Draaaaaains!

Mmmm...draaaains...

You can always rely on the Germans

...to come up with shit like this.

Blessed are the cheese-makers

Watch Vonnegut on Daily Show if you haven't already. Then go out and read all his books.

Best entry in Vonnegut's "Liberal Crap I Never Want To Hear Again":

"'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' The hell I can't! Look at the Reverand Pat Robertson. And He is as happy as a pig in shit."

Correct me if I'm wrong

Isn't this, on some level, a rather ironic headline? How can one "mull" a "decisive" anything? Isn't mulling kind of definitionally indecisive?

Republican logic

Why would you think that a major natural disaster that destroyed huge amounts of the South would actually require federal spending for recovery? Why, funding programs _less_ will actually help! See, if we collect fewer taxes from Trent Lott, he'll actually have _more_ money to spend on reconstructing his house, and it will make him so happy that he might give some of his moving boxes to others who had their houses and life savings destroyed! You know how much poor people seem to like living in boxes. See? Everybody wins!

Sigh. And the scary thing is that there are people in the world that actually buy this shit. Oh, and also loved the clips on the Daily Show where Republican pundits were blaming New Orleans for, you know, existing.

Further proof I am a bad person

======================
Email received from roommate:
======================

From: Michelle Butte
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 2:29 PM
To: Nick Murphy
Subject: Support me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walk!

Nick, Every 18 minutes in the U.S., someone dies by suicide. This fall thousands of men and women will walk in over 40 communities across the United States, each contributing their voices to break the silence surrounding suicide. These men and women are the Out of the Darkness Community.

By supporting me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walks to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), you will be helping me raise money for AFSP's vital programs to prevent suicide and save lives, increase national awareness about depression and suicide, and assist survivors of suicide loss.

Sponsoring me is simple-- just click on the link at the bottom of this page and follow the prompts to make a donation.

(Michelle's probably-inappropriate side comment: if you only can or want to make a small donation, please consider the victims of Katrina instead. You can support me with a smile and a "good luck!")

Thank you!

Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

=======
My reply:
=======

From: Nick Murphy
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 3:54 PM
To: Michelle Butte
Subject: RE: Support me as I walk in the 2005 Out of the Darkness Community Walk!

Michelle,

Every 3 minutes in this country, someone takes a tragically unsatisfying crap. These sad, irregular souls walk the earth in a tormented, constipated haze, desperately trying to remember the simple joy of a good bowel movement. This fall thousands of men and women will travel thousands of miles to cheap mexican restaurants and lentil distributors in an attempt to dislodge the intractable, dehydrated mass that has accumulated in their abdomen, each contributing their own squeaking ripper to break the silence surrounding constipation. The silence...of their ass. These men and women are the Out of the Darkness Community. The darkness...of their ass.

By supporting me as I walk in search of the ultimate Bowel-Buster Burrito, you will be helping me raise money for my vital program to prevent me from not raising money, not to mention raising awareness of Obstinate Turd Syndrome (OTS), depression surrounding OTD, and continuing conspiracy of the United Cheese and Gummy Candy Makers of America. Please...every little bit counts.

Sponsoring me is simple. Just give me a bunch of money. Or a burrito. Or a burrito filled with money. Either way, you're making a difference.

God bless,
Nick

Stallman rides again

Yet Another Idiotic Idea by Stallman. Software patents are not a menace. _Stupid_ software patents (like one-click) are a menace. Just because our patent system is broken doesn't mean patents aren't a good idea in principle.

Moreover, it you make the license even more viral than it already is (and yes, boys and girls, it is viral...Microsoft employees are generally not even allowed to touch GPL'd software because it would force all kinds of restrictions on whatever they're working on...it's so wonderfully ironic that free software people rail against shrink-wrap licenses [rightly] when the GPL is the most egregious and aggressive shrink-wrap license there is...anyway...), then companies will avoid it. There are other open source licenses out there, and they will be adopted.

When is Stallman going to get over his messiah complex?

Rice and race

You know, much as I despise Rice for being an utter sellout, I believe that the Katrina debacle didn't really have anything to do with race. It had to do with money plain and simple. Do you honestly believe that if the residents had been a bunch of poor white rednecks the outcome would have been any different? The problem here is that a) Republicans don't like spending money on anything except the military and corporate welfare, and b) the two FEMA heads Bush appointed are totally inexperienced managing disaster relief because they were simply Bush cronies being rewarded for their loyalty.

Don't make it racial when it isn't and doesn't need to be.

Renquist dead

This is going to be the fun replacement nomination. Roberts was just a warmup.

I really, really, _really_ hope that Democrats can take advantage of how badly Bush has handled the Katrina debacle to build some sorely needed political capital. There's no historical evidence to suggest that they can, but hey, a guy can dream...

scientific progress

1969: United States lands man on the surface of the moon.
2009: United States lands penguin on the surface of the moon.

Badass NASA movie

Amazingly, these are actual images captured by MESSENGER and not simply computer graphics.

Not sure if you can shoot the dog

Duck Hunt meets Doom (thank you memepool).

A better representation of red vs. blue

We've all seen the red vs. blue political maps of the US, but this is a better representation that reflects percentages.

The sleaze keeps on comin'

Really, and I'm serious here, is there anything they won't do? At least wait for a decade or so before rewriting history for fuck's sake.

And can we at least restrict things to one major sleaze item per day? I can't keep up.

You can't make this stuff up

Well, what did you expect? The guy just got a new leg.

Men are more intelligent than women, but this isn't why

Hard to let a report finding that men score higher on IQ tests than women go by without comment. First of all, IQ tests are dumb. They don't tell you anything. It's like trying to assign a single numerical score to art. What would it mean to give Magritte a 92 and George Carlin a 94? There are so many dimensions to each artist that to condense them to a single number is next to meaningless. You can talk about more specific traits and compare them on those narrower qualities, but something like "intelligence" is so multi-faceted that it's profoundly retarded to even consider evaluating it using a single dimension. In fact, you should lose 20 points on your IQ test just for doing so.

Secondly, the dimensions IQ tests test you on are highly analytical aspects of cognition that it's not surprising men are slightly better at on average. It's well established that men inherently have a better sense of spatial reasoning than women, for instance. Evolutionarily, this makes sense. Male humans had to go hunt and gather, so they needed to be able to navigate. Why would it be at all surprising that a metric that tests these kinds of abilities (which the IQ test does...I've taken one [long ago]) gives men a (very) slight advantage?

Now, lest anyone jump all over me, note this is very different from saying the reason for a gender gap in academics is a biological disadvantage (thank you Douchebag Summers). Among other things, I've said nothing about the distribution of analytical abilities in the set of people with the best minds. Just because the average is slightly lower doesn't mean that the upper tier of women couldn't deliver a hardcore academic ass-whooping to the upper tier of men. And it may well be the best woman would beat the best man.

More importantly, however, is the fact that on that particular issue, other factors inevitably dominate to a degree that any tiny biological differences would vanish in the noise. There's such a social aspect to becoming a tenured professor that any minute statistical disadvantage with regard to analytical ability by gender (if in fact it exists) would be vastly overshadowed by gender discrimination, male-centric power dynamics, cliqing, etc.

All that said, women are of course still dumb. Or, perhaps more accurately, crazy. It just happens to be the case that the above article doesn't address why.

