Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

 You've slayed enough dragons. You've rescued enough damsels in distress. You've crept along stealthily in the shadows of feudal Japan long enough.

Just take a minute and breathe. Look at the pretty colors. That's all Angelo Plessas' ZigZagPhilosophy wants you to do: move your mouse around, enjoy the shower of colors cascading from your cursor, and relax.

There are no levels, no powerups, and no easter eggs (that we can find), but for once in your life just sit back and enjoy something for what it is, okay?

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We got a lot of love for our pro-Conan post yesterday, and a lot of people wanted to know where they could get that logo on shirts, stickers, and underwear. Well mark your calendars, because this is probably the only time we'll ever encourage you to buy a shirt somewhere else:

You can get I'm With Coco shirts and prints HERE, direct from the artist, for some almost-as-affordable-as-Woot prices.

Why would we pimp some other guy who's not giving us a dime? Because $1 of each purchase goes towards PlantingPeace.org, which is helping the people of Haiti recover from that earthquake.

Before the trolls start: yes, we know, you could easily donate the equivalent amount of money to a charity or organization in Haiti rather than buying a t-shirt. And you know what? We endorse that idea too. Give whatever you can afford. Seriously. They need it.

But if you're going to buy a novelty shirt, you might as well buy the one that throws a buck to some people who could really use it right now. Hip us to your favorite Haiti relief efforts in the comments below.

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Samsung's new home theater system IS pretty sweet, but we're waiting to see a price tag before we commit.

Also, we're going to need a much more spacious living room.

Make room for more CES 2010 coverage - including our annual Wootable Awards post tomorrow!

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One of the things we would've liked to see at CES was Roxxxy the Robot, the latest and most horrifying advancement in sex technology: a sex robot. In researching said monstrosity, some interesting things came to light:

For starters, Roxxxy has downloadable personalities. Aside from making for the weirdest iTunes receipt ever, they'll allow you to program your uber-lady with different moods, points of view, and characteristics. True Companion LLC founder Douglas Hines listed only two personalities so far: "Wild Wendy," which seems pretty expected (it's a well-known fact that ladies named Wendy are just insatiable), and "Frigid Farrah."

What? Frigid?

Because the last thing I want in my $9,000 sex robot is a robot that just wants SEX all the time. I want to spend an hour in stony silence as we lie in bed at the end of the day and I backtrack in my head what I might have done to upset her. I want my sex robot to have emotional issues and tersely eat dinner across the table without making eye contact. Yeah, Frigid Farrah sounds great.

Will there be a personality that eventually gets tired of watching me play video games and leaves me, presumably for my best friend or boss? What about one that is a perfect woman but hates my family, making Thanksgiving awkward? Can I get an extremely jealous sex robot that coerces me into not seeing my female friends any more? That would be great.

Come to think of it, a sex robot you had to "crack," or woo with the proper amount of interest in other things, nurturing, compassion, and personality might be a really great socialization tool for the types of people who want or need sex robots.

In case it wasn't weird enough, Hines went on to explain that the idea for the sex robot came from 9/11. Specifically, his friend died in the terrorist attacks and he wanted some way, any way, that his friend's personality could be stored or imitated so that eventually his infant children could grow up and know what he was like. That's a pretty touching, human, and amazing concept.

Naturally, this evolved into a sex robot.

I can only imagine the tearful scene as Hines rolled out Roxxxy to a quiet living room with two children sitting on the couch.

"Kids," he'd say while smiling, "I want you to meet your dad."

"Daddy? Is that you?"

"TAKE ME, YOU STUD."

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Yeah yeah, all the cool kids knew about it months ago, but The Batman Villain Project is still cool. One guy, WanderingBert, has decided to draw as many Batman villains as he can remember. In an adorable and unique style. We're not just talking the usual Rogue's Gallery here, either. Sure, The Joker and co. are here, but WanderingBert digs deep into the realm of the obscure (Shame), the stupid (Jackal-Head), and the shamelessly used to shill snack cakes (K-9).

