YouTube Scavenger Hunt: Volume III

All right, maybe we'll get back to the theme YouTube lists next time around. For this one, random will do nicely. Let's see what's out there:

10. A dog eating birthday cake



It turns out there's a plethora of videos of dogs eating birthday cake. This one might seem a little cruel at first glance, as there's another golden retriever who is clearly upset that she's not getting her own piece and scrabbles to get out of her crate to join in the feast. But according to the description, she already had one and also stole the piece meant for this dog, Dempsey. The dogs are involved in the Helping Paws program, and user jeep2me has quite a few videos of their skills and other adorable golden retrievers.

Views: 149
Comments: 0

9. Fireworks going off inside a vehicle

Embedding is disabled, so enjoy this video here. Uploaded by the TV station WMTW in Maine, it shows security camera footage of someone in a vehicle tossing a Roman candle into a parked car and heading out, bumping the car for good measure along the way. The incident took place in Portland in July of 2012 and police are looking for the perps.

Views: 12,954
Comments: disabled

8. Someone climbing the CN Tower



This is one of those so close yet so far away type of things. The CN Tower in Toronto is one hell of a thing to take the stairs on, since it's 1,815 feet tall and has 1,776 steps. The tower uses this daunting staircase for an annual challenge to climb the stairs and raise money for the World Wildlife Federation. Unfortunately, as the sign warns, the tower has some weird stipulation that it has to be hands free. Climbers can't take cameras or even water bottles along, and security searches everyone to make sure they're not sneaking anything in. So most of the videos are people before and after the climb, including this guy - TOvlogs - who has various videos from around Toronto including swimming in snow and getting caught in traffic.

Views: 2,019
Comments: 0

7. A war reenactment done with snowballs



All right, so these kids aren't exactly recreating Pickett's Charge (well, I guess there's a brief charge around 5:15); it's more of a half-assed free for all. But this is the closest thing I could find. The kids and teachers in this fifth grade class have a bit of fun at the end of a field trip to the Civil War battleground. The Gettysburg National Military Park Museum & Visitor Center is the building in the background. This is the only video uploaded by ibellahappy.

Views: 241
Comments: 0

6. A plane landing on a truck



I remember an incident or two where a small plane in an emergency situation has put down on the rear of a flatbed truck. I wasn't able to find any footage of those landings, but you can do the same thing with wheels down to avoid a belly landing and make a neat air show trick. This shows such a stunt from the Renio Air Race Exhibition in Nevada. Uploaded by hobbiesforever, who has numerous other videos of this event.

Views: 132,152
Comments: 21

5. A giant jellyfish washed up on a beach



Pretty much what it says in the title. A guy takes a look at a giant jellyfish washed up on a beach, and a toddler mistakes it for an elephant. Uploaded by canuckinrok, also known as "A Canuck in Kimchi-Land." The kid dominates the channel but there are a good deal of short sightseeing ones as well.

Views: 107,688
Comments: 190

4. Adolf Hitler dancing to dubstep



Go to 1:30 for the start of said dancing. Otherwise, this is a pretty good contribution to the meme involving angry Hitler from the German film Downfall. It's a good movie, and the scene in question has the dictator blowing up at his underlings after receiving news that his troops have failed to put a dent in the Soviet approach. Parodies have Hitler angrily reacting to a whole range of other topics via different subtitles. In this case, he's pissed that the rest of the bunker doesn't like his dubstep party. Uploaded by anaveragepro4, whose channel offers numerous Downfall parodies. Or, in the channel's own words, "a bunch of videos of Hitler failing at life because the Nazis suck balls."

Views: 2,241
Comments: 13

3. An asteroid grazing the atmosphere



Well I kind of cheated on this one, given that there as a time when I was deeply interested in asteroids and comets and knew this footage was out there. The video was originally shot by a woman named Linda Baker in Grand Teton National Park and captures the "Great Daylight 1972 Fireball" as it soars overhead. The object came close enough to nick the atmosphere and was visible in the western United States and Canada before heading off again. Uploaded by user Rnastershake, whose videos include a lot of music as well as that Donald Duck cartoon where he's a Nazi.

