The Space Toast Pages 2010

11 Great Children's Book Titles or Terrible Band Names

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:13:00 GMT

If there actually is a child chapter book or band named after any of the following, I stand behind my opinions.

Jason and the Astronauts

The Musical Mystery Tour

Carpet Whale

Mutually Assured Distraction

Trust This Penguin

Fun Will Be Had!

Sister Spat

Turtle Beach Party

Shirley Icanne

The Wild Flutes

Watch the Pegasus Poop

111 Minute Book Covers: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:26:00 GMT

Speed composition of a book cover for C. S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia (if numbered correctly).

Assets are "Tambako the Jaguar's" CC licensed photograph of a lion from Flickr, and Henningklevjer's CC licensed cloth weave texture from the Wikimedia Commons. Fonts are Charlemagne and Mona Lisa Solid.

Under 111 minutes? No, but with the template established, the rest of the series should go faster.

Click image for 300dpi.

YouTube Captioning: Strawberry Sex by Ken Hirai [Official Music Video]

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:12:00 GMT

Dozens more captioned YouTube videos, including several complete feature films, at YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com. Create your own embeddable captioned YouTube videos here.

E08REa8JV8k

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That must've been quite a wreck. Look at his pants.

← BECAUSE HE'S RICH

Passed over by the Steppenwolf tour. This had better be a new low.

"YOU'RE FANTASTIC, POWER LINES!"

Good. Stare at her boobs. American girls love that.

Failed cosmetology school on a 1.3 GPA

Is this seriously all the blonde they could afford?

*ejaculates*

"I like you despite your weird face."

Is it time for the racism then?

↑
Roots

Guess not.

Don't you hate it when you meet a girl's mom, and the "After" picture ruins the "Before" picture?

↑
(BLACK HAIR)

↑
(BLONDE HAIR)

↑
(BLACK HAIR)

↑
(BLONDE HAIR)

↑
(BLACK HAIR)

The weirdface girl must be playing hitchhiker king of the hill.

"Ever ride in a lozenge?"

What did we talk about, dude?

Three more hits and he's dead.

Did the director have a fetish for creepy smiles?

*ejaculates painfully*

Enough with Mrs. Robinson poolside. It's time for the Jimmy Swaggart fantasy.

(Technically that's just strawberry foreplay.)

"Objectivism is the only logical philosophy!"

"No, behavioral psychology has laid waste to its fundamental tenets!"

Like he's never done a tranny in Thailand.

TRUST RENT-A-TUMBLEWEED!
For All Your Tumbleweed Needs
Special rates for low-rent Japanese exterior shoots.

Did he really want to ride in the hearse?

Finally! There's the racism. And a touch more homophobia because you asked nicely.

"Oh hey, you're bluffing!"

A bored Jersey housewife and a community college anthropology major. Aren't you straight pimping.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♠ ♣ ♦

That's smart.

If you lose enough they comp your room.

I'll bet anything the ball doesn't land on perineum tonight.

Welcome to America

"Hey, it's me. The gay guy from the car. This whole thing has been a repressed homosexual allegory. Why don't you party with me tonight?"

"A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION IS REALLY HERE!"

*wah wah waaah*

Capped by Space Toast

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Retired Addiction

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:55:00 GMT

William Gibson's Zero History (uncorrected proof)

William Gibson's new novel, Zero History, will be published in September. Confessionally, I read the first few chapters of Pattern Recognition without being drawn in, nor did I read Spook Country. Zero History seems to share a universe with these two, perhaps even complete a cycle of sorts. It's a brilliant piece of fiction, magnetic on the page, sharply observed, deeply witty and driven by an oddly ambiguous sense of peril. What becomes clear reading Zero History is that William Gibson never stopped writing cyberpunk: The real world simply caught up with him.

Here are a few short passages:

* * *

"How is she?" Milgram was having one of those experiences of feeling, as he'd explained to his therapist, that he was emulating a kind of social being that he fundamentally wasn't. Not that he was unconcerned with the pain he saw in Hollis's eyes, or with the fate of her friend, but that there was some language required here that he'd never learned.

* * *

"...What you need to remember, with these guys, is that they don't know they're con men. They're wildly overconfident. Omnipotence, omnipresence, that's part of the mythology that surrounds the Special Forces.... Your guy can walk in the door and promise training in something he personally doesn't know how to do, and not even realize he's bullshitting about his own capabilities. It's a special kind of gullibility, a kind of psychic tactical equipment, that he had installed during training. The Army put him through schools, that promised to teach him how to do everything, everything that matters."

* * *

"Were you ever a model?"

"No," said Hollis.

"I was," said Merideth, "for two years. I had a booker who loved using me. That's the key, really, your booker. New York, L.A., all over western Europe, home to Australia for more work, back to New York, back here. Intensely nomadic. George says more so than being in a band. You can cope, when you're seventeen, even when you've no money. Almost literally no money. I lived here, one winter, in a monthly-rent hotel room with three other girls. Hot plate, tiny fridge. Eighty euros a week 'pocket money.' That was what they called it. That was to live on. I couldn't afford an Orange Card for the M�tro. I walked everywhere. I was in Vogue, but I couldn't afford to buy a copy. Fees were almost entirely eaten up before the checks found me, and the checks were always late. That's the way it works, if you're just another foot soldier, which is what I was. I slept on couches in New York, the floor of an apartment with no electricity, in Milan. It became apparent to me that the industry was grossly, baroquely dysfunctional."

"Modeling?"

"Fashion. ..."

Retired Addiction

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:55:00 GMT

Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great

[Emphasis from original. Ellipses mine. Page numbers refer to the first edition Twelve Books hardcover.]

These mighty scholars may have written many evil things or many foolish things, and been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the terrestrial globe in the solar system, let alone the universe, and this is the plain reason why there are no more of them today, and why there will be no more of them tomorrow. Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago.... We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness. (7)

As for consolation, since religious people so often insist that faith answers this supposed need, I shall simply say that those who offer false consolation are false friends. In any case, the critics of religion do not simply deny that it has a painkilling effect. Instead, they warn against the placebo and the bottle of colored water. (9)

[Quoting John Stuart Mill:] "He looked upon [religion] as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up factitious excellencies--belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human kind--and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtue: but above all, by radically vitiating the standard or morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful." (15)

It assures them that god cares for them individually, and claims that the cosmos was created with them specifically in mind. This explains the supercilious expression on the faces of those who practice religion ostentatiously: pray excuse my modesty and humility but I happen to be busy on an errand for god. (74)

In 2004, a soap-opera film about the death of Jesus was produced by an Australian fascist and ham actor named Mel Gibson. (110)

It was not until after the Second World War and the spread of decolonization and human rights that the cry for emancipation was raised again. In response, it was again very forcefully asserted (on American soil, in the second half of the twentieth century) that the discrepant descendants of Noah were not intended by god to be mixed. This barbaric stupidity had real-world consequences.... The entire self-definition of "the South" was that is was white, and Christian. This is exactly what gave Dr. King his moral leverage, because he could outpreach the rednecks. (179)

But to the totalitarian edicts that begin with revelation from absolute authority, and that are enforced by fear, and based on a sin that had been committed long ago, are added regulations that are often immoral and impossible at the same time. The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the detection of error. Most of humanity, throughout its history, has dwelt under a form of this stupefying dictatorship, and a large portion of it still does. (212)

In order to be a part of a totalitarian mind-set, it is not necessary to wear a uniform and carry a club or a whip. It is only necessary to wish for your own subjection, and to delight in the subjection of others. What is a totalitarian system if not one where the abject glorification of the perfect leader is matched by the surrender of all privacy and individuality, especially in matters sexual, and in denunciation and punishment--"for their own good"--of those who transgress? The sexual element is probably decisive, in that the dullest mind can grasp what Nathaniel Hawthorne captured in The Scarlet Letter: the deep connection between repression and perversion. (232)

[Quoting Blaise Pascal:] "Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie."
("The eternal silence of these infinite spaces makes me afraid.") (253)

Everybody but the psychopath has this feeling to a greater or lesser extent.... Modern vernacular describes conscience--not too badly--as whatever it is that makes us behave well when nobody is looking. (256)

Paine's Age of Reason marks almost the first time that frank contempt for organized religion was openly expressed. It had a tremendous worldwide effect. His American friends and contemporaries, partly inspired by him to declare independence from the Hanoverian usurpers and their private Anglican Church, meanwhile achieved an extraordinary and unprecedented thing: the writing of a democratic and republican constitution that made no mention of god and that mentioned religion only when guaranteeing that it would always be separated from the state. Almost all of the American founders died without any priest by their bedside, as also did Paine, who was much pestered in his last hours by religious hooligans who demanded that he accept Christ as his savior. Like David Hume, he declined all such consolation and his memory has outlasted the calumnious rumor that he begged to be reconciled with the church at the end. (The mere fact that such deathbed "repentances" were sought by the godly, let alone subsequently fabricated, speaks volumes about the bad faith of the faith-based.) (268-269)

The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by easy electronic means, will revolutionize our concept of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone. (283)

Best Sellers

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:06:00 GMT

Just time this week to check in on the Times Best Sellers List...

