Claire's blog

• COMEDY: Fake Science
  A tumblr blog of pictures that are fake science. File under surreal comedy.
  (tags: media pictures science fake fakeScience comedy tumblr)

CLEVELAND, Ohio: The Church of the SubGenius has announced that the end of the world will take place in precisely seven days, on Monday, July 5, 2010. In preparation for the fulfillment of this doomsday prophecy, the Church has issued a call to all of its members, to participate in a festival with rock concerts and blasphemous rituals taking place in upstate New York, during the final weekend before the arrival of the apocalypse.

The Church’s popularity has grown in recent years, much to the alarm of authorities. In 2010 the Church of the SubGenius arrived on Facebook, offending peace-loving conservatives but gathering over 1,500 members on its Facebook page in only a few days’ time.

The Church of the SubGenius is a popular organization often seen as a “parody” of religious cults, including Scientology, the Raelians, the Unification Church, and racist hate groups such as Christian Identity. The organization is widely seen as a satire that mocks organized religion, or as the church describes itself, “a cynisacreligion.”

Since its inception in 1953, Church founder J.R. “Bob” Dobbs has predicted that a fleet of flying saucers will arrive at the beginning of July to destroy the worldwide Conspiracy against the Church of the SubGenius, while all ordained SubGenius ministers will be rescued by escape vessels piloted by the Alien Sex Goddesses, also known as the Xists.

The Church is inviting all of its members worldwide to gather together for the final hours in Sherman, New York from Wednesday, June 30, 2010 to Monday, July 5, at a clothing-optional outdoor campground called Brushwood Folklore Center. The first gathering at this compound took place in 1996, and the event has increased in size and participants each following year. 1998 was designated the first true “X-Day,” and each successive year has added one to the total. This year’s celebration in 2010 is X-Day 13, or X-Day XIII.

The Church has been engaged in a massive recruitment campaign to increase the numbers of its membership before the arrival of the Xists. According to Church records, the organization currently has approximately 100,000 members worldwide. SubGenius recruitment has been especially dedicated among the ranks of people who refuse to conform to the norms of society, including disbelievers, blasphemers, pranksters, rebels, hackers, pornographers, geeks, and outcasts.

The Church is seeking underground bands, indie rockers, performance artists, and performers and producers from the adult entertainment industry, because sexual freedom has been an important part of Church doctrine from the start. X-Day will be a celebration of free expression, performance art, rock and roll, pornography, and adult entertainment; and certain parts of the event will be restricted to adults only. Only ordained ministers of the Church of the SubGenius are allowed at the event, but the Church is accepting memberships at its standard rate of $30 up until the final hours of July 4.

The Church of the SubGenius has been no stranger to controversy since its foundation, and the upcoming X-Day celebration promises to be no different. In the late 1980s, members of the Church were accused of spreading a virus in Macintosh computers known as the “Peace Virus.” Numerous articles have been written on the Church in such noteworthy publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wired Online, Boston Globe, U.S. News and World Report; and broadcast reports have been produced by CNN and NPR. In April 1999, officials of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts shut down an official SubGenius Devival gathering in the belief that the Church was affiliated with the Trenchcoat Mafia (the organization blamed for the Columbine high school shootings), though authorities later realized the association was mistaken. In its January 1, 2000 issue, a Time magazine poll declared J.R. “Bob” Dobbs the biggest fraud of the 20th century.

The Church received additional media attention in 2006 when one of its high-ranking members, known in SubGenius circles as Reverend Mary Magdalen, became involved in a legal battle for custody of her son due to her membership in the Church. This case has been covered in such popular online sites as Boing Boing, Fark, and Wikinews (Wikipedia’s news reporting service).

When the mysterious group “ANONYMOUS” delcared war against the Church of Scientology in 2008, the Church of the SubGenius responded with a declaration of solidarity with the hackers on steroids…and an invitation to the legions of ANONYMOUS to join the Church in New York to prepare for X-Day.

Detailed information about X-Day can be found on the World Wide Web at the X-Day Web site:

http://www.modemac.com/x-day

The official home page of the Church of the SubGenius can be found at:

http://www.subgenius.com/

Official Facebook page for the Church of the SubGenius:

http://tinyurl.com/23f2dxy

X-Day XIII Facebook Page:

http://tinyurl.com/2a47pyj

Reverend Mary Magdalen’s custody case:

http://www.modemac.com/wiki/Reverend_Magdalen

Message to ANONYMOUS from the Church of the SubGenius:

Photographers, entertainers, production companies, radio broadcasters, and all media producers are encouraged to contact the Church at its Cleveland, Ohio headquarters at 1-216-320-9528.

Also check out The High Weirdness Project @ http://www.modemac.com (more…)

• OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Congress Just Declared Preemptive WAR on Iran
  Very interesting. Sanctions are historically considered an act of war? And the Obama Administration is basically carrying on the exact legacy of the Bush Administration:

  Pre-emptively battle sovereign nations for their oil, over an unprovable pretext, using fear and the need for security to drive acceptance.

  Except this time, it happened under the Democrats' watch. Same shit, different party. Same shit, different president.

  Not that I'd vote for him, but kudos to Ron Paul for being one of 8 people in Congress and the House Of Representatives to actually vote correctly on this issue. Iran's never going to nuke us, ever. This is not actually about America, or saving Americans' lives.

  (tags: politics WarOnTerror war terrorism freedom WarInIran Iran sanctions Israel Battleships ships Pakistan Reuters ActivistPost news articles BushDoctrine ObamaAdministration SameShitDifferentPresident Democrats SameShitDifferentParty pre-emptive RedSea oil nuclear uranium RonPaul HR2194 IranSanctions UN)
• 211: 2-1-1 US: Home Page
  Special thanks to SubGenius Reverend Leonard The Committed for pointing out that the "211 movement" exists.

  For a long time I've been saying there should be an "811", a "soft 911" for people who want responders OTHER than aggressive police with guns and tasers who will shoot your own family member.

  Apparently, 211 is basically my 811 idea, but with a 2 instead of an 8. A way to connect to services you may need in a pinch WITHOUT having to go through the police and their violent and often brutal tactics.

  Good stuff. Let's hope this takes off.

  (tags: 811 211 fromLeonardTheCommitted phones communication government)
• COPYRIGHT: Copyright fee crackdown has coffeehouses pulling plug on open mics – fuck the ASCAP, this isn't about artists
  Will intellectual property laws squelch open mic from our culture?
  Will we destroy art in order to save it?

  Ahh, ASCAP. The ones who sued the boy scouts for singing around the campfires. The ones who made it so restaurants can't sing us "Happy Birthday", even though the artists that are being "protected" have been dead for half a century.

  ASCAP actually told one guy that if people use guitars in his cafe, they owe him money. Wow.

