Biomes Blog

Entry #442

Turns out a glitch in my cable service prevents me from getting ABC (took me four years to notice) so I couldn’t watch the Oscars and ogle all the stunning stars like Katie Couric.

A little piece of Dylan: Country Pie (1969).

Wow. Check out this bill being introduced into the Senate. The only way anyone could be against anything in this bill is if your party would be hurt by people actually being able to vote and guaranteeing that those votes are counted and verified. Who could possibly be against that? (cough)

Doing more of that “honor and dignitude” thing with old Europe. Good lord.

Try out the State of the Union Parsing Tool.

Movie Review: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Graham’s been learning to film using a “green screen”, and this movie was made entirely in front of one. I picked up a copy from Amazon mainly for the “making of” segments, but I was pleasantly surprised at the movie itself. Kind of silly but entertaining nonetheless. 3.8 starfish out of 5.

Albino Monday: Albinos of the 19th century.

This is good news for me.

Ok, I’ve read this site over and over and it appears not to be satire. Someone please tell me I’m wrong.

Entry #441

Listening to an old Bartcop radio show he had this great audio clip of George Carlin doing a skit called “A Modern Man”, which is just awesome. I couldn’t find it anywhere on the web so I cut the piece out with Sound Studio and managed to get it into a quicktime format. (Remember, I’m a technological idiot so this was a really big deal for me.) I even managed to compress it somehow. Yay for me. Anyway, here it is and I apologize for the poor sound quality. If anyone cares to clean this up, compress it more or work whatever magic you tech geeks do, be my guest. Just please don’t hotlink it, mkay.
[Update: The boy fixed it for me so it’s now clear as a bell. No idea what he did so I’m just as lost as when I started.]

Cool Site of the Week: Whalesounds.

Happy Birthday Rufton (9), Alex (6) and Micheal (6).

Stuff You Should Know: Sunflower facts.

Pamper your banana with the banana bunker.
Cat in the Kettle. I think Harry Chapin would approve.

How to freshen smelly shoes, or why my sneakers are in the freezer.

Entry #440

Housekeeping: I've added a syndication link to the page (top right corner). I wasn't too sure how this works but apparently you can use it to be notified whenever I update. Unfortunately, the way I post, one entry per day timed to go online at 5:00 pm, even with preview I sometimes have to go back and fix typos or bad links. This seems to result in multiple "pings" going out even if I just replace a missing comma or something. Sorry about that and I'll try to avoid doing this too much in the future.

The biblical curse generator. Take that!

Happy Birthday Sydney (5) and Noah (7).

Stuff You Should Know: The top nine worst bad breath remedies.

Brushing with Household Cleaners: Under no circumstances should you use cleaners for oral or topical use!

Name the president based only on his hair. I actually did quite well. (How'd I miss Rutherford B. Hayes?)

Timewaster of the Week: Whatever. You go figure it out.

Ze Frank’s spamalogue.

How to cheat at monopoly. Print extra money here.

Entry #439

So, what happened on the day you were born?

October 23, 1964: Japanese beat Russians for 1st Olympic Gold in woman's volleyball. (Olympics in October?)

Happy Birthday Ryan (11) and Justin (10).

Do lobsters feel pain when you boil them alive? I’ve always tended to think no, not in the sense that birds or mammals do. Still, keeping lobsters alive for my education center, treating them for parasites and disease, daily feeding them etc., I can’t do it. I can’t drop a live animal in boiling water whether it can actually feel pain or not. So, there you go.

Watch a guy aging.

Play! Tobbogan jump. This one’s a keeper.

Check out the Society for the Eradication of Television.

Friday Echinoderm Blogging: Sea Apple.

Entry #438

"My house is made out of balsa wood, so when I want to scare the neighborhood kids I lift it over my head and tell them to get out of my yard or I'll throw it at them." -- Steven Wright

This year’s Koufax award winners have been announced. Check them out and congrats to all the victors, and you losers, too.

“He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub, then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away."
The late Hunter S. Thompson on his first meeting with flightsuit boy in 1974.

Pet Corner: This is a set of dog Siamese twins. They are named “Jack” and “Jill”. Jack looks mad.

Watch this short film called Bike Thief (15.8 MB). Two guys are so sick of getting their bikes stolen in NYC they decide to make a little movie about how easy it is to steal them, using their own bikes, chains and tools. Nobody cares. One guy even helps.

Those frozen shrimp you buy in the grocery store; this is where they come from.

Deuling banjos with squirrel, penguin, Burt and the General Lee.

Dept. of Educashun: Grammar traps. The Farther/Further thing gets me all the time.

Entry #437

Animal of the Week: The picture above is an emperor penguin. This is the sound of one of them sneezing.

A cure for earworms.

Stuff You Should Know: How landfills work.

A future Darwin Awards winner. Power tool, aluminum ladder and water. Nice.

Now we’re cookin’: Healthy snacks served at Texas state fairs.

Why dogs bite people:

Entry #436

Happy Birthday George Washington (273). More here.

From barkbarkwoofwoof, do the following, and pass it on:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Use what’s actually next to you.

“Second dorsal spine very long and stout, about as long as snout; when depressed, spine reaches midpoint of caudal fin.”
From Peterson's Field Guide: Atlantic Coast Fishes. 1986

Internet user tip #225: Godwin’s Law.

I strongly suggest you do not buy a bunch of these stickers and put them on cars that are poorly parked. That would not be a good idea.
Here’s a gallery of more bad parkers.

Search Results: Someone found the Biomes Blog on the 35th page of googling “Batman”. It brought them here

Buy your wearable animal heads at this site.

Bonus Comic: I usually don't post recent comics here, but I just don't get today's "Get Fuzzy". (Click it.)

