This Japanese site links to completed currency origami projects that focus on creating strange bodies for the faces found on notes. Link (Thanks, SE!)

The CBC's Rick Mercer has produced a screamingly funny, vicious parody of the copyright boo-hoo-poor-Hollywood ads that run in front of all the movies in Canada now.

WHO MAKES MOVIES?

You know, people go see a comedy or a fantasy or an action film and nine times out of ten they walk out of the theatre at they look at one another and they say "Wow, that was really bad."

CHARLIE NESMAN MAKES BAD MOVIES

I make a lot of sequels. I'm the guy who makes part four and part five of movies where you haven't heard of the first one. Someday I'd like to make a part two.

What kind of movie do I like? I like a movie about a monkey that gets special powers and then has to play a sport. That's the kind of movie I like.

THE PIRACY ISSUE

I don't know why anyone would ever steal a movie. Unless of course it's to avoid this commercial which we now play in front of every single movie you could possibly go to, telling you you're bad for stealing even though you just spent $11 to see some movie and instead you have to sit there and listen to me whine at you and accuse you of being a thief. Nevermind the $9 you just spent for $0.30 worth of popping corn.

MOVIES: THEY'RE NOT WORTH IT

You're very bad people.

WATCH TELEVISION

Real Stream Link (Thanks, Ted!)

Spastic Ink's prog-rock epic, "A Wild Hare," is a Zappa-esque guitar interpretation of Walt Disney's Bambi; there's a video that maps the music onto cuts from the animated film. Part 1 5.3MB WMV Link, Part 2 4.3MB WMV Link, Part 3 5.3MB WMV Link, Part 4 3.3MB WMV Link, Part 5 6.5MB WMV Link, Part 6 6.1MB WMV Link (Thanks, Fnordo!)

Creative Commons has released a new, Music Sharing license, for bands who want to encourage sharing of their tunes. Link

A fellow named Jack posts a series of fake photoblogging documentaries on his website, fauxjob.com. Check out the hilarious fake Friendster UI on his home page. My favorite fauxtoblogs on Jack's site are "STAINS OF WEST HOLLYWOOD RAMADA INN" -- photos of stains on walls and carpet and furniture in an LA hotel -- and this series about (plastic) rats and roaches he discovered in a new Tenderloin district flat in San Francisco. Caption: " IT ALL BEGAN ONE MORNING -- SIMPLE ENOUGH -- WHEN I SAT DOWN TO ENJOY A BOWL OF CEREAL FOR BREAKFAST. HOWEVER, IT SEEMS, A GIANT RAT HAD BEATEN ME TO IT... I REALLY SHOULD HAVE MOVED TO THE CASTRO." (Thanks, J!)

I have no idea WTF this is. Alright, I have *some* idea. It's -- like -- an X-rated pop art Farkistani Where's Waldo. Someone made this Keith Haring-esque Photoshop file of a vagina dentata assmonster. They invite you to download the file, print out, take photos of it in odd situations, then email in for inclusion on vaginamabutt.com.
Link (so not worksafe; thanks Susannah!)

I used to dislike Tom Tomorrow's comic strip, This Modern World. I'm not entirely sure why it didn't work for me, but I think it is because he would set up right-wing straw people to say exaggerated things to make them look bad. Lately, I've been enjoying his strip a lot more, and I think the reason is because the right-wing is now so outrageous, he doesn't need to exagerate to show how bad they are. The truth is funny without having to embellish it.To me, Peter Bagge is the opposite of Tom Tomorrow. I love the stuff he did for Weirdo, Neat Stuff, and Hate. Now he's doing a libertarian comic strip for Reason, and like a mirror-image Tom Tomorrow, he tries to make his point by exaggerating the kinds of things left-wingers say. And just as Tomorrow's early work wasn't funny, Bagge's recent Reason work doesn't make me laugh either. I did read Bagge's latest Hate Annual and thought he was in top form, so this criticism only applies to his Reason comics. Link

Brian Carnell sez: I thought it was unfair for you to pull that single strip out unqualified and claim that Bagge is just a right wing Tom Tomorrw.

Yes, that strip clearly exaggerates what the Left says for effect, but the difference between Bagge and Tom Tomorrow is that Bagge is an equal-opportunity exaggerator. For example, follow the link for a similar strip that is a caricature of the claims made by right wing supporters of the war on Iraq (I supported the war and I find it funny, but YMMV). He also lampooned libertarians.

The problem with Tom Tomorrow is that he's always caricaturing the Right, but never the Left (at least not that I can remember), unlike Bagge who skewers all sides.

(Mark sez: You're right, Brian!)

kellan sez: The other difference is that Tom Tomorrow often uses direct quotes, not caricature. When he exaggerates its clearly ridiculous (Bush in space fighting aliens), not a borderline, mean-spirited attack at common people.

Abelard sez: I'd love to point out the fallacy of Brian Carnell saying that Tom Tomorrow never skewers anyone on the Left, at least that he can remember. Apparently, his memory does not extend to 2000, and the running GoreBot gags [here and here] Or his occasional lampooning of granola guy. Just wanted to throw that at you - I was somewhat dismayed to see you agree with him on that rather ill-researched point.

