Since putting them up, I've come to the realization that I suck at my games. People are posting some amazing scores with furious dedication. In my Tiger's Transgressions games, for instance, I anticipated there would be multiple people posting perfect scores so I equipped the boards with a "# Times" column to subdivide those power players. But people aren't just posting a perfect score a few times. Try 1000 times. I sh*t you not. It's incredible. Even the back 9, which I thought was nearly impossible to ace, is getting multiple perfect games posted per day.

You can check out the boards in the flash games themselves or on the individual game pages here at toccionline.

Tocci Ponders: Why don't ex-sumo wrestlers ever become hockey goalies? The opposition can't score if the goalie's body blocks the entire goal.

In other news, the amazing weather we've had in New Jersey last week kicked off the fishing season a little early. I've caught two bass and a pickerel so far.

Linkz (spelling it with a "z" means I'm gangsta)

• 8 Bit NYC - New York City in old school 8 bit video game style graphics. Thanks, Frankie.
• World's Fastest Game of Hide & Seek - Where did she go? Thanks, Jon Jon.
• Hey look who's in the picture!

Incidentally, the backlash has finally started. I found two articles so far complaining about Tiger's Transgressions, claiming it's violent towards women. Oh give me a freakin' break! The faceless and nameless hos are a mere 4 frames of animation. There's more graphic violence in Mario Brothers. It's a funny game, meant to combine golf with Tiger's mistresses to make people laugh. And if you check the comments on atom.com you'll see that virtually all men and women are seeing it that way. Some are calling it the funniest game ever! It's really no surprise that anything that can garner that kind of reaction will surely offend someone out there... but lighten up, people. Tell ya what, if my game incites a rash of people going around driving golfballs at promiscuous women from a hundred yards away, feel free to blame me.

Tocci Ponders: Why does my cat always run immediately after pooping in her litter box? Is the "poop and run" technique really that satisfying?

I've added some TocciOnline subscription options to the homepage and the creations page. You can now learn of new games and animations via twitter, a facebook group, an rss feed, or by receiving e-mail notifications.

Timeout: I just accidentally trapped my cat in my file cabinet! I thought I heard a faint meow. I looked around. No sign of Leia. Then a minute later I heard a rustling sound near the file cabinet. No Leia. Then I heard it again and realized she probably wandered inside before I shut it. (She loves small spaces.) Amazingly she was completely out of the way of moving parts when I closed it. I just opened it back up she walked right out, laid down on the carpet, and started purring.

Back to the Tiger game, also impressive to me are the people who are scoring 9s. That's a "ho in one" on all nine hos. I don't know if that's sheer skill or just persistence, but I can tell you it's not easy. (I usually score in the 30s, maybe the 20s if I get lucky.)  One guy with the handle STICKTV posted a screenshot of his perfect game. Another guy named Rod got 9s so consistently that he came up with all kinds of variations on the game to add difficulty, and it got picked up by the atom blog. Looks like we'll need a back 9 with some trickier hos.

Tocci Ponders: In Young MC's "Bust a Move" there are lyrics that go, "Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry. In five days from now he's gonna marry. He's hoping you can make it there if you can 'cause in the ceremony you'll be the best man." [record screech] Now hold on a second. WTF is going on with Larry? You're best friends with his brother, so why would he ask you to be best man at his wedding? Doesn't he have any friends? Why not tap Harry? If I were Harry I'd be pissed. Maybe Harry's not reliable, but then again how reliable can you be if the wedding is in five days and he's still 'hoping' you can make it. It's a little late to change your RSVP. Larry really should really patch things up with his brother and maybe get some decent friends.

Tocci's back 9 links:

• Crazy Xmas Prank - Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) in this apartment has been wrapped in wrapping paper.
• Denise doesn't work at taco bell - I was thinking the same thing when I saw that commercial. Funny blog.
• Charcoal Drawing Videos - Amazing to see these drawings being created.
• Baby Dancing to Beyonce - My father loves this one.
• Ukulele Boy - My mom sent me this one.
• The History of Air Jordans - One of the hottest sneakers in its various incarnations. I think I had the IVs in junior high.
• Richard Mastry sings I Can't Afford My Gasoline - This one-man band did a cover of my song. Cool!
• The man said tada. - I know it's a commercial but it cracks me up.
• Shorewood Lip Dub - A music video on a massive scale starring pretty much an entire high school, shot entirely in reverse. It was made in response to this one by a rival high school, which would probably be more impressive if I hadn't seen the other one first. Now to try to get Hall & Oates out of my head...

My Tiger Woods' mistresses game launched yesterday on atom.com. In Tiger's Transgressions, you're Tiger Woods and your mistresses are coming out of the woodwork. It's up to you to stop them from going to the press using the tool you know best - a driver. The object of the game is to knock each mistress out with a golf ball in the fewest strokes before she reaches a news van. There are nine ho's of golfing fun. Enjoy!

Special thanks to Jeff Silvestris for his help with the artwork.

