Friday, July 21, 2006

Headlines for Friday 7-21-06

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Thursday Thirteen #3

YTMND, an initialism for "You're The Man Now Dog!", is a website community that is centered around the creation of hosted web pages featuring a juxtaposition of a single image or a simple slideshow, which can be animated and/or tiled, along with optional large zooming text, and a looping sound file. Most of these images are created or edited by users. Most YTMNDs are meant to expose or reflect the more inane facets of pop culture.

You're the Man Now Dog

Blue Ball Machine (Classic GIF Returned) My favorite. Addictively amusing to stare at... for hours. You've been warned!

Batman: ualuealuealeuale I am not sure what the name means but it probably translates into "Batman tards out"

Picard Song Patrick Stewart has such a rhythmic delivery

Paris Hilton Doesn't Change Facial Expressions Clever..just as the name implies.

Tom Cruise Kills Oprah

Popular YTMND themes take on a life of their own. More from Wiki:

"YTMND features many memes and memetics as a result of intertextuality; where one YTMND makes a reference to another. Series of these similar YTMNDs are referred to as "fads." For example, one YTMND fad, "What is Love?", is based on a scene from Saturday Night Live paired with a repeating loop of Haddaway's What is Love?. Following that, permutations of that page were created, including What is NES?, the same scene set to 8-bit graphics and music. Fads can also be mixed with other fads. One example includes when the "What is Love?" fad was mixed with the "Tiger Handheld" fad to create What is Tiger?, lampooning the Tiger Handheld."

Coincidentally one of my favorites is a member of this particular fad.

What is TNG? A Night at the Roddenberry The command crew is ready!

Crazy telemarketer call NSFW A moonbat calls a telemarketer and comes completely unhinged calling him a murderer, a hater and life destroyer. She even calls him a rapist. Methinks she needs her dosage adjusted. Loop is 8 minutes long and language makes it Not Safe For Work.

Ninja Works It Yeah he does. Move over Hammer.

Cosby Bebop A NEW favorite! This is much better if you a) Have ever seen COWBOY BEBOP and b) like TANK! by the Seatbelts. BTW the words Cos is saying are "Funky Man"

Willy Wonka's Acid Trip

Willy is having visions of some of them most popular YTMND fads

The YTMND community has it's share of controversy and conflict. One such conflict is with the Church of Scientology. More from Wiki:

On June 10, 2006, a cease and desist form was sent to Max Goldberg by lawyers of the Church of Scientology, claiming that several Scientology based sites had infringed on their copyrights to some Scientology material. In response, Goldberg replied to the lawyer that the cease and desist form was "completely groundless" and he wouldn't be deleting any Scientologist sites. Days later, a Scientology page section had appeared on the front page along with a disclaimer on the bottom stating the following: "This website is in no way affiliated, sponsored or owned by the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, SeaOrg, Dianetics, volcanos or aliens of any sort. We are, however, sponsored by Citizens for the Release of Xenu, a not-for-sanity organization." The Scientology section has since been removed, but the disclaimer at the bottom still remains. According to Max Goldberg, there haven't been any recent updates regarding the potential lawsuit.

The Un-Funny Truth About Scientology

Not fun like most of the others but a very sobering look at the "church" so many celebrities call home.

Vader Sings the Hits

And to finish up we have Darth Vader singing the Classics!

From the main YTMND site you can see the latest, highest rated or most viewed YTMNDs made. There are hundreds if not thousands of YTMNDs. As you can see most are funny, some are not and others, which I have not sampled, contain "adult" content. But fear not. From the main YTMND page, links to questionable or NSFW pages have a warning page which tells you the content may not be suitable and has you verify if you really want to see it.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Technorati tag: Thursday Thirteen

Monday, July 17, 2006

Headlines for Monday 7-17-06

'Pirates' becomes year's top-grossing film
Quite an accomplishment for a film rated 'Arrrrh'

Mel Gibson donation will help build houses in Mexico
Residents will still sneak into U.S. to buy furniture

In-home eating rules may improve teens' diet
Parents must first figure out how to get teens to eat in-home

Food Network Star Becomes Daytime Hostess
Hostess Ding Dong, Hostess Ho Ho, Hostess Twinkie...