Spam poetry

Anti-Baysian filter fodder at the bottom of a spam I just received:

"fraction me dextrous you pitiful me dexterity you baseboard me waldo you proline me allele you cluj me conqueror you handlebar me grownup you leprosy me prison you embalm me datum you"

That's fucking poetic.

Stupid obstinate bastards

Sony and Toshiba are retarded, and it's going to affect my ability to watch movies, and that pisses me off. Why can't they fucking agree on a format?! They're not all that different. Both just store lots of data. If both formats come out, we're going to have a format war, and any reasonably intelligent person is just going to avoid getting either until one or another wins the war. Which means the rest of us have to wait to get decent hi-def movies. Meanwhile, both companies are going to lose billions to an easily avoidable war.

Personally, knowing very little about the respective formats, I would say go with Blu-Ray since I believe it stores more. Cost arguments are stupid since as time goes on, it will just become cheaper and cheaper to produce. Similarly, any argument saying that it carries "too much" data is almost too retarded to bother refuting. How big was your hard drive five years ago? I rest my case.

The Gaza pullout

I've wanted to comment on the Gaza pullout for a while. It's a truly remarkable phenomenon, and it's remarkable in several different ways. First and foremost, I find it personally satisfying to see crazy religious extremists forced to confront reality. Every time I see pictures of the raging, zealotous settlers being dragged away by the Israeli army, I get fucking pissed off. Why don't those idiots understand that they're responsible in large part for the continued hostilities and deaths of innocent people on both sides? Do they not know how criminally insane they sound when they claim to have a Biblical right to the land of Israel?

At the same time, I gotta say it's reassuring to know that other religions besides Christianity have their nutjobs. Fundamentalism is not particular to Christian dogma. Any time you have a reliance on an invisible, magical authority whose will is purportedly divined by people who claim to have a special understanding of the will of said invisible, magical authority, you're going to end up with a group of people who have so completely defined their existence in terms of the arbitrary but reassuring moral system that inevitably develops that they will fight tooth and nail defending that moral system even in the face of the corresponding inevitable encroachment of reality. And it's been happening for millenia. And people are still too stupid not to let it happen.

The other really fascinating phenomenon, however, is the behavior of the Israeli soldiers. I have been absolutely astounded by the many reports on the Israeli soldiers' poise and composure through this whole thing. They've calmly negotiated with settlers screaming at them. They've comforted the settlers who have complied with the orders that they themselves doubtlessly have some reservations about. No soldiers that I've heard about have refused to obey the orders. Moreover, they've restrained themselves from employing an unnecessary and vengeful amount of force in response to settler attacks. They've done quite simply an amazing job, one that I don't have 100% faith that American soldiers could match.

Corporate psychopaths

Not really news since I learned of this phenomenon in intro psych, but nonetheless interesting. If you think about it, it really shouldn't be all that surprising that top CEOs could probably often be considered clinical psychopaths.

Stupidity marches on

This is a profoundly pointless controversy. It's just a fucking name for chrissakes. What the hell does it matter whether a porn site ends in ".com" or ".xxx"? At least in the latter case it's easily identifiable.

Nerd candy

Kind of an interesting article on how modern-day NASA plots courses for spacecraft. Interesting, of course, in the "how does the warp drive on the Enterprise work?" kinda way.

Global warming caused by decline in pirate population

Also, the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Have you been touched by His Noodly Appendage?

Don't be evil...unless it's in your own best interest

I knew something like this would happen eventually. Google is a company just like any other. They'll be evil when it's in their interest to be so, corporate mantras to the contrary.

Fun with ragdoll physics

Ever wondered what it would be like to watch a bikini-clad woman's limp body bounce haphazardly off miscellaneous and randomly placed white spheres? Well, wonder no more!

Yes, the Religious Right really are Nazis

Well, ok, so that's stretching it a bit. I think this says less about any direct comparison between Fundamentalists and Nazis and more about the tactics involved in demonizing a(ny) scapegoat for your own political ends, but still...an interesting comparison.

And yes I know any comparison to Nazis is immediately suspect, but still...at least these guys try to actually back up their assertion with some amount of quotational evidence.

I've finally found the meaning of life

A simple quote in a seemingly unrelated article:

"Every time I reach a Starbucks I feel like I've accomplished something," Winter said, "when actually I have accomplished nothing."

There you go. That's existence in as small a nutshell as you can fit it. Profound, huh?

That sound you just heard was my brain exploding

_You_ try wrapping your head around the concept of "negative information."

Such profound delusion

We really do live in the land of retards, don't we?

"It is important to many creationists that man and dinosaur lived simultaneously because they believe there was no death in the world until Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. If the Genesis story is false, they say, then there would be no need for Jesus Christ to redeem the sins of the world.

Thus, at the Museum of Earth History, Genesis dictates gentle, vegetarian dinosaurs sharing Eden with Adam and Eve, whose vaguely Polynesian appearance represents all races, according to a guide. Another exhibit confirms that dinosaurs, like all land creatures created on Day 6, were on Noah's Ark. The exhibit maintains that the ark could accommodate them because it was huge--450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high--and only smaller, adolescent dinosaurs were put on board."

Folks, I know I say this a lot, but that seriously has to fall in the top ten stupidest things I have ever heard. Read it again and try not to have an aneurism.

Bulwer-Lytton

They're up! The 2005 Bulwer-Lytton contest results are up! O sweet purposefully awful prose...

People have too much free time

This reeks of the same allure the Sims has.

Yay for a film I can actually look forward to!

Enter MirrorMask.

I am totally and utterly worthless

...at least compared to this kid.

It's now official. I am a failure.

Wheeee!!!

For those too lazy even for sex!

Tracable documents

You know, I always wondered whether they did this...I guess now I have my answer.

Another plug for universal health care

Inspired by this Krugman piece.

It is quite simply retarded that we don't have universal healthcare. And when I say retarded, I don't mean retarded in an abstract liberal sense of justice sense of the word, though certainly that applies. I mean retarded in the very practical and economic sense of the word. First, a little background:

In the beginning, America had an awesome health care system. Doctors were well paid and respected, and American hospitals were the best in the world. Unfortunately, due to increases in the sophistication of treatments (and therefore cost) as well as an ever-aging population (proportionally), health care costs started to climb. Enter the HMOs. The HMOs were created by fucktard MBAs who saw an opportunity to make a buck. They said to the world, "Hey! You know what? The reason your health care costs so much is those greedy doctors are purposefully overcharging you, are needlessly administering unnecessary procedures, and are generally responsible for all that is wrong with health care! If you give us your money, we'll make sure you pay less for your health care, and we'll deal with those mean old doctors by strictly regulating what they can and can't do to treat you, and thereby we'll trim all the fat off of the health care system and everyone will live happily ever after!"

So we did. Except the problem was that the premise is and was totally and utterly false. The problem was never the doctors, and even if it had been, it turned out that the administrative overhead of figuring out what kind of treatment was covered for each and every patient and negotiating with doctors about it and so on and so on and so on created such a massive beaurocracy that any savings that might have existed were utterly overshadowed. To give you some perspective, in the current American health insurance world, about 30% of every health care dollar goes to administration. Also remember these are businesses, so they want about 25% of every dollar to be profit. So you're left with less than half of every dollar actually going towards your care. In comparison, places like France and Canada spend only about 10% on administration, and the rest goes to care. Don't we have an awesome system?

