Last night at koressa's annual Cthulhumas party, our friend Mark read two "children's books": Where's My Shoggoth, and Where the Deep Ones Are.

Well, today, TeeFury came out with this shirt:

Where the Old Things Are


How freaky is that?

The other day, using my Netflix streaming account, I watched two movies. One was a soft-core, European art-house film from the early '70's called Maid In Sweden. The other was the fairly recent, low-budget, straight-to-DVD B-movie Zombie Strippers. I expected to like Maid In Sweden, as I am a fan of art-house films, especially European ones. I didn't expect to like Zombie Strippers, despite the trailer making it look kinda funny, because . . . well, come on! Zombie Strippers?!? With a title like that, one doesn't expect stellar film making.

I couldn't have been more wrong, on both counts.

Zombie Strippers turned out to be absolutely hilarious. It's a brilliant send-up of nearly every zombie movie ever made, with some interesting twists on the theme, and with a sub-current of philosophical debate. No, I'm not kidding about that! It's done tongue-in-cheek, but it's philosophical debate nonetheless. Of course it's all played for comedic effect, and sometimes the comedy falls flat, but overall it's a really funny and fun movie. And, hey . . . boobies! LOTS and LOTS of BOOBIES!

Maid in Sweden, on the other hand, while also having the virtue of lots and lots of boobies, received from me a one-star rating. I'm not one to give out one-star ratings that much, but this movie deserved it. Bad writing, bad acting, no plot to speak of . . . and not one, but two rape scenes! And the really disgusting thing is that they weren't portrayed as rape; they were portrayed as "sexual awakening". I nearly vomited. You'd think the Swedes, who for the last half-century or more have had a far more open and casual attitude towards sex than we have, would understand and recognize rape, even in 1971. Apparently not.

So . . . thumbs up for Zombie Strippers and a huge thumbs down for Maid In Sweden. Both of which were completely counter to my expectations.

NASA scientists held a press conference at 2pm EST (11am PST) today, at which they announced that they have discovered an entirely new form of life in Mono Lake (a highly concentrated salt late in California).

And I'm not just talking about a new species. No, this is a form of life that isn't based on any biology previously known to humanity!

Because it makes its building blocks out of arsenic.

Here's another article, with a link to the scientific paper.

All day, I've had a craving for gazpacho.

Now, the first, last, and only time I have ever had gazpacho was probably 20 years ago, and while it was good, I wouldn't say that it was super-duper-awesomely-amazing or anything.

So why, today of all days (which has been a bit of a ratbag, for various reasons*), do I suddenly have this intense craving for it? I mean, I can't even properly remember how it tasted!

Maybe my brain is hiccuping, and I really just want pico de gallo...

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*Starting with the accident that closed the 67 this morning, which forced me to go through Escondido instead of Poway to get to work from my girlfriend's place this morning.

(Thanks to caprine for linking to this...)

Okay, while I can't participate in this thing myself, I can wholeheartedly support it.

Jen McCreight posted the other day on her blog Blag Hag this idea: If Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader, believes that women dressing immodestly causes earthquakes, then this theory should be scientifically tested.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I'm sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn't rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it'll be one involving plate tectonics.

Women who wish to join her in producing the boobquake should leave a comment on her blog, join the Facebook event, or Twitter it with the tag "#boobquake".

And if anyone takes issue with this idea, she's posted some clarifications on her blog, which includes the following:

And to the scientists who are concerned with my methods—don't worry, I fully plan on doing some statistics after the event. I know many earthquakes happen on a daily basis, so we're looking to see if Boobquake significantly increases the number or severity of earthquakes. Or if an earthquake strikes West Lafayette, IN and only kills me, that may be good evidence of God's wrath as well (I'm not too concerned). And yes, I know I need a larger sample size to make this good science. Maybe I'll include Mardi gras in my calculations.

And she also has this to say: "Dressing modestly won't end earthquakes, so help out the victims of inevitable natural disasters at the Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/" All I can add to that is to also post the URL for Doctors Without Borders, who can also help: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

I dreamed I was washing my face with soap. While driving.

Someone called me asking for "Devon". Now, Devon is one of the common mis-hearings of my name (others being Evan, Kevin, etc.), so I didn't think much of it. But it took a few seconds to realize that this person wasn't looking for me.

CALLER: Hi, is this Devon?
ME: This is Eben, yes.
CALLER: Hi, Devon, this is [name redacted—and I can't remember it anyway, but it was a woman].
ME: Hello.
CALLER: How are you doing?
ME: I'm doing okay, thanks. (Thinking: You're being awfully familiar for a salesperson.)
CALLER: I noticed that you weren't on ICQ today.
ME: (ICQ? She probably means GTalk or AOL or something. Must be one of my fans?) No, no I haven't.
CALLER: Well, I thought we were going to touch base today about going to the movies.

That's when I realized, okay, this person what not in fact looking for me, because the only person I'd be going to the movies with today is my girlfriend, and she's busy playing hostess to some out-of-town guests.

ME: Ummmm... Actually, I think you may have a wrong number.
CALLER: [Reads off my number]?
ME: Yeah, that's my number.
CALLER: Devon [name redacted, but not mine]?
ME: No, Eben Brooks.
CALLER: Oh! I'm sorry.
ME: No problem. Bye.

I hung up, still bewildered. What are the odds that someone with a name similar to mine (phonemically, anyway) would have a number similar to mine?

I must have some kind of psychic power to attract and then antagonize crazy people. First there was this debacle, then yesterday afternoon some crazy loon first interrupts a conversation I'm having with my girlfriend in order to try to sell me toiletries (?!?) and then starts laying into me (verbally, thank goodness, though threatening gestures were involved) when I say I'm not interested.

I think I've decided that I need to get back into martial arts training...

Some of my YouTube videos seem to be having an odd glitch: as soon as the main video ends, the feed freezes. You can manually move the slider past that point and the credits play normally, but if you try to let the player play past that point on its own, it won't.

But here's the kicker: it only happens on some systems! teri1337 notified me of the problem, so I tested the videos on both my MacBook and my PC. On both systems, running IE and Firefox, they played perfectly with no glitches.

So I need your help! Please go to my YouTube channel and play any of the first six videos in the video pane. Let them play to the end and see if they stop playing when it fades to black.

Then post a comment here and let me know what happened. Thanks.

Yesterday, I posted this LOLcat in the cat_macros community:


moar funny pictures

The comments on it were...interesting.

I seem to have created a monster...