2002 January❮❮prevnext❯❯

Navel Gazing of the Moment
I went through last year's archive to bring you the Best 10 of 2001 from the kisrael journal. I mostly focused on creative-ish things I made, rather than interesting things I linked to, and tried to weed out most of the rehashes of stuff I had made a while back.

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Quote of the Moment

Laughter is heard farther than weeping.

Article of a Previous Moment
SALAMANCA, NY -- Captain and Mrs. James Israel were adopted into the Seneca Nation of Indians recently. Mrs. Israel was adopted by George Heron of the "Hawk Clan" and Captain Israel was adopted by Mrs. Harriet Pierce of the "Bear Clan." Pictured are Mr. Heron, Mrs. Captain Israel, Kirk Logan Israel, Mrs. Helen Harris, representing the Hawk Clan Mother; Mrs. Pierce; and Captain Israel
--The War Cry, March 27, 1982. The War Cry is the periodical of the Salvation Army...I remember making a nest of blankets in the back of the Station Wagon as my parents drove around doing the "Tavern Route", selling "War Cry"s. This clipping was unearthed by my cousin Scott Bedio, who is a Salvation Army historian. I've always tried to figure out if this makes me an adoptive member of the Seneca tribe or not...

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Funny of the Moment

"All I'm saying is that people who say 'irregardless' are TOTAL CRETINS!"
"LOTS of people say 'irregardless.'"
"That's exactly my point! 'LOTS' of people ARE cretins!!!"
"Look: just because a person doesn't have "BOOK SMARTS" doesn't mean he or she is STUPID! That newscaster might have a lot of EMOTIONAL intelligence!"
"May I inject one teensy-weensy thought?"
"Go ahead!"
"Emotional Intelligence is CRAP!!!"

Link of the Moment
Ranjit pointed out a new service of Google: catalogs.google.com. Unlike their brilliant Usenet and image searches, this one seems pretty sketchy. If you do a search, say for "sewing machine", the results are in the form of catalog cover, page from the catalog, then a graphical close up of where the search words appear, with the words highlighted...in other words, the system is entirely based in scanned in versions of the mail-order catalog, unlike most online catalogs, which are product and database driven. Google's idea is all too freaky retro-future for me, like what some C=64 using computer geekling in 1985 would think the future of online shopping would look like.

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Interview Response of the Moment

Q: So what would an intelligent car be like, for example?
A: Well, there may never be such a thing . But we used to have intelligent cars; they were called horses. And they used to know stuff that our cars don't know. They used to know where they lived and how to get home and how not to knock over people. Even how to refuel themselves. The amazing thing was that they could even make new cars. The intelligent car would be like a horse. Something that really enjoyed a good drive and prided itself on not knocking people down.

Link of the Moment
Via Bill the Splut, it's Kiru's Analysis of Lord of the Rings. Funny Stuff, with advice to various races and characters. Here's a dwarf.

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Guestbook Quote of the Moment

When going downhill skiing, make sure you know how to get up when you fall. Ouch.

You know, that's the same problem I had the season I was in the school skiing group in Middle School, and I haven't been on the slopes since. In the spirit of obsessive neurotic geekdom, I've been keep track of what media I've consumed over the past year: movies I've seen (at the cinema, on video/dvd, or on HBO or cinemax), books and graphic novels I've read, and video games I've played through. I just hated how I'd forget what I'd seen months later...

