January 2011
1 post
Happy 10th birthday, Wikipedia
Wikipedia is best understood not as a product with an organisation behind it, but as an activity that happens to leave an encyclopedia in its wake. — Clay Shirkey, Wikipedia – an unplanned miracle, guardian.co.uk
October 2010
1 post
Conservatives and Liberals
Both conservatives and liberals love telling other people (or even forcing other people) how to live their lives, they just hate other people telling them how to live their lives. The difference between them is that conservatives care about your soul more than they care about your body, and liberals care about your body more than they care about your soul.
August 2010
1 post
Ghost hunting tragedy
It is a case of tragic irony. Christopher Kaiser, 29, was looking for signs of a ghost train when a real train struck and killed him near Statesville, NC.
…
When tragedy happens, usually the cause is human error.
…usually? Getting hit by a train while hunting for a ghost is usually human error?
[link]
July 2010
1 post
Are you the gatekeeper?
In the aftermath of the Shirley Sherrod incident, CNN’s Kyra Phillips asks if something needs to be done “legally” about “anonymous bloggers.”
Seems like they are basically saying, “How dare these bloggers post inaccurate material which is then picked up and regurgitated without fact-checking by mainstream media! It’s all the bloggers fault that we...
June 2010
3 posts
So, what did God say the weather would be like?
Does God predict the weather? Are His predictions better or worse than the weather man’s?
Ryland's Law
After looking at Urban Dictionary again and seeing the word “smash” redefined, I had to publish Ryland’s Law again.
Ryland’s Law: Soon, every word in the English language will be a euphemism for either sex or poop. Once this happens, we won’t be able to carry on conversations because nobody will be able to stop giggling.
Rule #1 of comedy filmmaking
Rule #1 of comedy filmmaking is (or should be): Never make a parody of a comedy.
April 2010
2 posts
Hats
I don’t know what this says about me, but I found Wikipedia’s list of hats fascinating. I think I spent a solid hour looking at hats, mainly looking up particular hats and remembering where I’d seen a hat like that. Most of the time, I had seen a particular hat before, usually in a movie or TV show, but didn’t know it had a name, or what religious or ethnic significance it...
Christ, what an asshole
It was recently theorized that all New Yorker cartoons could be captioned with “Christ, what an asshole” without compromising their comedic value.
I discovered this is true of virtually all comics, old and new.
Christ, It Works for Everything
March 2010
1 post
"V" is dead to me
The first few episodes weren’t great, but they were watchable. I was willing to give it a chance. But after tonight, “V” is dead to me. Tonight’s episode had the worst CSI “Enhance!” fuckity magic ever done. It was insulting. Fuck that show.
January 2010
2 posts
Really, History Channel? Really?
Come on, History Channel, what the fuck? Larry the fucking Cable Guy?
Fear
I was just reading this story on BoingBoing about a guy who got the cops on his neck for a high school prank back in 1983, which was inspired in turn by this story from a few days ago about a kid who made an electronic device for a school science project, and the vice principal flipped out and called the cops on him.
That story reminded me of a related episode, also back in 1983 or 1984, when I...
December 2009
8 posts
Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry presenting shows about interesting things: interesting. Stephen Fry doing interesting charitable work in Africa: interesting. Stephen Fry dropping the hammer on Catholics in a debate: very interesting. Stephen Fry going on and on about darts on Twitter: not interesting. Not at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Stephen Fry. I love his television and movie work and his activism. I...
2010
I was just reading this article about how the decade 2000-2009 slipped by without a definitive name. Like, the decade of 1970-1979 was the 70s, the 80s were called the 80s, the 90s the 90s, but the decade after that was… the two thousands? The naughts? The twenty hundreds? Nobody knows. Or cares, apparently. It’s kind of a stupid thing, to have a brand name for a decade.
The way I...
Stop Avatar!
Apparently there are some transgender folks who believe that James Cameron’s new movie Avatar should be stopped, because…
Hang on, let me get set. Ahem. OK.
…because they believe that the heterosexual relationships portrayed in the movie are wrong, because human beings are evolving away from heterosexual relationships and toward transgendered ones, so therefore movies set in...
Hot & Spicy
Holy crap, someone finally made Cheez-Its non-boring.
Cheez-Its + tabasco = HOLY FUCK SO GOOD
In fact, I’m going to have to say that they are… DIABOLICALLY good.
Health care "reform"
Huh… the public option and the Medicare buy-in were removed from the health care reform bill… oh well, at least the purchase mandate and the insurance industry antitrust exemption were saved. FUCK YEAH, POWER TO THE PEOPLE, WOOOOOOO
Dreamtime
I had a strange dream last night. I dreamed that Noam Chomsky disavowed one of his own earlier essays for being shockingly naive about Jews in Israel, and he called on Jews to issue a fatwa against him for it.
I did dream this, right? It hasn’t actually happened.
Beverages
I just tried Snapple Peach Green Tea. I was expecting it to taste like peach, but instead it tastes like lawn. It tastes like a freshly-mowed lawn smells. Yuck.
Web Services Covers Therapy →
November 2009
4 posts
New Republican Contract on America. It's New....
The New Republican Contract on America has been released. It’s remarkably similar to the previous Contract from 1994, except this one has the words “but this time, it’ll be different, we promise” at the end.
Twilight
OK, I’ve never read any of the Twilight books, but I hear that the main vampire dude is over 100 years old. Is that right? And he’s banging high school chicks. So he’s a pedophile on top of being a vampire. Why is this supposed to be good for little girls to read again?
“Is there really that much babysitting money being passed around?” — Bill Hicks
Edit: apparently...
Mutual exclusivity
I just wanted to catalog the things that I’ve seen wingnuts accuse Barack Obama of being:
socialist
communist
fascist
anarchist
muslim
atheist
nazi
black supremacist
All I can say is that it must be really tough being a socialist and a fascist, all at once. Tough to be any kind of political leader while simultaneously being an anarchist. And toughest of all? Being simultaneously...
New blog
I don’t actually blog much anymore, so rather than go through the hassle of messing with software, data import, etc., I’m just going to use Tumblr. I just want to jot down thoughts and ideas once in a while, so this will be good enough.