Hateful Things

It's Like Text-Only Voyeurism

2007-10-04T16:17:00.000-04:00

It's a simple premise: People submit snippets of conversations they'd overheard, and the masses guffaw. The site has gotten so popular, it's now split up by eavesdropping location! There's Overheard At The Beach, At The Office, In New York, Everywhere, and special bonus -- Celebrity Wit!

Now go there.

Overheard Everywhere | The Voice of the Rest

EcoGeek: A Green Nerd's Paradise

2007-09-15T13:55:00.000-04:00

Ecogeek is a sort of Boing Boing Gadgets for the tree-hugging set. It's all about the intersection of technology and environmental awareness, which is great, but the entries are also smart, interesting, and often surprising. In short, the site rocks, and if you visit it once, you'll probably visit it forever.

EcoGeek: Technology for the Environment

Funny, Funny Shirts

2007-09-11T01:35:00.000-04:00

At last count, there were 34 hexagillion sites on the web that want to sell you funny t-shirts. Bustedtees.com has designs that are well above average, and some that are pure disaffected-hipster-ironic-pop-culture heaven.

Busted Tees - Jokes you can wear!

THE Site For Cryptozoophiles...

2007-09-11T01:13:00.000-04:00

... if "cryptozoophiles" is, in fact, a word.

Regular readers of Fortean Times may recognize Loren Coleman as one of the world's go-to guys for all things cryptozoological. His site, cryptomundo.com, is probably the best resource for info on cryptids of all varieties. He's reasonable and scientific, and his writing is concise and accessible. Recent topics include a new Orang Pendek expedition and "Is Bin Laden As Tall As Bigfoot?"

These are the stories the mainstream media are afraid to touch!

Cryptomundo.com - for Bigfoot, Loch Ness, and More!

Of course, one can't mention Loren Coleman without also mentioning Dr. Karl Shuker, who has probably done more to legitimize cryptozoology as a field of study than anyone since Charles Fort himself. As an added bonus, Dr. Shuker actually bears a striking resemblance to Oliver, a suspected cryptid sometimes called a "humanzee:"

Dr. Shuker's columns for the Fortean Times are often the most fascinating part of that magazine. Here's his space on the web:

All About Dr. Karl Shuker

Larry Craig Is A Douchebag. A GAY Douchebag.

2007-09-03T16:56:00.000-04:00

(Above: Sen. Craig demonstrates his technique)

I haven't said anything so far about soon-to-be-former-Senator Larry Craig yet, so her's a sampling of post-mortems regarding his downfall.

Time Magazine has a decent analysis of how the scandal will affect the Republicans as a whole. Executive summary: The GOP is running out of candidates that aren't crazy, corrupt or perverted, thus ironically de-motivating the one block of voters they can count on -- the crazy, corrupt and perverted Religious Right.

Republicans Lack Self Control, Common Sense

Speaking of right-wing kooks, The Boston Globe has a columnist named Jeff Jacoby who serves as their resident conservative on an otherwise mostly rational Op-Ed staff. He's wrong on most every issue he's ever written about, but never more so than in his recent column declaring Craig's behavior "odious," "squalid" and "degrading," but NOT hypocritical. Dubbleyoo Tee Eff?

Jacoby then uses as an example of somebody that IS a hypocrite "[t]he 'family-values' politician who blasts the sins of others while blithely carrying on affairs of his own." Huh? Isn't that what Craig was doing?

Another favorite: "opposing same-sex marriage doesn't make someone a "foe of gay rights" or of gay people..." It's a laff-a-minute!

Conan O'Brien had a line a few days ago, "Gay groups are calling Craig a hypocrite because Craig is a staunch opponent of gay marriage. Craig denied he's a hypocrite, saying, 'Hey, I wasn't trying to marry the cop in the bathroom.'"

I like the Boston Globe, and I absolutely agree that they need to maintain some philosophical balance on their Op-Ed page. I just wish they'd find somebody who isn't such an idiot.

