“Well, you brought some magic into that little life,” said Albert, as the next child was hurried away.
It’s the expression on their little faces I like, said [Death].
“You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?”
Yes. Now that is what I call belief.

Indeed!

(14:13:47) Sarah: hahaha
(14:14:01) Sarah: ohhhh that so sad
(14:14:03) I: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chromatic_dragons
(14:14:06) Sarah: i got to the bottom of the paragraph
(14:14:07) I: oops wrong chat window
(14:14:11) I: that’s embarrassing

(14:14:38) Sarah: thats really embarrassing
(14:14:43) Sarah: i think im publishing that
(14:14:53) I: loling
(14:15:01) I: already sent that exchange to all my friends
(14:17:37) Sarah: and did they all have the same response. or were some like “oh sweet dude. thanks a ton”
(14:18:51) I: (14:14:17) Will: TWITA
(14:18:55) I: (twita = that’s what I’m talking about)
(14:19:01) I: (14:15:10) Will: it still doesn’t have the metallic dragons
(14:15:13) Will: FUCK THESE PEOPLE
(14:19:50) Sarah: hahahahaha

We’ve all been there before, I think.

I’m glad to see that my university is going all 2.0 in order to get me to use its dilapidated portal service. I’m even gladder to say it’s working.

But know we have further insight into his brainchild, ReiserFS. Behold. (Click for large version.)

Full credit for the snapshot goes to my buddy Carl.

On a related note, my goal in life is to express every desire with deadpan sarcasm.

I’ve posted before about missing my pets, but tonight the longing is especially grave. I found a sweet GIF that shows why animals are so great. And also why they should be trained: to hone their skills in annihilation.

This experience for me was particularly moving because it combined the nostalgia of a looping-GIF with the timeless classicism of a little kid getting rocked.

The comments on the Digg page for it are actually funny enough to warrant reposting here.

• Stay down kid. Just stay down.
• Flawless victory.
• Dogs doing things to kids is sort of old, we see this shit on t.v. We need something more eventful and new like Kids and Badgers.
• Well that’s what you get for fucking around in the water kid.
• What the hell is the damn kid doing running around in a swamp in the first place?

That’s about everything that could ever be said about this gleefully looping slice of life. Oh, how I envy the historians of the future.

In case you didn’t laugh hard enough, please watch the same thing in reverse.

All is right with the world.

I warn you, it’s weird.

In a small farming town somewhere in Russia, a family noticed that their cow had gone missing. The men of the family conclude that the cow has been stolen, and proceed to determine the thief. The grandfather says, “Whoever stole this cow must be homosexual. Only homosexuals steal cows.” His son, the father of the farming family, replies, “Then whoever stole the cow must be short, too. All homosexuals are short.” The grandson chimes in with the capstone to their investigation, concluding, “The shepherd that lives at the edge of town is short! Therefore he must be the person who stole our cow.” They all agree to go beat up the poor shepherd.

Upon arriving at the shepherd’s hut, the grandfather declares, “Give us back our damn cow, you faggot.” The shepherd explains he knows absolutely nothing of any cow-stealing incident, and his three accusers decide to take the issue to court.

Once in the courtroom, the shepherd uses as his defense the absolutely absurd chain of logic the men used to accuse him. The judge inquires as to the nature of the reasoning, and the men explain. The judge says, “Well, let’s test the validity of this logic.” With that, he points to a box sitting on a table at the edge of the courtroom, and asks the grandfather, “What is in that box?”

The grandfather thinks for a moment, then replies, “Well, it’s a box, so… it probably has another box inside.” The father says, “A box inside a box would probably hold something round.” The son finishes it off with, “If it’s round and inside a box, it’s probably an orange.”

The judge says, “Just give them back their damn cow, you asshole.”

This joke has become a party classic, and it gets better the drunker Pavel is, because then his English is mangled and newcomers to the joke aren’t sure whether they missed something, or whether the verdict by the judge really is the punchline.

I was inspired to tell this story by reading an article about a Russian doomsday cult that just came out of its cave, evidently having had their doomsday date wrong.

Thirty-five people took refuge in the cave in the Penza region, about 650 kilometres southeast of Moscow, in November, threatening to detonate 400 litres of gas canisters if authorities tried to remove them. The cave dwellers, members of a group calling itself the True Russian Orthodox Church, said they were waiting for the end of world, which they believed would come sometime in May

Oh, yes. What an honor to be a parishioner of the True Hardcore X-treme Russian Orthodox Church, complete with a badly dilapidated cave as demesne and 400 liters of gasoline as a characteristically Soviet tithe.

The story gets better when the cult members explain their decision to leave the cave.

Vice Governor Oleg Melnichenko said more of the cave had collapsed around dawn Tuesday, and cult members told emergency officials that a divine vision overnight had instructed them to leave.

Last Friday seven other cult members emerged as melting spring snows caused part of the shelter to cave in, sparking fears that the entire structure could collapse.

