Giant Boogers from Outer Space

FILTERS DO NOTHING

2010-10-09T21:55:00.064+02:00

The Google Images filter settings are nothing more than a sham. Type in the names of pretty much any cartoon characters, and you'll get fanart of a sexually explicit nature sprinkled among the more innocuous results. And this not just with the "recommended" Moderate SafeSearch setting, oh no; even if you set the filters to Strict, you will still in all likelihood get NSFW results within the first ten pages (and often on Page 1).
Adding insult to injury, the "report offensive images" option is usually pretty much useless, as the images tend to stick around, both on the screen and burned into the backs of your retinas.
On any given search, you are likely to find :

Full frontal nudity
Close-ups of genitalia
Explicit coitus
Explicit coitus involving a she-male for added mental trauma
Threesomes
Foursomes
Incest
Child pornography
Bestiality
Tentacle porn
Sadomasochism
Oral sex
Masturbation
Rape
A staggering variety of fetishes
Two or more of the above at once

Plus, do not ever use any Pokemon-related keywords whatsoever if you want to preserve your sanity.

TODAY'S BOOK: "1776", by David McCullough ((c) 2005)

Randomly reprinted post (XXIV)

2010-09-30T20:33:00.011+02:00

"Post-it posted on a Post cereal box. Postopia, a state one enters post-operation.
Heave a supercharged battery into a live wire fire, watch what happens, and--here's the important part--don't blame me.
From flashes of lightning we go to rumbles of thunder, and I wish we didn't. I had a grand total of two (2) hours of sleep last night due to the sonic effects of G-d riffing on His bongo drums.
Seashells with thumbtack paste taste good with marinara sauce, Leastways, that's what I've heard. But you don't to take my word for it. Uh-uh.
You burn faggots. You're supposed to burn faggots as well. If you don't understand that (and you probably don't) consult a dictionary and a thesaurus.
If I could just combine all the stray cats in my neighborhood into one big cat, I could probably take over Indiana. If you want to join my revolutionarily random revolution while it's still in its pre-planning phase, dial 1-800-I-AM-AN-IDIOT. If someone answers, please hang up and whistle 'Dixie'.

TODAY'S BOOK: 'Fantastic Voyage', by Isaac Asimov ((c) 1966)

TODAY'S MOVIE: 'Air Force One', from Touchstone Pictures (1997)

WWWW2?: Tony Gwynn.

TODAY'S WEBSITE: http://www.doonesbury.com/ Rounding out the list of four comic strips I read daily, G.B. Trudeau's Doonesbury--now in its 35th year--has a website that, besides running the daily strip as a matter of course, also features asinine quotes (usually political), links to current news (usually political), and an admittedly meaningless straw poll (almost always political), as well as useful information on the strip itself and a collection of cartoons Trudeau drew at Yale before embarking on his current career."
--26th post, 12/27/06

378th post

2010-09-23T20:05:00.016+02:00

I have only one thing to say about this year's American political voting season:

This guy is awesome.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Secret of Platform 13", by Eva Ibbotson ((c) 1994)

377th post

2010-09-19T22:20:00.032+02:00

Well, I hope you're happy, Ike Davis. I hope you're happy with your decision to go ahead and play on Yom Kippur 5770. After all, with your team wallowing in fourth place, 13 games out and going nowhere, your contributions on the field were absoultely necessary--nay, even vital--to assuring your team's success yesterday. I hope you're happy about going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and leaving a runner in scoring position during yet another lackluster Mets loss. I hope you're happy about going completely against your heritage as a Jew (and a halachic Jew, at that--not just a "cultural" Jew with a Jewish father), an act which Jewish luminaries of the sport, much more famous and talented than you--Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax and Shawn Green--have avoided while at the same time being in either pennant races or the World Series.
Isaac Benjamin Davis?
Go to your room, young man.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Have You Seen Hyacinth Macaw?", by Patricia Reilly Giff ((c) 1981)

I'm in a video!

2010-09-13T22:33:00.016+02:00

You can catch glimpses of me at 2:48-2:51 and 3:25-3:27 - that's 5 whole seconds of airtime! Wow!!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Boy Who Saved Baseball", by John H. Ritter ((c) 2003)

373rd post

2010-08-22T22:14:00.012+03:00

It all started on my other blog, with some bleeptard writing anti-Semitic slurs on a post showcasing my cartoon about the Demjanjuk Trial. Defiantly, I answered with an uncompromising statement of my principles.
Today this person

found said post, ask me not exactly how--it's at times like this that I really, REALLY wish the Sitemeter was able to track Google Images search words--and, apparently being a moron of few words--albeit somewhat limited grammar--contented him/herself with saying:

(Edited so as not to offend my more sensitive readers.)

The commenter, of course, was anonymous.
And I just have to laugh, I really do. Tell me, Brazilian Bozo, when was the last time a Nazi accomplished anything? I'll tell you: when your heroes reached the gates of Stalingrad.
That was your last hurrah, wasn't it, you Nazi scumbag? Once you lost the siege and couldn't solve the Britons and then the Americans landed, it was nothing but retreat, retreat, retreat. Then your glorious Fuhrer shot himself in his bunker and it was all over for you.
Kaput.
Finished.
And every Nazi since then can only dream of accomplishing anything at all, much less genocide. Your absolute pinnacle of achievement is scrawling messages of hate on Jews' blogs.
And if you're not in fact a Nazi, then please in the name of all that is holy please explain to me what has made you so messed up that you read a post whose entire point is to denigrate Nazis, some of the vilest human beings of the 20th century, and the only thing--the only thing--you can focus on is that the writer is Jewish.
Well, hombre, let me reiterate my message to you--in a language I think you may understand better:

And that is positively all.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead", by Dave Barry ((c) 1985)

371st post

2010-08-05T18:09:00.096+03:00

That there's my 130th cartoon drawn for The Jerusalem Post, submitted yesterday and slated to appear exclusively online. That's the twelfth of the thirty I drew since the last update in the 356th post to be seen by the general public (overall total: 67, or just a touch over half of the total).
Subjects of said 12 'toons break down as follows:
Radical Islam (2)
Hizbullah (2)
Iranian sanctions
The Palestinian Authority
Unilateral withdrawals
Gilad Schalit
Corruption
The Conversion Bill
The Israeli Comptroller's Report
Jewish holidays

The stars!
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (four times, once unpublished)
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu (four times, thrice unpublished)
US President Barack Obama (twice)
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah (twice, once unpublished)
Syrian President Bashar Assad (once)
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (once)
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (once)
Uncle Sam (once)

Plus all of the following none of whom made it in:
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Israeli Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman
Israeli politico Moshe Feiglin
Helen Thomas
Inspector Clouseau

Bibi had the hardest fall, only appearing once out of four submissions (the most of anybody), leaving him at 22 overall. Obama made both his appearances count, and Ahmadenijad led the pack with three printings, putting him at a stunning 12-for-15 (80%) success rate historically. Startlingly missing completely is PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who seems to have dropped off the news radar completely.
And now, the bonus you've all learned to look forward to: my favorite unpublished cartoon from this period!

It's a no-brainer, really--the only cartoon I ever literally begged the Post to print, and they wouldn't. I already featured it on The Eighth Day, and here it is again. Soak up the bitterness!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The City of Ember", by Jeanne DuPrau ((c) 2003)

Missionary position

2010-07-23T16:13:00.008+03:00

Both knees on the ground and hands clasped in front. Simple, really.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Well, Duh!: Our Stupid World, and Welcome to It", by Bob Fenster ((c) 2004)

369th post

2010-07-12T22:25:00.007+03:00

9,000 DAYS, people.
Another milestone comes and passes...

368th post

2010-07-05T23:20:00.001+03:00

The New Adventures of Little Toot has got to be one of the most obscure animated movies of all time. I can barely find any proof for its existence on the Internet, and its entire IMDb entry was written by me. (Thankfully, I'd had the foresight to preserve the cast list for posterity before the videotape got lost.)
Without further ado, here is the only footage I can find from it--the movie's sole song (except for the one during the credits), "Percy's Perfect Purple Pickled Pelican Pellets":

It's quite obvious the animators were heavily influenced by "Pink Elephants on Parade" from Dumbo. To quote from one of only two reviews for this film on Amazon.com, this song "will rob you of your sanity". So you can thank me once they take you away (ho ho, hee hee, ha ha) to the funny farm!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Dosadi Experiment", by Frank Herbert ((c) 1977)

Randomly reprinted post (XXIII)

2010-06-28T13:53:00.011+03:00

"My name is Url. His name is H.T. Tepee.
Over the past month, besides visits from the usual suspects--Israel, America (particulary Denver[=Eric]) and Portugal (Bernardo, from 'Funchal, Madeira')--this blog has also received hits from Estonia, Indonesia, Chile, Japan, and--gasp!--even Canada. I believe those first three are the first visitors from their countries, and in the past I've had visitors from the UK, Brazil, Germany and other places. Thus my booger-encrusted tentacles spread...
dEFINITELY A DEFINED DEFINITION. p.s. tHE cAPS lOCK BUTTON IS ON BACKWARDS.
Exit Stage Sinister with a side order of chili and fries.
Orange Country residents are seeing red due to an outbreak of yellow fever that has hospitals filled patients feeling blue and under the weather, although health authorities feel that greener pastures are in sight and do not wish to whitewash anything or put further developments under a blackout, saying that in this case there are no gray areas.
'F' and "S" words are practically the only words still considered unprintable by mainstream comic books; I've seen multiple counts of 'A', 'C', both 'B' and all the variations on the 'D' words. Get with the program, guys, little kids are exposed to these comments!
Teh 'teh'-ness of it all is simply teh awesome.
Rocky Balboa vs. Rocky J. Squirrel in a winner-take-all brawl officiated by Rock Hudson! Come on down!
Another one dites the bust, and another fun whites the crust, and a mother on town, a fishy on th' ground, Carruthers shun fights we must...
Nix.
Starring Patricia S. Mump as the Hopping Woman.
.
.
.

TODAY'S BOOK: 'The Road to Omaha', by Robert Ludlum ((c) 1993)

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes Since writing my 26th post, I have since added a fifth online comic strip site my daily reading: Calvin and Hobbes, widely regarded as a classic of the genre despite running for 'only' 10 years and nearly unique in that its creator (Bill Watterson, who once replied to a letter I sent him--o Snail Mail, wherefore art thou?) both left on his own terms while he was on top and had an almost complete ban on using the strip for merchandising purposes."
--65th post, 7/22/07

366th post

2010-06-22T21:29:00.010+03:00

This will make absolutely no sense to anyone but myself.

What if our homemade Bat Mitzvah movie (Officially known as "Sibling Wars/Everyone Has a Little Sister", mentioned last month in the 361st post), had a TVTropes entry? Let me find out. You can all ignore this and stare at the lovely nonexistent wallpaper.

Acting For Two: Y. plays both himself and Agent J.A.C.O.B., who interviews him at one point. This leads to a double listing in the credits.
* M. is himself and the Bum.
* S. is also the car's driver, as well as doing the voiceover for Agent J.A.C.O.B.'s superior and the "Bum Review" introduction.
All Girls Love Ponies: True fact!
Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The "Bum Review" was tacked on to the end as nothing more than a private in-joke, and will make no sense to those who don't know of the original.
Cloud Cuckoolander: Y.. Oh so very, very much.
Crazy Homeless Person: The Bum.
Creative Closing Credits
Crowning Moment of Awesome: "Let's make a new deal."
* S. directed, shot and edited the footage almost entirely on his own in under a month.
Crowning Moment of Funny: "Catch the rubber ducky!"
* The footage for Y.'s second credit, the lone remnant of a scrapped blooper reel.
* Let's face it, Y. himself is pretty much a walking CMOF.
* "Expelliarmus!"
Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The answers to the final question, and Agent J.A.C.O.B.'s epilogue narration.
Crowning Music of Awesome: The Jason Bourne theme plays over the end credits.
Evil Laugh: S.. Quite terrifying, actually.
Expy: The "Bum Review".
Fun With Acronyms/Meaningful Name: Agent J.A.C.O.B., referring to his real name.
Heavy Sleeper: E..
I Just Shot Marvin In The Face: Testing your magic wand while pointing it at yourself isn't the brightest of ideas.
Narm Charm: Four brothers get together and decide to film a silly, often incoherent skit for their sister's Bat Mitzvah? What's not to like?
Recycled Soundtrack: Snippets from the theme tunes of Mission Impossible, The Pink Panther, and Harry Potter are used as background music.
Rule Of Funny: Many of the answers.
Running Gag: E. really likes sleeping.
Shout Out: The Title Sequence painstakingly mimics that of The Phantom Menace.
* For no reason at all, the characters begin referencing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End:
Y: What are you doing?
S: What are you doing??
Y: What are you doing??
S: What are you doing???
Y: No, what aarrre you doing?????
Take That Me: Everybody play Flanderizations of themselves to one degree or another. Basically the whole point of the movie really.
The Voice: Agent J.A.C.O.B.'s superior. Also a Large Ham.
Trigger Happy/Disproportionate Retribution: S.'s response when someone interrupts his reading is to try to perform the Avada Kedavra spell. Then again, it seems to be his default spell anyway...

Six-Thousand-Hit Blog.

2010-06-14T17:16:00.005+03:00

Due to a drastically reduced posting rate, it's taken six months and two weeks to reach this milestone since the five thousandth hit (the first time the length between milestones has gone up), and three years, eight months and nine days overall. This time, the lucky fellow hails from Hollywood, Florida, which sort of disappoints me because over the past week alone people have dropped in from Latvia, Guatemala, Mexico, Romania, Italy (twice!), and even Canada. But USA it is. At least the 4,000th was an Englander...
Even his (her?) entry point is boring: it's the "backstabber" cartoon from the 157th post, currently the most popular one on GBFOS. You may or may not be surprised to learn that it is the 29th result in a Google Images search for that keyword, and even higher (6th!) for "backstabber cartoon". You also may or may not recall that the 5,000th visitor also arrived via that.
Traffic is down to 3 visitors a day. After a record-shattering 361-hit October, the highest monthly total the blog has reached was 211, in March; in fact, excluding this half-done June, the past seven months have seen an average of 152.7 hits, which I would have given my back molars for three years ago, but is now just depressing, particularly since so many of them now come via image searches. That's what my artwork blog is for, darnit!
Not including spam, just ten additional comments were added for an average of one every 4.2 posts, the worst average between milestones ever. Familiar faces Sea-of-Green (4 comments), Khaaan! (1) and me (2) reappeared, and three comic book bloggers (including Shelly, who shortly thereafter became the newest addition to the "Backlinkers" list) added their thoughts to what will probably be my last great post.
Along the way, I had a few political cartoons snatched up by the blogosphere, had my first ever professionally illustrated book published, reached 100 cartoons drawn for The Jerusalem Post, performed at my sister's bat mitzvah, did a siyum shas mishnayot, and remained out of steady work.
On to the next thousand!!!!!!

TODAY'S BOOK: "Curtain", by Agatha Christie ((c) 1975)

"The Running Man"

2010-06-04T14:02:00.004+03:00

READY!

See the man, running through the maze.

WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA

See the helmet. It is yellow, like his suit. It resembles a pizza pie with a slice missing.

WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA

See...

The letters stenciled above his tinted visor...

P A C

WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA

The man runs. He cannot remember why he is here; indeed, he cannot remember if he ever did know. All the PAC Man knows are the maze, the pills...

...He turns a corner and stops dead...

...the pursuit.

One of Them is advancing down the path right now. He does not know if they are ghosts, or demons, or some nameless eldritch abomination. The only thing he knows about Them is this:

They must not catch him.

He turns and flees, picking up pills all the way.

He does not know what the pills are for. They are tasteless, scentless, and (as far as he can tell) have no nutritional value. The only sustenance he receives is placed at a certain spot by a person or persons unknown—the ones responsible for his being here? Who knows?—at regular intervals, disappearing as mysteriously as it appears.

The PAC Man runs...

For all his speed and cunning, he would be dead by now were it not for the glowing orbs.

He must have found out about the orbs quite early on, for he can't remember not knowing the effect grabbing one had on Them. He has escaped from more than one jam that way. They turn blue, and flee from him in fear, knowing that now, and only now, are they vulnerable.

He could not deny the sheer pleasure vanishing one of Them gave him, but as time went by they returned to the chase. They always returned.

He hasn't seen a glowing orb for a while.

Sometimes, he is so exhausted from running that he will begin to hallucinate. He imagines he sees a wife, a female doppelganger of himself; or a child; or some sort of teacher or professor.

But they all fade away, and he is once more alone.

Alone but for Them.

He has been running for so very long.

And They have become faster. Smarter.

Hungrier.

See the man running, the sound accompanying him, emanating from everywhere and nowhere.

WAKA WAKA WAKA—

From the left—!

From the right!

They close in on him, two of Them, in a pincer movement. The man stifles an oath, and ducks into the only opening available.

It's a dead end.

He stumbles to a halt a few feet from the wall, two more pills in front of him.

He whips around. The two from before have entered the pathway. A third follows them in.

No escape.

He looks back down at the pills—the last two pills.

He has been running for so very, very long...

The hell with it, he decides.

See the PAC Man, turning and running headlong towards the relentless foe...

GAME OVER

INSERT COIN? (y/n)

The Comedy for Koby June 2010 Tour

2010-06-02T23:48:00.006+03:00

came tonight to Beit Shemesh, led once again by the indefatigable Avi Liberman, this time bringing along Wayne Cotter, Johnny Sanchez and Bob Zany. As usual, most primo lines below.

AL: Israel just got condemned by the UN. Over here, we call that "Wednesday".

WC: Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity by flying a kite into some high voltage wires.