Views: 29,137
Comments: 14

2. Someone bungee jumping in Wisconsin



The website Thirst For Adrenaline bluntly says there aren't any places to do it in the state. It does mention that Extreme World in Wisconsin Dells once offered it, however, and there are plenty of videos showing individual leaps. Including this one of the video uploader, a fellow named Jim and user named rhlzxp, who gives a little plug for Samsung by saying he forgot to take his phone out of his pocket but that it survived getting tossed out of the net onto the pavement. A 12-year-old girl was less fortunate about a year later, suffering severe injuries on a terrifying-looking attraction that Jim also tried out; turns out getting dropped 100 feet into a big ol' net might be a little dangerous.

Views: 3,147
Comments: 0

1. Footage of the Martian moon Phobos



Given all the excitement over Mars after NASA jazzed up the rover missions by lowering the SUV-sized Curiosity onto the surface, I was wondering what was available for the Martian moon of Phobos. Not so much footage as a series of photos, but this one throws in the other moon, Deimos, for free. These images were taken by a variety of Mars probes, according to the video's description. The video itself was uploaded by 20Bond09, whose videos range from space probe images to nature shots to a documentary on the third season of 24.

Views: 13,036
Comments: 30

YouTube Scavenger Hunt, Volume II: Slow Motion

As the great Dave Chappelle once said, just about everyone and everything looks cooler in slow motion. Some day, I hope to do the slow motion nonchalant walk away from a giant explosion or dial things down to bullet time or something. But until that time, I give you 10 random actions or things I thought to check YouTube for to see if there's slow motion footage of them.

10. Chopping wood



A few years ago, my parents moved to a house that once again had a fireplace, and they added a wood-burning stove to boot. So now every year they get a pile of firewood dumped in the driveway, and my dad tends to correspond it to my summer visit so I can help split and stack the winter fuel. I tend to alternate between cleaving the piece like a big burly man and having the axe bounce off it with barely a dent left like a nancy boy. Whoever filmed this split the difference (HA) by getting a nice cut on a rather clumsy swing (even though another wood split video shows them neatly slicing through two pieces of firewood). Video is from LucidMovement, a slow motion specialist, in June of 2007.

Views: 7,653
Comments: 8

9. Whip



The top result, with nearly half a million views, is a Discovery Channel clip from a show called Time Warp (apparently about how cool things look in slow motion) where a couple of guys bullshit about whips without showing any slow motion at all. The end of a whip breaks the sound barrier when it creates the crack, and although this guy fooling around in his backyard doesn't give a nice close-up view of that it's still pretty neat. Shared by ksteryou, a bullwhip enthusiast and no doubt adventurous archaeologist, in December of 2008.

Views: 12,787
Comments: 33

8. Kiss



I remember the sitcoms and other shows of my youth as always portraying a really slow leadup to a kiss, both in the interaction between characters and the final magnetic pull between their lips. In retrospect, it was kind of like watching the docking scene in 2001, and offered ample opportunity for the characters to break off and pretend like it never happened (TV Tropes has a whole category for that).

Then I grew up and found out that kissing is a much speedier affair, except in the lazier makeouts. TV shows seem to have reflected the reality more in recent years, which might be why most of the results for a slow motion kiss are just scenes from shows slowed down a bit. Here's one from House, posted by superfan JustHuddy.

Views: 77,816
Comments: 81

7. Water balloon



Odds are you've already encountered a video or photo of a water balloon exploding, and that awesome moment when the skin has burst but the water remains in the globular shape of the balloon for awhile before dissolving into droplets or splattering about someone's face. This video's view count is higher than the population of several small countries, after all. In case you haven't seen anything like it, though...there it is. Uploaded by DiscoveryNetworks, the Discovery Channel page of YouTube, in January of 2009.

