YouTube Digger

Have you ever heard of the expression “mad as a March hare”? And if you haven’t, why not? Well, trust me — there’s an expression that goes “mad as a March hare”. I heard it used a lot in England (although I’m not sure if it was referring to me.) No month of looking at madness would be complete without looking at March hares and why they have such a reputation for being completely bonkers.

Growing up in America, I’d assumed that hares were just large rabbits. Nope. There are quite a few differences.

Hares have longer legs, longer ears and nastier attitudes. Although rabbits have been successfully domesticated, hares are still wild and free. Rabbit babies are born naked and helpless, while hares hit the ground running (so to speak). There are various species of hares, including the jackrabbit of America, the European Hare (which look like small deer with big ears) that I got to know in England and the Arctic Hare in — well, in the Arctic.

(more…)

On this date in 1962, Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin was born — no doubt in little tan shorts. I have no idea how he got the nickname “Crocodile Hunter” as he didn’t actually kill the crocs he found. I guess “Crocodile Finder” didn’t have that much of a ring to it and “Mad Aussie” had already been taken.

In case you’ve been off the planet for the last couple of years, Steve Irwin was killed in a freak accident involving a startled stingray while filming a nature documentary. At least he died instantly and doing something he loved.

Anyway, he was a lovely man who, according to many people who’ve interviewed him, could verify that he really said “Crickey!” a lot. The world is a less interesting place without him. Although there are many mad Australian naturalists on television these days, none of them quite have the charm that Steve Irwin did. And none of them could pull off wearing the outfit.

(more…)

Timothy Treadwell (he changed his name to Timothy Treadwell) was a wack-noodle who decided that the best way to make grizzly bear documentaries in Alaska was to live as close as possible with grizzly bears — even going up to them and petting them. Now, I love animals better than I love people (’cause people suck), but I respect animals, too. Bears can be cranky. I respect that. So I stay the hell away from bears, just in case they suddenly get cranky. But ol’ Timmy couldn’t keep his hands off of them.

Not surprisingly, many people predicted that one day a bear would kill him. And, eventually, in 2003, one did. This made a great premise for an award-winning documentary called Grizzly Man by Werner Hertzog.

Timothy Treadwell is old news, but the love keeps going on. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then there’s a heck of a lot of love left for the lost Timothy Treadwell in the digital files of YouTube.
(more…)

I live in the greater Philadelphia area, where it’s currently snowing, raining and windy. Your typical crappy winter day. What with climate change, we all need to get used to hotter summers and even more crappy winters. Even London received the most snow they’ve had in 18 years this week. They don’t even have a snow plow — because they usually never have enough snow to plow.

So, on that happy note, let’s think about what positive things colder, snowier, icier winters can bring — a hell of a lot more accident videos to watch on YouTube. Positivily smashing, eh?
(more…)

Hackney ponies are great, because all ponies are great. But Hackney pony breeders and showers can be just a little too fanatical. I’m not sure suicide bombers for Al-Queida have as much fire as these folks do when they’re riled.

I’m sure you’ve encountered similar groups of people who are so loyal to one breed of dog/cat/horse/human that if you happen to just look at them sideways, they try to bite your head off. Hackney pony fanatics are not alone this reguard.
(more…)

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the word “change” on television or read it in the newspapers or online for just this week, I’d be a freakin’ millionare. Granted, change can be a good thing, such as changing the Bush administration to the Obama administration. But some changes do get nerve-wracking, especially if a bunch of changes happen on the same day.

When I was trying to find the inaugeration events on MSNBC, my cable provider decided that THAT would be the day it would change it’s line up and which channel number every station would be on. And then, AOL Mail changed it’s format and so did WordPress. All on the same day. For someone who has major depression, this is far too much change than I can handle.
(more…)

Yesterday, for another blog, I did a little book review of Life And How To Survive It by John Cleese and Robin Skynner (no relation to famous behaviorist BF Skinner). So, just out curiosity, I went to YouTube and stuck in the words “skinner” or “skynner” in the search feature and looked to see what came up.

This is always fun to do, especially if you are desperate to kill time in an entertaining way. Just stick any random word or word combination into the search feature at YouTube and see what weird and wacky stuff comes up.
(more…)

Please Note: The following is not intended to be in any way insulting to sea cucumbers.

