I got a brand new house on the roadside, made from rattlesnake hide

This is a bad idea. Making it easier for spammers to include malicious code in emails is never wise.

This was a worse one--in the middle of an opiod epidemic, paying advocates to push opiod deregulation would easily lead us where we are now.

There is now a Tomb Raider Barbie. I'm...honestly not sure how I feel about this. But on the plus side, yay for non-blonde, non-Aryan Barbies! Woo!

This is the best apology I've seen this year. Kudos to them.

Finally, if anyone plays Grand Theft Auto V, just log in before the 29th of February and receive a tidy amount of in-game cash. It won't make anyone rich beyond dreams, but hey, it could ease the way a bit.

we're a pillow fight on a concrete bed

[11:30] txxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: yalll... today seems to be a busy day for pfishing schemes .. please do not click on any links form anyone you do not I know .. I have seen over 7 attempts at pfishing just in the past hour

Yeah, the phishing attempts are getting pretty bad. Obviously they're going to continue, because just as people don't learn from exposure to gold farming tactics in MMOs, people aren't learning from phishing attempts in SL.

[11:33] cxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx sighs "TOday just seems like a pretty bad day overall...?
[11:33] cxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: !"
[11:33] cxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: Damnit!
[11:34] cxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: *"

Wau. Touchy.

[11:36] lxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: lol hi meow
[11:36] lxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: whats wrong? :P
[11:42] cxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: Oh nothing in particular, just people you see on the streets and have to listen to in general. WHy does there have to be so much negativity in the world?
[11:43] cxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: THe damnit was cuz the typo typo though. lol
[11:43] txxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: i think there are both ...neg and pos.. you can listen to one or the otehr or youcan take them both as a balance to each other . trying to not absorb thatwhich isnt " youre=s"

There are days where Ms. T just can't spell. It's a thing.

And, to be fair, there are also days where it seems every other being on the planet has previously met and interacted with one goal in mind: driving us out of ours. Of course, that never happens, but it feels like it some days.

[11:44] txxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: a saying i heard a couple years ago sometimes I have to repeat many times a day when someone tries to draw me in to a pile pof crap }} this is not my circus ..these are not my monkeys
[11:44] dxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: :)
[11:44] Axxxxxxx Cxxxxx: wait, those ARE my monkeys

Take your monkeys back, then!

[11:45] hxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: or
[11:45] Rxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: i was allways told not my circus not my clown.

That's another good one.

[11:45] hxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: my name is West and im not in this Mess

Never heard that one before, actually.

[11:46] cxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: Oh I know, I'm just saying like what you can't avoid. People obnoxioulsy honking at other cars, sticking close to your car pressuring you, passing cars left and right. I mean what's the point of all this? None of this matters and while change nothign in the end. You're just throwing the crap you're carrying at other people and ruinging their day as well.

Sure, but--as I well know--it's the most difficult thing to pull yourself out of your own irritation and be conscious of the people around you. And if we are already in that stage of being irritated at each small, perpetual thing, it's nearly impossible to pull back and stop.

[11:46] dxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: lol i mostly go like : its not my business
[11:48] txxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: cossak...heres another one }}}}}   dont let idiots rent space in your head

Not the least of which is, idiots don't usually pay on time. Or at all.

[11:48] txxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: now imma go eat food :P
[11:48] txxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: NO KILLING and ill se yall laterz
[11:48] Bxxxxxxxx Rxxxx: lol
[11:50] cxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: I know... *sighs* I just need a break from people... *squirms around yelling* And this annoying fly to go away! ARGH!!

Some days, it just doesn't pay to chew through the leather straps.

Meanwhile...Back when it was Canada Day, I put together an entry, and then...forgot it existed for several months. Ooops.

So Happy (belated) Canada Day! (This might be NSFW, in some jurisdictions: everything is technically covered, but...not by much.)

And interested in getting a Hulkbuster toy? Why not get a totally adorable one? With an equally dead-cute Iron Man figure inside.

Meet Andreas Urbanski, fire wielder. (Link leads to a video, but the video is awesome.)

And finally, I found a slideshow presentation of Victorian color schemes, and color blending through all three major Victorian periods. Neat!

And now, back to your regularly scheduled haunt coverage.

she sawed at her head till the floor pooled with hair

So, I was trying to track down an image used in the beginning of a video on the creepiest kids' toys ever, which...disturbingly enough, didn't show up as an actual toy. No real wonder, really, because--well, it's pretty much nightmare fuel (seriously, click at your own risk, and depending on inclination, possibly NSFW).

So I turned to Google Image search, always my first recourse, no matter how often it disappoints me. It turned up Monty Python's rabbit as a hand puppet; a gallery on Imgur apparently uploaded by the creator behind the Fugglers; Nintendo World Report's review of something else I can't track down, which was sent to their office; Florentijn Hofman's half-melted, boneless somethings that lounge around in various places; Julia Bornefeld's...leg tangle??...sculpture; Funcage's entry on thirty-three fashion items, most of which are just baffling; PetaPixel's animals turned inside out; Matt Kirkland's investigation into what's really underneath those animatronic toys; and one of the archived Twisted Toys entries from the Sassy Two-Socks blog, in specific, this entry, which sort of seems like maybe a...prototype version? Sort of?

