Painting Tolkien's Worlds

Large, hi-resolution galleries of artwork inspired by the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, including this Frank Frazetta piece (above, used for the movie poster of the 70's cartoon version of The Lord of the Rings), as well as Tolkien's own renderings of his fantastic visions.

New Zealand Man Strives for Air Guitar Championship Status

28 year old Tony Peneha's Jimi Hendrix routine has earned him the right to fly to Oulu, Finland for the Air Guitar World Championship (yes, there actually is such a thing - how about that?). There, he'll be cutting heads with air guitar luminaries from Austria and Australia for bragging rights and a guitar. It is presumed that Mel Bay will not be in attendance.

Hep Cat Jazz

Well, this one scores a ten on the "cute stuff" scale - it's the "Kitten Burger Electronic Latin Jazz Keyboard". Meow.

Happy Birthday, Ringo

Born Richard Starkey, the drummer turned 62 today.

Said Ringo, early in his career: "I figure we're good for another four years. I don't want to invest me money in stocks or anything. I just want to have it and draw twenty or thirty quid a week. The main thing is, I don't ever want to go back to work."

Here's 13 reasons to give Ringo some respect.

Drinking on the Job Gets Burglar Busted

A moronic burglar who robbed a church in Ohio made it exceptionally easy for the cops to find and arrest him - he left them a trail of empty Bud Light cans that led them right to his home.

I'm a Rocker, I'm a Roller, I'm an Out-of-Controller!

If you never saw the first Mad Max movie that line probably doesn't ring a bell. If, however, you did see it and have always wanted one of those boss cars they drove in the movie, such as the Nightrider's Pursuit Special or Max's own vehicle, these folks can hook you up.

I Love Egg

A very cutesy, nicely designed (Korean?) site featuring freaky, colorful little flash animations revolving around a little troupe of colorful eggs. I just really love the menu on this site. Very prettily designed.

Cake Divas

Bakers that specialize in over-the-top cakes sculpted to look like Faberge eggs, guitars, anything you want, looks like. Wonder if it hurts when they see someone take that first slice out of their creations?

Twenty-one...Twenty-two...Twenty-three...Sleepy Yet?

And the award for most comically pointless site of the day goes to Counting Sheep, a site in which sheep after tiny sheep pop up and you...well...count them. *Yawn*

No Wonder Spock's Blood Was Green

He wasn't getting enough Salsa. Well, the folks at L.N.S.E.M.S. (Leonard Nimoy Should Eat More Salsa) foundation want to change that. Live long and prosper.

elgooG

Emotiblaster - Attack of the Smileys

Here's one for the hardcore Yahoo! messenger fans out there, Emotiblaster is a game in which you enter the proper keyboard strokes for each "emoticon" smiley that falls from the top of the screen - maybe if I play this a little I'll finally be able to get down the old "light bulb" smiley and a couple others I can never remember how to make when chatting :)

Funny Pictures Back In Style

I just realized it's been a long time since I just posted a zany picture for it's own sake. Here's a cool one (above) stolen from virtualjokes.com, just thought it was cool, click here for a larger version on their site. I couldn't resist swiping this one, either:



(Larger image here)

In other goofy graphics news, this has to be one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen, someone posted it on a message thread at Fark. Dancin' Spiderman:

There, now I've ruined Spiderman for everyone out there, back to blogging....

Open for Business Again - Finally

Sorry 'bout the recent lack of updates, with my birthday and the Fourth of July I was just a little busy. Well, actually I didn't do much on either but I took a little break anyways. Blogger's went down all day today, of course, fixing their servers, apparently - just when I got around to feeling like blogging some things. Things seem to be back in order again now, though, so here we go.



Kids, Don't Try This At Home

Swordswallowing.com has tons of info on the stupid-crazy art of sword-swallowing - complete with pics, x-ray's (such as the one above) of swallowers at work, as well as video of practioners showing off their craft.

Happy Birthday to Me

Yep, today's my birthday, oh joy. I was going to give a list of famous people who shared a birthday with me but the only ones I recognized were Kyle Petty and Thurgood Marshall.

