IMAGINARY HOUSEMATE: Hello. How was your day?
ME: This is how it was:
“La de da…. what a nice day. A bit busy, but not bad. I don’t really want to go to this translation meeting, but since it’s Thursday I guess I’d better. 1:15… I’ll just walk on over to the SBS building and get set up early. Okay. here I am. Get this computer cranked up, figure out how to make the computer display on the big screen…. all right, it’s 1:30, time for the research assistants to show up…. let’s just check the time here on the ol’ computer… it’s um, 1:32… Wednesday… AAAAAA! It’s not Thursday! It’s WEDNESDAY! Class started 20 minutes ago! AAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH! @#$%! $#@#! #$@*!
And that’s how my day was. Bless their poor little hearts, the students were all still there. And now, in the interests of mental escape from my apparently buffoonish life, here are some comics from Toothpaste for Dinner.
and there’s this one…
also this next one…
and this is cute…
who could deny the humorousness of the following?
your mom thinks this is cute…
oh, the joy…
and finally…
Those of you not familiar with reddit.com … maybe you’ll be happier if you stay not familiar with it. If you are religious (and do not like being demeaned, belittled, mocked, or screamed at), politically conservative, sensitive to profanity, or not that into tech, it can be unpleasant to read. However, there are also a lot of intelligent, witty folks on reddit, and occasionally one of them spawns something incredible. I consider NOW to be one of those moments. Yesterday someone posted the following challenge:
Seemingly obviously (in hindsight), someone posted “No Pecan’t” as an option. However, that was not the end of the hilarity, by a long shot.
The comment thread for this item is, in my opinion, epic. Yes, I said EPIC. And I’m sure it’s still growing. After the cut, find the highlights, as of this morning. Warning: I’ve included the sweary ones, with the letters tastefully deleted. But children should probably not read this post in its entirety (unless they’re foul-mouthed little b******s). Disclaimer: I don’t necessarily agree with what you’re about to read, but I think you’ll admit the level of humor is as high as in any of David Letterman’s Top Ten lists :D
So tomorrow I get up crazy early, drive to Austin (about 5 1/2 hours), take my oral exam to be a licensed psychologist in Texas, drive back home. Long day. Today I’m trying to make up for weeks of procrastination in studying. My friend Philip (who is on the licensing board) says most people pass. Thanks. This will make me feel much better if I’m one of the few, the proud, the morons who manage to fail.
I really have been mostly dedicated in my studying, though I don’t know how effective. But I stop every so often and browse random websites. And here is some internet stuff:
>:\ Yet another move by a police agencyaway from transparency and accountability.
XD Star torpedoes! Massive, galaxy-sized clusters of stars (whirling, I hope) that rip through space and wreak havoc when they encounter galaxies, etc. So cool! Hubble, you are my homeslice.
:D you know I’m a sucker for a cleverly vandalized sign. Also I like pie.
:/ Five economists who accurately predicted the current crisis (allegedly) have offered their views on the near future. I haven’t read through all the essays, but it seems they do not see a particularly rosy picture.
!!! In the LJ “found objects” community, a Super Lucky User called bo_bailey posted scans of a 1965 book titled (warning: not safe for children.): “The Recently Deflowered Girl.” It is some weird mix between bizarre and hilarious and depressing. It also seems to include some snarky commentary on the sexual culture wars of the 60s, just barely under the surface. Delightful illustrations (these ARE safe for children… more or less), and an approximate PG or PG-13 level of content scariness. A most entertaining read.
Flying out in about 12 hours, so I’m motivated to distract myself from that reality. Here is some of what has distracted me today:
:) – K’Naan, a Canadian rapper who grew up in Somalia, has some choice words for American “gangster” posers:
Where rocket-propelled grenades are fired around you on a daily … a guy bragging on TV talking about how gangster he is? For us, it’s more a source of entertainment. It’s more like a comedy or something we watch. Say, ‘Oh wow, that’s kind of cute of American gangsters.’
:( – War Nerd analyzes the recent Israeli offensive, with his trademark cynicism and with few or no holds (apparently) barred. Bottom line: The Israelis hit the Palestinians during the slowest news days of the year, knowing there would be heavy civilian casualties, but that the news organizations and the American/European public would not get off their a%%es right after Christmas. WN thinks the IDF is likely to have the campaign all wrapped up before Obama takes the oath, later this month, because they can’t count on him rubber-stamping every aggressive action they take, like GWB has.
