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Someone in a knife afficionado forum asks:

“I think the president should carry a knife! which knife do you think obama should carry? even if you dont support him. i would have to say Spyderco Police”

Hilarity ensues.  Naturally, a couple of guys recommend a Jambiya or a scimitar … you know, because he’s a Muslin.  Another guy recommends “anything made in Communist China” … you know, because he’s a Commie.  Some guys say that he’s a liberal wimp who would be too afraid to carry one.  A few too many recommended tanto for him to commit seppuku (real patriotic, guys).  Finally, magic happens and one guy says:

“Carry one ? most likely he will take ours away.”

That’s right guys, Obama the Gay Muslim Communist is not content with simply taking away everyone’s guns, but he’s coming after your knives, too.  And when he has them all, he’s going to stab you in the back with them.

Thankfully, there were a few reasonable posts in that thread.  One guy said:
“The President doesn’t even carry a wallet or keys. He’s got a big group of deadly trained agents surrounding him.”

Another:
“Obama will need a multi-tool….
There are so many things in this nation that need fixed and repaired.”

And finally, someone decides to be the signal amidst the noise:
Of course he should carry a made-in-the-USA Case Eisenhower pen knife. And he better keep it sharp enough to cut through all the crap.”

The New York Times published this article recently:
What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting

I’m glad this issue is finally reaching a wider audience.  It costs virtually NOTHING for your wireless carrier to send your text messages, yet the prices they charge to do so are getting higher and higher.

Want to know more?  How about this:
“… sending a mundane, ubiquitous text message costs at least four times as much as transmitting scientific data from the Hubble telescope.”

Text messaging is a colossal ripoff – which is why I have disabled it altogether.

Still hungry for more?  Here’s a related post on Slashdot and this brilliant comment on another post.

Turdichrome by redteam on FlickrBack in 1997 I thought “I’ll bet there are no porn sites for people with a garbage fetish – if there are any such fetishists at all.”  There was nothing on Altavista back then and I maintain that there is nothing really about it on Google today.  A few terms come close, like “salirophilia,” but nothing really hits the mark.  I really thought there would be an online community for people into that, or a porn site, some fan fiction, a mention on Savage Love, or something by now but no.

Not like I care so much, I just liked the fact that I thought of something reasonably novel or rare, no matter how inconsequential.

The reason I’m writing today is because I have developed a phrase which appears nowhere else on the internet.  I thought of it a couple of years ago and I have a nagging fear that if I don’t put it online first, some other fool will.  So check it out, on November 27, 2008 I am officially using this phrase on a public website:  “turd-bearing hips“.  I don’t believe I have used it on a message board before now though I believe I have written it in emails.

Use this phrase as you see fit.  Here are a couple of suggestions:

[You happily emerge from the bathroom]
YOUR FRIEND:  Well, you look happy.
YOU:  (placing both hands on the front of your pelvis) I just love these turd-bearing hips.

How about this scenario:

[Your friend comes out of the bathroom angry]
YOUR FRIEND:  Who forgot to flush the toilet after taking a dump in there?
YOU:  Curses!  Sorry about that, it was me.
YOUR FRIEND:  You?  Wow – that was the biggest turd I’ve ever seen.  Have you not taken a dump in a week?
YOU:  (proudly gesturing towards your pelvis) Nope, it’s just these turd-bearing hips.

Look, use the phrase or don’t, just know that it was on the internet here first.

You have to celebrate every small triumph, you know?

Moving In

Haffa Cubicle

I’ve registered the domain name, I found hosting through my gracious good friend hexod.us, I installed WordPress, and now I’m tidying up and moving things around.I am gathering posts from other bloggy endeavors that I have undertaken in the past and finding places for them here. Copying and pasting the text and changing the timestamp seems to do the job very well in most cases.

Now, my main concern is getting the site to look a little prettier. I want to get a nice little header graphic going, a little assortment of my Flickr pictures, and maybe even some things and stuff.

After a seemingly endless string of bad hair days with thermal underwear required, soggy Winter ’06 is on its final days here at UCSC. I can look back on:
Tater tot binges along with kiwi fruits, Captain Crunch, and mayonnaise (not all at once) on tap at the dining hall. The purchase of half a cow’s worth of leather in the hopes that I can convert at least part of it into a dream bag. A trip to the Monterey Bay aquarium which featured about 15 awe-filled minutes of staring at barrel-width tuna barreling through their simulated open sea environment. Wrestling with the end of low tide in a sea cave near Davenport. A fabulous barf-tempting sailplane soar session somewhere near the Pear Blossom Highway after ingesting a wonderful Hungarian sausage sandwich that I didn’t want to taste twice despite its initial deliciousness. An impromptu slug hunt that netted three healthy Banana Slugs and featured appearances by two adorable rough skinned newts. A desperate, profane, and nearly fruitless midnight hitch-hiking session in the abject darkness of a charming 45 minute Santa Cruz downpour. The careful and steady construction of an intense hatred for the soul-crushing fundamentals of statistics. Legally observing very young children through one-way glass for hours. Enough bitching to train my future self: a bitter old man who lives only to tell kids to stay away from his yard. My new refrigerator: festoons of aluminum cans on lengths of wire hanging out of my window, conveniently cooled by exposure to the frigid night air. An exciting evening of rain, driving snow, having a bolt of lightning strike 5 feet away from me, and exhilirating bodyboard sledding on two inches of hail with a view of the Pacific Ocean. Several bottles of sake. Enough Tecate to warrant a sponsorship contract. The consumption of 2kg of yerba mate. Age-accelerating Rockstar-fueled all-nighters. My venerable, battle-scarred Canon Powershot S400, Photoshop, and Flickr. My delightful hallmates and most of all, the company, aural and physical, of my Bojanese dream girl.

