He had crawled in on his own, while I was looking away. And by virtue of remaining in there, he added considerably to the number of dirt molecules needing to be vacuumed away.
Monday, April 5, 2010
LOOK IN THE TUNK
He apparently didn’t want me to vacuum out the trunk of my car.
He had crawled in on his own, while I was looking away. And by virtue of remaining in there, he added considerably to the number of dirt molecules needing to be vacuumed away.
He had crawled in on his own, while I was looking away. And by virtue of remaining in there, he added considerably to the number of dirt molecules needing to be vacuumed away.
Oh, That? It’s Just My Prehistoric Whale-Dog
New favorite thing: the mesonychid, a carnivorous mammal that lived between 65 and 56 million years ago on nearly every continent.
Though the creature superficially resembles a wolf, it’s actually more closely related to cetaceans — that is, dolphins, whales and porpoises — and artiodactyls — even-toed hoofed animals like pigs, sheep, deer, giraffes, and hippopotami. The fact that a predatory land animal could be closely related to both whales and sheep is nearly enough for me, but there’s more. The mesonychid (literally “middle claw”) was a jackal-sized apex predator throughout much of Paleocene Asia. Late in the species’ evolution, it walked on its toes, all of which ended in tiny hooves, lending them the description “wolves on hooves.”
And that’s just neat.
So please add the mesonychid to the list of Amazing Animals That Actually Happened, alongside the anteater, the cassowary, the axolotl and the milk-sweating platypus.
Though the creature superficially resembles a wolf, it’s actually more closely related to cetaceans — that is, dolphins, whales and porpoises — and artiodactyls — even-toed hoofed animals like pigs, sheep, deer, giraffes, and hippopotami. The fact that a predatory land animal could be closely related to both whales and sheep is nearly enough for me, but there’s more. The mesonychid (literally “middle claw”) was a jackal-sized apex predator throughout much of Paleocene Asia. Late in the species’ evolution, it walked on its toes, all of which ended in tiny hooves, lending them the description “wolves on hooves.”
And that’s just neat.
So please add the mesonychid to the list of Amazing Animals That Actually Happened, alongside the anteater, the cassowary, the axolotl and the milk-sweating platypus.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Chauncey Peppertooth Did Something Bad, Part Two
Consider this post the sequel to the July 2009 post “Chauncey Peppertooth Did Something Bad.” As with the original post, this one features a victim of Hillary’s dog, the aforementioned Mr. Peppertooth.
Both image source and dog victim are the same as in the original post. The strange sense sensation you’re feeling — a mix of “Aww, that’s cute!” and “Eww, that’s creepy” — is also the same as in the original post.
May all your eggs be marshmallow creme-filled.
Both image source and dog victim are the same as in the original post. The strange sense sensation you’re feeling — a mix of “Aww, that’s cute!” and “Eww, that’s creepy” — is also the same as in the original post.
May all your eggs be marshmallow creme-filled.
Alleluia, He Is Frozen!
And by he, I don’t mean the messiah of some weird, cryogenic-focused denomination of Christianity but instead the rotund little chick-shaped Easter pastry that I’ve been keeping in my freezer for the past four years.
My personal Easter ritual is to open his little Gladware tomb on Easter Sunday to ensure that he still exists and then return him to his frosty Hell for another year. And just for the record, I would be more inclined to support religious leaders covered in faux down made from coconut shavings.
Happy Easter!
My personal Easter ritual is to open his little Gladware tomb on Easter Sunday to ensure that he still exists and then return him to his frosty Hell for another year. And just for the record, I would be more inclined to support religious leaders covered in faux down made from coconut shavings.
Happy Easter!
Friday, April 2, 2010
An Alternate View of the World via Capcom’s Red Earth
Oh video games, and your unique perspective on the world around you.
