Stray Hawkeye

Fuck you.  But not the horse you rode in on.  That would just be disgusting.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?  Or at least makes you want three go get intoxicnineed.

Via Kottke

You may think that many of the traditions and celebrations that are now part of the Easter holiday have absolutely nothing to do with religion.  That they’re actually mostly left overs from pagan holidays celebrating the equinox and the start of spring, and that Easter was meant to ease conversion by occurring at nearly the same time and taking many of the same themes.  That perhaps candy and bunnies and dyed eggs shouldn’t be such a big part of the celebration.  That there are no more than five puns you could make around the Easter Bunny and religion.  Turns out, you’d be wrong.  Dead and resurrected wrong:

Any one else notice what the lizard guards are wearing on their heads at 1:23 in that clip?  Remind you of anything?

Via Friendly Atheist

What you have 3 days after you shave a Snuffleupagus.

If you haven’t read them before, the previous episodes of the dino saga will help make this make slightly more sense.  Not lots of sense, just more than it would otherwise.

In this episode / series, Parker goes to the Orange Bowl in Miami to see the Hawkeyes play.  My going along is part of why there was that couple week long lull of no posting – planning the trip, going down, being there a few days, coming back, getting my feet back on the ground, not to mention Christmas, New Years, some things shifting at work, and just generally having needed a bit of a break.  At any rate, I’m back now.

Also, I’m breaking this episode into 3 parts (this is the first, as the title would indicate) because:

1. There are lots of pictures.
2. There are basically 3 distinct stories.
3. These posts take for freaking ever to make, so I want to stretch it out a little bit and make the effort for each a little more manageable.

The third segment is a little short for reasons I’ll explain in that post, so that one’s more like half a post compared to the other two.  As a bonus though, there will also be one non-Parker, non-dino post of Miami stuff after the third as well.  So, really, it like 2 and 2 half post about Miami.  So, anyway, let’s get started, shall we…

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As it turns out, Nessie has an in with the BCS people and helped them decide that Iowa should go to the Orange Bowl in Miami so she could see Parker, instead of sending Iowa to the Fiesta Bowl.  Apparently Nessie doesn’t do well in the desert, being a lake creature and all, and it turns out that Plesiosaurs have a surprisingly large say in the BCS selection process.  Who knew?

So, when we heard that Iowa was headed to Miami, Parker decided that we needed to go.  Sinclair stayed behind to hibernate.  Because dinosaurs hibernate, I guess.  That or he’s just lazy and still moping about not being able to find Minne.  Who knows?  He has his moments of being a rather surly fellow, but I think mostly it’s just the cold and dark weather getting to him, cold blooded and all.

So, Parker and I got our tickets and flew down to Miami a couple of days before the game.  The TSA is surprisingly permissive with dinosaurs.  Apparently they’re a well connected bunch.  Anyway, as soon as we got to the Miami airport, we decided we should go find the hotel, settle in a little bit, and then go see what South Beach has to offer.  Without thinking, I had let Parker do some of the planning, like the car…

Also, it turns out Parker packs like a Druish Princess.

And he fit in pretty well in the hotel lobby while they were taking the bags up, too.

Once we got up to our room, Parker decided to check out the view.

As you can see, I pack slightly lighter than Parker, but I still had room for swim trunks and sandals, so, we headed to the beach, at top dinosaur speed, to see if we could find Nessie.

The lifeguard flashed a mirror a few times in Morse code to signal to Nessie for us.

After we sat on the beach chairs for a while and tried to talk with Nessie as best we could from that distance, Parker got a little restless and wanted to play.

Two hours later…

“Hmmm, Parker, would you like to play on a little bigger sand castle?  I think I see one over there you might like, and it doesn’t look like anyone else is playing on it right now.”

“Sure, where?”

“Right over there…”

“Wow!!!” … running….

“Oh, you know what else we should do? …”

Parker was a little miffed at me after that, so I put the camera away for a while.

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As a side note, how often do you see a post with references to Space Balls, Moby Dick, Baywatch, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Monty Python, and an obscure Sesame Street record all in the same place?

Pleasantly trippy, though simple, Lego illusion.

Cute and clever diorama and detail (via The Brothers Brick).

Using Legos to mend walls.

Lego candles.

An absolutely enormous / insane (read: awesome) Lego aircraft carrier.

Nathan Sawaya makes all sorts of amazing Lego sculptures / art (found via Makezine).

A great/bad pun in Lego:

Attack of the Second Amendment from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo. Via Gizmodo.

On the slightly more serious side, here‘s a really interesting story from The New York Times about Lego as a company and the changes they’ve made and where they’re heading (via Kottke).  As much as I fully realize that things like that have to happen to keep the company afloat, it kind of makes me sick too.  I’ve bought Legos for birthdays and Christmas in recent years and each time it seems like they get more and more expensive, with almost no really little sets, and they’re so specialized that it’s hard to build much out of them aside from what’s on the front of the box.

I remember quite fondly Lego sets I had when I was little (okay, I still have some of them) that came with multiple sets of instructions for things to make out of them, and also had things pictured on the box that you could make which there weren’t instructions for, just to get the creative juices flowing a little more.

I sort of credit the old Lego sets with a lot of the way I look at thing (perhaps I had this view before I got Legos, and they just happened to fit in well, who knows).  Mostly, putting pieces together, taking things apart and rebuilding them, just seeing how things work, and being willing to mess with them a little.  I often explain my interest in computer programming in these terms – programming is Legos for adults.  (Legos are Legos for adults too, but we’re going for a metaphor here people.)  In programming, especially object oriented programming, you have all these different pieces you have to fit together and line up just right, and when you do, you have built a new toy to play with from the parts you had.  And you can combine them in all sorts of ways, and swap out pieces here and there, and build whole new things no one else has thought of yet.  And when you’re done, you can reuse it all and not have a mess.  And the building that happens is a mix of building with your hands, and planning it out in your head as you go, and adjusting as you run into problems.  In an overblown metaphoracal sense, Legos are life.

So, in closing, here’s a great, very simple Lego ad campaign (via Swiss Miss) that’s the way I like to remember them.

I’ve decided that posting this around New Year’s is now a tradition as well:

Also, you know what I’m looking forward to about the New Year’s Eve celebrations next year?  Seeing how they’re going to make those stupid plastic eye glasses where the frames are in the shape of the year out of a 2011.  Maybe everyone will have to ring in the New Year with only one eye open and the whole celebration all around the world will be pirate themed.  Happy New Yarrrrrr!

The end result of Pavlov’s diabolical plan to make everyone drool while Christmas shopping.

Organize a 5k race.  (Or whatever distance, but preferably something short.)  Have the proceeds from the entry fees / sponsorships benefit a local GLBT advocacy group.  Encourage cross dressing and flamboyant clothing.  Name the event “The Drag Race”.

You could probably even set it up as part of Pride weekend, especially since they tend to close some streets for that anyway for parades.

Ever wonder what it would be like if the military started a circus?

A desert camouflage big top.

Navy seals balancing colorful balls on their noses and playing horns.

Perhaps a tiny clown car tank, which seemingly endlessly fires colorful mimes from it’s main gun.