Views: 24,446,597
Comments: 32,729

6. Bottle breaking



Oh it's such a waste of a good beer...Put on the site by HumorKick, a website of humorous videos and photos and articles, way back in November of 2006.

Views: 3,171
Comments: 5

5. Card shuffling



I'm forgoing the main result, a slowed-down scene from a Western, in favor of this neat little parlor shuffle. HQMedia, or High Quality Stock Footage, brought this to us on July 29 of this year.

Views: 1 (just me??)
Comments: 0

4. Wrecking ball



An already beat-up old car gets punched in the top. It is indeed a pretty thing to see. This was uploaded by monkeycu in November of 2008.

Views: 7,445
Comments: 5

3. Guitar strings



Long, long ago in ninth grade, a couple of friends of mine used a slow-mo camera for a science class presentation and the outcome looked a bit like this grainy, close-up video of a guitar string getting plucked. And yes, the presentation was still a lot better than anything the rest of us came up with. Also, this was brought to us by twopamels of Spain, whose uploads are a mix of slow motion and music.

Views: 12,798
Comments: 3

2. Match strike



I wonder if the number of pyromaniacs skyrocketed after the development of cameras with high frames-per-second rates. This thing of beauty, uploaded in July of 2008, comes from 78James, an Englishman who seems to specialize in slow motion videos.

Views: 54,847
Comments: 41

1. Cannon firing



If you're reading this before you see the video, I'll save you some time: you can stop after five seconds unless you want to see 51 seconds of smoke wafting about. This was uploaded on July 5 of this year by MrPatriotOne, who had another video of his cannon, a biscuits and gravy tutorial, and something on a Second Amendment March because apparently the government wanted to take his cannons away.

Views: 248
Comments: 0

YouTube Scavenger Hunt, Volume 1

Well, this is a simple social experiment: taking on the contention that you can find anything on YouTube. That's certainly an exaggeration, but among the millions of videos on the website you're sure to find most of the things you're looking for. So I decided to launch this feature as a semi-regular look at the bizarre world of online multimedia, thinking up 10 random phrases or images, seeing if it's available in video form, and checking to see how many views and comments it has (reflected by whenever I got around to viewing the thing, given that it takes awhile to draft these entries). Some are fairly common, some are a little bizarre. Let's see what we can get.

A computer mouse used as a lasso



Incredibly enough, there actually is a video matching these terms. In this 30-second clip uploaded on Jan. 10 2010, animator and "unemployed/starving artist" someynguy depicts a battle between a cordless mouse and a mouse with a cord. The cord mouse's first trick is to use the cord like a lasso, and it later employs it like a whip.

Views: 148
Comments: 0

A hit for the phrase "dumbass kid" and the word "snake"

Apparently even dumbass kids know not to mess with snakes. The one video listed as a match for no apparent reason is this one, of a kid doing a front flip off a swing set into deep snow. It was uploaded by MrPATRIOT64 on Feb. 6 2010.



There's no mention of the word "snake" in the description of tags, so it's unclear how snakes are involved in this. Maybe the town name, who knows.

Views: 762
Comments: 2

A crab fishing clip that isn't from The Deadliest Catch

The hit Discovery Channel show The Deadliest Catch, following a handful of vessels on their hazardous journeys into the Bering Sea to hunt crab, has plenty of clips and candid shots of Sig Hansen, Phil Harris, and the rest of the affable guys that man these boats. The show also frequently uses home videos, though, and crab fishing has obviously been going on long before the show started airing. There are loads of amateur videos to reflect that.



In this three-minute video, described only as red king crab fishing on the Bering Sea, a deckhand takes a break to film the process of reeling in and sorting a pot. It all seems very quiet after what is aired on the show. It was posted on Dec. 5 2006 by dpcatala.