Is Craig Really A Hypocrite? (HINT: Yes)

Finally, for those of you who aren't really sure what a jerk-off this guy is, here's a pretty good summation of how he's voted on issues:

How Not To Advance The Radical Homosexual Agenda

The Benefits Of Public Transportation

2007-08-27T21:08:00.000-04:00

Ang Lee Won't Be Censored

2007-08-27T20:44:00.000-04:00

While we're on the subject of censorship, and the cowardice at its heart (see entry below), let's look at the other end of the spectrum.

The evil, wretched, corrupt and despicable MPAA ratings board has given Ang Lee's new film, "Lust, Caution," an NC-17 rating, meaning that only people age 17 and over can get in. It is, in effect, what used to be called "rated X." Apparently, there's a lot of sex going on, though it isn't base or prurient. Too many pelvic thrusts and that sort of thing. But the rating is more than a simple age limitation. Many (most?) theaters won't screen an NC-17 movie. Many newspapers won't even accept advertisements for them. So it can truly be the kiss of death for a movie.

Normally, an NC-17 rating would mean the studio would edit out the offending material and re-submit the film for an R rating, but I'm extremely pleased to report that Focus Features, which will distribute the movie, has said that there won't be any editing. They'll move forward with the film as-is. Focus Features CEO James Schamus said, "Every moment up on that screen works and is an integral part of the emotional arc of the characters. The MPAA has screened the film now and made its decision, and we're comfortable with that."

That's right. The distributor is on the side of the director, even though the potential revenue loss will be enormous.

Thanks, Focus!

"Lust" Begets Caution From The MPAA

Profiles In Cowardice

2007-08-27T20:08:00.000-04:00

Shame, shame, shame on the Washington Post and all the other newspapers that chose to censor Berkeley Brethed's "Opus" comic strip this week.

Why'd they do it? Well, it mentions Islam! The last thing we want our newspapers to do is deal with timely and sensitive topics, you know! We all know that newspapers are dying a slow death. Let's hope it's a painful one, too.

I won't ramble on. Below, you'll find a link to Salon's editorial about the matter, as well as a link to the cartoon. I hope I've earned a fatwa for linking to it!

Salon Cries Foul On "Opus" Censorship
Here's The Offensive Cartoon In Question

China Forbids Unauthorized Reincarnation

2007-08-22T21:54:00.000-04:00

Yes, you read that correctly.

From MSNBC:

"In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is 'an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.'"

You can't make this shit up, folks.

The offshoot of this madness is that the Chinese government has effectively reserved the right to name its own Dali Lama once the current one dies. I think the government's staunch atheism may make it impossible for them to choose the right one. Hmmm....

Thanks to boingboing for the heads-up on this. Normally, I don't like to overlap my posts with theirs, since educated readers like you should be reading boingboing every day.

China's Totalitarian Freak Show Goes Apeshit

I Heart Wii

2007-08-19T02:12:00.000-04:00

Normally, I'm a graphics snob. I skipped the original Playstation and got a Nintendo 64 instead. I skipped the Playstation 2 in favor of the original XBox. People will say to me "but there are more games available for the [Playstation/Playstation2]! Why would you ever buy a [N64/XBox]?" The answer is obvious: quality trumps quantity. Every great game obviously needs good game play; it has to be fun, regardless of the graphics. But if I only wanted good game play without good graphics, I'd shut off the TV and play cards. A truly legendary game needs to combine an inherently fun game with the best possible graphics. The Playstation and PS2 were always a step behind. If the sheer number of games was important, I'd still have an Atari joystick plugged into my Commodore 64 with a library of 8000 games all priced under $20. But I don't.

The Nintendo 64 had some stunning games, like Super Mario 64, GoldenEye, WaveRace and Mario Kart 64. Sweet God, those games were enormous fun, and the graphics were astounding for their time. I can still remember bringing home the N64 and playing Mario 64 for the first time. It was a revelation. I'd never seen anything like it. Mario Kart is still one of the most hilarious multi player games EVAH! The intensity and detail, along with the perfectly-executed 4-player split-screen, make GoldenEye perhaps the only game-based-on-a-movie that doesn't completely suck. (I'm talking to you, Harry Potter.) WaveRace 64 is one of the all-time great driving games, and it doesn't even involve cars. It's all jet-skis. The game may look a little dated now, but at the time, the water effects and the textures were unmatched.

