What would Jesus do?
Why, he'd call in the hit squads, of course. See, what most people don't know is that when Jesus said “love,” he really meant “hate.”
[Link: Televangelist Calls for Assassination of Chavez - New York Times]
It's raining men
Body Parts From Jet Hit a Long Island Home:
A man's leg and part of his spine came crashing onto the roof of a woman's home in Nassau County near Kennedy International Airport yesterday morning, and a short while later the man himself was found dead in the wheel well of a South African Airways jetliner that had just landed.
More phishing nonsense
Washington Mutual phishers are still idiots:
We recently have determined that different computers have logged onto your Washington Mutual Online Banking account, and multiple password failures were present before the logons. We now need you to re-confirm your account information to us. If this is not completed by 10 February, 2005, we will be forced to suspend your account indefinitely, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes. We thank you for your cooperation in this manner.
Hey scammers!
If you're going to try phishing for IDs, try not picking a date IN THE FUTURE:
We are contacting you to inform you that on Mar. 15, 2005 our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account. In accordance with PayPal's User Agreement and to ensure that your account has not been compromised, access to your account was limited. Your account access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved.
Morons.
Ew.
“[Ryan] Haddon once stabbed [husband Christian] Slater with a broken wineglass and also flew into a rage two years ago when he was caught in the couple's Vancouver rental home getting his back shaved by topless strippers.”
LEDbling
Funny. I noticed one of these just this morning, on a young woman in the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall station, but I hate to disappoint you: I failed to notice whether it was bezeled in faux diamonds.
Kids these days
Back in my day, happy slapping was something a boy did in the privacy of his bedroom.
MacMorons
Leander Kahney's latest piece from the floor of Macworld is amusingly trite. Here are highlights:
And there are concerns about the changing face of the Mac tribe: Hordes of new iPod users may be sullying the Mac experience.
Mac tribe? How might members of such a tribe distinguish themselves from the sullying hordes? Let's ask this Dutch fellow:
Koen Van Tongeren, a student at the University of Amsterdam who is writing a thesis on Mac fan culture, said he was disappointed by the lack of Apple haircuts and tattoos.
Goddammit. I guess the Mac tribe will just have to wear T-shirts like everyone else.
What about the Mac Mini, though? Let's ask Tim Allen:
Kevin Krank, head of the service department at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, said he wasn't impressed with the Mac mini…. “Anything small enough to put in a backpack doesn't belong on a college campus,” he said.
So I guess this means no laptops or handhelds in Aggie-land, eh, Mr. Krank?
Older than dirt
Ben Hammersley notes that he's older than Superman. Perhaps Ben will take some comfort from knowing that Superman is older than Superman.
Oh, look...
…it's the fugliest thing ever:
Teleflora's motto is Send flowers and show someone you care. My motto is, if you buy Thomas Kinkade “art,” please slice off your genitals.
Gazette readers blow it on 69
Readers of satire site Hoosier Gazette apparently didn't catch the satire, judging from this collection of recent letters.
Indiana highway is immoral
Hostettler mounting campaign to change the name of Interstate 69
John Hostettler, the Congressman representing the 8th district of Indiana, has been convinced by local religious groups to introduce legislation in the House that would change the name of an Interstate 69 extension to a more moral sounding number.
[It's a hoax, folks. Don't you think the proximity of “mounting” to “69” would be a dead giveaway? Seriously, though, in a country that changed U.S. Highway 666 to U.S. 491, I can't blame people for believing the hoax.]
Not exactly sunshine, Mr. Denver
Another choice quote, from an American opposed to the Guardian's Clark County project:
"I hope your earholes turn to arseholes and shit on your shoulders."
America v. Earth, redux
KEEP YOUR FUCKIN' LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION. HEY, SHITHEADS, REMEMBER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR? REMEMBER THE WAR OF 1812? WE DIDN'T WANT YOU, OR YOUR POLITICS HERE, THAT'S WHY WE KICKED YOUR ASSES OUT. FOR THE 47% OF YOU WHO DON'T WANT PRESIDENT BUSH, I SAY THIS ... TOUGH SHIT!
Underground cineasts come forward
The group who built the secret cinema-restaurant-bar complex underneath Paris has met with the Guardian reporter who broke the story.
Huddled round a table in an anonymous Latin Quarter bar, the group's members - of whom only Lazar wanted to be named - relate past exploits: rock concerts for up to 4,000 people in old underground quarries; 2am projections in a locked film theatre; art and photo exhibitions in supposedly sealed-off subterranean galleries.
Secret cave in Paris, for movies and drinks
The Guardian reports that Parisian police have discovered a cave containing a bar and an audiorium for film screenings, complete with a professionally installed electrical system and working phone lines. Although the police have no idea who built the underground cinema, they suspect the work of so-called cataphiles, bands of urban explorers who access the network of tunnels and catacombs under Paris.
My favorite part of the article:
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."
Americans aren't the world's only morons
Six percent of British youth identify Gandalf as the hero who led the defeat of the Spanish armada, the Guardian reports. Thirteen percent credited another fictional character, Horatio Hornblower, and twenty percent fingered Christopher Columbus for the job.
Our across-the-pond cousins shouldn't feel bad, though. Sixty-seven percent of American schoolkids think that Spider-Man led American forces in rebellion against King Arthur in 1492.
Okay, okay, so I made that last sentence up. But it's plausible, you gotta admit.
Weird spam
Among the spam in my inbox this morning was a Cialis advertisement. That's not the weird part. The weird part is that the name of the "sender"--spoofed, no doubt--is the name of a woman I worked with for several years, back at Macmillan/Pearson in Indiana. I've been out of touch with this person for years, so it's highly unlikely she has my e-mail address. I think it's complete coincidence, not a virus or anything like that, but it's still weird.
