Kaleidoscope Painter

A neat java applet that lets you paint kaleidoscopic patterns.

Kaleidoscope Painter

Chuck Jones Dead at 89

This really took me by surprise. Just the other day I posted some stuff regarding Chuck on the blog. You can see the post - which includes links to the current project he was working on for WB's site - Thomas Timberwolf - as well as his homepage, by clicking this link.

Chuck worked on such classic cartoons as Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner, as well as producing, animating and writing the screenplay for The Grinch That Stole Christmas television special.

He also created such memorable characters as Marvin the Martian. He was truly one of the great animators of all time and by all accounts, a nice guy as well.

He'll be sorely missed by the many fans of his work.

Newsday.com - Animator Chuck Jones Dies at 89

Man Dies After falling on Coffee Mug

It's true what they say, you never know when you're time is gonna come, how unlucky was this poor guy though?

Newsday.com - Man Dies After Falling on Coffee Mug

Pat the Obsessive Winamp Skin Collector's Skin of the Day:

Today's skin is yet another old-school videogame inspired creation, fashioned after the world of everyone's favorite brick-busting, mushroom meister, Mario...it's the Mario Amp:

My Crazy Granny

Warning: There's some off-color language on this site and frankly it's just plain mean-spirited but I laughed my ass off at it nonetheless.

index

Please Step This Way, M'aam...It's a Matter of National Security.

This site was posted on BoingBoing a couple days ago and I just got around to looking at it today. A security guard at the Winter Olympics runs this blog and has some really hilarious takes on the games:

A quick piece of advice if you're pretty hot and trying to enter a secure location: Some (a very few) male security personnel will kick the magnetometer to make it sound an alarm as you pass.
Why?
So they may ask you to step to the side and "wand" you.

My request:
Call them on it. I'd love to see their face. Or at least tell them to send over a female wander. Or both.

b-may

BottleCaps.org

Fear not, lonely bottlecap collectors...you need not live a life of isolation anymore: BottleCaps.org is a haven for you and your obsessive/compulsive kind, with galleries of various national and international caps as well as links to such other fringe hobbies like beer can collecting and beer tray collecting.

BottleCaps.org - The Site For Antique and Collectable Bottle Caps

FILMSON: A site that lets you search for online films by title, cast and crew or reviews.

FILMSON - Your Guide to Online Films

Yeah, But What If You're Color-Blind?

Doctor Paul Goldin claims he can generate a profile of your personality based solely on your choice of colors in his "Colorgenics" test...I took it and I suppose a lot of it was right, seemed like a kind of a vague description that anyone could have applied to themselves, however. I'm including it though on account of the Flash quiz's neat ambient music and because I know how many test-taking nuts there are out there.

::: The Amazing World of Colorgenics :::

I Swear, Officer - I Only Use It For My Arthritis Pain

An 81-year-old woman was arrested in Miami for attempting to smuggle 9,931 doses of Ecstasy in her luggage on a flight from London. Surprisingly, this isn't an isolated case, either - last March a 72-year-old tailor from New York was charged with bringing 61,691 ecstasy tablets with him on a flight from Paris to Miami.

This is why I no longer allow my grandmother to attend raves.

myCFnow.com - 81-Year-Old Woman Charged With Smuggling Ecstasy

Shake, Rattle and Roll

California had an earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale today.

We had an earthquake here awhile back and it freaked me out. I didn't even know we had earthquakes in Alabama.

My friend James and I were sitting around watching television and there's this rumbling that shakes his house a little and we were like, "What the @#%!% was that?". It was just a small one, I think a 3 point something or other. I thought maybe a truck had overturned outside or someone was dynamiting stumps. I did a little looking around and it turns out we had another small one back in 1996 that I'd never even heard about.

Like we don't already have enough worries due to tornadoes, now I have to sweat earthquakes too.

Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada - Index Map

Obits Section: R.I.P. Angry Wet Cats, We'll Miss You.
You may have noticed there was no daily "pissed off wet cat picture" on the blog today. Unfortunately, it just got too hard to keep coming up with funny ones and so I had to drop it.

atom grid

My sincerest thanks to the proprietor of atom grid for his advice and also for linking me on his page. It's been on my must-read list since I got into the whole blogging thing and I urge you all to go there and check out his site, it's one of the best blogs out there.

atom grid

Insane Cat Painter Follow Up:

Regarding the insane cat-loving artist I just posted...a fellow on the BoingBoing discussion board for the story posted this link with tons of info and pictures of the artist's (Louis Wain's) work, if anyone is interested.

disinformation | louis wain, pussy lover

Art by Psychotics.

A gallery of paintings done by schizophrenic (and suspected schizophrenics - like Hienonymus Bosch).

Be sure and look at the freaky psychedelic cat on the top left, when you click that one it shows you a progression of paintings that were done by the artist (whose typical subject matter was humorous depictions of cats) as his mania spiraled further and further out of control.

Another note of interest - I noticed that the second painting from the right - middle row - was utilized as cover art for the Van Halen album "Fair Warning" (my favorite Van Halen album, incidentally. Does this make me psychotic? Keep in mind that this was before Van Halen sucked).

Neuroscience Art Gallery

Pat the Obsessive Winamp Skin Collector's Skin of the Day:

I wasn't around tonight, I was hanging out with my friend Chris and his cousin so I didn't get around to blogging anything and probably I'm not gonna post a lot of stuff on here this morning. I'll try and make up for it tonight but I had to get on long enough to at least post the skin of the day. Here's a good one - I tend to favor the those that have a really different look to them and aren't just knockoffs of the same kind of futuristic/goth/quake-ish things you see all the time. This is a pretty good example of one that stands apart from the crowd -
Denim Amp.

All Your Trailer Park Are Belong To Us. . . . Move 'zig'.

StupidaMouse

"i totally have a crush on derek powazek and like haha i wish i got an anti-bloggie."

This is pretty funny...an instant "teen weblog" generator, as well as a "spam generator" scripted by Daniel Bogan.(Warning: off-color language)

waferbaby » hummer

This Is What Happens When You Let Rednecks Have Access To Computers

As if videogames didn't cop a bad enough rap already because of their violent themes, racist groups are now taking it a step further - games that are specifically geared towards the goal of making racism and genocide "hip" among young gamers.

Primarily variations of such games as Doom and Quake, they feature gameplay that centers around murdering members of particular minority groups - i.e. blacks, jews and latinos. One game even goes so far as to be set in a concentration camp. It's goal? To kill as many jewish prisoners (or rats, as they're referred to in the game) as possible.

The article here - from Wired, even mentions one of these idiots having bastardized my beloved Pac-Man, which - coincidentally - I've been writing about here for the past hour...sigh...have I ever mentioned what a screwed up world this is?

"I hate Illinois Nazis." Jake Blues - The Blues Brothers

Games Elevate Hate to Next Level

Pac-man Fever!

While I'm on the subject of Pac-Man, here's an interesting tidbit of Pac-history.

I was reading an article at Twin Galaxies' - the official authority on videogame records - describing perhaps the single most awe-inspiring Pac-Man moment of all time, the first perfect score on a game of Pac-Man, achieved by Billy Mitchell - a Fort Lauderdale, Florida hot sauce manufacturer - on July 3, 1999 at 4:45 P.M. at the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, NH.

Now, in order to get a perfect score on Pac-Man, a player has to achieve a score of 3,333,360 points - the maximum possible points allowed by the game. This means eating every last dot, every energizer, killing every blue ghost, getting every fruit and surviving to the 256th level, which ends in a split-screen. All of this must all be accomplished on a single quarter - which is why in the game's 20 years of existence, nobody was able to accomplish the feat - even though by Twin Galaxies's best estimates, the game has been played somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000,000,000 times since it's introduction.

The Perfect Pac-Man Game became an arcade Mount Everest of sorts and was a hotly contested badge of honor sought by the world's hardest-core joystick-jockeys...these guys were dead serious - listen to this snippet from the Galaxies article:

Mitchell, who refused to eat until he beat the Canadians for the world record, went hungry for nearly two full days. “I had to be first,” Mitchell explains. “Its like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. No matter how many people accomplish the feat afterwards, it will always be Armstrong who will be remembered for doing it first. And, best of all, it was an American.”

