Holy Crap

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html

A talk from TED.....a website and organization I am sure you all are familiar with.....this one is so....Jeeezzzz...
I don't even understand all the possible implications/opportunities/potential.

How To Be A Successful Evil Overlord

All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

How to be a Successful Evil Overlord by Peter Anspach

I am falling in love.

P042309PS-0831
Originally uploaded by The Official White House Photostream

This flickr page make me all gushy inside.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/

The soothing beauty of a made bed.

I never make my bed. I find the rumple of covers/clothes/towels that generally resides atop my mattress pleasant to burrow under and thrash around in when the time for sleep comes. This is a long-time habit, and unlikely to change soon.

However, since May has snuck up and blind-sided me, and i find myself with 58% or so of my stuff in boxes, or staged, ready to box in my living room, no lease signed and 4 days or so to find somewhere to (a) sleep and bathe and (b) put my stuff i find i can fully appreciate the island of crisp, calm serenity and declaration of control that is a neatly made bed.

Similar to my long-time refusal to make my bed i have had a habit of believing that i have accomplished the things i think about for too long. Having now thought about where i want to live next for entirely too long, i guess i figured i had already sorted it out, and am scrambling. In an odd way it is kind of fun. If push comes to shove i have a friend i can crash with for two weeks or so, and a line on a room (think B&B) i can finagle for two more. I know i can rent a pickup for $20 a day, so i can start ferrying my meager possessions to either a storage facility or a new apartment.

There are two viable options, one available immediately (the responsible choice, but lacking something) and one slightly later (quirky, but not everything i am looking for). So, i squirm on the horns of dilemma: settle and take the 'right now' place, or hold out for something better.

Whatever happens i am enjoying the scramble as it takes me a bit out of myself, a thing sorely needed.

I hope all readers of this periodic blog are well, happy, and know where they are gonna put their stuff.

Hannah's birthday rap

Here is how cool my daughter is.
She made a rap video for her friend Sunshine's birthday.

Auto-Tune

via http://www.kottke.org/09/04/auto-tune

type lovers

This movie is a beauty if you love hand done type.

Great Work By The SerpAndCo

Got a nice report from the Todd yesterday about one of the projects he put together over at Milkshake. He and his company were tasked with developing a video contest web-site for the National Cooperative Grocers Association; the idea was to ask the community to submit videos that communicate “the top 10 reasons that you love your food co-op”.

Plenty of videos were submitted and lots of votes were tallied. Todd forwarded his favorite clip to me. It is pretty clever!

I just love this sort of thing. When the project was first explained to me, I thought: how many folks are going to take the time to make a video about their favorite co-op? Well, it turns out that hundreds of folks will. And the results are pretty great! Hooray for technology!

Ronaldo's Amazing 40 Yard Goal

When I have the ball and I look up and see that I am 40 yards from the goal I think “Man, I will be really tired if run all the way over there.”

Ronaldo thinks: “I’ll have a go”

Everybody Poops

Futurecop - Karate Kids (video by TNUC)

Futurecop – Karate Kids (video by TNUC) from TNUC on Vimeo.

via The Offside Rules

April Fool's!

OK

So we get a phone call.

Killy and I are in the kitchen finishing our conversation about our upcoming Sooper Dooper Family Fun Time Vacation Extravaganza, a two week long excursion trecking across several of our great United States to culminate at the 50th Wedding Anniversary of my little old folks - that's right - FIFTY YEARS of marital bliss (and madness, if you read between the lines).

Then the phone rings, faintly, from another room, the sound reaching it's delicate tendrils almost as if from a dream or another world.

It's kind of a surprise in that Killy and I never,  and I mean never, get a phone call at this hour.

So Killy rushes to get the phone in a furious come-back-to-reality-from-a-state-of-disbelief motion and blurts out a general greeting, "Hello?"

He emerges from the bathroom a few seconds later with a happy, gleeful grin wrapped around his face.  He holds the phone out to me and announces, "It's for you, an April Fool's call, from Discover."

I'm game.

So I take the phone and say, "Hello?" with a half-expectant smile in my voice.

I spend the first thirty seconds listening intently to a young but gruff voice speaking in a rapid and kind of slurred pace. Killy has walked away for a minute but comes back to find me still sitting there, with a crazed open faced smile frozen on my lips. His expectation dissolves into confusion and he gesticulates for clarification.

I have yet to identify the voice, so I say to this person, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

The voice is raspy and thick, like phlegm is bubbling about in the back of the throat, but he repeats, word for word, his lines.

Killy now asks aloud, "Who is it?"

I pull the phone away from my ear and reply audibly, "It's Discover card trying to sell me something."

Putting the phone back to my ear, I listen to the voice for a few seconds and make out only three words distinctly, "...to you Miss CarolEYEnah?"

I attempt to hide my confusion with a simple reply, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

By now, Killy is explaining to me that he thought the phone call was a prank by someone I knew, perhaps my brother...?

I have not identified the voice and am only half convinced that this is a real Discover Card telemarketing call, so when the voice concludes with his, "Does this sound OK to you Miss CarolEYEnah?", I am amused, and ask, "I'm sorry, could you please repeat that?"

The third time is the charm it seems, the voice reads the script to me again, this time more deliberately and with exaggerated enunciation repeating an offer made in case I am unable to make the minimum payment and yadda yadda yadda...

Now I am certain I don't recognize the voice, although for a few tense seconds, when Killy was apologetically justifying his mistaken April Fool's theory, I did believe it was Colin's voice on the line. I had ruled out Todd's voice by this time because it is very much like Killy's in tone, but distinctive in it's inflection and it most certainly was not my brother's voice.

So I started to pay closer attention to the voice realizing I could unwittingly sign myself up for something if I wasn't careful.

So when the voice used the words, "Does this sound OK to you Miss CarolEYEnah?"

My response was deliberate, "I am not interested."

The voice was quick, "I am not asking for you to be interested, I am..." and back to the pitch.

This was not going to be easy.

I waited for a breathe pause and inserted, "I am so sorry you called me on April Fool's, I thought this was a joke and that is the only reason I listened to you, I am not interested, thank you."

Again, the voice is persistent, "Discover Card does not joke around Miss CarolEYEnah. I am offering you the opportunity to..." and slides back into the pitch concluding with the "Does this sound OK to you Miss CarolEYEnah?"

I have now identified the key words, sound OK, and make a mental note to NOT USE THE WORD OK in this conversation.

I say, "No."

The voice, "I am not trying to sell you something, I am offering you the opportunity to look over..."

(opportunity, another key word)

Me, "I do not want the opportunity."

The voice, "You are being offered an opportunity to review..."

Me, "I do not want the opportunity, I am not interested."

The voice, "This is just a chance to look at..."

Me, "I do not want the chance, nor the opportunity."

The voice, "...review the possibility that you are unable to make your monthly payments..."

Me, "No."

The voice, "This is an opportunity only, you are not obligated to buy any..."

Me, "Nope."

The voice, "This is a courtesy call offering you the..."

Me, "No, nope, nope, no."

The voice, "Thank you very much ma'am...click...................."

This is the first time I have ever been hung up on by a telemarketer.

It was the best joke ever.