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Okay, just to get Vickie and my wife off my back, here’s some stuff:

1. On Monday evening I missed going on my daily lung-walk for the first time in over six weeks, because of a lightning storm rolling in. D’oh. Oh well, at least I got in six solid weeks without missing once.

2. Did you know that the Boy Scouts have a Merit Badge for Graphic Design? You do now.

This is just one of the cool designs of a Flickr user named Augiestyle, who has a great collection of designs in his gallery, and who is apparently a really big fan of the old TV miniseries V.

3, Are you all Nine-Elevened out, or is it just me? Seriously: Four years from now, will we be hearing as much about the fifth anniversary of the near destruction of the entire city of New Orleans?

No, because the country’s news and entertainment media isn’t headquartered in New Orleans.

4. And finally, a couple of my old college buds have sent in links: Terry sent The Flying Lawnmower (I saw this once on AFHV), and The Spook sent this teaser page for a high end camera that he’s lusting after.

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Okay, I posted. Can I get back to being productive now?

I haven’t mentioned The Spook in a while, so this is for him, for reasons I won’t mention here: Clell Tickle, Indie Marketing Guru.

Yes! Okay, I did three non-video posts in a row, so now we’re back to it!

Seriously, my job is so depressing lately that I’m really enjoying that rush of exploration and creation that I’m getting from dabbling in video editing and animation lately. It’s like a whole new world is opening up.

I finished the first rough-cut render of my light show project tonight, but I’ll be screening it for my friends and coworkers first — in fact, it’s so rough that only Todn8r gets to see it in its present form, because he has an understanding of the experimental stage our team project is in right now …

So until I have something to show the public, here are some more good examples of the great things you can find on YouTube:

I had to watch a lot of TV during my sick leave, including cartoons. I didn’t really care for The Angry Beavers on NickToons, but the theme song is mind-blowing — it’s like Tijuana Brass on way too much Red Bull. I’ve been trying to tell my wife about it, but it’s hard to do it justice with a description.

Then it occurred to me to look it up on YouTube, and sure enough, you can watch and listen to it here.

Along those same lines: Did you see Connie Chung’s bizarre farewell song on TV, and have been at a loss for words to describe it to your friends?

Now you can just email them to a link to the video, and they can see for themselves.

Friday I was listening to my MP3 player at work, enjoying the last day of New Boss in Training being out of town, and Bjork’s Isobel came up on random-shuffle, and that reminded me of the Bjork music video DVD that I got into last summer, and it occurred to me that I could not only find all of Bjork’s videos on YouTube, but I could add them to my Favorites and click to them anytime.

This is another instance of where mere words fall short, but pictures tell a multitude of stories.

Plus there are lots of Bjork interviews and parodies, so check it out.

Here’s a group video by several members of the YouTube community, most of whom don’t know each other personally: Lip-synching to John Lennon’s Imagine.

The Spook sends this: The First Male Engineer.

(Isn’t that a bit redundant? Like saying “the first female stewardess”?)

Anyway, when a company has one good commercial, it’s probably got several more, and you can see more ads from Volvic here.

And finally: Even the Electronic Frontier Foundation is getting in on the act, with The Corruptibles, a super-hero parody that illustrates how the entertainment industry wants to control everything about your entertainment media, from dictating worthless product design to prohibiting you from making a mix CD for yourself or your friends.

This is the same self-defeating industry that has had several videos taken down from YouTube, even though they only promote the studios’ product and don’t deprive them of any revenue.

So check out all the above videos on YouTube — before Hollywood shuts it down …

Yes, I’m still caught up in Video Fever, so tonight, to illustrate just how many people are slapping together their own videos, consider the AMV — the Anime Music Video. People are taking cartoons — just about any cartoons — and splicing them together with songs to make their own music videos.

To give you an example of just how huge this is, here is a very small sampling of the different types of videos that are out there for just one cartoon, the excellent Invader Zim:

Mariachi Zim.

