Google has a well known company policy of “do no evil” — today their stock price momentarily struck $666.66. Had to get a screenshot of this historic moment. Satanic message? Financial coincidence?
Think I’ve found the 2007 rising of The Blob. Doing some desk clean-up and see the need to replace my mouse pad gel wrist rest. It’s becoming disembowled and look what evil lurks beneath the stitching:
Is that stuff hazardous to touch? If so, I’m doomed. So close to Halloween it is giving me Blob creeps. Had to pause from the action this morning to try and figure out what this gel is made of.
Scary, a prior art patent conflict over gelatinous goo:
A wrist rest (10) has in its core resilient, deformable gelatinous material (50). Gelatinous material (50) consists of a solution of glycol-like material, which is highly deformable due to its liquid state … Gelatinous material (50) is encased in an elastic envelope.
You’d think the gelatinous good was as secret as the Coca-cola recipe by how it evaded my Google search queries. Lots of patent-related posts were turned up and inside what I scanned (ok, didn’t read every word) more often than not the phrase “gelatinous material” is used in these patents.
But is gelatinous material safe, Senor? It might be there for ergonomic reasons, but is its innards pure evil incarnate?
Not safe to eat, mind you, but will it ooze out while we’re moving the mouse, envelope our bodies and slowly devour us inside its eerie brown substance? Have to get rid of this thing. Now.
I’m not into guns personally but this one made me smile. It’s a bit creepy if your friends — and foes — don’t know you for having a twisted sense of humor, so caution advised.
It’s supposed to be for foe’s only, but friends or family might think see this bullet as a joke email. I normally dislike joke email, but personalized joke mail like this once in a great might make me smile. Update: Here’s an example of what the email looks like:
No to ban on assault weapons
And now let me be serious for a moment.
In case you were wondering, despite never owning a gun or being part of the NRA, I’m against a ban on assault weapons. Sorry for shoehorning in something political into a joke post, but at least one reader was curious why I’m against a ban on assault weapons and since I don’t write about guns very often, I figured this was an opportunity. I’m against more government encroachment on our constitutional rights almost 100%. I’m for less government, not more. I’m for fiscal responsibility in government.
And speaking of weapons, and going back to entertainment, Saw 4 this Friday in theaters everywhere.
What a strange post. Hey, it’s almost Halloween. Conveniently categorized in the 666 category.
Another good day to be a Sirius subscriber with one billionaire slamming another billionaire.
This morning Howard Stern’s guest was billionaire Donald Trump and there were some juicy quotes. Trump did credit Mark Cuban, who is currently enjoying a stint on the TV show Dancing with the Stars, for being a good dancer, but wasn’t impressed with his business acumen adding that if Cuban could make a billion anybody could. Trump seemed annoyed that Cuban who rents an apartment from him was in the beginning nice to him and saying nice things and then changed and started talking badly about him.
Don’t cry for Cuban, he seems to love the attention and this seems to be a case of history repeating itself. On December 21, 2006 Mark Cuban wrote on a blog post titled ‘Trump the Chump‘:
Every couple weeks I get emails from people asking me if I heard what Donald Trump said about me on some radio or TV show. From Howard Stern to Donnie Deutch to just this week while promoting The Apprentice. I have to be honest, I LOVE IT when he rips me. Its been 3 seasons since The Benefactor tanked, but Donald still couldn’t find something else to rip on. It always gives me a good chuckle knowing that he thinks of me so often.
Cuban’s tongue lashing from The Donald was mild compared to others like President Bush whom he deems the worst president ever. Can’t disagree with him there. Trump is friends with both the front runners in the 2008 President election, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani and while Howard pressed to find who Trump would be voting for, he sidestepped. Trump did add that whomever supported the war in Iraq was “going to lose and lose badly.”
Rose O’Donnell whom Trump has been trading barbs also earned was bashed worse than Cuban, so don’t feel too badly for Mark. Lest we forget that Trump is known for being boisterous, especially when the camera and microphones are hot, so not sure we can take much away seriously from his quotes. Come on, Donald, start telling us what you really think.
If the Sirius merger with XM is ever approved there will be even more reasons to love satellite radio. Never tried satellite radio and enjoy solid radio entertainment? You’ve got to give it a try. A little over a year ago I joined the satellite radio movement and remain a happy subscriber. It’s playing in the background as I type this post.
Last night for whatever strange reason — I’d blame it on a full moon if there was one — I collected 13 different Bohemian Rhapsody videos at YouTube. Some of these are funny, some impressive and showing talent, some bizarre and some are stupid. All Hmm-inspiring in a unique way? As always, you will be the judge.
1. A hand farting version of Bohemian Rhapsody, are you kidding? Nope.
3. And now for some real humor talent: Rick Miller performing Bohemian Rhapsody as many different artists like Bon Jovi, Aaron Neville, AC DC, Axl Rose, Ozzy Osbourne and more.
4. Star Trek retrospective video. See how many scenes you can identify with which version of Star Trek (STOS, STNG, Voyager, etc) with the classic Queen song in the background.