:) – The Trans-Texas Corridor is (hopefully) dead. This thing reeked of more pork than Sarah Palin’s Bridge to Nowhere. Good riddance.
>:| – The Wall Street Journal just ran a column claiming that frugality is going to prolong our current recession/depression, and implying that this is a horrible thing. Here’s my take on that: Yes, mass frugality will probably prolong our crisis, but I (hesistantly) suggest that this is a good thing. Instead of viewing an economy that requires ever-increasing doses of consumer spending to stay afloat as normal and healthy, I think these are the symptoms of a sick system.
We have demonstrated, through at least half a century, that any attempt to move the system toward a more sustainable model without large-scale economic pain results in no change whatsoever. Consumers and businesses show great solidarity in resisting shifts to the status quo, no matter what evidence or moral arguments are behind them. We have demonstrated that the only thing that will prompt us to change is painful necessity, on par with the Great Depression. Now that the survivors of the Great Depression are mostly not-so-coincidentally dead, we’re wallowing in the same economic sins that brought the wrath of the marketplace down on our heads, back then. So, if the only way we can learn is through punishment, then maybe we need some of that, to save our children or grandchildren from whatever is worse. And there’s always something worse.
Once again, I’m avoiding work. So, I have started to think about New Year’s resolutions. And I avoided doing that by cleaning residual spam out of my email inbox. Then it hit me: Why go to all the trouble to think up resolutions myself, when the spammers have already done just that? If the subject lines of my highly-personalized spam can be believed (and I think they can), spammers have both insight into my personal deficits and some specific advice for improvement.
So, here is my New Year’s resolution list, following (as word-for-word as possible) the suggestions implied by my most recent spam subject lines:
1. I resolve to become the IT consultant of perfect love making art.1
2. I will make a stronger effort to confirm upon delivery.2
3. I will brand some Swiss watches.3
4. I will attain a huge love luger.4
5. I will upsize my manhood today!5
6. I resolve to gain inches the easy way.6
7. I shall represent female Viagra for most pleasure.7
8. When facing a love making problem, I will solve all myt problems in a few minute.8
9. I will strive to make the impression of a well off person on everybody.9
10. I will please approve or deny.10
11. I will stop certain bacterial infections forever.11
12. I resolve to choose my own price.12 Continue reading →
This metaphor isn’t really working for me, but I don’t want to offend any Don Juan IT folks out there, so I’ll go with it. [↩]
Okay… I get that this is some kind of penis reference, but “luger?” Is there some subcategory of fetishists in the world who fantasize about Nazi weaponry as metaphors for body parts? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. [↩]
Problematic. Sure, it could just be a penis thing, but let’s give the spammers the benefit of the doubt. Am I just not masculine enough? Do I need to spend more time lumberjacking and belching and cat-calling women and herding cattle? Should I take it more literally, like a request that I increase my weight training while packing in the protein powder? [↩]
I’m already achieving this goal, thanks to Amanda’s Nanaimo Bars. They have about 10,000 calories each. [↩]
This is right out; I already have a career, and I prefer to be paid with some form of government-recognized currency. [↩]
This resolution is vague in several ways. Is this a response to a sexual performance issue (and if so, whose?), or is it some sort of problem that actually results in the creation of love? The second option is far more interesting, but could be pretty complicated. In any case, I think it’s a recipe for disaster, in demanding that I solve the problem immediately (and with poor spelling), but with no workable plan of action. [↩]
This really doesn’t seem reasonable, and I’d rather understand hyphenation than appear affluent, anyway. [↩]
Here are screen grabs from the most recent articles I found online about breast cancer stuff (it’s a common topic, which is a good thing). Check them out (especially the first and last, which I find the most weird; I mean, does that first lady have silver gloves on, or something?)
sad: Yoani Sánchez, a very cool Cuban blogger, who writes the poignant and well-crafted Generación Y, is getting shaken down and threatened by the Cuban national cops. Apparently, it’s not in the public good to be blogging honestly about life in Havana right after the two hurricanes (yeah, I don’t know what the hurricanes have to do with it, either).
Here are some totally great one-shot visual joke-type comics (t-shirt designs, actually). My favorites are the tuba-playing ninja, the handlebar-mustache-guy catching air on a pennyfarthing, the alien using a lawnmower to make crop circles, and the classical musician in a tux totally smashing the crap out of his cello (or bass or whatever), rock-star-style.
