Happy Birthday to ME!

Sigh… One year older…

Speaking of which, due to the crazy weather, snow storms, and freezing temperature we’ve been having, check out this slideshow of crazy traffic and abandoned cars.

Derek also showed me this video: Bumper cars in Portland, Oregon. Crazy! Cars skidding and bumping everywhere, but instead of regular bumper cars, we’re talking 20-50K cars… That’s why on snow days, I work from home. Just need to make sure I stock up on food.

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Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese phrase is 兎 (usagi) which means rabbit.

How to avoid crying when chopping onions (from SueOn) – apparently the part of the onion that makes you cry resides on the bottom cone.

How We Shower (from Digg) – Heres a funny comparison on showering practices between guys and girls. Funny and true! HOW MEN AND WOMEN SHOWER DIFFERENTLY… Rather funny read.

2006 Ice Storm – Follow Up Visit (from Digg) – Amazing when 2″ of ice forms on a wire from a power utility pole.

spacecoyote did some artwork on what would The Simpsons and Futurama characters would look like if they were drawn in anime style (from Digg). Titled The Simpsonzu and Futurama: Super Happy Fun Show (click images to enlarge), she landed herself a contract with Bongo Comics:

THANK YOU INTERNET

Long story short: Bongo Comics, Matt Groening’s comic book company, is hiring me to do the pencils for a short manga-style Simpsons comic. Also, I’ve been contacted by 20th Century Fox. They want me to do work for them somehow. I might get a job for the upcoming new Futurama series!

Why all this sudden success? Why are my childhood dreams coming true? This is madness, I tells ya! MADNESS!

EDIT: I don’t think all credit should go to just one website! My recognition is thanks to deviantART, Digg, Drawn, ABC News Australia, among many other websites and blogs. Not to mention word of mouth. Hence why I am thanking the Internet as a whole. 🙂

“Nurse” bleeds lonely hearts with flirty SMS – A Chinese company has duped about 400,000 people by creating the character of a young female nurse to solicit text messages and collect revenue from lonely men, a Chinese newspaper reported on Tuesday. … Yang said “Wang Jing” would ask mobile phone users flirty questions before luring them unwittingly into subscribing to the nurse’s chat for 10-30 yuan (65 pence-2 pounds) a month, the paper reported. Yang, who would receive up to 2,000 text messages from people all over China in a single shift, said the nurse scam had reaped hundreds of thousands of yuan a month, the paper reported.

Japan school to test applicants’ chopstick skills – As if reading, writing and arithmetic weren’t enough, one Japanese high school now also plans to include chopstick skills on its entrance exams. The Hisatagakuen Sasebo Girls’ High School in western Japan will require a 10 minute test using chopsticks to transfer beads, marbles, dice and beans from one plate to another. Haha. Sounds like a skill my dad would love to show off.

Ford, Microsoft team up on new dashboard OS – I didn’t find this article too interesting, but it reminded me of the joke back in the day:

IF CARS WERE BUILT LIKE PC’S

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If G.M. had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got one-thousand miles to the gallon.” In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating,

If G.M. had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

• For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
• Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
• Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart, and drive on.
• Occasionally, executing a manner such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
• Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought “Car95” or “CarNT”, but then you would have to buy more seats.
• Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
• The oil, water, temperature, and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car default” warning light.
• New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
• The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.
• Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
• It would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a G.M. subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by fifty percent or more. Moreover, every time G.M. introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
• You would press the “start” button to shut off the engine.

Have you seen Nepal? Not really, Peru says – Royal Nepal Airlines has apologised to Peru after mistakenly using a photo of the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu to promote tourism in Nepal.

Moms, kids arrested in R.I. school brawl – Two mothers and their 13-year-old daughters were arrested after police say one woman drove her already suspended daughter to school to fight a teenage rival. Haha.

Dracula’s castle is for sale for $78M – The Habsburg family said Wednesday that it wanted to sell a Transylvanian castle famous for its connections to the 15th century medieval ruler who inspired “Dracula” for 60 million euros, or $78 million, to the local authorities, an attorney said.

Disneyland – Club 33 (from Digg) – Apparently there’s a secret club at Disneyland and even Snopes.com claims its true: Club 33, open only to members and their guests, has been a part of New Orleans Square since 1967. Originally intended as a private facility where Walt Disney could entertain park sponsors and lessees, Club 33 did not open until several months after Disney’s death. The club’s facilities were made available to the public through limited memberships, and Club 33 has operated unobtrusively in Disneyland’s New Orleans Square ever since. However, it seems rather expensive to join…

CES 2007: HD DVD versus Blu-ray – The porn industry says HD DVD – Looks like we have our winner for the next gen video format war.

You’ve probably seen this picture around the net:

But do you know the story behind it? I was probably reading Digg and they mentioned this image and the photographer Kevin Carter. According to wikipedia:

The sound of soft, high-pitched whimpering near the village of Ayod attracted Carter to a young emaciated Sudanese toddler. The girl had stopped to rest while struggling to a feeding center, wherein a seemingly well-fed vulture had landed nearby. He said that he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn’t. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. However, he also came under heavy criticism for just photographing — and not helping — the girl:

“The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.”

…

He later confided to friends that he wished he had intervened and helped the child. Journalists at the time were warned never to touch famine victims for fear of disease. … Portions of Carter’s suicide note read:

“I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”

Flash Element TD (from Digg) – another fun flash game where you build towers to blow up enemies. However, unlike others where you need to defend your castle, this one deducts a life for each the enemy passes the checkpoint. Somewhat hard to play given the fact you can’t get extra lives (if you could, I didn’t figure out how).

Bee Movie teaser – was going through the new movie trailers and saw this hilarious teaser with Jerry Seinfeld with others playing insects on a car windshield.

The Mac (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) (from Digg) – a music video by Setty Smooth. Welcome to the world of Setty Smooth – where his quest to find love leads him on the most extraordinary of journeys . In this episode, Setty Smooth guides five fine ladies through an intimate video chat session, a little something he likes to call “cyber love”. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride as Setty drops his first single and video, “The Mac” from his unreleased debut love ballads album.

Sand sculptures in Lommel (from Digg) – tons of rather neat sand sculptures.

LEGO church (from Digg) – Lego creations continue to amaze us. TN4046 has sent this gallery of a … church, created entirely with LEGO bricks.