Movies at the Cinema: (16)
Snatch, In the Mood for Love, O Brother Where Art Thou, State and Main, O Brother Where Art Thou, Bridget Jone's Diary, Bridget Jone's Diary, Moulin Rouge , Memento, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, K-PAX, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Amélie , Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Movies on Video/DVD (48)
American Beauty, La Blue Girl 1+2, La Blue Girl 3 + 4, La Blue Girl 5+6, The Pornographer, Gladiator, Bound, Fight Club, American Psycho, Cecil B. Demented, Better Than Chocolate, Quills, Shaft, Shaft, American Pie, Big Kahuna, Charlie's Angels, Six String Samurai, Slayers 1 , The Usual Suspects, Hamlet (2000/Ethan Hawke), AntiTrust, Idle Hands, Evil Video, Battle Queen 2020, Unbreakable, Pecker, Hannibal, Traffic, Snatch, High Fidelity, Chocolat, La Blue Girl 1+2, Crash, Evil Video, Cool Devices, The Mummy Returns, Cool Devices (6-11), shrek, Tank Girl, Green, Planet of the Apes, Star Crash, BackBeat, Henry & June, The Castle of Cagliostro, Tron, The Killer
Movies on TV (55)
Passion Fish, Meaning of Life, Virtual Sexuality, Flirt, Glengerry Glen Ross, Mother, Juggs, and Speed, Canadian Bacon, Wild Wild West, Armed and Dangerous, Terminator 2, House on Haunted Hill, Boys Don't Cry, Bang, Oxygen, Another Stakeout, Batman: The Movie, The Replacements, Time Code, Robocop 2, Scenes from a Mall, Pushing Tin, Ed Wood, I Love You to Death, Bringing Out the Dead , Loser, The Prophecy, All the Right Moves, Hollow Man , Steal this Movie, Whiteboyz, Welcome to Hollywood, Tommy, Space Cowboys, Birdy, Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker, 28 Days, The Lesser Evil, Bill Cosby, Himself, Star Trek Generations, Batman Returns, Mermaid Chronicles Part 1: She Creature , Moscow on the Hudson, sex,lies,and videotape, Love & Sex, The Dao of Steve, Blood and Wine , Center Stage, Me,Myself and Irene, Blaze, Almost Famous, Arthur, Bootmen, Sparkler, The Fly
Video Games (14)
Driver, Mario Kart 64, Yoshi's Story, Mega Man: The Power Battles, Quake 2, Turok Ragewars, NFL Blitz 2000, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Unreal Tournament, Battle Tanx, Metal Slug, Warhammer, Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader, Super Smash Bros Melee
Books (47)
What It Felt Like, The Meme Machine, Uncle John's Bathroom Reder Vol 11, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, Chaos, Machine Beauty, When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours!, Prozac Nation, The Difference Engine, Game Over press start to continue, My World and Welcome To It, How to heal the hurt by hating, Bridget Jones' Diary, Pursuit of Happiness, X-Men, penn & teller's cruel tricks for dear friends, The Great Fires, The Domination Trilogy, The One Minute Manager, Owning It: Zen and the Art of Facing Life, Just For Fun, Rendezvous With Rama, Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason, Feet of Clay, Andy Kaufman Revealed: Best Friend Tells All, The Cuckoo's Egg, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Four Blondes, Soul of a New Machine, Perv - A Love Story, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, Drakon, Zen Computer, Interesting Times, We Are Still Married, Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True, The Truth, got milk?, Carpe Jugulum, Small Gods, Hogfather, Fight Club, The Fifth Elephant, Jingo, The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death
Comics/ Graphic Novels (20)
X-Presidents, Astro City: Life in the Big City, Astro City: The Varnished Angel, Dykes to Watch Out For, Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For, Love and Rockets 3, DreamToons, Whack Your Porcupine, The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book, JLA earth 2, Old Boot's Private Papers , Seven Years of Highly Defective People, Jar of Fools, All About the Mayas, Perfect Summer, What Is This Thing Called Sex, DC vs Marvel, The Dark Knight Strikes Again (1 of 3), Ethel and Ernest
Well, that was a pretty self indulgent weekend, journal-entry-wise. On the other hand, I haven't been finding that many really interesting links lately. (And I did like those photos.)

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Quote of the Moment

And when I say love I mean dizzy, frustrated and sick. Love is just easier to say.

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Link of the Moment
An animation of alcohol warning signs. Kind of funny, not the best thing I've posted here. I coulda used it at Brooke's Party...well, not really, but the pictures I took look like the camera might've been drunk as well (because I was avoiding using the flash, to get that dramatic look. And the ones there are the ones that came out well....) Stayed up 'til one rewriting a prototype from scratch. Rewarding but draining: it was actually easier to build it from the ground up than to wrestle with proprietary J2EE crap.

