Monday, January 30, 2006

 

Comical Auction #375

This was relayed by a friend of mine, and I thought it was so hilarious. What was even funnier was the fact that I relayed the info to my housemate, who said she had seen it, but it was only $400 or so worth of bidding... She nearly dropped dead when I told her it had gone as high as it has...hahahaha

Comical Auction #375

Laugh with me... lol

Friday, January 27, 2006

 

The Tale Of The Spider

One night, maybe one and a half years ago, I was trying to get some shut-eye around midnight. I tossed and turned, as one does during those times of insomnia. Upon turning around, I noticed something in the corner. Grabbing my green LED light from my desk, I shone it into the corner (it was a pretty damn bright LED light) and saw a black lump, resting on the door frame.

Ah, it's just a cockroach, I thought. I moved a little closer, and it didn't look anything like a cockroach at all. It looked more to be like a... And before I could think the rest of my thought, I froze as I saw EIGHT very LONG legs stretching outwards from the body of the huntsman spider. I've suddenly gone into "freak out" mode. Spidey has run halfway across my door, and stopped. In my knee-jerk reaction where spiders are concerned (kill the fucker before it moves another inch), I've grabbed the closest shoe-like object, which I think was an ugg-boot. As I've gone to grab it, Spidey has scuttled behind the duffel bag which used to hang on my doorhandle. (I now have no doorhandle. Long story.) Ok, I think, trying to calm myself down, as my heart is now beating like a fast paced paradiddle: Carefully move the bag and whack the spider.

I move the bag, and as I'm doing so, Spidey scuttles behind the behemoth that is my desk. I nearly have a heart attack at this point. I sit down on my bed, more or less rooted to the spot in terror. Now, I know what you're going to say. It's *just* a spider. It's a huntsman, it can't hurt you. NEVERTHELESS, this bastard was the size of my HAND, and I am (what I call) PARALYSINGLY ARACHNOPHOBIC. That is, arachnophobic to the point where I can't even look at a picture of a spider on a computer screen without getting freaked out. The hair stands up on the back of my neck, seriously.

Anyhoo, cue 15-20 minutes of me glued to my bed, not being able to move because there's a spider under my desk (That's where the "paralysing" bit comes in). 15-20 minutes of me blubbering like a little whiny baby and being scared shitless. 15-20 minutes in the middle of the night, wanting to scream like nobody's business, and not being able to wake up the whole house. And wondering what the FUCK I'm going to do. Sleeping with this hairy fucker in my room does NOT equal an option. Cue horribly distressing images in my mind of waking up with this 8 legged thing spread across my face, breathing like the creature in "Alien". *major shudder*

So Frosty eventually wills self to get up off the bed, and out to the kitchen in search of chemical death for Spidey. Now, being that it's in the middle of the night and I have no desire to sleep in a room that I've just asphyxiated a spider in, I'm in kind of a conundrum about it. But then distressing images of the Alien/spider creep back in and I'm now more determined to slaughter this arachnid. Moving my chair, I peer under my desk, holding the can of chemical death in one hand and babbling insanely "Heeeere spidey, spidey!" to no one in particular, feeling completely distressed, with tears stinging my eyes...

And suddenly, Spidey decides to scuttle towards me! With a yelp, I drown him in chemical death! He flails a bit, and I shrink and yelp a little more, inching backwards. Now he's half scuttled, half limped away from me, moving towards the power cables that are connected to my PC. Not wanting to cause a potential electrical fault, I wait until he scuttles over all the cords. Very gingerly I move to the side of my desk, to see when he will come out.

And then he begins to crawl out of the space in between my desk and the wall. I douse him once more in chemical death, and then grab the nearest shoe and bash him! In fact, I think I bashed Spidey about 10 times, just to make sure he was dead. Even when I could see that he was missing 4 legs and he wasn't twitching anymore, I kept bashing him. I dropped the shoe, and then I shook my finger at Spidey. "Now you're dead, you fucker!"

