Thursday

The obligatory link;
HOT or NOT

I had a bit of a spike yesterday and the day before in the page views to the blogaroo. Since my service is a piece of free shit, I don't know what it was about. If anyone would care to let me know, that would be appreciated.

sad

Single Man's Guide to TV Dinners

print at work

stolen from mefi:

Phila Lawyer reads like fiction (awesome, Hunter S. Thompson -esque fiction -- Part 1, 2 ) to outsiders, but that might just be because it's so fucking good. The lawyers commiserating in the comments, at least, think it's real.

The navigation is cumbersome -- if you're not careful, you'll come into a story in the middle. For your perusal, then, I've laid a few out:

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5


Part 1, 2

Part 1, 2, 3, 4



I have already read the one about speakerphones. It was very good.

Tom Delay, the scariest man alive

Reuters AlertNet - DeLay vows judiciary changes after Schiavo case

AlterNet: Terri Schiavo Is Dead ... And What Remains

terri s. dead

"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak," Mr. Bush said in Washington. "In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life."
-- cbs story

Let me repeat that.
"In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life."

I only hate a few things in this world. Among them are cruelty and complacent ignorance. And the president of the united states. This jackass wouldn't lift a finger to review the questions in 152 executions. He lied to get us into a war in which not a brain dead woman, but over as thousand and a half healthy people got killed. And now he has the temerity to make a statement "george bush style" (I'm a uniter not a divider, then divides like no other. And mission accomplished? Yeah.) about the compassion of his conservatism? Of all the low-down dishonest bullshit I have heard a president say, this is right up there with the rest of his hateful catalog of mistruths and duplicity.

via mimi

Surstromming--One of the World's Strangest Dishes

adorable:
Let's be friends

Piraque Ham Snack

and this is going to be lame of me, but I was too lazy to come up with an explanation for this story I think I saw on boing boing a couple of days ago, but some blogger, bitch phd, has the story of a robotics contest.
Bitch. Ph.D.: It's an equal playing field. Not.

lisa chandler
BARELY not safe for work
[kicks rocks, mutters]

-::- Free PublicData.com SexOffender Search -::-

Buttercouple.com - Who's in your league?

Bush Launches Preemptive Attack On Social Security

The Onion | Bush Launches Preemptive Attack On Social Security

Social security is part of the axis of evil! It hates our freedom!

the morning after pill

The Onion | What Do You Think?

Wednesday

old news

Yahoo! News - Bush critics blocked from presidential events

cable news watchers

you are here

making the best of a bad photograph

passenger

I am scared of this
not safe for work

dynamap sounds cool

Urban Mapping Gives a Vintage Printing Technique a High-Tech Revival - Articles

ashes discovered, buried

The Spoonbender explains, sort of

smoking ban FAQ

When does the ordinance go into effect?

The City will begin enforcement of its "no smoking" ordinance at the beginning of the business day on March 31, 2005.

What types of businesses are impacted by this ordinance?

The new smoke-free ordinance applies to all restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, pool and billiard halls, private clubs and other food and liquor establishments that need a license to operate from the City of Minneapolis. The ordinance does not apply to hotel/motel rooms, outdoor spaces, private residences or locations where the use of tobacco is part of a recognized religious ritual.

How will the smoking ban be enforced?

Businesses have the primary responsibility for ensuring customers in their establishments comply with the smoke-free ordinance. Businesses can request that a violator (smoker) stop smoking immediately. Businesses also can stop serving the individual or require that he/she leave the establishment if they do not stop smoking. Businesses also can call the police if the violator becomes violent, disorderly or refuses to leave.

What should I do if someone is smoking in a bar or restaurant?

You can file a complaint through the City's Smoking Hotline - 612.673.2424.

What is the penalty for a violation?

Individuals who smoke in prohibited areas can be prosecuted for a petty misdemeanor, which carries up to a $300 fine. A person smoking could also be charged with misdemeanor trespassing (maximum penalty of $1,000 fine and 90 days in jail), if he/she refuses to leave the premises upon request. For licensees, a $200 administrative citation will be issued for the first violation. The fine
will double for each subsequent violation, up to $2,000. Chronic and unabated violations could result in adverse license action, up to and including suspension or revocation. Establishment owners are primarily responsible for ensuring that smoking does not occur on premises.

Can I smoke outside a bar or restaurant?

Yes, establishments can allow patrons to smoke in outdoor areas.

Unlike the Bloomington ordinance, the City of Minneapolis ordinance does not prohibit smoking within any distance of the entrance.

web waste

web waste is an internet rubbish dump; it takes the contents of your computer's recycle bin and holds it for everyone to see.not to worry, anonymous.

I get the feeling this isn't going to be as interesting as I thought it would be a few seconds ago when I decided to post this.

thunder

Besides being the name of an American Gladiator (awesome), thunder is my favorite sound. Maybe I heard it a lot while gestating, maybe I am descended from a Norse thunder god, but whatever the case may be, I just love it. There's a lot of it happening right now for the first time this year.

A girl in a burkha just ran out of the room. She had so many clothes on it sounded like bedsheets being held out the car window at fifty miles per hour. Man am I glad I'm not her.

:::...Lebowski Fest...:::

I want to go!
:::...Lebowski Fest...:::

the gloves don't fit, you must acquit

Johnny Cochran dies of inoperable brain tumor

so long, asshole

asshole
The New York Times > National > Jerry Falwell Critically Ill With Pneumonia

The whitest man who ever lived, is about to kick the bucket. The man who claimed gays and abortionists were responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Falwell is most likely, to my dismay, unable to tell us whether it's the gays, or whether it's god, who is responsible for his terminal illness.

And this guy is going to be in heaven? His entire career was about getting there, so it must be. And who would want to be anywhere this guy is? Jerry Falwell made religion as ugly and as political as possible. The real religious people, the ones who try to follow the words of Jesus, should have seen this clown for the pharisee he was, but a lot of them, that I know, are too nice to tell it like it is, and in some cases, even notice it like it is. Falwell should be going to an afterlife with a microphone, some speakers, and his own arguments in a seven-foot cubed room for all eternity. I just wish a person could be made to cry for that long.

what can you say about this

In almost the ultimate twist of TV irony, on the heels of the Terri Schiavo media orgy, a much bigger version of the same story has come along. The pope is on a feeding tube. The pope. What will the right wing rhetoric jockeys have to say about this one? It's one of those rare situations that keeps your brain locked up, like a nosebleed while you're brushing your teeth.

International News Article | Reuters.com

Hollywood Query Letters are pretty much what you'd expect them to be, as long as you don't expect much.

This guy:
NPR : Donald Knuth, Founding Artist of Computer Science
Gave these lectures:
even more awesome nerdy media
SCPD Video Links

sweet resource

If you're just going to sit around in front of the computer there's absolutely no reason to watch that retarded homestar runner when you could be learning something just as easily.

Hank has vouched for the Nov. 19, 1998 lecture about coincidences.

Princeton University: WebMedia - Lectures

People I know are in this picture from a tour of Jack Daniel's.
Distillery Tour Photos From

companies' political contributions, color-coded.
Choose The Blue

Tuesday

smack!

funny

A Week of Kindness Blog: Laura K. Pahl is a Plagiarist.

thanks, mom and dad!

aryan justice

The hardening process for winding stems is very inexact. It is also prehistoric. If you want a piece of steel to be really hard, you have to heat it and cool it quickly. The little steel molecules come crashing back together very tightly and the thing's as hard as glass. We take the stems, heat them up till they're glowing red, and then dunk them in water. We do this as quickly and as straight as we can, so that the piece doesn't warp. But it doesn't matter because the piece just fucking warps anyway.

Yesterday I came in and had a stem ready to harden. I then ruined it in the hardening process. Then I made another one, which I then ruined in the hardening process. Today I started from scratch, made another stem, and ruined it in the hardening process. My patience wears thin. I have spent the last three full days of school cutting beautiful stems, only to ruin them in less than one second in the hardening process. Fuck the hardening process.

article on the history of broadcast spectrum allocation in America,
print

overheard in hallway

"I live in a world of fast food and cat hair."

