Category: Linkage

  • I like my sea kittens battered and fried.

    In case you were wondering if PETA have completely lost their collective freaking mind, please permit me to present Exhibit #45,829-A, the Sea Kittens.

    People don’t seem to like fish.

    That depends upon how they’re prepared, I suppose.

    Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone.

    So… Nature has a PR team? Well now. Most of the marketing & PR types I’ve ever known like to hang out at sushi bars, which seems like a major conflict of interests in this case, doesn’t it?

    (And: Britney Spears? Really? You guys couldn’t even try to keep this idiocy timely in some fashion?)

    …We’re going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it’s time for a serious image makeover.

    I have a clue for the folks at PETA: Small stupid scaly animals do not care about their “image.”

    (On another note, I know people who put metal into their heads for decorative purposes, so there goes that part of their argument.)

    And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

    Many people. Some call them… fishermen.

    Right. Like calling a fish by some cutesy name (let alone a creepy attempt at anthropomorphism) is going to eliminate from all humanity the urge to hook, net, gut and deep-fry those tasty critters. May I invite y’all to rejoin this little thing we call, “Reality”?

    Idiots.

  • Mary Sue Gets A Dragon, and other great stories

    Everyone’s going to link to this, and so am I. Check out Mighty God King Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits, Part One and Part Two.

    I’ll be honest: I read and loved (or at least liked) quite a few of the books/series that he’s poking fun at. I laughed my damned fool head off nonetheless. Relax, it’s funny. (I’ll add a language warning, though. The F-word makes an appearance, and so on.)

    There’s one modern ringer at the tail end of Part Two. I won’t spoil the surprise, but consider yourself fairly warned.

    EDIT: Well, naturally the site goes down within hours of this post going up. That’ll teach me to, you know, post stuff in my journal. Le sigh.

  • What’s another $38bil between friends?

    Man, I hate posting about current events. I keep up on them, mind you. I just don’t post about them very often, mainly because I don’t want to get into arguments with strangers on the Internet. I also don’t want to get into argument with friends on the Internet, come to think on it.

    With that said, I think I’ll take Two Lumps’ James L Grant’s recent post seriously. Here’s my humble rendition:

    In case you’re wondering whether the men in suits we’re “bailing out” with fantastic amounts of money that’s being devalued by the minute are doing their utmost to set things right again, the answer would appear not only to be NO but also HELL NO. First AIG parties like there’s no tomorrow on our collective dime, then they hit up the Fed for more money. Hell, guys, all you had to do was not blow your wad to begin with! Let’s hear it for rewarding irresponsible behaviour!

    I’m not (yet) in the doom-and-gloom camp, but this is the sort of thing that causes me to alternately weep for the future and froth with rage at the worlds of high finance and politics.

    For more of the frothing, I recommend reading Mr. Grant’s aforementioned post. Be warned that strong language awaits. I kind of agree with this bit, though:

    “I say we need to have these executives hauled into the streets like mad dogs and executed on national television.

    “All those in favor?”

    Aye.

  • Newfangled Contraptions

    I’ve been… busy. Making contraptions, that is. Intermittently. After work, mostly.

    Allow me to show you my bizarre creations, won’t you? Note that the only contraptions I’ve bothered to save are those which satisfy some “above and beyond” quirk of mine. For instance: Don’t Stop completes the goal in mere seconds, but the fun part is watching it climb the hill and throw itself off the side. Four Plus 1 is an exercise in very, very slowly removing all four of the accessible orange balls. As with all of my creations, the trick is to click the “back” button when prompted as the goal is reached.

    For her part, Erica managed to get three of them in the same challenge with her Push and Roll. That’s right, I hooked my darling daughter on Fantastic Contraption. You know what? She’s not doing too badly. Her solution for “Mission To Mars,” Chain Reaction, elicited a forehead slap from me. “Why didn’t I think of that?” (My solution to that puzzle didn’t warrant posterity, I assure you.) Her Push-Over is a much more creative contraption to solve “U-Turn” than what I’ve done so far, too. (I have an idea, I just haven’t been able to make it work yet. Argh.) Erica showed promise right from the start with her straightforward yet amusing LastMinuteSave.

    Other contraptions of note that I’ve cobbled together include Brick Bridge, Goal & Clear, Latch & Chain, Tilt & Go and the Humpmobile. I’m probably not done yet, either…

  • Not Incredible, Not A Machine

    The Fantastic Contraption, a Flash-based device-building game, is a suitable facsimile of The Incredible Machine. It’s good enough for my purposes, anyway. I spent some time building machines that achieve the goal plus a bit of something extra for fun. Please, allow me to demonstrate (in some cases the full amusement value requires clicking the “Back” button once the challenge is technically completed):

    • Kick The Can – A nudge and a bridge. I could’ve just flung the ball straight over, but what’s the fun in that?
    • Carrion Luggage – Everything must go! Well, everything in my machine’s path…
    • The Ball, Too – Who says you can’t take it with you? This one took more time than you might think, but c’mon. I had to do it!
    • The Ball, Also – I couldn’t leave it alone. I mean, it was just perching there. Mockingly, I might add. If I was crazy.
    • Roomba Falling – Once I got onto the “orange ball” kick, I couldn’t just take the easiest way out of this challenge.
    • Backflipper – Not only did I clear all of the orange balls in the path, I even collected four of them within the build area, leaving none on the field elsewhere. Hah!

    There may be more to come, or I may grow bored before getting a chance to stretch my brain further. Still, I hope you enjoy my silly contraptions. What can you come up with?

  • Touched By An Atheist

    Taking up a worthy challenge, I present George Carlin on Mad TV in, “Touched By An Atheist.”

    (The Python-esque disclaimers are just icing on the cake.)