Tiger Links:

• Tiger gets mad
• Tiger cub

The next order of business was a Christmas tree, which we attained lumberjack style at a local tree farm. Basically you show up and they give you a wagon and saw and send you on your way. We found a beautiful Fraser fir and I took that mother down, tied it to the car's roof, and brought it home. It doesn't get much fresher than that. I love the smell of a pine tree at xmas time.

Photos on flickr.

I've been working on a new song lately about a certain social networking experience. I finished and had it ready for animating when a certain golfer had to go and take over the Yahoo Buzz with his 14 (and counting) mistresses. So I put the animation on hold to make a quick game which absolutely consumed me for the past week. I've delivered it to atom.com for publishing so it should be up soon.

Some fun to tide you over:

• Drops with HTML checkboxes - So cool.
• This photo made my brain hurt. It's brilliant.

The other day I had to find a new cat food for Leia (because she's been boycotting one of the brands we give her) and I couldn't believe the ingredients they were bragging about on the labels. Things like "made with real chicken and brown rice." or "only the finest ingredients like chicken, carrots, and cranberries" Now, obviously I can understand the chicken part, because cats love chicken. But WTF is up with the rice and veggies? Why would that be good for a carnivore? I for one have never seen a wild cat on the Discovery channel chomping away at a corn on the cob. Cheetahs do not stalk celery (see what I did with that?). And you can bet your ass that if a tiger makes his way into a rice paddy, he's probably looking for farmers. There's apparently an entire science behind pet food that I am completely ignorant about.

Tocci Ponders: After thousands of years of fur ball problems, why haven't cats evolved digestible hair?

We started decorating the house for xmas. So far we've just got candles in the windows, but we have some lighting plans. Photos to come...

Tocci Ponders: If Santa sees me when I'm sleeping, how come he's not considered a peeping tom? I guess the authorities look the other way. Makes sense. They look the other way for the breaking and entering too.

I'm so linkin' you can call me Abe:

• Carol of the Chins - Enter a song and the chin guys will sing it for ya... if they know it.
• Storm Troopers Reminisce About the Death Star
• The Escalator Spin

Anyway I'm not really in that bad of a mood. We had a Halloween housewarming party on Saturday and had a blast. We decorated the house and the yard. I made some tombstone decorations for the front yard with some amusing epitaphs:

Funny Tombstone Epitaphs

1. Monkey - Jumped on the bed. Broke his head.
2. Pierce DeHart - Ran with scissors.
3. Pepperoni & Sausage (from the Tombstone pizza commercial)
4. Walter Skimmer - Pool boy. Died of SHOCK.
5. I. M. Skewered - Sword Swallower. Overeater.
6. Mark D. Newb - Pwned
7. Justin Pieces - Fireworks maker. Went out with a BANG.
8. Mario - Game Over

Lots of people dressed up, so that was fun. I was a pirate, Jenny was a witch, my mom was a hippie, Eric 2.0 was Dracula, Chris and Amanda were a clothesline, James was Plaxico Burress, Jon Jon and Angela were Clark Kent and Lois Lane, Don was a chef, Catherine and Victoria were Cho Chang and a dragon respectively, and Lucas was Dash Incredible. We had tons of food and drink, a lot of which was provided by our awesome family and friends. I made a spooky rum punch in a plastic cauldron with a (sterilized) rubber hand floating in it. Ingredients:

Party Punch / Rum Punch

• 3-liter bottle of ginger ale
• 1 quart tub of orange sherbet
• 1 46 fl. oz. can of pineapple juice
• 1-1.5 liters of rum (I used bacardi)

It's been two months so other things have happened around here. Some highlights include:

• We had a huge maple tree removed from our back yard. That's a crazy job! It was too close to the house, patio, and pool so it had to go.
• Chris and Amanda had a nice engagement party down the shore.
• We went to a corn maze for the first time.
• We moved my mother, step-father, and sister to a new house.
• We met Mark and Lauren's cute little baby Preston Lucas.
• We installed a new chandelier for the dining room and bought a new recliner for the living room.

In professional news, the Kizash Network is no more. We decided to dissolve the parent company Intellidreams and divide up the assets. We had a good run for a while but in the end it was not worth maintaining. It was a good learning experience though.

Tocci Ponders: What's with dollar stores charging more than a dollar for things these days? By that logic, every store is a dollar store as long as at least one item in the store costs a dollar.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I'll be 34 years... aged. I won't say "old" because 34 is not really old. But I'm not going to say "years young" either because I'm not quite that lame. Time really flies when looking back on it.

Tocci Ponders: Why do the Miranda rights say that "anything you say can and will be used against you"? That's putting a lot of pressure on the prosecution. What if it's not useful? What if the guy being arrested says, "I like purple". Can that really be used against him?

Well this blog entry has been all over the place, but I guess it's to be expected when you cram two months into a few paragraphs. It's time to end this nonsense with a link list.