The XBox was far, far ahead of the PS2. Halo and Halo 2 are examples of first-person-shooter perfection. They're epic stories, perfectly told and fully realized on the screen. They are completely immersive with enormous replay value via the multi player scenarios. Any video game junkie will tell you that Bungie, the company behind Halo, totally redefined the genre, and these games will still be remembered as groundbreaking 20 years from now, when today's consoles are nothing more than quaint relics in the back of the closet. Driving games like Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions and, of course, the Burnout series showed how much fun a car wreck can be.

But, as usual, things are more complicated in the present day. The most powerful system on the market is undoubtedly the PS3, but Sony seems to have truly screwed things up, like they've screwed up most everything they've touched in the last 5 years. (Digital music players that don't play MP3s? The completely unnecessary UMD movie disk? Ugh.) The system is apparently hard to code for, which is leading to delays and frustrations. After paying $600 for a video game system, people expect to have games available to play on it. And those games should be qualitatively better than the games running on less expensive, less advanced systems. So why does Madden NFL 2008 suck compared to the Xbox 360 version? No excuse for it!

I still think that the PS3's better capabilities, along with its Blu-Ray drive, will turn things around in the next 12-18 months. I hope so, anyway. I really want to like this system.

Which brings us to the Xbox 360. While not as capable as the PS3, Microsoft's gambit seems pretty smart these days. The decision to aim slightly lower in the hardware department and come out a year earlier looks pretty good in hindsight. The Xbox has an army of developers that are now comfortable coding for the system, so games coming out for the 360 are optimized, polished and mature. The growing pains are behind it, despite some highly-publicized quality-control issues that have left a bunch of people with expensive doorstops instead of game consoles. Of course, Microsoft is somehow unable to turn a profit on this thing, because the only thing MS does worse than software is hardware.

And then there's the Wii, Nintendo's bizarre little endeavor that throws out most everything we know about designing and using game consoles. The graphics are only marginally better than you'd get from the antiquated PS2, and the controllers are really just motion sensors with some afterthought buttons on them.

About 2 months ago, I started seeing a guy who has a Wii. Two weeks later, i bought one for my nieces. A week after that, I bought one for myself. The thing is genius. Absolutely brilliant. At $250, it's the bargain of the bunch, and the killer app for the system is included for free. It's Wii Sports.

Playing Tennis, especially, is a true joy. You just swing the controller like it's a tennis racket! No frantic taptaptaptap on the z button! No arcane combinations to memorize! It's so intuitive and so obvious, it's like Nintendo has torn the notion of video games down to its foundation and re-built it from the ground up. The graphics are simple and cartoonish, but it doesn't matter at all. In fact, the graphics' simplicity is the ideal aesthetic for the simple game play. Nintendo's game designer savant, Shigeru Miyamoto, clearly designed the game to be fun, and then stopped before it could get cluttered up with extraneous, distracting crap. Playing the Wii for the first time felt a lot like the first time I played Space Invaders some 28 years ago. I knew immediately that the ground had shifted. The curtain of Pong had been lifted, and the logical next step was revealed.

Now, Nintendo has sold nearly as many game systems in 10 months as Microsoft has sold in almost 2 years. Unfortunately, they're having production problems as a result of component shortages, so it may remain hard to get a Wii at your local store until next Spring. Nonetheless, go to eBay right now and find one.

Delicious irony: the Wii can connect to Nintendo's online store, where you can buy old video games to play on your Wii. As a result, I now have Mario Kart 64 on my TV screen again.

Oh, and here's a review of Wii Sports that misses the point 100%. The reviewer actually complains that the Bowling game doesn't let you switch to different ball weights. Sheesh!

A Moron's Review Of Wii Sports

Cool-Looking Movie: Taxidermia

2007-08-17T00:14:00.000-04:00

I know a guy who watches movies and really connects with them through the soundtrack. If he enjoys a film, you'll know because he has the soundtrack. When he listens to it, he can sort of "re-watch it" in his head. It's a perfectly valid way to approach a movie, I suppose.

For me, a good movie becomes a great movie when the visuals grab you, surprise you and, naturally, augment the storytelling. I'm especially a fan of the surreal visuals in movies like Fight Club, Being John Malkovich and even the over-hyped Matrix movies.

