Fafblog is a good blog. It is the best blog. It is a blog about God, the Universe and those Horrible Screaming Monkeys.
1. Is there an emergency?
a. Yes!
- Quick! Break glass in case of emergency.
- Oh no, now I'm all cut and bleeding on this broken glass!
- Sounds like an emergency! Quick, break more glass.
- Okay, I broke the glass! Now what?
- Oh no, what'd you do that for! You needed that glass for the emergency!
Well, OK, there's many different kinds of stupid, but this is one of my favorites. rickrolldb.com in amassing a database of Rickrolls, web pages which trick the user into viewing 80's pop icon Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up. Ostensibly this is so that web users pissed at being taken for a dance can add the database to their browser's ad blocker. Since YouTube Rickrolled it's entire user base on April 1st 2008 it has gone irrepairably mainstream and is officially an old meme - unfunny outside its legitimate use in harassing Scientology.
But this database intrgues me. It's a realtime dataset showing the growth and manifestation of a meme, empirical data against which theories of meme behavior can be falsified or corroborated. There are other such datasets which can be created, one can track the reproduction of files on p2p networks (actually, I did study this, a story for another day) or the spread of threatening chain messages in YouTube comments. This is different though, the YouTube data is messed up by anti-spam systems that arbitrarily check and confine the meme's spread, and file sharing is a little simplistic. rickrolldb on the other hand is a real-time map showing the spread and use of a learned behavior in a human population. A limited demonstration that stupidity is contagious :-)
In 1993 Snow - "Superb Notorious Outrageous Whiteboy" - was released from prison and launched his debut album, 12 Inches of Snow. (Blame Canada! Blame Canada!) The first single Informer spent seven consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Top 100. If you were alive in 1993 you've heard it, the high school classes of '99 and 2000 heard it so much, so often that the single is now deeply programmed into our subconscious. The song, however, is incomprehensible Ontario gibberish. In an effort to better understand myself and my peers, I have painstakingly translated it into English.
[*chorus*]
so..
Informer
You know say daddy me snow me-a (gonna) blame
A licky boom-boom down
Detective man he say, say Daddy Me Snow me stab someone down the lane
A licky boom-boom down.
Someone has been stabbed. Police suspect the fruity dancing cracker is to blame.
Police ina dem come an-a dey blow down me door
Ready to crawl through, through ma window
So they put me in the back the car at the station
From that point on I reach my destination
When the destination reached ina the East Detention
When-a look down me pants, look up my bottom.
Police arrive at Snow's house to ask questions, but must force their way in. They apprehend Snow trying to escape through a window. He is taken to a police station for questioning and then transferred to the Toronto East End Detention centre [google maps]. There he is strip searched, or maybe just whips down his pants to moon people.
East End Detention Centre, Toronto
[chorus]
Bigger them are, them think they have more power
Them on the 'phone, me stay there for an hour
Me for want to use it once an-a me call me lover
Lover who me call ina the one Tammy
An me love her in me heart down to ma belly
Yes [incomprehensible] me Snow I feel cool an deadly
It's the one MC Shan and the one that is Snow
Together we are love 'em as a tornado (?)
"Bigger them are, them think they have more power". This could express resentment of:
(a) beefy fellow inmates,
(b) correctional officers
(c) men with large penises
(d) illegitimate authority
(e) legitimate authority
I vote (c). Anyhoo a person who is somehow "bigger" makes him wait to use the telephone. He wants to call his lover Tammy. Speaking to Tammy puts Snow in the mood for a vigorous threesome with her and MC Shan.
[chorus]
Listen for me ya better listen for me now,
Listen for me ya better listen for me now,
When me a rock-a the microphone me rock on steady
Yes-a Daddy Me Snow me are the article done
But then in and out the the dance an they say 'where ya come from?'
People them say I come from Jamaica
But me born and raised in-a de ghetto an' I want ya to know,
Pure black people man is all a man know
Yeah ma shoes-a them tear up and the toes used'a show
For me a born in-a the one Toronto
Snow: Pay attention. I was raised in poverty in Toronto and have terrible shoes. Also, I only know 'pure' black people. (a strange feat in Canada)
[chorus]
Come with a nice young lady
Intelligent yeah she gentle an irie
Everywhere me go me never left her at all
Yes it's daddy snow me are the roam dance man
Romancing a dance-a ina nation-a
You never know say daddy Me Snow me are the boom shakata
Me never lay-a down flat in-a one cardboard box-a
Yes-a Daddy Me Snow me-a go reachin' a da top.
Snow has succeeded in his life - he has a girlfriend, dances a lot and does not sleep in cardboard boxes.
[chorus]
Why would he? Why whould he would he would he?
Why indeed.
