[Humor] If Life Gives You Lemons...

If life hands you lemons, sell them at the market
and buy a big handgun with the profits, then go
track down that sucker and teach him what it
means to mess with a guy with a big handgun.
(Steven D'Aprano)

If life gives you lemons, grind them into a
fine juice and drink it. If life gives you
pesky little neighbor children... well, you know.
(Phil Peters)

If life gives you a yeast infection, make bread.
And if you know someone whom life has given
lemons, you could have a picnic or something.
(Michael McCuiston)

If life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.
However, if life gives you a pickle you might
as well give up, because pickle-ade is disgusting.
(Clifton J. Gray)

[Sig] Jesus was my co-pilot

Jesus was my co-pilot. But we crashed into the Andes and I had to eat him.

[Holiday] Winter-een-mas

It's right around the corner!

[Image] Comics

From a nice (old) Slashdot article on Creative Commons and Webcomics.

Here's an example of how well things can work:

Queen of Wands ended...


Something Positive references it...


Checkerboard Nightmare wraps it up.

[Question] The New Age

So, many moon ago I was flipping around the TV and happened to catch part of a monologue about a guy who ate through his ass, and his ass decided it didn't need the mouth anymore, and the mouth grew closed.

Or something like that. It was a bizarre thing.

My question is: what movie was that? Was it "The New Age"? Unfortunately, there's no such quote on iMDB, and this movie has a title that is .... hard to search for without getting numerous false positives.

I didn't see the whole movie. So, basically, all I have is the feeling that it was Peter Weller who gave the speech. Anyone know what movie I'm talking about? It's driving me crazy.

[iPod] Video

K and I went iPod window shopping this past weekend. At the store, the video iPods had a DVD rip of Final Fantasy VII. What a highlight of cultural differences. ^_^

America: Copy a DVD (that you own) onto a video player (that you own) for your own personal use? That's a DMCA violation! (Don't get me started on "fair use")
Japan: Download a DVD rip off the Internet and push it onto the display models of the iPods? Sure! We won't even bother taking the release group's credit out of the filename!

Japan is awesome.

Speaking of iPod, this engraving idea was my favorite.

The only thing keeping us from buying it immediately is the certainty that as soon as we do, a newer better cheaper iPod will come out. :-/

[Godstuff] A Blow Against Pastafarianism

Pirates everywhere, weep. His Noodly Appendage is persona non grata in Dover.

Good commentary on this tragedy over at PandasThumb.org, and some insightful observations on this topic from last month can be found at the DilbertBlog.

[Link] Cute Overload

Warning: The Ultimate Cuteness found on this link may give you diabetes.

(Strangely, there is no link to the Archives page, and even more strangely, the archive links only go back to September. Here's the link to July, navigate at the top. NONE SHALL DENY ME THE CUTENESS!)

[Japan] A Really Big Snow

"The local weather observatory said about 62 cm of snow had fallen in the city of Fukui by 8 a.m."

Good pics on Dan's blog and my fellow Asahian Lewis' blog. I was going to take pictures myself yesterday, but decided to spend the day digging a path for my car to get out for work today.

For the record, I hate the snow. I hate driving in it, I hate walking in it, and especially, I hate shoveling it.

Sigh.

[Shiny] Gatestown

He arguably robbed from the rich and gave to the poor...
Stood up to the Man
and gave him what for!
The Man of the Year
that all Slashdot hates,
The hero of Redmond
the man they call Gates!

(from Slashdot)

[iPod] Gift

I'm thinking about giving my girlfriend an iPod for her birthday. Does anyone have any suggestions on which one I should get?

[Link] Students for an Orwellian Society

Yet =another= link that makes me weep for the current state of affairs in my once-free homeland.

[Zug] The Turnpike Prank

Executive summary: Mariah Carey is rich, the Turnpike Authority is poor, and Zug is funny.

[Grief] John Spencer

John Spencer passed away on Friday, four days before his 59th birthday. That makes me a sad Phoenix.

[Nerd] Either You Get It or You Don't

u = 6.0f; if( isnan(i) ) i = free(man);

I really need to start a "Best Sigs" page...

[Me] Damn Your Black Heart, Thomas!

So, Thomas infected me with an Internet meme. Because he's a bad person.

Here are the directions: Write 5 random facts about yourself, and then list the names of 5 people who you in turn infect.

Fine.

