Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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04:06 am
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/70386731/240226) [Link] |
And now, your moment of Zen
The music video for Dream Warriors' "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style" is pure intellectual smut, a glorious celebration of avant-garde, of a type that seems custom-tailored to a big chunk of my friends list. (Totally worksafe. Weirdness level: 520 milliBohemes.)
Of course, the Dream Warriors also recorded the world's only rap song about roleplaying games [lyrics], so perhaps this is to be expected. Or maybe it's just more of you Canadians trying to export proper culture to your boorish southern pals?
I am also amused that the video took Bonnie Tyler's fencers and gymnasts, but left behind the ninjas.
Random trivia: While the letter sequence 'pron' is used in many common English words such as "apron" and "pronounce", the letter sequence "porn" is only found in "pornography" and its cognates. (Unless you count obscure medical terms like epornithic or proper names like Lampornis.)
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Music: Guess.
Tags: multimedia, roleplaying, wordplay
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04:19 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/51121343/240226) [Link] |
Game acronyms
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) circuit_four recently posted about "[figuring] out the solitaire rules for RFTG:TGS", which led to some acronym guessing. Clearly some Web-2.0-style crowd wisdom is called for here.
Poll #1368445 It's a board game of some sort
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllWhat does "RFTG: TGS" stand for?
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood:  silly
Current Music: Absurd Minds, "The Gash"
Tags: polls, wordplay
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12:54 am
[Link] |
The not-quite-Friday Five
From eredien:
Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you. They might make sense or they might be totally random. You're encouraged to post that list, with your commentary on each item, to your lj (or just add a reply back at me).
Extra Baxilian addition: If you have a mental association with me that nobody has mentioned yet, add it to your five-things request and I'll write some bonus commentary. (N.b.: I'm preemptively calling mulligan on "draconity" just because it's so blindingly obvious.)
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Hiking -- The vast majority of you have were already following my journal in summer 2006, when I plowed through nearly 1000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. So I have little to add. Except: In an odd bit of coincidence, I finally gave in earlier this month and posted one of my THGGTPCT episodes to YouTube, where it's just a click away instead of a two-minute weird-format movie download. Go see!
Hawks -- This also goes back to the PCT trip (aka "BaxWalk 2006"). My trail name was "Redtail," which ironically didn't actually refer to the bird. I once scripted (but never actually drew) a guest strip for Theri There that used this fact as the punchline: "So you changed your self-image from a flying creature to another flying creature for a 2600-mile walk?" "Yeah, well." I've still got that script, fallen off the stove*, and regret not illustrating it, though I doubt that's likely to ever change.
Running a Web Forum -- Once upon a time, I was the Herder of Cats and official administrator of "BaxTalk," a set of discussion forums at Tomorrowlands. There were many topics based loosely around my old journal, along with a draconity board, a TTU board, and plenty of marginalia. It was pretty famous for the quality of its users and discussions, and somehow cohered and stayed awesome despite having a userbase of half dragons and half random-people-that-knew-me-from-other-venues.
Entropy caught up to it, unavoidably, as its old PERL back-end bogged down, and then the phpBB resurrection died in the Great Server Crash of 2004. More broadly, it was a victim both of Web 2.0 and of my own reluctance to put in the administrative time it would have needed to continue. By then, I had already moved to Livejournal, and the comments section here scratched most of the itches that the old fora fulfilled for me.
The big question always was, and remains: What went right? How did it maintain its quality? To that, I can only say: A lot of luck, a little clarity on what the acceptable behavioral standards were, a little drama avoidance, and a LOT of "like attracts like." Awesomeness wants to self-propagate.
Evolving Spiritually -- If eredien wants to expand on this one, I'll yield the floor. I actually honestly don't see myself as having changed very dramatically in spiritual belief during my adult life. Maybe some of the things I see as subtle refinements -- tone shifts, as it were -- strike chords in others, or maybe I've just got a dragon-sized blind spot here.
Incidentally, dragonzuela cited my essay on quantum theism recently, which I penned over seven years ago. I still am proud to have written it and stand by its spiritual sentiments (if not its exact percentages).
Puns -- Okay, I admit it: I'm often accused of littering my posts with wordplay. Clearly the accusation is rearing its head again. It's time to put it down once and for all.
I thought of a dozen witty ways to respond to this. Two of them were unsuitable for publication in an all-ages venue. I examined the others to see if any met the standard of quality you have come to expect from my dragon drops.
...
... No pun in ten did.
