For those of you who have been watching ABC’s Lost, I thought you might enjoy this Penny Arcade:

Alternatively found here.

Fyn just forwarded me a link, which I have to share: LINT HARVESTING (aka How to enjoy lint safely at home). He found it on another blog run by an acquaintance of his in Ontario.

I would describe myself as a Columbian drug lord who manages to lead a rather electrifying lifestyle.
Seeing as how I have an extensive network I have to rule with an iron fist and crush all those that oppose me.
My organizational skills are excellent as is my ability to optimize tasks (it’s a multistep business).

As I lead such an exciting life I tend to have many adventures. Like one time, my best friend Kyle and I were on the run in a 1993 Dodge Caravan and we managed to get serious air (we also had two Kayaks on the roof).

This being the 21st century my drug operation has expanded into the online and computer industry. I hack from time to time as well as write computer programs. You know how these things are.

Any how, I must get back to my opulent life with my mansions, women, money, and danger.

— Tushar’s description on Orkut

Darsteller: Oliver Kalkofe, Bastian Pastewka, Tanja Wenzel, Anke Engelke, Olli Dittrich, Thomas Heinze, Thomas Fritsch, Christoph M. Herbst
Regie: Tobi Baumann
Ãœbersicht: Der Mönch mit der Peitsche, der Frosch mit der Maske, der Bucklige von SoHo, die Bande des Schreckens und der Schwarze Abt haben derzeit nicht viel zu Lachen: Mysteriöse Morde rund um das traditionsbewusste Blackwhite Castle erschüttern Londons Unterwelt. Ein Schurkenmörder geht um — genannt “Der Wixxer”!
Länge: 86 min.
Genre: Komödie

Rezension(en):
Augenblick!: Hier spricht Dem Wixxer sein Kritiker! Und der Kritiker ist very amused!
Michael “Bully” Herbig muss sich für seinen neuen Film warm anziehen, denn mit Der Wixxer wird endlich der Beweis erbracht, dass nicht nur er in der Lage ist, eine gute deutsche Persiflage-Komödie zu drehen. Der Wixxer ist eine richtig gelungene Krimi-Komödie, die in erster Linie die alten Edgar Wallace-Filme hemmungslos auf den Arm nimmt. In den 60er-Jahren lehrten diese Filme den Deutschen das Fürchten. Heute wirken sie aber mehr amüsant als unheimlich. … [mehr]
FilmSzene.de: Ein jedermann kennt sie, sie werden in regelmäßigen Abständen im Fernsehen wiederholt und selbst für Quentin Tarantino sind sie Kult: die deutschen Edgar-Wallace-Filme der 60er und 70er Jahre. Ganze 32 an der Zahl, war in ihnen so ziemlich alles vertreten, was damals schauspielerisch in Deutschland Rang und Namen hatte. Namen wie Blacky Fuchsberger, Heinz Drache, Klaus Kinski und natürlich Eddy Arent werden ewig mit diesen Filmen verbunden sein. Nach dem Derrick-Desaster vor kurzem ist dies also nun die zweite Parodie, die versucht, deutsches Kult-Potenzial zu nutzen. Die Story ist hierbei mal wieder nebensächlich und deshalb schnell erzählt. [mehr]

Hey Y’all. You guys remember the end of the world animation? It seems the guy who made it was paid some money by Nike to create some ads for a new product.

I love my iPod, but I thought I should metion some frustrations I had after recieving it (In December of 2003).

About 5 months later, apple decided to do a major revision to the iPod by including the “click wheel”. This urked me a bit, because I only just bought it and a mjor revision that fixed some battery issues and “random” playlists were solved. No matter…

However, if I was one of the poor souls who bought one of those, then I would not be happy. Why? Apple just released a NEW version of iPod, called the iPod Photo. It includes a 2″ COLOUR display! Also, for those curious there is also a limited edition U2 Black version, but that is not color display either. I would be very upset if I had bought one recently and then saw this revision.

Apple has been annoying me lately as you might have guessed… on another note, my Nvidia 6800 DDL card stil isn’t here and has been delayed again.

In the ring of wonderous people I know, I found in my in box a believable if utterly false origin for the word shit. It went as follows:

Certain types of manure used to be transported (as everything was back then) by ship … well in dry form it weighs a lot less, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, and one of the by products is methane gas . . . and as the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen, methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern . . . BOOOOM! Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was discovered what was happening. After that the bundles of manure where always stamped with the term S.H.I.T on them which meant to the sailors to “Ship High In Transit”. In other words high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.

