Shyzer.com

Sweet. Just head to southern England and try to find any of the 30,000 plastic ducks floating towards the coast.

Personally, I think Ze Frank has something to do this.

At least, I don’t want them to think otherwise because I would hate it if they started signing me up for gay dating sites.

Here’s just a little tip to any of you employed by a company where Internet access is available while on the job. It’s 2007. Anything you do can be traced right back to you. Easily. Come on people, I thought we’d been over this by now. That chapter can be found right between the “don’t pass on chain e-mails” lesson and the “yes, Wikipedia can have false information on it” section. Get with the program.

I wish I had some awesome Rod Beck memories to share with you, but alas I only barely remember him as a semi-above average baseball closer for much of the 1990s. But the quote below from this CNNSI article makes me wish I had taken the time to get to know him just a little bit better.

While working his way back to the majors in 2003, Beck pitched for the Triple-A Iowa Cubs and lived in his Winnebago parked just beyond the outfield fence. Fans would drop by for autographs and stay for a beer, and Beck became a folk hero. Then the Padres called.

Seriously, what pro athlete is that awesome anymore? In the age where most scrub players yet alone stars live in mansions far away from us normal folks and who act like they’ve done the planet a favor every time they sign an autograph, Beck would kick back and down a brew with you in his own home. That’s just kick ass. I can only imagine some of the stories that guy must have had. May he rest a little more in peace knowing that he never had to play for the Seattle Mariners.

The fact that I didn’t first start a website catering to people who are looking for easy races and marathons to win both saddens and disappoints me. If this doesn’t have something I’d do written all over it, then I’m even lazier than I give myself credit for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go train for the Second Annual Pear Festival Marathon, which expects to top double digits in participants this year! Cheaply earned trophy, here I come!

I can’t say that I see this happening as quickly or quite this way, but this video is onto something. To say that LIFE is about to shut their doors later this year is a bit or that Google will one day be financing space exploration in search of new customers is far beyond absurd. But take for instance electronic paper, which I think will be absolutely revolutionary. Once it’s easily and cheaply mass produced, we’ll see a huge shift in the way not only we acquire information, but live our daily lives. Prosumers will be able to tap into whatever they want no matter where they are, making traditional newspapers, books, magazines, and even carrying around laptops obsolete. And as a guy who gets back pain just from carrying a laptop on a shoulder strap, I can’t wait!

[via TechCrunch and John Chow]

While sitting in a Chinese government office this week, I found myself distracted by the Chinese version of CNN being blared at around 900 decibels throughout the building. My BOSE noise canceling headphones work great on jet airplanes at 30,000 feet, but they couldn’t shake the Asian Soledad O’Brien. After conceding defeat, I figured I’d just stare at the screen a while and see what I could learn and the only thing I discovered is that China has a huge hobby for ripping off American commercials. For instance, remember this commercial below?

Click To Play

Yeah, the official Beijing 2008 Olympics Committee totally ripped that off, except they found a way to make an even cheesier and longer version with worse actors and more absurd scenarios, like a little Chinese boy running through the streets chasing his soccer ball only to be saved by an aware driver who slams on the brakes at the last minute. Quick cut to another guy standing on the curb and staring at this little Kodak moment with eyes aglow. Now, call me old fashion, but isn’t that just called being a good driver? Is it common practice in China for drivers to mow down any pedestrian in the street at will? Because otherwise, that little act of kindness was probably executed out of the driver’s desires not to end up like Jack Bauer instead of helping his fellow man.

It got better though, as one of the good deeds was done by a man walking down a crowded street and picking up a recently dropped apple by the woman in front of him, who promptly thanked the good Samaritan and chomped right into the tasty snack. Oh, I left out the part where the apple was dropped IN A PUDDLE ON THE STREET. But hey, China only has 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world. I’m sure it was perfectly healthy.

Halfway through the commercial (it was honestly about 90 seconds long), I asked the guy next to me if he noticed it as well and we spent the next hour dissecting every ad we saw as there were plenty. McDonalds has a campaign that basically rips off The King from Burger King, except it’s not nearly as funny and his face will most certainly haunt my dreams. And even though I have no idea what they were saying, Chinese car commercials looked to be just as annoying as their American counterparts. Glad to see that crappy ads screaming at you to buy a new truck is a global experience.

EDIT: Ha, the Mariners are on a two game losing streak now. The Shyzer Curse strikes again!

How in the name of all things Holy do the Seattle Mariners have the 5th best record in baseball? (Fun Fact: The five highest ranked teams are in the American League. They might as well just let the National League start using aluminum bats and softballs.)