And after letting my room air out for a little while, to avoid my tombstone reading "Here lies Frosty, suffocated by chemicals", I went to bed and slept, even though I had a recurring thought about another 8 legged monster inhabiting my sanctuary...

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

 

100 Posts at TFP!

At this point, I would just like to thank those of you who read this blog, however many there are of you who read and don't comment, drop a line and say hi! You can do this by leaving a comment or emailing me. (See right hand side of the page for an email link.)

Thanks for reading, and spread the word! :)

~Frostilicus Frost~
Author of The Frostilicus Perspective.
 

The Making Of A Brick

Stumbled on this cute flash animation of how LEGO bricks are made. Being the LEGOgeek that I can be, I thought it was worth blogging.

The Making Of A Brick
 

Hahaha...

Frostilicus finds this amusing.

Monday, January 23, 2006

 

A Purist Rant About Band Reunions

Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Doors, INXS. 5 great bands. No, 5 *fantastic* bands. These 5 bands are 5 of my favourite bands. Besides that, They have 2 other things in common.

1: They all have one member named John.


  • John Deacon - Queen (Bass)
  • John Bonham - Led Zeppelin (Drums)
  • John Lennon - The Beatles (Guitar and Vocals)
  • John Densmore - The Doors (Drums)
  • Jon Farris - INXS (Drums)


2: They all have members who are no longer with us.


  • Jim Morrison - The Doors (Lead singer, died in 1971 of heart failure)
  • John Bonham - Led Zeppelin (Drummer, died in 1980 of asphyxiation after a hard night on the booze)
  • John Lennon - The Beatles (Vocals and Guitar, murdered in 1980)
  • Michael Hutchence - INXS (Vocals, found hung in his hotel room in late November, 1997)
  • Freddie Mercury - Queen (Vocalist, died in late November, 1991 due to bronchopneumonia, a complication of AIDS)


Now, as stated by the title, this is a bit of a Purist rant. All of these bands have had "reunions" of sorts. The Doors have reformed with Ian Astbury (of The Cult fame), and without drummer John Densmore (either he declined to take part, or wasn't invited, depending on who you ask). Led Zeppelin have played a handful of times as Led Zeppelin since the death of drummer John Bonham, once with Bonham's son Jason sitting in as drummer. (Fact fans, he's the kid playing the mini orange vistalite drumkit during the footage in John Bonham's solo Moby Dick in "The Song Remains The Same") Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have, in the late 90's performed as Page/Plant, without the participation of Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones. The Beatles had their sort of "reunion" which culminated in the release of 2 new Beatles songs, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love", created from 2 demo tapes made by John Lennon that had been in Yoko Ono's possession for a good many years. This coincided with the release of The Beatles Anthology, which was a 6 CD set of archive tracks, demos, works-in-progress and live takes. And if that wasn't enough, there was also an 8 part series documenting the history of the band. (And that was great for me at the time, having just discovered them at the age of 17)

INXS recently conducted a reality-type TV show to find a new lead singer. JD Fortune is now part of the new INXS, and I've not heard any of their new material.

Queen were one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) band to come out of England. Queen formed a few years before I was born, and continued to rock us until the early death of Freddie Mercury in 1991 at the age of 45. The world lost one of it's best performers the day he died. If you watch the Live in Wembley DVD, he at one point says: "We're going to stay together until we fucking well die, I'm sure of it!" Well, how right he turned out to be. There aren't many music fans who don't know who Queen are. (Well, except maybe the teenyboppers who think Britney Spears is just the best thing since sliced bread) Their "Greatest Hits" CD is a great addition to anyone's music collection, in fact, I'll be pretentious and go one better than that and say it's a MUST HAVE. I first heard Queen when I was 15 or so, although I do remember hearing about Freddie's passing at the age of nearly 13 and thinking "who is that man?", having no clue about him or Queen. Oh, the only thing I knew about Queen at the time, was that I had seen the video clip of "I Want It All" on Video Hits (a weekend morning music video program) a few years earlier, and thinking "who the hell are these 4 geezers?" and let's just say, I didn't think much of them. Well, times change like sweaty socks, and Queen's Greatest Hits was one of the first 10 cd's I bought in 1993/94 when I got my first CD player. Needless to say, I've never regretted buying it. It was a CD you could listen to intently, or just have it on as background. A friend gave me a copy of "Greatest Flix Volume 1", which spent many, many countless days in my VCR, being played and rewound. And played and rewound. Reverse, repeat. Now that I remember these memories, I was very much drawn to the band.

