Are These Celebrities Alive or Dead?

A little morbid when you think about it, but interesting just the same -- here is an interactive quiz that gives you the names and photos of 23 TV and Movie stars and asks one simple question.

At times I thought the quiz should have been called, "Man it's gonna suck when this person passes away" -- but like some strange online Dickens novel, the fact that many of the people you're not sure about actually turn out to still be kicking makes you feel kinda good inside for no apparent reason.

By the end of it I had 19 right and 4 wrong, which considering some of the ringers hiding in the list I'm feeling pretty good about.

See how you do!

Best Political Ad Ever

I don't actually want this guy for President, but this sure beats the crap normally thrown at us during elections.

Tim Tams

My dad lives in Australia. For the past few years he has been sending my grandmother Tim Tams.

Tim Tams are inspiring biscuits. Biscuits in the English sense, not the fried chicken side-dish sense.

I can hear you now.

"Oh, it's a cookie. Get a grip."

You simply do not know. This food single-handedly makes up for vegemite.

Here's Aussie Natalie Imbruglia and her lips demonstrating the way to take the Tim Tam to a new level. Even the famously not-impressed Graham Norton is conquered:



A Tim Tam is the type of food that's so good you have to dance with it.

John Spruill, this one's for you:



Tim Tams are sold in other countries under different names, and were actually sold in the US on a trial basis in supermarkets in 2001 under the brand name "Double Trouble." Apparently everyone mistook the boxes for Olsen Twin videos, because they didn't catch on.

There are some online stores that sell them, but I don't really want to know where they are, 'cause it would mean caloric doom.

Anyway, if you ever get the opportunity, eat them!

Holiday Hack Newsroom Bingo

One of the worst things about the this time of year is the endless recycling of holiday-themed stories by local news outlets. From NORAD tracking Santa Claus to hyping up "the first baby of the new year" -- we've heard it all before, and will surely hear it again.

So why not make it into a game?

This site lets you download a handy-dandy BINGO card that gives you the chance to use that story about those "craaaazy last minute shoppers" to your advantage.

Enjoy!

The Angry-Gram

Now that Thanksgiving's over, the time has come to rid ourselves of all that friendliness and good cheer. Surely after having to sit there and share turkey with your friends and loved ones you were reminded of many of the reasons you don't eat with them every day.

If there was only some way to tell them how you feel..

Enter Angry-Gram, the latest viral advertising widget from Burger King. Part Bad-Libs, part Johnny Rotten -- this is probably what the Geico Lizard would be like if someone caught him, ground him into a patty, flame-broiled him, and then put him on a bun with lettuce, tomato, and cheese.

GIANTmicrobes

Looking for the perfect gift to give that good little boy or girl this Christmas?

How about some germs?

Not the slimy real ones, but these cute stuffed animal replicas. Probably more aimed at pediatricians and science teachers, but still available to anyone who wants them.

Sorta like venereal diseases (which they sell too).

Steve Burns is Not Dead

How former Blues Clues host Steve Burns is not a hipster god is beyond me. With an irony rating of +10, every time this guy lights up a smoke a soccer mom dies.

That's not to say an army of cute blue dogs could do anything to make his band sound better, but just in case you had heard any false information through the "former children's show gossip hotline" or wherever rumors about guys like this get started -- Steve is very much alive, and really needs to shave.

Wikipedia vs. Conservapedia

Speaking of Top Ten lists, check out this absolute gem from BoingBoing -- showing a listing of the top ten most viewed pages on Wikipedia, followed by a comparative listing of the top ten most viewed pages on the self-proclaimed "trustworthy encyclopedia" Conservapedia.

Classic stuff.

The 10 Most Bitter Female Rock Songs

With the writer's strike effectively sweeping the leg of that other guy who does Top Ten Lists on a regular basis -- it seems the remaining undisputed champion of the list game are the gang over at Cracked.com, who churn these things out with frightening regularity.

This time around it's The Top 10 Bitter Songs by Female Singers, a listing of 10 tunes by gals who at first were afraid (they were petrified), kept thinking they could never live without you by their side -- but then spent so many nights thinking how you did them wrong, and they grew strong, they learned how to get along.

Oddly enough, Gloria Gaynor's "I Will
Survive" does not appear on the list.

Take ten seconds to think about the subject of this list and you'll have already guessed what #1 is, but in usual Cracked.com style it's not the results that make it worth reading -- it's the snarky comments along the way.

Enjoy!

Elf Yourself

The holiday season is finally upon us. It's a time for peace, good cheer, and love for your fellow man.

So in that spirit, here's our very own Monster
-- tasting the bitter wine of cold, dark, vengeance.