1. I've been homeless three times. Since then, I've gone to college and traveled half-way around the globe. Being homeless is a choice, and I chose to move on. This is why I won't give beggars my spare change anymore. Well, also because I'm just a bad person.
   
2. A friend of my mother offered to buy me from her, when I was a baby. If you can understand that she was wealthy enough to afford to buy a baby, you might understand why I have never forgiven my mother for not selling me.
3. I'm red-green colorblind, but my brain fills in whichever color it thinks something is. One time, I was walking around downtown Spokane with a friend, who pointed out a cherry red pickup truck, and commented on what an unusual color it was. Now, I've seen dozens of cherry red pickup trucks, so I thought it was unusual that he thought it was unusual, until he said that the truck was green. I looked again, and IT WAS GREEN. I expected red, so my brain made it red, until I was told otherwise. This is why, if you ask me what color grass is, I'm going to give you that condescending look. I'm color-blind, not retarded. Grass is blue, everyone knows that.
   
4. I love to read, but I am, in fact, quite a slow reader. I have never been able to get over the habit of reading the words in an internal voice, so I can only read as fast as I speak. On the other hand, I have nearly perfect retention (at least, for things I have read), so I often only have to read something once. ^_^
5. I suffer from high self esteem. I have a serious superiority complex. It's a problem.
   

Now, it would have been more fun if the meme were Write 5 random secrets about yourself. Who wants to go first? ^_^

As for this meme, the infection stops here. I'm not going to infect five other people, because I'm a killjoy wet-blanket who ruins the fun for everyone else. Basically, I'm just a bad person.

[Work] Season's Greetings

I'm preparing for my next class, where my students will write their own Christmas Cards (in English). I was searching for other phrases that can be used, such as "Happy Holidays" and "Merry Christmas", and I discovered that there is this really big argument right now over the use of Merry Christmas.

Some people don't like it, some people =insist= upon it. I just have to ask...

WTF is wrong with you people? Seriously?!

I need my iProd.

...
Two more weeks until Winter Break, and I'll be able to breathe again! No more three-hours-of-sleep for THIS guy! ^_^ Two more weeks...

[Link] Serenity

The Hand Puppet Movie Theatre Presents "Serenity" (*SPOILERS*)

[Slashdot] WWJD? JWRTFM!

It's spreading. Google has 373 hits for JWRTFM

[Me] Jesus

(This started as a comment on Emily's blog, but it got too long so I moved it here)

Don't get me started on the whole "I like Jesus just fine" thing. Sure you can say that, you never had to share a place with him.

Frankly, the man is a pig. I don't think I ever saw him do laundry. And the mess! It was like living with a dozen hippies. I'm not downing on hippies, but you don't want to bring a fine lady home to a hippy nest. It's just not cricket.

And when it came to cooking, forget about it. Though, I may be a bit of a nitpicker on this topic; I can make a three-course meal with one side of a butter knife, and serve it with the other. But J-man, I don't know what he was thinking.

"What did you do in here?" "I made a sandwich." "HOW MANY LOAVES OF BREAD DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE ONE SANDWICH?!"

He was always doing stuff like that. Go in to the kitchen to fix a snack, and when I come in five minutes later, there's food EVERYWHERE. Unbelievable.

It wasn't Jesus that was the problem, though. It was all his crazy friends. The J-Man can throw a killer party, but man, the nuts come out of the woodwork. And they ALWAYS got in fights with each other, over really trivial stupid stuff. Like, one time J-dude said "Don't eat the bacon", right? And some of his friends were like, "No prob, dude" and others were all "No, man, he was saying Don't eat bacon, like don't eat pigs at all, which is cool, 'cause pigs are dirty" and even others go "No, he meant don't eat meat. We should all be vegetarians!" Gah, why not just =ASK= him what he meant?!

I did ask him, and you know what it was? He said "I meant, 'don't eat the bacon in the fridge because I'm saving it for breakfast'. Man, I love bacon." Me too, man, me too.

If I could hang out with just him and not his other friends, it would probably still be cool, except that J-man can't handle money either. It was like, every week he would ask me for more money.

I'd be like, "Man, I just gave you $20 last week!" "Dude, I spent it all." "What'd you spend it on? More wine?"

Actually, it probably wasn't wine. In fact, I can't recall him EVER making a liquor store run. Come to think of it, where did he get all that wine from?

Anyway. He makes a good friend but a lousy housemate.