Hispanics to Play Pivotal Election Role
Replacing Blacks as the Democratic oppressed minority of choice

Study suggests liver risk from Tylenol
Details are sketchy but the Bayer-Advil Pharmaceutical Institute promises further study

Race, weight, smoking tied to menopause symptoms
Shockingly smoking menopausal woman of all races and weight have symptoms

Rich get more sleep; blacks and men get less
All of a sudden Night Basketball makes sense

New tour of Marie-Antoinette's quarters at Versailles
Take in the magnificent view along the "Let Them Eat Cake Walk"

Poll: Americans Want Democrats in Power
Highly scientific study finds 8 out of 5 Democrats surveyed want Democrats to win honestly in November

That's it for Headlines today. Remember to visit the usual suspects for more "headliney goodness"!
basil at basil's blog
Lyn at Bloggin Outloud

Linky Business
Blogs of Summer Open Post & Trackbacks at Bloggin Outloud
Technorati tag: Humor Headlines

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Superman Returns: Questions I Have

*** WARNING. By the nature of the question, this post contains spoiler information. Do not read if you have not seen the movie and plan to. ***

Question: Is it just me or did the makers of Superman Returns take the iconic "Big Blue Boy Scout" and turn him into the World's Mightiest Deadbeat Dad?

And just how old is the boy? Obviously Superman didn't know he existed. So he wasn't born when Superman left. Lois couldn't have even been showing else Superman would have known and my guess woulld have put off his trip. So at the oldest the boy had to be less than five years old. Four year olds don't attend school that teach reading and gym.

Did anyone else see this as more of a chick flick than an action adventure film? Sure there were lines that paid homage to the first Chris Reeve film but essentially the movie was "Lois Lane's Baby's Daddy". He returned. He saved some people. He had his heart broken by Lois who couldn't commit to Richard (but continues to lead him on without marrying him). Gets his butt severly kicked by Luthor's henchmen (who unsatisfyingly expire without Superman getting payback) and to top it off he almost dies. Some return.

As a side note I may have to add Kate Bosworth to my list 13 Famous Women Who Could Walk Barefoot Over My Face. As much film time as her bare feet got in Superman Returns you'd think Quentin Tarantino had shot it.

Just the Way My Mind Works

True story.
Thirty one years ago I was privileged to have participated in the Upward Bound program which took inner city youth to a prestigious prep school for six weeks in the summer. The purpose was to help us improve our math and reading skills thereby increasing our chances of getting into college. My participation and subsequent post testing landed me a scholarship to attend the boarding school full time starting as a sophomore. The rest they say is history. But during the two summers I attended Upward Bound I made some lasting friendships.

Well today while I was out doing my church rounds I ran into a fellow UB student. The conversion went something like this (I've omitted the names for obvious reasons)

TD: Hey Dane how you doin'?
DB: Great! How long has it been?
TD: Years. Say whatever happened to the guy what's his name? You know who I'm talking about.
DB: Short, big afro, always flirting with the girls, married my sister and had three kids, divorced and moved away?
TD: Yeah that's the one.
DB: He came back to Ohio and then passed away a three years ago.
TD: Oh. What about that big girl who wanted to do stand up comedy?
DB: Oh I ran into her a couple years ago. She did do an open mike night once. She passed away shortly after that.
TD: What about that girl you dated right out of high school?
DB: I saw her last year. She had some health issues and died shortly after I saw her.

He got this strange look on his face and told me he had to go. I didn't think much of it until I was driving away. It seems that everyone from UB (except my sisters) that I have run into during the past three years have all died. And I just ran into him. Coincidence? Yeah probably. But if he kicks the bucket then I will have proof positive that I am the Angel of Death.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Of Cabbages and Kings

Some things of no particular importance.

First, we men used to have a saying that if you missed your period you were in trouble. We men that were COBOL programmers. COBOL is a language full of divisions, sections, statements paragraphs, all having to end with a period. If you forgot the period, the compiler would upchuck your code all over your printer. Then you would scour the program listing trying to find your problem and there it was, you missed your period.

I said all that to say this; I have fixed the "folding" function in my Blogger template. The culprit; a left curly bracket. The CSS wasn't properly closed with a right curly bracket And I kept scanning over it because there was a left curly bracket in it's place. Finally through patience, diligence and an editor that color codes style sheet elements, making errors stick out like Michael Moore in a Chippendale dance line. So I fixed it and all is right with the world.

Which brings me to point two. Said editor is the CoffeeCup HTML Editor 2006. A feature rich editor that among other things, displays CSS elements in a hot pink. I am an official CoffeeCup Ambassador as evidence by the HUGE mucking banner in my sidebar. I have been using CoffeeCup for about six years on web pages. I recently discovered that is is great for testing Blogger template changes. Free trial and great price with lifetime updates. Check them out.

Point three; Phase Two of my vacation begins in August when I head over to Indianapolis for GENCON. It is the largest game convention of the year and promises to be a lot of fun. I will be posting from there which will include hosting a catagory of The Blogs of Summer

Nobody on the Road, Nobody on the Beach...

