2012 October❮❮prevnext❯❯

Love is blind, which is why it's usually preceded by touch.

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http://www.thisismyjam.com/kirkjerk :

Beautiful and melancholy.

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You say, 'I'm great at multitasking.' I hear, 'Delusion's made my carelessness scalable.'

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You learn the greatest lessons from failure. For example, that failing sucks.

The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity...

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So glad the last step in my microwave entrée suggestion is 'enjoy.' If it was 'deplore,' the entire meal would be ruined.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox - Simpson's Paradox just blows my mind. A > X and B > Y but A + B < X + Y? So weird.

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Generally speaking I have found that most things do not get simpler over time.

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I have a theory that the Red Line in any city with a subway is always the worst.

All the world's major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

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Life is far more interesting than it needs to be, because the forces that guide it are not merely practical.

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From a brilliant riff on time travellers bringing good stuff back to the 70s and starting a little company...

Brilliant blend of old and new!

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THAT'S IT IMMA LIKIN' EVERYTHING!!!!

Not to be confused with licking everything.

That would be gross, because there is a whole lot of everything out there.

--me on Facebook http://boingboing.net/2012/10/03/movie-43-trailer.html - super not-safe-for-work trailer for a movie loaded with hollywood stars looks raunchy and hilarious

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Watched the movie "Perfect Sense" last night. Darkly romantic in truly disturbing epidemic horror setting...

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Didn't watch debates; heard Romney looked better. Also heard he had greased up Reagan hair, and on radio his voice had that rasp. #trickery

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Of course, the biggest problem with current Republicans is they put into practice the stuff Reagan was smart enough to only use as rhetoric.

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lost in fog

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Romney 2012. Soft on Wall Street. . . . . Tough on Sesame Street.

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U can't say we have religious freedom AND that we're all children of the same God, Bro!!

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/10/most-citizens-of-the-star-wars-galaxy-are-probably-totally-illiterate -- pervasive illiteracy, the latest noted signal of the cultural stagnation in the Star Wars universe...

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A T poster for Zipcar boasts of over 1,000 cars across Boston. I've know of 4 or 5 spots, have probably seen dozens more-- they're like GTA "hidden packages" for real life!

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Once in a while, look down from your mindless staring at the outside world and appreciate the tiny escapist majesty of your smartphone.

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Girls are cute and perky. I am a caffeinated ball of rage with ovaries.

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http://52tiger.net/how-to-create-custom-iphone-vibration-patterns/ You can make your own vibration patterns on the iPhone! Shave-And-A-Haircut, here I come!

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Skipped this the first time, but the story of the design of the modern airline baggage tag is great, if the result is functional and unbeautiful "Well, that was average," said Tom, meanly.
"Ow, my balls," said Tom, testily.
"Meanest. Waitstaff. Ever!" Tom yelped. http://media.skysurvey.org/interactive360/index.html Great composite scrollable night sky map. (Suddenly I have an urge to make a daytime version, just a field of blue.)

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Clever-- Home Depot has an icon with "Shazam for HOW-TO"-- guess they're using it like an audio QR-code...

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October Blender of Love

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mouthy

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http://www.thisismyjam.com/kirkjerk - my top 50 continues -- an upbeat euro cover of Mad World may be blasphemy for some but I dig it

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"You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signalling! And cats are COMPLICATED! A human mind can't just visualise a whole cat's anatomy and, and all the cat biochemistry, and what about the *neurology*? How can you go on *thinking* using a cat-sized brain?"

A great bit of fanfic I'm starting about what if Harry took an analytical, scientist approach to the fantasy world we find him in... great thinky stuff! http://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/08/an-inside-look-at-apples-role-in-the-patent-industry/ - Apple and Google pay more in patent stuff than in R+D. That is broken. #stopsoftwarepatents

But he could, there was no rule saying he couldn't, he could just pretend he'd never heard that little whisper. Let the universe go on in exactly the same way it would have if that one critical moment had never occurred. Twenty years later, that was what he would desperately wish had happened twenty years ago, and twenty years before twenty years later happened to be right now. Altering the distant past was easy, you just had to think of it at the right time.

Regretsy posted some clips of Obama reading his own book, and taking the voices of various characters from his life... cussing hilarity ensues.

"Way too complicated."	"Buy your own damn fries."	"There are white folks..."
"Sure you can have my number baby!"	"Got nothing on me..."

In posting these clips, I also made up the alienbill soundboard with these clips and a bunch of other .wavs I grabbed in the mid-90s. Some of the Simpsons ones are pretty funny, and a lot are at least "potentially useful" in office situations, if you're in that kind of office.

