2001 May❮❮prevnext❯❯

Products of the Moment
Empathy Belly -- "Shatter the romantic illusions of teen pregnancy". Man, it's kind of weird to think that there is a "romantic illusion of teen pregnancy"... and then there's Drug-Affected Baby. Your own imitation crack baby for the low low price of $285. --via cruel site of the day

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Quote of the Moment

It's not a lie. It's a gift for fiction

2/3 of a great movie. Very realistic dialog, but with people who are funnier than you and your friends. Parts seemed a bit contrived though. Chant of the Moment

THE HANGMAN EQUALS DEATH!
THE DEVIL EQUALS DEATH!
DEATH EQUALS DEATH!

The link is an interesting story of one person infiltrating the organization. And based on my personal activities last night, I'd add another:
MO'S HOMEMADE SANGRIA EQUALS DEATH.
But, you know. In a good way. Ooh, my head. Staying home sick today. I "heart" phlegm.

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Quote of the Moment

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans... ...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."

Sigh. The Republicans, party of the rich idiots. Funny to see them come so close to out right saying that.

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Link of the Moment
Seanbaby has about the funniest site ever. I'm very serious about that. He's not always 'on', but when he is, he is laugh-'til-it-hurts funny. His Hostess Page is legendary, both reprinting and mocking those infamous ads where the superhero saves the day by flinging delicous prepackeged snackfood at the rampaging evildoer. If you only have a minute, check out Batman and the Mummy. (On the main page, only the titles with a dot actually have commentary by Sean Baby, Blaxploitation comic book hero Luke Cage, his one time nemesis Fish Man (probably the sanest one of the bunch) and the infamous Dr. Doom.) It's worth clicking through all the ones with commentary. Republican Madness of the Moment

He claims to be a god-king, a leader of the Buddha religion, which historically has been considered a cult because of its anti-Biblical teachings concerning the one true Holy God, Creator of Heaven and earth and His Son, Jesus Christ.

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Links of the Moment
Wired.com article on Japanese robofish. Neat stuff! (Had a link to a neat store RoboToys.) For a long time I was fascinated by the idea of electronic pets. Now that they're more or less here, I dunno.

In an odd bit synchronicity, I also just stubled upon this year old news about scientists at the University of Chicago sticking parts of an eel brain in a robotic body. It's still really primitive, but the thing could react to light and control the body accordingly. (Reminds me of The Locust Car, a 3-wheeled cart steered by the electrical muscle impulses of a Locust. Whoa-- gotta work on a polling script I promised the keeper of InExOb so not much time...

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Final Republican Religous Madness of the Moment (for now)

"Do the members of the crew have Bibles? Why don't they have Bibles? Can we get them Bibles? Would they like Bibles?"

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Banner Ad of the Moment
Quote of the Moment

From the cries of Sinn Fein to the whines of Jackie Mason, everybody's got an agenda and everyone thinks he or she is right. Trying to change someone's mind usually becomes an exercise in futility, so it is your job to pretend to care. Offer some tepid advice and move on. Cultivate the Switzerland of your soul and remain delightfully detached.

I really like that "Cultivate the Switzerland of your soul and remain delightfully detached" line.

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News of the Moment
Looks as if there's a new increase in Demand for U.S. Sperm. USA! USA! But seriously, it does say some good things about this country: it's partially a result of our diversity, and relatively loose regulations. (Both good things in my book.)

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Link of the Moment
Creepy Clown. Looks like a little quiet web meme-- wouldn't be surprised if it blossoms into another "All your base", though it lacks a really catchy hook. What is it that can be so disturbing about clowns? Ramble of the Moment
A friend of mine says he was at a really wild MIT party this weekend. Strippers both professional and amateur, participatory mudwrestling, the works. It hit me that I haven't been to very many parties like that; maybe none. And that made me a little sad. Both because of the sheer enthusiastic debauchery of it, and also there's something about public nudity that I am in favor of, for reasons both stimulatory and intellectual.

"The nipples of strangers sometimes means more than those of the ones we love."

And the other thing is, if I'm going to do it I almost have to do it soon, or else I'm going to seem like a lecherous dirty old man... I know this sounds just a few short steps away from those Girls Gone Wild videos they're hawking on TV. And maybe it is. But I remember Garrison Keillor's final entry in his meditation "Postcards", where he suggests the 50 word limit I try to live by, and then follows with examples of the form:

Sunbathing yesterday. A fine woman took off her shirt, jeans, pants, nearby, and lay on her belly, then turned over. Often she sat up to apply oil. Today my back is burned bright red (as St. Paul warns) from my lying and looking at her for so long but who could ignore such beauty and so generous.