JS: I can't wait to tell my friends "I bombed in Israel".

BZ: A new record, somebody sat on a toilet for four days, beating out Elvis by three. ...I told that joke in Memphis, I got NUTHIN'.

AL: Latinos are a lot like Jews in that they're very possessive at trying to identify fellow members of the tribe. I live in LA, where there's lots of Mexicans, Latinos, and when one of them comes up to me and asks me my name, I say, "Avi". Which sounds kind of like "Javy", short for Javier. So, "Javy?" "No, Avi!" "I think you're Mexican! What's your last name, Javy?" "Liberman." "...Rodriguez?"

WC: They had to replace my dishwasher because they said something in the switch was a fire hazard. How bad a fire hazard can you have in a machine filled with water?

JS: Let's give a big hand for my Latino brother, Javy!

BZ: Can an orphan eat at a family restaurant?

AL: We've added a new venue to our tour--a cruise ship to Turkey.

WC: My wife and I just celebrated our 24th anniversary. An unmarried friend of mine was like, "Huh. Geese mate for life." I looked it up. You know how long geese live? Three years.

JS: Asian people are very agile, but only sideways. You see Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, they're doing all these cool martial arts moves sideways. Then they start running and they're like, "WHOOAA!"

BZ: I've learned a lot by visiting this country. For instance, I've learned that my Hebrew name is "Get The Hell Away From Me".

AL: How many kids do you have, ma'am--eight? ...Five? Eh, not so frum.

WC: I was a terrible student. Back when I was in third grade I never took Roman numerals seriously.

JS: I'm five [feet]-five [inches]. Which is kind of fitting. Cinco de Mayo.

BZ: I'm self-taught. I went to public school.

AL: I can't bring any more stuff to Israel for people living here from America. On this trip the only stuff of mine I had in my suitcase was a sock and a pair of underwear.

WC: They've finally figured out the technology to put TV screens on shopping carts. Isn't there something else they could focus on first? Like fixing that fourth wheel!?

JS: Israel's a lot like America. You've got the same stars--Lady Gaza?

BZ: Anyone here from Kentucky? Anyone here ever heard of Kentucky?

WC: When you go to a foreign country, you bring along one of those little pocket dictionaries... are those of any use whatsoever?? When I went to France with my wife, I opened the dictionary on the plane, and the first phrase that I saw was, "I can't move my leg." ...When would I use that? When I'm pinned by a collapsed Eiffel Tower? Surrounded by paramedics, all just standing around and saying, "Why does he not love?"

JS: Avi requested that one!! [Said every time a joke bombed]

BZ: They told me I would never play in a community center in Bet Shemesh... I have arrived, bay-bee!

AL: On report cards you've got to find the nuances in what the teachers write. "Your son is full of energy"--he's hyperactive. "He's a real leader among his peers"--he's a bully. "Creative"? Bad at math.

WC: Try going out on a date in a foreign country with that little dictionary. Trying to find the words for "How about we go to your place." What am I gonna say when we get there? "The engine makes a funny noise. ...and I can't move my leg."

JS: Supermarkets, in my neighborhood hire disabled people. Don't get me wrong, that's all very well and good, but they keep putting them in the wrong places. I saw a one armed man--making sandwiches... and a guy with a hook for a hand was bagging my groceries! Why don't they put him in the raw meat section?? I won't even mention what they did with the guy who had Tourette's Syndrome. He belonged in management.

BZ: They told me that for tonight's show I'd have to cut out all the bits that might be inappropriate, off-color or offensive. ...Thank you, you've been a wonderful audience!

WC: Hot dogs come in packages of 12 and buns come in packages of 8. So every time I go to the supermarket, I'm always trying to figure out the lowest common denominator.

JS: Hide and Seek these days... it's all changed. You've got GPS and stuff. Back when we played we didn't even always find all our friends!

BZ: Scientists have determined that dogs can make 100 different facial expressions, beating out Joan Rivers by 99.

WC: I asked a doctor about amniocentesis and he began describing it to me. I asked how long it took. You know what he told me? "14 business days." ...What kind of cells take the weekends off?? "No mitosis on Saturdays"!

JS: Every year, you've got panics about letting children play with certain toys--lead in the paint, choking hazards... Let 'em! It builds character!

Are you always this rude?
BZ: Get out of here!! (I think I handled that well.)

AL: Here's how you play tetherball: you hit a ball on a string until it breaks your face.

WC: I flew in to Paducah, Ohio. Paducah... that's the sound your body makes when it hits the floor.

JS: They're now making motion sensors for flushing toilets. I don't know about you but I never found the handle too hard to use. You can even headbutt it!

BZ: You're 18? Stick around, I've got some Pokemon jokes coming up.

WC: I was reading the manual that came with my HDTV, and do you know what I found on page 2? "How to plug it in." With a little picture and everything. What do they have on page 1? "Turn pages with fingers"?

JS: Car companies are spending millions of dollars in safety tests so that drunk drivers can walk away from accidents.

BZ: In a recent poll, 62% of Americans said we were ready for a woman president. 38% thought we already had one.

WC: On some airplanes they don't have a Row 13. Tell me, am I supposed to be reassured by the fact that my airline is superstitious? Soon I'll be seeing rabbits' feet everywhere... stewardesses throwing salt over their shoulders.

JS: Remember Slip 'n Slides? Begins on plastic, ends on sidewalk.

BZ: What do atheists say when they orgasm? "Oh, Darwin! Oh, Darwin!"? ...I told that joke in Kansas and I got NUTHIN'.

WC: Bringing a hamster to the vet is like taking a disposable lighter in for repairs.

JS: When I get in line at the supermarket, and I've finally picked which line to get in, I'm so pathetic I mark what person I would have been behind in each line... What is this, the Grocery 500?

BZ: The longest recorded flight for a chicken is 13 seconds. Of course, you've got to kick 'em just right...

AL: When you're naming your son, the rabbi always leans over for you to tell him the name you've picked. When that happens I've always wanted to say "Christopher Mohammed".

WC: I bought a new protractor for school every year for 11 years. And I still have no idea what it's for.

JS: As Latinos get older, our bodies change shape--our stomachs get bigger and our arms get shorter. What are we turning into? T-Mex?

BZ: If I marry two midgets, is that big o' me?

AL: What would happen if teachers were more honest on report cards? We'd get comments like "For G-d's sakes!", "The hell were you thinking?"...

WC: I was in a hotel... and they had the remote control bolted to the desk. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose?

What is Israel most lacking?
JS: Mexicans.

BZ: What's your name? Elisheva? Oh, that's a beautiful name. I'm Bob.

AL: Elvis Costello just cancelled his concert here... Oh, what a shame. Like being told that Milli Vanilli can't make it.

WC: In a recent Newsweek poll, 1 in 7 Americans could not find the United States on a globe. And some of these people are flying for Delta.

JS: Mexicans, of course, tend to have a hard time keeping certain consonants straight. I go up to somebody and ask, "How are joo? Are joo Yewish?"

BZ: I just saw Land of the Lost. No, not the movie--I made a wrong turn up near Yish'i.

AL: How did the different Sabbaths get started? I'd imagine for the early Christians, on Sunday, you'd have eight or nine guys showing up in shul--"Wait, we're one day late? Eh, let's just run with it." And the Muslims are all: "Friday! Ours is first! We were here first!"

WC: My dad wasn't big on questions. We'd be walking--"Dad, why's the sky blue?" "Because the trees are green. It offsets them nicely."

JS: Children on planes... I was on a plane ride once, and in the middle of the flight, dead of night, somebody keeps hitting the back of my chair. I'm the only one up--my and the person in back of me. I turn around, and see a little girl sucking on a Pixy Stix the size of a pole vault.

BZ: I was filling out a form and decided to have some fun. When they wrote "Are you hard of hearing?", I put down, "What?"... "Are you an American citizen?" "Si."

AL: They ask you to bring from America a Kiddush cup. Yeah, 'cause that's so unavailable here.

WC: Let me tell you all a story: I was in a restaurant in New Jersey... and at one point the owner comes up to my table and asks me, "Sir, does that soup taste soapy or rancid to you?" I said, "No, why??" "Never mind." And he turned around and left. ...I am not good enough to make this up.

JS: Let me tell you, they should make it a law that before a flight the only two things you're allowed to feed your children are Ambien and Lunesca.

BZ: I was once driving to Kentucky, got out in the middle of nowhere, to the point where my GPS said, "Screw it."

AL: What do they say? "Every child is like a gift"? Haven't you every had crappy gifts before?

WC: I'd be with my dad in a restaurant, trying to read the labels on the bottles... He'd tell the waiter, "A bottle of witt'e, please." "That's 'white', sir."

JS: There's a lot of Iranians in my neighborhood, but they all refer to themselves as "Persians". "You're from Iran?" "Yes." "So, you're Iranian?" "No, no, I'm a Persian!" That's like walking up to someone and asking them, "Where are you from?" "Mexico." "So you're a Mexican?" "No--Aztec."

BZ: Dateline, Los Angeles: the city has outlawed urination and defecation in public. Police say it's been their number one and number two priorities.

AL: What would the updated version of the Four Sons be like? Gifted, behaviorally challenged, special ed, mentally impaired.

WC: There are satellites now that they say can take accurate pictures of people on the ground from 250 miles in the air. These are made by the same government that takes my picture from 3 feet away and makes me look like a Klingon.

BZ: You know what I've found in supermarkets here? Whole Wheat Knockers. These should be imported to Los Angeles for vegans who want breast implants.

AL: And the Four Questions--what would they be like if girls said them? "Why on all other nights do I eat so few carbs, but tonight I have to eat so many...? Do you know what this is doing to my figure??"

JS: Get this: it's the 21st century, and they're still using crash test dummies to test our cars' safety. Those things don't tense before impact, you know.

WC: You know why they have all these bizarre warnings in the oiperating manuals? It's become some idiot's actually done them, and then sued them for 8 million dollars. I figure if you're awarded 8 million dollars for sticking your tongue in the electric prong, you should also be forced to sign away the right to have your name and picture printed in the manual. "This is the guy who stuck his tongue in the electric prong!"

BZ: You heard of the guy [Aron Ralston] who got his arm stuck between two rocks and had to cut it off? When asked if he would do it again, he said, "Sure, but only one more time."

AL: Your name's Paula? Ba'alat t'shuva, right?

WC: 43% of Americans, when asked how long it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun, say it takes one day. There go the seasons! Coat--T shirt--coat--T shirt...

BZ: I was once working in a department store, and one day I learned about suggestive selling. Here's how it went: a customer came in, he wanted some grass seed. My boss asked him, "You want to buy a lawnmower with that?" He asked, "What for?" "We'll, you're gonna plant this grass, and it's gonna grow, and you're gonna need a lawnmower to cut it." "Hey, yeah, that makes sense! I'll buy it!" So the next customer comes in, and he asks me for a package of tampons. I said, "Yes, sir, you want a lawnmower with that?" ..."What do I want a lawnmower for?" "Well, your weekend's shot, you might as well mow the lawn!"

JS: We went to the Baha'i Gardens... That's the first garden I've been to that didn't have any Mexicans working in it.

WC: I was in Phoenix when I got into a car accident... So I'm in the hospital, and I'm in the room--and then the doctor turns the pulse oxometer towards me and asks, "Could you keep an eye on this? We're a little understaffed." Tell me, what do you think happened to my pulse after that??

BZ: I was doing a show in Shreveport, Louisiana. Somebody in the crowd got up and asked, "Are you a Yankee?" I'm from Los Angeles, California. I said, "I guess I'm a Mexican."

Do you get upset when your jokes don't work?
WC: Did I tell any jokes that didn't work?

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Prime Ministers", by Yehuda Avner ((c) 2010)

361st post

2010-05-10T22:26:00.006+03:00

I'm writing this from the scene of the crime--or, rather, nearby. Tonight was my sister's bat mitzvah celebration, and my brothers and I cobbled together a fairly-well-made-if-I-do-say-so-myself "tribute" video for the occasion. It was witty, well-edited, and wildly popular.
This isn't it.
After the first movie, I hit the audience with a wholly unexpected Big Lipped Alligator Moment. This is what they saw:

That, boys and girls, was a total knockoff of Doug Walker's Bum Reviews. I conceived and acted out this show of madness, displaying simultaneously no acting talent and tons of insanity.
I enjoyed every minute of it.
(Seriously, watch the real Bum Reviews. They are hysterical.)

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Judas Strain", by James Rollins ((c) 2007)

360th post

2010-04-28T11:48:00.002+03:00

How's this for odd:
Remember my classual Waka Waka anthem, prominently featuring my priorly-coined catchphrase? Its lyrics have now popped in the unlikeliest of places: the official anthem of the FIFA 2010 World Cup. (??!?)

"Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)", by Shakira ft. Freshlyground

Apparently, the lyrics I originally know from the CapeTown song are actually from the song Zangalewa by the Cameroonian group Golden Sounds. Who knew?

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Story of D-Day", by Bruce Bliven, Jr. ((c) 1956)

Two men banging

2010-04-09T09:46:00.009+03:00

They could keep this up all day.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Everything But Money", by Sam Levenson ((c) 1966)

358th post

2010-04-05T22:14:00.004+03:00

Please welcome rookie sensation Jenrry Mejia, making his debut in the big leagues as none other than the twenty-fourth New York Met to wear #32! Woo!

TODAY'S BOOK: "Faith and the Electric Dogs", by Patrick Jennings ((c) 1999)

Randomly reprinted post (XXII)

2010-03-29T13:13:00.004+03:00

"
Poor ol' Russell Jay Kuntz (pronounced 'Koonts'). Doomed to become one of the most hilariously misnamed athletes of all time--#1 according to one online poll--and the only such person in my sports card collection (several thousand baseball and nine basketball).

TODAY'S BOOK: 'The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle', by Avi ((c) 1990)"
--176th post, 9/25/08

356th post

2010-03-24T22:43:00.010+02:00

The above is my 100th cartoon drawn for The Jerusalem Post. Unfortunately it did not get submitted; in fact more than half lately haven't. Still, 15 of the 30 submitted since the 327th post have gotten in (making exactly 55% overall), so that's something. Four of those also appeared on the Post's website (two exclusively there) before they stopped featuring cartoons there for esoteric reasons.
The subjects of those 15 cartoons were:
Iran (3)
The "peace" process (3)
The Goldstone Report (2)
Settlements
Israeli political maneuvering
The war on terror
Airport security
The Mabhouh assassination
Miep Gies
Chanukah

Who featured in them?
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu (seven times, thrice unpublished)
US President Barack Obama (thrice, once unpublished)
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad (four times, twice unpublished)
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak (four times, thrice unpublished)
PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas (twice)
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (twice)
Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni
Dubai Chief of Police Dahi Khalfan Tamim
Anne Frank
Anne Frank hider Miep Gies

Plus all of the following who did not make it to print:
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
Israeli Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin
Israeli Minister-without-Portfolio Benny Begin
Israeli Deputy FM Danny Ayalon
Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan
US JCS Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen
Israeli Vice-PM Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon
Quartet envoy Tony Blair

Earlier this month a cartoon featuring Ahmadenijad failed to make it to print for the first time ever; he still wound up 9-for-11 overall. Netanyahu is by far the overall leader in both tries (21) and appearances (13), but both Obama (67%, 10/15) and Abbas (70%, 7/10) have a better average than him. And the current leader on the perfection board, at 3-for-3, is Hillary Clinton. What does all this mean? Absolutely nothing.
Anyway, here's my favorite unpublished cartoon from this period!

How fitting. (Also, see how I managed to work into one post both of Ahmadenijad's unseen appearances? Ha! I'm a sly little bugger, ain't I?)

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Last Patriot", by Brad Thor ((c) 2008)

355th post

2010-03-22T21:44:00.006+02:00

Tomorrow will be Jonathan Pollard's 8,888th consecutive day in prison.
There's nothing terribly significant about the fact in and of itself. It's just a number. 8 8 8 8. It just means that 8,887 days of jailtime have already passed, with G-d only knows how many more to go.
Jonathan Pollard is a spy.
Perhaps you may have noticed I keep a running tally of Pollard's days at the bottom left of the blog. It's not automatic, so I have to sign in every day and update it in the template. It helps me remember.
No one should ever forget Jonathan Pollard.
In case you don't know who he is, and you probably don't, here's the score: Jonathan Jay Pollard, a Jewish American intelligence analyst, was recruited by Israel's secret service to pass on to them classified information. The reports Pollard passed on did not contain information about the American military, but rather were about enemy countries--reports that America should have been passing along to Israel (a friendly nation), but wasn't.
Jonathan Pollard was discovered and tracked down; when he sought sanctuary at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he was kicked out (!). At his trial, Pollard entered a plea bargain by which he would plead guilty and therefore receive a reduced sentence, in addition to cooperating fully with the governmental investigation. Instead, at the last minute, the judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole, based on "secret evidence" submitted by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger that only he saw.
Pollard's lawyer forgot to submit an appeal before the deadline (!!), sealing the deal.
Jonathan Pollard has now been in a maximum security prison for eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty-seven days. That's twenty-five years, four months and one day. He is serving the longest American prison sentence ever handed down to a spy of an ally nation. Just to compare, David Barnett (KGB spy) received 18 years, David Boone (USSR) was sentenced to 24 and a third, Chi Mak (China) got 24.5. Andrew Daulton Lee served 18 years; William Kampiles was sentenced to 20 years and served 18; Christopher Boyce served 25 of 40; Ronald Pelton is scheduled for release in 2015. The list goes on. Recently, Ronald Montaperto--who passed classified information to China for over a decade--got sentenced to three months in jail.
Let me reiterate: Jonathan Pollard is serving a life sentence without parole.
This is unconsciable.
The United States needs to free Jonathan Pollard. The man has served 25 years in jail, incarcerated alongside murderers and rapists, for a crime that did not harm national security, and is now sick with a variety of illnesses.
It's time to end this debacle. It's time to let Jonathan Pollard go.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Fast-Talking Dolphin", by Carson Davidson ((c) 1978)

The cover to today's Green Lantern Corps issue

2010-03-18T14:25:00.005+02:00

353rd post

2010-03-12T16:09:00.002+02:00

"If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?"
--joke received from the Interwebs, c. 2005
Mother (translating a document): "What's the opposite of 'progress'?"
Me: "Congress!!!"
--today

March Hare: "Why don't you start at the beginning?"
Mad Hatter: "Yes! And when you reach the end--stop."
--Alice in Wonderland, first viewed c. 2009
Man in synagogue (to chazzan): "Start from the beginning!"
Me: "And when you reach the end--stop!"
--tonight

352nd post

2010-03-06T20:18:00.004+02:00

Well, at least one selfishly good thing has come out of this cluster****ed ****storm: I've been granted permanent linkage in another blog. Say hello to Shelly's Comic Book Shelf, which is, you guessed it, yet another comics-related blog. Apparently my latest rage-induced rant was impressive enough to warrant GBFOS a place at the bottom of Shelly's links list. Hey, it pays the bills. Or not.