  (tags: politics copyright intellectualProperty coffeeHouses openMic Somethin'sBrewin'BookCafe Lakeville CoffeeMilano Middleboro ASCAP SESAC BMI media audio music)
• WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: Britain army head says Britain will not defeat Taliban and should open talks
  Yup. We're not gonna win in Afghanistan. This has gone on longer than Vietnam.
  (tags: politics WarOnTerror war WarInAfghanistan Afghanistan freedom UK Taliban Britain SirDavidRichards negotiations Telegraph news articles)
• TECHNOLOGY WAR: VICTORIES: GUN CONTROL: Supreme Court rules that all Americans have fundamental right to bear arms
  Yes! States cannot override the constitutions protection of our right to use gun technology to defend our lives; the most basic right of all, more important than freedom of speech or religion. Those freedoms are useless if you were killed and unable to defend yourself thanks to government restrictions. This keeps the playing field between criminals and homeowners level.

  It's official: The 2nd amendment is an individual right, not one related to military service. People have been trying to retroactively change the meaning for a long, long time. No more. The highest court in the land has ruled on the subject.

  (In this case, screw Breyer.)

  (tags: politics TechnologyWar victories GunControl ConstitutionalRights rights self-defence guns 2ndAmendment SecondAmendment law legal court rulings SupremeCourt SCOTUS CHicago Illinois government individuals WashingtonPost news articles)
• OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: SCOTUS Nominee Kagan On Free Speech Issues
  Obama's trying to appoint someone who thinks our country hasn't done enough to stop porn. Remember when Bush had the FBI redirected to fight porn, and everyone whined? If you want to be consistent, then you need to whine now too. Obama's doing the same shit Bush did, just in more subtle ways so everyone continues to think he's the fucking messiah. He's not.

  Hate speech regulation is also bullshit. That's how Scientology squelches criticism. That's how Islam squelches criticism. In countries with hate speech laws on the books, free speech no longer exists — unless you want to go to court to prove your speech isn't hate speech. Good luck being able to express your opinion. Of course, hate speech legislation is something one dimensional liberals LOVE.

  Me? I side on the side of freedom. It's not hard. You can too.

  (tags: politics FreedomOfSpeech speech 1stAmendment FirstAmendment ConstitutionalRights rights pornography porn WarOnPorn ObamaAdministration SCOTUS SupremeCourt nominees appointees ElanaKagan UniversityOfChicago government freedom hateSpeech hateSpeecLegislation legislation legal laws Democrats Slashdot news articles SameShitDifferentPresident BarackObama)

• COPYRIGHT: Creative Commons Responds To ASCAP Letter
  ASCAP protect artists? Hah. Love the spin they had to put on what they said after the backlash. Stupid corporate dinosaurs will die; we don't need companies to get our music to each other anymore. We can make money via our own arrangements, thank you.
  (tags: politics copyright media audio music ASCAP EEF CreativeCommons ZeroPaid IntellectualProperty DinosaursWillDie Slashdot news articles haha copyleft)

• ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: Grandson calls police because he's concerned his bedridden 86-year-old grandmother wasn't taking her meds
  What do you think happened next?

  They arrested him, tased her, hospitalized her, and put her in a mental ward to cover their asses.

  Why did they taser her? She told them to leave, of course. THERE WERE TEN OFFICERS THERE. They tased a bedridden 86-year-old grandma for "a more aggressive posture in her bed".

  The only officers named are Thomas Duran, Frank Tinga, Joseph Sandberg. Whoever was involved with this should be criminally prosecuted,imprisoned, and prevented from ever working in a position where they have physical authority over another human being ever again.

  You guys are scum, the lowest form of cowards ever, using our taxpayer money meant to serve and protect the public to assault the elderly instead. You will lose your lawsuit, and the other 7 John Doe names must be released o the public.

  Cowardly pigs belong in a slaughterhouse.

  (tags: politics AbuseOfAuthorioty police policeBrutality brutality tasers elderly 86-year-old grandmother bedridden ElReno LonaVarner oxygen oxygenHose oxygenDeprivation lawsuits LonnieTinsley ThomasDuran FrankTinga JosephSandberg toreSkin injuries hospitalized burns bleeding psychiatricWar institutionalized CarlosMiller CourthouseNews PoliceState blog news articles)

[IMDB link] [Netflix link] There’s a Speed Racier movie? Thanks for the tip, Christian D. Sounds like a great candidate to watch in HD!

PEOPLE: Written & directed by the Wachowski brothers — who brought us The Matrix, V For Vendetta, and Bound. Starring Emile Hirsch (Milk, The Girl Next Door), Christina Ricci (not looking as hot as in most of her movies), John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Roger Allam (V For Vendetta, and the Inkheart narrator), Scott Porter, Matthew Fox.

QUIRKS: Based on a cartoon. And LONG. 2 hours, 15 minutes. Long movies rule — when they’re good.

VISUALS: Absolutely incredible visuals. I didn’t realize this was from the creators of The Matrix. Most of the movie is CG. Think: Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, but better. The car races are the most amazing things I’ve ever seen “cars” do (even if it’s really CG). The CG also helped keep the cartoon feel. The crazy outfits, sets, and visuals really made this a live-action cartoon adaptation that retains all of the original cartooniness. Usually, if a cartoon is converted to live-action, the cartooniness is sucked out of it. NOT here. Absolutely amazing visuals.

CONCLUSION: I never really cared for the cartoon that much, but the movie was absolutely amazing. Some of the most frenetic action scenes that I’ve seen in awhile. EXTREMELY stylized movies always get me off really good. Truly amazing. Some people might not like how long it is — but when something is really good, you don’t want it to end. I could have watched 4 hours of this! We both loved it. I never knew a cartoon could be adapted into live-action so successfully.

RATINGS: Netflix: 5/5 stars. IMDB: 8.5/9 (average of me & Carolyn).

RECOMMENDATION: Like visuals, action, special effects, and unique style? Watch this — even if you hated the cartoon.

MOVIE QUOTE: Speed: “Haven’t any of these drivers read the rule book?”

FRIENDS’ RATINGS: Christian D loved it. Jordan really liked it. Stacy hated it (weird). (more…)

So I decided to upgrade our 7.1 Home Theatre rear surround speakers…. From crappy black noname ones I got at a yardsale, to these better silver JVC ones with a bass port and everything, which I got off of Freecycle.

First, in order to hang them, I have to use a ruler and mark off where I want to add my hooks. Then I nail a thumbtack into the holes [my way of drilling pilot holes] and remove them. Then I screw in picture hanging hooks. I use 4 per speaker, for redundancy, after a speaker fell back when I use 2. A total of 8. Except I started with a different set, and ended up using 12. (Did a blind listening test with Carolyn — literally wearing a blindfold — which confirmed the results of my own listening test, that the silver speakers were better and I should have been using them. I didn’t realize they were wood-cased, I thought they were plastic and thus would not accept hooks.)

