Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

Every week in this space, we’ll take a look at the news and offer our own incisive blend of commentary, analysis, and poop jokes. The news you need, from a voice you can trust, in the 90 seconds you have to spare: that’s Woot Weads the Wire.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP)—Australian media say a lost humpback whale calf has bonded with a yacht it seems to think is its mother.

Church leaders pointed out that this was the sort of thing they warned would happen if gay marriage was legalized.

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From the secret diaries of King Harald V:

July 29: Heavenly Lord, why was I sent such a beastly son? Prince Sjcåostøtn refuses to listen to reason about his ridiculous proposal of marriage. No matter how Her Majesty and I plead with him to come to his senses, he insists: “It is my divine right as heir to the throne of Norway to marry who I like. You yourself married a commoner – is a penguin really so different, father?” This crisis is shaping up to be even worse than his nude visit to the Wailing Wall.

August 2: While Prince Sjcåostøtn is off to the fleshpots of Pittsburgh, I’ve taken a different tack to stopping this disgraceful courtship: approaching the penguin girl’s father, Nils Olav, to ascertain what influence he may exert over his daughter. King penguins are said to be rather protective of their offspring, so I am hopeful that he, too, will see the folly in this abominable coupling.

August 6: Received Nils Olav in the royal court. I found him quite agreeable, and willing to help – for a price. He’s demanding a military commission with the King’s Guards, and a rather large sum of kroner. But the reputation of the crown must be defended, at any cost. Such are the burdens of leadership.

August 8: Sjcåostøtn due back from Pittsburgh tomorrow. Nils Olav making more demands. Now wants a Sandisk Sansa e260 4GB Media Player for all 1,200 penguins in his colony – his “subjects”, he calls them. I tried to point out that the controls, earbuds, and 1.8” TFT screen are entirely unsuited to the penguin physique. He just laughed – chattered, really – and repeated his demand. He hinted darkly that he may approach the press. And the penguin media is ruthless. No libel laws or some such. Prince Sjcåostøtn, why must you put your dear parents through such trials?

August 11: A rather distasteful call from Colonel-in-Chief Nils Olav today. In his honking voice, he demanded a full knighthood and public ceremony in return for keeping his daughter away from my son. What choice have I? Oh, to be a lad again, cavorting in the fjords, spearing whitefish, not a blackmailing penguin in sight.

August 15: Ceremony today. Nils Olav, the scheming blackguard, couldn’t have been more smug about the whole unappetizing business. I suppose I must call him Sir Nils now. The entire world must be laughing. How I long to join them. But at the very least, my son will be saved from utter disgrace. When I start to imagine what his time with her must be like – but I mustn’t. The calamity has been averted.

August 18: Scandal! What do I find in the pages of my morning news-sheet? Prince Sjcåostøtn and his penguin-friend, photographed leaving an Internet cafe in Ibiza – in the company of her father! Doubtless they’d been indulging in the i-dosers that have so ravaged our young people. Sir Nils has betrayed me! And his hatchling daughter shall soon be heir to the throne! I have fumbled away the Norwegian crown to a bird who cannot even fly! All is ruin, ruin!

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There is infinitely more variety to human visual expression than you'll ever see in a museum. Here's what we'd exhibit at the Woot Gallery, if such a wondrous place existed...

• It takes a lot of pebbles, loops, puffs, and rings to make a really good piece of Larry King Cereal Art.
• Why stop at costumes? True geeks dress their cars up, too. My favorite is the Jawa Sandcrawler, which our own Andrew has seen in person.
• Now this is one hot custom-painted guitar. Vincent Price would be flattered.
• You could make a copy of the body with the guitar photocopier, but you'd have to paint that design on yourself...if you dare.
• All those old Soviet propaganda painters had to find work somewhere. Hence, these paintings of U.S. presidents playing cards. There's one each for the Democrats and Republicans, proving that schlock knows no political boundaries.
• I hate to do this to you, but...Naked Clown Calendar. I'm sorry.
• If they had any imagination, the National Guard would call this painting Eskimmandos!
• When they head to the polls in November, the crucial Dairy-American constituency will ask itself one tough question about the presidential candidates: which one looks better sculpted out of butter?

Four O'Clock Flash: usually, the faux-infantile LOLcat/stick-figure aesthetic gets on my nerves. But I Don't Even Know is funny enough to pull it off. Don't tell anybody, but it's also a fairly engaging puzzle game. (Thanks, Kevin!)

