Friday, April 19, 2002
If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you know I'm no PETA vigilante. However, I do love animals. Let me elaborate...for instance, I don't think it's very cool to hang a cat by it's throat from a phone cord for fifteen minutes, slit it's throat, stab it, kick it, skin it, tear it's eyeball out with a dental instrument and then rip it's ears off with a pair of pliers. That's just me.
Incredibly, though, Ontario Court Judge Ted Ormston doesn't seem to see a helluva lot wrong with it. He shocked a courtroom full of people who'd been moved to tears after witnessing the video the perpetrators had made to preserve the horrific act for posterity, telling them he was passing on his option of giving the men the maximum time allowed because he felt their crime was "not the worst offence possible" and that "There are worse ways that this cat could have died.".
Ummm...worse ways? Maybe I'm just not not that imaginative, but it'd be hard for me to come up with anything to top the gruesome spectacle described above. Apparently, though, Ormston can, mentioning that the men could have spent a longer amount of time torturing the cat. Point taken, Judge Freddy Krueger.
The sleazy lawyer of Jesse Power, 22, the apparent ringleader of the group's (there were three men involved, one has yet to be found by police) cat-slaying party says that it was all part of an art project, intended to make a statement against meat-eaters.
Such high idealism...he's a visionary artist, of course! What a fine, insightful and brilliant bit of artistic achievement. Beats Monet's Water Lilies any day, hands down. I bet Picasso, were he still alive, would wish he'd thought of it first, obviously this is something on a par with Da Vinci's Last Supper in terms of artistic merit - someone give this guy a big, fat grant and pronto!
I've seen some awful garbage passed off as Art in the last decade or two and some of it, though offensive to many, I can muster some defense for. Sometimes art should shock. It's good to rattle the cage a little now and then and shake things up. There's a huge difference, though, in something that - while shocking or even disturbing - has some real artistic value, as opposed to projects such as Power's previous work, for instance - in which he slaughtered and consumed a chicken for art class (he got an A for that, by the way). That's the kind of stunt hacks resort to because they have neither the talent nor discipline to learn to paint, draw, sculpt or create anything of beauty or power. That's not art, that's an episode of Jackass.
Sounds to me like Power just plain gets a kick out of killing things. Maybe one day, when he really loses it and cleaves off a human's head, the clueless judge who sentenced him will rethink his decision.
Look, this rant went on a little long, sometimes I'm compelled to write my opinions things, though and and this is the kind of stuff that really ticks me off.
Successful New Delhi physicist and businessman Sugata Mitra is passionate about the education of his nation's youth and has some very unorthodox ideas about how to bring them into the wired future. Upon noticing that anytime his friends bought a computer, within weeks they were bragging that their small children were "computer geniuses", Mitra asked himself if this trait wouldn't be found in all children.
To put this to the test, he came up with "the hole in the wall experiment". Mitra took a high-powered Pentium computer with broadband access and simply placed it in a wall in an indian slum, with no explanation whatsoever, allowing anyone to come along and play with it as they wished, while he monitored it, using a remote computer and a nearby camera. He found that children ages 6-12, with only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of english, were the biggest users of the machine and within days had taught themselves to surf and draw on it. In fact, at times, he was completely taken aback by their savvy:
Q: Of all the things the children did and learned, what did you find the most surprising?
A: One day there was a document file on the desktop of the computer. It was called "untitled.doc" and it said in big colorful letters, "I Love India." I couldn't believe it for the simple reason that there was no keyboard on the computer [only a touch screen]. I asked my main assistant -- a young boy, eight years old, the son of a local betel-nut seller -- and I asked him, "How on earth did you do this?" He showed me the character map inside [Microsoft] Word. So he had gotten into the character map inside Word, and dragged and dropped the letters onto the screen, then increased the point size and painted the letters. I was stunned because I didn't know that the character map existed -- and I have a PhD.
Incidentally, the adults in the community had little interest in the computer and instead relied on the children to find them things, such as horoscopes - as one woman claimed, "I don't have the brains to understand all this.". Also noteworthy, when Mitra added a Hindi interface to the computer, which he expected to be a huge hit, the children just went back to Internet Explorer.
MP3s, of course, were eventually a favorite with the children, that much is universal.
It's a very interesting article that challenges you to rethink the ways children might be educated in the the future.
