Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Amsterdam Mac users certainly come up with entertaining ways to amuse themselves — creating Mac porn, having an Ellen Feiss Lookalike Contest, and tossing PC’s across a parking lot.
The picture shown here was by far my favorite of the PC-tossing pictures. While it’s most likely just an ‘elephant picture’, it looks either incredibly fey, or good ballet form.
Or both. In any case it made me laugh.
(Thanks to this Wired article about the lookalike contest.)
This is one of those ‘net memes that has been going on for quite a while now. Figured I’d go ahead and jump on the bandwagon.
I have such a hard time with ‘favorite’ lists — narrowing any category down to a single entry is damn near impossible. The first ones that pop into my head, though, are The Blair Witch Project, Alien, and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
What is your favorite Halloween treat?
Candy corn, definitely. Love that stuff.
Do you dress up for Halloween? If so, describe your best Halloween costume.
I haven’t in years, but I think the best I ever had was ‘The Blue Beetle’, when I was a kid. We got a blue snowsuit, and mom sewed an extra pair of arms onto it, connected to my arms with string, so that they moved with mine. I couldn’t tell you anymore where we came up with the idea for the costume, or even whether or not it had antennae, or anything else — but the costume, and especially the arms, has stuck in my brain for years afterwards, so I must have been pretty impressed by it back then.
Do you enjoy going to haunted houses or other spooky events?
Something else I haven’t done in years. I had fun going to them with friends a few times, but I think they lost their luster after a while. How many times can you walk down a dark corridor, waiting for someone to jump out and yell “BOO!” before it starts to get boring?
Will you dress up for Halloween this year?
It’s not looking like it. Again. Someday I’ll get back into it…
(Thanks to the Friday Five)
This would be funnier if it weren’t so damn accurate:
ANCHOR: Now, this breaking news. Something has reportedly happened. Details are sketchy, and we really don’t have any idea of what it might be, but let’s show these impressive aerial shots from our helicopter. Now let’s go to our correspondent in the field to tell us that he doesn’t know anything. Bob?
CORRESPONDENT: Paula? I’m sorry, I couldn’t really hear you, but let me say that out here we really have no idea of what’s going on. But my sources tell me that something definitely has happened. All I can say is that we’ll find out as soon as possible. In the meantime, everybody should stay tuned to CNN.
ANCHOR: Thank you. As you can see, CNN sources now are confirming to CNN that something has, indeed, happened.
Y’know, I think that this is one of the (many) reasons that I have yet to regret giving up on television years ago. Most of the time I use the dearth of worthwhile shows as my reasoning, but even the news rarely seems to have actual content anymore. The last time I actually paid for cable access was in late 1999, to watch two things: first, the Bush/Gore presidential debates, and second, to watch the Y2K turnover.
Okay, so I’ll admit that no news was good news in the case of Y2K, but when even the circus of the 2000 presidential race can’t coax intelligent commentary out of the talking heads that pass as news anchors…why bother?
I’ve got newspapers available, which I can skim through to sieve the content from the drivel. And I’ve got the ‘net — which, while certainly not drivel-free (far from it, in fact), does allow me to both weed through a much larger set of sources to find information, and gives a far broader spectrum of commentators a voice. Often, I’ve been finding that those who expound on a topic because they want to, and because they have strong feelings for or against it, rather than those who talk because they’re paid to talk, come up with much more interesting things to say.
Then there’s people like me. Who just talk ’cause talking’s fun. And hope that we’re occasionally lucky enough to create something worth reading (grin).
Just a quick reminder — NaNoWriMo kicks off in just over a week. For the month of November, posts to The Long Letter may be pretty sparse, as I’ll be spending the majority of my free time from work either fighting my way through my NaNoWriMo attempt, or huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth and quietly gibbering to myself when I actually realize what I’ve gotten myself into.
Also, a quick word of warning from the NaNoWriMo website:
You are an arteest, and no longer have time for things like cooking and grocery shopping and laundry. Start demanding favors and treats from friends and loved ones now. That way they’ll be fully acclimated to the new you once November rolls around.
This just might be the single stupidest thing I’ve seen in a very long time. A group of people have put up a website protesting the title of the next Lord of the Rings movie, “The Two Towers”, because, “The name of this movie will undoubtedly cause a return of the emotions felt on Sept 11th which left so many people in the nation feeling stunned and in a state of shock.”
From their FAQ:
The movie is intentionally being named The Two Towers in order to capitalize on the tragedy of September 11. Clearly, you cannot deny the fact that this falls under hate speech. We believe that if they will not willingly change the name, the government should step in to stop the movie’s production or to force a name change.
Just amazing.
Just tossing these in really quickly — I may come back and revisit them later on tonight.
Sitting around at work, doing something mindless, so my mind is wandering.
Theory 1: Bush must be pissed — the sniper is stealing all his press.
Theory 2: What if that’s the point?
Theory 2a: The sniper is a government operative (and probably future fall guy, once he’s caught), unleashed to distract the American public from the buildup to invading Iraq, making it easier for Bush to work out all the schemes and deals he needs to in order to set the invasion in motion.
Antipixel: The Radius of Human Experience:
Here’s a little game I sometimes play when I’m bored. Works best in the denser urban environments, but you can play it anywhere. It helps to believe that pretty much anything a human can do is being done by someone somewhere at any given moment (although you can switch this thought off when you’re done).
Imagining yourself at the centre of a circle, how far do you have to expand the radius of that circle until you’ve encompassed all of human experience?
Great post. I tried to find a good way to work it into my site for a few minutes, then just decided a quote and a link would work just fine. I probably do that too much, but here, it seemed the best approach.
Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby have just created an RSS Validator. I’ve run my feeds through, and can now ensure that I offer valid RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 feeds for use with newsreaders/aggregators.
I even managed to get my own little addition to the feeds going without breaking them — yay!
Admittedly, I can’t honestly say I really know or understand the difference between RSS 1.0 and 2.0. But hey. They’re both there.