Hardcover Fiction

1.	THE LORDBURN REPETITION, by Kluey Part Smith. (Niffen, $26.00.) Super spy Rex Coulter must stop a large thing from happening.
2.	THE PERSPICACITY OF DOUBT, by Lucy Blovine. (Scor/Delfine, $26.50.) Summering on Wild Horse island, recent divorcee Hailiey McElle-Saphire meets an otherwise perfect man with a dark secret.
3.	CHURNED, by James Patterson and Olivia Sciatica. (Buffet, $28.00.) Ribald O'Makepeace will stop at nothing to avenge his carpool. Patterson Vermeers his name onto an eleventh USA Original-grade potboiler this year.
4.	ROBERT LUDLUM'S THE BOURNE BORING, by Eric Von Lustbader. (Taipei Holdings Corp, $24.99.) Renegade agents delve underground as Von Lustbader continues to serve out some karmic purgatory inside the long-dead corpse of Ludlum.
5.	PIECES OF A LIFE ONCE LIVED, by Katherine Loft. (Shumberg, $26.00.) Nothing much happens.
6.	A MURDER IN THE COLON, by Dee Brettfield. (Snorium Mystery, $23.95.) Questions must be answered when bodies begin turning up outside homicide dick-turned-doc Rue Level's Hollywood practice in Brettfield's latest colonoscopy-flavored opus.
7.	HEART OF THE HEART, by Lisette Poe. (Snaf Books, $26.00.) A story about sisters in which they don't just plain hate each other.
8.	STAR WARS: QUORUM OF THE JEDI: THE FORCE AND ITS DISCONTENTS, by Callista Quing. (DF, $24.00.) A whole galaxy at war and it's the same ten goddamn planets and cast members. Followup to Star Wars: Quorum of the Jedi: Lodgers of the Force.
9.	JEREMIAH'S SWORD, by J. Luke Taper. (Swaggart Press, $23.99.) A young man's flaming sword thrusts the spirit of God into the backs of the unrepentant in Taper's post-Rapture Christian allegory.
10.	DEAD IN THE FAMILY, by Charlaine Harris. (Ace, $25.95.) Sookie Stackhouse is exhausted in the aftermath of a Fae war.
11.	PROFOUND TONE, by Paulo Coelho. (Shiv/Livertoot, $27.95.) The author of The Alchemist pads out another child chapter book plot with his trademark Buddhist Monk Voice.

Hardcover Nonfiction

1.	THAT WEBSITE: THE BOOK, by Stu Borgen et. al. (eBooks iPublications, $22.99.) That website, in book form for some reason. Destined for the can.
2.	IF IT WERE POSSIBLE TO HAVE SEX WITH A GENERATION, I WOULD HAVE SEX WITH THE GREATEST GENERATION, by Tom Brokaw. (Culthouse, $24.00.) Further wankery on the generation that beat the Depression, World War II, blacks and women.
3.	MR. EIFFEL'S AWFULLY BIG TOWER, by Snake Morley. (B&W/Weege, $29.99.) New revelations on the temporary unpopularity of the monument, from the archives of the Parisian Ladies' Anti-Berber League.
4.	STEPHENIE MEYER: CREEPY, SEXUALLY-REPRESSED MORMON BROOD MARE, by Deedee Copenham. (Salt Press, $22.00.) The authorized biography.
5.	FAILED GOVERNOR, by Mitt Romney. (Tankard, $28.50.) The one-term Massachusetts executive explains why he's somehow relevant to national politics.
6.	I'M A CELEBRITY... FUCK!, by some chick or other. (Tarpaulin Books, $23.00.) Yet more reminiscences by the woman who has the routine about- Wait am I thinking of the other one? The one who was always drunk.
7.	MY MONEY IS IN MY SHOE, by Lou Dobbs. (Milli Press, $27.00.) Something about immigrants, something about gold, and other stuff it's getting increasingly hard to classify from the former pundit.
8.	IN LEAGUE WITH DEVILS, by Gordon Bott. (Walden Press, $29.50.) It doesn't matter what it's about, the crappy university publisher didn't expect it to do any business and it'll be backordered for a month.
9.	WHEN WE DIE, WE DON'T DIE, by Premaketuur Jones. (Shambhala, $24.50.) Deep meditations on the large "Continue? 10... 9... 8..." screen that appears over our heads when we die if we properly practice spiritual quantum mindfulness soul vibration wellness.
10.	...AND HE PROBABLY HAS A TINY PENIS, TOO!, by Laura Ingraman. (John Birch Books, $24.95.) Ann Coulter takes us on another tour of vitriol, crackpot research and insinuation. Laura Ingraham. Whatever.
11.	COUNTERFACTUALS, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Greengreen, $24.99.) Sixteen more hilariously surprising bullshit essays, including "Reevaluating Ethyl," "Anyone Could Teach Elementary School" and "Caesar Invented the Typewriter."

Five Underused Horror Tropes

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:25:00 GMT

And properties that make interesting use of them.

1. Frankenstein Creations: Powerful, perhaps immortal confusions of once-dead human parts reanimated by Dr. Frankenstein's (always) secret method. Not to be overly confused with James Whale's 1931 film with its constricted, single-location plot, dim bolt-necked creation, and memorable use of Nicola Tesla-inspired electrical equipment as the (revealed) method of cell reanimation.

Franken Fran: A manga series about a loveable but somehow unmistakeably monsterous patchwork girl who inhabits a mansion full of equally bizarre creations, "helping" people as she sees fit, and awaiting the return of her creator.

2. Dopplegangers: Classically, a mute apparition of oneself that appears to warn against impending danger.

Arcana: Another manga, slow to start, in which a girl matching no missing person's report is found by the police, and by her ability to see ghosts proves useful in investigating a series of brutal murders.

3. Former Tenants: Beings who inhabited the Earth long before humans, and who want their world back.

The short stories of H.P. Lovecraft: Lovecraft lived in the era when man was pushing into the final dark corners of the map. His dominant theme was a fear that the dark corners would push back. The double-switch Lovecraft plays in "At the Mountains of Madness" is particularly impressive. (Cthulhu, despite his fame, is a relatively minor player.)

4. Sirens: Beautiful female creatures, often with the aspects of seabirds, who lure men (and women?) to a watery death with an irresistable song.

There is a Japanese survival horror videogame series called "Siren," but it appears to have very little to do with the western myth.

5. The Motif of Harmful Sensation: Related to the siren, a broader term for the idea of a piece of sensory input that can cause a physical effect on the victim. (Well explained in the finest deleted Wikipedia article I've ever come across.)

BLIT: David Langford's remarkable short story revolves around the discovery of a class of images that "crash" the human brain, killing anyone who views them.

India, Nationalism and Archaeology

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 08:53:00 GMT

East Asian cultural blog A Man With Tea muses on the implications of a request by the Archaeological Survey of India for the return of certain art objects in the British Museum.