Entry #435

Happy President’s Day.  Here’s flightsuit boy’s resume.

Take this Presidents quiz.

A Blogger Guy By The Decade: Let's see if this catches on at all.

2004

1994

1984

1974

1964

A little piece of Dylan: Things Have Changed (2000).

So, I drop off my van (for four days! including the weekend when slacker mechanics don’t work even if they have half you car engine on the floor) to have it’s radiator replaced and when I go to pick it up I notice a fresh clean smell and an empty bottle of this on the passenger seat.  I think the boys at Hal’s Garage are hinting that either me or my dog needs to bathe a little more often.  (psst. it’s the dog.  Honest.)

Albino Monday: Moray Eel

Entry #434

Cool Site of the Week: The Virtual Bacteria Museum.

Happy Birthday Nathan (7) and Zachary (9).

Buy your Homeland Security chokers here.

View Python's "I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok". (22 mb)

I’m not so sure how I feel about this whole $50,000 cloned cat deal. I find it a bit disturbing that someone would fork over this kind of money for a cat clone, that, let’s face it, is not a reincarnated version of their old pet. I wonder how many shelter cats could be neutered, vaccinated and found good homes for that amount. That being said, the name of the company, Genetic Savings and Clone, is priceless.

Find out about your neighborhood here. My results were “small town/rural, homeowners, 55 plus”. I should either move or this site needs work. This is Rhode Island, there is no such thing as “rural” (and all you folks in Chepachet and Foster, a little bit of woods in your back yard surrounded by suburbia does not constitute “rural”.)

Google's mirror site.

Counting sheep.

Entry #433

Tiny carvings.  Here is a caravan of camels carved into the eye of a needle.

Timewaster of the Week:  Tease Titus.  Ngazi went a bit nuts seeing this.

Check out the robot gallery.

Dept. of Educashun:  Goat biology.

Review of The Biomes Blog

"I just saw biomesblog.typepad.com. Don't get me wrong, I expected the creator to achieve only the best. Wow! The page contains 243 links, a stable amount. If only Microsoft would have a splendid page like that. It must have taken months to design the page. The color scheme is very balanced. There are 33,121 characters in the file, which is a cool length for Yahoo.
Gorgeous. Seeing The Biomes Blog, I'm simply out of words.
The URL has 29 characters. This length scores best in usability studies. The HTML source is valid. What an awesome page! Also, majikthise.typepad.com put up a link to this page. Watch it... this page might change your life."
-- Robert Sutherland, WebReview Online

Jesusland mp3. (By David.)

Stuff You Should Know:  The “done” position.

Entry #432

Check out the “Tricks of the Trade” blog.

The Jefferson Parliament Bomber footage. Don’t get a link to this in your email box and actually think it’s real. It's not up on Snopes yet, but it's a hoax. Nice try though.

Stuff You Should Know: Polar bears aren’t afraid of nucular* submarines.

Try out the face analyzer. It didn’t work for me. No matter which photo I tried it came back as “no archtype found”. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.

You know, this really, really pisses me off.

Play! Sheepish.

Friday Echinoderm Blogging: Echinarachnius parma

Entry #431

I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place. -- Steven Wright

Stuff You Should Know: How to write a fantasy novel.

More Stuff You Should Know: How to make a hairpiece. Follow instructions carefully or you could end up looking like this:

or this...

Dept. of Educashun: Bird feathers. With grammatically awkward words of wisdom such as “A plucked chicken or pigeon looks very different to a fully feathered one.” Yeah, no kidding.

Worship Anatids at the center for duck studies.

Watch the War of the Worlds trailer.

Pet Corner: The dog diaper (via Freddie the Dog).

Ze Frank’s “couples therapy”.

Entry #430

Animal of the Week: Blue Crab.
We don’t normally keep Blue Crabs at Biomes because they are so aggressive and tend to kill anything else in their tank. And when they pinch it hurts. But click the name above to see everything you could ever want to know about Callinectes sapidus.

Buy your soap with embedded razor blades here.

Now we’re cookin’: Bush voter recipes.

You’re spending way too much time online when you find yourself purchasing an internet urinal.

Movie Review: Bowling for Columbine.
Watch this doc and tell me Mike Moore isn’t an American hero. If you disagree you’re a maroon. Sorry, but you are. 4.8 starfish out of 5.

Dept. of Educashun: Anatomical drawings by students.

Entry #429

Today in history: 40 years ago Canada unveiled its current national flag (via barkbarkwoofwoof).

Four More Years. I have to say I disagree with the last frame. I have nothing against Hillary, but I'd like to see Gore come back and undo the damage caused by the willful ignorance of the 51% of our citizens who have been duped so badly.

Wow. Huge thanks to reader Sceptica, for buying me this and this from my Amazon wish list. They arrived today. Think I’ll take the rest of the afternoon off and watch Bowling for Columbine. Really, is there anyone cooler than Mike Moore?

Search Results: Someone found the Biomes Blog by googling “I hate clowns”. It brought them here.

Saw it on eBay. This person owns a Three-Mile Island lamp and a dog that really needed to go outside.

Stuff You Should Know: Clock history.

Bonus Comic: (Click it.)

Entry #428

(DNC donation page and info is here.)

Puttin' the Razorba to good use.

Unfortunate Valentine Cards:

Break some hearts here.

Introducing "Bittersweets", Valentine's Day candy for the dysfunctional.

More creepy Valentine's Day cards.

Use this generator to write a silly love note.

A little piece of Dylan: You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (1975).

Love is Just a Four-Letter Word.

Valentine's Day monologue by Ze Frank. Don't miss this. It's not that long.

Make your own candy heart messages here.