If you’re bored or just want to play with a soundboard, check out PALINdrome, which allows you to drag and drop Sarah Palin soundbites like so many refrigerator poetry magnets and then hear the results.

Just recently, Brandy and I were talking about a segment from The Electric Company in which one of the cast sings a song regarding his inability to tell the difference between lettuce and cabbage.

I was reminded of this song when I today read this:

“my cat is bleeding from the anus and penis what do i do or what else can i look for until i can get her to the vet??!”

Either that’s the world’s first hermaphroditic cat or somebody is a bit confused.

Oh the wonders of digital television!  It appears that there are three channels viewable on our bedroom flat panel TV that pick up the On Demand content of other folks in the neighborhood.

As a result, I’ve been able to watch every episode of TrueBlood (which isn’t all that bad) and get caught up on this season of South Park. 

The real fun comes when they fast forward through the commercials for me.  It’s like TiVo but with even less effort.  Of course, I don’t get to choose what I watch on these channels, but I do get a unique insight into the tastes of my neighbors.

This is apparently not a new phenomenon, but it’s a fun way to inject some randomness into my day.

First, it was two weeks of fake “CNN Alerts” in my spam box. Now, it’s all Paris Hilton. For example:

• Paris Hilton’s Bust Goes Missing
• Paris Hilton Hates Nicole Richie
• Paris Hilton In Online Plea For Leniency
• John McCain To Paris Hilton: “Cosmo, bayatch!”
• Paris Hilton Fires Talent Agent!
• Letterman to Interview Paris Hilton’s Vagina
• Paris Hilton: Let Me Be Yearn For Zion Girls’ Role Model
• Paris Hilton asks: Has anyone seen Mike Hunt?
• Paris Stilton no longer FHM Magazine Sexiest Women List big cheese
• Paris Hilton Had Sex With Aliens
• Paris Hilton confuses Animal Control Cops

My favorite is that last one.

My favorite time of the day is when I wake up from an overly elaborate dream and then find my mind racing through a variety of thoughts.

This morning, I had a dream about daywalker vampires gathering to celebrate the worldwide lord of all vampires.  Unfortunately, he was unable to be there, so his second in command (largely considered an eccentric undead dude) took over for the festivities.  This allowed an opening for a renegade faction, which included the #1 vamp’s mom, to penetrate the grounds and go after #2.

I woke up from that and imagined a story in which vampires had finally conquered the Earth.  It seems to me that nearly any story about vampires ends up having somebody that stops them from ruling humanity but also has any number of living humans who aspire to be vampires.  So what happens in a world where vampirism is the dominant state?  Would there exist a sub-culture of people who eventually declare their individuality by harkening back to imagery of a brighter world?

Specifically, I imagined a group of anti-goths called the Waukees, named for the city of Milwaukee, setting of Happy Days.  Hundreds of years from now, the visions of bright 50’s americana would be as counter-culture as the visions of darkness and isolation that drive counter-culture today.  In a dark world, what would be more jarring than to see people patterning themselves after Richie Cunningham?

Want to give your friends, enemies, and acquaintances some gin-yooo-wine Hannah Montana wake up calls? Wal-Mart to the rescue!

No, you can’t have my phone number.

I’ll be 36 by the time this ships.  That’s far too old to have a Millennium Falcon kiddie pool.  Of course, I will have two children by then.

No no, I can’t.  I won’t.  Damn it.

FUN FACT: When searching Yahoo for “flickr peeing outdoors”, I am the 6th result returned.

News out of New York state shows that Governor David A Paterson has signed into law a bit of legislation regarding video games.  Specifically, the law compels the state government to conduct a study of video game violence and its effects on children, requires consoles to have parental lockout controls by 2010, and requires games to show ESRB ratings.

Sounds pretty reasonable, except for three major things.

1. A couple thousand (might be exaggerating here) studies have already been done about video game violence.  Why can’t NY reference those?

2. All modern consoles already have parental controls built into them.  The industry has already addressed that concern, so legislating it makes no sense.  They had that one taken care of four years before the 2010 deadline.

3. All games sold at retail already carry an ESRB rating.  Most retailers require it.  Again, legislating a practice currently in practice.

So what did this legislation achieve?  Absolutely nothing aside from letting politicians look productive and fooling the public into thinking something will be done about this video game menace.

Well New Yorkers, you just paid for fluff legislation.  If you’re hoping it will reduce youth violence, you’re in for a surprise.  You see, poverty is a much larger contributor to youth violence than video games could ever hope to be, but nobody is trying to outlaw poverty.  No, let’s go after the inconsequential targets and hope the public doesn’t notice the dodge.

The good news is that this law doesn’t actually change anything.  The bad news is that making a law just to make it is asinine.

There’s nothing quite as shocking for a nobody like myself than to visit a site looking for information and unexpectedly find one of my photos used as a product shot.

I’ve been trying to find a AAA battery clip for my Magellan eXplorist 500. Why? Because I was reading about portable solar power and thought, “If I could take portable panels with me to charge my GPS, I’d be able to track a multi-day tour.” Not that I have the time to do a multi-day tour. Trust me when I say that such details are often lost on me.

My search took me to a page hosted by HighSpeedSat which has the 500 listed among its product reviews. Scroll, scroll, scroll… looking to see if they sell the battery clip… and then WHAM!

Holy hell, my pale legs are on a GPS website! Kinda cool, as long as they link back to my Flickr site, since that’s where they got it. But no, clicking on the image brings up a photo of the eXplorist box contents. And there’s no photo attribute, meaning I don’t even get credit for the shot.

My first instinct was the grab a shot of the page, record the date/time, and jot down the URL so I could write them to have my image removed.

And then I remembered I have this blog. This blog that has, as early as yesterday, relied upon using the images of others to supplement the writing. It’s hard to get my moral superiority in order when I am guilty of the same actions. “Fair use”, you might cry. “You’re not making any money from the images.” This is true, I’m not making a dime, but it still feels weird to feel as though my copyright has been violated when I do the same thing to others so easily.

It’s easy for me to ignore this infringement of my “work” since this isn’t really my source of income. I don’t make money from my photos. I never plan to do so. The long term impact to my livelihood is null. So why should I care?

I’ll tell you why… Because while I’m no photographer, I am egotistical. I’m actually okay with somebody using my stuff as long as I’m credited. However, I do maintain full rights so that there’s no misinterpreting who can use what and to what level.

Having said that, I’m probably not going to do anything about HighSpeedSat. If showing off my legs helps them sell a GPS, so be it.