Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

Obama may have to give up e-messaging – CNN.com.

Not the Crackberry! NOOOOO, DARKNEEEESSS! CHAARRLIIIEEEEE!

My guess is he’ll keep the thing, and just switch it out somewhat frequently. You can’t just give that up. You’ve gotta ease out of it over a period of like… you know… a decade or so. Or until the Next Great Thing comes along to replace it.

How much of a geek am I, that I had to actually open Google Earth and see the giant stuffed pink bunny for myself?

It’s there! I’m so amused.

Testing Google’s Drunk E-Mail Protector – TIME.

I love it! It’s an amusing article.

It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye because they leaned too close to the baby…

CNN has an interesting story about bartering sex for stuff or services. It doesn’t even portray people who do this as evil and depraved. Golly. Could it be that we’re actually making some progress in eliminating our status as one of the most prudish and Puritanical of free and industrialized countries?

This awesome story is making the rounds on the Internet and in the news lately.

In 1969, Anthony “Ace” Bourke and John Rendall rescued a lion cub from the “exotic animals” department at Harrod’s Department Store in London. They named him “Christian” and raised him in their apartment, exercising the cub on the grounds of the local church. After a year, though, Christian the lion became too large to keep in their home.

As luck would have it, the two men coincidentally ran into actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, who had recently starred in Born Free, the 1966 film about another domesticated lion who had been reintroduced into the wild by the couple whom the actors had portrayed, George and Joy Adamson (author of Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds). They suggested that the two men contact George Adamson in Kenya.

Bourke and Rendall eventually brought the lion to Kenya, and after a few years, they returned to visit him. They were informed at that point that Christian was the leader of his own pride and was fully wild now, and that he would not remember them. See for yourself what really happened when the lion and the men met again.

You can purchase the DVD made about Christian the lion at the Born Free Foundation website.

It turned out to be a pretty interesting article about an 80-year old stripper, Tempest Storm – something of a legend, apparently, who still performs on stage. Who knew?

If you seem to always guess correctly as to how sports games, current events, and other occurrences will turn out, perhaps you need to sign up for Predictify.

I am always a little bit too optimistic or a little bit too pessimistic, so I haven’t made a dime — but my wife has made a little under $15 already, just by predicting the outcome of such questions as “What will Sex and the City: The Movie gross in the box office on its opening weekend?” or “Who will be the Democratic candidate for the 2008 presidential election?”

Want to try your hand at predicting the future? Give it a shot!

Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

I just got my $5 Amazon gift certificate from Winzy! Most of my prizes have been for points, but this was my first actual prize, and it’s officially in my hands now, or at least, figuratively in my hands, actually in my email. 🙂 Sign up so you can win too!

[Cross-posted at my epinions account.]

We have friends over fairly often, and the game of Cranium is definitely one of our favorites to bring out. The game is terrific because it relies on teamwork and a variety of creative and intellectual tasks.

This is no “Candy Land“; if you want to win, you’re going to have to use your… cranium, as it were. You can get the basic board rules from the game’s instructions; the more important information you need to know is about the different tasks you could be assigned.

The Basic Stuff

Each space on the Cranium game board is marked with a color, either red, blue, green or yellow. At the four “corners” of the gameboard (actually located in the middle of each side) is a purple “brain.”. Regardless of how many spaces a player is supposed to move, they must stop when they reach each brain, even if their roll would have taken them further. Between each “brain” spot is an inside track and an outside track; the inside track has fewer spaces, so you get to the next brain more quickly. The team that goes first is the team including the player with the next birthday. I’m not kidding; this is in the rules!

At the start of the game, every player is on the initial “brain” spot, and therefore they get to pick their first task. If they are successful in their first task, they get to roll the dice and move to the appropriate color via the inside track, and on their next turn, they will draw a card from the deck of this color. If they do not succeed in their first task, their turn is over. When they do successfully complete a task, they must go along the outside track until they reach the next brain. The inside-outside path resets at each brain, so you can still catch up even if you miss your first challenge.

Once you’ve made your way around the board, you enter the center “brain” – the big brain, if you will, and you must answer, on each of your subsequent turns, a question from each of the four categories. Once you finish the fourth, you move to the middle of the brain, and on your next turn, all of the other teams get to pick a card for you. That’s all of the teams, not each of the teams. They will have to agree on a category. Usually this category is red (Data Head), unless your team includes one of those people who just knows everything about everything. In order to win, your team must successfully complete this last task.

So What Are These Challenges?

The game’s challenges are broken up into four key categories: Word Worm (yellow), Creative Cat (blue), Data Head (red), and Star Performer (green).

Yellow is “Word Worm,” and contains such wacky tasks as:

• Gnilleps: One player from the team must correctly spell a word backwards on your first attempt, and without writing anything down.