Enter universal health care. Why is this a good idea? First of all, we live in a society where you get treated even if you can't pay for it. So despite healthcare becoming too expensive for a lot of people, those people still get sick, they still go to the hospital at the last possible moment, and they still get treatment. Which you pay for. And, in fact, if they had gotten proper preventative treatment, they might not have needed that expensive ER visit which, again, you paid for. So there's one win for universal healthcare: supplanting last-minute drastic treatment for cheaper preventative treatment.

But more important than that is cutting out all the goddamn administrative overhead. Since each HMO has to maintain its own administrative army to handle the load, there's a huge amount of duplicated administrative effort. If you consolidate everything into one entity, you cut out the duplication, which is a huge savings. You also save by allowing an entity like the state of California to negotiate drug prices en masse for reasons similar to how your employer can get lower health insurance rates than you can as an individual. And finally, you can trade in the profit margin for, at worst, some governmental inefficiency. So you save money. Do you hear me people? YOU SAVE MONEY. AND YOUR EMPLOYER SAVES MONEY. WHICH HELPS THE ECONOMY GROW. YOU GODDAMN FUCKING IDIOTS.

Opponents will tell you one or both of two things: a) that you're increasing the size of government and that government is inherently evil and does nothing good for anybody, and b) that the system will drastically increase taxes. With regard to a), you only believe that if you're stupid and listen to Republican rhetoric. Certain things work better when the government runs them or at least regulates them. Certain things don't. Sometimes you can get a better result if you hand the problem to the markets and let the equilibrium fall where it may. Other times you can't. The current fucked up system is what we got when we let the markets play their little game. That experiment ostensibly failed, among other reasons because at core we aren't a completely morally corrupt people and place all kinds of restrictions on the nature of health care that have weird (and usually negative) effects in the free market (as in the last-ditch ER visits mentioned above). Let's talk about better solutions now, m'kay?

With regard to b), the argument is specious. Technically, yes, taxes would increase. But the overall cost would actually decrease. Why? Because you're already paying for health care in a different form. Right now your employer pays a premium directly to (likely) an HMO on your behalf. Economics will tell you that, on par, you basically split that cost with your employer. All we're talking about here is shifting that premium to a tax that would go to the state. And, per the reasons mentioned above, making that shift in the system would actually save everyone a fuckload of money.

How much? Roughtly $8 billion for the state of California alone.

So why don't we have centralized healthcare? Two basic reasons:

1. Republicans have convinced everyone that any government program is a priori a bad idea, and
2. The HMOs have so much money that they are a significant force in governmental lobbying, and damn wouldn't you know it? They were the 9th highest donors in the 2004 election cycle and gave 68% of their money to Republicans. Funny that Republicans think HMOs are just fine, huh?

Yet another failure of American society you can blame on Republicans. :)

So write your representatives. Or, you know, don't, because money talks in Washington and you don't have any. So be like me and be silently pissed off at the utter stupidity and gullibility of the human race.

The true cost of software

This is what I hate about free software apologists.

First, let's assume that the analysis is correct and that most of the value of software is in the creation of derivative revenue sources (e.g., support, maintenance, etc.) and that the intrinsic value of the software itself is relatively minimal. Fine. Great. Wonderful. All software is free (as in beer) and the software world makes money off support and service. But wait...what do the financial incentives in that system suggest for software makers? That's right, boys and girls: in that system it makes the most sense for the producers to make the absolute shittiest software they can get away with and then make a mint on the "support." And when I say shitty, I explicitly mean _shitty_. I _don't_ just mean mostly cheaply made, though usually cheaply made does imply shitty. In this case, the economic model in fact _demands_ shitty software even if it costs _more_ to make shitty software than it does good software, because if the software isn't shitty then there's really no room to make money off the support and maintenance. It also suggests that consumers won't mind that the software is shitty so long as the support is _fantastic_. The software itself isn't worth anything but the support is, remember? So why would you care if the software is crap so long as the support is stellar? Doesn't this sound like a fantastic business model?

Now, to the Linux community's credit, they do indeed seem to be following exactly this model. Why do you think IBM is so in love with Linux? They take an OS/platform that is basically an inscrutable, inconsistent, unmanagable piece of shit (note that I'm not saying Windows isn't also an inscrutable, inconsistent, unmanagable piece of shit), and they make money off of trying to fix it to do something useful.

But secondly, I don't think I buy the model to begin with. Nobody seems to take the open source contributors' time and energy into these financial calculations, and this is a huge part of the analysis. For the most part, nobody is paying these people. Sure, some of them do in fact collect salaries specifically for the open source work they do, but a lot of these guys are contributing in their free time. Or they made their dot-com millions and just do this to amuse themselves and not to support themselves. And indeed, that's the crux of this: for the rest of us, it's _free_ time. Nobody's paying them for it. They do it because they like fucking around with software. Which is great and all, except, guess what: that's not capitalism. People doing pro bono work generally does not fit into the capitalist model except insofar as other people take advantage of the fact they are providing something for nothing. Like, say, IBM. For us software developers, that's not an economic model, folks. People doing what I do for free has the net effect of lowering my salary, which frankly pisses me off. Imagine trying to bid for a contract in your job and having some shmuck come in and say, "Hey, you know what? I'll do that for free!" Would you admire his selflessness? No. You'd be fucking pissed off since you lost that contract. This is the part of the free software movement that pisses me off.

So what do I think should happen? Well, I don't know, to be frank. Because of the way source code and compilers and business models work right now, there's no way to decouple being able to look at source code from being able to build the software and run it. Being able to see the source for something you use and/or build off of is a good thing. It makes for more stable and transparent systems, which is good for producers of software and consumers of software alike. Hiding your source in that sense is a terrible and short-sighted idea. Closed-source companies always claim that if they have to reveal their source then competitors will easily be able to steal their ideas. The truth, however, is that trying to actually figure out someone else's source and then adapt it to your project is non-trivial, and moreover one would hope that you would have patent protection on any substantial idea in one of your products independent of its particular implementation. Patent protection as a general concept is a good thing, though certainly the current IP system is utterly fucked and needs to be rethought in the context of modern software.

But anyway, I still think you should need to pay to run a piece of software. You can look at the code all you like...that will foster an open research environment, allow others to build off the ideas in your work, etc. But building software is a complex enterprise, and there should be an economic model behind it that directly encourages good, working software and not derivative support contracts that encourage the production of crap. And again, you Linux morons, I'm not pointing to Microsoft as a model...Microsoft should not be the poster-child of proprietary software because a) they are annoyingly secretive about their source, and b) their revenue comes from a monopoly and not from market forces producing good software. In the U.S., we have never had a regulatory and intellectual property environment that actually fosters competition in the software world. It has yet to happen. And I think it would at the very least be an interesting experiment. But it never will until all the free software fucktards like Stallman stop demanding that all software should be given away like party favors thus fostering an entrenched support industry that will make damn sure computer systems are never manageable and reliable enough that they actually work out of the box and instead start demanding an even playing field.

If everyone would just listen to me, the world would be a better place. Because I'm always right.

AIMFight

Ever wonder how popular you are in the AIM world?

