The Peachoid

A water tower that looks like a giant peach.

Billy Idol Fridge

Buy an ugly refrigerator Billy Idol's scrawled on from Ebay. Proceeds go to charity.

New Xiao Xiao

Yet another in the long line of stick-figure kung-fu Flashes.

For the Welder Who Has Everything

If you happen to have a welder friend or family member you'll be shopping for this holiday season, look no further - Hoodlum Welding Gear has a line of eye-catching welding helmets that will make him or her the talk of the metal shop.

Ratchet and Clank

A fun, Tetris-like Flash game in which you move and stack cogs of various colors to make combinations and free up space.

Still More Obsessive Lego Fiends

I've seen some pretty crazy Lego stuff on the web. Mind you, it's not really my bag - even as a kid, I don't think I ever had anything beyond your most basic Lego set, something you could maybe make a really crummy little house with or something along those lines. I find it endlessly fascinating, though, that there are people out there devoting so much time and energy into making ultra-complex structures from the interlocking plastic toys. These latest examples I saw on Boingboing are truly out there.

First off, we have someone making a reproduction of a work by the artist M.C. Escher, famous for incorporating optical illusion into his work - in this case, Ascending, Descending.

For sheer, hardcore Lego craziness, though, the prize has to go to this guy, who's Lego Harpsichord (above) took two years of planning and assembling. But for the steel strings needed to produce notes (oh yeah, it works - though it's less-than-listenable sound won't make it the choice of any concert players anytime soon) it's made entirely of Lego stuff.

Snoop Dogg Just Says No

Snoop Doggy Dogg has announced that he's no longer smoking marijuana. In a related story, pigs take flight.

Quick, Go to Google News!

Because they'll likely start charging for their recently-unveiled news search service soon, according to this article.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

Stupid.com is your one-stop shopping center for inane and ridiculous gifts, gags food and apparel. Whether you're looking for the world's smallest radio-controlled car (above) or a handbag shaped like a Chinese carry-out box, a Sigmund Freud action figure or just some turn-signals for your ears - if it's truly stupid, you'll probably find it here. Personally, I'd really love one of these fog-ring-blowing ray guns.

We'll Be Right Back After These Important Messages From Our Sponsor...

Tv Commercials Now has all kinds of classic commercials to watch. Andy Griffith hawking Post Toasties, The Three Stooges showing their own Simonizing technique and many more, old and new - in both high and low-bandwidth Quicktime movies.

Our Dumb Century

A fair-sized selection of sample pages from The Onion's book, Our Dumb Century, at Amazon. If you haven't read it, pick it up sometime - it's one of the funniest books you'll ever purchase.

Digitalart.org

I can't believe I've never come across this site before, there are some flat-out amazing examples of digital artwork on here. Artists painting in Photoshop, Painter, etc. - some really, really nice illustration. Be sure and browse the Top 50, while you're there. It's just unbelievable what some of these folks can do with just the brush tools in Photoshop. Sheesh.

Double Vision

Celebrity Doubles offers up their roster of celeb look-alikes for hire - most are kind of "eh.", but a few, like the Alan Alda guy above are kinda creepy in their similiarity to their famous twins. Some, I found kind of puzzling - for instance, under what circumstances would you ever need to hire a Christine Baranski look-alike?

I see a bunch of confused partygoers pointing and asking "Who's that?" and the host having to explain to them that she was the oft-drunken best friend of Cybil Sheppard on the now-defunct television series Cybil.

Painting for Posteriority

Rikki Rocket, Poison's drummer, enjoys painting hotel room toilet seats while on tour with the metal band. Rikki explains:

It's 2002 and the days of useless acts of hotel destruction are over. It's been done, it's financially wasteful and nobody cares anymore. Besides, I like hotels. I have lived in them a good chunk of my adult life. Truth is, some are better than others.