Sadly, this is the only thing I have ever heard in the hallway here at Saint Paul College I consider notable.

obvious

One of us is smarter than all of us

I told you so

You only need to read the first half of this post I made in september 2003.

A little fucking late, here come

Budweiser
and
the Doublemint Twins

omelet sandwich

Bangladeshi children get ready to reinforce seams like never before, to make sure Americans' fat asses don't tear apart their clothing, thanks in part to burger king's latest.
New Burger King breakfast offering outdoes Whopper - Mar. 28, 2005

stupid


P. Diddy to Make Custom Rims for Vehicles

hallelujah, idiot


Judge Melba Marsh

do your taxes for free

Free File

Daily Kos :: J.D. Guckert/Jeff Gannon: These Are Your Lives!

Monday

HHG2G

Tonight after school I went to Woodbury, MN, to retrieve an extremely rare audiotape from a library. It is the first in the series of abridged books on tape read entirely by Stephen Moore, which means that in my possession right now are all three. There are actually four, but the fourth one , "So long and thanks for all the fish", isn't that important to me.

Stephen Moore was the original voice actor who played the role of Marvin in the BBC radio play that spawned the whole catalog of media that is the hitchhiker's giuide to the galaxy. I would go so far as to say that he is, therefore, as responsible for the success of the project as anyone besides the author. It appears Moore's not involved this time around, which is too bad. This time Alan Rickman is doing Marvin, a suicidally depressed robot. Marvin is superintelligent, completely miserable, and easy to relate to. Marvin was key to the popularity of the series.

Now I've got to get these tapes digitized.

Here's the movie site. Pretty cool.

without Delay!

First of all, the moral values of Christian right in America are really the most consistent, unwavering...
CBS News | DeLay Let Brain-Damaged Father Die | March 27, 2005�14:30:01

Well it's not like he called removing Terri's tube an act of medical terrorism. Oh, wait.

I signed the petition to get rid of this asshole, and you can too, if you want.

very funny

qwantz: totally just invented the best format for music EVER

get your war on

skydriving

uh-oh

another tsunami?

most boring post in history

I'm going here after school today to pick up an audiotape they have:
Washington County, MN - R. H. Stafford Branch

Sunday

black people! ha ha!

This negro space program thing is bigger than I thought.

The actual name of this page is: Racism isn't cool.

A couple of different things leave a funny taste in my mouth about this. One is that you can say that racism isn't cool and then get away with being racist, which is dumb. Because no one really understands racism, if you say that you get to have it both ways. Rush Limbaugh used to play "movin on' up", the theme song to "the jeffersons" whenever he did a segment about black senator Carolyn Mosely Braun. As a "joke". When you actually state, though, that racism is bad, you're covered with the PC crowd and you're still funny to the white power kids and angry, newly culturally marginalized suburban white males, who know a wink when they see or hear one. When you think about it, racism in the public domain has no consequences; everyone is entitled to be as bigoted as they like, and to not "be" racist is only to acknowledge and stand on shunning the practice of racism. That's all you can do to combat it, and that's not much. In the end, unfortunately, I think anti-racism loses because it's no fun.

Another thing that bugs me is that this dumb shit gets a laugh. The person who ostensibly eschews racism per se who titled the page "Racism isn't cool" is still going for the cheap gag. That bothers me more.

I'm building this idea, and I mean someday to present it in a unified form, but in case I don't get round to it, I'll just say a couple of things about this here. Thesis title: There's a heirarchy of sophistication in humor, and what a person finds funny tells you a great deal about the inside of his or her mind. (To my knowledge, this is just known by everybody and not taught anywhere, but as we can see, for example, by looking to the southern united states, the bible belt, nothing implicit can be taken as read. In this case our (reasonable people's) assumption that people are going to treat creationism as a pleasant bedtime story for children and not a way of life that necessitates the rejection of scientific reality is obviously making a proverbial ASS out of U and ME.)

Cheap stereotyping is just dumb. It's not even funny. It's just repetition of some mean idea. It's more of a social contract between complicit parties making and hearing the joke than anything else. It may be shown someday that this dumb shit serves an important memetic evolutionary need for group loyalty. But anyway, I think whoever runs this site is also dumb. I'll amend that, too dumb or too lazy to make a good joke. This isn't about me, it's about making a joke, but I easily can make a better joke than these guys out of racial stereotyping. For example, to satirize a stereotype of black people, here's an imaginary news headline and lead:
MONEY IS RACIST
In a new study, it has been found that money prefers white neighborhoods to black ones, which has staggering implications. In the same study, it was shown reverse racism is exhibited by crime, which seems to prefer black areas.


See, there's a formula and you drop in different situations and funny-ness comes out the other side. How funny depends on how imaginative the source material is. Take the scientific american article from yesterday. That's about as funny as funny normally gets because it rips on people who aren't happy getting ripped on, and it's also funny because of the discomfort our society is experiencing due to their Christian fundamentalist worldview's clash with our, yes, secular government. A side note, there are such things as "post-modern" jokes that I understand exist and that I know I've heard, but that are very much "in-jokes", I think for people who think about humor too much.

To make a long story short, the bigger your worldview, the funnier everything is. To a person like me, who doesn't believe in spirituality of any kind, almost everything is funny. To claim allegiance to a deity or belief system of someone else's devising (all religions) is to stop thinking something is funny. Christians think it's funny that anyone could be so stupid to think that if they blow themselves up they get to screw virgins for eternity in heaven. People like me think that's funny, too, but we also think Christians are funny for thinking life was created by a supernatural force that has never been shown to exist. I like it this way, and I don't think it will ever be possible for me to shrink my mind down to the size and shape of a god-needer. (I also didn't ever think I'd get married, but the change in this situation was vry different, and if you ask me about it I'll tell you in depth, I don't want to get into it here. And I assure you, the lovely JV isn't pregnant.)

www.istheshit.net

Terri Schiavo's Blog

See? She's fine!

Scissors in the Arm

another link to the same thing, in case the other one gives you problems

"Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." - Richard Dawkins

a film not by ken burns

IFILM - Short Films: The Old Negro Space Program

The Sterilized Easter Bunny and His Plastic Eggs by Kirsten Anderberg

Not especially good, but better than I can produce in the time it would take. Each year at Easter I like to read something that reminds me (as my memory isn't what I'd like) about easter being a completely ripped off, co-opted pagan holiday. That bunny didn't come from nowhere, and the jesus rising from death thing isn't original.

Have an easter egg.

happy easter

Muddy sent me this rapping easter bunny.

Should I kill him?

1528



click to go somewhere, I made that image

MSNBC - House OKs $37 million for Wal-Mart H.Q. road

but that's a great way to spend 37 million.

wal-mart = usa

free medical advice

Boing Boing: Send Frist photos of your ailments for diagnosis

We should all send those images of smegma.

the bush news network!

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: Bush News Network

Producing your own news isn't like what Hitler did, though. No way. To even compare the two is really, uh, unamerican! So I guess journalism is unamerican.

bad logo

Saturday

why scientific american is awesome

"we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design theorists..."

This song was driving me crazy about two weeks ago. I just couldn't think of what it was. I finally figured it out, which was a big relief. So I guess what I'm saying is it's songs just like this that are in my subconscious, that form the fabric of my mind in ways I will never understand.
Nashville Cats - Lovin' Spoonful (Lyrics and Chords)

Friday

A reason I'm looking forward to marriage:
The flippant "sex toy" becomes the respectable "marital aid".

No more will I have to hide my singleness shame, I can proudly flash a wedding ring and confidently stride forth into a sea of multicolored vibrating jelly, knowing that my goal is a noble one which society has deemed right and true. As I browse the aisles I can smile, for I will know at my quest's end, my marriage will be aided, but will the aid come from big black cock, will it come from a plastic blow-up doll? Here an anal intruder, there a gallon jug of lube, fighting for my attention and the chance to aid my marriage. But there's a downside. Going to sexworld will have become a sexual oil change. Bummer.

god isn't helping

Illinois man puts crosses outside Red Lake school: "'We need to tell them there is a God,'' he said."

good ideas it's way too late for

As long as we're fighting evil maybe the united states should declare war on satan and ban the number six hundred sixty-six!

