Thursday, September 28, 2006

The Tomahawk - a bike a man can love



Check out the Tomahawk:

  • 4 wheels

  • 12 headlights

  • 500+ horsepower

  • top speed estimated at over 300 mph (though this has ne'er been tested, as no rider could hold on at that speed)


This is enough to make even one as squeamish as I ride the fire eagle on danger day (sorry, ze).

Monday, September 25, 2006

Canadians make me smile




For all their craziness, every once in a great while a Canadian comes along that just makes me smile - like Kristen Kreuk - and now this guy, whose video is embedded above.

He had the genius idea to strap a camera to an r/c plane and then attach the receiver to a pair of VR goggles. The result is an exact view of what the tiny little aircraft sees as it sky surfs. Plus he can control the camera with his head movement.

Kristen still makes me smile a lot more, but until she starts returning my phone calls - the tiny r/c plane & camera thing will just have to do.

See you in the funny pages...

Thursday, September 21, 2006

News worth noting...kinda

It's that time of the week again, and so let's turn our attention to other parts of the world - where much more interesting stuff than the Massachusetts primary is happening.

"Man bites panda but comes off worse for wear"
A drunken tourist hailing from Henan province was visiting the Beijing Zoo recently and after 4 pitchers of whatever passes for beer over there, decided to jump into a panda enclosure to give the little bugger a hug. The six year old panda, unamused and uninviting, proceeded to bite the man's leg. The action went like this: panda bites man's leg, man kicks panda, panda bites man's other leg, man bites panda, man has to go to hospital and explain why there's panda-fir stuck between his teeth. Wow.

"Pyjama patience wearing thin"

According to a recent poll in Shanghai one of the most irritating aspects of city life is having to suffer people wearing pyjamas in public. More than 16% of respondents claim that they or their family members wear their pyjamas out and about quite often - while 25% do it sometimes. Pyjama wearing was joined by aggressive pets and unhelpful neighbors on the list of irritants.

"Burglur takes taxi for robbery"
"A cabbie was asked to keep his meter running while his fare burgled a house in a Cardiff suburb, police said yesterday. The driver became suspicious when his customer emerged carrying a stereo system." 'nuff said

See you in the funny pages...

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Dear Amanda Congdon,

Dear Amanda,

Please stop sucking. You used to be cool, and I used to really like you. You used to be funny and stuff, and - like - make me laugh early in the morning at my oft-but-not-always-notoriously boring former job.

I was totally looking forward to your new vlog project - and then I saw your new vlog project. Please make it better. Because if you don't, I don't think we can be friends anymore. And if I didn't think you were my friend, I just don't think I could bear it (see...I do silly spoofs too).

Stop being "new" and "innovative" and just be you. You're a pretty cool chick, when you wanna be.

Thanks,
ed

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Lunchtime snack: Buffalo

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." is a grammatically valid sentence.

The sentence is unpunctuated and uses three different readings of the word "buffalo". In order of their first use, these are:

  1. The city of Buffalo, New York.
  2. The animal "buffalo", that is, an American Bison,white buffalo, or African buffalo. It is used in the plural (equivalent to "buffaloes").
  3. The "buffalo", meaning to confuse, deceive, or intimidate

Marking each "buffalo" with its use as numbered above gives:

Buffalo1 buffalo2 Buffalo1 buffalo2 buffalo3 buffalo3 Buffalo1 buffalo2.
Don't believe me? Read the wikipedia entry here.

Psychological trauma causes penis amputation

Chinese physicians claim to have performed the first successful penis transplant. The 44-year old recipient of a brain-dead 22-year old's member was delighted to undergo the procedure, as his own unit had been severed in an accident.

Within just 10 days of the surgury - he was able to pee standing up. Sadly, due to his wide suffering "psychological" problems with the fact that her husband now had someone else's anatomy, the organ was amputated after just 14 days.

My ear hurts AND my nose hurts. I have two ow-ies.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Ripped From The Headlines

Gucci. Prada. Armani. Anorexia?

The Mayor of Milan announced this week that designers showcasing new threads at fashion shows in her city may face stringent regulations regarding the BMI index of models used in shows. This is in reaction to a similar practice instituted in Madrid that forced designers to turn away models whose BMI, which is based upon a height/weight comparison, fell below a certain level.

