Here's a mid-1980s CBC News scare-story about Dungeons and Dragons driving kids to suicide featuring (at 2:49 onwards) me and my classmates (the video is dated 1985, but I'm pretty sure this couldn't have been later than my graduation from Junior High in 1984). Ignoring the crazy-ass fearmongering, it's incredibly nostalgic to see all those kids I grew up with, playing with their minis and rolling their dice.

Dungeons & Dragons D&D Canadian Doc 1985 Part #2 (Thanks, Tim!)

Click here for higher-rez image.

Anthony Citrano says,

Being an observer (and occasional shooter) of all things fashion, I was just was looking at December's "W" cover [above and left] with Demi Moore.

In the interview she says she'd rather be a "puma" than a "cougar" - but apparently, the clumsy Photoshop artist decided she was looking too strong in the cover shots - and awkwardly chopped off part of her left thigh. Note how the upper part of her left thigh/hip is basically missing (our right). Did she have some sort of weird car accident that left a wedge of meat missing from it? The fabric even magically floats above the missing thigh. Ha!

Hard to believe that made it to the cover.

And now there's a T-shirt to prove it.

Hiney shirts at CafePress

Video link. From James and Peter Serafinowicz.

Alice spent the weekend in a Scottish hotel that Winston Churchill was a regular guest at -- even though he seems to have hated it, as is demonstrated by this sign in the lobby.

... and he hated it. by Crys

In my spam: boner pill fantasy art. This is a real image that adorned a spam email message from a Chinese meds site.

The Roomba Pac Man uses indoor location sensors and Unmanned Aerial System software to create a playable (albeit slow) PacMan built on repurposed autonomous vacuum cleaners.

Roomba Pac-Man (via Wonderland)

Diesel Sweeties' R. Stevens and Ariana Osborne are offering this wordy Venn diagram shirt showing the bittersweet territory between happiness and sadness for $18-19, and taking pre-orders now.

(Happy()Sad) Diagram Shirt (via Warren Ellis)

I always celebrate when a new Terry Pratchett novel hits the stands -- doubly so now that health problems are slowing him down from his normal superhuman output to a merely impressive one. But I confess I was a little less excited to learn that the newest Pratchett Discworld book, Unseen Academicals, was about football (AKA soccer). I'm not a sports fan. I wasn't a hockey fan when I lived in Canada. I wasn't a baseball fan when I lived in the US. I'm not a footie fan now that I live in the UK. But I gave it a whirl: this is Terry Pratchett, after all. I'd read his grocery lists.

A word about Pratchett for the uninitiated. Terry Pratchett is an incredibly funny, warmly human British fantasy (mostly) novelist. He writes at an impossible rate. Most of his books are part of a sprawling, infinitely varied fantasy series called Discworld, about a flat, disc-shaped planet that is carried on the backs of four gigantic elephants who tramp in slow circles around the back of a vast, interstellar turtle called A'Tuin. On Discworld, everything happens. There are imperial battles and barbarians; witches and trolls and dwarves in the hills; animist spirits on lost continents; and there is a vast and wonderful and terrible city called Ankh-Morpork. Ankh-Morpork is presided over by a tyrant called Lord Vetinari, who is quite progressive as tyrants go. For one thing, he's let the trolls, vampires, medusae, dwarves, werewolves, zombies, and assorted other nonhumans into the city. For another, he's organized the thieves into a guild to whom one can pay an annual license and be guaranteed a life free from official thieving (freelance thieves are dealt with most firmly by the guild).

You can read the Discworld books in almost any order. Some of them run in little trilogies that follow the same characters, but even if you picked up the second or third volume of these, you'd probably get along OK -- Pratchett is quite good at getting newcomers to Discworld up to speed on its basics.

Back to Unseen Academicals. Here's the setup: the wizards of Unseen University have discovered that a key grant from a former Archchancellor requires them to keep a football team that plays regular matches. It's been decades since the last UU team was fielded, and they're in imminent danger of losing a substantial source of funding. Meanwhile, football itself -- as played on the streets of Ankh-Morpork -- is a vicious game that is more riot than sport, and the wizards of UU have no intention of getting involved in that mess.

So they cook up a plan to reform football -- and to field a team of their own, coached by Nutt, a mysterious (and erudite) goblin who has been heretofore employed as a candle-dribbler (no self-respecting wizard wants to do magic by the light of a pristine, unmarked candle) in the cellars of UU.

