Global Reset

On the way back from the airport a few days ago, I noticed a building in a shopping center claiming to be a “Christain Office Supply” store. Going into the mexican restaurant in front of it, I just remembered it as kind of odd. Coming out of the mexican restaurant (after I’d had a little tequila), I got a few ideas about what they might sell there. The first one that popped into my head was a 20-pack of Jesus Died for your Pens. I thought this was hilarious, but Nicole told me I only thought that because I’d been drinking… It wasn’t long before she and Erik joined in on the fun. We came up with:

• A Crucifax Machine
• Sermon on the Mounting Board
• 3 Holy Punch
• Stationary of the Cross (Apparently, Stations of the Cross is a Catholic Prayer)
• Silent Nite-lite (not really an office supply)
• A-Toner for your Sins (ok, we obviously ran out about here)

Can you think of any other good ones? If so, please leave it in the comments. Blasphemy is a blast for me!

Too bad there isn’t a CafePress option for making big, fancy pens… I wonder if I could make any money selling Jesus Died for your Pens.

I’m just a little embarassed at how familiar this music video sounds. I’d never heard of the comedy trio Tripod before Dare let me know about that video, but you can call me a fan after hearing this line:

Oooooh Baby, I can’t wait until we start…
It’s just that the save points are quite far apart!

And this one:

You know I can’t stop thinking about you baby…
And all the magic coins that I need to collect, yeah.

So true, Tripod… So true…

<typo:flickr img=”99865368” style=”border: 1px solid #8ab3d1;

   padding: 5px;
   margin: 5px;
   float: right;" size="small" alt="I look like an Asian actress!!"/>

I think the technology has a long way to go, but it’s still fun to play around with MyHeritage.com’s facial recognition software.

Though it is quite funny that I look just like an Asian actress (according to their software!), I find it even funnier that Nicole looks like Shakira. We really enjoy making fun of Shakira and we were laughing pretty hard at this parody of her this parody of her last weekend. The software must have misinterpreted Erik’s goatee as a second chin; I really don’t think he looks anything like the first secretary general of the United Nations. I guess I might look a little bit like that Asian actress…. Before she lost about 200 lbs.

I suppose MyHeritage’s goal is to collect a hell of a lot of faces for their database. And they probably get loads of photos by letting people compare their pictures with celebrities. Don’t sign up with your real name if you don’t want your illegitimate children to be able to contact you after a successful face match on MyHeritage.

Now, I consider myself a fan of good comedy. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself an aficianado, simply because I don’t have the time or energy to keep up with whose got the best material nowadays. I have a few favorite comedians I keep tabs on occasionally and I’m really familiar with some recent great acts (Bill Burr, Dane Cook, Sarah Silverman). On the other hand, there’s a few folks out there that think they have what it takes to be a comedian… Yet, they resort to just telling jokes (i.e. tired, obvious setup-punchline-repeat), as opposed to really connecting with your audience and making us laugh at true absurdities.

You might even agree with me that the obvious most trite expression of hack comedy would be the Blonde Joke. I’m of the opinion that if you’ve graduated past Middle School age and repeated a blonde joke, then we can’t be friends. That said, I’m going to be a little hypocritical here now… Because I really think you need to check out this blonde joke. No matter your feelings about blonde jokes or blondes, you’re going to laugh your ass off at this one.

Am I the only one who finds these lip-synching Asian kids hilarious? I first discoverd that video a few years ago and found it quite laugh-out-loud funny. Now I’ve discovered some slightly more mature knock-offs singing a couple of Backstreet Boy’s songs : As Long As You Love Me and I Want It That Way. On Google Video it seems that this is inspiring a few other Asian kids to try their luck at becoming video-casting stars. Some of them aren’t very talented and have crappy web cams, but they are all hilarious.

Forget the doomsday prophets and their cries of panic as we approach some alleged day of reckoning with our “natural resources”… Their is a bona fide shortage that must have peaked ages ago: Good Movie Ideas.