Views: 119,099
Comments: 63

A video showing someone's tongue being detached from a frozen flagpole

Well, it doesn't quite show the process, but apparently it's not something that happens too often after the cautionary tale of A Christmas Story. In this short Associated Press clip, a girl looks quite chipper despite the fact that her tongue seems to be bleeding, and some firefighters mill about as a reporter discusses how she got her tongue there in the first place and how rescuers got her detached.



Views: 107,351
Comments: 306

Someone scuba diving in a cave in the Caribbean

I thought of this one since a local theater had a talk by a diver who had been exploring underwater caves in the Caribbean. National Geographic was involved in this talk and several associated lecturers, so of course a search readily brings up a clip from a National Geographic show, Wild Chronicles. It looks at an exploration of an underwater cave in Cuba. The video was posted by oceancontent, an official channel with a ton of ocean videos, on September 10, 2008.



Views: 15,228
Comments: 0

A Frisbee hitting a camera



This short video was uploaded by kljacobson, an Oregon resident who has posted several videos of her dog, on July 10, 2010.

Views: 89
Comments: 2

A humpback whale breaching

Sorry for those of you who absolutely hate Coldplay, but hopefully you can stomach a 30-second clip of one of their songs for this rather amazing video from near Husavik, Iceland. As someone who went on a whale watch in elementary school and saw little more than a couple of blowholes spouting off, I imagine this was well worth the ticket price for passengers.



This was uploaded on Nov. 1 2008 by fdjunk, a Dutch guy whose videos include a BASE jump into a Norwegian fjord, a laughing baby, and a rather popular one of a marathon runner who has become completely exhausted in the final 200 meters of a marathon as dozens of people cruise past him.

Views: 16,870
Comments: 12

Elmo and some celebrity

Famous actors love them some Sesame Street, so I figured this one wouldn't be too hard. This video is actually geared more to celebrities in general, as Ricky Gervais sings Elmo a "celebrity lullaby." Elmo certainly doesn't seem overly bothered that Gervais is in his house for no apparent reason and that the letter N is watching him when he sleeps.



This video was uploaded by the official Sesame Street channel on YouTube on December 18, 2009.

Views: 2,252,616
Comments: 1,381

Some average Joe on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, is apparently the easiest continental high peak to summit since it's a more gradual climb. Here's a short video from a couple of guys who did the hike to raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation and Wounded Warrior Project.



This was put up by Joshua Goldstein (JoshuaGoldstein23) on July 24, 2008. In addition to an outtake video from the summit, he's uploaded his best man speech, a couple of concert videos, and a short video of the 2010 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Views: 1,382
Comments: 5

A chess set on fire

Well, right now no one has uploaded a video where they've set a chessboard on fire. However, there is this:



This is taken from Marostica, Italy, a city known for a human chess game that has taken place every other years since 1923. This is apparently how they start the festivities.

Views: 509
Comments: 0

Internet Killed the Everything Star

Once upon a time, there was a video parody of "Video Killed the Radio Star," the song by The Buggles that was the first music video MTV featured in the wee hours of an August morn in 1981. In that context, The Buggles are kind of assholes, since they're bragging that they're going to kill a particular form of media. Not to worry, radio is still kicking and MTV's quality imploded like a collapsing star after ditching music videos in favor of a hodgepodge of "edgy" shows and dynamiting a number of quality animated series (Clone High and Undergrads among them) to protect the suckiness. And then there was this:



I remember seeing this video back when Shockwave was a cool new Web application offering various animated videos and online games. It apparently hasn't changed too much, but this video is already dated. The Internet services are offered through CD-ROMs? And they include Compuserve? And there's still reason to include a Netscape logo in the mix?

My relationship with the Internet is probably about the same as what I have with gasoline: I realize it has a lot of negative effects, but I friggin' need it. I work at a newspaper, and hear plenty of jokes and dire stories about how the Internet is gleefully killing us and everything else on the planet. At the same time, I spend plenty of time online checking out various websites or Netflix. The resources available online are pretty much the only thing that lets me keep up my other website by doing research in news archives and books whenever I want. And if I, say, wanted to see Summer Glau, let's see how different the paths are between whether I have Internet and whether I don't. Ready? Go!

