Landspeeder for Sale

This driveable and totally boss-looking landspeeder (a street legal Ford beneath the window-dressing) is up for auction on eBay. Think of the looks you'll get and all the nerds drooling and have spastic fits when you pass them by in this baby.

Live, Hot Seamonster Webcam Action!

The official site of Lochness, home of the Lochness Monster, or Nessie, as she's affectionately called, has two webcams - one above and one below the water - for you amateur Nessie hunters out there to view. This guy says he may have caught screen caps of it already, you be the judge.

New Look

I'm going to be playing with the template a little tonight so if things look weird, please overlook it, okay? Hopefully I'll have all the bugs worked out of this stupid thing soon, so bear with me.

Start-up Introduces "Tractor Beam"

BioRyx 200 uses 200 lasers to move and manipulate small particles like cells and sperm.

Those Zany Aussies

Here's a good one: 70,000 Australians upset their census by listing their religion as "Jedi" on the forms. You have to give it to them, the Australians are a madcap bunch.

Case in point: last night I was watching one of those crazy Aussie nature-show guys, not Steve the Crocodile Hunter, but another one - I wish I could remember his name. It was some really gripping television, I have to say. This guy was the craziest human being I've ever seen (with all due respect to to Evel Knievel and Farrah Fawcett).

This guy's batting about a big cobra - teasing it - more or less, like he's daring it to bite him. I have to admit, I was rooting for the snake after awhile - which surprised us all and actually did bite the guy (justifiably, I might add, as he did everything but give it noogies in the course of telling the home viewers how deadly it was and what a mongoose might do if it were in his situation). Dude's no mongoose, however, ballsy though he might be and the cobra bites the assclown right on his hand. Of course, now, it's not fun and games anymore - he's all "Okay, I'm bit, the snake bit me, I'm bit over here!" They give him some antivenom and rush him to the hospital (which is forty miles away, of course) and he's laying there in a hospital bed going "No more, never again, that's it - I'm getting too old for this stuff," and I'm thinking "good move, guy - guess you have a little sense about you, at that."

Two hours later, the guy's right back in the desert, playing chicken with the same monstrous cobra and practically juggling this super-venomous Boomslang. Australians, man - they rock.

Fetch, Boy, Fetch! Goooood boy...OMG, LOOK OUT!

Help this adorable pup catch frisbees and balls in the Flash game Frisbee Dog - but watch out for grenades and spiked discs, which prove fatal for the poor pooch.

"ROTFLMAF", I've Heard - But Who Uses "ILICISCOMK"?

The first abbreviation most of you have probably seen if you've spent more than five minutes in a chatroom anywhere on the web, but the second one and many of these others I've never heard of and are as foreign as the Japanese chat exchange above to me. There are many more examples of chat/email shorthand in this large list from NetLingo - The Internet Dictionary.

BTW (by the way), "ILICISCOMK" stands for "I Laughed, I Cried, I Spat/Spilt Coffee/Crumbs/Coke On My Keyboard", apparently, and if you know that, you've been spending way too much time on the internet - go out and do some fishing or something.

X-treme Candy-making

So I'm sitting here and I'm a little hungry and in the mood for some cookies. I'm browsing around and I come upon this site, pastrywiz.com and though I haven't checked out the cookie recipes yet, I have a feeling this is probably the wrong place to look.

I was thinking along the lines of some plain, old-fashioned peanut-butter cookies - these pastry wiz folks are way harder-core than that. There's a whole section here on sugar blowing. I had no freaking idea what kind of radical things were going on in pastry kitchens these days, nor did I know what sugar blowing was...but these people are melting and shaping sugar with a full-on blowtorch and metal tube like a glassmaker and throwing together things like the sugar-swan pictured above.

There are step-by-step instructions for any of you culinary extremists out there who'd like to give it a shot, but remember - The Ends of the Earth and it's proprietor take no responsibility for any third degree burns you may incur by way of your dangerous pastry thrill-seeking. As for myself, I'm going to wait until tomorrow and buy one of those little rolls of cookie-dough - I may not even bother to cook it.

Pocket Full of Kryptonite

This has to be the coolest Superman action figure I've ever seen - there's only one thing I find kind of troubling...

