Category: general

Just so you know. (Currently mirrored at National Lampoon)

And now, Spaceballs the Animated Series.

No imdb entry yet. They’re slipping! ;>

Lokitorrent has caved to the MPAA. Check out their site now. (A screencap is available at BoingBoing, too.)

I’m just kind of…amazed. It’s like the MPAA has become some sort of Internet totalitarian regime.

I received news of what was probably a very cool Edgar Allen Poe one-man show this morning. The show took place last night.

Gee, thanks, RSS! (And why, AikenOnline.com, would you not post a story like this earlier in the week?)

When I shift my blog over to WordPress, I’m thinking about adopting Derik‘s idea about using del.icio.us as a “clip blog” (the “Supplement” part of his sidebar pulls his 10 most recent additions to del.icio.us). I make a lot of brief posts that relate to the news, and these push my more lengthy discussions and rambles, the things I really want people to see, out of the limelight.

Luke deals with this problem by embedding a second blog in his main blog. This way, people are still able to comment on his clip entries. That’s a thought, too.

I was also thinking of simply establishing a category in WordPress for news-ish posts, because that way people could easily get to my more journal-y posts (by clicking that category), and yet could still comment on the clip posts. I may end up doing this, ultimately. I don’t think that my news clips are less important just because they’re short. All of my posts ultimately give the reader insight into my personality, which is the entire point of this blog.

At any rate, there’s a lot of news today:

Lesbians are the “new” (10 years new) sweeps gimmick. (Via Jen Garrett.)

Here’s an interesting piece concerning the problems with ecommerce websites and their requirements for user logins. I’ve seen people get really up in arms about this at 2go-Box. “Why can’t I delete my account? I don’t want to have an account anymore. Delete my account!” (Via BoingBoing.)

Here’s a hotel at which I would be terrified to stay. (No sentence-terminal prepositions here, bucko.) And yet, I am compelled. I would love every minute of it, I just know it.

Hitler is still getting mail. I am intrigued by the fact that the postcard “arrived at its intended destination”. How exactly is that possible?

The FAA has drafted some guidelines for commercial spaceflight.

Businesses in North Augusta are buying up inexpensive property on West Avenue because of its curb appeal: many of the shops are renovated vintage homes. I wouldn’t mind working in one of those :)

There has been a delay in plans to set up a nuclear fuel plant at SRS. I don’t really know a lot about SRS, though I’ve heard stories, such as: 1) People who work out there get paid a lot of money, because they end up sterile. 2) There’s a long stretch of nothingness as you’re driving past on the highway, and all of a sudden a huge white dome looms in front of you. Somehow, you never saw it on your approach, and it soon disappears. 3) There are guards there along the highway, and if you spend too much time in the area–stopping for photos, perhaps, rather than simply driving straight through–they will come and get you and escort you out. So, yeah; SRS has always seemed spooky to me. I want to visit, and yet…don’t.

And finally…you’ve all heard by now about North Korea (President Bush: “Okay, so, nuclear weapons are bad.” Kim Jong Il: “You’re not the boss of me!”). Here’s Japan’s reaction. (I want to note that right now, the top stories on MSN.com are “Why Some Men Cheat”, “Women: What to Wear on Feb. 14”, and “6 Signs You Should Quit Your Job”. I guess Pyongyang’s announcement doesn’t warrant permanent highlighting. But I remember that when Sean and I were in Japan for our honeymoon, there was a news program on TV highlighting how Pyongyang might fire missiles at Japan, and what steps could be taken to intercept the missiles. I remember being extremely disconcerted by this notion. The war in Iraq began a few days after we got home.)

Just now, for example, he intoned: “Mithril alloy. Ah-ha.”

I love that doofus.

The producers of the film “Eyes on the Prize”, a documentary on the Civil Rights Movement in America, could not afford to renew their rights to the copyrighted historical clips used in the making of the film. This means that this important piece of history is largely unavailable to those who want to learn. (Here’s BoingBoing’s original post on the subject.)

