Shades of Grey - Greymatter

Back in 2006 we all had fun playing around with the "celebrity match" program that compared your own photo to a database of celebrities and through some arcane (and apparently ineffective) algorithm told you what celebrity you most resembled. Coco-Cola is currently running a similar site (albeit one where it matches you to other users, supposedly finding your "doubles" in the world), and after having it match three of my photos to "doubles" of me conspicuously lacking a Y-chromosome, I decided to return to the old celebrity-matching site and upload a few newer photos. Lo and behold, after matching two of my photos to two different photos of a 14-year-old Emma Watson in 2006, guess who my first match was this time? (And Hayden Panettiere? Really?)

Labels: amusement, me, what the hell

Posted at 3:29:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Sunday, October 4

Learning Experience

I made Asian-style dumplings (pot stickers) from scratch last night (okay, I bought the wrappers, but I wrapped them by hand). I couldn't find ground chicken at the grocery store, so I used ground turkey instead (it was on sale and I don't eat red meat, so pork was out). I also didn't have all the ingredients on the list, but I noticed that no two dumpling recipes on the Web were the same, so I did some substitution. Folding them was a pain. I ruined the first 8 entirely and the next 20 or so were pretty ugly. By the time I got to number 30 (close to the end), they were looking more like restaurant dumplings. I put them in the refrigerator when I was done and took them to Scott and Lisa's tonight, where I steamed them in my electric steamer. The steamer worked perfectly and the texture and composition of the dumplings were pretty close.

Unfortunately, Lane and Lisa each had half of one and Scott (who loves spicy food) only managed to eat two. It turns out that the "1/4 cup minced red bell pepper" called for in the recipe is *not* equivalent to the 1/4 cup crushed red pepper I actually used . . .

I'm going to make up a batch of plain brown rice and see if I can "dilute" the dumplings that way. If I die of heartburn, remember me fondly.

Labels: amusement, cooking, food

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Wednesday, August 26

Prescience

I've done this trick before.

Me: I've been practicing my telepathy and I can read minds now, Jeff.
Jeff: Sure. Okay, fine, what am I thinking?
Me: You're thinking . . . *pause* . . . that you don't really believe I can read minds and I'm making all of this up.
Jeff: *long pause* Okay, well, what am I thinking *now*?
My dad: *cracking up laughing*

Labels: amusement, family, jeff

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Tuesday, August 25

Eye of the Beholder

This made me laugh (I'm allowed; I'm a photographer).

Labels: amusement, funny, photography

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Wednesday, August 19

Can't Go Wrong With Fire, Right?

I feel like trying this project. Anyone need any wine bottle tiki torches?

Labels: amusement, art, cool

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Monday, August 10

When People Run in Circles

CliffsNotes version of my recent Internet vacancy:

- The wedding I attended went off without a hitch (or rather, with the one expected hitch). Bride and groom on their way to Hawaii (just in time for the tropical storm). Nice weather at the family pond, everyone on time, no family quarrels, etc.

- I don't have an official tally, but I took somewhere in the vicinity of 1,600 photos (enough to fill two 4GB compact flash cards). Divide that by three since I use exposure bracketing, and then divide the formals by three because I take multiple shots per pose to account for blinking and the like, and I still have at least 200 photos to narrow down before starting the long cleanup process. I told the family I'd have albums ready in two weeks. Some of the photography was quite enjoyable and some was just monotonous, but it would have been far more stressful if my mother hadn't been running the shot sheet.

- We were scheduled to finish formal portraits at 5:30 (the ceremony started at 6) and I'd given out specific deadlines for various people (e.g., bridesmaids at 3:30). Due to people running late, at 5:15 we'd covered only about a quarter of the shot sheet and I was doing my share of panicking. When I told my mother that there was no way we were going to be done on time, she looked at me and said "Are you still on Omaha time? Because I have 4:15." Yay for time zone changes.

- I injured my hand doing the photography. Apparently 10 hours is too long to hold a 3-lb. camera lens on a 2-lb. camera. At some point during the reception I developed a sharp pain in my left palm, and since then I've been feeling little "electric shocks" in the same place whenever I flex my hand, which is consistent with a repetitive stress or carpal tunnel injury. Bloody hell.

- I also did family portraits for my brother and his family. Kelbi played along for about 15 minutes before growing bored with it.

- I did most of my dancing at the reception with Kelbi. Apparently she likes loud music and flashing lights.

- The reception played an eclectic mix of music. I'd wager I was one of the only ones there who knew the full set, considering the country bulk was punctuated with Abba and Lady GaGa. On two occasions the DJ played only the first half of a song before fading into something else because the dance floor would completely empty as soon as it started (apparently western Nebraska isn't a big Michael Jackson fan).

- I learned from my dad's mother that I have a Native American ancestor if you go back far enough (something like my grandmother's grandmother's grandmother).

- I saw a dead armadillo on the side of the Interstate. That's a first for Nebraska.

- I listened to a wide assortment of religious programming during my 12 hours of driving. Amongst the highlights:

- A fire-and-brimstone preacher who encouraged his listeners to shun Muslims because Islam is a devil-worshiping religion thats only purpose is to kill Americans.
- A soft-spoken "answer man" who politely answered callers' questions about the Bible and laid out the facts that people who worship on Sunday instead of Saturday, play "revival"-style "rambunctious" (his description) music in church and wear any sort of hair styles or decorations (outside of what a "plain Christian woman" should wear), including hair extensions and dyes, are going to Hell. His one clarification to all of this was that you wouldn't go to Hell if you didn't know about these rules (his example was the Biblical figures with multiple wives, who just didn't know that polygamy was wrong), but now that the listeners had heard them (and I guess by extension the fact that you've read them here), the rules were in force.
- A discussion between a radio call-in show host and (the) Stephen Baldwin that started with "Welcome to the show, Stephen in California" "Thanks, pastor. My name is Stephen Baldwin and I'm a film actor; perhaps you've heard of me or my family." "Well, Stephen, it doesn't ring any bells but I don't really watch movies. What's your question?" and then segued into a discussion on whether Christian rap music is an abomination or not, with Baldwin suggesting that if it reaches inner city kids who won't relate to more mainstream preaching it's a good thing and the host comparing it to pornography and saying it was inappropriate in all forms before hanging up and taking the next caller.

- I upgraded my parents' computer while I was there. After some quarreling, my mother and I agreed that they didn't need to pay for it. Which is apparently mother code for "I'm just going to put the check in your suitcase when you're not looking."

- The last hour of my drive was through fairly heavy fog, which was very pretty.

Labels: amusement, family, photography

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Monday, August 3

Risky Business

From "7 Men We'd Like to Date":

Photographer. He sees things others just do not. He can use his eyes to experience the world in a unique way. He'll challenge you to think out of the box and urge you to embrace change and life in the now. He's a risk-taker who knows how to suck the marrow out of every day. A no-rules kind of man, he may buck any idea of routine or rules-setting, but if you're looking to charge your life with some energy, date this guy.

I am so not "a risk-taker who knows how to suck the marrow out of every day," and I definitely don't "buck any idea of routine" (I'm rather attached to my routines). Unless you're talking specifically about photography. Hrm . . .

