Coffee Klatch

These are just some things I’ve observed lately. No particular relation to each other and in no particular order.

There are WAY too many forensic mystery shows on TV now. Seems like every commercial I see for a TV show any more is about murder and people figuring out who/how/why. I think America’s preoccupation with death is getting unhealthy.

I’ve noticed that I don’t really root for any particular football teams any more. I have some preferences, a few teams that I like to see win, but none that I really feel I’m a “fan” of. Instead, I seem to be more reactionary, cheering for teams that are playing one that I DISlike. As I’m watching games, I’m more into it for the ball game than for a particular team to win. Which, I guess, is a good thing, because that makes every game more enjoyable. Unless it’s a blowout.

I saw a commercial for a made-for-tv movie that’s premiering tonight on ABC: Martha Behind Bars. Cybill Shepherd is playing Martha Stewart in this movie about the events that led up to Martha going to jail. From what I read online, there’s too much time spend on the “before” section and not enough on the “during” or “after” phases. I also read that it’s less than spectacular. My first thought? Martha’s getting royalties! She’s even making money off going to jail!

No amount of quick camera shots can disguise bad swordfighting.

I also seem to be seeing a lot of computer graphics (CGI) in movie trailers lately. Is that actually being done? Is it because they want to release the trailer when they don’t have enough actual movie footage yet? Tonight I saw two examples of this. When watching the second one, I said to myself, “That’s CGI, too!” And then I saw what movie it was for and figured it was probably part of the actual movie. They’re making a movie called Doom, based on Doom, the video game. It’s starring The Rock as “Sarge.” If you’ve played the game, you’ll have it all figured out. Still, it might be fun. Click here to see the trailer and more information.

A couple of co-workers (fancy that!) showed me a website yesterday that is just INCREDIBLE! It’s called addictinggames.com and it is CHOCK FULL of fun little games. Most of which are done in Shockwave.

If you’re looking for something to spend a few minutes playing, this is a great site to poke around in! They’ve got to have well over 100 games here. Problem is, many are addicting, so once you try one, you feel like, “I can do better” and want to give it one more try. Then just one more. Pretty soon, you’re hooked! If you’ve got more self-discipline than that, which I expect many of you do, then it’s a great site to play a game when you’ve got a few minutes to spend waiting for that meeting to end or that class to start. Or if it’s Friday afternoon and you’re waiting to go home!
A couple of my favorites are listed below. Please do not get on my case about violence or cruelty to animals or anything else like that. They’re just fun little games. I would never do anything from these games in real life. (probably)

• Age of Castles
• Hapland 2
• Planarity
• Battleship
• Wacky Word Search
• Splat ‘Em
• Camper Strike
• Helicopter Game
• Kitten Cannon
• Tanks
• Rock Paper Scissors

Word on the media channels is that gas prices are going up again. Apparently 92% of the oil refineries in the gulf coast are shut down now, which will cause limited supplies leading to higher prices. The blessing/curse of a capitalistic society. Anyway, I’m hearing that gas prices could go up by fifty cents just today. Check http://www.indygasprices.com/ for the cheapest rates that people have reported, or use http://www.gasbuddy.com/ if you’re not in Indianapolis.

Having heard that, I stopped at my usual gas station on my way to work this morning, even though I was still at half a tank. The price was still $2.52 for a gallon of regular unleaded, and since this station is on a major intersection, it was PACKED with people. There was even a line going out onto the road–a major artery into the city (Fall Creek Parkway) with three lanes going in and traffic moving FAST–plus all the cars waiting around in the station itself.

I simply chose the SECOND entrance, where there WAS no line. I pulled in and a lady was just finishing. She got into her car and left. Nobody else was waiting there, so I could pull right in. I tanked it at $2.52/gallon, put it on my BP card, grabbed my receipt, and was able to exit right onto the street without waiting. The same cars were still waiting in the line in the street. I think it took me about 2 minutes TOTAL, from pulling in to driving away. I think it was the fastest gas stop I’ve ever made. And the busiest station I’ve ever been in.

Gotta love that!!

Current music: The Butterfly Lovers Concerto, by Zhan-Hao

This just in: eating cheese can alter your dreams! More specifically, different kinds of cheeses can lead to different kinds of dreams. The British Cheese Board performed the study that led to these findings. You can read about it and listen to the radio story on NPR’s website.

