…from Merlin’s Lists of Five Things: Five pet peeves about eating out with Ayn Rand Five (presumably) untapped topics of slash fiction Five things I wish I could have talked out of my ass about on a weblog when I was in college Five things I suspect Im not supposed to think about when watching those bands with messy hair who sound like Joy Division
Another McSweeney’s list. An example: 3. All warfare is based on deception. When the enemy draws near to you, cry out, “Look out behind you.” When he turns to look behind him, attack.
I have been using Singapore for my photos, but I like the bandwidth deal on Flickr, so I’ve switched my photos over there. Perhaps the ease of uploading will encourage me to get the rest of my pictures up as well. :) Anyway, no knocks on Singapore. they have a very good program, and I encourage anyone who wants to host their own pictures to take a look at it. They’ve recently moved to a database-oriented system. ...
The San Francisco Police Department has an aspiring novelist writing its community police blotter. Good reading: He had not run for very long before he realized the two cops were only pacing him. They could see something he could not. With each frantic step a sense of dread nagged at him. The more calm and calculating they were, the further behind he left his common sense, and his panic ratcheted up. As he ran, the black and white radio car glided silently along behind like a predatory whale. ...
Supposedly these are questions asked in the Church of Scientology while people are hooked up to the E-meter. (However, the questions were pulled from the first issue of Radar, so who knows where they came from.) I shall endeavor to answer them, even though I am not currently in possession of an E-meter: 1. Have you ever enslaved a population? Well, no, but if this is to be part of later performance evaluations, I’ll need a measurable. How large a population? 2. Have you ever debased a nation’s currency? I ripped a dollar to make a point one time. Then I taped it back together, but it wouldn’t work in the vending machine. 3. Have you ever killed the wrong person? I haven’t had occasion to choose between people to kill. 4. Have you ever torn out someone’s tongue? They’re slippery, so no. This fellow did it to a leopard, though. 5. Have you ever been a professional critic? Enthusiastic amateur. 6. Have you ever wiped out a family? I don’t think I did it, but I’ve met some families where it would be hard to tell. 7. Have you ever tried to give sanity a bad name? Only by example. 8. Have you consistently practiced sex in some unnatural fashion? Uh, no, I don’t think so. Of course, the questioner could be going off a different list. 9. Have you ever made a planet, or nation, radioactive? Only in my imagination, when I was a kid. 10. Have you ever made love to a dead body? No. If that’s not covered by question 8, I don’t even want to know what the list includes. 11. Have you ever engaged in piracy? ARRRRR! 12. Have you ever been a pimp? No, but I’ve always been envious of the tall-soled shoes. 13. Have you ever eaten a human body? That would have to be a really small body. I’m not the best at cleaning my plate. 14. Have you ever disfigured a beautiful thing? Only in misguided attempts to make it more beautiful. 15. Have you ever exterminated a species? Maybe. A rare spider species, perhaps. 16. Have you ever been a professional executioner? Enthusiastic amateur…of spiders in the house. 17. Have you ever given robots a bad name? I usually have the opposite problem. I know they’re talking about me behind my back, whispering… 18. Have you ever set a booby trap? Yep, also elementary school. Kid was stealing my pencils. 19. Have you ever failed to rescue your leader? No, because I’ve usually put them in that situation, so it’s easier for me to get them back out. ...
A 73-year-old Kenyan grandfather killed an attacking leopard with his bare hands by ripping out its tongue. He dropped the machete he was carrying to do so. 8O Courtesy of Reuters
Pre-1985, at least. The good years of video games. :) I am a Defender-ship. I am fiercely protective of my friends and loved ones, and unforgiving of any who would hurt them. Speed and foresight are my strengths, at the cost of a little clumsiness. I’m most comfortable with a few friends, but sometimes particularly enjoy spending time in larger groups. ...
From The Onion. :) “This is no way for people to live,” said Kentucky Family Outreach coordinator Martin Weiss, speaking Monday in front of a half-constructed, five-story Habitrail outside Payneville. “While it’s true that poor Americans need a viable alternative to housing projects, placing them in large, confusing warrens of see-through cylinders is not the solution.”
Yeah, those words don’t seem like they should all go together, but in this case, it’s appropriate. Check the image on the first page of The AMA Compensation Survey of Marketing Professionals. It takes a bit for it to start, so it may look like a normal picture, but it isn’t. It probably says something about my expectations on the Web when I jump when a picture takes several seconds to start moving. :) ...
Man, step away from the Internet for a few days, and by the time you get back, hell freezes over. Okay, so hell didn’t freeze, it just caught a draft, but still: Apple is planning on using Intel chips? And they aren’t planning to do anything to keep those computers from running Windows as well? Admittedly, Apple can easily fix it so OS X only runs on its hardware, no matter what processor. However, the illogic of being able to run it on this Pentium IV while not being able to run it on that Pentium IV is going to be one more push down the path to widespread Mac clones. Maybe Apple’s counting on the idea that it’s the Microsoft in this picture, instead of the IBM. ...