Geek Speak

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

“Kowabunga” Creator Dead at 85

Although most of them don’t realize it, fans of Buffalo Bob, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bart Simpson and ‘60s beach movies are mourning the death of Ed Kean, the original writer for The Howdy Doody Show.

The coining of “Kowabunga” is generally misattributed by generations of Americans too young to qualify for regular colonoscopies. However, a contributor to the online Urban Dictionary has it right:

This was a term used by Chief Thunderthud on the Howdy Doody show in the fifties. It was picked up by surfers in southern California in the late fifties, then skateboarders. Not Swahili, not Hawaiian, not Mutant Ninja Turtles - Howdy Doody.

Kean scripted the seminal TV kiddie show from 1947 to 1954, and is credited with writing its beloved but earwig-like theme song, “It’s Howdy Doody Time.”

RIP Ed. Thanks for the cultural continuity, and praise God you weren’t Bozo.

PS: Please use this thread to cast your nomination for the Teabagger or Wingnut politician most deserving of the appellation “Chief Thunderthud.”

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 08/24/10 at 11:22 AM
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Categories: Geek SpeakNewsTelevision

Sunday, August 22, 2010

A-Jad to West: “Ni’tokor bak’to!”—Iran Unveils First-Generation Klingon Cruiser

Just more proof that these people are freakin’ evil.

Iranian jet-propelled “Karrar” drone bomber—“Ambassador of Death”

Fully-evolved Klingon “Bird of Prey” (ca. Stardate 8210.3)

They like the same music, too. Just sayin’.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 08/22/10 at 12:39 PM
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Categories: Geek SpeakNewsPoliticsWar In Error

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Armless, Legless Robot Pal Can’t Escape Your Crazy Grandpa

Freaky Japanese robot designer Hiroshi Ishiguro has prototyped this unnerving “telepresencing” unit, which transmits the speech and realistically mimics the movements of a human operator at a remote terminal. Well, some of the movements, anyway.

In addition to enabling you to “visit” your drunken, abusive father without having to worry that you’ll accidentally kill him in a blind rage after he repeatedly burns you with a lit cigarette whilst shouting “Whoreson! Whoreson!” and waving a framed photo of your fabulously good-looking, successful older brother who died pushing you out of the path of a runaway moving van, the “Telenoid R1” robot opens up a vast new frontier of entertainment opportunities, including:

♦ Totally turning the tables on your kid’s “Chucky” doll.
♦ Positioning the Telenoid in a TV Chair at the bus station and having it offer strangers cash for their body parts.
♦ Stuffing it in the trunk of a burning car, then YouTubing the craziness when the EMS guys get there.
♦ Shipping it to your ex-fiancée in a big red Valentine’s Day box, then “drunk-calling” her with it the moment she opens the lid.
♦ Getting epically baked on Christmas Eve and substituting the Telenoid for the life-size Baby Jesus in an outdoor Nativity display.
♦ Taking the Telenoid with you to an IRS audit, and introducing it as your CPA.
♦ Convincing your senile Nana that you’re visiting her on her birthday, while you’re actually on the other side of town cleaning out her Safe Deposit Box using a forged Power-of-Attorney.
♦ Getting excused from jury duty by claiming you’re a giant mutant fetus whose rights and obligations as a citizen aren’t explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.

The Telenoid R1 units are not yet available for purchase, although I would wager they’re pretty easy to kidnap.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 08/04/10 at 12:57 PM
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Categories: Geek Speak

Friday, July 23, 2010

“Patty Duke Show” Cast Reunites to Make Me Contemplate Suicide

Thanks for reminding me that the howling maw of the grave is beckoning, you zany prankster twins, you!

But God Bless William Schallert, who—along with James Hong, David Opatoshu, Vito Scotti and a dozen or so reliable utility actors—populated the entirety of broadcast TV in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 07/23/10 at 12:58 PM
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Categories: Geek SpeakPoliticsHealth CareYouTubidity

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Clingons issue a challenge to the Federation


Lt. Uhura

Pro-tip: When using a long running and insanely popular entertainment franchise as the basis for your cruelly overextended metaphor, it is important to know the good guys from the bad guys.

Exhibit A: Yesterday’s press release from Mark Williams’ TPE, courtesy of Stephen1947. It was written by one of Williams’ duly deputized TeaBaggers. This means the typos don’t leap out and mug you and it doesn’t read like an M.C. Escher drawing converted to text. However, this does mean there is nothing to distract you from the high-pitched whine:

read the whole post »

Posted by Hunger Tallest Palin on 07/20/10 at 06:03 AM
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Categories: Geek SpeakPoliticsNuttersTeabaggery

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Happy 154th Birthday, Nick Tesla

This is probably the best 10 minutes on Tesla available on the Web, albeit necessarily sketchy in its content and annoyingly reverential in tone. I mean, I think we’re all pretty clear that the guy was a god, and that Edison, Westinghouse, Morgan and Marconi were total punks. 