Current music: Aphelion, by Amethystium

For those of you who are Bugs Bunny fans, here are some quality websites with my own personal annotations.

http://looneytunes.warnerbros.com/web/
stars/stars_bugs.jsp
The official Warner Bros. site, but lots of popups and distractions. Still, there are some great pictures, sketches, info, and links here.

http://www.archive.org/
A couple of freely downloadable Public-Domain-type Bugs Bunny cartoons!

http://www.nonstick.com/wmovies/
More downloadable cartoons!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugs_Bunny
Bugs Bunny on Wikipedia! All kinds of trivia and background information on Bugs and his various cartoons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bugs_Bunny_cartoons
Also from Wikipedia, a list of all the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Many of these have their own page on Wikipedia.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/
encyclopedia/b/bu/bugs_bunny.htm
An encyclopedia-style article that breaks down Bugs’ career year by year, with details about each cartoon as it came out. Very interesting reading, with tons of metalinks. Similar to the Wikipedia article mentioned above.

http://images.google.com/images?q=bugs%
20bunny&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wi
An image search on Google for Bugs Bunny. Over 24,300 hits!

http://www.chuckjones.com/
Gotta include a tribute to Chuck Jones! He died in 2002, with a career over 60 years long. He made over 300 animated films and was the genius behind the animation of Bugs Bunny (among many others). From the site: “After hearing that Jones had died, a four-year-old child asked her mother, between sobs, ‘Does this mean the bunny won’t be in the barber chair any more?’ The answer is, ‘No, the bunny will be in the barber chair forever.’ ”

Bugs Bunny Stuff on Amazon
An Amazon search that turned up DVDs, CDs, books, apparel, computer games, and even utility mats!

http://www.barbneal.com/bugs.asp
Tons of classic Bugs Bunny sound clips! (over 150 of them)

http://www.idealwallpapers.com/animation/b/bugs-bunny/
Bugs Bunny wallpapers for your computer!

http://screensaver.tierranet.com/fsnet/wp/Cartoons/B_wpCartoons.html
MORE Bugs Bunny wallpapers! (just scroll down to Bugs)

http://www.tnpsc.com/ssaver/looneysavers.htm
Oh, and some screensavers, too!

http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/search.cgi?query=bugs%20bunny
The Big Cartoon Database is a great repository and searchable database of all kinds of cartoon-related information.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/30/cartoon.characters/
A story on CNN about TV Guide’s rating of the all-time greatest cartoon characters. Bugs was NUMBER ONE, of course! (Daffy turned out number 14, after Fat Albert and the PowerPuff Girls!)

http://www.kidscolorpages.com/bugsbunnypics.htm
Okay, this page is far from attractive and has flashing banner ads, but it also has some good coloring-book style pictures of Bugs. Click ‘em and print ‘em, then take ‘em home to your kids or your neighbor’s kids! Just be sure to save a good one for yourself!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053488/
And how could I do a list of links without referring to the Internet Movie (and tv) Database?

There’s apparently a parasite that eats (and eventually replaces) fish tongues! The Discovery Channel News site posted the story a few days ago. This parasite, called Cymothoa exigua, snacks on the fish’s tongue until it eats it down to just a stub. But by then, the thing is big enough to replace the fish’s tongue, which it does. The fish manages to keep living, since the “tongue louse” functions sort of like a tongue, but that parasite also gets the pickings of food particles that the fish lunches on.

I’d never heard of anything like this before, but apparently it’s been a known if limited phenomenon off the coast of California. The worrisome thing about this story is that this particular fish was found in England! Which means this parasite is pretty much all over the world now! Blech! If ever a fish wished it had HANDS, I bet the time would be when it felt something nibbling on its tongue!

Current music: Songs from a Secret Garden

Several years ago, I received a book for Christmas entitled Very Bad Poetry. From the introduction of the book:

A compulsion to write verse, and a happy delusion regarding tallent–that is the beginning of a very bad poet. Very bad poets are perpetrators of a unique and fascinating type of writing. Unlike the plainly bad or the merely mediocre, very bad poetry is powerful stuff. Like great literature, it moves us emotionally, but, of course, it often does so in ways the writer never intended: usually we laugh.

So what is a very bad poem? Usually it is testimony to a poet’s well-honed sense of the anticlimactic. A poet must be immeasurably moved by some grandiose emotion or event–say, a horrific catastrophe–commit it to paper, then veer from the sublime to the pedestrian at precisely the right–which is to say, the wrong–moment. One minute the poet is describing the sinking of a ferry, the next mentioning how much the fare was.

Often it is a matter of using inappropriate words. The poet, eager to keep up a rhyme or meter, shove in the only word that will do–and, of course, it is the wrong word. (’Fear not, grand eagle, the bay of the beagle’ comes to mind.) Or the ever-optimistic poet seems to think that he or she can slip in a word that almost rhymes, thus creating exciting and certainly unique not-quite-rhymes such as Havana and manner, pygmies and enigmas, mud and God.

And so we are blessed with poems such as “The Spleen,” “Ode on the Mammoth Cheese,” “A Pindaricque on the Grunting of a Hog,” and “An Elegy to a Dissected Puppy.”

