I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
-- Albert Einstein

I'm steelyray on that popular ejaculative word-named email system / search engine site.
Also on Multiply, but rarely. steelyray.multiply.com

Somedays I'm Don. Other days I'm Sancho.

(Favorites of my own pile, in no particular order):
Venterdammerung
Kaleidoscope Cathedral
Super-Shocker 100
Surrogate Head-Scarves
Times and Seasons
Tibetan Ant Painting
My First Madlib Popup Choose Your Own Adventure Storybook
Jellyfish Propulsion Wetsuit
Great Moments in War Avoidance Reenactment Societies
Custard Pie
Street Gang Registration Office

(Most Underrated, probably due to the crash):
Loogle V2
Plasma Drumset
WPBS
Square Breakdancing
OCEP
Robotic Sign Language Jacket
Mosquito-Spread Immunization

(Don't bother with these):
reactive underwear
my directory
www. trade-a-sock.com
Obnoxious Neighbor Active Noise Cancelling
flameware
meta
Bald-People Solar Energy Balance Theory
Bad Sci-fi, Starring You
cellphone lipservice
animal litigation
Secret Geek Code Jewelry

(weird theory, poorly communicated, thought out, or misunderstood):
Net Cultural Evolution Indicator Theory
Overdamped-Wave Historical Modelling
Microsurgical Warfare Trends
Math-modified Language
Fast Food Commodities Exchange
Reverse Fuzzy-Logic Music Genres

(Most blatantly trendy / bun-seeking / overrated, but hey, at least they dont contain pirates):
Halfbakery Limerick Challenge
PC Witchdoctor
TPPCPPC Haiku
Flocking Luggage
Call Me -Alx
Santini Claus
Schizo Man
Traitorous Boy
Olympic Pole Dancing
Shakespearean Porno's
Junior Mad Scientist Research Set

(Some of my better work appearing as annos in other people's ideas): http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/HolyRollerCoaster http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Halfbakery!

"The male brain is a delicate object, inherently prone to extremes, both of incompetence and of genius." -from a recent lab study.

What good is a fleeting thought?
too fast to be pinned,
it pauses like the Road-Runner;
pecks at the birdseed for an instant
and is gone again;
never triggering my clever Acme memory-catcher--
just wiggling it a little--
And I, the starving Coyote
am left staring wide-eyed and drop-nosed
at the cloud of dust
that was supposed to be my dinner.
One time, I thought I heard that familiar
'Beep Beep' only to to step into the
face of an Acme truck
(on its way to deliver my next trap, of course).

I think the roadrunner works for Acme.

in the oven: menthol chew toys
Qur'ayons
Reese's Masterpieces
Rube Goldberg Olympic Torch Lighting Mechanism
Beach Barges
Goldberg's Wonder-Urinal
Assembly Lines of God
or perhaps Church Pew Conveyor Belts

Straight from the 'stupid puns that wouldn't pass muster if I tried them' section:
War on Tarot: 'The skull card. I see biochemical agents in your future. You must find them!'
War on Dualism: 'You're either with us, or your with the guys who see the world in an 'us vs. them' perspective.'

There's a man who's secure in his rock songs of old
And he's writing a parody of Zeppelin.
And when he gets done he knows, if the lines be juxtaposed
Undeterred, he can get what he came for.

woah oh oh oh oh oh
And he's writing a parody of Zeppelin.

There's a line in the song that doesn't seem to rhyme at all
And you know misheard lyrics need screening
In the 'bakery, if you look, recent newbies can cook
Sometimes all our bones are misgiven.

Oooooooooh... makes me wonder...
Oooooooooh... makes me wonder...

There's a feeling I get on the 'Great Equalizer Test'
And my spirit is crying for relieving.
In my thoughts I have seen rings of cheese and all the best
And the Voices in the Head Caller ID.

Ooooooooh... makes me wonder...
Ooooooooh... makes me wonder...

And it's whispered that soon, if we all write a tune
Then the bakesperson will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the 'bakery will echo with laughter

Woah oh oh oh oh oh
And it makes me wonder

If there's a tussle among your annos,
Don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring cleaning for the site queen

Yes there are three ways you can vote by
but in the long run
They're still time to be a-listening, friend

And it makes me wonder
woooh oh...

Your head is humming and it won't go because you don't know
The bakers' calling you to join them
Dear newbies can't you hear the wind blow and did you know
Your idea lies on the whispering wind

(Funky Gas-Powered Instrumental Part)

And as we find our own abode
Our anno's longer than our posts
There walks a lady we all know
Who draws great pics and wants to show
How moderators knead the dough
And if you listen very hard
The way will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a baker and not to troll...

Woah oh oh oh oh oh
and he's writing a parody of Zeppelin.