On paper, at least, India under the Raj wasn't the single nation "India" as we know it today, but a massively fractured series of kingdoms and micro-nations. (Think of the Warring States period in China, or Italy until the late 19th century -- but cloned many times over.) Each was (in theory) independent, though deeply linked with the others through trade and treaty. Each (in theory) had its own arrangements with the British. In practice they were vassal states to a virtual vassal state ("India") of Britain.

In ethical terms, there is a difference between taking advantage of a period of unrest to loot art objects, and taking things with the permission of whomever is in charge of the place where the artifacts are located. (In some cases, like Boston's Japanese art collection, the items were literally being discarded during a period of unrest, and would no longer exist if some foreigner hadn't taken a shine to them. VERY tricky.) Obviously leaders change, and by the standards of democracy virtually no leader from the past would now be considered "legitimate" -- but that's applying modern ethics to the past. Modern ethics are a modern technology.

Indians are wonderfully legalistic, and I'd be a little disappointed if they didn't try to make a case for having the items returned. But Indians have a bad habit of building a convoluted case and then BELIEVING it too. I'm afraid that what this probably comes down to is nationalism, and that's something that I, personally, have no truck with.

Panorama: Off Route 17

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:04:00 GMT

Union, ME.

Stitched together in Hugin from eighteen camera phone pictures. Mercator projection.

Retired Addiction

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:54:00 GMT

Current Addiction: Dimitri From Paris's Cruising Attitude album

I can't quite manage to not get happy listening to "Merumo." Slick, stylish and fun "faux jazz" in the '60s orchestra style. John Barry on a bender.

111 Minute Book Covers: Paradise Lost

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:37:00 GMT

Speed composition of a book cover for John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Assets are a photo of Michelle Webster from a shoot we did in March, and Ivan Tortuga's public domain image of a moth from the Wikimedia Commons. Fonts are Zdenek Gromnica's InfraRed and Gerard E. Bernor's Bambi Bold.

Under 111 minutes? Close.

Click image for 300dpi.

Mac OS X Interface Criticisms

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:56:00 GMT

For the statement of purpose, skip to the end. Let's get into this...

Slow interface elements. When you click on a menu in Windows XP, there's often a "meh" moment where it hesitates before opening. As far back as System 6, clicking on a Mac menu meant, menu: now. Two Mac interface elements have always been painfully slow, though: Dashboard and Spotlight.

Dashboard. Great idea. Bad execution. I always found Dashboard unusably slow on my G5, but figured I'd use it all the time when I got an Intel. I was half right. It's about twice as fast. Which means it can still spend 10 seconds thinking about nothing of apparent difficulty before letting me type a word into my dictionary. I only have six widgets. Dashboard needs to be rewritten from the ground up for instantaneous speed.
Spotlight. Far too ubiquitous in the system. If I want to find a file, I go to the Finder and hit the standard key combination Command-F. If I want an address, I go to Address Book. If I want an email, I go to Mail. If I hit Command-Space, anywhere, any time, it's by accident. Usually, I don't even mean to open the Help menu. Lurking behind either accident is a judder as the Mac thinks hard about opening... a search box.

The default Finder window. What IS all this crap? The titlebar is half an inch tall. I've got a search box which, if I click on it and begin typing, MAY start searching in the current folder, or may jump out to the whole disk. It may decide to do Contents or File Name. If I "x" out of it, it will dump me back to list view when I was in column view. There's a gear-widgety thing that I've never used; it does nothing but duplicate the File menu. Most of the stuff on the left makes sense, but once again I've got search; can we just pick a place for search and leave it there? The bottom of the window is another quarter inch tall, and empty except for one line of text that could fit a dozen times in all the wasted space up top. Finally, there's a little tic-tac in the top right that hides all the useless stuff -- as well as the useful stuff in the left-hand pane.
Disk Images. I'm old enough to remember copying between two disks on a Mac Plus with no hard drive -- using "Eject" instead of "Put Away" so you could drag and drop a file from one disk to a greyed-out picture of the other, and spend the next several minutes swapping disks physically. Why do I bring this up now? Because the virtual disk concept is lost on all but the most propellerheaded users. Look at your mom's computer: she's still got every installer and .dmg file she ever downloaded. She doesn't get that you download a file, the file becomes a "disk," you copy from the "disk," then you "eject the disk," and delete the file. (No mom, deleting the disk image won't delete the copy of Firefox you just installed...) Applications shouldn't have installers and outside-the-bundle files in 2010 anyway, but that's a much wider abuse of the Application concept in modern graphical user interfaces.
One-click application opening. Have we forgotten how to double click? How often do you accidentally begin the slow loading of a large application because it's next to the one you wanted on the dock? Here's a consistent workflow: Hover reveals nothing new but indicates that the object can act; Click hilights the object and reveals options; Second click performs the default action. (In an application's case, starting up.)
Dot-3 file extensions. What kind of teletype-era UNIX cancer is this? The file NAME is the file NAME. Nothing. More. The file TYPE is the file TYPE. You had this solved in LisaOS, never mind in the first version of the MacOS that was written when I was four. Two hidden pieces of data, each more than three characters long: The file type, and the file creator. The whole point of a graphical user interface is that the file system shows us -- with it's graphics-ical things -- what type of file we're dealing with. Which leads us to...
Thumbnail icons. Unless the image the file contains is not much more complicated than an icon, an icon-sized preview is unlikely to reveal much of value to the eye at a glance. Below a certain size, say about that of your fist at arm's length (your thumb thumbnail is far too small), images become jumbles, like a big table of numbers. My text documents all have thumbnail icons. They all look the same. Their icons do not reveal the file type or creator, which was supposed to be the point of an icon. It's possible we need to abandon miniature icons in their entirety.
No application should ever steal focus from another application. Period. If I open three applications and then click back on the one I was working in, I should never be ripped back out of it. If I insert a CD, iTunes has no right to demand my attention whenever it gets around to deciding what the CD is.
The jumping icon on the dock is much too annoying for developers to have access to it. Too many abuse it. Progress finished? So f***ing what? Leave me the hell alone. Apple's own Software Update abuses it, constantly demanding attention until it's allowed to tell the user that, eventually, a restart will be required.
The Finder vs. the open and save dialog. The special view of the file system in the open/save dialog made beautiful sense when we could only have one application open at a time. That was twenty years ago. There's no more need to duplicate the functionality, especially in a truncated manner. How should we decide where a new file is saved to? We click Save, and the top Finder window pops up with the file awaiting a name.

And briefly noted:

If an application is going to take more than half a second to open, I should be able to tell it to stop.
It's easy to browse FTP servers from the Finder, and it feels like a natural use of the filesystem. So why is it read only after so many years?
Safari Command-arrowkey navigation doesn't work when a text box is hilighted. The page itself gets to decide when a text box is selected.
Connecting to and rebuffering an internet stream locks up the entire iTunes interface with a modal dialog.
*Sorting in column view. I'm asterisking this one because I understand it's finally been implemented in Snow Leopard. The trouble is, we should have been able to sort Finder columns the same ways we can sort Finder lists a long, long time ago.

I was making Hypercard games when I was ten on a Mac Plus. I learned Animation:Master when it was Playmation on a Quadra. I was modding Escape Velocity with Ray Dream Designer and ResEdit on a 60Mhz Performa. I won most of my film festival awards for a 12 minute short animated on a 500Mhz G3 iMac bubble. I freelanced after college with a G5 tower. I remember Strata, KPT, Aldus and Fractal Design, and I'm old enough to remember the MCP when it was just a chess program! I may know what I'm talking about.

YouTube Captioning: March 19, 2010 - Rubi

Sun, 30 May 2010 21:38:00 GMT

So many more captioned YouTube videos, including several feature films, at YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com. Create your own embeddable captioned YouTube videos here.

lbdFY3-yv1A

You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video.

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This translation is provided for the educational enrichment of the YouTube Captioning public regarding the unique cultural voice of Tagalog-language drama.

I'm afraid you're just not cut out to be a vet tech.

You can keep the scrubs, but please leave.

I've never said this after one class.

You faking it too?

No-

Come on! Doctor Teeth looks more like a pediatrician.

You're not a pedo, are you?

Because if you are, I've got a trunk full of items that might interest you...