Rocket keeps a gallery of his artistic triumphs on his site - which is peppered with quotes by artists like Pablo Picasso, as well as his contemporaries, like Aerosmith. I don't suppose anyone would have guessed that at least one toilet seat masterpiece has a scary bat on it, would they?

I'll Trade You Two Hilberts for a Euclid

Ah, what nerd's toy chest would be complete without a set of mathemetician trading cards? Kind of math-phobic myself, but my friend Bill's gonna get a charge out of this, I think.

Puzzle Playground

Bunches and bunches of puzzles you can play and print out.

Post-trauma

Well, I'm looking at my blog tonight and I'm noticing how downhill it's gone. I have to fix my template, as the Yaccs comments code needs updating, I somehow lost my Blog Hot or Not link (thankfully, probably, as I'm sure it's slipped too) and there've been a woeful lack of posts.

What can I say? Got a little lazy with my blogging, folks...it'll be getting chilly soon, though and more than likely I'll be spending way more time here at home on my computer. I sure do dread fixing this template, though. The code for my page, what with all the little comments things and this and that, has grown a mile long and it's hell just picking out a particular javascript so I can fix it at this point, so I've been putting it off as long as possible, but I'll fix it all at the first opportunity. In fact, I recently installed some graphics programs so I may just knock out a whole new template - you never can tell.

Also, not surprisingly, I haven't been getting many visitors...so now, in a pathetic attempt to recieve more traffic, I'm posting Google Zeitgeist's top ten gaining search requests:

Top 10 Gaining Queries

Week Ending Sept. 30, 2002
1. ryder cup
2. oxana fedorova
3. kristy swanson
4. enron auction
5. mandrake
6. berlin marathon
7. ivory coast
8. jennifer love hewitt
9. isidore
10. christopher hitchens

Who/what the heck is isidore? Well, I'd better go find something to post, post-haste, before everyone abandons this sinking ship.

Googlefight

Who's more popular, net-wise - The Jeffersons or The Partidges, God or Satan, Jordan or Bird? Googlefight will let you type in two keywords, then show you who gets the most results on the popular search engine.

Speaking of Google and fights, they're under fire themselves of late, as chinks are beginning to show up in their much-lauded Pagerank system and bogus sites - spam, 404 pages, etc. - are beginning to make appearances near the top of search results.

Candy Train

Another new game from Popcap - click the tiles to keep the train from going off track.

And the Weiner is...

Weiner dog races - which weiner will win?

Bookworm

A fun new word game from Popcap.

Buttonhead

Frank's Vinyl Museum

Not sure if I've blogged this one before or not, but Frank's Vinyl Museum has some really goofball audio-nuggets...everything from Evel Knievel reciting poetry to Mae West singing Ticket to Ride. Straight out-of-left-field stuff that smells of a moldy, old box in the attic.

Drew on Fark

An article about the history of Fark.com - mostly stuff you'll be familiar with if you've ever spent a lot of time on the site, but a decent write-up anyways. (Link, appropriately, via Fark)

Detective Mistakes Onion Story for Real News

A Coldwater, MI detective from the Branch County Sheriff's Dept., Detective Dan Nichols, mistook an Onion story about Al Qaeda terrorists running telemarketing scams and included the bogus information in a four-page press-release.

Explaining himself, Detective Nichols proclaimed, "We wanted people to be aware of telemarketing scams, and I used the information just in case there is a remote possibility," Nichols said. "We have no indication that Al-Qaida is involved, but we wanted people to know there are telemarketing scams."

Here's the actual Onion article the news report - which was also picked up by an area radio station - came from.

How Neat is This Applet?
















I was just browsing around some javascript sites, looking for ideas awhile ago - in particular, I was looking for a tasteful, unobtrusive script that would make some tiny, blinking stars on my page, maybe just a few tiny fading pixels here and there, no gifs or crazy stuff - if anyone happens to know of one, let me know, okay? Anyway, while I was script-shopping I came across the above applet and it was so pretty I thought I'd share it - pretty cool, in a lava-lamp sort of way.

