lickety jackblog

"Employees met with supervisors and human resources personnel before leaving. At coffee bar areas on each floor, the company provided boxes and plastic bags for employees to pack their personal belongings."

This doesn't surprise me, but it's also the reason i believe in unions.

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 8:57 PM 2 Comments

On Monday August 21, 2006, Dan said this: "If the Dodgers and the Reds meet up in the postseason, I suggest we bet something grand. My suggestion is fueled largely by the fact that we will demolish you if such an event were to come about. Demolish. Like what happens to old dilapidated tampon factories. Demolish. "

too bad for him this happened.

Labels: redlegs

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 12:06 PM 27 Comments

jerry springer wants to be governor.

Labels: gubernatorial dongs, ohio

posted by candycanesammy @ 5:09 PM 7 Comments

I like this one better.

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 2:23 PM 3 Comments

Behold the Rapture

To counteract the Sarge's negativity, I thought I'd post this picture, courtesy of SI.com, which makes Carson Palmer out to be either a superhero rescuing Chad Johnson from certain demise, or maybe even a holy prophet ascending to the heavenly host (probably a nightly commute for Carson, since I'm pretty sure he gives lectures on Quarterbacking at Heaven University).

Go Bigg Cats!

p.s. This picture was taken from this slideshow on SI.com, which indicates that, according to that fine publication, Palmer and Johnson are THE MOST DANGEROUS QB/WR combo in the NFL.
Suck on that, Sargeant.

Labels: bengals

posted by dan @ 2:03 PM 2 Comments

As football season approaches, take this as a friendly reminder for why the bengals will always suck. or this one, too.

Labels: bengals

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 4:21 PM 11 Comments

for those of you who haven't heard, two big pieces of news about friends:

1) andrew and andi are having a baby. they are stuck between two names: face face & isosceles wilkes-booth.

2) todd and kristen are engaged. now they are going ring shopping.

congrats to all involved!

posted by candycanesammy @ 1:20 PM 5 Comments

Pluto = Chopped Liver

The proposed planet redefinition I posted about last week has been defeated by the International Astronomical Union. Instead of adding three new planets to our solar system, you can officially remove one. That's right, Pluto's out. Deemed a "dwarf planet" by the Union, Pluto is no longer to be considered a full-fledged planet in our solar system. It's a sad day for fans of the Lord of the Underworld everywhere. Sorry, guys.

Labels: science

posted by dan @ 10:55 AM 0 Comments

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 7:02 PM 6 Comments

Stupid Boring Reality

As you are all no doubt aware, LACon IV, the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, kicks off today in Anaheim California, and I'm not there. Most regrettable. Nevertheless, I thought I might still let everyone know so that, if you can manage it, you might tune your brain-banana toward the west coast in the hopes of picking up some rogue nerd-emanations drifting eastward on the sweaty humid tail of the Jet Stream.

Guests of Honor for this year's WorldCon are Connie Willis (Writer GoH), James Gurney (Artist GoH), Howard DeVore (Fan GoH) and Special Guest Frankie Thomas (Frankie Thomas, you will be aggrieved to learn, actually passed away between when he was invited to be Special Guest and the time of the Con. Frankie, I'm certain, will be honored greatly in some capacity).

Other notable participants include: Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Ray Bradbury, Pat Cadigan, Gardner Dozois, Ann McCaffrey, George RR Martin, Cory Doctorow, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Rudy Rucker, Stanley Schmidt, Robert Silverberg and Vernor Vinge among countless others (See a full list here.)

In other exciting news, this year's WorldCon will be honoring the 40th anniversary of the launch of Star Trek. As you can probably guess, this is a huge deal. From the website (this is funny/sad): "In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Star Trek, the crew of the original Starship Enterprise have come back![Wait for it...] You'll even have an opportunity to have your photograph taken with them! [This sounds good, but wait for it...] The wax figures of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, & Chekov that stood for 32 years in the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California will be on display in Cadet Central throughout the convention. Stop by and see these remarkable likenesses." (emphasis added)

Ouch. Wax figures to commemorate the 40th anniversay? My understanding, though, is that Walter Koenig (Chekov) will be in the house. Whew.

And if you're not yet convinced that WorldCon is the place to be, get a load of this: none other than Craig himself will be there. That's right, Craigslist's Craig Newmark will be participating in WorldCon this year, sitting on panels to discuss, among other things, the development of online communities. Goddamn, Anaheim California is so definitely the center of the universe for the next 5 days. I'm so jealous of all those bastards who'll be drinking rocket fuel and partying with George RR Martin in the "Brothers without Banners" Suite. It makes me ill.

