At last, I can indulge my movie jones without all of that spending 2 hours or so in front of the TV. Now this is what I call a true breakthrough in cinematic technology!

Browse on over to Angry Alien Productions for at least a four minute tour of some of the funniest movie parodies to be seen, all 30 seconds long and all starring … bunnies.

Jennifer Shiman has been creating and releasing an average of one bunny movie per month since 2005.  Her parodies can be seen (so I’m told, I still don’t have cable) on Starz, and the occasional parody pops up as an easter egg feature on the original movie DVD release, such as her parody of Titanic.

While there check out her bunny store.

If you don’t see your favorite film on her list, you can submit a Request for Bunnification at her site.

The best part is, from what I’ve seen she always manages to capture every important plot point and twist in her films. I’m still trying to figure out how she managed that in 30 seconds for Pulp Fiction, but manage it she did.

Now this sounds like a cool deal … I can get a copy of Photoshop CS3, Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade, or VMware Workstation for  … free? Ok I’ll pass on the Vista but Photoshop … hmmm…

A blogging friend turned me on to this offer at BAS.  You can check the offer out here.

Photoshop CS3

I am totally in love with Photoshop CS3, and currently is the only reason I’m still running a windows machine. Some day a Mac … some day …

Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade

Windows Vista Ultimate - all of the features found in Windows Vista Home Premium, including Windows Media Center,  Windows Movie Maker with high-definition support, and Windows DVD Maker.

VMware Workstation

VMware Workstation enables you to run the broadest selection of operating systems on a single PC.

So how to get one of these for FREE?

1. Write an article about this offer ( or our services ) on your site, be sure to link to us from this article.
2. Subscribe to BAS for updates via email.
3. Stumble this article with your comment.

1. Write at least five quality reviews ( or comments ) for five distinct softwares listed in our website ( be sure to write quatilty review, we will check it after you submit )
2. Subscribe to BAS for updates via email.
3. Stumble this article with your comment.

Check it out here

I’m currently setting up a new website that focuses on local small and home based business, and as I start to promote it over the next three months I hope some of my readers may want to get involved and hopefully also benefit from it.

While hardly a new or stunning idea, The Daily Downtown is another “Local Small Business Directory” with extra emphasis on the “local” and “small”. I want to offer a very low cost advertising alternative to the smaller entreprenuer, with a good chance of reaching a target audience that is indeed local to the advertiser.

Rather than category lists or banner ads, each advertiser at the site gets a full page, such as this live demo page.

I have several advertising plans to promote the site now in place and ready to start, but I don’t want to pull the trigger until there is a good amount of content at the site. Ye olde chicken and egge conundrum … I need content (ads) to attract readers, but I need readers to attract content providers (advertisers).

So for the next three months, I’m offering a free highlight page ad any readers who have a small business and would like to try it out. I’ll alert all my beta testers when I start to run promotions for the site. After the three month evaluation, you’ll be invited to continue as an advertiser at a special discount rate, or you can choose not to continue. No hurt feelings here, whichever you choose.

There are only a couple restrictions I need to place on prospective advertisers:

1. The product or service you offer must be family friendly.

2. Your products or services must be easily available to your local prospective customers. Whether you have a physical storefront, operate out of your home, do home visits, sell at the local famer’s or flea market, or any combination, all of these are fine. If you also offer goods or services over the web that’s great too .. as long as you also cater to your local customers. I’m not out to disparage the “web only” businesses out there (which would include myself) but there are already numerous quality “web directories” available. I want this site to have a narrower focus.

If this sounds like something you would like to try, use the contact form on this page and you’ll get a reply from me shortly.

Thanks in advance to all who participate!

Ya gotta hand it to the swiss for coming up with the coolest toys!

Yves Rossy was the test pilot on May 14, 2008, in a successful 6-minute flight near Lake Geneva, Switzerland ( not Lake Geneva, Wisconsin? dang … ) jumping at 7,500 feet with jet engines and a folded 8-foot pair of wings strapped to his back.

Rossy is a Swiss pilot, inventor and aviation enthusiast. While research with jet packs dates back to World War II, his is the first contraption to also have wings.

So, can I get one of these on eBay, or what?

My daughter and I love to play chess. She’s already at a point where she wins 11 out of 10 games with me - hey I said I like to play, not that I’m good at it .

The only challenge is the 300 plus miles separating us. So I did a little looking around, and found an open source “chess server” so we could play online.

