Topical post!

If you get this before the US presidential debate on 9/30 I've found a way to extract a bit of amusement from it while your stomach churns at watching our current president's performance. Debate bingo. Share and enjoy. If you can.

And yes, I plan to make this a drinking game. I don't think I could tolerate W for 90 minutes otherwise.

Hey Florida: God called. He has a message for you: Wake the Fuck Up!!

I have GOT to get/make one of these. Imagine all the uses around your users. Ok, you may not have users (come to think of it I don't either) but we've all done tech support for friends, family, neighbors, random strangers who accost you on the street and can read the "geek" written on your forehead.

Ahhh.... the combination of sweet satisfaction and the tangy smell of burning flesh.

Wow. And you thought live kids were annoying.

The future is here. And it appears to have a bad slavic accent and wear clothes that would embarrass Buck Rogers.

Shocking

Two things from Tex-ass that don't suck - in the same week. This one comes from Dubya's adoptive home town, to boot. What's going on?

A reader's "top tip" printed in Viz magazine once described "moving as far away as possible" from this town as the best way to avoid depression; now, it seems, a reader's poll in another magazine, The Idler, has voted the same place to be "the most crap town in the UK". What town are we talking about? Why, Luton, of course. But wait! Maybe this could be the start of a turnaround for Luton, as a spokesberk for last year's "winning" town (that would be much-unloved and deeply unlovely Hull) reported:

"Hull didn't suffer at all by receiving the number one 

accolade last year.



If anything it was good news for the city as it made 

people look at the city, visit the city and realise 

that Hull is in fact a thriving, vibrant place 

undergoing a stunning renaissance."

Of course, it may be argued that the reason Hull didn't suffer at all last year is that things really couldn't get any worse than they already were. As for Luton, well, this may the be first, and last, time you'll see its name in the same sentence as the words "thriving", "vibrant" and "stunning renaissance".

The Onion reviews Matchbox Twenty's next album.

Ever stumble across a site that looks real, but you become convinced is a parody, only to find it's real after all? No? Well, if you're so smart, you tell me.

Eventually, I guess, by sheer chance it had to happen. Something good come out of Tex-ass, I mean. No other explanation.

Gropey Goofy gets grumpy!

How much more ridiculous could a pickup truck get? None. None more ridiculous.

Parodies are good. Comedy is good. Heavy metal can be good. This combination... uhm, maybe not so good.

Bonus points for whoever can figure out what was the motivation (chemical or otherwise) for the authors.

While looking for directions to the nearest IBM office in Singapore, I came across this page and the disturbing image depicted thereon. View at your discretion. (Don't worry, it's SFW - after all, it's an official IBM web page).

Building a web site for the house you're trying to sell is a good idea. Including pictures is a very good idea. Forgetting to check the view out the windows is not a good idea.

In case you don't see it check the comments.

Nice house.

Browsing Amazon the other day, saw this nice little self-referential occurrence that seems to indicate that the disaster foretold has already befallen us:

"Disneyland with the death penalty" is how sci-fi has-been William Gibson described Singapore in Wired magazine back when Wired was interesting.

Sure enough, when you come in to land at Changi, you can't help but notice the friendly notice on the back of the disembarkation card: "WARNING - DEATH FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS UNDER SINGAPORE LAW". Just in case you didn't notice, the flight crew helpfully remind you of this fact too, as you're on final approach, and strapped into your seat. "Great", I think to myself, "now I can't even get up to flush these three keys of China Cat I'm carrying". I keed, I keed.

The Singaporeans are far from the humorless drones Gibson makes them out to be though - I saw an ad last night that had been illegally fly-posted on the side of a box housing traffic-light electronics that had originally read "Condominium for rent", which some soul had creatively edited with a pocket knife:



And this (presumed) drug abuse education ad was just plain ... strange ...



What's the message here? Don't wish peace on your friends?

Still, the funniest thing I have seen so far is the unintentional humor in a sign in a bathroom here in the office building I'm working in. The sign itself is not very funny on its own; the goodness is that the sign promoting accurate pecker pointing has, in the bottom right corner, the logo of the company that provides the facilities management for the building:



As reprobate Jeff said - "There's no such thing!"

Whenever I visit websites featuring images of prurient interest that are contributed by members of the public (eg 1, 2), I consider that it is inevitable that sooner or later I will feel the shock of recognition at finding images of someone I know.

Well, today it almost happened, but it was not quite what I would have anticipated. What I recognized was not a "who" but a "where" - I have been four-wheeling up the very waterfall depicted in this pastoral image of female nudity; it depicts (aside from the strangely unattractive unknown naked chick) a waterfall on the inappropriately named Dry River in the George Washington National Forest, west of Harrisonburg, VA, near Harrisonburg Reservoir.

I know this waterfall very well - the rock step is just the right height that the shackles on the underside of my truck's front bumper make a bone-jarring clang when they hit it. I have surmounted this particular obstacle maybe three or four times; the last time I did it I popped the right front tire off the rim, lost all the air pressure in it and had to try and change the wheel in the middle of the stream, after I'd winched the truck up the waterfall. I did not succeed in changing the wheel as the lug nuts were a bit too tight to be loosened by hand so I consider myself very lucky indeed that I was able to reseat and reinflate the tire sufficiently with the truck's onboard compressor. Huzzah!

Man robs bank with rusty pitchfork. Story from a stupid criminals file? Nope. True success story from, you guessed it: South Carolina.

Yup, he got away.

By wearing sunglasses and a mask.

And getting picked up at a fast food restaurant so that the dogs lost his scent.

Only in the south, home of George W. Bush's core constituency.

I have to go cry now.

Remember:

Tera Patrick - porn star.
Tera Patricks - Mac journalist.

All clear now? Good. Next week: Jenna Jameson's guide to Windows shareware, Janine Lindemuller's Unix scripting hints, and Peter North's reviews of the latest 802.11g gear.

So let's say you named your company after a Chilean desert. Let's further say your marketing people decide to continue the Spanish-language theme by giving your products Spanish names. So far, so good. Wouldn't you expect, maybe, that they would choose, ahh, appropriate names for your products? And so what to make, then, of a Windows-based product named "Bitch"? Oop - just answered my own question I guess ...

Ever wondered how the world's press would react if we should happen to receive a radio signal from an alien civilisation? I'd always imagined it would be something like one of the Onion's "The Onion In History" covers like the one that recorded Neil Armstrong's first steps onto the Moon ("HOLY FUCKING SHIT! MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON!") or the outbreak of WWII ("WA- (headline continued on page 2)")

But maybe not. Maybe it starts like this.

I know I could use one of these shirts and I suspect that others here would find them useful too.

Or am I wrong about the reprobates demographic?

Even low-life scumbags need love too.

Next time someone calls you a sheep maybe you should lie down, roll over and take it as a compliment.