Labels: amusement

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Wednesday, July 29

Can Gigolos Advertise in the Phone Book?

Financial Improvement
Originally uploaded by -Greyson-

Labels: amusement, funny

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Thursday, July 23

This Modern Life

Courtesy of Kindsey:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Labels: amusement, internet

Posted at 10:25:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Insta-zombie

I want one of these shirts. Lane, the other mega-zombie-fan I know, opined that these shirts are cool, but not suitable to anyone without a Y-chromosome (and in fact, not suitable for even some of those with Y-chromosomes) and so declined to endorse them.

Labels: amusement

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Sunday, July 19

Yay Science Standards!

This week is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, an event that became a symbol of the pursuit of knowledge in general and science in particular (not to mention a feather in the cap of the U.S. during the heyday of Cold War brinksmanship). To celebrate this monumental achievement in human knowledge and progress, Yahoo is linking photos from the Apollo 11 mission from its home page, including this photo of the Earth as taken from space, highlighting "most of Africa and portions of Europe and Asia."

Except the photo is actually of South America.

Go Yahoo.

Labels: amusement, annoyance, science

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Monday, July 13

This and That

- I was approached twice over the weekend in two different stores by other shoppers who assumed (incorrectly) that I worked there. I could vaguely see the Target incident; I was wearing work clothes that superficially resembled Target's color scheme. But the other one just has me baffled. I was holding a shopping basket and actually *shopping* (reading labels and crossing items off a list), and yet the woman in the motorized shopping cart looked not only surprised but actually disbelieving and possibly offended when I responded to her request that I page someone to help her in the paint section with a sheepish "I'm sorry, I don't work here." Maybe I need to reevaluate my attire.

- I've been more annoyed than usual lately at the oncoming drivers waiting to turn left on green who actually start to turn as I'm entering the intersection, assuming my course and speed will remain constant and they'll just miss the back of my car. If I were more confrontational, I'd play "chicken" by intentionally slowing down to dispel their assumption and force them stop, but (a) that would disrupt traffic and (b) sooner or later I'd lose, neither of which is a good outcome. So I'll just swear at them as I leave the intersection instead.

Labels: amusement, annoyance, miscellany

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Sunday, June 14

Okay, Which One of You Is Borrowing My Amazon Account?

Today in my Amazon Gold Box (supposedly based on an analysis of my purchasing habits):

- The autobiography of Melissa Gilbert
- A pet deshedding tool
- The first book in the Twilight series
- A cookbook for meat recipes

Labels: amusement

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Monday, June 1

Bleed for Me

My electric razor gets grumpy when it's overly humid (like it has been for the last couple of weeks) and tends to "stick" to my skin (which is not pleasant), so, for the first time since college, I bought a normal razor to use (at least until the humidity goes down a bit). Then I remembered why I switched to an electric razor. When I was done, I counted thirty-nine places where I was bleeding (none of which hurt, but it looked awful).

Labels: amusement, me

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Friday, May 1

Who Wears Short Shorts?

Happy No Pants Day. :) I have the day off, so I'm afraid I won't be able to propagate this meme through the firm (although I have this vague suspicion that it wouldn't be well-received . . .).

Labels: amusement, holiday

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Mortal Combat

This struck me as funny tonight.

Labels: amusement

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Thursday, April 30

Disparity

Granted I don't spend a lot of time perusing the salvos from the various sides of the religious culture wars, but regardless I've never seen a book receive almost entirely "best possible" or "worst possible" ratings from readers. It's not particularly surprising, given the almost total polarization among those who would want to read a book like this, but it's still amusing.

Also amusing is this book apparently uses the "banana is proof of God" argument I've seen pop up recently in various media. The general argument as put forth in its original source is that the banana has a number of characteristics that show it was designed for human consumption (it fits the human hand perfectly, it has a tab for easy opening, it's naturally color-coded to indicate when it can be consumed, it's nutritious, etc.). The easy retort to this is that the bananas we know are the result of a few thousand years of human-directed selective breeding (not unlike how our species took the timber wolf and selectively bred it into the poodle) and uncultivated bananas show no more "human-specific design" than any other edible seed pod. (It also begs the question of how the pineapple and the coconut fit in, given how difficult those fruits are to eat without tools of some sort.)

Labels: amusement, religion and atheism

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Tuesday, April 7

Whoops

I'm not sure what this guy thought would happen when he illegally downloaded a copy of an unfinished, unreleased movie whose leak is being investigated by the FBI and then not only reviewed said movie in his official job as a news columnist but also joked about how easy it was to download, but I don't think the actual result was that unexpected.

Labels: amusement

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Thursday, April 2

Apparently I Don't Taste Like Chicken

What would you taste like to a cannibal?

Created by Recipe Star

Labels: amusement

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Wednesday, April 1

Help Wanted

I gave my notice today. Things just weren't working out at work, between the random drug testing and them actually wanting me to do work. I know the economy is slow, but I'm sure it's not nearly as bad as the media makes it out to be. I expect I'll find a higher-paying job within a couple of weeks. Maybe in banking or real estate. Until then I can live off my 401(k) and my credit cards. If anyone knows of any jobs available that pay more than 70k (preferably with a company car), let me know.

And if that wasn't transparent enough, happy April Fools' Day. :)

Labels: amusement, funny, holiday

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Tuesday, March 31

It Sucks To Be Me (Except on Saturday)

Meghan treated me to Avenue Q as a time-delayed birthday present on Saturday. It was fantastic. You have to love any play that opens with a puppet singing "What do you do with a B.A. in English?" (ouch!) and moves on to "It sucks to be me," "The Internet is for porn" and "Everyone's a little bit racist sometimes." Tres bien.

Labels: amusement, fun, meghan, theater

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Monday, March 23

Land Ho!

Someone should buy this for me so I can start building my Earthship.

Labels: amusement, earthship

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Wednesday, March 11

Also . . .

This is pretty good. Your life in a calendar month.

Labels: amusement, internet

Posted at 3:46:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Steampunk Fashion

I would gladly stand in line for a runway show if the models were sporting a formal Tommy Hilfiger Sword and a puce Kenneth Cole Fusion Reaction Jetpack.

That's my favorite quote of the day today. I wonder why. :)

Labels: amusement, internet

Posted at 3:42:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, March 10

Validation

Ha! Cici's scored a B+ on Yahoo! Health's healthiest fast food restaurants. I find that incredibly amusing, given that pizza in general is unhealthy and Cici's isn't exactly known for its high-quality ingredients. Still, any excuse for me to justify camping out there with my Discover magazine for an hour . . .

Labels: amusement, food

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Thursday, March 5

Topsy Turvy

My circuitous, rat-maze-like route to the kitchen at work takes me past a number of a cubicles, each festooned in its fashion to its occupant's taste. The path is so routine that I almost sleepwalk the journey, unless something out of the ordinary catches my eye. Like the scene below (which led to a second inconspicuous trip to the kitchen with cell phone in hand).

It's not often one sees a topless photo sitting in the inbox of one of your colleagues. As it turns out, while indeed a topless photo, the image in question can use the "I have a Y chromosome so it's okay for me to show my pectoral muscles" excuse.