Anyway, screwing those 12 hooks in last night gave me a huge blister on my right hand! From screwing those tiny screws in! 1.0cm long, 0.5cm wide, and 0.4cm raised from my skin. I broke my tradition of popping all blisters and let it fester there in pussy healiness, since the body obviously does that for a reason.

The next step is to use picture hanging wire to create a wire hook to hang it to a ceiling hook that I have on my ceiling. Wire it through the hooks in a redundant fashion, then make a loop to hang.

Problem is, we ran out of picture hanging wire for the first time in 10 yrs after I did one speaker. I asked Carolyn to scrounge for more, and she brought up some REAL wire, i.e. stuff thick enough that you could use it in a soldernig iron. NOT woven picture hanging wire, but a single wire well over 1mm thick. A bit harder to bend.

Today, I went to cut that wire with scissors. No go. Way too thick. So I opted to use the “two handed dangerous scissor cut method”, which I have used many times in my life before, with larger and more dangerous scissors than the plastic-handled ones of Carolyn I was using.

I put my hand on both sides of the scissor and squeezed as hard as I could on both ends. BAM! I got that wire chopped!

And a great deal of my hand too. I screamed in pain. I looked at my hand, and saw an injury that was not so minor as to automatically exlude the possibility of going to the emergency room. It was actually a bit of horror movie psychology that I got to experience myself: Looking at a wound in horror, making noises that come from the animal kingdom (not humanity), feeling the adrenaline rush, and not knowing what to do for 2 or 3 seconds. (I don’t really panic, so losing presence of mind for 2 or 3 seconds is a significant psychological event for me.)

Of course I went for the camera right away [after 2 or 3 paper towels]:

Here’s the blood that landed on the floor between me sitting down and taking a picture 10 seconds later:

Much more on the floor before I managed to wipe it up. And it was stainy, leaving some red on the floor. I ended up spitting on it, as spit breaks down tough stains with its digestive properties, and carries its own disinfectant as well (why we lick wounds), but, most importantly, can be dispensed without leaving a trail of blood between you and actual cleaning products. Because waiting another 30 seconds would let the stain set more, plus I don’t want to get blood on any carpet. Later I used some water, I think I’ll have Carolyn use some Murphy’s Oil Soap on the floor later to give it a proper cleaning.

I went to the bathroom and realized a bandaid was not going to cut it. Hell, just while rinsing it with water, the blood would NOT stop. I needed some pressure.

Having no clue where we keep the gauze, since I hadn’t used it in quite awhile, I knew I needed something gauze-like to use. Not a towel or washcloth, they are too expensive to get blood all over. Not a shirt; same deal. What’s cheap? What’s cheap, cotton, and guaranteed to be clean? UNDERWEAR which just came out of the laundry. I’ll look for a pair with holes in it that I would probably be throwing away anyway.

So here I am with underwear wrapped around my hand. I call Carolyn up, and she talks me through finding the gauze. Speaker phone kicked ass, but I couldn’t hear her from the bathroom, so I tried our cordless phone we hadn’t used in years. It didn’t work. Argh. So I had to keep walking back and forth between the bathroom and the phone. But if I’d had a cellphone, I’d probably have gotten blood all over it, so this is okay. I find out the gauze is in the back of shelf 3 from the floor, so I get it out. I know where the tape is, because I had just reorganized 3 boxes of band-aids plus 2 rolls of medical tape plus scissors all into one tiny metal coffee tin; it was a 10 minute space-saving project we did last week in order to find a use for the coffee tin [rather than throwing it away]. It saved a ton of space.

So I wrap that baby up. By then, the toilet was pretty messy from the blood. (The sink was too.)

So I then scrub the toilet — I had to stick my hand in the toilet water and everything. Blood does NOT leave easy, I had to wet the whole rim of the toilet just to get my own blood off. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Now my day is filled with left-hand typos. What is the recommended interval of bandage changing, anyway?

The moral of the story: If wire clippers are 5 feet away, and you need to clip wires, for “Bob’s”sake get up and walk over there rather than using a pair of scissors that can’t cut it [pun intended].

Anyway, the other neat thing was – MY BLISTER ON MY RIGHT HAND INSTANTLY DISAPPEARED! I guess all the pus went over to my left hand. No, not really. But my body lost enough blood that it realized its fluids would be put to better use than being used for pussing up something that happened 16 hours ago. So now I have this weird “ex blister” on my right hand, bandages on my left hand, a cleaner toilet than this morning, and bloody underwear in the trash.

ALWAYS FUN UPGRADING SPEAKERS (more…)

• REPUBLICANS: Congressman Rohrabacher: Almost All House Republicans Think Iraq War Illegal, Immoral
  Oops! Started a war by mistake! Stupid, stupid republicans. We all knew it was a mistake then, but you didn't. Now if only the Democrats could wise-up about Afghanistan. Obama campaigned as a peace candidate, and now is a bigger warmonger than Bush!
  (tags: politilcs Republicans war WarInIraq Iraq WarOnTerror terrorism AndrewNapolitano FoxBusinessNetwork DanaRohrabacher ShepSmith ObamaAdministration BushAdministration AlexJones PrisonPlanet news articles)
• WAR ON DRUGS: SCIENCE: Cannabinoids Inhibit Cellular Respiration of Human Oral Cancer Cells
  There you have it – ingredients in marijuana help prevent YET ANOTHER kind of cancer. Could a marijuana high simply be an evolutionary adaptation? Do something that prevents cancer, and your brain rewards you with a high?
  (tags: politics WarOnDrugs drugs marijuana medical medicalMarijuana science research studies cancer oralCancer cannabinoids PubMed journals articles)

Got up early enough to make it to the 8AM-12PM yardsale rush, but then opted to keep laying in bed. Repeatedly. We didn’t actually get up until 11:45AM or so, and only made it out driving by 12:30PM or so. A lot of yard sales are actually over by this time; we knew it’d be kind of pointless.

Yet we still went out until 3:30PM or so, for a total of 3 hours or so. Latest yardsaleing ever.

Total spent $20.25 plus ~$8 gas for ~30 miles of driving, for a total cost of $28.25.

We bought 13-~40 items (depending on how you count) – for a total estimated value of $202.53, leading to a profit of $174.28. To earn that much after taxes you’d really have to earn $249; money saved (by not having to spend it) is actually worth more than we realize when the government’s cut is taken into consideration.

That’s $58.09/hr as a couple or $29.05/hr per person.

