November 30, 2010

Look at this concept for a Twitter shoe

twitter shoe

I would only buy twittershoe if it utilized LA Gear light-up technology to show my latest tweet on an LED marquee, like the New York Stock Exchange

Just kidding, I hate all shoes

November 29, 2010

disney adventures july 1996RIP Leslie Nielsen, I'm pretty sure the issue of Disney Adventures with your face on the cover was the first issue I received after I got a subscription, and I think Spy Hard was my favorite movie until Good Burger came out the following year

 

angelangelangel


November 27, 2010
BATTLE OF THE PORTALS
msnyahooaol


  • I just looked at MSN.com for the first time in a while, and I guess they got rid of the nice colors at the top with a big blue bar. Blagh. The big redesign is a lot nicer on the eyes than it used to be, but some of the pages didn't get the memo. There's too many black words on a white background, and it comes off as sterile and unfriendly. It could definitely use a designer. Also, I still don't get why they don't combine Bing's picture of the day and Windows Live's social features to make a compelling Microsoft Homepage Experience. I miss start.com, which existed briefly in 2006 or thereabouts as a sleeker, more experimental version of My MSN.

  • I thought the Yahoo! frontpage looked neat when they announced it, but they keep changing things around and crippling functionality. You can longer pop out the "apps" simply by hovering over them, you have to click the arrow to "Open Quickview." Adding "apps" is now confusing as hell, since they're now part of the "Yahoo Pulse App Gallery" and may or may not actually be added to your homepage. Also, any sites you add to "My Favorites" just have an ugly star icon, instead of grabbing the site's favicon like it ought to.

  • AOL.com is surprisingly nice. It feels less grid-like than the others, and they do a fairy good job highlighting the stuff from the massive network of sites they've been secretly building up when we weren't looking. The drawback is that you can't really change anything except the picture at the top. We all laughed at AOL for being AOL, but now "Aol." (as it wants to be known as now) wants to garner some respectability, and I think they're taking the right steps.

November 24, 2010
EXCITING NEW DEVELOPMENT IN THE WORLD OF PUBLISHING

phil hartman book


wikipedia

November 23, 2010
dogcatcher

Dogcatcher-elect Alan Stanwood (D-NJ)

November 21, 2010

Vanity URL shorteners are the new internet status symbol

If I had boatloads of ca$h money I'd buy rbbr.cat and maybe bort.ly for rubbercat.net/simpsons

November 21, 2010

Here's a stupid thing inspired by a tweet from somebody whose account is private (so I'm not sure if its kosher for me to quote it), enjoy??

November 18, 2010

NEW GOAL IN LIFE

Obtain these books:

  • Decision Points by George W. Bush, signed by Bill Clinton
  • The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, signed by Jimmy Carter
  • My Life by Bill Clinton, signed by Hillary Clinton
  • Living History by Hillary Clinton, signed by Sarah Palin
  • Going Rogue by Sarah Palin, signed by John McCain
  • All The Best by George H.W. Bush, signed by George W. Bush
  • White House Diary by Jimmy Carter, signed by Barack Obama
November 16, 2010

I hear Windows Phone 7 isn't selling too well. I bet it's because Microsoft forgot to include a mobile version of MS Paint. Here's a mockup I made to show the executives:

MS Paint Mobile for Windows Phone 7

Still waiting to hear back from them...

November 16, 2010
beatles on itunes

THEY CHANGED THE FACE OF HISTORY. NOW THEY'RE ON PLAYSTATION UMD

IN 1964 YOU COULD BUY TWO SONGS FOR 54 CENTS. NOW YOU CAN BUY ONE SONG FOR $1.29

IN 1969 MAN WALKED ON THE MOON. NOW YOU CAN BUY A COMMEMORATIVE POG

November 13, 2010
STRAY DIALOGUE

CANDIDATE

Let's not forget about a little thing called the American people.

November 11, 2010
Garfield & Mallard Fillmore Watch

If you browse on over to Garfield.com, like I do every morning, today's strip is blocked by an apology by Jim Davis:

Dear Friends, Fans, and Veterans:

In what has to be the worst timing ever, the strip that runs in today's paper seems to be making a statement about Veteran's Day. It absolutely, positively has nothing to do with this important day of remembrance.

