Chechnya is a scary place

"A few days before the election that won him the presidency of Russia's violence-plagued Chechnya region, Maj. Gen. Alu Alkhanov gave a startling order to the police force he commanded: Shoot anyone wearing a mask."

Reminds me of Assassin...

Feez Will Get Excited

And then hopefully realize what a terrible idea this is. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I think the historical record supports my doubt.

It's still a sick, donkey-humping disaster....

So apparently as of september 2nd, the internet is 35 years old. Go and celebrate in a matter befitting the occasion, such as downloading child pornography while shopping for viagra and reading e-mails about low mortgage rates.

Your Saturday would be better spent...

Anybody wanna play Axis and Allies tomorrow?

Just a thought. I'm sure you're all too cowardly to face me.

Us vs. the rest of the world

Apparently the Americans called an improper time-out in the Olympic basketball quarter-finals, and have pissed off the entire nation of Spain. Best quote of the article: "Pesquera, who had to answer to the king and queen of Spain in the locker room afterward..."

Timely and relevant

Where the Cosby Show fucked up.

I put it to the floor...

Okay, so me and fishel were talking about it last night, and i personally think that some changes need to be made to the poker night. First off, i think the multiple rebuys are kindof ruining the game. It gets way too much money on the table, makes the game more stressful, and drives the bet levels through the stratosphere. Personally, i'd rather play a much friendlier game.

CH had posed a while back that we play a limit game once a month, with the regular game on tuesdays. I'm almost thinking the opposite would be better. Maybe not a limit game, but a lower-stakes game, maybe a limited buy-in, or eliminating rebuys, or something like that, and then run one pot-limit game, maybe one saturday a month.

Any suggestions, gentlemen? I think the weekly game is getting less and less fun for me as it goes on, and i'm pretty sure i'm not the only one.

Apparently kochis is refusing to come if we establish any kind of limit on the game. So that's one opinion. Any others?

Does the Internet dream of shaved sheep?

This is an experimental project -- people submit images, and a program blends them together once every 24 hours. Kind of neat.

I heart the internet, and everything about it.

Okay, so i have a mascot now.

I love my apartment building...

So apparently this is what happened to the ceiling of the girl whose bedroom is right below me. I guess i should stop all those "jumping up and down" sessions i have in my room.



Note the insanely piss-poor composition of the photo.

In 1877, the sport was tamed in Scotland

Fun Olympic fact for today: the original sport of water polo involved riding floating barrels, and the goalie stood on the deck, waiting to pounce (?) on whatever jackass managed to get into scoring position.

For reasons lost in the mists of time, water rugby became known as water polo. It too had its bizarre strategies -- "A favorite trick of the players was to place the five- to nine-inch ball inside their swimming suit and dive under the murky water, then appear again as near the goal as possible" -- and was the first Olympic team sport. And I just watched America get pwned by some Norwegians.

(Discussion question: is it coincidence they air women's water polo late at night?)

Important Delivery Information

Scheduled Delivery: 27-August-2004

Shipment Detail
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ship To:
Christopher Harring
1407 West 36th Street
Baltimore
MD
21211
US

Number of Packages: 1
UPS Service: GROUND
Weight: 33.0 LBS
Tracking Number: 1Z3Y20200345047677
Reference Number 1: 12780

Click here to track if UPS has received your shipment or visit
http://www.ups.com/WebTracking/track?loc=en_US on the Internet.

But Are You Rich Enough?

"One broker gave Google a target price of $115 and the other was even more bullish, targeting it at $120.

This is a far cry from Google's humiliating offer price set at $85.

On its first day of trading, its shares rose 18%, closing above $100 on Thursday as Google concluded its controversial campaign to become a public company, making millionaires of almost half its employees."

It's funny that we live in a world where it's considered humiliating to only make half your employees into millionaires. I guess they should've gone for the gold and shot for billionaires. Retards.

from the bbc:

[Mr. Jafar] said he was probably a few years away from producing a nuclear bomb. However, Iraq would not have had the resources under the sanctions regime to continue the programme, he said in his first broadcast interview - aired on BBC's Newsnight programme on Wednesday night.

apprently, iraq didn't have access to the internet under sanctions, either.

3-13. Bronze Star Medal

a. The Bronze Star Medal was established by Executive Order 9419, 4 February 1944 (superseded by Executive Order 11046, 24 August 1962).

b. The Bronze Star Medal is awarded to any person who, while serving in any capacity in or with the Army of the United States after 6 December 1941, distinguished himself or herself by heroic or meritorious achievement or service, not involving participation in aerial flight, in connection with military operations against an armed enemy; or while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.

c. Awards may be made for acts of heroism, performed under circumstances described above, which are of lesser degree than required for the award of the Silver Star.

d. The Bronze Star Medal may be awarded for meritorious achievement or meritorious service according to the following:

(1) Awards may be made to recognize single acts of merit or meritorious service. The lesser degree than that required for the award of the Legion of Merit must nevertheless have been meritorious and accomplished with distinction.

Microsoft = hillarious!

Apparently our good friends at microsoft need better translators....

From HardOCP:

A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.

or.

this is 9" longer, far cheaper (about 100 after shipping), but has no chip rows.

as much as i love feez's bouncing knee in direct contact with my prostate...

...we might consider alternate seating arrangements.



the thing is 72" by 40"; it should be able to fit 10 comfortably (three along each side, two along the ends). after shipping, it would cost around 200.00. there are approximately three hours left in the auction.

Chris Harring, do not read this post. Rampant nerdery contained within.

