I Won a Major Award!

it's pronounced fra-jeel-lee

Yay for me, I won the caption contest at Cowboy Blob's! Sometimes I crack myself up.

I entered another one over at Outside the Beltway. Here is the photo and my entry:

Wavy Gravy's Groovy Love Potion
1. Proper signage
2. A bongo
3. A time machine

I don't care who you are. That there is funny. Unfortunately, they didn't think so. I didn't even get an honorable mention. C'mon. Really?!?

In other news, I've decided never to refer to you-know-who by name on this site again. Henceforth, his name shall be Bareass Obambi. Google seems to think this site would be a fine place to peddle his wares. This should fix'em.

I am Totally Renting a Clown

I underestimated the creepiness

Just snagged this from Cowboy Blob's, where he snagged it from somewhere else. I'm so far removed from the source that I don't feel even a little bit bad about it.

I love this kid ... and maybe even fear him as well.

Turn the Page

words, words, words

Barack Obama's Turn the Page speech. It's an old speech, but I was just thinking:

the whole theme of this speech could very well be the result of Barack accidentally reading a speech writers notation.

...
...
And finally, the time has come to,
(turn the page)

Barack read it so well they decided to run with it. He could probably stand up there and read Green Eggs and Ham and get a standing ovation.

Not For the Faint of Heart

too late

There is a caption / photoshop contest over at Cowboy Blob's. Here is the photo and my caption entry:


Marge was perplexed as to why her jetpack never achieved lift, but could now rule out the extra weight of her clothes.

At least, I think it's a she. Bbbrrrrr.

Change You Can Believe In

prepare to hope without condition

I changed up the Obama logo. Yeah, this works much better. It clarifies the message, I think. This one is free, O-dog.

Brace Yourself

i knew it!



Just to be clear, I'm making fun of Obama. Let's not forget that he really does have a bracelet, and it really does mean something.

Update: Apparently Obama forgot the real reason.

Fast Eddie Had a Cool Hand

and a hot pocket. weird.



Paul Newman was cool. RIP.

Yeah, I know he was a liberal activist. Bleeding hearts and artists. I like movies, and he made some of the best. Sometimes you just gotta let shit slide.

Ordinary Family at the Table

a day in the life

"Daddy? What does unconditionally mean?"

"Let me be, um, clear about this. Unconditionally means that you, ah, need to make some, er, preperations so that you can, um, set up conditions.

"???"

"Eat your, um, arugula."

I Am Much Happier Than You

and that makes me angry

I read something not very long ago that suggested conservative people are more happy overall than liberals. I don't know if this is what I read, but it is close enough.

I have a different theory on why this is so. Some people simply like to complain. If you try to find a solution to their complaints, they will complain about the solution. Why? I think it is because complaining is all they have. You might say it makes them happy. They don't want solutions ... they just want to have something to complain about.

I'm not saying that all liberals think this way, but I do find people who think this way are usually liberals.

What is my Demotivation Here?

aaaaand action!

I've been seeing these demotivators all over the nets lately. I decided to throw my hat into the ring.

I don't know why I choose this one. Maybe I figured I should warm up with some softballs first? You can make your own here.

The Brothers Obama

smile and say arugula

Right Wing News posted an interview with Barack Obama's brother. It is not very flattering. You can bet the Obama campaign is going to do everything it can to keep this from becoming a hot topic.

Well, I can't let them do that. I decided to poke around a bit. Not surprisingly, I was able to access his Yahoo account with relative ease.

Username: Neo999374
Password: hopechangetax

Got it on the first try actually. Change password tricks are for noobs!!! Sickburn!!!

I uncovered this picture. Disgusting. What you see here is a recent photo of Barack and his brother. I thought you haven't seen your brother since childhood? Chalk this up as just another lie from the Chosen One.

Is this the man we want running our country? Is this the man we want sheltering our poor? Look at him, his belly probably full of arugula and waffles while his brother, his own flesh and blood, has to survive on peanut butter and crack sandwiches. Is this man fit to be our next President? I think not.

Hope For the Best

but plan to beg for change

Long winded speeches, full of hope and change, yet somehow devoid of detail. The grueling primaries gave us more debates than I care to count. Still, Obama kept his cards close to his chest, like a stony faced poker player, refusing to offer the slightest tell of what his actual policies would look like.

Maybe we underestimated him? The media has been telling us all along how utterly brilliant he is. Maybe they were right and we were wrong?

Today Obama lay down one of his cards. In a small school room setting he articulated his plan for the economy. He demonstrated, so succinctly, his plan that there remains no question what an Obama Presidency will mean for our economic future.



Personally, I would have went for plan A. Good thing I'm not running for President.

