When I was a kid, I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books. I had a huge stack of them, and enjoyed seeing how many different ways I could make the story come out.
I never had any of these titles in my collection, but I surely wish I had. (Warning: Not entirely safe for work).
John Scalzi (aolscalzi) links to a story revealing Roto-rooters list of strange things they have pulled out of plumbing, including an Civil War cannon shell, a collection of miniature liquor bottles, and a live cat.
Oh wow, I would LOVE to go and see the World Pyro Olympics:
The World Pyro Olympics is an annual international competition amongst the most prestigious fireworks companies in the world. Nine international participants will showcase the best of classical pyrotechnic displays. On the final eve of the event, the sky will be illuminated by The World Pyro Olympics Fellowship of Fire Pyrotechnic Display -a joint fireworks display from the nine countries and the organizer, La Mancha Pyro Productions.
Five days of fireworks. Wow. Cool. (Too bad it just ended…)
Reuters reports that a pound of rare Indonesian coffee, unique for having passed through the digestive tract of a nocturnal tree-dwelling mammal called a palm civet, costs $175, making it the most expensive coffee in the world and proof that no matter how silly you think people can be, they are actually capable of being even sillier.
MedPage Today reports that Harry Potter is not only a literary sensation, but he may be helping keep muggle kids safe.
That’s the opinion of researchers here, who found that when the latest installments of the Harry Potter books came out, the number of kids showing up in the emergency room with broken bones, sprains, scrapes and bruises went down significantly.
Apparently, kids were just so wild about Harry that they didn’t have time to ride a skateboard down a flight of stairs, or weave a scooter through heavy traffic.
Finally, proving that all you *do* need is love, British millionaire Sharon Tendler married her sweetheart of 15 years, a 35 year old Dolphin named Cindy, in a touching and likely quite damp ceremony in the Israeli resort of Eilat on Thursday.
“I’m the happiest girl on earth,” the bride said as she chocked back tears of emotion. “I made a dream come true, and I am not a pervert,” she stressed.
Best wishes and long life to the happy….couple.
Thanks to kobold, I’ve now seen the weirdest thing I’m likely to tonight.
(Requires Flash.)
Wired News has a report on Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’s practice of editing his own bio article, a violation of Wiki ettiquette. This lead the folks on Slashdot to indulge in the form of pointless wankery that passes for sport on Slashdot. I’m not sure why I find it so amusing, but I do.
Speaking of Slashdot, they have a fun Q&A session with Adam Savage and Jaimie Hyneman, the presenters of Discovery’s wonderful TV show MythBusters
Just in time for the holidays, It’s A Wonderful Life in 30 seconds and re-enacted by bunnies. Requires Flash. And a somewhat robust sense of amusement.
Chicago Magazine has a long and fascinating feature article on Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert. I love reading Ebert’s reviews, not because I always agree with him, but because his obvious passion for the art of movies permeates every word he writes about them. I just finished reading his book, “I Hated Hated Hated This Movie”, a collection of negative reviews from throughout his long career. Go read it, it’s interesting stuff.
Phil Dunlap’s wonderfully funny new comic strip, Ink Pen, ran into a bit of a problem: it turns out, one of it’s signature characters, Captain Victory, shared a name with a character created by the late, great Jack Kirby. Unfortunately, the trademark on the name still belongs to the Kirby estate. Rather than get bogged down in unpleasantness, Dunlap worked the problem into the strip. (Link to first strip in series, which continues through the week.)
Ressurecting my old “Daily Digest” of random stuff that I’ve seen elsewhere on Livejournal or the Internet at Large. Some of it will be informative, some of it humourous, and none of it really worth making an entire post over. Enjoy!
Physorg.com has an article detailing The Most Offbeat Science News of 2005, including researchers in California building DNA profiles from leftovers of a dinner party, the discovery of the stone dwelling puzzle mouse, and the revelation that cane toads are attracted to disco lights.
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy food maven Ted Allen spoke with NPR’s Susan Stanberg with turkey tips and other holiday recipes. (The audio link on the page linked requires javascript and RealAudio or Windows Media Player).
Also on NPR, a rememberance of John Langstaff, founder of the Christmas Revels, who passed away last week. I meant to send this to telynor when I heard it on the radio, and figure that it fits nicely here as well.
the_magician and filkertom point to the Music Genome Project. Quoth the Magician:
A group of musicians have listened to tens of thousands of tracks by thousands of artists and figured out a “genetic fingerprint” for each … and then they’ve set up an internet streaming radio station where you can type in an artist you like (e.g. Sarah McLachlan) and they look at the fingerprint (Subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, acoustic rhythm piano, meandering melodic phrasing and mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation.) and play other tracks that they think you will enjoy. You can vote “like”/”dislike” for each track and it will build up a better targetted radio stream for you.
Requires Flash.
kightp links to a delightfully tongue-in-cheek article on the Catholic Church’s decision to close Limbo.
You can buy a tank from Amazon. (Side note to folkmew: Where *else* would you look to buy a tank?)
beige_alert points us towards The Cavalcade of Bad Nativites. Some of this stuff is just pure freakin’ art, man.
