First, a man tries to pay his bill with a drawing of a spider. Then, the spider drawing sold for $15,000 on ebay.

That reminds me. I've got this gnarly quarter that I was nervous to try on my building's notoriously fussy laundry machines. Instead, I've decided to try and spend it at Starbucks, which I honestly didn't think would be much of a challenge. However, the first time I tried to use it, the cashier refused to take it, offering to cover the change for me instead. After that, each time I've tried to use it, the people at the register have given me my coffee for free. It's proven a hellish road towards achieving my goals, but a somewhat cosmic avenue to getting free coffee.

Detroit Metal City is pretty hilarious.

Souichi Negishi is a shy young man who came from the rural Ota Prefecture to Tokyo for college and wished to become a trendy pop singer. However, for some reason he became the singer and songwriter of a metal band named "Detroit Metal City," with a stage name "Johannes Krauser II." Whenever he wears the heavy makeup, Negishi becomes a completely different person, shouting the most vulgar profanities beyond anyone's imagination. With the popularity of DMC increases, Negishi starts worrying his double personalities can have negative effects on his (romantic) life off stage.

Godzilla has always been a creature of nature- a response to man's destructive technological prowess. And now, like so many times before, the unstoppable giant kaiju is back once more, this time more in a more literally ecological context. Sort of. Well see, he's back as a tree.

Godzilla Tree Terrorizes City



The video where they dramatically explore each angle of the tree that doesn't look like Godzilla is a nice treat.

Just in case you were hoping to do some homework before the next onslaught of comic book movies, here's a list of 75 comics (possibly) being made into films.

Oh, and while it's not on the list, they're making a movie version of Watchmen, too. Dunno if you'd heard.

From wikipedia:
On 15 November 2008 the team of Weijers Domino Productions tried to break the world record domino toppling. They did set up 4.5 million dominoes in the WTC Expo Center in Leeuwarden to try topping the previous record of 2 years ago, which was at 4,079,381 dominoes toppled. Although one Builder Challenge failed, the record was broken with 4,345,027 dominoes toppled.



Video link here.

So here's something. About an hour ago, AP released two articles. The first, from Lincoln, Nebraska, was "Driver sentenced for throwing axe at motorist." This was followed a few minutes later with an article out of Port Orchard, Washington; "Motorist accused of throwing wrench at vehicle."

I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned here, cosmic or otherwise, even if it is just as simple as "an axe will hurt more."

rubicante_kid posted a photo:

rubicante_kid posted a photo:

Urban legend turned science tells tales of a day when great machine secured away in the vault of every major record label will algorithmically interpret the waveform from a song and determine whether or not the song will be a hit. Spooky, no? But with that much in mind, it makes sense that efforts towards making similar predictions about the popularity of internet content wouldn't be too far behind.

Two researchers from HP's Social Computing lab, Bernardo Huberman and Gabor Szabo, just published a pretty in-depth study surrounding new content on YouTube and Digg, aimed at predicting the level of traffic and traction submissions might achieve. Unfortunately, a lot of this bounced up and over my head pretty quickly. However, there is some interesting analysis in here, including the optimal times of day to post new content and the expected length of time to measure general success by.

The pdf is here for general consumption.

rubicante_kid posted a photo:

rubicante_kid posted a photo:

While I won't take credit/blame, I suppose this is a piece of nonsense I was sorta asking for. A while back I was railing against these flatbed trucks that drive around town with nothing but giant signs on the back. Basically mobile billboards, and an idiotic waste of gas. I haven't seen one in while, but this afternoon I saw the next best thing; billboards pulled by recumbent bikes. A squadron of four futuristically-shielded bikes, actually. I couldn't quite make out what the signs were for, but by the time it all started to sink in, I didn't really care. I'm trying to decide if I think a billboard towed by a Segway would be more or less ridiculous, but I guess it's only a matter of time before things head that way, so no matter.

Better than the trucks tho, no doubt about that.