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RUIN every Knock Knock joke by saying 'It's open!'

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found online

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http://www.cartoonstudies.org/index.php/lifeinhell/ - Matt Groenig "Life in Hell" tribute, worth downloading PDF, in a hurry go to Slate for a sampling

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buscemi eyes at work Amber pointed out that it might be more convenient if I did my "music I've found lately list" monthly rather than seasonal-y, that three month's worth of my music would be a bit much for anyone to run into all at once.

Seems like a worthy experiment! Turned out to be a lot easier to put together.

No 4- or 5- start stuff, just 3s all around though I bolded 1 or 2 videos I think are especially noteworthy.

Shouty Gals (is that a category? I think it should be.)

• 1 Thing (Amerie) Dig the percussion. Sometimes I wish I had a 3 1/2 star category.
• Bad Girls (M.I.A.) Nice middle eastern (?) melodies entwined.
• Want U Back (Cher Lloyd) The shoutiest of the shouty gal songs. Love it for that, and the jealousy.

Indie and Pop

• Autumn Sweater (Yo La Tengo) This group is almost too artsy for me, but this is a nice melancholy song.
• Lisztomania (Alex Metric Rmx) (Phoenix) Phoenix is one of the few groups I've seen live in the past few years, 'cause Amber digs them so much. Good song with lyrics that don't explain too much.
• Sucker (Peeping Tom feat. Norah Jones) Slinky and evil.
• Jigga What/Faint (Jay-Z/ Linkin Park) Hip-hop and metal...

Brass

• What's Going On (The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, feat. Chuck D) -- Hurricane Katrina protest song... Dirty Dozen Brass Band made one of the first three CDs I ever owned...
• I'll Go In the Strength of the Lord (Salvation Army) Every once in a while a march or sunday school ditty gets stuck in my head... love the brass bridge in this one.
• Across the Field (Ohio State Buckeyes)

Retro

• Jack U Off (Prince) (I have the original, link is a VERY strange cover, but then again, I know this song as a marching band piece called "J.U.O."
• Sonic Reducer (Dead Boys) I guess the Beastie Boys sampled this... very punk.
• Eternal Flame (Bangles) Shmaltzy as heck, but my first girlfriend did a dedication of it on the radio and taped it for me.
• Do It Again (Marilyn Monroe) Sexiest version. Marilyn was amazing.

Novelty

• It's My Life What Ever I Wanna Do (Vennu Mallesh) Man, this deserves to be more famous. I love that this guy put himself out there like this... a little long, but fun. I love the skeptical glances of the backup singer in the video.
• Red Solo Cup (Toby Keith) Miller mentioned this horrible earwig. I love things that appreciate inanimate objects.
• If You Really Loved Me (Tim Minchin) XKCD mentioned this guy...
• Somebody Kill Me (Adam Sandler) I know the feeling.

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Make love, not war. But also, if at all possible, make money.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8 - the Conway's Game of Life, run on a big copy of Conway's Game of Life

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Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

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A friend of my family's, David Knickerbocker, is a Christian pastor who runs a thoughtful little blog. I disagree with a lot of things with him, but I think he really is on the more compassionate and humane side of Christianity, so I feel a little bad for getting a bit snarky when he wrote about 42 and the Answer to Life the Universe and Everything

Fun topic!

I was gonna say 42 now performs the function of "geek shibboleth", a buzzword that shows you you're "in" the community.

And then I wikipedia'd up "shibboleth" and they quote Judges 12:5-6, where the Lord's army of Gilead (under Jephthah-- another funny word to say!) invented the use of the term:

And the Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. And when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, "Let me go over," the men of Gilead said to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" When he said, "No," they said to him, "Then say Shibboleth," and he said, "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and slaughtered him at the fords of the Jordan. At that time 42,000 of the Ephraimites fell.

42 thousand killed-- I almost fell out of my chair. God works in mysterious ways.

Again, I'm being a little disingenuous here, but the coincidence of it really did startle me.

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For fun I did some music math... from 1992-2007, i.e. when I was buying CDs mostly, I added about 100 good songs a year, from 2007 on, when I started buying mostly MP3s, about 150. So now 2/3 of my good music is older, 1/3 newer - but that ignores the filler I leave off of my devices...

"Laziness, well-applied, can be a virtue!"
"That sounds like something lazy people make up."