Who are THEY to judge us?! Know what I mean?

Right?

I'm trying to catch the Phantom!

I'm sorry the... disease has only gotten worse.

I can tell.

With every minute that goes by, your son turns more and more into Jaden Smith.

Untalented. Yes.

Neve Campbell!

We've never met this Phantom. How can we be turning into "B" list celebrities?

They say he might be tainting drinks to terrorize people.

Seriously, though. Am I really starting to look like Robin Tunney?

Um...

Not... Who's Robin Tunney?

You know...

I do?

From The Craft?

Well! If it isn't the bitches of Eastwick.

I can't believe you're BOTH turning into cast members of The Craft.

Laaaaame!

Look! It's Danielle Panabaker and post-scrappy-cuteness Claire Danes.

It's better than being Neve Campbell and... oh wait, what was her name? She never did another film again.

Robin Tunney? Bitch is on "The Mentalist" these days, skank.

Oh, that's right! And The Zodiac, right?

Zodiac, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey, Jr.?

No, The Zodiac, with Macaulay Culkin's kid brother.

But really, "Neve." How's it going? Thought of releasing an album since riding the Scream franchise into the ground?

...as in "GWARs Doug?" [GWAR-style scatting.]

They say it's reversible!

Get real! At least I caught someone no one's ever heard of. No one remembers Disney's Sky High.

Seriously. Kurt Russell in a big foam suit? You've got to rent it.

She probably thinks if they catch the Phantom they'll be able to reverse the effects.

Get used to it, honey. The blank. Test pattern. Stare. You're going to have it for a long time!

Everything all right?

Um... You got a huge dose of Ryan Seacrest, didn't you?

Whatever. It could have been Simon Cowell.

When you're bumping uglies tonight, it'll be like a porno VH1 special.

Sleep tight, kids.

I threw up a little just now.

Is it possible to wash my mind's eye out with bleach?

I am never going to eat again!

Bumping... ug-uglies...

"Come on, son."

"You can tell me."

I don't know how to explain this, doc.

The Phantom has gotten to each one of my friends... but not me.

Do you think you're feeling a sort of survivor's guilt?

You may just be so bland that it's not taking.

You know, I actually thought I was turning into Ricky Martin this weekend.

I went out and bought some Menudo tracksuits, came out on my blog...

"Maybe it will help..."

If we imagine there is no Phantom per se.

You look about as imposing as David Schwimmer...

"Just about." Why?

"And maybe..."

"This can help too."

"It will be our little secret, son."

You take this.

Essence of Neve Campbell? I can't accept this.

You'd look good as a stiff "B" actress.

Thanks. The Janet Reno never quite took.

It all...

It started out innocently enough.

A little essence of Tim Robbins here and there...

Bob Hoskins. I got hooked on Gerald McRaney.

Pretty soon everyone's doing it.

But not admitting it. Like listening to Boston.

Thanks for the David Schwimmer and the advice.

"I appreciate this conversation."

It may be Matt LeBlanc.

I can live with that.

I'm sorry.

All I could score you was Robin Tunney. She was on "Prison Break." Kind of.

Her hair didn't really fall out. It was a bald cap.

Driver?

Yo?

How good is this Mark Ericson guy?

If you can't be the real person you want to be

Why not be someone who looks like someone else?

They must be famous for a reason, not just by random chance...

Capped by SpaceToast
YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

Is It Just Me...?

Sun, 16 May 2010 21:03:00 GMT

YouTube Captioning: Clean Coal Success Story

Sun, 09 May 2010 21:11:00 GMT

Find more captioned YouTube videos from KKDW, TheDiva, GlitterRock and myself at YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com. Create your own embeddable captioned videos here.

HipbxVHH1-Y

You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video.

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TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!

Fishing next to a 50 year old coal plant. Get ready for the Big Lie, folks.

Rednecks?

"Far as we could get from this sh** hole."

"Tha's right."

SOFT FOCUS = SINCERITY

UNRELATED TESTIMONIALS = RAPPORT

"...your wife."

I should say so!

"Still f*ckin' your wife, Ted."

That's easy to remember.

You put little suits on steam?

"We're going to be using steel, which is metal. And burn coal, which burns."

♫ Heeeeeeeere they come to snuff the Bruce Na... ♫

It can't be that important...

Enter your own damn text.

It means 40% efficiency, vs. the 37% of hundred-year-old technology.

PARTIAL FOCUS = EVEN MORE SINCERITY
(Added in post.)

TIME LAPSE CLOUDS = THOUGHTFULNESS
(Also works with bodies of water, stars, hilly forests.)

It's basically a big Dirt Devil.

"And about 5 million tons of CO2 per annum."

If you'd like to know what these a**holes are actually on about, Council Bluffs #4 happened to be the first coal plant built after the EPA began forcing the power industry to reduce mercury emissions. There are three older plants on the site, each releasing 5x the mercury of #4. We have two more minutes -- think they'll mention any of this?

GREEN STUFF = FRIENDLY

They're circulating, are they?

Rape, larceny, poor dental hygiene...

You built. A fourth. Plant.
That means more pollution, you carpetbagging twat.

"And global warming was made up by Al Gore, so..."

"Fish sticks."

Walri? Kid's nothing if not ambitious. And a bit stupid.

I'm sorry, which disease did you catch?

I only speak New England Redneck, can you repeat large portions of that?

TMI, dude.

"That was no fish, that was my wife!"

*boom!*

FAMILY TESTIMONIAL = TRUST

"Just not in any way that affects me."

BACKLIGHTING + FILL = CALM

"Something heavier than the lure."

MULTIPLE MATCH CUTS = CLOSURE

HITACHI: Doing the Minimum Required by Law™
And expecting a handjob for it!

Capped by Space Toast
YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

Thirteen Ideas We Need Words For

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:40:00 GMT

1. verb. Treating a verifiable fact as a philosophical opinion. (Evolution, heliocentrism, tax rates, etc.)

2. adjective. An idea which is neither fringe nor mainstream; a plausible idea without sufficient refuting or corroborating evidence.

3. noun. The desire to marry outside one's ethnicity, religion or culture.

4. noun. The talent for attracting resources to oneself, as distinct from talent or charm.

5. noun. The peculiar semi-English used in Indian advertising. India's version of "Engerish."

6. noun. Putting a great deal of work into looking less attractive.

7. noun. The inflated price of a good or service from which a predetermined "discount" is expected to be deducted. (Magazines, cars, medical services, etc.)

8. verb. Looking for attractive friends-of-friends on a social networking site.

9. adjective. The quality of a language to sound good rapped.

10. noun. An imagined period of time which doesn't fit into the known timeline of history. (Nationalist myths, "ancient wisdom," the 1001 Nights stories, etc.)

11. noun. The ageing character who survives the story despite having little concern about his or her death. (The hostages in the Nausicaa mangas, Terence Stamp's character in The Limey, etc.)

12. pronoun. A neuter third-person singular.

13. pronoun. A second-person plural distinct from the second-person singular.

You'll notice that there are no adverbs on the list. We have more than enough adverbs as it is, and compositions are usually improved by their deletion.

Some suggestions for the above:

1. To murdoch? In honor of its greatest worldwide proponent.
2. Borderland? Useful for grain-of-salt publications like "Counterpunch."
3. No idea. "Exo-" constructs sound too cold.
4. Does this already exist as an off-label use of the word "gravity?"
5. Hindlish? (Hindi + English.) Not entirely accurate, but most Indian culture that reaches the West escapes via (Hindi speaking) Bollywood.
6. Emoing down? More of a term than a word.
7. Bulltag?
8. This usually gets lost under the broader term "Facebook stalking."
9. Spittable? As in "Korean is not very spittable."
10. i-time? Ugly, esoteric and hyphenated. Refers to the mathematical concept of i -- imaginary numbers which can be visualized as extending to the left and right of the number line.
11. Old soldier? Most stock characters get a term, not a word.
12. Ee? (False root of "he" and "she.") None of our other pronouns have this problem.
13. Yall? I still flinch when I hear "y'all," but unless we somehow bring back the third person singular "thou," it's our best hope. Perhaps we should drop the apostrophe and make it a proper word.

