January 31, 2011
Rejected is a surrealist animated short comedy film by Don Hertzfeldt that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2000. A fictional frame story explains that Hertzfeldt was commissioned to do animated segments for commercials and television network interstitials, but they were all rejected upon receipt. Towards the end of the short the animator begins to break down mentally and the animated world he created literally begins to fall apart, brutally killing all of his characters in the process.
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January 31, 2011
Photoshop tennis is a game played through sequential alternating photoshopping of an image. Photoshop tennis originated in graphics-related internet forums in the late-1990s/early-2000s. The game was made popular by art director Jim Coudal, and the matches on coudal.com have since been renamed Layer Tennis, as they are no longer restricted to the use of Adobe Photoshop. Each match of Photoshop tennis is generally played with two competing players. The players pick a starting image, or one is ‘served’ by a player, then another player makes some sort of alteration to the image in any chosen image editor (matches are not exclusive to Adobe Photoshop).
He or she then sends that altered image to the other player or players, usually via e-mail or by posting the image to a Photoshop tennis forum, who then edits that image and sends it back to the first player. This process goes back and forth until a predetermined number of rounds have elapsed, or the players otherwise wish to end the game. When the final round is over, there may be an independent judge who determines who has played the best shots, and declares that person the winner, or players may play without a clear winner. Sometimes extra rules can be enforced, such as sticking to one particular software package, or keeping to a particular theme.
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January 26, 2011
The term black fax refers to a prank fax transmission, consisting of one or more pages entirely filled with a uniform black tone and often made into a loop the sending machine will transmit endlessly. The sender’s intention is typically to consume as much of the recipient’s fax ink, toner or thermal paper or disk space as possible, thus costing the recipient money and/or denying the recipient the use of their machine (this is similar to computer-based denial of service attacks).
Black faxes can be particularly effective as the fax algorithm compresses the solid black image very well, so a very short fax call can produce many pages. They have been used to harass large institutions or government departments, to retaliate against the senders of junk faxes, or merely as simple pranks. In a black fax attack, one or more sheets are fed halfway through the sender’s fax machine and taped end to end, forming an endless loop that cycles through the machine. Not only can solid black be used, but also images which will repeat endlessly on the receiver’s machine until his or her toner runs out.
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January 25, 2011
Speed Golf is a sport started in California in 1979 by American runner Steve Scott and which involves completing a golf course in the lowest combination of strokes and time. Players run between shots and generally carry one to six clubs. A player’s score is calculated by adding minutes plus strokes, so a round of 90 completed in 50 minutes and 30 seconds would compute to a score of 140:30. The lowest score in competition is believed to have been shot by professional Christopher Smith at the Chicago Speedgolf Classic in 2005. Smith shot 65 in just 44:06 for a speed golf score of 109:06.
Rules and etiquette are generally the same for speed golf and regular golf with minor exceptions. Speed golfers are allowed to putt with the flagstick left in the hole, but are expected to rake bunkers, fix ball marks and conform to the dress code. Speed Golf is sometimes contrasted with Cross-country BigBall, in which players use soccer balls and baseball bats. Both sports require substantial physical stamina.
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January 25, 2011
The Monty Hall problem is a famous problem in probability science. The problem is based on a game show, ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ and is named for the show’s host, Monty Hall. In the problem, there are three doors. A car is behind one door and goats behind the other two doors.
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January 25, 2011
Happy slapping is a fad in which someone assaults an unwitting victim while others record the assault. The ease and general availability of video cameras in mobile phones means that such attacks need not be planned carefully beforehand and are more easily watched and circulated for comedy purposes afterwards.
The practice started in the South London London Borough of Lewisham. Initially the attacks were, as the phrase would have us believe, fairly minor pranks … As the craze spread the attacks became more vicious – often serious assaults known in British legal circles as grievous bodily harm.
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January 21, 2011
The Book of Mormon is a musical written by South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Avenue Q writer, Robert Lopez. The show tells the story of two young Mormon missionaries sent off to spread their faith in a dangerous part of Uganda. Scott Rudin and Anne Garafino are listed as the producers. The show debuted on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in 2011.
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January 20, 2011
The high five is a celebratory hand gesture that occurs when two people simultaneously raise one hand, about head high, and push, slide or slap the flat of their palm and hand against the palm and flat hand of their partner. The gesture is often preceded verbally by the phrase ‘Give me five’ or ‘High five.’ The origins of the term are said to belong to U.S. basketball, and the use of the phrase as a noun has been part of the Oxford English Dictionary since 1980 and as a verb since 1981.
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January 20, 2011
Archie Meets the Punisher or The Punisher Meets Archie was a one-shot comic book intercompany crossover published under two separate covers by Marvel Comics and Archie Comics in 1994. It featured the unlikely meeting of Marvel’s murderous vigilante, the Punisher, and Archie Comics’ all-American teenager, Archie Andrews. The book was written by Batton Lash, with artwork by John Buscema (drawing the Punisher characters) and Stan Goldberg (drawing the Archie characters).
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January 19, 2011
Percussive maintenance, also known as percussion therapy or a technical tap, is a term used to describe the malediction of an ill-behaved device to make it work, that is to say, swear at it and hit it. The origins and practice of the term are unknown, although some suggest the act became commonplace with the introduction of vacuum tube electronics. The term is a play on ‘preventive maintenance.’
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January 19, 2011
Desert Bus a minigame found in the 1999 Sega CD title: ‘Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors.’ The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph. The feat requires 8 hours of continuous play to complete, since the game cannot be paused. Penn Jillette commented in his radio show that the overly realistic nature of the game was in response to Janet Reno and the controversy surrounding violent video games at the time.
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January 18, 2011
Spaghetti Junction is a nickname sometimes given to a complicated or massively intertwined road traffic interchange that resembles a plate of spaghetti. The term is believed to have been coined by a journalist at the Birmingham Evening Mail in the 1970s to refer to the Gravelly Hill Interchange on the M6 motorway in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Since then many complex interchanges around the world have acquired the nickname.
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