Never Enough Unfulfilled Ironies Department

I know this is a month late. Life and all. Plus somehow, despite my better instincts, I've been sucked into the Facebook maelstrom. But I was reminded by this Zaius Nation posting of an odd fantasy I had running through my head on Inauguration Day.

There we have President Barack Obama, freshly sworn in, giving his speech to the nation:

"On this hopeful occasion, one must yet recognize certain realities. Now, I know I have been compared to Superman by some of my supporters. This, of course, is nonsense. For you see...."

And here he rips off his rubber mask -- "I am actually LEX LUTHOR. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

Why, oh why, is it that something that'd suck that bad would also be incredibly awesome? Probably for the same reason it's far-fetched, and it's just as well. Superman had his work cut out for him too.

Never Enough Face Recognition Fun Department

Now that the place is a few inches closer to the move, I felt that a bit of late-night Internet goofing was in order. Noticing a face-morph widget on a friend's Myspace profile, I went to the site to find that MyHeritage.com had integrated into their genealogy tools a face recognition engine that can compare your image to others' in order to find distant relatives. While I can see the value of it in terms of family branches you suspect are related but wish to confirm, it's clear they are trying to drive traffic by letting you compare your own face to those of celebrities. Now, I don't exactly need to be validated by such a comparison, but I had to wonder what would happen if I used various different styles of my pictures to see what results I get.

First, a bit of goofy cheesecake I made back when I was experimenting with such things:



I'm duly flattered to be compared to Christina Ricci and Demi Moore--I don't know the others offhand--but I'd let Jason Biggs play me in the movies. He's gotta grow that hair out, though, and gain about 100 pounds, and wax. A lot.

Ah, but what if I'm in a darkly lit room, looking up at the camera, with wires running off my head, eh?



Seems that wires and poor lightning make me look like a mentalist self-help guru, or an actor that would be well cast playing such. Also, without makeup and with wires on my head I suddenly look kinda like Natalie Merchant. Interesting.

But is it as interesting as my most popular Flickr photo--not interesting because of how pretty I was, but on how horrifying UGLY I managed to make myself look:



I am deeply honored that, while making this intentionally screwed-up face in the name of comedy, I would therefore be compared most solidly with Peter Sellers. I could cry.