Take a second. Peruse.

And if you're anything like us, you can then while away several hours looking up obscure Batman villains on Wikipedia to get their whole life story.

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I think that was a Russian rocket!

By now you've probably heard of the mysterious spiral light show over Norway this morning. It was captured on video by dozens of people and seen across a huge swath of Northern Norway. Well I've examined the videos available and I have to say this looks to be some sort of misfired Russian rocket.

Something seen in the sky across such a large area would have to be at a tremendous altitude. Almost as high, say, as a satellite launch or test run for a missile or rocket of some kind. Also, the blue spiral appears to be a matter of perspective, as a rocket twisting around would appear to make tight spirals while far away and larger ones as it got closer. Now the white spiral pinwheeling in the sky could only occur if the object was moving more or less perpendicular to the observer (i.e. coming right for you), which would account for the illusion of a stationary spin. Whatever is being dumped from this rocket, be it exhaust, fuel, horrible chemical weapons, etc. is simply escaping in a straight line while the center rotates.

Now Norwegians aren't known for very many rocket tests, as they tend to spend a lot of military efforts on infantry trained to defend the fjords. Their space program is also pretty relaxed and, if it was launching something, probably would've had an announcement of some kind.

Really the only country nearby with this kind of technology and a motivation to be testing high-altitude rockets is Russia. What they're planning, and what we may have accidentally had revealed to us, we may not know until it's too late.

Sincerely,

Gary Baxter
Amateur Astronomer

Hey, that definitely was not a Russian rocket!

Hello my good friends,

I am writing to you from Zvyozdny gorodok at a…uh, training facility. For…science. Yes. Anyway, I was logging on to my ROL account to check my email when one of the newsgroups I subscribe to posted a story about some lights in Norway.

Totally weird, man!

Some crazy people are suggesting, get this, that WE did it! Crazy, right? I mean look at that video. We don't have anything that cool, believe me! Nope, we're still all "rolling iron" and rusted tanks and sunk submarines. Nothing to see here. This? This looks like aliens, to me. Yeah. Aliens.

Think about it. What reason do we have to test high-altitude intercontinental ballistic missiles? What? I didn't say ICBM, you said it. Are you sure? I'm pretty sure you said it first because otherwise I would have no reason to even bring up such a funny word!

Plus, who would we even want to shoot with this thing? America? Come on, we've been pals ever since you guys won that war of attrition and our economy collapsed. What? Are we gonna join forces with China and try to jumpstart a neo-Communist worldwide revolution by taking down a severely overextended superpower? Like we'd even think of that sort of thing!

Just wanted to let you guys know it totally wasn't us. Just to show we're on the same team, we've dispatched a covert Special Forces unit into Northern Norway to retrieve any pieces that might have fallen off the missi-…space ship.

Yours,

Vladimir Putin
 

PS
Everyone in Norway should turn off their video cameras and not look up tomorrow night.

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Sometimes finding the right gift can be a real challenge. Say, for instance, the loved one in question is an unabashed stoner with a flair for artistic portraits of musicians and religious figures? Sure, you could probably skate by on a bag of Funyuns and an iTunes gift card, but now you've got Chronic Art!

In case you've got a somewhat uppity workplace and can't afford to have a lot of Bob Marley-related JPEGs in your browsing history, Chronic Art is some dude named Cliff Maynard who makes portraits using scraps of rolling paper from his own spent joints. Because you shouldn't just let that stuff go to waste, man. He cuts the little bits of paper into "delicate shapes" and arranges them "in such a way as to form a true work of art." How'd it come to be? "I just remember sort of making this connection in my head between the tiles [of mosaics] and roach papers." It's one of those ideas that you smack yourself on the head because you thought of it a hundred times but never took the time to make it happen, y'know?

