Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

Fun with polls

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About the same number of people who think it’s an advantage to be a woman in America would eat a rat on live TV. Clearly, we’ve got some work to do on the whole gender-equality thing.

— Bob Harris, in this TMW post about recent poll results that, among other things, show that a third of Americans believe that WMDs were found in Iraq, and that 22% actually believe that Iraq used WMDs during the war.

Poems for Laila

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I wanted to do two things with this post — test a new feature for the site, and promote one of my favorite bands, Poems for Laila.

I discovered PfL when I was in Germany in the summer of 1991. I saw a display stand advertising the release of their second album, and gave it a listen. What I heard was enough to peak my interest, so I bought their first two albums — ‘Another Poem for the 20th Century’ and ‘La Fillete Triste’ — on the spot.

Unfortunately, I bought them on cassette tape, and over the next few years, I listened to them enough to wear them out. Thanks to the magic of the ‘net, though, a few months ago I was lucky enough to track down not just the two albums I used to own, but three more. Eventually I’ll order as many as their albums as I can, but as they’re not available here in the states, for now I’ll just have to live with the .mp3s I downloaded (one of the very few times I’ve actively searched music out on the file trading networks).

In the meantime, though, you can browse through my PfL catalog, and listen to just what has captured my interest for so long. It’s a little difficult to narrow down just a few ‘recommended tracks’, but here’s a few good ones from the two albums I know the best:

  • From ‘Another Poem for the 20th Century’:
    • Intro to the Morning After
    • The Morning After
    • Lewd
  • From ‘La Fillete Triste’:
    • Round Round Round (The Gentleman’s Fear)
    • Willy Poor Boy
    • I Hold A Prince

Enjoy!

Viagra gum?

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Here’s a bizarre little story that one of my co-workers just told me about: Wrigley patents anti-impotence gum:

Wm. Wrigley Jr., maker of Juicy Fruit, Big Red and Doublemint gums, is expanding its definition of “doubling your pleasure.” The Chicago gum company has been granted a U.S. government patent to develop a gum that contains a dose of the generic chemical in Viagra.

\Won’t this gum be hard to chew once your tongue swells up and stiffens inside your mouth? I’d guess it’ll sell quite well at lesbian bars, though….\</obligatory stupid jokes>

(via Tim)

Update: Comments have been closed for this entry, as I got tired of deleting constant spam comment links. This post is not an open invitation for Viagra or Phenteremine spam. Go the fuck away.

Heroes

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Except in the life of a hero, the whole world is meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what’s possible. That’s the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.

— John Gardner, Grendel

The greatest American is…

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In preparation for a show airing next week entitled ‘What the World Thinks of America,’ the BBC took nominations for the ten greatest Americans of all time. Nominations have closed, and now it’s time to vote!

So, out of a completely open playing field, what ten people were nominated as the ten greatest Americans ever?

Bill Clinton, Bob Dylan, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Homer Simpson, Mr. T, and George Washington.

Homer Simpson? Mr. T?

And, while this is kind of amusing, it’s also kind of disturbing — the current standings, after 28,548 votes:

  • Bill Clinton (3.53%)
  • Franklin D Roosevelt (3.78%)
  • Benjamin Franklin (4.07%)
  • George Washington (4.62%)
  • Bob Dylan (5.12%)
  • Thomas Jefferson (5.72%)
  • Mr. T (8.17%)
  • Martin Luther King Jr. (9.08%)
  • Abraham Lincoln (9.60%)
  • Homer Simpson (46.33%)

For the record, I voted for Martin Luther King, Jr.

(via Prairie)

Update: The website for the show (linked above) looks very interesting too. It includes a short 10-question quiz about America — that I got a whopping 60% on. Ouch. Maybe I need to watch the show, too…

Habits

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So D’s asking about odd or wierd habits today. I know I’ve got more than my fair share…

  • I’ve got something of an unusual vocabulary — choice phrases that I really do say, both online and in the real world, include “rock on,” “ooers,” “woohoo,” and others that I’m blanking on at the moment because I’m actively trying to come up with them.
  • I’m a fidgeter. Always have been, always will be. Must have something to do with my hands, whether it’s playing with something, tapping my fingers to music, talking with my hands while describing something, or anything else.
  • I will, on occasion, completely randomly start hopping or skipping, or generally bouncing around. This usually happens when other people aren’t around to witness it, but I’ve been caught on more than one occasion.
  • Four years after cutting my long hair off, I still tend to try to run my hand through my hair when thinking or stressed.
  • Certain events must be described as “fuckin’ awesome.”
  • I quote movies constantly — but rarely entirely accurately. Close enough to make my point, but I’m often corrected by my friends after spouting off.
  • It’s just been pointed out to me that I tend to start humming whatever random song is floating through my head at any given point.
  • After my years of DJ’ing, I’m incredibly catty when I’m at a club and the DJ isn’t up to my personal standards. And they rarely are.
  • I’m as likely to watch a Disney film as I am a horror flick or bizarre surrealistic art film.
  • If there’s a way to make a lowbrow, crude, gutter-level joke about something, I’ll probably go there.
  • I’m not a big fan of cheese, and my preferred form is the Kraft Singles (fondly referred to as “plastic cheese” by my mom).

I think that’s enough for now. I’m sure there’s more…

But what about the kittens?

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Royce sent me a link to this page about kittens today, saying that it reminded him of us.

What follows is a dramatization. It is based on a very, very true story of two modern maniacs discussing the implications of God killing kittens, and deciding, logically, how to protect themselves in the event of a kitten apocalypse. Logic, of course, can be skewed terribly when your premise is a theory based on the Lord being a female kitten…

Y’know, I think he’s right!

Speakeasy needs a laxative!

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I noticed an ad on Speakeasy’s website today advertising a limited time offer for a good price on a faster connection than the one I currently have. Always interested in a good deal, I gave them a call to see if I could upgrade my ‘net connection.

As it turns out, I can — so sometime next week, my pipe to the ‘net will be upgraded to a 1.5/768 connection — the same speed into my apartment, but approximately six times as fast leaving the apartment. This should mean slightly better response time for this website, and it might allow me to play with things like streaming audio, something I’ve wanted to explore but haven’t had the bandwidth for.

The best part about all this, though, was the service representative I spoke with. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch his name, but he was great. At one point, since I don’t have any great concept of how easy or difficult it might be on Speakeasy’s end to upgrade my service, I wondered if it might be as simple as “throwing a switch deep within the bowels of Speakeasy.” Apparently he’d not heard a customer choose that particular phrase in the midst of a service call, because things got a little sidetracked for a bit after that.

End result? Here’s my service request, as seen from my account status page on Speakeasy’s site:

we are awaiting the new upgrade switch to be thrown deep within the bowels of speakeasy. once this bowel movement is finished please credit the customer a month of service. they have agreed to recontract if we do this favor for them. it’s like a new order, only it’s an old order with a funny hat on.

Yup — my Internet upgrade is just awaiting a bowel movement. Anyone have any Ex-Lax?

Fundamentalism

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Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.

— anrwlias (found on the ‘net)