Funny Blog of the Day

For a couple laughs, check out Things Younger Than John McCain. Things like Alaska, Barack Obama's parents, the Hindenburg Disaster, Spam ... just to name a few.

"Call Me" by Blondie

David Pogue's blog had a link to a site that will show you what the #1 song was on any day, as recorded by Billboard magazine. It's a perfect way to find out what your special "birth song" is.

For me ... it's "Call Me" by Blondie. Ouch.

Mary's birth song is "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" by Johnny Mathis & Deniece Williams.

My dad's is "The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart)" by Percy Faith.

My mom's is "You Belong to Me" by Jo Stafford.

My sister's is "Ebony and Ivory" by Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder.

What's your birth song?

What is this woman holding?

Holy cow. Check out the woman on the right. I think that's 6 recorders she's holding in her hands. That's got to create some killer feedback.

Awesome. Just Awesome.

You owe it to yourself to take 4 minutes from your day and watch this YouTube video.



It's what YouTube is for.

Um ... moo?

Every so often a good headline catches your eye. Like "Zoo beefs up tiger exhibit" in today's Tribune.

For some reason I don't think they're adding cows to it. That seems like it would be a bad idea.

The T-Town Gnome

If you like garden gnomes travelling around the world (and who doesn't?) then you'll appreciate knowing that Tacoma has its very own travelling gnome who travels to all the cool landmarks in town.

Check him out at tacomagnome.blogspot.com.

Who loves Law and Order?

Chickens do Law and Order.



If you like Law and Order, you'll like this short. Gotta love Robot Chicken (although Season 3 has not been great so far).

Daily Kos picks up Lefties for Obama!

My pet project LeftiesforObama.com got a jolt of traffic earlier this week when a lefty website called the Daily Kos (a very significant lefty website I should say) linked to LeftiesforObama.com and had some good fun extending the joke.

Think of a joke, make a logo, and throw up a poorly designed html table and who knows what kind of traffic you'll get out of it.

The internet is a weird, weird place.

Now if I can just get Obama to call me and thank me for bringing him the left-handed vote ... I'd even run the NEA for him if he asked.

Bob Newhart in Tacoma

Journeyed this evening to Bob Newhart down at the Pantages.

First, it's been awhile since I've been to a sell-out at the Pantages, so that was particularly cool.

Second, there was a pretty great moment of Tacoma pride. A large swing band played a few numbers before Bob Newhart came out. After their first little ditty, the band leader made the colossal mistake of telling the audience, "It's great to be here in Seattle." All 1,169 people in the audience shouted back in something close to unison: "Tacoma!" Awesome.

Third, Bob himself was good fun. I've listened to a number of his routines with my dad on car trips and enjoy his comedy. Perhaps the loudest and longest laugh came when he was complaining about country-western music. He told people he didn't want to denigrate country-western music, and then "for those of you who like country-western, 'denigrate' means to put down or make fun of ..."

I can already see that it's not as funny here, but that's OK. Fun night at the theater. Things seem to be running very well down there these days. I'm officially impressed.

On the funnies

Caution: Erik is about to get all bothered about a relatively unimportant topic.

Now that you're warned, let's talk about the comics in the paper.

Author Johnny Hart died recently, whose B.C. comic was rather tired (although it hasn't shown nearly the kind of wear as the Family Circus or Blondie). According to the Editor's blog at the Tribune:

This week Creators Syndicate, which distributes “B.C.,” announced its plans for the continuation of the strip. Hart’s family has selected six weeks of his favorite strips that will run until early July. Afterwards, Hart’s daughter Perri Hart, will continue the strip on a regular basis.

The thing is--and here's that high horse moment you've been waiting for--you wouldn't know that Johnny Hart wrote BC if you read the Tribune. Actually, that's true of at least one other paper I've read. For some reason the authorship of daily comics is left off. So the change from Johnny to Perri Hart won't really be noticed because no one will know.

Why don't cartoonists get bylines? I would think that columnists and reporters would get pretty darn mad if their name suddenly stopped being attached to their work. Shouldn't cartoonists too?

End of random diatribe.

Weirdest Quote Ever

"I snorted my dad."

So Keith Richards mixed his dad's ashes with his cocaine and snorted it. Apparently the mixture "went down pretty well."

Eww. Eww eww eww eww eww.

I'm all for spending time with the family, but playing board games with my dad does us just fine.

Department of Justice

I'm not talking about the scandals we're getting out of the DOJ Office under Gonzales. But an odd story here in town. Apparently a bunch of barbers are getting investigated for price fixing their military hair cuts (at a whopping $7.00).

The reasoning seems to be that one barber distributed notice that rates would be going up and posted it at other barbers, I guess. It's a bizarre story and one where it seems likely that small business owners are getting investigated for no good reason.

But it's worth a read to see what the owners are having to go through. (On the other hand, if the owners actually did collude to fix the price of their military hair cuts, then I say that's absolutely hilarious that barbers are copying some of the worst traits from giant corporations. Well done, guys!).

Welcome Visitors

So my entry on the conservative cactus got picked up by boingboing.net today, apparently thanks to Mr. Kevin Freitas.

It would appear that many others thought it was amusing, seeing that 3200 people have visited my blog since noon today. (Yesterday I welcomed about 100 visitors).

So to all those people who visited me today for the first time: If you like book and movie reviews, theater, and have an affection for Tacoma, WA, stick around! Other than that, I'm not sure I have too much to offer you unless you want to hear my latest diatribe on why we should nationalize railroads or force taxis to be hybrids.

Man, too bad I don't have ads...

Conservapedia's Tree Dwelling Octopus

Another blogger suggests that Conservapedia is a hoax designed to make conservatives look bad. He cites this entry, for the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, which supposedly can be found on the Olympic Peninsula.