I'm not sure if it was quite as big a deal as the first moonwalk, but for Billy Mitchell, it was the pinnacle of his gaming career - an illustrious one, too - Billy also holds the world record for Donkey Kong.
In the end, with the grueling six-hour game behind him, eyes bloodshot, victory his at last, Billy backed away from the machine and announced:

“I never have to play that darn game again,” he sighed in relief. “There’s nothing more I can accomplish.”

Said like a true American hero. This Bud's for you, Billy.

Click here for an interview with Billy about his perfect game on Videogames.com and if this got you in the mood to chomp a few dots, you can find some Pac-Man Clones here.

Is That a Dot or Some Dust On My Screen? Oops! Game Over.



The folks at Tiny Windows Games have released a few new items - including a Tiny Pac-Man (screenshot below, shown actual size), Tiny Donkey Kong, Tiny Pengo,Tiny Frogger and Tiny Mario Brothers.

Only problem is, as opposed to their other tiny games - (Tiny Space Invaders, Simon, Chess, etc.) - these new games are actually emulators...which means you'll have to download the games' corresponding rom files in order to make them playable.

It may not be worth the hassle to you unless you're really nutty about retro arcade games. I'm only mentioning it here because I love 'em and because of the novelty factor.

Tiny Windows Games

Pat the Obsessive Winamp Skin Collector's Skin of the Day:

Today's skin bears a theme that's near and dear to my heart - The Beatles. A simple, clean design with easily-navigated buttons, it's a nice little homage to the Fab Four's movie of the same name, The Yellow Submarine Amp.

Timmmmberrrr!!!!!

Thomas Timber Wolf is a new online cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, one of the geniuses behind a lot of the best Warner Brothers Looney Tunes...this new series of flash cartoons marks his first new characters for WB since he created Marvin the Martian.

Warner Bros. Online: Timber Wolf

Japanese Game Show / Torturefest Makes Fear Factor Look Like Trip To Spa

When it comes to their gameshows, the Japanese have a real bloodlust that far exceeds our humble fare of contestants eating bugs and performing such mundane tasks as bungee jumping and the like. I'm quite confident that none of the contestants in any television show here, such as Survivor or Fear Factor, could have dealt with the kind of treatment Japanese comic Nabusi dealt with:

Nippon Television's (NTV) producers have obviously never heard of the Geneva Convention. If they had, they wouldn't have treated poor Nasubi the way they did. They wouldn't have stripped him naked and shut him in an apartment, alone with no food, furniture, household goods, or entertainment. They wouldn't have kept him there for over a year until he had won $10 000 in prizes by sending in postcards to contests. They wouldn't have cut him off from the world and they would have told him that he was on nation-wide TV.

It gets much worse...you have to hand it to the Japanese, anyone who can make tackier television than us deserves a medal...however, if this is how a gameshow contestant is treated, I can't imagine what their prison system must be like.

nasubi

Wet Cats Placed On Endangered Species List, Numbers Rapidly Dwindling!

How many more funny wet cat pictures can there be out there? I'm here to tellya, the pickin's are getting pretty slim, folks, but no need to panic just yet...here's today's entry:

Okay, I'm back with the popcorn...what, you mean it's already over?

Think of all the time and money you could save if, instead of renting movies, you could just read a quick, ultra-condensed sypnosis? This is the mission of the folks at Movie-A-Minute. Here are a couple examples:

Good Will Hunting
Directed by Gus Van Sant
1997

Matt Damon: I'm smart, but so what? Let's get drunk and pick up chicks.
Robin Williams: If you push people away, they can't be close to you.
Matt Damon: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP you fixed me thank you I love you. (cries)

The End

Pretty Woman
Directed by Garry Marshall
1990

Julia Roberts: I'm a hooker but I don't kiss on the lips.
Richard Gere: I have a lot of money.
(smooch)

The End

Movie-A-Minute

Gene Simmons, step aside...
Channel4000.com - Michigan Pooch Has Longest Tongue

Yahoo! News - Man Kills Boss, Turns Her Into Pepper Soup

Announcing a Brand New Feature: Pat the Obsessive Skin Collector's Winamp Skin of the Day!