Perusing the gallery turns up the usual black-light poster regulars: Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Snoop Dogg, Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia, and Method Man. John Lennon might be a bit of a reach but sure, I like John Lennon. Jesus Christ? Well I won't begrudge you your faith. There are even some abstracts like the ironically-titled "Addiction," which is listed as 18" x 24" and therefore probably took took about 50 joints to complete.

How much will one of these paraphernalia posters cost? Apparently it depends on which part of the site you click, I guess. Visit the FAQ for a startling revelation: "They start at $1,000 and range as high as $10,000. However those prices will change with demand." Somewhere between the time you read that and click on "Gallery," though, the demand must drop pretty drastically because most prints are marked at $80.

And really, isn't $80 worth it to make the college drop-out, barista, or burgeoning comedy writer in your life happy? Just remember to leave the art supplies to the pros. Drugs can have serious side effects.

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It's fun to peruse old copies of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Modern Mechanix, and similar magazines and laugh at the naivety of 1950s science. Everything was all, "Rockets! Space! Lasers! Together at last, on your toaster!" Really, it was a recipe for an inevitable letdown when jet-packs failed to show up by 1970. But sometimes Popular Mechanics just had bad ideas. Like, crazy, poorly-thought-out contraptions and scenarios that, even in the '50s, made no damn sense whatsoever...

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The Zombie Apocalypse now seems pretty imminent since the Japanese Health Ministry is reporting 151 flu patients have "exhibited abnormal behavior" including "acting violently or uttering gibberish." I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "C'mon. This is just some kids acting delirious under extreme duress from a flu." Well consider this report of "abnormal behavior" comes out of Japan, a country whose known exports include tentacle porn, and you start to realize how serious this is...

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Dreams are meant to be winged Luck Dragons on which we soar to the heights of accomplishment, joy, and triumph. Unfortunately not all dreams can come true. I'm never going to score the winning goal in game 7 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I'm also never going to somehow become Dr. Manhattan and use my powers to populate the moon with spacefaring Ape-people to watch our two worlds fight for the stars. I will also never be 6'2".

And you know what? I'm okay with it. Except the Dr. Manhattan thing; I'd kill any one of you for half a chance at that. But mostly I'm okay with it, because if we all focused on our hopelessly out-of-reach fantasies we wouldn't knuckle down and focus on the things we ARE good at, like writing snarky reviews of outdated electronics.

EMBED-Worst Beatboxer Ever - Watch more free videos

This guy, though, is still in denial about his level of talent. Now it's pretty easy to bag on him for deciding to beat box at all since he's not the usual beat boxing kind of guy. I mean how many chubby white guys with facial hair too goofy for Bruce Villanch do you see busting out funky beats? Probably zero. But I try not to pigeon hole people. I do have some tips, though.

If you're going to show off your beat boxing skills to the internet, you might want to practice. Maybe storyboard a little bit, so you have a rough idea of where you're going with it. You might also have considered blocking this shot ahead of time to avoid the awkward sheen your head develops from the flop sweat that hits pretty much instantly.

This leads into my next point: confidence. Scratching your head absent-mindedly as you announce your performance into your Xbox headset doesn't make me think "I'm about to see a high-caliber performance." At 1:30 you can see the poor guy realizes, "I look like a complete jackass" but I do applaud his determination to see it through to the bitter end.

Speaking of the end, it's pretty rushed, which again leads me to believe this was hastily improvised. Was there a deadline for some sort of competition? Take a few seconds to write things down! Instead we get an abrupt stop and an awkward, "And that's my, um…beat box."

One other thing that bothers me here is the fact that this isn't really beat boxing. This is some kind of song, or at least part of a song, he's had written in his head for awhile now. The problem is things never sound as good outside your own head because we're not imagining the drum sounds and guitar solos with you. We're just hearing a lot of "boom, pssh, pow pow!"

But you have to hand it to the guy; not only did he make those noises and record them for the world to see, but he took one look at the video and said, "Yep. That's the one. Upload!"

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