• $8.00: megaphone, Realistic brand, black, plays 99 different short (1-5s) tunes, doesn’t work well as a megaphone but the tunes part is too annoying to resist, taking this to X-Day. But then I tried to fix the bad knob on the microphone by spraying contact cleaner into it, and now it doesn’t work at all. Probably should not have gotten this, but it is the most annoying thing ever that you can get for $8. I actually tried to talk her from $10 to $5, but noo, she had to have $8, and now it’s halfway broken. (EV:$10)

ours is black and doesn't have an external mic, which would be very useful since i apparently killed the internal one

• $5.00: bucket, yellow, 12×14 – containing emergency food rations – 7 packs of 2400cal (6x400cal) bars, 10 packs of water (7.5L total), made 200809, expire 201309 – Yes, I marked my google calendar to remind me to eat these if no emergency arises by then. We already maintain an emergency box, and this bucket o’ rations went right by it. Plus we wanted a bucket anyway. (this is an incomplete version of this $80 set, missing the toilet stuff — I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS ALSO A TOILET — but with 1.75 sets worth of food bars, no blanket, no first aid, so I’d call this EV:$20)

We wanted a bucket. We, apparently, got half a toilet.

• $3.00: chopper (aka slap chop), 4.5″ diameter – a bit bigger than our Pampered Chef one, but it doesn’t open up for easy cleaning like the Pampered Chef ones do (EV:$12)

• $2.00: electrolysis kit, Inverness OneTouch Deluxe Home Electrolysis – the woman said she’s permanently fixed her eyebrows and didn’t need it anymore (EV:$20)

I tested this out on my 1 finger that has mid-digital hair... shit hurts my eyes, I can't focus that close anymore

• $1.00: cat toy, tube, furry, blue, 52″ long (EV:$40)

• $1.00: game, board game, The 90’s Game (Trivia) (EV:$24) – Mark kicked Carolyn, Jesse, and my asses at this

Mark kicked our asses

• $0.25: light bulbs (3), 4w – we use this size of bulb, this is cheaper than Home Depot (EV:$0.63)

one was missing

• $FREE: rug (striped runner) – can always use more, don’t understand why people throw these out (EV:$5)

• $FREE: book, Powerpuff Girls, Bubbles Saves The Circus, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book – will read this sometime (EV:$1)

• $FREE: book, Powerpuff Girls, Sticky Business, sticker and coloring book – put a few stickers in random places before throwing away (EV:$0.10, since it was all scribbled over and trash except for the stickers, like a huge Mojo Jojo sticker)
• $FREE: bowling ball plus case, Budweiser, white – this thing is like the most white trash thing ever, love it! (EV:bag=$20,ball=$40 new but it’s not in the greatest condition so I’ll say $10)

• $FREE: cd jewel cases (19) – useful for burning discs for other people, as I only buy spindles of blanks (EV:$3.80)

• $FREE: christmas lights – whole boxful – mostly white, some color. Included an individual bulb tester. Which means we’ve spent tons of time testing all the bulbs on the the strings that didn’t work, then re-filling them with tested bulbs to ensure the string is really dead before throwing it away. Plus now we have tons of replacement bulbs for our existing strings. Can never have too many Christmas lights. (EV:tester=$6, 5 or so strings we’ll get out of this=$30)

Click here for other Yard Sale-related postings.

* EV stands for “Estimated Value”, which I estimate by looking things up in Google Shopping/Google/Amazon/Ebay. I don’t always deduct for an item being used, unless it’s actually in worse condition in a way that matters. I also try to only count shipping if it’s the type of thing that would need to be shipped, and only if the price isn’t “fixed” (i.e. 1 cent items that cost $10 to ship would not be $10 in person). (more…)

• WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: US officials back away from July 2011 Afghan withdrawal deadline
  When we finally leave Afghanistan, will we end up with a bunch of people claiming we won when we didn't, like with Vietnam?

  40% of the country is controlled by the Taliban — according to us. We've now been there LONGER than Vietnam. Not even halfway won? What a fucking joke. What a waste of our money when our economy is in the toilet. What a waste of our soldiers when they could be doing something productive.

  The worst part about the war is this is one of the few wars one-dimensional liberals actually support, because their messiah Obama supports it and therefore they do — even when it was bad when Bush was doing it.

  Me? I've always been against it.

  (tags: politics WarInAfghanistan Afghanistan RobertGates 2011 withdrawal deadlines Taliban JoeBiden RahmEmanuel DavidPetraeus WarOnTerror war terrorism RawStory news articles)
• ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: Cops beat the shit out of a man, handcuff him so hard he needs stitches, haul him out of his house, naked, for burglary. He was the homeowner, of COURSE he was black.
  Dicks! The guy had a medical condition and even knew ex-cops that stuck up for him and said this, and the cops threatened the ex-cops with arrest for telling them he was the homeowner.

  Funny how all the stories about people getting arrested for burglary in their own home are about black people, huh?

  Amazing that the police not only didn't listen to valid information provided by neighbors and witnesses, but threatened them with arrest for saying and doing the right thing.

  And of course the police refused to apologize.

  (tags: politics AbuseOfAuthority policeBrutality brutality police racism beatings insulin diabeticShock homeowners burglary oops wrongperson Hartford VNews news articles HartfordPolice Vermont VermontStatePolice StonyCreek pepperSprayed naked WayneBurwell BobMcKaig BetsyMcKaig handcuffed injuries stitches glucose lowGlucose GlenCutting LeonardRoberts noApology)
• TECHNOLOGY WAR: Say No To a Government Internet 'Kill Switch'?
  For me, technology is a tool and it kind of falls under practicality more than idealism, to some extent.

  I can sort of imagine how something like this might be advantageous, for example if china unleashed a virus on us that erased everything on every computer or somehow damaged hardware to the extent that it would cripple the economy, that turning off the flow of data would actually save everybody.

  But the idealist side of me doesn't like this one bit. This is an affront to freedom, and no, this is NOT analogous to the emergency broadcast system.

  I'm just not sure which side wins in the end — idealism or practicality — because it's impossible to imagine all un-thought-of threats…

  Then again: This will be abused, so idealism or practicality aside, heaping government abuse on top of the situation tends to make me think things will be worse of with this, and as such it is a bad idea.

  (tags: politics TechnologyWar technology connectivity internet killSwitch JoeLieberman government censorship Slashdot news articles)
• SEX: Disease risk higher for swingers than prostitutes
  … at least, among middle-aged Dutch people…
  (tags: sex science research studies dutch prostitutes swingers STDs diseases medical BritishMedicalJournal netherlands chlamydia gonorrhea Reuters news articles)
• BEARDS: The Quest For Every Beard Type
  I'm not sure how, but this someday may turn out to be a handy reference
  (tags: media pictures beards lists reference fromKevinPa)

• ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: VICTORIES: Maywood California must disband police department, other city services, after it can no longer afford lawsuit insurance
  Oops! Too many police abuse of authority lawsuits! No more police for you!