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News of the Moment
Naked Homerobbers in Bangladesh. John says he heard about this on CNN in Jersey. The idea is they just walk naked into houses, and the shy residents are so flustered they leave. I guess this eyewitness report says it all: "The womenfolk were so embarrassed by the nudity of the well-built men that they ran away from their homes, giving a free hand to the robbers to decamp with their valuables."

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Quote of a Past Moment

I just want a lover who'll make me chicken soup when I'm sick.

Found that in an old Usenet .sig on Google.

I think she's found what she was looking for since then. Shockwave Game of the Moment
That elephant to the left is Jumbo. Not only is he the mascot of my alma mater, he's also the star of just about the most poorly conceived Flash game I've ever seen: Starship Jumbo. The animation is well nigh non-existent, and the "Please note: Holding the CTRL/COMMAND key down for continuous fire will cause the game to malfunction." doesn't bode well either. (Incidentally, PT Barnum was a trustee of Tufts, which is why his famous elephant is the mascot. He promised his remains to both Tufts and the American Museum of Natural History...they got the skeleton, we got the skin, but it was turned into ashes during a fire in the 1970s. More of the story here.)

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Essay of the Moment
Essay on geek slacking and buzzword compliance as a weapon: Fire and Motion. Mentions an idea I've felt myself, but rarely hear admitted to: for many tech workers, a day that's really productive may only consist of a few hours of dedicated work. There's a huge slack factor, and I can really identify with the sense of productivity inertia he talks about. Like Monday night, when I worked from 6pm 'til 1am, really without much of a break. And like others day, where it' a struggle to get anything done.

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Quote of the Moment

But even Einstein took five years to tie his shoelaces.

Walkway Light Over Snow, January 8 2002 1AM

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Lyric of the Moment

Kinko, Kinko, the kid loving clown, if the kids just love me back, I'll never wear a frown. Kinko's in his kinko car, pockets full of change, lots of dirty pictures and sticky candycanes. All the kids love Kinko for the presents that they get, silly leather clothes to wear and happy cigarettes.

I remember someone writing the kinko car/pockets full of change line on a board in high school. Google search didn't come up with many matches (I guess they used to play it on Doctor Demento), but it got me the rest of the lyric.

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Link of the Moment
Salon.com had A is for Arabs, an Alphabet of Arab Achievement . Amazing how many things their culture produced, but right now I think our culture's strength is being really good at co-opting things. Although many of the achievements listed are things they utilized from other cultures, I think in general they've gotten less flexible with time. I wasn't surprised when I found out one of the better translations for "The Great Satan" is "The Great Tempter". Color of the Moment

	To the left is the color of the universe. When you take the average of the shades of all these bajillions of color readings of the universe, what's you get is the Howard Johnson's reject that you see here.
Some astronomers counter that it (the universe) is pretty much just the black and white you see when you step outside at night, and that our view of color only makes sense in terms of the human eye anyway. BTW, this color is #A2E8CE for all you web programmers out there. I'd really like to get away from Boston's nightly purple glow and see the Milky Way sometime soon.

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Funny of the Moment

Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> Liz Broadwell wrote:
> > phil hunt wrote:
> > > Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > > > Being the wrong sex, I've never understood girl's
> > > > infatuation with horses.
> > > Perhaps they like the idea of something powerful
> > > making rhythmic movements between their legs?
> > I was always attracted by the fantasy of riding a suitably
> > large horse right over the boys at school who insisted on
> > making remarks like that.
> Yes, exactly. It's a vibrator, a giant plush toy, *and* a
> weapon of war, all at once.
Which is to say, a penis substitute.

So I added a hit counter of sorts to the bottom of the page...it gives the number of frontpage and overall hits for kisrael.com, as well as the number of unique IP addresses (which prevents me from getting too excited when I reload my frontpage over and over.) I think those are more interesting numbers about the interest level for the site than a typical "this page hit #### times" would provide.