TODAY'S BOOK: "A Man Called Intrepid: The Secret War", by William Stevenson ((c) 1976)

Hitting the fan: In Memoriam

2010-03-04T13:44:00.015+02:00

PROLOGUE:

DC, you ____ing b______s!

NOW ON TO THE MAIN EVENT:

It has been said that, if the entire population of China was to walk in front of you nine abreast, the procession would never end due to the rate of birth. Well, if the readers of DC Comics--and any person who loves decent comics in general--were to somehow form themselves into an orderly queue to deliver a kick in the balls to Dan Didio, James Robinson, and anybody else involved in the production of the just-concluded Cry for Justice miniseries, that line would also never end because they would keep lining up for more kicking, and keep on lining up until their feet were eroded down to stumps, and then they'd have corrective surgery and get new titanium feet just so they could keep on kicking.
Why?
Justice League: Cry for Justice is a 7 issue miniseries made to lead into an upcoming crossover event. It was written by James Robinson, who made his mark writing Starman during the 1990s, a run that brought acclaim from readers and critics alike, and has since made it onto many "best of" comics lists. Robinson then proceeded to fritter away all the goodwill he gained from this until it reached nil with Cry for Justice.
The series started out a as being simply reviled, a relic of the Dark Age, with overblown dialogue and actions and cliched grimdark storytelling. The main villain was Prometheus. Prometheus started out as one of the greatest threats the DC heroes had ever faced right off the bat. Subsequent appearances, however, made him less and less threatening... until it was revealed that this was an impostor, and the original, hypercompetent Prometheus had been imprisoned. He was reintroduced to the DCU in an impressive special issue of Faces of Evil. The buildup then and throughout his appearance in Cry for Justice was intense.
Then he just got killed quite easily, but not before destroying a city, offing several minor heroes, and capping it all off by killing Lian Harper.
Who?
Before I continue, let me state that DC has absolutely no idea how to deal with child characters. Practically the only child ever allowed to age and reach teenagerhood is Robin, or rather the three individuals who took up the Robin mantle as children and grew out of it (Dick Grayson as Nightwing, Jason Todd as Red Hood [another snafu, but we won't get into that here], and Tim Drake as Red Robin). Yes, three. And there's currently a fourth Robin, Damian Wayne. Formulaic much?
Anyway, the only time this rule was excepted was in Young Justice, a series about a team of underaged superheroes. It was completely AWESOME, and I'd show you pictorial evidence of this but scans of the series are hard to come by ever since writer Peter David pissed off many fans by complaining about too much of his work being shared online, leading to one of the dreaded Inernet Backdrafts. (Despite it being one of the very few positive-attitude, family-friendly mainstream comic books in recent years, YJ was canceled so that some members could reform the Teen Titans, via the "Graduation" storyline, which was bad but nowhere near as bad as CfJ.)
Back on topic. Quick history of Lian Harper: daughter of the hero Roy Harper, a.k.a. Speedy a.k.a. Arsenal a.k.a. Red Arrow, and the villainess Cheshire. Made her debut in New Teen Titans #21 back in 1986 (with red hair even though it's been black in every other appearance, but let's not hold that against her). Grew up into toddlerhood and childhood in her father's home. Friends with some of the DCU's heaviest hitters.

Cute as a button

and twice as awesome.

She also--

Whut.

WHUT.
That, my friends, is what was revealed in Cry for Justice #7 yesterday.
The first intimations of impending disaster were revealed on the Titanstower blog, which found disturbing implications in the dialogue of an issue set after CfJ. Their suspicions, sadly, have been proven correct. How can this possible be a good thing to do, DC? How??
It's Lian Harper! Lian freaking Harper! She was sweet and funny and adorable and she was just an innocent little girl, you shmucks! How dare you, James Robinson? How dare you, Dan Didio? This is vile. This is nauseating. I would say that this is "everything wrong in comics today", except this is worse. You knocked off this cute little girl who had inoffensively been a cute little girl for 24 years--longer than I have been alive--and the apple of her father's eye, loved by all! Why? Why??
"Character development"? You think Lian's death was required for character development? Let me tell you, I can think off the top of my head ten dozen ways to give a character development, and, get this, not one of them involves the death of a little girl! It's nothing more than a cheap trick, a shock for the sake of no more than shock value, a revolting offense against all modicum of good taste.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people? Bad stuff happens in the real world? Guess what! I don't read comic books about aliens from other planets and millionaire vigilantes and alternate dimensions for realism! It's escapism! How hard can this possibly be to understand? Comic books are (meant to be) one of the best sources for fun escapism ever created! I want tragedy, I'll go read Shakespeare or something! I'm not saying comic books ought to be devoid of death and disease, but KILLING LIAN HARPER--?
NO.
Remember when I metioned Internet Backdrafts earlier? This one has set off the Mother Of All Internet Backdrafts, at least in the part of it that concerns itself with comics. I have not had an active online presence for very long, but I doubt there's been much like it in the history of ever--no single event immediately incurring such wrath. (Except "One More Day".) I mean, other series like Ultimatum or Countdown have been hated for their permeating stupidity, and issues like the way Stephanie Brown's death and legacy were handled became a byword for incompetence, sure, but this takes the issue of quality, throws in callous offensiveness, and drags the series beyond So Bad It's Good, beyond So Bad It's Horrible, beyond So Horrible It's ____, and into some uncharted realm of awfulness where, by some horrible quirk, it practically circles around to become a masterpiece.
As one internet commentator has put it, DC has gone from women in refrigerators (trope namer Alex DeWitt) to raped women in refrigerators (Sue Dibny) to girls in refrigerators (Lian). What's next, RAPED GIRLS in refrigerators? Wait, don't answer that. I don't want to give Mr. Didio any ideas. In fact, all this made is even odder by the fact that Didio is supposedly moving DC into a "newer, brighter" mode with the "Brightest Day" event set to follow the awesome ongoing "Blackest Night" crossover. This is brighter and happier? This plumbs new depths of depravity, and to what end? To provide a cheap shock, to propel characters into more moneymaking miniseries. What characters? Roy Harper and her grandfather, Green Arrow.
.
Whut.Yes, her grandfather. He's the one who killed the mighty Prometheus (with an arrow, through his armor. How the hell does that make sense?), he's the one who went out and avenged her death. What the...?! Green Arrow was never this close to his granddaughter! He was never even that close to her father! In fact, it's a misnomer to term him her grandfather, as he never even formally adopted Roy Harper. And when he found out he'd become a heroin addict, he threw him out onto the streets. Way to parent, Ollie! Recently, however, DC has perplexingly been ignoring all this, making Roy willingly go into the "family business" by changing his alias and costume to resembles Green Arrow's and encouraging the latter when he began teaching Lian archery despite the fact that he'd previously said that he didn't want her to be a part of his dangerous world. Tough luck there, Roy! Hey, guess what else? Now you've actually lost all character depth you had when Lian was around and are about to become a one-note "hero" fueled by angst and vengeance!
(Roy also lost an arm in this miniseries but even that was not so facepalmingly awful, not even when they milked that particular development beyond all its worth in subsequent cover imagery and planned storylines.)
Why do such revolting stories still get published? We can't just blame the writers and editors--a not-insignificant portion of fans actually like this type of drivel. As of this writing, 46% of the voters on a Newsarama poll have rated this issue 2 out of 4 stars or higher, with over 250 fans giving it the highest ranking. Money talks, bull____ gets printed, and all in all I have to say is this is very lousy time to be a comic book fan.
Capping this all off, Lian Harper may have been unique in that readers saw her growing up from the sidelines from birth to... um, whatever age she had reached. 6? 10? Comic book ages are left deliberately ambiguous, which can be a pain. But the point is, she was the first. Let's take a look at some other kids born to DC characters:
*Aquaman's son Arthur, Jr.. Asphyxiated in infancy.
*Tempest's son Cerdian. Killed along with his mother off-panel, age about 1.
*Donna Troy's son Robert. Killed in a car crash, age about 1.
*Catwoman's daughter Helena. Taken away soon after birth, location unknown--and perhaps, seeing this list, that's all for the better. Like I said before, DC has no idea how to deal with children, or at the very least the concept of them aging and developing into something--gasp!--new. The exceptions to the rule, the underage Young Justice members, were introduced when they were already almost teenagers; tellingly, the only one without superpowers was... Robin (version tim.drake), who as I've pointed has character immunity (except for Jason Todd, sort of, but we won't get into that here either) (EDIT: Arrowette [another archer!] had no superpowers either; she just retired and dropped off the radar completely except for the Wonder Girl mini a few years back). Apparently you need abnormal abilities if you expect to reach maturity in the DCU.
Lian Harper found this out the hard way.
RIP.

EPILOGUE:

____ you, you b______s!

Elegant weapons for a more or less civilized age

2010-03-02T23:52:00.006+02:00

Curious about my Purim costume's weaponry? Probably not, but here's what they were constructed of anyway!

Der Zwei-X Raygun, Mk. II

Main body is drum tripod. Special timer attached to right side with belt; copper pot knob-piece taped on for olde timey funke ambience. Laser scope from brother's BB gun taped to top. Gear meter of bicycle attached to top left side. Computer power cable stuck into bottom. Chair wheel inserted into "barrel". Gear-like pieces from my electric shaver attached to lower front with inside of twist-tie.
Meter and cable attach back to...

Der Zwei-X Powersourcen Mit Optional Blastenpiece

Main body is a mixer. Asthma inhaler lashed to one side. More pieces from shaver taped to front, as well as computer cable. Gear meter snaked into hole on side.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Just So Stories", by Rudyard Kipling ((c) 1902)

Herr Doktor Gunther von Vilhelm, MAN OFF SZIENCE!!!!

2010-02-28T23:32:00.009+02:00

Greetinks from der Israelcountrie, I am Herr Doktor Gunther von Vilhelm, szientist off der schteampunk varietien, undt I am not really real beink also an ego-altern off Herr Menachem Jerenberg (aka MakFanOffMetz) created especiallink fur Purimschpiel!

I haff googles, ein trench-koaten, ein hatski, ein cigar, gloven, really tight booten, undt a really schnazzie bow-tie! Also please to be noten: der VEAPONEN OFF DOOMERIE!

Fear me undt mine schteampunky hypo-schpray, puny mortallen! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! For I am Herr Doktor Gunther von Vilhelm, undt I bring you doomy szience off DOOM!!!!!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Night Raiders: Israel's Naval Commandos at War", by Samuel M. Katz ((c) 1997)

348th post

2010-02-26T15:18:00.004+02:00

Ladies and germs, feast your eyes upon my very first professionally illustrated book!!

UPDATE: Sample chapter (complete with sample illustration!) available for reading here!

TODAY'S BOOK: "Hate You Forever: How to Channel Your Rage into Effective Supervillainy", by M.D. Wilson ((c) 2010)

Well, I guess I'm not immune either...

2010-02-06T23:32:00.007+02:00

A few posts back I laughed at the inadvertently dirty language in a short story's narration. Since then, I chanced upon an old English project: a diary written from the perspective of a young alien on another planet. The confused grammar in the April 13th entry caught my eye, and after a good laugh, I decided to fess up and show that, yea, indeed everybody makes mistakes!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The School Story", by Andrew Clements ((c) 2001)

Sknil backwards

2010-01-28T21:33:00.007+02:00

www.badassoftheweek.com Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Every week, another badass living or (usually) historical figure is described in the most glowing and hyperbolic terms possible. Testosterone poisoning ahoy, even for the ladies!
www.mylifeisaverage.com Used to be Exactly What Is Says Etc., but not anymore. Now it's basically a free-for-all to see who can describe--with brevity--unusual happenstances that for some reason always occur "yesterday". Harmless and enjoyable fluff; seems to be picking up posting speed.
www.givesmehope.com Women, break out the tissues; men, pull up your sleeves. Each and every story on this amazing site is guaranteed to restore your hope in the human race and not leave a dry eye in the house.
Excuse me.
*HONK*
www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php Add another webcomic to the list! This one's about a guy named Art, a catgirl named Kat and a giant green penguin (Pip). Oh, and there's an ADD squirrel-girl in there called Scarlet who is voiced in my head by Ellen DeGeneres. Awesomeness doesn't get much crazier than this, folks!
cheezburger.com/sites This is not addition but a name change. Remember I Can Has Cheezburger? They've expanded into an entire Cheezburger Network, covering everything from wedding pictures and graphs to cute babies and Facebook stupidity. With 36 separate offshoots and counting, say hello to hours of laughs!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Making of 'The African Queen', or: How I Went to Africa with Bogie, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind", by Katharine Hepburn ((c) 1987)

345th post

2010-01-20T10:28:00.004+02:00

Wherever there is trouble, Israel is there to lend a helping hand. May G-d be with the people of Haiti. (Unprinted cartoon submitted to The Jerusalem Post.)

TODAY'S BOOK: "Miss Pickerell and the Geiger Counter", by Ellen MacGregor ((c) 1953)

Oh my. Oh MY.

2010-01-18T17:42:00.004+02:00

There is practically no way the author did not know how those top two paragraphs could be misinterpreted.
FYI, this is an excerpt from "Brothers Beyond the Void", a 1952 short story by Paul Fairman, reprinted in "The Twilight Zone: The Original Series" ((c) 1985).

Randomly reprinted post (XXI)

2010-01-16T20:37:00.004+02:00

"'There was a young fellow of Stroud
Who dressed himself up in a shroud.
When they called him a freak
He replied, "I'm unique
And don't wish to be one of the crowd."'
--Livingston, M.C., A Lollygag of Limericks (1978), p. 11

'A meticulous person of Grange
Once declared, "Though my friends think me strange
Teaching roosters to crow
And the weeds how to grow,
They would be most confused should I change."'
--Ibid., p. 29 "
--172nd post, 9/16/08

342nd post

2010-01-14T13:51:00.013+02:00

Well I suppose it;s time close out another year's list month. This time, I'm drawing the blinds with a unique sort of list: my top 10 favorite unpublished Jerusalem Post cartoons!

#10 - Abdelbaset al-Megrahi arrives in Libya to great fanfare, 8/25/2009

Yeah, meting out justice based on the honor system really isn't such a great idea, Kenny.

#9 - The world fiddles while Iran prepares to burn, 11/22/2009

Countries as mammals, reptiles and spineless inveterbrae--old-fashioned and clich'ed, but highly enjoyable to draw.

#8 - HRW changes tack... kind of, 8/13/2009

Bonus: the guy on the left side of the Human Rights Watch group was later found to be a collector of Nazi memorabilia. What an innocuous hobby.

#7 - Terrorists attempt a horseback attack, 6/9/2009

You try that tactic against the Israelis With Infrared Missiles, you deserve everything you get.

#6 - The UN once again calls for Hizbullah to disarm, 10/23/2009

Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus...

#5 - Unrest among hesder yeshivas following the ouster of Har Bracha, 12/16/2009

Although the hornets eventually settled down, this visual metaphor was too good to pass up--and got pulled off pleasingly.

#4 - The US decries Israeli settlement expansion, 7/2/2009

Putting the settlers in the heroic Iwo Jima pose was a stroke of inspiration.

#3 - Yom Kippur 5770, 9/24/2009

With Israeli politicians (and Bernie Madoff), you've got to laugh if you don't want to cry... Right to left, fraud, sexual misconduct, embezzlement, embezzlement, and various financial improprieties.

#2 - Bernie gets 150 years in the slammer--good riddance!, 6/30/2009

I love this one so much.

#1 - The least-worked-for award of the year, 10/11/2009

Burn, baby, burn!

339th post

2010-01-08T11:50:00.014+02:00

Ah, fanfiction.net, thou hast proven the truth of Sturgeon's Law many times over. And yet, out of the foul muck and mire, the Mary Sues and the Canon Rapes, some good things doth arise...

