Otter Disaster #4: Pop Culture Reference

Vampire Boogie: Angel Gets Down and Funky

Posted for Mrs. Disaster who really loves her some Angel:

Prepare to Laugh: a List of the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

Nerve.com and IFC have compiled a list of the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time Lists like this are always subjective, there are Carol Burnett sketches I prefer over 'Went With the Wind'(#22)for instance, but all in all a good sampling of great sketches.

'$240 Worth of Pudding'(#47) was a source of much joy for me and friend Lee during our college years. I could often be heard saying, ". . .and I'm Barry, Sagittarius."

Hubba Hubba: Zap Zap!

Barbarella/BSG Hotness here.

Charlton Heston: Dead at 84

Charlton Heston died last night. I always liked him as an actor, and his role as George Taylor in Planet of the Apes is one of my favorite perfomances in one of my favorite movies.

Heston also appeared as 'Mike' Vargas in Orson Welles' 1958 noir classic, A Touch of Evil. Another great role in another one of my all-time favorite movies.

When I was very young (and Catholic) I remember watching The Ten Commandments with my family every Easter.

1980's The Mountain Men was one of the first 'R' rated movies I ever saw. My neighbors had a giant KU band satellite dish, and I saw the film on HBO. I don't remember much about the movie save for lots of course languange and a fight scene that (if I remember correctly) had Heston's character taking a bite out of the man with whom he was fighting. I remember loving it, but haven't seen it since.

Since announcing his affliction with Alzheimer's, he hadn't really worked much, but his impact was great, and he leaves a legacy of great films.

Bitstrips: Otter Disaster #2 and #3

Otter Disaster: The Comic Strip

Bitstrips, which I blogged about the other day, allows you to create a series of strips under a title. I created Otter Disaster which seems to be a semi-autobiographical strip about my misspent youth.
Here is episode #1:

Bitstrips: Comic Strips Made Easy

Via Boing Boing.

Bitstrips is a very cool web tool that allows you to create characters, pose them, and put them in your very own comic strip.
Here is my first strip, and a semi-autobiographical strip from my college years. Any resemblance to people living is entirely intentional:

Paul Destroys Peden

Ron Paul destroyed Texas Congressional District 14 challenger Chris Peden, by about two votes to one last night. Paul will be unchallenged by a Democrat in November, so Paul will have two more years to be a voice of liberty and reason in the House. With his seat secure, I'm not sure where Paul goes from here, but there are still rumors of a possible Third Party Run.

In other news McCain acquired the necessary delegates to clinch the GOP nomination, and Mike Huckabee started making plans for Election '12.

Hillary won both the Texas and Ohio primaries to keep the Democrat Party nomination up for grabs. Obama looks poised to win the Texas Caucases though, which account for a third of the available delegates in that state. With the proportional distribution of delegates and the remaining primaries, it is unlikely that either Clinton or Obama will clinch the nomination, and the Superdelegates (Strange visitors from another planet?) will be the deciding factor. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. It could come down to a fight in Denver at the Democratic National Convention.

A Spoiler: REBORN!

Major Spoilers has indeed returned from the great beyond.



In their costumes, I'm not sure which one is Stephen and which is Matthew, but I'm glad these fine gentlemen have found their way back to Stately Spoiler Manor.

HERE is the tale of the return. Even though I don't read anywhere near the volume of comics I used to, I still enjoy them, and Matt and Steve's enthusiasm is infectious. Plus, now I know when to look for Nexus #100!

Major Spoilers: Back from the Dead?

I haven't talked to friend Matthew in quite some time, but it looks like there is something happening with Major Spoilers real soon.

Stephen Schleicher's blog has no clues either. . .

Ron Paul: No 3rd Party Run, and With Good Reason

I was always sceptical of Ron Paul's denials of his intent to run as a third party or independent candidate, and felt he was planning for that contingency once any GOP candidate aquired the necessary delegates to get the nomination. It seemed like the natural progression, once there was absolutely zero chance for even a brokered convention.

He announced last night that he will not go third party or independent so that he can run for, and maintain his seat in the House of Representatives. This makes sense to me. He can have at least some influence in the House.

Paul has always said that his movement was about the message and not the man. Part of his intent is to change the face of the Republican Party to truly embrace the principles of limited goverment, and staying in an elected position within that party makes a lot of sense. His presidential run has built a pretty good network of active people who really believe in his message of liberty, limited government, sound money and all the rest. Hopefully those people will stay with the party, move into positions of party leadership, run for office themselves and give liberty a true voice again.

Ron Paul: 3 Delegates So Far Today!

Ron Paul made a deal to help Mike Huckabee win the West Virginia State GOP convention.
Paul was dropped after losing the first ballot(with no candidate getting 51% of the votes) Paul and McCain both threw their support to Huckabee to deny Mitt Romney the win.
In exchange for the votes that put Huckabee over the top, Paul will receive 3 of the 18 Delegates available from West Virginia.

