My latest ear- (and eye-) worm!

[warning: the video and song are NSFW!]

For the longest time, I've loved fantasy books, but hated fantasy movies, because the special effects were so cheesy. Then LOTR came and changed everything. Now fantasy movies are a dime a dozen, and all too many are low of story and high on special effects (*cough*StarWarsEpI-IIi*cough*). At the same time, I enjoyed what could be considered sci-fi movies, but never really did get into the books. ... but I *do* know the name Ray Bradbury.

And after listening to and watching this video over and over and over and over again...



... I might want to pick up a book or three from this list :) I *have* listened to an unfortunately abridged audiobook of Fahrenheit 451: does that count for anything? :p

In the meantime, I have yet to hit the hay (it's now 11:30am... I stumbled upon this song over 2 hours ago, when I made the mistake of checking twitter before turning in for the day... it's all Neil Gaiman's fault!!) because I keep listening to this song over and over and over... if Rachel Bloom ever makes an MP3 available, it is getting downloaded faster than you can say F--k me, Ray Bradbury!!

What's this Phrase?

I saw this on Patricia's Subjective Soup blog and decided not just to take a crack at it, but to publish my effort too :)

1. 26 L. of the A.
2. 88 P. K.
3. 18 H. on a G. C.
4. 4 Q. in a G.
5. 13 S. on the A. F.
6. 7 W. of the W.
7. 24 H. in a D.
8. 9 D. in a S. S. N.

9. 99 R. B.

I have easily identified 6 out of 8 so far, while the first two still have me stumped for the moment (will provide answers in the comments below)... and in case you were keeping track, #9 is one I added on myself. Kinda lame, I know :p

If you are also playing along, drop by the comments with a link to your post, k?

Have a great weekend!

should I be flattered? can those who've faced this pls weigh in?

It's finally happened to me.

I just found that one of my posts from Life After Work has been reproduced on someone else's blog! See MY POST, then see THE IMITATOR! Apart from a few words that have been changed/substituted (and very poorly), it's all mine!!

I intended to leave a comment calling the author out on this, and asking for an immediate takedown of the post. But I would need to get an OpenID or LiveJournal account first. Ugh.

I started to lodge a complaint with LiveJournal, but felt the default language/steps I am guided through to report intellectual property / copyright violation rather drastic so I canceled the process... and yet... this IS a case of copyright violation, isn't it?

What should I do, and how?
I remember reading of things like this happening to other bloggers, but am not up for perusing the 'net for solutions right now... so if you're among those who have had this happen to you, please weigh in.. your input is appreciated!

umm... oops?

(Hat Tip to Edenza)

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

it's kapgar's fault...

... that my neighbours might think I'm crazy. I was laughing out loud at 6:45am! Many times!!

Here's what started it:


Then I moved to the Food Court version:


"He's the most singingest janitor I've ever seen!"


So what's this all about? These two are among the nearly 100 "missions" carried out by Improv Everythere -- with a tagline of We Cause Scenes, you will find they are not limited to musicals - they've had a 5-minute Frozen Grand Central Station, and hold an annual No Pants Subway Ride, for example. While usually occurring only in the New York area, there was a North America tour of the mp3 experiment (see Toronto & Chicago editions).

Very cool.

Here's another. I roared with laughter at around the 1:00 mark (getting pulled by the "dog") and 1:30 mark (walking a whole bunch of them!). Be prepared!


Hope this got ya laughing!

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Pssst! Spread the Word!!

. . . . . .

I have three great causes I'd like to do my small part in spreading the word about. Please read on!!

First: Help a PhD student!

Who: Adam at ah ok lah and Adam Ok Dot Net
What: needs A LOT of respondents to answer his survey thus providing vital and valuable information for his PhD research looking at consumers' perception of blogs.
Where: click on the link at the top of his My Research Methodology post
What's in it for you: for every survey completed, Adam donates 50p to Cancer Research UK. He also has a £100 cash prize and some amazon.com certificates to give away to lucky respondents.

Adam is one of my early blog buddies, and I really like that he's pursuing an advanced degree studying the blogosphere and its perceptions. You don't have to be a blogger to help -- you just need to have been reading blogs for more than a year. So please swing by and answer his questionnaire, k?

Next: Help purse-less students in Springfield!

Who: MochaMomma
What: Calling for your unused / no longer used small (8.5" x 11" max) purses (a.k.a. handbags), which will be sold cheap to female students who can't afford / find purses of a size that's allowed in her school.
Where: Read more about it at One Small Thing. One Small Purse (its GENIUS tinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/tinypurse)
What's in it for you: you get to reduce the clutter of unused purses/bags in your closet ~and~ do good at the same time!

