Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

First off, props where due: kansel01 tracked down the webpage from which I ganked the headlines images (and I also found it on my old Windows installation desktop, but hadn't posted it yet; first poast wins): Find them here. I'm glad to see it back up; it went down in mid-gankage and I still feel a little guilty about that.

But if you're into slightly more interactive imagery, you might want to try legless123's image caption generator, complete with some McCain/Palin pics to caption as your heart moves you.

Or, if you want to slap a frame on your image of choice, check out sarahs_muse's Online Photo Frame Maker.

Again, let me sing the praises of my f-list. You're all far too clever.

We've done this two or three times now, be it us at work in Topeka or on various fora frequented by m'self and rewil, but since ravenskye8 reminded me....

It's the old game of mashing movie titles together: ravenskye8 contributes An Inconvenient Truth About Cats and Dogs, The Empire Strikes Back to the Future, Children of a Lesser Godzilla and The Muppets Take the Manhattan Project ("I have become Beaker, destroyer of worlds....").

Now I'm not even going to try to come up with any new ones; I'm migraine-y and exhausted, so I leave that up to y'all. I just dug the old database out of the archives so I could toss up the few we had oh those many years ago. Though I still don't know that we can improve on D.C. Cabaret or Children of a Lesser Godzilla. ( Pity the fool. )

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk/ linking to your results.

( I'm very American.... )

Many thanks to the wondrous seraangel for introducing me to Owls.

While dying of boredom today, started reading entries on the Battlestar Wiki, ended up at the entry of a most fascinating individual: Henry Allingham.

I don't necessarily find him interesting merely because he's 112 years old, because he's one of the 20 oldest people in the world, because he's the oldest man in Britain, the oldest surviving World War I veteran or even his huge family ("Henry now has six grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, 13 great-great-grandchildren and one great-great-great-grandchild, all but one of whom live in the United States").

No, actually, it's a combination of two things -- his status as the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, generally regarded as the largest naval battle in history, but also because of his impressive utility during the early days of World War II:

During the Second World War, Allingham was in a reserved occupation and worked on a number of different projects. The most significant of these was perhaps the effort to provide an effective counter-measure to the German magnetic mines. During his Christmas lunch in 1939 he was called away to help come up with a system that would neutralise the mines and open the port of Harwich. Nine days later, he had successfully completed the task.

It must be nice to wake up in the morning at the age of 112 and realize that you're a badass.

From Digg.com, a site typified by an insipid preponderance of Libertarian presidential candidate, Ubuntu, and Cracked Top n list spam, comes this winner of a headline:

Worst Danny Way Slam Acquire Hard At XGames Is Out

I realize Digg titles occasionally have a tenuous grasp (and sometimes even "fleeting knowledge") of the English language, but goddamn, even Yoda is shaking his head in shame at this one. So thank holy cow Diggers stepped up to the plate with winning commentary:

• Looks painful, but not as painful as reading that retarded title


• Can someone explain what the title means? Good lord


• I had to click on the video because the title left me so confused.


• Best Title Can English With Grammar Is Not


• Out Slam At XGames is Danny Way Out Worst


• http://hooked-on-phonics.com/


• T?WF


• I think the title just slammed my brain.


• I fucking hate whoever wrote that headline.


• buried headline sense not able removed

From everyone's favorite Hindu newspaper, the, er, Hindu: The fourth paragraph in a report “Viagra potentially to help depressed women as well” (“Newscape” page, July 23, 2008) was “The women were told to take a pill one to two hours for eight weeks …”, leading to queries. It was an editing error. The sentence should have been “The women were told to take a pill one to two hours before sex for eight weeks ….”

Also of note: the Standard-Examiner out of Utah is looking for page designers "with a solid knowledge of grammer [sic]" -- knowledge of InDesign/Photoshop and a college degree are all "helpful, but also not required." This may be the last job open in the field of print journalism.

And the current front-runner for Typo of the Year: The Valley News either misspells its own name, or is appealing to its sizable Serpentine-American readership. Hrm. Am considering the viability of a web-script that replaces letters with multiple copies of the same letter. Go for that Cobra Commander/Kobra effect.

It's not often I post links to Flash games, but rarely are you playing a disease with the aim of wiping out humanity. That I can get behind.

More writerly stuff tomorrow. The once-every-two-days thing is working out for me, even if it's less...coherent.

Yes, it addresses, on the surface, webcomics in general, but it's clear whose case he's harping on pretty quickly.

Not remotely safe for work, by the way.

I give ESPN a hard time -- and justifiably so -- but when they set their minds on it, they can be pretty impressive. Their piece on the late Len Bias -- a bit late, but I can understand why they didn't want to cloud the Celtics' celebration -- is an impressive online presentation. It's frickin' huge, and it really works.