Bright Ideas

I'm sure this title will not be sarcastic.

Two movies are coming out which you should know about. Sadly not because of the sheer amount of awesome each represents. Fox is putting out a Family Circus movie, and the Creative Arts Agency is writing a script to make a Rubik's Cube movie.

I'd probably at least rent the rubik's cube one if it involved a cube that gave superpowers or something when it was solved. Sadly it seems that they are writing a script based on a Rubik's Cube speed solving competition. Early reports assume that consumers will get fed up with the movie after 5 minutes tear up the reel and reassemble the movie the easy way.

I might watch the Family Circus one with the help of Riff Trax.

I should have opened with this news.

Back in October The London Times reported that Fifa officials were taking bribes to choose which country would get the 2018 and 2022 Olympics. Saying that Russia had been bribing for the '18 games, and Australia was bribing for the '22 games. There has also been accusations about South Africa (the '10 hosts), Brazil (the upcoming '14 hosts) and USA and Qatar (both '22 hopefuls). These have not been confirmed.

So a high raking offical in FIFA has leaked that England will not win the '18 bid because they broke this news. Meaning that the running is either going to be Spain/Portugal or Russia. Russia says they were entrapped, Fifa says England should have told them before going to print.

But basically if Russia gets the next world cup you'll know what's up. If Spain gets it, it might mean they are trying to draw attention away from this. If England does end up winning it would mean this source is wrong, or that FIFA changed their mind.

The Vote will be on Dec 2nd (at 9am Central Time) for both the '18 host and the '22 host.

History

Looks like this is going to be a grab bag as well, none of the links really have much in common. But in historical news today is the anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall and yesterday was the anniversary of the discovery of X-rays (happened in Wurzburg, Germany).

Conan OBrien's show starts today. And evidently he wants everything to be perfect.

A photo from the upcoming muppet movie.

Did you ever get to go to Six Flags New Orleans? No?This may be your last chance to see it. It was deserted after Katrina and has never been reopened.

Almost 100,000 toothpicks is a weird way to make art.

grab bag again.

Because Jen is driving everyone nuts about Dr. Who, here are some Dr. Who links.

Lego Who? I am such a nerd, my first thought was Doctor 11's sonic screwdriver is the wrong color.

Tardis dress. Your girlfriend will dump you if you make any "bigger on the inside" jokes.

And because everyone freaks out when they see it. The coolest table ever.

Got a t-shirt that's to big. Here's how to fix it.

Slow Motion Popcorn

OWWWWWWWWWwwwww! OW! Ow! ow! Seriously, here's a martial art your not tough enough to do.

Nun Fight.

John Cleese on the muppets...for no reason.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Today was supposed to be my grab bag post, but not anymore. Betrayal at House on the Hill is being reprinted.

"What's that?" you ask. It is a horror themed board game where you're investigating a haunted house. But the real fun of this game is that one of the party members (players) is the killer/psycho/evil being/ect. And what's more is it's random, the game has a system where the scenario changes based on what rooms you're in and who sets the betrayal in motion. My group of friends has been looking for a copy of this since around last Halloween when the Iowa side of our group brought it down.

It's been out of print till now, and used copies were selling on ebay for around 70-80 dollars.

I have played this game 4 times. And so far we've had to fight a group of cannibals and their queen (played by my wife), the Midgardian serpent (Kaiser), aliens (Greypaw), and a flesh man who absorbs people (Greypaw again). A blurb on the website for the game claims there are 50 different outcomes. I have not confirmed this yet, but plan to check.

Supposedly WoTC/Avalon Hill will also be releasing expansions via the interwebs. So that the stories can continually change.

I highly recommend this game especially now that the new printing does not require you to carry around pages of errata to fix the misprints of the original game. Also the rules are not so crazy as to scare away new people, but still deep enough that some strategy is possible.

Our usual play through took about 1-2 hours depending on the luck of the draw.

Word

I posted Ernie Cline's before. But it bears repeating. Give some of his tracks a listen over atSpoken Word.

20 Awesome untranslatable words. Yes schadenfreude is on there, that's probably the only one you'll know.

Mr. Doctorow

I might be a little late to the party so forgive me for this, but I'm currently reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. I read his book Little Brother while traveling through Germany and I have got to say, this man writes Sci-Fi that seems possible. Both books are set in the near future. Little Brother had small things like the X-Box Universal (the next x-box...next box if you will. Where Microsoft gives the console away for free and charges a ridiculous amount for games and peripherals), that seemed so logical a next step that sometimes I wondered if I just didn't miss the announcement.

In both books Mr. Doctorow writes about gait-recognition software. A type of tech that would allow people to be identified by their walk. In Makers its being used to make a device for peoples homes that would unlock their doors while they are walking up the driveway. In Little Brother its used to keep an eye on kids in schools so they don't sneak out, but its also used by homeland security to keep an eye on people.

I got to thinking last night, does this exist. It sounds sci-fi, but it plausible. Sure enough it is a real technology. Yet the technology is in its infancy.

By the way Mr. Doctorow publishes his books under creative commons meaning you can download them for free if you aren't going to make any money off of it. Very nice for those of you who have an e-reader or don't mind reading from a computer. But you should definitely read his works.

And now for a silly link. Make a silly product get silly reviews. The Amazon community strikes again. For my money the best comments are about the airline pilots and the review claiming this is the worst ironing board.

WTF files

4chan to get its own Federal Investigation...for child pornography.

Moving on to happier news

This is why your not allowed to have an inception kit. What's with all the inception links lately?

A song about what not to say to your wife. Set to Green Day's "Time of Your Life".

From our WTF files. Pee Wee Herman and his cousin get in a fight on the WWE. It's good to see the WWE has continued giving high quality entertainment since I stopped watching.

Grab Bag

I was going to post about elections, but I got nothing to say that isn't true of most elections. The Puppy Mill Bill passed by less then 60,000 votes.

So here's some stuff that you might find interesting/funny.

First off in case you need to add dramatic effect to anything you say. It's the inception button.

Capt America pics. Shirtless shot for the ladies.

From the please explain it in terms of movies because we can't understand the science without the reference.Delete Tramatic Memories like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I get that more people probably will read this because of the reference...ignore me I'm in a mood to yell at stuff today.

Election Day, the least magical day of the year.

Well lets get baseball out of the way first. The Giants beat the Rangers last night, and San Francisco has it's first World Series title.

Don't forget today is election day. I hope you all have done your homework.

And here to guide us out this week. some wise words from Vincent Price.

Sports...slap, pull, observe, release, tap, squeeze

Don't have any links for you today.

But I wanted to let people know that you can now get espn3 through your X-Box. Thanks to Kaze who let me know this. Now you are saying so what? Well if you ever wanted to see whats so cool about European Soccer or Rugby now is your chance, and a lot of the games can be viewed a day or two later so you don't have to let them interfere with your schedule.

Congrats to the Texas Rangers who won a game in the World Series on Saturday. They are the first Texas based team to win a game in the World Series. The Houston Astros were in the Series in 2005 and lost all 4 games.

Also if any one is interested in Hockey. Or was interested in learning about hockey now is an excellent time, because the St. Louis Blues are off to an excellent start. Their next game is Thursday against the Sharks. It will be on Fox Sports Midwest, or on 1120AM on your radio. For those of us with out cable, the internet and radio are the only ways.

Also I'll be very impressed if anyone can get what the title of this post is about.
Doubly impressed if you don't use google.