Regarding today's Garfield comic strip, it was written almost a year ago and I had no idea when writing it that it would appear today -- of all days. I do not use a calendar that lists holidays and other notable days, so when this strip was put in the queue, I had no idea it would run on Veteran's Day. What are the odds? You can bet I'll have a calendar that lists EVERYTHING by my side in the future.

My brother Dave served in Vietnam. My son James is a Marine who has had two tours of duty, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'd have to go a long way to find someone who was more proud and grateful for what our Veterans have done for all of us.

Please accept my sincere apologies for any offense today's Garfield may have created. It was unintentional and regrettable.

Jim Davis

Yes, you read that right: they have more than a year's worth of Garfield strips stockpiled somewhere.

Here's the unintentionally offensive strip in question:

Garfield, 11/11/2010

Wow. Just wow. Now, ordinarily I'd accept Jim Davis's explanation - according to TV, men forget birthdays and anniversaries all the time, after all - but this isn't the first time this has happened. Here's a Mallard Fillmore strip from November 21, 2006:

Mallard Fillmore, 11/21/2006

Why do wisecracking anthropomorphic comic strip animals who share names with U.S. presidents hate our troops????

November 10, 2010
IN THE NEWS

Dead Girl Really Alive
source: The Daily Mirror
November 10, 2010
Mallard Fillmore Watch
Mallard Fillmore, 11/09/2010

Two predictions:

1. This is a temporary story arc that will mirror the cruel indignities suffered by political prisoner Juan Williams at the hands of the insidious P.C. Police

and/or

2. Mallard becomes a BLOGGER for the INTERNET because it's 2004

Mallard Fillmore, 11/10/2010

ding ding ding

Mallard Fillmore, tireless champion of millionaire beltway pundits everywhere

November 9, 2010
MAD AT BLEEPS

I don't remember signing up for the Parents Television Council's mailing list, but I've never bothered unsubscribing because I don't want to be left in the dark on the latest developments in the culture wars. Here's some shocking statistics from the front lines:
Across all networks, use of the bleeped f-word in the 8 o'clock Family Hour increased from 10 instances in 2005 to 111 instances in 2010 - an increase of over 1,000%. And in the 9 o'clock hour, use of the bleeped f-word increased from 1 instance in 2005 to 156 instances in 2010 - that's an increase of 15,500%!

How do they know they were f-words? They were bleeped!

November 8, 2010
   

If you like Simpsons and politics you're in luck! I wrote a guide to the winners & losers in last week's midterm elections and which Simpsons character they most resemble. Please take a gander, I think you will find that my conclusions are ROCK SOLID.
November 7, 2010
pete & pete time warp

wish I knew how to make animated gifs from movies and stuff....
November 4, 2010
Mallard Fillmore Watch

Remember a few months ago, when Mallard Fillmore creator Bruce Tinsley said he was going to touch some butts?
Sunday october 10th cartoon finally came together. I'm goosing the anti-Tea-Party snobs a month b 4 the big dance....

Now, Tinsley's been pushing the "Democrats are ignoring the Tea Party at their own peril / the media is misrepresenting the Tea Party" beat pretty hard. What fresh, new spin would he put on it this time? Let's check the archive...

Breast cancer?!? Where was the ownage? The goosing? The smug rebuke of liberal conventional wisdom? You've really let me down, Bruce...

November 3, 2010

Sure, liberal icon and civil liberties chamipion Russ Feingold may have lost re-election... but at least he got a fun new board game to play!

Sergeant Don Mueller says the package was opened after x-rays revealed there were no explosives. Inside was a letter to Feingold signed by Thomas Jefferson. Mueller says the signature looked like the version on the Declaration of Independence saying the person probably cut and pasted it off the internet.