This is a very cute (and well done) photo of a kitty, with a drug-reference macro I find amusing.
Want a fun 5 minutes? Here is a photo (not mine, sadly). There is absolutely a small bird in it, very well camouflaged. Find the bird :)
OK, gotta get up and get ready for work now. Sigh. So very not motivated, today.
Something horrible: my friend Dan, a government researcher, told me several times of his despair over the fact that people simply do not comprehend large numbers of dollars, especially if they don’t come out of our personal checking accounts. Well, this bailout abomination is perhaps the best example of that, ever. Our bailout (now a multitrillion-dollar stupidicity) is the most expensive thing, EVER1. Consider this shamelessly ganked pie chart:
Something interesting: the recent discovery of a blond-haired, blue-eyed shaman buried 2,700 years ago in China with nearly a kilo of weed could also be mined for humorous purposes. But it got me thinking: could psychoactive properties be naturally selected in some symbiotic way? That is, if you’re a plant species, the crazymaking2 would eventually become a turn-off for certain animals3. However, if humans used the plant for medicinal, recreational, or religious purposes, then they would protect and cultivate the plants. This would provide both natural and directed selection pressure for the species to get more psychoactive over time. I’m sure this comes under the heading of “things someone else already thought of a long time ago.”
Something Alex: I have to admit defeat (or at least detente) in a disagreement with Alex. Apparently, “Worcestershire” — as in sauce4 — though usually pronounced as a 3-syllable word (e.g., “wuhstuhshr”), is also sometimes reduced to two syllables (“wuster” or something), and this was historically common.
My wife's secret sideline
I’m sure there’s an Imelda Marcos or Donald Trump joke in here, but it’s not going to be funny. [↩]
especially in the case of marijuana, which is not very physiologically addictive [↩]
Consider this historically accurate dialogue between a stoned gazelle and his buddy: “Hank! It’s a tiger!” “Oh, maaaan, his stripes are, like, sooo, soooo, soooo…” chomp. [↩]
What percentage of humanity will ever have occasion to utter that word without also saying “sauce?” Not very many. [↩]
The web, she is a harsh mistress. This week, she has hurt me and tickled me and hurt me again. She is not a nice girl.
1. As I have said all along (and as young Catherine Vogt has just learned), associating oneself with a candidate who talks about diversity and tolerance doesn’t mean one actually has a clue about what those words mean.
2. Vanity Fair has written a snarky little piece about Thomas Kinkaide’s involvement in what sounds like the most horrendous movie ever made. It’s a movie based on a Thomas Kinkaide painting!!! The VF article is titled “Thomas Kinkaide’s 16 Guidelines for Making Stuff Suck.” :D
3. Andy Borowitz, a humor writer with the Huffington Post (or “HuffPo,” as some people call it… the people who are still upset that they never mastered the slang of the moment back in high school) has written about President-Elect Obama’s controversial and confusing use of complete sentences.
4. Richard Renaldi is a Canadian photographer with a strangely moving series of photos in which he asks complete strangers to touch each other while posing for the shot. “Giovanni and Deborah” is my favorite.
5. Second to last: This is absolutely without doubt a classic example of that “road to hell paved with good intentions” idea. This is Orwell’s 1984 in embryo. It is a very, very horrible idea. Just read the last sentence in the Globe and Mail article. Ick. Ick. Ick.
6. Last, but oh no siree bob definitely not least, you HAVE TO SEE THIS VIDEO. Especially if you like Rock Band/Guitar Hero. :D
(gnarles barkley video removed… trying to find “badware” that made Google block the site)
Is that not a perfect video? Who hasn’t been through that?
In this Wall Street Journal article (somewhat rare liberal perspective for that paper), the populist, anti-intellectual movement of the GOP in the past couple of decades is dissected, and the death of the longstanding conservative intellectual tradition is announced. My thoughts, exactly:
How, 30 years later, could younger conservative intellectuals promote a candidate like Sarah Palin, whose ignorance, provinciality and populist demagoguery represent everything older conservative thinkers once stood against?
