WTF Wednesday

Guess why I find this song particularly relevant. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Whataboutery Wednesday

whataboutery
noun
1. (of two communities in conflict) the practice of repeatedly blaming the other side and referring to events from the past

I have no idea why this word seems so relevant at this point in time. No idea at all. But I'm definitely gonna start using it more.

Here, have some music from a good Portland band:

You should buy the album.

Wimp-out Wednesday

I'm gonna be lazy and outsource today's blogging. Huge surprise, I know.

First, if you're not reading Jesus And Mo, you should be:

b) This is a pretty good McSweeney's column about guns. A tidbit:

Three years ago, my wife and I got concealed-carry firearms permits. A lot of people have asked why we did that. The answer is short: we did it because of a weekend column in the newspaper. Plus, we wanted to do something new, and we weren’t afraid of guns.

The official gun evangelist answer, on the other hand, is longer: “Why not a concealed carry? Are they trying to infringe upon your sacred Second Amendment right to Keep And Bear Arms, bestowed upon you and all of your Fellow Citizens by God Himself, as He directed our Founding Fathers to ensure Freedom from Tyranny for all Freedom-loving Patriots who need to defend Themselves and their Families from the Government and the Maniacs that lurk outside our homes across this Beloved Nation and—"

While that tirade continues, back to the short answer. It was summertime, and one night as my wife and I sat on the front porch reading our local newspaper (on our laptop screens because the “paper” only exists in binary code now) I caught one of those Things to Do This Weekend pieces that typically run in the Friday issue of any paper.

[...]

Read the whole, etc., blah.

Or not. What the fuck do I care?

I Saw The News Today. Oh Boy.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Same shit getting worse by the minute, same stupid talking heads blabbering about it. I don't even know why I bother.

Wacky Wednesday

I get the weirdest spam:

(click to embiggle)

Notice there in the blue print that I have been selected to receive this amazing message because I have been "identified as an Expert in [my] area of activity." I'm so honored.

Also, too: I'm kinda curious to hear more about this Bizarro "Sollar System" they talk about, but not curious enough to expose my inbox to more weirdness than it already gets pounded with [heyo!].

Wayback Wednesday II

This was one of my favorite games as a kid. Now I can play it any time I want!

Xevious

Sadly, it requires Flash. Controls are:

• Mouse click to start.
• Z key to fire
• X key to bomb
• Arrow keys to move

Tons moar old classics available here. Consider your day wasted.

You're welcome!

Things and Such and Weather and Whatnot

Hmm, a blog. Yeah, I guess I have one of those.

So... how 'bout that weather? Some of you folks are still experiencing winter I guess. While here in Beerville a month after Snowpocalypse II, Icelectric Slipperypoo it's finally 65°F, sunny, and the flowers are blooming. For those still suffering with cold, I made you a campfire:

Also, you didn't know you needed THE ELECTRO-PLASMIC HYDROCEPHALIC GENRE-FICTION GENERATOR 2000 but oh yes, you do. Yes. You. Do:

In a post-apocalyptic Antartica, a young flying message courier stumbles across a crazy old man which spurs him into conflict with forces that encourage conformity with the help of a bookish female scholar with mousy brown hair and her reference book, culminating in a philosophical argument punctuated by violence.

Your title is: "The Blackbots."

And:

In an alternate-history Victorian Britain, a young brooding loner stumbles across an encrypted data-feed which spurs him into conflict with humanity's selfish nature with the help of a sarcastic female techno-geek and her discomfort in formal wear, culminating in the invocation of a spell at the last possible moment.

Your title is: "The Neurophages."

I should submit these to Regenery.

Hawaiian Humpday

So. Much. Food...

Wayback Wednesday

The Iron Maiden documentary Flight 666 was on TV last night, so of course I had to watch. It was actually kinda neat to see that one of the favorite bands of my youf is still out there having a blast. Of course it's available (for now anyway) on the Ute Oobs, if you have a couple hours to kill:

And since it had been forever, I just had to listen to the Powerslave album again (digitized from my "picture" LP no less!), for old timey sake. Here's a long-ass song from that album based on the famous Coleridge poem. Who knew that an '80s heavy metal band could inspire a teenager to read Coleridge? Crazy. I saw them on this tour back in '85, good times.

Nothin'

I have nothing positive to say about anything. So here, have a puppy in a bowl:

RIP Blinky

A sad, sad day. The much-maligned <blink> tag is being removed from the last browser that supported it, Firefox.

Thankfully, we can easily come up with an even more annoying alternative, our own special programmatic "blink" that has adjustable speed and alternating blinkage.

First, apply a "class" attribute to whatever you want to blink:

<div class='blink'><p>PUT ANNOYING BLINKY STUFF HERE</p></div>

You can use tags other than <div> -- <span> is a good choice too. Note that more than one item can have the same "class" so you can do that multiple times. In fact you should, because that way they'll alternate states and be extra annoying.