[chorus]
Me sittin round cool with my dibby-dibby girl
Police knock my door, lick up my pal
Rough me up and I cant do a thing
Pick up my line when my telephone ring
Take me to the station, black up my hands
Trail me down 'cause I'm hangin with the Snowman
What I'm gonna do, I'm back and I'm trapped
Smack me in my face an took all of my Gap
They have no clues and they wanna get warmer
But Shan won't turn informer.
MC Shan is detained by the the Toronto Metropolitan Police and his fingerprints taken. He may know who is responsible for the stabbing, but is not willing to help the investigation.
[chorus]
And now you know. That's been riding around in your head the whole time, subtly affecting your thoughts.
One fabulously arb pair of sentences, from the Wikipedia article on Dandys:
By the time Pitt taxed hair powder in 1795 to help pay for the war against France, Brummell had already abandoned wearing a wig, and had his hair cut in the Roman fashion, "à la Brutus". Moreover, he led the transition from breeches to snugly tailored dark "pantaloons," which directly lead to contemporary trousers, the sartorial mainstay of men's clothes in the Western world for the past two centuries.
From now on this will be my recourse when asked to explain anything I don't understand.[read on...]
From the Wikipedia enty on Top Hats, about their inventor being arrested by the fashion police:
The top hat caused a riot the first time it was seen in London. The perpetrator was a “haberdasher” named John Hetherington, who designed it, made it and was the first person to wear it into the street in 1797. According to a contemporary newspaper account, passersby panicked at the sight and ran in terror. Several women fainted, children screamed, dogs yelped, and an errand boy’s arm was broken when he was trampled by the mob. Hetherington was hauled into court for wearing "a tall structure having a shining luster calculated to frighten timid people." He was fined £50.
Google News has a feed (2317 current stories) documenting the ongoing relationship between mankind and the sciuridae, and the profound effect squirrels have on all aspects of being. Ecologists warn that if squirrels were to die off then all life as we know it would be gone in 10 years. Even bacteria could not survive.
I was surprised to learn:
Squirrels are reluctant users of oral contraceptives, which are administered to reduce the number of greys. Greys are thought to have been introduced to Ireland in 1911 when a bunch were brought over as a wedding present. Personally, I don't know which is weirder, giving someone a bunch of live squirrels as a wedding present (cattle, yes, goats, fine, 200 head of squirrel, very irregular dowry) or spending your weekend in a cornfield for the purpose of shooting the little fluffies.
"How was your weekend Bob?"
"Great, here I brought you something. Don't eat them all at once, you'll get worms."
[Opens Box] "Uh... thanks."
Squirrel hunting is reputedly a popular and emotionally satisfying sport that can lead rednecks to shoot one another, though the North-West Arkansas News laments that many young'uns nowadays would rather play with them thar newfangled computer machines. They go on to reminisce about a childhood which "revolved around filling a game sack with a limit of squirrels" and how at bedtime "sleep was hard to find as visions of blazing guns and running squirrels clouded our restless thoughts". [no, really]
Louisiana has 300,000 squirrel hunters, and the season starts October 5th. Why hunt squirrels? Because they taste better fresh than the canned squirrels you can get at the supermarket. I'm a vegetarian, but if I ever see a can of squirrel meat I'll buy it just to keep around.
So yes, everyone should subscribe to this feed (it's important), though there is overall a disappointing lack of squirrely wrath.
Check out this specious bullcrap from the Mail on Sunday (not linking 'em), about how blue-eyed people are supposedly more intelligent than those dirty brown-eyed foreigners and assorted non-Aryans. I risk running into Godwins Law here, but it's interesting to note that googling on Dr Fallone's name quickly brought up an article about how blonds were better people than non-blonds and another titled 'Fewer People Have Proper Genetics', also complaining about how the master race is being diluted. Again, no link, google if you want 'em.
For those not familiar with UK newspapers, the Daily Mail (~ Mail on Sunday) is a right wing hate rag always brimming with invective decrying the Labour government, foreigners, Islam, immigration and any sort of social change. People the Mail supports have included Jean-Marie Le Pen (Holocaust denier, French National Front), the BNP (Skinhead/Neo Nazi Group) and all manner of Stormfronty politicians and xenophobes.
To say that historically blue-eyed people have been over-represented in intellectual and scientific achievement is probably not too outlandish, blue eyes being most common in Northern Europeans and the white man having the resources to support educational and scientific institutions. To have the means and education to stand on the shoulders of giants was (is?) doubtless easier if you came from a wealthy white background, and therefore more likely to have blue eyes. No need to confuse correlation with causation though. If actual genetic evidence can be provided to prove a link, I'll recant, until then I have solid doubts - though I'm sure those who'd like to believe in the article will require little more proof than the word 'Dr'.