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by pie comics "There are many decent, honorable men on the Yankees who truly have no idea they are doing the devil's work."
--http://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod

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The show Dr. Katz's Bar scenes use a pinball sample that is the same as my iPhone ringtone. Very distracting.
about 300 cubic inches of Lego

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I decided I had too giant a surplus of underused Lego, so I divided it three ways, and am giving 2/3 of it to two different friend families. It looked to be about 300 cubic inches (at least seemed to more or less fill 3 10.5 cubes.)

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"I wish you could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to be up really high to see how small you are.

I'm going home now."

...from Gizmodo's watch the video of the space jump here

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My childhood would have been that much less confusing if George Lucas hadn't named one planet 'Tattooine' and another 'Dantooine.'

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Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

"That day I understood that this heart scares easily. You have to trick it, however big the problem is. Tell your heart, 'Pal, all is well. All is well.'"

"Does that solve the problem?"

"No, but you gain courage to face it."

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Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

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Whoa Shots of the Space Shuttle rolling through LA.

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lego retelling of the red bull jump

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I try to get through life without judging people much, but when the casual game you're playing on the subway is "Bejewled" it's tough not to.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.

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http://www.thisismyjam.com/kirkjerk - My top 50 moves on-- arranged this obscure-ish Lisa Lisa item "Skip to my Lu" for acappella but never sang it... "All scientific truths are small."
--Nicholson Baker

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"What is morality but high intelligence?"
--Henry James

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Awesome lightning strike in slowmo by Tom A. Warner, via this xkcd what-if

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'Any faith is good, so long as you have faith' is the most insane thing I've ever heard.

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Not sure which is more tedious, all the tweets about the mini-earthquake or all the live tweeting about the debate. (I didn't watch much of the debate, for similar reasons why I don't watch my favorite sports teams much.)

Making the rounds: http://www.romneytaxplan.com/ is a clever browser joke. Also, riffing on Romney's "binders full of women".

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I always have dessert gums to share at work. Coworker chips in with "thanksgiving dinner" gumballs. Pumpkin pie is ok, but Turkey? Gumballs should not have the flavor "greasy".

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Tomorrow starting at 7PM I'll be hosting 24 Hour Comics Day (make a comic in 24 hours straight) 2 friends signed up, possibly room for more-

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The illogic of religions is not a weakness in them but their essential strength. Acceptance of the bizarre creation myths binds the members together.

I think even the scientific theories of the origin of the Universe and life on Earth are bizarre as well since it describes events so far outside everyday human existence, but the idea of "weirdness is strength" intrigues me.

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E.O. Wilson again:

Flannery O'Conner asked, correctly, for all of us, literary authors and scientists, "How can I know what I mean until I see what I say?" The novelist says, "Does that work?", and the scientists says, Could that possibly be true?"

I think maybe my block as a storywriter comes from asking a variation of the scientist's question: "could this possibly represent a self-consistent alternate reality? In my universe, did these events 'really' happen?"

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via I'm reading a book of Nicholson Baker's essay, and in his review of "The Historical Dictonary of American Slang" he says he spent several hours assembling the following matrix:

You	bag!	ball!	bomb!	wad!	wipe!	loaf!
cheese-		x		?	?	?
corn-		x		?	?
dirt-	x	x	x
grease-		x
hose-	x			x	?
jiz-	x			x	x	?
scum-	x	x			x	?
scuzz-	x	x			x	?
sleaze-	x	x	x	x
slime-		x		x

I wonder if he left out some prefixes and postfixes, such as "dork-" and "monkey!", still it was an entertaining table to parse.

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You know, when you go upstairs to poop that's some Next Level Shit

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Some suggestions for Mitt Romney's rap name: Rmoney, Rom Com, Seedy Rom, MC Douchefuck

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Syria Awash in Advanced Antiaircraft Weapons Mark my words: we'll see an airliner down by missile before anything smuggled onboard. (Also. "MANPADS"? Really?)

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marco

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--A little toy for Glorious Trainwreck's Kackling Korpse of the Monster Klaw Playful ghosts play tag, and you can bounce them around with your ectoplasmpuck. Or press mouse button to call them to you.
--HAHA! I've been quoting this Raggedy Ann + Andy alarm clock message for years, nice to see it again. (I remembered it as "start your brand new" rather than "happy" day, thought)
Thanks Internet!

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http://ckmobilebikerepair.com/ -- got Amber's bike fixed up -- they're often parked where Mass Ave meets Minutemain Trail but they'll come out to you! Thumbs up for that concept and execution. http://www.thisismyjam.com/kirkjerk -- Madonna's "Dick Tracy" blend of big band and playful kink

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"Not my circus, not my monkeys."