  This is pretty unprecedented. People always say "don't sue the cops, the taxpayers will be on the hook for it". NOT TRUE. Every city has liability insurance. The taxpayers are only on the hook for a higher insurance premium, not the cost of the actual lawsuit.

  Maywood City Council has no choice but to disband its police department, and lay off all its employees.

  THIS IS DEMOCRACY IN ACTION, albeit in a twisted, legal, corporate (insurance company) method.

  Use taxpayer money to abuse the taxpayers — lose your authority. MAJOR VICTORY. Amazing stuff.

  (tags: politics AbuseOfAuthority police policeBrutality brutality lawsuits victories layoffs shutDowns disbanded Maywood MaywoodPoliceDepartment insurance MaywoodCityCouncil California ADN news articles)
• ISRAEL: Examples of hate speech by Israeli politicians
  David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti – Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

  11. "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

  "Our race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects." -Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in speech Knesset, 1982

  (tags: politics Israel racism quotes hateSpeech Jews Judaism religion Arabs Palestine WestBank Gaza GazaStrip Muslims Islam WhatReallyHappened articles)
• PHOTOS: 4 Free Online Photobooth like Web Applications
  i'm amazed at the lack of freeware photobooth software … but here's a way to do photobooth stuff with no software at all
  (tags: media pictures photoBooth software webapplications web free webcam)
• WAR ON DRUGS: Police kill 13-year-old dog locked in bathroom during drug raid — man on warrant hadn't lived there for 12 years
  The government and the war on drugs: Once again turning the victimless crime of daring to do what you want with your own body into a crime with victims: Taxpayer-funded pet murder.
  (tags: politics WarOnDrugs drugs freedom pets dogs policebrutality brutality police shootings killings warrants grandmother StopTheDrugWar DRCNet news YouTube videos articles)
• COPYRIGHT: Court Takes Away Some of the Public Domain
  And intellectual property laws continue to rob us of our culture with each passing day.

  Instead of getting a new day's worth of public domain material each day, the release of material into public domain has pretty much halted. No artists are being protected here — they're, for the most part, dead! This is about corporations stealing our culture for money, and inhibiting our free speech.

  Retroactively changing rights? What a nightmare for content creators. Of course they don't want content creation to be so easy that one person can do it – sites like YouTube are in many ways a huge threat to of the establishment.

  Not good, not good at all.

  And of course, the big argument against freedom here is whether doing something is in the government's "best interests". Funny how government's "best interests" almost always remove freedom, and not grant it.

  (tags: politics copyright intellectualProperty publicDomain retroactive Congress ConstitutionalRights rights 1stAmendment FirstAmendment freedom government moneyGrab corporations legal court rulings RIAA MPAA Slashdot news articles)

What a fucking stupid name. A photo booth is something people walk into, press a button, and get 4 timed photos taken. THAT IS WHAT A PHOTO BOOTH IS.

So in wanting to set up an impromptu photo booth for parties and other events (using a computer and a digital camera), I’m looking around for free photo booth software. And I found some. But then I download it, and it’s not software for running a fucking photo booth. It’s simply software imitating apple’s Photo Booth software.

Thanks, Apple, for coming up with a name so fucking stupid that you actually made it harder to google for the real thing.

There ARE options out there:

• OpenPhotoBooth works, is free, and is very basic as it’s a new project currently in development. It can use any device Flash can see — webcams, some digital cams. There is, however, no configuration options, and the HTML is very basic. Nor are the 4 photos actually stitched together. This is a work in progress, but if development continues, this will eventually emerge as the clear winner based on its $0 price.
• PartyBooth sounds good. They still want $60. At least it works out of the box for $0. But only for 7 days. And with watermarks. Grrr. Also runs on Adobe AIR. Still, this actually had configuration options. This had an actual voice that said “smile”, and was extremely polished. I’d choose this over OpenPhotoBooth if it was free, but it’s not, and I”m cheap. The 4 photos are stitched together and everything.
• PSRemote is probably great, IF you have a Canon camera that is compatible with it. Neither of mine were. I think it’s $75 to register, too. Ridiculous.
• Photoboof is probably great, if you don’t mind having a watermark in the center of every picture, or paying 600 fucking dollars.
• SeaMonkey wants $150, and it isn’t even released yet!
• CrazyCam (which runs on Adobe Air) is just a Mac Photo Booth clone.
• There are other options out there, but if it’s obviously crippleware [i.e. not fully featured out of the box, puts watermarks on the pictures unless you pay, like Photoboof] — then I’m not even going to try it.

I’m tired. I’ve spent way too much time on this, and a lot of it was wasted by a dumb decision on Apple’s part. I had to install a fucking runtime (Adobe AIR) just to run CrazyCam just to find out it’s NOT photo booth (as in, the real booths) software, but Photo Booth (as in, Apple) software.

So tell me, faithful readers. What is a good software to set up an unattended photobooth with? Specifically, freeware/shareware windows?

YARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR (more…)

• RELIGION: The Church of Scientology does not want you to see L. Ron Hubbard's woman-hatin' book chapter
  Scientology is a dangerous cult. Those who perpetuate it will hopefully contract cancer.
  (tags: politics religion Scientology Scientologists cults Xenu L.RonHubbard woman mysogany sexism VillageVoice news articles)
• REPUBLICANS VS. SEXUAL FREEDOM: TX GOP platform: Re-criminalize sodomy, make gay marriage a felony
  And half our country voted for a republican from Texas?
  Is there another country I can move to where 50% of the people don't suck ass?

  FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK TEXAS, we should have let it flounder in its own independence and idiocy.

  (tags: politics Republicans SexualFreedom sex freedom gays homosexuals gayMarriage sodomy Texas platforms analSex oralSex RawStory news articles)
• WAR ON DRUGS: Police deliberately pose as drug dealers IN THE YARD of a man KNOWN for using his gun to make drug dealers get off his property
  What do you think happened next? Yes, the man exercised his CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to tell trespassers to get the fuck off his property while brandishing his gun that gives him the inalienable right to life [self defense].

  The cops shot him.

  And then they lost a lawsuit for $200,000.

  Fucking idiot police. They took the "crime" of people doing what they want with their body, & escalated it to taxpayer funded murder of the same citizenry that pays those taxes.

  Of course no wrongdoing was found, despite the lost lawsuit.

  Idiocy. Insanity. "We had to destroy the village to save it" seems to be the mentality here. RIP Isaac Singletary.

  As far as I'm concerned, Officers James Narcisse, Darrin Green, & Donald Maynard are state-sponsored murderers who are 100X worse than any drug dealer. Hell, you're worse than Al Queda. Al Queda is at least up front about wanting to kill us. Killing us — using our own money — while pretending to protect and serve is far more offensive than terrorism.