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Image and Link of the Moment
Heh, remember this miniclip on the right, that used to be part of The Daily Show? I found this animated GIF on David A. Webb's Home Page Ground Zero, which should meet your US RDA of Rockin' Guitar Licks and Skeleton, Fire, and Blood Themed Animations. I did a bit of websearching to find out more about it. It's from "The Story of Ricky", a semi-legendary chop socky flick, and you can see a page with some stills and an mpeg clip at badmovies.org. My webhost upgraded the OS, and now my backlog database is busted. At least I don't think any data is lost.

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Funny of the Moment

--Internet Lore. Hmm, not quite so funny post 9-11. Ah well. Morbid Thought of the Moment
You know, despite disagreeing with him I on many issues I don't really wish him any harm, but I kind of can't wait for Charlton Heston to die, just so we can say "Woo hoo! Time to do us some pryin'!"

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Images of the Moment

Wow. This guy really has some biceps. He has his own website, BICEPMANIA. You look at him, and all you can think of is Schwarzenegger going "It's not a tu-mah...oh, wait, maybe it is."

(via Portal of Evil)

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News of the Moment
Ok, not so much someone who would kill me directly so much as order my mysterious "accidental" death, The President choked on a pretzel and fainted while watching a football game on TV. Quote from his doctor: "He fainted due to a temporary decrease in heart rate brought on by swallowing a pretzel." It might be related to him being the most fit president we've had in a long while, with a resting pulse rate between 35-45 bpm. News of the Moment

virgin shark mary on the halfshell: coming soon to a yard near you?

So Zoo officials are investigating a Shark who gave birth with no guy sharks around. They're starting with the usual theories: the off chance it actuall is asexual reproduction (previously unknown in sharks), a bit of sperm that had somehow survived for years in the shark, or that a different breed of guy shark in the same tank did the deed (akin to "a Chihuahua impregnating a Saint Bernard"). But have they considered the possibility that that shark gave birth to the Shark Messiah? (Well, the newborn was stung to death after only five hours of life...but perhaps that stingray was the Pontius Pilate of that zoo tank!)

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Quote of the Moment

"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save."

It's rather a zen point of view, come to think of, it the importance of living in the moment, appreciate what you're doing for the sake of doing it.

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Useful Link of the Moment
A very convenient page of opt-outs for popup/under ads. (via webword) Sick Sad World of the Moment
When the capitalistic message we try to bring the world goes a little bit awry...it's the handheld video game "Laden Vs. USA", with real pictures from September 11.
On the one hand, it's appalling to make a terrorist incident where thousands died into a game. On the other hand, you have to admire the chutzpah. And really, is that much worse than the flash games like this or the "Come Mr. Taliban, Hand Over Bin Laden / Daylight Come and We Drop Da Bomb" flash video?

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Quote of the Moment

What comes out of your mouth is more important than what goes into it.

Quote of the Moment

Art is what you can get away with.

This is the criteria I use for art. It kind of defers the decision, puts it in the realm of consensus.

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Nostalgia of the Moment
Heh, remember the Garbage Pail Kids? They were a parody of Cabbage Patch, in Bubble Gum Card form. Some of them were really pretty cool. I don't think I ever collected many of them (possibly forbidden by maternal edict) but I thought some of them were pretty darn clever and cool.

Hmm, the browse function seems to be broken on certain versions of IE (I'm using 5.0.) Time to bust out netscape. Image of the Moment

Woman or Sax Player? (actually looks a bit like Bill Clinton...) I first saw this image years ago, and really liked the stylized woman. But then I starte asking, what part of the sax player is forming the woman's mouth? (via ZZZ online)

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Link of the Moment
Public Service Announcement: How to identify if your cow has mad cow disease. A little corny, but still makes me laugh. Quote of the Moment

I found while driving in Wyoming that wearing a stetson and driving a beat-up pickup meant you could go as fast as you like, while the police picked up Californian winnebagos that went one mph over 55. After all, they wanted to bring money into the state, not merely circulate it.