Well I’ll be damned, there’s that comet speaking to you again—you must be a prophet! Just how do you tap into these cosmic messages? What did the comet say this time, anyway? “Get the hell you, you drunken idiots, this shit is falling down!”?

Maybe they’ll get the date right next year.

Today, while poking through my feeds, I found this little gem.

Some people really do have the threshold on their appallingness meter set to the wrong value, don’t they? If we are going to use up the word “appalling” on a minute variation in orthographic conventions, what kind of adjective will be left to describe the taste of fermented soy beans in methylated spirits, or the sound of a cat being electrocuted during a child’s violin lesson?

The context was the “appalling” practice of capitalizing the first letter after a colon. It’s comforting to know that some people still respect the art of sound appallingness meter calibration.

I’ll refrain from stating whose calibration I find sound.

It’s still a really good time for me. But while googling for it, I found another very interesting take on this kind of copy moxy.

Dude, that’s fucking funny.

To be perfectly honest, every now and then I do sit bolt upright in bed, having been awoken by imagined sounds of retching. I don’t know which is worse, having cat puke invade your dreams, or actually having to clean up a pile of it in the morning.

And do check out Basic Instructions if you’re not familiar with the strip.

Doesn’t that look like Castro’s brother won an Oscar? Or that the golden-man-baton of presidency was conferred upon him?

Ridiculous.

Honestly, I spend so much time in front of my computer that it’s really important to me that it be a visually pleasant experience for me. So understandably, I was quite thrilled when I found this masterpiece, which now graces the altar of volume icons that is my desktop.

Epic or what? It seems this is a portrait prepared by Todd Lockwood for a World Of Warcraft card game. Something tells me we’ll never see it implemented.

(As always, click images to see a larger version.)

The Telegraph has an interesting, if utterly predictable, article up about this peculiar gentlemen.

“If the suit is too small, larger male crocs may see me as an aggressor and attack me. But if too big, I may scare off smaller crocs. So I want to look like an average sized croc – about four metres long.”

Barr then crawled on all fours towards the den, while enduring scorchingly high temperatures of up 60°C, the threat of being rumbled by the crocs and also the danger of attack by a family of neighbouring hippos.

On his lonely, exposed route to the river, Barr’s weird appearance attracted the curiosity of a herd of hippos.

“This may be just too dangerous,” he says as a hippo and her calf take an interest in him – but they turn away.

“That could have been a very hairy situation,” he says. “And that was before I’d even seen a croc.”

Oh, look at that! The man is batshit insane. If you ask me, designing a “croc-suit” should be grounds for having your PhD taken away.

To Dr. Barr I send my most steadfast salutation: “I wish you no hippos, and crocodiles of the number and dimensions you specify.”

Here’s an image of what I think is it fucking up. But given that the band is power metal, it might just be an amazingly capable script. I haven’t decided yet.

Kind of seems like a cruel joke. A cruel, adorable joke.

You have to stick around until about 1:25 for the cat to come back, but it then stays for the remainder of the video. How freaking cool is that?

And the guy posts it to YouTube, appending “with cat” to the title, instead of doing another take. Gold.

Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.

Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the “loser,” and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.

I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.

Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.

When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3×5 card reading, “Please use this M&M for breeding purposes.”

This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this “grant money.” I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.

There can be only one.

I’m really glad someone took the time to compose that epic. I genuinely think the world is a better place for it.

So eloquently rendered.

Source article

No source, unfortunately I just have the direct image link.

Source article (that’s paint, not puke)

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I obviously did.

My primary gauge for what the norms are thinking about is The Onion. It is my barometer for Western culture at large, sardonically yet tactfully cluing me in on what I need to believe.

This morning I found an article called Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book.

Sitting in a quiet downtown diner, local hospital administrator Philip Meyer looks as normal and well-adjusted as can be. Yet, there’s more to this 27-year-old than first meets the eye: Meyer has recently finished reading a book.

[...]

“The whole thing was really engrossing,” said Meyer, referring not to a movie, video game, or competitive sports match, but rather a full-length, 288-page novel filled entirely with words. “There were days when I had a hard time putting it down.”

Even more bizarre, Meyer is believed to have done most of his reading during his spare time—time when the outwardly healthy and stable resident could have literally been doing anything else, be it aimlessly surfing the Internet, taking a nap, or simply just staring at his bedroom wall.

I lose. Obviously people don’t read anymore, and that’s a damn shame.

I guess I need to start selling Tupperware or Pepsi or American Idol-themed underwear or whatever it is people are interested in these days.

Because 14-day-old embryos have such well-developed nervous systems that they can appreciate (nevermind even “experience”) pain?

So, it is not cruel when one does not “appreciate” or “experience” pain? You could then sedate a person to the point of being incapable of doing either in order to morally kill them?

Your argument is stupid and you know it, so why bother posting it?

If only I had mod points today. That wouldn’t be at only +3 Funny, I’ll tell you that much.

I wonder if the guy did actually know that his argument was stupid. That’s a question for the ages, I guess.

