Talking heads

Making Faces from Bud Light has been bringing productivity in our office to a screeching halt the past two days. Upload a picture, map out a few facial landmarks and type in a message. Voila! Instant talking head. (requires Internet Explorer)
(via J-Walk)

I Was In Woodrow Wilson's Nostril

Some amazing photos from the WWI era by Arthur Mole and John Thomas. The George Glazer Gallery website describes it nicely:

During and shortly after World War I, Mole traveled with his partner John D. Thomas from one military camp to another, posing thousands of soldiers to form gigantic patriotic symbols that they photographed from above. The formations depicted such images as the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, the Marine Corps emblem and a portrait of President Woodrow Wilson. The Wilson portrait, for example, was formed using 21,000 officers and men at Camp Sherman in Ohio and stretched over 700 feet. His "Human Liberty Bell" was composed from over 25,000 soldiers, arranged with Mole's characteristic attention to detail to even depict the crack in the bell. Mole and Thomas spent a week or more preparing for these immense works, which were taken from a 70- or 80-foot tower with an 11- by- 14-inch view camera.

Other images include the 30,000-man Human U.S. Shield (finally, a good meaning for "human shield"!), the U.S. Flag, and Uncle Sam.

"I've got a delicious baked good and I'm not afraid to use it!"

Sixth-grader suspended from school after threatening allergic teacher with a peanut-butter cookie.

TRIF (Tattoo Reading Is Fundamental)

[Jesse and Chester have tattoos on their backs that say "dude" and "sweet."]
Jesse: Dude! You got a tattoo!
Chester: So do you, dude! Dude, what does my tattoo say?
Jesse: "Sweet!" What about mine?
Chester: "Dude!" What does mine say?
Jesse: "Sweet!" What about mine?
Chester: "Dude!" What does mine say?
Jesse: "Sweet!" What about mine?
Chester: "Dude!" What does mine say?
Jesse: "Sweet!" What about mine?
Chester: "Dude!" What does mine say?
Jesse: "Sweet!" What about mine?
Chester: "Dude!" What does mine say?
Jesse: "Sweet!" What about mine?
Chester: [angry] "Dude!" What does mine say?
Jesse: [screaming] "Sweet!"
Dude, Where's My Car?

Back in college, I used to think I was fashionable when I wore my T-shirt sporting a big red Chinese character of some kind. That is until my girlfriend pointed out that, me not literate in Chinese and all, for all I knew I could be proudly announcing to the Asian community an affinity for abnormal relations. Okay, what she actually said was, "Gonna wear your 'I [expletive for really, really, really like] dogs' shirt again, huh?" So now whenever I see someone with a tattoo like that, I always wonder if their 'tat really does mean "tranquility and joy" like the artist told them.

Lesson Number 1) Chinese is not English with funnier looking letters
Story of moron who went into tattoo shop and asked that they inscribe his name in Chinese, letter for letter. Since each character is a word, instead of saying "Jeremy", his back now reads "Kung Po karate, martial arts expert, and Shaolin fifth".

Lesson Number 2) Research, research, research
Guy asks artist to tattoo Chinese characters for "Love, honor and obey" on his arm. Gets something slightly different instead.

Lesson Number 3) When someone from work says they know Chinese, don't automatically believe them
A pretty funny practical joke involving a tattoo, Photoshop and... bean curd.

Bathroom Humor

A double-whammy hijacked from Sarcasmo's Corner, but somehow they seemed to fit together.

The Writings on the Stall is a huge repository (I said REpository, you sickie) of bathroom graffiti from around the world.

Fark Photoshop contests are known for their bathroom humor. This is one of the funnier ones of late: replacing one product's slogan with another's.
(via Sarcasmo's Corner)

I vant to be alone!

Friendster, Tribe.net, Spoke, Ryze... Are you turned off by all the online communities? Do you long to surf in peace without being invited every five minutes to a Meetup? Do you just want to be left the hell alone? Sounds like you need Introvertster.
(via I Like)

Have it your way

Chicken, just how you like it: all subservient-like...
(via Follow Me Here)

UPDATE: TWiki has a list submitted by readers of the things the chicken will and won't do.

Happy Dyngus Day!

