Things that make me laugh to tearful incoherence

Without doubt Hot Chicks with Douchebags.

I laugh, I cry, consistently, uncontrollably, every time.

I know not why. I just do. Nothing cracks me up so consistently.

Possibly because I grew up with those douchebags (suburban Noo Yawk, a town that was 90% Italian-American, mostly first-generation).

Possibly because high school was an ordeal of spectacularly gorgeous girls, clinging to spectacular douchebags, just like the website.

And the comments. Lo, the comments are often funnier than the pictures. The wit, the anguish. And the concept of the pictures: the juxtaposition of incredible sexiness and unspeakably disgusting douchiness; it’s like a speedball, an icy/hot.

Although the pictures, just some of these facial expressions, is enough….

I don’t actually know. I love this website. Just love it. Never fails to brighten my day.

Facebook sanity saver

I finally figured out how to hide updates in Facebook (it’s a hidden option, you have to mouse over the right corner of an update to see it!).

Awesome. Now that I can block useless updates from ex-girlfriends, former cow-orkers, and people I hardly know or haven’t seen in 20 years, FB is marginally useful. There are a few work-related posters whose updates provide valuable info from time to time, and now I can find them.

If only there were a way to block every stupid quiz at once, instead of one at a time, that’d be even better.

They’re cops!

When I was a kid, I was a fan of the original Star Trek series, which was in syndication by then. I haven’t paid any attention to the whole franchise since reaching puberty. I managed to miss or ignore its whole 90’s-era re-emergence.

Well, recent websurfing somehow led me to a Wikipedia page about Gene Roddenberry, creator of the series. Turns out he was a LAPD cop; a Los Angeles City paycheck fed his family while writing TV screenplays and pitching series pilots on the side. He wrote a lot of Dragnet and other 1950’s and 1960’s cop-show screenplays, under a pseudonym because he was still an active member of the police force.

As Wikipedia surfing usually goes, I ended up reading the entries for a few of the original episodes. And I quickly noticed a pattern. In script after script, the Enterprise responds to a distress call, or is ordered in to investigate. Wha? They were cops! Roddenbery sold the series to NBC as being "Wagon Train to the Stars" or "Gunsmoke in Space", and maybe it was in terms of overall feel, but that wasn’t the main plot device. Never noticed that isomorphism between cop shows and Star Trek, but there it is. They cruised around the galaxy, like cops on the beat, responding to a dispatch call. Maybe that’s why the Enterprise looked a bit like a donut.

Complicated

Awesome. Listen here.

Toys I like

Even though I’m very nerdy, I’ve never been much into toys and gadgets. I’ve always feared and mistrusted them, more than liked them. Tha’ts why I love Free Software: I get to be in control of the gadgets instead of them controlling me. So you see I have a somewhat complex relationship with technology: I seek to understand it in detail because I loathe and fear it.

But there are a few gadgets with which I’ve found myself totally delighted:

- Sansa Fuze player: An iPod Nano clone that plays Ogg Vorbis! It sips batteries, is easy to use, and plays Open and Free format audio!

- Asus EEE 1000 laptop. This thing is amazing. Runs Linux flawlessly. All the hardware in it is well-supported in Linux and my Debian distro (debian-eee, based on Lenny), just installed and ran on it with only a very minor amount of fussing. The keyboard is usable, the screen readable, the Wifi and even the webcam work, and it hardly uses any electricity at all and runs for 6 hours on a battery.

I’m also pleased with by Etymotic in-ear headphones (I use them often with the Sansa), because they block out external sounds almost completely. I can walk down a city street past a bus, listening to ambient music, and hear every texture of it.

I don’t expect to be buying very many more gadgets, nor for many other people do be doing so either, but at least I’m enjoying these ones, for once.

Fashion idiocy

Maybe this is a sign of my getting old. But I went out the other night, and noticed a silly new fashion trend: chubby or overweight girls in skirts that are ridiculously too tight and way way way too short. So they’re spilling out of these things, first of all compressed by them, and then they can’t even lean over in it without becoming basically bottomless. And in 50-degree weather too.

WTF? I don’t get the fashion-victim trip. Completely impractical. Looks totally uncomfortable. Probably freezing cold. And, is it supposed to be sexy? Maybe some very tiny model might be able to pull it off, but that’s not who I saw wearing this.

Ugly People

"If I were President, if I were Queen for a day,

I'd give the ugly people all the money"

– Laurie Anderson ("My Eyes" from Strange Angels)

Holy Sheepshit.

I'm now a blogger. Hey, this little WYSIWYG editor looks a hell of a lot like tiny_mce. I bet it is.

Why am I doing this? Because I was told WordPress's GUI is great, and I want to check it out.

Hmm. it's not that interesting really. Some nice features, but it's still a web GUI.

Still, they did some nice stuff here; I'm sure there are things I'll lift.