Internet Me does a quick search on Google Images. And for good measure, I carry it through to this blog with a few keystrokes.

So the Internet has this going for it. Which is nice.

Meanwhile, Non-Internet Me is trying to catch a repeat of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, or seeing if some magazines might have a shot available. Or I could be taking a cross-country road trip to Hollywood complete with hilarious pratfalls to see the lovely Ms. Glau in person...whereupon I would most likely get mace-Tased right away by her personal security or crushed by her powerful robot arms.

So how much harm or good is the Internet causing in various areas? Let's find out together.

The Video Star, ie Music Videos

I'll always have a special liking for the alternative rock songs that appeared in the late 1990s, since that was generally a good time for music and also the time I discovered WEQX. The music videos of the time weren't really special, but I do remember a few of them. They include Oasis playing with a bunch of military helicopters in an industrial ruin, Radiohead's incredibly weird animated video featuring a limbless EU delegate and other such oddities, and the front man of The Verve plowing a straight line walk through a busy London street. Those are all British bands, I realize. So be it.

I've already mentioned how MTV has pretty much ruined itself, so I won't dwell on that. Strangely enough, music videos have grown more popular since people have stopped watching them on television. It makes sense, really. More people use the Internet than watch MTV or VH1, and the bands apparently realize that if something becomes a viral hit they'll receive much more exposure than they might otherwise get. To that end, music videos have become incredibly awesome. They include the Flobots' animated dystopian future, Depeche Mode's short movie featuring a sort of hostage situation with a man in an out-of-control car, and Mutemath lip-syncing their song in reverse to terrific effect. OK Go are the undisputed kings of the new video scene, having put out amazing videos featuring a backyard choreographed dance, a seamless routine on treadmills, and the best Rube Goldberg machine ever made.

So kudos to the Internet on this one. MTV can keep their crummy reality shows if it means music videos are consistently entertaining now.

Record Stores, CDs, and Radio

There are still a few record stores around, and some chains seem to be doing fairly well (see Turn It Up in New England and Cheapo in the Midwest). And I wish them well, because they both have a nice atmosphere and, well, a ton of CDs. Though I have to confess that I haven't bought any discs in quite some time. I don't have an iPod, so it has more to do with listening to the radio and saving any song I really like as a favorite in YouTube. That and the fact that I'm kind of cheap. Illegal song downloads have been around since the Internet was fast enough to sustain them, but it hasn't destroyed the music scene. By having music be available mostly online or through iTunes, though, it seems like CDs and the stores that sell them might be on the way out. Guess it's time to welcome a vacancy in the mall for a little while before letting another Starbucks move in.

Radio, I'm hoping, will endure. It's possible to play tunes off the iPod in vehicles, but it certainly seems unfair to require someone to pour thousands of dollars into a car and then demand that they go out and buy an iPod to fill with their desired songs and podcasts. So cars will always have stereo systems included in them, and hopefully radios will be a part of that. Plenty of radio stations are chock full of good music with minimal commercials and some pretty good DJs to boot. And then there are all of those concert giveaways and tornado warnings that radio brings you.

Guess they don't make a podcast for that.

Movies and Video Stores

One can pick up an illegal movie download as soon as a movie premieres, if not sooner. But that really can't compare to dropping some money every now and then to hit the theater and see something on the big screen. Not everything needs to be blown up to massive proportions with a nice sound system to get the full effect, though, and I do watch online movies on Hulu or Netflix in smaller windows. So any decline in movie revenues can be attributed to people holding onto their cash to put toward more essential needs or people deciding they don't want to see dreck like Furry Vengeance.

