Some of you may wonder just where I have dissappeared to. Never fear…I have not dissappeared. I have merely been pre-occupied mainly with something I did not expect myself to be pre-occupied with…and that would be yelp.com

I think it all started when I wrote about Torchy’s Tacos. It has gone downhill since then.

For those of you that don’t know, yelp.com is a user-driven review site/social network that allows one the opportunity to voice opinions about places…doctors, stores, restaurants…to other people. The whole ‘wisdom of the masses’ mentality for the Web shines full force here, and I’ve been enjoying writing reviews of restaurants I’ve been going to. I figure that I do my fair share of eating in restaurants; I consider myself fortunate to be able to do that. I know some people have to really make the time and effort to go out to eat. Therefore, I thought I might knock out two birds with one stone and do some reviews so I can:

1) Write a little more because I sure like writing and…

2) Pass on my experiences to those who might be looking for a well-deserved night out so they can hopefully avoid the swill

God, I’m so noble.

Besides yelp-ing…I’ve been playing GTA IV…probably one of the greatest games in the history of video gaming. I say that with full confidence and absolutely NO sarcasm whatsoever. There is something pretty amazing about this one that few games manage to capture. Violence, insanity, sexual innuendo and general bad stuff aside, I can pretty much promise you there hasn’t been a more fully realized non-contrived video game character than Nico Bellick. He’s a complicated person. And he’s further complicated by what you choose to put into him and put him through. The stats say I’m approximatley 11% of the way through the game, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m excited to see where it takes me.

And then a friend of mine at work got me started back on WoW. That’s all I’ll say about that. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’m going to go do now…

In the meantime, if you want to see what I’ve been writing on yelp, go here. You’ll hopefully get a chuckle or two…

Despite my dismay of cruelty, I am a big believer in balance; without extreme or obvious opposites, it is impossible realize the merits (or horror) of something. But it doesn’t make it any less hurtful…painful…utterly heartbreaking…to see, hear or read about something like Oogy the dog.

Some friends of ours were over the other night telling us about how they saw Oogy on Oprah. To summarize, he was used as ‘bait’ in a dog fighting ring. I’m sure you can imagine what that means, but please…let me just describe it for you just in case your imagination isn’t quite creative enough.

In order to train a fighting dog, trainers will often use other animals as bait. This could range aywhere from rabbits to kittens to puppies to grown/older dogs. These animals are then used as living breathing punching/mauling bags.

They are, at the very worst, maimed in the process…and at the very best killed quickly.

Oogy’s story starts with a severe maiming, as inidicated by the picture to the left. Oogy was a 4 month old puppy when this happened. At 35 lbs, he was chained to a stake and then mauled by a pit bull. The entire left side of his head and part of his face was chewed off right behind the ear. But he didn’t die. The trainer took him and threw him in a cage and left him to bleed out. It was by some odd miracle that the police came and got him to a shelter/hospital in time to save his life.

People make me sick and sad. How can anyone look at an animal and think, “It’s going to be great to see this thing die in a horrible painful way.” It’s amazing to me to think that there are people in the world who have no emptahy towards animals, that animals are somehow ‘less’ because they are not human.

But on the same hand, there are Oogy’s new owners who took him in and made him a part of their family despite his odd looks and his checkered past.

Oogy’s new owners gave back to him what any dog has to offer his or her human counterpart…and that is unconditional love and acceptance. They did not question, they did not judge, they did not turn away. They simply acted and selflessly gave, and in return, they will always have the same from Oogy.

While Oogy will bear the physical marks of the very worst humanity offers, his owners embody the spirtual balance of the very best of what humanity offers, and so shall the two forever be intertwined in constant reminder of what humans are truly capable of.

You can read more about Oogy here.

If you haven’t seen this yet, it is probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Mom sent this to me. Thanks Mom…

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If you thought that the people who set up a room full of dominoes to have them knocked over later was amazing, you haven’t seen anything yet. There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in these images. Everything that you see happened in real time exactly as you see it.

The recording required 606 takes and in the first 605 takes there always was something, usually of minor importance, that didn’t work. It was necessary for the recording team to install the set-up time after time and it took several weeks, working day and night to achieve this effect.

The recording cost 6 million dollars and it took 3 months to finish, including the engineering design of the sequence. The duration of the video is only 2 minutes, but every time that Honda shows the commercial on British television, they make enough money to support any of us for the rest of our lives. However, this commercial has turned out to be the most displayed in the history of the Internet.

Honda execs think that it will pay for itself simply because of the free showings (Honda is not paying one cent for you to see it). When Honda senior execs viewed it, they immediately approved it without hesitation-including costs.

There are only six Honda Accords built by hand in the whole world, and to the horror of Honda engineers, the recording team disassembled two of them for the recording.

Everything you see in the sequence (besides the walls, floor, ramp and untouched Honda Accord) is part of those two automobiles. The voice is that of Garrison Keiller. The commercial was so well received by Honda execs when they saw it, that their first comment was how amazing the computer graphics were. They almost fell out of their chairs when told that the recording was real without any graphics manipulation.

By the way, about the wind shield wipers in the new Honda Accords, they are sensitive to water and designed to start working as soon as they get wet.

The same guy also did Pole Position, Pong & Space Invaders. Pretty cool, though he must have quite a bit of time on the hands…

For some reason I found this picture mildly entertaining. So I doctored it up a little bit.

Actually, the picture is kind of depressing when you think about it. It makes me happy to live where I do. You know…not having to live in a place where guys are walking down the street toting high-calibur rifles and rocket launchers is kind of a sweet life bonus.