Blosxom: Upgrading to an RSS 2.0 Feed

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 17:24:00 GMT

Blosxom still pretty much just damn works, but it's dying. A dead News link on a project site is never a good sign. It won't be long before the STP will have to move to another weblog backend, but that's for another day.

Today's issue: Facebook keeps inexplicably dropping my RSS feed. Facebook is of course happy to pretend there isn't an internet outside its walls, but I get a lot more feedback on my ideas through Facebook than in the blog comments. Whether it's the cause of this problem or not, in keeping with its age, Blosxom serves feeds in the RSS 0.90 format, which would be a bit of a ColecoVision even if Blosxom had ever done it right.

I've modified my copy of the blosxom.cgi script to produce a modern RSS 2.0 feed that validates correctly. You can do the same. Here's how:

1. Open blosxom.cgi in a text editor and scroll to the bottom.

2. Replace this rubbish:

rss content_type text/xml
rss head <?xml version="1.0"?>\n\n<!DOCTYPE rss PUBLIC "-//Netscape
Communications//DTD RSS 0.91//EN"
"http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd">\n\n<rss
version="0.91">\n <channel>\n
<title>$blog_title $path_info_da $path_info_mo
$path_info_yr</title>\n
<link>$url</link>\n
<description>$blog_description</description>\n
<language>$blog_language</language>\n
rss story   <item>\n
<title>$title</title>\n
<link>$url/$yr/$mo_num/$da#$fn</link>\n
<description>$body</description>\n </item>\n
rss date \n
rss foot   </channel>\n</rss>

3. With this rubbish:

rss content_type text/xml
rss head <?xml version="1.0"?>\n\n<rss
version="2.0">\n <channel>\n
<title>$blog_title $path_info_da $path_info_mo
$path_info_yr</title>\n
<link>$url</link>\n
<description>$blog_description</description>\n
<language>$blog_language</language>\n
<generator>blosxom $version</generator>\n
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>\n
rss story   <item>\n
<title>$title</title>\n
<pubDate>$dw, $da $mo $yr $ti:00
GMT</pubDate>\n
<link>$url/$yr/$mo_num/$da#$fn</link>\n
<guid
isPermaLink="true">$url$path/$fn</guid>\n
<description>$body</description>\n </item>\n
rss date \n
rss foot   </channel>\n</rss>

That's it.

YouTube Captioning: Jesus and Moses Went Golfing

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:14:00 GMT

The YouTube Captioning Thing has been upgraded to handle higher resolution videos. Find more captioned videos from KKDW, TheDiva, GlitterRock and myself at YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com. Create your own embeddable captioned YouTube videos here.

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"...you said we'd be in the desert for a week."

Book of Clubs: 8 wood 4

Please don't do that.

Spreads a choirboy's anus, and...

Jesus doesn't handle confrontation well.

But it's hard to make par with your penis.

Passive-aggressively immitating Charlie Chaplin.

Moses was just being an asshole.

Is Jesus doing the sound effects too?

( / 2) -

For more of God being a dick, please read the Old Testament.

" God is just sick of your masturbating. "

(The guy reaching for the man with the limp penis.)

Did he say when?

.
o
O
(He's right... He's right... That's right... Oh my god, that's so right...)

Did they know how condoms worked?

"BASTARDS!"

It also lets SATAN crawl up your hoo-ha.

"You... SLUT."

Actually, the Catholic church has spent the last thousand years debating the point of "ensoulement" without coming to any solid consensus.

Something that happens naturally to 60-80% of fertilized eggs anyway. (Yes, fertilized eggs.)

Wait, when did logic come into the Catholic church?

Or "GALILEO WAS RIGHT!" prior to Nirvana dropping the Nevermind album.

There there, Thomas Aquinas, William of Occam and Aristotle -- the molestache man is almost done.

Yes, I can clearly see the moral and logical problem you've backed yourself into.

←Bad Good→

"Sorry about your son's sphincter, here's some money..."

Do you get the feeling that somewhere there's a shop class missing its wacky teacher, and the girls are having to use the bandsaw without someone leaning over to guide both of their hands?

Brought to You by Your Ashur-Worshipping Friends in Ninveh:
Capital of the Ancient Assyrian Empire

Capped by Space Toast
YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

Panorama: Beech Hill

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:22:00 GMT

Rockport, ME.

Stitched together in Hugin from fifteen camera phone pictures. Mercator projection.

Retired Addiction

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:41:00 GMT

Massive Attack's Heligoland album

Massive Attack is dangerous. Massive Attack is back.

How to Tell If You've Been Ripped Off by the Developers of Your Corporate Site

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:35:00 GMT

It's thoroughly embarassing what even Fortune 500 companies will accept from their website designers. There's a lot of snake oil out there, like Twitter and almost anything to do with Facebook, not to mention the Russian roulette of gaming search engines, but we're just going to look at your website. If you're a not too tech savvy manager trying to figure out if your vendor is ripping you off, read on.

On any page, go to View Source, and search for the word "<table>". Did it come up? If so, is there any actual spreadsheet-type data on the page? No? Then you've been ripped off by a firm that can't use modern code to build a site. They'll want twice what they should be charging for any minor layout tweak, because they'll have to practically rewrite the page from scratch every time it needs changing.
When you enter a phone number in any reasonably logical manner into the phone number field, does the site fail to understand it? Does it give you an error, and tell you how it wants the number entered instead? If so, you've been ripped off by a vendor who thinks your customers' patience is less valuable than half an hour of its billable time. Teaching a computer that 555-555-5555x102 is (555)555-5555 ext.102 and 5555555555ex102 is not taxing. An incredibly badass phone number validator might run to 50 lines of code. Might. Five minutes on Google will turn up dozens of good ones, ready made and free to use. See also: Social security numbers, dates and zip codes.
Does clicking the link to log in redirect the user to a different website? It's easy to create a fake site at a plausible-looking address. There are thousands of them on the web at any given time, designed to trick the user into typing in their account information. Redirecting from TinyCreditUnion.com to login.2MyAccount.co.cz/TinyCreditUnion?=mainsite?=login.redirecttome.com goes against every shred of good internet consumer advice in existence. If you train your customers to make bad decisions with their account information, some of them will.
Does a password have to contain numbers, symbols, etc? Bear the following in mind: There are lists available on the web, compiled by legitimate security researchers, of what the most common passwords are. Beyond screening for those, the difference between the password "buylamps" and the password "4f9s^fg)3" is statistically meaningless. Brute-force attacking an eight character password containing nothing but lower-case letters would require an average of over 104 BILLION attempts. If the site designer is smart enough to take the tiny precaution of ignoring more than one login attempt per second (which your customers will never be bothered by, on the receiving end) it would take 3,309 years of constant guessing just to get an even chance of breaking into an account.
Is there a meter that tells you how "strong" your password is? It's bullshit. It's calling 3000 years "weak," 30,000 years "fair" and ten lifetimes of the universe "strong," and chances are it's not even checking against a list of common passwords. If the small steps above have been taken, it's as meaningless to you as mathematician talk about the different sizes of infinity.
If you enter the wrong password a few times, does the account lock you out? More fake security. The obvious trouble is, it's only ever going to be invoked by already pissed off customers who can't remember the machine-exact keystrokes with which to enter this particular password on this particular website. I know you want to think of yourself as the center of your customers' financial lives, but you're not. So unless you want to pay someone at a call center to deal with every minor issue the website was designed to handle, fire the bums who try to sell you customer lockout.
Does the password need to be changed at regular intervals? This is not even fake security, nor merely irritating: it's actually negative security. Your customer can't memorize a new password every month (nor can you) never mind half a dozen. That means the password has to be written down somewhere. Which means it's not a password anymore, it's a bearer bond. Suddenly, leaving an address book in the restaurant, losing a $10 thumb drive, having a purse snatched, or just plain leaving a sticky note in the wrong place can compromise half of a customer's financial life.
Does the site use security questions? If you can make a security question specific enough to be unambiguous (mother's maiden name) it will be a matter of public record. If it's any vaguer than that (your first crush), it will lead to so many possible answers that no customer will be able to consistently enter the same, correct, exact, machine-confirmable string of characters in answer to the question each time without -- again -- writing it down. Most users settle on a consistent string of profanity, which is guessable and still usually needs to be written down. Guess a few strings of profanity yourself if a vendor ever tries to sell you this.