TOP 25 FAVORITE FF.NET FANFICTIONS
25. Scrat's Haiku (Ice Age, K)
Yes, it's a haiku. But it's a very good haiku, capturing Scrat's essence perfectly in 17 syllables.
24. Lantern Boo (JLU & Animaniacs crossover, K)
A "Chicken Boo" segment set it the Watchtower. Hilarity ensues. How I wish this were real.
23. Omicron Opera (DC animated, T)
A counterintuitive setup: two morally challenged extraterrestrials, Blackfire from Teen Titans and Lobo from Superman, meet in a bar. Better than it sounds.
22. Half of Your Adult Life (Bolt, K+)
One-shot that posits what would happen if the movie's show-within-a-show actors visited a convention. Somewhat fluffy, very well-executed.
21. Will the Real Robin Please Stand Up? (Young Justice, K)
Great good fun with the YJers attempting to uncover Robin's identity, with unpredictably hilarious results.
20. Humor Me & Laugh It Up (Harry Potter & Batman crossovers, K/K+)
Q: If the HPU and DCU coexisted, would the Weasley twins try to prank the Joker? A: Totally. This could just as well be considered a two-chapter story split in half.
19. If the Hat Fits (Discworld, T)
Written by A.A. Pessimal, and get used to that name, because you're going to see it a lot more on this list.
18. Cultural Significance (JLI, K)
For some reason, FF.net seems to breed authors who write extremely good, extremely funny, completely IC Justice League International fics. Case in point: this effort from LM, who parlays the heroes eating at a Chinese restaurant into something short yet spectacular.
17. Highway Code (Harry Potter, K)
shewhoguards tells the untold story of just how Ron Weasley got his driver's license. Nobody is OOC, which made me fall in love with this fic immediately, but beyond that, I have to say that Rowling herself could have done no better.
Speaking of shewhoguards...
16. Night of the Anas (Harry Potter, T)
Another behind-the-scenes vignette, crowbarred out of a simple throwaway line in Book 7. No need to worry about OOCness, as the main characters are OCs, and hilarious in their own right to boot.
15. Even Superheroes Need Fashion Consultants (Blue Beetle III, K+)
In the best Jaime Reyes-centered fic I've seen on the site so far, our hero and his scarab prepare for a date with Traci 13. So IC it hurts.
14. The New Guild (Discworld, K+)
A.A. Pessimal takes the euphemestically-named Guild of Seamstresses and turns the concept inside out.
13. A Night on the Town (comic book Teen Titans (ex-YJ members), K)
A visit to Gotham City goes typically awry. Technically under the TT banner, Tim, Kon, Bart and Cassie's characters nevertheless evoke the charm, direction and fast-paced funny Young Justice was known for. Written by the fantastically prolific Mara Greengrass, usually a drabbler, but this one clocks in at well over 4,000 words.
12. Generic Exaggeration (TV Teen Titans, T)
Nothing but an effective series of jabs at the worst cliches prevalent in fanfiction, Amethyst Turtle's parody is still going strong at over 60 chapters.
11. Road Rage (JLI, K)
The other LM story on this list, this one takes all the good qualities found in "Cultural Significance", then cubes them.
10. How Not To Write Fanfiction: A Non Guide (general (but Artemis Fowl-centered), T)
As opposed to "Generic Exaggeration", The One Called Demetra's fic is not a fic at all, but rather lists and pointers on how, indeed, not to write fanfiction. The snark level is over 9,000!
9. All of blubeetle3's Untold Tales of the JLI (JLI, K+)
Simple fact: if DC Comics ever decides to revitalize the JLI series, this is the writer they should turn to. I kid you not.
8. The Mary Sue Test (general, T)
Writing a fic with an OC? Then Elihu's two-chapter guide is absolutely required to tell if you're straying too far into Mary Sue territory. No more, no less.
7. Fishing in the Streams of Time (Discworld, K+)
A.A. Pessimal amazes and amuses yet again, linking the Discworld to the Loch Ness Monster, and throwing in spot-on historical references just for kicks.
6. The Last Temptation of Alfred (Batman, K+)
Alfred Pennyworth is awesome, and all fics starring him are required to be equally awesome. This one, to say the very least, succeeds.
5. The importance of index cards (Discworld, K)
Take two background characters (one from the very first Discworld book), mix in an uncanny amount of matched-up plotting, and what do you get? Another A.A. Pessimal triumph, that's what.
4. The Adventures of Sherlock Brain & The Brain VS the Claw Machine (Pinky and the Brain, K)
Born about a decade too late, The Illustrious Crackpot should have encountered unparalleled success as head writer (or at least associate head writer) of PatB. These two fics perfectly display what the show would have been like in a fanfic format: they are witty, funny, unpredictable, and do not tell the same story twice.
3. 100 Things Crowley Would Do Before the World Ended ("Good Omens", T)
shewhoguards achieves something none of the four other authors with at least three fics on my Favorites list manage to do: all of them are in my Top 25. Clocks in at an astounding 26,628 words in a single chapter (the next-highest on the list, "If The Hat Fits", has a measly 9,909), and worth every single *blessed* one. Since Pratchett & Gaiman's sequel book fell through, this one will have to make up for it--and I can't tell the difference.
2. How André Got His Badge Back (Discworld, K+)
A.A. Pessimal's debut FF.net fic, and wow, was it a sizzler. All the hallmarks of his later works are already in full bloom--the wickedly funny lines, the unexpected yet completely sensible canon cross-stitching, the works.
1. Family & Friends (Animaniacs (mainly), T)
I've gone over this before, but it bears repeating: "Family" (and its companion piece, "Friends") are the ABSOLUTE BEST FANFICTIONS EVER WRITTEN. Full stop.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Gregor the Overlander", by Suzanne Collins ((c) 2003)

338th post

2010-01-06T23:16:00.005+02:00

What shall I list off today? How about some animation companies that I've been neglecting!

TOP 10 DREAMWORKS ANIMATION MOVIES:

1. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
2. Kung Fu Panda
3. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
4. Flushed Away
5. The Prince of Egypt
6. Over the Hedge
7. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
8. Shrek 2
9. Madagascar
10. Shrek

RANKING AMBLIN'S ANIMATED MOVIES:

1. Balto
2. An American Tail
3. The Land Before Time
4. An American Tail II: Fievel Goes West
5. We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story

RANKING 20TH CENTURY FOX'S ANIMATED MOVIES:

1. Ice Age
2. Ice Age 2
3. Horton Hears a Who
4. Robots

TODAY'S BOOK: "Lanterns and Lances", by James Thurber ((c) 1962)

Reverse cowboy

2010-01-04T13:54:00.007+02:00

UR DOIN IT RIGHT

336th post

2010-01-02T23:59:00.012+02:00

TOP 15 DISNEY (& PIXAR) TEARJERKERS

#15
Movie: Beauty and the Beast
Tearjerker: The Beast's death, transformation and revival.

With the Beast on the verge of death after being stabbed, Belle confesses her love for him just as the enchanted rose sheds its last petal. What happens next brings the audience from tears of sadness to tears of triumphant joy. A beautiful way to cap off a beautiful movie.

#14
Movie: The Tigger Movie
Tearjerker: "T-T-F-E--Ta-Ta For-Ever!"

I saw this movie when I was 11 and this scene shook me up pretty badly. I grew up on Winnie the Pooh videocassettes; I knew who Tigger was--the fun one, the silly, the one surest to make you laugh, always calling out his signature line "T-T-F-N, Ta-Ta For Now!". Then they gave him his own movie, messed around with his character, and finally had him so upset with his friends that with the above dramatic and emotional declaration, he slammed the door and ran off into a blizzard. Cue shocked blubbering.

#13
Movie: Dumbo
Tearjerker: "Baby Mine". Just... "Baby Mine".

This may be the one saddest song in the entire Disney repertoire, and it just gets worse with age. After going berserk protecting her son from bullies, Mrs. Jumbo gets locked up in Circus Jail (I guess she was fortunate not to go the way of Mary). To cheer Dumbo up, Timothy takes him to visit her. This is what ensues.

Small wonder they hurried to follow it up with "Pink Elephants on Parade".

#12
Movie: The Fox and the Hound
Tearjerker: The whole movie, but mostly the ending.

For overall depression, there's probably no Disney film that can touch TFatF. Tod the fox and Copper the hound dog, childhood friends, grow to be bitter natural adversaries. At the climax of the movie, Tod saves Copper and his hunter owner from a giant black bear; Copper reciprocates by protecting him from the hunter. Smiles all around, right? Wrong. The film ends with each going their separate ways, knowing they can never truly coexist, as their childhood declaration of eternal friendship plays out across the aether. Happy endings, my foot.

#11
Movie: Tarzan
Tearjerker: The death of Kala's baby.

Aw, isn't that cute, the widdle baby gorilla is chasing a butterf--JEBUS KRYSE IT'S A LEOPARD!! Oh yeah, and top it all off we hear the baby's cries from offscreen as it is no doubt disemboweled and devoured while the Phil Collins lyrics gently push us over the edge.

#10
Movie: Mickey's Christmas Carol
Tearjerker: Tiny Tim's burial.

Aah, Mickey Mouse. The very symbol of happiness and good cheer, his smiling face ubiquitous across the world. The ultimate optimist. In the role of Bob Cratchit.
As an adult you can see this coming, but imagine being a child seeing Mickey standing at his own son's grave and shedding a single tear while laying Tiny Tim's crutch atop it... Cue waterworks. It comes out of left field and you're not even sure that it will be reversed.
For added woobieness, the above video is dedicated to the late Wayne Allwine, who began his career as Mickey's voice in this film.

#9
Movie: Alice in Wonderland
Tearjerker: "Very Good Advice"

Speaking of coming out of left field, how about this cheerful tune? In a bizarre scene in an already bizarre movie, Alice, lost and alone, begins... singing. Yeah. It's such a sad song she begins crying partway through, as do the Wonderland denizens listening to it, who... melt away as the tears run down their faces.
Um.

#8
Movie: Pinocchio
Tearjerker: Pinocchio's death and revival.

From sobbing at "My boy... my brave boy..." to sobbing at "You are a real boy!". Mood whiplash ahoy--and pass the tissues.

#7
Movie: Finding Nemo
Tearjerker: "I don't want to forget!"

Earlier in the movie, a potentially sorrowful scene is subverted when the jellyfish-stung Dory bounces back and starts playing hide-and-seek. This, however, is the true low point. Marlin, thinking the son he's traveled hundreds of leagues to find is dead, begins swimming away. Dory begs him to stay with her.

"No one's ever stuck with me for so long before. And if you leave... if you leave... I just, I remember things better with you. I do, look. P. Sherman, forty-two... forty-two... I remember it, I do. It's there, I know it is, because when I look at you, I can feel it. And-and I look at you, and I... and I'm home. Please... I don't want that to go away. I don't want to forget!"
"I'm sorry, Dory. But I... do."

It's the way her voice cracks with desperation that gets me the most.

#6
Movie: The Lion King
Tearjerker: Mufasa's death.

Here we're entering the big leagues. Mufasa, the loving father figure voiced by James Earl freaking Jones, is pushed off a cliff by his evil brother and under the hooves of a stampeding wildebeest herd, and only by a quick cut at the last second do we avoid actually seeing a Disney character die on-screen. Then his son finds the body... (You know, I'm not sure if the fact that it's completely unmarked actually makes this scene worse than if it were otherwise. In any case, major. Tear. Jerker.)

#5
Movie: Old Yeller
Tearjerker: *BANG*

Introductions to the basic unfairness of life don't get much more graphic than this. After 70+ minutes of adventure, Old Yeller, the can-do dog hero, contracts rabies from a wolf that, had he not fought it, would have killed his owner Travis and his family. Knowing that he cannot be cured and that he now poses a danger to them, Travis is forced to shoot his beloved pet. I don't like dogs, and even I find this scene heartbreaking.

#4
Movie: Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
Tearjerker: The whole. Freaking. Ending.

After surviving a harrowing trek across the Sierras, Shadow, Chance and Sassy have nearly reached their owners' home when Shadow falls into a pit, badly hurting his leg, unable to climb out.
That's not the tearjerker.
At least not for me. That's the very next scene, when the pets return to their owners. I get teary-eyed when Chance and Sassy reunite with Jamie and Hope, but when Peter gives up on Shadow right before he limps into view...
Here, just watch it.

Oh G-d, oh G-d, I'm crying just while typing this.

#3
Movie: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Tearjerker: Snow White's funeral wake.

This was it. This was the film that had box office cash registers ringing day and night and little kids wetting seats by the theaterful. It was revolutionary. It had color. It had music. It had everything.
It had this.

Snow White's wake is one of the biggest sob-inducing scenes in cinematic history. If crusty old Grumpy tearing up doesn't get you, then the simple, child-like Dopey sobbing uncontrollably into Doc's shoulder will.

#2
Movie: Up
Tearjerker: The entire opening montage.

Ever since I was old enough to know better, the closest I have ever come to crying in public was in a theater watching the first ten minutes of Up. There is a good reason for this. You can watch the video and see why, but you'll be watching alone because I'll be too busy bawling my eyes out.
So what can possibly top that? What is the biggest tearjerker ever to come out of the House of Mouse, the Happiest Place on Earth? It's...

#1
Movie: Bambi
Tearjerker: Do I really have to tell you?

Yes, doubtless an unoriginal choice... but a deserved one. Every child born within the last 20-25 years who owned a video player has suffered the same traumatic childhood trauma, and that is seeing Bambi's mother being shot by hunters. Every. Single. Child. You can have been affected to a greater or lesser degree by other Disney (or Pixar) tearjerkers, but this is the one common denominator guaranteed to leave you crying hysterically.

Bonus round!
Just to counteract claims of bias, I present you with four uber-sad non-Disney childhood tearjerkers: Charlotte's Web (Paramount), The Iron Giant (Warner Bros.), The Land Before Time (Universal), and Snoopy, Come Home (20th Century Fox).

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Dog Who Wouldn't Be", by Farley Mowat ((c)1957)

335th post

2009-12-31T13:45:00.003+02:00

Happy Jesus Circumcision Day!
I bid you leave of 2009 CE with this li'l ditty:

"Roses are red
Violets are bluish
If it wasn't for Jesus
We'd all be Jewish"

This is for all the Twilight fans

2009-12-29T23:51:00.006+02:00

I confess! I'm a member of Team... Ed Wood.
Yep.

Ed Wood and Bela 4ever!!1!

TODAY'S BOOK: "Henry and the Clubhouse", by Beverly Cleary ((c) 1962)

333rd post

2009-12-27T20:26:00.007+02:00

Three hundred and thirty three threes triples "Ain't nothing like a triple" baseball hot dog show-off proud pride goeth before a fall autumn season seasoning spice cinnamon buns Animorphs shapeshifting morphing Morph Treasure Planet space room walls fourth wall broken breaking up reception cellphone tower high drugs stoned death penalty hanging Hangman guess wild guess wild animals zoo circus clowns funny laughter medicine syrup juice apples and oranges rainbow rain wet water sea ocean liner cruise control controller joystick video game Donkey Kong barrels monkeys bananas cuckoo clock time flies flying airplane airport security safe anvil gag bound and gagged captured capture the flag game Monopoly business money ash cheque check in check out leave leaf tree green frog tongue calf foot feet mile marathon run jump hop hopping mad angry red-faced crimson tide moon stars Hollywood movies cinema popcorn corn on the cob Ty Cobb Detroit Tigers lion and bears oh my goodness gracious polite well mannered to the manor born rich money cash Johnny Cash western gunfighter lawman lawyer slime pond scum algae green stuff feeling green diseased sickness health medicine pharmacy drugs druggie stoner Stone Age Bronze Age bronze third place one third .333 three hundred and thirty-three.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said", by Ross and Kathryn Petras ((c) 1993

Randomly reprinted post (XX)

2009-12-25T13:29:00.002+02:00

"Here's a TV series coming soon to a station near you: The OZ. It's about a scarecrow, a tin man, a lion, and a young country girl all living in Los Angeles. One of them is a pimp. Don't ask me why I just said that.
Pluto is still a planet. We know this because the aliens living there recently contacted the government, and since we don't want to embarrass them by referring to them as coming from a 'dwarf planetoid', it's been re-upgraded.
Cut the lights, I'm gonna fall off...
I've mentioned before that my class anthem is 'Waka Waka'. Its title is quite similar to a song called 'Waka Laka', which is like it a lot except not really. And now for something completely different.
'Ragenalie' is not a real word. Make a note of that, children.
If you ever stick your tongue in a toaster, you deceive what you reserve.
Listen to the Weird Al Yankovic song 'You Don't Love Me Anymore' (Fan-made AMV: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWEzW4yWre0), admit to me that it's the best song you've ever heard, and I'll give you a whole carton of jalapen~o-flavored ice cream. With a cherry on top too. Maybe even sprinkles, if I feel like it. Please?

TODAY'S BOOK: 'It's Not Over 'Til it's Over', by Al Silverman ((c) 2002)

TODAY'S MOVIE: 'Cats & Dogs', from Warner Bros. (2001)

WWWW2?: Bugs Bunny.

