VS.

Maybe it’s just some blurry high school burnout crowd memory but every time I see one of those 9rules logos I think it’s some kind of pot leaf. And if for some odd reason it is/was chronic inspired, subliminally conjuring up the sweet leaf, does that make every member of their loosely defined network part of some virtual ganja cake? Cannabis blog extremitis?

Tonight, for some bizarre reason, I just had to take a hit of Google images, hold it, and slowly exhale:

Cheech, Chong and 9leaves? You tell me. Dude! The reefer resemblance is, is, is like scary. Somebody dial the chronic cops, or at least a half dozen pizzas. Munchies alert.

Check out the 9rules logo and their motto: “Quality loves company.” That could easily be a cigarette slogan, or wacky tobacky ad, where the weed is legalized of course. Holy bong toking, Batman.

Once upon a time, Scrivs, the 9rules ringmaster stopped by here to give some props and then went up in smoke, never to comment again. Maybe the not so odious smell of this High Times inspired blog entry will lure him back …

Wonder no more if 9rules ever holds a party, budding readers, at least the spirit of Mary Jane will be there!

Never thought a tag for my name could be so … messy.

I’ve been inking every day now for 23 days straight in a scary attempt to improve my artistic skill. Wonder how long this streak can go on? Will I become the Iron Man of inking? Maybe I’ll create a mini inkroll that has thumbnail versions of the various daily ink drawings and people can put on their blog? Title it something like: crink (CRappy INK). Possible motto: scaring the crap out of real artists!

Here is how something like this — the crinkstrip — might look (without links and colorful borders):

And another:

And finally:

One thing I’m learning from this experiment is to try and let the ink speak for itself. Primarily my crinks (or would it be crinkings?) so far have been about daily events, primarily web/tech-related.

For other artistically challenged tableteers, here is a collection of links for practicing and improving your artistic skills, feel free to share some more for in the comments/trackback section (just be sure to add a few lines of text about why the resource is good, if it’s free/pay, etc):

Uncle Fred walks through several basic cartoons, step-by-step
you draw in black and white via a java program, thin or thick pencil.
various drawing lessons - cityscape, book, road, letters and more

Simpsons (scare the hell out of Matt Groening)
draw Homer Simpson - doh!
draw Lisa Simpson
draw Bart Simpson

Help stave off Christmas With The Crinks: share more drawing resources.

Recently AOL decided to add two bots to AIM — Moviefone and ShoppingBuddy — irritating some users. AOL’s attitude seems to be that they can easily be deleted, but some netizens viewed this as intrusion.

EveryTomorrow describes a humorous exchange with the bots.
Joshua Stilwell writes: “AOL claims that the feedback on the bots have been mixed… I can just imagine 90% say its stupid, 8% say its not a bad idea, and 2% like it… I think AOL would call that mixed…” ilia Alshanetsky wonders what’s next?

I didn’t see even one person the past few days say they actually appreciated or liked these two bots being auto-added, but I’m sure there is some AIM fans out there who were digging the convenience.

Somebody please buy AOL and fire whoever is making stupid moves like this over there.

Haunted captcha at the IMDB?

Phillip Lenssen who hails from Germany and runs Google Blogoscoped is sharing a dynamic list of blogger mug headshots that rotates from a pool of 138 bloggers (and growing) based upon the 40 most recent posts displayed. He calls this mini-pictorial construction: fortyfaces.

I call it a clever way to reach out and get in touch with bloggers you may/may not know directly. If he had wanted to make this at least semi-automated he could have thrown up a form and put a little GD or ImageMagick voodoo on the backend, but perhaps wisely, he went the 1995 route: email.

Forty Faces started with the same cliched list of 50 or so popular bloggers that Lenssing cropped their photos by hand from various sources. I feel like it’s high school all over again when I see some of these sites/programs start with the same 50 or so bloggers all the time. Why doesn’t somebody do something really creative and start their new program with the list of 50 bloggers that are good and not overexposed?

I’m not sure if he got permission to use any of these pictures from any of these original sources or used pictures that were Creative Commons Licensed but his about page sort of indicates he got permission. Doubtful anybody would object either way as his site will drive traffic just like Google does — if enough people find it useful to watch for their favorite (or least favorite) faces, anyway … IMO, some of these blogger mugshots look downright scary. That green shading with each picture adds a sense of madness to the montage.

To get listed you have to actually email Phillip, which I did otherwise you wouldn’t see me in the screenshot above, and after several slices of my ugly mug, I finally made the cut and became one of the initiated Snow Lenssen and 40 Dwarfs (see picture). I noticed his count of bloggers yesterday was less than 100, so he’s busy in Photoshop.

Email can still be effective.

Lenssen indicates that Forty Faces updates once every 30 minutes (though it seems to me that it is updating more frequently than that), but at that rate, sooner or later posts will be missed (if that’s not already happening), especially when up to three successive posts from the same blogger are allowed. If only 1/3rd of the 138 bloggers wrote and published something right now, then a few would already not show. However, I’ve made posts and refreshed his page and see my own hmmsical photo staring up at … god knows what.