With the Thanksgiving holiday behind us, it’s time to look forward to December. I love this season, no matter whether it is Christmas or Solstice or Hanukkah or something else entirely, or even if it’s just December. Folks just seem more decent and nice to one another, and the days seem cheerier, and the world is a brighter and happier place. So, in that theme, some holiday oriented links to get the season off to a good start:
Linus and Lucy
Speaking of Peanuts, I consider A Charlie Brown Christmas the high point of Western civilization. Okay, I’m kidding. A little. No, really, since Christian theology has been the font for monumental artistic expression from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Of The Heart, Of The Soul, and Of The Cross, it’s possible to see the Peanuts special as a sort of crown — a succinct and poetic articulation of ancient principles. If you can understand why Charlie Brown chooses the tiniest and most unhealthy-looking tree in the lot, you’re at least halfway to the proper spirit in which to approach the Gospels. Incidentally, the famous Linus speech I alluded to in the last entry is Luke 2.8-14, straight from the King James Version. I don’t think that is made clear during the program. CBS certainly knew, and they were shitting bricks that audiences would find the special too preachy. This was 1965; in 2003, a project like this one doesn’t even get out of the gate. Thank God it’s been grandfathered in as an annual event — by now it’s too much of an institution for the seculars to gripe about St. Schulz, and really, how much Heatmiser can a person take?
Have A Holly Jolly Christmas
God, what a retarded song. What the hell is a “cup of cheer”? It must have taken the composers all of three minutes to put together this lyric. Here are the rhymes, or what passes for them: year/cheer, street/meet, see/me, hear/year. It is a damning critique of our culture that it makes songs like this inescapable for a full twelfth of our lives. Anybody who thinks there’s any ground for substituting “Holly Jolly Christmas” for “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” — on progressive grounds or otherwise — deserves to have to listen to records like this. “Have a holly jolly Christmas/ and in case you didn’t hear,” it wraps up, before it repeats the title as if there are only five words in the whole world. I heard.
I love Christmas music, so a huge long catalog of the best and worst of the genre is always worth revisiting.
I hope everyone has an utterly fantastic holiday season!
Tomorrow, November 5th, is Guy Fawkes Day, and the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. What’s that all about, you say? All is explained by scarletdemon.
In 1605, English Catholics were angry that they did not have equal rights, so their leader (Pope Trevor the Third) signed what Catholics call a “Fatwa” and sent it to Guy Fawkes to be carried out. Fawkes assembled a band of like-minded terrorists and they decided to assassinate King James I, his family, and most of the Protestant aristocracy, in one fell swoop, by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening. They saw themselves as soldiers of fortune, helping people in need. But who were these desperate men? Guy Fawkes had chosen some of the best minds in pyrotechnic history: Himself, George Handel, Arthos, Porthos, Shakespeare, Dogtanian and fuse specialist Artemis Richlieu. Their famous cry of “Penny For The Guy And One For All!” has become a regular catch-phrase for children begging outside corner-shops (with their Guy Fawkes effigies), even today.
(Thanks to sclerotic_rings for the pointer…)
This is positively, without a doubt, the dumbest thing I have heard since….well, it’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard today, at least.
Ananova reports that a company is developing an mp3 player which can be included in breast implants:
Computer chips that store music could soon be built into a woman’s breast implants.
One boob could hold an MP3 player and the other the person’s whole music collection.
BT futurology, who have developed the idea, say it could be available within 15 years.
BT Laboratories’ analyst Ian Pearson said flexible plastic electronics would sit inside the breast. A signal would be relayed to headphones, while the device would be controlled by Bluetooth using a panel on the wrist.
According to The Sun he said: “It is now very hard for me to thing of breast implants as just decorative. If a woman has something implant
Admittedly, there might be some useful application of this technology, as the article mentions offhandedly in its final paragraph:
The sensors around the body linked through the electrical impulses in the chips may also be able to warn wearers about heart murmurs, blood pressure increases, diabetes and breast cancer.
But seriously, consider the ramifications of this. What if it starts playing randomly during a moment-of-passion short-circuit. If you think your (ABBA|Rick Dees|Winger|Carpenters|Bone Thugs ‘n’ Harmony) collection is embarrassing now, just wait until it’s blaring out of your left nipple at a volume of 11.
What an amazing world we live in.
EDIT: Does this mean that in the future when you say a woman has a “nice rack”, you’ll just be talking about her stereo?
Seen on a mailing list:
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=82458&page=1&pp=15
Wherein, you shall find stuff like:
Yon renowned fellow, let us kick it
Ho, everyone, cease, I prithee listen
Thor hath returned with a new invention
Something taketh hold of me most tight
Floweth like a harpoon day and night
Shall it ever end? I doth not know
Conjure the darkness and I shall glow
To great measure, mine voice is as a vandal
Brighten mine surroundings and snuff a life as though ’twere a candle
Yon mystic dance doth boom like a storm in motion
I bring death upon thee as like a black potion
Lethal, when I doth serenade thee
For any lesser tune wouldst be a travesty
Art thy affections roused, or dost thou flee?
Thou shouldst aim well, lest I forsake thee
If there be any ill, I shalt resolve it
Look thee upon mine hook while mine DJ revolves it
and
Ooh, mine beloved, knowest thou what that be worth?
Ooh, Valhalla art a place on Earth.
The minstrels sing that in Valhalla, love comes first
Thou makest Valhalla a place on Earth.
Ooh, Valhalla art a place on Earth.
EDIT: Due to confusion, I’ll point out that this is a pastiche of the Marvel Comics rendition of Thor, in which Stan Lee puts a high school production of Shakespeare through a blender on puree.
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