As long as we're calling french fries freedom fries, maybe we should stop using french words altogether to show how patriotic we are! A garage becomes a freedom car storage area! Et cetera.

I'm pathetic, aren't I?

another great science fair entry from the baptists

2nd place middle school level:
"Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

peak oil presentation in congress

haunted anything makes bug bucks on ebay, read the story, this person is "naked fighting a parking meter" crazy.

Last night I went to the black forest for pints with some friends, including the illustrious Newman, who is back in town at least long enough to heal. He's up and about, surpassing my low expectations, which is great. On the night, we didn't meet my goal, which was to make a solid commitment to the contest*, but it was fun anyway.

*To collect as many support the troops magnets as possible. Whoever has the most doesn't have to buy any beers at contest's end.

Now it's off to school, where I will suggest we take a break from stems long enough for a side project, to make monopoly pieces for the hell of it. The little top hat is cool, and so is the car, but one we make ourselves would be much better. After school, work, and then time with my sweetie having tacos and wine. I'm going to try to talk her into watching Gummo, a very creepy movie, and if that fails, and even if it doesn't, we'll rent one she wants. Wild and crazy, huh? We know how to partay. It's really just that since smoking went out the window, bars stink and when we go to them, so do we. There's going to the theater, but that's a lot of trouble and expense for what you get, and E block isn't even showing million dollar baby, the only movie either of us wants to see. Maybe they're too right wing for that now. So we'll rent a movie, drink-a da vino, and throw away old busted furniture.

I was inspired by that stencil graffiti guy. Anyone wanting to highway blog stencil in Minneapolis, please email me and we can talk it over.

Thursday

cool

Transparent Screens - a photoset on Flickr

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | T. rex fossil has 'soft tissues'

good old smegma

not safe for work
but safe for human beings

Banksy is how it's spelled

Banksy
I mis-did it earlier.
A piece of his called "can't beat the feeling":

City Pages - The Undoing of America

City Pages - The Undoing of America
with gore vidal

OBJECTIVE: Creation Education: Creation Science Fair 2001

"1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"

Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey."

You have to see this, otherwise you'll think I'm making it up to show how complacently dumb people are.

game, set, match

Supreme Court Won't Hear Schiavo Case

If I had all the money I could ever want

I would make a video special for television and play it late at night among the infomercials. It would be a video documentary of Jesus, and I would call it "the book of awesome". I would play the role of awesome, and Jesus and me would have a great time just cutting up and barely staying out of trouble. When he was carrying the cross he would make the romans' clothes fall off and stuff like that.

woo-hoo! freedom chews!

Products

CBS 2 Chicago WBBM-TV: Chicago Poet Led Double Life

But don't all poets, like, lead double lives in a way, man?

cool

The Credit Card Prank II

david hasselhoff calendar

a guy who hates mao



and that's what I love about satire.

Bansky

The guy who did this,

also did this

USA! USA! (repeat forever at high volume)


Yahoo! News - World Photos - Reuters
: "The Army, struggling amid the Iraq (news - web sites) war to sign up new soldiers, will miss its March and April recruiting goals, but hopes to attract more recruits with a patriotism pitch..."

How long is the patriotism pitch going to work? Another thousand dead soldiers? Or do more dead soldiers make for more patriotism?

sweet

Clocky: "Clocky is a clock for people who have trouble getting out of bed. When the snooze bar is pressed, Clocky rolls off the table and finds a hiding spot, a new one every day."

The stuff they're injecting cows with these days makes me want to go vegetarian.
story

dogs are cool

Yahoo! News - World Photos - Reuters

Wednesday

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

rates up again

Yahoo! News - Fed Raises Rates to Check Inflation

awesome

Clear Channel hit with $90 mil. verdict

disgusting.

GreenvilleOnline - AP Nation / World: "The IMAX theater in Charleston and several others in the South have passed on showing a science film on volcanoes because of concerns it might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs."

How to really confuse your party guests.

BBC - Nation on Film - An archive of historic film clips

interesting

The 2 2 Forums: How many 5 year-olds.....

so how many?

magic!

The reviewers had a field day.
10 GHZ memory and 30 terabytes storage, sheesh.
Amazon.com: Computers: VIEWSONIC TPCV1250S PM-1G 40GB ( TPCV1250S-1303 )

printable comic books
misty

well, it is Texas...

CNN.com - Baby at center of life support case dies - Mar 15, 2005

Tuesday

Somebody's moment of genius from
the onion: "Sopping Wet Panties Removed From Washer, Placed In Dryer"
They also gave us this: what do you think -- oil drilling in alaska

Stephen Fry is the book

I just found out on this page:
Stephen Fry is going to play the role of the book in the forthcoming film adaptation of "the htchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

Stephen Fry is the best pronouncer I know of, and it was by sheer chance I made the hitchhiker's discovery. It makes me very happy that they got him. The only place I have seen him is in "blackadder back and forth", but I'm thinking of dowloading more of his work from undisclosed sources on illegal networks.

caption it

Material this good stands up to multiple postings. Good call, flanisgoodpud.
your caption here

dumbass

altruism

New Scientist Charity begins at Homo sapiens - Features

zap the ruined diners back to life!: "Turn off that TV set, go outside and live!"

we just edged out cairo

Construction Comparison of the World's Most Booming Cities

the office

I've been watching a British TV show called "the office". I would be flabbergasted if it is not the most excruciating television show ever made. Watching it, you wonder how much more you can take. I love it. I know I'm late to the party.

Is there any other show as painful to watch as the office?

games

I don't usually plug people's sites but this guy's blog deserves more recognition than it's getting. He's one of the guys who make the stuff we enjoy, including the supersize me game. The audio for said game is brilliant.

Freesome Games - Flash and Java Games Blog and Tutorials

Monday

CHARLES DARWIN HAS A POSSE -- free bookmarks and stickers

useful!

Finally, a simple answer to a simple question.

Do I Need A Jacket?

ABC News: Poll: No Role for Government in Schiavo Case

People may disagree on what should be done with the barely alive, but one thing is apparently much less controversial: It's the consensus amog most people that the government shouldn't be the ones enforcing and intervening.

ABC News: Poll: No Role for Government in Schiavo Case

While we were over in Wisconsin dropping off wedding clothes for JV's friends, we stopped at her friend Mandy and Tana's parents' house in Mondovi. Randy (the dad) had just found their neighbor and friend of 30 years dead in his house earlier that day and so the mood was low. A drawn-out necessarily subdued emotional reaction is what I will blame for not having mentioned earlier that Randy has a ton of candy, one kind of which is my absolute favorite in the world, and he gave me the whole bag.

The greatest candy made by humans is the Atkinson's Chick-O-Stick. It is peanut buttery and coconutty, kind of like the inside of a butterfinger but much better. I saw some last summer at Mabel's fabric store or something like that; I thought they didn't make them any more. I bought two. I ate one and gave the other to muddy, with whom JV and I went out that evening. Anyway, these ones that Randy had were bite-size Chick-O-Sticks. You will have to try to imagine my shock and delight, but to make it easier for you, imagine Scott Peterson, instead of the death sentence, received Catalina. But it's hard to jump up and down when somebody's having a bad day like that.

When I was a kid and my mother read us bedtime stories, one of those was the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. There were seven books, I seem to recall. My attention span wouldn't allow me to maintain interest in the whose series, not even the whole first book, but I do remember a couple of things.
1) There's a land where it's always cold and a lion named Aslan that the evil witch is scared of.
2) The kids in the book eat a thing called "Turkish delight" which sounded like about the best thing a person could ever eat, even though it was never clear exactly what that was. At this point in my life, having tried a fair amount of the world's treats, I think if Turkish delight had been just like a Chick-O-Stick, the story, and they way we felt about this mystery confection, would have made perfect sense, and be none the less magical.

