A few days ago, Horatio introduced you to the Bacon Man. Today, I’d like you to meet his violent, heart-stopping cousin, the Bacon Explosion.

Go read that. I’ll still be here when you get back from the hospital.

Yes, the Bacon Explosion, essentially a giant sausage, filled with and wrapped in bacon. Everything I know tells me I should be disgusted by this. No matter how delicious bacon is, I know this object is terrifying, and quite possibly pure evil. I know that it is not so much a foodstuff but a weapon to be unleashed upon the arteries of your foes.

But damn it, I kinda want to make one. The issue is, I don’t own a smoker, or even know what one is, beyond some vague memories of stuff I’ve seen on the Food Network while stoned. Should I just abandon this insane plan, or should I attempt to improvise something in my apartment’s tiny kitchen? And if I do make one, should I liveblog it?

In other bacon news, Mike Nelson (of MST3K fame) has vowed to eat nothing but bacon for the entire month of February. I admire his spirit, but I can’t help feeling like he wussed out by choosing the shortest month for this bold experiment.

Also, I’m kind of worried he might die.

I don’t need to write anything today. You know why?

Because the list of 50 Most Loathsome People In America came out today!

The list is an annual tradition of the Buffalo Beast (former home of Matt Taibbi), and provides some much-needed New Year’s catharsis for everyone who has ever wondered if people get dumber with each passing year. Plus, despite its decidedly outraged-liberal perspective, it’s perfectly happy to go after members of our own team; Barack Obama kicks off the list at #50.

Just go read it. It is beautiful, and there is only death here.

Last night, Sarah Palin made her much-hyped-about appearance on Saturday Night Live. She appeared in both the introduction and the Weekend Update segments. In an effort to read the minds of 90% of the U.S. population, I will now predict exactly how this appearance will be reviewed by both sides of the campaign.

Here’s what Obama supporters will say:
She was so cold! Alec Baldwin and Amy Poehler did all the real work, and Palin’s so dumb she can’t even handle a comedy bit, let alone run the country! Didn’t you see her glaring like she wanted to punch half the audience in the gut? And her lines were flat and humorless, because she can’t get enthusiasic unless she’s torturing animals or inciting racist epithets. And Tina’s way hotter!

And here’s what McCain supporters will say in response:
No way! She totally threw her hands in the air when Amy said “maverick!” She was all grooving and cool! She zinged Alec with that crack about Stephen Baldwin! Palin was on fire! McCain made the right choice, we’re not worried at all, fuck you queers who don’t love America as much as we do. And Sarah’s way hotter!

Ahem. Yes, America, the romance is waning, and you’ve become predictable. But for the record, I personally think Tina Fey is way sexier than Sarah Palin, which should tell you who I’ll be voting for, as if you didn’t already know.

So apparently Spore was released today. Somehow, despite the months of hype, I never caught the actual release date. Plus, according to Wikipedia, Australia and Europe got it a couple days ago, and are probably bragging about it to all the other continents.

I don’t have the game yet, and may not get it at all, but I downloaded the free Creature Creator back when they announced it. Using only the free features offered in the trial version, I managed to put together a fairly cool little creature. Earlier today, I took some snapshots.

What’s that? Three eyes, three legs, and giant flailing arms would be impractical in nature? Not if I have anything to say about it!

The links above will tell you more than enough about the gameplay, but I still feel compelled to point out how cool the concept is. I mean, you get to take a bunch of random parts, distort and arrange them however you want, and assemble them into a creature. Nothing special, at least until you see it walking around the screen, perfectly animated, as though it had been made that way by the designers, and not just slapped together on your computer five minutes earlier.

Geeks will understand why this is awesome. Everyone else thinks computers are powered by magic, and are just surprised that no one thought to do this before. The reason they didn’t do it is because it was impossible. Sure, you could make a few minor changes to a character’s appearance, or its clothing (see basically every MMORPG ever made), but you couldn’t just slap on a third arm or decide its knees should bend the other way. I mean, you could, I guess, but it would have required you to go back and make the entire game over again.

I did not program it to point and go, “Heyyy!” as you see above. Some beautiful, god-like programmer figured out a way to make all the creatures to do that, regardless of what crazy-ass parts players decided to give them. Tentacles? Claws? Nothing? Doesn’t matter! It’ll find a way to point, or dance, or do a backflip.

Oh, and also there’s an entire game to go along with this stuff, but that would just get in the way of my nerding-out over the magic programming.

Allow me to nerd out for two paragraphs, and I swear this will swing around to something topical.

Having spent much of the last two weeks giving myself a crash course in web design, I’ve become familiar with my browser options. I tested the site in the Big (or at least relevant) Four browsers, and learned all about the stupid quirks they throw at end users. Safari is festooned with iTunes-looking bullshit, and makes every page look like a screenshot of a much larger page that’s been resized in MSPaint. Opera turns its users into humorless pricks for some reason. Firefox does what you tell it, but quickly becomes so customized that nobody but you can comprehend it. And so forth.

Needless to say, it’s a pain in the ass to make a page display correctly in all four browsers, what with IE being dumber than a bucket of Stupid Pills and Safari not knowing the difference between “bold text” and “fucking blurry text.” A good chunk of the design process was devoted exclusively to these issues, and most of them are only half-fixed because I wasn’t getting paid for this.

And once I had everything posted, what did I find waiting for me at the end of my own private browser war? A college scholarship? A sexy nurse?

How about Google releasing another fucking browser.

Amid all the excitement of getting the site working again, I somehow didn’t notice that I was sharing a launch date with Google Chrome. I’ve downloaded it and used it a bit, imported my bookmarks and all that. It seems to work well enough, and it doesn’t fuck up my hard work in any noticeable way, but it’s not spectacular.

Aside from reducing the amount of crap at the top of the screen, what about Chrome should actually excite me? Your move, Google.