Swimming cats, The Animation Show, Firefox extensions
Friday, September 14, 2007
What have I spent time watching online this week?
Swimming cats
This week a friend and I watched way too many YouTube videos centered on a “swimming cats” theme, which were followed by even more “devil cat” and “attack cat” videos. I don’t remember how it all started, but here are a few YouTube selections from our time wastage: scared cat jumps into pool . . . cat falls out of canoe . . . the world’s only scuba diving cat . . . and cats tossed into swimming pool from Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video.
Now, for the mother of all swimming-cat videos: A loony Oregon woman “teaches” her cats to swim and says they look like beautiful dancers. Wow. Of course cats can swim, you ninny! Most of them just hate it.
The KMTR newscasters at the end crack me up: “I mean . . . [the cats] weren’t lingering; they swam to get out.” Slow news days are the best!
The Animation Show and tesseracs
The Animation Show now has 22 videos up on their channel at MySpaceTV. It’s great stuff. I have The Animation Show and The Animation Show 2005 on DVD. I missed the 2007 version when it traveled through Portland earlier this year. Glad to catch some shorts I hadn’t seen before.
Now, I’m going to use Don Hertzfeldt’s “Intermission in the Third Dimension” film as a segue into this video segment, from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series, about the fourth dimension and tesseracs (or hypercubes). What would the fourth dimension look like to a 3-dimensional being?
Music-related news and random videos
Did you know that Marilyn Manson has an official alcoholic beverage? And not just any alcohol, but absinthe. The aptly dubbed “Mansinthe” contains 66.6% (what else?) alcohol and became available for purchase in August. But not in the United States, of course. Wormwood has been banned in the U.S. for ages!
Next, a music video: Travis Barker (of Blink-182 fame) has turned “Crank That” by Soulja Boy (an unremarkable rap song) into a ferocious rock-rap track. Watch the “Soulja Boy Remix” video of Travis and his drum kit. Download the mp3 from this random MySpace profile. I never really liked Blink-182’s music, but this guy can drum!
More videos from YouTube and MySpaceTV: Firemen lift a car with water pressure from fire hoses. Also, see the complete tiger attack video that’s become an Internet sensation. In this footage, a tigress seemingly appears out of nowhere to take a flying leap onto an elephant’s head and attack the man riding the elephant (who loses some fingers). The event took place in Kaziranga National Park in India in May 2004.
Just watch the first 10 seconds of this bizarre video: The Mad Bag Man. I find this surprisingly brilliant and well timed. The rest of the video isn’t bad either. But it’s the very beginning that’s important to watch (maybe a couple of times) for maximum comedy. (Note: This may only appeal to those with a certain demented sense of humor.)
Also, check out this amusing short film Home Base (AKA “I’m gonna fuck your mom”), which is about getting revenge on an ex-girlfriend.
Wow, I watched a lot of crap this week!
Firefox extensions and themes
Since I’ve never posted about my preferred Mozilla Firefox add-ons before, I will do that now, in case someone finds it useful. Download Firefox 1.5.0.12 or the latest version now.
Here’s my Firefox theme of choice: Orbit Yellow 2006. Here are 10 of my favorite Firefox extensions for web browsing, downloading, and general use: Adblock Plus, FlashGot, Forecastfox, NoScript, Copy Plain Text, Print Preview, Print/Print Preview, StockTicker, Tab Mix Plus, and VideoDownloader.
As a web developer/designer, these are my five favorite Firefox extensions: Firebug, Google PageRank Status, IE Tab, Web Developer, and XML Developer Toolbar.