Windows Vista

New name, same botched OS. :)

And now, your moment of zen

Poor elmo.
Scary Rumsfeld.

"Fucking CNN, balls deep, every day"

Well, that's Mr. Murdoch for you.

On Carlinism

You'll forgive me...it's 1:30 am, and I'm in a melancholy mood...

I was discussing with a friend recently our relative views on, well, everything. Seeing as how she was talking to me, you can rightly assume that she shares at least some of my dark, jaded outlook on life. But she hasn't give up entirely on humanity. And I realized that I totally have.

It was kind of shocking to me, actually. It seems somehow anathema to liberalism to be fatalistic about the prospects for our species. And yet, I am also an empiricist, and the empirical evidence points inevitably to the fact we are, as a species, selfish and self-destructive. Maybe that's actually the core of liberalism anyway...the fundamental recognition that people are self-interested fucktards, and that that is, you know, bad. Conservatives either fail to recognize the dark nature of humanity (inexcusably idealistic naivete) or recognize it but just don't give a shit (understandable narcissistic apathy).

Anyway, back my main point. Think about it. Sure, you have friends you believe are good people and are trying to make the world a better place. But consider humanity as a whole. Look at history. The things we believe to have positive developments in human society were inevitably paid for with the blood and suffering of countless generations. People are entirely reactive. Nothing ever changes unless a critical mass of people are miserable.

Take a moment and wrap your brain around the implications of that simple fact. We are totally incapable of proactively working for the good of humanity. Self-governance, social welfare...none of them came about because it seemed like a good idea to the ruling class. It came about because enough people were being dicked over that they went and killed the fuckers collecting their taxes and tithes. And for a moment, things were good. But soon the revolutionaries (or more likely, their children) became decadent and apathetic. They stopped giving a shit about the people who had less than they did because they had what they wanted. And voila, you have a brand new ruling class. Repeat.

Every human society in history has followed this pattern. At least the ones who had enough resources and became efficient enough to allow for division of labor, an economy, and free time. Every goddamn one. Roman empire. Charlemagne. Byzantine empire. Kingdoms of the middle east. England. Spain. France. Portugal. And now, United States. And just look at the state of national politics to see that we've forgotten the dangers of an entrenched aristocracy and of an insurmountable class divide. This country has taught me that the only thing democracy buys you is a cheering section behind the tyrant.

It's fucking depressing. Every time I read about world events I get this profound sense of disappointment and infuration at humanity. And this, I think, is the fundamental aspect of Carlinism.

"What may sound like anger to some is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction." -- George Carlin, Brain Droppings

It's just so frustrating. It wouldn't be hard. We could do it. But we don't want to. We prefer to hoard, to demean, and to follow. We are fucktards. Absolute quintessential fucktards.

"...It's not so much individuals, it's about my contempt for the way [people] organize themselves and handle themselves. The contempt is because this species, including the American variety, had a great deal of potential. An incredible higher brain, able to do all these conceptual things beyond just food, eat, shit, fuck. I think that gift from nature has been completely wasted, and the pursuit of power, money, position and objects and possessions…all those things have pushed off the radar the more intelligent aspect of humans." -- George Carlin

I get pissed at people like Karl Rove, Bush, every retard in the Religious Right from Frist to Dobson to Falwell, all the sleazes in corporate America like the Ken Lays of the world, but you know, this last election taught me that it's all the other normal people that enable them to exist. To paraphrase Newton, if the world is ruled by assholes, it is because they stand on the shoulders of giant idiots. All those rat bastards are powerless without the throngs of braindead zombies that support them. All the money people voluntarily give up, money they could use to actually better their community, contribute to the knowledge of the universe, to warm somebody who's cold or feed someone who's hungry, and they fucking give it to Focus on the Family. No one holds a gun to their head. Nothing would happen to them if they didn't make the donation. But they do.

We thought that if we could get rid of the unelected monarchs and make the church more accountable to its congregation, if we could just give the downtrodden a voice, then we could fix it. We could make it better. We thought it was the upper eschelon standing in the way of our inevitable journey to Avalon. But look at what we've done with the world. We blithely poison ourselves and voluntarily give power to the unscrupulous and malevolent. And we fucking deserve the results.

So you know what? I'm just not going to feel guilty any more. I don't care. I'm going to enjoy the ride. I'm not going to feel guilty about not giving money to Second Harvest, not donating blood, not volunteering, none of it. It's a drop in the ocean of ignorance and apathy. Even if we were to make the world a better place, we are too shortsighted and petty not to fuck it all up again anyway. I have one shot at life, and every moment I waste worrying about a scourge of wasted intelligence that has done nothing to justify its viral existence is a tick off my internal clock. Fuck that. There are games to play, Go-Karts to ride, cotton candy to eat, and orgasms to have.

Call me when the world ends. With any luck I'll be laughing too hard to notice.

About that firing thing

Did I say fire? I meant not fire. Yeah, I can see how you might have been confused...

Inspirational phrases for a baby shower

Feel free to add your own.


It wasn't that hard to spread your legs/Yet we're still amazed his sperm found the egg

You let a retard sleep in your bed/Hope the kid likes special ed

We're really sorry the condom broke/But at least now we get some rum and cokes

Perhaps one day you and your child will be walking all alone/And you can point and say, "Look! That's the bar bathroom where mommy answered the bone-a-phone!" (ok, a bit long, but I liked it)

We know this is hard so don't feel so bad/Some day the circus will come back and you can find the dad

When the kid realizes his dad is so ugly the mind just boggles/Just calmly explain, "Sweetheart, mommy had beer goggles"

We dearly hope you don't fuck up your kid/Quite as much as your parents did

We're all delighted and ever so pleased/You contracted the most joyful sexually transmitted disease

Just goes to show that with enough stout/You'll believe him when he says, "I'll pull out"

Congrats on the bundle of joy, and try not to think about/The fact it will be 10 times larger than the orifice it needs to come out

We're happy about the baby, but it's still kind of shitty/That its daddy could be any guy in the city

We loved putting together this stupid goddamn party, no really it's a thrill/But next time just remember to take the goddamn pill

We're sure the kid will be perfect and won't need a brother/But it's still good to know if you fuck this one up you can still make another

Hardcore gaming...grandma?

My brain hurts.
(Be sure to watch the video)

Just sad

Brainwashed so young...

Don't buy Google

I just read that Google has a price/earnings ratio of 119.

Let me say that again because it's important: Google's price/earnings ratio is 119.

That means that their stock is worth 119 times their earnings. Hypothetically, this means people expect Google to grow, in the long term, by doubling seven times. Seven times.
They need to double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
Then double.
AND THEN FUCKING DOUBLE AGAIN.

Ok, so that's an oversimplification, but still...goddamn. It's like the beanie baby craze all over again.

Something you always suspected

Namely, studies show that one third of all studies are bullshit.

Why organized religion is a bad idea

Ah yes...of course the Church has traditionally been the defender of reason and truth in the face of hysterical "science." Just ask Galileo.

(Christ...at what point did these people completely lose touch with reality?)

Also, I couldn't help but post this.

I got bored again

Unremarkable peon seeks independently wealthy braniac supermodel - 25 (san mateo)

---

Reply to: anon-83910102@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-07-12, 2:15AM PDT


I've tried these sites before, but I have yet to find that special straight-haired brunette, large-breasted, independently wealthy, sexually deprived braniac supermodel and her lonely extra ferrari that I just know is out there waiting for me. I'm really not a picky guy, but I have yet to find her.