Rick sez: I don't know why you and Brian have this idea of Tom Tomorrow of focusing only on the right for his skewerings. His politics aren't exactly secret and aren't meant to be, but he lets the left know when they've struck out. This even includes the Clinton years, the last of these three being an example. [here, here, and here]

(Mark sez: My argument is that Tom Tomorrow probably doesn't consider Clinton or Gore to be left wing. )

Here's a video clip from MoveOn that shows Rumsfeld admonishing some TV show hosts for claiming he ever said Iraq was an "immediate threat." He challenges his "critics" to provide "citations" to back up their claims, and when they do -- on the spot -- hilarity ensues. Link (Thanks, rupa!)

I'm about to fold up my laptop and grab a bite before heading down to my Toronto book-launch at the Merril Collection (239 College, third floor, 416-393-7748.), tonight at 7PM. Hope you can make it!

We've got monthly archives again (I hope -- my Movable Type skillz are a little sub-1337) -- to those of you who have observed that the mailing list is b0rked, expect a fix soon. Link

In the old days, you could get bonus software for your Sinclair Spectrum PC encoded as audio on vinyl record albums. This exhaustive, loving report has links to the code and emulators for executing it.

In the case of these programs on vinyl, the user would have to play back the proper portion of the record, record the resultant chatter to tape, and load the tape into the spectrum. Some users have mentioned playing certain games so much that they could recognise the loading sounds.

Link (Thanks, Jed!)

Douglas sez, "A group of us recently got our hands on unedited videos of the meetings where Texas's appointed voting system examiners meet with vendors. Very scary stuff. We've put together a downloadable 'greatest hits' version. My favorite moment: 'I just want to make sure this machine can add. Remember, we've had machines recently that didn't add.' 'We've certified other things that weren't tested' is a close second." Link (Thanks, Douglas)

Well, I've just mailed off the Bloggie certificates and the gold star to my co-editors' places, but luckily I've got this photo, courtesy of Justin Hall, of me displaying all the Bloggie bounty that Boing Boing was fortunate to acquire this year. Link

Via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:

You plug this solid-state inverter into your car's lighter socket and power whatever 110 volt AC appliance you want, 75 watts max. No need for special DC gadgets. It's made for recharging cell phones and other batteries, but I've used it for my scanner and my printer while on the road. Also, I've run a small B&W TV set (5'5), and more important, my baby's bottle heater (I admit is a small one). You can power almost anything that doesn't use large resistance like hair dryers, waffle makers, bread toasters, small ovens. I haven't tried a coffee maker yet. The same company offers an assorted line of automobile inverters with more output power (200 watts on up). This is the smallest one.
-- Juan J Gil

XPower MobilePlug 75, Manufactured by Xantrex.

Update: BoingBoing reader Ben Zanin disagrees with the review: "Admittedly, the convenience factor is nifty, but the efficiency is /terrible/. The cigarette-lighter-cum-power-socket puts out DC current, which is then passed into a DC-to-AC inverter, which in all of the given examples (recharging cell phones, running a scanner and a printer, heating a baby bottle) then passes the energy into a wall-wart adapter... that is, an AC-to-DC inverter.

"Derek Woolstar wrote about this much more clearly than myself. The numbers he came up with for such current inverters place their efficiency at less than 10%. Even if the efficiency were as high as double that, you'd lose more than 95% of your energy while transferring it from battery to device. See also this Harper's article."

Bill Dugan snapped these pictures of crazy, ranting, wordy signs on a farm in Oklahoma in 1992 -- they're a kind of anti-Burma-shave ad, with neither rhyme nor wit to distract us from their glorious tinfoil beanery. Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Originally uploaded by Stewart.

It's really, really, insanely easy to blog photos you receive in flickr, Ludicorp's sweet image-sharing-and-socializing app.

Also noteworthy, flickr's best-of-breed terms-of-service and a privacy control-panel (reg required) that lets your friends assert your friendship without exposing your presence on the system to their friends.

Spot Draves has released a bunch of Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature) as Creative-Commons-licensed, high-resolution scans in PNG format, with painstaking alpha transparency channels that allow you to easily composite them onto other images. Haeckel was the naturist who stated that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" -- that foetuses step through their evolutionary history in the womb. It turned out that he was kind of making that up and faking his evidence, but he sure drew pretty pictures, and the meme's got legs. Well, first it had a tail, then it had legs. Link

An MIT study suggests that low-car/pro-protein diets like Atkins can chemically bum you out. Judith Wurtman, director of the Program in Women's Health at the MIT Clinical Research Center, found that when you kick the carb habit, your brain stops regulating serotonin. As people who take SSRI drugs like Prozac know, serotonin elevates mood and can also act as an appetite suppresant.

