Al's Billboard

Here's Weird Al's first billboard! It's for the "Al's Brain" 3-D show and exhibit at the Orange County Super Fair.

Star Wars Cakes

Here are some awesome Star Wars-themed cakes. The Millennium Falcon above is a product of Cakes by Jyl. Pretty cool, and very detailed! Nice work, Jyl.

This R2-D2 cake was actually a wedding cake, and comes from 1886 Cafe and Bakery. The cake was the bride's idea, and here she is striking the famous "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi" pose:

This next cake is also a wedding cake. This scene of a fallen AT-AT in the Hoth snow is my personal favorite, and it also has some pretty fine detailing. The whole wedding was themed around Star Wars, and you can check out pics of the ceremony and guests here.

Is it just me, or do those cupcakes look like Ewok faces?

The Benefits of Recycling

No, this isn't some mushy post about helping out Mother Earth -- it's about Rock-N-Roll!! I recently started a recycling program at work, and set up some boxes in our department to collect plastics for recycling. Today I was checking out the volume of bottles in my boxes, and saw some caps on a few Pepsi bottles that looked like the symbols from Rock Band (the drum set, guitar, bass and microphone). The cap had a promotional web address and there was a code on the inside. There wasn't anything on the label at all.

I went to the address, logged in with my Yahoo! ID, and entered the codes. Once you enter a code, it's worth one point that you can use to enter a bunch of different contests. Well, instead of trying to win a trip to Vegas or an X-Box 360, I entered the "free Rock Band 2 song download" contest. I figured the odds would be a lot better of actually winning something. Apparently, any time you enter your point into the song contest you win, so I now have 5 song downloads! The reason it's not mentioned on the bottle is because it's a new contest - there's still like 90+ days remaining. Awesome! Free Rock Band 2 DLC, here I come!

And it doesn't stop there. There are MyCoke Rewards points, and Dr Pepper has some sort of contest going on right now, too.

Needless to say, I'm planning on checking the boxes a lot more often!

I always knew recycling was a good thing.

The Debut of PlanetBizzle 2.0

Today I launched PlanetBizzle 2.0 in a desperate attempt to attract a fresh audience. Currently, my readership is comprised of a 31-year-old (OK, it's me) and sometimes my wife. So I decided to enhance the look, but stopped short of adding "Totally in your face" as a subtitle (I thought that would be too obvious). In case you're blind and someone is reading this to you, the blog looks much hipper than before. I also joined Twitter, and I'm fully planning on tweeting like crazy for the next 36-48 hours before getting bored/frustrated with posting and giving up on it altogether. There's a link on the sidebar if you care to follow the madness...I think my current tweet is "joined twitter". Yeah, I'm awesome.

Can't Argue with That!

ZYZ: The World's Next Big Text-Phrase

Recently, my wife and I were chatting with some friends on Animal Crossing about texting abbreviations. You know, like BRB (be right back) and IDK (I don't know). We were trying to think of more obscure ones that the others may not know, so my wife thought it would be funny to type XYZ. Unfortunately, "typing" with the Wii remote means guiding your pointer to letters on a keyboard and pressing the A button. In her haste, she entered ZYZ and we both thought it was hilarious (yeah, we're a little nutty).

Ever since, I've been trying to work it in to emails and other online communications. Today, my supervisor and I were discussing something in IM and I closed the conversation with "ZYZ". She asked me if I was sleepy, and I said, "No, it means 'no problem, everything's good, forget about it'". She accepted my explanation, and thanked me for the intel. I expect she'll be using it herself soon, so I wanted to document the start of the world's next big text-phrase.

So join me in spreading the message online and in other standard forms of communication. ZYZ! ZYZ! ZYZ!

More Responsibility, Same Pay

I recently told my boss that I would be willing to collect recyclable products (bottles, cans) from our area at work and take them to the recycling bins that I pass on the way home. Not only did she think it was a great idea, she made me Captain of Finance's Green Initiative. Pretty cool, right? Now I get to recruit some lieutenants and draft some plans. I'm going to insist that from now on, everyone at work call me "Captain Ben" - or at the very least, "Cap'n".

An Explanation

OK, OK - so my plan to post once a month failed, and I've only got one thing to say...April Fool's! HAHA! That was the most elaborate April Fool's blog joke ever! I totally fooled you all into thinking I was done posting...like I had disappeared off the face of the Earth or something! There were a lot of times in the last few months that I would have written, but I wanted the joke to seem real. Boo-ya!

One question - who's supposed to feel like the fool? You or me?

2009 New Year's Resolution (Amended)

Okay - so the new resolution is to write a blog at least once a week. Wish me luck! (Oh, and BTW, this one counts for this week).

2009 New Year's Resolution

My resolution for 2009 is to write a blog entry every day! I know it's going to be hard work, but I want to try my best to document the events in my life for future generations. Wish me luck!