If you've only read just a post or two of MochaMomma's blog, you will already know that she writes beautifully, and that she CARES. Her heart is THIS BIG! So while the plight of purse-less high school girls is not one I have experienced personally (the difference between Malaysian and US schools is really huge!), MochaMomma does a great job explaining why this is something that would make a difference to her female students.

... of course, if you know ~me~ you'll also know that I don't do purses/handbags, that I am the epitome of fashion and purses – NOT! The only semi-fashionable/decent one I ever had was a leather backpack styled thing which broke, is now fixed but waiting for me in Switzerland... so in the meantime, I’ve been making do with a 13-year old fanny pack... yes you read that right. Fanny pack. 13 years old. Oh yeah. That’s me!

So I'll be just donating some cash instead. Some are volunteering to make purses to be given/sold. Others want to just go out and buy some for this effort. There are plenty of ways to participate. I hope you do. :)

Finally: Help Heifer International!

Who: Fantastic fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss
What: Pat is giving people a chance to get their names into his second book The Wise Man's Fear while raising funds for his fave charity Heifer International.
Where: See his So You Want to Be a Hero? post for ALL the details
What's in it for you: Your name (or a name created by you) might appear in Pat's next book! And you do good by helping needy families worldwide obtain a goat, cow or other livestock.

Patrick Rothfuss is one of the newer generation of authors who not only has a blog, but interacts a lot with his readers and fans there, and on facebook. He even visited one of my pottery albums and left a message! He's also not shy about being silly (who else would have the cojones to wear such an item, let alone endorse a caption contest for this image??!). And I do like the principle of Heifer International, which I had never heard of until he ran his first fundraising effort for it last year -- I admit, I entered/donated just for the change to get at some of the swag offered, but don't mind not having won anything, the $$ went to a good cause.

And in case you're not keen on parting with your dough, but want a chance at getting your name in the book, there's also a "no purchase necessary" method of joining this raffle - read the post with all the details, k?

I thank you for your time, and hope you will at least consider following-up with one, two or all three featured bloggers and their causes. And no, I'm getting no kickbacks from this, I just want to do my part to spread the word... it is Blog Action Day after all, even if this doesn't talk about climate change.


Image Credits:

• Businessman by surely
• Bags by salsachica
• Pat Rothfuss in cat ears taken from Tobias Buckell's post.

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I'mma let you finish, but my previous post was the best post of all time!

yes, it's a little stale by now, so sue me!

Kanye West is ... from GraphJam

have a good weekend, everyone!

Emmys Schemmys!

Back when I was a teenager, I did watch the Grammys for a year or three... but in general I really couldn't be bothered with all those award shows, acceptance speeches, etc etc. This year is no different: even knowing that Dr Horrible was being honored even if it's not technically a tv show (it was, after all, a 3-part web series) didn't move me to watch the Emmys tonight. I knew Neil Patrick Harris was hosting, but I've not gone out of my way to be a fan, tho I did enjoy his horribility in said web series.

... and I'm glad that when NPH's evil alter ego hijacked the Emmys live feed, folks were smart enough to make it available online so that people like me could enjoy it without having had to sit through all those acceptance speeches, etc.

So in case you missed it, here's Dr Horrible's hijacking of this year's Emmys:



And in case you have been residing under a really large and heavy rock, here's where you can get acquaint yourself with the horrible goodness that is Dr Horrible.

Have a great start to the week, y'all!

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Goodwill Treasure?!

A Miami hotel recently donated a whole bunch of stuff to the South Florida Goodwill: furniture, mirrors, lamps, paintings, etc. One of the items included a 2 ½ ton life-size bronze statue of a ballerina. Turns out it's one of only 10 made decades ago, each fetching half a million dollars way back then.
Rather than attempt to sell/auction it off,
Goodwill informed the donor and returned the statue. (full story here)

We're going to be hitting Goodwill this weekend: somehow I don't think the 12-year old mattress and box spring set, the ancient rowing machine, or the tv entertainment center we're planning to donate will fare the same, LoL!

... and yes, we survived the move... internet service just got reconnected... a gazillion boxes still to unpack... but we are now residents of Springfield, Illinois!

More later.

Ciao!

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The Guild: better late than never!

Patrick Rothfuss made reference to The Guild a few times on this blog. The Guild is what helped inspire Joss Whedon to create Dr Horrible during that writers' strike. And recently both Pat and Wil Wheaton were gaga over a music video released to publicise Season 3 of this web-series.

Curiosity finally got the better of me, once Kapgar also posted the video.

I hit play. And I was hooked. Why don't you try?



My fave line is: "You’ll touch my “+5 to dexterity” vest."
And yes, I'm geeky enough to appreciate this, even if I've never been sucked into the MMO world.

If Felicia Day looks familiar to you, you might recognise her from Buffy Season 7 (she was one of the many Slayerettes), or from Dr Horrible (his love interest). I've not seen the "missing" Dollhouse episode (Epitaph One), but she's in that too. Yes, she has done non-Whedon projects, I just haven't seen 'em. You can read more about Felicia and The Guild here (a Wall St Journal article!).

Anyways... so this The Guild thing... a series of webisodes about a local group guild of gamers who end up interacting in real life... to rather disastrous results. I've watched Season One, and will be move on to Season Two soon. Season Three just came out today.

Try it out!

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Gawd but do I lurve the internets!

So I'd stumbled upon this concept of "literal music videos" a few months ago when the version for A-Ha's Take On Me made its rounds through the internet. ... Then thanks to a tweet by @redeyechicago today I was pointed to The Huffington Post's article on The 7 Best Literal Music Videos of All Time, which contained not only the A-Ha vid but six others, some of which were absolutely hi.la.rious.

If you're not sure what I'm talking about... "literal music videos" are essentially voiced-over music videos, where the song now describes what's going on in the video.

Still confused? No worries! I'd like to feature three vids (only one of which is in The Huff's list, so don't worry, you can enjoy all those AND these too!) which I think are hella awesome :)

[There's a pop quiz question at the end, so pay attention!]

First, Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart:


Second, Meat Loaf's I Would Do Anything For Love:

Pay special attention to what's said at 6:55-7:10ish :D

Third, Air Supply's Making Love (Out of Nothing at All)


.. and now the question: what do these three songs have in common?

Submit your guesses in the comments :)

.. and have a great weekend everybody!

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"George R. R. Martin is not your bitch"

For those not in the know, George R. R. Martin is the author of the as-yet-unfinished series A Song of Ice and Fire. I've blabbed about the author and series before: bottom line is if you want an engrossing gritty realistic non-cookie-cutter epic fantasy series with flawed heroes, redeemable bad guys, and many intertwining plotlines, this is for you!

The "issue" some people have with George R. R. Martin is that it took forever to release Book 4 (A Feast for Crows), and that this ended up being Book 4 Part 1 because there were so many storylines to keep in mind and expand that only half the characters were advanced in Crows; the other half will be explored in A Dance with Dragons - which so far has had its release date changed/delayed quite a few times already.

So someone writes in to Neil Gaiman, asking his opinion on whether fans should be angry that GRRM seems to be working on other projects instead of churning out Book 4 Part 2 and however many books more to complete the series.

Neil's reply? George R. R. Martin is not your bitch

Bwaahahaahaha! Of course, Gaiman says more than just that, and it's a great read, but wow, George R. R. Martin is not your bitch kinda stayed with me.

As it did with other people too, obviously.

So much so that someone wrote a song about it. Please follow the link and give it a listen. If you like it, it's free to download. Serious.

Have a great weekend, y'all!

But don't blame me if the tune gets stuck in your head the whole weekend, k? :D

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Jill & Kevin : there's more!

A week ago, I discovered this very different walk down the aisle by this couple and their entourage, which went viral just a few hours later:



My comment on Facebook as I shared it:

have you seen this yet? a great way to walk down the aisle!

no guarantees they won't still end up divorced, but I hope this shows they are able to laugh and have fun together and thus gives them a better chance long-term!

... so imagine my delight when I saw this at AmyOops' site!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Enjoy! And have a great weekend!

The Shat does Palin's tweets!! :)

So it seems that Sarah Palin promised to keep in touch with her fans & supporters via Twitter... but it also seems that her tweets have been as "poetic" as her farewell speech. Thus, is it any wonder that Conan O'Brien had William Shatner tackle Palin's tweets?



Not as funny as the previous one, but still...

Cheers!
*lynne*

The Shat rules!! :)

William Shatner "does" Sarah Palin's resignation speech.

(UPDATED with clip from NBC itself - you'll have to deal with a 30sec ad tho)

... for those who don't quite get it, here's how it all started -- The Shat "interpreting" Rocket Man:


... and I found this gem: Shatner's tribute to George Lucas (made all the more funny because I only recently saw Fanboys and the Shat had an important role there too! Gotta love the Star Trek / Star Wars almost mutual exclusivity!):


... now if someone could point me to a GOOD QUALITY embeddable clip of
- Leonard Nimoy's Bilbo Baggins...!! :D
- ... and Stewie Griffin's version of Shatner's Rocketman!


[UPDATE: Shatner does Palin's tweets!]

of focal and spasmodic dystonia

I knew that Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, had suffered from focal dystonia where his pinky finger would spasm uncontrollably when he tried to draw his cartoon - certainly NOT something a cartoonist would want! I also knew that more recently he was suffering from something similar relating to his voice.

Knowing is one thing.
Reading about these afflictions in a fascinating albeit a touch long article by Wired is another thing entirely.

If you're interested, do click on through to the article: it's 3 pages long, but I found it an excellent read.

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#999: The Sims Serendipity

So last week, I came across this hilarious conversation between a Video Game Store clerk and a customer:

Customer: “How do you change the language setting on The Sims?”

Me: “Well, I’d imagine there’s something in the game’s options. What did you need to set it to?”

Customer: “English.”

Me: “Funny, I’d think that would be the default.”

Customer: “But I can’t understand them!”

Me: “Wait, you mean the Sims themselves?”

Customer: “Yes! They’re speaking French!”

Me: “No, they’re speaking Simlish. It’s a gibberish language.”

Customer: “Oh. Well, it sounds like French!”


[Source: (The Customer is) Not Always Right]

.
And today/last night (again, it's past midnight but I ain't sleeping yet, so...) Kosh pointed me to this little gem: a Star Trek parody using The Sims 3.


(found at The Awesomer)

I started laughing as soon as the voiceover started.

Ah yes, sometimes it really is fun to be a geek. nerd. whatever. :D

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#998: book disposal!

Over the past week or so, Kosh and I found the energy and motivation to go through his boxes and boxes of books, assessing what was worth keeping (for rereads, sentimental reasons, etc) and what really needed to go. ... . He's been harbouring his father's physical education text books from college, for heaven's sake!

... I'm groaning, and I'm a packrat myself!!

Anyways, so we had a few boxes of books, and figured we'd try to get some money back for them then donate the rest.

First stop was online: CKY Books and Powell's Books!

Punched in every single IBSN we had (and some books were so old they didn't have an ISBN!!), got some hits, took note of the titles and offers: so in theory we had about 30 books that would get us maybe $50. But that involved the hassle of packing the books, shipping them (at no cost to us), and hoping the evaluators would keep to the original quote upon seeing the condition of the books.

So we decided to go ahead and see what we could get from bookstores that are known to buy books here in town.

OMG the nightmare of making our way to Myopic!! Finding parking on a busy narrow street in the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon with seemingly everyone out on/in the streets enjoying the weather - f.u.n! They didn't take that many books, but offered $22 for what they would take. Tolak $7 for a book I found while browsing waiting for the evaluation to be done, we walked out $15 richer.

We then made our way to Powell's (no idea if it's related to the online one), and they took TWO books, for a measly $1.50. On hindsight, seeing as Powell's had more eclectic tastes, and that their payout seemed to be 75¢ per paperback instead of Myopic's 50¢, perhaps we might have done better to hit Powell's first? As it stood, what we got from Powell's served to cover the parking meters we'd had to feed at both locations.

After those two visits, we still had three rather full boxes of unwanted books - but guess what? We still had 13 books that we'd gotten hits for online! So we set those aside, and dumped donated all the rest to Goodwill.

Tomorrow/today/Sunday, we'll go ahead and reenter all those ISBNs, for reals this time, get the necessary labels printed and books packed, and off to the Post Office we will go.

Once the dust has settled, and we get the/any $ from those online buy-back sites, I'll report back as to whether we might have been better off just shipping off the 30 books before bringing the others to be evaluated at the local bookstores.

... so, how about y'all? Have you done something like this too? Was it worth the effort?

(Photo credit: Old books... by nkzs)

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#996: A wink at Firefly :)

For your weekend enjoyment:

Part One:


Part Two:


Part Three:


Part Four:


Part Five:


Source: xkcd - A Webcomic (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five)

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#993: a smoking jacket with a difference!

My mind went off on a tangent recently, sending me down memory lane thinking of the "Smoker" I would attend just about every semester of college down at U of I: my first was as a wide-eyed potential pledge to the Zeta chapter of Alpha Chi Sigma, the rest as a worldly member checking out the potential pledges, LoL!

Why call it a smoker?? Turns out it's an anachronistic term that was all the vogue way back when, from a time when membership was all male, and it was all the trend for such gentlemen to get together and smoke their pipes and cigars while wearing their smoking jackets (more like bathrobes, IMO) -- that's how they socialised.

Glad we've come a long way since then!

I found a nifty update to the smoking jacket concept by a Fiona Carswell:

"This Smoking Jacket has a built-in pair of lungs on the front. As the wearer smokes, the lungs fill up with the exhaled cigarette smoke and begin to gradually darken over time."

Neato! Please make sure to check out Fiona Carswell and her various projects: the mind that spawned this smoking jacket also has produced the malignant mole bikini, blurry eyeglass tray and co-dependent warming gloves, and more!

Happy hump day, y'all!

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