It sounds like a line, but that generosity is part of it.

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Link of the Moment
The original (well, possibly the 90s rereleased version) Star Wars was on network TV yesterday. It made me think of Star Wars Technical Commentaries. It's an interesting site. The idea is that they take all the technology presented in the Star Wars movies and books at face value, and then try to figure out how the universe works, and more about the socities that would have produced it. It's very cool in a geeky way. Geek Link of the Moment
ZZZ online is a neat "latest inventions" website. I liked last week's, which featured a mode of transportation for certifiably insane people, like something out of a G.I.Joe cartoon. The entire archive might be worth clicking through, if you're bored, a gadget-geek, and/or obsessive-compulsive.

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Quotes of the Moment

"Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best."

it looks like at one point it made the rounds. It reminds me of an old favorite quote:

"He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day...but that's not why I ran away."

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Geek Joke of the Moment

I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost...

I was really amused when I found out Volkswagen Quantum is a real car, so maybe somewhere out there there might be a "Quantum Mechanic".
Web Toy of the Moment
This is so cool: dizzycity. They took 360 shots at every intersection in Manhattan. If you know the city at all, maybe even if you don't, it's way fun. 360 degrees, look up, down, zoom in. Here's a shot of my mom's old apartment building at 95th and West End Ave: (The toy uses even bigger images than this.) Doggone, I miss her apartment there. When she moved, I lost having my own micro-studio apartment that overlooked broadway. (via memepool)

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Quote of the Moment

We ought put the Department of Defense together with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Interstate Trucking Commission, and the Fish and Wildlife Service and just call it the Department of Guys.

Only the first one applies to me though, I'm not much of a guy. Though someone else on the group pointed out it was missing a department of boobies.

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News of the Moment
Salon on the Phantom Energy Crisis. Or, as The Onion headline put it, "After Careful Consideration, Bush Recommends Oil Drilling". Running down to Ocean Grove, New Jersey to help my mom pack away some stuff in preperation for her trip to England. Not sure if I'll be able to do an update tomorrow or not.

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Zen Koan of the Moment
"Does this banana
have buddha nature?
I don't know but
it's mighty tasty!"

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Link of the Moment
memepool is one of the more well known 'blogs out there. I want to like it more than I actually do; I find its tendency of linking random words to be a little much for a site that's nothing but links. Aw man, Douglas Adams of Hitchiker's Guide fame died. So young...

Posting from Ocean Grove, New Jersey. My mom's new laptop froze... is it AOL 5, WinME, or the hardware? Aargh, I really hate when fresh OS's have such problems.

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Quote of the Moment

Oh, t'was ever thus, Boot, ever thus.
We men of vision dream dreams an'...er...vish visions, while the rest of the world--(what the...?)
You might at least stay awake whilst I'm doing a bit of bemoanin'

A cute little cartoon book in my pile of books from when I was a kid that my mom keeps here. (2019 UPDATE I guess it comes from a UK strip The Perishers) Quote of the Moment

Hello to all you mothers out there.

(He was a minister in the Salvation Army, and loved to say this while peering over the pulpit at Mother's Day services.) Link of the Moment
1950's Miracles of the Next Fifty Years. It's always neat seeing these tomorrows of yesterday, what happened and what didn't. (One thing is 2 or 3 years ago I would have laughed at that guy using the depilatory instead of shaving, but I just saw that product advertised on TV...)
(via slashdot where they had some interesting conversation on it.)

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News of the Moment
Heard this on NPR. Tom Green (not the dada-esque comedian) is being prosecuted for polygamy. In Utah. What I don't like about this debate is how much it's being argued in terms of religion. The government just shouldn't dictate terms like this. It's not bigamy with false pretenses. On the other hand, Tom Green isn't the most sterling poster child for the cause (no pun intended) with his habit of wedding and having children with 13 and 14 year olds. Oy. Corporate Logo Math
Nintendo just 'leaked' the logo for its upcoming game system, the "GameCube". There's a clever hiding of the G and the C in the logo, but over all I don't think it will be as flexible as the old 4 N's logo. At first I couldn't tell if it was a "real" 3D object or just an Escher-esque trick, but I think it can be real if the inner cubed is flush against the top front corner of the larger cube, not centered inside the larger cube as it kind of appears. Still, once it rotates the cool "G and C" visual gag will go away.