(*runs away quickly*)
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* Baxilian argot time! Fallen Off The Stove, adj.: An important project that has been back-burnered too far. It remains in your mindspace and resources for it are still at hand, but you don't want to do anything about it until all of the (more recent) front-burnered and back-burnered projects are resolved or set aside, so it lives on in a messy state of limbo.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Music: Brian Eno, "Deep Blue Day," Trainspotting OST
Tags: meme, wordplay
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05:23 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/9758787/240226) [Link] |
iTunes storytelling
![[itunes playlist]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/itunes_storytelling.png "If you don't get it, read the song titles in order as a narrative.")
Also: See comments.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Music: Old Soul, "Sometimes"
Tags: multimedia, wordplay
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09:33 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/80952186/240226) [Link] |
Video game poetry
THE HAVING OF GUNS
(From "Old Hero's Book of Practical Guns," by T. R. Iggerman)
The Having of Guns* is a difficult issue,
For a hero in video games that are fun;
Many guns he must tote, lest he shoot and then miss you,
So I tell you, our man must have THREE DIFFERENT GUNS.
First of all, there's the gun that he shoots if he's near you,
like a flamethrower, shotgun, a D'eagle or Uzi,
If need be, a crowbar or chainsaw can smear you,
All deal death at close range; don't be choosy.
But I tell you, a man needs a gun in distinction not lacking,
A gun that shoots farther, and less broad and wide;
How else can he snipe from afar while wall-hacking?
Or clear out a level before stepping outside?
The guns of this nature will now be highlighted,
Such as his sniper rifles, or railguns, or AWPs,
Such as guns that shoot lasers, or by lasers are sighted --
All guns that at long range I promise are tops.
But above and beyond there's still one gun left over,
And that is the gun that no shooter omits;
The gun that makes game players sigh like a lover,
The gun that kills HALF OF THE MAP when it hits.
When you notice a gunhaver laugh with abandon
Then, no matter the game, you will know what he's done:
His mind is fixated on firing at random
With explosives, explosives, explosives so fun
With unbeatable, l33table
Bee-eff-gee-eetable
Blow up the map-able
Havable
Guns.
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* If the "Gunhaver" reference for video game shooters hasn't crossed your path yet, then at least there's this for some context.
Current Location: ~/bedroom
Current Music: "teh noob song," teh pwnerer
Tags: games, geekery, wordplay, writing
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12:52 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/68155561/240226) [Link] |
Let's see YOU work "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" in there :-p
Newest addition to the ticket queue, based on a phone conversation with "FROST ROBT K ":
6/20 TR - Robert Frost called in and needs some computer support.
After a long time being Acquainted With The Night, his computer went Out, Out, and now turns on with great Reluctance. Before he gives it a Home Burial, or retires it out to The Pasture, he wants to drive The Road Not Taken (from Sierra City into Nevada City) and run it by The Mending Wall.
Now, we're Stars of the internet fixing world, but the problem with The Code of his operating system is Neither Out Far Nor In Deep in our specialty. If he were to Come In to us, we might be here until October reinstalling Windows XP. I referred him to The Black Cottage across the highway and gave him Clientworks' number. They have Good Hours and the Dedication to fix his failing-to-boot problem.
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Some say his OS will end in upgrades,
Some say in bugs.
From what I have seen of Windows
I hold with those who favor woes.
But if equipment is replaced,
I've seen enough of Plug and Play
To say that endless hardware hacks
Will make him bray
And buy a Mac.
Clearly, I am far too bored today and need to find some billing to enter into the system.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood:  trying to be good
Current Music: "Do It Now!," Killer Instinct soundtrack
Tags: wordplay, work
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07:03 pm
[Link] |
Renee Decart, white courtesy phone*
Google gets closer to DWIM every day.
It all started with an innocent typo. I mistyped Lewis Carroll as "Lewi Carroll" in Google while looking for his birthday.
... And Google cheerfully returned the results for the author without so much as acknowledging the misspelling.
This struck me as unusual. After all, with most errors -- such as Nancie Kerrigan for the figure skater Nancy -- Google will pester you with a little "Did You Mean:" line at the top of your results, showing you what you probably meant to type but returning the searches best matching your exact wording.
But search for Louis Carroll, and the results go straight to Lewis' Wikipedia page and several repositories of his works. None of the results' sample text even quote "Louis" until at least halfway down the page.
A little experimentation with other writers confirmed this wasn't a fluke. For example, the immortal words of Bill Shakespeare stand atop English literature. (Note, however, that Billy Shakespeare is someone else.)