Oh well...another year on earth, another step in my direction taken by the Grim Reaper :P

That Zany Kevorkian, Artist

Remember Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the "kindly" old doc who'd off people with his "suicide machine" in order to save them from suffering caused by their various diseases? Well, take a gander at some of his oil paintings...somehow I think it had less to do with ending suffering than his getting off on death. Weird, weird guy.

Stairway to Gilligan's Island

Possibly the strangest thing I've ever come across, definitely up there. Apparently recorded by "Little Roger and the Goosebumps" in the 70's and taken off the shelves after a legal row with Zep's lawyers, Stairway to Gilligan's Island appeared lost forever. Now, though, for your listening enjoyment the folks at GilligansIsle.com have it up for all to hear. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on how much you like Zep or Gilligan or both.

Judge Finds Federal Executions Unconstitutional

Looks like the death penalty could be on it's way out, if this holds up in appeal. I don't know how to feel about this, I realize here and there someone might be innocent and unjustly executed at some point, it seems inevitable. However, when some nut goes crazy and hacks a bunch of people to death, it's hard to justify housing and feeding him at a huge expense for years and years.

Manson, for instance - while he's incarcerated and his freedom has been taken away, he's lived all these many years and in fact, turns a profit off his crappy artwork. The Californian prison system isn't at liberty to disclose how much money inmates have in their prison bank accounts, but I have a sad feeling that he may make more money than many honest non-serial murdering folks on the outside. Meanwhile a bunch of innocent people are long dead, their families have to live with that fact and this clown just laughs at everyone from his cell. It's a pity California changed it's policy on capital punishment not long before he was tried.

Terrorist Cyberplotting

A genuinely frightening article about a recent string of apparent fact-gathering and strategic cyberspace ventures of the al Qaeda network's operatives. As illustrated by the low-tech approach of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, authorities fear not an out and out cyber-attack but intrusions on key targets, like disabling dams or re-routing fire dept. alarms, in conjunction with explosives or other more conventional forms of terrorism.

Fun With Heiroglyphics

Find out what your name might have looked like spelled out in Egyptian heiroglyphs.

Man About to Realize Lifelong Dream of Cork-Boat Journey

Over the course of nearly his lifetime, John Pollock of Ann Arbor, MI has amassed 160,000 corks, all for the express purpose of building a big boat out of corks which he one day would set sail in. Well, it's ready to go. Good luck with that dude...seems a little wacky but go for it. I know I'll always regret never fulfilling my lifelong dream of collecting the world's largest ball of earwax and pushing it off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Soccer Violence

Mad your favorite soccer team got beaten? Get some kung-fu-style revenge in Ultimate Soccer Knockout.

Cheaters Never Prosper

Ice Cream in a Bag

A little recipe for making ice cream by shaking the ingredients in Ziploc baggies.

Mini Moo

These folks breed little miniature cows. I can't imagine why, but they do look like they'd make neat pets if you lived in the country.

Bad Taste Bears

Like the name says...bears, bad taste. That pretty much says it all.

AOL Sucks - Reason No. 22,352,563

A glitch in AOL's software has been causing their customer's computers to dial 911.

Monopoly Strategies

A lot of helpful hints about the game Monopoly, from Hasbro.

Some Welcome News from the World of Medicine

Researchers say they've cured 200 lab rats of cancer and expect their new approach will cure as many as 1/3 of all cancers in human beings.

nbc5i.com - HealthWatch - Cure For Cancer?

Having a Dylan Moment Over Here

Look, everybody...go to your Kazaa or Kazaa Lite or Gnutella Client or what have you and download and listen to Bob Dylan's song Masters of War, right now - okay? It's some powerful stuff and it's as relevant now as it was back when he wrote it. Oh...and If you think Bob has a "funny voice" or is too "old"...well then F*** you. Deal with it, he's Bob Dylan - a genius - and you're just some random person. Are you the voice of your generation? Probably not.

"Some random person", mind you, includes standout celebs, politicians, sports figures, entertainers, poets, business magnates, founding fathers - you name it. Unless you happen to be Pablo Picasso or Elvis or Martin Luthor King Jr., more than likely you haven't had as much impact on the popular culture as Bob has. Just get it - and listen to every word - and think about what the hell exactly is going on in the world right now and how deadly serious it is.