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News of the Moment
High Court Nixes Medical Pot. Great. Hell, I bet if they let this thing slide, people would be getting AIDS and cancer just to smoke up in peace, by crackey! I really don't believe that our country is better off with the kind of drug enforcement we have now. I don't know where the limit should be-- the libertarian in me says no limits, the utilitarian in me suspects no limits would be harmful to safety and hurt more people-- but I know the limit now, with a lot of non-violent drug offenders in overcrowded prisons, and a chicken-and-egg refusal to permit research into its medical effects ("there's no research proving it works" says the Federal Government, now the only legal resource for marijuana for the research, who also seem loathe to permit it's use for doing that same damn research), is not right.

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Quote of the Moment

Poor Poland: so far from God, so close to Germany and Russia

Link of the Moment
Kind of a neat history and overview of @. Culturally, we're really unimaginative in what we call it, all these other cultures come up with a cute animal name for it... the funny thing is, each comes up with a different animal name for it.

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Quote of the Moment

1. everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal;
2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3. anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Art of the Moment
My online pal Ranjit has made an interesting series of photos. He took a series of winter shots on March 6th, and then recreated those same shots on May 10th. The difference is really quite striking. While your at it you should browse around his moonmilk site as well.

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More Art of the Moment
Interesting piece on the Art Manifestos from earlier this century, "when art mattered enough to hate". Mostly I liked all the manifesto snippets on the first page. I've always been a big fan of Dada myself.

Heh. I just remembered one of the entries from the Second Chapter of my Palmpilot Journal that I made after seeing a biography of Man Ray:

I must become the founder of CYBERDADA, and its foremost creator. An uncorruptable art form because of the bullshit line information wants to be free- infinite copies can be made, and who but an overmoneyed idiot or iconoclast would buy a piece of it anyway?

Of course, someone beat me to it. Taking the garbage bin to the curb, dropped it when I heard a distinctly animal shuffling inside... bravely took off the top bag, the next box, saw a little bird looking up at me. Gently removed the larger box that was stopping it from getting the space it needed to fly and off it went, across the street and onto the telephone wire. Guess it was ok. Strikes me that birds probably don't have enough brainpower for the concept of gratitude, it probably figured it was clever enough to escape the big mammal looming over it.

In any event my karmic balance felt improved.

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Quote of the Moment

Leave the cat here.
Take the whiskey along.

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Link of the Moment
RiksJotto II is a cheerfully insane java game. You control the crosshairs of a "semi-automatic Dragunov class sniper rifle" and your mission is to take out all the players of a soccer match... (but, the game reassures us, no one is killed, "The players are actors that are instructed to lay down when you aim at them") And you don't shoot the refs, because they're spoiling the game already.

I really like the little soccer game simulation built into this game.

Quote of the Moment

That made such an impression upon me as a boy that I decided that no boy friend of mine would ever accuse me of licking the butter off his sandwich and I kept my promise.

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Proof that girls are evil:

First we state that girls require time and money.

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Girls = Time * Money
And we all know that "time is money."

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Time = Money
Therefore

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Girls = Money * Money = (Money)²
And because "money is the root of all evil":

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Money = sqrt(Evil)
Therefore:

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Girls = (sqrt(Evil))²
And we are forced to conclude that
Girls = Evil

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Link of the Moment
Interview with Douglas Adams on Atheism. Interesting points on the distinctions between Atheism and Agnosticism. Went to my five year reunion at Tufts last night. I skipped some of the multiyear events and just went to the dinner, but I guess for the cheapskate 5 year-ers they don't go all out. It was catered by Redbones but it was in a gym. Not a great turn out. The people there seemed... I dunno, pretty much the same. We agreed that it would be better if they could find someway to have people come back based on what they studied, or what groups they were in, for a general period of time, rather than strictly by year.

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Link and Ramble of the Moment
A wonderful, wonderful commercial is back on the air... here's how I described it last summer:

There's a brilliant commercial for the VW Cabrio, a convertible. 4 people are driving on a moonlit road in the country, enjoying the night air, looking up at the moon, trying to catch the magical looking pollen as it blows past, all to this wonderful mellow folksy song 'Pink Moon'. They finally arrive at the destination, a party- through the windshield you see many cars, strings of big festive lights, people talking... it seems very pleasant but the foursome look at each other and silently decide to keep driving into the night. It's a beautifully shot piece, the convertible nature of the car permitting intimate shots from many angles in the moonlight, not just the typical headon from the front view. Even though I find the decision to ditch the party unbelievable and just the wrong choice, as a whole the spot really resonates with me. I'm seriously tempted to look into one when I get my next car. (Then again I've always liked the compact boxiness of VW convertibles.)