YouTube Captioning: 2010 K-POP Single Chart (March Week 3)

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:35:00 GMT

So many more captioned YouTube videos, including several feature films, at YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com. Create your own embeddable captioned YouTube videos here.

xBCZc7s4ELQ

You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video.

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2010: A K-Pop Odyssey

"What!?"

"Ow!"

"Quit it!"

"Dammit!"

"Quit shoving!"

It could be gas.

Translation: "...but the Body Shop was closed!"

↑
To be fair, chicks with violins rock.

To be fair, chicks with violins rock.

Shouldn't he be wearing tissue boxes on his feet?

"Go my child! Escape from the man fairy!"

To be exact, love, a can of Red Bull, and two shots each of Bacardi and Jagermeister taught me to drink.

"Play it again, Chan."

"My urine sample!"

.
o
O
(Dammit, I'm almost out of condiments)

Seeing as this appears to be a tv show theme, you'd think cutting a video wouldn't have been ponderous.

If you squished today and twenty years ago together, this is the horrible clothing you would end up with.

I thought HOPPER + DRAMA = EASY RIDER

(Shouldn't this be over?)

Boyz II Twatz

Walk into the damn light!

You: zip up

You: unzip

What about Noein?

8eight appears with 2AM and 4Men in the new release Now 7hat's What 1 Call 1nexplicable Use of Digits #7.

Where do you get a belt with a heat exchanger?

Not his usual look. He came here straight from dodging the "100M from a school or playground" restriction slapped on him by the judge.

There's a joke you're not in on here: The band is called "4Men," but there are three of them, without a testicle between them.

I Can't (Theme to Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse")

I want to enjoy this, but there's an air of barely-contained desperation around these women.

See what I mean?

; _ ;

^_^

You do know they make unobtrusive mics, right?

Love. I'm noticing a theme here.

Falling Down II: Lady Luckless

A sewer in my bed...!

↑
[INSERT EMOTION HERE]

"Hey! It's only raining in front of the camera!"

Yay! The shocker song!

Two in the pink, one in the stink! Shock! SHOCK!

Maybe they're saying "shuck." It could be a corn song.

But didn't get a wrist or a finger

Goddamn the cur

Jack, that cat
(He's technically a woman but don't tell the officer)

Korean is not a language you can "spit."

People who won't even dog-ear a page run in fear from
Marginalia Man!

The hand bump. Classic.

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Well don't everybody run away. Somebody's got to clean up around here.

*Lloyd Thaxton pedals through*
I knooooow a little place/ Not far from town/
(Gotta go) A kind of pretty place/ Three up, two down

Ahh. The Korean Miley.

"Good. Gooooood..." ↑

Another song with "love" in the title. Take a drink.

Confirm. Deny.

You take that back!

Usually you have to be near a base to get Cum-Shot Happy Entertainment in Korea.

Not that I'd... know....

I'm getting a little sick of running too.

What are we running from, at least?

Stop telling me what to do!

+5 Chain Mail? She can't equip that until level 15!

Does lupin grow in Korea? Or is this a posh remake of "Hungry Like the Wolf?"

Sarah Jessica Park Hyor

"Wait! I'll get furniture! I swear."

"Or a door! At least I'll get a door!"

I hear the Marvel continuity nazis sh*t kittens when Dazzler moved to Korea and had a son.

"Or scenery outside of the windows! Anything!"

"You know I love you more than my cheap particle effects! Please!"

Sentinel attack! Hit the deck.

Gee. This video.

Cut scenes from a movie in, and it's MTV: 1988-1994.

(For those younger people in the audience, MTV used to play music.)

BubbleLove.com was already registered. And she was NOT happy with what she found there.

Someone lob another mortar.

2AM: The all fighting-game-villain band

Yes, you did wrong. Now comb it flat again.

Did anyone else just see Kim Jong Il?

D'oh, my bad!

Look, we'll see if we can sort it out with super glue...

What's with the fourth grade love note? I thought child molestation was only big in Japan.

She been driving me so blue

I'll not chicken out again!

Her mom's so cocky...

Young as kids can get...

Yes, "T-ara" is #1. We haven't been counting up.

I know someone who goes crazy because of his violent psychoses. Y'all should hang.

Somewhere in Seoul: "It's peurile, but it doesn't have an annoying repeated phrase. Who wrote that 'Oh Oh Oh Oh' bit for T-ara? Get me that bastard. That bastard sh*ts gold records!"

"What a world!"

Chunky? Lady, Gainax characters are chunky compared to you.

Fosse!

To recap #1: Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, chunky-chunky-chunky-chunky-chunky-chunky-chunky, Satan'll never reach out.

Capped by Space Toast
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Zombeatification

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:13:00 GMT

From a picture of my friend Michelle...

Original:

Edited:

Still not as awesome as this image, or this image, but fun.

Lessons learned:

I'm trying to teach myself not to just go in and make a mess in Photoshop. You can always get an image done faster by painting and filtering the assets directly, but adjustment layers and smart objects REALLY save grief when you need to go back in and fix things. This composite is almost completely nondestructive.
Applying a filter to a smart object creates an editable "smart filter." I don't know how I missed this feature. I wish to god I'd noticed it when I did the Ego Likeness flyer for Plague.
Also useful in a project currently underway, simulating the look of still film has two parts to it: grain and schmutz.
- Grain can be created by adding a 50% gray layer, setting its composite mode to Overlay, applying a small amount of noise, and scaling the layer up as desired.
- Schmutz is small fibres, hair and dust on the negative. This is a little harder. Opaque bits on a clear negative, they appear white when printed. I'd love to find a high-res print of an unexposed frame of film. Then you could just apply it as a layer in Screen mode. I wonder if it's possible to make a convincing one in Animation:Master with instances and flocking.
When you see what happens to people when zombies get them, why are the zombies we see always so intact?

Retired Addiction

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:13:00 GMT

Barnaby Ward's Sixteen Miles to Merricks and Other Works
I've mancrushed on Ward before. Picking up his graphic novel was worth the money. Now where's the next one, Barnaby?

Building the Shack, Part 12

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:02:00 GMT

Ended up spending most of the winter on the walls, working on warm days. Started by cutting and stapling sheet plastic over the frame where the walls would go.

Collected usable scrap lumber from around the property. Angle cut boards on the table saw to 30°. Made perpendicular cuts in the workshop with hand-held circular saw.

Started on the west wall. Didn't beat the snow. Got most of the west wall nailed into place standing on saw horses. Finished on the extension ladder.

East wall was the most complicated. Hung the entension ladder on the roof peak from the foot of the banking, being careful of the picture window.

Made a platform with the ladder, to get the board above the window nailed into place. Steadied the ladder by running ratcheting straps out from the side windows, and finished the roof peak late one night in February under freezing drizzle.

South wall easier. Stood on the block of styrofoam from the picture window installation to get the top board in place. Worked up from the bottom. Recut the final board a few times.

North wall finished last. Cut the final board trapezoidally by hand.

Finished this afternoon, in sunny 45° spring weather.

Caulking needed in places, but walls are in place.

YouTube Captioning: Duck and Cover

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:18:00 GMT

So many more captioned YouTube videos at YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com. Create your own embeddable captioned YouTube videos here.

-2kdpAGDu8s

You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video.

YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

And to the sound of the Dumb Dumb song, we welcome you to a classic piece of WTF.

The Allegory of Bertrand Russell

Clearly.

Wh-? Where did-?!
Oh god, the monkey was a suicide bomber!

♫ He didn't speak unless spoken to...

"FOR THE CAUSE -!"

*bits of dead monkey begin to fall*

"Plod along mindlessly, and withdraw within yourself when there's unrest."