In Polish culture, the Monday after Easter is called Dyngus Day. It was traditionally the day when boys tried to douse the girls with squirt guns, buckets of water, etc. They also are allowed to swat them with pussy willow braches. The following day, Tuesday, it's the girls turn to take revenge on the guys. Those wacky Poles...
(thanks, Tim-may!)

It'll Never Work!

If you have a passing interest in perpetual motion machines, check out The Museum of Unworkable Devices.
(via Boing Boing)

The Great American Work Ethic

Two tales showing good-old American ingenuity for getting the job done. Even if you aren't exactly, you know, willing to go to work.

First stop: Harrisburg, PA -- Further proof that legislation is like sausage. You don't want to see how they make either one. A story of "ghost voting" in the Pennsylvania legislature. I wonder if this kind of thing is more common than we know... From the article:

On the day Gov. Rendell unveiled his budget to a packed House chamber, Rep. William Rieger voted in favor of all six bills that came up.

But Rieger wasn't there. The Democrat was home on Feb. 3, 100 miles away in Philadelphia.

A wad of paper shoved into his electronic "yea" button atop his desk did the work for him.

He even had the nerve to collect his $126 per diem for "food and lodging". Anybody else reminded of Homer Simpson "working" from home by having his drinking bird do all the typing for him? (via As Above)

Next up: From the heart of the Rust Belt -- Selections from Ben Hamper's hilarious "Rivethead". Hampers was a shoprat on the line at General Motors back in the 70s and 80s. During his stint there, he wrote the widely-read column "Impressions of a Rivethead" for the Flint Voice, edited at the time by the infamous Michael Moore. He would regularly set it up with his assembly line partner so that one guy would do both jobs, leaving the other one free to sleep, read, or more likely, go out and get really, really drunk. Did you know that GM, in an effort to raise morale and improve their product, had a guy wander through the plant in a "Howie Makem, The Quality Cat" costume? The selections are great, but the whole book is a real treat, tracking his drug- and alcohol-fueled days on the line ultimately leading to his meltdown at the end of the book. "Rivethead" is one of my favorite reads. Highly recommended.

Sorry, I didn't hear you. I had my eyes closed.

It's always amused me how in movies, as the SWAT/Navy Seals/commando leader and his team are about to ambush the bad guys, he will flash some vague hand signal to his troops (taps elbow, holds up two fingers and points off to the left, etc). Apparently from this they know that means "Six thugs in the next room with the hostage gagged and tied up to a chair. Two more of them upstairs with Uzis. The short one with the scar over his left eye is holding a detonator device wired to some explosives in the briefcase under the table. Three of us should go around to the northwest corner of the building and execute Plan Delta Charlie, just in case they try to escape out the window."

Here are some of the more arcane hand signals, just in case you lost the training manual.

101 Jan-mations

There was a reason Jan was always the insecure one in the Brady Bunch. Not in contention as the cute "baby of the family" like Cindy, and at that gawky early teen stage, how are you gonna compete with Marsha, Marsha, Marsha?!?

Jans 1 - 100) Sometimes movies suffer the same ignoble fate. Maybe they got crushed at the box office because they happened to be released on the same weekend as 2Faster2Furiouser II (or would that be 3Fast3Furious?). Maybe because the studio had no clue how to market it. Maybe the audience just didn't "get it" at the time. Maybe it was an indie film that just didn't have the bucks to get shown on 547,000 screens like Scooby Doo 2:Electric Boogaloo. Whatever the reason, CHUD.com feels their pain. Here is their list of 100 Movies That Deserve More Love. (via A Small Victory)

Jan 101) Speaking of Jans, back in the days when WKRP In Cincinnati was in prime-time, everyone made a big fuss over Loni Anderson. But there, under the radar, those of us in the know bypassed the obvious choice and pined instead for Bailey Quarters, played by Jan Smithers. After 'KRP, Jan moved to Canada (another underappreciated asset) and pretty much retired from the limelight. Cloth Monkey has not one, not two, not three, but FOUR pages devoted to Ms. Smithers. You may begin your Jan-worship here.

Interesting sidenote: Much of the music used in WKRP In Cincinnati has changed ownership many times since it was originally aired in the 1970's. As a result, due to licensing issues, most of the songs have had to be edited out and replaced with "generic" rock music created by studio musicians. Occasionally, this wreaks havoc with the storyline. In one episode a Russian diplomat applies for asylum in the WKRP lobby. He also falls in love with Bailey. Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" was an integral part of the original show, and the diplomat's final line to Bailey before leaving again for Russia, was "Hold me closer, tiny dancer". However, even spoken lyrics are subject to licensing, and after the re-editing, his line turned into the somewhat less romantic, "Hold my order, terrible dresser."