Btw, All American Blogger added me to their Directory of Blogs today. W00t!! I'm buzzworthy.

Slick Willy in the Hen House

he felt their pain

Bill Clinton was on The View today. Heh. What were the producers thinking? What's next? Michael Jackson on Sesame Street? I couldn't find a picture, so I made one myself.



Bawbwa Wawa was bwefless. Whoopie was angry. Bill left a stain on the couch.

In other news, I'm going to go ahead and start spending some of those theoritical Internet dollars now because they are as good as mine. Read 'em and weep.

Why in the Hell is This Squirrel So Slippery

don't ask

For all of the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and probably some references I missed) fans out there ... I give you this:



Incidentally, I found this by googling "moosebutter kiss a wookie". Don't judge. There was some chafing last time. Moosebutter? I just betcha that goes great with Venezuelan Beaver Cheese.

Actually, I'm surprised I didn't end up at Rachel's blog.

Another Problem Solved

bring on the next one

I added a bookmark button to the bottom of every post. It's a cool little tool that will hopefully help get me some exposure around the 'nets. I recommend it. It's free and you can get it here.

I did have some problems with it at first. For one, it threw one of those annoying little javascript errors that you often see at the bottom left-hand corner of your browser. You know the one. It looks like a yield sign with an exclamation point in it? No? Oh well, maybe I'm just anal like that. Just take my word for it. It was there. Let's move on.

The error wasn't a problem in and of itself, until I started noticing some strange behavior with the button itself. On one post, clicking the button would reference the post above it, instead of the post I was actually clicking the button on. Confused? You're going to have to take my work for it again. It happened.

On another post the button didn't show up at all. The really frustrating part was that on most posts it worked exactly as intended! Fortunately, my incredible intellect and amazing computer skills allowed me to figure out where the problem lay. The button code didn't like me using apostrophes in post titles.

What happens is the post titles are turned into HTML links tags. The browser sees the apostrophe and, confusing it with a double quote mark, decides to end the tag early. Or, I could be talking out of my ass. It's been known to happen from time to time. I do have some experience writing SQL queries for dynamic web pages. This sort of thing used to trip me up all the time. I should have recognized it sooner and avoided some painful thinking time.

At any rate, the solution was to not use apostrophes in post titles. Instead, I use the ASCII code for an apostrophe instead, &#146 .

Hopefully you'll find this site if you are having the same problem. I'm cool like that.

Politics and Booze Don’t Mix

unless you don't give a crap


BDS. Bush Derangement Syndrome. If you cross paths with a BDS sufferer, it is best to avoid eye contact. If you have a few beers in you, it is permissible to engage conversation with a BDS sufferer, for entertainment purposes.

Last night, I had the opportunity to converse with one of these angry little creatures. We crossed paths at a bowling alley. That's right, I said bowling. I'm from Western PA. When we aren't clinging to our guns and religion, we put on funny shoes and get hammered smashed. It's how we deal with our bitterness.

I would like to say I fought the good fight and he went straight home to delete the Daily Kos from his bookmarks. But, of course, that didn't happen. You know as well as I do there is no reasoning with these yo-yos. It is best just to have a little fun with them. For instance:

BDS guy: "Bush lied to get us into this war!"
Me: "The war in VietNAM?"

Yes. I used my best Forrest Gump voice when I said it. Forrest rocks! I think it was at this point he realized I wasn't taking him seriously. I wouldn't know. The Forrest Gump line ignited a barrage of movie quotes between my friends and I. Eventually, we turned to South Park quotes ... as usual. It's another thing bitter people cling to.

** In case you are interested, I made the graphic (which is a fairly accurate depiction) using this site. Their "send to a friend" thingy seemed a bit shady, so I just did a screen capture and cut the image from that.

Feds Close in on Email Hacker

threat of a stern talking to looms

Surprise! He's a Ritalin kid! I see a time out in his future. Ace has this one covered. I will say that this kid looks awfully familiar.



It fits so perfectly too. I mean, he is on record as saying he has computer hacking skills, among other talents. He should have caught her a delicious bass if he was trying to win her affections. Sarah Palin seems like the kind of lady who would appreciate a delicious bass.

The search for traffic continues - UPDATED!

mistakes were made

I decided to take the e-referral gadget off the site ... for now.

1. it took a second or two to load. That bugs me.
2. I tried to filter out my IP from registering on it to no avail.

Number 2 could have been resolved by adding a cookie to my computer, but I'm pretty lazy and since number 1 was nagging me I decided to scrap it. Besides, I can get by manually adding top referrers while this place is still in its infancy.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, don't bother registering a site for Googles index until you have plenty of prominent sites linking to it. It appears that the Google-bots will turn their noses up if you are unpopular. I bet they feed on arugula. Needless to say, my blog is not yet in the Google index. Not to worry though because ...