In the 1996 arcade game Red Earth — a Street Fighter-like brawler with RPG elements, released in Japan as Warzard — your chosen character moves from location to location, vanquishing monsters and ridding the world of evil. You know, as one often does. But though Red Earth is a fantasy game — among the four selectable characters are a sword-wielding lion-man-thing and a witch — the setting is actually just a warped version of the real-world. See the map that shows you which destination you’ll next be duking it out with a monster:
In fact, this map is what I’m writing about. Given that the basis for Red Earth is the regular old green and blue earth, familiar, real-life geographic locations appear, just in odd ways. See the location in the upper-left corner, marked with an ice statue? The text on the map itself refers to the location as something beginning with frost, and when you actually fight at this stage, the screen introduces it as Icelarn. Obviously, it’s supposed to represent the frozen reaches of Scandinavia. The center of Africa, on the other hand, is Sahada, with the stage marked by the sphinx being Sangypt — you know, because Egypt has a lot of sand. (Wikipedia notes that in the Japanese version, this area was called Alanbird, a name I can’t make heads or tales of.) And the stand-in for Japan — oddly labeled The Kingdom of Reece on the map — is introduced when you arrive at this stage as Zipang, an alternate name for Japan.
What seems especially about Red Earth’s map screen, however, are the locations that are labeled even though no battles are fought there. For example, there’s Australia, called here Auster. Or there’s North America, referred to as Indean Land — a little awkward, I guess, but not offensive. And finally there’s the Middle East area of the map, marked with the less benign-sounding Evelious, which seems a little wrong. And the closest stage fought to Evelious? The Greece-themed one — called Savalia in the English version but Greedia in the Japanese one. This all seems suggestive attitudes toward this region of the word, at least when filtered through my American ears.
In all, it’s just interesting to see how one culture interprets the world for the purposes of a video game, and then how another would change or retain parts of this interpretation for another culture. Leaving Evelious but changing Greedia? Odd. Leaving Icelarn but switching out Alanbird for Sangypt? Also weird. I’m fascinated by how anyone would go through the process of saying “Yes, keep this but, no, get rid of that,” and what the motivations might be for protecting or indulging one culture’s sensibilities over another.
Not on the subject of national representation in video games but nonetheless worth mentioning in what will probably be my only-ever Red Earth-themed post: Tessa (Tabasa in the Japanese version), one of the four heroes and one who’s gotten a lot of play in other Capcom titles. In the story sequences that break up the fighting, Tessa speaks this line:
And I’m noting here because it perfectly exemplifies the logic of heroic characters in video games.
Finally, there’s also this:
You get this screen in Tessa’s ending if you choose the “bad” option: not destroying the horrible little alien creature being kept by the game’s main villain. Again you have to love video game dialogue. And the presumable logic behind the art design here: “Hey, wouldn’t this be better if Tessa was totally naked? Like, for no reason?”
(Images via this Red Earth playthrough.)
Game geek? Subscribe to the video games-only feed for Back of the Cereal Box.
In the 1996 arcade game Red Earth — a Street Fighter-like brawler with RPG elements, released in Japan as Warzard — your chosen character moves from location to location, vanquishing monsters and ridding the world of evil. You know, as one often does. But though Red Earth is a fantasy game — among the four selectable characters are a sword-wielding lion-man-thing and a witch — the setting is actually just a warped version of the real-world. See the map that shows you which destination you’ll next be duking it out with a monster:
In fact, this map is what I’m writing about. Given that the basis for Red Earth is the regular old green and blue earth, familiar, real-life geographic locations appear, just in odd ways. See the location in the upper-left corner, marked with an ice statue? The text on the map itself refers to the location as something beginning with frost, and when you actually fight at this stage, the screen introduces it as Icelarn. Obviously, it’s supposed to represent the frozen reaches of Scandinavia. The center of Africa, on the other hand, is Sahada, with the stage marked by the sphinx being Sangypt — you know, because Egypt has a lot of sand. (Wikipedia notes that in the Japanese version, this area was called Alanbird, a name I can’t make heads or tales of.) And the stand-in for Japan — oddly labeled The Kingdom of Reece on the map — is introduced when you arrive at this stage as Zipang, an alternate name for Japan.
What seems especially about Red Earth’s map screen, however, are the locations that are labeled even though no battles are fought there. For example, there’s Australia, called here Auster. Or there’s North America, referred to as Indean Land — a little awkward, I guess, but not offensive. And finally there’s the Middle East area of the map, marked with the less benign-sounding Evelious, which seems a little wrong. And the closest stage fought to Evelious? The Greece-themed one — called Savalia in the English version but Greedia in the Japanese one. This all seems suggestive attitudes toward this region of the word, at least when filtered through my American ears.