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.snoopy.com One of the longest-running and highest-syndicated comic strips ever, "Peanuts"--featuring Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder and, yes, Snoopy--was beloved by generations of children. Although the series finished its run a few months before the death of its creator, Charles Schulz, its spirit lives on in this informative website, featuring news, character bios, and downloadable stuff, as well as a daily reprinted strip."
--7th post, 10/17/06

331st post

2009-12-23T15:29:00.004+02:00

Speaking of updates, this is now my second update to my Favorites Movies of All Time list. Adding in just 5 movies (written in bold) seen over the past year, we get:

103. Toy Story 2
102. The Land Before Time IV [DTV]
101. The Bridge on the River Kwai
100. Spirited Away
99. The Karate Kid, Part II
98. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
97. (tie) Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Vacation [DTV] & Ice Age 2
96. Gulliver's Travels
95. My Fair Lady
94. DuckTales: The Movie
93. (tie) The Guns of Navarone & The Rookie
92. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron

91. (tie) Spider-Man & Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
90. A Bug's Life
89. The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars [DTV]
88. A League of Their Own
87. Brother Bear 2 [DTV]
86. National Treasure
85. Fiddler on the Roof
84. Finding Forrester
83. A Night at the Opera

82. An American Tail
81. Snoopy Come Home
80. Spider-Man 2
79. Pocahontas
78. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
77. The Great Muppet Caper
76. Over the Hedge
75. Aladdin and the King of Thieves [DTV]
74. WarGames
73. Back to the Future

72. Star Trek III
71. Batman Begins
70. (tie) Peter Pan & The Princess Bride
69. Bolt
68. (tie) The New Adventures of Little Toot [DTV] & The Wave [DTV]
67. Homeward Bound II
66. Horse Feathers
65. The Sound of Music

64. The Adventures of Robin Hood
63. Erin Brockovich
62. Justin Case [TVM]
61. Surf's Up
60. The Prince of Egypt
59. Who Done It?
58. Frequency
57. Annie [TVM]
56. (tie) Fantasia/2000 & Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

55. Holes
54. Buck Privates
53. Sneakers
52. Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark
51. Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins [DTV]
50. The Mask of Zorro
49. Cinderella
48. Fever Pitch
47. Star Trek II
46. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

45. Balto
44. (tie) The Italian Job & Ocean's Eleven
43. Cars
42. Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker [DTV]
41. The Jungle Book
40. The Philadelphia Story
39. Tarzan
38. Angels in the Outfield
37. Bringing Up Baby

36. Hercules
35. (tie) Toy Story & Ratatouille
34. Die Hard
33. 12 Angry Men
32. Ice Age
31. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
30. Treasure Planet
29. The Karate Kid
28. Dumbo

27. Up
26. Pinocchio
25. Alice in Wonderland
24. Mary Poppins
23. The Wizard of Oz
22. Fantasia
21. Bambi
20. Star Trek IV
19. Flushed Away
18. The Rescuers Down Under

17. Space Jam
16. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
15. Kung Fu Panda
14. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
13. Charlotte's Web
12. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
11. Robin Hood
10. Mulan
9. (tie) Schindler's List & E.T.

8. Monsters, Inc.
7. The Emperor's New Groove
6. The Incredibles
5. Aladdin
4. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [TVM]
3. Star Wars: A New Hope
2. Finding Nemo
1. (tie) Beauty and the Beast & The Lion King

[DTV]=Direct to Video [TVM]=TV Movie

TODAY'S BOOK: "Indian Captive: The True Story of Mary Jemison", by Lois Lenski ((c) 1941)

The last 34 search engine keyword referrals

2009-12-21T18:04:00.000+02:00

Over the past 21 days Netizens have used Google and other search engines to look for the following and instead were led here:

giant boogers (3)
a picture of the biggest booger (2)
"giant boogers from outer space"
a pic of the worlds biggest booger
booger ball guinness record
cartoon man hit with frying pan
do people at outer space got there feet on the ground\
erma bombeck motherhood the second oldest profession culmination
here's a yoda, there's a yoda, and another little yoda... lyrics [Nice to see my made-up ditty is considered canonically real.]
i dont care about underwater boogers [Neither do I, but you don't have to tell us about it.]
images on google off boogers
its not important to explore outer space [From the UAE no less.]
jerenberg
little girl
llama song wikipedia
my booger space [It's called a nostril.]
nissim gini photo
nobrand pace
obvius
oo waka waka meenie song
particle man home video archives
peter parker middle name
pictures of gigantic boogers
praise for the middle moffat by eleanor estes
ramona quimby "rule 34" [Great, another disturbed 13-year-old.]
rood giddance to rad bubbish childrens book
valeen_the_ii
waka waka my names chewbacca
wakka wakka wakka calvin and hobbes
what are boogers made off
where did the llama song come from
why boogers are white for science class [After all, this blog is called Giant Boogers from Outer Space for a reason. Wait, no, it's not.]
why keep silence between netilat yadaim and motzi [Some poor chump from Chile wanted to know. Instead he had to suffer through an obscure Jewish in-joke. My apologies.]
world record booger

TODAY'S BOOK: "Throwing Smoke", by Bruce Brooks ((c) 2002)

329th post

2009-12-18T13:36:00.003+02:00

Tevet is here and now and then again once more mit feelink, an' ya know what that means, right? Right? Yes? Yes, it's List Month! Oh boy oh boy!
Today, let's update my All Time Favorite Songs list!

"Hero" by Superchick enters between "Slipped Away" and "Kleptomaniac" at #34.
"They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" by Napoleon XIV enters between "Won't You Stay Home, Israelis?" and "Rock and Roll Music" at #53.
"The Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley enters between "We Will Rock You" and "Roll Out the Daryl" at #109.
"I'll be Mellow When I'm Dead" by Weird Al Yankovic (henceforth "WAY") enters between "Help Me Make it Through the Flight" and "Hillary Will Survive" at #118.
"All-American Girl" by Carrie Underwood enters between "Close But No Cigar" and "Goodbye" at #158.
"Genius in France" by WAY enters between "Goodbye" and "I Think I'm a Clone Now" at #160.
"They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" by Napoleon XIV enters "Papa's Got a Brand New Baghdad" and "What if God Smoked Cannabis" at #177.
"Pressing On" by Relient K enters between "If You Knew Souter Like I Know Souter" and "Speaker of the House" at #186.
"When I Was Your Age" by WAY enters between "Calm Eagle" and "Welcome to the Jungle" at #194.
"21 Guns" by Green Day enters between "Land of Confusion" and "Livin' in the Fridge" at #199.
The list now contains 200 songs.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Great Brain", by John D. Fitzgerald ((c) 1967)

328th post

2009-12-14T20:23:00.003+02:00

The above cartoon, which ran in The Jerusalem Post on December 7th, has also now been featured on some sort of German news blog. Of all things. Anyhow, it refers to the recent ban in Switzerland on building minarets. The blog editor took it to mean a protest against intolerance; actually I drew it from a purely reportingative point of view.
Well, publicity be publicity, I s'pose.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH", by Robert C. O'Brien ((c) 1971)

Last night

2009-12-12T18:21:00.004+02:00

I was in a hotel. Don't ask me to explain how I knew it was a hotel, it just was. I think I've been there on previous excursions.
So my shirt disappeared and I went outside through the revolving door, then back in, then out again. And I found myself in my old building's lobby.
I went to the elevator (which was in front of me instead of to the left, oddly enough) and waited for it along with some other folks who walked. There were both men and women. I think one of the men was bald.
Then we went into the elevator and the scene shifted to the elevator now outside the building, going up at an angle instead of straight. I remember thinking, "Oh yeah, I forgot that elevator did this", even though it never actually did. Also, it had no roof.
Some more people got on.
I was completely calm throughout all of this.
We stopped at my floor and I went in. There was a long hallway, on the left were animals that looked like CGI images exhibited in pens. As I walked down the hall, one of the animals, a bull species called a "Fencebreaker", destroyed its enclosure. I walked past and mentioned to a security guard.
As I kept walking I saw more animal exhibits that had been destroyed or something.
Then I turned a corner and found out who was responsible for this: the Joker. A scene from Batman: The Animated Series played out on a giant screen.
And then I woke up.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Voice of Liberty: The Story of Emma Lazarus", by Eve Merriam ((c) 1959)

326th post

2009-12-10T19:47:00.007+02:00

Yesterday I submitted my 70th cartoon to The Jerusalem Post. With today's appearance of it in both the print and online editions, this makes 18 of the thirty I drew since the 309th post published (3 exclusively online). Their subjects were:
Iran (3)
The Palestinian Authority (2)
The "peace" process
Turkey
The Goldstone Commission
Gilad Schalit
Swine Flu
Settlements
Healthcare
Weather
Sabbath
Switzerland
The Demjanjuk trial
J Street
The iPhone

And these are the figures, political and otherwise, that I have caricatured:
US President Barack Obama (six times, once unpublished)
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu (five times, once unpublished)
PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas (five times, once unpublished)
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad (four times)
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh (thrice, twice unpublished)
Fatah Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (twice, once unpublished)
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
French President Nicolas Sarkozy
Israeli President Shimon Peres
British PM Gordon Brown
Jordanian King Abdullah II
J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami
Nazi John Demjanjuk

Plus all of the following who did not make it to print:
Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert
Former Israeli President Moshe Katzav
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal
Former Israeli Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano
Former Israeli MK Shlomo Benizri
Bernard Madoff
Murderer Dimitry Kirilik
Attorney Uri Keinan
Indiana Jones
A gremlin from Gremlins
Me (hidden cameo)

My conclusion? I'm getting better at diversifying my subject matters, and any cartoon featuring Ahmadenijad is a surefire winner (7-for-7).
Here's another peek at an unpublished tidbit!

Doubles as timely since he actually received the Prize yesterday. And yes, that's me (hair whitened) on the left.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Odessa File", by Frederick Forsyth ((c) 1972)

The Comedy for Koby December 2009 Tour

2009-12-03T23:07:00.005+02:00

came to Beit Shemesh today, and I attended with my mom. It's organized by Avi Liberman, the same guy in charge of the hilarious Crossroads tour. This time he brought with him Mark Schiff, Butch Bradley, and Steve White. Here are some of their most memorable lines.

AL: I was in Modi'in yesterday. Now in Hebrew, modi'in means "intelligence", right? That's kind of arrogant. "I'm from Modi'in! Where are you from? Beit Stupid?" But how intelligent can they be if they built their city 15 minutes away from Ramallah? Now if it was 15 minutes away from a beach, they might have something...

MS: You know you're really overweight when people whistle after you tell them how much you weigh. If they flinch, you've got two weeks to live.

BB: You're always hearing about groups of men going missing. Never women. The only time women go missing, one of us is involved.

SW: I grew up in Long Island, so I'm like a Black Jew. A Bew. Or maybe a Sephari.

MS: My grandmother would soak her undergarments in the sink. Leave 'em in there for a week. Every half hour bubbles would come up. "Grandma, run, it's alive!"

BB: We stayed in a hotel here... The only time in my life I called a hotel switchboard, asked for Avi Liberman, and got five different rooms.

SW: I voted for Barack Obama, but not for the reasons you may thing. I voted for him because he's black.

AL: The Hareidim may have made Ushpizin, but they wouldn't be able to make movies in every film genre. (Besides the most obvious one.) Science fiction. Guy goes into the time machine, comes back out--everybody's still dressed the same, everybody's still speaking Yiddish. Horror: instead of Friday the 13th, we'd have Thursday the 12th. Comedies! Instead of 9 to 5, we'd have--well, nothing.

MS: I've noticed that if a restaurant forgets to charge you for something--"Everybody, let's walk out nice and slowly." An' it's like you're robbing a bank. You get outside, "Get in the car! Get in the car!" Someone falls and twists their ankle: "Go on without me!"

SW: You've mostly got two types of blacks in America. There's the ones who go to Harvard, graduate top of their class, and become leader of the free world, like Obama. And there's the ones who become Flava Flav and OJ.

BB: Oxygen masks on airplanes. What kind of evil genius thought those up? We're in a steep dive, the last thing I want to do is remain conscious! If anything, they should pump nitrous oxide! That way we'd go out happy at least. "Faster! Faster!"

SW: Fooled ya! I'm a Negro. No refunds!! People hear "Steve White", they get all fooled.

AL: I was in Maryland one Shabbat and was given hagbah. Now, the Torah scroll was a bit large, and I was straining to lift it I blurted out, "Jesus, this is heavy." Yeah, great timing. Just then the rabbi leaned over and whispered, "For Chrissakes don't drop it!"

MS: Medical marijuana--my grandmother, 89 years old, has glaucoma. And she smokes 10-12 joints a day. I told her to stop, she said, "Don't hassle me, man. ...I'm gonna put on some Led Zeppelin and have a lie-down."

BB: Israeli drivers. You people are all so nice and easygoing and relaxed--until you get behind the wheel. Then you're like: "I'm gonna win." Our Israeli chauffeur was taking us around at high speed. "That's a police car over there!" "Well, he'd better be fast!"

MS: I met the cast of Seinfeld. There's Rich, Richer, Even Richer, and Extremely Wealthy.

SW: You know what a Shabbat elevator should be? THE STAIRS!!!

AL: Jewish holiday analogies for the goyim. Rosh HaShanah: New Year's but without the fun. Yom Kippur: Confession... all day long.

MS: My mother always had splitting headaches. Never ordinary headaches. Splitting headaches. "I've got a splitting headache!" Maybe that's because you've been yelling for the past 11 hours. Or drinking a cup of coffee every half hour.

BB: I was watching The Ring and the girl started to crawl out of my TV. Click--turned it off. And unplugged it. And turned it around so that it faced the wall. Maybe if she bumped her head she'd turn around and go back.

SW: There have been, like, two Black Jews in History. Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jesus. Oh, you don't believe me? It says in the Bible Jesus had "skin of bronze and hair like sheep's wool". That's either a black man, or Alex Trebek.

MS: The 99 cent store. You go in there and you see a box of 40 underpants. For 99 cents. And you buy it, even though the small voice is telling you you shouldn't. And then you open it up and all the underpants have the fly on the side.

SW: People acted like it was a big thing when they found out that Andrew Jackson slept with one of his slaves. But what was so unusual about it? Slavery was legal back then! Imagine you're the president of the United States, rich, powerful, and out back you have Beyonce, Halle Berry and Rihanna.

BB: My mom had a station wagon. Lime green. That way nobody's steal it.

AL: The Sephardim probably couldn't believe it when they saw what the Askenazim were doing to the chametz laws. "What're you gonna do next, get rid of rice? ...Wait a second!!"

MS: I put my exercise bike on my treadmill. I do 500 miles a day.

BB: Monkey bars in playgrounds--plumbing 40 feet in the air. So dangerous even the monkeys don't use them.

SW: What would a black production of Fiddler on the Roof sound like? "Who day and night must scramble for a living, feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers, and who has the right, as master of the house, to have the final word at home? The brotheeeeeeers, the brothers!"

MS: Tiger Woods on the Letterman show. "What's been going on by you?" "Nothin'. How about you?" "Same as you..."

BB: And those playground metal animals with springs on the bottom! You never see these kinds of springs anywhere else! Their purpose is to launch children.

SW: My wife made me watch three movies back to back with her. We saw The Bridges of Madison County, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Steel Magnolias. Then I had my period.

AL: The demographic that has the most people training as Jerusalem tour guides nowadays is the Arabs. No joke. I can see it now: "And here we have de Western Wall." "What happened here?" "Absolutely nussing. Nussing to see here, moving right along!"

MS: I had a friend who was obese, I told him, "You've gotta exercise!" Know what he told me? "Can't. I've got to get into shape first."

BB: You know how on airplane flights the pilot periodically tells you how high the plane is? Do I really want to know that?? They should lie, tell us the plane's six feet off the ground. Then I'd think, Good, if we crash I can jump and roll.

SW: O.J. Simpson broke the cardinal rule of crime: if you got away with it, shut your damn mouth! I mean, you don't see Woody Allen hanging around Asian daycare centers, do you?

AL: Purim is great. It's the only holiday of the year where you're supposed to get plastered. Your gentile neighbor sees you coming out of the house with a Jack Daniels in one hand and a vodka in another-- "Where are you going?" "Synagogue. Have fun at church!"

MS: They asked me at the hospital for my emergency number. I put down 911.

BB: Our son was born, 6 pounds, 12 ounces, 0.08 blood alcohol.

SW: John McCain would have made a great president. In 1871. When he was 60. Why he probably would have owned Barack Obama. ...Hey, if I can't make a slavery joke, who can??

AL: Subways in New York--they change the schedule on you arbitrarily. And if you're from out of town it can be quite disconcerting. The announcement comes over the loudspeaker: "This train is now the 2:00 G train." And those announcements get weirder and weirder the later it gets. 1 AM: "Now holding a cockfight in the last car." And by 2 AM you're in the Twilight Zone. "Next stop: St. Louis."

MS: I can never ever find anybody in a supermarket who actually works there. I was in the meat department, came across a guy in a white shirt with blood all over it. "Pardon me, do you work here?" "No."

BB: I've got an East Coast mentality, so there's certain things I say--but I can't say them here, because in Israel I can sense G-d's presence. I can say them in New Jersey. I don't sense it there at all.

SW: When I first heard of Kwanzaa, I wondered what is was--an Australian airline? Actually, it's the black version of Christmas. Santa Claus comes down the chimney and steals your watch.

AL: When you try to describe Sukkot to a non-Jew, it makes you sound completely deranged. My friend Russell asked me about it. I told him: "Well, we build these huts, and then we sleep in them for seven days. (Only we don't really.) And we take a palm branch, a willow, a myrtle, and a really expensive kind of lemon... and then we shake them." "What do you do with them after the holiday?" "We throw 'em away. ...Sometimes we make a jam out of the lemon." "Is it any good?" "...No."

MS: An earthquake in Los Angeles wrecked a trailer park. 200 trailers destroyed--over $60 in damages. Now, I just don't get why trailers are so popular. Why would I want to live somwhere, if some guy want to sit on my couch, the house tips over? And if I'm in the bathroom and I'm thirsty, I can just reach over to the kitchen sink?

BB: I was raised by a single mom. She'd hear something in middle of the night, she run into my room and shake me. "Can you go see what that noise is?" "Mom, I'm nine years old!"

SW: Some people are obsessed with Splenda. "Gotta have Splenda. Gotta have Splenda." "Why?" "It's got half the sugar." You know what else has got half the sugar? HALF THE SUGAR!!!!

AL: Some Christians, monks, take vows of silence. That's another difference between them and us. How many of you can keep from talking between netilat yadayim and hamotzi?

MS: My mother was always telling me, "I'm not your maid!" And on the inside I was thinking, "Oh yes you are."

SW: Women think "compromise" means "do it my way".