That's the setup. Here's the payoff: it's brilliant. The novelist's best trick is to make you care about stuff you don't care about. It's what Fever Pitch does. And it's what Unseen Academicals does, too. Pratchett shows us how sport is part of the emotional life of a city, and how its significance resonates across generations, across regional parochialism, across social strata, uniting us behind something that transcends the mere game.

What's more, Pratchett shows us how fragile a thing this is, how vulnerable it is to greed and thuggishness and venality, and how those who defend the game do so for the best reasons imaginable. As Pratchett says, "The thing about football is, it's not about football."

I wouldn't call this the best Discworld novel ever (I think my vote for that honor would go to Monstrous Regiment, which, incidentally, can be read without having read any of the other Pratchett novels). But it's in the top five.

A word of warning: it's also one of the most inside-baseball (you should forgive the expression) of the Discworld books, requiring a fair bit of familiarity with the previous books in the series to be fully appreciated. It's a real gift from Pratchett to his fans, in other words, and I, for one, am grateful for it.

Unseen Academicals (Amazon US)

Unseen Academicals (Amazon UK)

Bonnie sez, "Measuring close to a foot tall and crafted in durable all-weather resin, the Garden Jawa protects your tomatoes, zucchini, and daffodils from the dark side, armed with a garden tool bandolier, a garden hose, and a thumbs-up attitude. Reflective amber-colored eyes peek out from underneath his hood, challenging any unwelcome visitors looking to feast on his turf. True to nature, the Garden Jawa is still up to the well-known mischievous antics we know from the movies. Case in point: If you've caught StarWars.com's Flickr sets lately, you may have caught this little guy sneaking into Skywalker Ranch to snag some pics in front of the Main House. We've also caught him snooping around Lucasfilm's Presidio campus, reclaiming a bit of green from the dry California summer months. "

Garden Jawa a StarWarsShop Exclusive (Thanks, Bonnie!)

Found on Sean Bonner's tumblog.

This is surely one of the most adorable animal YouTubes in the history of all internets. (via @maggiekb1 via this blog).

Even though the title of this hilarious short mockumentary video is "Cockhead," it's probably safe for work, since the naughty bit is mosaiced. It was co-written by CJ Davies and Mr Tom Barbor-Might.

Cockhead

Lucas Martell's new animated film, Pigeon Impossible: "A rookie secret agent is faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase." (Thanks, Joaquin Baldwin)

Yesterday, my husband went hunting around the Internets for a new dining room lamp. This is one of the options he presented me with. Only $189. Cheap!

Sadly, no Battlestar model is available. Or a Death Star. I might have gone for a Death Star.

Star Ship Chandelier from eLights

For months (years?) Rupert Murdoch has been waving his jowls around and shouting that Google is stealing from him by not paying to index his material. And all along, we've been saying, "Pffft, right. If you don't like it, just add a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index you. Until you do, stop whining and put it back in your pants."

Now Rupert has promised to do exactly that. He claims that he's going to take all of News Corp's websites pay-only and have them removed from Google when he does.

You know what? He's lying. But I think it'd be entertaining if every reporter who interviewed him, for the rest of his life, said, "Hey, Rupert, when are you going to take all your company's websites out of Google?" It'd also be hilarious to get the CEOs of the various pieces of Rupert's empire to comment on whether they want all their company's materials invisible to search engines.

Rupert also thinks that fair use is illegal and that the right court case would result in it being "barred altogether." Again, another hilarious interview question for the rest of his career: "Hey, Rupert, when are you going to abolish fair use? How's that plan coming, pal?"

The revelation came early in the interview, after Murdoch claimed that Google and others are stealing News Corp content in response to a question about who he was talking about when he talked about plagiarists. "The people who simply pick up everything to run with, and steal our stories...they just take them..without payment. That's Google, Microsoft, Ask.com..a whole lot of people."

Murdoch claimed that readers who visit News Corp sites via search offer little value to advertisers, and that News Corp would rather have fewer people coming to their websites, but paying. Asked why News hasn't made its sites invisible to Google, Murdoch replied: "I think we will....but that's when we start charging."

Murdoch also claims that News Corp believes that the doctrine of Fair Use can be challenged in court and "barred altogether."

Epic Win: News Corp Likely To Remove Content From Google (Thanks, Dustin!)

Update: So here's what I think it going on. Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he's still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump).

So what he's hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year's operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google.