Scrooge Yourself

You there, young boy! What day is it?
Why it's Christmas Day, Mr Scrooge.
Christmas Day!! Then I haven't missed it!

That's right Ebenezer, I didn't forget about you, either.

Watch The Guild

I don't know how well this will resonate with the non-online-gaming crowd... but I suspect you'll either laugh because it confirms your stereotypes or you'll laugh because it hits close to home.

Either way, you're laughing.

Dust Mop Slippers

Now that I'm embarrassingly famous, people approach me at random all the time. On the street, at the Tex-Mex joint run by the Asian-Americans, the Hispanic pizzeria, when I'm using a urinal--everywhere. They approach me, humbly. They don't touch me, thank God. But in their little supplicating way, with hope in their eyes and stains on their off-the-rack clothes, they say, "Satorical, I hate cleaning floors." They also say "I hate wearing shoes," or, often as not, "I do not own any shoes," or "I have eaten my shoes."

This is my cue. This my chance to give back to the little people.

"Step back, you are impure," I say. "Please, really, you probably have TB."

Then I say "I know life has treated you poorly. You were not blessed with my good fortune or modesty."

"However," I say, "Your world is about to change," I also say, "for our civilization has reached a pinnacle of achievement with you, yes YOU in mind."

Then I stop speaking in boldface. I tell them about dust mop slippers. How they can get two pair, $6 a pair, and have one pair to use even when the other is in the laundry.

They usually are speechless, which is good--especially when I'm using the urinal. They back away, bowing, but with little bit more dignity, a little bit more joy.

I know that soon, very soon, they too will have clean clean floors.

Snow Joke (and other work by the Supergroup)

There's the guy I know who is just a little too good at cool stuff for me to say that I like him ALL the time. Seriously, though, Chris and the other guys at the Super Group have been making nifty web tricks for a while... but variable video makes my panda puppet clap.

Here's our very own Hex, snowboarding. In a beret.

Only You Can Prevent Ninjuries

Addiction, thy name is Squares 2

The upscale techno soundtrack and Piet Mondrian-esque shapes somehow add an air of class to this deceptively tricky game that you will surely be cussing at like a dockworker inside of three minutes.

Her Lady of Sealand

Become Lord or Lady of Sealand. Click here to apply. Two titles for $41.

His Lordship the Viscount St. Austell-in-the-Moor Biggleswade-Brixham, aka Doonesbury's Zonker, got his title pretty much this way.

Want to visit your royal lands? There they are, up above. It's an abandoned platform off the coast of Scotland. It has a helipad. Go nuts, your worship.

Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians.com

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Battles

Jellyfist

If you haven't been getting enough weird, this'll fix you up right quick. Written by Jhonen Vasquez, the mastermind behind Invader Zim.

"It provides the type of sophistication that only a giant, drooling baby can give."

The Amateur Bone Cracker

Free Rice

Play a vocabulary game and earn free rice for the U.N. foodbank.

The Movie Timeline

Here's an interesting one: A detailed timeline of events related to Hollywood movies -- but perhaps more interestingly, this timeline also includes events that happen within the storylines of the films as well.

In other words, the first entry on page one is:

65,000,000 BC: A mosquito becomes irrevocably trapped in tree resin. (Jurassic Park)

And the last entry on page 52 is:

865,427,810 AD: Alexander Hartdegen briefly arrives in London from the year 802,701. (The Time Machine)

btw, you read that right -- 52 pages.

Sort of a time-waster, but certainly an impressive labor of love -- the site also offers you a chance to search by page, year, or keyword. In other words, you could search for your (or anyone's) birthday and see what events (real or fictional) match up to them.

At the same time, the movie nerd in me got a real kick out of seeing how things from various movies match up (or don't) when put side by side like this -- For example, when you dial up the year 1969, this is a partial listing of events that appear (possible spoiler alerts?):

Fighter pilot T. J. Kong destroys entire world in vast nuclear annihilation. (Laputa, Russia - Dr. Strangelove)

A chemical spill at the VA hospital brings corpses to life. (nr Pittsburgh - The Return of the Living Dead)

Richard M. Nixon inaugurated as 37th President of the United States. (Washington, DC - Nixon)

Maybe not for everyone -- but certainly fascinating if you've got the time or interest to poke around a bit.

This Movie is About Cats Flying

Just in case you weren't sure what the subject was:

Pick It Up

Math Made Easy

(Some language NSFW, depending on who's reading over your shoulder).

Moola

This is for casual gamers who want to gamble. I was up to $22 and should have cashed out. Now I've got about $1.50. Who knows, maybe the $10 mil has your name on it. Anyway, we have a ridiculous number of invitations. If you want in, click here.