Honky Tonk Zim.

Complicated Zim.

Zim Gorillaz: FIFA 2002, and Dare.

And finally, here’s one especially for The Spook and Todn8r: What do you get when you combine Invader Zim, Bizet’s Carmen, South Park, and beer? The Beer Song.

And if all that still isn’t enough, re-watch the best of them all, the video I originally linked to a couple of week’s ago, the Zim version of Weird Al’s Devo parody, Dare to Be Stupid

I’m sad to say that I’ve been too busy lately to read my normal regular blogs, but fortunately my readers still keep me informed, especially where it concerns me.

Every once in a while, you get the opportunity to post something unique, something that no other blogger has, and about three years ago that happened to me: The Spook (ol’ college bud, you probably know by now) sent pictures of this really cool pistol-shaped barbecue grill that he designed for a friend of his, J.W. Holtman. Last year I posted the pictures on Flickr, and this week Neat-O-Rama featured this grill (via my Flickr set) in a list of the world’s coolest BBQ grills.

And today our ol’ blogging bud Presurfer linked to the Neat-O-Rama post, possibly not realizing that one of those grills originally appeared here.

Then the Spook, dutifully keeping tabs on my blogroll (during his lunch hour, I’m sure), let me know today that Life As We Know It had come full circle.

Ah, the wonders of the cosmos …

Anyway, here are the specs on this work of art:

19 Foot Long
36″ x 60″ Primary Grill (2 Doors)
12″ x 36″ Secondary Grill (In Barrel)
Fire Box in Handle
Front Sight Damper
Ranger Star Damper
Hammer Damper (Hard to see)
Steam Pan
Handle Firebox
Stainless Steel Tray (Forward of Cylinder )
Weight 750 #

The local TV stations said it didn’t hit 100 today, but I’ve been a Texan all my life so I know better, so here comes the sun:

The Spook (who now has his own category here, you may have noticed) reports that he just finished reading Mark Twain’s Roughing It. I read it in high school, and of course, being Mark Twain, it was great. I especially remember a great little passage about a camel eating Twain’s overcoat and a manuscript it contained.

I recommended to Spook that he look up and read Twain’s 1601 — but to you, my other readers, I would advise caution, since this story was not published during the author’s lifetime, and is for mature audiences only …

Still, though, it’s highly enjoyable, so read it if you dare.

(You’ll need to look it up yourself on Project Gutenberg, because I’m pressed for time, but it will be well worth the effort …)

There was a great line on tonight’s Invader Zim: “Prepare your bladder for imminent release!”

The episode was “Room with a Moose”‘; click here to see it for yourself.

Also: The second episode was “Hamstergeddon”, which featured the line, “The weiner tempts you!”

I just now heard this: Billy Preston has died. He was one of those artists that I wasn’t crazy about at the time, but now I like hearing his music for the nostalgia factor …

I uploaded some old pictures (from last November and October) to Flickr tonight, for no good reason, except that I’ve neglected to UL them before … so click on my Flickr box in the upper right to check them out …

I didn’t post yesterday because I was too “tired” …

Ha! That’s a joke! A lame joke!

See, my wife came home and said that her front right tire (see, I was TIRED, get it?!), or as I like to call it, her curb finder, was coming apart, so I set out to get her a new one, but it was too late, so it needed to be changed, but my back is still in no shape to be loosening lugnuts, so she asked this guy from our church, a handyman who did some work for her shop last month, to help me change it, and he did, and was even insulted that I tried to pay him 20 dollars.

I told him I knew he wouldn’t take it, so he shouldn’t feel so insulted, but I felt obligated to offer.

You know, protocol must be followed on both sides.

ANYWAY: Long story short, I went back out this afternoon and succeded in getting a new curb finder, grabbing a bite to eat at the nearby IHOP while I waited.

Then I worked on my animation program some more, then I went for a walk, then I animated some more.

And here we are.