The server handles multiple players and games, and as I currently have no clue how well or bad the server operates, here’s an open invite to anyone who wants to give it a try. The link is:

chess.johnacheson.net

Pass it on to any chess fans you know, it’ll always be a free system, although I can’t make any promises as to how well it works yet.

Nope, I shouldn’t be surprised, she’s not one to be idle.

I called my mom today and we spoke for a few minutes. I did not want to keep her on the phone too long, as she was driving back from taking an 80 year old patient to a doctor. The patient lives in the northern burbs of Chicago, and the doctor was somewhere in the city of Chicago. My mom lives in Wisconsin, and is in her 70’s. Still works as a visiting nurse, doing all those things nurses are called upon to do, be it bed pans or lifting patients out of their beds.

If you browse her blog, you’ll see that my mom is a nun in the Julian Order. Due to most people’s perceptions of religious orders, I get tons of humor mileage out of this.

“Did I tell you I have a blog now?” she said, happiness spilling from the phone. She has been writing poetry and short prose for years, and has been published to some extent. Now she can reach a huge audience with as much of her immense library of writing as she pleases, without needing to please some literary review board somewhere, or spend scads of dollars in some self-publishing venture.

In other words, she is a prime example of one of the original promises of the web

I’m not really very attuned to poetry, and so I’m a horrible judge of anyone’s work - but I hope you’ll take a look:

Sister Andrew Johns Weblog 2

Last summer I accidentally saved a chipmunk from becoming a kitty-snack. Or perhaps I almost caused the little guy to become someone’s lunch, depending on how you want to look at it.

During one of my obnoxious-addiction-but-it’s-legal breaks in the parking lot at work, the little fuzzy guy went barreling past me, headed for the home nest. I guess I did make him a bit nervous, as he failed to notice he was headed straight for a big old neighborhood cat resting in the shade underneath a car and looking entirely pleased with the impending food delivery.

At the next to last possible moment the little rodent realized where he was headed and did the tightest micro 180 I’ve seen in a long time. Friend cat, not happy with this turn of events, began to head out after his intended morsel.

Apparently in the chipmunk’s mind I, as the largest semi-stationary object within scurrying distance, had now become the lesser of two evils. He ran behind me and literally hid behind my feet, and stayed there until the cat lost interest and found a leaf to chase. As is normal for a cat, this took about 12 seconds.

As soon as the threat of feline consumption had passed, the chipmunk again resumed his course without a glance back.

I just overcame my irrational fear of google and now know that the average life span of a chipmunk in the wild is two to three years. I only mention this because today I went outside to the parking lot, to enjoy the warm weather and again indulge in that habit which must not be named.

While indulging, a suspiciously similar chipmunk … well ok, to be honest they’re all pretty similar … popped out from under the porch, plopped down not three feet in front of me and just stared at me for at least a good thirty seconds. Then in a flash he was off to parts unknown.

While it’s most likely this was just a coincidence, I like to think he was saying thanks.

I remember back in the day, AT&T used to be the epitome of The Evil Corporation … way back when AT&T, Ma Bell and “The Phone Company” all meant the same thing.

For the 80 percent or so of those of you too young to remember, rent the movie “The President’s Analyst” (1967 with James Coburn and Barry McGuire of “Eve of Destruction” fame).

Pat Harrington (later to be known as Dwayne Schneider on One Day at a Time) plays the smiling, bland and completely evil President of The Phone Company, with plans for the country very chillingly like some of the wilder conspiracy theories mentioned recently on Coast to Coast AM.

So, maybe I have some residual guilt in liking this commercial from AT&T. However, it has two things going for it - It has Meatloaf parodying his own music and it mentions Milwaukee.

I didn’t recognize Tiffany till the ending credits in this extended version, although I’ll admit it was her walk-on in the broadcast version that sent me searching for the video - I had to know who that was.

Still hot.

I WISH these people had an affiliate program … or maybe they do but I keep missing the link because I’m too busy laughing at the day’s ad copy …

woot.com has been around since July of 2004, the creation of electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge, and the purported originator of the “One deal a day” sales model.

Each day woot (along with several niche spin-off sites) offers one product, usually a close-out or factory refurb. The picing is generally pretty good, but it’s the ad copy that makes a trip to woot worth the bandwidth.

Woot eschews with the manufacturer supplied product descriptions, and instead delivers off the wall product descriptions and sales pitches in the guise of bad Eastern European spam, strange detective stories, oddball travelogues, and other wild narratives.

A daily “sharing of the woot” has become a tradition at my office, and we even sometimes buy things from them too.

Take a look today!

so what kind of bait should I use to catch one of these … earth magnets?

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