Labels: amusement, breasts

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Wednesday, March 4

Happy National Grammar Day!

Long live the proofreader!

Labels: amusement, proofreading

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Thursday, February 26

The Life of a Clerk

Heard on the store intercom at Wal-Green's last night:

Woman: The store will be closing in 15 minutes. Please bring your selections to the front of the store and we'll be happy to ring them up for you. Thank you for shopping Wal-Greens.

*pause*

Man: John, we need more cowbell in aisle 2. More cowbell in aisle 2. Thank you.

Labels: amusement, funny, overheard

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Tuesday, February 24

Callipygian Compilations

I'm pretty good at Photoshop. I bet I could make a living at this.

Labels: amusement

Posted at 10:54:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

One of Those Weeks

I have the post-vacation crash. Blah to the world.

I was out of it enough today that I actually punched the security code for my alarm system into the microwave at work when I was trying to heat up my tea. Go me.

Labels: amusement, stress

Posted at 1:41:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, February 11

Yer All Daft

An introduction to the "Daft" viral world, for those of you left out. Daft Punk is an electronic music band that has been around since the early 90s (most famous in the U.S. for the songs "Around the World" in 1997 and "One More Time" in 2001). Also included on the 2001 album was a song called "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," which most of the U.S. missed. It was re-released as a live version in 2007 (where I found it on iTunes) and subsequently bastardized into a hip-hop song by one of the numerous rappers I can't tell apart (where it saw wider U.S. airplay, so if you heard that version first . . . I'm sorry).

The "Daft" viral videos took off in mid-2007, beginning with the original "Daft Hands." The videos are an example of musical kinesthesiology, of a sort; the motions of the performers create the lyrics of the song, and as the lyrics speed up, the performers speed up into more intricate patterns. This works because the song has a grand total of 19 words, and several of them share most of their letters (our/hour, ever/never) which lowers the total number of letters required even further.

"Daft Hands" was the original and most popular (with something like 28 million YouTube views). It spawned dozens of "hands" copies (all of these start slow, by the way; the impressive choreography isn't until later in the song).

It was followed about four months later by "Daft Bodies," which featured two women with silver boxes on their heads (which were later parodied in numerous other viral videos). A plethora of other "bodies" videos appeared not long after.

The next step, of course, was multiple people. A rugby team did a presentation of it and posted it online, followed by a student council somewhere (which has my favorite choreography):

I find the interplay of music and motion and the translation of motion into music an interesting subject and I think this is a good example of it. I'd have done a choreography like this in school as a presentation.

Labels: amusement, internet, video, wonder

Posted at 4:07:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Thursday, February 5

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Just in case you needed something to make you feel smart today:

I don't necessarily disagree with her point (that we've polluted our environment to the point that the effects are noticeable), but perhaps the specific details of the pollution should be left to people with slightly more training in the scientific fields.

Labels: amusement, internet, what the hell

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Wednesday, January 28

Super Dating

Maybe I should borrow $3 million from my friends and family, too.

Labels: amusement, internet

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Wednesday, January 21

Fairytale

Wow, our society is spoiled . . .

Labels: amusement

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Thursday, January 15

Bitter Pill

Two articles on Yahoo! News on the same day:

- Drinking coffee may decrease the risk of Alzheimer's

- Coffee may cause hallucinations

But at least you get to *choose* when you start hearing things . . .

Labels: amusement

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Friday, January 9

Yay for Following Instructions

A weight-loss flyer in the break room shows the results of a survey of former participants who were asked to sum up the program "in one word." My favorite? "Life changing."

Second place goes to "Sweat."

Labels: amusement

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Wednesday, January 7

Maybe Next They'll Sell Pure Tritium in Bulk

For the man who has almost everything, nuclear-grade duct tape (perfect for patching up nuclear power plants . . .) at 97% off list price. I'm even more amused that the most closely related item in the "things people buy after viewing this product" section is a Rubik's Cube.

Nuclear material. Rubik's Cube. Hrm.

Labels: amusement, internet

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Tuesday, January 6

Truth in Words

I've discovered that the most poignant of human experiences can effectively be summed in one sentence.

Labels: amusement

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Tuesday, December 23

King of the Road

I could whine in large vocabulary about the unplanned expenditure that put four brand-new tires on my car today, but given the incredulous looks I've received from multiple people regarding the state of my old tires, I'm leaning more toward being amused at the value I've squeezed out of the rubber. Apparently, tires have mileage ratings. And people look at you askew when you grumble that your tires only have 107,000 miles on them . . .

(Hey, I still had 3/32nds of tread left!)

Labels: amusement, car

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Sunday, December 21

The Cableless Guy

I'm considering dropping my cable. I made a preliminary audit of my television-watching habits the other day and realized that the only show I specifically plan to watch on television is Atlantis, and it only has two more episodes. Everything else I stream from Hulu or Netflix (or else is just random channel flipping that I wouldn't miss). This was brought into stark relief last week when I was talking about "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" to one of my coworkers and encouraged her to watch an episode; she agreed and asked for the channel and time, and I sat there confused for a moment before saying "Erm, Hulu, whenever it's convenient?". The savings from dropping cable wouldn't be *huge*, but they'd be noticeable.

In furtherance of my cable-pondering, I visited the site of my somewhat-less-than-illustrious cable provider to check on current pricing. The visit did not do much to dispel my disappointment in them . . .

I also like how their premium package is advertised for "large file downloaders" (wink, wink).

Labels: amusement, television

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Friday, December 19

Cathartic Sacrifice

There is something in the sudden awareness of an approaching wave of snow, showered off the street in perfect parabolic arcs by a city plow, reminiscent, in its way, of the movie staple of the car splashing water from a puddle onto a hapless pedestrian, that leads one first to swear and then to laugh at the absurdity as the efforts of an hour of snow shoveling are reburied under three inches of greyish muck.

So I have to shovel again when I get home tonight . . .

Labels: amusement, house

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Friday, December 12

Who Says Black Friday Is Over?

Labels: amusement

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Thursday, December 11

Sodal Disobedience

A small confession. Whenever I encounter a soda machine with specific instructions on how to orient the proffered currency in order to encourage the machine to accept it (these days most commonly denoted pictorially with a rough little sketch of ol' George facing a specific direction), I always give the bill a 180-degree turn and feed it in backwards. I wonder what that says about my psyche.

For the curious, the machines have always accepted such rebellious offerings and vended my purchase without so much as a glaring eye. I've heard, from others frustrated by the intricate rituals often required to appease the vending gods, that this is an anomaly, but it's one with a surprisingly strong track record.

Labels: amusement, introspection

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Monday, December 8

Math Is Hard, Pt. II

From the great source of timeless wisdom that is the John Tesh radio show (heard on the radio last night):

A recent study found that one third of people have admitted to sending an e-mail or text message to the wrong person. That means that on any given day, 1 out of 3 e-mail or text messages go to the wrong recipient.

Yes, in much the same way that if 75% of people admit to having had chicken pox at some point in their lives, on any given day 3 out of 4 people have chicken pox . . .