But I feel I should post something, so here and here are a couple of pictures that The Spook sent me today, with the notation, “Only in Lubbock”.

Be sure to view the larger sizes of both pictures to get the full effect …

Three quick things, because I like to kid myself that I could get something done if I don’t spend all night posting:

1. The Spook sends this link: Mystery Robot Said to Solve Crimes, Find Mines in Chile.

He adds the comment, “Now we’re talking….bodies, gold, oil.”

And guns. Don’t forget guns.

2. I found out that one of my co-workers used to work in tech support (not computers, exactly, but computer-based machines like ATMs), so we traded stupid-user horror stories, then I told her about The IT Crowd, the British tech support sitcom, which I wrote about here earlier in the year — and which is now on YouTube. And since I looked up the links for her, I might as well post them here, so here’s Episodes One, Two, and Three.

3. I’ve just got to say Welcome to the people who keep arriving here by the dozens through my post Saturday night about the Morse Code in Sunday’s Foxtrot comic strip.

I went to the trouble of decoding the message, because every time I post the answer to something intriguing or puzzling (like the snowman riddle on Lost, or the “Shape of Things to Come” commercial for Target), especially in the comics (like the recent Get Fuzzy/Pearls Before Swine crossover, or Foxtrot’s “Sgt. Neelie” trick last year), there are always people searching for it, and I like seeing how many of them I can reel in.

That’s the one kind of fishing I like to do …

I’m hauling out the raindrop bullet point, since we just got three rain storms in the past 36 hours — and some nice cool temperatures too, so I’m not complaining.

Last fall, I posted about The Go! Team, a British band that I first heard about on the Texas Tech radio station during a visit to Lubbock. I bring that up now because they were on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on Thursday. Since I’m trying not to stay up so late now that I’m going back to work, I recorded their performance and just now got around to watching it. They did “The Power is On”, which I like better on the album version, since the performance version was too muddled. Still, I got to see them perform, but I think I’d enjoy even more finding out more about all those 70s & 80s TV music samples they used on the album.

I am such a geek.

One of the things I’ve been working on the past couple of evenings is Google Sketchup, a really cool 3D drawing program that’s FREE.

So seriously, check it out and see what it does. Of course, if you’ve had years of experience with CAD/CAM (I’m talking to you, Spook), this may seem like old news, but it’s still fun to work with …

I went in to our new offices this afternoon, because New Boss in Training wanted pictures of the completed furniture, carpeting, bathrooms, etc., in order to send to the High Holy Corporate Office. Unfortunately, all those things weren’t even near finished, and it appears that he new that since he was there this morning, before I left my house.

So I took pictures anyway, and I might be told to go out again tomorrow. Everyone was also under the impression that all our packing boxes would be moved in, so I had planned to spend some of my time today unpacking my more important work to get started on first thing Monday morning, but that also was not to be, since the crates were still over at the old building.

Of course, being there helped me make up some of my time since I’ve just been working half days, and it was easier to be there a couple of hours today that to have stayed a couple of extra hours last week, since my back and ribs start hurting after four hours; plus, I got to talk to Vickie and Main Computer Guy, and got a little more unofficial scuttlebutt on the move and a few other topics.

Still, it would have been nice to have actually accomplished something for my sixty mile round trip …

102 frigging degrees today, and it’s only halfway through April. Welcome to Texas.

The Spook sends this: Devil birds in the Falkland Islands, and “Vampire Birds” in the Galapagos Islands.

That’s nature for ya: Out there in their secret hideouts, planning our destruction.

Excellent line on last night’s Desperate Housewives: “She’s not a slut, she’s just … popular, with … indiscriminant men.”

Ha!

Okay, this is bizarre: A new British reality show, Band in a Bubble, will challenge a rock band to write and record a new album in one month …

… while encased in a large glass capsule, in a public place.

That sounds like it has possibilities; too bad we can’t do the same thing with Cabinet meetings.