I also looked up a bunch of Lego stop-motion films after seeing Lego Disco linked on Sissyfight. I also enjoyed Lego Monty Python & the Holy Grail, and of course thought of my buddy Kaptain K when I found a Lego Dr. Who.

Get lost on YouTube someday if you have the time and a decent connection! It's fun!

The world according to Anderson

OK, I must admit - along with a good chunk of the American female population, I have a bit of a crush on Anderson Cooper.


I watched an episode of "Live with Regis & Kelly" on TiVo last night. Regis is on vacation so Anderson was sitting in for the day. Doesn't hurt that he's hawking a new book too (which I just put on reserve at the library - yay!). He was clearing having fun with the gig. It doesn't hurt that Mariah Carey was on so he could gawk at her like a sexually frustrated schoolboy. (One a side note, her new album should just be renamed "Emancipation of a Hoo-ah", but I digress...) Anderson was equally amused with new American Idol Taylor Hicks, since he was a huge fan of the show AND stoked about meeting another prominent prematurely grey man. Gotta love it. (The third guest, Larry the Cable Guy, had a good line - "Who would have thunk it - the guy is from Alabama and named 'Hicks'?" But I digress - again...). Perhaps the greatest revelation of the show was that Anderson is not only a fan of American Idol, he obsessively loves "My Super Sweet 16" and "Tiara Girls". I find it incredibly amusing to see someone like Anderson, who comes from an affluent background himself, to completely bash the girls on this show for being shallow and materialistic. He went so far as to comment that the ideal season finale would be to line up all of the girls from the show and shoot them down. Excellent. Nice to know that we are on the same page here!

I'm looking forward to reading Cooper's book. I'm curious to see what his upbringing is like. If you didn't know, his mother is none other than Gloria Vanderbilt. It's somewhat refreshing to see someone whose family is obviously connected to strike out and try to make it on his own. He talked of struggling to break into the news field, having a small apartment, trying to figure out what to do with his life. Very down to earth, very understandable by the general public. This is a pretty good article on him - check it out.

In any case, the whole reason (finally) that I went off on this pro-Anderson Cooper tirade was that I came across my links for some old articles that he had written for Details Magazine. Anderson has a great sense of humor, and I found these pretty funny. He talks about trying to play the real estate game, talking sex with his Mom (ew!), fesses up to biting his nails, but perhaps my favorite is his account of his time on Celebrity Jeopardy. You can read all of his articles here.

I only wish I was more politically minded or I would probably be a regular follower of Cooper's show on CNN, "Anderson Cooper 360°. I much prefer watching him in The Mole.

Speaking of shows, while looking for images I found this great Jeopardy Site. Great way to try and play along and test your knowledge. But all of the pictures of Anderson came out really dorky looking.