He may, in fact, get a taker. And it will be a disaster. A search engine whose sole competitive advantage is "We have Rupert Murdoch's pages!" will not attract any substantial traffic. The search engine will either go bust or fail to renew the deal.

On this fair use question, my guess is that some evil Richelieu in the legal department has been passing torrid whispers to Rupert about how the Berne Convention's "Three Step Test" for exceptions to copyright is overstepped by US fair use and by many countries' fair dealing rules. So Rupert thinks that he can take a case to the WTO (membership in the WTO is contingent on compliance with the Berne Convention) and get all these rules struck down.

Of course, Rupert's own media products make frequent and copious fair use of other copyrights -- you can't create without fair use. But the mustache-twirling lawyer at Newscorp probably didn't mention this to Rupert Palpatine (the lawyer probably thinks it'd be OK if every single one of those fair uses was replaced by a process in which lots of lawyers negotiated the terms of every use, probably all reporting to him).

They're wrong, of course. The WTO's rules -- and Berne -- are necessarily subservient to realpolitik, viz., the US gets $1 trillion of economic activity out of fair use, and it's not going to get rid of it because it makes some UN agency sad (if the UN mattered to the US, the US'd be paying the billions in back-fees it owes). And if the WTO imposes trade sanctions on the US, they'll just be ignored, because the world's factory-states (China, with also-rans such as India and Vietnam) can't afford to stop sending shipping containers full of Happy Meal toys to America. And if the WTO tries to embargo China, it'll quickly discover that the rest of the world isn't prepared to live without plastic tchotchkes and junkware either.

So good luck with that, Rupert. have a delightful, Howard-Hughesian dotage, acting out a crazed, Moby-Dick dumbshow against the Internet, hoping that the world's politics and economies will reform themselves to suit your fevered imaginings. This is how history will remember you.

A copyeditor at the Toronto Star greeted the news that union copyeditor jobs were being eliminated in favor of freelancers by heavily editing the publisher's memo announcing same, pointing out all the ways in which the publisher could benefit from editorial aid.

This is very funny stuff, but having looked at the markup, I have to say that I would ask for a different copyeditor in future. A lot of these edits ("avoid simplistic qualifiers" for "very") fall under the heading of "creative disagreement" not "helpful suggestion" or "correction." I've generally benefitted from copyeditors who know the difference, but on the rare occasion where I've had to deal with a couple hundred pages of redlines by a copyeditor who thought that he was my co-author, it's been quite a struggle.

Disgruntled Star Editor Takes Constructive Revenge (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Skeptics who believe that a university is actually a diploma mill often prove their point by enrolling their cats in the university's program and seeing whether the cat can get a degree. Some enterprising Wikipedians have assembled a list of several such cats.

Colby Nolan is a housecat who was awarded an MBA degree in 2004 by Trinity Southern University, a Dallas, Texas-based diploma mill, sparking a fraud lawsuit by the Pennsylvania attorney general's office.[1]...

Ben Goldacre, a UK-based science journalist, obtained a diploma in nutrition from the American Association of Nutritional Consultants for his dead cat, Henrietta, while investigating allegations about fake qualifications.[5]

List of cats with fraudulent diplomas (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

(Image: Count the cats!, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Eva 101's Flickr stream)

We'll never know what was originally intended for this Techdirt tee, but we can see the aftermath of the takedown notice it attracted!

DMCA Takedown T-shirt (Thanks, Dennis!)

Popular Science is reporting that a piece of bread, dropped by a passing bird, has managed to damage the Large Hadron Collider.

The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

If this really is the work of time-traveling Higgs boson particles, however, they're demonstrating a lot of creativity, but not a lot of competence. The Bird Incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility, which is still scheduled for later this month.

Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down the Large Hadron Collider (Really), Popular Science. You should follow the link just to see their illustration "according to eyewitness accounts". Via stevesilberman.

Absolutely, positively need a beard now? Simply enjoy looking at photos of cute girls sporting fake beards? Yeah. There's an Etsy for that.

imadeyouabeard store on Etsy. Thanks, Christina!

And, yes, I am getting a little obsessed with the whacked-out wonder of Etsy. Why do you ask?