Pac-Txt

Wireless controllers? Direction-sensitive handpieces? Musical Instrument emulators? Sure all these things are great -- but whatever happened to the classics?

Come on now, don't tell me you don't miss text-based adventure games just a little bit?

I know -- some of you out there are probably too young to remember the hours poured into typing your way through Zork or The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, and the earliest games you remember are of the Pac-Man variety, but don't worry -- we've got you covered too, because someone just came up with the ultimate in gaming technology:

Text-based Pac Man.

Yes indeed, we've finally reached the point where you can forego all that annoying joystick movement and play Pac Man the way it was meant to be played --

With words.

The Onion Sports Page

The Onion has long been an Internet favorite -- complete with it's mix of political and social commentary and rips on just about everything else you can think of. But like anything else on the web there comes a point where a little tends to go a long way. It's not that the Onion isn't funny anymore, it's more like I know the kind of joke they're going to tell and it tends to kind of take some of the punch out of things.

However, the recently-added sports page takes The Onion's brand of humor to places it's not ventured that much into over the years, with priceless results. If you're not a sports nut it's possible a lot of the gags will miss you (my two current favorite headlines are "Colorado Rockies: 'What The Fuck Just Happened?' and Suspended Tackle Albert Haynesworth: 'I Just Wanted To Make Sure The Guy Was Dead'), but if you've watched enough ESPN to be utterly sick of it, this might just be the alternative you're looking for.

The Story of Manos, The Hands of Fate

Strictly for the MST-ies out there, an interesting article telling the story of one of the worst movies ever made -- Manos, The Hands of Fate.

As with so many of these old-time horror films, the story behind the movie is almost more interesting than the movie itself -- and Manos is no exception, as it's beginnings appear to be the result of some sort of bet between a fertilizer salesman (Harold P. Warren -- who not only produced the film, but directed and starred in it as well) who wagered with a screenwriter friend of his that he could easily create a successful horror film on a limited budget.

Clearly he lost the wager.

The film might have faded into obscurity if it hadn't been for it's inclusion as one of the films lampooned by the crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in 1993. Since then the movie has enjoyed a minor revival as a cult favorite.

If you've not seen this film -- be warned, it's not something I'd immediately recommend adding to your Netflix list. It's a slow paced, nonsensical, horribly dubbed mess of a film that really never goes anywhere story-wise -- which makes it perfect for the MST3K crowd, but makes it a hard sell anywhere else.

Still, the story of the struggle to get this albatross off the ground adds some interesting depth (especially considering the film and television writer's strike going on) to the other side of what happens when anyone says the magic words:

"How hard could it be?"

Endorphin Shot

Yeah yeah yeah... everybody has a cute kid video online.

But I dare you... TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU, even... not to laugh.

Wow. Just.. Wow.

An enterprising company has introduced a new product that has me both horrified and hungry at the same time.

Please let these taste like crap, because otherwise they're sure to be the downfall of any weight loss plan I could ever come up with or consider joining.

Seriously.. pancake whippets?

Game over man, Game over!

The Shroud of the Thwacker

A spoof of the historical crime novel by Chris Elliott (yes, that Chris Elliott).

This is probably the funniest thing I've read since Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. I had to read it in sections because I would laugh too hard to keep going.

Very smart, dense, satire. It pulls no punches. Here's an example. Inscribed on the version of the Statue of Liberty at the time of the novel, in the late 1800s:

Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses from no further south than Spain and no further east than Russia (unless they're good with railroads).

Make a Mixa

Creating temporary/portable USB drives customized to look like all sorts of wacky things is nothing new, but here's a variation I think is pretty cool -- a blank cassette. But more than a way to make a modern style mix tape by filling up the drive with mp3's, pictures, video's or whatever you may like -- the twist here is that using the website's interface, you actually get to design the look of the "cassette's" outer shell.

You do this by mixing and matching images that you choose yourself, either from your own computer archives or from a variety of online libraries (including flickr).

Maybe not mix tapes the way we remember them, but a very cool idea nonetheless.

Enjoy!

Bioshock Halloween

Bioshock is an video game made for X-Box 360 or PC players. Incorporating elements found in role-playing and survival horror games, it tells the story of a plane crash survivor named Jack, who must explore an underwater objectivist-dystopian city called Rapture and survive attacks from the mutated beings and mechanical drones living within it.

But after a long day of killing mutants and jumping around an undersea city in an old-school diving suit, what's a guy to do on a Wednesday night?

Take his daughter trick or treating.

Parental coolness (save for the fact that she apparently lives in the cabinet), Halloween costume ownage, and proof that video game cosplayers can occasionally get laid. What else do you need?