David Brooks noted correctly (if belatedly) that conservatives’ “disdain for liberal intellectuals” had slipped into “disdain for the educated class as a whole,” and worried that the Republican Party was alienating educated voters. I couldn’t care less about the future of the Republican Party, but I do care about the quality of political thinking and judgment in the country as a whole. There was a time when conservative intellectuals raised the level of American public debate and helped to keep it sober. Those days are gone. As for political judgment, the promotion of Sarah Palin as a possible world leader speaks for itself.
#1: A prof was offered ten grand (and more) by Utah Republicans if he could use his nifty text-analysis software to show that William Ayers wrote Barack Obama’s biography (what…). Apparently the deal fell through largely because he wanted the results published no matter what the outcome should be.
#2: MY HEAD ASPLODE! Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in a recent speech, pushed an expansion of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes to include nookyulur weaponz! YES. He insisted that the U.S. should LAUNCH PREEMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES. He said (among other things): “Challenging the US in the nuclear arena—or with other weapons of mass destruction—could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response.” Could this get any worse? I suppose it’s a natural progression:
We will attack you if we think you are a threat
We will kidnap, torture, and imprison your citizens for life, without trial and without evidence
We will violate your national boundaries if we think you’re not doing enough to fight terrorism
WE WILL BOMB YOU WITH NUKULAR BOMBS if you have too many weapons.
#3 (for Alex): Several local city councils in England have banned the use of Latin and sometimes French phrases (ergo, ad hoc, ex oficio, QED, in lieu, etc.). They are apparently “elitist”. Also people are worried that new English speakers might not understand them. Hm.
#4: A new salvo in the recurring debate about “embedded” reporting with enemies of the U.S. during wartime (well, our current eterno-war, anyway). Are embedded reporters traitors? Are they actually doing something highly patriotic? Neither? And how much of the enemy groups’ activities can they participate in before they’re doing something very, very bad? These are the Taliban groups, here, not some cupcake tea party association. I find this debate very interesting.
I’m not usually one to revel in the public discomfort or stupidity of others, but the following video is completely precious. It’s like watching a Will Ferrell sketch:
Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to home.att.net:80 (Connection timed out) in /home/bobbyfiend/webapps/wp/wp-includes/class-snoopy.php on line 1148
item the first:
I found a 3×5 slip of paper on the ground outside, just now, that looked like this:
In case that caption didn’t come through, it says “Trust your Doubts.” What? The evidence has failed to convict Obama of having any ties to radical Islam, so you should instead go on a gut reaction engendered by similarity of names? Wait! McCain… Scotland… located near Ireland… OH MY GOODNESS MCCAIN IS AN IRA SUICIDE BOMBER!!! yeah exactly that logical.
I’ve checked out the rather hideous site this pic comes from (identical to the one on the paper I found), and it’s a mishmash of unsupported innuendo, ranting, racism, and fearmongering. Precious little information to be found, except that which has already been thoroughly debunked by nonpartisan groups.
Item the Second:
Consider finding a popular right-wing blog that says this:
Here is a list of contributors to Senator Obama’s campaign. Each contributor is identified as Muslim, Christian, or Other. Please dig up dirt on these people. See if they have contributed to less than honorable causes, or if any one of them has done something otherwise egregious. If so, we can make the Obama campaign return their contributions, or face a bunch of negative publicity. Remember that these people are using “reform” and “hope” as their primary motivation to support Obama. if you find anything that belies that in any way…well, you know what to do.
What would you think? Is this a smear tactic or not? (shocking answer after the cut)
Today's awesome comic is from Sinfest (warning: frequent inappropriate content)
Le sigh. I am le tired of the handbasket thoughts, but the news is not likely to look much brighter (economically) anytime soon. So let’s post some links.
The depression/recession (deepcession?) is gonna happen no matter what, so why not blame it on your opponent’s economic policies? If you win the election, who cares what you said during campaign time? And if you lose, you can blame the inevitable on the winner.
Peter Schiff, a libertarian economist, gives his take on what caused the 1929 crash and the current depression. He predicts this depression will be even worse, and both candidates’ policies will exacerbate the situation.
On to the politics of fear: an Atlantic Monthly columnist and awesome security agitator Bruce Schneier team up to point out how ridiculous, misdirected, and generally useless our post-9/11 airport “security theater” has always been.
Now, for cheering up: a recipe for poutine made with sweet potato fries and mushroom gravy.
Edit: I almost forgot! An interactive timeline of ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-THREE U.S. military interventions since the Republic was founded. Gak! (To be fair, some of them are like “sent a boat somewhere to make sure the marines got out safely” or something).