Coming Soon

Lyn at Bloggin Outloud has this idea. He wants to honor the best Blogs of Summer. Some of us have decided to help him before the idea dies of loneliness in his head. (Hey I said I stole thirteen ideas from him, I didn't say he had them all at once.) So stay tuned for more details as they develop.

Technorati tag: Blogs of Summer

I Pity the Fool Who Messes With Mr. T

T.V. action star Mr. T has shed all of his signature gold bling after an epiphany in post-Katrina New Orleans. And he is very vocal with his opinion about some fellow celebrities' motivation in showing up in Louisiana.

'As a spiritual man, I felt it would be a sin against my God for me to wear all that gold again because I spent a lot of time with the less fortunate,' the actor said Thursday at the Television Critics Association's summer meeting.

'I saw some, I call it `sorry celebrities.' They'll go down there and hook up with the people to take a photo-op. I said, `How disgusting.' If you're not going to go down there with a check and a hammer and a nail to help the people, don't go down there.'

Celebrities aren't the only photo-op whores taking advantage of Katrina. There were many political figures from both sides of the aisle that zoomed in for a Kodak moment. I may not think much of Mr. T's acting ability but I can't fault him using his star status to actually help out those less fortunate. Especially when he calls out all the hypocrites.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Thursday Thirteen #2

NOTICE: The link from Thursday Thirteen for some reason dumps here. Click on this link to get to my current T13 list.

Well I had an actual Thursday Thirteen list of things relevant to who I, Dane Bramage truly am. But then I noticed that today is the thirteenth of July, making it a Thursday Thirteen Squared. So in honor of this auspicious occasion, I have decided to give to you a list of thirteen lists of thirteen.

Now I don't plan to actually do all these lists, in fact I probably won't do most of them. (You will understand when you read them). But I will do some of them. At first I was going to make you guess which ones I would do but last week's attempt at soliciting guesses when over like a depleted uranium zeppelin. So I will simply state that I plan to publish the last four lists during the next four weeks (in no particular order).

Why? because in a fit of inspiration I have already done them. And since it is not Thursday Fifty Two you will have to wait.

I would also like to petition the TT group to consider this: The next time a Thursday is the Thirteenth, Our list should contain 169 items. If you start now you will have no trouble coming up with 169 list items by Thursday September 13, 2007.

	Dane Bramage's List of 13 Lists of 13
1	13 Famous Women Who Could Walk Barefoot Over My Face
2	13 Liberal Democrats I respect and admire(still needs 13 names)
3	13 Ideas I Have Shamelessly Stolen from Lyn at Bloggin Outloud
4	13 Amusement Park Roller Coasters that Almost Made Me Puke
5	13 Tortures for Woman Whom I've Dated, Because I'm Not Bitter
6	13 Liberals that Almost Made Me Puke
7	13 Elements from the Periodic Table That I Like
8	13 Reasons Why Stupid People Should Be Removed from the Gene Pool
9	13 Stupid People Who Should Be Removed From the Gene Pool
10	13 Favorite YTMNDs
11	13 States I have visited
12	13 Favorite Comic book heroes
13	13 Movies that have influenced me

UPDATE to Thursday Thirteen #1

Speaking of depleted uranium zeppelins, here's the answer to which of last weeks 13 statements were false. My hint was that the number of false statements was an odd non-prime number. The only odd non-primes between 1 and 13 are 1 and 9. Since Your Name Here correctly identified 5 true statements, that left only 8 questionable ones. Eliminating 9, that meant that only 1 statement was false. It was the first statement. My middle name is not really Dane.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

christen

Raggedy

carmen

Andrew

Lisa

Write From Karen

DayByDay4-2Day

Kailani

Barb

Lisa

nodoodahs

(leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Technorati tag: Thursday Thirteen

UPDATE! I don't know how it happened but somehow the link from the T13 site leads here instead of my current T13. If you get a chance, check out My 13 Favorite YTMNDs. You'll be glad you did.

Monday, July 10, 2006

The Platypus Society : Yet Even More Old Proverbs Explained

Looks like the Pltypus Society is at it again. Yet Even More Old Proverbs Explained has a fresh batch of old proverbs. Did you know the meaning behind this old proverb?

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
Recognized Meaning: Do not trust enemies who bring you presents—they could very well be playing a trick.
Alternate Meaning: Greeks are notorious for giving crappy gifts

Well there you have it. Go ant tell them at The Platypus Society that you want to see this as a regular feature!