Thanks, Randy, and thanks Atkinson's, for the best damn candy there is.

Torrent Portal - BitTorrent File Download Site

Yes, I'm finally getting off my ass and doing bittorrent.

No thanks.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories Photos - Reuters

I wonder what it must be like to do this many times every day in ice skating practice.

Yahoo! News - Sports Photos - Reuters

"pope's hat" chip

Pope Hat Chip - You've got to see it to believe.....

there's a song.

Do you like big 'uns?

NSFW

dance, monkeys, dance

yikes

muddy doing yard work

Jeniuses love Hannity

the mailbag at Sean Hannity Is A Moron.com

Thanks to Hitler and Castro, we have liberals in America. Liberals in denial because they say they dont agree with these dictators among others (Hussien). War is inevitable. No war, no peace. Know war, Know peace. HIPPIES SUCK!!!! GET A JOB YOU STANK
A@$% LUMPS OF WORTHLESS COAL. LEAVE AMERICA IF IT IS SO BAD. WAIT YOU ARE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF AMERICA'S FREEDOMS YET YOU STILL HATE. YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WRONG AND ALWAYS WILL BE WRONG. PAVE THE WHALES!!!!!



FROM: "Roy"
SUBJECT: Hannity needs help

YOU SUCK CLINTON'S DICK!
you wimps couldn't find it though...
those 10 assholes you call presidential
candidates are commie lap dogs who
Fidel wouldn't even allow clean toilets
in Havana...

but this country has already REJECTED
YOU IDIOTS...so take a one way flight
to NORTH KOREA ..you'll love kissing
their asses..

signed.. 40 yr survivor of left-winged bullshit


That is a couple of well-informed, well-composed emails. And there are many more where they came from. Go right wing!

moral bankruptcy

"It's enough to make you wonder if there's anything republicans can do that would alienate their rank-and-file."
WorkingForChange-This Modern World: Moral bankruptcy

WorkingForChange-Fiore presents: Never again... again

still enthused about war? or do you hate America?

2 Years After Invasion, Poll Data Mixed (washingtonpost.com)

funny/scary

Whiskey Bar: Scenes From the Cultural Revolution

jesus swimming

that's pretty much it.

The Good Wife's Guide

Does this still apply? If so, marriage is going to be awesome.

The Good Wife's Guide

ABC News: Most End-of-Life Cases Avoid Courtrooms: "'There are an estimated 4,000 deaths each day where there's a conscious decision to limit treatment in some way,' said Dr. Ron Cranford, professor of neurology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis."

U.S. gas prices hit record level

$2.10 a gallon

The New York Times > Washington > Congress Passes and Bush Signs Legislation on Schiavo Case

Sunday

Chocolate Deities: Chocolate Gods and Goddesses

Leisure Town

weird

captions

funny

Things Republicans Believe

a conservative list. from here


1. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is a solid defense policy

2. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

3. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

4. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s and John Kerry did in the 1970s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

5. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

6. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

7. Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

8. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

9. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

10. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

11. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

12. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

13. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

Well, spring break was relaxing. My brother at UT (the REAL UT, University of Tennessee, Texas sucks) is going on his now. I cleaned my apartment with JV, turns out my carpet is grey. School starts back up tomorrow. I'm sure that after all these days off my dexterity will have gone to hell, so I have to try to keep my hands off what I've done already. The pieces I was making before break were turning out pretty good.

At the hospital today, after two whole days of being over the longest cold I've had for years, I got another motherfuc*ing cold. So now I am sniffling and my throat hurts. Great. I hate working at that damn hospital.

1521

and that's just our guys.
Iraq Coalition Casualties

I am gripped by fear

NSFW

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Lab fireball 'may be black hole'

WSJ.com - Rock's Oldest Joke: Yelling 'Freebird!' In a Crowded Theater

duh

CNN.com - Study: Many virgins take other risks - Mar 18, 2005: "those who pledge abstinence try other sex"

Well gee, Norman, what does that mean? Are they talking about that cyber-sex? Why are you slapping your foreheead, Norman? I'm serious!

the man with balls the size of cats

Chavez Casts Himself as the Anti-Bush (washingtonpost.com)

germania international
embedded music
nazi ebay

It came from the 1971 sears catalog
an overreaction by a person who can't believe the world was so tacky way back then

coincidence

Once every X events, a one-in-a-X event takes place. This has just happened to me.

I told a girl I work with to bring in her master lock and I'd crack it for her, so she left it in my mailbox. Then I showed it to some people I work with and was telling them how you have to find the sticking points and then after that it's pretty easy. I demonstrated what a sticking point is for them and when I did, the damn thing popped open. I'm bad at math, but I do know that the chances of this happening are very slim. Anyone want to calculate those odds?

Next time I would prefer to find a suitcase full of money.

*_update_*

The guy's harvard site that told how to crack master locks is down. Which is we have google cache. So here, as per this page's purpose, which is to make it easy for me to find information, is a cut-and-paste job, before google's cache goes away, too.
Okay, so let's get to the trick already! You'll need to have a lock you already know the combination to in order to practice. It also helps if a friend has a lock that you don't know the combination to (but he does) to verify that you have acquired the necessary skills as you go along.

First, we have to figure out the last number in the combination.
This is pretty simple once you get the hang of it, but can be tricky if you're just starting out. It involves pulling the "U" shaped part, or arm, away from the main body of the lock. Try this: with the lock closed (i.e. locked), pull the arm out as far as it can go. While continuing to pull arm out, try to rotate the dial of the lock. You will notice that the dial will "stick" at a particular position. You can release the arm now (phew!). If you rotate the dial a little bit, and try the same thing over again, you will find that the lock sticks in another place! Now the question is, are there a finite number of places where the dial sticks? [Geoff Menegay writes me that on his older Master Lock, there is only one sticking place, but it slides between two digits (i.e. goes between 23 and 25). In this case, the last number turns out to be the number in the middle (i.e. 24). Thanks Geoff!]


There are only twelve sticking points.
The reason that we care about the sticking points is that one of the points is the last number in the combination! Confirm this for yourself, since you already know the last number of the lock in front of you. The lock will stick on the last number. Okay, now the question is how to single out the last number from all of the "fakes" that Master Lock has put there to try to trick us. There are basically two types of sticking points, ones that stick ON a mark and those that stick BETWEEN marks on the dial. The distinction is crucial, so you should practice a little bit now identifying and contrasting the two types. Once you've learned how to distinguish the two types, you can reduce the number of possible last numbers from twelve to five!

All seven of the points that stick BETWEEN marks are FAKE.
So, this leaves us with five points left. Four of the five numbers that the dial sticks ON have the same one's digit place. For example, the numbers 5, 15, 25, and 35 all have the same one's digit.


The SAME ONE'S DIGIT sticking points that stick ON a mark are FAKE.
That leaves us with just one sticking point, and thus we have found the last number in the combination! Try this out for yourself on your lock. After you figure it out, practice this on a friend's lock that you don't know the combination to (but that he does) and see if you can get the last digit right. Once you master this skill, give yourself a pat on the back! We're done with the challenging part (hurray!).


After we have the last number, we get the first two numbers with a little math and a lot of brute force.
Once we know the last number, there are only ten possibilities for the first number and ten possibilities for the second number, for a total of one hundred possible combinations. This might seem like a lot, but compared to the theoretical sixty-four thousand possibilities we've made a lot of progress. So, what are the possible values for the first and second numbers?

The key to the first and second numbers is the modulus mathematical operator.
Whoa there, don't let the name of that scare you away! The modulus operator is just dividing one number by another and the remainder is the modulus. Anyone can do this, and you probably had to take remainders and such in grade school. The modulus operator isn't any different, it just has a fancy name.


Some examples and notation of the modulus operator.
Notation: (a%b)=c

Translation: c is the remainder of a divided by b

Examples: (35%4)=3; (2%4)=2; (5%4)=1; (16%4)=0. Got it? Good.