MS: When the doctor asks you how you're doing, just make up something. "I'm fine. Haven't gone to the bathroom in a year."

AL: You can never get a direct flight out of LaGuardia. Last time I took a flight out of LaGuardia, the plane landed at Kennedy.

MS: I don't usually wear a yarmulke when I perform. Then they start pigeonholing you. Then I get booked less, then I get less pay, then my wife divorces me.

BB: You Jews, you're lucky--you always know what's going on during prayers. Catholics have no idea what's going on in Mass. Priest up front, mumbling in Latin, we have no idea what to say... We cheat, we copy what everyone else is doing. One of you could walk into a church, improvise something, and mess everybody up.

MS: Everything in Las Vegas is open 24 hours. Supermarkets. Jewelry stores. Family restaurants. What kind of psycho takes his family to a restaurant at three in the morning??

BB: The worst part about sitting in our station wagon were the vinyl seats. Those things heated up to the temperature of the surface of the sun.

SW: I don't get the big fuss over Michelle Obama. "Ooh, she's so gorgeous!" Just because she's the First Lady doesn't mean you have to fawn over her. She's okay looking, I guess. Actually, I think she kinda looks like Chewbacca, but that's just me.

MS: The definition of shalom bayit: my wife sees something she wants, I buy it, and we have shalom.

BB: You Israelis are all so peaceful, sittin' around relaxed, sippin' coffee. Then you get behind the wheel of a car and it's all like: "I'm gonna win!!!"

SW: I'm not black. It's a birthmark. I just scratched it a bit too much.

MS: You can't threaten your kids these days. They'll sue you.

AL: Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving too. They're thankful that they border us. ...But they get mad at me when I call them "America, Jr.".

SW: I went to the Dome of the Rock. You know what's inside? A Starbucks.

MS: There's a law that if you snore, you must be woken up and told about this. I don't need this information!

BB: I got so intimidated by the El Al security personnel in the airport. They told me "Drop your pants", I complied immediately. "If you find anything, let me know!"

SW: I know what you're thinking. "Damn, he's got a lot of teeth!" Well, I can use 'em for other things than show business. For instance, I go jogging at night.

MS: No hareidi asks his wife for fashion advice. What would she tell him? "Wear the black jacket... and the black pants... and the black loafers... and the black yarmulke... and the white shirt... and the tie with a soup stain on it."

BB: Girl Scouts are really good at selling those cookies. One troop I knew used their money, instead of camping out in woods somewhere, they rented a condo overlooking Central Park. And even if they had gone camping, they wouldn't have gotten lost. Because they would leave a cookie trail. ...Unless they brought Boy Scouts along, in which case they would be eaten.

MS: If your wife hears a noise outside--she wakes you up: "Honey, there's someone outside." "Good. That's where they belong." But she makes you go and check anyway in case it's a murderer or something. And as you leave, she says, "Don't forget to put a sweater on, dear." And when you go outside--she locks the door.

SW: I've got ADHD. That's Attention Deficit in Hi-Definition.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Hangman's Ghost Trick", by Scott Corbett ((c) 1977)

Five-Thousand-Hit Blog ;-P

2009-11-30T18:45:00.003+02:00

It took a little over one year for Giant Boogers from Outer Space to get its one thousandth visitor. It took slightly more than half that time to reach two thousand. Three thousand was reached after six months exactly, and just under five months later the four thousandth hit was recorded.
Today? Four months, two weeks and one day since that last milestone (and three years, one month and twenty-five days since we set up shop), GBFOS received it five thousandth visitor.
So take a bow, Denver citizen! You got us here! And you did it while searching Google Images for, apparently, "backstabber". That entry point has gotten interestingly popular over the past four months or so; exhaustive research has placed it at the bottom of the third page of results for that keyword... but, as usual, I'll take it. As a matter of fact, Mr. Denver (or Ms. Denver, as the case may be), you narrowly beat out some fellow (fellowette?) from Mountain View, California, who visited the blog three times in succession yesterday in what was obviously a desperate attempt to corral the honor for themselves.
Down to the non-lies or damned lies: hits-per-day hold steady at an average of 4. After a disappointing four-month stretch, the blog hit a rebound with 285 hits in August (good for fourth-best among the past 12 months), followed by a whopping 361 in October for, once again, a new record. November, on the other hand, will need seven more visitors in the next few hours to surpass July's disappointing total of 129, currently fourth-least over the past year. (I'm beginning to see a pattern here: two months feast, four months famine... I feel like Joseph and the Multicolored Dinner Jacket or something.)
Discounting spam, thirteen more comments were posted here (for an average of one every 2.31 posts, not yet counting this one, between milestones), led with eight by Sea-of-Green. I added four more, and one evelynsaenz contributed another, just to keep things interesting. Slightly.
Along the way, I celebrated the blog's third anniversary, won a bumper sticker design contest and got my first ever big monetary payoff, graduated from my Computer Graphics course, got two pictures featured in another Youtube AMV slideshow, was quoted extensively in a baseball blog, and got a part-time job.
On to the next thousand!!!!!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Eyre Affair", by Jasper Fforde ((c) 2001)

Two girls one cup

2009-11-25T13:29:00.005+02:00

Don't ever say I don't do exactly what I say.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Help! I'm a Prisoner in the Library", by Eth Clifford ((c) 1991)

322nd post

2009-11-20T13:23:00.009+02:00

Remember these guys?

Particle Man, Particle Man/Doing the things a particle can/What's he like? It's not important/Particle Man
Is he a dot, or is he a speck?/When he's underwater does he get wet?/Or does the water get him instead?/Nobody knows, Particle Man

Triangle Man, Triangle Man/Triangle Man hates particle man/They have a fight, Triangle wins/Triangle Man

Universe Man, Universe Man/Size of the entire universe Man/Usually kind to smaller man/Universe Man
He's got a watch with a minute hand,/Millenium hand and an eon hand/When they meet it's a happy land/Powerful man, Universe Man

Person Man, Person Man/Hit on the head with a frying pan/Lives his life in a garbage can/Person Man
Is he depressed or is he a mess?/Does he feel totally worthless?/Who came up with Person Man?/Degraded man, Person Man

Triangle Man, Triangle Man/Triangle Man hates Person Man/They have a fight, Triangle wins/Triangle Man

Randomly reprinted post (XIX)

2009-11-13T14:26:00.005+02:00

"Ding-dong, paddywhack, Old MacDonald bought the farm, E-I-E-I-oops.
After eating in our Beit Midrash for the past 6-plus years, the school has finally organized an actual cafeteria for us, which opened on the new wing's top floor yesterday. The debut didn't do much to stir me up, however, seeing as how I don't use it anyway.
Ooh yeah, I'm pickin' up some real good vibes here. Yeah man!
So, you're doing a class project in Physics now, huh? What's it about? Uranium? Uranium's nice. You gonna blow anything up? Huh? Whaddaya mean, 'no'? Tell me, just what is the point of studying uranium if you can't make an atomic bomb, huh? Answer me that! It just ain't worth it! You're not doing it right.
Wakka wakka wak! Wakka... wakka wak-wak wakka? Wakka? Wakka wakka wakka wakka.
Let the bodies hit the ceiling, let the bodies hit the ceiling...
In Hebrew, we have a saying, 'Baruch ha'gever', which means "Blessed is the man [who trusts in the Lord]". However, in the case of my good friend and classmate Baruch, it would be more fitting to say, 'Baruch ha'Amish'.
It's a rummy thing--whenever you mention the Lady, she disappears, but when you mention CJ, he comes. (I'd love to tell you their names, but as you see, I'm in a quandary.)

TODAY'S BOOK: 'Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled by the Nazi Regime', by Jean Medawar and David Pyke ((c) 2000)

TODAY'S MOVIE: 'Home on the Range', from Disney (2004)

WWWW2?: Doctor Dolittle.

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.youtube.com You may have recently read in the papers about how the online video-sharing site YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion (or about $25 per user). However, you may not have actually visited it yet--unless you used one of my links from previous posts. Well, you should! If it was ever aired or screened, it's probably there, and it also includes innumerous home movies. Principally, I use it to watch cartoons 'cause I don't have a TV; fave list: Teen Titans, Animaniacs, Freakazoid!, Pinky and the Brain, and Earthworm Jim."
--10th post, 10/23/06

Amazing fact of the day

2009-11-07T19:11:00.004+02:00

Prince Randian (birth name unknown), born without arms or legs, could shave, write, and paint; roll cigarettes and then light them; and was an accomplished carpenter to boot. He could also speak speak four languages, and he remained married to the same woman his entire life, raising a family of four children.
Kind of puts your petty complaints into perspective, doesn't it.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Amadans", by Malachy Doyle ((c) 2004)

319th post

2009-11-03T17:58:00.004+02:00

Another milestone in the life of Me: I got a job.
Kind of.
It's a part time job. It's part time squared. And cubed. Specifically, it's for two hours on Tuesdays.
I've been hired by Judaica maker Azoulay Art Ltd. as an office boy/design consultant at about $7 an hour.
Well, it's something.
And there's a chance in the future of working longer hours and being paid more.
So... yeah. It's something.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Lafacdio: The Lion Who Shot Back", by Shel Silverstein ((c) 1963)

EDIT: Oh, and just by the way, Line_of_Fire is now The Eighth Day. Just so you know. Cheers!

318th post

2009-11-01T15:13:00.005+02:00

"Quite frankly, for a Mets fan in 2009, this year features the Series From
Hell: the much-hated Yankees vs. the Phillies, our current National League
bugaboo. Put simply, our best-case scenario is for the whole World Series to
be called off after everybody contracts pneumonia.
"Since that is not likely to happen (inclement weather conditions
notwithstanding--bring back summer championships!), I would root--if pressed
at gunpoint to pick--for the Phillies. Sure, we hate them a lot now; but we
didn't hate them this much 10 years ago, and probably won't 10 years from
now. On the other hand, Yankee Hatred, and Yankee Fan Hatred in particular,
springs eternal. Not to mention that a victory parade would be a lot easier
to ignore while occurring in Pennsylvania.
"Quite simply, I would be rooting for the (slightly) lesser of two (enormous)
evils."

The above message was sent to Murray Chass, who held an e-mail poll on the topic of Met fans' allegations during this year's WS. The emboldened sections made it into the article on the results, one of just ten quotes that made it in. It's all anonymous, but it made me happy!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The War With Grandpa", by Robert Kimmel Smith ((c) 1984)

Huh. Well, how about that.

2009-10-30T12:01:00.004+02:00

That was kind of startling.
The description reads: "basicly the BEST TT ART i could find along with great music....". From this we can learn three things: 1) YouTube member missjumpcity can't spell 2) She has deplorable taste in music (High School Musical? Seriously?) and 3) She has impeccable taste in fanart. Yes, from 2:05-2:14 and 3:12-3:36, two of my Teen Titans fanworks are exhibited--the second time this has happened in a slideshow AMV.
I'm flattered. I think.
Oh, and I'm not credited at the end along with other artists, but that's okay because neither were TGN compatriot Buzzard or professional Glen Murakami. Anytime I can be categorized along with those two talented people, it's okay.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Middle Moffat", by Eleanor Estes ((c) 1942)

316th post

2009-10-24T21:20:00.009+02:00

"Ooh, this is awesome!... I like this a lot!" -- Ravenisawesome
"I'm impressed... That was really intense, and well done." -- BAColeNC
"That was wicked awesome!" -- TeenTitans4Ever
"FANTABULOUS!!! Seriously, I've run out of words that can describe how great your story's chapters are... Thank you for this wonderful story you've made." -- blackbird15
"Really interesting!" -- ZombieSlade

So it's not as much as the first go around--it's still nice to get such praise for my second fanfiction.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Chocolate Touch", by Patrick Skene Catling ((c) 1952)

UPDATE!
Here are reactions from the stories' repostings on FF.net:
You Never See it Coming (story #1):
"Good story." -- Waterdog (15 year old)
"Color me impressed... This is really good." -- Cylor (32-year old TGN member)
"Interesting concept with your story. Love it. Great job." -- contagiousCHRISTian (Philippinean)
"Beautifully written." -- ReoccuringComatose
"Awwz, this is an awesomely written story. You're doing great, keep it up." -- GraceFangsandFire (Canadian)
"I found it to be well written and the characters seem to be in character as well... You did a great job writing this." -- titanfan45 (49-year-old autobody repairman)
"Definitely a good story... Thanks again for a great read." -- J.M. Bowers (23-year-old from Nevada)
"You're doing a SUPER job on this, they're all in character, good job!" -- what lurks beneath (18-year-old Canadian)
"Incredible... It's an awesome story." -- rainbowstrike
"First time I cried in a fanfic. Incredible..." -- Everything you know is fangirl (Muslim Berber)
"That's awesome." -- Jasper's Lil Red (12 year old)
"This story made me CRY! Sad sad sad. Good writing though." -- Titantastic
"It's pretty interesting." -- Byn
"Whoa, that was deep, and I enjoyed it very, very much." -- Somewhere In Time (17-year-old Korean)
"This is eerily cool." -- cRaZyMaN676

Suspension (story #2):

"THAT. WAS. FREAKY. But good nonetheless." -- Raptured Rainbow (Chinese)
"Interesting." -- Kyer
"Keep it up!" -- J.M. Bowers
"This was pretty good. Creates a legitimate suspense and had fun with the characters." -- KF fan
"That's some imagination you've got. I've never read anything like this... Great story. You did a great job writing it." -- titanfan45
"Breathtaking. I admire your mind for all these ideas, they were AMAZING. I loved it!!... I hope you write another amazing story like this." -- Somewhere In Time

315th post

2009-10-21T19:30:00.001+02:00

When the Dove of Peace comes--guess who has to clean up after it?

This quote and design, prepared on Adobe Illustrator, just won a bumper sticker contest held by the right wing grassroots political organization Mattot Arim. I got nationwide printing, 1,800 NIS, and a daylong of Happy :-)
This was my first ever practical application of Adobe Illustrator and as such the first time my just-completed Computer Graphics course paid off--may it continue to do so for ever more!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Bronze King", by Suzy McKee Charnas ((c) 1988)

Three-year anniversary

2009-10-19T21:36:00.007+02:00

Boy, I've really been neglecting this blog, haven't I? Quite a bit of time had to pass before I'd realized this milestone had been reached.
But better late than never! (Or pregnant. But that's a whole 'nother story.)
What's happened since the last, first anniversary?

Sea-of-Green and her Hoosier Journal of Inanity reach out
Where am I on Google?
Finally, the ShiurTimes has gotten around to listing me on its Contributors page.
Deconstructing mayoral campaign slogans
The final edumacational year kicks off

How much do I have?
All my 32s
Disappointing election results...
My first Internet rant
...twice.
something completely different
Kurt Busiek is awesome
Your Horoscope For Today arrives
The top 32 results for a Google search of "32"
15, a new record for posts in a calendar month

Citius, Fortius, Satius
The most memorable part of an otherwise forgettable movie
Babes aplenty... and a ballcock
It doesn't count as "work" if you have fun doing it
What does all day and Ctrl+V make?
The World's Greatest Criminal Mind is #1
A list of lists finishes off List Month
16, a new record for posts in a calendar month (no, that's not a typo)

The best darn TV commercial ever
Scraping the bottom of the gags barrel
My first ever foray into animation
I'M HOLDING KURT BUSIEK OVER MY HEAD!!!
Please just watch this.
The Wakka Wakkas have their revenge
So do the smocks
Bill Stickers is innocent
Your Horoscope For Today leaves

The deliberately incaustic cartoon
When I first saw this... my eyes bugged out and I began slapping my face hysterically.
The revenge of the injury that was never even remotely funny
Spam addresses
Darth Obvius resurfaces
The ShiurTimes is renamed, ZOMGBBQ
The blog's three thousandth
What a lark. Not!

A little bit
"Blue Beetle" quotes
My first AMV inclusion
The All-Villain Baseball Team
Good luck and Godspeed, guys.
Speculation on Spider-man's middle name and bashing Batman
Reactions to my first fanfic
My less modest contribution to Let's Glorify Guy Week

Just all seriousnessositiness
12 out of 30 MLB teams (40%) begin the season with 32s on their rosters
I saw a lion charging in real life!
An Illustrated room
A look at the babbles' subject
I started off with Ellen Raskin as "mesmerizing".

Worries...
That's not how you spell Cappuccino or Frappuccino
The top 28 uploadable results for a Google Images search of "32"
Parting ways with the IsraTimes
The greatest Metly 32

The Jerusalem Post. Wow. Just... wow.
Furious Five humanized
First jpost.com cartoon
Creating a second blog for my artwork

Political cartoons switch over to The Eighth Day
How the All-Star Game became so fleeped up
and four thousandth hits.
Pretty hoity-toity, given that I've got 12 more years to reach that plateau
Together, they fight CRIME.
"Son of man, can these bones live?"

Star Trek: DS9 and Rule 34
and another little bit of YouTube and myself dies
As soon as he saw the duck, Elmer knew it was going to be a bad day.
A whole mess of introductions
Mispelled is misspelled
"Demonstrates defenestration"!

Milagro and her friends will kick your butt
Hallelujah, Abigail...
The final edumacational year comes to a close

Who knows what another year will bring Giant Boogers from Outer Space? Hopefully less apathy.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Ellimist Chronicles", by K.A. Applegate ((c) 2000)

Goatse

2009-10-10T23:45:00.005+02:00

Lotse ofe theme.

