Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

Poster for the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie unveiled. ...Meh.

Every time I think it's not the quality of the Lucas and Roddenberry franchises that's deteriorated, but rather my own attitude toward them, something reminds me that they were, indeed, redeemable. Flipping channels yesterday landed me on an ST:TNG rerun of "Family," a great little episode far removed from what a casual fan's expectation of what the series should be, but delightfully human. When TNG was good, it wasn't just good sci-fi, it was good TV, and people seem to have forgotten that. I'm thinking the (critical) successes of Firefly and BSG as well as the scorched-earth management policy might breathe new life into the whole Trek concept, but rewinding the show to Kirk's academy days.... If you think you can out-Kirk Shatner, you're just biting off more than you can chew.

The delightful kateshort pointed me to a gallery of RPG motivational posters (first link dead, second still twitching), and I went ahead and perused the first 100 pages of the RPG.net thread, ganking my favorites. I just need to set up a Picasaweb gallery of 'em. (The latest update of Picasa supports Explorer-style browsing. Thank you, Internet gods.)

I know I've not done a picspam lately. I'm working on an auto-picspam generator to speed the process. Moo hoo haa haa. Fear me.

Possibly the weirdest sentence in the English language is: “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”. Pete Bevin has never taught English comp, nor read an Erin Schneweis column. ("A train of no respect....")

Arr! There be a bounty for getting Windows XP to boot on an Intel Mac, yarr.

Arr, and t'was a time I'd have offered ye a bounty for gettin' 'er to work on me 'pooter in da kitchen, aye.

This morning, crows. Dozens if not hundreds. Cawwing. Neighbor: "It's like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds -- is this normal for Kansas?" Ma'am, you're assuming there is a normal for Kansas. Our daily weather patterns are straight out of a D20 roleplaying random weather generator table, our people range the gamut from the mindbogglingly brilliant to the most cretinous mouthbreathers who schlorped their way from the primordial soup -- there is no normal here.

I love how, amid the Katrina calamity, the N'Awlins Saints could've become the new "America's Team," but despite the newfound goodwill toward the team, the owner seems hell-bent on moving them to San Antonio (managing to stay quiet to avoid breaking league rules that forbid discussing moving a team mid-season) and also has taken to beating up the media. Just die.

New SCOTUS nominee. This one's actually a judge. Already a quantum leap.

Yes, I rooted for the Bolts, to keep them in the running, and yes, I felt a little guilty. Get better, Priest. The Vikings need you.

Dude, Brett Favre is a class act, even -- no, especially in defeat. You are not. Die.

Hallomeme third most popular blog link yesterday, behind Technocrati and How Much is Your Blog Worth? At one point yesterday 26,265 people had taken it. This is me agog. =:O Storage space: 187.04 MB used, 112.96 free. Traffic: 1433 MB used, 8567.08 MB free. Looks like I just might make it after all....

Edit: One of the instructors stopped by and talked to me for a second, and after talking to me immediately afterwards charged into her classroom and announced "I think the quote of the day is 'I'd feel better if I had more cough syrup,'" to which one of the girls in the class announced enthusiastically "I would!"

Reflected here.

Updated the "Haiku" option -- added some active verbs to the mix. Also changed the output so the 5/7/5 splits are actually new lines which makes 'em much easier to read.

Added the "Superhero" option (data from Lee's Useless Super-Hero Generator) and "Wu-Tang Name" option (data from...a page I can't seem to find at the moment)....

Also, don't miss today's Cellar Image of the Day: the Cat Bib. It's real and it has a purpose. Complete with pics of deeply peeved felines.

Still growing. Still taking suggestions. Adding options, fixing randomizers. Changed the nonsensical "color" pull-down into a "what's your costume?" textbox for greater randomness.... But I had to share this, just for the Izzardness of it all, using the new 30-guest option.... ( Roll the bones.... )

Inspired by the Harry Potter Story Title Generator, I wanted to see how long it would take to roll my own using phpNonsense. As it turns out, about half and hour, with most of that time being copying-and-pasting possible protagonists' names and debugging the CSS.

You can find my contribution here. I tried to give it the flexibility to occasionally renderer some pretty plausible-sounding titles ("Viktor Krum and the Alliance of Flame", "Cedric Diggory and the Wizard's Hammer") and yet still have the capacity to spit out a few atrocities ("Harry Potter and the Rotting Monk", "Harry Potter and the Porcelain Justice") as well.

If you're interested in the data files, ( click here. )