Audio friendship:
Of Montreal’s inspirational “Sunlandic Twins” on repeat. Wonderful Al Bowlly. Psy-trance being given a fifth or sixth chance. David’s valuable recommendation of releases from Boogizm records. Euromotion, Prince, Bitstream, Tipper, Tigrics. And my rather large collection of Tango CDs.

Excited at Study Time

Ok, so I get a little excited at exam study waypoints. Here’s what the Soulseek Lobby had to endure a little while ago:

[redteam] I’M STUDYING MY ASS OFF RIGHT NOW
[redteam] STATS EXAM THINKS IT’S ALL HARD
[redteam] “CHAPTERS 8-12, I’LL FUCK YOU UP”
[redteam] BULLSHIT, YOU FEEBLE TEST, I AM PREPARED TO KICK YOUR ASS

* deepness puts $5 on chapters 8-12
[redteam] PREPARE TO LOSE $5 OF YOUR MONEY
[deepness] oh we’ll see
[redteam] “OOH YOU BETTER BE PREPARED TO REJECT THE NULL HYPOTHESIS”
[redteam] FUCK YOU BITCH, IF THE OBSERVED SAMPLE STATISTIC FALLS OUTSIDE OF THE TEST STATISTIC’S CRITICAL VALUE AND INTO THE REJECTION AREA, I WILL FUCKEN REJECT YOUR NULL ASSED HYPOTHESIS.

[deepness] i hope you know how to prepare a quarter pounder
[redteam] THAT SHIT IS GOING TO BE FUCKEN STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT AS HELL
[redteam] THEN WE’LL MEASURE THE EFFECT SIZE AND ALL THAT SHIT
[redteam] EXAM #2, YOU DON’T STAND A FUCKEN CHANCE
[redteam] I’LL ROCK YOU LIKE CELINE DION HAS ROCKED THE HEARTS OF THE FRENCH CANADIAN POPULATION

[THESOW] any one got 2 pac
[THESOW] or emiem
[redteam] EXAM #2 IS GOING TO GET ROCKED LIKE THE CROWD WITNESSING PRINCE PERFORM “WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS” WHICH CAN BE VIEWED HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nOtQzPCqvE
[redteam] NO, THESOW, BUT IN A MATTER OF HOURS I *DO* HAVE A STATS EXAM THAT’S GOING TO GET ITS MOTHERFUCKEN ASS KICKED
[redteam] IS THAT SATISFACTORY?
[redteam] ALSO, THESOW, ARE YOU A FEMALE PIG?

[THESOW] go for it what exam
[THESOW] yes
[redteam] FUCK YEAH, STATS EXAM #2 IS GOING TO GET ROCKED LIKE A RUNT IN YOUR LITTER AT FEEDING TIME

Party at House 2

Santa Cruz, California, USA
Elsewhere, I’ve mentioned that House 2 at Stevenson College is a house of, well, no repute. I don’t believe that I know anyone there, I’ve never heard of anything interesting going on in there, I’ve never heard it mentioned in conversation, overall, I haven’t heard a peep come out of that place. For all I know, it could be completely empty or reserved for devout Catholics.

That all changed tonight.

I was studying for my upcoming stats midterm when I heard whooping, hollering, and screaming girlish chaos coming from somewhere outside. I stuck my head out and saw that House 2’s lounge had the blinds all the way down. Multicolored spinning disco lights were illuminating the transluscent blinds and standard issue house music laid a rhythmic background for the raucous squealing from the girls. This I had to see.

Shoes, jacket, keys, and I’m outside. A healthy assortment of youths from my house are playing hackey-sack in the quad. They share my curiosity about House 2’s sudden awakening. I walk up to the door and get let in by this dour-faced betrenchcoated nerd I’ve seen stalking around campus a few times before. The little window on the door to the festive lounge has been covered up so I approach it to get a peek through a clear spot. That’s when the useless would-be guardian begins his pointed questioning in an attempt to make me feel unwelcome. “Wha wha … hey … what are you doing here?” Without even looking at him I say, “I’m taking a look at what’s going on in here.” “Hey … you know someone … um … you live around here?” “Yeah, I’m from House 3 – hahhaha oh man, what a party!” “Wha – wha what’s your name?” I tell him and ask “what’s going on in there?” “It’s a, um, private function.” “Yeah, I can tell – what’s your name anyway?” “William, I’m the RA”. I couldn’t help but laugh at his feeble attempt at intimidation. Feeling a little like Al Swearengen vs. Calamity Jane in Season 1, Episode 2 of Deadwood, I walk out of there, my curiosity satisfied.