  (tags: politics WarOnDrugs drugs freedom Jacksonville Florida deaths shootings killings policeBrutality police brutality 2ndAmendment SecondAmendment guns rights ConstitutionalRights tresspassing propertyOwnersRights lawsuits settlements IsaacSingletary GaryEvans YourTaxDollarsAtWork brandishing JamesNarcisse DarrinGreen HaryShorstein ThinBlueLine DonaldMaynard Jacksonville.com news articles)
• WAR ON DRUGS: Cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products now illegal to ship via postal service
  Because criminalizing drugs will mean nobody pays higher medical insurance rates, because of course nobody will have any medical damage anymore, because nobody will use drugs, because everybody always follows the law. Naturally.

  Coming up next: Obama Administration to end all murder by banning guns :) [Actually, I don't believe they will ban guns. Just pointing out the idiocy of the prohibitionist mentality.]

  (tags: politics WarOnDrugs drugs freedom cigarettes mail USPS PostalService smokeless nicotine tobacco ObamaAdministration PreventAllCigaretteTraffickingAct news bulletins)
• APPLE: Now either sharing your location with others, or banning you from downloading from their store
  The company says the data is anonymous, but analysts have shown that they can be used to identify people. Remember when AOL released a bunch of searches by people, and they were "anonymous"? But then people were identified, interviewed, etc. Now Apple is doing it — at thread of banning you from downloading anything more unless you agree.

  Be tracked, O Sheep. Apple will change the agreement on your super-expensive phone — AFTER you've bought it — as many times as they see fit. I'm glad our Android phone only cost $0 down + $20/mo.

  (tags: politics corporations Apple location privacy iPhone phones cellPhones Mashable Consumerist Slashdot news articles)
• SHOWS VS. MUSIC: Food Party Vs. Atari Teenage Riot: CX KiDTRONiK aka King Of The Universe
  John The Canadien's blog summary of the episode of Food party that we watched Sunday night, guest starring CX KiDTRONiK of Atari Teenage Riot as King Of The Universe. Thu Tran is awesome, and this show is the most AdultSwim-fucked-up show to ever appear somewhere other than AdultSwim.
  (tags: media video TV shows IFC FoodParty ThuTran audio music bands AtaraiTeenageRiot CXKidTRONiK KingOfTheUniverse kings JohnTheCanadien blog posts)

(more…)

• SOFTWARE: 3GP to AVI converter
  I spent way too long before giving up on ffmpeg, thanks to intellectual property laws causing them to stop including certain libraries. This thing is freeware, worked right away, did Xvid AVI conversion, no watermarks, no expiration, no registration. Yay!

  It also claims a lot of other useful conversions, like youtube to mp3 — but I'd much rather use ffmpeg whenever possible, because command-line means automation.

  (tags: software video converters 3gp2avi 3gp avi freeware notFFMPEG free)
• MUSIC: Dig For Fire: a Tribute to PIXIES on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
  Another Pixies tribute album! Yay….
  (tags: media audio music bands Pixies albums tributes tributeAlbums DigForFire MySpace)

The full 3-minute version of the Mr. Belvedere theme, by Gary Portnoy are absolutely nowhere to be found on the internet! So I’m posting them myself. If this is some kind of copyright violation, please let me know via the comment section rather than contacting my host, but frankly you should enjoy the free advertising:

Purchase a non-DRM mp3 of the full 3 minute Mr. Belvedere song, as originally sung by Gary Portnoy (best known for writing and singing the Cheers and Punky Brewster themes), for 99 cents at http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Belvedere/dp/B000QN8XAA/ref=dm_ap_trk4.

This song is still stuck in many peoples’ heads, apparently.

Now, enjoy the theme as sun by Stewie of Family Guy:

Here’s another goofy cover:

Yes… There’s still a lot of people obsessed with this song!

Then things get REALLY weird, I mean, why does something like this exist?

And if you’re curious what the instrumental closing-theme version of the original theme sounded like, just fast forward to the 8 minute mark in this video:

Anyway, here are the lyrics…
(more…)

[IMDB link] [Netflix link] Watched in glorious 720p!

HAIKU REVIEW BY CAROLYN: There’s a suspicion
that these two boys are creepy.
You should be alert.

PEOPLE: German director Michael Haneke brings us a scene-by-scene American remake of the exact same movie he made 10 years prior (Funny Games). But this time with Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, and Brady Corbet (who reminds me of Mcauley Caulkin a bit, and apparently was in 6 episodes of 24).

QUIRKS: A disturbing thriller/horror about a family taken hostage and tormented by 2 charismatic-but-creepy psychotic young men. Sometimes described as “a punch in the stomach”.

It’s also pretty realistic in the way violence is depicted. It really doesn’t take a lot of violence to take a family hostage.

VISUALS: The most horrible acts take place off-camera. I found this to be a mistake. But I understand why they did it: The focus is on how casually the antaganists do what they do. So in terms of gore: This movie is actually very low.

Also in terms of visuals — Naomi Watts in her underwear, in bondage. Struggling. Mmmmm. It’d be more erotic if the situation wasn’t so disturbing!

SOUNDTRACK: A couple songs by a band called Naked City that really reminds me of The Boredoms. Some classical music. But mostly, there is no real soundtrack, and absolutely no score whatsoever. Even the closing credits are dead silent. This definitely increased the tension and realism of the movie.

MORALS: The antagonists clearly have zero morals whatsoever. And the good guys? They have some very bad self-preservation instincts. [highlight for spoilers]→ If you’re trying to kick someone out of your house, don’t turn your back on them! If you’re investigating a suspicious noise and have a knife on hand… bring it. If you’re running away from a house full of people who want to kill you, don’t stop and knock on the house next door. Go at least 2 houses away. And for chrissakes, have a landline if you care about your safety — though that could easliy be cut. And if you have a boat — perhaps that is your best route of escape. And if you can’t get the attention of authorities, and think you might die — set your house on fire. That will get somebody’s attention!

BAD STUFF: There’s also one surreal scene thrown in there just to mess with you — and many people hate it. The bad guys also talk to the camera a couple times, which may put some people off. This movie definitely acknowledges that it’s a movie. This will really bother some people.

CONCLUSION: This was definitely one of those horror/thriller movies where you just feel bad knowing that something like this can and does happen to people in real life — which is what makes it good. No punches are pulled, other than not showing much gore; this movie goes all out, but tries to keep it psychological (by suppressing gratuitous gore). The bad guys basically play with their victims like a cat plays with its food — if a cat had a human IQ.

RATINGS: 4/5 stars on Netflix, 8/10 on IMDB. Definitely a couple cuts above your generic horror movie, but at the same time, not a perfect movie.

RECOMMENDATION: High-tension horror movie aficionados should like this. Some people did not. This got a 6.4/10 on IMDB.

SIMILAR MOVIES: Not a movie, but remember the carjacker scene from Six Feet Under? The one that traumatized the gay son (who went on to play Dexter in the series Dexter)? This movie is a lot like that. Not quite as intense per-minute, but way longer.