Check out the Man of Steel's "package" in the larger photo here on the site.

Geez, no need for x-ray vision - Supes is puttin' it on display for all of Metropolis to see.

You Hadda Be a Bigshot, Didya?

On board an outbound flight from Philadelphia International Airport, David Vassallo, 46, bragged to a fellow passenger that he was a federal sky marshall. Only problem was, he was actually a postal worker and the passenger he shot his mouth off to was - you guessed it - a federal sky marshall :)

Save Sheeba!

Well...looks like people have gotten wind of the fact that savekaryn.com was actually a moneymaker. The site, run by a self-described "basket-case" who has very bad spending habits, basically asks you to donate money - getting nothing in return - to help her pay off her credit card debts. Unbelievably, she's raked in enough dough so far to account for half of her original $20,221.40 - all without even getting naked, or even showing her face, for that matter.

Incidentally, here's what she looks like. I'm surprised she didn't go ahead and put her picture on, she's kind of cute and probably would have racked up the full 20 grand by now had she posted it initially...never underestimate the abundance of lonesome dorks willing to throw money at girls on the internet.

At any rate, now that the word's out on Karyn's success, you may as well brace yourself for what I'm sure are to be endless parodies and copycats - errrr...copydogs, rather.

What's Scarier: Poe, Master of the Macabre or Wacko Jacko? How About the Two Combined? Egad!

This is coming from The Star magazine, U.S. supermarket tabloid extraordinaire and the story is so utterly ridiculous as to be impossible, but I'm posting it anyways 'cause it's the funniest. According to The Star's crack reporters, none other than Marlon Brando is coaching Michael Jackson for an upcoming role in which he'll be playing the horror story master, Edgar Allen Poe.

I guess it's not that far fetched. I mean, look at the startling similiarities looks-wise, in the pictures above. They could be twins. And with that ultra-spooky homage to plastic surgery gone horribly wrong that he calls a face, Jackson is sure to bring chills galore to the audience.

Oh God, please let this be true - I smell a cult classic.

The Toast Always Lands Butter-Side Down

In other words, anything that can go wrong, will, as the math-contest winners above can attest.

The origin and history of Murphy's law, along with every permutation of it you can think of can all be found here, neatly categorized under topics like love, computers, commerce, etc.

0wnz0red

Thought I'd plug this piece of science fiction on Salon, 0wnz0red, a story about programmers who take on the ultimate hack: that of their own bodies. Why sleep or exercise when you're the sysadmin. of your body's operating system?

A really kickass bit of writing from Hugo Award winner and resident BoingBoing blogger, Cory Doctorow.

Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution

A brief history of hacking.

Guard Your Mind!

With MindGuard, the personal anti-psychotronic software for Amiga and Linux:

MindGuard is a program for Amiga and Linux that protects your mind by jamming and/or scrambling psychotronic mind-control signals and removing harmful engrammic pollutants from your brain. It also has the ability to scan for and decipher into English specific signals so you can see exactly Who wants to control you and what They are trying to make you think.

Was the Moon Landing a Hoax?

Compelling evidence that puts the Fox special and others to shame. This is pretty funny stuff.

Gwyneth and Steve

This is a repost but I came across it again today and had to put it up again, in case anyone missed it, it's just that funny. Gotta love Steve Martin.

Fubbs

A very odd, trippy little website...I really don't know what else to say about it, just check it out for yourself.

Stark, Naked Love!

And the struggle continues...(warning: language).

News of the Day

I realized the other day that I'd been neglecting posting a lot of news stories like I used to and have been mulling over ways I could incorporate a separate section into the blog devoted just for that purpose. In the meantime, here are a few headlines for you to peruse:

Burnt Jimi Hendrix Guitar Up for Auction

Woman Who Gave Birth at Five Back in Spotlight (Yep, you read that right...5)

The Babe's Bat Found After 20 Years Under a Bed

Escaped Emu Mistaken for Naked Man

Australian Drug Dealer Allowed $118,800 Tax Write-off for Stolen Drug Money

Man Accused of Trying to Kill Friend Who Gave Him a "Wedgie" Faces Charges

Woman Has Two Sets of Identical Twins

The Schøyen Collection

An incredible collection of 12,536 manuscripts of all kinds, spanning the course of five-thousand years of human history, from Aborigine art to medieval texts and Asian antiquities, with loads of info and hi-res pictures of many items.

