Ah! A cartoonist after my own heart. :)

Hamburger University

Maybe it's just because I'm still up working at 2 in the morning, but this has got to be the funniest thing I've ever seen. Be sure to read HAMBURGER UNIVERSITY in the loudest, most important voice you can muster.

On the topic of funny objects, even if you don't know who Eric Brill is, you should read his website, which I stumbled across looking for his famed (eponymous) part-of-speech tagger. I especially enjoyed his samples of creative portraiture work, and the attendant descriptions. The man must be nuts, and I'm starting to feel sorry I didn't pursue a Microsoft internship just to meet him!

Also, if I may say so, there's no way my blog will ever be as cool and interesting as his. ;)

Worms!

What do you get when you add Spring + Rain? Earthworms! Everywhere! Dozens of them, squirming over pavements, basking under trees, just sidewalk after sidewalk of the little creatures. It's funny, it's been so long since I've seen one, that at first I didn't even recognize them -- I actually thought they were sticks, until Steve pointed one out... and then, wham! Suddenly, we were surrounded by wormlife.

Steve says they come out like this when it rains because if they stayed underground, they'd actually drown. Kind of a cool nature fact, until you realize that the tragic part is that when they surface, the driest place to go is the pavements... and that's precisely where bikes, cars, and bipeds have the best chance of stepping on them. So you get hundreds of worms, and hundreds of squished little bodies. A regular wormicide! Poor little guys.

I made an effort to save one today, maybe that counts for something. He was a rather fat fellow, rolling lazily across a broad stretch of road, unaware of the imminent danger. I managed to find a Y-shaped stick, scoop him up, and deposit him in the grass on the other side. I hope he didn't mind the transplant! He appeared to be burrowing happily in the grass as I left -- maybe he found some nice juicy soils.

On reflection, I think there's really too many of the creatures for the odd bike to pose a significant threat to wormery at large. But still... they're so soft and squishy. I wonder how many will be left tomorrow?

Weird nature!

Random quotes

It works! Instead of a constant tagline, I inserted a little javascript into the subtitle up there to randomly display some of my favorite quotes. You can see a different one each time the page is refreshed. If you have any suggestions for quotes let me know! :)

EDIT 4/19: Thank you, everyone, for all the quotes!! I've incorporated them into the script. If you want to see the complete set, actually (without hitting "f5" over and over ;)) you can view the source code for this page, too.

PvP Online

I know, I know, I read waaay too many webcomics, but this one made me laugh too hard not to share (I just love the expression on the cat's face!):



Hope it gives you a chuckle.

CherryCam

Cherries, part II: the UW website has a live CherryCam pointed at the Quad, so visitors can enjoy the blooms remotely. They're really into their hanami!

At least we'll have a nice view...

A quote from a Seattle radio DJ: "We built this city on Rock 'n' Roll! And an earthquake fault line. In a tsunami zone. Next to a big volcano."

Ha! (thanks, Amy!)