Alaska goveneror Sarah Palin is the rising star of the Republican party, even after bringing disaster to John McCain’s Presidential campaign. Although the Presidential campaign ended over two months ago, Palin still seems to exert a magnetic pull on the nation’s short attention span. She certainly is beloved by liberal-leaning reporters, including MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who has recently described Sarah Palin as the “all-you-can-eat buffet of polictical scandal, nay — the endless wedge of Velveeta of political scandal.”

Why is she so popular? It can’t be just because America is fascinated by train wrecks. It could be that instead of being human, Sarah Palin is, in fact, an undiscovered species of sea cucucmber that actually masquerades as being human.

Shocking Similarities
Sea cucumbers are found all over the world, and Sarah Palin seems to be found all over the world. And somewhere, surely, is a sea cucumber who can see Russia from it’s house.
A sea cucumber is a creature without a backbone. Sarah Palin is also a creature without a backbone. When provoked, a sea cucumber reacts in self-defence by spewing parts of its digestive system out of its anus to thwart the attacker:

When provoked, Sarah Palin also spills her guts:

They also wave their tentacles in a similar fashion. First up, one moment that makes me so proud that I’m from the Philly area:

In comparison, let’s watch this pink sea cucumber also waving to background music:

So, there’s the evidence. Is Sarah Palin really a sea cucumber? Only time will tell!

Stupid week continues here on YouTube Digger, where you can feel a little better about yourself because you are not one of the people featured in these clips. No matter how screwed up of a day you are having, at least you’ve never been impaled by a Marlin. Hell, I once got framed for assault and had to spend a night in jail before charges were dropped — but at least I’ve never been impaled by a Marlin. (Not yet, anyway. Just my luck, Marlins will rain out of the sky over Philadelphia. And I don’t mean a sports team, either.)

Okay, enough with the intro and let’s make with the clips, already, Rena. Since we talked about Marlins impaling people, let’s show a clip, which is a recreation from The Learning Channel. Now, the Blue Marlin is fighting for it’s life, here, which is why it’s 450 pound body is flinging about. So, naturally, you want that big ass fish to come as close you as possible so you can have an excuse to get drunk. I don’t understand the attraction — I guess fishing rare big fish makes you feel better about your shortcomings in life.

The next clip is from “argamer” and is about the perils of ice fishing:

Now that you’ve recovered your breath (and changed your underwear), here’s the (silent) epic struggle of the old man and the sea, put up by “Slawterhd”:

It seems so silly to go messing with all of that bait and hooks and nets and things for a rare or endangered species (like most fish nowadays). Anyone who has watched Sesame Street learned all they needed to learn about fishing from Bert and Ernie. Thanks to “qbeam” for today’s lesson in how to catch a fish:

How shall we start the new year? With medication? Sorry, out of meds. How about looking at video clips of pet birds playing dead? Recently, I’ve had to write a lot of articles on pet birds. I know a lot about pet birds, although I’ve never actually kept one. I know enough to know that I should never have a pet bird. I do know that our generation is paying for the sins of our fathers, which gathered pet birds from the wild and decimated the wild flocks. Now, like it or not, the decendents of these captured birds need a home and thankfully, some people seem to be willing to take them in, feed them and keep them from plucking all of their feathers out from boredom.

And, for their part of the bargain, apparently pet birds have to learn how to play dead. Fair enough. I’m not sure if any of these videos will go viral like last year’s phenom, Snowball the Sulfur-Crested Cockatoo who worshipped The Backstreet Boys, but they are pretty damn cute. Enjoy.
(more…)

I’ve fugured out what the world needs more of — dragons. And I’m not talking about sports mascots or the lizard from the Komodo Islands, but real, honest-to-goodness dragons. Of course, there is that little bugaboo about dragons perhaps not being real creatures, but if we can make enough dragons through incredibly cool animated YouTube clips, then perhaps dragons will suddenly pop into existence. Heck, if billions of people can firmly believe in an invisible God, why not invisible dragons?

One of the great things about drawing or sculpting dragons is that you don’t have to worry about being anatomically accurate — because there’s no dragon anatomy textbooks to compare your final work to. So, in this way, any dragon you draw or animate looks like it could be a real dragon … if there were such things as real dragons.