I also found Makiko Shinoda's "Materials Teddy", which...is slightly disturbing to look at, for me personally, but I like the concept behind it.

So, okay, fine, save for the one bear with "IAS" technology (*coughs*), no joy. I turned to TinEye Reverse Image Search, which works far more often than Google, to see what they could track down. All I had was that one screencap from the vid, but surprisingly, it actually turned up links.

Tons of links. Tons of...mostly non-relevant links.

Oh.

This page, for instance, seemed to be just images, no information. I did try to run additional searches--which tracked down everything from the 'Family in Disguise' series by Yu Jinyoung to a mecha-cybearg (according to the artist for this competition, Cakie) to Dark Roasted Blend's take on twisted toys (again with few attributions).

And nobody seems to know where this doll is from, either. (Possibly NSFW?? Though it is a baby doll, not an adult doll.)

So...I'm giving up. If anyone has any further information, or wishes to run down the disturbing toy themselves, have at, but I take no responsibility for strange dreams later.

I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving

"As you no doubt have heard..." I hadn't heard. What's worse, I slept through the service due to intermittent sleep last night, so now I'm just feeling sudden loss and wondering what happened. We'd lost touch the last year or so--not because of him, but because I've pulled back to the point of almost featureless-egg status, and I'm still poking at the shell to re-emerge.

Travel sweetly, lost soul; you were a good friend and a good man. You will indeed be missed.

The rest of this entry seems rather silly in comparison, but...I don't have the heart to revise it, so I'm just going to let it stand.

^&^

I think it can be considered justified that, even several days before Aprille 1st, I sincerely and honestly thought this was a joke.

It's not. And, with seven days to go, it's cleared its original funding goal by a depressingly huge margin, and there's little sign it's going to stop.

So, what's making this so huge for deck-building gamers? Because keep in mind, this is not a new game; this is just a game company seeking funds for translation from Japanese into English, and funds for reprinting. The game already exists, and more to the point, didn't succeed as a concept even in Japan, where Nazi cosplay is mysteriously popular. I, myself, have no idea; I only know it's going to be a thing, so...yay for even less faith in our species.

In the meantime, how far would you go to reduce waste on the planet? The makers of both the Ooho and the Wikipearl are hoping pretty far. And, in the case of the Ooho, at least, currently under development, it will actually cost less to produce an Ooho container for "bottled" water products than it does to create an equivalently-sized plastic container--and in the case of the Ooho, you'll be able to eat the container afterwards, or just throw it away--where, instead of remaining for plastic's decades, it will simply biodegrade in a number of days.

So how soon until we see Ooho water on the shelves? Unknown. But in the case of the Wikipearl, expect to see them on Whole Foods markets' shelves later this month.

In toy news, this is not a thing. But it desperately needs to be a thing, and ThinkGeek has already gotten several pleading requests to have it made. With any luck, we'll see it join the rarefied ranks of the once-pranked, now-real items for sale. We can only hope.

maybe I'm in the black, maybe I'm on my knees

There's a lot that's been happening on Twitch TV this week. The most bizarre thing is the cooperative game session--excuse me, "social experiment"--that's been set up wherein the internet at large plays an old Pokémon GameBoy game emulated for the PC.

No, seriously. That's what's going on. (In fact, it occurs to me now that "Twitch" is the perfect description for what's going on, in a sense.)

If you've never played Pokémon before, it's massively confusing, but if you have, it's alternatively confusing, mentally stunning, emotionally frustrating and jaw-droppingly hysterical. For example...

• This happened when Red, the Pokémon trainer, confronted Giovanni in a boss fight.
• This happened after the boss fight...when the Silph Scope was on the floor, and just needed to be picked up. (The stream chose to walk Red out the door...it took close to ten hours to finally get back to the center and pick the Silph Scope up.)
• At some point, after many fights (and much leveling-up of Pokémon), the "decision" was made by the stream to go back to the PokéCenter and try to put less usable fighters into storage. Instead, Eevee and Abby, two of the better fighters, were simply released, never to be seen again. Oops?
• This may be the most perfect depiction of our battles with the ledge yet envisioned. It was like that. It was like that a lot.
• At some point, the Helix Fossil, picked up early on in the game, became a god. I still don't entirely understand this.
• Especially as the Helix Fossil has been less than helpful in cutting down trees. Or, well, helpful at anything else. In point of fact, we do more consulting with the Helix Fossil than anything else.
• The mere act of accessing a computer within the game renders many of us gibbering idiots by the time it's finished. And it takes hours.
• There's now a dedicated page where we, Helix' humble servants, can ask questions of the Holy Helix...and have them answered. (This is all getting somewhat messianic and disturbing.)
• Red gets stuck. A lot. A WHOLE lot.
• This is still what ends up happening most of the time.
• In fact, there's an uncomfortably large amount of comparisons that might be made between Red and someone who hears voices. I mean, this poor guy. All he's trying to do is train up Pokémon and beat the game, so he can graduate as an accredited PokéTrainer, or something, and instead, thevoicesthevoicesthevoices...compelling him to bash his face into walls, walk repeatedly into corners, walk in and out of doors, get lost in mazes, get out, and promptly go back and get lost again...I mean, that has to be frustrating to deal with.
• And while there's a lot of really impressive art coming out of this, the game remains the same--thousands and thousands of people trying to make one character do what they think is best...with no consultation and usually less consideration. And we're surprised it's ending up a train wreck of an emulator??