You can screw around with it using your right and left and middle click buttons and moving your cursor around on it and if you'd like to download it for whatever reason, you can, here at Javafile.com

Checker-Shadow Illusion

A really freaky optical illusion.

Superman Movie is Finally Cleared for Takeoff

Well, looks like there's finally a solid, for-real Superman movie in the works. John Peters will produce and Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) will helm the director's chair. There's a rumor going around that Keanu Reeves may play the Kryptonian crimefighter, which would really cement the odd little tradition of similiarly-named men (George Reeves, the television Supes and Christopher Reeve of the previous big-budget outings) donning the blue tights and cape. Here's hoping they don't mess it up.

We Will, We Will Eat You!

A little Thanksgiving-themed humor by some rockin' and rollin' turkeys.

Miserable Melodies

Only the very worst in music is served up here - from Ethel Merman's I Got Rythm (Disco Version) to Phyllis Diller's ear-torturing rendition of I Can't Get No Satisfaction - it's a veritable crap-heap of auditory blasphemy that will leave you crumpled on the floor in the fetal position, desperately trying to poke out your eardrums with a fork.

If you're man/woman enough to withstand the mind-numbing awfulness of Pat Boone belting out the Jimi Hendrix hit The Wind Cries Mary or can stomach the horrific refrains of Leonard Nimoy's take on If I Had a Hammer, I salute you - you are made of stronger stuff than most.

Mmmm...Refreshing!

It takes hundreds of years to form and only minutes to vaporize… Pure, refreshing, crystal clear, filtered, and compressed dehydrated water. No where on Earth will you find a more pure substance. Dehydrated water is compact, lightweight, easy to store, and perfect to take wherever you go.

The people at buydehydratedwater.com tout the benefits of their product, a steal at $5 a pop. Free samples available if you'd like to try before you buy.

Move Over, Gates, $anta's Got the Bling-Bling, Baby!

Forbes Magazine's picks for the top fifteen richest fictional characters of all time. St. Nick tops out the list with his seemingly inexhaustible wealth, beating out such cash-carrying luminaries as Richie Rich and Bruce Wayne.

"I Get Lonesome, Sometimes, Right in the Middle of a Crowd.."

This and other quotes played out by The Virtual Elvis, which you alter, costume and background-wise, to your tastes. The King lives on, in cyberspace.

Brainwashing America

I only hope they use those nice little fabric-freshening strips so all our brains will come out all fluffy and smelling springtime-fresh.

Page by Page

This site gets around the hassle of reading long literary works online - the endless scrolling, the problem of finding your place once you've lost it, etc. - by presenting the large library of public domain classics it offers in a single-page-at-a-time format.

Meankitty

Don't be fooled by those cutesy greeting cards and seemingly loving nature of our feline friends you're used to...not all cats are cute, cuddly and adorable. Some are just out-and-out bad apples. HISSSS!!!

Because You Can Never, Ever Have Enough TV Trivia

TV Acres bills itself as "The Ultimate Subject Guide to Television Facts" and is a huge repository of trivia on various subjects. Pick a word like "taverns", for instance, from their indexed list and you get loads of fictional hangouts like "The Boar's Nest", from The Dukes of Hazzard, Boston's favorite watering hole, "Cheers", Northern Exposure's "The Brick", Frasier's "McGuinty's, etc. You get the idea.

Sand Art

An applet for the truly bored-to-tears. Use your cursor to drop virtual sand (in the color of your choosing) and make your own little sand-art masterpiece. Not much to it, but it has a nice Zen quality, nonetheless.

"Stay Inside the Velvet Ropes at All Times and Don't Touch the Joysticks, Please."

At The Videogame Museum, there's more game info than you can shake a controller at. I didn't even know there was such a thing as the Atari 800 pictured above. Sadly there was little information regarding it, aside from the picture - there's tons of dirt on everything else videogame-oriented, however. This may be a repost, I'm not sure. If it is, though, probably it was so long ago nobody's going to remember anyway.