Nor is it confined to the prose disciplines. Actors? Larry Olivier. Artists? Peter Mondrian. Musicians? Axle Rose.
And of course philosophers, like the suave and enigmatic Renee Decart.
Found other interesting "canonical" misspellings? Submit your own in comments!**
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* DEAR GOD, the PHILOSOPHICAL MONISTS. </ObInJoke>
** Rules: Name has to
1) NOT produce a "Did You Mean" message;
2) NOT contain top references to a different person;
3) return substantially similar top references as the original.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood: better
Current Music: Bob Neuwirth, "Winter in Berlin"
Tags: wordplay
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12:31 am
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/74210624/240226) [Link] |
This icon is strangely, wrongly appropriate
I swear, sometimes it feels like I'm writing headlines in an alternate universe much cooler than our own:
"Quake lake growing despite military action"
Yes, soldiers are in fact attacking a lake. With anti-tank weapons.
waywind suggests via IM that "All it needs is to have a face on it like in your icon. And make aggravated Godzilla noises when they attack it."
Well, sure. But why stop there?
Clearly, this entire phenomenon is a campy monster movie come to life. Humans play god with nature; nature rises up in force; humans try ineffectually to stop the now-invincible threat; most of an Asian country gets leveled as lots of people run around screaming.
And then, giant robots. And theme songs.
Mizu-ra!
Mizu-ra!
Randa banunradan Tounjukanraa!*
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* I am so going to hell for this.**
** The whole post, I mean. What with the joking about natural disasters and all. Although when I get there, the devil's probably going to cite that one line as the deciding factor.
Current Location: ~journal
Current Mood: silly
Current Music: Wolfstone, "J-Time"
Tags: wordplay
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11:34 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/61890961/240226) [Link] |
Doing it wrong
No no no ... You're supposed to cover breaking news events, not break newsmen covering events!
(Link is worksafe, though contains photo of javelin injury.)
Current Location: ~journal
Current Mood:  morbidly amused
Current Music: Fatboy Slim, "Rockafella Skank"
Tags: newspapers, wordplay
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11:59 pm
[Link] |
Fun with headlines
Ah, the life of a paginator. I can do without the daily deadline pressure, but there are some parts I've missed.
Like laying out today's Annie's Mailbox advice column on the page. For space reasons, we just ran the final two letters -- from vampire fans who met their spouses via that corner of the Internet, a little peeved at Annie's earlier joke at vampire chat rooms' expense.
For one thing, the exchanges were remarkably cordial (at least compared to the screaming dramafests that usually occur whenever mainstream media catches wind of us oddballs). But also because I got to write the headline:
"When love bites: Vampire fans weigh in"
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Then there was this story, on today's front page. Nickel summary: A new stretch of the American River has been opened to river rafters, who are discovering that the formerly secluded stretch of water is home to a gay nude beach.
Alternate (rejected) headline: "Boaters now penetrating gay hidey-holes"
Heh. *cough* Ahem. Anyway. Who says small-town papers don't cover hard news?
--
Current music is genuinely what's playing now, with Winamp choosing at random from most of my music library. Truth, fiction, stranger, etc.
Current Location: ~journal
Current Mood: giggly
Current Music: "Sit Down, You're Rocking The Boat," Guys and Dolls sndtrk
Tags: draconity, wordplay, work
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04:33 am
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/70283732/240226) [Link] |
Well, it was funny at 4:30 AM
IM convo between roaminrob and I as we're trying to mash the last bugs out of the new mailserver. Context: At this point we're trying to manually wade through a number of user e-mail accounts on the system that didn't get transferred to the new box correctly, to determine whether they're in active use or need to be shut down.
Bax: (spoken) *snerk*
Rob: (spoken) What's so funny?
Bax: # alias eat='su -s /bin/sh -c "pine -p ~nccnuser/.pinerc"'
Bax: I did this just so I could type
Bax: # eat squid
Rob: # eat squid & die;
(Later)
Bax: # eat sent-mail
Bax: Hey, look, I'm Microsoft Exchange!
(The joke refuses to get old, but does turn off-color)
Bax: # eat cowboy
Bax: Starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Rob: D-:
(Finally culminating in:)
Bax: Oh great.
Bax: The worst yet:
Bax: # eat peter
Rob: Dude.
Bax: And the worst part?
Bax: He's never used it.
Rob: Well, he has now!!
Bax: Yes, except we're about to cut it off D:
(We both bust out laughing.)