The first number modulus 4 is the same as the last number modulus 4.
For example, let the last number of the lock be 33. Then (33%4)=1, so we know that (first number%4)=1 as well. This means that the only possible values for the first number are: 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29, 33, and 37. Note that there are only ten possibilities. This is because dial only has 40 marks, and by enforcing the modulus operator we essentially are dividing the possibilities by 4. Try this out on your own lock, and verify that the (first number%4)=(last number%4).


The second number modulus 4 is the last number modulus 4 plus or minus 2.
If the last number modulus 4 is 0, then the second number modulus 4 is 2, and vice versa. If the last number modulus 4 is 1, then the second number modulus 4 is 3, and vice versa. Let's continue our example above, with the last number equal to 33. (33%4)=1, so the second number modulus 4 is equal to 3. This means that the possible values for the second number are 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, 31, 35, and 39. Again note that there are only ten possibilities. Try this out on your own lock, and verify that the (second number%4)=(last number%4)+-2.


Going through the one hundred possibilities takes a little time, and a little effort not to forget where you are in the sequence of possibilities.
The exact sequence or order of possibilities that you try out is really a matter of self preference. What ever is easiest for you is what will work best. On average, you will have to go through 50 possibilities before you figure the combination out, regardless of the sequence you choose. I personally like to go in ascending order with the first number varying the fastest. In our example above with the last number equal to 33, my sequence would look like {1-3-33, 5-3-33, 9-3-33, ..., 1-7-33, ..., 1-11-33, ..., 37-39-33}.


How quickly you can crack a lock depends on how quickly you can go through about fifty combinations.
Personally, it takes me about five to ten minutes to crack a lock. I don't really time myself or anything, but that is about how long it takes on average. I have had a combination that opened on the first couple of tries, and ones that were at the very end of my sequence. Some times you just get lucky. As a final drill, try to figure out your friend's combination. Once that lock arm slides open (at least for me), it's a rush.


One quick word of wisdom.
Getting the last number right is crucial to this whole process. If you have the wrong last number the rest of your time will be wasted. So take your time here and be confident. Sometimes rechecking once or twice isn't a bad idea, and it will save you a lot of time in the long run. Also along those lines, watch out for old locks that have been beaten up a little bit. Sometimes the dial can be shifted a little, so sticking points between marks appear to stick on the marks and vice versa. There should always be more between sticking points though, so this should be a clue if a shift has taken place.


Notes on applicability of this trick.
This method only works on Master Lock combination locks as far as I know. I would guess that other brands of locks work in the same way, but I do not claim to be able to crack them.


Quick Summary (a real Example)
If you can follow this wrap-up, you should be well on your way:

The 12 Sticking Points of my lock were found to be:

Between two digits: 1.5, 8.5, 11.5, 18.5, 21.5, 28.5, 38.5

On a digit: 5, 15, 25, 32, 35

-> Last Number = 32

-> Possible First Numbers: 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36

-> Possible Second Numbers: 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, 30, 34, 38

(turns out my combination is: 36-18-32)

DubyaSpeak.com : Fresh Dubya

interesting

KillHim.Nu

Saturday

is this real?

Russian Information Agency Novosti

You're the Man Now Dog!

even better

print at work:
Two Years Later, Iraq War Drains Military (washingtonpost.com)

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight | Secret US plans for Iraq's oil

13 things that do not make sense

New Scientist

A friend writes in, email literally cut and pasted with no changes, boldface mine.

These guys have been sending newsletters on this subject every other day for at least 3 weeks:

This CONSERVATIVE ALERT is a special message for [XXXXXXX] from RightMarch.com:

A word from Terri Schiavo's father:

"Our family has asked Randall Terry and his staff to once again coordinate the efforts to rescue Terri from the clutches of death by judicial homicide. We ask you to help my daughter, Terri, by following Randall's lead, and cooperating with and supporting the efforts we have asked him to undertake. We thank you with all our hearts for your concern for our daughter, and for your help in trying to save her."

-- Bob Schindler, Father of Terri Schindler-Schiavo

Please click here to give an emergency donation to support this activism now:
https://secure.cartlight.com/merchant/rightmarch/?afid=alerts-tj

Dear Friend,

It is unthinkable... like some dark scenario in a horror movie... but true.
An innocent, disabled woman is now being starved to death. Her food and water were suspended on Friday afternoon.

But we still have time to save Terri, if we work together, and work quickly.

Read this closely, and do whatever is in your power to do. We will leave the outcome in the hands of Almighty God.

1) Call your US Senators and Representative. The US Congress has stepped in to this fight. The Senate and the House originally passed different bills; but they JUST announced that they have agreed on the language for ONE bill.

Call them, and urge them to show bi-partisan support for this legislation. Many of us have worked for years to get conservative leaders in congress. We did this so they could deliver results, not rhetoric! We need them to honor their pro-family commitments, and save Terri now!

Click here to call your Congressman and Senators now:

http://capwiz.com/sicminc/callalert/index.tt?alertid=7260546

Click here to send an e-mail to your Congressman & Senators now:

http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=7260626&type=CO

2) Come to Florida. We need people to come to Tallahassee (Florida's state capital) to beg Governor Bush and the Florida legislature to intervene now to save Terri's life.

We need EVERY SINGLE PERSON that can come to Tallahassee, come down THIS COMING WEEK. The Society for Truth and Justice, along with RightMarch.com, will be leading the charge to demand that the Florida legislature pass vital legislation that will SAVE TERRY SCHIAVO'S LIFE. Starting on Sunday night (3/20) through Wednesday night, we will be holding Rallies and Training Sessions on how to lobby the legislature; then we will be holding protests and lobbying Governor Bush on Monday, and lobbying the Florida legislators while they are in session on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

We have a block of rooms reserved for each night at the Holiday Inn Select at 316 W. Tennessee St. in Tallahassee, near the Legislature (phone 850-222-9555 to reserve your room NOW, before they're all taken). If we run out of rooms, we'll post more hotels shortly.

We will have an around the clock vigil at Governor Bush's mansion, urging him to use his executive powers to take Terri into custody. As the governor, he swore an oath to uphold the Florida Constitution, which guarantees the right to life of disabled people. He has been told by many lawyers and legal scholars that he has the right, authority, and the duty to use his power to save her. The question is whether or not he has the will to do so.

We will also be pleading with State Senators and Assemblymen to pass the bill here in Florida that would save Terri's life. The Florida House has the votes to pass a bill, the Florida Senate is close. We must "inspire" them to do the right thing. Some politicians "see the light" after they feel the heat. They will see us in the halls, in their offices, outside their doors...we will be everywhere we can be, urging them to act on Terri's behalf.

We have all next week to accomplish our goal. Please remember, in October of 2003, Terri's food was withheld for 6 days before the legislature and the Governor intervened. Terri suffered no ill effects; she still says infantile words and tries to talk, she still laughs and cries, she still interacts with her family. We have all next week.

You might say, "I am not a Florida resident; so what do Florida politicians care what I think?" First of all, I am a Florida resident. And I am inviting you here to help in this life and death struggle. Second of all, what happens in Florida will effect you in your state. The proponents of euthanasia will use Terri's murder as a benchmark to achieve their godless agenda in your state. You have a stake in what happens here, so you have a right to have your voice be heard! Thirdly, this case has the attention of the world; they are watching to see if we will defend this innocent woman, or just sit back and let her die a horrific death.

3) Call the Florida Senators. Beginning Monday morning, they need to have their phones ring off the hook continually. E-mailing is good, but calling and faxing is much better. It really gets their attention.

We have provided information below on nine of the key Senators we need to reach. If 3 of these Senators change their vote, we will win this fight here in Tallahassee. And remember, at least 4 of them were with Terri in 2003. We need to get them back! Please call, fax and e-mail them as soon as you can on Monday, and for the entire week.

To call or fax these Senators, scroll down to the bottom of this e-mail. To e-mail all of the key state Senators at once, click here:

http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=7260671&type=CU

4) Call Governor Bush at 850-488-4441 or fax him at 850-487-0801. He still has the authority to intervene. He needs to know that people all over the country support him in any effort he takes to save Terri's life. It is not enough for him to say kind words about Terri; he must use his authority to save her. You can also send him a message at http://capwiz.com/sicminc/mail/?id=9483&type=GV&state=FL .