*instinctively mashes the Top Menu button*

"...any unathorized rebroadcast, retransmission, or relocation without the express written consent of the Civil Defense Administration is prohibited."

I think Bert's pretty much "out" already.

"You're a puss."

Scenes from "Burt the Turtle Fights VD"

Emotionally?

Sometimes monkeys just blow themselves up.

"Under my hairpiece, children."

But do we understand its needs?

"Such as school desegregation."

Alert the FBI if you see anyone talking to unknown fires in your neighborhood.

Hitler!

"If you ever need to drill a fire."

"Herbie: Fully Loaded" should be avoided at all costs.

"Our ragamuffins shall protect us from the cars."

Or risk suburban ostracism.

Pre-Tweens

Chances are you won't.

If you're not lucky enough to be vaporized instantly.

Or will again.

Miss Rumphius: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

"Burn your shadow into the pavement..."

"It can menace people near drugstores, and smoke marijuana."

Please. Bert is boiled like a sweet in there.

"Oh yeah. Oh god yeah."

Did you know your homeowner policy doesn't cover atomic brinksmanship?

Shame-wise

With your face?

Cover your back with your septum.

"Isn't this f*cking bullsh*t? Wouldn't we f*cking die anyway?"

"Shut the f*ck up, Betty."

Sometimes you will see the monkey, sometimes you will not.

"Permission to go faster, sir."

"PBS. No, the Mrs. Slocum's Pussy tote bag is at the $200 level."

"Does that look like an atomic bomb to you?"

You may be playing with yourself when the signal comes.

FASTER! TRAMPLE EACH OTHER, YOU F*CKERS! THE WEAK WILL NOT REPRODUCE UNDER THE NEW ORDER!

"Galactus!"

In your perfectly pressed suit.

Near the liqueur cabinet.

If you're in Chinatown...

"It's in my soundproofed apartment, right up there..."

"Let go of my elbow."

"Forget it, baby. It's... Chinatown."

"...you may encounter a Beatnik."

"Me?"

Unless you're The Flash.

"When they dump your books, dive into a fetal position, screaming like a little girl. Watch..."

"Ugod! Wah! Stopit! Stopit! Aaugh!"

"See how he's wet himself?"

"That'll keep them from stuffing you in the janitor's cart."

"Expect them to spit on you. Fortunately, no one can jack off fast enough to soil you in that manner."

I'll take my chances with the bomb, thank you.

Except the room itself.

"IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD, KIDS! INCEST! DRUGS! WAAAH! HA HA HA HA!"

"...they'll never live down the shame."

"Out of my way, b*tch!"

"Too bad they won't be around to enjoy it."

"A feeble attempt, really."

"Future civilizations will be amused by the shapes they leave in the half-molten topsoil."

GAH! They are!

Did she put her head through the cladding?

Or her head will be preserved, anyway.

"Tony regularly wets the bed as a result. Tony's dad beats him."

Tony, can I recommend the other side of the wall?

Tony thinks that if he can't see the shockwave, it can't see him.

"Notice how he weeps, and curses Oppenheimer."

Any unnecessary rubbing or thrusting he does is condoned by the United States Government.

"He's armed, so be careful of him in the ensuing anarchy."

"No matter how mad his demands."

The armored schoolbus

"Has it ever been cleaned down here?!"

"The glass may melt and splash across your body, casting your final scream in a hideous crystalline death mask."

"Stop eating the cooking fuel!"

If they know what's good for them.

Or they believe it, and that's the important bit for civil control.

As long as it's made of 3" thick lead.

"Which shouldn't be much of anywhere, or you'll just be getting what's coming to you, you slut."

That could have gone so many kinds of wrong.

"In all likelihood, falling structures will do this for you."

"Seriously, what the f*ck?"

"Review the life flashing before your eyes, as the air fills with a sound and smell of sizzling bacon."

"...lose that virginity fast."

Kill every monkey you see.

Don't call him Barry Allen?

Next from Astoria Public Schools, don't miss "It's a M.A.D., M.A.D., M.A.D., M.A.D. Cold War."

Capped by Space Toast
YouTubeCapper.blogspot.com

YouTube Captioning: Sylvia Browne's Predictions for 2009 (Part 1)

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 22:14:00 GMT

So many more captioned YouTube videos at YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com. Create your own here.

-56lERwiZtI

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YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

We were. Let's see how you did.

You're not going to change them after the fact like you do on your website, are you?

Book sales down, Syl?

"Ribbit."

Puff puff. Pass. Prophecy. Prevaricate.

That wasn't the first one?

YOU'RE NOT A FRAUD!

Yes yes, my liberal sensibilities are sufficiently buttered up. Can we move on to the predictions?

Everyone expected the December interest rate cut you're referring to, and there was no cut in all of 2009.

Mexican labor?

And many things we don't.

Are we talking about lamp oil? Fish oil?

We sure did expect it though, didn't we?

You fail again, Professor Umbridge.

No, I know about Kermit Roosevelt overthrowing the elected government and installing the Shah in Iran.

All the live-long day.

Don't we see that every year?

All in December?

Strange that you didn't foresee the re-escalation in Afghanistan.

"Lending at the biggest U.S. banks has fallen more sharply than realized, despite government efforts to pump billions of dollars into the financial sector." ~The Wall Street Journal, 2009

"The tally of bank failures easily broke past the No. 100 milestone on Friday night, with regulators announcing the year's 106th closure. That's more than four times the number that were closed in 2008..." ~CNN Money, 2009

"I mean, when the party I predicted gets into the White House..."

In 2009?

With Brooks Garner. Brooks?

(Not really funny. He's just my old roommate.)

You're a psychic. Aren't you supposed to just know?

Yes, I'm sure somewhere "the islands" will have bad weather. Thank you.

"The 2009 Atlantic hurricane season was below average in activity, with a total of nine named storms and three hurricanes. For the first time since 2006, no storm brought hurricane force winds to the United States..." ~Wikipedia

"...she telephoned a psychic."

Capped by Space Toast
YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

The YouTube Captioning Thing Upgraded

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:50:00 GMT

I've added a second mode to the YouTube Captioning Thing. The original version allowed you to create a running commentary beneath any embeddable YouTube video. The new version has a second mode where the captions appear directly on top of the video. Here's a demo:

peZqaHd06xk

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YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

The original Lloyd Thaxton was a retired Grand Rapids machinist who would stand in a long raincoat and leer at the camera for an hour a day. His program ran from 1952-1960.

Back when you had to be drunk to work as a television announcer.

"With a sound as gay as their sportcoats!"

*crowd cheers*

The escalation in Vietnam?

"And other pop culture cliche crap! DAMMIT, JACK, WHERE'D YOU-? Oh, it's in my hand..."

Thank god we invented teen sex.

What's Dorothy doing back there? The Funky Mashed Chicken Potato?

This is what the hep crowd would be doing on a Friday night if Strom Thurmond had won the Presidency.

Where?

That's Lake Michigan.

Well, there are a few.

I thought you said there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

.
o
O
(Two more verses! I can make it!)
*puff puff*

The abandoned mortuary?

Maybe the old vomit factory?

Oh! The weird church on the dump road, in that trailer.

Over... over here now, dude.

Hello?

.
o
O
(It can't be my healthy 3-pack-a-day habit, why am I so beat?)

Gomez Adams: Bandleader

The grand tradition of American songs that use up their material in 90 seconds but just keep f*cking going.

↑

Thinking about Rayon dress pants on a bicycle seat, I hope this guy didn't have balls when he started doing this.

Dorothy, what are you doing?

Wait, he's not really singing!

"WE'RE EASILY ENTERTAINED!"

"Anyone got some Gold Bond?"

"...he'll never work in this business again."

That's the choke.

Christian Bale, Nixon Youth↑

"Ixnay on your ex-life-say."

"David, I understand you're warehoused at the vocational school..."

"Michelle, you're not any part negro are you? It doesn't work on negros."

"The same."

*jing jing!*

Do the faggoty little ribbons come with it?

"--and fight."

Wait, what?

Is this Britain during the rationing?

"But none for you, Dorothy -- I said 'dancers.'"

