my.bicycle

Good for several laughs: Richard Simmons’ utterly flamboyant appearance on Whose Line is it, Anyway? ( 4rthur )

By the time I visited the site that originated the Ahnold in Brazil meme, the guy had dropped the video from his server and was crying like an eight-year-old over his savaged bandwidth bills . If you missed it too, now you can see it elsewhere (alternate .mov at WMFU), and there is a remix version ( .mov ) ( 4rthur )

Firefox 1.5 is finally out of release-canditate-land and into the Kingdom of Normal Release! Cnet likes it . I am using it right now and holy mackerel ! It is a lot faster than 1.0.7 -- good grief.

Sony may not know noninvasive DRM, but they have their marketing and advertising down stone cold. You saw the Qualia advertisement with the horde of superballs , now check out this dynamic, inspiring, batshit crazy PSP advertisement titled A Day in the Life (on which Chris Cunningham consulted).

JayPinkerton.com comments on the surly nature of overly active nationalistic guardians in The Occupation of Latveria .

Change everything that’s grey into blue. From now on, everyone wears red shoes. Make everything happen at midday or sunset. Replace gun textures with banana textures. Turn all cars into pink convertibles that wobble and only do 15mph. If you get 100 of anything, a little tune plays. Instead of saying “crew” say “your buddies.” Instead of saying “hood” say “zone.” Make the female characters something other than prostitutes. Make the black characters something other than drug dealers. BLUE SKY IN GAMES campaign (thanks, monty and andrew v )

For those who need a little extra physical volume in their incredibly tiny but efficient computers, here is a tower for your Mac Mini . It didn’t make sense to me until I realized it acts as a port hub, HDD enclosure and a subwoofer. (w00t!)

Twink makes happy, bit-pop songs with toy pianos. ( mckenzee )

Here's a video of a mishap waiting to happen: a man re-purposing PET plastic bottles to make a water-rocket pack .

An intriguing, overly brief preview of We3, a Frank Quitely and Grant Morrison take on Americanizing Japanese manga ? Why do you people never tell me anything?

Something Awful has two series of Flash movies featuring Super Mario sprites. Most are juvenile, many are offensive, some are just mind-bending , but I sat through them all to find you this one gem .

My friend Kristen has interviewed Piers Anthony for her online magazine, Jitterbug Fantasia. What I want is to have my novels published the way I write them, and that can be difficult in traditional publishing. Those who read them in search of body functions will be disappointed; there’s not that much. Some readers refused to read the Xanth novel The Color of Her Panties because they said there was a bad word in the title. I refuse to cater to the limitations of such folk. My ChroMagic series is an example of my integrated approach. It’s not about body functions, but where they are relevant, they are there. It’s about as simple as that.

Exerpted : Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes ever. To prove it isn’t that big of a deal to beat cancer. Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong. The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain. (thanks, TimK)

Beck’s video for the non-bitpop version of Hell Yes features the dancing of four QRIO robots. Very cute. Rockin’ song, too. The page requires an email, but doesn’t check so “a@a.com” works just fine; privacy maintained! ( boingboing )

Moog Break-Beats , an SRI project offering. SRI stands for Sonic Reclamation Industries; these are MP3s of out-of-print vinyl recordings from decades gone by. Hard to believe that electronic music has been around for so long, and still relevant. (Thanks, The Other Michael )

Exceptionally cute, faux-vintage robots from Bennett Robot Works ; tiny, mythoelectronic ambassadors from a future we were promised but never arrived. (thanks, Monty!)

While listening to the President denying its use, I find myself thinking about American torture. And I ask myself, "At what point does a tortured man 'break'? Is it the moment when he hears his twisted arm snap behind his back? Or is it, perhaps, the moment when he sees the frayed electrical cord draw blood from his beaten skin? Or maybe it's when he feels the creeping dread of pain promised after hours without sleep, squatting on a cold cement floor, hearing the sound of footfalls moving menacingly down the hall?" These questions are not born of morbid curiosity. Rather, these are practical questions, the banal stuff of present day American politics and policies. Because, despite the President's pale claims to the contrary, the American government does, in fact, condone the use of torture. The President himself makes this clear when he promises to veto any bill that "makes it illegal to practice the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment...

An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla: Goka jyu-pun senso: Enjoy a tour of a Japanese model-kit convention with tons of pictures. Keep in mind that this is an otaku -festival, so some of the models are dubious, but none are outright porn-o-riffic.

If you’re interested in id’s games but don’t have a machine that will play them, check out these QTVR constructions of Quake IV environments . Man, these take forever to load because of the resolution of the composited shots, but it’s hard to believe games look like this now. Even if it’s not on one of my boxes...

Something Awful tackles honesty in game titles .

I also meet people at E3 and various other conferences. I go to these conferences and I enjoy myself, but I’ve noticed that very few people actually talk to me. It’s almost as if there’s a giant bubble around me or I’m completely invisible. Wherever I go, the crowd splits or I’m not seen at all, and someone comes running into me, knocking me over. I’ll try and wave at someone and get no recognition. I’ll walk up to someone and say, ‘Hey, what’s the PvP like in this game?’ The presenter will look at me in shock for a minute, whisper to a friend and then attempt to explain to me what PVP is. I know what PVP is; otherwise I wouldn’t have asked the question. — The Escapist: OMG Girlz Don't Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1

Despite the lack of broadcast service, I am, in fact, alive. I had a two week business trip and vacation to the USA. It was so busy, I now need another vacation to recover from it. At least it was productive, and a great chance to catch up with friends and family!

Star Wars Transformers Hey! I made a Say-So Post about the toys.

Sadly, these eerily realistic doll body parts are not available for purchase, only as examples or for repairs. (Thanks to The Other Michael )

Japan has wacky gameshows, as immortalized by Takeshi’s Castle . But perhaps it is even more fun to watch the nauseatingly cute, overproduced aidoru band Morning Musume suffer through wearing pork hats and being stalked by a giant lizard . (thanks, kristen )