The weather in Los Angeles is so predictable, weather reporter Mark Thompson from our local Fox affiliate can just play sexy rap music and dance the day's forecast. He is one of the many reasons I love living in Los Angeles. Here's one video. Here's another, and here's yet another. He has an awesome, manly-man voiceover voice. But I like him best when he's silent. As one non-LA YouTube commenter said, "I wish my weather channel played songs that said 'bitch please.'" (That'd be this one, at 1:42.) (via @eecue)

If you flip the Dodge Viper logo upside down, it looks like Daffy Duck. (Via Bits & Pieces)

Watch: MP4 download, YouTube, Dotsub (with captions/text translations).

In this episode of Boing Boing Video, we test-drive "Sarriugarteis (Odontochile) trilobiteis," also known as The Electrobite.

This trilobite-shaped DIY vehicle was created by "Oilpunk" enthusiasts Kyrsten Mate + Jon Sarriugarte, with help from fellow makers Amy Jenkins and Tansy Brooks.

Pesco previously blogged about the little bugger here -- it's even been to Burning Man, where it no doubt terrified some trippin' hippies.

"We Are Douchebags."

From Wikipedia: A reclaimed word is a word in a language that was at one time a pejorative but has been brought back into acceptable usage—usually starting within the communities that experienced oppression under that word, but often also among the general populace as well.

(Via Laughing Squid)

I've written before here about the impact that Sue Townsend's comic Adrian Mole novels have had on my life since I was a young teenager, so it'll come as no surprise to learn that I was completely delighted by the latest volume, Adrian Mole: the Prostrate Years, which is sweeter, darker, more sentimental and more grim than the earlier installments.

For the uninitiated, the Adrian Mole books chronicle the life of a young man born near Leicester, whose dysfunctional family, intellectual impulses, gormless bumbling and terrible poetry make for a meaty, multi-volume series that serves as a wicked history of Britain and the world since the 1980s.

In the latest volume, Adrian is nearly 40, and is increasingly estranged from his (latest) wife, the mysterious and sexy Daisy, who seduced Adrian in Weapons of Mass Destruction. Their five year old is a High-School Musical-crazed monster, their finances are in tatters, and they're living with Adrian's elderly parents in their converted pigsty. Adrian's mother is writing a fictionalized agony memoir called A Girl Called Shit, and the lovely bookstore Adrian works at is going bust. And there's something wrong with Adrian's prostate, a problem compounded by all the friends and acquaintances who insist on calling it a "prostrate."

And yet, there's plenty that's sweet here. Adrian is figuring out fatherhood. His childhood flame, Pandora Braithwaite (now an MP) is back in his life. His half-brother Brett is back, his career as a hedge-fund manager in ruins. His son, Glenn, on deployment in Afghanistan, is shaping up to be a critically minded sharp young man. And Bernard, the alcoholic librophile who's helping out at the store, turns out to have quite a good approach to life that Adrian stands to learn much from.

Reading these books every year or two is a magic experience. Townsend recounts and recasts recent history in a way that makes you realize just how funny and tragic it all is. Townsend's vision has recently failed her, but she continues to write these books at an amazing clip. It's a real inspiration, as well as superb entertainment.

Adrian Mole: the Prostrate Years

Entire Adrian Mole series

In this brief true-life comedy short film, a gentleman who is careless with his forklift in a warehouse full of cases of glass bottles (vodka?) manages to bring the whole lot crashing to the ground with much hilarity!

Fork Lift Accident Brings Down The Warehouse Video (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Digby does a great job of rounding up the criticisms of outspoken Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson, who is being pilloried for such rhetorical crimes a calling Enron lobbyists "whores" (yes, it's an insult to whores, but that's not what's got some people upset):

You see, it's one thing for Republicans to give speeches on the floor of the House saying that Democrats want to murder the elderly or that they plan to create sex clinics and force teenage girls to have abortions. That is simply folksy language these people use to communicate with their people. When Newt Gingrich blamed Susan Smith's murdering of her own children on liberalism, Lady Frothenberg understood that it was harmless hyperbole. When Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and the rest of the conservative movement leadership say daily that Barack Obama is a black racist who hates America, it's simply their way, and we all understand that it is just entertainment for the masses who require this type of crude stimulation.

But when one calls a former Enron lobbyist a K-Street whore on an obscure radio show, one has simply gone too far, sirrah, and it will not be tolerated.

There will be a town hall meeting this evening led by Pastor Dick Cheney to discuss the possibility of witches in the village and what types of enhanced interrogation might be used to determine the breadth of the infiltration. Our deep sense of decency, morality and civility demand it. And thank you once again, Lady Frothenberg, for bringing this egregious breach of proper behavior to our attention.