I started a link seeking campaign. Basically, I made a form letter begging other blogs to add me to their blogrolls. You can see the ones I've solicited in my blogroll on the left. So far only American Digest has added a link to this site. That brings the total number of sites linking this blog to a whopping 2. That is, when you count coolerthanyou. But that is my brothers site so I'm not sure if it counts. I wonder if my mom has a blog? Hmmm.

Anyway, I wasn't expecting everyone to read my email and add a link right out of the gate. It's late, and it's the weekend. I'll be patient. Plus I plan to send many, many more in the next couple of days.

Update: Make that three links to this blog. Thanks Basil! I'll take back some of the things I said about you.

Update 2: Rachel Lucas added me to her 'roll. Luckily I managed to get a giggle worthy post up before she had the chance to visit. Cha-ching! She liked the 'delicious bass' line from the post above. I should send her something nice. Delicious bass are hard to come by in Pittsburgh. A smelly river carp should do fine ...

It’s My Party

and nobody else is invited

Hillary Clinton backed out of a planned rally protesting Iran when she found out Sarah Palin would be attending. Her reason being that she was not aware the event was being billed as a partisan event. Personally, I think she was afraid the two would show up wearing the same outfit. Background.



Update:
and now nobody can come.

The Doctor is [IN]

Day four. I haven't eaten since before the crash. At night I can hear the drums. I think they are getting closer. Tomorrow I will try to swim for it.

As you can see, I'm getting pretty bored talking to myself. Today I took some measures to increase my traffic.

First, I signed up to Technorati. I'm not 100% sure what this does, but someday it may generate hits. You will notice a button on the top right-hand side of this page asking you to add this blog to your Technorati favorites? I'm fairly certain that is where the magic happens. I could be wrong.

Second, I added the nifty little e-referrer widget underneath the blogroll. Now, everytime someone visits me from a link on another site, the referrers link will automatically be added to that list. Aha! My lazyness knows no bounds! Thank you magic internet widgets for making it happen. Hmm, I am starting to see a pattern here. Each one of these latest additions seem to rely on people visiting my site. Oh well, I can't get hung up on that now.

Third, I googled "link exchange blogger", or something simular and found this page. Now we are getting somewhere! Maybe. I promptly added them to my blogroll and shot off an email asking for them to return the favor. Actually, the All American Blogger site looks top notch. It'll probably end up being one of my daily stops. You should check it out sometime. Who am I kidding? If you are reading this, you probably came from there in the first place.

Finally, I submitted a sitemap file to Google Webmaster Tools. This will make it easier for the Google spiders to crawl around my site (eek!). It takes awhile to kick in, but any day now when someone googles "Wilford Brimley Swallowed a Frog", mine should be one of the top links found. I'm guessing that should be good for at least 5,000 hits a day? Easily.

Now I'll sit back and let my plan unfold. Step one is just about complete.

Plan
Step 1. Collect underpants Create blog
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit

PolitiCons !!!

What do you get when you mix political cartoons with emoticons? PolitiCons!!! This is the first of what I hope to make a regular feature on this blog. I call this one Want to get away? Here is some background.



Want to get away?

Separated at Birth

I stated last week that I thought Tina Fey would make a good Sarah Palin characiture. It was a no-brainer really, considering her looks. I have to say, her accent and mannerisms are spot on! The skit is pretty funny, especially Hillary as the bitter loser.

Update: Hulu video did not fit into new template borders. Here is a link to the video.

Funny, except most SNL viewers probably accept the mistruths portrayed as fact. Here are some of them:

Myth: Sarah Palin said God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago.

Truth: It started with a blogger posting fake qoutes. The media took it from there. Good fact checking there. Here is CNN itself debunking this one. Apparently Matt Damon was fooled. His quotes went something like this ... "Matt Damon, er, uh, Matt, um, er, uh, Damon". I'll still watch his movies. Here is snopes.

Perception: Sarah Palin didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was when questioned by Charlie Gibson

Reality: Charlie Gibson didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was when questioning Sarah Palin. Charles Krauthammer, the man who coined the "phrase", sums it up pretty good here. Sorry Charlie (Gibson), you lost me at "exact words".

Perception: Sarah Palin's answer when questioned on her foriegn policy experience was something to the tune of "You can see Russia from Alaska!".

Reality: Her full answer was edited out. The quote that was aired is riduculous. The unedited transcript gives a little more perspective. Edited portion in bold type.

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they’re doing in Georgia?

PALIN: Well, I’m giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

In summary, Tina Fey is hot. So is Sarah Palin.