These days nobody gives a rat's ass about politics, in general. Sorry, but it's true. Your average person on the street doesn't give a damn - a Mussolini clone could be elected President due to voting errors and nobody would get up in arms about it, as long as it didn't pre-empt a Fear Factor rerun on FOX. As long as the MTV is still going strong and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston are okay, everything is fine.

People think Eminem is outspoken and outrageous. I like Eminem, I'm not knocking him. But whereas Mr. Mathers expounds on the shocking aspects of the language for laughs and entertainment, these kind of lyrics were, for all intents and purposes, a revolutionary act. When I listen to this song I'm just in awe of the man's guts - frankly I'm surprised that Bob didn't wind up in a desert grave somewhere for writing songs like these, with some artfully perpetrated "accident" listed as his cause of death, considering the times in which they were written. Now, though, in our time, they seem even more volatile and provoking. Speaking out, whether you're right or wrong, isn't tolerated these days. Perhaps you've read about the recent Bush speech at Ohio State...if not, you should. It's damn scary. I can't even believe that it happened in the United States of America. I love this country and I want to support our president, but it's hard sometimes...I doubt Nixon himself would have had the nerve to threaten people with arrest or detain them for merely turning their back on him. The sheer gall of it amazes me.

Well, that's my little socio-political commentary for the month, tomorrow I'll return you to your regularly scheduled diet of funny articles and sites and Flash cartoons. I was just listening to that song and a lot of feelings I've had lately about the state of our nation and the globe came to the forefront and I felt like I had to say something. If you're too lazy/bandwidth deprived to download the Dylan song, you can read the lyrics here.

Nano, Nano!

Those wacky nanostructure guys are at it again, this time they've built the world's teeniest, tiniest guitar, complete with strings. At around ten microns long, this baby's about the size of a red blood cell. Amp not included.

VillianSupply.com, For All Your Villianous Needs

From their site:

From Scaramanga & No, LLC, the world's #1 choice in villainous architecture and weapons systems, the Doomsday Star Satellite fires a single fusion-powered energy blast that instantly liquifies the Earth's crust, destroying all life. Be the envy of other supervillains. Orbital insertion not included.*

Price: US$1,200,000,000 (additonal 10% discount for recidivist VilAnon members)
*requires the Halex Diamond for beam cohesion; currently stored at the Pentagon's High Security Facility in Virginia.

2002 Webby Winners Announced - What's Wrong With This Picture?

Well, the votes have been counted and the 2002 Webby Awards are in. Surprisingly, shockingly, even - this site was nowhere to be found, which is confounding, to say the least. Oh well, Fark - which I steal half my links from - didn't get anything either, so I'll try not to feel too bad.

Besides, I don't think it's quite as big a deal as it used to be anyways - with the lack of all that mad dot.com cash that used to get tossed around like R. Kelly handing out Pokemon cards to potential dates, I think this year's ceremony was held in an IHOP or something anyway, so no big loss. Still, too bad - I'd already written my four-word acceptance speech: "Drew Curtis got farked!".

No, We Don't Sell Big Macs - That's Mcdonald's...Grrrr

The Burger King Therapy Center is a place for the beleaguered workers of Burger King to unite and share a few war stories:

Here at the Burger King Therapy Center we strive to be a compassionate solace for the tortured & battered souls of past, present and future BK employees. We hope you will find comfort in being here - A place to share your stories, your tears and your victories. Or just laugh everyone else's!

Powers of 10

A cool little java applet that gradually takes you from a picture ten million miles from the outer rim of the Milky Way to a face-to-face meeting with a single photon in Florida by magnifying it's view 10 times with each snapshot.

The Cult of Hasslehoff

I was at B3TA awhile back and they had a link to some surprisingly gushing reviews of a David Hasslehoff cd on Amazon. Well, it seems the link inspired some of their readers to go there and post their own over-the-top reviews, some of which are really hilarious - shining accounts of the album that put Best of David Hasslehoff on a plane well above Sgt. Pepper and Bridge Over Troubled Water abound, along with praise of his acting ability and overall genius and charisma, which is compared favorably with that of God's on more than one occasion. Here's a typical example:

Reviewer: Victoria from Bristol, England
I'm writing through a veil of tears having listened to this CD, which I can only describe as a work of art. Tears of wonder at the feelings that the songs evoke in me. Tears of sadness as the beautiful words and melodies re-open every mental or emotional wound that I believed had healed. Lastly, tears of joy at finally finding what I have been searching for all my life. I feel that my life is complete now that I have David and his work in it........and I am at peace with the world.

