Tag: hail Eris!

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current events internets media uncategorized

The Yes Men in Nawlins

The Yes Men, a group of painfully satirical culture jamming pranksters, have done it again: they duped organizers of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit into thinking that Andy Bichlbaum was Rene Oswin, an official stand-in for Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson, announcing that HUD was not going to tear down 5,000 units of affordable public housing (projects) in New Orleans …a blatant lie meant to bring attention to the fact that HUD was actually planning on doing the exact opposite, even with people clamoring to return to some semblance of normal home life.

William Loiry, president of meeting sponsor Equity International, said he was duped.

“We were contacted about a week ago or so by someone who we believed to be [public relations firm] Hill & Knowlton [saying] that they were representing the HUD secretary and that he wanted to make a major announcement at this summit.”

Loiry said he was told a few minutes before he had planned to introduce Jackson that the secretary would be replaced by Oswin.

Video here; CNN article here.

And to explain, from The Yes Men‘s website:

Identity theft: Small-time criminals impersonate honest people in order to steal their money. Targets are ordinary folks whose ID numbers fell into the wrong hands.

Identity correction: Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.

The Yes Men have impersonated some of the world’s most powerful criminals at conferences, on the web, and on television, in order to correct their identities. They currently have hundreds of thousands of job openings. Sign up today!

See also:

Situationist International (you must absorb this information to fully understand culture jamming!)
The Yes Men movie

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current events internets uncategorized

Signs of Witness

The End is nigh! Nigh, i tell you!!

(Not really. It’s just a great blog about the End of Times.)

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Speck

Well, at least he’s recycling…

  1. Dog eats Nylabone
  2. Dog shits Nylabone
  3. Dog eats shit-Nylabone
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internets web design

Google Search

This just in: this site is totally the #1 search result on Google for “extinct dog breads”

Victory is so sweet.

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current events internets uncategorized

Henry giving it to Ann

Henry Rollins: A Love Letter To Ann Coulter

“But mostly, Ann, you will shut the fuck up.”

Priceless!

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current events

Anti-corporate prankster group jakes McDonalds at UK games conference

Andrew Shimery-Wolf of “McDonald’s Interactive” gave a bizarre presentation at the UK Serious Games summit, where game developers meet to discuss games made for corporate and educational use. The presentation focused on the potentially devastating climate changes brought about by shady corporate practices.

According to Shimery-Wolf, the group had created McMarketplace, a simulation of the global effects of the burger business. It worked well for training, but in long-term predictions, business ended in 2050, when everyone died due to climate change and dead earth. (source)

They also announced that McDonald’s Interactive was splitting off from the McDonald’s parent company.
“We can no longer stand by while McDonald’s corporate policies help lead the planet to ruin,” said Shimery-Wolf, co-director of the “Interactive Division”, which supposedly was founded to help strategize business for future markets.

Nobody seems to know who this group really is, or whether or not the organizers of the conference knew what was going to happen, although it’s a safe bet that they didn’t. The group’s domain’s WHOIS resolves to an Italian registrar and the registrant is obviously a fake, with a contact email at mcvideogame.com, a spoof videogame created by political subversives Molleindustria to blast McDonald’s.

Apparently, RTMARK also has something to do with this mysterious and hilarious jake, as a response to a press inquiry was sent from an rtmark.com e-mail address. It seems highly likely, to me at least, that Molleindustria and RTMARK collaborated on this joint venture.

Check out the PowerPoint presentation itself, and watch as this hilarious story develops. For more info, see:

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current events internets

religion, and weird science

Onward, Christian soldiers: Sick, twisted revenge-fantasy that is the Left Behind series to be made into sick, twisted revenge-fantasy videogame. Violence! Killing heathens (Jews, Buddhists, Muslems, pro-choicers, non-radical-right type Christians, profaners, etc.)! Now YOU can be the vehicle for God’s Final Holocaust!

Microbes from outer space rained down on India. No shit. Alien life forms! Well, maybe.

New animal species found in Israel! At least 8 new sightless animal species found in Israel cave: 4 land, 4 water (2 fresh and 2 seawater). The giant cave, scientists believe, has been entirely closed off for millions of years, allowing the independent evolution of these strange species.

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friends life memories

Memorial Day weekend

One of my favorite friends of all time is Melissa R. She and i go way back to around 1997-98, when we wore headsets at AT&T Wireless together. I really only knew her in proximity for several months, actually, because she ended up moving to the left coast relatively soon afterward. But we got along so very well. She’s the kindest, most gentle soul who has ever graced this planet. She’s also wicked funny, madly intelligent, and insanely charming. She’s been though a lot, and has the most wonderful beaming smile that just fills you up with such incredible, serene warmth. Truth be told, she’s one of my favorite iterations of the Bodhisattva. I’m very, very lucky to have had the opportunity to meet her in the short year and a half that i worked at that company.

I haven’t seen her for a long, long time. It’s been a couple of years since last we spoke, in fact. But thanks to her comment on one of my posts recently, we’re back in touch. What a great weekend for memories. I was thrilled to hear that her little buddyboy (2 1/2 years old!) is doing great and that she’s got a new beau and is going back to college. She deserves so much that is good, and so i am very pleased!

I was so sad when she moved away. Her wit and general personal splendor are like nothing else you can find anywhere – once you’ve met her, it’s impossible not to be moved in a big way. Her humanity is overwhelming – i could have easily lost my faith in people entirely if not for her. It’s great to know such a fabulous woman.

