Today is a great day to be an American.  It’s a time where we have the most important power of choice.

Whether you cast your vote for McCain or Obama or someone else doesn’t matter, what matters is that you vote.  That you express your opinion on who needs to lead this great nation of ours.  Today we get to help make change happen.

The only real statement I’ll make here is for my friends in California.  Please vote NO on Prop 8. The world is discriminating enough, we don’t need to make it any worse.

Go vote, I promise you that it is time very well wasted.

Thanks, JC.  Nice find.

Sloane sent me this link this morning, think I’ve slept most the day away so I’m just now getting a look at it.  Laughing one’s ample rear off while being plauged by a sore throat is not pleasent, but the signs are funny.

Enjoy.

The ABCs fo Entertainment will be up when I get home from work, I left the draft there.

Right now, if you’re in desperate need of something entertaining you need to run over to AMC’s MonsterFest and check out the FDO’s comentary on Chucky.  Considering Seed of Chucky is the only one I’ve seen, I have to confess to having giggled my butt off.  But, since it’s from Scott Sigler, you know you’re in for a good read.

Back tonight with F is for Firebrand.

Go out and get yourself a FIRST life!

So, for a couple years now (it feels that way) I’ve really envied anyone who can get onto the virtual reality community called Second Life.  See, when I was in High School, I wrote a story (more like a 346 page novel) based in a scifi / fantasy setting, where people could log in to a VR universe.  Therefore, when Second Life came out I was all, “Pa- Payow!”.  But, I never had a computer that could run SL until just recently.

My buddy wyped Vista off this computer I have and installed some .. linux stuff and low- and behold, I can run SL!  So, I run right out, download and install it, and get to tooling around.

My High School fantasy come true.  Two years of waiting and envy have come to and end.  I am on.  Second Life.

Dun, Dun, Emming Effing Dumb!  What a friggin waste of all that emo and plex!  I mean, my computer isn’t super graphix max awesome, yeah, but it’s not shoebox with wires either.  So, I log in, wait for things to res. Wait for the world to render, wait for my avatar to appear and then..  nothing

I’m in a weird looking world comprised of bunches of random props that just do not relate to one another, watching a bunch of awkwardly animated characters mull around striking arbitrary poses while making occasional lewd noises.  I met one of my friends there who gave me a cool dragon costume, and then was promptly assaulted by someone wearing assless pejamas with smiley faces all over them who was trying to cyber hump me to some stupid techno song I haven’t heard since 2002.

I can fly.  Wee.  I can walk around under water.  Wee.  I can look at creepy avatars.  Wee.

OR I can slam my fingers in a car door and get about as much enjoyment out of my time.  OOH my gawds, people, What a waste of bandwidth and time.

Sure, there may be some worlds therein with neat scenery and pros with which you can interact in some meaningful way.  Maybe there is a plot SOMEwhere - or SOME role-playing, but damned if I have the patience to find it.  So, I say BOOO!   BOO to Second Life.

Boo, Boo, Boo, it’s a waste of your first life, Boo.  I’ll be sure to write even more about how I hate it after I log out. IN- a few hours.

Its like internet crack, and the HIGH isn’t even that good!

Rating:

So, it’s pretty hard to go anywhere on the internet without bumping into a Weebl animation.  You know:  Badger, badger, badger, badger, Es Tee Eff You!

It’s quite easy to spend all day in front of the computer, liquefying your brains with various creations of genius as Owls, Pork, and CatFace.  However, lots of Weebl’s stuff is not quite suitable for *ahem* family viewing-

Not that *I* care.  No!  I like the weird, wacky, off color and borderline psychotic / prawn-o-graphic.  I’m a dragon, after all.  We don’t have such silly social taboos as you mammals do.  *We* are awesomest!

Anyway, Let’s just say (hypothetically) that you have a basketful of hairy hatchlings that -

[to off-screen] What?  No?  No hatchlings?  Then how-?  How do-?  Yeah.  How do mammals-?  But- But where-?  H-?  No way.  No WAY!  That’s - Noooo! That’s a- you’re a liar.  No way!  Prove it!  Yeah.  Pro-

[is handed a portable DVD player from off screen]

o.o   o.O    O.O    *.*  *hurk*
[hands it back - is now a pale shade of lavender]

Okay!  so, you have a bunch of little pooplings, and you want to start them early melting their own brains.  What do you show THEM?  Well.. You can plop them down in front of the Scaredofbees website.  There are some.. weird little dittied that are a bit less grown-up, but nonetheless fun.

There’s a video about waffles, which will infect your littluns’ brains with its infectious tune.  and there’s one about scary aminals that - I dunno, MIGHT educate them a bit.. or mess them up some- one or the other.  Either way, it’s fun to watch their little worlds implode a bit. :)

So, go ahead.  Check them out :)  You won’t regret it much.  honestly!

(well, not for long anyway.  Once the gray trickle begins, you won’t care about much of anything any more)

Rating:

Mur Lafferty linked to this in Twitter, and I’m sure many of you have seen it already, but it’s the first time I’ve every come across it.  The Machine is Us/ing Us is about 5 minutes discussing how we’ve changed, and how the Machine has changed, because of what we do and say.  It’s a very entertaning video that provokes a lot of thought.  I hope you’ll go take a look.

So the King of Social Media is at it again, and this time he brought a retinue.  JC Hutchins and Myxer.com, along with Jared Axelrod, Jim Perry, Mur Lafferty and many, many others have become MINErs.

Yes, that’s spelled right.  What they’ve done is create an awesome site full of pop culture and whale farts called MINE.  And what’s MINE is yours.  Not only have these people dug up some interesting content, but they ask people to send in links and information that they’ve dug up themselves.  Submitted content is always linked back to the person who sent it in with full credit.  So not only are the King and his retinue digging up things themselves, they’re sharing what they write about a submitted links with the person who simply said “Here, this is cool, write about it.”

Before you ask me if I’m nuts, which if you ask anyone who knows me I am, I actually do have evidence of this.  I sent in some information about “The Tales of Beetle the Bard” to JC over the weekend and found an excellent piece on MINE by JC that was credited back to me for sending him the link.  So they mean what they say, “What’s Mine is Yours.”

MINE stamped its presence on the internet with authority this summer.  The site is very easy to navigate and enjoyable to page through to see who’s come up with what and what others think of these nuggets of information.  That’s without even going into some of the original content offered, like Mur Lafferty’s Geekgasm; which leaves me wondering if the Mightiest of Murs sleeps; and Jared Axelrod’s “The Millennium Canon”.

MINE is worth checking out.  I’ve found tidbits of information there that I hadn’t seen on some of the more “professional” blogs that I read about entertainment.  If you have time, you should check it out, the short articles take only a few minutes to read, are written by some snarky and silly writers and the whole thing looks like it should go a very long way in the world of blogging.

Just try not to put my little corner of the blogosphere out of business, ok?