Class envy, or I'm in the wrong line of work
Wired News reports that fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld owns 40 iPods. They're distributed through his several houses, located at various spots around the world.
Le sigh.
Found in e-mail
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 12:51:37 -0400
From: Diego Jack
To: mike@michaeldietsch.com
Subject: Fw: Cancelled Card Tabitha ocean 2 swamps
When beyond judge dies, over vacuum cleaner procrastinates. When over hole puncher flies into a rage, defined by philosopher gets stinking drunk. And make a truce with the dark side of her dissident. Any coward can play pinochle with bartender behind light bulb, but it takes a real industrial complex to rattlesnake around. alchemist behind brainwash toward demon.haunches remain makeshift.
Craig's list meltdown!
YOU MAY WANT TO LOOK OUT FOR A CERTAIN FEMALE PERSON. WHAT I AM ABOUT TO TELL YOU IS QUITE DISTURBING AND SHOCKING.
THE SPELLING, GRAMMER AND OVER ALL STRUCTURE IS CHANGED AS TO NOT BE ABLE TO TRACE IT BACK WITH STRUCTURE ANALYSIS THE LAST THING I NEED IS THIS CUNT SAYING THAT I AM WRITNG THESE TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT HER WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR FIRST AMMENDMENT
I HAVE AN AMAZING APARTMENT IN THE VILLAGE AND I TRAVEL A LOT MOSTLY IN THE SUMMER SO MY APRETMENT SITS EMPTY FOR A FEW WEEKS AT A TIME AND I STAY WITH MY GIRLFRIEND SOMETIME A FRIEND THAT IS OF THE FEMALE PERSUASION WAS KICKED OUT ON HER EAR AND IT WAS SOMEONE I THOUGHT I KNEW PRETTY WELL.
More Wal-Mart hysteria
"Before the doors opened Friday, a car caught fire in the parking lot, police were called twice to restrain eager shoppers (and wound up restraining overzealous private security guards hired by Wal-Mart), and in their rush to get inside once the store opened, shoppers literally broke the door down."
Congratulations, consumer America, this is the life you deserve.
Once in a blue moon
Two amusing Google links: Once in a blue moon, 1 ÷ Once in a blue moon. [via Polyglut]
Social hygiene poster archive
American Social Hygiene Posters from the University of Minnesota. [MetaFilter]
New favorite URL
http://www.head-smashed-in.com/
(This isn't a gross-out site at all, so don't feel worried about visiting it.)
Visit Old Madison!
Visit Madison, Indiana! We're xenophobic and too boring to matter to terrorists!
A safe place to visit...When you visit Madison you will discover that we have no tall buildings to fear, no nuclear power plants, airports or anything anyone would want to blow up. When you step into Old-Madison, you step back more than a 100 years in time experiencing a past as much alive today as it was a century ago. Old Madison was a time of adventure, an age of grandeur the great steamboatin era. Most of the folks around here are American Americans and you too are welcome here. We have "great" old homes and buildings to see, antique shops, great food, sleep in one of our old homes and walk on our lighted riverfront. Experience Old-Madison today.
Wonder what they mean by American Americans. Even if this is a joke, it's a perfect example of why I got the fuck out of Indiana.
Oh, and Madison? 100 means one hundred. The construction a 100, therefore, means "a one hundred." And that really doesn't make much sense, so keep your illiterate, furriner-fearing, antebellum culture to your damn selves.
PC destructobot Hatch: Porn and stolen software
Hatch Site Hides X-Rated Link. Earlier this week, Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch was caught using unlicensed software on his website. While his staff scrambled to fix that problem, Web surfers discovered his site had a link to a pornographic website. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]
<scoff>
Synapse chip taps into brain chemistry
New Scientist reports on creation of artificial synapse:
Since synapses are typically around 50 nanometres across, and each chemical puff contains just a few thousand molecules, building an artificial synapse is a huge challenge. But Mark Peterman and Harvey Fishman at Stanford University in California are getting close. They told a biophysics conference in Texas earlier in March that they have created four "artificial synapses" on a silicon chip one centimetre square.
To cells on the surface of the device, the artificial synapse is simply a hole in the silicon. But each hole opens into a pipeline etched into a plastic layer on the back of the chip, connected at both ends to a reservoir of neurotransmitter. When an electric field is applied, the neurotransmitter is pumped through the pipeline, and a little of it squeezes out of the hole, stimulating nearby cells.
[via Boing Boing Blog]
What a relief!
Recently there has been some confusion as to the origin of French’s mustard. For the record, French’s would like to say, there is nothing more American than French’s mustard....
This is not a joke.
EDIT, 10/26/04: The link above is broken, but many webbies have archived it. I wonder, if you pitted French's mustard against Heinz catsup, who'd win?
Buy yerself a new hippocampus
Didja bursted yer hippocampus? Replace it!
World's first brain prosthesis revealed
The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing.... [New Scientist]
From the people-suck column
Columbia collectibles soar on eBay. Within hours of the Columbia tragedy, hundreds of items featuring the space shuttle are listed for sale as prices climb. By Scott Ard, Staff Writer, CNET News.com. [CNET News.com]
Meat
I was once describing to a friend the eating habits of the genus Dietsch--meat, usually fried, with every meal and sometimes with dessert as well. "In fact," I continued, "if there were a way to have bacon in our coffee, we'd have done it!"
I'm also fond of this page. What's wrong here isn't that the young bride used chicken fat to make cookies. Ooooooh no. It's that she didn't render that fat first.
All this, from the delectable Gallery of Regrettable Food:
Remember, folks, foods fried in SPRY are as digestible as if baked or broiled.