Monkey Benders are poseable, magnetic stick-figure-ish monkeys in a tin. You can individually buy the four Coconut Tin Monkey Benders (Leo, Tito, Roco, and Max). Or you can get the Banana Tin Monkey Benders, containing Bonzo, George, Jane and Kongo. You can even get the Monkey Benders Pop-Up Building (with four more monkeys) that telescopes four stories and a whopping 12.5″!

Heck you could go monkey crazy and get ‘em all.

Then send them to me.

Britain’s fattest family shed 23 stone

Between the five of them, the Phillips family from Worcester weighed more than 100 stone and spent £300 a week on food.
…
Mitchell, 13, was the heaviest of the three sons weighing in at 27 stone. By the age of four he was Britain’s fattest toddler, weighing 10 stone. He broke five bikes by buckling the wheels.

One stone equals roughly 14 lbs. That means together the family has lost about 322 lbs, and Mitchell weighed in at a massive 140 lbs when he was four years old!

[Mum Jayne] applied to be on ITV1’s Fat Chance for a joke, but was surprised when her sons actually liked their new healthier lifestyle.
…
The family are still 27 stone over their target weights and continue to diet.

Even though this may have started out as a joke for them, I’m glad to hear that it’s working. I applaud their efforts and hope they reach their lifestyle goals.

i am gonna have to come back and edit the formatting of this post since i can’t enter the proper html tags.

http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3424491

Tabbed browsing, one of the more popular features built into alternative Web browsers, contains a security flaw that puts users at risk of spoofing attacks, research firm Secunia warned on Wednesday.

Update: Whew, shift and control are working again.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to come up with costume ideas for this Halloween. I’ll be around 6 months pregnant by then, so I needed something that could accomodate or emphasize my belly. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to come up with many ideas.

The pregnant nun was done at a party I held a few years ago. I don’t like the idea of painting my belly like a pumpkin, especially if anyone else is going to see it. I saw a site that suggested being Humpty Dumpty, which is kind of a cute idea, in a creepy sort of way.

The only original ideas I could come up with were getting a white shirt, blue pants, a blad cap, and painting myself yellow to become Homer Simpson. Or getting a blue jumpsuit and painting myself blue to become Violet Beauregard. However, I am once again turned off by the idea of greasepaint.

But now it seems I’m going to be spared any self-painting or other costume torture because our niece Allison’s first birthday party is going to be held on Halloween. That ought to be a lot of fun, and I’ll get my costume fix by dressing up for the Texas Renaissance Festival the day before.

William Hung. the Real American Idol, will be putting out an album of holiday tunes. The title?

Hung for the Holidays

I kid you not.

Dungeons & Dragons turns 30 this year. In celebration, this Saturday, participating games stores will be running special D&D games as part of the Worldwide D&D Game Day.

Cnn.com currently features a news story about a study showing that about one percent of adults are asexual. What’s really odd is the story is listed under their Technology section. Apparently, it falls under Science & Space. I’d have thought it would be under Health.

Jish is back! (again)

Dale and I went out and took some photos of me. I think these are the first photos taken of me in the last five years that I’ve liked.

I think I look pretty cranky in the second photo, but I’m not. I’m just squinting against the setting sun.

(Cross-posted from the baby blog.)

A private voter registration organization by the name of Voters Outreach of America is under suspicion of trashing voter registrations by Democrats.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

“We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me,” said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Why all the Democrat hate? Oh….

The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

This article was posted by Eyewitness News in Las Vegas, Nevada (Clark County). Community members are being urged to call the Clark County Election Department or check online to see if they are properly registered. That’s probably not a bad idea for most folks to do.

Update: Voter fraud issues in Colorado as well. Though, in this case, it seems to temporary employees attempting to pad their paychecks as opposed to a political party trying to invalidate the votes of their opponents.

I recently saw this quote in Gretchen’s journal.

For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free”. Here’s an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage, why?

Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire Pig, just to get a little sausage…

I believe it was attributed to Andy Rooney.

The Zoom Quilt is a “collaborative art project.” It’s also pretty damn cool. (View the Shockwave version. The HTML version just can’t accomplish the same sense of ‘whoah.’)

Thanks to Aaron, even though I bitched at him at first because I had to upgrade Shockwave and restart my PC before being able to view it.

Watch out for these new viruses - neither Symantec nor McAfee have solutions as of yet!