I can see us together in my mind...
...her gently sloping nose exquisitely reconstructed after being bitten off at the age of 6 by a meth-crazed, gimpy Saluki...
...her hazy, vacant green eyes, one lazy like the two of us on a Saturday night cuddling on a tired bean-bag chair...
...her turgid yet surgically botched nipples that make her shirt look like it's hiding tic tacs rammed haphazardly onto the sides of gracefully curving turkeys...
...her hips two angelic parentheses surrounding the universe's warmest and most welcoming asterisk...

Oh, it could be so beautiful!

I don't know much about you, oh beautiful fantasy woman, but I know in my heart of hearts that you must...simply must!...meet the following criteria, for I cannot imagine you any other way:

• Be sexually aroused when the announcer of the Lea and Perrins commercial announces lustily that, "_You_ were dry, but _I_ made you juicy!"
• Enjoy as a token of your deep and everlasting affection the fact that you will need to stare intently at my stubbornly flacid manhood while clapping excitedly and exclaiming, "I believe, Tinkerbell, I believe!" in order for me to become sexually aroused
• Like pretty sunsets
• Enjoy fine dining, be an excellent cook, and yet inexplicably also maintain the totally unreasonable cultural standards of female body shape
• Have the heights of your already enflamed passions elevated inescapably by the fact that I like to sing "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" during my sexual partners' moments of climax
• Be brilliant, successful, enviably gorgeous, charming, loyal, and witty, except insofar as your expression of said qualities exceeds my own
• Will glow with loving admiration at the sensitivity and empathy of my gift when I send your emotionally unstable sister a wire hanger for her baby shower
• Defecate infrequently, and when you do, only emit the finest aloe vera-enriched bath soaps
• Appreciate me for who I am, accepting my physical and emotional flaws unquestioningly and without holding me to unrealistic and shallow standards

My sweet fantasy fungal spore of perfection, I hope this note finds you well. Your acceptably attractive, selectively courageous prince awaits you so that we may begin our idyllic life together! Please email me soon! Every moment we are not together is an unbearable eternity of emotional constipation! You are the enema that will release the thundering, fragrant torrent of my passions!

Write soon, my sweet!

Quick! Act surprised!

Karl Rove?! No! That bastion of morality?

No, I don't know why

...but it's funny.

Lemming sheep!

I know I shouldn't find such deep financial loss funny, but goddamnit I do!

Why is Microsoft retarded?

Why does Microsoft keep doing such stupid shit? Haven't they learned about bad PR yet? Christ...

Anti-humor

I don't know why this is so funny, but it is. This ain't bad either.
...and while we're at it, baby jokes!

Latest homosexual recruitment promotion

Wow...a free toaster?! Where would I be without you, Matt?

Ruined your horoscope? Really?

Wow...people really are retarded.

Yeee-haw!

Deedle eedle deedle eet...

And so it begins

Fuuuuuuuck. I can already hear the Religious Right drooling.

Really cool housing search website

Someone hacked together a web page to glue together Google Maps and Craigslist apartment listings. Interface has some quirks, but otherwise it's very cool.

350 retarded reasons god exists

A nice collection of all the ridiculous justifications for the existence of God.

The Bush Administration's continued war on science

Hey, look! Another case of your government looking out for you.

A minimally-covered scary precedent

This _should_ scare the shit out of most people, but I suspect most haven't heard about it. As you may remember from your high school civics class, the government is granted the power of "eminent domain" to seize property so long as the seizure is for public use and the residents are given fair market value. The point is to be able to grab land for things like military bases, public utilities, etc. But the Supreme Court just ruled that land could be seized under eminent domain for commercial development. As in, a community in Connecticut was uprooted to make room for office buildings.

Think about that. It's fucking scary. The rationale here is that the economic benefit to the community as a whole by removing the homes and re-zoning the area commercially constitutes a justifiable public good. But Jesus...you can make that argument about just about anything. Economics is a sufficiently hazy pseudo-science that you can make a case that's compelling to at least some people to justify almost anything. Just ask the Bush Administration. So, effectively, now government can legally claim any private property they want to at any time. Scary.

Interestingly, it was the conservatives who were in the minority on this one. Makes sense if you think about it...conservatives are all about limited government, and liberals generally are in favor of allowing the government broad power.

Zombie dogs

Well ain't that fucking freaky?

Sleazy and gross

...but not unexpected.

The onion of the future!!!

Personal favorite: "We need a fourth rule of robotics: Stop fingering my wife."

Congress doing what it does best

Namely, pointless, stupid shit.

Didn't go into this with an agenda my ass

Come on guys...at least be a little more subtle about your smear campaign. I'm disappointed in you.

"In my vagina two times he bite me!"

Crazy lady, crazy dog.

I am the king of getting around paying for shit

Latest Craigslist post:

-----


I am a goddamn genius, you know that? A god. Damn. Genius.

So, the idea of actually paying people like match good money, especially $30/month, pisses me off. It's stupid, especially when it's so easy to do the same thing free on craigslist. Yay Craigslist.

Ok...here's what you do. And mind you, this is completely within the rules (no hacking required), even if it does stretch the intent a bit.

1) Create your profile. This is usually free. For tips on making a decent one (you retards), see another one of my posts.

2) Create a second profile. This is also free. You might need a second email to do this, but that's also free (hotmail, gmail, etc.). Name this profile something that obviously relates to the first profile (e.g., by appending "_email" to the end of the first one or something). Put no interesting information in this profile except, in some form or another, your email address. To avoid spammers, you can do something like "I'm hotgurl32@gmail.com, except replace the u with an i."

3) Ok, got that done? Awesome. Now, go happily browsing through the personals. Find someone who isn't so boring you want to stab yourself in the eyes with the fork and might actually want to talk to.

4) Here's the fun part. Winks are almost always free, right? Ok. Wink at the person with your first profile.

5) Immediately wink at them with your second profile.

Any reasonably intelligent person should be able to figure it out and email you. Or, if they're dumb, they'll pay money to talk to you.

Ok, so you might object that the service will screen profiles for emails and such. In that case, you'll have to be a bit more clever. You might, for instance, note in your first profile at the bottom that "you'll find something interesting in the first letter of each sentence of other profiles." Then encode your email address in the second profile. Slightly harder to figure out, but if they can't figure it out, do you really want to date them anyway? I thought not.

Yay covert channels! My parents would be so happy I'm putting my CS degree to such good use.

Special added bonus: Netflix!
I recently figured out that if you switch your subscription up to the, say, 8-at-a-time level, they will pretty much immediately send you the extra DVDs. But they won't charge you until your next billing cycle. So, as far as I can tell, they'll bill you for whatever your subscription level is set to on your billing day regardless of what the subscription level has been for the rest of the month. 8 for the price of 2, anyone?

Grapefruit? Really?

I cannot begin to explain how disturbing the second paragraph is.

Primer

If you haven't seen it, see Primer. It's the best science fiction movie I have seen in a very, very long time, perhaps ever. Seriously, if you like movies that make you think, it is fantastic.

And the even more amazing thing is that it was made on a budget of about $7,000.