By the way, I feel that Hot Shot City deserves a special mention.

I think I'm going to go back to Amazon right now and start a new John Tesh thread, this is just too funny :)

Canadian Superheroes

A site about superheroes from Canada.

Star Wars...FOR ME TO POOP ON!

This link's a bit stale, I suppose, but hey...I didn't get around to watching Episode II till last weekend and I haven't watched this until today, so what the heck, it's pretty funny.

Conan O'Brien's "Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog" hassles die-hard Star Wars nerds standing in line for the latest installment.

Did You Hear What I Said?

The Al Pacino Soundboard (warning: foul language - duh - it's the Al Pacino Sounboard, so obviously...)

For Love of Beer and Back Bacon

A fan site dedicated to my favorite Canadian television hosts, Bob and Doug McKenzie, of SCTV and Strange Brew fame.

Snap Your Desk

At Snap Your Desk you can view photos of other people's desktops and upload your own to share with the world.

Hobo Nickels

In the thirties, when money was tight, says engraver Sam Alfono, one of the more unusual and creative ways for an homeless person, or hobo, as they were called, to make cash, was by carving so called "hobo nickels".

The coin of choice, used as a starting point for the work, was the U.S. Buffalo nickel - introduced in 1913 and well-suited to the art, as there was lots of metal to work with and around. Alfono, an active practioner of the art form, has many examples of his own works in the medium on his website, as well as step-by-step instructions on how to make them yourself, if you're so inclined.

Someday You Won't Have to Get Up for That Beer (Yes!)

In case you haven't seen them, Honda has been running a commercial showing off their new humanoid Robot, Asimo, which looks to be an AIBO-type thing that walks on two legs. Pretty cool looking, you can check it out here and view movies of it in action.

Pac-Man Fever (Again)

An article about the mighty Yellow One from Salon.com, which I'm posting because...well, you know, I'm just a Pac-Man nut, basically. Some things never change.

More ASCII Imaging Fun

The other day I linked to a page that would convert your pictures into ASCII artwork, but it had some pretty severe limitations (the size of your original picture had to be just-so). This one's way cooler - not only does it convert any picture you have laying around to a text-image, it does it in color, as well. The pic above is a detail from a screenshot I took of a Jimi Hendrix photo I converted with it.

The Seven Deadly Sims

For my Sims playing buddies out there, I don't know if you guys are still into this at all, but if you get the urge, they have a lotta Sims-stuff here.

1984

I had to include this link to a fully-searchable edition of George Orwell's masterpiece, 1984. If I had to choose, this is probably my favorite novel of all time and it's chilling message of a totalitarian future seems to grow more timely with each passing day:

The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.

Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone -- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink -- greetings!

He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote:

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

In addition to 1984, the site has searchable online editions of The Bible and works by other literary greats, like Fitzgerald, Tolstoy and others.

Bubblegum Art

This guy makes his artworks from that time-honored medium, chewed-up gum. Uh huh...chewed-up bubblegum. Come on, you knew it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Molested Cars

They're out there, you've seen them...people doing unspeakable things to innocent cars that never harmed anyone - horribly pimped out trucks, terrible paintjobs, Neons with fins and racing stripes. The horror is all too real.

And We All Shine On

The latest fad among Japanese schoolchildren is making hikaru dorodango, or "balls of mud that shine". Kids there have gone nuts for this trendy new diversion and making a ball with the highest shine-factor, such as the one above, is quite the feather in one's cap.

Top 100 Monsters of All Time

As compiled by Retrocrush.com. Their list is bound to tick off some serious monster-loving fanatics out there, seeing as my boy Herman Munster and Casper the Friendly Ghost made the cut, along with such perennials as Godzilla and Frankenstein. Personally, though, I'm glad they saw fit to recognize some rather oddball choices, such as Bizarro Superman and Michael Jackson. The commentary regarding each pick is pretty good too.

