Here’s an idea. For earth day, they might try changing the color of the paint to green. That might help out a little. Psyche them out with a little switcheroo. Of course, that’s not fooling everybody. They might need a whole “green” campaign to do a little extra damage control. 

Then again, they might fold to the pressure of popular opinion and change their logo, slogan and all. But that’s just silly, right? It’s paint, people. Get over it. It’s not like there’s an old black mammy in a do-rag on the label.

There’s a whole history of the Aunt Jemima label on their Web site. Here’s all the  spin control masters had to say about the logo change in 1989:

“In 1989, the image of Aunt Jemima was updated by removing her headband and giving her pearl earrings and a lace collar.”

Progress and change are good. But this Sherwin Williams tradition isn’t hurting anybody. Come together, people. Hands across the red-coated earth.

Ann used to be those people. I remember walking around at Christmas with my hand over her mouth to keep her from telling all the little nephews and nieces that Santa Claus was a cruel trick being played on them by their parents. I’ve still got bite marks from her frustration at not being allowed to tell the truth.

Nowadays, she corrects words that I’m pronouncing correctly with an incorrect pronunciation. I guess I really messed up on the day I decided to teach her humor!

I found a cool website that put Nicolas Cage’s picture on a bunch of people. It’s called Nic Cage as Everyone. Definitely check it out. Also went in search of the best fake movie trailers. This one cracks me up:

I’m not buying it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’d be cool to have one. It’s like a big iPod Touch, and who doesn’t like their Touch? But I don’t see it as breaking any new ground in the tablet market, a market that has yet to see its time come. I think Apple dropped the ball on this one.

The iPad should have been to video what the iPod was to music. That’s the way to pave a new market. Instead, it’s just a bigger Touch. And while bigger is often better, a bigger iPod Touch is just an iPod that won’t fit in your pocket. Great for web browsing on the couch, but you aren’t lugging it everywhere you go.

Top 10 funny scary (and scary funny) movies

Speaking of funny, I compiled some Jim Gaffigan videos and some banned Super Bowl commercials. I need to work on some videos of Zach Galifianakis. We watched his stand up routine the other night and that guy is hilarious.

Yes, World of Warcraft is just another Everquest Clone. But then again, so are 90% of the MMOs released in the last decade.

Recently, I’ve leveled up a Hunter in World of Warcraft, really giving the game a chance to show me what its got. And I’ve learned a few things in my time in the game. I’ve even compiled some Hunter tips for those that like to play.

But what have I learned most? That I was right all along.

I remember reading about a study where they divided people into several different groups on a website and allowed them to pick out the music they wanted to listen to while on the site. The website also displayed how many times a certain song had been played, thus allowing everyone to see how popular it was. What they found out was that popularity tends to beget popularity — what became popular early tended to rise to the top, given a certain lift by its own popularity.

The key piece of evidence was that songs that were popular among one group were sometimes among the least popular in the other group. It was the act of becoming popular that led to the song being played again and again — people would see that it was popular or hear about it from someone else and would listen to it themselves.

An interesting theory and one I think holds true. Popularity does tend to beget popularity, which is what we see with World of Warcraft. The game’s initial popularity is based on the Blizzard name — Blizzard being well known for producing good, quality game and having quite the fan following before WoW came along. Obviously, World of Warcraft itself is a solid game else these players would have quickly grown bored, but there isn’t anything that really sets it above Everquest 2 or its other contemporaries. Rather, it was good enough to keep the interest of the players, and the sheer number of those players caused it to explode in popularity.

Unfortunately, the genre has become quite stale over the past few years, leaving me to just dream up Frankenstein’s MMO.

• The items leave a lot to be desired. There are a few cool items in the game, but mostly, you spend your time finding leaves and dust and rags and useless pieces of paper.
• I don’t see it as being high on the replayability. The cut scenes are great and story fantastic, but I’m not sure I’m going to want to sit through it all. And with long dungeon crawls with no variation (i.e. nothing random) and no fantastic loot, it just seems like it’d become a bore trying to go through again.
• There is no way to put together your party in the campsite, which means you have to travel somewhere even if you simply want to give a companion a gift.
• I don’t mind not being able to respec skills and abilities, but we should actually get good information on abilities from the selection screen. No fun spending four points only to find out mass paralyze only lasts a few seconds.
• I really would love it if the class specializations were more than just four abilities. This is especially disappointing considering that many of these abilities are mostly useless.
• The hotkey bar continually thinks I’m trying to drag an ability when I’m just clicking on it to select it. Ug!

Need hints? Get some Dragon Age tips.

Apple’s objection is to how much resources Flash takes up and how it will effect performance on the iPhone. But in my research, I found some common ground between Apple and Google when it comes to HTML 5. Google is obviously pushing some HTML 5 features hard through its Google Chrome browser and Google Chrome OS, and Apple is also pushing hard on some HTML 5 features, especially Canvas, a 2D drawing element that could make Adobe Flash all but obsolete.

It is rather interesting what strange bedfellows the digital world makes. It wasn’t so long ago that we were reading about Apple rejecting Google Voice from the app store and the resulting FCC investigation. But as far as the evolution of the web goes, it seems like they are on similar pages.

I’m glad they still have hula hoops. “You know? For kids.” They’ve got to keep that one around because somebody somewhere figured out it was just good exercise. But they’ve even come up with an electronic version of that with the Wii Fit. I’m not complaining, though, I love my Wii Fit hula hoops. Some kid came over and broke my real hula hoop about seven years ago, and it may be time to buy a new one.

It might’ve been the same kid that threw my nekkid Barbie down into the flood canal like she was committing suicide off a super high balcony. He was so cute and looked at me with innocent eyes, like he was sad he “dropped” her.

Anyway, I was having a moment of nostalgia and just thought I’d share, especially since I haven’t written out here since January when I was talking on singing about singing. I have since become quite the hypocrite, having embraced another childhood memory, The Carpenters Now & Then album, which only has cover tunes and songs about singing. Go figure.

Google Chrome OS is basically a lightweight version of Linux + Google Chrome and is being targeted at  the PC, laptop and netbook market, whereas Android is more about  portability.  They are even targeting cable boxes and DVRs with Android.

Here’s a big long article all about Google Chrome OS.