Dear fucking Christ

The Internet can't really be blamed for the gradual decline of video stores, either. The very fact that they're still called video stores when VHS has pretty much disappeared from the market isn't a good sign. And ironically enough, the true threat to them is Netflix and other mail-in services, which utilize the post office, which the Internet also threatens to some degree. It's much easier to have a DVD mailed directly to your house, or stream it online, than make a trip to a video store and face late fees. Though if the Internet kills the post office, you can never get movies ever again. Except bootlegs or a more extensive online stream network, which can be ported directly to your television. Dammit.

Television

It's pretty much the same thing as movies. It's not like commercials weren't already interludes that let you get a snack or take a bathroom break, but TiVo has taken things to the logical conclusion by letting you skip them altogether. Hulu and other streaming sites offer pretty much the same perk: wait a day, miss the water cooler talk, and watch your show with only a scattering of 30-second ads. Of course, these ads can repeat themselves ad nauseum.

Overall verdict: television has had a few golden ages, and though it seems to have progressed from a "stupid reality shows" phase to an "endless cop shows" phase, there are plenty of terrific dramas and comedies out there and the Internet is probably helping them more than hurting them. It was pretty much the entire reason for the writer's strike back in 2007-2008, after all. All told, the Internet is much less threatening to television than the team that makes creative decisions at Fox.

Canceling this, and Arrested Development, and Greg the Bunny, and so on = Rupert Murdoch is going to the special hell

Video Games

Online games are about as graphically advanced as the old Playstation games. The real issue lies in their addictiveness. XKCD already said it very well:

Newspapers and Journalism

So here's my plan: I'm going to bury my head in the sand and ignore any and all bad news I hear related to newspapers.

A terrible strategy, I know, but I'm currently stuck in a situation which is neither dire nor ideal and I'm sure that's how the newspaper industry can be described as a whole. For all the jokes about every newspaper and magazine in the country fading into nothingness in a matter of months, they are still looked upon as a trusted source of local news (and national news, though there are plenty of people who criticize those as "liberal media" while implicitly trusting anything on Fox News). A newspaper subscription is cheaper than an Internet package, but of course a newspaper doesn't come with access to anything and everything ever produced. And those of us who grew up reading the funnies have realized that most of the comics now are bloated relics kept trundling along by an original artist's offspring while the stuff that makes you laugh has migrated online, where amusing people with some degree of artistic skill can reach a wider audience.

So newspapers are in trouble. They apparently can't afford to keep teams like Woodward and Bernstein focused on important stories, and the people who get fired are more likely to be the experienced reporters at a higher pay grade than the cubs who aren't paid much. At the same time, there's always a demand for news, and there seems to be a corresponding demand for accountability. Newspapers might convert into an online product or something like the version of the Minority Report version of the USA Today that morphs to incorporate breaking news, but it seems like there will always be a place for journalism. As long as journalism in general doesn't go off the rails into completely editorial territory.

If that thing leaves the island, that's it. It's over. Everything.

The post office

Which is easier: typing dozens of words per minute in an "electronic mail" that can be quickly and instantly sent to someone, or carefully scrawling out a letter and envelope, spending forty-some-odd cents to send it on its way, and getting it to the mailbox or post office where it will proceed to a destination within a few days.

For idle conversation and other routine correspondence, e-mail is ridiculously convenient. And with companies everywhere urging people to go paperless, will there come a time when the mail system simply collapses for lack of anything to distribute other than glossy junk mail? Well, hopefully not. Sending out cards for someone's birthday or other special events should be firmly in place. I don't think sympathy e-cards where a cartoon duck consoles you the loss of a loved one will catch on. And then there's always Netflix. Sweet savior of the postal system, Netflix!

Books and bookstores

And perhaps Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer said it best for this one: "Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly."

Apparently books are doing fine, even if they're being printed on paper and that's dying out and allowing trees to grow back and cure the planet of all its ills. Granted, most paperbacks published in North America are romance novels. Tell me, does the strapping guy with the pecs the size of Ohio get the fair maiden? Spare me the suspense! Still, there's something about relaxing in bed or a favorite chair with a good book. We're not at the point where everything had to be on the screen, are we?