Jesus fucking Christ

...did I really write that? Good lord...potent shit. I don't even remember writing half that shit. Scary.

Posting under the influence

I figure I had to try this. I took a somewhat heavy dose of Ambien to try to get my dumb ass to sleep, and it just kicked in hardcore. I feel...very weird. There keep being shadows on the edges of the screen, and all the windows are fluttering and undulating between swinging far away from me and swinging back towards me. Every so often if you catch the sides of the frame, they'll bend every so slightly. Fuckers. All the icons are floating around each other a bit...interestingly, the top words seems to be pushing the bottom words forward like bleacher seats. The words almost feel like they need to expand outside of the page. And the desktop seems like it really is 3 dimensional
I feel like I could put my hand behind what's being typed on the page and feel something fuzzy.
I don't know...it's like writing on a tight bubble or something. And sometimes it feels like I'm writing far away, and other times the screen is much closer. At the moment, for instance, the screen feels like it is bending clockwise...just a tendency. If I don't focus, it moves.

That entire paragraph undulates if you look at it. Words float together and away...according to some kind of tide I don't know about. and stream. They look like a floating armada of words. Bending. Floating. Shifting shades. This is fucking crazy. Have to land...have to land. Ground the page. Need to sleep. bleh

A best of craigslist that needs to be shared...

Girls really are crazy.

Virtual property

People are fucking retarded.

Let me explain some basic economics to you, Sparky: value is created by scarcity. Good waterfront property is worth a lot because, relative to the number of people who want it, there ain't much of it. Now, in contrast (you fucktards), the only scarcity in virtual worlds is completely arbitrary. If the universe creator wants to, they can probably add another server and instantly add a million more of whatever valuable thing you have, making your precious little virtual thingy worthless. Now, does that seem like a good investment to you?

Comments from a public defender

From Craigslist...this needs to be preserved:

-----

Some Advice From Your Public Defender

---

Reply to: anon-70300494@craigslist.org
Date: Tue Apr 26 10:49:28 2005


First, let me say I love my job and it is a privilege to work for my clients. I wish I could do more for them. That being said, there are a few things that need to be discussed.

You have the right to remain silent. So SHUT THE FUCK UP. Those cops are completely serious when they say your statements can and will be used against you. There’s just no need to babble on like it’s a drink and dial session. They are just pretending to like you and be interested in you.

When you come to court, consider your dress. If you’re charged with a DUI, don’t wear a Budweiser shirt. If you have some miscellaneous drug charge, think twice about clothing with a marijuana leaf on it or a t-shirt with the “UniBonger” on it. Long sleeves are very nice for covering tattoos and track marks. Try not to be visibly drunk when you show up.

Consider bathing and brushing your teeth. This is just as a courtesy to me who has to stand by you in court. Smoking 5 generic cigarettes to cover up your bad breath is not the same as brushing. Try not to cough and spit on my while you speak and further transmit your strep, flu, and hepatitis A through Z.

I’m a lawyer, not your fairy godmother. I probably won’t find a loophole or technicality for you, so don’t be pissed off. I didn’t beat up your girlfriend, steal that car, rob that liquor store, sell that crystal meth, or rape that 13 year old. By the time we meet, much of your fate has been sealed, so don’t be too surprised by your limited options and that I’m the one telling you about them.

Don’t think you’ll improve my interest in your case by yelling at me, telling me I’m not doing anything for you, calling me a public pretender or complaining to my supervisor. This does not inspire me, it makes me hate you and want to work with you even less.

It does not help if you leave me nine messages in 17 minutes. Especially if you leave them all on Saturday night and early Sunday morning. This just makes me want to stab you in the eye when we finally meet.

For the guys: Don’t think I’m amused when you flirt or offer to “do me.” You can’t successfully rob a convenience store, forge a signature, pawn stolen merchandise, get through a day without drinking, control your temper, or talk your way out of a routine traffic stop. I figure your performance in other areas is just as spectacular, and the thought of your shriveled unwashed body near me makes me want to kill you and then myself.

For the girls: I know your life is rougher than mine and you have no resources. I’m not going to insult you by suggesting you leave your abusive pimp/boyfriend, that you stop taking meth, or that your stop stealing shit. I do wish you’d stop beating the crap out of your kids and leaving your needles out for them to play with because you aren’t allowing them to have a life that is any better than yours.

For the morons: Your second grade teacher was right – neatness counts. Just clean up! When you rob the store, don’t leave your wallet. When you drive into the front of the bank, don’t leave the front license plate. When you rape/assault/rob a woman on the street, don’t leave behind your cell phone. After you abuse your girlfriend, don’t leave a note saying that you’re sorry.

If you are being chased by the cops and you have dope in your pocket – dump it. These cops are not geniuses. They are out of shape and want to go to Krispy Kreme and most of all go home. They will not scour the woods or the streets for your 2 grams of meth. But they will check your pockets, idiot. 2 grams is not worth six months of jail.

Don’t be offended and say you were harassed because the security was following you all over the store. Girl, you were wearing an electronic ankle bracelet with your mini skirt. And you were stealing. That’s not harassment, that’s good store security.

And those kids you churn out: how is it possible? You’re out there breeding like feral cats. What exactly is the attraction of having sex with other meth addicts? You are lacking in the most basic aspects of hygiene, deathly pale, greasy, grey-toothed, twitchy and covered with open sores. How can you be having sex? You make my baby-whoring crack head clients look positively radiant by comparison.

"I didn't put it all the way in." Not a defense.

"All the money is gone now." Not a defense

"The bitch deserved it." Not a defense.

"But that dope was so stepped on, I barely got high." Not a defense.

"She didn't look thirteen." Possibly a defense; it depends.

"She didn't look six." Never a defense, you just need to die.

For those rare clients that say thank-you, leave a voice mail, send a card or flowers, you are very welcome. I keep them all, and they keep me going more than my pitiful COLA increase.

For the idiots who ask me how I sleep at night: I sleep just fine, thank you. There's nothing wrong with any of my clients that could not have been fixed with money or the presence of at least one caring adult in their lives. But that window has closed, and that loss diminishes us all.

Treatise on proper karaoke technique

...from my dear friend Jewmanji, who is of course an expert on the topic.

Guide to Better Personals Posts from Uncle Jaded McSarcasm!

Apparently we've figured out what I'll be doing in the short term with more free time.

-----
Okay: once more, with feeling. I know this has been posted a thousand times before by a hundred different posters, but from what I can see you're not listening, so we're going to go through this one more time. Please follow the bouncing ball.

Ladies. I know you are the scarce commodity in these here parts. I understand that. Really. I realize that you can afford to be pickier than the guys, and that you could probably post something in all caps that said, "I HAVE WITHERED BOOBS AND FART A LOT!" and have about a thousand replies in the next 40 minutes. I get it.

That said, for the love of whatever deity you believe in, let's put a little thought and a little marketing into those personals posts. If you want any hope of actually catching the attention of a guy who does not keep a folder full of pictures of his own wang, who has not (at least recently) had a discussion about whether the Enterprise or a Star Destroyer would win in a fight, and who will not ask you to "touch his wookie" on the first date, you're going to need to do better.


Rule #1: The phrase "I'm so tired of" should not appear in your post unless followed by "riding naked and alone in my extra ferrari."