As an aside, growing up in Zimbabwe, when companies with white executives wanted to hire only white staff (not too uncommon) it was politically incorrect to say so in want ads, so 'blue-eyed' was sometimes used as code. I've not encountered this in the UK, so perhaps the racist overtones are not as apparent - or intended - to Mail readers.
Sometimes I rip on CNN for being by turns biased or asinine. I hold CNN to a pretty high standard because, well, it's CNN. But the 2007 Impromptu Award for Selling Paper goes to... (drumroll) ... The Guernsey Press and Star!
Backstory, Princess Anne; stern lookin' old lady and the Princess Royal visits the Channel Islands. Muggles here resists the urge to dress up like an indian and throw tea in the harbor. Slightly miffed that the motorcade of a celebrated European inbred is passing my house, rankles my generally democratic and egalitarian outlook. The tyranny of absolute power over an unrepresented populace is not something to be remembered fondly. But she couldn't have chosen to be Royalty, so I can't really be flat with her. I figure the best way to deal with this is just shut up and not validate the royalist position by discussing it.
Mostly, this award is to recognize The Press and Star and its uniquely infuriating assumption that I (media consumer) my friends (media consumers) and co-workers (media consumers) will care more about this story than any actual news. The current crises in Darfur or Gaza, say, or something closer to home. The Press and Star deserves this award because they're not selling news, they're selling paper, printed with whatever they think will appeal to the lowest common denominator.[read on...]
Gather round, dear hearts, and let us gawp and point giggling fingers at the backwardsness or yore. The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, written around 1853:
The Jews commit another Outrage (OUTRAGE!) upon the Christians? On page 349? Really? Lets read...
*GASP* Why, those malevolent impious Jews of Antioch! Scoffing at Christ! Well deserving of chastisement indeed. But... should I change the title of my blog to 'Guilty of Many Absurdities'?
PS: I am so glad to be living right here, right now, in the 21st century.[read on...]
And you heard it first on CNN. This just in: CNN uses Markov chain to generate headlines. Celebrity bacon orphan shock! Ruminant is pants fire. And now back to our main story: Person's Noun Emotive!. Poor CNN, I remember using it for news, but in recent years it's just entertainment, opinion and rhetoric masquerading as news (ie, the domain of blogs), with a tiny bit of actual news mixed in, like the drop of real orange juice in 'Real Orange Juice(tm)'. Oh well. Nice to know GW is all huggy-kissy today.
North Korea has a website, and it's pretty, er.... nifty. You can buy Kim Il Sung's classic eBook "10-POINT PROGRAMME OF THE GREAT UNITY OF THE WHOLE NATION FOR THE REUNIFICATION OF THE COUNTRY". You can learn about the glorious North Korean Government:
The Chondoist Chongu Party
The Chondoist Chongu Party is a democratic party formed by Chondoist peasants on February 8, Juche 35(1946).
It was formed with the objectives to oppose imperialist aggression and subjugation, join in the work to secure national independence and build a rich and strong democratic country with the partiotic idea of “defending the country and providing welfare for the people” and the independent spirit of “driving out westerners and the Japanese”. [link][Patriotic Japanese Translation Link!]
Yep, sounds patriotic to me :-) The site also features several important art works in the medium of 'Illegal North Korea Cellphone Wallpaper!'. Feast your eyes on this:
Surprise! Notice how the chicken doing the surprising humps and then holds on. Real chickens don't do it that way round, which is the artist's way of letting us know that this narrative is in fact an allegory, meant to be interpreted carefully and with an open mind. As the gripping storyline unfolds, the unnamed artist bares his soul, in a poignant, subtle retelling of the history of North Korean peasant workers. The white chicken represents the proletariat, and the brown one also represents the proletariat. The sunset shows the great deeds of the present being immortalised in history, and the ground is an eternal, sublime symbol for Barbera Streisand Dolly Parton. Ahh, such complex poetry masterfully rendered in simple images of life. The title of this work? 'Love'.
Truly, North Korea must be the greatest nation on earth to have moulded such genius. I see the US Government's website doesn't have any chickens "surprising" one another (whyever not? shame on you USA!) Anyhoo, check it out yourselves:
This is just too good. The assorted fruit and mixed nuts of the American religious right are unhappy with Wikipedia for its bias towards a reasonable middle ground and tendency to favor evidence supported consensus over truthiness. And so was created Conservapedia, an online encyclopedia dedicated to advancing lunatic opinion in an environment unencumbered by scientific knowledge or inconvenient reality.
As John Swift points out 'Conservapedia is based on good conservative Christian values while Wikipedia, as you can tell from its name, is based on Wiccan.' Would love to see Jimbo Wales face when he reads that one.
As far as I know this is the first time there has been an online creationist encyclopeadia which you can edit. From the entry on Kangroos:
'Like all modern animals, modern kangaroos originated in the Middle East and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood. It has not yet been determined whether kangaroos form a holobaramin with the wallaby, tree-kangaroo, wallaroo, pademelon and quokka, or if all these species are in fact apobaraminic or polybaraminic.
