This will waste ten minutes of your time

Okay, I found this interesting game online. Here's how it works: there are three lines attached to your mouse. they all spin at whatever speed you input. When you click and hold the mouse, the last line starts drawing and the computer will draw whatever shape you've created (as long as you don't move the mouse while it's drawing). It sounds odd and not that interesting, but give it a try. You'll enjoy wasting 10 minutes or so.

Geosketch

Don't watch these things with your pregnant wife

Frequency

Star Trek

March of the Penguins

K-Pax

Bambi

The evening news on the day that they report a horrific crime involving a pregnant lady getting murdered and her unborn child being stolen out of her

Any movie where a a pregnant woman loses her husband.

Madame Butterfly

If you have any other suggestions please let me know.

Things I Secretly Wish I Had

So, in general I try to be a decent person. I think I generally do okay at it. But there's this side of me that likes to do things just to shock/annoy/offend the sensibilities of/tick off/bother and otherwise pester my fellow human beings. It's not that I don't like you, it just that you're fun to mess with. So, here are a few things that I kind-of wish that I owned, but would (likely) never be able to use because if I did, TW wouldn't go out in public with me:

T-Shirt

A slightly ironic shirt, an inside joke about something you read on the Internet, and a superhero reference all rolled into one. Unfortunately the slight sacrilege is a bit of a turn off. :^(

Car Thingy

I'll admit it. Even though I often tend to be conservative in my political views, I think it's funny when the wing-nuts on the right (or the left for that matter) get ticked off, and as far as the evolution vs. creation debate goes, I think people who refuse to look at the evidence that science gives because they think it contradicts the bible must live in a very small world. The inability to hold two ideas in your mind that seem contradictory and accept that they could both be true if you had all the information is evidence of an underdeveloped psyche.

Book

Actually you can scroll down and choose from several of these books that TW wouldn't be thrilled with. Of the three things here, one of these books is the thing that I am most likely to actually get. Just wait, we're having a girl right now, but when we have a little boy, I may have to get some of the ones about explosions or things like that.

Puerto Rico: The Game

Lots of people like to play board (or card) games. I am one of those people. Now I should qualify that. Games of the board and card variety come in three types: speed, strategy, and luck. Admittedly, many games use at least some amount of all of those, but you can generally say a game is mainly one or another of those three. TW likes speed games, since she tends to kill me. (Never play SET with TW). I like strategy games, because I like to out-think/out-maneuver an opponent. If you are at all like me, then I have a game for you: Puerto Rico.

I will warn you. Puerto Rico has a lot of rules and takes a little while to learn, but once you get it, you will find that it is one of the most balanced, interesting, strategically dense, and fun games you will ever play. The basic idea is that the players are all plantation owners who are trying to settle Puerto Rico. (It's a little like Settlers of Catan, and I believe it's by the same company so that makes sense). You take turns building, producing goods, shipping them to England, selling them, or getting more settlers (a side note, the "settlers" are little brown chips that come to Puerto Rico on a special ship. Essentially they're slaves, but we're being politically correct, which is probably a good thing in this case, so they're settlers). It's really a fantastic game, so if you're looking for a new game to keep you interested, check it out.

I Have a Dream

I mentioned in an earlier post a thing called "auto tune the news." In my opinion it's a fascinating mixture of fun and playfulness with legitimate satire, and musically there are actually some really good moments. The artists who produce those short videos (the Gregory Brothers) also produced an interesting tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. They auto tune his famous "I have a dream" speech and produce a sort of postmodern anthem. Whether or not you like it, I think it's incredibly relevant given events in the last few years, as well as the current political climate. Should this replace the original speech? Obviously not. Does the original speech even need help to reach people today? I doubt it. It's incredibly powerful on its own. But does this take on it present an enjoyable and compelling tribute to the man? Absolutely.

Cosmo is Gay?

As I have mentioned before, I go to BYU, and our beloved mascot is Cosmo the Cougar. For some reason I searched him on wikipedia the other day, and I came across this line:

"Cosmo is usually one of the homosexual students on campus..."

I have no idea if it's true or not, but I'm not inclined to believe it. Wikipedia, I love you, but sometimes you make me wonder how much I should trust you.

Youtube

So, I attend BYU, and recently there was a huge change that happened: BYU unblocked Youtube from their servers, citing the educational content that could be accessed. For the last week, I've basically become a Youtube junkie as I try to catch up on all the things that I've missed. In case you've missed anything in the last several years, I have a few of my favorites from the last week:

Tranquilized bear and trampoline
Gay referee
Treadmill dance from ok go
George Lucas in Love
Matrix ping pong
Katana sword infomercial
Butterfly lovers dance
Best man trips
Look at that horse
The Nothing Box
Take on me "literal version"
Gay mount everest
Auto tune the news
Mentos and diet coke
Pet of the week
Grape stomp
Boom goes the dynamite
Maze prank
Brian Regan

I'm sure all of this has been very educational. That is all.