The “Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement” have written a powerful essay denouncing the inaccessibility of “Eyes of the Prize”:

To us, knowledge is a human right every bit as important as the right to vote and the right be treated with courtesy and respect. Therefore, we do not believe that reading, or viewing, or listening is, or should ever become, a crime. Nor should access to information become a luxury sold only to the wealthy.

I agree. It is completely stupid to deny people access to this information. More copies should be allowed to be produced. It should be on DVD. The film should be freely available at libraries and schools. That it isn’t is a sad commentary on the state of copyright law. (Via BoingBoing.)

I love the idea of this t-shirt, and now that it is reality, I love the t-shirt itself.

I would actually wear it if I thought I could get away with it. But, ultimately, I’m married, and the slogan might give people strange ideas about our relationship. I could give it to Sean (he’s already got PA’s old Got Wang? t-shirt, with an arrow pointing to his crotch), which I suppose would be less controversial. I just feel bad that I can’t wear cool t-shirts myself.

I did, however, buy a hot pink babydoll tee with the word “flirt” on it the other day at Target.

(BTW: Welcome back, PA.)

At least, according to this article in Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough.

“Big gift givers make important contributions to China’s economic development,” an unidentified economist was quoted as saying in the International Herald Leader ahead of the beginning of the Year of the Rooster.

“But what they are doing could be called a form of corruption.”

Officials must report any gifts worth more than 50 yuan (3 pounds) but few do.

Notable are the search (and seizure?) tactics of some government agencies regarding gifts.

Today in #amrn, Kevin was talking about a hybrid supercar that he liked. (His exact words were, “the hybrid supercar makes my pants tight too”.) My response:

[23:16:03] <COSLeia> Kevin: this one? http://www.toyota.com/vehicles/future/volta.html

[23:16:20] <COSLeia> that looks like something Orochimaru would drive

[23:16:28] <COSLeia> ahem, I mean, that car looks like a snake

[23:16:34] * COSLeia notes that her Narutard is showing

Elizabeth Leah Sauls, 21, was hosting her niece’s second birthday party at the time of Friday evening’s raid. She was allegedly smoking marijuana in the master bedroom and continuing to sell pot out of the house as the police moved in. Friend said she received 35 calls requesting the drug in the short time that police were there.

[…]

She appealed to the police that she was just selling the marijuana to pay for diapers and food for her 1-year-old, but police said they had been gathering evidence for weeks, making undercover purchases from the home, arresting buyers leaving the home and finding $860 and a pair of scales in the house.

I’m not going to get into a debate about whether or not marijuana is as dangerous as other drugs. That’s not even the issue here. This woman was ploying illegal trade out of her home and in the presence of children. Her activities endangered children. She is scum, the end.

It is not. According to Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough, American Jill Wettstein won a “trans-Atlantic pancake race”, beating out the British winner, Andrea Rawlings.

Rawlings was the fastest in a field of 26 apron-clad contestants between ages 20 and 73, who ran from the Olney market place to the local church while carrying a pancake in a frying pan.

The women are required to flip their pancakes before the start of the race and at the end to prove they haven’t dropped the pancakes.

[…]

Legend has it that the Olney race started in 1445 when a harassed housewife, rushing to be on time for church, arrived at the service still clutching her frying pan with a pancake in it.

A beautiful, honorable sport.

From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough:

Jurors and others in Judge Donald Thompson’s courtroom kept hearing a strange whooshing noise, like a bicycle pump or maybe a blood pressure cuff. During one trial, Thompson seemed so distracted that some jurors thought he was playing a hand-held video game or tying fly-fishing lures behind the bench.

The explanation, investigators say, is even stranger than some imagined: The judge had a habit of masturbating with a penis pump under his robe during trials.

Ahahahahahahaha!

This story sounds really familiar to me. WKYT doesn’t date their articles (why?!) but Google says this item was updated 13 hours ago, so maybe it’s new. Who knows.

I haven’t been getting enough sleep this week, and today I started to feel sick–a little cough, sore throat, sinus pressure, haziness. So I took a nap.

As I slept, I dreamed.