Foreign films are sometimes the best place to look for bizarre images and extreme camerawork. Half of the jokes in the brilliant Kung Fu Hustle are purely visual, and they serve to create a live-action world with Looney Toon physics. If you've never seen Delicatessen, with its dark, hilarious and painstakingly choreographed sequences, please do so immediately.

Anyway, what I'm actually posting about here is a Hungarian film brought to my attention by the fine folks over at Fortean Times. It's called Taxidermia, and the small trailer they have is very intriguing. I look forward to digging up a copy of it. Click the link to see for yourself.

Taxidermia movie trailer

We're Back!

2007-08-16T02:13:00.000-04:00

After a long absence, during which we toured Central and South America posing as gypsies in order to gather intelligence for counterterrorism operations, we will shortly begin our blogging again!

Floppy George In Bubble World

2006-04-10T22:47:00.000-04:00

OK, so It's a rag-doll version of George Bush, falling helplessly through a sky of semi-hard bubbles. Yeah, I know. I've already seen it, and it doesn't make much sense to me, either. But it's magically hypnotic. You must see it. You MUST.

If he gets stuck, just grab him with your mouse and give him a toss. If only it were so easy in real life!
Bubble World

Windows Media Player

2006-01-14T17:14:00.000-05:00

Finally, Windows Media Player for the Mac is dead. DEAD, I tell you!

WMP may be the most ill-conceived, poorly-executed, unattractive, bug-filled, feature-starved piece of crap Microsoft ever foisted on Mac users. And if you ever used Word 6.0, you know that's saying something. Imagine, if you can, a video player that you can't fast-forward, rewind or even scrub through. It's literally an insult to people accustomed to the elegance of OS X.

Now if we could somehow convince Real to stop assaulting us with their craptacular RealPlayer and take the entire .rm format behind the barn for the Old Yeller treatment, we could perhaps get on with the business of recognizing Quicktime as the common-sense default for audio and video content.

Microsoft also recently announced it was abandoning Explorer for the Mac, which was something of a surprise since most people assumed it had been abandoned five years ago. Their Office suite for the Mac will continue to be made at least until 2010, according to an agreement announced at MacWorld a few days back. This is Good News For The Mac, I'm told, since it maintains Apple's credibility in business environments. It's also great news for Mac users that want bloated hackware to make even their simplest documents look like abortions mounted on popsicle sticks.

Microsoft Quietly Ditches WMP for Mac

People Seeing Goatse For The 1st Time

2006-01-11T01:55:00.000-05:00

BoingBoing links us to a Flickr set showing photos of people seeing Goatse for the first time.

What's Goatse, you ask? If you don't know, you should probably look it up in Wikipedia before you actually see it. If you haven't been desensitized by war or videogames, or if you have any fleeting wisp of innocence left inside you somewhere, I urge you to leave now, and we'll never speak of this again. The picture is the very definition of "NOT SAFE FOR WORK," and may, in fact, be not safe in ANY context.

Anyway, the pictures of people seeing Goatse are taken by a Laszlo Toth, who may or may not be a.k.a. Don Novello, who I know is a.k.a Father Guido Sarducci, the only man I've ever known to be arrested at the Vatican for "impersonating a priest." This whole thing is a sordid and postmodern waltz down the dark side of internet pop culture, really.

If you haven't seen Goatse for yourself, and you think you might want to, have a friend get a camera, and then click here.

Boing Boing: Flickr set of people seeing Goatse photo for the first time

God Not All-Powerful, Says Bible

2005-12-12T00:53:00.000-05:00

So, if God's all-powerful, why did it take him 6 days to create the world? And why did he need to rest on day 7? Some god this is!

Some video games are like crack.

2005-04-23T14:26:00.000-04:00

Mmmmm... crack!
I posted previously about my irrational giddiness in the days leading up to the release of Doom 3 on the Mac. I'm here to report that said giddiness was not, in fact, all that irrational. The game is Bee-Yoo-Tee-Ful. Absolutely gorgeous. It's like walking around inside a painting that's equal parts Geiger and Escher.