5) Give as generous a gift as you can in this historic battle to save Terri's life. We have to pay for meeting rooms, for a bus, for food, press releases, and a host of other items needed to create a firestorm of protest and outrage on Terri's behalf. The buses alone are $1000 each for each day.

Please click here to give an emergency donation to support this activism now:
https://secure.cartlight.com/merchant/rightmarch/?afid=alerts-tj

Anything you can give is a huge help, and is desperately needed. Please give whatever you can, as a show of support for this battle for Terri's life.

Friend, every action we can take on Terri's behalf is worth the effort. A nation is judged by how it treats its weakest and most defenseless members. Each of us needs to love Terri, as we love ourselves. That means we do all we can to save her life.

I hope to hear from you, and I hope to see you in Tallahassee.

Please keep Terri and her family in your prayers, as well as all of us who are fighting for her life. These are times that try men's souls. May God have mercy on all of us.

Sincerely,


Randall Terry, President
Society for Truth and Justice

Green.
Veronica Zemanova
not safe for work

ice tower falls

News-Miner - Past News

christian goodness now fighting evil in IMAX theaters

The New York Times > National > A New Screen Test for Imax: It's the Bible vs. the Volcano

Peace-Out

get out of the military

crazy eye candy

NID GALLERY

weed bikini

SPACE.com -- Best Hubble Space Telescope Images

when the cops say drop the knife, drop the knife.

breakdancing transformers

Abstract Appeal -- by Matt Conigliaro

"As a Florida law blogger, I have created this page to help people understand the legal circumstances surrounding the Terri Schiavo saga. In my view, there continues to be a need for an objective look at the matter. There is an unbelievable amount of misinformation being circulated."

MSNBC - Study: Homeless, unemployed favor malt liquor

The Seven Dwarfs of Auschwitz

Friday

MSNBC - Schiavo feeding tube removed: "'Right now, murder is being committed against a defenseless American citizen in Florida,' House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas said in an earlier statement."

That almost makes it seem like he isn't the same guy that implied god was responsible for that tsunami. Too bad my memory works or I might think he was a human being, complete with feelings.

How are we to make heads or tails of this contentious issue when the news people prefer to have us hip-deep in hyperbole, grabbing for straws of their making in the endless news cycle? Come to think of it, how responsible is the media circus for the attention she's getting, and for her continuing silent suffering that no one can even comprehend?

It is a widely known fact that life is a meaningless existential hell. There is really no disputing this, philosophically, that I know of. There's not even a competing philosphy that is equally viable. It is easy to understand that most people are reluctant to admit or acknowledge that this is the case. Lots of people prefer the myth of meaning and "choose to be chosen" by a god of their own imagining to get them through the day without going crazy. In my opinion it takes a braver soul to look into the heart of oblivion and come to terms with it than to rely on a group hallucination that everyone involved (for some reason) decides is benevolent. If I'm not mistaken, the lesson Buddhists are after amounts to "Yeah, it's all meaningless. Everything amounts to so much noise. So now that you know this, cheer up." I get it and so do all of you. Seeking meaning is silly, futile, and normal.

So we've got this woman who's brain dead in a persistent vegetative state, and some people who think she ought to be kept there indefinitely and some who want her to be able to die, already. Both sides consider themselves merciful, especially moreso than those on the other side, and they can all tell you why with no trouble at all, and feel completely justified in their reasoning. What this tells us is there is a difference in the basic makeup of these people's belief systems. But we already knew that.

When people want to say when other people will die, as in the death sentence, I understand that concept, though I disagree with it. If you want to follow the ten commandments so closely, fucking do it, and don't kill people. Call me old-fashioned, but there's also something about "blessed are the merciful" that seems not to include electrocution.

But when these same people also say that other people shouldn't be able to say when babies are allowed to be made out of their own bodies, that's stupid. Here's what we know. Females' bodies make babies in the whole wide animal kingdom. It's not proven that babies are made by Jesus or his daddy, nor any combination of some abstract concept of those two in collusion with the holy ghost. So why should the "holy" people who Jesus and his daddy sent here, be in charge of when momma's body does or doesn't squirt out a pleasant-looking, gurgling baby? So there's another incongruity.

Euthanasia, mercy killing, is an important issue with less miles on it than either of these former two. Neocons hate this issue because it strikes at the heart of the weakness of the myth of creation by intelligent design. Which is that it is, physically, demonstrably absurd and impossible hokum, and metaphysically, a complete disappointment. In spite of this, these deranged folks still insist that their faith compels them to tell everybody else how to live, whom to kill, and whom to keep on life support until hallelujahville swoops down and yanks her soul away.

The philosophy of theism: The universe and everything in it is too complicated to just "be", therefore it must have been created by a "god" that just "is". No wonder there's a disconnect that people have to work pretty hard to ignore. Ah, sweet denial. The nicotine of the soul. In case you didn't know, the two competing worldviews are duking it out on a daily basis on the backs of cars and trucks. This is getting silly.

Extemely silly.

The entire bible-jacking neocon movement is driven by a righteous soundbite culture, and there's no escaping the nuances of this issue. "Hey hey, ho ho, euthanasia's got to go" misses the point, and that's all you've got outside a mandate for life at any cost of pain and suffering. And when serious people sit down to seriously discuss serious issues, bullshit has to go out the window. And that is why in a serious dialougue, "god", the idea, isn't going to have any effect on Terri Schiavo living or dying. If god wanted to intercede, maybe he'd wake her ass up. It looks to me like he wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire. Pointing that out gives me a guilty sort of pleasure. When you're right, you might as well enjoy it.

Where do you fall on the issue? I think they ought to let her die. Number one, I know it's not any of my business. Number two, if it was me lying there I wouldn't want to be a burden, and my death could mabe even be a lesson in how people should perceive "mercy". Let's start acting like we're all responsible for each other's well-being around here.

the 30 not hottest things you can say to a naked woman

defective yeti

back in town?

JV and I went to Eau Claire yesterday to do some wedding planning. We delivered some bridesmaid dresses to some people and shopped for wedding cake. And I had to try on clothes but now the worst is over. Unless you count being married. Sorry, I know I'm not supposed to joke about it until it happens.

The weather is pretty bad, and so are the roads. Here's the conditions map from Wisconsin DOT:
Image hosted by TinyPic.com

The roads were bad, but I am no ordinary driver. I laugh in the face of danger. Beer helps.

Hence we are "still in Wisconsin", which means I had to call in for work tomorrow. "Damn". What I am not doing is cleaning my apt. and accidentally finding my high school diploma, which it turns out says that I graduated ten years ago today. Holy crap am I one old dude. But it has been a really incredible ten years. I hope the next ten is as exciting. So it turns out that tonight winds up provoking me to think about what's changed between then and now. I'm still seeing a girl named Jennifer, so that's the same. But other than that, everything is pretty different. I guess, as cheesy as it is, I'd like to give thanks to everyone I know for being so nice to me. I've been very fortunate this last decade.

Rania is out of the hospital and feeling better! She got a cold in there (not a surprise, nosocomial illnesses are one of the things that hospital does best), but the old ticker is still ticking. Which takes precedence. Welcome home Rania!

I got that guy's junk from Ebay. The George Wallace coin is really cool and I am wearing the spoon ring. The Civil war bullet is cool too. The little bell still rings and sounds nice. So I'm going to use it to let JV know when I'm ready for my breakfast in bed. Othern than that, it's pretty much rusty junk. Except for the druther's fifty cent token, which is priceless.

Sorry no links. Not in the mood.

nature sucks

CNN.com - Senate votes for ANWR oil drilling - Mar 16, 2005

Sexy Screen Saver?

channelcincinnati.com - News - Sexy Screen Saver Lands Police Officer In Hot Water

More like tittillated children.

hilarious

Amazon.com: About MusicalGenius: Reviews

GoogleX

Thursday

Here's Gene Scott

Wednesday

Top 100 tv themes from
retroCRUSH: The World's Finest Pop Culture Site

As I begin this post, a helicopter flies directly overhead.

