OK, I watched tonight's episode of the new Fox atrocity: Banzai! The show is breathtaking in its ability to be goofy, wildly non-PC, and funny all at the same time. Absolutely brilliant. The show is a series of bets with almost entirely random outcomes. Each "bet" is around 3 minutes long and most are usually very silly. If you think one is dumb, just wait a couple minutes and another will be on. And it will be sillier. Anyway, give it a try. It's in that dead zone right after Simpsons. (And it works great under TiVo control as well.)

There's also a brand new shirt there for you if you don't want a duplicate of something you have.

Also, if there's anything else you want to see up there (like a printed version of any of the stuff I put up) tell me and I'll set it up.

I wanted to make the dancing monkey and moai t-shirts available and was going to do it via Cafe Press. I had heard a bunch of horror stories about them, but they seemed to be the only game in town. So, I ordered a couple shirts from them (the "die puny humans" one, for example) to see what the quality was.

Well, they were pretty crappy. The t-shirts were Hanes Beefy Ts, which are fine. The graphics, though, were put on in exactly the same way as the ones I did by hand. So, they began to fade immediately. Bleah. And the only color shirt you can get is white.

Surfing around, I saw a number of people mention Zazzle as an alternative to Cafe Press. I ordered a couple shirts (as well as the wartime prints I hung up at Camp), and they're great. So, you can now go to the Foam Totem Schwag Shoppe at Zazzle and order replacement (or properly sized, or the other design) shirts. I get a couple bucks as a royalty-- I can't set it to zero.

The designs on these shirts a a little bit larger than the originals. The originals were restricted by the 8.5 x 11 paper I had. Besides, the originals should be... original.

The "premium" t-shirt is not 100% cotton, but is a nice and soft poly/cotton blend. The standard t-shirts are Hanes Beefy Ts. You can't really fail with either. You can select different colors too.

Zazzle's not exacly cheap. The unit cost ranges from $14 to $18 or so. That's 1.5 to 2 times more than me doing them by hand, but the quality is better. If I was going to make a bunch of shirts, I might do something else (especially if it was only one color like the monkey). That said, Zazzle does give a discount when you buy multiples (5% at 2, 10% at 12, 17% at 50), plus I get a 10% discount on shirts I designed. (Quick calc: for 20 shirts that's 11.30 a shirt, which ain't bad.)

Pirates of the Carribean is worth seeing.

Snuffy motivated me and I've put myself on a diet. See more about it, including the minutia of what I'm eating at The Svelte Programmer.

The Italian Job (IMDB 6.9|CAP 43|Rot 74%)

This is a caper movie along the lines of Ocean's 11. Ocean's 11 was a very stylish, very hip, very clean movie (and it was pretty good). The Italian Job is less stylish, less hip, and a little more realistic (if a caper movie can ever be called that). Instead, this movie shines by showing the characters and their very collegial relationship to each other. It's also a pretty exciting Mini Cooper advertisement. If anything, I wish that there were more witty quips, and especially flashbacks (of which there were several very funny ones).

There is a romance between main characters in the movie which only serves to muddy the plot. They should have just avoided it and had Charlize Theron play the sassy, competent, and sexy safecracker her character is.

Matinee fare or even a full-price if you like caper movies. I ended up seeing it since every other movie I wanted to see was sold out and was not disappointed.

Money drain: Cosmic Encounter Online

Sidekicks, mutants, and goddesses: What makes superhero culture so queer