your daily dose of awesome

I'm a few days behind on my Netscape News duties, so I'm scraping around a lot of the tubes this morning to find cool links and interesting news stories.

Please enjoy a few of the more awesome things I've come across:

+ Bandages that look like Tattoos!

If you're a fan of the bacon and pirate bandages, you'll probably be joining me on the waiting list to order these.

+ $10 Sale at Threadless!! Order through that link, and I can trade shiny gold rocks for my favorites:

That's right, it's ants cutting leafs into Tetris shapes and dropping them accordingly.

I don't know why I love this as much as I do, but boy do I love it a lot.

+ Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak immortalized in Lego-style playset!

I have a new dream: to one day be immortalized in this fashion.

+ And finally, my favorite YouTube Video of all time:

I initially thought this girl was too stupid to breathe, but then I felt sorry for her, humiliating herself on national television and the Internets like this . . . then I found out that, even though she is as clearly a dumb as a box of and such as, she finished third in the contest. Third! That fourth place contestant must know how Al Gore felt in 2000.

Comments

[Merbrat]

She...has no maps. I have no words. Poor 4th place. What a legacy.

Boo-Boo Tattoos! Perfect! I love fun bandages.

[trinitytao]

oh dear lord thats depressing
shes a highschool graduate right !?!?!
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
our country
our poor poor country
whats to become of us
*shudder*

[Sally J]

D'oh! I ordered myself a T as soon as I got the promo email. If only I had waited, my splurging on a Rube Goldberg-esque shirt would have sent some credits your way. Will that same link work on future purchases?

Kudos on your PAX keynote, Mr. Wheaton. You are the toast of the intertubes!

[Elizabeth]

Now, come on, we all have occasional nervous moments where the brain turns off but the mouth stays in gear. I guess was on "Today" this morning and talked about it a bit:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20473692/

There's a link to her Today interview there and she sounds way better this time.

Also, apparently she came in third runner-up, so she was actually 4th place overall.

[Plainsong]

And she totally represented SC. Thanks! We rule! *

Nah, I felt bad for her too, maybe not as bad as I felt for the Star Wars light saber kid, but still bad.

* - sidenote, I could talk a lot of trash about Lexington (where she's from), but basically I'll die of heartattack from "not surprised."

[angie k]

I hope shiny rocks from my tshirts come your way!

I think my mind imploded the first time I heard her say, "the Iraq". How South Africa got in there I'm still not entirely sure. There's being nervous and then just making no sense whatsoever. If she couldn't think of anything to say, "I unfortunately have no comment at this time." would have been preferable to what came out.

I saw a video on youtube of the entire finalist question series. Miss Colorado was asked,"So who do you prefer: Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, or Nicole Richie and why?" She looked dumbfounded that she had been asked that. "Well," she said. "First of all I would not say they're my roll models..." Somehow I think Miss South Carolina could have handled this question better than her own.

Steve and Woz legos! FTW!

[dowdyk]

Luckily the Today show allowed her to try again.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20473692/

[Jim Kiser]

I am amazed to read something so sexist and derogatory in your blog. The girl was nervous and a little flustered, kind of like you expected to be at PAX, and if you had seen her this morning you would realize just how wrong "dumb as a box" is.

[arspoetica028]

Wow. I don't want to be mean, but that girl need a reality check. I had absolutely NO idea what she was talking about. She did seem really nervous, though, so don't come down too hard on her.

[R]

I have been coveting those Legos in a pretty serious way. Is it bad that now I want a Wesley Crusher minifig with one of those infamous, awesome sweaters?? :)

[naeelah]

That Tetris shirt is approximately 587 kinds of awesome.

As for the girl - it looks like someone took apart her 2007 beauty contest buzzwords coaching leaflet and wasn't able to get it back in the right order. All that was missing was 9/11 and the environment.

[1701-C]

That girl is clearly made of fail.