TODAY'SE BOOKE: "The Book of Names", bye Jill Gregory ande Karen Tintori ((c) 2007)

312th post

2009-09-27T10:43:00.006+02:00

Time for more catching up on the links list reorganizationizaning. Ing.

www.thatguywiththeglasses.com Home site of the Nostalgia Critic, Linkara, the 5 Second Movies, and other pop culture commentators. Loads of fun to watch.
www.titane.ca/igod/main.html IGod--a diverting method of time-passing, dialogue with a computer with a God Complex.
notalwaysright.com The customer is sometimes wrong, and sometimes they are stupefyingly so. This site dedicated to collecting and displaying the worst of the worst.
tvtropes.org Fact: TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life. Xkcd has learned this lesson all too well.
the-dark-cat.livejournal.com Batman and Sons: take the amount of win in in all the DCAU series (TV and comic book) combined. Stir gently. Shake. Square it. Square again. Cube. Square once more. Congratualtions, you now have 1% of the total win in this reimagining of the Bat-Family. The facial expressions alone are to die for. Also has a blog.
And so long to Being Five, Chuck Norris Facts and JKRowling.com.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Saucer", by Stephen Coonts ((c) 2002)

Randomly reprinted post (XVIII)

2009-09-15T10:40:00.003+03:00

"There are plenty of Mets-related sites on the interwebs, that are connected with the 'official' media coverage of them--MLB.com and Mets.com, and all the online newspapers. But there are four websites, personal and unoffiliated, that I consider ansolutely essential to my Web reading on the team. And each of them offers something different. Today, I shall categorize them by comparing each website to a certain player in Mets history.
Mets by the Numbers is like Rusty Staub. MBTN is the only one of the four websites that does not update daily, and deals with a more esoteric aspect of the game (namely, uniform numbers), but it's still a well-run crowd-pleaser. Le Grand Orange, meanwhile, was a fan favorite in any city he played, including New York, which brought him back as a sentimental choice in the twilight of his career. Due to the briefness of his tenure his overall impact on the team is lessened, but while with them, he did it well, he did it with style, and he did it while being adored by the fans. Go up to a Met fan of a certain age and say 'Rusty Staub' and you'll be sure to elicit a grin.
Faith and Fear in Flushing is like Tom Seaver. No contest. Watching Seaver pitch or reading FAFIF gives you the same feeling: splendour, a joy at watching a master craftsman at work. (If you want, we'll throw prime Dwight Gooden into the metaphor, because it's a two-author blog, and we'll let Jason and Greg fight over who is who.)
Metstradamus is like Marv Throneberry. Now, bear me out on this one: I am in no way implying that Metstra is anywhere nearly as incompetent as his spiritual counterpart. But Marvelous Marv was lovably incompetent, famously so, and will elicit smiles from Met fans of any generation, bigger than those given by Staub. 'Damus, like Jason & Greg, is a blogger, but in contrast to them his blog is usually content with short, pungent, and extremely memorable posts, with lavishly Photoshopped images. It's like comparing a four-course dinner (when you're relaxing after a long day at work) to a nice juicy hot-dog-in-a-bun (when you're on the move and famished); or, to change the Met-aphor here to match blogs with pitchers, like Tug McGraw, the always-scrappy Met reliever who gave fans one of their favorite rallying cries: 'Ya gotta believe!'
And to cap things off, what else could The Ultimate Mets Database be other than Casey Stengel? The Ol' Perfesser of baseball and the Online Professor of Mets minutiae are a match made in virtual heaven.

TODAY'S BOOK: 'The Jewish Mothers' Hall of Fame', by Fred A. Bernstein ((c) 1982)"
--159th post, 8/10/08

Remembering 9/11

2009-09-11T18:17:00.002+03:00

Never forget.

309th post

2009-09-08T23:38:00.007+03:00

Today marks the 40th cartoon I have submitted to The Jerusalem Post. So far, 22 of them have been published, 5 of those exclusively in the online edition.
The subjects of these 21 'toons break down as follows:
General security issues (3)
Iran (3)
Haredi riots (3)
The settlers (2)
The "peace" process (2)
Sweden (2)
Sports (2)
Crime (2)
Syria
Lebanon
A death

And these are the figures, political and otherwise, that I have caricaturized:
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu (nine times, four times unpublished)
US President Barack Obama (six times, thrice unpubished)
PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas (six times, twice unpublished)
Bernard Madoff (four times, twice unpublished)
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad (thrice)
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (twice)
Syrian President Bashar Assad (twice, once unpublished)
Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert
Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan
Arab-Israeli MK Ahmed Tibi
Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat
Iranian politician Mir Hossein Mousavi
Holocaust denier David Irving
Levy Rosenbaum
Michael Vick
Batman
Laurel & Hardy
The Keystone Cops
Me

Plus all of the following who did not make it to print:
Former PA chairman Yassir Arafat
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak (twice)
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
US VP Joe Biden
British PM Gordon Brown
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill
Israeli Minister of Trade and Labour Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal
Kenneth Roth and two other members of HRW
Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi
Abdelbaset Al Megrahi
Incoming Director General of the IAEA Yukiya Amano
Christer Nordal
Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Kohout
Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Uncle Sam
Lady Justice

And for your general amusement, here's my favorite of the 18 pics that did not make it:

LOLzer.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Fields for President", by W.C. Fields ((c) 1941)

One more moment of silence

2009-09-06T13:07:00.005+03:00

Since I am a very bad boy, I didn't look at all at the JPost.com website between Thursady and today, which would have meant this news wouldn't have surprised me this morning. Abigail Radoszkowicz, op-ed editor of The Jerusalem Post, died of cancer. She was 53.
When I opened up the paper and saw the article on the front page, I had an Heroic BSOD. This was compounded by the fact that last night, I'd watched Shrek (actually, I was just in the same room. Long story), so the songs from the movie were still reverberating around the empty space between my ears. What was playing in my head when I saw the headline? Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".
So yeah, it was basically like this scene from The West Wing.

(Songs kicks in at 2:14.)

I'm one sad bunny now. Abigail was the one who hired me as a Post cartoonist, and regularly wrote back to me about submissions she found nice or funny. I whipped up a memorial cartoon that got into the online edition, and wrote a sorrowful letter to the editor (Edit: that got printed tomorrow). I never got to meet her face-to-face--and now, sadly, I never will.
And even though/It all went wrong/I'll stand before the Lord of Song/With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah... Hallelujah, Hallelujah...

307th post

2009-09-03T21:24:00.003+03:00

They are Alina X, Milagro Reyes and Lian Harper, and they will KICK YOUR BUTT.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Zombies of the Gene Pool", by Sharyn McCrumb ((c) 1992)

Possibly the greatest line of poetry ever written

2009-08-30T21:49:00.005+03:00

Bill Watterson, poetic genius.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Marv", by Marilyn Sachs ((c) 1970)

Mispelled Internet words that make me mad

2009-08-28T12:59:00.010+03:00

Grizzly instead of grisly
Their instead of they're
Wails/wailing instead of whales/whaling
It's instead of its
Crises instead of crisis, and crisises instead of crises
Teh instead of the
Roll instead of role
Cannon instead of canon

And if you didn't notice that the word "misspelled" in the title has been misspelled, shame on you.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Maximilian, You're the Greatest", by Joseph Rosenbloom ((c) 1979)

Snippets from future possible fanfictions

2009-08-24T11:59:00.008+03:00

Test Subjects; Disney; rated T
"And the last thing he saw before he blacked out forever was a demonic pair of red eyes..."

Animaniacs: The 10 Year Reunion Special; Animaniacs; rated K-T
"'The first time we all met each other, though, was at the Ted,' he continued as an image of the Theodore J. Valiant Memorial Theater flashed on the screen behind them. Known as 'The Ted' for short, it was one of ToonTown's biggest and most famous entertainment halls, a combination stage theater and multiplex. Countless famous Toons had gotten their start playing at the Ted before an ever-present contingent of talent scouts. 'It was May 2nd, 1992, and they were holding a general talent competition.'
"'What was your planned act?' Douglas inquired.
"'Paddleball juggling,' Jake answered."

Simon & Bongo; Animaniacs; rated K-T
"'By the time the Korean War rolled around, we had become boffo box office thanks to the radio show. No more backing up the headliners on the USO tours; we were the headliners. And how sweet it was.'"

Panic and Hatred in Ankh-Morpork; Discworld; rated T
"'He has two eyes just like any other man, two legs like any other man, two arms, two ears, one nose like any other man, he breathes like any other man, he sweats like any other man, and--' he drew a stiletto and inserted it neatly between two ribs; Hildebiddle's eyes bugged out, then he slumped forward, dead as a doornail-- 'he dies just like any other man.'"

Tale as Old as A'Tuin; Discworld/Beauty and the Beast crossover; rated K+
"Rincewind wandered into the garden. The Luggage was there, perched by the edge of the pond, apparently watching some frogs. One snapped its tongue out and snagged a dinner of fly a la carte.
"Rincewind didn't know why, but he sensed that this was having some significance for the Luggage."

The More Things Change...; Teen Titans; rated K+
"Slade slowly raised a hand to his head. 'My mind,' he whispered. Shock quickly turned to fury. 'You messed with my mind!--'
"In one motion, Slade was on his feet and aiming a punch that was liable to have taken Mnemon's head clean off his shoulders--had Cinderblock not suddenly appeared out of the shadows and grabbed him from behind. As it was, his fist missed Mnemon's face by a fraction of an inch. He didn't even flinch."

TODAY'S BOOK: "Time Flies", by Bill Cosby ((c) 1987)

303rd post

2009-08-20T10:33:00.005+03:00

Introduction to Calvin and Hobbes: "Something Under the Bed is Drooling"
Introduction to Garfield: "Garfield, This is Your Life"
Introduction to Doonesbury: "The People's Doonesbury"
Introduction to The Far Side: "The Far Side Gallery"
Introduction to Zits: "Zits"
Introduction to Baby Blues: "Guess Who Didn't Take a Nap?"

First Disney movie watched: The Jungle Book
First movie seen in theaters: Toy Story 2
First movie seen on DVD: Robots

First comic book read: "The Untold Legend of the Batman" #2 (Aug. 1980)
First comic books owned: "Blue Beetle" volumes 1-4

First episode of Teen Titans watched: "Betrothed"
First episode of The Magic School Bus watched: "Gets Baked in a Cake"
First episode of Animaniacs watched: "Babblin' Bijou"
First episode of Freakazoid! watched: "Hero Boy"
First episode of Freakazoid! watched in English: "Dexter's Date"
First episode of Codename: Kids Next Door watched: "Operation: K.N.O.T."
First episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy watched: "Attack of the Clowns"
First episode of M*A*S*H watched: "Hey, Look Me Over"

First Harry Potter book read: "Chamber of Secrets" (#2)
First Artemis Fowl book read: "Eternity Code" (#3)
First Mrs. Pollifax book read: "The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax"
First Discworld book read: "Hogfather"
First Star Trek book read: "The Vulcan Academy Murders"
First Hardy Boys book read: "Mystery of the Desert Giant" (#40)

First book by Alistair MacLean read: "San Adreas"
First book by Robert Ludlum read: "The Bourne Identity"
First book by Roald Dahl read: "Fantastic Mr. Fox"
First book by Gordon Korman read: "The Toilet Paper Tigers"
First book by Judy Blume read: "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing"
First book by Isaac Asimov read: "I, Robot"
First book on baseball read: "A Dream Season"

302nd post

2009-08-12T10:24:00.002+03:00

In his book "Soul Music", Terry Pratchett mentions books found in bathrooms filled with illustrations with captions like the one above--an obvious Far Side reference. I couldn't resist and decided to bring it to "life". The Larsonian style, incidentally, was drawn entirely from memory.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Holes", by Louis Sachar ((c) 1998)

The last 35 search engine referrals

2009-08-10T10:12:00.005+03:00

giant green boogers (2) [13-year-old boys must represent a significant demographic of GBFOS readers. 10 of the keywords are about boogers.]
the gizmo from outer space (2)
"amazing gladiators" clip
"gammage cup" fanfic
"llama llama duck" animaniacs
"shave you bald" rubber
"we're back a dinosaur's story justin korman"
"with love from karen" download
agbayani crotch hit [A 13-year-old Mets fan, obviously.]
animaniacs amv to file
badger badger llama [I must be doing something right. 5 more keywords are Llama Song-related.]
badger "llama song"
biggest booger ever pictures
capetown waka waka 2007 blog
george c. scott home on the range clip
giant boogers
giant boogers pictures
here's a yoda, there's a yoda and another little yoda, fuzzy yoda, funny yoda, yoda, yoda, luke [No stealin' my ideas!]
i was once in kenya i lived in a pie
largest booger pull from human
moron from outer space avi
peter piper master craftsman [Indeed he was.]
pitchers boogers
pitchers of boogers
postersof the moon real pictires in outerspace
ramona quimby rule 34 [A... really disturbed 13-year-old?]
results 1 - 10 of about 2,390,000,000 for google. (0.08 seconds)
the llama song wikipedia
the world's longest booger
the worlds biggest booger
valeen_the_ii
watch animaniacs this pun for hire for free [This is the 5th Animaniacs-related keyword on the list. It's gratifying to know that my obsession counts for something.]
world record booger
www.outerspacepussy.com [bait 'n' switch works. 'Nuff said.]
you shake the toy & it says wakka wakka wakka

Bonus! Over the same period of time nine separate pictures attracted visitors via Google Images. They were:
!!jonmatlack.jpg
Adobe_Illustrator_logo.png
backstabber.gif
Blowfish.jpg
Country+share+5-1-08.jpg
Doom-Watch_Menachem-G-Jerenberg.jpg
garfaug12th89.gif
puppeteer.jpg
tennis.jpg

TODAY'S BOOK: "Ark Angel", by Anthony Horowitz ((c) 2006)

300th post

2009-08-07T13:04:00.005+03:00

Well, it finally happened. Another bit of my post-childhood-pre-adulthood died.
Remember how in the 249th post I waxed poetic about my very first YouTube videos seen? Insert Queen playing "Another One Bites the Dust", because that's what happened. "Slipped Away", a.k.a. "Remember the Titans", my first YouTube vid ever viewed, is gone from cyberspace.
Two down.
Three to go.
I'm not very happy.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Hollywood: The Golden Era", by Jack Spears ((c) 1971)

Oh deary deary me.

2009-08-05T13:58:00.004+03:00

The first rule about Rule 34 is: you do not want to know about Rule 34. (I'll bet that somewhere out there, someone has already slashed Quark and that electrified fence...)

TODAY'S BOOK: "Big Trouble", by Dave Barry ((c) 1999)

Randomly reprinted post (XVII)

2009-08-02T21:38:00.006+03:00

"To the left is a crude diagram I made of the lobby in my school, where kids play a game called 'stangah', usually played with a flattened tin can. Participants (3 to a side) may only touch the 'puck' once in a row; the optional limit is a 5-point win. All this is a roundabout way of reminiscing about Monday: I (the prospective Inert Gas) actually participated in a stangah game, one that this time used a soccer ball, and wearing only sandals! A few minutes in, the score was 3-1 against me, one of the opposing players had taken a ball to the nose (he survived), and my toes hurt like heck. However, my side stiffened, and soon the score was 4-4 when a rabbi came by and made us stop (the game is banned in my school). I haven't felt so proud of myself in a long time!
Zzif, zzif, polp, polp.
Saw a lightning storm yesterday. First time in my life I've actually seen lightning bolts in person. How lovely is the periwinkle rose.
I wonder how De Bahbouh's doing these days.
How do I create all this randomness? I'll tell you how I create all this randomness: with a Random Access Generator (R.A.G.). It's a lot like RAM, only not.
Also yesterday, I saw a movie wherein two characters reenacted the awful 'Grab my hand!' routine. The next time you see a movie, and one character yell 'Grab my hand!', and the other one fails to do so with catastrophic results, shoot out the screen with a gun. (Use .22-caliber bullets because they don't look like film canisters.)

TODAY'S BOOK: 'Break In', by Dick Francis ((c) 1982)

TODAY'S MOVIE: 'Muppet Treasure Island', from Jim Henson Productions (1996)

WHO WON WORLD WAR II?: Lewis Carroll.

TODAY'S WEBSITE: http://www.tv.com/ While not as user-friendly as I'd like, TV.com is nonetheless the place to go for up-to-date information on TV shows, present and (to some extent) past. Not much else one can say about it."
--11th post, 10/25/06

Ezekiel 37:1-14

2009-07-31T13:12:00.005+03:00

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and the LORD carried me out in a spirit, and set me down in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones;
and He caused me to pass by them round about, and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.
And He said unto me: 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered: 'O Lord GOD, Thou knowest.'
Then He said unto me: 'Prophesy over these bones, and say unto them: O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD:
Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.
And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.'
So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a commotion, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
And I beheld, and, lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh came up, and skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them.

Then said He unto me: 'Prophesy unto the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath: Thus saith the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.'
So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great host.

Then He said unto me: 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.Therefore prophesy, and say unto them: Thus saith the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel.And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, and caused you to come up out of your graves, O My people.
And I will put My spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I will place you in your own land; and ye shall know that I the LORD have spoken, and performed it, saith the LORD.'

The Dead Presidents' Society

2009-07-25T21:47:00.005+03:00

George Washington's mecha battle armor can also transform into a horse. Andrew Jackson's a crotchety old man with a trenchcoat. John F. Kennedy's the youngest member and responsible for tech support. Franklin D. Roosevelt's leg braces give him superspeed and jumping abilities. Teddy Roosevelt's Teddy Roosevelt. And Abraham Lincoln won't take no nonsense from anybody.
Their biggest enemy is, of course, turncoat Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon and his legion of CREEPs.
Any questions?

"That's Not in My American History Book", by Thomas Ayres ((c) 2004)

Sadly, in his later years Harry drifted into a life of crime.