On a lighter note, here’s some fun, stupid shit you can do with Tesla Technology that won’t result in a second Tunguska Blast.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 07/10/10 at 07:39 PM
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Categories: Geek Speak

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Hack Attack

Saw while browsing a few minutes ago…

Taylor Marsh

It gets better…

Taylor Marsh

No shit.  But why did it take until July of 2010 for Google to figure that out?

Posted by Kevin K. on 07/07/10 at 09:36 AM
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Categories: Geek SpeakPoliticsPUMAsPoliblogsSkull Hampers

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

AZ Tea Party Rolls Out Glitchy “Sarah Palin Mark II” Unit: Less Brains, More Bullets

This got lost going into the holiday, even though a lot of people covered it, including TPM and Olbermann. If you missed it, please put your hands where she can see them and welcome “Machine Gun” Pamela Gorman:

While Gorman appears to be a decent, feature-lite, budget-priced Palin knockoff for undemanding voters with poor distance vision, she exhibits the same sort of “rushed-prototype” OS/hardware mismatches that notoriously plagued OCP’s early Robocop upgrades:

However, despite her utilitarian, no-frills packaging, incompatibility with frameless school-marm glasses and over-reliance on NRA-supplied documentation and service support, Gorman repeatedly bench-tests Just as Nutty As Sharron Angle, as you’ll see in the field-trial footage below the fold.

read the whole post »

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 07/06/10 at 10:19 AM
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Categories: Geek SpeakPoliticsElection '10NuttersTeabaggery

Friday, July 02, 2010

“Remote Viewing” for the Masses—Overnight Weirdo Radio Thread

I was doing fine with morning deadlines and Coast to Coast AM. Then I made the fatal mistake of Googling “Art Bell.”

read the whole post »

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 07/02/10 at 02:23 AM
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Categories: Geek SpeakSkull HampersYouTubidity

Monday, June 21, 2010

Obligatory Mystical Solstice Image

Because it’s the Solstice, and because shit like this really classes the blog up.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 06/21/10 at 08:02 PM
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Categories: Geek SpeakImages

Saturday, June 19, 2010

“Two Girls and a Gyro-Stool”:Techno-Porn for the Fully-Dressed and Vertically-Stabilized

Except for the device itself, the engineering animation and the fact that nobody’s naked, this could be almost any “Showtime After Hours” movie circa 1983.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 06/19/10 at 04:38 PM
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Categories: Geek SpeakMovies

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Twitter is over capacity: Oily #failwhale edition

After Twitter’s constant outages today, I think they’re desperately in need of a new fail whale graphic…

Twitter is a disaster
(click to enlarge)

Posted by Kevin K. on 06/09/10 at 05:29 PM
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Categories: CrittersGeek Speak

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Cheap Shots, But No Ideas: Polarizing, Divisive Ax-Grinder Palin Keeps Sniping from the Shadows

All Static, No Signal.

Sarah could have been a leader. But she chose to duck accountability, cash the checks…and become the National Kvetch.

Fortunately, at this point, her tweets are so coded, gnomic and content-free that her Twitter Feed has become a cross between a test-pattern and a carrier-wave—kind of the UVB-76 of parked, pointless, clock-setting telemetry from the Wasilla White House. 

So what if she won’t grace us with her solutions to America’s greatest challenges? At least we know she still has a trickle-charge on her transmitter. Party on, Ice-Ninny.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 06/08/10 at 03:36 PM
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Categories: Geek SpeakPoliticsNuttersSarah PalinTeabaggery

Sunday, June 06, 2010

Forbes on Fox: The Bulletin of the Atomic Idiots

Nothing inspires confidence like David Asman and Steve-Forbes-in-a-neckbrace noodling the pros and cons of accidentally transforming the Gulf of Mexico into an open-air, self-serve gas station.

Thank God for Stephane Fitch, who probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about either, but makes the correct call anyway.

Come back to us, Oppy—and bring Richard Feynman with you, stat. We’re in some real shit here.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 06/06/10 at 01:18 PM
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Categories: Geek SpeakNewsPoliticsOur Stupid Media

Roastacon Day 3: UVB-76 Has Stopped Transmitting

Geek forums are abuzz today with the news that “the Buzzer” is dead. UVB-76—a Cold War Era shortwave transmitter that’s been beaming the same eerie, repetitive signal on the same fixed frequency since at least 1982, has abruptly gone silent

As we know from the movies, this can only mean one of two things: 1) We are all going to die horribly in the last reel or 2) We will discover that Mr. Mittens, the space station’s rascally feline mascot, harmlessly short-circuited the Doomsday Beacon when “he” scratched out a cozy nest behind the heat-exchanger in preparation for birthing a litter of adorable kittens. Then we’ll all die.

The sudden extinction of UVB-76 may or may not be causally tethered to last night’s initiation of the Creative-Class Access Blogotron Accelerator, but true Forteans understand that these things are rarely just “coincidence.”

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 06/06/10 at 12:44 PM
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Categories: Geek SpeakRumproast Biz

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