• Lady Gaga's Pokerface read by Christopher Walken. (Also sung by Cartman. Twice.)
• Awesome Costume - This guy is a transformer that actually transforms. Crazy! Thanks, Chris.
• Place the State - See how well you know your US geography. Thanks, Jenny.
• Computers of the future are cool. Thanks, Frankie & 2.0.
• Lyrics to the Legend of Zelda
• If video games were realistic. I like #18 and #4.
• Oh the Temptation - Kids are cute.

Random Thought: Costco and these other wholesale places are interesting. They always have food samples, but if you like the food your only option is to buy the quantities they sell. It's like, "Hey, do you like that french fry? Good! Here's a 20 pound bag of 'em."

We've really gotten a lot of use out of our pool - more than I had thought. We had a few mini pool parties and I taught Jenny to dive. It's so refreshing to jump in when it's 90 degrees and humid. This week it's a bit cold though. It's going to be a sad day when we have to cover it for the winter.

Tocci Ponders: If fat people swim naked, is it still skinny dipping?

I took a test for the first time in like 10 years last month. It was the NJ Boater's Safety exam which is now required of all boaters who use any kind of motor.  Since my fishing boat has a trolling motor, I was included. Apparently I've still got it though, because as we used to say in college, "I pissed on it". That means I did really well. I think I got two wrong and those questions were about feuling a boat and fire extinguishers on a huge vessel - things that have nothing to do with the kind of boating I do anyway.

Random Thought: Headbands are not cool. Jimi Hendrix is cool. Jimi Hendrix wears a headband, and yet he is still cool. Ergo, Jimi Hendrix is cooler than headbands are uncool.

The other day I was pulling weeds in my backyard and I discovered some mysterious eggs behind one of our border trees. They look like chicken eggs but there are obviously no chickens around here. They're on the ground, half buried, so I don't think they're from a bird. I'm guessing they're from a snake? Maybe a platypus? WTF?

The link list strikes back:

• Drawtoy vs Byokal - Another gem from Ze Frank. Draw your own kaleidoscope.
• Potter Puppet Pals in "The Mysterious Ticking Noise" - Funny and somewhat deranged musical video parody of characters from Harry Potter. Thanks, Suesan.
• FailBlog.org - Funny site. My favorites include Pen Trick Fail and Hat Fail.
• Chia Obama - This is a real product. I sh*t you not. There's nothing like the gift of a crappy statue of Obama with a big green afro.
• Tetoris - The world's largest Tetris game, for those of you with that kind of time on your hands.
• How to open a beer with another beer - A useful tip. And if you want to open both beers there's a video for that too.
• Boombox - 100 dances. 100 locations. 100 songs. 100 days.

I've probably done a million blogworthy things in the past two months but haven't had the time nor energy to write about them. Being a homeowner is a lot of effing work. I haven't even taken my boat out since May 14th, and it's sitting in my own garage now (no longer stored at my father's house). In my last blog entry I joked about going to the Home Depot but I had no idea... For a while I felt like I was there every day... probably because I was. The words you are now reading were written by a semi-skilled electrician, landscaper/gardner, painter, plumber, and handyman. Here's a list of some of the things accomplished since moving in:

• Wired all the bedrooms, living room, and offices with digital cable lines and cat 6 cable for gigabit ethernet
• Started a garden with tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, and basil
• Filled bare spots in the lawn with sod from the garden
• Nicked a sprinkler line when digging the garden, creating a nice impromptu fountain
• Taught myself how to reroute and patch a sprinkler system (which came in handy again in the front yard)
• Added chair rail and crown moulding to the dining room and caulked the existing crown moulding in the living room
• Painted the livingroom, diningroom, closets, and my office (so far)
• Installed an electrical outlet in the upstairs hallway
• Installed two new phone jacks
• Rewired the light / fan switches in all bedrooms and the living room
• Cut the grass every five days or so
• Killed poison ivy, weeds, and various intruding bugs
• Installed new blinds
• Assembled office furniture
• Changed the kitchen sink faucet set, two bath faucet spouts, and one drain.
• Opened and cleaned the pool
• Power washed the patio and the exterior of the house
• Installed closet systems in the master bedroom
• Bought a dining set, bedroom set, and office furniture.
• Cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned some more

There were really only four things we didn't do ourselves: refinishing the hardwood floors (including adding a new wooden bannister), installing recessed lighting in my office, running a new natural gas line for the grill on the patio, and replacing a hot water heater that leaked water all over our basement. Sometimes you have to call in the pros.

Other than keeping us busy, our experiences in the new house have been great. My garden is growing nicely. We've had two robins' nests that produced babies in our bushes (and one whose eggs disappeared). We also had baby rabbits in the back yard who have just left their little hole. We've broken in the new grill, did some swimming, and we've been sleeping well in our new bed, which is finally big enough so that the cat can't nudge one of us off the edge anymore.

All in all it's great (yet time consuming) to be a new home owner. Now if you'll excuse me, the lake is calling.