Nothing brings out those commitment and support urges like sustained and detailed whining about previous dating experiences! We love them. It makes us fantasize about standing in front of that ramshackle, heavily mortgaged house with maladjusted children screaming across the yard while listening to you explain to us how the yard still needs mowing and we never take you anywhere special any more. And that's soooo hot. We immediately begin composing email demanding to be allowed to take you to Europe and marry you on the Italian Riviera.

Seriously though...how do you feel when you read a guy's post about how there aren't any decent women in the bay area and how all the girls he's met are fake? Is this attractive? Do you get good feelings about this clown? No, of course you don't. You feel like you're being whined at. You don't like it, and neither will your Perfect Boy. Don't do it.


Rule #2: There is no one on Craigslist who is 6'2", in perfect physical condition, mysterious eyes, confident, successful, witty, driven, supportive, understanding, has a perfect butt, rock-hard thighs and calves, broad, muscular shoulders, and a deep, knee-melting voice with a slight accent.


He doesn't exist, and he sure as hell isn't browsing online personals. And psst...I'll tell you a secret: you don't actually want that anyway. Interesting people always have a certain set of "flaws" that make them distinctive, and the person you fall in love with will inevitably not match your preconceived notions.

So, ditch the detailed laundry list of desirable traits in your Perfect Boy. This one also falls under the heading of "you don't like it when we do it, so why the hell are you doing it?" I realize boys are somewhat alien, but believe it or not we do have feelings too and have vaguely human reactions to things. If you create this detailed list, we think you're just going to be sitting there ticking off points for the ways in which we don't measure up. We all have our flaws, and we all get evaluated too much as it is anyway. Isn't the whole point of being in a relationship with someone that you can rely on them _not_ to judge you and be supportive no matter what kind of fucked up thing you do? All right then. If physical appearance is important and you don't want to waste your time with someone you will never be attracted to, fine. Ask for a picture. This is reasonable. But we are not applying for a job. We're trying to find someone we'd actually like to hang out with and might have a connection to.

That said, describing _your_ physical traits is perfectly fine and indeed probably recommended. Us boys are very simple and very visual creatures, and you're more likely to get our attention if we can form a picture of you in our heads. The nice part about words is that they're never complete, and we tend to fill in any missing details to our own particular liking. You might think this could be dangerous as we will eventually be "disappointed," but so long as you are (vaguely) honest, it's fine. Creating interest is an important first step. The rest will take care of itself. You never know; he might be pleasantly surprised, and even if he isn't, by the time he sees what you actually look like, he'll probably have more than physical appearance to go off of, and as you girls well know, that can account for a remarkable portion of a person's overall attractiveness when it comes to relationships. There are some damn ugly people out there dating some damn hot ones, and it happens for a reason.


Rule #3: Everyone thinks they're kind of cute, likes movies, snuggling, travelling, going to restaurants, loves to laugh, and wants someone cool to hang out with. FUCKING EVERYONE.


Seriously. Everyone. Ted Kazynski likes snuggling. Goebels liked snuggling. Pol Pot liked to laugh. The Wicked Witch of the West liked travelling. Even James Dobson likes to snuggle while he's busy hating gay people and plotting the resurrection of his dark master. But you know what? They're all very different, very unique, and very scary fuckers that I would never want to date. And having you tell me you possess these traits gives me absolutely no new information and does not differentiate you in any way from the demented fucktards previously mentioned. Please, please, PLEASE tell me about yourself. Spend at least a little bit of time describing yourself in a way that gives me a picture of who you actually are. What you like doing. What you don't. What pisses you off. What you love. What you find funny. What kind of fucked up shit you've done. Even the specific ways in which your job sucks balls would be progress. But damn...tell me something about YOU. Read the other "women looking for men" posts and then DON'T SOUND LIKE THAT. Ask yourself why any guy would want to reply to you in particular out of the myriad of personals postings. Will it be because you like to watch movies on the couch and go to good restaurants? No, because that's what the last 912 postings said too. Be unique. If you like kicking puppies, well damnit, I want to know about it. Tell me what you _think_...don't just give me a laundry list of activities. I want to know how you look at the world and what makes you tick, and the fact that you plan tennis and read books just doesn't cut it. Oh, and by the way, describing yourself should hopefully take more than a few lines. If it doesn't, you are boring, and we have no interest in talking to you.


All right, a couple of final, minor rules:

Rule #4: If I want an unsmiling stare, I will peer intently at my mother's cat


If providing a picture, take a decent one of yourself. Try not to take a poorly lit webcam photo at 3 am. And smile. The impression I want to get is, "Hey, you should come hang out with me because I'm fun!" not, "Look into my eyes so that I may use my mental powers to make your brain explode!!" Smiling good. Brain exploding bad.


Rule #5: The caps lock is not that hard to figure out


You look retarded when you type all in caps and misspell all of your words. Frankly, I'm surprised you were able to actually post anything. Is chewing gum and walking at the same time a challenge as well? Here. Take this bag of M&Ms and remove all the W's. Let me know when you're done.


Rule #6: When you say, "I am a 9 and you should be a 9 too, and men find me intimidating," I hear, "I am a self-involved, shallow, and insecure bitch that no man should go near with a borrowed dick"


Get over yourself. What kind of banchee succubus intimidates people into dating them? And what kind of fucked-up relationship does that result in? And are the children of those people the idiots who buy shit from spammers? And does this explain Karl Rove?


That's all I have for now. 6 easy to follow rules to better and more fulfilling personals postings from you friendly local bitter and sarcastic recently-single mid-twenties male. I wish you the best of luck, and I look forward to the drastic improvement in postings that will inevitably now result. Excuse me while I return to being pissed off at world events mixed with intermittent masturbation.

transportation disasters = fun

I wrote up my "thoughts" on a recent television program I watched into a Craigslist rant & rave.

Update: since it will eventually be deleted, I thought I'd repost here:

I know there will come a day sometime in the future, karma being the unavoidable bitch that she is, when I will find myself the heavily used Preparation H tube of a truck driver with Irritable Bowel Syndrome for thinking this, but that documentary on major transportation disasters I was watching today was goddamn funny.

I'm serious. Have you watched that shit? People seem to have the common sense of an autistic koala and, to quote George Carlin, the reflexes of an aging panda, and in the midst of disaster do the most profoundly retarded things. And people die because of it! And damned if it isn't fucking entertainment.

Case #1: Titled, I shit you not, "Flying with One Wing." Now, that alone is funny. You don't really fly with one wing in my experience. It's really more of a falling to your doom kind of thing. Or perhaps spinning to your doom. That second wing...really not so much optional. Not a backup. Prerequisite to the whole staying in the air thing, wouldn't you say?

But, anyway, Flying with One Wing. Apparently, there was some plane that, if I may spoil the ending for you, had a fucked up propeller that had broken off, destabilized the engine, fucked it up, and thrown it out of its mounting, thus contorting a wing, and making the plane not fly so good. Ok, so that sucks. But it turns out the pilots were so busy trying to control the plane that they don't bother to look back and see that, hey, the engine's all fucked up. All they knew was that the plane was veering sharply to the left and losing altitude. Which is fine. They were busy. But when they finally got it stable enough to call the stewardess, she apparently didn't feel the need to mention that she had, you know, noticed the engine was all fucked up.