After the Flood, kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land - as Australia was still for a time connected to the Middle East before the supercontinent of Pangea broke apart - or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters.'
Since word of this broke on the blogoshpere it seems everyone and their creepy uncle have been contributing to articles. In the comments over at scienceblogs.com Steevl writes:
I'm having tremendous fun. I edited the article on Atheism to point out that it leads to pedophilia and bestiality. I checked back an hour later expecting my edit to be gone, but no: they didn't remove it, they added citations.
Round of applause for that man. Good-natured vandalism aside, here's a quote from the Google cache of an older and apparently serious article:
“Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.’” (Gospel of Thomas 114) “Jesus is not suggesting a sex-change operation, but is using 'male' and 'female' metaphorically to refer to the higher and lower aspects of human nature. Mary is thus to undergo a spiritual transformation from her earthly, material, passionate nature (which the evangelist equates with the female) to a heavenly, spiritual, intellectual nature (which the evangelist equates with the male).” [link]
It had never occurred to me to consider whether Jesus would want his girlfriend to have a sex change operation so that she could be elevated from her sub-human female status, guess I never assumed Jesus thought about women that way. But apparently the fundies have pondered it at length and arrived at an important theological message for the world.
Life is so much fun.
Update: Jon Swift said...
Regrattably, it appears that some mean-spirited liberals have been committing mischief at Conservapedia and administrators have been forced to shut down new registrations for the time being. It may take them a while to sort out legitimate entries, such as the article about the Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus, from hoaxes perpetrated by liberals. All of the citations in my piece, however, link to versions by trusted conservative authors. You can also be certain that any version by Aschlafly, that is, the founder Andrew Schlafly, are genuinely conservative and of the highest quality. [read on...]
But... two women having a catfight over some guy isn't news, if it wasn't for the sordidly memorable bit about the diapers it would have had far less coverage. There's a marketing lesson in that. Following a similar theme of sex, conflict and a little social transgression:
Orange County Weekly: ‘They’re My friends and I’m a Swinger!’
It's about the cops busting a local nookie joint. Notice towards the bottom there are three websites mentioned, but only one has a full domain name. You can bet that a local interest story about illicit sex in a sexually repressed part of the US is going to stir up a fair bit of traffic to those sites, and comefiesta.com is the one they'll hit first since it has an easy to use domain.
Interestingly, there isn't a website called comefiesta.com, it's a (deliberate) misspelling of cumfiesta.com, a Bukkake getup from Miami, right the way across the continent. Someone going by 'creep276' has an affiliate agreement whereby he gets paid for sending traffic to cumfiesta-with-a-u, and visiting comefiesta-with-an-o redirects visitors to the with-a-u.
So when the plump, sweaty, newspaper reading public of Orange County put their hairy palms to the keyboard after breakfast, someone makes a sudden surge of money. I'm not sure if the 'o' was a deliberate misspelling or not, could be the OC Weekly doesn't like to say cum, but it's suspicious, and a clever way to make a quick bag of pesos for the sly journalist, source or media hacker. The affiliate ID's a bit of a giveaway though, a single large frame or a cloned front page on the decoy domain would be more opaque.
Tomorrow is Boomtime, the 35th day of the Aftermath in the Discordian calendar, that is: St Pliny Dance-for-Ham Day. To celebrate, let's play a game.
SINK, A GAME by Ala Hera, E.L., N.S.; RAYVILLE APPLE PANTHERS
SINK is played by Discordians and people of much ilk. PURPOSE: To sink object or an object or a thing... in water or mud or anything you; can sink something in.
RULES: Sinking is allowed in any manner. To date, ten pound chunks of mud were used to sink a tobacco can. It is preferable to have a pit of water or a hole to drop things in. But rivers - bays - gulfs - I dare say even oceans can be used.
TURNS are taken thusly: who soever gets the junk up and in the air first.
DUTY: It shall be the duty of all persons playing 'SINK' to help find more objects to sink, once one object is sunk.
UPON SINKING: The sinked shall yell 'I sank it!' or something equally as thoughtful.
NAMING OF OBJECTS is sometimes desirable. The object is named by the finder of such object and whoever sinks it can say for instance, 'I sunk Columbus, Ohio!'
Needs no further explanation. Now the waiting game begins. I fire up the referrer logs, sit back, relax, and count the seconds until someone gets to this page by Googling for 'Barbera Streisand Nude'. Keywords: Naked, Nude, Sex, Dirty Sanchez. Spider me!
Update - April 2nd: FYI, about one person per day gets here by Googling 'Barbera Streisand Nude' or 'Streisand Nude' (her name is actually spelled Barbra). Hooray! Am collecting data, will one day publish a map of the world...