And oh, how they laughed! The two-pack of Philips SHE2617 In-Ear Headphones ran gayly through the fields of their childhood, positively bubbling with joy! Bluery rode Bluepin’s back, and then Bluepin rode Sam. Yet Sam never once strayed too far from the side of his master, Bluedo. For there was still a great darkness about Bluedo, as though his Neodymium magnets had ceased to function and his Flexi-Grip was failing to make a strong, flexible connection. So it cheered Sam to no end to see Bluedo with a smile upon his face, and his 15mm speaker driver providing optimized comfort.

And why not? For the four friends were together once more, two pairs, each side by side with the life-partner with whom they most adored. Was it not Bludeo and Sam who chose the path to Mount Flamer when no one else dared? Was it not Bluery and Bluepin who ran off to the big city and became friends with an hundred year old tree-man who paid their rent? And now, at last, they were together again, just like they had been when they were younger, like that day they ran naked on the lawn of a complete stranger who lived in the middle of the woods without a care in the world. The stories they told, the secrets they shared, oh, it was like magic!

At sunset, the Philips SHE2617 In-Ear Headphones sat on the old stone wall and looked at the rainbow, their twin vents balancing the high sounds with the bass tones. They knew that whatever came next, be it iPod, Sansa or iPhone, it was something that two pack of Philips SHE2617 In-Ear Headphones would find a way to gayly overcome, just like they gayly overcame the day they were surprised by that bear!

But memories were best shared around a fire, and it was growing dark. So they skipped down the hill, hand in hand, Bluery and Bluepin, Bluedo and Sam, Philips SHE2617 In-Ear Headphones two packs all, off to a single room at the inn and a good night’s rest, and, with luck, they would awaken feeling twice as gay, and be ready for their next big, manly adventure.

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Remember how I told you I moved last month? We took our daughters to get ice cream twice yesterday. The first time, in our old neighborhood, was at an Italian-style gelato place, populated by yuppies and hipsters. The second, in the new one, was at a Lutheran church social, populated by senior citizens and post-senior citizens. That's the difference between my old neighborhood and my new one. And we had a good time at both places. Am I old yet?

• Dumbest article of the year: INTERNET DRUG SHOCKER TERRIFIES PARANOID PARENTS!!! If I'd thought up that "i-doser" scam, I'd probably be at my beach house right now, roasting sauteed truffles over a fire of $100 bills.
• Now that Sean Penn has mellowed, the worst part of being a big-deal photographer is all the gear you have to haul.
• If you sing in a band, you probably fit one of these 10 Common Frontman Styles. I'm a Chatterbox if I'm in a good mood, a Stoic if not.
• You've never seen LOLCats like DeepLOL before, an eminently zoomable collage of every netizen's (least?) favorite meme. (Thanks, Shawn!)
• Collected in one place for the first time, a monumental publishing event: Snoopy's novel.
• Comedy troupe Summer of Tears inserts themselves into Teen Wolf, with hilarious (and more realistic) results. Those crazy kids with the Internet, God love 'em. (Some NSFW language and "adult situations".)
• Computers can make you prettier.

Four O'Clock Flash: wouldn't the world be a happier place if wars were fought by tanks made of bubbles? If Bubble Tanks 2 is any indication, it would at least be a more fun place.

We see a bright future for our Shirt.Woot designs. Conquering the world of apparel is one thing...but why stop there? Why not move from adorning chests to adorning the silver screen? Your preposterous challenge this week:

Show us a poster for, or scene from, a film adaptation of a Shirt.Woot shirt of your choosing.

Follow the link for more Shirt.Woot designs than anyone can handle without becoming nauseous and disoriented. It can be a straight-up cinematic retelling of the scene on the shirt, a look at the backstory behind the shirt, or a film "inspired by" the design. But let us know what shirt you're riffing on, preferably with a link to the original. We're only talking about shirts that were actually produced and sold by Shirt.Woot, so unproduced Derby entries don't count. No, not even Honorable Mentions.

Post your entry here by 11:59 AM CST on Monday, August 25, 2008. Prizes are $20/$50/$100 for 3rd/2nd/1st. The rules and criteria for winning: our panel of volunteer judges can and will make stuff up as it goes along. Use Photoshop, linoleum blocks, pastels, MSPaint, cave painting, tattoos, tribal scarification, whatever, but it’ll only be judged if it’s visible in our forums as a jpg, gif, or png. As we are fond of saying, try to keep your maximum width to 450px. If you need a place to host your pictures, try www.imageshack.ws or www.photobucket.com. We have no connection to either, but they seem free and easy to use. And if you want us to be sure your entry was indeed your work, post links to your source images. The more sure we are that you did your own work, the more likely we are to consider it for a prize.