Whatever the rest of you do, don't encourage this miscreant Alan Grayson to do more of this boorish behavior by donating money at his crude web site: Congressmanwithguts.com. If you do, I certainly hope you don't plan on being invited into the any of the finer homes and establishments in the Village because you just aren't welcome there!

Lady Frothenberg Laces Up Her Corset (via Making Light)

Eric made this smashing papercraft "Big Head" costume for Hallowe'en this year, based on the Big Head mode from classic video games.

Head (Flickr) (Thanks, Eric!)

How much do you get paid to poop? That's the question asked by Workpoop.com, a Web site that will, helpfully, time your restroom breaks and then calculate how much money you make while on the toilet using that time, the number of times you go per week and your hourly salary. I'm torn between three feelings here: First, a childish glee; Second, a childish disappointment that I can't really participate, what with not having an hourly salary; and Third, the creeping sensation that, somewhere, somebody's boss is using this to shorten their break times.

Workpoop, your pay-per-poo calculator. Via Barfblog.

BoingBoing: We have a lot of archived articles about poop.

Image from Flickr user lilit, via CC.

Hayley and Rachel went out this Hallowe'en dressed, respectively, as Cory Doctorow (as depicted in the XKCD webcomic) and a floppy disk. GREAT costumes, folks!

Look, it's Michael Geist! (Thanks, Rachel!)

Chris sez, "I made a thing! This thing did not exist before I decided to make it. John Young called out to me from his universe, 'Make me a Ban Hammer!' So after a little 3D modeling and research, I conjured into existence the worlds only real Ban Hammer. If you are so able and inclined, you can print your own with the instructions given here."

Sisters and brothers, these are the first days of a new golden age of kipple.

Ban Hammer: 3D printed (Thanks, Chris!)

A number of news sites and blogs erroneously (or hoaxily?) reported the death of Chuck Biscuits (Wikipedia), who has performed over the years for bands including Black Flag, Circle Jerks, DOA, and Danzig. The reports were all wrong. He will live to bang on de drum again. Apparently the whole thing was a prank on a particular journalist. Or not. All I know is the photo in this post was taken by Glen E. Friedman, who broke the news about the fact that everyone who broke the other news was wrong. Oh, and: this blog post is an elaborate excuse to post the Danzig "home video" above, in which Mr. Biscuits confesses his love for sugary breakfast cereals. His addiction to the likes of Quisp and Boo Berry ("the caviar of breakfast cereals") is the stuff of punk legend. (thanks, Sean)

News reports earlier this month created a global stir around an odd "made in China" product marketed to the Middle East - cheap artificial hymens. They're intended for use by brides who feel compelled to fake virginity, in countries where not being a virgin at marriage is a very big, very bad thing. Conservative Egyptian politicians wanted to ban the product. One curious (male) blogger in Egypt decided to order one.

Mohammad Al Rahhal picked up the contraband gyno-goods at his local post office in Egypt:

it had been opened by various puzzled customs and postal employees who, at a loss, defined the product in writing as "containing an unknown red liquid" - and awaited my description.

Al Rahhal told inspectors it was "cinematographic make-up," and took his hymen home.

Marwa Rakha over at Global Voices has more from Al Rahhal's product review (he explains how it works, sort-of NSFW if only for use of anatomically specific language). Also, a report at the UK Guardian.

Spoiler: Al Rahhal's verdict? This thing, and the thinking behind it, are totally stupid. "Morality is worst interpreted by anatomy," he says. Bravo, dude.

Vincent Pearase, of Oak Park High School in Winnipeg Canada, writes:

One of our talented Oak Park students, Andrew Vineberg, helped make this hilarious short, Hiding Your Sexual Orientation From Your Parents 101. The kid is a vlogger, too. He does an amazingly erudite, funny vlog under the moniker Volatile Chemical. Check it out! Andrew has asked to show this at our next school assembly.

Remember the La-Z-Boy DWI story Pesco blogged earlier this week? A local paper reports that the lounger is headed for eBay. See also this update at Smoking Gun on the case of Dennis LeRoy Anderson, who drank "eight or nine beers" before driving the motorized lounger into the street and smashing it into a parked car. Snip:

Anderson's customized vehicle, seen in the police evidence photos on the following pages, is powered by an eight horsepower Kohler lawnmower engine, and has a stereo, headlights, a built-in cup holder, and a "Hell Yeah It's Fast" bumper sticker. The ride, however, does not have a seat belt.

