A helpful figure I made while eating breakfast

Move over Cordon-Bleu! I mean Corbin Bleu!

Oh, don't mess with Predator's baby. He'll make you look like a fool with a behind-the-back pass. Or he'll shoot a hole through you with his triangle laser beam. One of the two. Game on!

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Obey the pug.

For more awesome dog propaganda, click here.

Just a test.

So.
About a year and a half ago, I initiated the infamous Bulldog or Bust campaign. To bolster support and rally the troops, I included some pictures of bulldogs that I had found on the internet. There was one photo in particular, FinneganFrenchBulldog.jpg, that magically shot to the top of the google image search rankings for the search term 'french bulldog'. This brought in between 300 and 500 hits a day.
Recently, I noticed a significant dip in the traffic to my site. So I went to google and searched 'french bulldog'. There was the photo, FinneganFrenchBulldog.jpg, but somebody else's blog was next to it. To get a glimpse of what this felt like for me, I ask you to imagine your only child becoming famous, and then when he does, that ungrateful child who received a constant shower of love and care and personal sacrifice from you, that unfaithful ingrate who you taught and groomed for greatness -- imagine that this child proclaims on the bright morning of his fame that he is the son of someone else. That is the dagger I felt in my heart today.

I'm performing a little experiment. I'm taking the top four photos from the google image results for 'french bulldog', and I'm posting them here. I'm gonna get my child back. Bring it.



This one also happens to be #1 on the 'french bulldog puppy' google image search results. More bang for my buck.





















































And here's the infamous Finnegan. Come back to me, Finny. The doggy door is always open.

Note: the original FinneganFrenchBulldog image comes from the owner of a political blog. I guess I forgot to mention that Finnegan was adopted. But I'm the one who got him to the top. I'm nobody's stepping stone.

the McGurk effect

Did you enjoy the "Ricola" video? Check out my other blog for a scientific description of it.

Link to Brain and Sky.

Ricola!

While Kristen and I were in Paris, we ate a lot of food at the Latin Quarter (I think that's what they called it, at least). The food was cheap (for Paris) and there was always something interesting to see. One night I was wandering around and I saw this guy with 10 or so cigarettes (all lit) in his mouth. In one gulp, he swallowed them all. People started gathering, and I started filming. He has a speech impediment that makes his words hard to understand, so I took the liberty of putting subtitles on the footage. Enjoy!

Sub-broad-way

There is a fine line between mocking someone and rejoicing in their unrepentant weirdness. I'd like to think I'm involved in the latter. The latent journalist in me has been begging me to publish this ever since I took the video in a Paris subway platform. Now you, too, can rejoice with me.



If you pay attention, I put a few euros in his bucket at the beginning. I feel like that buys me the rights to this video.

Snowball's got soul

Found this on a neuroscience blog. I like how he loses it a bit when the bass drops out, and when it comes back in, he's right back on the beat. He mixes in a few different moves here and there. I wonder if Snowball can do the MC Hammer slide. Or the Ninja Rap dance that Vanilla Ice does on TMNT. Or the boot scoot boogie. I wonder if Snowball has an agent.

Home sweet home

We were out on a drive the other day, and we saw a nice little home that was for sale. We had some extra cash, so we bought it. (Thanks to our parents for the "training wheels").

Here are some pictures of it.


Front view



Nice tree



The backyard deck



View from the backyard deck



Main floor, view of dining room from living room



Main floor, living room



Main floor, kitchen



Main floor, office



Top floor, guest bedroom



Top floor, master bedroom



Basement, family room



We are seriously excited for moving day, August 16th. I've already started looking at options for a canine friend. I'm sad to announce to all those who supported me through thick and thin during the Bulldog or Bust campaign: I won't be laying down $2500 for a bulldog. I've never been a quitter, so let's just call this a rain-check.

Also exciting for me: I get to find out if I'm just a poser handyman or if I have what it takes.

a morning at the opera

Here's a clip from Sunday's journal entry:

I just remembered a funny incident that happened during conference today. A man walked by and Kristen nudged me and said, “Hey, doesn’t that guy look like he could be a broadway performer?” Honestly, the man was short, pudgy, had thin red hair, and wasn’t the type I’d peg as a broadway star. “I don’t see it, honey.”
“I’ve always thought that he looks like he could play the Phantom of the Opera,” she said. I strained my imagination, but I still couldn’t detect anything that would make him a good candidate to play the Phantom. After a few seconds, I think Kristen had an epiphany: “Maybe it helps that his name is Michael Crawford.”
For the Broadway-challenged, Michael Crawford is the name of the original Phantom of the Opera, and he looks nothing like this man. I love that Kristen keeps me laughing.