You can see it here at VW (same link as above) or at AdCritic.com. (When I was looking for a second copy at the VW site I found this image which would have been much better for the quantum car gag I had here a few weeks ago.)

You know, one of the nice things about this quote 'blog over the Palm journal it replaced is that I can include links to the thing, as well as the images. Incidently, although some people were really happy to see Nick Drake (who did the song) get some exposure with this ad, I was a little bummed out when I saw that the lyrics didn't live up to the mood. Link of the Moment
APOCAMON! A literalist retelling of Revelation with Japanimation styling. Funny; it shows how absurd and odd a fundamentalist reading of the final book of the Bible would be. Be sure to check out the Apocadex (on the front page) so you know the stats of all the characters.

Quote of the Moment

Quantum particles: the dreams stuff is made of.

(via Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas"... he talks about a general attempt to over generalize the Uncertaintly Principle (like I do in this story) Link of the Moment
This is so cool... a dream I sent in got selected for illustration on Jesse Reklaw's Slow Wave site. (Here's a local copy.) People say it's a good likeness. Sigh. I always forget how big my lips must look... also it's funny, I think at I sent in this image (in negative) to show him what I looked like. His drawing of me has a shirt barely open over a darker t-shirt, a style I mostly wore in college, and also it's pretty rare that the T was darker than the overshirt. Ah well, it's still really cool (and a little surreal) to be able to relive a dream like that. It's a really fascinating site, illustrating dreams that people send in. You can recognize the strange logic dreams have as you click through the archive.

Dreams are so hard to remember. I know they have a device that can wake you up just as a dream starts, and that's bad for your mental health. I wonder if they could make a machine to gently wake you just after you've had a dream, so that it would be more possible to record it.

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Quote of the Moment

If making it in the real world doesn't involve sleeping until noon and playing frisbee all day, I'm totally screwed

Yesterday the fire alarms at my building went off. We all dutifully filed down the stairs to the lobby, where we discovered we were completely stuck. Both the front and back doors to the outside were sealed shut. At first we assumed there was some sort of errant locking mechanism in place, but when the fireman arrived, we discovered that even once they were pried open with a crowbar (the glass (!) doors, not the fireman), they were still prone to slamming shut in dramatic fashion.

Apparently, there was some kind of mechanical venting mechanism, presumably meant to whisk away smoke filled air, which was creating a low-pressure area in the lobby. (I don't know enough about fire codes to know if the implied supply of fresh air to a fire is consequential either.) The amount of force needed to open the doors was tremendous. Eventually the back doors (a floor down) were open, although I'm not sure how, or how they were kept from slamming shut.

"New, from the Towering Inferno Construction Company! It's LobbyVacuuSeal technology! Why bother with pesky layoffs and expensive severance packages, when you have LobbyVacuuSeal?"

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Quote of the Moment

[The Monrobot Mark XI all-purpose computer] solves many of the technical problems that we in the computer game have been bucking for years [...] Mark XI weighs only three hundred and seventy-five pounds and is therefore completely portable.

On many occasions Liu Ling, under the influence of wine, would be completely free and uninhibited, sometimes taking off his clothes and sitting naked in his room. Once when some scholars saw him and chided him for it, Liu retorted, 'I take heaven and earth for my pillars and roof, and the rooms of my house for my pants and coat... What are you gentlemen doing in my pants?'

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Political Quiz

Which headlines did not appear in an American newspaper?
(a) "E.P.A. TO KILL NEW ARSENIC LIMITS FOR WATER"
(b) "U.S. PROPOSES TO END TESTING FOR SALMONELLA IN BEEF"
(c) "BUSHES REVERSES CLINTON POLICY ON FEDERAL AID FOR ABORTION COUNSELLING OVERSEAS"
(d) "BUSH, IN REVERSAL, WON'T SEEK CUT IN EMISSIONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE"
(e) "BUSH TO CLOSES OFFICES ON AIDS, RACE"
(f) "BUSH HALTS PROTECTION ORDER FOR HABITAT OF ENDAGERED SHEEP"
(g) "WHITE HOUSE ENDS BAR ASSOCIATION'S ROLE IN SCREENING FEDERAL JUDGES"
(h) "BUSH'S BUDGET WOULD CUT THREE PROGRAMS TO AID CHILDREN"
(i) "MORATORIUM ASKED ON SUITS THAT SEEK TO PROTECT SPECIES"
(j) "BUSH BUDGET ON HEALTH CARE WOULD CUT AID TO THE UNINSURED"
(k) "BUSH TEAM URGES REPEAL OF MINING RULE"
(l) "ADMINISTRATIONS PROMISES BUSINESS-FRIENDLY WORKPLACE SAFETY REGULATIONS"
(m) "NADER SAYS THERE MAY BE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUSH AND GORE AFTER ALL"

Sigh, Mo got laid off yesterday. Damn dotconomy. The timing relative to the wedding is a bit irksome.