Last week we asked you to show us a past or current Woot product modified to make it easier to deal with on moving day. Why didn't you answer the phone the other day when we were moving? Huh? What, you have caller ID or something? We just wanted to borrow your tape gun, sheesh. It's not like we wanted you to come over with your truck or nuthin'.

First Place - $100
beatfarmer - Bacon Bits
Finally, a yappy dog with something useful to do.

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Nothing bums us out like vacuuming. Maybe it reminds us that we can never really win the battle against the crud and filth besieging our lives. Or maybe it forces us to face the dismal fact that our remaining decades on this planet will be more and more filled with the tedium of daily maintenance, just to keep our homes (and bodies) from falling into decrepitude. Perhaps it’s because our parents choked to death on a vacuum cleaner they were eating to amuse the guests at our fifth birthday party. And handheld vacs are even worse – they don’t even provide the macho thrill of pushing a big, heavy, snarling piece of hardware around the room.

But the Dyson DC16 Root 6 Handheld Vacuum banishes our gloom the same way it banishes our Frito leavings: with extreme prejudice and a minimum of hassle. See, it uses the same root cyclone technology as in Dyson’s upright vacs. So when we unholster this cordless assassin – yes, we built a holster for ours – we’re not just holding a mini-vacuum in our hands. We’re holding a cyclone! Like mighty Zeus, we dispatch the very power of nature itself to scourge our heathen enemy! “Tremble before us, crumbs and dust and little bits of fuzz!” we bellow, sweat glistening angrily on our chest hair. “Behold your unmaker! You cannot but yield to our power! And we shall delight in your destruction, and a thousand plagues shall rain upon thee -”

Of course, this is always right when our wife gets home. But we’re not embarrassed. She knew what she was getting into when she married us. And at least we’re getting the vacuuming done.

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OK, OK, hang on a second. We know that there are some among you who turn their noses up at the ‘furbs. “Refurb!?” they say. “No, thank you!” And while we appreciate that their parents at least taught them to say no thank you instead of “poop, no” or something, we still think they might be missing out sometimes because of that knee-jerk reaction of theirs.

Take today’s 750-gig hard drive, for example. Who can’t use another 750 gigs? And before you say “refurbz suXX0r,” take a look: It’s “recertified.” That’s “refurbished by the manufacturer” to you. It’s uberrefurbed. These drives’ve met Seagate’s own standards of quality control—not those of some second-rate, no-name, fly-by-night “company” run out of some schmuck’s basement. So what else would you want?

Us, we’re convinced. But say you aren’t. Say you’re the kind of soulless skeptic who can’t be convinced there’s anything good in the cold, cruel universe. So use this drive to back up your music or something. Then you only need it to fire up twice: Once when you load the files onto it, and once when you take it out of its fireproof safe inside your extra-large safe-deposit box at the bank to recover the files.

Boy, you really do have serious trust issues, don’t you?

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da dat da da STORE ME EYES
da dat da da SOUND OF LIES
da dat da da WINGS-

-oh, hi! You’ve just caught us bonding with the Vornado 615L Hi Velocity Stand Fan. Not only being an excellent way to move air, the Vornado 615L Hi Velocity Stand Fan has great taste in music. Check this out!

veedie woodie wooba
vreedap vreedap vreedap
voddle woddle
vou wou veeeeel
vo wou veeeelllll

Like that, huh? That’s the famous middle part of Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do”. And it’s just one of the many songs you can sing with the help of the Vornado 615L Hi Velocity Stand Fan.

This Vornado’s so quiet that you can barely hear it, and it’s very lightweight. That means it can be carried from room to room, or even to the recording studio. Hey, check this out!

ooo ooo beWEEEVinn iiiiife afta uvvvvvv

You could’ve saved yourself a few million, Cher! And also made that hot studio more comfortable by directing airflow at any angle. Up the stairs, down the stairs, across the stairs, under the stairs, if you’ve got stairs, the Vornado can work for you! So you head over to the I Want One button, and we’ll be here… rockin’ out!

da da da breath on my face
da da da close to me
da dadada eyes
da dada dada leee eeeague

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