Now, add just a tiny bit of code:

<script type="text/javascript">
var delay=100; // change to adjust speed

function annoy() {
  var annoyances = document.getElementsByClassName('blink');
  var positive=1;
  for (var i=annoyances.length - 1; i>=0; i--) {
    var b = annoyances[i];
    if (positive === 1) {
      b.style.visibility = (b.style.visibility === 'visible') ? 'hidden' : 'visible';
      positive = 0;
    } else {
      b.style.visibility = (b.style.visibility === 'hidden') ? 'visible' : 'hidden';
      positive = 1;
    }
   }
   window.setTimeout(annoy, delay);
}

annoy();
</script>

Presto:

THIS SHOULD ANNOY EVERYONE

BUT IF IT DOESN'T HOW ABOUT THIS TOO?

Oh yeah, that's the stuff. The blink is dead, long live the blink!

UPDATE: I fixxorated it so it'll work (hopefully) with a new-ish version of Internet Exploder too. Woudln't want bbkf and Mooser to miss out.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian, cont. Again.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian has a new article in today's campus paper. (See here and here for the previous installments if you can stand it.)

Today we get the pleasure anguish of reading yet another article about same-sex marriage. Because nobody else in the media is talking about it from that super-special-snowflake of glibertarian perspective. Or something. At least the glibertarians usually want to allow same sex marriage, like sane people should. Unfortunately that's typically where the sanity stops with them, and indeed we'll see that here as well.

As with the last installment in this series, he starts off in semi-sane mode, if you're willing to ignore the usual "government must stay out of governing" angle:

Since the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against gay marriage last week, the bandwagon for marriage equality returned. However, the real issue remains dormant on both sides. We should not be asking government to give us “marriage equality.” Instead, the government should have no part in marriage.

Of course, it immediately continues to accelerate downhill from there:

Marriage has existed longer than the government. Marriage is not a product of the government. Many people believe marriage comes from religion and in America, we have the separation of church and state, but many other ideas of marriage exist, as well. Regardless of any one view, why does the government regulate marriage when it should not?

That's some awesometastic sentence construction there. Good thing you don't write for a newspaper or anything. But yes, why does the evil government have an interest in regulating marriage? It's not like society has any interest in encouraging healthy relationships between people. That's why we also don't regulate any sorts of violence between individuals. And have no regulations whatsoever about interaction between folks in various transactions and how various people treat other people. Because America! FREEDUMB! Fuck yeah! WOLVERINES!!!

Oh wait, what do you mean we do have all sorts of laws and regulations about all sorts of relationships between people? Contracts and such between folks that want to conduct trade without the threat of violence? Oh, yeah, we do! How silly of me.

But still, this one particular form of relationship is one the government should stay completely out of. Uh, because freedom, I guess? Let's see what he thinks:

The government requires marriage licenses in order to call a couple married. But what business of the government's is it if two people want to, and do, get married? The government should not have any rules about it. The government even requires marriage licenses. Why? The original intent of marriage licenses was to prevent interracial marriages. Marriage license laws began in the mid-1800s to stop whites from marrying anyone who was not white. By the 1920s, 38 states had state laws prohibiting the marriage of whites with other ethnicities.

As is his typical pattern, now he's just started making shit up. While he's correct about about states in the '20s specifically using laws to prevent interracial marriage, his assertion that the "original intent" was to prevent them is laughably false. Marriage licenses have been around since at least the middle ages, and were all about contracts between families. That is something glibertarians usually like, sacredfreemarket and all that. I should really stop being surprised by this guy's complete lack of historic knowledge and/or utter contempt for facts, but whatever.

At this point we know how this is going to end, and indeed it proceeds down through all the standard glibertarian tropes of evil government stealing people's money and freedom. I can't be arsed to dissect the rest of it, so just read it if you must. Here's the concluding paragraph:

Marriage equality may be the big uproar right now, but we need to look at the bigger picture. The government erodes our freedoms, and turning to them for more laws and oversight will only wear away at the few freedoms we have left. We need to tell the government to get out of marriage, to get out of our lives, and not return.

At this point I think he only wants the government to stop regulating marriage so he'll finally be able to marry Ayn Rand's corpse. I hope somebody's keeping an eye on her grave.

Something Different

Zero fucks given.

I like it, I really need to build something like this. I'd probably use an old Z-car instead though, always liked those.

Wondering Wandering Wednesday

Always wondering, with wandering thoughts, wandering workloads, and wandering around the intertrons.

I wandered shambled by the zombie's place and was introduced to some lovely tunes, which caused me to wander to eMusic to see what else there is by the EELS (warning: music autoplay). After listening and downloading a bit I of course had to wander around to some of my standard faves to see if anything new was out, and lo-and-behold a "new" Tool album is available. "Hmm," says I, "WTF is up with that? They didn't have any Tool here before." Turns out it's mostly a bunch of stuff I already had, but I noticed that "Parabola" was 10 minutes long. "Ten minutes?" I wondered -- "The version I have is half that." Then I wondered further if it was available on the Ute Oobs so I could see what was up with the different version.

Of course it is!

That is wonderful weirdness right there. Watch in HD for best results.

So that's how you get from zombies to EELS to Tool. I knew you were wondering.

Now I need to wander back to work.