greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Geekery

  • How to destroy the Earth

    If you’re anything like me, which in this case means “a geeky weirdo with a fascination not only for the physical sciences but also anything which involves what Marvin the Martian once called an Earth-shattering kaboom,” a description which probably applies any number of Mythbusters fans, you might want to read up on how to destroy the Earth.

    Here’s a sample quote to whet your appetite.

    The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you’ve had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

    I believe I’ve found my new favorite bedtime reading…

  • Gone Completely (Map)Loco

    Well, everyone else is jumping off the cliff doing one of these so I might as well join in. Mind you I will probably just leave the silly thing in this entry so eventually it’ll scroll right off the main page…

    Visitor Map
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    I have some non-meme content in the works, but I’m not promising a delivery time. Thank you for your patience while I get my life back in order.

  • Some kind of new-age voodoo curse.

    Define funny:

    I leave work at 5pm and step onto the snowy streets of Hillsboro, Oregon with my little iRiver portable music player going and a jaunty spring in my step, and the second song I hear is Dada’s “Spinning My Wheels.”

    See, it’s funny because I don’t have any wheels, and because I watched a lot of wheels spinning in futility on the roadways and in the parking lots.

    (The first song? New Order’s “Guilt Is A Useless Emotion.” Make of this what you will.)

    And then there’s the advertisement I heard a couple of times on Friday:

    “Feel like curling up on the couch and watching a movie tonight? Go buy The Illusionist, coming out Tuesday on DVD.” Wait, what? Do they assume everyone’s got a blue, dimensionally transcendental police box stashed away so they can hop a few days into the future to make a shiny-disk purchase?

    Crazy, I tell you.

  • Neither An Isotope Nor A Rare Earth Be

    Maybe I’ve simply seen “Hamlet” too many times, but while enjoying lunch at the Pizza Schmizza near the office this afternoon I looked up at the TV screen and saw a news crawl about the poisoned spy and the first thought that flashed through my mind went something like this:

    “Polonium? What, is that the chemical element that gives trite advice, entices lesser elements to spy on its isotopes, and ends the last of its half-lives in a misadventure while eavesdropping on the Danish royal family?”

    (For the record: No, Polonium was so named by M. Curie as a political statement. Those wacky scientists!)

  • Thumbnail Theater: The Revival

    A long, long time ago I created my own little rendition of something called “thumbnail theater,” a tongue-in-cheek parody of a popular anime series. The original, by someone calling himself “Toasty Frog” (what’s up with the animal nicknames, eh?) was based on Evangelion, and someone else made one for Cowboy Bebop. I figured that I was best suited to take on the Tenchi Muyo OAV series.

    I probably figured wrong, but them’s the breaks.

    When I converted from version to version to version of the various site platforms here, Thumbnail Theater kept breaking. Moving to WordPress completely broke the archive, and for a long time I figured that’s where it could stay: broken and forgotten. Then, a few weeks ago, I decided to resurrect the project in a more useful form, namely as a static page hierarchy within WordPress. The rest, as they say, is history lunacy.

    At any rate, check out the TMTT revival currently in progress. I’ve reposted the six episodes’ worth of the first OAV, with the remaining episodes to follow as I get the chance.

  • Seals Of Violence

    If you look at the NaBloPoMo page, you’ll notice that some of the seals are a bit… forceful in the message they convey. “We here at NaBloPoMo enjoy nothing more than a good aggressive logo, apparently. Oooh, just wait until next year.”

    I can certainly play along with that spirit. Witness the following:

    Perhaps I’m just a total weirdo for finding the Seal Generator so darned amusing. I can live with that…

    (Note: Permission to use, granted. Permission to hotlink, denied. Be nice, kids.)

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