To combat this scaling issue Lenssen indicates he may (soon?) make different categories like fortfaces.com/writing or fortyfaces.com/sports. This is a cool idea for a minute, but I’m not sure how many people will actually sit and refresh this. Staying power could definitely be an issue here.

Could be cool for a game of memory though, or perhaps some other game. Now if only I could remember what site I saw that did something like this already … anybody else remember? I recall the thumbnails being very small. Might have been in Flash.

Anybody?

I chuckled over this short Kiss video cartoon which pokes fun at them being sellouts. The Yahoo site is moving painfully slow for me right now, so you might want to give that link a little time, or hit smash.yahoo.com and try to get in from there.

Sure, I’ll admit it: I like several Kiss songs. I was never much for their whole makeup scene, didn’t care that they were unmasked, hated most of their disco crap, didn’t groove on the Kiss Army, but I definitely dug their live material. Saw them live a couple times — they are a great live band — and liked the era with Vinny Vincent (Creatures of the Night is a good album). I thought Gene Simmons was a pretty funny critic next Simon Cowell on American Idol.

At the end of the day, love them or hate them, they are rock icons.

She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me! My wife bought me Darth Tater ($8.99, affiliate, ages 2+) and scored a pretty good deal at Amazon. I told her to let me know when these good deals come along so I can share them somewhere. 9 bones for Darth Tater, evil ruler of the Potato Head farm? Are you kidding me?! I’m so there.

Darth Tater doesn’t come with much in the way of accessories beyond what is shown in the picture above, so you’ll probably want to pick up something like the Mr. Potato Head silly 40-pieces suitcase ($16.99, affiliate).

Running low on candy tonight? Want to scare the hell out of people? Play this on LOW VOLUME near your door in a continuous loop. Time for some custom evil laugh tracks created in a cold, damp dungeon. A trick of the mind in audio …

Stretch that candy a mile as they will be running away in droves!

DISCLAIMER: None of the computer altered voice talent below that follows resonant from real, evil people, this is purely for Halloweenish fun, but know that their laughs have been put through a tortuous evil filtering process. The pure have been tainted! Whatever you do, don’t crank the volume up on this or you may blow your speakers completely out — YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED — and don’t listen to these tracks in the dark yourself … no way. Do. Not. Do. It.

And first the raw material (still mixed somewhat):

- Todd from Geek News Central [5.2 mb WAV] can’t get podcasting out of his laugh. If you ever thought his normal laugh was eccentric, wait until you hear this twisted take.
- Dim the lights and crank up Warner Crocker’s scary laugh [2.7 mb WAV] … if you dare
- Scoble makes fun of his laugh, but see how it rates on the scare scale. Oh, and yes there is some backmasking. [2.5 mb WAV]
- Bill Gates [2.3 mb WAV] shrill laugh remixed and talking email, blogs, security … don’t have a full bladder when you listen to this one. And on the trick mix version you can hear what Microsoft’s chief architect might sound like aboard the Borg cube.

WARNING: EXTREME audio perceptive experience ahead! TURN YOUR VOLUME LOW!
A horrifying mix of all the above and more from the demented madman Gray V. Robber. This contains all sorts of speaker melting sound effects SO KEEP THE VOLUME LOW on the first few listens and gradually increase as you get used to it. If you play this around your house with fog running, strobe lights and darkness you will scare the hell out of people. You’ve been warned, mortals!

Helloween Trick Mix ‘05
[Running Time: 9:21 4.3 mb 64k MP3]
WARNING!

All these clips are being released with a Creepy Commons v666.0 License, meaning they’re totally free to borrow, burn, beg, mix, rip, mutilate and/or steal for podcasts, target practice, public shamecast, conventions, for sale and whatever else any twisted minds can conceive. If you use any of this source material you might want to link to the unofficial Creepy Commons v666.0 License at:

http://www.makeyougohmm.com/creepycommons666/

Which just redirects here for now. Get these why they are HOT, they may not be here long …

The Creepy Commons v666.0 License treats the creator of work like worm food, so you might as well too!

Happy Halloween!

At midnight server time last night, Hmm turned scary, hairy orange. For those terrified by the color scheme, don’t fret, it’s merely a one day illusion.

For those reading this in their RSS aggregator then they are missing on all the holiday frights and frills (boo hiss!). Today, every post will have some trick or treatish wording/slant/content. Next to Christmas, Halloween is my 2nd favorite holiday of the year.

Why? Why! Why arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Because it reminds us all how human we are and that some of us actually enjoy being scared. It’s a very real time.

(insert creepy Halloween music)

Something I never thought we’d own was a fog machine, but what Halloween-inspired consumer could resist? I checked online for fog machines via Amazon (affiliate) and there are lots of even fancier ones, but no time to order online for tonight, just hit your local Walmart and be one of the most ghoulish spot in the neighborhood for the kids to trick or treat at tonight. Don’t forget to buy enough candy for the candy-seeking squirrels.

Fire up the badboy.

Our kids enjoyed pressing the button to totally fog up the room. This will be great for trick and treaters tonight … open the door, creepy music playing in the background, evil cackling, muhahahahahaha!

Happy Halloween readers