However, I really digress. Back to the rant. Queen have done a wierd reunion tour of sorts, rounding up Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company fame) to fill the void left by Freddie (Though all parties claim that Paul is not replacing Freddie in the band. Incidentally, John Deacon declined to participate and has retired from the music scene, even though he endorses Queen related projects undertaken by Brian May and Roger Taylor.) They've done their tour and put out a live CD/DVD set called "Return Of The Champions".

Now here's where I get purist about it. While I can admire these bands for wanting to carry on playing with each other, for whichever reason, some people you just cannot replace. In the case of The Beatles, I would be completely skeptical if Paul and Ringo reformed with 2 other guys. Led Zeppelin... I admired Page and Plant's enthusiasm in reworking some of the Zeppelin catalogue, even if it WAS a little strange sounding. And sorry, but Robert's voice is half shot now, if not worse. Likewise with INXS, I've not heard the new incarnation of The Doors, so I'm not going to comment.

I've been on a Queen kick lately, as I said they've been a favourite of mine since I was 15 (at least), and I pulled out my DVD's (that I could find).... Greatest Video Hits 1+2, and Live At Wembley. (I also have Live and the Bowl, and the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert) So, after spoiling myself rotten listening again to all this fantastic music, and reading about Freddie and the band, I gave the new live set with Paul Rodgers a listen, thanks to a friend who lent me the CD. And I think I made it to about the second or third track before screwing up my nose at it. I listened for a couple more tracks, until "Love Of My Life" rolled around. Paul Rodgers has a bit of a blurb at the beginning, and mentioned that Freddie's mother was with them that night. Well at that point, I lost it. There aren't that many Queen songs I've heard that make me cry. One is "One Vision", and it's only because at one point in it, Freddie's voice sounds so beautiful and completely pure that I get tears in my eyes from listening to it. But it's still one of my favourite songs of theirs. The other, is "Love Of My Life", because it's a pretty sad song lyrically, and live, Freddie would get the whole audience singing along with him (Hearing 72,000 people sing along with him at Wembley is pretty damn impressive). And to hear that Freddie's mother was there, and Paul was singing a song that Freddie wrote, just made it even sadder and not fair that he's not alive anymore. Plus, I don't particularly care much for Paul Rodgers' voice. The only person who I think is really good at doing Freddie's songs is George Michael.

Freddie's voice was so amazing, there is part of the Wembley DVD where he is singing notes, and he sounds almost like a guitar (it's hard to describe, but it's a fabulous example of his vocal range), and his voice could be anything from strong and powerfully awesome, to gutsy sounding, to gentle and beautiful. Put simply, Freddie had a very unique style all of his own and is something that can never be replaced. It wasn't just his voice, either. Freddie had a style that was all FREDDIE. He was unlike any other performer I have ever seen. He wasn't the type of guy to just stand in front of a mic and belt out tunes, he danced around, jumped around, bounced around and completely got into the music he was performing. No wonder Queen are one of the greatest bands ever. True, Freddie was only 1/4 of the band, but all 4 of them as a group were awesome. Brian May is one of the best guitarists in the world, Roger Taylor was a good solid drummer, and John Deacon a great bass player. And without each other, it's just not the same.

