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Regicidal Maniacs

Many people believe the John Hinckley verdict showed our judicial system at its most impartial. Others feel the verdict was the product of an anti-Reagan jury. But if you were a Hollywood starlet or world leader, wouldn't you be a little uneasy knowing this guy could be wandering the streets? Hinckley is in the news again, angling for more unsupervised time with his family. To be fair, he hasn't shot a President in almost twenty-five years. But he sure is lucky he didn't take out his nation's leader... READ ON

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Contest winners: Your song, but butter (er, better)

Last week's contest, in which we challenged you to tweak and improve the lyrics of your favorite songs, had a surprising but delightful side effect: a boatload of new mondegreens. I particularly liked one that reader Joel said belonged to his "buddy's high school girlfriend" -- yeah, Joel, we've all heard "my friend has a problem" before -- which substituted "God sent gravy" for "constant craving." Jordan alerted us to a lovely tune called "Alex the Seal," apparently written for the hundreds of confused... READ ON

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Another stick on the wall

Imagine every nasty, chewed-up wad of gum you've ever had the misfortune of discovering on the bottom of your shoe or the underside of a desk, times 10,000, magically transposed to one... READ ON

5 Questions: Wells, Wells, Wells

5 Questions: Right on Q

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Week in Review: That's sooooo cliche.

Rather than shoehorn my review into poetic form this week, I decided to take a cue from David and go with cliches. There's always another fish in the sea, especially if you're an orangutan. You can smell a celebrity a mile away. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, especially if you're on a treadmill bike. He who laughs last is probably a man, laughing at something a woman said. Politicians and diapers should be changed regularly, and for the same reason. It's a dog... READ ON

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Straight to Blu-ray?

Just as you're putting the finishing touches on your DVD collection, another format war is heating up. This time, it's HD DVD versus Blu-ray, with the future of high-definition home video at stake. What I found fascinating were the rental habits of the early adopters. Let's look at the Netflix Top 10 HD DVD and Blu-ray movies: HD DVD 1. Million Dollar Baby; 2. Ray; 3. Ocean's Twelve; 4. Batman Begins; 5. The Bourne Supremacy; 6. The Manchurian Candidate; 7. Troy; 8. The Last Samurai; 9. The... READ ON

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Snakes on a... yeah, the joke's already getting old

Nonetheless, in honor of the event we've all been waiting for -- Snakes on a Plane comes out today! -- here are ten bits of snake trivia for your (and your moviegoing pals') amusement, courtesy of UKTV: 1. Terrible teeth. Unlike regular teeth, the fangs of a venomous snake are hollow. This means they can act inject their toxin with the efficiency of a hypodermic syringe. And they don't need much... the venom of a cobra could kill an elephant. 2. Particular poisons. Snake venom is a complex mixture of... READ ON

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Ape is enough

So long as we're blogging about apes using the internet, I feel duty-bound to remember the web's own simian Neil Armstrong: Koko, the first gorilla to walk in cyberspace, making nerd history in 1998 by participating in the very first -- and to date, the only -- interspecies web chat. Now, while that sounds pretty impressive at first blush (as it must have to the more than 20,000 AOL subscribers who logged in to "watch," as it were), Koko's end of the conversation was... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap: Spoonerisms

One of the comments we got in our Weekend Word Wrap on malapropisms was from a reader named Leslie who semi-suggested we tackle the subject of spoonerisms, as well. But before we get to Revered Spooner, let's first go back to antiquity, because that's where the trouble starts. The Romans took the Greek hero Herakles, transposed the inner part of the word, and started calling him Hercules (sort of the way many of us say nucular instead of nuclear), thus creating what's known as a... READ ON