A corollary to the above is another math question that has been popping up on OkCupid for me lately (mostly because my answer differs from most others, and the site for some reason wants me to be aware of that fact):

If "some men are doctors" and "some doctors are tall", does it follow that "some men are tall"?

I'm going to skip the Venn diagrams and just say that the question is a theoretical problem with no relation to reality (you could swap out "companion cubes" for "men," "nerf herder" for "doctor" and "vorpal" for "tall" if abstract words help to divorce the question from the idea that "of course some men are tall"), and the question only asks if we can prove some men are tall from the information given, not to prove that all men are short. Logic puzzles are funny that way.

Labels: amusement, social commentary

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Wednesday, December 3

Money To Be Made

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Labels: amusement, social commentary

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Wednesday, November 26

Beep Beep

I found this article amusing today, given that I use my car horn so infrequently that I went over a year without realizing it doesn't work. That was at my sister's wedding, so I've been without a horn for at least two years (I'll probably get a fix-it ticket for it eventually, but in the meantime I've not missed it, at all). I found the salient points in the article to be the conclusions that most honks are administered as chastisement after the fact and very few actually contribute to avoiding accidents in real time, given that reaction time limits our ability to take evasive action *and* honk at the same time. I think I'm in favor of abolishing horns.

Labels: amusement, social commentary

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Wednesday, November 19

I Don't Think They Were Going for "Oooo, pretty!"

Lisa has been encouraging me to watch "Bones" lately (something to do with the female lead exhibiting the same highly analytical-but-socially dysfunctional personality traits that I do). This clip is from the first minute of the pilot episode. To illustrate my atypical reactions in what is hopefully a humorous fashion, my initial impressions of the shirt-ripping scene were, in order:

1. I hope those were snaps, because otherwise her buttons just ripped off.
2. It's kind of sad that she had to resort to that.
3. Wow, that's a fantastic corset. That would make an awesome photo prop. I wonder how much one of those runs and if I could find one on eBay.

Highly analytical. Check. Poor social skills. Check.

Labels: amusement, breasts

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For the Dogs, Redux

I Stumbled on a page re-referencing the high-pitched tones used by some teenagers for clandestine cell phone rings. It's been about two-and-a-half years since that post, and I can still hear 17kHz, so at least my hearing isn't declining. In an irrationally masochistic move, despite knowing that it would likely give me a headache, I listened to the tones anyway. And they gave me a headache. Go me.

Labels: amusement

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Thursday, October 30

I'm Sure Tim Will Kick My Ass at This

Labels: amusement

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Tuesday, October 28

Thou Shalt Not Do Round-offs

I wasn't aware that Christianity really had anything to say about gymnastics.

Labels: amusement

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Friday, October 24

Freudian Slip

Red Cross tech: Okay, we're all done. Here's your contact sheet. If you experience any problems today, please give us a call. If we have any problems or determine your love is unsuitable for others, er, your *blood*, that is. Wow. Yeah, if your *blood* is unsuitable we'll give you a call.

She was horribly embarrassed. Poor girl.

Labels: amusement, overheard

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Saturday, September 20

Digital Fingerprints

I'm not the only person engaging in befuddled head-scratching over Microsoft's most recent spate of confusing television advertisements.

- First came the egregiously expensive $300 million Seinfeld ads that supposedly helped "humanize" the company by showing comedian Jerry Seinfeld and "the man" Bill Gates interacting with "normal people" in a shoe store and moving in with a "normal family" for a week, but actually ended up showing Gates to be a pompous ass who complains about leftovers and tips poorly, and nothing in the ads related in any form whatsoever to Windows Vista. The third completed ad was shelved without being released.

- Then came the "Mojave Experiment," where short clips of "real customer interviews" being shown what was supposedly a new operating system called "Mojave" but which in reality was Windows Vista demonstrated that people think the operating system is "neat" or "cool" if it's shown out of the context of its readily deserved criticism. Of course, the commercials don't actually show what the customers are seeing on the screen and offer no rebuttal to the reasons people have downgraded back to XP or labeled Vista as seriously flawed, and more importantly the customers see Vista running on a state-of-the-art laptop that can actually run Vista properly, not a much cheaper "standard" laptop that most people buy or already own.

- Most recently, Microsoft launched its "I'm a PC" ad line aimed directly at Apple's popular-if-snobbish "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercials. Notably, they don't say "I'm Windows Vista," which does nothing to brand this as a Windows commercial and may actually just be free advertising for Dell. And most interestingly of all, the ads were made on a Mac, something Microsoft tried to hide as soon as it was discovered.

All in all, Vista has become a significant embarrassment for Microsoft, with 60% of corporate companies indicating no plans to upgrade to it and most PC dealers bundling it with an option to downgrade to XP. This for an operating system that will be officially two years old in January. But all of that aside, Microsoft's schizophrenic advertising has become so muddled that it's likely to have no impact at all on Vista's adoption. Sure, Apple makes expensive hardware and dips well into the "pretentious" vault on a regular basis, but at least its commercials are understandable.

Labels: amusement, internet

Posted at 11:25:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, September 19

Blunt Honesty

A snippet from a clandestine planning session:

Me: Okay, we could make cookies or cupcakes.
Alec: Oh, I love cupcakes!
Me: Or waffles. I make pretty good waffles.
Alec: Oh, I love cupcakes!

Point taken.

Followed by:

Me: You know, I make chocolate cookies that are shaped like little tiny waffles. Those are pretty good.
Kyle: WOW! How do you do that?!

Labels: alec, amusement, kyle, twins

Posted at 2:30:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, August 27

My Own Personal Stalker

My Own Personal Stalker
Originally uploaded by -Greyson-

I received 8 single-ring calls from Linde today in the space of 3 minutes. Turns out she *thought* she was calling her voicemail and it was, somehow, dialing my number instead. When I finally answered, she seemed surprised and then said she wasn't calling to talk to me. I feel loved. ;)

Labels: amusement, linde

Posted at 9:12:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, August 26

Accentuated

The twins, while finishing the coconut-pineapple smoothies they helped me make, were watching one of their DVDs, one I had not seen before from a television series entitled "Charlie and Lola." The protagonists of said series are English, which made for some interesting observations. Kylie and I had a humorous exchange involving one of the characters, a hamster named "Burt."

Kylie: "Oh no! Butt's in trouble!"
Me: "Who?"
Kylie: "Butt."
Me: "Oh, right. Burt."
Kylie: "No, Butt."
Me (laughing): "I'm pretty sure it's Burt."
Kylie (shaking head): "No. It's Butt."
Me (looking directly at her): "Burt!"
Kylie (staring back defiantly): "Butt!"
Me (still laughing): "Okay. You win."

A few minutes later I was quoting along with the show in a mock accent when Kylie, mimicking me mimicking the show, started saying "perfect" in a scarily accurate accent ("puh-fect"), to the point that Lisa thought it was the show and not Kylie (although I tried to get her to do it later and she reverted to her standard accent).