"According to Wurtman's clinical studies, if the carbohydrate craver eats protein instead, he or she will become grumpy, irritable or restless. Furthermore, filling up on fatty foods like bacon or cheese makes you tired, lethargic and apathetic. Eating a lot of fat, she said, will make you an emotional zombie."

Link

Heath sez, "Rick Heller has put the full text of his novel Smart Genes up as a Wiki, encouraging people to contribute to it." Link (Thanks, Heath!)

Spot Draves is the author of the brilliant Electric Sheep screensaver -- this is a distributed rendering application that grabs its users' computers' idle cycles to create computationally expensive, vivid and beautiful animated fractals. Users vote for the animations they like best while the screensaver is running, and those fractals are then given precedence within the computational gene pool, spawning variations that are rendered out again, dancing for their human masters who have the power of life and death over them.

The result is a breathtaking, psychedelic form of artificial life whose fitness factor is the ability to tickle the aesthetics of computer geeks.

Spot has assembled the best of these animations -- these "Electric Sheep" -- on a DVD, with DJ mixed background audio. The contents of the DVD are all online as small QuickTime movies, for for the high-rez, you'll have to order a copy or go to the launch on March 31, in San Francisco:

wednesday march 31st 7pm-2am StudioZ
314 11th st @ folsom san francisco 415.252.7666 www.studioz.tv 21+ w/ID
free admission

featuring the soundz of Spool, jhno, mbb, dj vordo, and Kenji Williams/ABA Structure

Link

Microsoft has announced a Welsh-language version of Windows. Link (via Fark)

BoingBoing pal JP points us to Kazaa Cleaner, which its makers describe as "a free and tiny Adware / Spyware remover utility especially designed for getting rid of all Spyware and Adware applications (i.e., Scumwares) that have been bundled, past and present, with all Kazaa Media Desktop clients." Folks, I'm not recommending it, just pointing to the fact that it's out there. Several BB readers have written in to alert us to the fact that a download and attempted install triggers warnings in virus detection software. I haven't had time to check it out, and it may in fact be toxic stuff, I don't know. Proceed with caution.

Creem was the best Rock 'n' Roll magazine ever. It was one of the few mainstream magazines to embrace Punk in the 70s and 80s. Its website is really nice, with lots of old articles and a complete cover gallery. Here are a couple of interviews with William S. Burroughs.

MORGAN: For many contemporary rock critics and musicians, William Burroughs is rock ’n’ roll. Do you feel the same affinity for rock ’n’ roll that rock ’n’ roll obviously feels for you? BURROUGHS: Well, yeah. (laughs) I have given them a lot of titles: The Heavy Metal Kids, The Insect Trust, The Soft Machine. There are a couple of others. I enjoy rock ’n’ roll. It certainly is a unique and incredible phenomenon. Remember that 40 or 50 years ago, musicians didn’t make any money. They played to very small audiences in night clubs and road houses. Also, they had no protection on their records. I’m always asking rock ’n’ roll people if they know who Petrillo is, and none of them do. Well, they wouldn’t have a dime if it weren’t for Petrillo because he organized the Musicians’ Union way back at the end of the ‘30s. And that is why they make money on their records. There wouldn’t be any white Rolls Royces or anything like that.

Link

An anonymous BB reader says:

This is a little odd thing for people who don't want to touch toilet seats. It's a porcelain handle to lift 'em! Apparently porcelain won't let bacteria grow like plastic might, so it makes a sort of odd sense. Of course if toilet seats were made out of porcelain still this wouldn't be a problem, but then think how cold the seat would be in the winter -- we'd need an electric tushy warmer (although I bet Toto and Kohler already have 'em). What I'd really like to see is a toilet seat ringed with dozens of these things, like some sort of toilet stegasaurus.

Update: BB reader Maya Stosskopf says, "I don't know if it is still there, but for at least 15 years there was a lone billboard for this product (or a similair one) near my hometown in rural northern Illinois and the text of the billboard read avoid fecal fingers!".

JayPee provides proof, via Kottke.

Link.

Douglas Repetto, organizer of the robotic performance extravaganza Artbots, says, "The 2004 ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show call for works has just gone live! The deadline for entries is May 1st. We invite all geek/artist BoingBoingers to send in their stuff! Info and entry form here."

David Calkins, President of the Robotics Society of America, says:

1,000 robots. . .well, 414, but that is more than enough at the first Annual Robolympics - this Saturday and Sunday at Ft. Mason in San Francisco. Robots from 11 countries will crawl, wrestle, screech, walk, roll and bash their way to victory. . .or limp pitifully to the recycling pile. Be there for all the action, from 25 gram nano-sumo matches to 340-pound behemoth combat monsters! Artbots, combat bots, huge bots, teeny bots, human competitors of all ages, sizes and shapes, from elementary school Lego League to professional combat masters, all vying for medals and glory at Robolympics! This event also introduces Robo-One to America, a little-known tournament all the way from Japan that features biped androids doing Kung Fu! See the videos at the Robolympics website, Robo-One defies description. Your ticket pays for the whole seat - but you won't need it. You'll be to excited to sit!

Link (thanks also to Roland !)