As I usually do with shit like this (no pun intented ), I looked it up on the Urban Legends Refence Pages (ULRP) and lo and behold, it was there! With the same wording even! Apparently this e-mail has been circulating for the last two years and hasn’t gone away yet. According to ULRP, it began life in 1999 on USENET in the list rec.humor. The part I really like is tracing shit back to the old english word Scite … which they traced into proto-German and then back into Indo-European:

Scite can trace its roots back to the proto-Germanic root skit-, which brought us the German scheisse … Skit- comes from the Indo-European root skheid- for “split, divide, separate,” thus shit is distantly related to schism and schist. … If you’re wondering what a verb root for the act of separating one thing from another would have to do with excrement, it was in the sense of the body’s eliminating its waste — “separating” from it, so to speak.

Well I found it interesting anyway. I love doing this with “virus” warnings too. Why do people feel the need to propogate this crap? Besides the fact it lead me to an interesting relationship between schism and shit I’d never know about …

Slashdot recently conducted an interview with Neal Stephenson (author of Snowcrash and many other books). It’s lengthy, but a highly entertaining read, covering a wide variety of topics — serious and otherwise. Read it.

ROTFLMFAO! Y’all have to got to watch this! Electronic Voting [mirror]

Kein Mitleid für die Mehrheit, No Pity For The Majority. The band has a much better acronym in German than in English (KMFDM vs NPFTM), IMO. In any case, as you may recall, the legendary German industrial band was here, in Regina, in concert on October 12th on their way across Canada on their 20th Anniversary Tour. I’m still floored by it over a week and a half later and am shocked that none of the others there posted about it already. They put on an incredibly show, even if one reporter at the Leader-Post described it as “Gawd-awful Noise”. LOL!

From the notable figures that we encountered in line to get into tHe sTatE, I was worried I’d feel a little out of place in club since I wasn’t dressed entirely in black (or in a KMFDM shirt), tattooed, mohawked, blitzed, and/or piereced in twenty places. Luckily, the majority of the crowd was relatively normal, and there were a lot of ‘em for the Club’s size. From what I could tell, it was mostly a college crowd (to be expected) of around 200. Regina, as was the case for the entire western half of the country, the concert was sold out.

The concert itself was amazing. They played many songs I’d never heard (mostly because I haven’t listened to their newest CD, which appears to be an attacked aimed at the USA … which is cool with me), and some of the old staples like Godlike and Sex on the Flag. At this late a date I can’t recall all what was played, but I’m sure others will add more songs to the list (I hope).

While I enjoyed the concert, I swear I took like ten years off my life from all the smoke in the air. tHe sTatE is horribly designed for getting rid of smoke. Luckily in like two and a half months, that will no longer be a concern (Public Smoking Ban in January for those of you living under a rock … or in Waterloo). tHe sTatE’s other problems, like poor accustics, crappy speakers, and poor layout, are going to be a little harder to overcome. I’m still surprised it took like twenty hours for my hearing to recover after the concert, which made for a very interesting German lab (It would have made for an interesting class as well, but I slept through my alarm … wasn’t loud enough … and missed it). I really need to invest in a good pair of earplugs before I go to another concert in a club the size of tHe sTatE. You know, something that doesn’t completely destroy the properties of the sound, but takes the music down a few decibels. I’m assuming something like what the band members must wear.

Talking about Band Members, Elbryan42 bought Lucia Cifarelli’s Solo CD, From the Land of Volcanoes (IIRC), and actually got it signed by her as well. Not that he recognized her at first … and said as much (not only to us, but to her as well). Real smooth, eh? jk Elbryan42.

Then there was DJ? Acucrack, the opening act. Now the main problem here is that most of the audience that went for KMFDM had very little patience or interest and listing to an electronica group like DJ? Acucrack. As it stands, though, I do enjoy electronica. Ther problem was that the speakers fubared it … and some of it wasn’t really that good. I was looking for the next song button. In any case, they did three sets of songs which were sort of merged together into 15 minute songs. I found the first set just horrible, but the second was quite enjoyable good, IMO (and not Delg’s … then again he doesn’t like the genre of music so his opinion counts for very little). In any case, if you are interested, they have four songs and four videos download on their label’s website. All I can say is DJ? Acucrack was it was better than both the opening acts for Great Big Sea later that week.

Of the three concerts I’ve been too, this is the only which didn’t disappoint in the slightest. Verdict? The best show to which I’ve ever been. Alas, I have no pictures. I didn’t figure they’d let me bring in my camera. *sigh*

I’m not sure if Michael Heilemann created it or not (though I suspect he did), but from binary bonsai, may I present to you: The Republican Election Campaign 2004 [Mirror]. By the look of things, the footage is from the Rebuplican Convention at the end of August/beginning of September.