That should bring his delegate total to 9 not counting those earned in Maine or Louisiana.

Reason Magazine's Hit and Run Blog has the details.
More Via the Lew Rockwell Blog

Ron Paul: Super Tuesday

It's been almost three months since I've posted here at Otter Disaster. Work schedule and other real life responsibilities pulled me away from any blogging at all.

I'm once again hoping to blog on something like a regular schedule, maybe a couple of times a week at least.

Today I wanted to blog about Ron Paul again, because Super Duper Tuesday is coming on February 5.

Since I last posted about the election Paul had less than stellar finishes in Iowa, Michingan, South Carolina and especially New Hampshire where expectations were high.
He had two record setting 'Money Bombs' and respectable finishes in the Nevada, Maine and Louisiana Caucuses.
Paul also weathered a scandal concerning racist and controversial comments in a Newsletter from the 90s that bore his name.
He was the top GOP fundraiser in 4th Quarter of 2007, pulling in over $20 Million dollars, helping him outlast Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, and 'America's Mayor', Rudy Giuliani.

Paul's only hope for the GOP nomination at this point is probably a brokered convention.
Romney and McCain will need to split most of the Super Tuesday states(with a few upsets by Romney), with maybe a suprise win by Huckabee somewhere, and possibly a surprise win by Paul in the Montana caucus and some California districts (where delegates are partly distributed proportionally). Those delegates need to be spread far and wide so that no clear delegate majority exists by the GOP Convention in August. With McCain surging in most polls, a brokered convention is seeming less likely all the time.

In my opinion, Paul will begin to seriously consider a third party/independent run following Super Tuesday. I think he will have to make this decision soon, for fundraising and ballot access reasons, but I think he'll do it. Paul seems dedicated to continuing the fight for the message of his campaign, and once McCain locks up the nomination, Paul will be increasingly marginalized by the media. He can drum up lots of publicity with an indy/3rd party run, and if he polls well enough, he could even find himself in some debates.

I personally hope he makes an indy/3rd party bid, because there is no way I'll vote for McCain, Romney, Clinton or Obama. If Paul doesn't continue his campaign, I'll most likely vote for the LP nominee, as I've done since 1996.

Nostalgiavision! Recalling 2 Different Sketch Comedy Shows

For some reason today I thought of 2 different sketch comedy shows separated by nearly a decade (in my life).

The first was Almost Live! which was produced by KING-TV in Seattle Washington from 1984-1999. I watched it on Comedy Central where it aired from 92 to 93. I think it may have aired in syndication as well, but the Wikipedia article does not mention the show ever being syndicated.

Almost Live! had many memorable recurring characters and sketches including Bill Nye as Speed Walker, a super-hero who speed walks, but does not run, to fight crime.

I also fondly remember the Lame List, which featured Seattle area rockers, including members of Soundgarden, telling us What's Weak This Week.

Mind Your Manners with Billy Quan was a really funny Kung Fu parody. Remember kids, "Be Like Billy!"

But the sketch that summed up Almost Live! most for me was the High Five'n White Guys:


The other sketch comedy show, I recalled today was Turkey Television, which aired almost a decade earlier than the Almost Live! episodes I watched in college. It was on Nickelodeon for one season in 1985-86. I had hoped to find a treasure trove of Turkey TV sketches on Youtube, but I was only able to dig up the opens:



I fondly remember watching Turkey Televison along with the much beloved You Can't Do That On Televison when I would get home from school. This show was on during my 7th grade year, which coincided with the first time in my life I had Cable TV.

Here is the IMDB entry.

Here are a few screen captures.

Feces Roger!: the Sad Death of Washoe the Chimpanzee

When I was in college in the early 90s I worked at my college radio station KFHS (600 AM at the time, now you can listen online), at Fort Hays State University.

We used to run a series of PSA's called 'Tips on Life' that would talk about various uh, tips on life.

One unusual 'Tips on Life' PSA concerned a chimpanzee named Washoe that had learned some American Sign Language. The PSA described how Roger Fouts, a graduate student that worked with Washoe had taught her a sign for his name. When he would deny her requests for food, she would combine his name with the sign for feces and call him 'Feces Roger' as an insult. I found this PSA endlessly amusing at the time and played it as often as I could reasonably get away with. At one point I even drew a fake album cover featuring a band called Washoe and the Opposable Thumbs featuring their latest single Feces Roger, and pasted it up in the control room.

Washoe died on Tuesday of natural causes (she was 42).
More on Washoe at Friends of Washoe.

Major Spoilers: A Spoiler No More!

Cool-ass comic review site Major Spoilers is no more.

I don't read the volume of comics I once did, but this site along with the always entertaining Progressive Ruin were my window on the comics world.

I've known Stephen and Matthew since college, and both are extremely creative individuals and their daily perspective on the 4 color world will be missed.