Moron of the Day

A Chicago teenager was treated for second degree burns after setting his shorts on fire (three times) in what was apparently a game he and his idiotic friends were playing - wherein each would smear gasoline onto their shorts and let the other light them. After lighting themselves on fire, they'd roll on the ground and put out the blaze.

After a few times, though, there was just too much gas on their shorts and the boy was unable to put it out. No charges filed - in the words of the police officer called to the scene, "Being totally stupid is not a crime."

Silent Suit

Composer Matt Batt has been ordered by a court to pay a six-figure settlement to the estate of John Cage for plagiarism. The lawsuit concerns Batt's inclusion of a silent track on his album, entitled One Minute of Silence, which the American composer, Cage's estate claims rips off his composition, 4'33'' - a four-minute, thirty-three second track of silence.

Pretty sad, huh? I think it's a little ridiculous, although I'm behind any lawsuit that would attempt to sue Batt and the late Cage for being pretentious jackasses.

Wouldn't He Already Be Insane to Do This?

Paul Mathis has a request - he'd like you to drive him insane. How, you ask? His home is wired so you can turn his lights on and off, send him annoying text messages that are converted to voice synthesized greetings, etc. A very odd person on a very unusual quest.

570 Bars

This one's just for Darren, Tara and any other Seattle residents or visitors. Two guys decided to make the rounds of all 570 bars in the city and have rated each on their various attributes, as well as summing up their experience in a weblog. They're halfway through their tour now and if you're in the area and in the mood for a drink this might be the place to check before you do your bar-hopping. Cheers!

Achoo!

A short, odd little commercial from Japan for Fanta brand soda.

The Beer Song

An Old "Weird Al" song done up as a Flash movie. Dial-up users take heed, this puppy took awhile to load.

This One's Not Gonna Mean Much to Anyone but Steely Dan Fans...However...

If you, like me, are a freak about "The Dan", go check out The Steely Dan Dictionary, it'll clear up a lot of questions you may have regarding some of the more arcane lyrical references on their albums. Tell 'em Jimmy sent ya.

It's the little things like this I love about the net....the fact that you can just type "Steely Dan Lyrics and their Meanings" into Google and BLAM! - you find yourself looking at a page like this, where a like-minded person has actually gone to the trouble to archive things of this nature - be it obscure Steely references or minutiae about Green Acres, the codes you need to activate your televisions remote control, pretty much anything. Gotta love it - I'm just waiting for that wonderful day when I can have some kind of cable jacked directly into the back of my head so I'm on it 24/7 and can escape reality altogether...ahhh :)

Punk Kittens

From rathergood.com.

Some Funny News Stories....

Just thought I'd toss a few out there, there are so many weird ones, last few days (most of these were lifted from Fark:

Drunken Woman Goes to Pick Up Summons for a DUI...Gets Another DUI

Disney and Satan to Co-Produce New Snow White Remake - With New Dwarf and Kung-fu - Walt Spins Wildly in Cryogenic Freeze Chamber

Man "Bobbits" himself, Among Other Things - Repeat After Me: Doing Loads of Meth is NOT a Good Idea

Interior Designer says of CEO's $2,200 Wastebasket: "Please, God send me a client who's that stupid"

Woman is Nearly Run Over - By Her Own Stolen Car

Worldprocessor

Is an interesting site that presents global statistics from a visual perspective.

Still More Paper Planes

You know me, I'm a sucker for these pages with oddball paper airplane designs, so here's yet another one, entitled Exotic Paper Aircraft.

My Potato Gun Kicks Your Potato Gun's Ass

This guy's taken it to the next level potato gun-wise - a pure oxygen and propane-fueled, laser-sighted, bolt action, automatic spud launcher that would make even the most avid fan of the classic geek project green with envy.