So, with all due respect to Brian May and Roger Taylor, I'd much rather watch my DVD's and listen to the old stuff. I know you guys aren't trying to replace Freddie, but even without him there, it pales in comparison.

/end self-indulgent musical rant

~Frostilicus~

Sunday, January 22, 2006

 

Rant About Music

This morning i found this post on Digg.com. And I figure it warrants a little rantage.

Addmitedly, I rarely buy cd's anymore. In 2005 i only bought 2: The soundtrack to Star Wars Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith, and Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth. I rarely download music. If I find something that interests me (which is rare in this day and age of really shitty music), and if I really really REALLY like something and know I can buy it here (in Australia), I will make the effort to purchase it. Why don't I buy cd's anymore like I used to 10 years ago? Well for one, I have bills to pay that I didn't have to pay 10 years ago, and can't justify $30 for a CD whenever I see something that might be interesting. Yes, there are people out there who pirate music. Do all people who download music pirate it? Of course not. I bet there's a majority of people out there who just download it for their own listening pleasure. If the price of CD's wasn't so horrible, the music industry might find that more people actually buy it. On average, we pay around $30 for, let's say, a 12 track disc? That's $2.50 per song on that disc. It's way more than it costs to actually make the CD, in terms of plastic used, etc. Essentially, we're being ripped off and fucked in the ass from all angles.

But wait, there's more. The new technologies that have sprung up in the past few years, such as "copy protected" discs and (dare I say it) "DRM" are making things musical (and media) very annoying for even your average Joe who, say, may only have his computer to use as a CD player. Some of these technologies have been known to cause computers to crash, hardware to just plain crap out and stop working, and even install nasty software that not only limits or prevents what you can do with the CD that you paid for, but also acts as spyware, sending God knows what kind of information back to record company servers. (See Extended Copy Protection (aka Sony Rootkit))

And then there's the **AA in all it's wisdom. The RIAA and MPAA. The **AA love you. The **AA wants to protect your right to listen to music and watch movies. Oh, by the way, the RIAA itself has sued over 17,000 individuals from September, 2003 to December, 2005. This includes: 1 12 year old girl from New York, college students, and, my personal favourite, a dead grandmother who didn't even own a computer. The MPAA has also sued several BitTorrent sites for distributing pirated movies.

If the **AA love us so much, why do they act like a big evil and sue 700 odd people every month? Do they not realise that whether they like it or not, people copy music and movies? Do they not realise it's not always because of piracy? Do they not realise that there are a lot of people out there who will actually purchase music/movies because they have heard/viewed it via a download first? (the old "try before you buy" theory.) Technology gets better and programming gets smarter, and the **AA gets shitscared because people steal their profits (which, they make shitloads of money ANYWAY). If they are going to charge such exhorbitant prices for music and movies, I'm not surprised that piracy is out there. Who wouldn't want something for free rather than paying $30 for a music CD or $40 for a 2 disc DVD set?

Here's something to think about. Joe downloads a new release movie off the internet. He gets a copy which isn't of superb quality. It's watchable, but the sound is kinda tinny or the picture is a little fuzzy. But he really likes the movie, so he decides to spend the $12 to go and see it on the "big screen". He ends up deleting the inferior copy from his PC, and ends up buying the DVD when it comes out (and if he's lucky, he gets it at a reasonable price), and as a bonus, he gets extra features on his DVD, as he's a bit of a film geek and likes to watch "the making of" and other juicy content. A few weeks later, a friend stops buy with a new CD that he would like Joe to hear. Joe likes the CD enough to make a copy of it on his hard drive, temporarily until he can go out and buy a copy. Unfortunately, the CD Joe's buddy brought over has some nasty protection on it, and it crashes Joe's PC. As a result, he does a little research on the internet, and reads about the **AA's various methods of subterfuge and nastiness, and isn't impressed. He therefore does some more research and now only buys music that isn't under the umbrella of the **AA.