Bax: (spoken) Oh, this is so going on Livejournal.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood: punchy
Current Music: Massive Attack, "Teardrop"
Tags: chat log, wordplay, work
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05:23 pm
[Link] |
Or maybe it was interrupting zombies?
baxil:
Wow. I just got the weirdest tech support voicemail.
baxil:
"Hello, my name is M--- S-----, and I live in Lake Wildwood. I have a computer, and it's not -- I can't -- it's got a blue screen, and --" *suddenly hangs up*
krinndnz:
Computer ate them. :(
baxil:
"Open the drive a: doors, HAL."
"I can't do that, Dave."
-----
And speaking of Krinn, here's your tiger QOTD, from a great post (read the whole thing for context; totally sfw) about Tintin, national myths, and the landmines of history:
Rule 34 only ruins icons of your childhood if you're afraid of sex.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Warcraft II OST, "Scenario Theme 8"
Tags: tech support horror stories, wordplay, work
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10:54 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/33402467/240226) [Link] |
Waffles and Terbos*
Amusing Craigslist post. Which I'm just linking because it's amusing. I have no interest in its outcome. Nope. None whatsoever.**
Meanwhile, back here in the hinterlands*** of California, the race is heating up in the primaries for the CA-04 House seat. Rep. John Doolittle, who is a venal, obsessive, science-hating, greedy shell of a man, finally threw in the towel on his lengthy congressional reign. The stink of the ongoing Abramoff-related corruption investigation was definitely a factor. Good riddance; he's been an unrepentant embarrassment since I moved here, and even replacing him with another rubber-stamp Republican would be a huge step for basic political decency.
Now the question is coming up: Who will run for his seat this year? The Democratic field is settled -- and Charlie Brown has my unqualified support in the general election -- but in the Republican primary, the horse race is just heating up.
The biggest names ready to jump into the fray -- Oller and Ose -- are carpetbaggers. Gaines, who was one of the few local Repubs willing to call Doolittle out over his scandals (and who got excoriated as a "weasel" for his efforts and nearly got censured by the county GOP), isn't running despite early speculation.
But, fortunately, there is someone in the GOP primary who I can wholeheartedly endorse.
I am not a Republican. But, while I often disagree with their principles, I respect what the GOP is supposed to stand for. One CA-04 candidate is a proud, sane Republican -- a man who knows that conservatism is about sane foreign policy rather than belligerence; that our goal is to prevent terrorism rather than simply "fight" it in the drunken bar brawl sense; that hating taxes isn't a license to run up record-breaking debt; and that the First Amendment isn't just for fundamentalist Christians who whine about oppression because they can't proselytize on government time.
At their best, conservatives rein in excess spending, ground discussions from theory into science, and slow runaway social upheaval. They serve a necessary function in government. But today's national GOP has come completely unmoored -- the party of legalized torture, endless war, soaring deficits, faith-based policy, and corruption and incompetence. George Bush's GOP is fundamentally scary; a direct threat to everything America is supposed to stand for. So, even if it meant continued GOP dominance, this liberal would much rather see sane, principled Republicans ascendant than watch the GOP drift further into fascism and/or irrelevance.
Nationally, the best candidate to reclaim the GOP is Ron Paul. And in CA-04, one candidate clearly comes from the same mold.
I am proud to offer the Nevada County dragon community's endorsement for the GOP primary to ...
Ted Terbolizard.
... In other news, a guy named Ted Terbolizard is running for political office. Which is just freakin' cool.****
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* This would probably make an awesome song name. (Hey, it has precedent.)
** I also did not write it. Which, unlike the non-footnoted protestations, is actually true.
*** What a nifty word!
**** Not to mention ... Charlie Brown vs. Terbolizard. TUUUUUUR-BOOO-LIZARD!***** That's Pay-Per-View GOLD right there.
***** For full effect, scream "TUUUUR-BO!" in the Trogdor voice.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood: TUUUUUUR-BOOO-LIZARD!
Current Music: Shpongle, "Behind Closed Eyelids"
Tags: politics, wordplay
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06:06 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/70456868/240226) [Link] |
I like cascades
![[An 'I like (x)' cascade]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/lj/i_like_screengrabs.jpg "This was in a friends-locked thread. My next response was 'I like strikes!'")
Giving the fun a thread of its own, so everyone can play.
Four starter words are in comments. Pick one and have at.
(Extra credit points for appropriate icons, but they're not necessary.)