[shauna]

Yeah, I felt myself losing IQ points just from the first few seconds of that. I couldn't watch it all the way through. Sorry, Wil. Not even for comic value. Just couldn't do it. I could feel my brain slowly beginning to shrivel up, so I had to stop. That's just so sad.... And to think that's what's representing our educational system these days...

[EdwoodCA]

Yeah, I couldn't watch more than about 30 seconds. Hard to watch, and then I felt bad for her.

"Dumb as a box"... take it literally, and it's NOT sexist. Read into it, with a typical guy's mind in the gutter, then maybe... but cut Wil some slack. He's never directly, or indirectly, shown a sexist mentality, in his words or actions.

[kristinalead]

Question: do you own every tee shirt from Threadless where streetteam=wilwheaton ?

If so, I think your tee shirt "drawer" must be in a dresser the size of South America...

xo

[alikitty619]

Too. Many. Blonde. Such as. Jokes.

[Nadia]

I also read she has a 3.5 GPA. Oh man... that's depressing...

(Wil, nice "Don't be a dick" addition to the title. ;) )

[jbay]

At first I thought this was funny. And then I thought it was sad. And then a little later I felt bad for her because she's, what, 18? And totally on the spot. You can practically hear the gears grinding in her head.

Honestly if somebody told me that a fifth of americans can't find the united states on a map, my response would be "you have GOT to be fucking kidding me" followed by stunned silence. So in that regard, she did better than I would have. Maybe I'm just a geography geek, but until you get into the -stan countries, I like to think I've got a decent grasp on what's where on the globe. Well not so much in africa. There'd be some guessing here and there.

and lastly, I thought, what if she and our esteemed 509-days-left president were asked that question, which one of them would give the more coherent answer?

thats when I started the drinking

[Douglas Kastle]

This is blown out of proportion, she didn't hear the question and is trying to put out some half mangled rote answer. How did she get to South Africa? You can just see in her eyes she's trying to dig herself out of the hole. I'm sure though that she'll do fine out of the whole deal, then we will really see how smart she is. Google maps spokeswoman any one?

[Bagelcat]

Very very sad that Perpetual Kid (the band-aid guys) don't ship to Canada. For any price...darn! As for the blond...the pageant world generally tries to promote good things. I just don't think that being beautiful really an effective platform from which to launch any campaign for change. No wonder the poor girl fell apart...the pageant people encourage intelligence, but they reward beauty.

[SantaFlash]

Watch the blonde jokes...I happen to be one.

Besides, how can you possibly located the US if you don't have a map?!?! Those poor people!

Coming in 3rd? I am surprised it wasn't first. Rhetorical Question: Why do these contest still exist?

[snapkat77]

Hi Wil,

Umm, normally I wouldn't do this — well, ok, who am I kidding, I do this all the time in Real Life ...

You do know the plural of 'leaf' is 'leaves', right? Not 'leafs'.

I'm sorry, I just couldn't help but point it out! It's like a compulsion ...

Kat :)

[Wil]

OMG, snapcat, I am the dumbest US American in the world.

Yeah, I know that it's "leaves" and not "leafs." I must have gotten a case of the stupids and such as when I wrote that.

I'm going to leave it without editing it, because WOW am I stupid.

[brazos605]

Interesting range of comments on the beauty contestant clip. Some say stupid, another charges others with sexism for calling her stupid, someone else points out that she was on the spot, and even a very intelligent person can get nervous and sound dense under that kind of pressure.

I think what we're seeing here is that we all treat very attractive people differently. No matter how dense she really is, doors will be opened for her that will be closed for others with less striking looks. In that regard, the comparison with George W. Bush brings up an interesting similarity. No, Bush is not particularly good looking, but just like good looks, the political and/or social power of a person's parents/family opens doors. Bush is an example of this: had he not been the son of a President and the grandson of a Senator, he would at most have been a middle-level manager, and certainly never held any elected office.

Just interesting how often one trait, like good looks or family, opens doors when neither should carry as much weight as intelligence, ability or integrity.

[terrymr]

Tell that to the Toronto Maple Leafs