The Elements

A cool little Flash toon that adds a bit of pizazz to the old Tom Lehrer song The Elements, a musical ode to the periodic table. I remember hearing this old song on Dr. Demento's radio show all the time when I was a kid. It's still pretty nifty, especially with the added element (no pun intended) of some simple animation.

Vintage Coffin Nail Ads

In the forties and fifties, not only was smoking not bad for you, heck - it was downright cool and good for you. Why else would Old St. Nick himself (shown above, endoring the delicious, soothing flavor of Chesterfields) be hawking them? Not to mention the obvious appeal of such gushing copy as this, regarding Kent brand smokes:

"Now, more than ever, you want a cigarette that really tastes fresh. Better change to Kent. It's the only cigarette with the Micronite filter... the filter that gives you high filtration to help you keep your smoking moderate. And besides, the Micronite filter smooths the flavor... If you really like to smoke a lot, why not make the change to Kent, today? And why not start with a carton?"

These old-school cigarettes sound great, how come nowadays they have all that awful "stuff" in 'em that kills you? Just another sign of how good, old-fashioned craftsmanship and value has gone out of style, I guess.

Perhaps the Most Creative 404 Page I've Ever Seen

Dude takes his page-not-found messages very seriously...(warning: language).

I've never given much thought to bathroom decoration, but recently I saw a couple items on the web that were just way too cool (and over the top) not to like, such as this aquarium toilet and what is perhaps the supreme bachelor-pad accessory, the home entertainment jacuzzi, complete with surround sound and widescreen tv monitor.

Evil on a Budget

A funny article on how to set yourself up as an evil-villian on a shoestring budget.

How to make soup

Ground Control to Major Tom - "Get Me the @#%# Out of Here!!!"

I've only seen the first of these Flash cartoons, but it was hilarious. Note for 56k folks, when you first start one of the toons, it's set for wideband by default, change it or you're in for a long wait :)

Oddest Action Figure Ever - Mr. Clean

Proctor & Gamble's website has Mr. Clean action figures for sale. I'm really curious as to who their target market for this item is, but if you're an obessive-compulsive or already have every other action figure on the planet and just can't live without one, hurry up - there's only a 100,000 of 'em and I'm sure they'll go like hotcakes. Did I mention that they're individually numbered, which will, no doubt, add to their umm...collectability factor?

Music Industry Unveils Piracy-Proof Format

Elvis Set for #1 Hit in U.K.

Well, thanks to World Cup fever, it looks as though Elvis may finally edge out The Beatles as the artist with the most #1 hits in the U.K. An obscure song, called A Little Less Conversation, remixed for a Nike commercial, is steadily climbing the charts there and looks to go all the way.

Typorganism

A cool, experimental website with some neat stuff, like an ascii composer that will take your 60x50 .jpg image and turn it into a typographic ascii-artwork like the one of Bill Gates shown above. I shrank the screen capture of the image, so you can't really see what's going on as far as the details go, but it's pretty nifty. Also on the site is a musical composer that will let you put together twelve-second songs on a virtual instrument. Requires the Flash plugin.

Like the Game Says, Folks - Sorry

I just want to apologize to the regular readers of my blog for the scarcity of updates lately. It's summertime and I've been getting out a little more. Now don't confuse that with "I've been windsurfing" or anything remotely cool or that will give me a tan, god forbid. It's just that I've been spending more time with my friends and so I've gotten a bit lazy about the blog recently.

I just needed a little bit of a break, at one point I was obsessively updating every day and I figured nobody was gonna have the time to look at all the links before they got pushed back into the archives anyway, so I chilled a little bit. Lately, however, I've been just plain neglectful of it and I just wanted to say "hang in there" to the friends who've stayed with me so long, I'll try and get it together and put some real goodies on here ASAP. At the very least I'll try and set aside a few nights a week to do big updates that'll keep you in links for awhile. Thanks again for reading, everybody, you know who you are. You're the best and if I didn't know you guys were out there I'd probably have chucked this thing at some point a long time ago.