Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince trailer

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!

The official Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince trailer.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Mythbusters Fun

Have you ever watched the show Mythbusters? I like this show. They were doing all sorts of things for Shark Week, like having one guy go in the water and thrash and one guy play dead. They were in shark resistant chain mail, in water in the Bahamas, which apparently has the highest concentration of sharks anywhere. It was pretty amazing to see the number of sharks just swimming around the boat. Then when the guys went in the water, the thrashing man definitely drew a lot more attention. Did I mention they had dead fish stuck down their pants?

They also did one where they went down to a shipwreck at night, one night without lights and one night with, and the flashlights drew a lot more sharks than the darkness.

Oh, they also verified that sharks can see prey above the water and will jump up to eat stuff. They made baby sharks repel from magnets, but the adult sharks didn't seem to care too much. And adult sharks were not bothered by hot peppers. They're about to test whether someone being attacked by a shark has enough time to poke the shark in the eyes. I have always heard you should punch them on the nose, but poking in the eyes probably works too. They built a giant shark for the test. :)

These people look like they have a lot of fun at work, though. They're always so excited to build robot dogs and animatronic sharks and blow things up and drop things from great heights. I don't think I would be too keen on going underwater in the dark to attract sharks, though!

TRUE or MYTH?
A farmer thought he was just putting dinner on the table when he picked up an axe and beheaded one of his chickens. Turned out he had a legend on his hands after the now headless rooster bobbed and weaved back to the henhouse and lived for 18 more months -- without a head.


This was taken from the Mythbusters website. See other quizzes at http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/quiz/quiz.html


The answer?

TRUE! Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colo., did indeed own the world's only surviving headless chicken, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. He wielded the infamous axe in September 1945, unaware that he and his rooster would go down in history.

The animal, now dubbed Mike and celebrated with a festival, Web sites and various magazine articles, apparently survived because the blade missed his jugular vein and a clot prevented him from bleeding to death. The axe blow landed high enough that most of the chicken's brain stem and one ear remained intact. Olsen kept the animal fed and watered by inserting an eyedropper directly into his gullet. Eighteen months after the chicken lost his head he choked to death in a motel room. Residents of Fruita remember Mike as "a big fat chicken who didn't know he didn't have a head."

Monday, July 7, 2008

A Moment from History

So I'm gathering trivia for games for the staff party and I come across this on Wikipedia:

Charlemagne
King of the Franks from 768 to his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 as a rival of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of France, Germany, and the Holy Roman Empire.


So, like, very impressive and all, right? So then the next sentence begins, :The son of King Pippin the Short....


And that gets me to laughing. King Pippin the Short? FIERCE! Oh, no, we're being attacked by King Pippin the Short! AIEEEEEEEEE!!!!! And how short do you have to be in the 700s to be given the moniker, "The Short."

Just to be thorough (and because I really wanted to find out his height), I did look into it more and found this:

Pepin's name can be very confusing. Historically, historians have vacillated between preference for Pepin, derived from the French Pépin, and the German Pippin. His nickname is also subject to whims, le Bref being translated as either "the Short" or "the Younger". The Younger is explained as referring to the fact that he was the younger of the two Arnulfing Pepins who ruled as mayors of the palace; the Short as deriving from the tales of Notker Balbalus regarding the King's diminutive size. More novel suggestions include a suggestion that "the Short" referred to his hair—since he was the first Frankish king to wear his hair shorn short. Dutton, PE, Charlemagne's Mustache.

So the mystery is explained. But I still have an image in my head of this little king running to attack the knees of his opponents.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

More Annoying Commercials

Okay. I’m back to complain about stupid commercials. The first is that stupid, insulting, $%*#$%^(@* FreeCreditReport.com commercial where the guy sings that if he’d only checked his girlfriend’s credit report before getting married, he’d be a happy bachelor with a dog instead of living in her parents’ basement. Every time I see this commercial I think, “WHERE IS YOUR DAMN MONEY, YOU LOSER!!!!!!!!!!!” So his girlfriend’s bad credit means HE can’t get a loan for a mortgage? They can’t live in an apartment on HIS salary? She made him get rid of his DOG? He should thank his lucky stars her parents are kind and generous enough to let a slob like him share their living space! I HATE THIS COMMERCIAL!!!!!!!!! And instead of going out and getting a job, while SHE’S IN THE BACKGROUND DOING LAUNDRY, he’s standing there WHINING about how awful he has it. As Kevin said to me today, maybe if he wasn’t hanging out with his chump friends all the time...

The other commercial that is currently getting on my nerves is that stupid Charmin commercial with the cartoon bears. Charmin has come out with a more durable toilet paper. Because apparently bears in the woods get toilet tissue stuck all over their bums. And apparently people must get toilet tissue stuck all over their bums, too, or else Charmin wouldn’t be coming out with a product like this. So I have to ask myself – who are these people who don’t know how to wipe themselves??? How do they get through life? Why don’t they shave their tushies? I find it all very disturbing.

I find the cartoon bears using Charmin in the woods very disturbing too. Why are these bears using toilet paper? Do they do their shopping online? Perhaps with credit cards they’ve kept from victims they’ve eaten? Is that why they NEED toilet paper? Do they all hide behind trees to do their business? Would I know I was in bear territory when I came across the pile of poo covered in tattered toilet tissue? Is this just another example of urban sprawl invading pristine wilderness?

I’m going to go read a book. There will be no commercial interruptions.