• Spellbound: The same as Gnilleps, only you get to spell it the normal way!
• Zelpuz: The team must unscramble words using a very vague clue.
• Lexicon: Multiple choice definitions. Be careful – these aren’t SAT questions. Here, they ARE trying to trick you; watch out for homonyms, because inevitably both words’ definitions will be potential answers
• Blankout: These are the hardest; you must complete a word with letters whited out. You do get a clue, but the clues usually aren’t too helpful.

Green, “Star Performer,” is my favorite; it involves various physical performance skills, including:

• Humdinger: One team member must hum the song on the card, while the other members attempt to guess the song. Generally when we play, we allow the team member to hand over the card to another teammate if she doesn’t know the song; she is forbidden to guess. If no player knows the song, then we allow them to pick another card.

• Cameo: Basically, charades. In theory, you’re not supposed to be allowed to give any indication of how many words or whether your team is on the right track, but we generally just follow the rules of charades instead.
• Copycat: The performing team member must get her teammates to guess which famous person she is imitating by mimicking the person’s speech, actions, characteristics. No names of people or places are permitted, and the team member cannot respond to anything the guessers ask. This challenge can either be really boring or absolutely hilarious, depending on how strictly you adhere to the rules. Given “Elvis Presley,” some people will say something boring like, “I have left the building,” or “Thank you very much.” More creative performances will involve hip thrusting and curled lips. It’s up to the game’s players to decide what they will and will not allow here.

Blue, “Creative Cat,” is my other favorite; it involves artistic tasks such as:

• Cloodle: Basically, Pictionary.

• Sensosketch: Like Cloodle, except that the drawer’s eyes must be shut. This can be extremely entertaining, and I like to hold on to the most brilliant “Cloodle” masterpieces for reminiscing in future games. If you do this, you might want to label it after the turn is over; some of them will be pretty unrecognizable later on!
• Sculptorades: The player has to translate the answer into sculpted form. No gestures/acting/pointing is allowed; this isn’t charades!

Red, “Data Head,” is my least favorite, although some people are freakishly good at this. The tasks include:

• Factoid: Random trivia questions. No list to choose from. These can be ridiculously hard.

• Selectaquest: Trivia, but with multiple choice answers.
• Polygraph: True or false trivia. The logical answer is rarely the actual answer.

Things You Should Know

• Sculptorades: We need to get a jar of Play-Dough; the Hints: Generally in “Star Performer” and “Creative Cat” you will have to rely on hints in order to give you some context as to what the answer might be. However, we find that sometimes

  As you can see, this game can be a lot of fun, and as in other popular board games like “Monopoly” and “LIFE,” you’ll probably find yourself modifying the rules as you go along. This can be the most fun part! After all, by tweaking it, you make it your own. 🙂

I just started using Winzy, another search engine where you can win random prizes while you search. Winzy is a lot like Blingo, except with a new twist in that some of the prizes are for points, which represent entries into a sweepstakes drawing each month. It’s kind of nifty, and a little bit more exciting than Blingo because you win more often (although the prizes are usually for points!). I did win a $5 Amazon gift certificate on Winzy last night. It may not match up to the $100 Visa Gift Card (and multiple $10 iTunes gift certificates) I’ve won through Blingo, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at (and I have been using Blingo longer…)! Besides, it’s fun – in addition to instant wins, you can also land on little “games” where you can spin a wheel, play “Lucky 7s,” or eliminate suitcases a la “Deal or No Deal.”

One thing I do have to say for Blingo over Winzy (one of several things) is that with Blingo, you get your prize as soon as you claim it, if your prize is a gift card. Winzy apparently sends out the gift card within a month of your winning it – which is kind of silly if they could just email it. I will post again when I receive this first prize!

In the end, I like Blingo better, but Winzy is still a fun site to check out, and you can still win some nifty prizes.

If you sign up for either Blingo or Winzy, please be sure to be logged in when you search, so that I can win along with you! If you refer your own friends, tell them the same – if they win a prize, you win the same prize, as long as they’re logged in! (It only goes one level down; I don’t win if your friends win.)

By the way, see if Raining Jane IS coming to your town:

Schedule below the cut: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve probably already talked about Raining Jane and how very wonderful they are, but now I have a new reason to yammer on about them! My friend was searching on YouTube and found a series of Raining Jane videos from a Fender show, so now you can see how fantabulous these ladies are, even if they’re not coming to your town!

(However, if they are playing locally, GO SEE THEM. No matter how terrific these videos are, Raining Jane is a thousand times better when they’re standing right in front of you. This is pretty mellow as their performances go, and the sound quality is crystal clear but doesn’t really capture their essence.) 😀

Convinced? Buy Raining Jane’s most recent album, Diamond Lane, on iTunes, at Amazon.com, or even better, through Raining Jane’s website.

Desperate Sails:

More Raining Jane awesomeness behind the cut:

Read the rest of this entry »