I'm a nut about my Winamp, I have tons of freaky plugins and gadgets for it and I spent a fair amount of time (well, an obsessive amount of time would be more to the point) looking for cool Winamp skins to dress it up with. Some of them are really nice.

Thus, for no particular reason I've decided to post my favorites here on the blog. I was going to do a "top ten" or "top twenty list" originally - however, I've decided instead to post a Winamp "skin of the day", that way I can post a small picture of each skin so you can preview it, without having to slow the site down any more than I have to. Besides, it's more fun that way and it gives me something to fill up space.

By the way, I didn't design any of these skins, they were all found at Winamp.com and other skin-related sites, like Skinz.org. I'd like to include the names of the people who did make them...however, it would be such a hassle to go back and find the exact links I'm just going to post them without credits, my apologies to the author and if by some miracle one of them happens by here and sees his/her skin, please drop me a line so I can credit you and thank you.

Now then, here it is, the first in a series - The Skin of the Day, Pac-Amp:

While I'm on the subject of Steve Martin, I'd like to toss out a few links to a some of his hilarious essays I've found on the web. He's a really funny author as well as actor and screenwriter and his written humor has the same kind of off-kilter, odd quality to it as his stand-up comedy did. "Dear Amanda" and "A Public Apology" are pieces he wrote for The New Yorker. "Writing Is Easy!" is an excerpt from his book, "Pure Drivel". Funny stuff.

Two of the very funniest flash cartoons I've ever seen - "Morto the Magician" and "Gwyneth and Steve", written by and starring my comedy hero, Steve Martin - the original Wild and Crazy Guy. I really wish they'd come out with another installment, Steve's site mentioned another one called Hapless Bachelor but so far no sign of it.
Counting Down Theater - Steve Martin

From this week's installment of The Onion, posted along with a shoutout - to Jordan, Sarah and Tara:
That Trip To Canada Really Broadened My Horizons

Wet Cats In Danger of Extinction!

Here's the angry wet cat pic of the day. Sadly, I'm afraid I may have to end this short-lived tradition soon, as it's getting harder to find any that meet up to my stringent standards. Scouring Google's image search provided a lot of pictures of soaked felines, to be sure. However, in order to meet the requirements necessary for my inclusion here the cat must be not only wet, but angry and at least semi-comical as well.

We'll see. It may come down to just posting a "funny" picture of the day, though, so enjoy these while you can. By the way, don't you admire the adult-like restraint I've shown by not once mentioning the very obvious play on words that the term "wet cat" presents? This is a wholesome family show, kids :)

Yacking with the Babel Fish:

So I'm bored and looking for things to do and I go to Altavista's Babelfish translator, which is supposed to translate web pages and text for you, from German to English or Spanish to Russian or what have you. It's been around awhile and I always thought it was a neat little web application, in theory - sort of like the "universal translators" they used on Star Trek to converse with people of other races.

Only thing is, it doesn't really work that well...you can get some pretty odd interpetations of the language sometimes...for instance, here's a section of a recent news article about James Brown, in it's original English:

James Brown Off the Hook

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury has cleared James Brown of sexual harassment charges against a former female employee, but ruled the soul belter's company must still face the music for wrongfully terminating her.

Lisa Ross Agbalaya, a 36-year-old former model and mother of three who served as the West Coast president of James Brown Enterprises, sued the legendary singer for $1 million, accusing him of harassing her and making unwanted sexual advances when she visited his home in Augusta, Georgia, in 1999.

The suit, filed in May 2000, claimed, " 'Sex Machine' is more than simply a title to one of James Brown's many hit records; it would also appear to be a description of James Brown the man."

(Article from Entertainment - E! Online Music)

Okay...now here's the article after I translated it (using Babelfish) into Japanese, then back to English. (note: I've left a blank underline in the spot where translation of the Japanese characters seemed not to have worked at all, in lieu of pasting them (so no one would have to hassle with a "this page requires Japanese language support" download message from their browser) and inserted caps where needed) :

The James Becomes Brown from the Hook Separated

The Teaching Father of Mind feels approximately now whose substance is good.