Some folks have made hay about the actual gameplay being overly simplistic. While I agree that the game doesn't have the complexity found in a game like Rainbow Six, I don't care. This is DOOM, people. DOOM. The game isn't about managing an entire squadron of characters, or using some special keyboard combination to twist an opponent into a Boston Crab. Mankind is the most ruthless, efficient predator Earth has ever seen, and this game is about becoming the hunted. We're being attacked by things we don't understand for reasons we can't comprehend, just like every species mankind ever hunted to extinction. It's the ultimate role-reversal, and that's what makes the Doom games the greatest first-person shooters ever made.

The other game I've glommed on to in recent months is Pax Galaxia, a very, very different game from Doom 3. It's a riff off of the classic Risk formula, but I find it really well executed. I don't have time to get into it right now, but I implore you to check it out. It's essentially a board game, so it doesn't have the mind-blowing eye candy of Doom 3, but it's video crack in its purest form: easy to learn, near-infinite replayability, and supremely satisfying when you win. It's available for both Macintosh and PC, there's a free demo available for download, and the full version of the game is just $20.00.
Pax Galaxia -- Dio Games

I think I'm gonna pee my pants.

2005-03-04T09:20:00.000-05:00

Why? Because Doom 3 comes out for Mac OSX on March 13! It's all about ancient demons fused with modern robotics and futuristic weaponry in an orgy of evil so grotesque that I can't help but get a chubby just thinking about it! w00t!

Doom 3 for OSX -- GUSH!

News from the War Is Peace Department

2005-03-03T18:21:00.000-05:00

A mindbendingly nonsensical collection of cartoons.

Winter of our discontent

2005-02-28T11:47:00.000-05:00

Let me be clear; nothing is being made glorious sun by anything around here. It's all discontent, baby.
See what I mean?

A fitting tribute to Sen. Rick Santorum

2005-02-19T18:55:00.000-05:00

Here's a brief reminder, for those who may have forgotten, of why we think Rick Santorum is a dimwitted and dangerous monster.

I'm pleased to report on a growing movement to inject a new word into the english language. It is:

santorum: n. "the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex"

The movement is being spearheaded by gay advice columnist Dan Savage.

So do your part! The next time you're talking about anal-sex residue, be sure to call it by name -- SANTORUM!

And I had another thought, while I was writing about this dickweed. The philosophical rationale that Santorum (and others) like to hang their homophobic hats on is the notion that the Constitutional right to privacy doesn't exist. That would be very convenient for Santorum and his ilk, since the right to privacy is the only thing that stops them from outlawing not only gay sex, but also most types of straight sex, masturbation, pornography, abortion, contraception, and even things like the ability to pay with cash, and write an anonymous letter.

It seems to me that the real question isn't whether or not the Constitution contains a right to privacy, but rather if Santorum thinks it doesn't, why isn't he proposing an amendment to add one?

Santorum

Gallery of Regrettable Food

2005-02-19T17:42:00.000-05:00

This cyber-house of horrors is not to be missed. It's a collection of old recipe books and advertisements showcasing some of the most ghastly epicuriousities ever documented, along with color commentary from the archivist.

Perhaps a nice batch of Scones & Pepsodent in a Banana-Placenta sauce?

Gallery of Regrettable Food

Japanese how-to guide to sex, 1960's-style

2004-11-29T21:51:00.000-05:00

Not what I'd call pornographic, exactly, but certainly NOT safe for work.

The cover shows a woman flaunting her armpit hair, and it only gets worse from there. Funny, yet sad.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the heads-up.
Hubba-Hubba

Assholes say the darnedest things!

2004-11-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

"'Reagan proved deficits don't matter,' Dick Cheney told Paul O'Neill during a Cabinet meeting. 'We won the (2002) midterms. This is our due.'"
Passing the Bill to our Children

All the slurs that are fit to print

2004-11-21T01:17:00.000-05:00

Via the glorious Wikipedia, here's a nigh-exhaustive list of ethnic slurs -- perfect for your next trip outside the lily-white trailer park that you call home.

My favorite: "Wonder Bread Wop -- U.S Italians; an Italian that acts white (does not make home-made pasta, did not grow up in italian neighborhood, does not have accent or does not use Italian-American slang, etc.)."
List of ethnic slurs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia