Halloween in Strongbadia
Posted on October 31, 2004
Behold my lovely wife’s latest work of art: a portrait of Strong Bad in the medium of pumpkin.
Another photograph of the Strong Bad o’Lantern follows after the jump, presented in Spook-E-Vision™ (i.e. slightly darker and blurrier).
Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi…
Posted on October 31, 2004
Run! It’s the zombified floating head of Carrie Fisher!
Okay, actually it’s a resized do-it-yourself Princess Leia mask from the 1983 book, The Star Wars Book of Masks. StarWars.com has reproduced several of these masks in printable form, including such Original Trilogy favorites as Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Admiral Ackbar, Bib Fortuna [Ed. note -- Yes!], and the aforementioned Princess Leia.
Happy Halloween!
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Geek | 4 Comments
Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Posted on October 30, 2004
Over 18,000 spam messages and nearly 2,900 quarantined viruses in three months — that’s what having the same e-mail address since 1996 and plastering it around the Web will get you. Sheesh…
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Geek | 4 Comments
Quote of the Whenever: Deathbed Edition
Posted on October 29, 2004
Cameron: “I’m dying.”
Ferris: “You’re not dying, you just can’t think of anything good to do.”— Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986
It’s day three of my ongoing cold and flu-like symptoms, and I still feel like death warmed over in a cheap, generic Tupperware dish. Meanwhile, the staff veterinarian here at Apropos of Something (a/k/a my wife) just reminded me that I don’t look so hot either. I wonder if this is karmic retribution for the half-ton of flu vaccine I stashed away six months ago when I heard there might be a shortage…
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Life in a Nutshell | 4 Comments
For Pete’s sake…
Posted on October 29, 2004
In case the election-year ridiculousness hadn’t crescendoed yet (which is debatable), the New York Post comes through today with this hard-hitting piece of journalism:
CONSPIRACY THEORY: KERRY ‘TIE’ TO OSWALD
October 29, 2004 — Conspiracy theorists are buzzing about John Kerry’s connection to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. While no one in the lunatic fringe has gone so far as to suggest Kerry helped kill Kennedy — yet — they make much of the fact that a cousin of Kerry’s, Michael Paine, was a close friend of Oswald who frequently had the assassin as a house guest. Paine even stored the rifle Oswald used to shoot Kennedy at his house. Paine’s mother, Ruth Forbes, and Kerry’s mother, Rosemary Forbes, were cousins. It has never been fully explained how Oswald came to have such socially prominent pals, says A.J. Weberman, author of the JFK assassination book “Coup D’Etat in America,” who notes that according to documents released under the JFK Documents Act, Paine’s sister-in-law and father-in-law were both closely connected with the CIA.
Wait just a second…didn’t we find out a few months ago that Bush and Kerry are distantly related to one another? Could that mean that Bush also has a tie to Lee Harvey Oswald? Is it possible that a young George W. Bush and John Kerry — ages 17 and 19 at the time, respectively — plotted together against JFK?
This changes everything… 
Posted by Jess | Filed Under In the News | 2 Comments
Having a ball
Posted on October 29, 2004
The third best thing about Halloween (after pumpkin ice cream and candy corn vampires): popcorn balls. Does the fact that I’m stockpiling these things while they’re still available in stores mean that I’m insane?
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Random Musings | 5 Comments
Nothing can stop…THE ANIMAL!
Posted on October 28, 2004
I had a dream last night about one of my favorite childhood toys — a battery-powered truck called “The Animal.” Of course, The Animal was no ordinary truck. You see, when the going got tough, a set of claws (not unlike those of a mountain lion) would pop out of The Animal’s tires to give it the traction it needed to conquer any terrain. The photos below (courtesy of X-Entertainment) show The Animal’s claw-tire technology in action.
Cool, huh? The dream also raised an intriguing question. Why hasn’t the automobile industry latched onto this idea and implemented it on actual vehicles? If you could slap some claw-tires on an SUV, package it with XM satellite radio, and engineer it to get at least six miles per gallon, I’d imagine the “security moms” of the world would eat it up with a spoon…
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Random Musings | 2 Comments
Drawn Together
Posted on October 28, 2004
I caught the premiere of Comedy Central’s new animated “reality” series Drawn Together last night. The concept of the show is that eight animation stereotypes (including a meathead superhero, a Disney-esque princess, a zaftig black-and-white heartthrob from the 1930s, and an adorable Japanese battle monster) are picked to live in a house, have their lives taped, and find out what happens when cartoons stop being polite, et cetera. For instance, racial tensions flare in the first episode when Princess Clara mistakes sassy, mystery-solving musician Foxxxy Love for a servant upon meeting her for the first time.
The verdict? This show is messed up. We’re talking messed up to the point that puppets making prank phonecalls seems pretty normal in comparison. Drawn Together takes its comedic cues from the shotgun approach of Family Guy — crank the yuks per minute (ypm) as high as possible and hope that at least a few of the jokes connect with the audience along the way. The end result is a crude, intermittently funny show. While the first episode proves vaguely compelling in highlighting both animation and reality television cliches, I don’t know if the series is sustainable beyond a few episodes. Of course, I said the same thing about Family Guy, and I understand that there are people out there who actually enjoy that show.
Meanwhile, the South Park season premiere was absolutely brilliant. Vote or die!
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Pop Culture | 4 Comments
American Idol 101, brought to you by Ford Focus
Posted on October 27, 2004
From NinerOnline.com:
UNCC offers ‘Idol’ class
UNC Charlotte students may be better prepared than Clay Aiken was for “American Idol,” as a professor will teach philosophies of the show in a class offered next spring…
According to Jay Grymes, professor for the class, he will “use the show as a springboard for discussions about music style, terminology, performance and the music industry as a whole.”
The assignments will include projects, watching the “American Idol” television show and being involved in online discussion forums. Mondays, the class will discuss music terminology and history relating to the next night’s “American Idol” theme. Wednesdays will be a discussion of the performances from the show.
This, in theory, will lead to an understanding of what makes a good performance and good stage presence.
In all fairness, I have a cousin who minored in The Gong Show back in the late ’70s.
Posted by Jess | Filed Under In the News, Pop Culture | 1 Comment
Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard
Posted on October 27, 2004
Tired of settling disputes through the time-honored tradition of Rock Paper Scissors? Why not try Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard instead? The general concept is the same, only two new play options are added: Spock and Lizard. In turn, the rules of RPSSL break down as follows:
Scissors cuts Paper covers Rock crushes Lizard poisons Spock smashes Scissors decapitates Lizard eats Paper disproves Spock vaporizes Rock crushes Scissors.
If only I could only figure out how to make the Lizard shape with my hand, I’d be all set. Link via Screenhead.
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Random Musings, Web Slinging | 3 Comments
Tales from the Classroom: Pass the Geritol
Posted on October 27, 2004
There’s nothing like casually chatting with an undergraduate about music and hearing her say that she “totally rocked out” to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill “back in sixth grade” to make you feel like the oldest person on the face of the Earth.
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Tales from the Classroom | 7 Comments
Tales from the Classroom: The Art of Shoemaking
Posted on October 25, 2004
A note to my fellow educators: if you’re ever explaining how tariffs may help protect domestic industries in the developing world with a hypothetical story about a skilled shoemaker in Afghanistan competing with Nike and you want to be taken seriously, don’t start off the story with, “Imagine there’s a cobbler in Kabul…”
Trust me on this one.
Bonus! Awful “cobbler in Kabul” limerick follows after the jump…
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Tales from the Classroom | 4 Comments
BlogImplosion
Posted on October 25, 2004
Slow loading, no loading, and everything in between — Apropos of Something’s host has been experiencing a wide range of intermittent network problems over the past few days. My sysadmin is on the case, however, and hopes to have it resolved in the near future. Sorry for the inconvenience…
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Blickity-Blog | Comments Off
Girl, you know it’s true
Posted on October 24, 2004
Just my luck, going to bed after Weekend Update and missing a classic SNL moment like this:
Saturday Night Live was not as “Live” as people expected last night. Musical Guest Ashlee Simpson poorly lip-synched her first song, and then a technical glitch or mistake led to the wrong vocal track being played for her second performance proving her fraud as she stood there confused while her recorded voice filled the airwaves. Simpson’s band picked up the slack, attempting to save the show as Ashlee walked off the stage. Just a minute in (on a musical segment usually four or more minutes long) SNL pulled the plug, cutting quickly to a commercial.
Even better, during the show’s closing, Ashlee blamed the mishap on her band “playing the wrong song.”
Video of the “performance” is available here (MPEG) and here (WMV). Meanwhile, thanks to Ashlee, I now have a new strategy for dealing with those moments in class when a student asks me a question that totally stumps me: do a little hoedown dance and then run out of the classroom.
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Pop Culture | 8 Comments
You can’t handle my infinite nature, can you?
Posted on October 23, 2004
I Heart Huckabees: go see it. Go see it today. Seriously, the film has it all — an original concept, laugh-out-loud pseudo-philosophy, standout performances by Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Jason Schwartzman, and Mark Wahlberg, and the most inspired take on the art of existential detection since Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Two thumbs up.
My top ten movies of 2004 (to date) follow after the jump.
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Pop Culture | 6 Comments
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