"CANNED GOODS!"

And the teenagers rebel by going away.

Capped by Space Toast
YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

Korean Hangul Cheat Sheet

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:08:00 GMT

This is a cheat sheet for cramming the basic phonemes of Korean. It's a printable PDF, and a first draft. I've noted the approximate sounds in English and Hindi, because Hindi has a better phonetic alphabet. It's mostly based on this guy's YouTube video. (He doesn't give his name, and I'm not going to look for it.) I number the order of the phonemes in the syllable blocks, rather than using his LRB/TMB system. Corrections welcome.

Panorama: The Eddy, Wiscasset, ME

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:07:00 GMT

Stitched together in Hugin from 17 camera phone pictures. Miller Cylindrical projection.

Panorama: Breakwater in Winter

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:47:00 GMT

Rockland, ME. A much balmier 20°, but breezy.

Stitched together in Hugin from 13 camera phone pictures. Stereographic projection.

Panorama: Stepped Brook

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:42:00 GMT

Union, ME. Air temperature about 10° F.

Stitched together in Hugin from 24 camera phone pictures. Stereographic projection.

The Fiddlers of Rome

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:22:00 GMT

Sneering, populist climate science denialism from a self-described Libertarian is nothing shocking, but it should be a bit beneath the New York Times science page. I'm beginning to think the best thing to do is just to sneer back, and keep asking questions about those lovely secondhand robes they've bought from the Emperor.

Leaving aside the question of whether libertarian philosophy is even flexible enough to mount a response to a problem with personalized rewards but socialized consequences, let's make sure we understand why this is denialism, and not skepticism. Climate change "denialism" relies not on a single set of arguments, but on several tiers, whose only commonality is a defense of inaction on the issue:

I don't "believe" in climate change, because of X,Y, Z
If you show that X,Y,Z are invalid, I will find new arguments U,V,W
If you demolish U,V,W, I will say that even if climate change is happening, there is no evidence that it is anthropogenic because of A,B,C
A,B,C become D,E,F through the same process that produced U,V,W
When D,E,F fall, I will argue that there's no evidence that it will be harmful
When harm is shown, I will pass the buck to the next generation, assuming they will invent some whiz-bang technology to reverse the damage
Why, under libertarian philosophy, anyone in the future would undertake a massive program whose only benefits are social will remain unasked; presumably in the future Libertarians will remain a fringe minority

The scientific consensus on plate tectonics is about as old as I am. It's been around much longer than that, much like our understanding of the greenhouse effect. To certain generations of Americans, though, the Earth never moved. The geological revolution was a boon to oil and gas exploration, and the free market as a whole. If modern climate science had such a rosy picture to offer, would such an unfortunate gap have ever been opened in the last ten years between scientific consensus and public perception?

Retired Addiction

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:21:00 GMT

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

Does a book listing all non-self-referential books contain itself? A book about the founding of modern logic has no right to be such a compulsive page-turner.

Carry On

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:11:00 GMT

No existential threat to the civilized world exists from fundamentalist terrorists. We do not call the madman Emperor, and we do not call the criminal Nemesis. Were terrorists able to threaten the existence of our values, the existence of our institutions of law, or even the lives of any great portion of us, they would not require the tools of cowardice. If Cheney, Beck, Limbaugh, Palin or O'Reilly will argue otherwise, let them do so, and let them stand against evidence. Fear will always be sold cheap by shameful men. Defend reason. Keep calm, and carry on.

The Sci Fi Channel

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:49:00 GMT

Spaceships

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:21:00 GMT

If you don't have artificial gravity, science fiction starts to look more like the age of schooners. To get from place to place in the solar system it'd be necessary to accelerate halfway, turn around and decelerate for the rest of the trip. Accelerating or decelerating at more than the equivalent rate of Earth gravity (9.8m/s) would be difficult for the crew to withstand for long. Jupiter is about 983 million km from Earth at its nearest point. If I'm doing the math right (and I'm probably not) accelerating halfway at 9.8m/s would take 158 hours -- about 6½ days. The full trip would take two weeks.

Laser weapons are a must. You'd only be able to see them when they shoot through gas or dust, but when it comes to shooting from one moving platform and hitting another on a logarithmic scale you won't get much time to aim. A projectile would deliver more energy with less expended, but a powerful lazer would be able to vaporize or nudge it out of the way. Opponents would basically joust on a split-second timeframe, trying to pass momentarily close enough for their computers to shoot. Ships would be no more than specks to one another, usually less. Forget about human combat.

Until someone tells me what exactly an "energy shield" would be, we'll have to assume that surviving a lazer attack means thick, dense plating all over the ship. If a lazer can vaporize a few cubic meters of hull in one shot, you'd better have a lot of hull to spare. It should be shiny too. Getting hit with a lazer might lead to some pretty refractions.

One last thought: Get used to the solar system. It takes light from the sun (which doesn't have to accelerate) eight minutes to reach Earth, four hours to reach Neptune, and four years to reach the nearest star -- itself a burnt-out red dwarf, Proxima Centauri.

Blowing some of the cobwebs out of scifi tropes, fiction begins to slip into unfamiliar grooves.

YouTube Captioning: Morning Musume - Onna ni Sachi Are

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:18:00 GMT

Many more captioned YouTube videos at YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com. Create your own here.

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Average Ages
Morning Musume: 20
Tanpopo: 17
Berryz Kobo: 16
°C-ute: 15

(You're welcome.)

Oh god, this is one of those sh*tty uploads where the sound is out of sync, isn't it?

The director's concept this time: "King Kong before the monkey shows up."

Hugh wooed Heaney

That's all garlic?

Condone cool weed. Neat, a wigwam

Elephant, no, Coochie Goosy

"Mother may we," we know the rules

Let me tell her, Miss Asinine

God an emo, meet sinners armed

Sure you can't debug Camino, why could she?

Gnu, gnu, sheep, pig

Ya, I know 9-pin

BACKHAND ME!
BACKHAND ME!
BACKHAND ME!

Double sheeting

I know Tony

Don't let it travel on the back of me!

Yoghurt is yummy today!

I want him to cower

Sh*t I was saying you could do well

Day old Dominos

In Jew movie saloons

The cartoons

I'd like to go today

My outfit tangled a sardine

Oh, and I need some cheap art, eh?

I sat here, you know buddy

First bridge, and I'm still not sure about the sound sync.

I suppose if straight men costumed them they wouldn't be wearing anything...

Took her eating

A coke girly

Jenny mooned you? Dude, that's your car

With those sheep they "knew" Killarney

I let them in, he says she said

I'm damn near shaking

Murdered Nietzsche

Took her emo nail like a shiv

She's out busted -- Eee! -- to tomb I laid the cow

Aladdin, Nemo -- get your cousins

BACKHAND ME!
BACKHAND ME!
BACKHAND ME!

I'm no condom

Eat your curry

Now can you see I'm no amateur?

Your eyes allow me to neck

A-A-e-choo! Cool wad

Sh*t, I was saying you could do well

Someone should docket her

Cool comb-over, Harry

So can you

Our life's so cold today

Why does she care you cooked her lab?

Oh -- mmm -- I need some cheap art, eh

I sang here. You're normal, eh?

What does a boa do exactly?

This is a weird version of Chicken Little.

I can't tell what's bad choreography, what's bad costuming, and what's bad lighting.

Allow me to cavort

She-Owl was sent to cool the world

Deal out those dominos

And to your own bitch, salut

Chicken, mmm!

I'll have some coke-odin

Mad Hatter thinks of us as Eve

Odin, I need the chief RA

Outside here you're normal, eh?

I'm ready to go'way

Sh*t, hours singing your cool new wail

So won't you die, killer?

A true cover headache

Suck it, do

A lesser coma day

Why don't you care, you crooked liar?

Oh what a nasal, cheap "artist"

Outside here you're nobody

"A monkey?"

"MY monkey!"

"Her monkey?"

"Which monkey?"

"That monkey."

"Monkey."

"MONKEY!"

Incoming 747!

Capped by Space Toast
YouTubeCapper.Blogspot.com

Maxwell

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:54:00 GMT