Bow Before Your Dark Kitten Overlord!

A truly evil kitty...scary.

Go Ahead and Click it, You Know You Want To...

http://www.xxxhardcoreporn.tk/

Greetings from Your M.I.A. Webmaster

Hi folks, just wanted to pop in here a minute and let you know that I haven't quit blogging on you, just been having some pretty bad computer problems of late and so I've devoted the last few days to the herculean task of burning and organizing all of my extremely disorganized data. I shall return ASAP, however - give me a couple days and things should be back to normal.

If Hackers Ruled the Earth

A particularly funny Photoshop contest at Worth1000.

McCartney Trots Out Beatles Leftover

Carnival of Light, a track recorded during the Sgt. Pepper recording sessions, will be seeing the light of day for the first time since 1967, when it was played at an avante garde festival. It wasn't included on the Pepper album and by the sound of the article I expect it to be an inaccessible mishmash of LSD-fueled meanderings - it's Beatles news, though and as such I thought it important enough to mention.

Customs Lets 15 Pounds of Depleted Uranium, Sent from Turkey, No Less, Sail Right Into New York

This is just too scary - I'm watching an ABC news show earlier tonight and well, you hear a lot of talk about how tight security is these days, which makes this that much harder to swallow. ABC reporters took fifteen pounds of depleted uranium, shielded in a container resembling a pipe-bomb and packed in a crate, then shipped it from Turkey to New York. This crate and it's ultra-suspcious-looking and mildly radioactive cargo - exactly the kind of thing that should have raised eyebrows - passed right through customs without anyone batting an eye, however. In fact, throughout it's journey, nobody even so much as opened it to have a peek inside or got close enough with a geiger counter to find there was cause for alarm. In short, had it been actual fissionable uranium and the person recieving it had not been a reporter, we'd have had a terrorist happily strolling the streets of NY, carrying an ominous, hardshell suitcase with a small nuke inside.

The uranium - although depleted, shielded and more or less innocuous - was giving off the same signature geiger reaction that would have alerted officials to the possibility of there being a bomb inside, had anyone at the port authority or customs bothered to take a closer look at it - which they damn well should have, considering Turkey is right at the top of the list of places nuclear material would be smuggled from by terrorist attackers. Sleep tight, kids.

9/11 Replayed on Fark

This is the most fascinating thing I've seen in some time...Drew Curtis has posted an archived copy of his site, Fark, from Sept. 11th of last year. The hundreds of users' comments and incoming news posts as it they happened in real-time are recorded in the comments section beside each post and it was amazing to see everyone's reactions as the story was still breaking and new facts and rumors were pouring in by the ton. This is why the first thing I do when I turn on my computer each day is log onto Fark - boobies, jokes and humor aside, if there's something really big going down, you know it'll be there as soon as it happens.

I was amazed at the relative tact with which most everyone seemed to handle the situation in a place where, normally, there's so much irreverance. I was also a little taken back by looking at the previous headlines before the planes started crashing - ten minutes before our whole world-view was changed by those horrible attacks one of the biggest questions on everyone's mind was whether Jordan should or shouldn't return to the NBA.

One Year Later...Sept. 11, 2002, in a Nutshell

Well, I'm sitting here at 5:13 in the morning, it's September 11, the first anniversary of the attacks and I suppose I should say something, but I don't know exactly what. I think as it is the media is going to soak us in so much 9/11 coverage there's not much point in my echoing it.

Still though, it's definitely an important day and a day for reflection and for tributes. Meanwhile, amidst the ceremony and remembrance, there's tension in the air, as the government has put us on alert for new attacks as we commemorate the old ones. There are pleas for war and cries of "give peace a chance" and amidst all the craziness and fighting, doctors and Supermen are quietly making miracles happen.