This is really cool, you have to try this....basically you play a game of twenty questions with the computer and it tries to guess which dictator or sit-com character you're thinking about. Pretty nifty.
Of course it would have been easy to go with the obvious headline, "Don't Do the Crime If You Can't Do the Time", but I thought I'd go the extra mile and lift another line from the ultra-cool Baretta theme song, which you can listen to here(note: apparently the cheapskate S.O.B. who runs that site, which none of the links worked to unless you sent him some money via paypal, but did, at least, play the show's theme, looked at his logs and came back here and decided his precious, crappy Baretta theme-music wasn't something he could give away for free and took it down. In hopes that he stops back by, since I just went there: I'd just like to say you're a jackass and good luck getting anyone to pay you for your crappyass tv show fan site, pal, you jerk). Amazingly, given the huge amount of fanatical fan sites for tv shows, it was the only real Baretta site I could find (and it's owner sucks). I'm sure that will change in the weeks ahead as people begin obsessing over each episode of the seventies cop drama, picking them apart for clues as to the underlying mania that (allegedly) turned the former Little Rascal's star into a murderer.
Blake has finally been arrested in connection with his wife's murder, his driver as well, as I'm sure most of the free world has heard by the time you read this. I'd like to dedicate this particular article to my friend Bill. Bill and I are both pretty big fans of celebrity crime stories and we were beginning to think we were the only ones on earth who were scratching their heads wondering what ever happened to this story, as it seemed to have been swept under the rug completely after awhile.
Bill, buddy, you hung in there, you kept the faith and now it's paid off and you can tell the world "I told you so!" with righteous indignance and, if you'd like, I'd be more than happy to let you have your say on the matter here in this humble forum whenever you wish. This being such a juicy story and one that we've held dear to our hearts for so long, I hardly know where to begin, myself.
How's this for starters? A little trivia nugget for you: In the very first episode of Baretta, Baretta and his fiance` were entering a resturaunt when she was gunned down by vengeful mobsters. A little foreshadowing? Blake's attorney apparently saw that episode, that's how he says it probably went down. Marcia Clark, O.J. trial star, begs to differ, however, saying, “I really believe if Robert Blake were just John Q. Smith he would be in custody right now.” way back in May, 2001. I'd have to agree with her on that one.
Your average vengeful dude doesn't carry a collector's quality Walther pistol. Guess who's an avid gun collector, though? Also, supposedly, the same brand of ammo, which IS a popular Remington brand, in all fairness, was found in Blake's house. In fact, a whole box...minus three bullets. How many bullets were fired to kill Bakley? Two...with one more left in the chamber of the gun (which was found in a nearby trash bin).
You know, I missed the CNN coverage, I'm sure I can see it online, but from what I hear it was a bit of a letdown in comparison to the theatrics of the O.J. arrest. The least Baretta could have done was hop in his car and take the cops on a road chase or something. Still, though...this has all the makings of classic Court TV and in addition, if Blake does get nailed for the murder, which is very possible, he could very well be the first Hollywood celeb to face the death penalty for murder.
Of course, the question on everyone's mind is, what's O.J. have to say about all this? Here's his take on things, from the tv tabloid Extra:
"I've got to admit, I was pretty fascinated when I first heard it," Simpson told the syndicated show Extra . "And my first reaction was an immediate feeling of compassion for him because I knew what he was about to go through."
The former football star also said he had advised Blake not to take a lie detector test or watch TV, and advised him against besmirching his late wife's character.
"Don't take a lie-detector test", spoken like a true wife-murderer who's been there, done that. Maybe you might want to stay out of it, Juice, I don't think Blake really needs you as his media cheerleader right now, somehow I don't think it'll help.
This one had nothing to do with the television show at all but there were a couple pretty things on it, I particularly liked "the constellation"
This next one is my favorite so far:
. . .Darrin the Bold, slew Rufus the Red in the 14th Century, and that henceforth all his descendants have been accursed. Samantha tells Endora. . .and returns Samantha to 14th Century Killkarney. Samantha stops the fatal duel between. . .the other is invincible. . .She twitches her nose and gets the desired effect. . .
Next up is a really stylin' flashed page from Sony's Screen Gems Network with some games, episode rundowns and stuff, really spiffy animation. The intro catches the spirit of the original cartoon intro of the show, as does the rest of the site's design. Probably you're wondering why I'm posting all this stuff.
