Little Running Guy

The House flipped, the Senate looks more than likely to flip, and Rumsfeld is gone. Today is looking quite bright.

Seeing how retail stores are moving the Christmas season earlier and earlier each year -- I swear to God I saw some Holiday commercials mid-October -- I'd thought I'd comply with our corporate masters and show appropriate holiday cheer.

Actually, it's just an excuse to link to Aimee Mann's cover of "Mr. Grinch." I just like her singing "You're a nasty, wasty scum." She almost sounds like she is enjoying herself.

She's putting out a whole Christmas album, which is beyond perverse. She must be playing an elaborate joke that I can't wrap my head around. It's a season that doesn't suit her. Guy Fawkes Day would be better, perhaps. Not Christmas.

Someone finally went around and wrote the song of my dreams. Or maybe it was of my nightmares. I really don't remember. Either way, the song may destroy your pancreas.

Remember this? Well, it's part of a series, teaching you how to deal with all manners of unpleasent situations while toning your body. This one is apparently a how-to for dumping your boyfriend as well as a great upper-body workout.

Oh Ann, don't ever change.

Travelers Life Insurance has put out this ad which pays homage everyone's favorite ball of junk. They deny that Katamari Damancy had anything to do with the ad, but it's a stretch of the imagination to think that everyone at Fallon, the ad agency that produced the ads, was unaware of the KD-phenomenon or the ad's uncanny similarity to the game. Plus, someone at the ad team surely knew that anything Katamari-related would get an extraordinary amount of internet-play. It's a canny bit of viral marketing, really.

It's friday morning, I'm wide awake and I'm skipping class. In the meantime, take a look at this little ditty from Joystiq about Crossroads, a GPS-game-mobile phone concoction. Crossroads is a simple Risk-type domination game where you race to capture more intersections in New York City than your opponents. There is a bit more to Crossroads, which also includes something about a territory-flipping voodoo spirit, and the whole things sounds like a variation of a 1980s arcade game, except expanded to twelve city blocks. The game is part of the Good Life exhibition, an exihibition about public spaces and recreation. It sounds pretty awesome, and it reminds me of CollecTic , a puzzle game where you walk around town collecting WiFi accesspoint, from a couple months back. Is geographical gaming the wave of the future?

With all the ink spilt about Pluto's demotion, this bit of planetary news might've been lost: 2003 UB313, or Planet Xena, has a name. Now called Eris, after the goddess of strife. Its moon also has a new moniker too: Dysnomia, who happens to be the goddess of lawlessness and the daughter of Eris. Yes, virginia, that is a pop reference you got in front of you.

You should click here if you want to watch a plane slam into a concrete wall at 500 MPH. It's all kinds of awesome. Added bonus: you can use this footage whenever some idiot shows you one of those stupid YTMND 9/11 conspiracy flash animations.

Moreso than outright conflict, it's the passive-aggressive comments that rile me the most. The way that these completely left-field jabs at my character are framed to end any further discussion and allow no course for redress leaves me far more resentful than any spat possibly could.

I'm well aware of my failures of character, thank you. I don't need anyone taking it upon themselves to remind me.