Surf’s Up Dept.

I won’t be surfing but I may be spotting some giant, four fingered mice while visiting Disney World for a week with The Lovely Anna and the kids. We fly out today. Thanks to the miracle of advance posting the blog will not miss a beat. Today, however, is one of those cheap posts that just have links to several interesting and worthwhile stops when surfing the web.

Apple iPods are Supposed to “Rock”, but this is Ridiculous Dept.-

I’m still not sure this isn’t a joke, but the Texas Star-Telegram reported that little Regan Ritter got a big surprise for her 14th birthday… a box of rocks. It was supposed to be an iPod, one that her mom Melanie bought at a local Target store. When Regan opened the sealed, shrink-wrapped iPod package she found only rocks… of the approximate weight of an iPod. They returned them to the store, where apologetic employees would only allow “store credit” and they had no replacement iPod in stock.

After calling around, one was located in a store 20 miles away. Regan and her mom went to the store and were told she could not open the box and inspect the package before buying. She bought it and opened it in front of Target employees…

… no iPod, just rocks.

… and still no refund, just “store credit”.

XBox Einsteins Dept.-

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and apparently whether you are killed or not when playing, video games can make you smarter.

Tom Hanson at openeducation.net writes about a new book by Steven Johnson called Everything Bad is Good for You, which examines how apparent causes for the problems of society like television, videos and, yes, video games are actually doing good. He goes on to list 11 video games that will “unlock your inner genius”.

Certainly I agree that many games involve intense problem solving and multi-leveled thinking and planning to play effectively. Even games like “Halo” involve the unravelling of mysterious plot lines and observational skills to discover things and concepts. They aren’t “Pong”! My brain is still sore from playing “The 7th Guest” years ago on my PC. However, it’s fair to point out that nobody gets much smarter if they play video games for 20 hours straight while their homework lays about untouched… and nobody pays the bills playing “The 7th Guest” for 20 hours straight while freelance work lays about untouched. Anna pointed that out to me once. Hard.

The Dork Knight Returns Dept.-

This is via a link from the marvelous DRAWN! blog…

Anyone who is familiar with Frank Miller‘s The Dark Knight Returns is laughing their ass off right now. See the rest of the fun here. Too bad comic’s writer Kevin Church, the guilty party here, didn’t use a font like Miller’s lettering. That would have been perfect.

Bizzard of Wahhhhs! Dept.-

According to this report, Denver area hospital’s maternity wards are overflowing with a baby boom right now, coincidentally about nine months after a series of winter storms closed down the city for a few days. Hmmmm. The cable must have been knocked out as well.

This is funny to me because the exact same thing happened in Minneapolis/St. Paul after the big Halloween Bizzard of 1991, when 29 inches of snow fell over two days starting on Halloween. Nine months later there were news stories of babies being delivered in storage rooms in Twin Cities’ hospitals.

Holy E.T., Batman! Dept.-

I ran across this video on YouTube the other day. It’s one that made the rounds among batfans a few years ago, done by director Sandy Collora. It was supposedly done to try and impress Warner Bros. and possibly restart the Batman film franchise, but that was just what I’d heard. It’s rather long (8 minutes), but about halfway through it takes an unexpected twist.

I remember it being much better than this, actually. But the Batman looks great. That just goes to show you can do some good visuals with a costume that isn’t rubber armor.