Okay, this is mainly directed at Joel and Klimas, but can someone please explain to me the IBM / SCO / Linus Torvalds love triangle? I keep seeing stories about lawsuits, mostly over patents for Linux and Unix, but i can't seem to find the "beginning" of the story. Am i correct in the assumption that SCO is trying to claim that they invented both Unix and Linux?

A good day for vice...

Okay, people, it looks like we may have as many as TEN for poker night tonight, so i suggest people bring snacks and such. Looks like the regulars will be coming, plus Cree's friend Brian. Also, I'm told that Mr. Fang will be in attendance. I'll actually endeavor to be there on time this time, to avoid the rampant assholery of last week's entrance.

It's gonna be a great year for movies....

From Neowin:

"The Rock will not play the central role in the forthcoming Doom movie, id Software reps confirmed over the weekend, although it's possible that he will figure in some way. Speaking at QuakeCon during a Q&A session, id staff commented on recent reports concerning Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock's involvement, which originated with UK film magazine Empire.

According to reps, he will not play Doomguy, but it is possible that he could take on the role of a Sergeant if he does come on board - although, as reported at the time, that all depends on whether the John Woo-helmed adaptation of the Spy-Hunter game is pushed back or not.

id reps also confirmed that the movie script is almost finished, but very little other work has been done yet."

m. moore will save your soul.

from the 'right place, right time' desk, mr. moore flexes another political coup d'histoire. ok, so i understand the popular aversion to partisan panty-snapping, but 'f911' is an important lesson in disguise, especially for all y'all potential grad students: well-documented, thorough research FUCKING VANQUISHES ALL

'i love you, madame librarian.'

by kurt vonnegut, from in these times

I, like probably most of you, have seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Its title is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. This temperature 451° Fahrenheit, is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year.

In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

With good reason.

In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O’Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen World War I. War is now a form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? “Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?

comic-kaze

an interesting tale of truth, betrayal and online comics.

make sure you read the fucking page before you start clicking on the hyperlinks: they are not organized chronologically. also, it makes the dude from 'penny arcade' look like a total, insane fuck-hole. well, in reality, he makes himself look like a total, insane fuck-hole. but who's counting. oh, yeah. me. he's a total, insane fuck-hole.

isn't the fbi busy enough?

at least they were 10-15 years ago.

on a related note, when real-life starts blowing, media often blows with equal force and duration.

Gentlemen, start your righteous indignation

The FBI is shaking down folks who plan to protest at the RNC convention. It's not clear if these are bomb-wielding anarchists or cookie-eating peaceniks, but knowing how these things often work...

Jerkstore Dies Lingering Death

And clearly, none are around to bear witness...

Jerkstore Dies Lingering Death

And clearly, none are around to bear witness...

scott mccloud of the clan mccloud

for those of you that don't check out scott mccloud's website, go stuff yourselves. for those interested in expanding your horizons, peruse away.

'i don't want to be a rat arche'

a stunning adaptation of the book redwall.

everything animized.

at some point in the distant future, the human race's concept of 'athlete' will be strangely colored, multi-ethnic, neon-haired (pre)teenage boys and girls from around the globe, complete with grating monologue wavering inexplicably from internal to external as the rules of the sport need to be explained to viewers.

At Long Last...

Our dreams of enjoying all the perks of third-world nations are coming to pass. I'm glad our modern political machine has finally brought us to this.

A Site of Interest

Seriously. I'm not saying it's awesome or anything, it's just a site..

In Paradise, all dead children wear pajamas

Get your lit on: The first act of a play by Tony Kushner and Laura Bush's fictional response.

I AM FUTURE

Yes, it's more glimpses at the wondrous future of the American Soldier. Can't we all look forward to the day when the President can easily decide that the soldier's gear is worth more than the life that carries it?

making things into liquid solves problems.

oh, yes it does.

from cnn:

The chain introduced a new line of frozen drinks Wednesday, including frozen original kreme -- a drinkable version of the company's signature doughnut -- raspberry, latte and double chocolate.

but at least i've never lost my fucking office chair.

from the houston chronicle:

Millions in U.S. property lost in Iraq, report says

Halliburton claims figures only 'projections'

Bloomberg News

Halliburton Co. has lost $18.6 million of government property in Iraq, about a third of the items it was given to manage, including trucks, computers and office furniture, government auditors claim.

tee-hee!

fees should work for the feds.

from the ap:

WASHINGTON - U.S. civilian authorities in Baghdad failed to keep good track of nearly $1 billion in Iraqi money spent for reconstruction projects and can't produce records to show whether they got some services and products they paid for, anew audit concludes.

Egg whites and strychnine

From work today, a story of Olympic triumph.

Immortality via poultry

Aside from his formidable military career - including campaigns to crush the famed Taiping Rebellion and an uprising in the predominantly Muslim western region of Xinjiang - Zuo was known for his belief that China needed to modernize to survive. His method: using tried-and-true Western innovations to improve upon Chinese traditions.

how was your weekend?

meh!!

i went to see local act 'water school' on saturday, largely because i know most of the people in the band. their drummer, matt scoggins, brought both his mother and sister with him. at one point, the sister leans over, taps me on the shoulder, and asks, 'did you go to hereford?' yeah. yeah i did. 'my husband was trying to figure that out.'

i look over at the husband. vaguely familiar. he strolls over, asks me my name, asks me if i wrestled. 'what's your name again?,' i pose.

'dom cirri.'

ladies and gentleman, few of you will have any idea what i'm talking about, but trying to contain the swelling ball of energy sending ripples across my diaphragm, that knot of pure desire that can only be sated by shouting 'MEH!' at the top of my lungs, trying to hold that back took a herculean flexing of every gracious muscle in my body.

by the way, if you google dom, you'll be pleased to know he runs his own business.