Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

Geekologie has turned us on to something cool. Something that we feel should have existed a long, long time ago.

That's right, they're NES Cartridge Harmonicas. Finally, there's something classy for when you want to accompany yourself while playing Guitar Hero!

Apparently you can only buy these beauties on eBay and they're just over twenty bucks, which seems pretty reasonable for such a cool harmonica. But what we'd like to know this: if we took one on stage during some 8 Bit Music Festival, would Pete Seeger get mad and try to plug it in?

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Like any Federal building stuffed full of elected officials, the Utah State Capitol is a place where many, many, many stupid decisions are made. The latest and most spectacular bad decision involved our monkeys, and a balcony, and an echo, and lots and lots of marble. Oh, and there was a video camera too. Take a look...

Assuming that no one got fired for this, we find it incredibly cool that our happy little mascots got to fly in the Utah State Senate. We also like the frog, even though we have no idea where he even came from. Communist infiltrator or third party hero? You be the judge.

Thanks to dogbreath2 for playing the part of Deep Throat and releasing this dark, governmental secret.

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Daddy, how was I born?

Well, “born” isn’t quite the right word, Clonathon. You were grown from various strands of DNA in a nutrient tank in a secret laboratory far below the Nevada desert.

You were one of among tens of thousands of other clones being created for an army of super soldiers to be loosed upon the world by the Shadow Government in its plans to bring us all under its control. But there was something special about you. Something so special, in fact, that your mother, who isn’t really your “mother”, but the female scientist that was assigned to you, and I decided to hatch a scheme to steal you away from that place and raise you as our very own child. After carefully sabotaging the Shadow Government’s plan and escaping in a truly heroic fashion involving guard dogs, cyborg ninjas, and many, MANY explosions, we found our way to this quaint Midwestern town where we all live in hiding under assumed names to keep under their radar should they ever want revenge.

But even though we no longer work for those villains, we still consider the experiment to be on-going. That’s why we take time every day to record videos of your progress with our Sayno 720p HD Camcorder. You remember when we had you lift that tractor over your head? Well, it was important for our research that we capture that moment in high definition 1280×720 30fps video and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. With several white balance, light measuring, and exposure controls, every video we take of your runs through the laser obstacle course in the basement is perfectly lit and rendered for our needs. And not only that, but it came with a fetching travel case, a 1GB SD Card, and 2 Li-ion batteries, so that we never miss a moment, even when you use your psychic powers to steal toaster pastries from the pantry, you little scamp.

Oh, look at the clock. It’s getting close to your bedtime, young man. You know the rules. Let’s get you in your jammies and practice using your setting things on fire with the power of your mind before sleepy ni-ni time.

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If you're the kind of person who goes out for lunch more often than not, keeping the spark going can be a real chore. Sure, that burger place across the street from the office is something you know. It's comfortable, but maybe it's too comfortable. You could strike out on your own for something exotic, but you just had Indian on Tuesday. Tacos would be good, but then you'll be burping all afternoon. Eventually the blur of fast food joints gets to be so overwhelming that you simply trudge off to that old, reliable burger joint like a spouse faithful only because of their inability to attract the opposite sex.

No longer, hungry readers.

We at the Woot offices have implemented our patented LUNCH MADNESS! bracket system. By categorizing the majority of fast food chains into regions according to their state of origin/headquarters, we've made lunch fun again! You'll spend hours you should be working calculating with cold and relentless logic where you'll be eating today!

For each pairing, just ask yourself, "Where would I rather eat?" Sure, you may say you're sick of sub sandwiches, but a hoagie doesn't sound so bad when compared to fried chicken! Or maybe it does. The choice is yours!

We've taken the nebulous cloud of multiple options and whittled it down into one winner-take-all tournament for your stomach's third-highest honor: lunch.

Is it flawed? Sure; being nowhere near California we don't get to eat a lot of In-N-Out, but we like that the option's there. Kinda like the BCS.

Print some copies up, pass them around the office, heck you can even scratch out our choices and add your own selections!

So, uh, where we goin' for lunch?

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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.

NEW YORK (UPI) -- Lindsay Lohan has filed a $100 million lawsuit in New York's Nassau County Supreme Court, claiming an E-Trade commercial features a baby modeled after her.

Experts say this suit puts E-Trade in a clever bind, because if they actually respond by calling Lindsay Lohan a stupid, self-centered know-nothing idiot baby, then their answer can be used against them in court.

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Google’s old motto: Don’t be evil. The new one: Don’t speak English.

If you thought the main problem with our “Real Actual Field Test” videos was that they made too much sense, you’re in luck. Now you can watch them with the sound off, reading along with subtitles provided by “Transcribe Audio,” a feature in beta testing that uses Google’s speech recognition technologies to automatically caption YouTube videos. The results? Pure Dada.