It was an interesting observation on how our brains compensate for anomalies; my brain automatically translated the English-accented context while to Kylie at least some of them appeared as entirely new words. In a similar vein, while listening to the BBC web cast today as I usually do, I sailed along with their accents until I tripped over "alu-MIN-i-um" and had to pause for a fraction of a second to figure out what they were talking about.

Labels: amusement, kyle

Posted at 1:42:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, August 11

The Surreal Life

Wal-mart, early afternoon, check-out line.

Elderly gentleman with all of his purchases bagged *except* an alcohol product of some sort. Line on hold while underage checkout girl waits for a customer-service person to ring up the last item.

Young man in line between the elderly gentleman and me, with no items to buy, spilling to the girl that he's seen her several times and has finally gotten up the courage to come over and ask her out. Awkwardness for the rest of the line. Panic on the girl's face. Pause after the nervous boy's pitch. Girl stammering out something about having a boyfriend (whether it's true or not). Dejected but polite guy slinking off embarrassed.

Girl paging customer-service person again. Fed-up elderly gentleman saying to skip the alcohol, paying for his bagged items and leaving.

Me bantering with the red-faced girl (who has had one unhappy customer and one unhappy non-customer in 30 seconds). Her joking that it's not her fault she can't ring up alcohol and she would if she could. Me joking that it really *is* her fault for not being born earlier (clearly a facetious comment).

Her gesturing to the woman ringing up items in the lane immediately behind hers. "Blame my mom."

Labels: amusement

Posted at 1:28:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Saturday, August 9

En Garde

Thanks to work (*grumble* silly attorneys *grumble*), I missed the opening ceremonies of the Olympics this year (although I hear they were impressive). I did, however, see the American sweep of the women's sabre event. Yay for Olympics! Yay for women with swords! Yay for an event I actually know all the rules to (I'm in the black)!

Labels: amusement

Posted at 10:28:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, August 8

Cyber Toddlers

Lisa found this on her computer today after putting the twins down for their nap. It looks like Alec is getting started on the Internet early.

Labels: alec, amusement, computers, funny, internet, twins

Posted at 2:54:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Saturday, August 2

I'm Not Sure What This Is About, But It Can't Be Good . . .

"Fool close friends/family"? Really?

Labels: amusement, funny, internet

Posted at 3:16:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, July 29

Sarah Haskins Rocks

Labels: amusement, funny, politics

Posted at 6:26:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, July 25

I Admit It, I Laughed Outloud

From Yahoo!Answers:

How would i cover up a bullet hole in my wall?
I don't care if you're gonna rant about guns and stuff
I just need to know before my dad finds out.
my friend shot his gun in my room, so i have this whole in my wall
my dad was naive enough to believe it was just my stereo that fell off my TV stand
but my brother found out.
So what's an easy way to like fill it in or something?

Labels: amusement

Posted at 12:36:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, July 2

Yay MacGyver!

Labels: amusement, comics, funny

Posted at 4:21:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, June 30

Well, That Lasted Until It Became a News Article

"I'm struggling...I don't want to lose my house and I want to find somebody," said Trabosh, who changed her name in the ad to Traboscia to keep people from finding her in the phone book.

Labels: amusement, funny, internet

Posted at 4:41:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, June 24

Niche Marketing

This seems like an oddly specific Web banner. Are there a lot of people who read Web comics who happen to run fishing tournaments and who are also looking to start Web sites? The peculiarity is only enhanced by its placement as part of a triptych banner of unrelated ads; the other two were for an HDTV and a once-a-month birth control implant.

Labels: amusement, funny, internet

Posted at 1:17:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, June 23

Please Commence the Procedure

Sometimes I think scammers would do well to hire a good (albeit ethically loose) proofreader to polish the nonsense they distribute. There seems to be no shortage of people on the Internet offering to clean up resumes, Web sites and other published material, although I do admit that the quality of these services is somewhat suspect until the results are displayed. Hopefully, they would know not to put exclamation points into a missive supposedly originating with a major corporate entity (and could polish out the missing articles, because nothing says "this wasn't penned by a literate English writer" like "If you are not customer").

Perhaps of more importance than appropriate business-style grammar and format, though, is the give-away involved in announcing that, even though the e-mail is going out to all Chase customers, if the recipient isn't a member of Chase Bank he or she can ignore (again with the exclamation point!) the e-mail in its entirety (bolding mine in the picture). Very polite. Not particularly bright.

Seriously, where is the doctoral-candidate-in-English mastermind writing these things on the side for pizza money who actually understands how to write to the audience and make it look realistic?

Labels: amusement, internet, social commentary

Posted at 3:03:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, June 20

Math Is Hard

The following is a frequently encountered question in the wide pantheon of OkCupid questions:

If the price of an apple was raised 50% and then decreased 50%, making it cost $0.75, how much was the original price?

(a) $1.00
(b) $0.75
(c) $1.25
(d) $0.50

What particularly amuses me about this question is that it's not a "how do you feel?" or "what's your opinion on this?" question as every other OkCupid question is; this is a math problem with only one correct answer. For those of you without OkCupid memberships, the problem with this is that the answer is never given and instead your answer (along with "how you want your friends/matches to respond," which works well for questions like politics and music tastes) is just posted for other people to see. And the vast majority of people who have compared their profiles to mine have gotten it wrong. So essentially it's a trick question that makes mathematically inclined people look dumb to the non-inclined, and the non-inclined look dumb to the inclined, because there's no opportunity to explain *why* you answered the way you did. So if you answer the question incorrectly and specify that you only want to match to other people who answered as you did . . .

Labels: amusement, social commentary

Posted at 2:22:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, June 9

Pixels Are the New Bragging Rights

Given my photographic proclivities, it's probably not surprising that at the moment I own four complete camera systems (granted one of them has some zooming issues due to an unfortunate fall and hasn't been out of the drawer in a few years, but it still takes perfectly good pictures), all four Canons, the most recent acquisition of which (purchased a scant two weeks ago) put a $1,300 dent on my credit card (but I got a really good deal on it!). Still, one can never have too many cameras, so for those of you who would like to take out a mortgage loan to treat me, this Hasselblad 31-megapixel camera is on sale ($9,000 off!) for a scant $18,000. :)

Labels: amusement, photography

Posted at 7:19:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Thursday, May 8

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

While enjoying the latest episode of "Top Chef" tonight (thanks to Cris for not spoiling it and yay to Richard for still being in), I saw a commercial for a company called "Finally Fast" that advertises a "free" computer scan (followed by a not-free "cleanup" of any problems it finds) for your PC. As a note unrelated to my amusement factor, what they're really selling is the same service that Spybot provides (except that Spybot is robust, highly recommended . . . and free), so what they're actually doing is cashing in on the computer-illiteracy of the average American.

What earned a laugh from me, though, was something completely unrelated in their ad. The opening and ending of the commercial, the "book ends," if you prefer, feature a young man first complaining that his computer (which "used to be so fast") is now crawling and then, after running Finally Fast, bragging in overly enthusiastic tones about how fast his PC is now. Except his "PC" is a 20-inch iMac (newer generation, either the last of the G5s or the first of the Intels). So the software the company is promoting wouldn't even install on his computer, let alone do anything to speed it up.