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood: good
Current Music: Jupiter One, "Platform Moon" (via net radio)
Tags: wordplay
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04:40 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/8403565/240226) [Link] |
Don't know why it took me this long
Just learned* I have an easy way to tell geeks how to pronounce my name:
Baxil, x as in TeX.
(Or, if you're more the IPA sort, /ba:xi:l/.)
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* I have a degree in mathematics. I somehow didn't pick this information up in college. Under the Chu-Carroll Criterion, this means that I should probably be fired.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Music: Symbion Project, "Soft Tempest" (via net radio)
Tags: draconity, geekery, wordplay
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06:29 pm
[Link] |
Friday Night Poetry Theater
Copied from a chat log earlier tonight, for your amusement and/or edification*:
tropism: Hee. "Let's make sure the world ends with a gang-bang, not a gang-whisper."
baxil: ...
tropism: ?
baxil: Some say the world will end in gang-bang,
Some say in whispers.
From chicks I've plied with yummy cake
I know the world is hard to rape.
But if that gang does really try
Then hide your mothers and your sisters
And give them guys, 'cause then you'll see
The whispers fly
And grown men flee.
--
* That's right. This poem has the power to change your name to Ed. Ha-HAH!
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood: silly
Current Music: Phish, "Wolfman's Brother"
Tags: chat log, wordplay
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02:13 am
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/1021922/240226) [Link] |
ClaWrite: Not just for placeholders anymore
         
This may not be news to those of you who read ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) therithere and/or saw its latest comic, but I've updated (and moved) the ClaWrite page. Permalink, for those of you who want to update your bookmarks, is now the simple and memorable http://draconity.com/clawrite.*
It still looks like crap, but it's now at least got a tutorial page up -- including full punctuation guidelines, which have been in existence but missing in action for the entire decade that the info has been online. (Happy anniversary, ClaWrite! Most people would say tin is traditional, but I got you punctuation!)
For as little attention as I've given ClaWrite -- an alternate alphabet based on a 3x3 grid of strokes easily made with, say, a dragon's claws -- it sure seems to have captured people's imaginations. Back in my college days, the URL was apparently dropped into a column in the gaming magazine InQuest, which is about the closest I've come to 15 minutes of fame. And I've heard from people over the years who have used it in one capacity or another -- including, as the comic linked above points out, writing in diaries. I really ought to give the site a facelift and commission a proper font out of it.
Which reminds me -- I don't have an informed opinion on the many alternatives-to-copyright that exist out there (copylefting, creative commons, GPL, etc). What would be the simplest way for me to preemptively tell people that $THINGY is available free of charge for non-commercial use and/or modification; as long as the original source (me) is credited and any modifications retain the same license? And hypothetically, should $THINGY gain enough popularity that people want to use it (or one of its derivations) in a for-profit scenario -- what protections would said license still offer?
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* Yes, draconity.com is me. This has the happy side effect that the Draconity FAQ is located at the wonderfully memorable draconity.com/faq. I feel guilty sometimes about not putting the domain to better use, but at least there's that.
Current Location: ~/couch
Current Mood:  awake
Current Music: Splashdown, "Karma Slave"
Tags: draconity, requests, tlands, wordplay
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03:46 pm
[Link] |
New web toy
Now you, too, can make up charts like this one* on the fly and embed them in your posts -- even if you don't have a website to host them on:
http://code.google.com/apis/chart/ has the details.
Fun contest in comments! Make up the most awesome fake chart! Winner gets official Baxil Points, redeemable for fine Baxil merchandise at fine Baxils everywhere!
--
* Venn diagram idea shamelessly reused from a floating Internet meme. I just needed something to test the API out with.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood: amused
Tags: contests, geekery, technology, wordplay
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01:49 pm
[Link] |
*gdr*
During a discussion of appetizers kadyg might cook as a chef:
K: I'll save that one for when I open up my S&M-themed restaurant.
B: ...
K: ...?
B: You know, if you do open that restaurant and it served Asian food ... ( Groan rating: 1300 millixanths )
Current Location: ~/bedroom
Current Mood:  mischievous
Current Music: Wolfstone, "Bonnie Ship The Diamond"
Tags: wordplay
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12:41 am
[Link] |
I feel GIPped!
New usericon! You may steal with credit.
Original source pic from here, which I figure icon make something else of.
Also, it's already seen its first use. Please don't hurt me.
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood: mischievous
Current Music: Aerosmith, "Gotta Love It"
Tags: wordplay
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