I hate this feature. Now, apparently there are a lot of times that it does ask valid questions that people can legitimately weigh in on -- such as "Are campaigning politicians visible enough?" and "Who should pay for the volcano disruption?" and "Should dogs be banned from parks?" Even "Should the rules for Scrabble be changed?" is appropriate, though it does seem a bit trivial in comparison to other issues addressed on the site.

But for some reason, whenever Have Your Say shows up in my headlines feed, I get some question that actually has a proper answer -- whether we definitively know it or not -- such that soliciting opinions on the matter is silly and pointless. For instance, following Ricky Martin's announcement last month concerning his sexuality, the feed linked "Does 'coming out' affect careers?" It's not necessary for anyone to "have their say" on this -- the question is a simple yes/no one, though one could elaborate upon it to discuss how coming out could affect people in different professions and so forth. In any case, however, people shouldn't be voicing flat "opinions" so much as looking at past cases, how people and the media and celebrities themselves react to suspicions of homosexual activity, and making relatively informed inferences concerning the topic.

And then there's today's question: "Do aliens really exist?" Maybe, maybe not -- but how the fuck would we know? The first question asked at the end of the piece is similarly irritating: "Are there aliens out there capable of communicating with us?" Again, how the fuck should we know?! Of course, there might be people who actually know the answer to this question (assuming it's in the affirmative), but it's not directed to them and I doubt they'd share their secret government knowledge on an online forum anyway. The final question -- "If they exist, should we avoid making contact with them?" -- is more appropriate for an opinion question, however, as it essentially asks about people's beliefs and fears concerning extraterrestrial policy as opposed to asking them to provide their opinion on a yes/no question.

I think my problem with these such questions comes down to the wording -- if it asked "Do you think aliens exist?" I'd likely be a lot less annoyed.

P.S. Everyone knows aliens exist. We've been aware of the Doctor's visits to the planet since the 60s!

Seriously, this is one of my most despised errors.

won't they be impressed
I am a gen-i-us
see how I fashion planks and bricks
into a temporary fix

Today was a very wet day! Not just because of the rain outside, but because the metal clamps on the pipe connected to the sump pump came loose... resulting in much gushing and minor flooding of the basement. Luckily Mom noticed it before too much water spread, and then I made a temporary fix using planks and bricks to keep the pipe in place until more skilled hands arrived to reset the clamps properly. I was really proud of myself for that invention until Mom's friend rectified the problem in all of five minutes -- I'd previously tried to tighten the clamps but been unsuccessful for whatever reason (I failed similarly when the toilets upstairs were leaking; again Mom's friend came to the rescue).

So it seems that I am terrible at simply tightening screws and bolts, but have little difficulty grabbing and combining random items from my surroundings to fashion temporary fixes. I guess if anything ever goes wrong and you don't have any tools -- but do have a kettle and string and knickknacks of that nature -- I'm your man!

Luckily, today's damage was confined to several damp box bottoms and two books with wet pages towards their conclusions.

And here are the answers to last time's challenge!

The sprites in that old graphic came from...

The SNES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters!

And the background was from...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Manhattan Missions!!!

Moving along, there's the matter of that ass... (more...)

SO! I was going through some old graphics folders looking for a photo to include in my latest Scary-Crayon article -- which contains some stuff personal enough that I almost cut it from the piece and posted it here, so readers of my blog who don't typically enjoy SC might still want to check it out -- and I came across a couple of images I thought it might be fun to post. And heck, I thought, we might as well make a game out of it! So see if you can identify the stuff in these pics via the comments (if you like), and I'll post again in a day or so to let you know how you did.

Back in college, I wrote articles and created some graphics for a student magazine for a couple of semesters -- and this is the graphic I made using some sprites and a background for one particular feature. See if you can guess which two respective games the sprites and background came from! I'll give you a hint -- both games share the same protagonists, and I reviewed one of them on SC (the list of relevant articles is here).

And since today's update also saw me rooting around in my DVD screen capture directory, I figured I'd post this image and challenge you to Name That Ass! That is, I challenge you to guess whose ass that is. And the legs, since they obviously belong to the same person. And I know what you're thinking, Mickey -- that's not the right answer. 😉 In fact, this screencap came from a children's movie made in the 1990s. It currently has an IMDb user rating below 4.0. (If you really wanna play, this search tool may prove useful. It's pretty useful anyway, actually. I just found out about it!)

Okey-doke, post your guesses in the comments -- among whatever else you'd like to write -- and I'll reveal the answers in a few days or so. (And I still haven't forgotten about your questions, Mickey!) Ja!