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Image of the Moment
Ah...Handsome Man Lando Calrissian. In college, Rick and I loved the up-and-down look smilin' Lando gave Princess Leia as he says "Hello what have we here...", it became a catch phrase. And Billy Dee William's later career as Colt 45 pitchman just added to his greatness... I'm hoping now more people will get it when I say "Lando was right...it does work every time!" (Image via Toys R Gus)

Online Toy of the Moment Ranjit directed me to the tilemachine 1.0, a tool for creating tiling backdrops and the like. I remember trying to do the same thing in VB way back when, to help make Windows wallpaper. The Tile Machine scratches some of the same itch as his much mourned pixeltime, but lacks the Pixel Master and the monthly themed galleries. Also, I thought a better name than Tile Machine (but one that has been used) would be "Escher-Sketch"...

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Quote of the Moment

It is white.

Found this in an old New Yorker, from back when it was more ok to make fun of the president. Today is his one year president-a-versary! Quote of the Moment

You can lead a horse to bullshit, too.

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Video of the Moment
From the makers of that brilliant Atari VCS themed video, it's Total Control, a audivisual study in Slot Car Racing and branding/iconography. (Their navigation isn't the easiest to follow, click on Veja/Watch in the top right corner...some of the other parts are interesting too, like "Making Of" and "Carros/Cars") Also, the site has some decent decent Electronica. Aw, singer Peggy Lee has died. Her beatnik-tinged cover of "Fever" is one of my 10 favorite recordings ever, and "Is That All There Is?" is a pretty amazing theme as well...

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Links of the Moment
Continuing the theme of celebrity death, a movie about the Bill Gates Shooting. (The Gates Estate is not amused.)

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Quote of the Moment

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.

Man, packing is such a grind. Hopefully this is the last one for a number of years. It's kind of neat to be having a fresh start, though.

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Image of the Moment
This Snapshot (click for fullsize and discussion) was taken by a passenger on the "shoebomber" flight. It's not the greatest picture, but it's still pretty amazing.
Score one for the innocents!

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Funny of the Moment

"...Bush believes he was out only for a few seconds because when he awoke, his two dogs were sitting in the same position they were when he [choked on a freakin' pretzel and] lost consciousness."

Lassie, they're not.

--A tribute to, or ripoff (err, I mean artistic recreation that stands in its own right as its own artistic work) of Jenny Holzer's "truisms" piece. I was pretty happy with yesterday's entry (left out this commentary because it kind of threw of the balance.) I wish I was a hardware hacker who could integrate yesterday's toy with some kind of LCD display...I used to have a little plastic 'digital fortune cookie' that would scroll a little aphorism/clichés each time you opened it, "truisms" would have been much cooler.

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Link of the Moment
Especially for the frisky single gal, it's The Online, Pre-Date Confidence Builder, the supportive campy gay latino friend you wish you had. (thanks ranjit)

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Funny of the Moment

[Explaining yet another Mike Tyson biting incident]"Why does this kind of thing happen? Well, it's one of the dark secrets of the sport...
Boxers are Delicious."

Today we move. We've hired movers, Mo learned a while back the wonder of not doing it yourself. Though there's always something odd about standing around watching other folks move your stuff. Maybe especially for guys, since these guys are clearly toting around things I could probably manage, but without nearly the grace they have. You feel like you're one step away from becoming that Professor in Real Genius: "What are you looking at? You're laborers; you should be laboring. That's what you get for not having an education."

(Update: 'Moving Guy' wrote on my guestbook that it's a terrible thing to equate having a job involving physical labor with not having an education, and I absolutely agree; I was pointing out that what makes being a guy standing around while other guys are hauling your stuff so awkward is feeling like they'll perceive you as that 'professor' type somehow. I have a great respect for the grace and strength exhibited by an experienced mover. My former co-worker Rob Baum would always point out whenever worked seemed to onerous "hey, at least it's not heavy lifting" and he had a point.)

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Small Gif Cinema of the Moment

sit, spin

--my old study in Watertown...farewell!