Hey, Where's the Fire?

Check out this wicked-bad jet-powered ride...the 1940 Ford fire engine, powered by two Rolls/Royce 601 Viper engines w/afterburners, is the world's fastest truck.

Nanopop History

Nanopops has a lot of hilarious little flash movies starring little stick-figure-type characters of the same name. I especially liked their take on the history of the Beach Boys and other bands like Nirvana in the History of Pop section.

Subversive Stickers

Someone's selling stickers with a message, they're for people to put on random gas pumps when they travel. The yellow, warning-label-type appliques remind you to stop your engine before pumping, not to smoke and proclaim "thank you for supporting global terrorism". They seem to be selling well and I wouldn't be surprised to start seeing these pop-up at service stations across the country.

Oh, What a Joyful Web We Weave

The Hawaiian Happy Happyface Spider, or Theridion grallator , has to be one of the oddest arachnids I've ever seen, there are several kinds on the islands, all bearing a variation on the famous smiley-face icon. This was on the Honeyguide Weblog, a fascinating little blog about nature and animals.

Been a Long Time Since I Saw One of These

In fact, I'd forgotten they even existed. I remember playing with these as a kid - I doubt this would entertain a little kid today for long, though, there's no rocket launchers or batteries and it doesn't even morph into any kind of robot or spaceship. Actually it's pretty lame, we were easily entertained then, though. There are some other neat little toys you can build, like mousetrap cars and a sardine-can jetboat on the homepage, Mechanical Toys.

Sexiest Cartoon Babes of All Time

Retrocrush, apparently with time on their hands, compiled this list of their picks for the top 50 sexiest cartoon babes ever. Of course I have no opinion on this utterly silly topic, but I suppose if I just had to pick one I'd go with their "Jean Gray, of the X-Men" selection.

Life Imitating Popcorn Entertainment

I had this movie laying around the house for awhile I hadn't watched, a 1996 Kurt Russell action flick called Executive Decision. I finally got around to watching it tonight and for the most part, it was your typical shoot-'em-up action fare. It was the kind of movie you saw all the time in recent years and thought nothing of: Islamic Terrorist Villian with machine guns vs. Clever, American, Blue-eyed Hero with machine guns. Your run-of-the-mill two hours of shooting, daring-do and miraculous escapes. A year ago, this film would have had roughly the emotional impact on me as a Weezer video, if that.

Lots of things have changed since then, though. As the movie played out I found myself completely taken aback by the plot. You see, these particular movie bad guys had hijacked a civilian airliner, a 747 - and were demanding that a fellow terrorist be released from U.S. custody, along with some gold, safe passage, etc. In actuality, though, their plan was to use the plane (which was filled with a nerve gas bomb) as an instrument of attack against Washington D.C. Their leader had planned it all as a suicide mission. Incidentally, his underlings, mostly, seemed to be in the dark about his intent as well...it was just plain spooky to watch after the events of last September.

I won't go into the entire plot, as it's mostly irrelevant - suffice it to say that Kurt and his crack team of commando buddies miraculously save the passengers and the city at the last possible second, as is par for the course for this type of movie, but it's amazing how differently this plays now than it must have when it was made. I realize I'm hardly the first person to point this out, in fact I seem to recall them talking about this on television back when the news of 9/11 was fresh and everyone was looking at it from every possible angle, trying to make sense of what had happened, but I'd never seen the film and it took me by surprise. Scenes that wouldn't have really affected me before (the terrorists shooting hostages, their leader kneeling on a prayer rug in anticipation of the fruition of his plan, the president trying to decide whether to shoot down the plane) suddenly took on a whole new meaning and I felt like I had an emotional investment in the picture. Even the ending felt weird and surreal, with Kurt driving off with the beautiful but brave heroine, everyone safe and sound. I've gone on enough about it, I guess, I would like to add one more thing, though.

Aside from all the cans-of-worms this movie opened up from an intellectual standpoint, there was one thing about it that was absolutely wonderful, pre- or post 9/11: Steven Segal gets killed off in the first twenty minutes. If only all his films were like that.