Funny Pic of the Day: Ghostbusters vs. Jesus

My bro sent this one to me - as a big Ghostbusters fan I thought it was roflcoptors!

One of the Biggest Waves You'll Ever See

There is surfing.. and then there is SURFING.

Word of the Day: Ponzi Scheme

Overview

A Ponzi scheme usually offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice new investors. The high returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises (and pays) require an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.

The system is doomed to collapse because there are little or no underlying earnings from the money received by the promoter. However, the scheme is often interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses, because a Ponzi scheme is suspected and/or because the promoter is selling unregistered securities. (As more and more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities will continue to increase.)

The scheme is named after Charles Ponzi, who became notorious for using the technique after immigrating to the United States from Italy in 1903. Ponzi was not the first to invent such a scheme, but his operation took in such a large amount of money that it was the first to become known nationwide. Today's schemes are often considerably more sophisticated than Ponzi's, although the underlying formula is quite similar and the principle behind every Ponzi scheme is to exploit lapses in judgment arising out of greed.

Family Guy Clips

Ahh I Love Family Guy

Not Dead

Sorry for the lack of posts recently - I shall return to form shortly! Meanwhile, I'm going to go check out Germany vs. Poland in Round 2 of the World Cup!

Three Movie Trailers You Need To Watch Now

Superman Returns Trailer 2
Following a mysterious absence of several years, the Man of Steel comes back to Earth in the epic action-adventure Superman Returns, a soaring new chapter in the saga of one of the world’s most beloved superheroes. While an old enemy plots to render him powerless once and for all, the woman he loves, Lois Lane, has moved on with her life.

Lady In the Water Trailer 2
Cleveland Heep rescues a mysterious young woman and discovers she is actually a narf, a character from a bedtime story who is trying to make the treacherous journey from our world back to hers. As Cleveland falls in love with the woman, he works together with the tenants to protect his new fragile friend from the deadly creatures that are determined to prevent her from returning home.

A Prairie Home Companion (filmed here in Minnesota!)
Garrison Keillor's old-school radio show is going to be cancelled. A huge cast directed by Altman. This one should be a hilarious character movie.

Let's Make Movies!

One of my good friends from L.A. wrote this book with his brother. It's called The Official Movie Plot Generator.

Book Description
Perfect for anyone who loves movies--The Official Movie Plot Generator is part humor book, part game, part creative tool. Simply flip the tabs to discover , hilarious movie plot combinations. Whether its A single mom fighting crime with a wise-cracking robot or Bigfoot coaching a little league baseball team, your combination is sure to become the next blockbuster.

Amazon.com: Official Movie Plot Generator

The movie I just put together:

A hooker with a heart of gold/battles an advancing horde of insectoid aliens/set against the backdrop of a Florida retirement community

Official Site: http://www.movieplotgenerator.com/

Put together a movie plot in the comments below!

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

I love watching how people recut movie trailers to portray the film as a totally different genre! Here's the 10 Commandments recut:

10 Things I Hate About Commandments



Throw your two cents into comments!

How About Some Video?

E3 Metal Gear 4 Video:

Let's just get it out of the way: Snake's gonna die at the end. Now, before anyone starts firing off the hate mail about spoilers, they should watch the trailer for director Hideo Kojima's swan song to everyone's favorite tactical stealth action hero. Once viewers get past the amazing visuals (all done using the in-game graphics engine, and not rendered cutscenes) and stunning details, they will see what is essentially a bittersweet denouement criticizing a future of corporatized warfare and the role of the military-industrial complex. Maybe. Or they'll just see an incredibly rendered, aesthetically pleasing finale to one of the most beloved gaming franchises of all time. Perhaps. Or perhaps they'll be stuck on the fact that Raiden seems to have up and gotten all badass again in a scene that sounds slightly cool in print and pants-crappingly amazing in motion. Yeah, that's about right.

Check out the trailer at GameSpy.com

AND:

New T.I. Video at YouTube.com

AND:

Conan O'Brien has a whole new site complete with a ton of videos from his show - check it out.

Trader Joe's Opens in St. Louis Park

Hey - another taste of California comes to Minnesota:

Trader Joe's finally opened in St. Louis Park on Monday, ending months of speculation for those who were eager to see the California food retailer bring to town its variety of quirky, cultish supermarkets.

But its successful business model of selling store-branded items -- 80 percent of the items are Trader Joe's private label -- already has made deep inroads into Minnesota, where Byerly's, Supervalu and others have jumped on to the private-label bandwagon.

Read more at the Star Tribune. Check out the TraderJoes.com site.

Froogle Wishlist

Just started playing with Froogle's Wishlist - I put up a couple pairs of kicks that look sweet. With this and Amazon.com's Wishlists you might always get what you want for the rest of time!

How The Kids Are Blogging

With the advent of text messaging (or "txt msgng") - I think we're on the verge of having an English within an English language. Check out this blog I found while surfing around Blogger.

FINALLY. finally can blog. =.=
Gt footy todae. Den gt eog test. I DIE liao. All e long long ans de, my ans all vvvv short. =.= Gimme 8 lines, i write 2 lines. =.=''' Den gt geog lesson. Miss ms seetho. =x Den gt HMT lesson. Gt compo test. I DIN WRITE FINISH MY COMPO. gosh. die. Den recess. dun lyk recess. always cant decide wad to eat. l0ls. After tt gt eng lit. Maths next. Yar. Still learing algebra. Can apporoach mi 4 help. Rmb? i m SUPPOSED to b gd at it. =.='''
YESH.G0in bak to help out e P5 camp. XD Wear wad ar? Fuchun uni???? l0ls. I dunn0 wares mine liao. =.= It's g0in to b fun. At least i tink it will b. l0ls.