Maybe Mayor Moratti is championing some higher cause, but isn't it more likely that she tried to make it as a model, before becoming a politician? Yep. This is sure to end well. Everyone remembers that handsome cuban devil that the Yankees never drafted, right? Vamos Bien?

"Crafting guns into guitars"

Colombian craftsman Luis Alberto Paredes has a veritable niche market cornered. He takes guns, and makes them into guitars. With no short supply of firearms surrounding him in his South American home - Paredes is planning on holding a charity concert featuring several of his formerly life-threatening guitars this November. No pseudo-jibe here. You go, dude. You go and you rock on.

"Cult enters bunkers though doomsday uneventful"

The world was supposed to end on September 12th.

But it didn't.

But that didn't stop dozens of followers of a U.S. based religious sect from carrying out their plan to move into a network of underground bunkers they've built in the tiny Kenyan village of Mauche.

"Those who have been doubting us will in hours be ashamed..." the groups leader said, as he led his cohorts - dressed in gas masks, gloves and long overcoats - down into their new home.

The cultists plan to stay in their new digs for a year. But they'll be ok. The place is stocked with dried fermented flour. And after the year is up, by which time sinners are to have been wiped off the Earth, they can just head on back up and reap the rewards entitled to the faithful. (*note: the bunkers are already leaking water and are in danger of caving in - cultists claim this is just god's way of giving them water)

In case you were wondering how the world was supposed to end - we (as in U.S.) were supposed to go to nuclear war with North Korea. This failed to happen due to international time zone differences...and the fact that the season premiere of Dancing With the Stars was on that night. Kim Jong Il loves that shit.

One more thing - if it's a US based religious sect, what about the US based followers? "Members of our sect who are in the U.S. will not be affected as they are protected by Yahweh," says the group's head honcho. Whew. That was close.

See you in the funny pages...

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Stop. Think. Repeat.



Blogs
Podcasts
Vlogs
YouTube & Blip.tv
Google

Pick any of these things and you're presented with a stream of content the likes of which have never before been so easily accessible to so many people around the world. And these are just a precious few. You can, through just one or two of these things get hold of enough content to last you through just about any day. Heck, there are even podcasts and websites dedicated to indexing the 'best' of the internet for you (The Daily Nut, Popurls, etc...), so you can go to just one spot and get the 'best' from several others.

So what?

So, this: When is so much content being taken in, too much? We spend much of our time clicking and scrolling through website after website, with a podcast or music playing in the background, and the tv on across the room - that we're not doing the thing that all these content streams are asking us to do: think about what we're reading, hearing, and seeing.



For me, this is a big problem - and so I've made the difficult decision to trim down my podcast subscription list, and tweak the bookmark folder that houses links to the blogs I read daily. I've done this, not because I suddenly don't care about what those sources of content have to say, but because I want to spend more time analyzing- not just absorbing - what the sources remaining on my radar have to say. I want to reflect on, and not regurgitate, the content I open myself up to. *(note: this isn't to say that I won't still search for paparazzi photos of Jessica Biel, and videos of frat boys smacking each other with 2x4s - because we need our idiot time, too).

In this day and age of free content, related to just about any topic you're interested in, it's very tough to say 'no'. The onus falls upon us as consumers to determine what merits a source has, if any, and to devote ourselves to not just reading, watching, and listening - but to stopping, and thinking.


See you in the funny pages...

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Robotic Frisbees of Death!

Purse snatchers and guerilla warriors beware, we've got your number(s).

Claiming to have the answer to those hard-to-fit-a-tank-through-the-front-door situations, defense tech.org reports that the U.S. Air Force is developing a new tactically advantageous weapon: frisbees that shoot to kill.

"The 3-D maneuverability of the Frisbee-UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] will provide revolutionary tactical access and lethality against hostiles hiding in upper story locations and/or defiladed behind obstacles," says Triton Systems, the Chelmsford, MA company tapped to develop the new weapon.

But this is nothing new. A bunch of Norwegian Trekkies were talking about this back in 2002, claiming to have modeled their "disc-shaped spyplane" after the design of Star Trek's USS Enterprise.

Heck, in the 90s even The Pentagon thought it was a good idea to strap little flying carp...err...saucers to soldiers' backs.