Compact discs? How primitive the Martian libraries of the year 3000 are.

Language and grammar

Perhaps the biggest drawback of the Internet is that some idle browsing can inculcate the idea that the human race has gotten stupider since we can hide behind a pseudonym and post messages that look like the ramblings of a drunken 10-year-old. Some people probably post these things to be ironic, but, as Jon Stewart would say, YOU'RE NOT HELPING. Text messages have certainly helped in diluting words to as few letters as can be managed, and then of course Twitter came along. Have a thought? Please be sure to condense it into 140 characters or less, and use the number sign to join thousands of other people in commenting on some current event, or the @ symbol to try to get the attention of celebrities. Oh, if only William Faulkner were alive to take part in it!

I probably shouldn't be so crotchety. For the most part, the Internet is well-versed and coherent, with scholarly articles and widespread collections and a plethora of random sites like this one with the occasional (hopefully forgivable) lapses in spelling or grammar. Still, I'm unclear how a funny cat video can devolve into a debate over whether or not America sucks. And though hilarious, there's always PeopleofWalMart.com and Lamebook (aka, "White Trash Gets A Facebook Account) to make us question the human race.

But I guess I can't really take too intellectual of a stance here considering the section I'm going out on.

Porn

"So you're looking for pornography, are you?" asks the kind Internet Merchant. "Well, I guess I can help you out. I've got a couple of billion images if you care to browse. About the same number of videos, too. It's all free, of course. And you can surf it all from the privacy of your own home instead of going into some sketchy shop or trying to buy a dirty magazine from some store clerk while waiting in line right in front of a Catholic grandmother getting Flintstones tablets for her three grandchildren. Is that all right with you?"

He's quite nice, this Internet Merchant.

You know what? Porn is like the cockroaches after a nuclear blast. It'll always be around, because it's a constantly changing thing. If the Romans took the time to make pornographic pictures out of hundreds of pieces of colored tile, I imagine pornography will always be riding in the wave of new technology like a top-notch surfer. Perhaps newspapers could learn a thing or two from it.

I'll be in my bunk.

"Videotaping this crime spree is the best idea we've ever had!"

Yesterday, we posted this story on our breaking news section. For those of you who just can't muster the energy to move your mouse over to click that link, here's the gist: a bunch of teens and old-enough-to-be-charged-as-adults set off some Molotov cocktails in a vacant building. They weren't supposed to be in the building, and you're not supposed to make homemade explosives to set off in buildings you're not allowed in. That's what those in the law enforcement community call burglary and arson.

These Rhodes scholars were kind enough to not only record these felony crimes, but also to scroll a line of credits listing the names of all of those involved. Police subsequently charged seven people with crimes that could result in 40 years in prison if the judge throw the book. Note: that won't happen. Burglary charges are generally let off easily, and even arson charges seem to result in a matter of months in county; given the age of these kids, they'll probably get even less.

One of the first comments we got was a question of whether we can charge people with the crime of stupidity. On one level, it seems like a good idea. A misdemeanor, for sure, but a bit of a punishment for being so damn brainless as to make everyone wonder if humanity is looking for a jackhammer to get past rock bottom. Then again, stupidity might fall more along the lines of insanity: a way of getting one's sentence reduced because they simply didn't know better. At any rate, crimes of stupidity free up police time to tackle other crimes, so it might be difficult to argue that it's a bad thing.

I remember criminals having the urge to film themselves breaking the law since videotapes were in fashion, so it isn't surprising that YouTube idiocy seems to be on the rise. Here's a story on some drug dealers bragging about selling crack in a rap video; here's one on some people who threatened their neighbors with illegal weapons online; and here's one on police investigating a fatal gang beatdown that was posted on the site. And these are all from browsing through the past week of news that returned hits on "YouTube arrest."

You know what? Screw those jagoffs. Here's Chocolate Rain.