Now, you'd think that would come up. At least a, "Hey, you know, I couldn't help but notice the engine's all fucked up, smoking, on fire, and about to fall off. I don't mean to be a bother, being a simple flight attendant and all, but it just seemed to me a rather important detail." But no, nothing. Not a peep. Not even a, "Hey, have you looked at the engine lately? I'm pretty sure it didn't look like that when we took off." Nope. Back to serving crappy pretzels.

Moving on. The final amusement of this episode was the announcer. Just before the plane crashed (in the re-enactment, of course...there wasn't another plane flying alongside full of insensitive pricks who just wanted to make a documentary), they said the pilot finally glanced back and looked at the fucked up engine. The reaction was properly overacted with the faux-pilot turning white, looking horrified, and generally giving the impression of impending doom. That wasn't what was funny. What was funny was that the voiceover said,

"...Only then did the pilot look back at the smoldering wreckage of the engine. He had no idea the extent of the damage. None of his instruments had told him."

Really. You know, because I could have sworn they put an "Engine All Fucked Up and Kinda Hanging Off the Side of the Plane" warning light SOMEWHERE on the dashboard. Seriously though, what fucking indicator would you put in to indicate THAT? I mean, among other things, I think the engineers would have assumed, rightly, that the point at which that light came on is roughly the point at which the plane had become intimate with a cornfield somewhere. What the fuck did the producers want? A giant warning message to pop up on the cockpit display that said, "HEY LOOK AT THE LEFT ENGINE IT'S ALL FUCKED"?

But the hillarity didn't stop with the plane with one wing. Oh no. Next up was a German rail disaster. Now, let's say you're riding happily along at 150 mph towards Hamburg facing your wife and daughter. You're enjoying some kind of funny-sounding sausage, drinking non-crappy, non-American beer, and feeling very efficient and stuff with only a hint of a memory of being bombed to shit at one point in your history. Now, let's say that interrupting this German bliss is an object that suddenly protrudes from between your wife's and daughter's seats. For the sake of argument, and because it's just plain factually correct, let's say it's...oh, I don't know...a giant metal beam.

That's right. A giant metal beam. Like the ones that sleepwalking cartoons seem to stumble upon as they're being lifted up a building? One of those. Sticking up between the seats.

Now, I'll give you two options at this point. It'll be like a choose your own adventure!

Option A) Realizing that travelling at 150 mph with a giant beam sticking through the floor is probably neither safe nor healthy, you run to the nearest emergency break handle and pull the fucker. Other train passengers arrive in Hamburg late but alive. You are yelled at and then praised in German. You can't tell the difference.

Option B) Having the common sense of a parent who sits their small child in front of a wall socket with metal forks in each of its hands, you decide to take a leisurely stroll back 3 cars to find the conductor and mention the minor but recent aesthetic annoyance of having a giant metal beam stick up between your wife and child. You fear your child will give the beam too much metaphorical significance and will become estranged from her mother.

Now, lest you jump at option B, allow me to make you aware of a further complication: IF you successfully tell the conductor about the giant metal beam sticking out of the floor, he will claim that company policy demands that he investigate the issue before pulling the emergency break. You know, because as a conductor, you see a lot of giant metal beams sticking out of the floor, and the stupid passengers will freak out at any old beam whether it's in danger of metastacizing into other giant metal beams or not. It might be one of those giant metal beams that jumps out of the floor as part of normal train operation. He doesn't know! He has to check it out!

Needless to say, this clever young chap went with option B. And wouldn't you know it, but before the conductor could pull the emergency break, the train derailed, slammed into a bridge, and killed most of the passengers. Ain't that a bitch?

All right, all right...final episode. This one is quick, but still worth mention. The last episode was on the Boxing Day tsunami. I know, too soon, not funny. Except that this particular (immensely entertaining) documentary taught me the answer to the following question:

Q) What's worse than being caught in a tsunami?
A) Having a phobia about getting caught in a tsunami and THEN being caught in a tsunami.

I shit you not. They interviewed some poor woman who had a long-standing fear of tsunamis, went on vacation, and was caught in the tsunami. What are the chances? Seriously. And when she came home, did she storm into her shrink's office and yell, "SEE?! I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO! Oh no...you said I was craaaaazy. 'Sure sure Helen...unstoppable wall of water. Widespread death and destruction. Yada yada yada. Whatever. Sit down and shut up Crazy McCrazyson.' Well FUCK you! I was right! Now give me my tinfoil hat back, you overpaid fucktard!"

Anyway, that's how it went in my head. Because it's funnier that way.

So yeah...transportation disasters. Hours of entertainment. Strangely apropos after breaking up with a long term girlfriend, but still...fun!

Dance Dance Immolation

I think this speaks for itself.

Another one to bang your head against the wall about

IRONY MUCH???

We haven't had a good book-burning lately

Why not start with these?

WHY?!

Something good inside me just died.

Kick ass

More Xbox 360 shizzle.

Xbox 360

Didn't see the telecast, but mmmm...delicious. Fuck dual core...let's try triple core.

Fucking creepy

World's first self-replicating robot. Strangely eerie.

A ringing endorsement

Oddly, a good word from one guy who was investigated multiple times by an independent counsel and another who led the charge to stop the recounts in Florida doesn't exactly help my impression of Mr. Bush's "fuck you" nomination for UN ambassador.

Winner of today's most surreal news story

It's oddly appropriate that the Vatican should be convicted of killing people with invisible beams of energy.

Apple too busy Microsoft-bashing to bother to learn from their mistakes

See? Security vulnerabilities come more from widespread adoption and the fundamental nature of building complicated systems than they do from the incompetence of any given software maker.

Be afraid

If you think viruses that erase all your email are bad, try some sexually frustrated schmuck in his basement creating a virus that will print "I (heart) boobies" across your chest and then make your liver explode.

A limp grasp of history

I hate that I know more history than our President, and I don't know much.

Hey. Jackass. Hitler was elected democratically. World War II was about fighting off bigoted, authoritarian fucktards (like yourself) and about cleaning up a badly negotiated peace following World War I.

What would politics look like without incorrect oversimplifications?

Want to be truly depressed?

Watch this.

No hope for humanity

People are dumb.

Colbert getting his own show

Wow...I don't know how I feel about this. It will be a shame to lose Colbert from the Daily Show. He's obviously the best correspondent there. Helms is almost as good, but Cordrey and Bee have a ways to go before reaching his level. And I'm not sure Colbert will work on his own.

Good old American spirit

Good to know that America can't even get its shit together enough to rebuild the world trade center.

Rome lasted a millenium...and yet, we're going to dick ourselves over in under 3 centuries. Go us.

Redefine it, then kill it

His direct attacks against Social Security having failed, Mr. Bush now seems to be taking a more circuitous route to its demise.

And topping the list of douchebags this week is...

Tada!

What an idiot. Claiming you bullied Microsoft into changing their position on a gay rights bill is the surest way to ensure they reconsider the changing of their position. Even God does not fuck with the Evil Empire.

Man who defeats invisible alien in movie not uniquely qualified for government?

Shocking!

God, people are fucking dumb.

The ongoing myth of the liberal media

Another one for the "not surprised but still pissed" files. I was wondering how long it would take for the creeping tendrils of the neoconservatives to try to invade PBS. Can't have one network that's actually relatively independent of corporate advertising dollars, now can we?