Read more from Aikky at her blog FwenS ForeveRR

Reality Theory: It Always Feels Like - Someone Is Watching Me

Remember Will Smith and Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State? Well - we've finally gotten there in real life.

He said the work the agency did after hurricanes Rita and Katrina was the best he'd seen an intelligence agency do in his 42 years in the spy business.

"This was kind of a direct payback to the taxpayers for the investment made in this agency over the years, even though in its original design it was intended for foreign intelligence purposes," Clapper said in a Thursday interview with The Associated Press.

Geospatial intelligence is the science of combining imagery, such as satellite pictures, to physically depict features or activities happening anywhere on the planet. A part of the Defense Department, the NGA usually operates unnoticed to provide information on nuclear sites, terror camps, troop movements or natural disasters.

I wonder what else we can do with this kickass technology?

Privacy advocates wonder how much the agency picks up — and stores. Many are increasingly skeptical of intelligence agencies with recent revelations about the Bush administration's surveillance on phone calls and e-mails.

Among the government's most closely guarded secrets, the quality of pictures NGA receives from classified satellites is believed to far exceed the one-meter resolution available commercially. That means they can take a satellite "snapshot" from high above the atmosphere that is crisply detailed down to one meter level, which is 3.3 feet.

Clapper says his agency only does big pictures, so concerns about using the NGA's foreign intelligence apparatus at home doesn't apply.

"We are not trying to examine an individual dwelling, for example, because what our mission is normally going to be is looking at large areas," he said. "It doesn't really affect or threaten anyone's privacy or civil liberties when you are looking at a large collective area."

Well at least we have very experienced, professional folks running this branch of national security right?

Experience-wise, the agency is among the youngest of the spy agencies. About 40 percent of the agency's analyst have been hired in the last five years."They are very inexperienced, and that's just fine. They don't have any baggage," said Clapper, who retires next month as the longest serving agency director. "The people that we are getting now are bright, computer literate. ... That is not something I lie awake and worry about."

It always feels like - somebody's watching me - and I got no privacy!

Chuck Norris Facts

A few pre-weekend facts to get you going:

Guns don't kill people. Chuck Norris kills People.
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
The chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain.
There is no chin under Chuck Norris' Beard. There is only another fist.

For more visit ChuckNorrisFacts.com

More Joram on Blogger

While I have never met another Joram in real life - I did a search on Blogger on the term "Joram" and came up an interesting match:

Forging the Darksword by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Started: 4/21/06
Finished: 4/24/06
Pages: 391
Year: 1987
Genre: Fantasy
Grade: C
Reason for reading: grabbed it off the shelf (from a bookbox)
Blurb (from back cover): "In the enchanted realm of Merilon, magic is life.

"Born without magical abilities and denied his birthright, Joram is left for dead. Yet he grows to manhood in a remote country village, hiding his lack of powers only through constant vigilance and ever more skillful sleight-of-hand.

"Forced to kill a man in self-defense, Joram can keep his secret from the townspeaople no longer; he has no magic, no life. Fleeing to the Outlands, Joram joins the outlawed Technologists, who practice the long forbidden arts of science. Here he meets the scholarly catalyst Saryon, who has been sent on a special mission to hunt down a mysterious "dead man" and instead finds himself in a battle of wits and power with a renegade warlock of the dark Duuk-tsarith caste."

"Together, Joram and Saryon begin their quest toward a greater destiny-a destiny that begins with the discovery of the secret books that will enable them to overthrow the evil usurper Blachloch...and forge the powerful magic-absorbing Darksword."

Opinion: Anyone who knows me knows that I usually despise fantasy books. However, this one was okay-certainly not the best but I didn't end up throwing it across the subway while reading it.

I was often asked if my name came from this fantasy book when posting on message boards across the web - this is the first time I've actually seen something about the book! The fan reviewer pretty much trashed the book so I probably won't bother finding out too much more about it.

Check out Ollie's World of Books

You Know What I Miss? Bubble Up

I haven't had this pop (soda for the rest of you) in years... has anyone seen it for sale lately anywhere? It tastes like a blend of Sprite and 7-Up.

Links:

Wikipedia Definition

MySpace

I have a MySpace profile if you're into that.

New St. Paul Hang-Out: Chatterbox Bar

From StarTribune.com:

It's inspired by the neighborhood bar of the same name in south Minneapolis, which, even on weeknights, packs in hipsters longing for beer-filled evenings of "Battleship" and "Super Mario Bros."

The owners have expanded on that retro concept. The new bar is three times the size of the original, with more vintage sofas, funky lamps, black vinyl diner booths and bad landscape paintings straight from Grandma's house. They've boosted their gaming, too.

Sounds like it's actually a place I'd check out - beer and old school Mario Bros. on flatscreens! I looked for a website for the new restaurant but I couldn't find one - for a place that is catering to the Gen X/Gen Y crowd I found that very curious.

One For My Brother

My brother has a weakness for redheads. Here's a new one for you L:

Sporting a new red-haired look, Jessica Simpson applauds while presenting an award during the 2006 National Council of La Raza ALMA Awards in Los Angeles, Sunday, May 7, 2006. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

While I'm a gentleman and prefer blondes - I think it kinda works for Miss Simpson.

Pimp My Friends - Abstract Photography

Another shot from Abstract-Photography.com:



You can check out more digital B & W here.