Don't think.
Thoughts are Arrogant Creatures;
they steal from one other all the time-
yet never acknowledge eachother.
Try and call one of the offenders out by name,
and it turns a deaf ear until
just after you're made the fool.

Thoughts are Spoiled Creatures;
Like perpetually backseat-bound siblings,
they whine and bicker with eachother,
Forcing you to take your eyes
off the straight-and-narrow road.

Thoughts are Adulterous Creatures;
While you stare dumbfounded and lusting,
They tease you with their wicked beauty
and reward you with nothing but remorse.

Thoughts are Barbarious Creatures;
They abhor any form of law, order,
frame, or functionality that would
Serve to civilize them.

Why can't they just march along,
Parade formation-like,
And when they arive at the Grandstands
Salute the Grand Marshall
And be done with it?

Thoughts are Wild Creatures;
They cannot be tamed--
Try and catch one for a moment
And instantly you're trampled
By the herd of a thousand
Running helter-skelter in all directions;

And you're left pounded
Facefirst into the dust.
Hoofprints on your back--
Broken and Bleeding--
Unable to Write--
Unable to even Breathe.
Unable to articulate
Or even comprehend what just happened.

favorite annotation of all time, by [po]:
// what we need is a hamster in a wet suit with a tank of oxygen on his back. time events carefully though. //

On America
I am an American.
I am proud; I am ashamed.
My countrymen opposed Stalinism; we fell into McCarthyism.
We created the Bill of Rights. We held slaves at the time.
We invented the computer, We invented spam email.
We invented the telephone, We created telemarketers.
We invented television; we invented the TV dinner.
We captured power of the atom; we invented the H-bomb.
We invented the lightning rod; we fashioned the electric chair.
We liberated France and Kuwait. We turned our backs on Somolia and Haiti.
We financed the Columbian war on drugs. We are their largest market.
We liberated the Iraqis; we terrorized Iraqi prisoners.
We implored the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall; we built our own during the 1980 Olympics.
We are thoughtful, creative problem-solvers; we are lazy couch potatoes.
We were founded by idealists, realists, expansionists, interventionists, escapists, isolationists, imperialists, capitalists, religionists, and rabble.
We are heros; we are hypocrites.
We are Americans. We are Yanks.

Yeah, I'm sorta religious, hence the handle. But I'm just as religiously a diplomat, and I'm not happy about that mix somehow. There was this dream the other night: I was sitting at a card table playing Euchre with God and Satan. They were partners, and I was 'going alone' I think, or else I didn't ever see my partner. An argument broke out between the powers that be (as would be typical) that threatened to escalate to biblical proportions and ruin an otherwise perfectly good card game as well as a few planets, which irritated me. Couldn't they be congenial enough to settle their dispute and leave the game go in peace? They've got eternity to figure it out, so why all of the fuss right here and now? People might not be all-knowing but at least they can be civil with their enemies and not bring on the apocalypse.

In defense of the cliche':

Communication is the primary skill, and the primary limiting governer upon our life's achievement. And unfortunately, we're relying upon a technology as old as time itself as our primary means of dealing with it. It's lousy at multitasking, serial at best, buggy, devours precious primary memory resources, and prevents more rapid growth all around. It suffers from user errors, arcane rules, bad programming, and a very steep learning curve.

It's language.

The digital age is not primarily limited by computing horsepower, but by the constraints we place upon ourselves in attempting and needing to verbalize our ideas in a linear fashion. The human mind is capable of so much more.

How can we break the barriers presented by verbal and written language?

By ignoring our English teachers and embracing rather than snubbing the product of the natural evolution of communication, the cliche'.

Some may object that the usage of cliches is lazy; I say absolutely, and brilliantly so, like any evolution should be--just as our modern sans-serif letters are vastly simplified over Old English characters. Just as we have a standard alphabet that eventually came into play, and then standard words on top of that, cliche's are the next level of standard, simply trying to happen. They're standard image phrases, trying to form. And we keep knocking them down.

Cliches allow the next level of phraseology to be developed. No professor would tell you to invent completely new words or use a brand new language to express yourself in journalism, so why are we so repulsed by cliches, which themselves are a purer form of the images that we think in than words anyways? They may bog us down into old and tired memes, but 'old and tired' can also be translated as 'successful enough to catch on and be useful.' Cliches allow for higher degrees of 'linguistic chunking,' enabling more complex thoughts to be developed and shared more efficiently, albeit imperfectly, and therefore transmits a broader scope of the entire vision than what would be normative if one were constantly searching for the exact word.

While not always defined in Webster's and not even so easily expressed, cliches have rather precise and intricate cultural definitions which are nearly universal across the common language.

Like the celebrated photomosaics which present works as pixelated collages of smaller images, cliches can serve to express combinations of concepts on a macroscopic level and linguistically compress the breadth and size of an abstract, complex subject into a viewable, thumbnail image.