Some FANTASTIC stuff here!! It makes me want to take up poetry, because, while I have absolutely NO illusions of myself being a quality poet, I think it just might be possible that I could compete with some of these. Of course, they wrote their works from the perspective of a “serious poet,” and I would never dream of doing that myself. So maybe it’s not the same thing.

Anyway, I would like to share one poem from this book. It was written by Lillian E. Curtis back in the 1870s. It’s a great example of bad rhymes, cliches, squeezing in more words to try to get a rhyming word in there, an attempt at a moral, very irregular meter, and inspiration from a vegetable.

The Potato
What on this wide earth,
   That is made, or does by nature grow,
Is more homely, yet more beautiful,
   Than the useful Potato?

What would this world full of people do,
   Rich and poor, high and low,
Were it not for this little-thought-of
   But very necessary Potato?

True ’tis homely to look on,
   Nothing pretty in even its blow,
But it will bear acquaintance,
   This useful Potato.

For when it is cooked and opened,
   It’s so white and mellow,
You forget it ever was homely,
   This useful Potato.

On the whole it is a very plain plant,
   Makes no conspicuous show.
But the internal appearance is lovely,
   Of the unostentatious Potato.

The useful and the beautiful
   Are not far apart we know.
And thus the beautiful are glad to have,
   The homely looking Potato.

On the land, or on the sea,
   Wherever we may go,
We are always glad to welcome
   The homely Potato.

A practical and moral lesson
   This may plainly show,
That though homely, our heart can be
   Like that of the homely Potato.

A lesson for us all!

Current music: Watermark, by Enya (it’s been 16 years since this CD came out, and it’s still #464 in Amazon’s Music sales ranking!)

Today’s the day! I’ve been waiting ALL YEAR for this! Sept. 19th! And of course you all know what Sept. 19th is… National Talk Like A Pirate Day!

So, avast, me hearties! Check out this wondrous assembly of piratey links to celebrate this most special of non-sacred holidays!

Of course, the first link I be providin’ must be the official site: http://www.talklikeapirate.com
A close second, not quite “official,” but it IS a wiki, is at http://www.talklikeapirateday.com.

My pirate name is:

Mad Tom Bonney

Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate’s life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

This one said my pirate name was “Second Mate Kidd.”
And this one said my name was “Gorgeous Jacques Dawkins.”
Pirate Vocabulary, from PuzzlePirates.com

Here’s another link to Pirate Lingo.

Want to translate a phrase into Piratey talk, but don’t want to memorize all the lingo? Visit http://www.talklikeapirate.com/translator.html
Here’s another translator.

What kind of Swashbuckler are you?

You Are A Pirate!

What Type Of Swashbuckler Are You?
brought to you by Maddog Varuka & Dawg Brown

Pirate Legends
Other Pirate Links
Evil Stevie’s Pirate Game

And, of course, me bucko, ye may always be checkin’ my personal collection of links down near the bottom of the right column of me webpage.

If you had a whole bunch of identical pieces of popcorn, and you had a popper that could heat all the corn very uniformly, would all the pieces pop at the same time? Instead of “pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop,” would they just go:

“Food for thought!”

Okay, here’s another cool Google feature. Now they’ve got a customizable home page. Kind of like My Yahoo!, only more flexible. Of course, you’ll need to set up an account, if you haven’t already, but from there it’s easy. Visit the main Google page and click on “Personalized Home.”

You can add all kinds of content and easily drag the items around on the screen to make them look the way you like. But the BEST part is called “Create a Section.” You can enter a term or a website and get all kinds of links you might like. Even better is adding the URL of any RSS feed! Not only do practically all blogs have RSS feeds, but so do news sites, weather sites, and all kinds of other sites. You can even get RSS feeds from your Google search results!

So you can make your own home page with content that you select and arrange. It’s incredibly easy to work with, and if you accidentally delete a section that you’ve made, they give you an Undo option! How thoughtful of them! When you’re all done, you’ve got a web page that has the latest information from sites that you’ve selected. All with the standard Google search box at the top.

Tomorrow I’m doing a presentation at the Indiana Library Federation (ILF)’s Reference Division Conference on Blogs and Wikis. The conference title is “How to Use Hot Technologies and Not Get Burned” and I’m honored to be co-presenting with Michael Stephens, a librarian who’s incredibly knowledgeable and excited about new technologies and how they’re impacting libraries. He’s definitely one of the library world’s new “movers and shakers.” Google’s new BlogSearch and use of RSS feeds on your personalized home page are two new reasons that libraries should have blogs, and I’ll definitely be incorporating all this into my presentation tomorrow. I found out about them just in time!