The jury of the Los Angeles excellent courthouse removed the Brown of the James of ____ fullness vis-a-vis the employee of the female before, the company of the belter of mind being controlled, music in order to finish her illegally must calm down the surface.

She was useful the Augusta, when Georgia visited that house someone bother her as coastal president of West of brown enterprise of the James, in 1999 advance of unnecessary characteristic, the singer of legend for the $1,000,000 which appeals him, the Agbalaya of 3 it is appealed, 36 years before being old, the model and mother Lisa Ross.

In May which is required the suit which 2000 year file is done than " ' to be more characteristic machine ' title simply is to one of many collision records of Brown of the James; In addition as for that the person it probably is description of Brown of the James. "

I have no idea why I did all this, out-and-out boredom, mostly - but I like the way the article reads this way, really...you can almost figure out what the heck it's about but not quite, it sounds like some kind of bizarre mental-patient prose.

I don't think Brown of the James would object to being called "The Teaching Father of Mind", it sounds like a really cool Japanese title for a learned Zen Master, although it doesn't have the snappiness of "Godfather of Soul".

Incidentally, I realize that making the Japanese to English conversion and then reversing the process may have made for more errors than normally would occur and sabotaged the translation slightly, but as far as I can tell, that's the same kind of accuracy you get from Babelfish in general.

Here's a translation of an article about the current "Courtney Love versus The Goo-Goo Dolls" legal wranglings I found on a popular german music site. There are no line breaks in this one because I don't speak german, it's as is, translated directly from german to english:

How from sets the New York post office oozed, at present the private recordings of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain in New Yorks publisher sets make the round. " Kurts family tried to publish on basis of its writings a book ", was called it by a source designated not more near. There would be Songtexte, drawings, papers over its career plans for Nirvana, revised lists of its favourite disks and out-curving sections over drug consumption and the media. Such a book could possibly support the argumentation of the Cobain widow Courtney Love. In her law case with the ex-Nirvana-musicians Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) and Krist Novoselic tries to state the getting front woman that Cobai was the actual creative strength behind Nirvana and you should be entitled as a widow the order over the musical deduction alone.

Huh???? I didn't get all of that, did you? From what I gather, though, Courtney's winning and good for her, I like the Goo-Goo's and all but I think she's caught a bad rap as the evil dragonlady behind Kurt's death. She's actually a surprisingly smart, literate person and has a lot of interesting opinions, as you can see by visiting her band Hole's website - which, by the way, is easily one of the coolest band sites I've ever come across. Courtney was pro-Napster - unlike a lot of people whom I won't mention by name (Napster Bad!) and has dozens of mp3s - including some of Hole's biggest hits - available on the site for free.

Oh well, enough with my Babelfish musings and ramblings about Hole...I was just in a writing mood today, I guess.

I will now return you to our regularly scheduled programming of funny pictures and links. Thank you for your indulgence.

Mail-order brides from hell (Warning: there are much worse things on the net than this, but some folks might find something offensive here and I haven't thoroughly checked this site out, so enter at your own risk, it's funny stuff, though)
DAS KUKKENHOES!!!!!!!!!111111

Here's an interesting Ebay item for you. Sorry folks, bidding is closed on this one but I think the pic pretty much says it all. Who wouldn't love a hand-knitted doghair sweater for Christmas or their birthday? It went for five dollars, in case you were wondering.



In another auction-related item, Dean Kamen is auctioning three Segway scooters *ahem* sorry, Dean - I meant to say "human transporters", not scooters - on Amazon.com. They're not planned for public release for another year. Look...I like Kamen and all and I think the Segway is pretty cool tech. However, after seeing Kamen (this time joined by Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and CEO) on Good Morning America for a second time, putting around and leaning back and forth and twirling around in circles on the things at three miles an hour, there's no denying the fact that it's absolutely impossible not to look like a tool while riding one. Next time just make us the damn jet pack, Dean - okay? Because if you're right and this thing really is the future of inner-city transportation, our inner-city commuters are going to look like vast legions of nerds.