MOVIE QUOTE: Anna: Why don’t you just kill us?
Peter: [smiling] You shouldn’t forget the importance of entertainment.

FRIENDS’ RATINGS: Ian really liked it.
(more…)

• MEDICAL: Scar Treatment Association – Best Scar Treatments Reviewed
  stupid scar
  (tags: medical scars keloid Hypertrophic HypertrophicScars scarTreatments)
• ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: Officer Jim Daves (Chattanooga Police Department) is a FUCKING ASSHOLE PIECE OF SHIT who should be fired, beaten, and tosed into an alleyway to rott
  He charged a man with multiple felonies – causing him to lose his paycheck even though he has not been convicted – because the man dared to rush his wife to a hospital. The hospital staff actually had to remove the officer from the patient treatment area after he kept interrupting treatment.

  Jim Daves, you are a piece of shit not worthy to shovel yourself from one side of the road to another. You are doing the OPPOSITE of what you are supposed to do. You should be criminally charged with interfering with patient treatment. I HOPE YOUR WIFE GETS A STROKE, dick.

  Kim Noorbergen – you're unamerican too, for not being willing to comment an an obvious abu9se. You're part of the problem. Please renounce your citizenship immediately. Just following orders is no excuse.

  (tags: politics AbuseOfAuthority JimDaves Police bullshit arrests ambulance stroke emergencies honeymoon ErlangerMedicalCenter ChattanoogaPoliceDepartment EricWright Chattanooga AlineWright interference HamiltonCounty HamiltonCountyJail felonies AssaultingAnOfficer DisorderlyConduct RecklessEndangerment EvadingArrest redLights registration suspended FrancisFesmire KimNoorbergen ClarenceShattuck)
• WAR IN IRAQ: Wikileaks Soldier Reveals Orders for "360 Rotational Fire" Against Civilians in Iraq
  Yes, they were told to shoot innocent people, including children. And when he wanted mental counseling, the army threatened to charge him with a crime.

  There's not really a difference between us and our enemy. Our enemy only attacked American soil once; we've done it 1000s of times in revenge. Nothing good has come of this.

  (tags: politics WarInIraq Iraq WarOnTerror war freedom leaks terrorism civilians violence deaths shootings killings soldiers whistleblowers Wikileaks CollateralDamage CollateralMurder EthanMcCord IEDs orders warCrimes crimes OpEdNews news articles)
• WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: The Afghan puppet government is crumbling before our eyes. We must talk to the Taliban | Mail Online
  Wake up to reality. Obama can't do jack about this, and it's literally our generation's Vietnam now, as the Afghanistan war has now involved American troops longer than the Vietnam war did.
  (tags: politics WarOnTerror WarInAfghanistan Afghanistan war unwinnable Taliban HamidKarzai DailyMail Kabul terrorism history UK WakeUp news articles)

• RELIGION: Family gangs up on and kills father for wanting to watch world cup instead of religious gospel program
  Yay religion! Convincing good people to do bad things since prehistory! Please tell me how this situation would result in a death in an atheist household. Sure, people have killed each other over flipping the channel before, but a whole family killing its father over watching soccer? Show me the atheist examples, please.
  (tags: politics religion murders family soccer gospel DavidMakoeye Makweya Limpopo Johannesburg SouthAfrica FrancinaMakoeya LebogangMakoeya sports WorldCup Yahoo news articles)
• RELIGION: Baby girl died after religious fanatic mother stuffed Bible in her mouth and sat on her | Mail Online
  How come most senseless killings of children by mother are religiously motivated? Like the woman who drowned her children to get the devil out of them? Do crazy people believe in God because they are too crazy to separately reality from fantasy, or does God mess up people's believe systems enough that they sometimes become crazy from their hysterical fear of the devil?

  I'm sure there are atheist parents out there who murder their children — but what is their reasoning? It's certainly not based on their spiritual beliefs. I can't conclusively point my finger at religion in this case, but it certainly seems to be the tool which provided her with justification to murder her child.

  And oh, the father was a mentally-ill religious fantatic as well!

  (tags: politics religion Christians Christanity parents babies children murders suffocated JuliaLovemore Cambridge arrests crazy mentallyIll religiousFantatics fantaics DailyMail news articles)
• ISRAEL: One hour of raw footage of the Mavi Marmara flotilla attack – journalists smuggled media cards through Israel
  Israel of course confiscated all their cameras, even though it had no right to stifle free speech in the name of propagandizing their actions. But they smuggled their memory cards out. Torrents available and everything.
  (tags: politics Israel GazaStrip Gaza flotilla raids blockade Palestinians Palestine Arabs Jews Judaism Islam Muslims religion MaviMarmara OverlyHarshPunishments violence shootings RawVideo video reality CaughtOnVideo smuggled ViaIaraLee CulturesOfResistance IndyMedia)
• RELIGION VS. SEXUAL FREEDOM: California Ethics Commission finds Mormons guilty on 13 counts of late Prop 8 campaign reporting
  Yup. Mormons — people who would, for the most part, otherwise be good people — have allowed their imaginary sky fairy friend to cause them to petition the government to oppress 10% of the population (gays) they don't agree with. How Godly! And then they lied about the money they spent — it was really MILLIONS. Millions spent on taking away freedom in the name of god.

  Tell me — where are the groups of atheists spending millions of dollars to take away basic rights from people? I know there are good and evil atheists, but none are using their spiritual belief system / lack thereof as a basis for taking away others freedom.

  (tags: politics religion SexualFreedom Mormons Chrisitans Mormonism Christianity gayMarriage gays marriage Sacramental California FPPC legal rulings guilty campaignReporting fines money Proposition8 Examiner news articles)
• WAR ON DRUGS, SEX: Study suggests the war on drugs might really be a war on sex
  Interesting. People who like drugs like sex more. Society — especially American society — hates sex. Knowing this, we demonize drugs more than they should be demonized, because of the non-Christian lifestyles drug users often want to live.

  Keep your laws off our bodies!

  (tags: politics WarOnDrugs culture drugs sex promiscuity science research studies ScienceAGoGo news articles sociology UniversityOfPennsylvania attitudes cultureWars)
• ISRAEL: Racist Orthodox Jews rally against verdict requiring school integration with Mideast/North AFrican descent children (known as "Sephardim")
  Religion: Helping defend racism and other ideas that are outdated by 1000s of years. This is one of the cultural attitudes behind the occupation of Palestine.
  (tags: politics religion Judaism Jews Israel racism schools integration rights courtRulings Jersalem protests Al-Jazeera news articles Emanuel settlements WestBank Ashkenazi Sephardim segreation)
• GAME THEORY: First replicating creature spawned in Coinway's Game Of Life simulator
  Wow. I used to play this "game" [which has no objective or way to win] all the time as a kid. I was always amazed by the patterns that existed. It took mankind almost 40 years of playing this "game" to finally create "life" within it. Very awesome geek news!