Unfortunately, it may be far too late to do anything about it. The steady increase in movie ticket price did not result in an increase in movie quality, as we had hoped… We may have to experience a Movie Apocalypse before we can revive the medium with good art.

Don’t believe that it’s gotten that bad? You must not have heard of Snakes on a Plane. Synopsis: On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who’s a witness in protective custody, let loose a crate full of deadly snakes. That’s right… It’s called Snakes on a Plane because, well, it’s about snakes… on a plane. As Erik puts it, next we’ll see movie titles like Someone gets stabbed and You just gave up $8.50 to see this?.

As an aside, if you don’t know what the title and the first sentence are referencing, I was alluding to the Peak Oil prophets. They claim that we’ve reached the end of our oil supply and the whole world is going to end because of it. The author of this Peak Oil website got more than just the idea for a ranting single-column layout from TimeCube guy. Besides our memories of the assorted Y2K-disaster theorists, if you need any reason not to waste your time on this disaster-du-jour you can browse the criticisms area of wikipedia.

But Good Movie Ideas… I would be interested in hearing a solution to this problem. Lately, Nicole and I have spent more time at the independent theater than the standard theater. But, we’ve been watching mostly documentaries, so I don’t think it stands in opposition to the problem necessarily.

The Onion has hit comedy gold again with this article…

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory

“Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the ‘electromagnetic force,’ the ‘weak nuclear force,’ the ‘strong nuclear force,’ and so-called ‘force of gravity,’” Burdett said. “And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus.”

The strength of my laughter is slightly dullened by how scarily accurate this article is to the actual arguments made by the ‘Intelligent Design’ religionists. The Onion did such a very good job in constructing their argument for ‘Intelligent Falling’ that this article could be refiled as an amicus brief, to help defend Evolution against the (equally silly) ‘Intelligent Design’ theory.

A couple of weeks ago, I made a comment in Chris’ blog post about how he tried to ruin his laptop with a bottle of water. For your convenience, here’s my relevant addition to his story where I tried to ruin my delicate Apple hardware…

Last weekend, Nicole was using my brand new Mac Mini. Of course, that also means she was using my almost brand new Dell 2005fpw 20” lcd… Not to mention my mostly new wireless keyboard. And, she was drinking coffee while doing this. So, I’m playing fetch with the dog downstairs. The way our apt is laid out, we have a second floor with a sort of balcony over the living room which is where my mac mini lives. I decide to give the dog a good challenge by tossing his toy over the balcony edge to where Nicole is sitting. Nothing but net… The toy went straight into the coffeee, splashing coffee everywhere. Keyboard was the worst hit, but I did actually get a big splash on the Mac Mini. It looks like it’s going to survive, but I have a nice brown stain on the felt in the slot loader to remind me of what an idiot I am. I think I got the keyboard back to a good state, though if the N sticks on me again, I’ll have to buy a new one. Can’t tolerate sticky keys, you know…

Today, thanks to a remnant of that mess, I learned a couple of things about my Mac Mini…

1. Dried coffee is like hardened cement when placed between my computer desk and the rubber bottom of the Mac Mini and will, in most circumstances, require an actual chisel to separate the two.
2. That little power cord in the back slips out of the Mac Mini like a frightened, greased pig at the county fair.
3. Mac OSX does not berate you for improper shutdown of your system, unlike Windows XP.

That third point is an interesting one to me. I’m very familiar with recovery on Windows, given that prior to WinXP crashes were quite frequent… I’m sure Mac OSX must have some sort of method for recovering orphaned files and, perhaps, booting into a safe mode if I installed something which hosed the boot process… I need to add that to my “to research” list…

Technorati Tags: MacMini, MacOSX

love letter to condi - zefrank.com

A beautiful love song from Ze Frank to our 66th Secretary of State.

If you have a few hours to spare, do yourself a favor and check out everything on his site. I’m not saying all of it’s good, but better safe than sorry.