A board game was included. As to what game it was, the sergeant didn't want to reveal that detail.

source: Wisconsin Radio Network
November 2, 2010
IN THE NEWS

Well, it's Election Day here in America, so let's see what the New York Times has to say ...
They might be funny, but the late-night TV hosts are just as partisan in their jokes as the politicians they make fun of.
Oh jeez, here we go...
President Obama has been the biggest target for all four comedians, coming in for a combined 309 darts from Jan. 1 to Sept. 6. But Mr. Stewart, left, and Mr. Letterman aimed 58 percent of their jokes at the Republicans,
FIFTY-EIGHT PERCENT OF THEIR JOKES WERE AT THE EXPENSE OF ONE OF THE TWO MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES !!!

This is just completely unacceptable. All comedy shows should have someone on staff counting the number of jokes to make sure they're slamming one side exactly as hard as the other, or else the show should be cancelled.

The most important thing is to make sure nobody feels slighted, which is the number one rule of comedy. The best political comedy is the kind that's wishy-washy and never takes any stances. A comedian should take great pains to ensure s/he is objective, for some reason.

Want to tell a hilarious witch joke about Christine O'Donnell? Well you'd better have a good joke about Blanche Lincoln ready, such as... uh... well... that's she's really old or something, I'm assuming? I mean, what kind of parent names their kid "Blanche?" That is such a grandma name, am I right folks? No offense to any grandmothers out there, of course.

while two-thirds of Mr. Leno's subjects were Democrats.
OK, this surprised me a little. If there's anyone who'd actually adhere to a meticulously-calculated Joke Quota to avoid the semblance of bias, I'd have figured it'd be Jay Leno.
Mr. Fallon, right, made fun of liberals 78 percent of the time.
I know what you're thinking: Jimmy Fallon is an arch-conservative??? I haven't watched his show in a long time, but I'm pretty sure his monologue is still only three jokes long. And since monologues focus on national news, you can bet your sweet bippy that one of those three jokes is going to involve the current president (D-USA), since he's the biggest newsmaker. It's different from Leno's show, where the monologue is the main attraction and lasts about 15 minutes. Letterman's monologue is slightly shorter, and Stewart's show is basically all politics. So I think including Jimmy here is a bit like taking a single Garfield comic and comparing it to a year's worth of Cathy (See?? In today's strip, 100% of the jokes were about lasagna!).
Among the sample jokes cited in the study: "The economy is so bad, Al Gore had to give himself a massage." (Mr. Leno); "George W. Bush is writing a book ... It's all part of his war on literacy." (Mr. Letterman); "Glenn Beck and his magic erasable truth board." (Mr. Stewart).
As I read this paragraph, horns.aiff played in my mind. With all the hubbub about THE LATE NIGHT WARS, we often forget just how groan-worthy their jokes are. Also I'm reasonably certain the example joke for Jon Stewart is part of a longer joke, unless I missed a really conceptual Daily Show where he just sat there spouting non-sequitur sentence fragments.
November 1, 2010

Hey, my Simpsons fansite's page about the Simpsons Movie DVD somehow made the Onion's A.V. Club, in an Inventory of "25 1/2 gimmicky DVD commentary tracks" as the 1/2!

25 1/2. Wish-fulfillment commentary, The Simpsons Movie
What could've turned out to be the greatest series of commentary tracks ever turned out to be an elaborate joke from a website that seems to have a love/hate relationship with The Simpsons. (Which in the Simpsons universe, means the site's writers used to love it, and now hate it.) The imaginary "ultimate collector's DVD" of The Simpsons Movie contains no fewer than eight commentary tracks, ranging from the expected cast track to commentaries from Rupert Murdoch, "Internet Nerds," and "Disgruntled Ex-Staffers Who Were Not Asked To Participate." There's even an idea so dumb it might work: an "Illustrated Commentary" in which Matt Groening and his team sketch over the movie as it's happening. Alas, the set and its many commentaries were just fanfic; in spite of the many Internet references from people passing this information around as gospel, it doesn't actually exist.
This is a much more amicable description than JoBlo.com's writeup, where the writer got all mad at me because he fell for my "not very funny" joke. Although, for the record, I didn't come up with the idea for "Illustrated Commentary," they've been a feature of many a Simpsons DVD. You'd think a site that writes about audio commentaries a lot would know that!

(thanks to twitterdude @robbiegoodwin for notifying me, since I doubt I would've found that on my own)