villain name and database links

Bored? Swing by my blog, and find out your supervillian name. 🙂 (or you can do it at the batman page at cartoon network.com) Requires flash. (case sensitive…bob does not equal Bob or BOB)

Newton = Scourge
Scotto = The Fiend, and El Oso = The Spoiler.

Found a fantastic comic book database for helping to search for almost anything… like the internet movie database for comics(you can also try this one). outstanding! Also the big cartoon database. Children’s Picture book database , science fiction, fantasy and horror book database, not to mention the library of congress again.

That’ll keep anyone busy for a week. 🙂

weird recent set of keywords to connect to my homepage blog- “feet and blisters, web” brings my page up first on av.com… I wish I could slap java on my lj page, so I could track keywords here, too.

Alton Brown has a fresh rant.

How mortifying! I know a lot of absent-minded folks…I’d hate to see that sort of thing happen to them. I wonder how my boss or my sweetie would deal with that sort of situation. Both straight-arrows but have little tolerance for rude or stupid people. The way they treated him probably cost the company a small mint in plugs and store usage fees.

Not cool that he had a dog in the car on an extended shopping trip, though. (I don’t know the whole story there…maybe it was a safe environment).

Thinking back on the Newton name post last week, and ‘s “With a C, not With a K” post and it’s got me thinking…

I’ve had people confuse the name “Scott” with Todd, Scout, Bob, and of all things, Gus. When I was a kid, I had a phase when I wanted to spell it Skot. (an economy of letters, and looks keen in a runic sort of font. I held a belief for a while that the letters C and Q didn’t serve much purpose, unless paired with the letters H or U repsectively. I wanted to rework CH into a new single letter, and replace QU with KW where needed, and drop Q entirely. I was a weird kid.) That phase has mostly passed, as Scotto works fine for me these days.

My last name is a bugaboo for all sorts of people. It’s two words, the first one all lower case. “von Berg”. Bad computer databases have a *lot* of trouble with that. They either want to combine them, and caps the von- “Vonberg”, chop off the data after the space – “Von”, or mix up the data so that one of the words is the first name. I can’t tell you how much junk mail comes addressed to “Mr Berg”, Dear Von! You need your grout cleaned! (or whatever). I often wonder if people with hyphenated names have the same trouble, but the one person I know that is hypenated hasn’t really had to deal with it that much. Not the worst of it, back when I filled out stuff including a full name, I’ve gotten mail addressed to “Dear Mister Third”, too.

I wonder if it’s a common occurance. There are so many names that can be spelled a few different ways, or unusual ethnic variants. Erik/Eric, or Lori/Laurie, etc. I’d love to see how people have hosed the names of others, but I know “real life” names are tricky for a lot of people on LJ, even just first names. Perhaps there’s a way to do it more anonymously, but a way to phrase a question about it.

The Anti-Newton liberation front. They’re doomed.

Neat! Prionix linked back to my poemtag!

Click here to see actual size picture

A note on the scale. Nervous Rex is About 2 and a half inches tall. (or maybe 6 and a third cm, if conversion is right) They’re all standing on top of my palmtop because it’s a flat surface on rugged bed terrain.The poor fools dont stand a chance against a giant Newtasaurus run amok over their fair city. the carpeted parks, the finely tiled city with it’s cardboard spires and giant white “astrobowl”… no plastic life will remain.

Update. Oh… the humanity. The running brown gunman is apparently tasty to giant kitties. Newtzilla has been scrambling around with the poor soul in his colossal feline maw, and batting him all over the mostly frictionless tile like a nightmarish hockey puck.

The Anti-Newton liberation front. They're doomed.

Neat! Prionix linked back to my poemtag!

Click here to see actual size picture

A note on the scale. Nervous Rex is About 2 and a half inches tall. (or maybe 6 and a third cm, if conversion is right) They’re all standing on top of my palmtop because it’s a flat surface on rugged bed terrain.The poor fools dont stand a chance against a giant Newtasaurus run amok over their fair city. the carpeted parks, the finely tiled city with it’s cardboard spires and giant white “astrobowl”… no plastic life will remain.

Update. Oh… the humanity. The running brown gunman is apparently tasty to giant kitties. Newtzilla has been scrambling around with the poor soul in his colossal feline maw, and batting him all over the mostly frictionless tile like a nightmarish hockey puck.

assorted schtuff

I also want to know if this movie is available with english subtitles. I saw a clip of it on Telemundo, and it looks *keeno* and creepy.The gist of the movie involves the only survivor of an airplane crash, and features games of chance, a weird subculture, proxy rituals, and characters with a special gift which is both a blessing and a curse.

Some evil news –

Cambodia skull map dismantled

“PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Skull by human skull, officials have dismantled a key icon of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Buddhist monks chanted and prayed Sunday for the souls of some 300 Khmer Rouge victims whose remains became part of a map of Cambodia made of human skulls and displayed publicly since 1979 as a testament to the regime’s brutality.”

Thousands Seek Citizenship in Fake Country

More than 3,000 Pakistanis want to become citizens in the northern European nation of Ladonia, the country’s state secretary said on Monday.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist.

Ladonia is a piece of land in southern Sweden only one square kilometer (half-mile) in size, and as a nation exists mainly on the Internet (http://www.aim.se/ladonia) and in the mind of its creator, artist Lars Vilks.