2009-07-21T18:42:00.005+03:00

33 books to read before you're 32

2009-07-18T21:17:00.007+03:00

"Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse" - Leo Lionni
"All Things Bright and Beautiful" - James Herriot
"Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code" - Eoin Colfer
"The Bourne Identity" - Robert Ludlum
"The Cay" - Theodore Taylor
"Charlotte's Web" - E.B. White
"Cheaper by the Dozen" - Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" - Roald Dahl
"The Cricket in Times Square" - George Selden
"The Da Vinci Code" - Dan Brown
"Dr. Dolittle" - Hugh Lofting
"Feet of Clay" - Terry Pratchett
"Frindle" - Andrew Clements
"The Giver" - Lois Lowry
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - J.K. Rowling
"Holes" - Louis Sachar
"The Jungle Books" - Rudyard Kipling
"Little Women"/"Little Men" [depending on what gender you are] - Louisa May Alcott
"Madeline" - Ludwig Bemelmans
"Make Way for Ducklings" - Robert McCloskey
"Maniac Magee" - Jerry Spinelli
"Math Curse" - Jon Scieszka
"Old Yeller" - Fred Gipson
"One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" - Dr. Seuss
"The Phantom Tollbooth" - Norton Juster
"Pippi Longstocking" - Astrid Lindgren
"Rabbit Hill" - Robert Lawson
"A Short History of Nearly Everything" - Bill Bryson
"The Toilet Paper Tigers" - Gordon Korman
"The Westing Game" - Eleanor Raskin
"Where Eagles Dare" - Alistair MacLean
"Where the Wild Things Are" - Maurice Sendak
"The Wolves in the Walls" - Neil Gaiman

Four-Thousand-Hit Blog (-3

2009-07-15T19:23:00.004+03:00

Today, after two years, nine months and ten days of blogging, and four months and twenty-two days after the last such milestone, Giant Boogers from Outer Space has completed its fourth cycle of one thousand hits! Our milestone man (or possibly woman) hails from Edinburgh, England, and was googling "peter piper master craftsman", which brought us up as the fifth website on the results list. Congratulations, old top, and I hope you found out just what Peter Piper was a master at crafting! (Barrels for pickling pepper, perhaps?)
Hits-per-day are up to 4, and while March passed November of '08 as GBFOS's busiest month by 14 hits, and then April followed that up with an outstanding 347, monthly visits have fallen to some of the lowest totals in years. I need more Englishmen searching for Peter Piper on Google.
Twenty-nine more comments have been posted here (for an average of one every 1.69 posts, not yet counting this one, since the third square root of one million), led with fifteen by Sea-of-Green, who's taken a break from blogging to finish her second novel (go, Sea!). I chipped in with eleven of my own, SallyP from GLBF! added a pair, and Khaaan! showed some life with another bewilderingly random comment five days ago.
Along the way, I had a picture featured in a YouTube AMV slideshow, got a personal e-mail account, saw a lion charging in real life, completed my second fan fiction, parted ways with my employer, got in touch with a long-lost friend, finished the Illustrator section of my course, got employed with The Jeruslem Post, and started up a new blog.
On to the next thousand!!!!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Homework Machine", by Dan Gutman ((c) 2006)

292nd post

2009-07-12T12:53:00.005+03:00

With the All-Star Game upon us, it behooves us to go over how such a noble institution became so fleeped up.
We start, of course, with the most infamous All-Star Game in history: 2002's 7-7 tie after 11 innings. Only once before had the ASG ended in a tie (1961, 1-1, first game), and that was because they automatically ended after 9 innings back then. What happened in 2002? The teams ran out of pitchers.
Now let's go back to 1993. Oriole Park at Camden Yards hosted that event (AL 9, NL 3), and many fans were ticked off because local hero Mike Mussina, a member of the AL squad, was not given a chance to pitch. Now, a reasonable reaction would be an unofficial assumed rule that wherever you host the ASG, the managers trot out all the hometown guys on the roster. Well, apparently that's too reasonable, because the result was that the managers started trying to play everybody, so that no team's fans would be disappointed. What used to be a game of skill incidentally featuring the best players in the leagues morphed into a circus exhibit. Meanwhile, rosters were expanded to well over the normal 25 maximum.
Fast-forward back to '02. This screwup, embarrassingly occurring right in Commissioner Selig's backyard, was declared a tie by Bud after 11, and fan reaction was overwhelmingly condemnational. In regular season games, it's perfectly possible for position players to take the mound--this usually happens during blowouts when the manager wants to coserve the bullpen's arms--so why not now? Sure, the score may have changed into some ridiculous numbers (14-12? 20-19?), but at least a game could be had out of it. A tie just plain sucked.
So Bud der Genius decided the best way to ensure this wouldn't happen again was not to trust that future managers would remember how awful this situation turned out and start conserving players again, but to declare that the winning league would have home field advantage in the World Series--an achievement previously achieved by the team with the better record, as is good and natural. A game that was once fun and then laughable was now too serious.
Then, since the managers would now be forced to use their players carefully, yet another new rule was created: every team should now have at least one representative in the ASG. So if the fans couldn't see them, at least nobody would feel left out. This populist pandering stuck in the craws of traditionalists, and many other people as well.
Not only that, the home field advantage proved to be meaningless. Since 2002, of the last six World Series, only one has gone more than five games (Marlins over Yankees, 2003), meaning all the rest were won by visiting teams. All the excitement and drama has migrated to the Division and League Championship Series, where home field advantage is decide by, you guessed it, regular-season record. Think of Boston's 2004 miracle ALCS comeback, or Houston's 2005 grueling 18-inning NLDS clincher. This kind of drama has vanished from the WS. Coincidence? Perhaps...
This year, with the expansion of rosters to a mind-boggling 33 players each (with the final player voted in by fans, able to vote an infinite number of times, just to make things dumber), the situation of mediocre and otherwise undeserving players entering the ranks of the likes of Ted Williams, Yogi Berra and Willie Mays, has simply been exacerbated. The diluting of the rosters by expansion and inclusion has taken its toll on a once proud institution. Who knows where it will lead next?

TODAY'S BOOK: "Dr. Dolittle's Circus", by Hugh Lofting ((c) 1924)

291st post

2009-07-07T12:42:00.008+03:00

Newest Post cartoon: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad commenting on the arrogance of his Iranian subjects.

Note: from now on my political cartoons will be appearing on my brand spanking new companion blog, curently and tentatively titled Line_of_Fire.

TODAY'S BOOK: "A Long Way from Chicago", by Richard Peck ((c) 1998)

Touching myself in a dirty place

2009-07-05T00:30:00.008+03:00

You wouldn't believe how filthy it is up there.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Behind the Lines", by W.E.B. Griffin ((c) 1995)

289th post

2009-06-30T12:55:00.003+03:00

Another Post cartoon. Barack Obama is making peaceful overtures to Syria's Basher Assad. Yeah, that's smart...

TODAY'S BOOK: "Down Town", by Viido Polikarpus and Tappan King ((c) 1987)

A random piece of wisdom that popped into my head on the bus today

2009-06-28T20:37:00.005+03:00

Every day, millions of women use thousands of beauty products to get the "natural look" that millions of other women achieve by just being natural.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Gentleman's Agreement", by Laura Z. Hobson ((c) 1946)

Randomly reprinted post (XVI)

2009-06-26T11:33:00.003+03:00

"'If I'm not back in an hour, it means I've made another huge mistake!'
TitansGo.net has finally released the gallery of the entries for their latest contest, including yours truly's 'Touring in Tokyo' pic. Wish me luck and check out the other competitors!
My bologna has a first name.
Fawned over! Fawned over! So they all fawned over and one fell out...
Seeing stars? No, seeing Cars. And it'd be best for you if you don't let the lieutenant catch you.
The weasels are back and they're marching on the village. But when the lights are out, the polka will play!
Wakka wakka wakka. Wakka wakka wakka. Wakka wakka! Wakka wak. Wak wak, wakka wakka. Wakka!
I got 5 hits on this site from Chinese (!) locations last Monday. Naturally, I'm being random by calling your attention to this only now. Or am I getting a bit predictable in my randomness?... Nah, the RAG (Random Access Generator (pat. pend.)) is still going strong. Toodle-oo!

TODAY'S BOOK: 'The Brigade', by Howard Blum ((c) 2001)

TODAY'S MOVIE: 'March of the Penguins', from Bonne Pioche/National Geographic (2005)

WWWW2?: Bjorn Borg.

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.thisistrue.com Over a decade old, Randy Cassingham's syndicated column 'This is True' has long been delighting readers with its recaps of the recently absurd. Now, you can use this site to subscribe to the weekly e-mail (which also features extraordinary headlines, an Important Recently Dead Guy, and its own version of 'TODAY'S WEBSITE'), submit your own erratic errata, and much more."
--39th post, 3/4/07

286th post

2009-06-24T10:10:00.004+03:00

Well, it took a week, but the Post ran another of my cartoons.

When Mahmoud Abbas releases Hamas-affiliated prisoners from PA jails to spite Israel and the US, he's running a bit of a risk...

TODAY'S BOOK: "No Promises in the Wind", by Irene Hunt ((c) 1970)

What Blogger means to me

2009-06-19T10:29:00.003+03:00

Or more accurately, what did Blogger do for me? That is the subject of today's post.
I'll be honest with you: so far, Blogger has not changed my life. But it gave me something to do, at a time when I sorely needed such a thing.
I began blogging in October of 2006. Twelfth grade--graduation year--had just started, and the pressure, while not at full tilt, was beginning to build. I was driving my friends up the wall more than usual. I needed an outlet for all my insane random energy.
So I sez to myself, I sez, "Why not start a blog?"
And I did.
And you know what? It was fun. And it worked.
As "The Blog of Ultimate Randomness", Giant Boogers from Outer Space gave me a venue to vent my pent-up frustration and stress in the form of off-the-wall, meaningless babble. This continued for a very long time with very much to say, all sound and fury signifying nothing (or something like that). It took, in fact, ten months--and sixty-seven posts--for the out-of-control randomness to die down. Since then, its been a bit more controlled, but no less subdued. Along the way, I have matured (slightly), along with Blogger. I've even started up a secondary blog, devoted exclusively to my artwork, that may eventually one day help me find gainful employment in the field. There's been some stuff to criticize here, but also a lot to admire.
So happy 10th birthday, www.blogger.com. You've earned it.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario", by Daniel M. Pinkwater ((c) 1979)

284th post

2009-06-17T11:21:00.003+03:00

How 'bout that! I get consecutive cartoons featured in the Post's print and online editions!
The ball's been in the Palestinian court many times... and Israel keeps serving 'em up.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Hoot", by Carl Hiaasen ((c) 2002)

283rd post

2009-06-15T10:17:00.003+03:00

Well, it took a while, but I got another cartoon printed in The Jerusalem Post--and for the first time, it also appeared on their website! (No link as there is no archiving.)
It doesn't matter who "won" the Iranian elections; there's only one real winner... the puppeteer.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Anything Can Happen", by George and Helen Papashvily ((c) 1944)

282nd post

2009-06-07T01:25:00.004+03:00

I had a lot of fun with this one. One day I thought to myself: "Hmm, what would the Furious Five from Kung Fu Panda look like if they were human?" The anthropomorphized answer stands before you. (l-r: Monkey, Crane, Viper, Mantis, Tigress)

TODAY'S BOOK: "In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson", by Bette Bao Lord ((c) 1984)

Publication!, Phase III

2009-06-04T10:23:00.003+03:00

Moving up from Quest to ShiurTimes was a quantum leap in quality. Now square that quantum. You now have a pretty good idea of the magnitude of my newest gig: contributing political cartoonist for The Jerusalem Post, Israel's premier English-language newpaper!!!
Ohmgee ohmgee ohmgee!
The pay's still terrible (i.e. zilch), the coverage is awesome, and Roger Waters gets his chops busted. All is to the good.

TODAY'S BOOK: "Aunt Dimity and the Duke", by Nancy Atherton ((c) 1994)

280th post

2009-05-30T23:50:00.011+03:00

These were logos I had to design for Illustrator homework. The top row are miniature black-and-white generic computer logos. The colorful one is an independent reworking of Adobe's Illustrator program logo.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Lonely Mound", by William Campbell Gault ((c) 1967)

279th post

2009-05-26T11:53:00.003+03:00

Here's a question that I know has been bugging you all lately: who put up the best career numbers in a Mets uniform with #32 on the back?

Only four position players have worn #32 for the Mets, accumulating 233 games played with that hallowed number on their backs. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Bill Pecota!

Bill logged 117 games all around the 1992 Mets infield and, by default, became career 32 leader in almost every offensive category, from hits and runs batted in to walks and strikeouts. He never tripled (but then again, no Met 32 ever has), and was bested in certain stasts only by Mark Carreon, who played 84 games under the Three And Two before switching to 45 for two seasons.

Carreon had 7 home runs to Pecota's 2 and was caught stealing 4 times (Pecota thrice). As for percentage, fuhgeddaboudit: Mark was .318-.382-.506 as opposed to B.P.'s lackluster AVG, OBP and SLG of .227-.293-.297.

Interestingly enough, Kevin Mitchell only appeared as a 32 for 7 games, 18 less than Eli Marrero, yet still managed to worm his way onto the leaderboards: he's tied with Pecota for second-most home runs, and with both Pecota and Carreon for most times hit by pitch (1).

Now for the pitchers, of whom there are a lot more of. One man stands above the pack, however; please meet Jon Matlack!

Jon played 7 seasons and change as a 32, outpacing all the competition (Tom Hausman pitched in 125 games, 78 short of Matlack's mark) and leading in every category save two: saves, which goes to Hausman (3), and ERA, with his 3.03 knocked off by Carlos Diaz's 1.97--set in 1,361 less innings!

And Now You Know.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Chimpanzee Kid", by Ron Roy ((c) 1985)

The return of Rister & Rob

2009-05-21T11:15:00.006+03:00

277th post

2009-05-19T10:40:00.019+03:00

I'll bet you've all been wondering why I've stopped posting my IsraTimes cartoons. (And those of you that haven't, should have been.) The reason is that we've finally parted ways--no skin off my nose. So today, I bring to you my favorite unpublished IsraTimes cartoons!

Short, sweet and to the point. I think the foreground terrorist kind of looks like the original Bip Bipadotta.

More simplicity. I also have no idea how to draw a tank.

The example par excellance of the Left-Hand-Right-Hand idea. PM Ehud Olmert was keeping ultra-religious political party Shas in his government by promising them that he would not try to negotiate with the Palestinians on Jerusalem's status--while almost every other day stories leaked out indicating him doing just that. (Shas eventually split over economic issues.)

Something about the idea of Olmert and Syrian President Basher Assad as British vaudevillians just appeals to me.

As the election campaigns heated up, candidates (l-r: Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud, Ehud Barak of Labor, and Tzipi Livni of Kadima) pulled out all the stops.

Moshe Feiglin is Netanyahu's in-party nemesis, the religious leader of the Jewish Leadership faction who perenially challenges him for the party's no. 1 (and getting closer every time). In 2008, Netanyahu helped fix it behind the scenes so that Feiglin was dropped from 19th place on the Likud's list to the virtually unelectable #36 spot. The concept of Feiglin always "bouncing back" after each defeat inspired this cartoon.

My take on the Bernie Madoff (tfui!) scandal.

Feiglin's demotion (see above) coincided noncoincidentally with Likud's status in the polls changing from "rising" to "hovering". Kadima, previously a solid #2, began rising and eventually ended up getting one more seat than Likud. The other names on Netanyahu's balloons--an image inspired by Larry Walters--are other solidly right-wing candidates, all MKs today.

When Kadima wound up getting 29 Knesset seats to Likud's 28, attention shifted to Avigdor Lieberman and his nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, which at 15 seats--and upseating Labor as Israel's third-biggest party--would tip the balance in favor of whoever asked nicely enough forming a coalition.

Likud won the bidding wars, and Lieberman was appointed Foreign Minister. This caused consternation for those who viewed him as unacceptably right-wing, which was just about everybody...

...And no wonder, for he spouted such ideological heresies as rethinking Israel's long-standing approach to negotiating with the Palestinians, which was rather one-sided and non-fruit-bearing. (Oslo, Wye et cetera are past failed agreements and accords; Peace Now is Israel's most prominent leftist NGO.)

TODAY'S BOOK: "Letters From Camp", by Karen Klise ((c) 1999)

Randomly reprinted post (XV)

2009-05-15T10:27:00.002+03:00

"As Tevet draws to a close, it's time for... Nope! Not a list. Is this the Blog of Ultimate Randomness or is this the Blog of Ultimate Randomness? I need to know!
Can somebody give me a Halleloojy?
Never mind the giant stick insects, here come the matriarchs of Teflon V!
This time, it's the stoats who are a-marching all over town. And unlike the limp biscuits, they are armed with squid-shooting Canadian-manufactured rifles.
Wakka wakka wakka wakka wakka wakka wakka! Wakka wakka! Wak wak wak! Wakka wakka wak wakka, wakka wakka! Wakka wak wakka wak wak wakka wakka.
Tenderly slips the ship into the dark dankness of the night... 52
Just call me the mailman and pass around the bag of nuts, please. Dive in.
Game over. Picard singles off Kirk, driving in Sisko, and all the cheerleaders come out for smooches.
If you can't leave in a huff, then you may leave in a minute and a huff. Pterry, get well soon! We need more like that!

TODAY'S BOOK: 'Three Men in a Boat', by Jerome K. Jerome ((c) 1889)"
--94th post, 1/7/08

275th post

2009-05-12T10:12:00.005+03:00

Two different Illustrator homeworks now--the first was about using the 3D Revolve tool, the second was 3D Extrude & Bevel, symbols, and gradient meshes.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland", by Jim DeFede ((c) 2002)