The Dark Balloon

A weblog by Hao Lian.
A terrible secret guarded by golems.
A note that thanks you for being born, all those years ago.

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Wow!

[In reaction to questions he’s written beforehand] I gotta be honest with you, that’s a pretty poor question. / [Later] Now that question I like.

A rare gem of a SNL show happened recently.

Sue really likes surprise parties.

Christopher Walken, Saturday Night Live 2007.04.06

(This turns out to be the understatement of the century.)

Did anybody else double take at Tina Fey in the fake commercial? If SNL doesn’t care that it’s rerunning old commercials (That was an old commercial, right?) for live shows, they might as well start interlacing new episodes with Blues Brother sketches.

[(2008 April 6) • • • .]

Recent comments (Ethane, General announcement.) • (HAO, Jammies.) • (Tim, Jammies.) • (Prashanth, Wedding.) • (Hao, Hands.).

Recent posts (10/06, The myth and the man.) • (09/13, 2011 Sep 13.) • (08/21, Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.) • (08/21, Failing beautifully.) • (08/18, Shameless.).

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LtJz

For Look Around You fans—you know who you are—the BBC has kindly put up the absolutely wonderful periodic table from the show. I wish I could link you to the Uncyclopedia periodic table of elements, which has the potential to be funny, but it sucks so very much like the rest of that awful blight of a website.

[(2008 March 2) • • .]

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Populism.

(Blogtanks in the blogorabola like to blog about big web redesigns. Not us, though; not ol’ dotfloofy dotblog. Here we celebrate the little guys, who work just as hard.)

Zap2it, one of the few respectable online TV listings websites left, redesigned (screenshot). They put in a white background, toned down the darks and grays, and updated the typography. You can now highlight more than once category too; if nothing else, Zap2it’s favorites feature makes it tenfold more usable than certain other people. While those certain other people were busy adding gradients and flashy advertisements, Zap2it has taken the lead in readability and presentation, proving flair doesn’t necessarily have to subsume content.

[(2008 February 7, 3!) • .]

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Grab bag this is a grab bag people

Never smile with a cheek full of water.

Flesh-Kincaid (n.) 1. Measurement of readability; 2. The motivating force behind my Law and Order fantasies for an entire season.

[(2007 November 14) • • .]

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Adoc.

Welcome, intrepid reader.

It’s one thing when a 2-by-4 gets picked up in a hurricane and it hits you in the head. When you start getting into handlebars and ivory soap, it gets more complicated.

Eric Schotz, producer of the new Fox series 101 Things Removed from the Human Body

There’s already a TV show like this channel CityTv in Vancouver; Fox is replicating or spinning it off. (Gives a whole new meaning to handlebar mustaches.)

Reading a weblog is close enough to a 2-by-4 hitting you in the head. It’s usually painful, it may send you into shock, and it happens rarely enough that most weblogs are islands surrounded by water containing reflections of the island, which is surrounded by water and so forth.

The Dark Balloon is the handlebar mustache of weblogs.

Welcome.

[(2003 July 28) • • .]