It's the details that get you.

Labels: amusement, funny, imac

Posted at 2:29:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, May 7

Jealousy

Labels: amusement, funny

Posted at 1:26:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, April 30

Scientists Are Hard at Work on a Vaccine

From a science article on obesity's effect on carbon footprints:

It's no secret that obesity has plenty of personal health consequences; the list of diseases that have been associated with being overweight include higher risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and less sex, to name only a few.

Wait, "less sex" is a disease? Is it contagious? That sounds like the death knell for the planet, as dangerous as small pox or zombie viruses. "The CDC now reports that 98% of the population is infected with the "less sex" disease. Birth rates have plummeted."

Labels: amusement, social commentary

Posted at 7:19:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, April 28

Generation Gap

Here's one to horrify my mother. I've always liked Dana Delaney (probably because "China Beach" was my mother's favorite show for awhile). I read an interview on Sunday about her tendency to date much younger men. That means if I'd played my cards right, my mother could be thrilled to actually meet one of her favorite actresses while simultaneously horrified that I was dating someone my mother's age.

That'd be a fun Christmas.

Labels: amusement, entertainment

Posted at 11:01:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, April 15

Dammit, I Hate Spoilers

Labels: amusement, politics

Posted at 12:54:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, April 14

Robert Armes, This One Is For You

For the past few weeks I've been watching various sites for Canon lens deals so I can upgrade from my current walk-around lens. On Friday the following ad popped up on the local Craig's List board:

"Canon EOS 5D 12.8 Megapixel w/ EF 24-105 Kit- $1100"

Right of the bat this seemed odd to me. The poster was advertising it as "like new," having only used it for "50 shots" before deciding he didn't need a full-frame camera. The language in the ad actually showed some degree of knowledge of cameras, but at the same time he's asking $1,100 for a nearly $3,000 camera. The lens alone is worth what he was asking for the package.

So I passed. I did forward it to Lisa with a joke about how I'd give her my XTi for free if she'd buy me this one, but other than that I forgot about it.

On Saturday afternoon it was still there, and I finally broke down and sent a query about the condition and original purchase point (no harm there). As usual, I used one of my "throw away" e-mail addresses so in case it *was* a scam I could just junk the e-mail address when I started receiving spam from it. No response came on Saturday, and within about three hours the ad was removed from Craig's List. I figured the seller had found a buyer and removed the ad to keep from receiving further inquiries.

Fast forward to this morning (Monday), when I receive the following:

> -------Original Message-------
> From: Robert Armes
> To: [my throw-away craigslist.org address]
> Subject: Canon EOS 5D 12.8 Megapixel w/ EF 24-105 Kit- $1100
> Sent: 14 Apr '08 13:14
>
> Hi there,
>
> I still have the Kit. But the thing is that i'm in the U.K. for my
> school ( i have the gear with me), if you're still interested in the sale
> please let me know and maybe we can work something out . So drop me a line
> if you're up for grabs!
> Thank you!
>
>
> Robert Armes
> 420, Prescot Rd, Old Swan, Liverpool, Merseyside L13 3DA
> United Kingdom
> Ph: 44 20 3014 7453

Alarm bells. First off, he didn't answer any of my questions. Second, he's suddenly in England, two days after advertising on an Omaha posting board? For school (a long-term obligation)? Why even bother to advertise it here? Third, now we're talking shipping charges, which defeats the purpose of Craig's List (local buying and selling) and introduces the potential for scams and fraud.

So I Googled his name and a few other pieces of information from the e-mail. It took less than 15 seconds to come up with a Flickr discussion board with posts from people who have received the exact same offer (using the same name and address) on the Craig's List boards of Seattle and Chicago. Some of the contributors to the board pursued it further than I did and had received instructions for sending payment through a faked-but-authentic-sounding shipping company.

Just a reminder that things that sound too good to be true probably are.

Labels: amusement, computers, internet, photography, social commentary

Posted at 1:14:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, April 1

A New Leaf

Even a casual perusal of my blog will touch upon my secular preferences, although I think I've done an admirable job of being the antithesis of the "militant atheist" so often denigrated in the common memetic circles.

As of late, however, I've really felt that something was missing. Something beyond physical stasis, perhaps some form of consensus reality where the dreams and beliefs of humanity shape existence. I dunno. In any case, I've decided to give Scientology a go; I remember that "exploding volcano" commercial for Dianetics when I was a kid and it's always seemed to have some commonsense appeal to it. I've looked for an Omaha chapter of the Church of Scientology without much luck (just some links to a defunct chapter), so I've had to sign up via the Internet. But the introductory packets arrived last week, so I should have some interesting homework for awhile.

And just in case you're still reading and are very confused, Happy April Fool's Day. :)

Labels: amusement, holiday

Posted at 2:58:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, March 14

Held Back

There has been some hoopla about the final Harry Potter book being made into two films instead of the traditional one (I'm sure Lane will be thrilled, given that the longer format means, hopefully, a movie truer to the book). I find it interesting, though, that by the time the final movie is released, the actor playing Harry will be 32 . . .

Labels: amusement

Posted at 2:48:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, January 25

Deadpan

"It looks like a mock-Tudor house from the front and it's got two turrets at the back," the spokeswoman said. "I understand there is also a cannon."

Labels: amusement, funny

Posted at 3:34:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, December 19

Double Meanings

My boss came into my office today and told me to clean out my desk.

Really.

Turns out I'm getting a new (or slightly less used, anyway) desk.

No one seems to think I'm funny today when I pause before clarifying the first sentence. *harrumph*

Labels: amusement, funny

Posted at 10:17:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, November 30

Payment Perils

Payment Perils
Originally uploaded by -Greyson-

I accidentally paid my power bill twice last month (once by online payment, and then again at the end of the month when I couldn't remember if I paid it online and their site was down, so I mailed a check). As a result, they credited my account and *this* month I owed a grand total of 87 cents. Due, of course, by the end of the month, with a $2 late fee if not paid on time. So my choices are to mail a check for 87 cents (meaning the check, the envelope and the stamp would make up more than a third of the cost) or pay it online like I normally do . . . except, to my amusement, the site won't accept a payment of less than a dollar.

So my next month's bill is going to have a credit of 13 cents on it . ;)

Labels: amusement

Posted at 1:54:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Thursday, November 15

"You Know That I'm No Good"

"To all those booing, just wait till my husband gets out of incarceration. And I mean that."

When all else fails, threaten your fans. Good plan.

Labels: amusement, social commentary

Posted at 12:32:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Thursday, October 11

Day of Links

- My baby sister's campus is on lock-down after the get-away vehicle from an armed robbery at a casino was discovered in the vicinity. Scary stuff, but it's good to see the campus is taking it seriously in the wake of other recent campus incidents.

- There is a real decommissioned Titan missile base for sale on eBay. Perfect for an Evil Mastermind Lair(tm), a zombie-apocalypse retreat or a do-it-yourself Stargate facility. If only I had $1.5 million (plus another several million to renovate it, since it was "stripped for scrap" in the 60s). We could pool our money for anyone interested.