I find it funny that a record company association double crosses it's customers by promoting music, and then suing music lovers for the crime of wanting to listen to something new before forking out exhorbitant amounts of money.

I find it both ironic and sad that some music artists have to apologise to their fans for the copy protection that has been placed on their CD's by their record company.

I also find it very funny that the same bands post instructions (further down the page on this article) about how to get around said copy protection. How frustrating would it be to be an artist, to find out that the body that represents you, and your record company is effectively screwing your fans (and potential new fans) by not allowing them to listen to the music that you worked so hard on, in the way that they want.

I find it hilarious that copy protection on some cd's can be circumvented by such basic methods as drawing a line around the edge of a CD with a felt tip marker. The pen is mightier than the disc!

The **AA says they are winning the battle. But I wonder, why did it become a crime to love music? I have ripped some of my own CD's that I paid for to mp3 so that I can listen to them without using the disc all the time. Oops! I'm a criminal now. Now they are trying to limit ways in which technology works, too. Give it a few more years and I'm sure they'll be trying to ban music altogether. I understand that artists care about getting something in return for their art. I'm not against that at all. People want to make money and that's fine by me. But what the big corporations don't realise, that as a user, it's alarming and annoying to see that companies penalise their customers by enacting technologies that are of dubious legal standing, and not only that, will probably be cracked within a short period of time anyway.

Technology is here to stay whether the corporations like or not. People download or pirate music whether the corporations like it or not. (And no, I'm not saying that everyone that downloads music is a pirate...although that's what the RIAA would have you believe) I think it's a good idea that people can download music from services such as iTunes, even if for a small fee. Why? Because I think that's eventually where we are headed in terms of technology and all things digital. We've gone from live performance, to wax cylinders, to vinyl, to 8-track, to tape, to CD and now to digital... hopefully music will continue to exist for a long, long time. Maybe one day the corporations will see that it's pointless to keep suing individuals, and all it does is make them look bad.

But hey, that's my 2 cents on the whole thing. I may not be right, nor do I claim to be. It's just my opinion.

'Til next rant,

~Frostilicus~

Saturday, January 21, 2006

 

Frostilicus' Halfass Caramel Bread

Ok this is one I just drunkely invented... it's not overly healthy but let's face it, when you're drunk or stoned.....who the fuck cares?

Recipe for Frostilicus' Halfass Caramel Bread:

2 slices white bread (or as many as you like depending on how drunkely hungry you are)
Butter or your favourite bread lubrication product
Sugar (i recommend raw sugar, but I suppose you could use the white stuff if you really wanted to)
Sandwich toaster

Method:

Now this is so freakin' easy even an idiot could do it. What you do is this....Warm Up the sandwich toaster, butter one side of the bread, and sprinkle with sugar so it covers the slice. Place sugar side down on toaster, then butter the other side and sprinkle sugar to cover the slice. We've got one of those stupid deli toasters, so bring the lid of the toaster down so it basically flattens your bread into a crépe type thickness.... The sugar will caramelise with the butter to make it golden, sweet and crispy...

Ah, mucho tasty. :D

Friday, January 20, 2006

 

LEGO Guitar

Now this is interesting. A guy made an actual guitar out of LEGO. Playable and all. *Is sufficiently impressed to blog this*

LEGO Guitar
 

BlogRolling with mah homies...

(Or not)

Anyway, I've signed up with Blogrolling.com to make the editing of the links that this blog links to a little easier. I say this because the last time I attempted to edit these links, I nearly *killed* TFP's layout in the process. (Can we say "still muddling through CSS"?) Anyhoo, thanks to the goodness of Flock's "back" button (or any browser for that matter *humps it wildly*), I managed to rescue the layout in the nick of time. So I decided to check out Blogrolling, and it seems simple enough to use. I shall see how it fares.

Update over!