What I saw in that lounge, folks, was several screaming girls gathered around a hairless, muscular young man with nothing but a burgundy satin g-string on. He was gyrating his hips over a girl who was laying on the ground and enjoying herself tremendously. Although the exact song wasn’t playing, I do believe that they were partying like it was that girl’s birthday.

After informing my friends in the quad, a contingent of girls ran to the lounge’s window to have a peek for themselves. It’s nice to know that the girls have a healthy taste for men (unlike a certain Miss Priss in my hall who was quoted on someone else’s whiteboard as saying “Penises are ugly” – heh, how sad it must’ve been for her when she found out that guys look nothing like Ken dolls).

While all this was happening, impotent William stormed out of the house in a huff and went away. We all had a hearty laugh at his expense and called for him to come to us. Maybe he was heading to his forest perch for his nightly reenactments of scenes from “The Crow”.

A while back I decided to go meme fishing by making a post on my favorite Friendster clone (um, community networking site?), Tribe.net. It’s like Friendster, but more for Burning Man attendee-type people. I was “Seeking a non-religious, no-nonsense approach to meditation”. I’ve collected the best responses and put them here.

Was cleaning out the garage today. Found a big, full bottle of Betadine antiseptic solution. Cool! Then found a full box of Band-Aids. Later, found a nice pair of scissors. “Wow, what nice scissors!, I’m going to go clean them up and sharpen them.” Took them apart, sponged them clean, cut my finger wide open. Dried the finger, applied pressure, then some Betadine, and a fresh bandage.

Halo 2 is so rad

Halo 2 is so rad. Well, gameplay-wise, anyway. I think overall, if looked at alone, the original Halo is better. It’s put together better. The story and the way everything is designed is just really well done. Halo 2 has a whole bunch of improvements in gameplay and level design, but the story on the whole just isn’t as good.

One thing that I really like, though, and this is what inspired me to write about this, is that you get to find out more about the Covenant Elites.

In the first Halo, the Elites are pretty smart. They dodge your shots, they know if you’re able to see them or get a shot at them. They curse in an alien language when attacked and laugh at you when they kill you. I always figured that the stuff they were saying was really smart, that they went to really good schools, and that they were good kids with families that had summer homes. They enjoy the finer things in life. Kinda like the German officer Wilm Hosenfeld in “The Pianist”. Maybe the Elites have pictures of their families in their quarters back on their ship and really sophisticated hobbies.

Finding more about the Elites is a treat in Halo 2. You even get to be one. When the story begins, it follows the Master Chief (the hero) as he is being commended for destroying the Halo in the first game. At the same time, in distant Covenant territory, the Elite officer in charge of stopping the humans is sentenced to death by a council of higher-up Elites and their Prophets for a military failure so bad that they consider it heresy (they believe the Halo destroyed by the humans is sacred). The Prophets later that simply killing that Elite would be a waste and devise better plans for him. They decide to make that punished Elite an “Arbiter” which has some kind of special role in their society. He gets a special suit. You are sent off to kill a Prophet which is considered a heretic because he found out the true purpose of the Rings (what they call the Halos discovered by the Master Chief in the first game) – they’re weapons designed by the Forerunners (an ancient alien race killed by the Halos) to wipe out all sentient life for light-years all around them as a last-ditch measure against a widespread infestation of a parasitic race called “The Flood”. Another class of creatures in The Covenant called “Brutes” stage a coup and take the place of the Elites as assistants and counselors to the Prophets.

As their name suggests, these creatures are filthy and big. They’re pretty smart, but the Elites believe they are superior. The Brutes believe the same thing (but you know, vice-versa), and they see themselves as part of a new way … that they finally got the Elites out of power. I see a sort of Democrat/Republican relationship there. The Brutes being the Republicans, naturally. The similarities don’t go too deep, so I’ll stop there.

The Elites in Halo 2, to my delight, speak English. I’m so pleased that I was right about the Elites. They hold a high place in society, they’re tough opponents (new AI makes them even tougher), and they speak with dignity. My favorite part of the game is in the chapter called “Fight Club”. You’re playing as “The Arbiter”. After taking out a whole bunch of Brutes, several Elites are dropped from the sky in special cannisters to join you in battle. Elites only wield Covenant weapons like Plasma Rifles, Needlers, and the elegant Energy Blades. So with a couple of Elites by your side, you run through a corridor and go through a room filled with a collection of weapons. Mostly human weapons like shotguns, a rocket launcher, etc. and the “Brute Shot” gun. One Elite, in his gruff voice angrily says, “What vulgar taste; even as trophies these weapons are worthless!”

I love that.

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