First up, Cowboy Bebop is my favorite anime of all time. It starred Spike Spiegel and his crew of bounty hunters, and it had awesome animation. Mash that up with My Little Pony, which stars Twilight Sparkle and her baby dragon named Spike…..

But wait, there’s MORE! What if My Little Pony was your typical anime? In this video, I especially like the translation given at the top. I’ve seen my share of translated animes, and this looks like at least 10 of them.

Good Morning America gave a more in-depth look at the first Extreme Makeover Home Edition house in Joplin, MO than I expected. Really nice inside. Cut off by commercial at end, but they still spent more time on it than I expected. The first house revealed was for a firefighter who lost his house and was working during the tornado. He couldn’t contact his family for a while to be sure they were okay(they were). Excellent choice, Extreme Makeover. 6 more houses to be revealed this afternoon, not live on TV, although our local news will surely show some footage. Episode tentatively scheduled for January 20th.

By they way, I’m from Joplin(Kenny Headquarters undamaged), which is why I’m reporting on this. I hope traffic will die down in that area before I stop by Radio Shack across from the spectator parking area.

Here’s the Move That Bus! moment from a builder’s perspective:

Photo from this Springfield News-Leader article:

Also, Good Morning America’s website has a nice widget showing before-after photos of their previous house here.

Extreme Makeover Home Edition is building 7 homes in Joplin right now in the area worst-hit by the May 22nd tornado(technically, “worst-hit” refers to the entire width of the town in a mile-wide thickness, so that’s rather vague, but oh well). I’ll try to get some photos, but I really don’t know if I’ll be able to get there. I figured I’d share a map showing the area they’re building in. First, here’s a marked-up map(using an old photo, obviously) of the actual project area:

Seven houses in a row. This area is just 6-7 blocks from St. John’s Hospital, which seems to be the face of Joplin since the tornado. Yes, it can be seen from anywhere in the tornado path, for the most part. This map is specifically to show where media parking is, but it’s the only one that shows where the actual houses are. Volunteer parking is at St. John’s. I won’t try to convince them that I’m media(I have a reach of maybe 300 people), so I’ll just park roughly 24 blocks away & take the shuttle bus for spectators, unless I actually have business in that area and a clear shot. It actually is possible I’d have business in that area.

Below is a map from a couple months after the tornado, to give a better idea of the area currently. As of this posting, it looks like July, judging from the amount of debris still in streets & amount of traffic on 20th Street. I was still dodging debris in the street when I finally started driving in that area again in July. Main Street didn’t even get new street lights until a few weeks ago. Scary at night with no lights around.

View Larger Map

So, that’s what’s going on around me. I’m happy that various businesses are back up and running and plenty of houses are going up around here. I’m still missing Backyard Burgers, but I know they’ll start rebuilding soon enough. Plenty of businesses have yet to start construction and there is still a lot of rubble yet to be removed, but we’re getting pretty close to normal again. I was fortunate to have not lost anything from the storm. In fact, power returned to my workplace right before I was scheduled to work the next evening.

Okay, so last night I wanted to post a joke link to www.ICWutUDidThar.com, but you know what I found? IT WASN’T TAKEN! There was no www.ICWutUDidThar.com! After a little deliberation, I GRABBED IT. The meme seems to have been around since at least 2008, according to the Urban Dictionary, and I’m sure it’s still popular.

The purpose will basically be for people to have a link for the catch phrase, possibly as a joke link like how I used it. I already have Google ads, a Twitter search widget(displaying recent tweets containing “icwutudidthar”), and a Zazzle store. The store is a little sparse right now, but I hope to get it filled a little more.

Future Plans: I hope to use it as a url shortener so people can link to other ICWut pictures under this domain, and I might install WordPress so people can post pictures directly as well. Not sure how interactive I want it to be(likely a lot of moderating), but the Twitter widget is plenty for now.

This fanimation is so spot-on. I found it within 24 hours of it going up, just by looking to see if a new episode was up yet. I thought it was from an actual episode until I heard vulgarity. And no, it’s not gross or violent(stop associating cupcakes with murder, bronies!). It’s completely true to the spirit of the show, just amped up a bit.

I normally post these on Fridays, but this was just uploaded yesterday and I want to be as timely as possible.