  Wow, it takes 34 million iterations to create a new child. But the new "life" keeps on creating new "life" — forever.

  (tags: geek news articles NewScientist science cellularAutomation life GameOfLife Conway'sGameOfLife self-replicating repliating JohnConway AndrewWade Gemini breakthroughs games simulations automation)

Oh man…. This is definitely on my “mean things I did” list. So this post is kind of a humorous story AND a confession of sorts.

The year was somewhere around 1990, and I was about a 10th grader in high school. I had dropped out of TJ and returned to my original school district, with a relatively clean social slate compared to before I left.

Me, around the same age, flicking off Dad as he camcorded me while picking me up from work at the now-defunct Weis Markets #125 of Lake Ridge, Woodbridge, VA.

So while walking around Woodbridge High School one day, I randomly found a lost object. It was this guy’s organizer. And it wasn’t just any organizer… It was SUPER-DUPER organized, and TOTALLY OCD beyond any levels I had seen.

Imagine this, but color-coded in every color visible to the human eye

Basically, this guy who I didn’t know (2,000 person school) had gone out of his way to REALLY organize his organizer. He had a key in the back, explaining his acronyms:

M. = Monday
T. = Tuesday
W. = Wednesday
Th. = Thursday
F. = Friday
S. = Saturday
S. = Sunday

Yes. He’d written this out by hand! He also had a box that he drew on the edge of EVERY page, where he inserted various meta information, such as “restriction ends in 45 days”, “restriction ends in 35 days”, “don’t lose organizer”.

He had a ridiculous amount of organizing. Me and my friend — I want to say Sam W, but I’m not positive — went through it, laughing at him a lot. He had put sooo much work into this organizer, but it was mostly pointless work, like color-code-highlighting his events. Orange=church, yellow=school, etc, etc.

The whole thing kind of offended me. Now don’t get me wrong — I hate people that are disorganized and can’t get their shit together — but as a 10th grader, there wasn’t a strong need for that. I didn’t become organized until the reward to effort ratio became much higher with the internet, and great tools such as Google Calendar. But the “organization” he was doing was more akin to Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain just to have it fall down again. It was pointless work.

Hell, the proof was in his “don’t lose organizer” comment! You can write it down as much as you want, but it’s a waste of effort. If you don’t want to do something — take precautions against doing so. Thinking that writing something down repeatedly is something a poor teacher makes a bad student do. It doesn’t actually work as a deterrent, even when voluntary. Nor does singing hymns make you a better person; mindless repetition is meaningless. Critical thought is what counts.

My 'organizer' next to the phone - held my phone numbers prior to moving to computer file around 1988, a file that I still keep my numbers in today, 22 years later. I DON'T LOSE MY SHIT. I still have every number that was hand-written in this 'organizer'!

It was decided that we would use my phone (pictured above, actual room and phone) to call him. There was no caller id back then. You could *69, but all it did is give you the number. You had no way of doing a reverse lookup to find out who’s number it was. It was the wild west of prank call days; we prank called all the time. I’d even prank called the operator, and even called 911 (tho I did not prank them, only hung up on them. And yes, they called back.)

So we could probably call without impunity. But me and Sam played guitar together… a LOT:

What?! This must be before I switched to the *blue* Dunlop (turtle) picks. Crazy. I always use blue now - just like Kim Deale of The Pixies. Green is simply too bendy for speedmetal chords. It's better suited to acoustic strumming.

We decided to use my a pitch-shifter pedal that I had bought for my guitar. It looked kinda like this, but it was blue:

It had echo, reverb, and pitch shift. I would pitch shift an octave lower, and play along with the bass for a song. Or pitch shift an octave up, and make “music box-sounding” guitar. It was great fun. But it was even more fun when plugged into a microphone! We pitch-shifted our voice at least an octave lower, and called the kid’s number from his lost organizer. It was an answering machine.

I don’t remember his name, so let’s just call him Dwight Schruite. Anyway, we left a message, in our pitch-shifted lower-than-humanly possible voices. “Dwwwwiiiight Shcruuiiiiiiiitte….. We have your organizerrrrrrrrr!!! We have your organizerrrr, and you’re never going to get it back! We’re going to burrrrn it! Ahhh HAHAH HAHHH HAHAHHH [demonic evil laughter goes on for awhile]”

Yeah... That was a little evil of me.

[SIDE TANGENT PARAGRAPH] We also called people on the last day before Christmas, yelling “Merry Fucking Christmas!” into the speaker-phone before hanging up. Dad actually figured that one out from upstairs, based on his supernatural ability to discern events happening in other floors. One time I bounced a rubber-band ball 1 foot on my bookshelf at 12:30AM, after going to bed, and dad came down… “It sounded like something hitting wood down here!” But I was expected to somehow not hear my parents doing their business above my bed.  This is why I sleep with music. Things like someone bouncing a rubber ball 12 inches on a different floor won’t bother me because it won’t be hearable over the sound of the music. If only Mark I would listen to that advice, he wouldn’t have to bring a goddamned white noise machine into his tent to sleep in a tent 100 ft away from ocean waves (which basicallymake white noise). [/TANGENT]

But I digress. It was a pretty mean thing to do. To “Dwight Shcruite”, whoever and whereever you are: I’m sorry about your organizer. I know the feeling of loss that must have caused, because I’ve lost things I’ve put a lot of work into more times than I want to remember. But it was just too laughable for me to care. So in a sense, I judged you, and punished you for being wanting. I suppose I have some negative karma from that, but fortunately for me I don’t believe in karma as a disembodied force.

It would be pretty funny to hear back from him via this blog, but I really doubt he’s going to be googling about an organizer he lost 20 years ago. And I would have trouble believing it to be him, even if a comment was left to that effect.

Sam? He eventually cut his hair:

My friend Sam, who had super-long hair, then got it cut off in the EPIC HAIRCUT OF ALL TIME:

And that pitch-shifter pedal? It went on to Virginia Tech with me. When Dan C brought his PA to his dorm room, we hooked my pitch shifter pedal up to the microphone, and yelled into the Pritchard Hall pit. At one point, our RA was even talking to us about, “Yeah, some guy has a PA, and we’d really like to catch him”. Good times.

The pedal eventually broke, and I threw it away. Had I known about the restorative properties of contact cleaner, maybe I could have saved it. But hey, it was $80, used, from another kid at the school. It was a $270 pedal. I ran my computer’s sound through it, making the game Syndicate sound MUCH cooler with an echo. I used it for guitar, microphone, computer, and I’m sure I ran my television through it at some point for shits-n-giggles too. I miss that pedal.

“I like stories.” (more…)