If you're still confused about the whole thing, go watch this. It pretty much explains the whole concept of what the internet at large--or, at least between 40,000 and 80,000 users of it, at any given time--are trying to do with the game. This is the current game objective. I predict it'll be another entire day before we achieve it.

What I'm taking away, ultimately, from this "social experiment"? People refuse to work together in large groups, they protest at the drop of a hat, they demand special privileges that ultimately don't matter, and in the end nothing gets done.

It explains so much about our culture.

The first official Firefly action figures are about to be released...and they're...well, not what we were hoping for, to say the least. Alan Tudyk was pretty pleased because his Wash figure will come with dinosaurs, not a toy gun--and okay, as that's such an iconic scene from the show, yeah, I suppose I'd be pleased too...But his figure still looks more like Spike in the Hawai'ian shirt from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And that's just...not good.

In a similar vein, io9 has noticed that Syfy channel seems to have finally given in and embraced their apparent destiny of being the--as they put it--"Food Channel of props and special effects". Me, I don't think that's the best thing, but then, I haven't agreed with the direction Syfy's gone in since they changed their name due to not wanting brand identification with "geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements". So as ever, screw them.

I am really going to miss Warehouse 13, though.

In the meantime, Steam's now allowing gamers to choose their own tags for games. It's going about as you'd expect, and is generally regarded as a Bad Move by nearly everyone.

"The net never forgets." That's very true, in a sense, but so's the rest of the article. Well worth your time to read, and absolutely accurate on the state of the internet today.

Irrational Games is--for what some folks consider irrational reasons, amusingly--closing its doors. (And, by extension, laying folks off, which is never good.) Why? No one seems to know, and there's a lot of confusion. One more DLC--for BioShock Infinite, entitled "Burial at Sea"--will be released, but after that, Levine's returning to 2K Games, and nearly everyone else at Irrational Games is...fired, basically.

I'm just not sure how to take this. I mean, Levine--and, presumedly, the fifteen staffers he hand-picked to stay with him--seem happy enough with the change and the closure, but what about everyone else? It strikes me as the closing of Paragon all over again.

And that's the news for now! More later when the links get too weird to save.

never tasted as sweet a poison as you have

(from the mesh album; Meshworx' amazing grand chandelier)

Seen at Warm Animations, this truly stunning chandelier. It's from Meshworx, and the entire thing is only forty-five prims (impact; physical prims, five). Impressive and finely detailed.

Beyond the many things most gamers find wrong with Ms. Sarkeesian, why does it always come back to her Kickstarter funding? I understand that objection least of all.

Talk about your train wreck tracks...

And I don't know if I'm the only one who follows happenings in the Slenderverse--I know I'm the only one among my friends, so I tend to assume that no one else does, either. How'ver, artist Expression on deviantArt has come up with a set of mini-comics laying out the major features of the various vlogs.

• Part 1: Marble Hornets, EverymanHYBRID, and TribeTwelve
• Part 2: MLAndersen0, DarkHarvest00, and Seeking Truth/the Mystic
• Part 3: CaughtNotSleeping, Tulpa Effect, and Osiris Chronicles
• Part 4: TJAProjects, 5ze02, and 004Steps
• Part 5: The Angel's Game, MyDarkJournal, and the Outside Agents
• Part 6: The Dead Are Watching, His Collector/APCollection, and Apple of Our Eye
• Part 7: SAParanormal Hunters, the Undecided Five, and One Bad Dream
• Part 8: Afraid at Home, Future Refused 2 Change, and Coyote is Awesome (along with an extension, part 8.5, featuring Paranormal Investigation, and part 8.6, featuring Sword and Legend)
• And the last one (at least so far): PewDiePie.

She's also releasing some of her art in wearable form, so here's the Spreadshirt link for the CreepyPasta shirt, the Come to the Woods shirt, and the Fetch shirt.

If anyone's desperately in need of Shakespearean insults, this is apparently where you want to go.

Meanwhile, China's having odd foam-related problems; me, I'm wondering what they're using on the roads to create foam that swells up and covers city streets.

Interested in cultivating a bonsai tree? Try virtually first. That actually seems like a good way to test out the hobby, without all the expense.

"Worming" is apparently the new Japanese craze, and I just don't get it. I've had my eyeballs licked, and it does nothing for me. (Though, to be fair, it has never happened intentionally. Still, even intentionally, I don't think it would be my thing.)

Aaron Goodwin explains Big Steppin', Ninjavitis reviews the Agent Coulson action figure from Hot Toys, and if you watch television, here's the grand master, everything-included, list of shows that were canceled and then renewed.