Speaking of opera, I had a pretty brilliant idea this morning:

O-perah: an opera about the life of Oprah.

Maybe Beyonce could play the role of Oprah. I guess Beyonce isn't really an opera singer, but can you imagine the millions of dollars I'd make if I managed to merge the fan bases of Oprah and Beyonce? I might even make more than Oprah herself. I'm starting the script today. Oprah and Beyonce, if you read this, have your people call my people.

Goose Gossage + Thundercats = Kids Incorporated

There's a cool post at Kristen's blog that highlights some of the radical things loved by children who grew up in the 80s. This prompted me to dig into the musty pockets of memories that constitute my own 80s experience. Here's what I found:

What 8-year old boy didn't want his own luck dragon to help him get sweet revenge on the local bully? I wouldn't know, because I was the bully, beating up on the little dweebs whose crying eyes looked up to the sky in hopes of finding Falkor flying down to rescue them, but all they found was clouds and my imposing silhouette. Actually, I was a puny little dork. But this clip is the opposite of a puny little dork.



And here's an awesome caption from the site that started the caption craze.



Below is my tribute to the Disney Channel. Kids Incorporated should have done far more damage to my psyche than it actually did. I dodged a real culture bullet there.



And here's my tribute to Saturday morning cartoons. 'Thundercats' is, in my opinion, the greatest cartoon series ever. How it didn't hijack the brain of every breathing organism alive in the 80s is still a mystery to me. Lion-O was pretty fresh, but Panthera, with his screaming nun-chuks, was my favorite. Notice the nice use of dissonance to create tension when Lion-O is summoning the thundercats at 5 minutes 30 seconds. I totally recognized that sound.



And here's a snork.








Sports were a big part of my 80s experience. Only now, however, do I realize that all of my victories were either accidental or confabulated. I swam on a team for 5 or 6 years. The only event I really excelled at was the one I hated most -- backstroke. I did 3 or 4 different kinds of martial arts, too. I have a trophy somewhere that says, "First Place, National Championship". Don't tell anyone, but the only thing I had to do to deserve this trophy was beat up an overweight girl. What can I say? A national championship is a national championship. And then there was baseball. I think it is telling that my fondest memory of baseball was laughing whenever my coach would say, "Good eye, Mike!" every time my teammate Mike would let a bad pitch go by without swinging. It just sounded so Australian. The only home run I ever hit was off a bunt and a bunch of fielding errors, but I still claim it. My coach signaled for me to bunt every time after that. He said I was the best bunter he'd ever seen, and now that I'm older I can grasp the true, cruel meaning of his words.

I collected comics and baseball cards during the 80s. I rearranged my baseball card collection in every way imaginable: alphabetical order, order of value, by team, by rookie year, by how much I wanted to be that person, etc. Thanks to Topps, Donruss, and Upper Deck, I was far too fluent with names like Steve Sax, Floyd Bannister, and Goose Gossage. I developed an irrational obsession with a player who wasn't even that great. His name was Greg Jeffries. He had a few decent, promising rookie years on the Mets, but the greatest thing about him was that he trained by swinging a bat under water. At the time, it seemed to me the absolute apex of coolness.






















This last picture technically isn't from the 80s, but I just couldn't resist -- here's one more caption for everyone. This has made me laugh a sum total of over 2 hours, I'm sure. Downloading it was a great investment.

Maieutica has a brother!

I've given birth to a newer, nerdier blog.

Check out its awkward stages of development at www.brainandsky.blogspot.com

Having this new outlet for my geekier impulses will allow me to unleash the destructive power of this fully operational battlestation . . . whoops, I lapsed into Star Wars. It will allow me to give free reign to my creative (and somewhat geeky) impulses on this blog.

The new blog is to keep me honest in my scientific pursuits. This old blog is to keep me sane.

In the words of Bib Fortuna (Jabba the Hut's acolyte), "Dae Wanno Wunga," which means, "Word up."

"My name is John Daker."

I give you the classic medley of "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" with "That's Amore".

I think he goes through every possible vowel on the last Hallelujah.

Frank is smitten.

Reason # 17 why you shouldn't have a sloth on your football team