Dude. As long as I can get one of these for Ultimate Frisbee games - I'm golden.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Enter: The Darkroom

I'd like to tell you all about a new feature here on The Rebel Yell. Over in the right hand links column, under "More, More, More", you'll find a link that reads "The Darkroom".

This is The Rebel Yell's new photo page. I'll be posting here (on a monthly basis, to start things off) with random snapshots, doing my best to keep things organized by topic.

To get going - I've posted photos for August. Take a look, and let me know what you think. Less? More? Different stuff?

See you in the funny pages...

Sights Seen Around Town

Cambridge, MA - seek and ye shall find:



Ha.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

I could make this up, but I didn't...



Some tasty morsels from recent headlines:

Latin American prison lifestyle takes an interesting twist with the finding of cell phones lodged in the intestines of several inmates. Reportedly, the inmates were using the devices to manage robberies, blackmail operations, and other illicit endeavors in the outside world. Dude. How terribly do you all need to vote on American Idol?

British motorists are ass-hats, according to this story from Reuter's. After his picture was taken by a traffic camera, the Briton in question returned to the camera's location...and blew it up. Delightfully, not only were the photos of him speeding unharmed - but the photos of him returning to the scene and making the camera go BOOM helped him on his way to a 4 month stint in the slammer. Sadly, the audio feed of him butchering "Singin' In The Rain" didn't make it through the attack. C'est la vie...

Lazy Cow in Hong Kong Wins Court Case Worth Millions. I don't know how much more I can really say here. The Cow in question refers to Monica Wong, banker & former salsa dancing enthusiast. After paying her instructors HK$120 million for unlimited private instruction - the relationship soured, and Ms. Wong suffered an emotional breakdown. Poor, sad, lazy, Cow.

This story makes me wish I still had a job to call out sick from (almost). In its infinite wisdom, the Zimbabwean health ministry has decided to allow n'angas (we know them as witch doctors) to write sick notes for workers. Dude. I saw the witch doctor. He told me what to do. He said...well...I couldn't make out much - but it sounded like a mix of clicking, and that little leprechaun that's always telling Ralph Wiggum to burn things.

Finally, in this late breaking shocker: Paris Hilton was arrested and charged with drunk driving early this morning in that glamor-hole city of angels way out west. What, you were expecting more than that? Ok. Hilton's attorney is cited as saying that Paris was affected more than usual by the one drink she had because it was "one drink on an empty stomach after a full day's work.". I don't know which is less believable - the idea that she had just one drink, or claiming that she worked a full day. My personal favorite line of the article follows: "Hilton is best known for her hit reality show "The Simple Life" and for a sex video that showed up on the Internet."

I'll leave you today with this:





















See you in the funny pages...



Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Drunken Brit Drives Carriage. Hilarity Ensues.

Over in that crazy "Europe" place, 21 year olds just can't seem to get their hijinks down right. Recently, a young Brit was charged with driving a horse and carriage while under the influence.

Why can't 20-somethings across the pond just do what normal 20-somethings do?
Start a bar fight by wearing your football colors to a no-football-colors pub.
Shout at people in public. "Hey Fats, how much for that scooter?"
Take a piss on the side of the road, and uncomfortably turn around in and effort to hide your...self...from the cars...errr...whizzing by.

The 21-year old Gloucester native claims that he was decidedly not under the influence while horse and buggying

His horse, Dipstick, was unavailable for comment.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Live from Toronto!

This post is coming to you live from the Canadian National Comic Book Expo.

I'm sitting in a sketch-duel between two of comics' hottest artists: Olivier Coipel and Terry Dodson.

As I blog, these two are furiously sketching original art for a raffle to be held at the end of the duel.

As far as the rest of the convention, so far so good. Many familiar faces, in terms of dealers - and many more in terms of creators.

Make sure to check back over the weekend as I'll blog live while waiting in various autograph and photo op lines (William Shatner, Morena Baccarin, that dude who plays Dr. Baltar on the new Battlestar Gallactica, to name a few - and a bunch of comic folk, too)

See you in the funny pages...

PS: please forgive any grammatical, or as an old colleague of mine would say 'syntactical' errors - BlackBerry QWERTYs do get to be a bit much ;)
www.TheRebelYell.org