Yar, it be talk like a pirate day, ye scurvy dog! In honor of the day, here be a most excellent presentation weighing the merits of pirates versus their most deadly enemies: ninjas.
Disposible Phone Numbers
On occasion, it might be useful to have a disposable phone number. For example, you might want to list something on eBay, or (for the old timers out there) maybe you’re just selling something in the newspaper. So you could publish a temporary phone number that would be forwarded to your regular phone, and people could call you to ask you for more information. Then, when the auction ended or the item sold, you could just cancel that phone number and never think about it again.
Enter iNumber.
As this article points out, this service isn’t really necessary if you have Google Voice, but if you just need a quick disposable number, you might not want to set up an entire Google Voice account. Just go to iNumber and do a one and done.
Nature is horrifying
I’m a sucker for any article with the headline “Zombie Ants Controlled by Fungus“.
So check this out, there is a fungus in this world whose life-cycle includes mind controlling zombie ants. Basically, the fungus somehow gets into the ants’ brain and takes control. It forces them to march to an area that is conducive to the fungus, in particular, the underside of certain leaves. Then it makes the ant bite down on the underside of the leaf, locking its jaws so that it will not fall when it dies. The fungus not only kills the ant, but it actually fills in weak spots in the ant’s carapace to make the “vessel” stronger. Eventually, the fungus feeds enough on the ant and grows enough, that it bursts out of the ant body and falls to the jungle floor below, hopefully snaring more ants to turn to zombies and start the process over again.
I don’t know if this is more or less horrifying than the Emerald Cockroach Wasp.
But that’s not all we have in horrifying nature updates, oh no. How about this doozy? This little parasite eats the tongue of a fish and then sets itself up to replace the fish’s tongue. That’s right, the fish actually lives on with a replacement parasite tongue.
Got your tongue!
I like how in the picture he just looks so happy, like he’s rubbing his little hands in glee.
More information here, including this wonderful quote:
“Eventually the fish’s tongue is reduced to a stub,” Brock said. “However, the parasite by now is large enough to replace the tongue and as it manipulates the fish’s food, it also dines out for free on food particles when the fish eats.”
More and more creepy things just waiting to turn this world into a horror movie. And, like I said with the rat eating plant, how am I just finding out about these things now?
Anybody looking for some real estate?
Here’s a really nice house, with some nice neighbors. I’d go so far as to say you will never find better neighbors…the Obamas. Of course, you can’t actually go and see the house or make a bid until you have been vetted by the secret service. In fact, I can attest that you can’t even get onto the street to see the “for sale” sign.
You can see the floor plans here. As you can see, the current configuration is only for 8 bedrooms, 5 baths, but there is plenty of room to expand that. The entire bottom floor is just storage room (their laundry room is significantly bigger than their kitchen). I think you could probably get 12 bedrooms out of that. So this would be a pretty expensive house *without* taking the house next door into account.
Unfortunately, they didn’t set an asking price. But, considering they have an entire “sales team” to handle the requests, I think it is safe to say it will be pricey (even though they say it is a “fixer upper”). The interesting thing is that they paid only $35,000 for it in 1973. You might say, “But $35k meant something different in 1973. That was actually a lot of money!” Well, it was more than it is now, but according to the calculation Sara looked up, $35,000.00 in 1973 had about the same buying power as $173,130.59 in 2009. And that house would probably be over $3 million now, even without the president.
But I digress. Buy the house and you’ll be pretty close to some other nice neighbors. I might even let you invite me over for a beer summit (as long as, you know, you don’t actually expect me to drink beer).
Supernatural
There is a show on the CW called Supernatural, and I’m here to tell you, this show is awesome. The show stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles as brothers Sam and Dean Winchester. They were raised as “hunters” by their dad, and basically go around disposing of supernatural baddies.
I wanted to write this post a long time ago, so that people would start watching this show and it wouldn’t get canceled, but I guess people were watching it anyway because it never got canceled, and I think it is in the final season.
This show gets better and better the more I watch it, and I highly recommend it. Obviously, two guys who fight supernatural creatures is sort of up my alley to begin with, but believe you me, there are PLENTY of shows with that premise that are wretched. The acting is good, and I could genuinely believe the two of them are brothers. Supernatural is creepy, funny, and (perhaps hardest of all) doesn’t come across as cheesy. Maybe this is because they don’t take themselves completely seriously. All of that is hard enough, but there are two other traps the show has avoided falling into, which are most impressive.
First off, the show manages to maintain the balance of throw away episodes and story arc. When the show began, there wasn’t much connection between episodes. The Winchester boys would show up, kick some supernatural henie, and ride off into the sunset. These kind of shows are great escapes because you don’t need to engage your brain. However, after a time, shows like this get a “what’s the point” kind of feel, and the writers usually transition to a more over-arching storyline to tie the season together. Sometimes when this happens, a show loses it. Some shows really are cut out to be single episode, stand alone shows. For example, I personally feel that Buffy worked better this way; in the last season, every episode was working towards the finale and it was awful. Supernatural somehow manages to have an overall storyline, with plenty of individual, stand-alone episodes and yet the stand-alone episodes frequently tie-in in some way, without seeming awkward.
The other trap the show manages to avoid is “villain escalation”. Often in books or T.V. shows (or even movie franchises), the heroes have to defeat certain bad guys in order to prevail. If the book or show is successful and a sequel is needed, the writers feel the need to out-do their previous effort. This usually results in a new, even MORE POWERFUL bad guy showing up. This happens time and time again, until the heroes are so powerful that the original bad guy wouldn’t have lasted a second against them. This is sort of the natural progression of things, and I’m not saying it doesn’t happen in Supernatural, but to at least some degree, anything from the first season is still trouble. For example, although they know how to deal with ghosts, an episode that has them fighting a ghost is still a good episode; you never feel like they should easily be able to defeat it.
I have only two quibbles with the show, one small and one large. The small one is that this show followed directly on the heals of Gilmore Girls, also on the CW. On that show, Jared Padalecki played a character named Dean. Then he comes over to this show and immediately becomes the brother Sam, NOT the brother named Dean. I understand he’s just an actor playing a role, but did Supernatural just HAVE to use the name Dean for one of its characters? This was very confusing for at least 2 seasons.
The bigger (biggest) problem with the show is that it is not available online! (legally) This is particularly a problem since it is on Thursday nights, up against Grey’s Anatomy and The Office. I think the show is popular, I don’t know the numbers, but there’s no way people are tuning in to it over Grey’s and The Office. Those people (like myself) are forced to try to catch reruns when they can, missing many episodes. What reason could their possibly be to stack your network’s best show against such heavy hitters, and then not make it available online. It’s like you don’t want me to watch it.
Well this season my friends, we’re putting our money where our mouths are (and by mouth, I mean this blog post). Sara has moved Supernatural to the top of our TiVo queue, over Grey’s and The Office. That’s right, you heard me. But the fact is, those shows are available online. Maybe this was the CW’s ploy, but I can’t imagine it’s working.
Okay, so final word on the subject. This was an outake from one of the episodes. The shot in the episode ended right before the “rising up”, but Jensen Ackles decided to take it to the next level. You can hear the camera guys laughing, but they let the camera roll:
EDIT: Okay, boo, they disabled embedding on that one, but it’s the best copy. So just click the “watch on youtube” link in the middle of the screen.
You can also check out some good clips (mostly) from season 2.
Shane Halbach 