An article about blogging on Wired, by Farhad Manjoo. Here's an excerpt:

"It depends on what you get into it for," said Matt Haughey, who created MetaFilter, a discussion site frequented by bloggers. "If you get into it thinking you are going to be popular, it'll fall out of fashion for you."

Crap. There goes another dream, shot to hell. :(

Blah, Blah, Blah and Blog

Altavista scraps it's free e-mail service.
Yahoo! News - AltaVista scraps free e-mail

These little guys, known as Xoloitzcuintles (pronounced "show-low-eats-queen-tlees") are the hot new dog in the United States, fetching as much as two thousand dollars a pup. They were once considered a delicacy by the Aztecs and the hairless dogs have such sensitive skin they require sunblock before being walked. I think I'll pass, just give me a beagle or something.
Independent News

Chortler -- Canada Warned About Using Up Its News Quota

Just wasn't in much of a blogging mood today...it happens. Here's the wet cat picture though...I'm about to run out of these so enjoy :)

Razzies.com - Home of the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation

The Rocklopedia Fakebandica, an obsessive listing of fake bands that have appeared on tv, the movies and cartoons...bands like The Archies, Alice Bowie and, of course, The Monkees.
Behold the Rocklopedia Fakebandica!

A flash parody of the camp classic fifties public service film "Duck and Cover", which told you what to do when one of those pesky atom bombs goes off without warning.
CHICANERY!!!

Well, here's the wet cat picture for today. Have I made it perfectly clear yet that soaking wet angry cats are infinitely amusing? It's just one of life's little givens.

Search spiders, are you reading this? Fox affiliate accidentally airs three seconds of XXX porno in primetime. I bet if I mention the phrase XXX porn in my blog daily, sooner or later those hits are gonna go up.
gazette.com - Fox station airs porno in primetime

Potato guns aren't legal everywhere, not in city limits at any rate, because they can launch a spud at a high rate of speed...so if you make one and you get in trouble, or you damage something or hurt yourself or anyone else, you're a dumbass and I claim no responsibility. That said, enjoy :)
Build Your Own Launcher-The Spudgun Technology Center

Hehe...now this is off the wall...
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Couple's dream house is a scream — a copy of TV's 'Munsters' manse

Well, it's been a long evening of tinkering with my blog's template and submitting it to search engines and making links and metatags and what have you and I'm bushed. Tellya what, i'm gonna go ahead and post a few more links and then I'm calling it a night. I hope and pray that while I sleep tonight, the search engine spider fairies will be hard at work indexing pages on my site. While I'm at it, just in case there's a spider browsing this page, "XXX PORNO XXX TRIPLE XXX ASIAN PORNO PORN PORN PORN!!!!" I'm desperate here, I really want people to look at my blog, okay? *Yawn*

I'm still going to post today's pissed-off wet cat picture later this evening...meanwhile here's a cat who's neither wet, nor pissed. In fact, he looks pretty darned content :)

NEWS of the WEIRD

Automated dream interpetation...just keep in mind that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and since Microsoft made it, it's probably buggier than your bizarre dream about flying donuts and oompa loompas was.
MSN Astrology / Love

The Real World ala` Ozzy Osbourne...now this should be interesting.
Yahoo! News - Ozzy Osbourne Launches Reality Show

Chaplin invades Berlin and the newly restored print of his anti-Nazi satire, "The Great Dictator" brings down the house at the close of the Berlin Film Festival, just down the road from Hitler's bunker.
Yahoo! News - Chaplin's Restored Hitler Satire Cheered in Berlin

As if the shark attacks last year weren't bad enough, now Floridians have to sweat the lionfish - an exotic fish with poisonous, needlelike spines. When I was a little kid, our next door neighbor was a fish-nut, he had one of these. They're really pretty fish. Oh well...yet another reason you'll never see me so much as put my big toe in the ocean. It's just asking for trouble.
Yahoo! News - Scientists Warn of Poisonous Lionfish Off Florida

Bonsai Potato - Zen Without the Wait!™

More information about juggling than you could ever possibly need, how to juggle, juggling history, etc.
education

New look for the template today.