• The George Bush Virus - Causes your computer to keep looking for viruses of mass destruction.
• The Clinton Virus - Gives you a permanent Hard Drive with NO memory.
• The Al Gore Virus - Causes your computer to just keep counting and re-counting.
• The John Kerry virus - causes the floppy to flip flop on its stored memory.
• The Bob Dole (aka Viagra) Virus - Makes a new hard drive out of an old floppy.
• The Lewinsky Virus - Sucks all the memory out of your computer, then e-mails everyone about what it did.
• The Arnold Schwarzenegger Virus - Terminates some files, leaves, but will be back.
• The Mike Tyson Virus - Quits after two bytes.
• The Oprah Winfrey Virus - Your 200 GB hard drive shrinks to 100 GB, then slowly expands to re-stabilize around 150 GB.
• The Ellen Degeneres Virus - Disks can no longer be inserted.
• The Prozac Virus - Totally screws up your RAM, but your processor doesn’t care.
• The Joey Buttafuoco Virus - Only attacks minor files.
• The Lorena Bobbitt Virus - Reformats your hard drive into a 3.5 inch floppy… then discards it through Windows.

[via Big Pink Cookie]

Yesterday afternoon, I set out to run some errands. Less than a mile from the house, I saw a puppy running around in the road, no people visible. I pulled over and got out. The pup immediately started wagging her tail at me. As I approached, she crouched down, belly to the ground, tail still wagging. Once I petted her, she popped up again, happy. She (yes, I checked) appeared healthy, no visible fleas, just dirty from being outside, had on a red collar but no tags. I called her to me and we recrossed the street. I’d left my car running, so I opened the door to turn off the ignition and get my keys, and the bold little thing tried to jump inside.

Although she’d been out in front of a house, I was reluctant to approach it and see if she belonged there. The property was in awful condition with trash and junk all over the yard. And there were two large breed dogs tied up in front, one positioned so it could block the path to the front porch. Since that one was aggressively barking at me, I opted to try other houses nearby. But the house to my left had a fenced front yard, with a large dog that was also barking at me. Scratch that. The house to my right, though not quite reputable looking, at least didn’t have dogs scaring me.

After knocking on the door, I spent half a minute checking out the odd adornment hanging next to the door. It was a plaque of wood engraved with the words. “Biker Wind Chimes,” and it had 4 or 5 faded and dented beer cans hanging from it.

No one answered my knock and the only other house on that section of street appeared to be just as uninhabited at the moment, so I opted to take the puppy to my house, then decide what to do with her. I put her in the back of the Murano, after closing the tonneau cover. As I started to drive away, she made the first sounds I’d heard from her. She started whimpering and crying, and I could hear her scrabbling around. I turned off the radio and just tried talking to her, but she stayed upset. A few blocks later, she quieted, then abruptly popped up next to me on the console. Heaving herself, she flopped into the passenger seat. I promptly moved her to the floorboards, where she sniffed around a bit, then tried to get back onto the seat. The rest of the ride consisted of a battle of wills as she jumped onto the seat and I moved her back to the floor. I’m sure I tired of it before she did.

After I got home, I let her out then opened the front door a crack and hollered for Dale. Zoë showed up too. I told her to go to bed, then told Dale we had a situation. I opened the front door a little wider to show him the puppy sitting on the porch when Zoë reappeared. As Dale and I turned to scold her to go back upstairs, she saw the puppy, freaked, and the puppy got past me and charged into the house. Dale yelled at Zoë who ran back upstairs, then we managed to catch the pup before she got past the entryway. We hustled her back outside so I could explain the situation to Dale.

As we talked, the little thing wandered to a corner of the front yard and pooped. Gross as it was, I checked her stool, even poking through it with a stick. Un surprisingly, I saw a tapeworm fragment. Now we knew we’d need to keep her away from Zoë and the cats. My thought was to take her to the local Animal Shelter and explain how I’d found her. Dale agreed that was best, so I asked him to go look up the location online while I watched the puppy in the yard. He went in and came out just a couple of minutes later, but instead of a printout, he held a phone book and his camera.

The only Animal Control facility listed in the phone book was for Leander. so I looked up the number for our vet and asked for their recommendation. The woman I spoke to gave me the location of the Cedar Park Animal Control facility, so after Dale was done taking pictures, I put a towel on our front seat and headed out with the pup.

I got to CPAC around 3pm and their posted hours were until 5pm, but no one answered the bell. So I followed the instructions on the sign on the door and called the police and explained I needed an Animal Control officer. After a quick check, I was informed that they were already on the way. I decided to wait in the car where I could sit down, but before I made it here, the AC truck pulled up with two officers and at least one dog inside.

