If you’re not on Facebook, this is a couple of screenshots from my “feed” there. This particular person first became a “fan” of  ”Fox Business and 11 others” which included Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy and Fox News. Two minutes later they posted their message opposing the new health care reform law. Subsequent comments revealed that it’s extremely unlikely this person understands anything substantial about the debate.

Ashley Todd

In case you don’t recognize this young woman, her name is Ashley Todd and she works for the John McCain campaign. A few days ago she reported being robbed and molested by a black man who, once he deduced that she worked for McCain, became enraged and carved a “B” on her face. She has since confessed to making the whole thing up and inflicting the damage herself. Obviously, she would have gotten away with it if she had just carved an “O”.

I shot the video when everyone else was out of the house and then showed it to them when they got back. Thomas edited the video and added the sound effects. Note that Rory was doing this for several minutes before I grabbed the camera. Crazy kitten!

Watching the second half of this video really reminded me of a sketch that Fred Armistan does on Weekend Update. Kevin James only came equipped with his talking points and when asked to back them up, he can’t even complete a sentence.

Wikipedia has a detailed entry about the show but I’ll summarize for those of you that don’t want to read the whole thing:

• Lorelai Gilmore and her illegimate daughter Rory live in tiny Stars Hollow which is a short drive from Hartford, CT.
• Lorelai comes from “old money” but she ran away from home after she became pregnant as a teenager. She scraped and worked and built a modestly profitable career for herself as an inn-keeper in Stars Hollow, a very small but quaint town with colorful characters (think Northern Exposure without the snow).
• Rory is incredibly smart and aspires to a more challenging education than Lorelai can afford. Eventually, they broker a deal with Lorelai’s estranged parents in which they pay for her tuition at a private school and Rory and Lorelai are obligated to attend dinner at their house once a week.

The show mostly follows Rory and Lorelai after Rory begins attending fictional Chilton Academy in Hartford. The Friday night dinners with parents Emily and Richard are masterpieces of dialog writing. The character development is also well done and by the end of the first season I felt like I knew the main characters as well as I know most of my own friends. In addition to the Gilmores, the towns folk of Stars Hollow are also well-developed and multi-faceted. There’s even a town troubador played by Grant Lee Phillips who occasionally serves the role of Greek chorus.

Although Rory and Lorelai are the obvious heroes of the show, their characters are complex and sometimes makes choices that are less than perfect. At one point, I was ready to stop watching the show when Rory lost her virginity to her married ex-boyfriend (sorry for the spoiler) but the subsequent handling of the plot was so beautiful and so real that it only served to further cement my love of the show.

I’m not sure why the show was off my radar for so long or why so few people know of it, but consider this my highest recommendation for a TV series. All seven seasons are available on DVD but ABC Family airs an episode at 11:00 am and 5:00 pm each weekday (according to their website). Starting on Friday (May 16) this week, they will have reached the end of season six and will start over with the pilot episode. They air them serially so you can see the whole series over the course of a few months. Check your local listings and set your DVR’s!

]]> http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/05/gilmore-girls/feed 0 http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/05/lolcats http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/05/lolcats#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 20:08:20 +0000 Mitchell Laurren-Ring http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/?p=639 lolcats" already. If you're not a nerd (which is more likely), then you either have never heard of lolcats or you have but don't know what it is. Allow me to explain.]]> If you’re a nerd like me, you probably know all about “lolcats” already. If you’re not a nerd (which is more likely), then you either have never heard of lolcats or you have but don’t know what it is. Allow me to explain.

A number of humor sites on the internet feature something called “photoshop contests” wherein a particular photograph is modified to (hopefully) comic effect. One particular site (4chan) began having “caturdays” in which the contests would be cat-oriented. Eventually, the idea became more widespread and websites devoted to lolcats began to appear. The most famous of these is probably icanhascheezburger.com, where lolcats developed it’s own subculture and vocabulary. Here is one of the first lolcat pictures:

The caption represents what the cat is saying or thinking and is usually in broken English that can best be described as “baby talk”. If cats learned English from the way their owners talk to them, you can imagine that many of them might talk this way. The peculiar phrasing served as a precedent for later pictures. Here is another oft-used idiom:

Lolcats can often be found “in ur noun, verbing ur plural noun.” This one departs slightly from the formula:

Lolcats can also take on specific roles in which they are renamed to reflect that role. The first was “monorail cat”:

 

Others would follow:

Eventually, somebody invented “ceiling cat” who is the Creator of all lolcats:

Although ceiling cat’s first appearance was somewhat off-color, future appearances were less risque:

Sometime after that, ceiling cat’s nemesis, “basement cat”, came to be:

Another favorite device is to pretend an imaginary, invisible object is in the picture:

Sometimes the lolcat is helpful or generous, but fails due to personal weakness:

Of course, there are variations on that theme:

Some pictures depict the lolcat in a particular situation expressing human emotion:

Like a child, the lolcat mostly likes playing games that require imagination:

Occasionally, other animals join the lolcat fun:

All pictures from icanhascheezerburger.com where you’ll find thousands more.

]]> http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/05/lolcats/feed 7 http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/04/25-bottles-of-nyquil http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/04/25-bottles-of-nyquil#comments Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:47:33 +0000 Mitchell Laurren-Ring http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/?p=624 Someone on Twitter linked to an article called “What Would Happen If You Bought 25 Bottles of Nyquil” and it is one of the most hilarious things that I have read recently. I’m sure it’s because it appeals to my own poor impulse control, but I really enjoyed some of the more subtle moments. For example:

I mean, what kind of nanny state am I living in right now? I can’t even buy cold medicine anymore without the government all up in my shit? Why is my right to privacy being invaded in favor of incompetent police officers who lack the ability to catch drug dealers without spying on the average law abiding citizen?

I’ve long thought that limiting sudafed purchases was doing little if anything to stop the meth problem, so this article was particularly satisfying for me.

]]> http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/04/25-bottles-of-nyquil/feed 0 http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/04/how-not-to-pick-up-women http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/2008/04/how-not-to-pick-up-women#comments Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:34:35 +0000 Mitchell Laurren-Ring http://www.rynosoft.com/blog/?p=623