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Quote of the Moment

Why should I love God? He strung up his only son like a piece of veal. I should fear what he would do to me!

Link of the Moment
Spacewar! is one of the grand-daddies of modern videogames, and a much deeper deathmatch than Pong. (I was amazed at how developed its deathmatch became when I read this old Rolling Stones article.) Written by MIT Hackers who were inspired by the space opera Fiction of E.E. "Doc" Smith. Someone has an the original game running on a PDP-1 emulator. There's a decent funny introduction at classicgaming.com and a more comprehensive set of Spacewar! links as well. (Possibly the most obvious sequal to Spacewar! was the brilliant Star Control series. The first game added 12 new types of ships, each with 2 unique weapons systems, and the second created a whole universe to support it. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.)

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Quote of the Moment

I've coined new words like 'misunderstanding'

...and to think he accused Gore of exaggeration of invention! Thank goodness the Dems have found some traction in the Senate.

k: I've been doing a lot of AIMing lately. k: (AOL Instant Messenger-ing ). k: You initiate a chat with someone, k: and then each of you type at each other, k: a line sent at a time. k: I've been finding that writing pattern k: creeping into some of my other writing k: with clipped sentences, k: a line per thought to keep them interested, k: and commas to indicate more is coming. k: Interesting.

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Read of the Moment
Slate.com has a diary of a firefighter. You really have to respect firemen, there lives are such a blend of danger and boredom, as the journal entries explain. And harsh practical jokes. (via Spike Report) Memorial Day... a parade lined up just down the street from my house, wasn't expecting that. After all this time away from playing in that kind of band, I think I miss cool drum candences the most.

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Quote of the Moment

I mean--I know I caughter her off-guard and all, but I think she was kinda' gettin' into it...right before she threw me through the sliding glass door.

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Link of the Moment
In a similar vein of dealing with women, it's Don Juan Center (at the URL sosuave.com -- nice touch.) Be sure to check out the articles link. Quote of the Moment

That's some cold shit, throwing my man Leroy out the window. Just picked my man up and threw him out the Goddamn window.

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Link of the Moment
The site for Mario Party 3 has a number of fun little shockwave minigames. The N64 game itself is a lot of fun, I've always felt that it was a revival of "classic" style (i.e. like the old Atari) gameplay with modern graphics. Sort of like having a mini-Atari cartridge collection, so you don't have to keep playing the same simple game over and over. I revamped the kisrael.com blog archive. It now shows you a month's worth of entries at a gulp. This makes a better reading experience I think. A lot of places either over- or under-do it when it comes to their archive: either everything at once, or one thing at a time (and generally requiring a lot of clicking...I often write scripts that will, say, take all the image references for a comic site and put them on a single web page, so I can scroll rather than click.)

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Quote of the Moment

"Everything," I am told, "tastes better when it's sitting on a Ritz." No exception is made for other Ritzes, so from this statement we can infer that any given stack of Ritz crackers tastes better than any smaller stack of Ritz crackers, and thus the tastiest stack of Ritz crackers is the tallest one that you can fit in your mouth.

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Art of the Moment
I was trying to figure out why I had saved this one little special insert from The New Yorker on their covers and I realized it was probably because of this one Eric Drooker painting (local mirror) they used as a cover and had reprinted in it. You can see more of his work at drooker.com, unfortunately the link for Prints seems to be inactive. Quote of the Moment

God grant him every mercy and God convince us of our phenomenal good luck in having ordinary lives.

He's referring to a recent graduate diagnosed with "a degenerative disease with a brick-wall prognosis."

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Links of the Moment
The Douglas Coupland Dictionary is a glossary of neologisms the author has put forth in his books. Wired's Jargon Watch explores the same territory. Many are too cutesy or complex to enter general use, but some (such as "McJob") have entered common use. Coupland is even credited for popularizing "Generation X", the title of one of those books. (Coupland link via Bill the Splut's the news, Jargon Watch link via...uh...Wired and google)

2001 May❮❮prevnext❯❯