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E-bay of the Moment
I've already seen links to all the Enron Retirement Mugs on Ebay. Ranjit point out a nuance I missed; if you go to this auction and click on the lower of the two thumbnails, you see their rather ironic slogan... So we moved yesterday. Hopefully everything went well...we will not have had Internet restored by the time this shows up on the website, so I'm writing this in advance. (I have a weird devotion to strict daily updates...unfortunately, it makes the verb tense a bit tricky. And my recent patch of the auto-publish system I made for my honeymoon worked out.)

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Consumer Electronic Product of the Moment
Does this device mark the end of civilization? Or just the beginning?

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Quote of the Moment

I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, Einstein and Cary Grant.

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Link of the Moment
Kind of cool little promotional teaser for a new Tron movie... I can't believe I bought the DVD of the original right before a new all-bells-and-whistles, behind-the-scenes, director's commentary 20th-Anniversary DVD was released for $30. So the move went ok. (By the way: Go Pats.)

On the guestbook Rhetoric mentioned that she likes the titles I give these things...glad someone noticed! And "The Future Was Then" was actually a bad minor in-joke, based on the title of Brooke's party, The Future Is Now. But it worked anyway.

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Link of the Moment
Journal of a New Cobra Recruit. Ah, the 80s, when terrorist organizations all wore blue and couldn't shoot their laser guns worth a damn and always bailed out of exploding vehicles just in time. (via Bill's The News)

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Quote of the Moment

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Anthropology of the Moment
This is a little embarrassing...the frilly things to the left are garters. They're from the two Euclid High Proms I attended (and it's always "prom" never "the prom", kind of a "Pop"/"Soda" thing.) One of the traditions of prom seems odd to people who didn't go there... (though it may be a general regional tradition, I'm not quite sure) ...it's the "garter dance". Most of the gals who go are wearing a garter that matches their dress. At some point, the DJ announces the dance, chairs are brought around the dance floor, the gals sit and their dates get to remove the garter. The guys generally use them as armbands for the rest of the evening. It's kind of goofy but sexy fun, and I have always thought goofy sexy fun is a good thing, even though the whole affair is a bit tacky. For sentimental reasons, I'm probably gonna keep the garters forever, a bizarre personal totem. Somehow getting rid of them now would retroactively diminish those evenings.

The beer mug is from 1991 (as the mug has inscribed on it, the year of eXCItement...get it?) when I went with Veronika though I was but a junior. That year, they gave champagne glasses to girls and beer mugs for the boys, which is a bit direct of a message to send when you stop to think about it. In 1992 it was champagne glasses for everyone.

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Link of the Moment
This was on slashdot: Norrath's a place plenty of people haven't heard of, but it's the 77th most wealthy nation in the world, right behind Russia. Or rather it would be, if it really existed. It's the fictional world of the online game EverQuest, but that New Scientist report is talking non-fictional money. Strange but true. Image of the Moment

click for fullsize

I don't know why, but I've always liked this image a lot...its been knocking around my hard drive for years.

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Quote of the Moment

A good friend of mine is Baptist. Here's her idea on the subject of dinosaurs: "God created dinosaurs when he created man. But he kept them on one side of the earth while he kept Adam and Eve on the other side. Then he killed off all of the dinosaurs and hurled their bodies to the other side of the planet, tilting the planet on its axis. And that's why the earth revolves around the sun - the impact from God's dinosaurs tilted earth into its rotation."

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Link of the Moment
Roller Derby meets Billiards: it's Speedpool2. (via camworld) Link of the Moment
This morning Kate and John were looking at some Very Evil Books for Children (PG13++, not for the easily offended.) The text commentary around the images is pretty pointless though.

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Guestbook Entry of the Moment

Oh yeah, you went with Veronika that's right... your a player as I remember correctly? Player AKA Cheater... you know the drill.

This must've been brought on by "Garter Dance" entry two days ago. Me, a player? Uhh, right. I may have hurt someone when Veronika and I started going out. I kind of suddenly broke off another relationship. But I don't have a lot of regret about that; the other relationship had been stagnant for many months by the time Veronika and I were on that fateful jazz band trip to Boston, and what I had with Veronika stands out as my first and last great AND innocent love. I'm sorry that I may have hurt someone to get that though.

2002 January❮❮prevnext❯❯