Flat Stanley and friends learn about cell biology

1:03:38 PM former orker: have you heard of Flat Stanley, the children's book?
1:03:53 PM zendonut: No?
1:04:30 PM former orker: the story is Stanley gets squashed flat by a bulletin board that falls on him while he's sleeping. the nice side-effect is he can be folded up and mailed around the world
1:04:38 PM former orker: (there is a tie in, wait for it)
1:05:17 PM former orker: my cousin's 3rd(?) grade class all made flat versions of themselves and mailed them to relatives who were supposed to make a photo documentary of them doing stuff
1:05:43 PM former orker: so my cousin picked me, and we took lots of pictures around town and at work (ICCB robots!)
1:05:57 PM former orker: i SO wanted a picture with some freaky thing from the warren exhibits
1:06:02 PM former orker: but, no photos allowed. bleh.
1:08:19 PM zendonut: That's great!
1:08:56 PM former orker: if you are REALLY bored: http://photo.miranda.org/flatmeredith200504

This is great, I thought.

(no subject)

I'm a little annoyed that, for a CD I bought many years ago and ripped via iTunes sometime between then and now, someone entered the artist's name in the CCDB using dense Japanese characters I have no hope of reading by myself. I mean, the artist is in fact Japanese and I'm sure that actually is how she'd write her name when writing in her native language. But the context here is clearly Western, with the English used for the album's title and all the track names, so I more suspect that someone was being a know-it-all otaku refusing to use her Romanized name just because they knew how to type in the kanji.

So now I look at this album in iTunes and I have no clue how to even begin pronouncing this woman's name, even though it was clear on the original CD packaging. All I can hear, for some reason, is my father's voice gleefully spouting his notion of Japanese-ish gibberish, something like Oishoishoishoishoishoisbanzai!!!

So I guess what I'm saying is Dear Japanese people: Please stop encouraging my dad.

(All that said, a long time ago he watched me play Ninja Gaiden on Nintendo, and he would act out all the cutscenes as they came up. Whenever the main character said "...", which was often, my dad would bust out the crazy ninja-talk and actually it was kind of hilarious.)

(no subject)

No longer automatically funny: zombies, and zombie accessories ("braains" et al)

[Flying graphic resembling "DONE" if stamped with a "DONE" stamp swoops in and lands with a THUDD diagonally over frame, fades.]

Feel free to remind me of this the next time I make a zombie joke.

I think I have been tired by all the stock "geek humor" characters for a while actually. (Free feel to remind me of this etc.)

Somewhat relatedly, let me use this space to announce that I'm purposefully going to avoid taking another programming job, even if I have to take a job sometime in the future. I actually have been consciously thinking for a while now that I've lost any will to hack on things I don't really care about. Or rather, to care about things solely because I'm paid to hack on them. (Feel free etc.)