From the text:

Their habitat lies on the eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30-33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are Amphibian, spending only their earliest life stages and mating seasons in their aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and their well designed skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming dried out for prolonged periods of time. (Citation Needed)

You have to cite that? Really? The same blogger also pointed to the Kangaroo entry, which is nearly just as bad as the cactus entry.

Like all modern animals, modern kangaroos originated in the Middle East^[1] and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood... After the Flood, kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land^[2] -- as Australia was still for a time connected to the Middle East before the supercontinent of Pangea broke apart -- or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters^[2].

Can this site be real? I doubt conservapedia as a whole is a hoax. Most likely it has been infiltrated by people who believe the idea is so outlandish to begin with that they have added their own entries that drive the site to the absurd. But the full scope of the site, makes me think it is for real.

Chalk that up to another fun fact for the day: kangaroos rafted to Australia on mats. Them marsupials were sure dedicated to getting there.

The Politics of the Cactus

Andrew Sullivan, whom I laud pretty frequently on this blog, linked yesterday to a website that is absolutely, incredibly hilarious.

It's called conservapedia.com, and it is what it sounds like, a "conservative" wikipedia. According to the site, it wants to give an alternative to the liberal bias of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a liberal bias, you ask? Naturally. Here's a great entry from the "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia page."

For example, even though most Americans reject the theory of evolution,^[6] Wikipedia editors commenting on the topic are nearly 100% pro-evolution.

Uh huh. I had a great time scrolling through conservapedia and I learned a lot.

Did you know, for example, that "Big Oil has also proven valuable in funding independant [sic] scientists who are able to dispute the propaganda behind Global warming without worrying about losing their government or academic funding due to liberal reprisals."

Or did you know that only Christians have "faith." No foolin, it actually says that.

But my favorite entry is on the cactus. I don't know how I stumbled on to this entry, but it is truly wonderful. I'll give you the first couple paragraphs.

The secularist view of the Cactaceae is that they are roughly two million years old, and that they have evolved exclusively in the new world. This view fails to explain, however, how it is that the Opuntia genus is native to the island of Opus, near Greece. Cacti are known for their high content of alkaloids, and have often been used in the sacramental rights of the Native Americans. Because of this, the early Catholic missionaries in the west thought the plants to be the work of Satan, and this is perhaps a preferable view to that of materialistic evolution since it is difficult to imagine how something like mescaline could have evolved by natural selection. Besides that, the psychoactive content of many cacti have inspired the writings of such ungodly men as Aldous Huxley and Albert Hoffman.

Several species of cactus are now endangered in the west due to "poaching" by collectors and invasive species. But, since Genesis suggests that man has been given dominion over all of the earth, the environmentalist concerns on this note are entirely inappropriate. It may also be that environmentalists, in addition to flauting the Word of God, are merely concerned about the effects that declining cactus populations will have on their supply of mescaline.

Obviously, going to conservapedia is a place to learn valuable stuff.

I have been reading Andrew Sullivan for a good long time now and I have a great deal of respect for him, most especially his attempts to separate conservatism from fundamentalism. (I'm currently reading his "The Conservative Soul" which makes some impassioned arguments for a conservatism founded on doubt and skepticism.) Websites like conservapedia.com show how much work he is going to have separating a true conservative movement from the fundamentalist Christian base.

No wonder the New York Times is reporting that fundamentalists like Falwell and Robertson and having a hard time finding a candidate to support. How many people can have an honest shot at the Presidency who believe that environmentalists only want to save cactuses to keep their mescaline supply stable?

Dear Reader

Hello friends and family. Perhaps you have noticed that my blogging has dropped off dramatically? I apologize that this is so.

But! You should know that it is all for a good cause, as I am working diligently and expediently on the Horatio Theater so that we can be up and running with cool plays. Like Molly Sweeney. And Topdog/Underdog (for which, by the way, I am interested in finding a director).

So a lot of that blogging time I used to have has been taken up by moe pressing matters. Not to mention time to watch movies, too. I had hoped to see both Iwo Jima and The Departed this weekend. But alas.

Anyway, since my blogging will be more sporadic, I will give you a special treat. Here is the raid on the Death Star in Star Wars, Episode IV, re-enacted entirely with hands. Really, hands.

Enjoy.

Federal Way vs. 'Truth'

I think the Tribune's editorial on the controversy about teaching global warming, and using 'An Inconvenient Truth' to do it, is well done. It's a pretty sane response that gets toward what appears to be the crux of the issue.

I thought this bit from the original article was pretty funny:

None of the three – Barney, Larson and Charlie Hoff – has seen the film.

“I know it’s a controversial movie, even though I haven’t seen it,” Larson said.

Having been very skeptical of the film, I was surprised while watching it to find how very uncontroversial it was. I think someone should mail them a DVD.

To see the effects of climate change locally, visit Exit133 for the satire piece today.

A festivus for the rest of us

That's awesome ... Tacoma's very own Festivus Pole down by the Christmas Tree and Menorah. See more at Exit133.

Happy Thursday

Last week GritCity and Exit133 both linked to an adorable video of pandas playing in the snow. It had nothing to do with Friday, but it was a good YouTube selection for sheer randomness and fun.

For my turn to post a video that has nothing to do with anything, here is Director Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine ... ) assembling a Rubik's Cube in two minutes ... with his feet. Enjoy.

Best laugh of the day

Thank you, Joe, for writing this great line:

Inspired by the success of Girls Gone Wild, Congress has decided to put out a monthly scandal, which they keep sending out even after we've told them we don't want them.

You can see more of Joe's pre-election jitters on his blog.