Hey, I'm 33, I liked Bewitched, sue me. In fact, I liked I Dream of Jeannie, too, so here's her site.
Thursday, April 18, 2002
L -Larry Dallas; went through the ladies faster than Bruce Lee dropped ninjas. Fellas take note: Lar spends most of his time lounging in them fly kimono-style robes and comes as close to a 'fro as a honkey can get.
"Nobody tinkers with my tweeter."
 I am Mr Do.I am sedentary by nature, enjoying passive entertainment, eating when the mood takes me, and playing with my food. I try to avoid conflict, but when I'm angered, I can be a devil - if you force me to fight, I will crush you. With apples. What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Are You? |
Well, what with the Osbournes being such a huge success, it was inevitable that MTV would look for other celebs whose personal lives they could chronicle. What sucks is their choices for possible future shows: P. Diddy (formerly Puff Idiot) and Brandy. Yeah, that sounds thrilling. Who wants to watch Puff Dummy obsess over his clothes or Brandy pick out lip gloss? My suggestion: Snoop Dogg, an obvious choice.
Well, last week scientists announced they think they'd possibly found a way around that pesky "exercise" thing and may be able to formulate a concoction that will allow you to sit on your lazy butt in front of a tv eating chips all night and get buff like a Baywatch lifeguard while doing it.
Then a couple days later they announced a new pill that betters Viagra.
Now they've gone mad-scientist on us again and are offering up a possible alternative to sleep ...in pill form.
Provigil, early reports show, allows people to remain awake for days at a time, without the awful side-effects and loss of cognitive performance you get with the likes of amphetamines and caffiene.
I have a bad feeling about this one. For obvious reasons this is going to be the most popular drug of all time and more than likely it'll be ten years or so of people running around day, getting things done, being happy, productive super-people - then finding out it's given them all brain cancer.
Arcane is a nice little flash game, played out in an episodic fashion. You control the characters and their decisions, a wrong move could mean your character to die or cause them to be committed to an asylum in this semi-spooky bit of cartoon role-playing.
Play the regular game at your own pace - with save enabled - or go for the gold, get the best time and be a hero - with no save option.
Nice animation, good atmosphere, great sound effects and music. The folks at Warner Bros. don't mess around and do things half-assed when it comes to their Flash projects, you've gotta give 'em their props.
Well, it looks like it's turning into one of those "theme nights" here, with comic/cartoon characters. This one doesn't need a whole lot of explanation. The Pink Panther, breakdancing to such hits as Baby's Got Back. It's an idea that's time has finally come.
This Site Will Not Make Any Sense To You If You're Not a Seventies Comic Fan. You Have Been Warned
I'm posting it anyway, though. While I was searching for something completely unrelated I stumbled across this site, The Hembeck Files!
Back in the late seventies, Fred Hembeck used to have a little comic strip that they ran in the editorial page of all of DC's comic books. It wasn't exactly Bloom County or Peanuts and the comedy material was strictly in-jokes geared towards the readership of DC's various comics, but I enjoyed it - comic nut that I was - and it was a kick seeing all of the strips online, out of nowhere - especially since i hadn't given it any thought in twenty years or so.
In other words, I'm a nostalgic sap and I can post whatever I want. Besides, a few of them (like the one above) feature my blogging nom de plume, Jimmy Olsen - so deal :)
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
Long gone are the days when our sports heroes are beyond reproach. Hofstetter's Sports Jerk of the Week and Badjocks vilify rather than idolize.
Hofstetter's no. 1 jerk pick for this week is Mike Tyson. Probably he's ruled this list for awhile, though shotgun-toting b-baller Jason Williams is right behind him.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love the internet.
Another twisted, totally insane Flash "thing" that defies description.
There's no point in my even trying to describe this. It's just insane, completely, utterly crazy and I have no idea what it's about, have a feeling it's going to be a huge hit, though, it's just weird enough to be popular.
A turbine barstool that does 40 miles-per-hour. Yup, really.
This absolutely makes sense in a weird way, sheer marketing genius.
This is a hilarious bit of Flash 'tooning. Probably helps if you know who Aquaman is, but this is the funniest thing I've seen all week :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)