Raygan’s Blog

I’ve been enjoying this live 24 hour webcam of African wildlife. It seems to be maintained by someone who occasionally checks in on it and re-orients it to look at the most interesting stuff, and it has high quality video and sound, as well as night vision.

If you look in during the day you’ll probably see black and white night vision video due to the time difference, but in the evenings and mornings this area seems to be crawling with giraffes and zebras, and some people say they’ve seen cheetahs and other big cats.

It’s a good source of neutral, nature background noise, and occasionally, there’s a giraffe!

Dan Reeder’s weird blues music and visual art Kills Fascists.

You can hear a few of Dan’s songs on his MySpace. I’m a particular fan of his mantra-esque “Work Song”, which I heard first on the soundtrack of the Emmy winning Showtime comedy, Weeds, now in its second season.

So I had never seen the epic 1989 Patrick Swayze bouncer odyssey Road House before. In fact it had never even occurred to me to so much glance at the DVD case at the video store as I walked by it looking for a copy of Sin City or whatever. I have learned the error of my ways.

For those of you who remember it, the show Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a touchstone, and Michael J. Nelson was it’s star, head writer, and co-creator. Since the show ended in 1999, Mike Nelson has been writing books, appearing on DVD commentary tracks, and doing other generally very funny stuff. His new venture is is RiffTrax, a service where he provides MST3K-like audio-tracks making fun of big budget Hollywood movies, to be played in conjunction with a DVD. It sounds like it would be a difficult idea to make work, but it was awesome. And it only cost two bucks.

Road House, plus Mike Nelson’s commentary, was a blast. RiffTrax has lots of other less-than-stellar Hollywood movies available, form Star Trek V to Crossroads, the Brittney Spears movie. Of course you have to actually be able to rent Crossroads without being to embarrassed to bring it to the counter, but that’s your problem.

(This concludes my advertisement for RiffTrax. Mike, I’m waiting for my check.)

Art Brut was great.

That is all.

Moo.com has this new program where you can get your Flickr photos printed directly on the back of these neat little slimline business cards. I’ve never been the type to hand out business cards, but I’m ordering the (free to Flickr Pro users!) 10 card sampler, to try these out. They seem like the kind of thing I wouldn’t be ashamed to have in my wallet, or give to someone who needed my phone number.

The thing I got to thinking about though, is that these would be perfect for actors. On the front you’ve got your name and contact info, and maybe the url of your resume online. On the back you’ve got a little miniature glossy headshot. It’s no replacement for a full headshot/resume, but it would be a neat little thing to carry around in your wallet for those times when you wish you had a headshot.

AVAST, ME HEARTIES! TIS’ TRUE, TODAY BE TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY, THROUOUT THE LAND AND ACROSS ALL THE SEVEN SEAS. YE SKURVY DOGS BEST BE PAYIN’ HEED TO THIS MOST IMPORTANT EVENT.

IF YE BE NEEDIN’ HELP GETTIN’ STRAIGHT YER “YARRS” “HARRS” AND “ARRRS”, HERE’S A FINE VIDEO TO HELP YE.

If you’ve never seen Bullshit! on Showtime, it’s a show where every episode Penn Jilette picks a topic he thinks is bullshit, and in about half an hour he explains in detail why it is bullshit. It’s a great documentary program and has a lot of excellent points to make.

Now I’ve found a website that lis links to nearly every episode of the show available free online on Google Video. Check it out! The episode on how The Boy Scouts are bullshit is particularly good.

Weird Wikipedia article:

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” is a grammatically valid sentence used as an example of how homophones can be used to create complicated constructs.

(Essentially, it means that the buffalo from Buffalo [New York] that the other buffalo from Buffalo buffalo [buffalo as a verb meaning intimidate], buffalo a third set of buffalo, also from Buffalo)

Now you know, and learning is half the battle!

I finally got around to making my MySpace profile all pretty. Seriously, MySpace is the ugliest site on the entire internet, and I’m including this groaner right here (which you should really take a look at just for a chuckle).

Yeah, so now I pretty much have the best MySpace profile out there. I even used a Godzilla font in the header for extra awesomeness. But after I finished, I realized this was another one of those “Special Olympics” things where, even if you win, you’re still retarded. No matter how pretty it is, it’s still a MySpace profile.

Oh well.

(And for the record I’d like to state that I support the Special Olympics and have a deep respect and sympathy for the athaletes that participate in it. Seriously, some of my best friends are retards.)

So maybe things haven’t been all that exciting lately, but let me tell you, a man in a shiny confederate soldier’s uniform riding an ostrich is always interesting. So, ever the public servant, I provide you with just that.

You’re welcome.