When I think of the times we're in now I'm constantly reminded of a song Paul Simon wrote back in the 80's, called The Boy in the Bubble. Here's an excerpt of the lyrics, they're nearly two decades old now, but I think they sum up our current world as well as anything else I could think of:

It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry

© 1986 Paul Simon

I guess that sums up how I feel about our times. There's a lot of bad going on but a lot of wonderful and amazing things, as well. It's just a damn crying shame everyone can't put aside their hatred, step back, take a look at how incredibly far mankind has come and really put their noses to the grindstone to make even greater, bolder leaps. There's so much potential for greatness right now and too many dollars spent on crap. Crap like tanks, bombs, fighter-jets, poisons and nuclear missiles - all of which we could live without if people could appreciate the smallness of the world we live in and the immediate need for us to get it together spend less time worrying about our individual and national beefs with one another and think about all the problems we face as human beings on the whole.

Maybe we'll make it, somehow. Here's hoping everyone's safe and well on this day historic date and I hope everyone takes a moment out of it to think about how lucky we are to have our friends, our family and our health and to think about the people we've lost in the year that's passed since 9/11 and how we can come together to makes things better in the years ahead.

Doh! Where's Homer Gonna Live?

Barbara Howard, of Richmond, KY has won the Simpsons House in Springfield, Nevada - the story, pics and a Quicktime tour of the home can be found here.

Triumph Poops on the VMAs

God bless Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, I love that mutt. In case you missed it, he attended the Video Music Awards...here's the *ahem* scoop, as well as video clips of him hassling the celebs in attendance. The stuff of him hassling Star Wars nerds waiting in line at the opening of Episode II was some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen. Also, who could forget his mocking of Bon Jovi?

I know sooner or later they're going to do this bit to death, he's going to get his own show and a year from now we'll probably all be sick of him, but as of now, he's my favorite canine (apologies to my dog, Janis).

Only 107 Days 'Til Christmas

So why not beat the rush and snap up this tasteful mouse for the pervert brother-in-law or friend who just flat-out doesn't care if everyone knows he's just in it for the porn-surfing?

This Has Been Posted All Over, But...

If you haven't seen this Quicktime film of a little girl showing off her skills in the competitive sport of "cup stacking", it's pretty darned amazing - think The Flash stacking and restacking plastic cups in various formations. Bit of a download, but it's not a very long clip and worth it.

Fun With Numbers

Now...think of a number...

How Long Can You Hold the Button?

Another classically pointless page.

Disney's Dirt

I was reading some stuff on a website earlier tonight about Disney and some of the claims made were so strange I decided to go looking around and see if they were true. A couple checked out on Urban Legends' site...for instance: when making the Disney movie White Wilderness, released in 1958, Disney's nature photographers - who, incidentally, were filming in Alberta, Canada, which is neither a native habitat for lemmings or possesses an outlet to the sea - staged a bogus "lemmings marching to their death into the sea" sequence by placing the rodents on a snow-covered turntable for a migration sequence and then transported them to a cliff overlooking a river, where they were herded off the edge and into the water. Apparently lemmings don't actually kill themselves, this is either a myth started by or at least enforced by the movie.

Other interesting tidbits: the film Song of the South has never been released on home video in the United States, ostensibly due to the laughably wonderful depictions of slaves' lives in the movie and in a related note, the film's star, Uncle Remus - played by James Baskett, who was a black man and the very first live-action actor hired by the studio and won a special Oscar for his efforts - was unable to attend the premiere of the movie, as he was unable to find a hotel in Atlanta that would put him up.