- As amusing as this video is on its own, it's compounded by the fact that the "blonde" second-from-left is one of my uncles. I'm glad to see he makes an even less attractive woman than I do.

- Although not a cup of tea palatable to everyone (both musically and politically), I found the song "Empty Walls" (even if the video quality on the official site is somewhat lacking) a sad-but-moving entry. For those trying to place the voice, this is the lead singer of "System of a Down" on his first solo outing.

Labels: amusement, haley, miscellany, music

Posted at 1:24:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, October 9

Winning Bids

eBay should have waited until the last moment and sniped this purchase instead of using the Buy It Now feature. Sheesh, you'd think they know this.

On a similar note . . . ;)

Labels: amusement

Posted at 12:47:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, October 3

A Penney Saved

JC Penney is amusing me this week. Such a simple statement deserves greater scrutiny, and a breakdown of the complex emotion I've conveniently labeled "amusing" would, in this case, reveal a smattering of "annoyance" and a healthy dose of "you've got to be kidding." Such are the limitations of language.

Due to a scarcity of counter space (compounded by cabinets that hang far too low, making what counter space I do have difficult to use), and owing to the acquisition of an awesomely monstrous mixer that has to go somewhere, I've decided I want one of these kitchen carts. It seems to be of decent construction (compared to the toy-like offerings at Wal-Mart), and I think we all know my affinity for copper. It would be nice to be able to roll out dough directly under the track lighting (illumination is a good thing).

Here begins the amusement. The stores do not carry furniture so I'm obviously going to be subject to shipping costs (I'm also, as Lisa enlightened me yesterday, going to be subject to sales tax despite it being an Internet order because they have a physical store in Nebraska . . . a store that doesn't carry this item). Calculating the basket on their Web site, however, gave me something of a shock. For $113 in shipping, I'm assuming it's arriving in an armored car surrounded by armed Hum-Vee escorts, driven by men in dark suits with little radios in their ears communicating their exact location to a command bunker via satellite every five minutes. Or "next-minute shipping" via their new teleportation service. My god, people.

Recalculating to deliver it to the nearest JC Penney store (the one that told me they don't carry furniture) drops the shipping costs drastically, so that appears to be the way to go. It *also* drops the taxes, which means they're charging taxes on the shipping. Harumph.

I also noted today, with those amused shakes of the head, that the main page of their site is dominated by the promo for their 105th Anniversary Sale, with a promotional discount code. The ad and the savings summaries are in large and colorful print. Hovering beneath, however, in nondescript grey text, are the inevitable exclusions, which include (*deep breath*): cookware, cutlery, cosmetics, electronics, furniture, housewares, mattresses, small appliances, sporting goods, toys and video games, along with a lengthy list of specific brands (as well as Santa suits, which seems oddly specific), leaving me to wonder just what exactly qualifies. Considering the maximum savings is $20, their exclusion list seems ridiculously complex. Apparently the kitchen cart is considered furniture, as the discount code curled up and died somewhere between pages 2 and 3 of the checkout process.

Labels: amusement

Posted at 11:53:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, October 1

Ninjas Are Everywhere

Even robbing stores.

On an unrelated note (as much as Lane would like to be a ninja), the two of us finally unlocked Mirror Mode in MarioKart. And promptly got our asses kicked in our first forays into playing the races backwards (we tied for last place after the first four races . . .). Go us.

Labels: amusement, lane

Posted at 3:25:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Saturday, September 22

Die Young and Leave a Beautiful Corpse

I caught a matinee of Resident Evil: Extinction today. It's certainly no Oscar-winning production, but for what it is (mindless entertainment featuring apocalyptic zombie wastelands based on a video game), it isn't bad.

I did find it amusing, however, that, despite the horde of zombie movies over the years, and the fact that these particular characters have been fighting off zombies for more than 5 years, no character in a zombie movie ever seems to wear the proper clothing. Every heartfelt, sad moment where a character reveals to a close companion that he or she was bitten in the previous skirmish and will now change into a zombie, forcing said companion to cry out in anguish and reluctantly agree to kill the character "when the time comes," could be avoided if the damn people weren't traipsing about the end times in shorts and t-shirts. My god, people, how hard is it to put on a motorcycle jacket before you enter a "supposedly abandoned" building? For extra safety, add some Motocross armor, reinforced biker pants, a helmet and Kevlar gloves and boots (as Gregg will attest, these are all readily available at any now-deserted-due-to-zombie-attack motorcycle store). Then those sad scenes could instead be "Oh, that's a nasty bite-shaped bruise you have there, but luckily it didn't break the skin! Now we can ride off into the sunset and have lots of babies!" But, no, we're going to whine and complain as we're picked off one by one because we've decided the standard uniform should be khaki cut-offs and tanktops.

On an only vaguely related note, the film was prefaced with a trailer for a horror flick called 30 Days of Night, whose hook is a brood of vampires terrorizing an Alaskan village after the sun dips below the horizon for an entire month. Perhaps it's addressed in this specific film, but as a general rule, both vampires and zombies (making it applicable to the previous movie commentary) are walking corpses, which means they're non-heat-generating walking corpses, so they should, theoretically, assume the ambient air temperature given enough time; in the case of arctic, snow-covered, below-freezing locales, this should mean frozen-solid undead in a matter of days. Granted perpetually cold locations aren't ideal for human survival, either, but hey, the Eskimos and Norse seem to have gotten by just fine for thousands of years; I'll take that over being eaten by walking corpses . . .

Labels: amusement, entertainment

Posted at 9:35:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, September 17

Humanity's Long Twilight

Two unrelated items, both deserving of social commentary:

-Craig's List continues to supply items of amusement, although the emphasis on form over content here saddens me.

-I'm tempted to buy a Map of Humanity, although I'm not sure where I would put it. (Larger view here.) It's an interesting two-dimensional counterpoint to my previous post, providing compass points to my "journey."

Labels: amusement, social commentary

Posted at 11:25:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, September 14

Early Adopters

I hear through the grapevine that Alec called me yesterday. On a toy cell phone. And proceeded to sit and tell me about her day in great detail (in the ever-growing vocabulary of a two-year-old).

That's kind of cute (for me). And doesn't bode well at all for Scott and Lisa's future phone bills . . .

Labels: alec, amusement

Posted at 1:40:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, August 27

Busy Busy Busy

I've been swamped. My apologies. And I'm not writing anything of note now, either (I know, I'm a slacker).

Instead, amuse yourself with the animations of this site. :)

Labels: amusement

Posted at 5:53:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, August 22

Deep Into the Darkness Peering

I've been playing a new (to me) game on the GameCube the last couple of nights, one of the games that actually encouraged me to buy the Cube (no, not MarioKart, Lane). Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a game "inspired" by H.P. Lovecraft's work, and as a huge Lovecraft fan how could I pass that up? The game has a similar feel to Lovecraft's stories, with human protagonists thrust into dealing with sanity-destroying cosmic entities trying to claw their way into our world. Gameplay-wise, it's very similar in style to Resident Evil, with the added bonus of flipping back and forth through a variety of characters in different historical periods (e.g., you start out as a Roman Centurion, then jump to medieval France, etc.).