The Passion of... The Brian?

Rainbow Film Company has announced that it will be re-releasing "Monty Python's Life of Brian" in US theaters next month as an alternative to all the hype Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" is generating. Romans Go Home! What did they ever do for us, anyway? I mean apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

(via Slashdot)

Turn it up! They're singin' about me!

Famous songs that refer to actual people:

"You're So Vain" - Carly Simon - Carly has kept the identity of who she was singing about a secret for aver 30 years. Some think it refers to Mick Jagger, some think it's about her James Taylor or Warren Beatty. Last August, Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports and NBC Olympics, put in a winning bid of $50,000 in a charity auction to have Ms. Simon personally reveal the name of the mystery man. He has sworn he will never reveal Carly's secret, but did give a clue. He has the letter "e" in his name. Ooh, gee, thanks Dick. So out of the 3 billion men on the planet, I can rule out... what, John Goodman and Gary Burghoff? Great! Only 2,999,999,998 to go.

"Smoke On The Water" - Deep Purple - They were going to start recording their new album in a concert hall called the Casino in Montreaux, Switzerland. Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention were playing the last show of the season before the hall would close down for the winter, and the members of Deep Purple, invited by Zappa, were in the audience. An unidentified someone in the audience fired off a flare gun in the hall, striking the ceiling and touching off a fire. Everyone escaped with their lives, but the entire building and all of Zappa's equipment burned in the blaze. I sometimes how Mister Flare Gun feels when he hears the song, knowing he is immortalized in rock as "some stupid with a flare gun"

"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" - Bachman Turner Overdrive - Randy Bachman wrote the lyrics on the fly and sang the stuttering vocals (B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen n-n-nothin' yet), but he did it as a joke, and only intended it to be heard by one person: his brother Gary, who suffered from a speech impediment. Not believing it was very good, he tried to talk their producer at Mercury Records from putting it on their 1974 "Not Fragile" album.

"I Don't Like Mondays" - Boomtown Rats - In 1979, Boomtown Rat's singer Bob Geldof and keyboardist Johnnie Fingers were doing a radio show in the US when news came over the telex that a 16-year-old Brenda Spencer from San Diego had shot teachers and children at the elementary school across the street from her house. During the seven-hour standoff outside her house, a reporter phoned in and asked her what was her motive. She said simply, "I don't like Mondays".

Brenda is currently serving 25-to-life. She was denied parole at a recent hearing.

Fifty Worst Dates

"Worst. Chronological System. Ever." - Comic Book Guy Probably. If he was ever consulted on it.

"Never ask a Trekkie the time, unless you can convert stardates and speak Klingon." - Nobody. I just made this up, too. But it's probably true.

STARDATE 319210.6 -- Pity the poor Star Trek fan. Pasty, out-of-shape, and roundly mocked by most everyone (except maybe the Furries, but that's a whole other story... It's kind of complicated. Here's a handy guide to the Official Geek Hierarchy (thanks for the link, Bonnie!) for the "big picture" of who gets to make fun of who in the land of Dork), the Trekkie gets no respect.

As if things weren't bad enough, he's got to try and explain Star Trek's crazy "Stardate" system of timekeeping. Generally, sci-fi and fantasy geeks like their little universes to be internally consistent. When Tolkien has Galadriel recite Elvish poetry in one of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, the hardcore "Ring"ers not only memorize it, they spell- and grammarcheck it as well.

The thing about the Stardate system is that it really doesn't make any sense. No doubt it was invented so that actual dates were not used, keeping the show set in the distant future without actually pinning down an actual time. The writers of the original Star Trek, and Gene Roddenberry (the creator of Star Trek) were no doubt just happy to have a show on prime-time TV, and pulling down a steady paycheck. Making sure that the Stardates Kirk rattled off made sense had to be pretty far down on The List Of Things To Worry About. Probably right down there with making sure all the Tribbles' fur was well-groomed in that one episode.

So how tortured is the explanation of Stardates? Behold the Stardate System Explained in all its 6-part glory (yes, I said six parts). And you think switching to metric is a bitch...