I understand the pressures of a paying job and a loving family that can make daily blogging difficult. Since my schedule change at the end of September, my posts here have really tapered off. Major Spoilers had A LOT of daily content. Multiple reviews and news items were posted daily. I can't imagine the amount of time and energy required to put that site together day to day. An impressive feat by two impressive guys writing about what they love. I wish I could put together a quarter of the content in a week they managed in a day.

Hope to see something again from you guys soon. You don't have to be so amibitious next time, just give us something to entertain, and inform even if it's just a couple days a week.

Miscellaneous Debris: Part 9

The Cleveland Okie has a nice post with an interview of Mike Shea, the son of Illuminatus! co-author Robert Shea. The interview mentions the eight appendices reported to have been removed from the original appendices of Illuminatus!, as well as the book 'Bride of Illuminatus' which was an unfinished sequel to the original to be co-written by Shea and Wilson. Oh what might have been. . .

Speaking of Illuminatus! the always cool blog, Damn Interesting, has a nice post on the Assassins.

Via Reason Magazine's Hit and Run Blog:

Will Stephen Colbert's Presidential exploration poach Ron Paul supporters?

And Radley Balko warns that Hillary Clinton may be the best option for Republicans looking to continue the foreign policy of George W. Bush.

Square Foot Garden: The Final Harvest

Denver is looking at freezing temperatures tonight and possibly snow tomorrow, so I picked the last of the veggies from the garden. Here is some of the harvest:



A few ripe tomatoes, the last two cabbages, a good bunch of jalapenos, a few radishes planted for fall harvest, and a really nice pumpkin. I also cut all the remaining tomatoes and left them on bits of vine hoping they will ripen and have a little flavor. Once they ripen, I'll quarter them and dry them in the oven. That is a pretty easy way to preserve them for long term storage while maintaining the flavor.



I still have some beets in the ground that I planted for a late harvest, but they really aren't ready. Friend Paul of the 5K Garden tells me you can cover them and they will winter over for spring, so I'm going to give that a try. Right now I have them covered with some cabbage leaves, but once I get the front yard raked I'll add some leaves to the coverage as well.



Aside from the beets, I've cleared both of the square foot beds and they are pretty well cleaned up for winter. Once I pull in all the pumpkins from my traditional beds I'll clean up the vines and try to get the compost pile ready to go in earnest.



All in all a fairly successful garden, especially considering the adoption of the Square Foot method for the first time, and a work schedule in mid-late summer that led to some neglect of the garden during some of the hottest periods of the year.

I was really pleased with my spinach, carrots, pumpkins, jalapenos, radishes, cabbages and onions. The cucumbers were also fairly successful. I didn't have much success with my green beans, and I think I've made my final attempt at growing green peppers. Year after year I end up with small, tough, and bitter peppers. I might give the green beans one more shot next year.

My attempt to get a second harvest of red radishes, icicle radishes, spinach and carrots was mostly a failure, again due to work pressures that led to late season neglect of the garden. I got a few radishes, pulled today, and the carrots never even sprouted.

My tomatoes were sort of a mixed bag. I didn't seem to have the sheer amount of tomatoes I've had in years past, and the fruit was smaller on average I think. I also had a problem in the SFG beds of large dark spots on the bottom of the fruit. I'd read that can be caused by calcium deficiency in the soil, but I specifically amended the soil for that because of the same issue last year in my traditional beds. It could be that I was overwatering, or there might be some other deficiency in my SFG soil mixture.

As for the Square Foot Gardening method as a whole, I was mostly pleased. It is a very organized way of putting the garden together and it does allow a lot of plants in a limited space. I may have used the wrong combination of compost or something, because while some plants flourished (Cabbages and radishes), others struggled as if they needed something extra (tomatoes, green peppers, beets). I will have to find a good compost, or amend the soil with some nutrients for next year. I'm also going to do a couple of deeper beds using the SFG method, specifically for potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables.

For the complete rundown on my Square Foot Garden for 2007 you can see all my posts on the subject HERE.

New Fall Shows: Cavemen

I finally watched one of the DVR'd episodes of ABC's Cavemen the night before last.

It was truly awful. I gave several segments the 'ol :30 second skip just to ease the pain. Not funny. Not at all. The commercials on which the show is based showed the Cavemen being discriminated against, and that was where a lot of the humor of those spots emerged.

The show has one caveman character(Joel) who has a good job as a middle manager type in an IKEA type store, and a really hot girlfriend. He actually convinces his boss to hire Nick, another caveman, to come work at the store when a couple of employees are fired for having intimate relations in the store. Nick gets himself fired for gross incompetence(with unknown assistance from Joel). Not thick-skulled caveman incompetence, but arrogant a-hole incompetence. Once fired Nick cries discrimination and tries to sue, but the true reason for his termination