Let the Dragon Parade of YouTube Clips begin. First up, a litle animation from ChinaOnTV.com. Thanks to “lamsike” for putting this up:

Next up is a very short stop-mtion film featuring a second generation Fischer-Price dragon. (Yes — I used to have one. I had a first generation, too, but sadly both perished when my home burnt down. I honestly don’t think the dragons had anything to do with it.) The embedding is diabled by request, so you need to click to see “The Dragon”.

Hello and welcome back. Ever wonder how to draw a dragon? Here’s a really quick lesson from “cgsbgs” which posted the steps to his dragon painting done in 27 minutes, but compressed down to three minutes in “Speed Painting of a Dragon”:

And, finally, we have what every animated dragon movie needs — dialogue from Father Ted Genius! And, uhh, not that much different from the original TV show:

2008 saw the sun set on a lot of beloved celebrities and entertainers. For this post, we’ll just concentrate on some of the notable and influential women celebrities who have have taken their last bow. We’ll give space to the male dead celebrities in a future post. Granted, this post will be done with more of an American slant, (since it’s written by an American) so no offence is intended if a favorite deceased celebrity from your country is omitted.

I’ve narrowed the list down to three ladies, otherwise we’ll be crying into our drinks all year. I’m not spending the rest of my life doing this post (although I could think of worse fates).
(more…)

For all of the American readers (both of you), December 26 is known in many parts of the world as Boxing Day. In America, it’s just called “the day after Christmas”. In Canada, this day is celebrated by shopping. In Australia, there’s a big cricket test played and a big yacht race is held. In England, you usually get another day off from work so you can go to the bookies, the pub, eat another turkey dinner and watch telly. It’s called Boxing Day to annoy people trying to figure out why it’s called Boxing Day. Ah, tradition!

But Seriously

However, in 2004, Boxng Day had a completely different meaning for millions of people. It will be linked here on out with the Asian Tsunami, where over 220,000 people were killed (some estimates put the death toll at over 270,000, and some over 300,000 so I’m being conservative here). It was triggered by an earthquake far out at sea, which produced the monster wave.

What About The Animals?

Whenever I hear of a natural disaster, I wonder about the animals involved. There’s always help for people, but animals seem to always get the shaft. But some animals in the path of the killer tidal wave did manage to survive. Although this first clip is a minute and a half advert for a full-length DVD from FirstScienceTV, it’s still good food for thought:

I share my bed with my dog. Last night and early this morning, while listening to my dog snore, I started thinking about animals that don’t snore. And then I thought of sting rays. And I mean the critter — not the car or the TV show with marionetttes.

There are many critters that nature documentaries don’t feature (where are all of the guinea pig documentaries, for example?) But there are oceans of clips onYouTube to help fill in the sting ray gap. And remember, don’t get sting rays as an impulsive Christmas gift, because you’ll only wind up having to surrender the sting ray to a local animal shelter.

Here we go. First up is a film about feeding very hungry sting rays by hand at Kemah Aquarium:

This next one is entitled “Sting Ray Ballet” was posted by a Jill Garnet, filmed in Hawaii. No — I don’t know who did the music or if sting rays are particularly fond of techno. Sting rays have had such a bad rap since Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin was killed by one in a freak accident. Sting rays are pacifists, really:

And, finally, what could be cuter than baby stingray feet?

Hope you’ve enjoyed this look at sting rays.

One of the most unusal and animal-oriented YouTube series is Cute With Chris, which “explores the dark side of cute”. Orignally a show about showing pictures of fluffly kittens and cute puppies, it has morphed into it’s own brand of Internet snark that has more one-liners than a George Burns routine. Your magical mystery master is Chris Leavins, a reasonably successful Canadian actor who decided to seek fame and fortune in California. Well, at least he’s got the fame. He has viewers from all over the world from Asian gay bears (don’t ask) to teens.

WARNING: Cute With Chris contains strong language and toilet humor.

There have been nearly 200 webisodes made, but not all have been posted to YouTube. Apparently, they are still sitting in the antiquated Apple QuickTime on the blog of the same name. That doesn’t include all of the bonus videos or videos sent infrom viewers. If you don’t have time to plow through them all, here are three that pretty much captures the flavor of The Cult without having to heavily rely on inside jokes known only to avid Cult members.

First up, is a concise lesson about the difference between Canada and America, especially their kittens.