Lucas Arts Adventure Games

I am getting bored with games. First person shooters, rpg's, Guitar Hero ... I had to put them down for awhile. I tried an old Tony Hawk game, but even that didn't hold my interest for long.

I decided to go back to the genre I cut my teeth on: Adventure Games. I choose a new one to start off with. FBI Confidential : Art of Murder. It was fun enough. The puzzles were'nt too hard, so I completed it without needing a walkthough until the end. I used to be against using walkthroughs, but what is the point of doing the same thing over and over until you finally give up and quit playing? The only problem is that once I open that box I find myself resisting the urge to consult a walktrough everytime I get stuck.

Anyway, I finished the game. The ending was anticlimatic and overall the story was pretty cheesy, but it was worth playing. At any rate, it got my adventure games juices flowing and I found myself with an urge to go back to the classics. Lucas Arts!

So far, I've played Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and Full Throttle. Currently, I am playing The Dig.


I was thrilled to learn of an emulator specifically for these games to allow play from Windows Vista. The games I mentioned above worked perfectly. Unfortunately, I ran into sound problems with Grim Fandango and the original Monkey Island. No biggie. I'm sure others have had the same problems and the solution is just a Google search away. I love the Internet.

In my opinion, these games have stood the test of time. Day of the Tentacle is my all time favorite. The writing and voice acting are top notch and has yet to be matched. It is so ... funny! It was like going back and watching an old '80's comedy. Sure, the graphics and technology references are somewhat dated ... but that didn't stop me going from giggling to straight up laughing out loud at times.

Whether you have ever played these games or not, do yourself a favor and give them a try. I'm sure I don't have to tell you to Google "lucas arts adventure mega pack". Plus, you probably already know that Virtual Clonedrive will let you mount the cd images. It would be downright insulting if I suggested you need WinRar to unpack the files. Of course you already know that stuff! That's why I'm not even going to mention any of it.

Wilford Brimley Swallowed a Frog

I finished my first Wilford Brimley - Conan O'Brien-esque video. I'm not going to mention how long it took me. I was following this tutorial I found.

First off, I obtained Adobe Premiere Pro 3.0 for some reason. The tutorial calls for 6.5. Needless to say, the screens are very different. So, I spent a good bit of time translating the 6.5 steps to 3.0.

Secondly, I have Macromedia Fireworks, while the tutorial calls for Adobe Photoshop. Not a big deal here. They are pretty much the same thing.

The big problem I ran into was my webcam. The video and audio was off by a second or two. So, I tried seperating the video and audio from inside Premeire. This involved starting the video a wee bit after the audio. Playing it by ear, making endless fraction of a second adjustments. Finally, I was able to sync them to my satisfaction. I was ready to export it as an avi file.

"Error compiling movie". Sigh. Apparently, Premiere didn't like the way I chopped the audio and video. Oh well. I searched around a bit and came across some freeware to sych audio and video. Virtualdub, in case you ever run into the same problem. I synched it up and saved as avi, so far so good. I put the avi in Premiere and played it. Somanabitch! Still out of synch! So, I went back into Virtualdub and delayed the video even more. I started out the day with video playing a couple of seconds before the audio started. Now I had the audio starting a couple of seconds before the video started. Que sara sara. I plugged it into Premiere and it was synched up almost perfectly! Weird. Not that I'm complaining. I'm just glad it worked, and am willing to forget that there is no logical reason why.

So, here it is. I'm not completely happy with it. The lips are too pale and a little disproportionate to his face. Not a bad first effort though. Well, overlooking the fact that I made him sound like Sling-blade just swallowed a frog. Ummmm Huuhhhmmm.

Meanwhile, Back in the Day One

Greetings! Ka-knee-she-wa! 'Sup bitches!

Day one of the "Right U R" blog on blogspot. I'm not sure exactly what my intentions are here, but finding out should prove interesting.

Mostly I just want a testing ground for a Wilford Brimley character I want to start working on. You see, I imagine the Brim as a somewhat grizzled and gruff old coot with a penchant for violence and whores. I plan to have the Brim recount tales of his days riding with Custer, bedding whores along the Rio Grande, and murdering a savage or two. All the while spreading the very important public service message of: "Check your God damn blood sugar, or I will personally strangle you dead!"

To help bring this character to life, I hope to employ the Conan O'Brian'esque style of moving lips on a still picture. In the process of aquiring the software for this I decided to start this blog.

In addition to the Brim character, I'll more than likely be doing some political blogging. Take a look at the blog's title to get a sense of what camp I lean towards.

That is all for now. Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you soon and maybe I'll even have some more posts for you to sift through.

Regards,
Gasgwar