http://www.okcupid.com/profile/Old_Spice_Guy

OKCupid just alerted me to someone new in my area. I'm fairly sure he's going to get shut down soon, but this was hysterical.

( Details under the cut for posterity. )

http://www.firemountaingems.com/details.asp?PN=H204136FL:

"The crackled surface of deep green Russian serpentine resembles the amphibious skin of a reptile."

I will give you "resembles the skin of an amphibious reptile", which you might have meant, but I will not allow you to indicate that all reptiles have amphibious skin. Because NO.

As some of you know, I read theferrett's LJ reliably. Around Christmas, he invites folks to post cheesecake pictures. So most of the comments on the post are (of course) pictures of breasts, but there was one comment that really made me laugh....

"I feel really stupid for asking, but what exactly is a cheesecake picture? I tried Googling it and got... pictures of cheesecake. Which is honestly what I was expecting when I clicked the comments link. I'm slow sometimes. Also, now craving cheesecake."

Poor kid.

Bizarre discovery of the morning:

The Consumerist reports that Xbox Live is adamantly opposed to people identifying their sexual orientation in their profile. This is supported to such an extreme extent that a real-life Mr. Richard Gaywood was required to pick a new usertag instead of using his own last name (although he was happy to provide documentation demonstrating that yes, it really was his real last name).

http://consumerist.com/5008908/gay-player-name-banned-by-xbox-live
http://consumerist.com/tag/banned/?i=5010226&t=xbox-live-decides-your-surname-is-offensive-because-it-contains-the-letters-g+a+y
http://consumerist.com/5010527/microsoft-confirms-gaywood-is-an-offensive-surname-mr-gaywood-responds
http://consumerist.com/5160187/identifying-yourself-as-a-lesbian-gets-you-banned-on-xbox-live
http://consumerist.com/5161145/microsofts-policy-regarding-identifying-sexual-orientation-on-xbox-live

I used to work with a Ms. Hrdlicka. I wonder how Microsoft would handle that particular last name as an ID tag?

-----------------

[Edit] Update: It turns out that Microsoft has been in active discussion since the beginning of this year with GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) about how their policies affect the LGBT community. Further, both Microsoft and Sony have stated that their language and profile policies were created to help protect people against homophobic and racist attacks. Further details available:

http://glaadblog.org/2009/02/26/xbox-live-homophobia-and-online-gaming-policy/

Thanks very much to bkdelong for drawing this to my attention. (Pity Slashdot wasn't also linking into GLAAD when I spotted the original article!)

http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/database/art/view.pl?id=39834

What's making me laugh about this is that the octopus seems huffy to me for some reason. "Don't want me here? Fine! I'll go be an octopus somewhere else, see if I care!"

Before anyone gets too excited, I didn't enter Thula, my bunny girl, in this contest. She doesn't have patience enough to wear a harness, let alone fake tentacles and wings (hey, it's the only appropriate costume!)

However, I thought the pictures were awfully cute, so if you're in the mood to look at highly-patient ferrets and bunnies and things in costumes... have at. (There's even a hedgehog!)

http://www.zootoo.com/petphotocontest/petcohalloweensmallanimalphoto

I rather suspect this will only be of interest to derspatchel, but I now have a Spore creature page.

http://www.spore.com/view/profile/mossdog

If your (very reasonable) reaction is "What the heck is Spore?", then I direct you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_video_game.

Want to see something really cool?

http://theferrett.livejournal.com/1105748.html

No... really. A fairly well-known convention figure with a massive blog following put out the following request:

"What is the most beautiful thing you've ever created? Artists, show pictures. Musicians, link to MP3 files. Writers, show us the happy pieces. Proud moms, show us your children."

The responses are still flooding in. It's pretty neat. And you might want to put something beautiful of your own out there.

Thanks, Ferrett.

For lux_alexander, mostly, but pretty darn cool to anyone reading George R. R. Martin. Henning Ludvigsen was apparently commissioned for a lot of the Game of Thrones art. (His other work is in here too, but I liked the Game of Thrones pieces best. Particularly awesome Melisandre here.)

http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/database/art/list.pl?gallery=11932&genre=2

Life size steampunk wolf skull. There's a bear skull too. Both of these are made of awesome.

http://missmonster.deviantart.com/gallery/

Check it out if you like steampunk.