Keeping Score

Vacation

Just wanted to throw a quick warning out there that Keeping Score is going on vacation all next week, so expect even more sporadic updates, as in, none, for a week.

Plagiarism

Um, movie poster, or videogame? You decide:

This, of course, leads us to the bastard love child: Laurel Canyon III. Look out Rockstar!

Saddam Joke of the Day

Told to me by a buddy of mine (who evidetly came up with it), said on his way out of work on Friday night:

"Like an Iraqi dictator, I'm going home to get bombed!"

Dear Norton

Fuck you very much.

I just wanted to throw a very formal and very much in writing thank you for making the most asstastical piece of "virus scanning" software on the planet.

No, really.

If I were going to design software for people to use, I might start by making it so that it doesn't pop up seemingly at random intervals in the middle of their online games, thereby booting them out of said game, or application. That tends to make people angry. Then, I might also consider putting checkmarkable areas in said pop-up windows that say things like "don't ever fucking ask me this/interrupt my game again." Better still, I would even make those buttons do what they say! And after that (now try and keep up here Symantec, because I'm going way out on a limb here), I might even include an uninstall option!

That's right! You've completely violated every commonly accepted "user friendly" feature of a Windows-based application! Pop-up windows! Unmanageable options! No way to cleanly remove your software! You even went so far as to not include a way for me to access the "Add/Remove Programs" feature for Symantec products in the Control Panel! It's as if you enjoy making your clients furious with your products. Are you taking your marketing advice from pop-up ad companies? Because whatever it is you're doing now, it's done nothing but piss me off.

Oh, and that part where you have a daily pop-up ad window that I can't possibly remove or cancel reminding me that my subscription for your piece of shit software has run out? You might want to reconsider that, too, because it's things like that which make me wish I knew how to craft vicious drive-consuming viruses, so I could email them daily to your once great and now infuriating company.

And for the record? My wife and I figured out how to surgically remove your software (despite your very best efforts to thwart us), so you still lose.

Neat

For the umpteenth time, Blogger has lost one of my entries! Whee!

Homage

So I finally got to see what a MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast) looks like, thanks to a recent photo at Yahoo*:

The military has nicknamed it "The Mother Of All Bombs," since it is not only the largest bomb they make, but it is the largest non-nuclear yeild explosion (at least I'm pretty sure it's a non-nuclear explosion), also.

Of course, I was shocked and delighted at the designer's choice of orange as the bomb color, but I noticed an "X" on the wings of the bomb, and couldn't help noticing that it looked a lot like the X-1 Chuck Yeager used to be the first man to break the sound barrier (see also: The Right Stuff).

Did the designers of the MOAB intentionally paint the bomb orange and throw an "X" on it because it looked like the X-1? Or is this just pure strange coincidence?

*Link via the always funny Defective Yeti

Google Funny

Just Googling this phrase has already shown that it's made the rounds and I'm probably way behind the 'Blog 8-Ball on it, but give this a whirl:

1). Go to Google.
2). Enter "french military victories" in the search window.
3). Click "I'm Feeling Lucky."
4). [Optional] Laugh Heartily.

[Edit]: Turns out some yahoos got 10,000 hits in their forum discussing the term, so now the "I Feel Lucky" button points you to their forum and not to the proper page. Here's the link it was supposed to point you to. As Gina points out in the comments, it's a parody page that isn't affiliated with Google at all. Yet again, I prove to be the most gullible idiot on the block.

You Make the Call

Who's more Irish? The company claiming to be Irish one day of the year? Or the other company, who quietly sits on the shelf, knowing full well that they're Irish on the other 364 days, as well.

For the assholes in Marketing at Anheuser-Bush: being Irish is a lot more than being piss drunk on Budweiser one day a year. And before you say it, being piss drunk on Budweiser for the rest of the year isn't Irish, either. It's called Fat Lazy American Redneck, which you have so masterfully cornered the market on already.

Domo Arigato

A friend of mine sent me the link to this guy's website at work yesterday. Evidently, he builds some of the coolest robots of all time.

For instance, check out these. You might even recognize one of them.

Paranoia

Tin Foil.

It's been used in movies (most recently in Signs) as a way to show that people have gone off the supernatural deep-end; that they have succumbed to fear and wrapped their head in tin foil in a desperate last-ditch effort to thwart off the "mind-rays" of the evil aliens.

Today, I received my I-Pass, which is one of those automatic toll collection devices that goes in your car and automatically deducts money from an account each time the tollbooth senses that this I-Pass device has passed by it. This is what it looked like when I removed it from the shipping envelope:

As you can see, the nut-jobs are onto something. Since my I-Pass came wrapped in tin-foil, I can deduce only one thing: that the State of Illinois has come to the conclusion that the aliens can in fact read our minds (and I-Passes) using their mind-rays, and the fine government of Illinois has decided to do something about it, starting with I-Passes.

I think it's safe to assume that our fine state's scientific labs have absolute, unwavering evidence to support that tin-foil stops all forms of alien mind-rays, and in an attempt to protect myself, I have taken desperate measures, and shielded my head with multiple I-Passes:

This is a fight for our future, and our very minds, people! Keep fighting the good fight, and wear your tin-foil!

It Sounds Dirty, But It's Not

I've done a bit of link management over there on the left-hand side, and recently added one that I feel is worth reading.

Cox and Forkum is an Editorial Cartoon Blog, and as such is following current U.S. politics.

If you're anti-war, you probably shouldn't bother. If, on the other hand, you're of the other persuasion, please enjoy. I'm desperately trying to keep politics out of this blog (because really, who wants to read about my political opinions. Either you agree with them or you don't; it's not like I have anything to offer that hasn't already been said), so this will hopefully be the only reference to current political events you'll see here in a long time. Unless of course I lose my temper. Again.

Link via LGF

So Tired

So very, very tired.

Did probably the coolest motion capture shoot today. Even cooler than the one I did with DJ Rocky Rock.

Today and yesterday we shot Trikz, one of Nike's Freestyle ballers. I'm sure you're all familiar with the Freestyle video; the one where the basketball guys are all dribbling and freestyling to the beat, with the ball dribbling and the squeaks of their shoes making up the rhythm.

So the past two days were spent with me chasing Trikz around the studio, trying to direct this amazing performer.

At least I got the compliment from him that I'm "the most athletic director he's ever seen!" This should amaze some of you, I'm sure, if you've seen me. I find it hard to believe that the Nike directors weren't in better shape, but then, they couldn't dunk, and now I can*.

*Sure, I needed a springboard and it was on a 9 foot net, but still!!