Now all this was a long time ago, obviously and although it's kind of messed up, it's kid's stuff compared to some of the stuff alleged on the site that got me started on this little tangent. Urban Legends has always seemed pretty reputable, though and they backed up his claims about the lemming story, which was the thing that got me started on this, as I'd never heard of it before. However, I can't vouch for the rest of the claims made here, which include deaths, perverts running wild at the Magic Kingdom while management looked the other way and other mind-blowing atrocities, so I'll let you do your own investigation on the matter. I say this, of course, because I'm afraid of Disney's behometh legal dept. and don't want to be sued, unlike the site's author, who says:

This is a preface to the section accusing the entertainment company of engaging in child labor practices:If I may, I'd like to preface this little page by telling the Nice Lawyer who sent me letters threatening to "pursue legal action" if I put this up that he can kiss my lilly white ass for two reasons : 1} this is all documented in the public domain and 2} I basically own a 12 year old car, a computer and a semi-respectable collection of Plasticware from Boston Market.

Bigtime

Big Things celebrates unusually large statues of everyday things like pineapples, oranges, bulls and other odd works that dot the Australian countryside, like the gigantic trout above.

When You're Smiling...

The Official Smiley Dictionary - how to make 'em, when to use 'em, smiley cards, smiley fonts, more smileys than you can shake a stick at.

Ancient Inventions

The Smith College Museum of Ancient Inventions, showcasing such unforgettable blockbusters as the catapult (above) and the humble folding chair, which hasn't really changed a lot since 2000 B.C.

Extra, Extra! Read All About It!

Today's Front Pages - view the front pages of various newspapers from around the world daily.

Welcome to My World

My friends on cable, dsl, etc...have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk a mile in my 56k shoes?

Wonder no more - just go to waitallday.com, sit back, grab a good book or knitting needles or something else to pass the time and thank God above you're not me. Be sure and watch the status bar as this loads.

Farewell to Thee, Napster - R.I.P.

For good, this time.

I have to admit...even though, for all intents and purposes, it died long ago and everyone's moved on to this p2p or that...this simple declaration of defeat on Napster's site kind of made me weepy for the "old days", when everyone was one big, happy, thieving family.

The Beaufort Scale of Domestic Squalor

Wait...you mean fungus is a bad thing? Even if it matches your drapes? Hmm...

Thou Shalt Not Quake

Get this - the Greek government has banned electronic games - all of them - outright. In an effort to abolish electronic gambling (which was already illegal), they've decided that it was too hard for officials to differentiate between gambling games and everyday, harmless game-games, so they've outlawed them all. Whether you're playing the ponies on the net or just playing a harmless game of Collapse on your computer, you're in danger of 3 months in the slammer and a 10,000 euro fine.

I'm curious as to what Microsoft has had to say about this, since Windows ships with games and obviously they and other Corporate Giants have a stake in this. Internet cafe owners are already freaking out, as this threatens to wipe out their businesses altogether - obviously.

Note from the Technical Dept.

I just noticed that my archives template was completely screwed and it only took me three days to realize it.

Anyway, they're fixed now, in a temporary Blogger-default, ultra-ugly form. On the off-chance anyone out there was trying to access them and it was keeping them up at night...your prayers have been answered - knock yourself out.

Yeee-haahhh!!!

Take the Hazzard County driver's test.

The Tornado of Fire

David Coppperfield's got a really, really cool Flash site. Wouldn't it be nice if John Edwards would just break down and admit he's a magician too? Oh wait, no...his act sucks too much for that.

Who Wouldn't Want to Slide on the Titanic?

Now you can - the kids will love recreating one of the most memorable disasters of our time on this inflatable waterslide version of the doomed ocean liner. Fun, fun, fun! Sharks, iceburg and inflatable floating corpses sold separately.

More New Sodas on the Way

Well, by now you've probably heard about Dr. Pepper's new drink, Red Fusion. Following suit behind the other cola big-boys and their recent releases of new flavors is 7up, which is getting a new, green, fruit-flavored version called dnL (7up, upside-down).

Headline Haikus

All the news in seventeen syllables:

Chicago's South Side
The problem of finding slots
in coveted schools

Burglar Tunnels into Neighbor's Home

So you're a burglar, but you're also an agoraphobic - meaning you have a fear of open spaces. What do you do? This guy solved the problem by smoking a bunch of crack and tunneling into his neighbor's house.