Speaking of fabulous women, Holly and i are coming up on our first year together in August. I thank “Bob” for giving me the SLACK necessary to cheat so well at the game of Life by merely knowing her. Like so many ancient heroes, she has been to hell and has returned more powerful than ever. She’s so funny and bold and intelligent and sexy and tough. A quicker, more delightfully sarcastic wit can not be found anywhere else in this galaxy. When we met, i knew she was important and special and she impressed the hell out of me right away. I was very lucky that “the cute black-haired girl in the elevator” (she looks a little like an [American] Indian Janeane Garofalo) started temping at the same job i was starting. We’re such soul mates it’s just pathetic.

It’s hard to believe that our first year anniversary is coming up. It flew right by. That’s a great sign, although i know that much of the flying is also due to the long hard hours of work that we both do. We get very little time outside of work. But i cherish every moment with this incredible girl (as much of an asshole as i am about having time to myself).

I am glad for the memories i have of all the special people in my life, most of whom are not mentioned here but are in my heart always and forever.

Categories
family life memories

Poltergeist!

Today i went over to see my grandfather. He seems confused, as usual, and asking him a question requires waiting around for at least a minute before he figures out how to say the answer, if he remembers what the question was at that time. So that’s nice and depressing.

But a really weird thing happened. We were sitting there, watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, when suddenly a little toy Douglas C-47 (a metal/plastic replica of the troop carrier my grandfather was in through all four Market Garden missions during WWII; about 3 inches long, something like this one) that was sitting on top of the television set came flying off and crashed onto the carpet about 5 feet away, right at my feet.

…As in, “WTF”!

I tested it to see how far it would bounce if it had just fallen off on its own due to the vibrations of the television. It landed directly in front of the television, bouncing a few inches at the most. That’s not five feet, i thought to myself.

My dad and Charlie (sp?), the caretaker for the night, said that this had happened before. She said that she herself hadn’t seen it happen, but was extraordinarily nonplussed. She told me that Jennifer, another caretaker, was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa (just about where i was when it happened tonight), when the exact same thing happened.

…As in, “WTF”!?

And then i remembered that my friend Tony once stayed over, not terribly long after my grandmother had died, and had stayed in her room. He reported the next day that he had seen someone in the room with him. I told him at the time that, in the darkness, and in his drunken state, it had probably only been his own reflection in a mirror. He vehemently denied any possibility of that. My friend Tony, who’s pretty skeptical about anything even remotely implausible…

So… now what? I’m a skeptic, goddammit! I do not believe in ghosts! How am i supposed to reconcile this event with reason? I mean, there simply MUST be a logical explanation for this, other than that my grandmother is haunting their house.

Categories
current events internets

link roundup

Korea unveil’s world’s 2nd (life-like) android. I had no idea there was another, but there is: it’s Japanese.

Best Buy invaded by faux blueshirts! Hail Eris!

Security guards and managers started talking to each other frantically on their walkie-talkies and headsets. “Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!,” one employee shouted. They were worried that were using our fake uniforms to stage some type of elaborate heist. “I want every available employee out on the floor RIGHT NOW!”

Student kicked out of private university for – get this – being gay! Honestly, wtf?!

This revolving kitchen is a serious space-saver. How awesome is that?

Superhero underwear fetish spoof! Female superheroes have always been objectified as so much T&A… now male superheroes can be fluffy C&B models!

German superhero Robin Hoods steal gourmet food to give to the poor!

“The Not Your Soldier Project gives youth the tools we need to stop the military invasion of our schools and our communities.”

Creationism dismissed as ‘a kind of paganism’ by Vatican’s astronomer.

Remix My Life in the Bush of Ghosts tracks!

3D pictures of 9/11.

The Skeletor Show. Yup. The Skeletor Show.

Terrorist video game mod is a hoax. Who knew? Anyone with half a brain, that’s who.

Categories
current events media

The Bobliographon

New SubGenius book in the works. It’s about damn time. Praise Dobbs!

Categories
creative internets memories web design work

rebuilding legacy sites for a portfolio

I’m working on getting my legacy sites ready for an online portfolio to be presented here on this site.

The unfortunate thing about being a relatively-inexperienced web designer/developer is that most of your clients will be fairly small outfits and that much of your work will be necessarily pro-bono, or close to it. This means that many of them won’t be around for a very long time. In my case, none of them are. I think the Tecumseh Local Music Boosters may still maintain a site somewhere, though probably one with tildes in the URI that i’ll never be bothered to really track down, because it’s probably no longer my work being displayed there.

On to the point: this means that i have to re-build all of those old sites from the archives. Which, in turn, means trying to get code written a pretty long time ago (by www standards) to work. That’s not much of a problem, in most cases, because i at least had the foresight to include some useful future-compatible functions, the most underrated of which is the doctype declaration.

Regrettably, i don’t remember how some of the functions worked, and i don’t have much time to figure it all out.

The worst part, though, is that the one of the coolest sites, for a sadly defunct print magazine, won’t work locally, and i think it’s because i no longer have any idea what kind of a server environment it was written for.

So take this to heart, fellow amateurs: always, always, always include copious comments in your PHP, and archive a copy of the phpinfo() that you generated at the time (when you were literally losing sleep trying to iron out that one nagging bug). Mirror the damn thing live if you have to. This will save you in the long run, when the site goes belly up, and you have to prove to potential employers or clients that it existed outside of the sick, narcissistic fantasy world inside of your head. You won’t look like a blowhard when you can at least produce a working copy. Right now, i’d settle for just some screenshots of that magazine site.

Speaking of which, i can at least produce a static HTML version, using archive.org for the markup and my backup image files for the graphics. So all is not completely, irretrievably lost.

But i’d rather get those bugs ironed out. I just need a lot more time than i can actually come up with lately.

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uncategorized

Civ IV

Hatshepsut is upset that all i left her was an island...