Toy deliveries also were made to the chamber of commerce in nearby Fallbrook, California, and to North Coast Church, a Fallbrook church the Mustaine family attends, said Bob Leonard, chief executive officer of the chamber of commerce.

“He’s this interesting paradox, with a family who regularly attends church, but he’s still involved in that kind of music,” said Leonard.

I’m sorry, but that’s just hilarious. This guy was clearly freaked out by Mustaine’s utterly tame demeanor. Megadeth’s music has never been offensive lyrically, unless, I suppose, you find songs about mortgage interest rates offensive. Which Leonard very well might, as the head of a chamber of commerce.

Oh, well. I’m gonna go listen to more of my crazy hate music and punch stuff while making flash cards for Chinese.

—————-
Now playing: Deicide – Lunatic Of God’s Creation
via FoxyTunes

I’ve never met an Australian who even made an attempt to speak German, let alone the Queen’s English. They drink the low-grade tourist beer, get trashed, say “Let’s gut pusst, moit!” a lot, and are all around intolerable. I wonder what they’re running from back home.

Oh, I know. It must be the coffee made from feces. Nothing less could make Hofbräu seem appealing, I’ll tell you that much.

Kopi Luwak, made in neighboring Indonesia from coffee beans excreted by native civet cats, is reputedly the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee, painstakingly extracted by hand from the animals’ forest droppings.

When roasted, the resulting beans sell for around $1,000 a kilogram ($450 a pound) and brew into a earthy, syrupy, coffee acknowledged by connoisseurs as one of the world’s finest.

I just hate Aussies so much.

Case in point.

Today Carl and I are walking back from the city with a mutual friend Sarah, also an American. Somehow we’d gotten on the topic of ripping on Wal-Mart, and she’s telling us stories of all the ridiculous trash that can be bought there. Her prime example is a ring-bearer’s pillow. Just imagine that: buying a ring-bearer’s pillow, at Wal-Mart of all places.

Here Carl and I get really puzzled, but don’t say anything right away, because we don’t want to betray our evident lack of knowledge to Sarah. Finally I venture, “Maybe they kneeled on something at the Council of Elrond?”

And that’s that. I guess I should get to studying—on more levels than one.

16. Chris Matthews

Charges: Calling his show “Hardball” is like rechristening ping-pong “Thermonuclear Warfare.” Displays the slurred, unmodulated speech and unfocused antagonism of an aggrieved middle-management drunk. Can read a scurrilous political attack into any paragraph at twenty paces. Continues honing his pointless questions as his guests attempt to answer, cutting them off with an affected imperial weariness when their responses are insufficiently inane. Apparently ignorant of the implications of satellite technology, Matthews shouts louder at geographically more distant guests. Has repeatedly called Ann Coulter “brilliant.” Referred to Gerald Ford’s yuletide demise as the former president’s “Christmas card to the country.” Unable to laugh like a normal human, Matthews compensates by simply shouting “ha!”

Exhibit A: “This country is based on generalizations!”

Sentence: Hillary’s White House Press Secretary and personal toilet steward.

13. Anne Coulter

Charges: A skeletal freak who hates the world and lives to anger people into buying her books. Says Jews need to be “perfected,” as if Christians are in better shape. Is against her own right to vote. Called John Edwards a faggot, when really he’s just a little swishy. Is about as sexy as a praying mantis. If Coulter were a man, she’d never be allowed on TV.

Exhibit A: “Faggot isn’t offensive to gays; it’s got nothing to do with gays.”

Sentence: Forced marriage to Osama bin Laden.

9. You

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism — it’s nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears’ children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you’re going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques.” You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can’t spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don’t want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy’s doing well. You’re an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn’t get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn’t cover. You deserve it, chump.

This thing really made my entire night. I kept trying to get other things done, kept trying to save a bit of it for later, but I read straight through from 50 to 1, pausing only to paste snippets to friends online.

Please do check it out. I want this guy to have tons of traffic, because I assume he’s using ads on his page, and I wasn’t able to find an address to which I could just mail a check. Because I seriously would.

Thus I experience a sense of awe each and every time I bear witness to an instance of ownage wrought by someone who isn’t me. A swift and clean reverence rushes through me, whipping and winding out of my cynical, sardonic heart, and I’m left to contemplate the eternal mystery: what is it like to feel stupid? Some of us may never know.

Today, though, I’d like to bestow upon you all the means to call down the wrath of the gods of mock and scorn upon the heads of your foes. Behold.

There isn’t too much to say to that. You just kind of sit there feeling stupid, going, “But that doesn’t—damn, a windmill. In a beard.” You’ll say it to yourself over and over. You might try to convince yourself it’s CGI. But does that really matter? Because you can’t CGI yourself into countering that cunning logical tactic.

Ten thousand thanks to J for e-mailing this, saying, “This made me think of you immediately.” Obviously Jordan understands Bavarian culture to the T.

Picture taken from FOHG pic repository.

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