After letting me inside, they told me I could put down the puppy. I explained the situation and was asked where I’d found her. When I told them, the female officer asked, “was she in front of a house with a white German Shepherd tied up?” I said she was. The male officer then said, “but their dogs are spayed.” In response, the female officer pointed out that doesn’t mean they didn’t get the puppy by other means.

They continued to chat while I filled out a piece of paper with my info and as much of the pup’s as I knew. Finally, the female officer mentioned a woman’s name (I guess the owner of the white Shepherd) and said they ought to give her a call and see if she’s lost a puppy.

After I’d done all I could, I got a little informal tour of the place because I’d asked to wash my hands. There were cats in stacked cages in the front/reception area, more cats in stacked cages in a slightly larger side room, and because I asked to see them, I got to visit the section that housed the dogs.

The kennels were just narrow concrete stalls with a gutter in the back and a chain link door. They were clean enough, but so uncomfortable looking. I had to fight back tears while walking around looking at the dogs. The place was far from crowded, with almost half the stalls empty, but the dogs all looked so sad. There were two gorgeous small shepherd breeds with fluffy coats, one pure white, one with faint grey mottling. There was a very cute white bulldog/terrier with large ears that stood straight up then flopped over at the tips. And there was a fat little Dalmatian puppy, smaller than the pup I’d brought in.

I really didn’t want to leave my little lost puppy in that place, but she did belong to someone else, and Dale absolutely refuses to even consider getting a second dog. He did say he’d be willing to trade in Zoë for the puppy. *sigh*

I spent about an hour with that puppy, but it only took the first 5 minutes for me to fall in love. I hope her owners, whoever they are, will take better care of her now. She sure is cute, isn’t she?

Driving along 183 earlier today, we passed two very different cars bearing the same bumper sticker reading, “We’re making enemies faster than we can kill them.”

While checking out a wedding message board I maintain, I came across a post with some links to cake sites. One of them, Mike’s Amazing Cakes, was… really beyond words.

The ‘traditional’ cakes, like this one, were impeccably crafted. But Mike’s work really shines with his sculpture cakes.

Want a replica of the Romeo and Juliet Balcony Scene? How about a sand castle with bucket (the groom’s cake)? Or a portrait cake. Or a stagecoach? Mike says, if you can imagine it, they can make it, and I believe him.

I expected those cakes to be crazy expensive, but I was surprised when I checked out the pricing page. A simple round cake can be purchased for a mere $17. Adding 3-D art begins at $150. A sculpture cake that feeds 20 would cost about $275, which is comparable to what many cake artists whould charge for a ‘traditional’ cake.

The Off-Kilter cake almost makes me want to get married again. Maybe I can convince Gen to make a smaller version as a birthday cake.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to mess around with The Sims 2 and it’s been fun (and a frightening real-life black hole). After first managing to inadvertantly kill off my first adopted family (I left them on “Free Will” and went to bed, came back to a filthy empty house and the ghost of the patriarch), I decided to mess with the character builder. Who better to be my first subjects than people I know well?

Though there seem to be near infinite possibilities for your Sims’ face, there are only two body types: skinny and fat. Skinny is what you’d expect. Fat, for females, is slightly bigger boobs, a small pot belly, and chubby thighs and butt. Hardly fat. Fat for males is apparently just a huge middle-age paunch.

I ended up making myself and Dale, then using the game to produce our “baby.” However, the resulting child was rather freaky looking so I fiddled around with her features a bit. Since I was chatting with a couple of friends, they got dragged into this Sim-world. I next created Aaron and Genevieve.

I tried to dress and style each of us to reflect our real selves. hence the cargo pants on me and a T-shirt. I tried really hard to dress SimGenevieve in purple, but I didn’t like a single one of the purple outfits, so I settled on the dress/jacket combo that showed off her curves. I had a good laugh when I went to do SimDale’s wardrobe and realized the outfit the toon was wearing was almost exactly what Dale was currently wearing - red polo shirt and khaki shorts. I swear it’s true.

In the end, I think I got some decent likenesses of us, despite the limited body sizes and heights. I mean, SimPam is nearly the same height as SimDale. That’s just wrong.

I thought I took screen shots in game, but I can’t find them. I do have an amusing video of SimGenevieve and SimAaron getting it on in the hottub though. That relationship was unintended. I tried to get them set up with NPCs but they fell in love on their own. I swear!