~Frostilicus~
 

A New Addition

Well, I went and got a new addition today... I haven't decided what to call him yet, although for now he is labelled as "Cousin It" ... so if anyone who reads TFP has any suggestions, feel free to email me or leave a comment.



Ain't he cute? :)

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

 

Cute Website

This is a site that I found linked on (one of my new haunts) Digg.com

Bembo's Zoo has an interesting use of Typography and would be fun for the kids (if you have any!).

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

 

NIN Humour

Ahhhh...lol. For those of you who have no clue, I absolutely *LOVE* the band Nine Inch Nails. While reading through the Echoingthesound.org Forums this morning, I found this parody of their 1994 song "Closer"...hehe. If you're not familiar with the original song... you should be, even if you don't like NIN... It's one of those "must have" songs.


CLOSER (stuffed mix)

Please let me violate them
Please let me mutilate them
Please let me infiltrate them
Please let me consecrate them

Hug me
I crave the ones with beady eyes
Hug me
They’ve got fuzzy ass to sell
Hug me
You know what really works for me
Those pink ponies up on that shelf

I want to fuck all your stuffed animals
I want to feel their cotton insides
I want to fuck all your stuffed animals
I dig those teddy bear broads
They get me closer to god

I just want their insulation
I just want the warmth that it brings
I’ll go down on them like a wraith
I just want some plush fucking

Hug me
I know they’re in season
Hug me
It’s that sexy fuzz smell
Hug me
They make me erect
Help me get them all for myself

I want to fuck all your stuffed animals
I want to feel their cotton insides
I want to fuck all your stuffed animals
I dig those teddy bear broads
They get me closer to god

Pressed on my chest
Give a tight squeeze
Warmth in my stomach
The sexy tease
I love my bunny
She fuels my drive
My plushy treason
Keeps me alive

Mmm... plush lust...lmao.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

 

Severe Thunderstorms...

On Friday evening, I noticed a rainbow outside my window. I went out to the back deck and snapped a pic.



I then went out to the front deck, to see if there were any itneresting cloud formations. There was this out to the south-west:



As I looked at them I thought that there might be a bit of weather ahead, and on the news they had predicted as such. (But who knows, in my opinion the weather bureau isn't always 100% correct) What looked even more foreboding was about 20 minutes or so later when I looked out the window again and everything outside looked a strange orange colour.



This image hasn't been altered in any way. That's really how it looked out there, and the sky seemed to look like it was glowing.

Sure enough, about an hour or so later, there was a severe thunderstorm warning predicted for our area. The radar didn't look too promising either. There was a LOT of lightning about, and I mean a lot. It looked like there were strobe lights everywhere, and there were rumblings of thunder in the distance. When the storm started to hit us, the wind picked up, and while I was concerned with filming the awesome lightning we were seeing...



At a lot of points during the storm, you could not tell it was night time...



(These pictures are composites of still frames taken from the footage I shot.)

Shortly after the worst of the storm began, the power went out. Unlike the other night when it came back on briefly, it stayed out, and we did not have power until around 5pm last night (Saturday), apart from a short amount of time around 11am, when it came back on for about 15 minutes and then we heard a huge bang nearby and it was out again for the remainder of the day. That night on the news, we learned that 100,000 homes and properties throughout Brisbane were without power at one point, the worst affected areas being Logan and Beenleigh. (Lucky us. NOT!) There were also somewhere around 17,000 lightning strikes, one of which shut down the Beenleigh Police communications centre. For about an hour I had no service on my mobile phone, my display screen telling me that the network was busy. We saw a lot of lightning strikes to the south of us, which were coming straight down, as opposed to staying up in the sky. I was filming on the balcony, until I began to get drenched with rain. Fearing for my camera, I bashed on the front door (which had been closed, and locked) and went inside, and my first words were "FUCK THAT!".