I like how it kind of implies both "not my fault" and "not going to affect me"

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Survey.What if there was a free game where your avatar is always crying. It doesn't affect the game but you could stop it for $2. Would you?

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6 Stages of Debugging: That can't happen. That shouldn't happen. Hmmm, weird. Why does that happen? Oh, I see. How did that ever work?

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Oh, Locke-Ober is going away. Now where will I go to pretend to be a member of the Boston Brahmin class?

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This is a whale imitating the sounds of human speech.

I think the whale might be making fun of us. Obama vs Romney in an epic rap battle:

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"Mitt's entire debate strategy: What he just said, but from a white guy"
--http://twitter.com/billmaher

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Math is really logic.
Logic is really philosophy.
Philosophy is really psychology.
Psychology is really biology.
Biology is really Chemistry.
Chemistry is really physics.
Physics is really math.

http://www.lostinmobile.com/how-did-we-get-to-the-iphone - fantastic article about the devices of the last 2 decades that led to the iPhone, and beyond...

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There is an overwhelming peace of mind that comes from knowing, to the depths of your being, that the universe doesn't give a shit.

realistic popeye -- more here

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--Protestors at a Right Wing anti-Gay Rally in France

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"The world needs more dreamers, Luke. Never stop licking things."
--Phil Dunphy, "Modern Family" While helping clean out my Uncle's PC etc workspace (not sure how many copies of Win98 and 3.5 disks one man could need... I found this, Patent 3,582,675.

I admit these days I'm kinda skeptical about all patents, but this feels like it's from a time when patents still mattered. fooling around with garageband... I have a lot to learn.

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Apropos of that last video, a song I learned about from my mom and aunt yesterday:

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I'm not sure if I dig the genre, but Assassin Creed III's detailed portrayal of Colonial Boston might be worth the risk.

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jack o'lantern self-portrait(ish)

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tap o'lantern

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Rape is 'God's will' but homosexuality is my 'choice.' Talk about making shit up as you go along.

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God doesn't make you get raped or die in childbirth, just decides you get pregnant? Sounds less like God and more like the Aquaman of sperm.

Do Radio DJs get special training to audibly laugh at things that might otherwise just make them smile, or are they chosen for that skill?

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Sometimes I really like Modern Family:

via

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http://inventikasolutions.com/demo/iPod/# - nice original iPod emulation! Nice piece of work. (Both the original "OS" and the simulation.)

"He was a poet, a mountain man, a Buddhist dedicated to the principle of meditation on the essence of things, a vegetarian too by the way though I haven't got on that kick from figuring maybe in this modern world to be a vegetarian is to split hairs a little since all sentient beings eat what they can.

This quote rattles in my brain whenever I think about Buddhism and Vegetarianism.

The characters in the books seem to grill themselves up an awful lot of steaks

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What if Gangnam Style is actually just a rain dance and you've all brought this upon yourselves?

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The chorus of Alicia Keys' "Girl on Fire" uses an AAAA rhyme scheme, where every A ends with "fire". Also "A"s 1 2 and 4 are actually the same line.

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I shit you not, our McDonald's is out of soda and ketchup. Hurricane isn't even here yet.

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@masukomi i am curious about the families that regard ketchup as an emergency staple.

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["25 or 6 to 4" comes on my new music playlist]
"Wait... is this the good one you've always had in your playlist?"
"You mean the mashup? No, this is the original."
"Oh, the one with the rap is better."
"This is a guy singing his heart out! You don't know rock and roll! You don't know anything!"
"The other one is better because it has the line 'pussy palace'."
"...touché" All is well for us here in Arlington. Some small branches, lots of leaves, no flooding, just another day working from home and a bit more of that "let's put a reporter next to a splashing sea wall!" footage on television.

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Bond vs Bond vs Bond:

Mighta been cooler as a tourney, but that was pretty sweet.

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There simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction.

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The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

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a permeating, low-lying sense of dread that there is some kind of 'should.'

http://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2012/10/29/1 some friends of mine are putting up matching funds for the Ada Initiative, a program to increase women's participation in open technology culture. I gave, you might consider doing likewise!

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Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

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Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

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HURRICANE VICTIMS. Avoid unwanted press intrusion by simply moving to Haiti.

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A Zombie is a slave, forever Important note about the overused popculture staple...

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I think (in the near future), instead of album art, MP3s (or their equivalent) should embed the music video. Would beat youtube.

2012 October❮❮prevnext❯❯