The part I've enjoyed (and dreaded) the most, though, is the incorporation of the effects of sanity in the game. In Lovecraft's books characters regularly suffer nervous shocks or go insane simply by witnessing the events in the stories. In the game, this is represented by a "sanity meter," which drops every time you see a creature. As the meter drops, the game changes. To represent your character slowly going insane, the game throws in effects ranging from soft whispers and footsteps to bleeding walls to enemies that aren't really there to statues with heads that twist to follow you as you walk by.

Here's where it gets really good. If your sanity drops too far, the game breaks the fourth wall and actually starts messing with you as the player. The game will pretend the controller is unplugged, mute or turn up the volume, give television error messages, pretend to turn the television off entirely, make fake "bugs" crawl across the screen and, my personal favorite so far, make loud banging noises that sound like someone is pounding on the wall behind the television (that's always pleasant at 2 a.m. in a dark house . . .).

Yay for interactive media. :)

Labels: amusement, computers

Posted at 1:45:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, August 17

Undesirables

Spotted on my way to work today:

In the midst of a protest rally in front of the Mexican embassy along Dodge Street, a man holding a sign that read "Deport all illegal immigrants and their sympathizers" (emphasis mine). I was amused at the irony involved in utilizing one's First Amendment rights to suggest removing another group's First Amendment rights.

Labels: amusement, irony, social commentary

Posted at 5:02:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Thursday, August 9

Hips Don't Lie

I uploaded this photo to my human form portfolio on Flickr some time ago. Shortly thereafter Cris commented on the graceful feminine curves of the image, which was pleasant feedback. Of course, it would have been nicer feedback if the image wasn't of me, and if the commentary on the feminine curves hadn't come in the form of "Dude, you have girl hips." Taking the teasing in its good-natured form, I laughed along and forgot about it.

Last week another Flickr "favorited" the image (in essense, adding a bookmark to the image to tell other viewers you liked the photo). When I peeked at this person's favorites list (the entire collection of favorited images), I found that every single photo (about 150) in the collection were of backs and hips . . . of women. Except for the picture of me.

[insert Cris's burst of triumphant laughter here]

I still maintain it's the angle and crop of the photo. :P But Cris wins this round.

Labels: amusement, cris, photography

Posted at 12:35:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, July 31

What Your Ring Says About You

Scene: A quiet hallway in a professional law firm.
Action: The tinny ring tone of a visitor's cell phone blares loudly through the hallway, startling everyone. I crack up laughing.

My boss: Is that Wagner?
Me: *still laughing* No, that was "The Imperial March" from Star Wars.

Labels: amusement

Posted at 11:08:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, July 17

@#$%!

This is scarily accurate. Not just for me, but for Lane as well. Her repetoire of swear words is somewhat limited (and suitable for primetime television), but the meaning behind them is pretty clear.

Labels: amusement, lane

Posted at 2:02:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Saturday, July 14

Fashion Sense

I saw a teenager walking down the street today with what I thought was a chunk of yellow fiberglass insulation taped to the side of his head. As he walked by I realized it was his hair. He'd grown it to his shoulder on the left side and cut it short on the back and right sides, and then he'd dyed just the long part a fluorescent yellow (not even bleached blond, but actually colored highlighter yellow), which contrasted with the rest of his light brown hair. I realize I'm too old to be in the "hip" crowd, but come on, that's not even "making a statement." That's just "attention whore" (help me out here, kids; can you apply that slang term to a guy?).

Labels: amusement, what the hell

Posted at 2:55:00 AM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, July 13

Days of Our Lives

My sympathies to all the paraskevidekatriaphobes out there today.

Labels: amusement

Posted at 12:40:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, July 11

Radio Waves

Heard on the radio today:

"It felt like being in jail. Although I guess I've never actually been in jail, so I don't know what jail feels like. But if that's what being in jail feels like, then it felt like being in jail."

I also heard a disturbing rendition of Queen's "We Are the Champions" performed by Disney cartoon characters . . .

Labels: amusement, radio

Posted at 1:15:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Tuesday, July 10

Seed Thief

Seed Thief
Originally uploaded by -Greyson-

I've noticed lately that the bird feeder holding sunflower seeds has been emptying about three times as fast as the others. This would explain why . . .

Labels: amusement, house, photography

Posted at 12:44:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Wednesday, June 27

Offbeat

Part of me wants to think this is a hoax. Part of me is waiting for the clip to show up on YouTube.

Labels: amusement

Posted at 10:18:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Monday, June 25

Eco-friendly

Somewhat unexpected, but go Hastings, NE (where my mother went to high school).

Labels: amusement

Posted at 5:22:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Friday, June 22

Dewey Dating System

Although I haven't dated any librarians, I've dated some library science majors so I found this amusing. Unfortunately, I'd be as mortified by the desecration as would the target, so I don't think this is going to work . . .

Labels: amusement

Posted at 6:49:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Thursday, June 21

Pareidolia

The local AMC theater displays its logo (the little animated swirly thing in the upper left corner) prominently on the screen before every movie starts.

Judging by the stares, apparently my movie-going companions by and large think it odd when I point out that the logo vaguely resembles ovaries. Sheesh, no imagination.

Labels: amusement

Posted at 1:04:00 PM. | | Permalink to this post.

Sunday, December 27

It's All in the Dimples

Sunday, October 4

Learning Experience

Wednesday, August 26

Prescience

Tuesday, August 25

Eye of the Beholder

Wednesday, August 19

Can't Go Wrong With Fire, Right?

Monday, August 10

When People Run in Circles

Monday, August 3

Risky Business

Wednesday, July 29

Can Gigolos Advertise in the Phone Book?

Thursday, July 23

This Modern Life

Insta-zombie

Sunday, July 19

Yay Science Standards!

Monday, July 13

This and That

Sunday, June 14

Okay, Which One of You Is Borrowing My Amazon Account?

Monday, June 1

Bleed for Me

Friday, May 1

Who Wears Short Shorts?

Mortal Combat

Thursday, April 30

Disparity

Tuesday, April 7

Whoops

Thursday, April 2

Apparently I Don't Taste Like Chicken

Wednesday, April 1

Help Wanted

Tuesday, March 31

It Sucks To Be Me (Except on Saturday)

Monday, March 23

Land Ho!

Wednesday, March 11

Also . . .

Steampunk Fashion

Tuesday, March 10

Validation

Thursday, March 5

Topsy Turvy

Wednesday, March 4

Happy National Grammar Day!

Thursday, February 26

The Life of a Clerk

Tuesday, February 24

Callipygian Compilations

One of Those Weeks

Wednesday, February 11

Yer All Daft

Thursday, February 5

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Wednesday, January 28

Super Dating

Wednesday, January 21

Fairytale

Thursday, January 15

Bitter Pill

Friday, January 9

Yay for Following Instructions

Wednesday, January 7

Maybe Next They'll Sell Pure Tritium in Bulk

Tuesday, January 6

Truth in Words

Tuesday, December 23

King of the Road

Sunday, December 21

The Cableless Guy

Friday, December 19

Cathartic Sacrifice

Friday, December 12

Who Says Black Friday Is Over?