Today, T-Rex said the same thing I’ve been telling relationship-depressed single people for years. Check it out:
See? He’s preachin’ my sermon! And in honor of this momentous occasion, I’ve developed a chart to visually illustrate the point that the big green killing machine and I clearly agree on. Here it is (click for a bigger version):
Note how quickly the curve climbs. Even if you’ve only dated 3 other people in your life, you’ll have a 75% failure rate. Of course, this assumes you ever get married or otherwise enter a permanent relationship. Don’t fret. I’m sure you will. And now you know why you feel like a relationship failure, even though you’re not! (any more than anyone else)
NBC quickly and without comment yanked this SNL skit from its site, and sends repeated takedown notices to any service hosting it (e.g., YouTube). It’s pretty funny, and it even has some good points to be made. Oh yeah, some are about the Democratic Party, so… let’s see… Al Franken is a Democratic candidate… he continues to write for the show… the show’s viewer base is largely made up of Obama supporters… nah. That’s just crazy conspiracy talk.
Anyway, watch quick or this site might get perma-yanked, too. Don’t pass up this chance to see Bush, Pelosi, and even George Soros simultaneously roasted. :)
It is SO VERY HARD to feel any pity whatsoever for Bill O’Reilly (or his loyal website subscribers). The man practically makes a career of loudly and sanctimoniously blaming others for their misfortunes.
I guess the moral of the story is something like this:
A. IF you’re going to base your identity and lifestyle on delivering vicious weekly public diatribes against those who are
different from you
less fortunate than you, and/or
hold diverging political opinions
B. AND IF the groups against whom you rant happen to contain large numbers of people with mad computer hacking skillz
C. AND IF you’re going to make a website for increased efficiency of delivery of said diatribes
D. AND IF you’re going to charge select visitors $49.95 a month to have special privileges on said website…
E. MAYBE you should invest a few bucks in some basic website security.
Passwords stored in plaintext? Srsly? The hacker(s) should be caught and prosecuted, of course; but, Bill, what were ya thinkin’?
or something not exactly like that. Research in this month’s issue of Science that finds a significant correlation (among people with strongly-held political views) between certain physical reactions and political leanings. The physical reactions studied had to do with how intensely people responded to being scared by shocking images (photo of a spider on a face, gaping wound filled with maggots, sudden noises etc.).
The strongest responses to the shocking stimuli were witnessed in people who favored “socially protective policies,” which…
…tend to be held by people “particularly concerned with protecting the interests of the participants’ group, defined as the United States in mid-2007, from threats.” These positions include support for military spending, warrantless searches, the death penalty, the Patriot Act, obedience, patriotism, the Iraq War, school prayer and Biblical truth, and opposition to pacifism, immigration, gun control, foreign aid, compromise, premarital sex, gay marriage, abortion rights and pornography.
The paper concluded, “Political attitudes vary with physiological traits linked to divergent manners of experiencing and processing environmental threats.” This may help to explain “both the lack of malleability in the beliefs of individuals with strong political convictions and the associated ubiquity of political conflict.”1
From the Science Daily summary (because I certainly can’t afford a subscription to Science), [↩]
Sarah Palin is an “expert” on energy. Um… moving on. She, John McCain (in one of his more recent policy flipflops) and, of course, President Bush, advocate opening up all sorts of protected areas for domestic oil exploitation. In fact, they are saying this is a solution to our gas-pump blues. Here are the bumper stickers I’m seeing in town, these days (snapped from a neighbor’s minivan):
And here is a visual representation of how much our oil supply will change, if we start tearing up our coastlines & wildlife refuges, and destroying our marine & arctic habitats to get those precious drops of oil. Estimates are that no significant price change could be expected until 2030 at the least, and not much, at that. (Chart originally ganked from gristmill, data from the official U.S. Energy Information Administration):
Note how the yellow line is not even visible before about 2020. Naturally, when McCain reversed his position on this, the price of gas fell. This might have even had something to do with his announcement. But it could not possibly have had anything to do with long-term price determinants, since nothing had changed. Even if these estimates could be disputed rationally, I agree with my insightful wife: finding more oil is not our real problem. In my view, that’s kind of like a drug addict explaining that his real problem is not having enough heroin. At some point (ASAP, really) the issue of need must be recognized as much more important than the issue of supply.