YouTube, we want to ask, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF OUR NARRATOR’S MOUTH? The answer: Enh, some of them...

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I’m Never Going Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

At last, I can watch my favorite commercials without sitting through all those annoying shows.

Concise storytelling. Striking visuals. Hapless, overfed man-children in comical situations. These are the things I love about television – or rather, used to love about television, before it turned into a cheapo cesspool of “reality” freakshows. Nowadays, the real artistry comes in thirty-second chunks. Turns out that soda companies, breweries, car-insurance firms, and fast-food chains are the only entities left with enough money to make anything worth watching.

And I’ll be watching, believe me, with this TiVo Series 3 HD THX Certified DVR. How satisfying it is to fast-forward past Bret Michaels and Simon Cowell to get to the latest humorous vignette about that scamp Jack in the Box. This TiVo’s 250GB hard drive can store approximately a hella-ton of commercials for savoring over and over. I’ve practically worn out the pause button examining the mise-en-scene of that Dr. Pepper commercial with the midget KISS impersonators. Eat your heart out, Fellini.

Even better, this TiVo Series 3 HD DVR doubles as a YouTube player (with a home network with Internet access). Have you ever seen how many commercials are on that site? I could literally watch them until the sun expands and engulfs the Earth in flames, without ever repeating one. It also streams Netflix, Blockbuster, and Amazon video, but until they offer more commercials, I’m not interested.

First, though, I had to have 2 CableCARDs installed so my TiVo Series 3 DVR could handle digital and HD cable. You’ll want to check with your cable provider first, because many of them require that the cards be installed by their technicians. If you’re lucky, while you’re on hold, you’ll get to listen to commercials for the cable company. I love radio commercials even more than TV commercials because they have to be twice as aggravating to make up for the lack of video.

I really only have one complaint: TiVo, can you exert your influence to require broadcasters to devote more time to commercials? Even on the most ad-heavy cable channels (I love you, TV Land), there’s still 40 or more minutes of programming every hour. This shocking imbalance means important voices are not being heard. Somewhere out there, some scrappy young filmmaker is coming up with the next “smunchy” or “wazzzup”, and I want to see it. Over and over and over.

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• Cinnamon and marinara sauce
• French fries and chocolate milkshakes
• Hamburgers and velvet
• Sun-dried tomatoes and the tears of orphans
• Bread pudding and the music of Joanna Newsom
• Zima and that clown from your birthday party
• Lamb shanks and my father's disappointment
• Melted gouda and Han Solo action figures (original or Hoth)
• The oral history of the Underground Railroad and the color teal
• Those old aluminum swimming pools and socialism
• LASIK surgery and your first crush
• Sandy Nelson's "Live! In Las Vegas" and a single grain of sand
• International test cricket and sneezing
• A savage wildcat and the aroma of melted butter
• Ambergris and the complete works of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
• B flat above High C and "Punchy" from Hawaiian Punch
• Jai-alai and 1-1/4" galvanized roofing nails
• Deal-a-day web commerce and a recording of Carol Burnett saying the word "moist"
• Mango and chili peppers

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The below video is a tad NSFW due to language and slightly adult content, but if you haven't seen this year's Oscar-winning animated short Logorama yet, give this a click. Watch as a Los Angeles made up entirely of corporate logos and mascots EXPLODES before your very eyes. You know, when you get home and maybe after you've put the kids to bed.

We here at Woot feel only slightly snubbed by the exclusion of our iconic Exclamation Point, but we'll let it slide. Hopefully, their people can do lunch with our people and get us a spot in the sequel. Don't forget to show the directors a little monetary love by buying it on iTunes.

As seen on Filmdrunk.

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Oooh, Father-in-Law’s birthday?

I’ve got the perfect gift.

I’m serious; hear me out. A Stanley 3-in-1 Tripod Flashlight with Mini-Tripod Keychain is the perfect gift for an older male in your life who you don’t really know all that well yet but with whom you are forced to awkwardly converse and spend extended periods of time with around the holidays. It’s not like you don’t like the guy; you just don’t know the guy. Hence, an awesome flashlight setup with a tripod.

Your father-in-law’s an accountant? So what? Mine’s got a Doctorate in Organic Chemistry and he captains his own fishing boat. You think I’m ever going to come up with something to impress HIM? No way. But I can get him something useful that he’ll appreciate.

Yeah. Fishing boat. Like “Deadliest Catch.” Back on track, James.

It’s got three independent flashlights, but you can Voltron it up good and nice and make one super duper flashlight with a brightness of 60 lumens. I don’t care what he does or who he is, at some point his power’s going to go out or he’s going to go camping or he’ll need a source of light in an otherwise dark place.

Then he’ll just flick that baby on, smile to himself, and say, “Y’know what. That guy shackin’ up with my little princess might not be such a colossal screw-up after all.”

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