Hmm… If I’d made that Magonia website like I was planning… would I have been in the news? Some dispatches are due….maybe Tulpa pays it a visit. A painted sunset might bring her life into focus.

They Drink From Troughs. (thanks, wrote.org!)

Pupils of a Kansas School Quench Their Thirst After the Manner of Horses.
Topeka, Kan.-The manual training school is to be equipped with a newfangled drinking arrangement for the pupils, which Judge T. F. Garver, of the school board terms a “horse trough” arrangement.

The new drinking system is a cupless, dipperless affair, supposed to be highly sanitary and the latest thing in school drinking fountains. Instead of a cup or dipper, one who wishes to drink bends over the fountain and plunges his face, or part of it, in a bubbling stream of water forced upward through the fountain much like an artesian well.

It is really an adaptation of the old fashioned country school way of holding the cupped hand over the spout of the pump, while another pumps, and when the cupped hand is full of water, plunging the chin, nose, and forehead, if necessary, into the water, if the hand is big enough, while the thirsty one drinks.

These “horse trough” drinking fountains have been tried at the summer school and Supt. Whittemore reports that they are an excellent device. The special advantage is that the persons who drink do not use a common cup and there is no danger of communicating disease.

Minnetonka Record, February 3, 1905

Queer California Disease.

Which Causes “Natives” to View the Rest of the Country as of Little Consequence.
When my wife and I came to San Francisco from New York we expected to settle, if not permanently, at least for a long time, but we have since changed our plans; why, the public might be interested to know, as our case is a typical one. We discovered that this part of the country is infected with its own peculiar affliction, which is of endemic form-a “native-born” product of the state, writes a correspondent of the San Francisco Argonaut.

Californianitis is principally a defective sense of proportion. We have no doubt that California is a big state, and that Californians are called to big things, but the native sons of the golden west might do well to remember that there is something else besides their state, and that there are some other people, and good for something besides serving as trinkets in their hands.

It had never occurred to us that we were “easterners” until we found ourselves chained to the triumphal car of some native daughter of California as she passed to her drawing rooms showing us as the victor’s spoils. We found ourselves declared foreigners, and called upon for daily largesse of dutiful homage.

We look in vain for justifications of distinctively American pride, or developed Californian originalities; in fact, the chief things held out to us as the glores of California are the missions (which are Spanish), the Chinese quarters (which are oriental), the Mexican restaurants (which are half-breed), the the kaleidoscopic scenery (which was here some years before Californians).

The Californian refuses for his state the modest place claimed for itself by every other in the union, abreast of its sister states, but, on the contrary, insists upon for it an isolation, golden-haloed, though at times he himself be conscious that the golden halo is only plated wire.

In a recent issue of a San Francisco daily paper we read an editorial on the yacht races for the American cup, in which the editor mildly suggested that San Francisco might be a better place for the races than New York-there is certainly wind enough to swamp the yachts, but what about the fog?

This is funny enough; but irresistible is the idea of the chief objection he foresaw New Yorkers would make, the loss of trade brought by visiting enthusiasts-which, by the way, might number 10,000. Isn’t this sizing things too much by local units, when it takes a Dewey parade with 3,000,000 visitors actually to crowd New York, and an extra 100,000 is there a wonted influx of ordinary travelers?

Some time ago a California writer, describing the mission period of Californian history, declared that the Spanish monks had given to the world a new style of architecture and a new form of the art, the mission furniture. The facts are, the mission architecture is nothing but the “barocco” style of ecclesiastical constructions used widely in Spain and Italy in the seventeenth century; and the mission furniture is easily to be found in all the medieval castles of Europe, with only this difference, that the former is made uglier and the latter cruder because of the want of suitable materials and good artisans.

Living in San Francisco would be particularly pleasant if it were normal, but since there is a bacillus here, too, and we must choose between the pains of Californianitis and the pangs of New Yorkitis, we prefer the latter every time.

Minnetonka Record, January 6, 1905

The Decay Of Manners.
We rush through life in such a hurry these days, that there is little or no time or thought for the refinements and courtesies that in the good old days of our grandparents were considered necessary to good manners.

The man or woman who has really good manners, nowadays, we distinguish as being of the “old school.”

Unfortunately, the old school is passing away, and there is no new school to take its place.

We seem to be drifting into the idea that good manners are a rather boresome and indefinable something in the way of an affectation which we may put on with our best clothes for weddings, parties and other such affairs, but not to be carried about with us on ordinary occasions.

We have come to regard common courtesy as a time consumer and a waste.

Rapid communications have corrupted good manners, for the speed with which we can travel or transmit news has aroused a nervous impatience of delay which is fatal to courtesy and manners both in spirit and form.

We no longer write the good, long, warm, soul-satisfying letters that were written in the old days.

Formerly letters were dignified and interesting, but now they are neither.

We imagine we have no time to write elegantly and in a spirit of impatience we scribble a few lines to some friend when there is no escape from the painful necessity.

And the letters of today show that their writing is a task, not a pleasure.

Once upon a time it was good manners to hold old age in reverence, but it is not so any more.

Whatever we may actually feel in the heart, our attitude toward the old indicates that instead of regarding them with reverence we consider age the synonym for incapacity and boredom.

It is an age of ill manners in both men and women.

Garish vulgarity taints what is regarded, commonly at least, as the best society.

So far we have sunk that the men of genuine courtesy and polish must balance it with some sort of coarseness or be damned as a “sissy.”-St. Paul Daily News 1902