I set the camera on the window sill, and filmed out of the closed window. The rain would have come into the house had it been open, and damaged all sorts of things. Then we heard hail hitting the roof.





This was the biggest hail I had ever seen in my life. Down in Perth, when it hails, it's no bigger than pebble sized. These were almost golf ball sized. After grabbing a plastic bag to shield my camera (and waiting until the hail stopped), I carefully went downstairs to pick up the hail in the above pictures, and also took a picture of the hail in the grass.



Apologies for the blurriness of this picture. As I had the plastic bag around my camera, I could not see the LCD screen to focus the pictures. The one of the hail in my hand and on the chopping board were taken without flash, as they would have been washed out.



(Can't See SHIT!)

The video I took on the 6th I am currently working on editing, and the link for it will be up as soon as possible. I will try and make it as small/downloadable as possible for those of you who read this who are on dialup.

'Til next time,

~Frostilicus~

Friday, January 06, 2006

 

Bionic Ears and Ravel's Boléro

Found this article linked on Digg.com, and being a lower of classical music, I thought it was actually quite fascinating.

My Bionic Quest For Boléro.

Enjoy.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

 

Site News

 

Email

You can now E-mail Frostilicus, should the desire strike you, or if you find something that you think of worthy of my pimping on my blog, feel free to drop me a line at frostilicusfrostATgmailDOTcom. (Replace the obnoxious looking bolded words with @ and a . :) )
 

First Storm Of The Year

...And guess who had their camera handy? This storm was in Tuesday night, and started about 10-ish, so I wh0red my camera's movie mode for all it was worth (or, more precisely, until the batteries died)...

You can download it here: 3rd January '06 (Megaupload file, *LARGE* file, 50mb. Same deal as the other one, click the link, wait for the "links" window to come down, click the X on the mini window and the download button is underneath.)

Now, before anyone complains, the file is about 35-40 minutes long. As such the file is as large as it is, because, trust me, if I made it any smaller, the quality would be lousy and it wouldn't be as enjoyable. Those of you on dial-up...what can I say? I've been in your position and I know it sucks downloading huge files. I'll just pull smartass and say SUCK IT UP and get broadband! *Muhahaha*. You shouldn't need anything special to play the file, it will play in Windows Media Player and is a .wmv file. The "commentary" is provided by myself and my housemate, and it's just inane rambling shit, so you can ignore most of it, but the bit with the cigarette was kinda funny! This clip has a new feature....subtitles! (Ok, so I'm still muddling through Windows Movie Maker.)

Enjoy!
 

Convert Any Image Into Text

...with this cool website. (Courtesy of Digg.com)

Text-image.com

Sunday, January 01, 2006

 

Cat Dials 911 To Help Ill Owner

Cat called 911 to help ill owner, police say.

Police aren't sure how else to explain it.

But when an officer walked into an apartment Thursday night to answer a 911 call, an orange-and-tan striped cat was lying by a telephone on the living room floor. The cat's owner, Gary Rosheisen, was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair.

Rosheisen said his cat, Tommy, must have hit the right buttons to call 911.

"I know it sounds kind of weird," Officer Patrick Daugherty said, unsuccessfully searching for some other explanation.

Rosheisen said he couldn't get up because of pain from osteoporosis and ministrokes that disrupt his balance. He also wasn't wearing his medical-alert necklace and couldn't reach a cord above his pillow that alerts paramedics that he needs help.

Daugherty said police received a 911 call from Rosheisen's apartment, but there was no one on the phone. Police called back to make sure everything was OK, and when no one answered, they decided to check things out.

That's when Daugherty found Tommy next to the phone.

Rosheisen got the cat three years ago to help lower his blood pressure. He tried to train him to call 911, unsure if the training ever stuck.

The phone in the living room is always on the floor, and there are 12 small buttons — including a speed dial for 911 right above the button for the speaker phone.

"He's my hero," Rosheisen said.

Courtesy of USAToday.com

>^..^< meow!