What happens when someone pays to produce animated instruments playing new age music? Member supported PBS ends up begging its viewers to flip the bill. I caught animusic while flipping channels the other night. I think the animation is dynamically generated, but worth checking out for a minute or two. The novelty does where off after a little while though.

You know how, generally, the news is full of stories so grim that it makes you want to raise your terror alert to red and pray that global warming ends things quickly so that you don't have to worry anymore about getting lung cancer while you're paying $2.50 a gallon at the gas pump.

Well, not all news is bad news and Happynews.com makes an effort to publish only the good news that is happening out there.

A few select headlines from today's homepage:

- Operation Teddy Drop
- 'Miracle child' survives fall
- Pope Benedict XVI visits Jewish synagogue
- Price of big-screen TVs dropping
- Arsenio Hall strives to be a great dad

Hmm, I guess if this was what the news was like everyday, I'd still want to kill myself out of boredom.

Just in case you thought the Republican leadership of this country had one drop of integrity left...Bill Frist endorses Intelligent Design. Once again, that's DOCTOR, man of science, Bill " you can catch AIDS from sweat" Frist.

When I was growing up and going to St. Mary's Elementary School, Father Kelly taught us the Book of Genesis was basically a fable meant to illustrate God's Love. And this was in Amsterdam, NY, which is about as middle America as you can get. When people look back at the U.S. during the Bush administration, they will refer to it as a time when the country's collective IQ dropped 50 points.

Runner-Up - Rush Limbaugh on Cindy Shehan: "Frankly, I'm also fed up -- not fed up. I retract that. I'm weary, ladies and gentlemen, of even having to express sympathy. 'Oh, she lost her son!' Yes, yes, yes, but we all lose things."

Has everyone been keeping up with this on BoingBoing? I suppose if youre gonna believe in fantasies, a giant noodle monster is as good as any...and there's a million dollars at stake.

Holy handjobs, the Cullen Art Gallery is in trouble.

Via Gothamist

Never one not to jump on the bandwagon, I'd like to add The Groove Tube to our "Where Are They Now" series. The first R-rated movie I ever saw, I still think of it as one of the funniest and dirtiest (although a lot of the humor seems a bit naive by today's standards).

The Groove Tube is a compilation of sketches from Channel One, which, according to TV Guide was "the world's first television theater, a brash and irreverent enterprise in the East Village, New York's shabby hippie pleasure dome. Channel One offers a televised shock comparable to a bop on the head with a sock full of gravel." (of course, to us irreverent, shabby hippies from the East Village, that's a bit insulting.)

Along with Second City and Kentucky Fried Theater, Channel One (including a young Chevy Chase) was a precursor to Saturday Night Live and, in fact, his Weekend Update anchorman character came straight from Channel One.