This morning I woke up at seven, had coffee, and went to Twin City Supply to buy a vernier caliper. I accidentally crumpled the corner of mine at school so I need a new one to measure the insides of slots. They didn't have a good one so they had to order one. Forty bucks, but what can you do?

Then I stopped by my friend's house and he was a crabby ******* about me coming over without calling. I might be able to understand this, but the first thing I said when I got there was "Hey, sorry to just drop in but I don't have a cell phone, wanted to see if you want to go get a burrito." After this, he acts like I'm ambushing him, making him get a burrito against his will or something, and then I offer to just leave so he can go back to watching TV. Which he doesn't want to do, but later I find out he doesn't want to shut the **** up about me just showing up at his **** house. Well, now the ****** isn't going to have to deal with me stopping by for a while, because I'm done getting yelled at for a while. What a *****. I mean, I'm making every effort to be polite and the guy's just a *******. We got tacos at chipotle, where I got the hot salsa. Which came back to haunt me later in a big way. Yow.

Across the street there was a black guy dresesd as a leprechaun holding a sign for seventy percent off sale at a jeweler who was going out of business. So we checked that out and the good stuff wasn't there for sale. Just the ugly, gawdy stuff.

On my way to home depot my whiny friend and I got in a little bit of a race on Lake street. This city is full of roads that you just want to haul ass on. They're asking for it, I swear. So we're doing about sixty in a thrity and I'm going to ease off and get behind my friend who's going to show me how to get to home depot, and I can't get behind him because h'es slowing down too fast. I'm thinking there must be a reason for this and I look up and sure enough, a cop sitting right in his car waiting for a couple of jackasses like us. So we slowed down (somehow) enough not to get ticketed, harassed, arrested, and sodomized, he showed me where to turn, and I waved goodbye to my whiny friend.

Then I went to home depot to see if they had a caliper that might save me some money and time. I wanted a digital one but the only digital ones anybody has have really shitty non-pointy inside measuring things, so I got out of there.

Across the parking lot is Costco, so I went there. I've always wondered what they have in there. The guy at the door stopped me from going in because I don't have a membership. He told me (in a loud, hateful voice) if I want in I have to go to the membership counter. I did not know this. So I passed the membership counter and walked in through the out-lane of cash register traffic. It's not that I'm trying to scheme some great bargains without paying, but it makes me mad when people treat me like a thief or something when I didn't do anything to deserve that. Maybe I have more class than they do, but I think you ought to let people walk around like the free people they are until they give you a reason to do otherwise. So I checked out costco. It was the most depressing experience I've had in the last month, easily. That place is floor to ceiling low prices, granted. They have a store brand, Kirkland, which is on paper towels, bath tissue, every disposable item you can think of, and most of the food. Which, I guess, in a way, is disposable, too. They sell kirkland chicken breasts for three something a pound, really cheap, but the breasts look kind of grey. And there's no doubt in my mind that these are the chickens that get shot into cages by the scary bionic chicken cannon. They had really big fillets of cheap salmon right next to that, and when you read the label it says "artificially colored". Which means the salmon was grey too, before they colored it. Great. Grey food, anyone? It was very quiet there and no one looked at each other in the eyes. Once I'd had enough of the low prices, I decided to go to a grocery store with un-grey food.

At hennepin and twenty-fourth right now there is an apartment on display. Somebody crashed their car into the corner of a storefront and the entire corner of the building came down. There was an apartment above that storefront, and now that the walls are gone, you can see it. Art still hangs on the wall, the bedroom door, marked "private", is open inward, and a beatles poster hangs in an adjacent room. The walls are a pink color, a closet door is open, clothes hanging in an orderly fashion inside. Some shoes were off to one side. It was easy to see everything in the room because even though the apartment was on the second floor, the floor curled downward. When it happened no one was hurt and the bed was lying outside on the sidewalk. What a mess. That lifted my spirits after the tragedy of costco.

After grocery shopping, I went to an oriental grocery store to get rice. Jasmine rice is dirt cheap there unlike american grocery stores where it's a novelty. I made dinner for JV and I and it turned out just OK. I didn't really have a plan. Flavor good, texture blah. Cabbage (not red, d'oh!), four chilis, hoisin sauce, jack daniel's (oh, yeah), sesame oil, steak, butter, ginger, garlic with rice.

I dipped strawberries (which are 2$ a pound in every grocery store in the city right now) in chocolate and also a couple of peeps, which I remember her liking from last easter. So dessert was definitely the strong point. Do I sound like a homemaker or what?

She brought me a present, a master lock to try the thing out on that was posted here a few days ago. I followed the instructions and it opened right up. Pretty cool stuff.

tuck-in media?

Good writing, like good music or good movies, good media, to make a long story short (too late), delivers disproportionate bandwidth.

To clarify, good writing is good because it packs more information into the same amount of words than bad writing. Contrast Orwell's(1) "1984" with Michael Crichton's, well, take your pick. (I wonder sometimes if when I'm writing these little rants out if I should be more specific in moments like these(2), like give lengthy citations for fairness's sake. But I don't think I have to here. Crichton is a lowest-common-denominator-finder. A literary depth gauge.)

Good music transcends its medium a little, too, maybe by way of making synesthesia accessible (velvet underground, dandy warhols), maybe by effective metaphysical imagery, (radiohead).

Good video, also, has more information in it than bad video. Raging bull has moments in it where nothing happens. So do other movies, like ghost world. Raging bull gets it right by framing the silence with dark emotion, which is why it's high drama and not just another flop art film.

But to get to my main point, there are exceptions, just like in any system, to this rule. Sometimes I want something large to look at that says very little, so I will put on the dancing outlaw video, or Billy Madison, something that makes a lot of noise perceptually, while delivering very little substance. It's a way to fill up the senses and leave a lot of empty space for the subconscious to relax in. "Tuck-in media", as I'll call it, (not that I expect it to catch on, my vanity doesn't travel in that direction) is like that for a lot of people I talk to and I've never read anything about it so I thought I'd just make a record of it.


(1) who has this to contribute on the subject:"For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity." I enthusiatically concur. Crichton is a media borg I liken to "painter of light" flavor-of-the-generation Thomas Kinkade; whereas Orwell got drunk, penniless, and thrown in jail for research. Did you ever read "down and out in Paris and London"? Point, set, match.

(2) What do you think? Please reference footnote # in your comment. The comments can be confusing and it will be harder to accidentally threadjack if done properly.

Never let these men perform music in your kitchen.
MilkandCookies - Hurra Torpedo: Total Eclipse of the Heart

Yay

Ishotmyself!!! with a camera. Your mouse is going to hate me for this. You, however...

NSFW

animal versus buddy rich

/quicktime

sad

Ananova - Man with two penises loses wife

cool animation

John Coltrane music video
Giant Steps by Michal Levy

Center for Inquiry Metro New York - Natalie Angier lecture

"raising children with secular values in a religious world"

I'm going to make a non-joke this weekend, as per the instructions of mimi smartypants. That's kind of like fight club. We have homework. But instead of getting beat up, it's more mimi-appropriate.

The Onion | Neverland Ranch Investigators Discover Corpse Of Real Michael Jackson

Tuesday

Delivery

a short movie by Till Nowak

smile

collapsing bubbles have hot plasma core�-�Find could boost hopes for bubble-driven desktop fusion.

does anyone NOT know this?

Critical thinking web

slate sucks, but this is good.
The 91-Pound Acid Trip - The numbers touted by the government in its big LSD bust just don't add up. By Ryan Grim

bridge

Durbster.co.uk

justice

metafilter beats fark
Fairvue Central >> Bloggies >> Fourth Annual Weblog Awards

today's smile

news @ nature.com�-�Collapsing bubbles have hot plasma core�-�Find could boost hopes for bubble-driven desktop fusion.

holy fucking shit

I think it's actually out.

'Ramadi Madness': Scene by scene

I love bourbon. It's like America in a bottle.