5. No Bohemian Rhapsody video roundup would be complete with a version played on a ukulele. This one by Ukulele Bart.
6. Stop animation LEGO version. Gotta love the LEGO piano.
8. A bunch of Navy personnel singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody. Only you don’t actually hear any of them singing, just moving their lips to the real song. Over 18,000 views and 111 favorites.
9. Marginally funny Fast Forward Bohemian Rhapsody spoof.
10. And speaking of spoofs and parodies, let’s not forget the master, Weird Al’s polka version. Not an official Weird Al video though, it was posted by halflifeman and is more machinima-like.
11. Speed up Bohemian Rhapsody and video a couple dudes — one wearing a shirt with a naked guy — with glittery hair and you’ve got a helium-induced version. Bizarre.
12. Bo-Heman Rhapsody. Nice title and use of the He-man and Masters of the Universe cartoon.
13. Unfortunately a little too much background noise for this live version of Rhett Butler playing Bohemian Rhapsody at the Dallas Guitar Show (April 21, 2007) in the Sewell Amp booth to fully enjoy and appreciate the piece. Nice two-hand fret work, Rhett.
Consult the Ultimate Rock, Paper, Scissors guide and pull off 22 additional moves like: gun, dynamite, nuke, lightning, devil, dragon, alien (the Spock sign, oh yeah!), water, bowl, air, moon, sponge, wolf, cockroach, tree, man, woman, monkey, snake, axe, fire and sun.
So the next time somebody is beating you at this game, just pull off the alien sign and say gleefully: “Aha! Alien vaporizes rock, force fields scissors!
Unless they countered with paper. Which, naturally, disproves alien. Fun stuff, well done.
With the exception of the somewhat obscured permalinks, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Gullible.info, which I recommended to Kent last week, a blog which serves up facts (they are facts, right? Er, wrong.) like the one in the title of this post and others like:
Sep 27: “While approximately 42 percent of Americans over the age of 45 can read music, only eight percent of those aged 18 to 45 are able to.” Sep 23: “Seventeen percent of Americans under the age of 20 have never ridden a bicycle.”
Sep 3: “US $100 bills of series 2003A and later will not burn.”
Hmm-inspiring stuff, isn’t it?
Back to the remembering your license plate factoid. I have lousy success remembering our plates and have to go out and look every time they’re needed, but figured there would be a higher percentage of people who remembered theirs nationwide. 93%? That’s a fairly high percentage (and the dead giveaway that it’s fake). I mean really, it’s only seven digits. Seriously though, can you remember all your non-vanity license plates?
[For those curious, I made the “Iforget” license plate shown in this post using the ACME license plate maker, which can be found in the growing sign generators post (destined to become a dedicated page).]
(Update 5:03am PST: The title of the blog should be a giveaway that these facts are, in fact, not facts — I added this to the humor category because the “facts” just feel like they could be true.)
There are two languages that would come in handy if you live in the United States and like to travel to neighboring countries: French (for Montreal and Quebec, Canada) and Spanish (Mexico).
Our middle son is currently taking Spanish and when I saw the language learning site trymango.com this morning, he was the first person who came to mind. Could this help him with his Spanish studies? I signed up and took a peek inside.
But first, a hat tip to Jay at Dumb Little Men who also shares two additional resources at the end of his post for learning foreign languages for free: FSI Language Courses and the foreign language podcast collection from openculture.
Signing up for Mango (oddly it’s not called Try Mango, it’s called Mango) involves only your email address. Why does a site like this need your email address?
Privacy Policy: We will NOT sell or provide your email address to any third party. We will only use this email address to authenticate your access to the Mango Language application and provide you with update information. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Authenticating access with email only is hopelessly insecure, but we aren’t trading military secrets or stock information, so maybe this is cool. The first email address sent thanking me for signing up, however, did not provide unsubscribe instructions (CAN SPAM compliance). The site is too new to have a rating from SiteAdvisor yet, so we have to take this one on faith.
Mango is a flash-based learning environment with voices that are clear and hover overs with your mouse to indicate the pronunciation of each word. After showing you a few common sentences, the system will test you by giving you the English word and seeing if you know how to say it in the language you chose.
Today’s Hmmcast #173 takes a look at the language learning process, particularly the importance of repetition.
BTW, if you haven’t noticed, I’ve fallen off the 4:20 schedule a bit this past week. I’m still working through the wonders of HD video. Things should be back to normal the first week in October. Hang with me and it should be worth it — at least visually — no matter what resolution you view the show at.
Sense of humor required for this one. At first it seems like a semi-serious form until you reach questions like penis size. Relax, you don’t have to fill out answers to every question. Some of them you probably won’t know anyway. I didn’t (SAT scores, for example).
Won’t tell you how I answered all the questions — and I didn’t answer them all — but here’s what I came up with for my humans for sale value.
$1.26 million, eh? Hmm … go ahead and share your worth below (click the button above to visit the site) or on your own blog and trackback in if you like. Only takes a minute or two.
With the exception of the somewhat obscured permalinks, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying 