In all, it’s just interesting to see how one culture interprets the world for the purposes of a video game, and then how another would change or retain parts of this interpretation for another culture. Leaving Evelious but changing Greedia? Odd. Leaving Icelarn but switching out Alanbird for Sangypt? Also weird. I’m fascinated by how anyone would go through the process of saying “Yes, keep this but, no, get rid of that,” and what the motivations might be for protecting or indulging one culture’s sensibilities over another.
Not on the subject of national representation in video games but nonetheless worth mentioning in what will probably be my only-ever Red Earth-themed post: Tessa (Tabasa in the Japanese version), one of the four heroes and one who’s gotten a lot of play in other Capcom titles. In the story sequences that break up the fighting, Tessa speaks this line:
And I’m noting here because it perfectly exemplifies the logic of heroic characters in video games.
Finally, there’s also this:
You get this screen in Tessa’s ending if you choose the “bad” option: not destroying the horrible little alien creature being kept by the game’s main villain. Again you have to love video game dialogue. And the presumable logic behind the art design here: “Hey, wouldn’t this be better if Tessa was totally naked? Like, for no reason?”
(Images via this Red Earth playthrough.)
Game geek? Subscribe to the video games-only feed for Back of the Cereal Box.
On the Third Day (or Thereabouts) He Rose Again
So today is Good Friday, the day when Christians worldwide commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It’s a sad day, and I’ll preface this blog post with the disclaimer that I mean no disrespect towards anyone’s religion with the question I’m going to ask here. It’s a legitimate point of confusion for me that I’m not able to answer despite my years of Catholic school. The question is this: How is it possible that Jesus Christ died and rose again in three days?
I’m not inquiring about the nature of death and resurrection, here, however. My confusion is about the timeline. Think about it: Today is Friday. In two days, we celebrate Easter Sunday, the day on which Jesus is believed to have risen from the dead. If that’s the way the Easter story goes, then why do so many Christians believe that Christ rose from the dead on the third day? After all, Sunday is only two days after Friday, at least according to how anyone today reads a calendar.
For Catholics and other Christian denominations, the belief is put forward in the Nicene Creed, a profession of various tenets of faith often recited by the whole congregation during liturgies. At one point, the current version of the creed goes as follows:
I’ve always wondered this. If anyone can set me straight, I’d love to hear it.
I’m not inquiring about the nature of death and resurrection, here, however. My confusion is about the timeline. Think about it: Today is Friday. In two days, we celebrate Easter Sunday, the day on which Jesus is believed to have risen from the dead. If that’s the way the Easter story goes, then why do so many Christians believe that Christ rose from the dead on the third day? After all, Sunday is only two days after Friday, at least according to how anyone today reads a calendar.
For Catholics and other Christian denominations, the belief is put forward in the Nicene Creed, a profession of various tenets of faith often recited by the whole congregation during liturgies. At one point, the current version of the creed goes as follows:
And in one Lord Jesus Christ… who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father …I mean, I know that technically speaking, Sunday is the third day, after Friday and Saturday. But in the way the story is usually told, Jesus died on the cross at 3 p.m. on Good Friday and was alive again on Sunday morning. Wouldn’t that be less than a day-and-a-half? And just like how Jesus wasn’t actually born on December 25, he might not have been crucified on a Friday — and that day of the week wouldn’t have been called Friday, even if the calendar lined up. But then why don’t we space out Holy Week so that Christians get three days to observe the period that Jesus was dead?
I’ve always wondered this. If anyone can set me straight, I’d love to hear it.
i resisted the urge to photoshop a basketball onto jesus’s finger
Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Best Pranks of April Fools’ Day 2010!!!
Those newspapers and their crazy jokes! Nothing like laughing at yourself when you realize you’ve been had! Looking forward to April 1, 2011! Here’s the best I came across! Look out, Onion!
- Republican phone sex scandal, fundraising challenge add to RNC woes
- Actor John Malkovich Seeks $2.3 Million From Madoff Trustee
- Science writer Simon Singh wins libel appeal after 'Orwellian nightmare'
- Robin Williams's redneck gibe sets off a global chain of offence
- LL Cool J Dropped from Palin Program After Airing Complaint on Twitter
- Report: Jesse James admitted seven affairs to wife Sandra Bullock
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