Proctor Police Chief Walter Wobig described Anderson as a "super-nice guy." The cops say they'll soon put the man's cherished chair up for sale on eBay, under state forfeiture laws (auctioning it off was one option, the other was using it for official police business, LOL). If anyone can find the eBay listing once it goes live, I'd sure love to see it -- and, hey, maybe bid on it.

Related articles: Proctor Journal, BBC, Duluth News Tribune, Wired.

Yeah, I'm just going to put this whole NSFW thing behind the jump. Read on for an in-depth look at bat blow-jobs, and insights into the evolution of such work, in general.

The guys at Videogum found what may be the absolute most awesome "pumpkin dance" YouTube video of all time. This splendid little number, choreographed to "Ghostbusters," comes to the internets courtesy of a local news channel in Omaha, Nebraska. (via Gabe)

BB reader Felix Jung says, "My coworker Jane took this photo of a mini-pumpkin tribute to a little boy and a little balloon that had us glued to our TV and computer screens. It was entered in to a contest taking place at her husband's office, and I'm betting it wins, hands down."

If America's law students continue to be this amusing, there may be hope yet for the future of America's lawyers. From Craigslist:

You & Me Doing It v. You & Me Not Doing It (2009)
Using that IRAC method we've been learning about, a compelling brief on why we should hump each other's brains out.

Facts, Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusions follow.

Thanks to Sarahpi, one of my favorite lawyers-in-training!

Ars Technica reports on the nascent Google Wave RPG scene, in which wavesters are amusing themselves by using Google's collaboration tool s a surprisingly effective (for some games) means of keeping track of the action in game:

The few games I'm following typically have at least three waves: one for recruiting and general discussion, another for out-of-character interactions ("table talk"), and the main wave where the actual in-character gaming takes place. Individual players are also encouraged to start waves between themselves for any conversations that the GM shouldn't be privy to. Character sheets can be posted in a private wave between a player and the GM, and character biographies can go anywhere where the other players can get access to them.

The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who's added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG. A newcomer can jump right in and get up-to-speed on past interactions, and a GM or industrious player can constantly maintain the official record of play by going back and fixing errors, formatting text, adding and deleting material, and reorganizing posts. Character generation seems to work quite well in Wave, since players can develop the shared character sheet at their own pace with periodic feedback from the GM.

Unfortunately for those of us who are more into the tactical side of RPGs, it isn't yet well-suited to a game that involves either a lot of dice rolling or careful tracking of player and NPC positions. Right now, Wave bots are hard to get working reliably and widgets are scarce, which means that if you don't want to use the standard dice bot that Wave debuted with (dice bots are an old IRC favorite) then there isn't really another convenient option; rolls are either made with real dice and then posted on the honor system, or they're posted in batches and a GM then uses them in sequence.

Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D (via Futurismic)

ThinkGeek's Star Trek onesies are a great change from the boring old Bob the Builder and Disney Princess junk you'll get heaped on you the second your kid emerges. I love that they have a redshirt version (for expendable babies!).

USS Warehouse Captain in Training (via Wonderland)

Worst and weirdest Beatles cover ever. A choir of ventriloquistic monstrosity, from Hungary. Nabbed from Robert Popper's newfangled webble-site.

Trossen Robotics forum member WGhost9 says they designed, built and programmed this creepy candy crawler in just 3 weeks.

It runs C on an Axon microcontroller. It uses all digital servos and can lift over twice its body weight. The software (soon to be given out open source) allows for 6 synchronous degrees of motion. Future additions will include foot sensors and a remote control option.

[ via DIY Drones ]

Laughing Squid has photos of the "Candy Corn Cones" that street artist diabetik is plopping around in Washington, DC.

Tim says: "Governator Arnold hides a colorful response in a carefully worded veto."

Schwarzenegger's press secretary, Aaron McLear, insisted Tuesday it was simply a "weird coincidence."

Can a statistician gives us the odds of this happening, please?

Did Schwarzenegger drop 4-letter bomb in veto?

The host of NPR's awesome news quiz/comedy extravaganza, "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!", has put up his annual Halloween display. It is a nativity scene of evil. I heart it. Image via Peter Sagal's Twitter account. Which you should be following.

Boing Boing reader Greg Zilm sent in this photograph of a fine pumpkin homage to William S. Burroughs.