How is this possible? Are more than 15 teams on any given night getting losses added to their standings? I can see it now, the Nationals and Pirates are playing, the umps look into the stands to see only 18 people left (two of which are actually dead), and so they call the game and both teams take a loss thanks in part to their massive sucktitude. Is this a new rule that nobody told me about, because that’s about the only way I could see a scenario unfolding where the Mariners are where they are in the standings.

Richie Sexson’s batting average is the price of a Quarter Pounder, Ichiro is punching himself in the face, Jose Vidro is grounding into double plays despite hitting the ball to the warning track, the starting rotation has a combined ERA of 74 million, and nobody’s reminded King Felix that he’s the second coming of Christ. How in the hell is this team one of the better ranked teams in baseball? I’m serious here, I’m looking at the standings and adding up all the losses and wins, because I think somebody screwed up and just gave a bunch of teams a few extra notches in the L word category for no reason.

But fret not, my Seattle brethren, for we all know what is about to happen. The Mariners might even win a few more games before then, but come mid-July, our almost eerily naturally timed summer swoon will take place, the team will lose 90 out of 91 games (their lone win coming when George Steinbrenner eats the entire Yankees pitching staff in a fit of rage), and next summer we’ll be hearing our team name early in the draft! Don’t get me wrong, I still love the Mariners, following them with my same frenzied lust as always and watching most of their games on MLB.tv (the third greatest invention ever, behind the clapper and motorized toothbrushes. It’s actually about as reliable as those two as well.), but this is a horribly constructed baseball team that is even perplexing the fellas over at USSM. Dumb pure luck should no more be expected to last than that time I was Facebook God for a few hours (you know, I still don’t think I’ve told that story on here…) and any Mariners fan who is actually kidding themselves into thinking we have a shot at making the playoffs needs to spend a few hours with Ichiro in Cleveland.

That quote is never going to get old.

Thank you God for YouTube.

In case you can’t figure out what’s going on in the video above, apparently a “Lady Friend” approached this guy and offered him a fun time. When he refused, she made a play to swipe his cell phone and then proceeded to kick the crap out of him. The best part is when he retaliates with a flying kick and some flailing arms ninja-style.

One benefit to listening to NPR and surfing Digg throughout the day is that you stumble across all sorts of cool little sites and applications. From desktop sticky notes to live updates on where the cheapest drinks in town are to websites that will call you and remind you to pick up milk on the way home.

A lot of the sites are dependent on social interaction though. People sign up for the accounts, share their info, location, actions, or whatever else the service curtails to, and in return the benefits are that they are able to interact with all their friends who are also using the service, making it easy to communicate and coordinate. But that raises one small question.

Who the hell is using this stuff? Because I sure as hell know it’s none of my friends.

For instance, you’ve got Twitter. It’s basically a glorified AIM Away Message, making it one of the less helpful of all the Web 2.0 startups you’ve got out there. But nonetheless, you’ve got millions of people who can either IM or text message Twitter to change their away message and at the same time, you can just surf around looking at other people’s away messages. So every few minutes, you get text messages letting you know that Paul just ordered another rounds at O’Rileys or Sally just put some muffins in the oven.

Riveting, huh?

I guess I just don’t get the point of this. Even with sites like Dodgeball, I don’t see why people use them so much. Basically, you text your location to the website simply so that the website can update your map and tell other people where you are. When I was living in Columbia or Spartanburg or Newcastle, I had heaps of friends in the areas and even still, there were only a few local joints we all hung out at. If I needed to get in touch with somebody or meet up with them, I could either A) Walk to the pub we usually frequented or B) call them to see where they were. Why get a third party involved in the interaction?

I see that a lot of people using these services live in big cities, like New York or San Fran or the likes. Do people really have that many friends they keep up with that they need real time practical GPS accurate tracking of them? Or is this just yet another fad where people can stalk others for no reason other…well, ok, stalking is kind of fun. But still, why bother updating your own profile then?

Of course, my favorite new startup site is Going.com, which allows you to update your current bar location via text messages. Why? So that your friends can buy you a beer while they’re sitting at home.

Now that’s my kind of friend. *winks towards the giant, frosty mug on the sidebar.*

Eat it, New York Times. You can have your fancy crossword puzzle. I’ll take this weird game that is the bastard child of what I believe to be Sudoku and Saki.

This “game” goes from Super Easy to I Need A Drink in about 5 minutes, so just stick with it.