In the first dream, I got Chris Dotson to help me build an awesome computer on the cheap for Ben. Chris is the son of an old friend of my dad’s. He’s several years older than me, and I always thought he was cool for that reason. Plus, he knows his stuff when it comes to computers–he used to call companies like IBM when he was troubleshooting a problem, and they knew him by name. I don’t know if he still does that, or if they still know him, but I always thought that was awesome.

I don’t know why I didn’t just get Sean to help me make a computer for Ben, but that thought apparently never occurred to me in the dream.

The computer we built was neat, and weird. It had five flat panel monitors, and they were arrayed in a half-circle–two of them lined up next to each other, then one right between them at a 90° angle, and the other two coming out at the 45° angles. The monitors were connected to each other by plastic spokes, and the monitors coming out towards the user were double-sided, so their picture could be seen from the left or the right.

There were these small round things with blue and green lights–not LEDs, but almost opaque plastic–on top of each monitor, and I remember thinking they looked like USB hubs. There was also a bag with five webcam and microphone sets on it. I remember trying to explain to AJ why exactly this computer was cool, and I said, “Now we can call anyone we want to anywhere from Ben’s computer for free!” (This part of my dream obviously came from A9.com, which I had been messing with right before I took my nap. Check out their new Yellow Pages, and you’ll see what I mean.)

After that, I was hanging out for lunch at a university. It might have been UK; I’m not sure. There was something like a jungle gym there, and people in their twenties and thirties were casually lounging around on it. Chris Dotson came there to hang out. There was a guy who he obviously knew who was in a bad mood, so Chris took it upon himself to cheer the guy up enough to smile–mostly by teasing the hell out of him. I don’t know if Chris acts like that in real life or not.

After he’d finished helping his friend’s mood, Chris revealed that he was actually in need of some cheering up himself. “Meal time has been replaced by pagan time,” he said bitterly, and went into a rant about his father’s new wife, and how she uses every opportunity to preach her pagan/occult beliefs. (I don’t know that his father actually has a new wife. I think this was just a dream thing.) From his impassioned speech, I got the impression that Chris’ Christian beliefs were affronted daily, but that he could do nothing about it out of respect for his father. (I don’t even know if Chris is Christian in real life.) I recognized how tormenting this must be, and I gave him a big hug.

At this point, something happened to where I was on a quest. (I had been reading The Illearth War immediately before I napped–almost to the end.) There is more to this, but I can’t remember the details. Ghosts of what I dreamt keep playing at the edges of my mind, but I can’t seem to grasp them.

Somehow I ended up at a gate at an airport. It was a secluded area, accessible by a bank of escalators that led back down to the main airport. Chris was there, as well as various other people. As we waited for whatever we were waiting for, suddenly terrorists started coming up the escalators.

They weren’t turban-wearing, robed, bearded Middle Easterners. They were, for lack of a better term, “white people”. Some of them might have had some “foreign” features, but nothing that really made them stand out.

I don’t really remember what they started doing. I think they were threatening us with something. But we fought back. I remember vividly kicking one of them back down the escalator.

After that encounter, I was loath to move out of a fighting stance. Duncan Fraser showed up, and at first some of the others at the gate were suspicious of him. They engaged in an extraordinarily brief fight that left Duncan in a low stance, with someone’s ridgehands (hands held flat in the “karate chop” position) dangerously trapping his groin.

“Okay, can I get up now?” he said humorously, looking up at everyone. I think the guy with the ridgehands was Eric Thigpen, another old kung fu classmate. They let Duncan get up and he joined us in the watch for terrorists.

Shortly thereafter I saw a line of men wearing airport uniforms, with large gold medallions that said “United” on them. I knew immediately that they were terrorists, even though they too were “white”. Watching them ride stiffly up the escalator, I shifted into an inapparent stance, trying not to tip them off, but I was already moving to intercept them.

One of them said, “James,” and raised his white umbrella.

I instinctively knew that those umbrellas contained some kind of lethal chemical gas or powder. I took a breath and held it as I moved forward to try to attack.

I must have really held my breath, though, because this woke me up.

As I awoke I remember thinking that it had been too long since I was in kung fu, that I was rusty, and that though I had been able to kick that one terrorist down the stairs, that was more luck than anything else. I remember thinking that I needed to train.