Welcome to Kentucky Distillers' Association

Image hosted by TinyPic.com

Angstbabe Gallery - Abstract/Figure Landscape

more nsfw but technically-qualify-as-art-not-that-you'd-ever-be-able-to-convince-the -brainwashed-people-in-charge-photos. (There are an awful lot of those, aren't there?) It will be nice when there are more of us than there are of them, and we can finally make some sense of "decency".

photos

I have saved more pictures from this site than I have from any other site in a long time. For the art. Seriously. You may find them, as I did, very captionable.

Novel With The Pictures By A.Arni

of course they're not safe for work. but what is?

10,000

When I clicked on this page the counter said 9,999, which means I'm about to hit ten thousand page views, minus my own for about the last six thousand. Which is pretty cool.

Thanks, everybody, for checking in.

it's called PROPAGANDA

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News

article

are you shitting me?

Anybody notice how blogger was completely down for the last day and a half? I did!

The clock is ticking till I'm on a decent server under a new domain, so it won't be long till the umbilical cord is severed between me and stupid blogspot. Believe me, I'll let you know when that happens. If this stupid thing is working tonight I'll post the stuff I found yesterday.

Yesterday JV and I had a busy day running errands. Thanks to Roger Dawson, negotiating expert, I feneigled (sp?) a free car wash from the saturn dealership, we had The Best Pancake at Maria's (corn pancake with cotija cheese) on Franklin Ave., and then we painted what will soon be her bedroom. The walls in my apartment are um, not exactly straight, flat, or anything else normally associated with walls, so it was a challenge. But it will be nice to have them done. They're a color that looks like it will hide imperfections, of which the walls have many. We also returned the monitor JV gave me from Best Buy (which, while we're dishing out superlatives, is also the home of the worst merchandise) and swapped it out with one of its brothers. There was a pixel that was acting up. For four hundred bucks there should be zero pixels that act up, and anyone who took basic math knows that the difference between zero and one is more drastic than what one thinks of when "just one tiny pixel" is mentioned.

So I'm looking forward to ditching this stupid publishing tool in favor of one that functions.

Monday

sod.farm

Leon's sod farm

Napoleon Dynamite Soundboard

lame

Incorrect Music Siftings

realaudio? join the human race.

repost

365 Days Project

awesome.

an audio goldmine, complete with children's music of the 40s and 50s. A plethora of obscurities that defy taxonomy.

Basic Hip Digital Oddio

Sunday

repost?

SHAKA LAKA
NSFW

ftv girls
NSFW

cool

Cognitive Daily

a new cognitive psychology article every day

this is no way to win a war on terror

Yahoo! News - General: Boy Was Among Abu Ghraib Inmates: "A boy no older than 11 was among the children held by the Army at Iraq"

boo.

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | 'Ghosts' scare off Malawi leader

Phil Bradley: Finding what you need with the best search engines

Minnesota's Roadside Architecture

Saturday

worst lindsey lohan collage to date?

christian offers to buy wife

Businessman Will Pay $1 Million to Keep Terri Schiavo Alive

lightning

haircut

ROCKWISDOM.COM: "I'm the King of Rock, there is none higher, sucker MC's should call me sire. - Run DMC, King Of Rock"

my landlord wrote this

August Berkshire: First Amendment should trump Ten Commandments

stupid

Ikea criticized for male-only furniture assembly guides - Mar. 10, 2005

Bush/Cheney bumper sticker evokes road rage

one more republican pulls head out of ass

Redstate || Collaborative Republicanism for the Masses
on the bankruptcy bill

Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career

1.

You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2.

You have to get noticed to get hired.
3.

It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
4.

No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
5.

Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
6.

Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
7.

Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
8.

If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
9.

If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
10.

It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

from here

This is what's outside my window right now. I blame the equipment for my inability to get a good shot of how pretty the sky is.

Friday

Chris Barr Is Available On Thursday

""Chris Barr is Available on Thursday" is a collaborative live art and documentary project. Events, actions, ideas, situations, etc. will be scheduled by the public for Chris every Thursday for the months March and April."

wow.

Gmacker, Map It

"Map it is a mozilla Firefox extension that allows you to find directions from google maps based on publicly listed phone numbers."

Master Lock Combination Cracking

watermelon

Not safe for work. I have so many questions about this picture. Where is it that this happens? Am I going to accidentally be staying at a motel somewhere and walk out my door to fill the ice bucket and see this guy, or someone like him? Who is taking this picture and what is their relationship to the subject? What is going through the mind of the subject? It looks like probably not a lot is capable of going through his mind, but you never can tell.

good lookin'

check out this definition: UrbanDictionary.com/good lookin'

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who hasn't heard this spoken as a normal expression.

Celebrity rants

The Mike Tyson one is good.

That apocalypse article was good. Sometimes at that website, though, "findarticles.com", the sentences get garbled. I don't know how it happens, but you're reading and all of a sudden there's a sentence that looks like about another sentence and a half is missing from the middle of it. Anyway, my favorite short description of the left behind series:

primitive revenge fantasy

("Idiotic hallucination of the cow states" is pretty good as a descriptor, but it's of something else.)

lunch break at mefi:

Porn Titles Based on Real Movies [NSFW]

THE APOCALYPSE BE TELEVISED: Armageddon in an age of entertainment By Gene Lyons

Parthenon Graphics Timelines

This is awesome.

Lots of historical information arranged graphically. There will be a lot of bets settled at this website.

Google's Cookie and Hacking Google Print

Greg Duffy [dot] com

Google's revenge

child prodigies

an essay about

Forbes.com: Top Corporate Hate Web Sites

cool!

interactive human body

now muddy can play with a body besides his own

gallery of albinos

Former Korn Guitarist Washes Away His Anger In Jordan River

"You know when you get angry and it builds up? I felt like hurting someone before, now I feel like hugging people," said Welch.

He could have chilled out without an elaborate religious ritual, but whatever. I still think god hates KORN, which gives us something in common.

Thursday

This is kind of dumb, but the last description on th page is right. Tourrette's guy's son does get grounded for the most awesome reason ever.
Welcome to tourettesguy

thanks muddy

click here

censored! by me

BLOGGER SUCKS

The stupid thing hasn't been working worth a shit and I'm fed up.

Anyone want to build me a simple website? I don't need fancy. I can pay. Newman? Anybody?

Take away somebody's favorite compulsion and they don't react positively. Ask a smoker.

Wednesday

a monkey picks on tigers

video

silly

very silly

most boring thing ever

Jesus Craft

cool picture

c h r o m a s i a / 8 March, 2005 / tomorrow is another day

print at school

Why don't they listen to us? speaking to the working class.
in Dissent Magazine - Winter 2005

magazine

The new Atlantic monthly is here, and it's got a must-read article about talk radio called "HOST" by David Foster Wallace. With, you guessed it, thousands of delightful footnotes.
It takes a lot of ideas I've seen in many different places and condenses them (talk radio is conducive to ideological reductionism, talk radio is primarily about money, not rhetoric, the reason Rush and "Dr." Laura failed on TV is because their audiences didn't compute the way they looked after so much time spent with their fantasies and the reassuring voices, and that the voices themselves can be sped up using powerful computers, to save airtime). Of course, I'm only about halfway through it, so it may turnout to be original yet.

The above-listed stray facts are well known to people who love to read about the mediascape, but who has time, so this article is sure to make a big splash. And Wallace is a great writer anyway.

Tuesday

a really cool ebay auction

complete with George Wallace campaign coin, and something related to Druther's restaurant
eBay item 3963039672 (Ends Mar-14-05 05:41:40 PST) - DADS METAL DETECTOR FINDS LAST 30 YEARS

joel writes in


People will try to make a buck off of anything.


Tired of sleeping? Want to stare into the dark heart of evil? Well this will help.

This is a horrific documentary npr put together about the jonestown massacre. You can listen to it online. It is super duper fucked up. You know those creepy televangelists? Imagine if they went that extra step and started founding their own countries and killing people.


I'm listening to it right now. It's very scary. And disgusting. Not the thing to listen to over dinner. Quite compelling, though.