For Novel and Short Story, Hugo Award nominations for this year have gone to:

Best Novel:
Old Man's War / John Scalzi
A Feast for Crows / George RR Martin
Learning the World / Ken MacLeod
Spin / Robert Charles Wilson
Accelerando / Charles Stross

Best Short Story:
"Seventy-Five Years" Michael A. Burstein (Analog)
"The Clockwork Atom Bomb" / Dominic Green (Interzone)
"Singing My Sister Down" / Margo Lanagan (Black Juice)
"Tk'tk'tk" / David D. Levine (Asimov's)
"Down Memory Lane" / Mike Resnick (Asimov's)

You can see a full list of Hugo categories and nominations here.

Of course, I would be remiss in excluding from this post the always-important Weapons Policy:

It is the policy of L.A.con IV that no real or realistic projectile weapons may be carried anywhere within the convention except during the masquerade or specially approved events.

The use of a weapon during the Masquerade or during a programming event must be approved by the Masquerade Director or the Programming Coordinator respectively. No weapon of any kind may be drawn or wielded in any area of the hotel or convention space.


WorldCon is so kickass.

Labels: nerdcore

posted by dan @ 12:56 PM 0 Comments

Hey Dan, good thing you got the Reds, because after this fucking ass-raping, you ain't got shit else.

Labels: redlegs

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 5:03 PM 13 Comments

does this mean blogs hate freedom?

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 10:09 PM 2 Comments

Interlibrary Borrowing Stands Firm: "Birds are for the birds."

Join me in unilaterally declaring your place of work an anti-St. Louis Cardinals organization! It's easy and free!

Labels: redlegs

posted by dan @ 1:57 PM 3 Comments

A Japanese man was arrested this week after making 37,760 silent calls to directory inquiries because he wanted to listen to the "kind" voices of female telephone operators.

posted by Little Gordie @ 2:31 PM 2 Comments

There goes the neighborhood

Just when you thought you knew the solar system, shit decided to get weird. According to a newly proposed definition of the term "planet", we now have 12, instead of 8 or 9, planets. The definition, from an MIT news release:

"...two conditions must be satisfied for an object to be called a planet. First, the object must be in orbit around a star, while not being itself a star. Second, the object must be large enough (or, to be more technically correct, massive enough) for its own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape."

I don't know about this definition. Condition number 1 seems straightforward enough, but what about that second one? What's "nearly spherical"? What degree of eccentricity are we allowing before the orbit is considered too ellipsoidal to be "nearly spherical"? Seems a bit shifty to me. Too much room for debate (orbital eccentricity was one of the key debate points over Pluto, after all, and it hardly seems resolved). That said, I don't know what the previous definition was, or if there even was one, so maybe this is a step in the right direction.

The new definition is certainly running into opposition, and it has one more test to pass, but it appears to be catching on:

"If the definition is approved this week at the IAU General Assembly in Prague, our solar system will include 12 planets, with more to come. They include the eight classical planets that dominate the system, three planets in a new and growing category of "plutons" - Pluto-like objects - and Ceres. Pluto remains a planet and is the prototype for the new category of plutons.

'It's time to rewrite the textbooks,' said Richard Binzel, an MIT professor of planetary science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences."

Pending approval, say hello to your new Solar System:



PS: 2003 UB313 is a shitty name for a planet, especially when compared with slick-ass monikers like Ceres and Charon. Maybe we should have a Jackblog contest to name the poor bastard something proper?

Labels: science

posted by dan @ 10:41 AM 11 Comments

i just shit my pants.

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 4:19 PM 10 Comments

why isn't our man the one sitting down?

posted by candycanesammy @ 12:40 PM 1 Comments

Damaged Goods

Reds seek explanation on injured pitcher...

Still a "fair" trade?

Labels: redlegs

posted by Vyux @ 10:13 AM 2 Comments

For months and months now, I've been receiving the same spam emails to my gmail account, each with a different, usually interesting sender name (Melda Latanya, Israel Mcintosh). The email invariably contains a dozen or so gif files, each of which is a small cut-out of the same larger document concerning stock options for sale of Yahoo stock. All of the emails (out of the roughly 700 I've received in the past months) contain these gif files, which are differently sized and shaped in each email, and all the gif files are cutouts of the same document. My spam filter catches most of them, but one or two get through every day. No big deal.

Lately, however, the emails have changed format slightly. Now, before the list of gifs begins, there is a half-page body of text, which from what I can gather is a series of sentences taken from old novels and strung together haphazardly so as to create a bizarre sort of dadaist literature. Are other people getting these emails? I'm just a little bit embarrassed to admit that I've started to collect them, they're that interesting. As an example, I received an email the other day from one Gil Allen, subject "Shudder Brilliant." The perfunctory gif files were labeled as follows: scurrilous.gif, punctuality.gif, chuck.gif, which.gif, fatally.gif and dwindling.gif. The body of the text reads:

"Reverently they lowered the body to the ground, whilst the inspector conducted a brief examination. Wont you stay and keep me, company at dinner, Mr Martin? But dont wait for me; I have a cab at the door. Whilst the stout man watched admiringly, he removed the whole pane and drew it out. They passed the next quarter of an hour without speaking. She saw the frown gather on his face, and asked quickly: Why? She saw the frown gather on his face, and asked quickly: Why? He went back to the car and returned with a screwdriver. She dared not let herself think of her mother. Yes, it is a beautiful spot, but the ground is rather damp for you. Youll wait here, my young lady, till you change your mind. I saw a man like this about ten years ago. He may have made a mistake - were all liable to make mistakes. She shrank back as he advanced towards her. My dear young lady, Im afraid you have had a bad time. In another second he had passed through the door, slamming it after him. Ive endured quite enough insolence from you, and you can go. You have that young lady waiting for me when I come back. It was a lady who drove up to the door in a Rolls. Dick grabbed his overcoat and flew to the door. Never mind what youre surprised at, she said tartly. And then, in an easy conversational voice: You have a very pretty house here, Mr Cody."

There's something so artful and lovely about these emails, and while I "report spam" with each new arrival, I can't help but to read and cherish each computer-generated gem. What post-human poet is refusing to take credit for these?

Here's one more of my favorites, from Blanch Trevino, subject "Attacker Ovation":

"He insisted on it: she was ill, very ill. Harriets needle prick-pricked the silence. Let her get herself aman and a bit of peace. No,it only meant that he thought Tomnoddies were fools and so was she. Do you want to kill me with anothertreacherous blow? Boiled shirts, chimney-pot hats, and watching your step every inchof the way till your dying day. He turned his head away and watched her out of the corner of hisplated eyes. Wasnt it plain asdaylight that he would never say THAT? I was the bloke that shot the blacks onthis here identical spot and incinerated them single-handed! The lips had lost or gained something too. He had an urgent matter to discuss but did not feelup to a two-hundred-mile jolting in the coach. He took the cigar from his teethand looked at it sharply, reached for the matches and got italight. My mother was Emma Surface,the convict, and my grandmother was a gipsy, and Im like mymother. Hetried to recapture that liking, but it would not come. Youll have a finger in thepie and my lawyer will give you a hand. No more bad temper, no more shrinkingaway, no more distrust, opposition, and ingratitude. Not with all the snooping duennas in the world. How could she tell him that after all her boasts,after what she had said about James? You shouldnt be thinking of that lot down there, he said after along pause. Its nearly the same as abasingyourself like St Seraphina. Oh, nonsense, she said, but she was pleased. Under easy-going old Larsen development had been slow. She took her hands away and rose from the table. Oh, come back, come back and take me away! There was no need for her to forbid him to question her. She listened without hearing, impenetrable. Cabell was relieved to see the last of him. Oh, yes, it would be hideous if it were true because what wouldbecome of her when he was gone?"

Labels: spam

posted by Little Gordie @ 1:45 PM 2 Comments

Tron and I just booked our one-way flights to Buenos Aires. We leave Washington, DC on Sept. 20 at about 9:45pm.

Tentative plans: eat food, ride bikes, dance, learn spanish in BA for two months. Then ride bicycles west through the Andes to Valparaiso, on the coast of Chile. (The trip will take us from the Pacific to the Atlantic in the southern hemisphere. If I ever finish the leg from Cincinnati to the east coast, I'll have done it in the Northern hemisphere as well.)

posted by Little Gordie @ 3:27 PM 3 Comments

motherfucking heath ledger is playing the joker in the next batman. ang lee's horrible monstrosity, brokeback mountain, continues its reign of terror. thoughts?

Labels: film

posted by ayatollah assahola @ 1:20 PM 2 Comments

The Good Old Days

Okay, by employing that phrase I'm insinuating a history I can't truthfully claim, but that's okay. I still miss the Good Old Days.

Recently I was treated to a view of somebody's Good Old Days, courtesy of Joe V., in the form of a documentary entitled "BBS: the Documentary" (Snappy). This darling little 8-episode series (which I haven't yet viewed in its entirety) details the development and evolution of the Bulletin Board System, a strange entity that served as an introduction to connectedness to many who frequent this blog. Sadly, I cannot claim that BBS pedigree, having cut my teeth on TLCNet, a slightly souped up version of a BBS, but I still get a hell of a lot of joy out this documentary, and--more notably--textfiles.com.

Textfiles.com is why I'm posting this entry. I have had a hell of a good time meandering through this site. It is an archive of BBS files, compiled by the BBS documentary creator, Jason Scott Sadofsky. It's got everything you've been missing for the last 10 years: conspiracy theories, a "how-to" for hacking answering machines, and (yes, Seth) ASCII porn galore!

Look it up if you've got the time. I know some of my TLCNet homies will want to check it out. It'll take you back to those good old 1200 baud, Rob Pickering days when the busy signal was your greatest enemy, and the German board was everybody's favorite hang-out.

###

Labels: nerdcore

posted by dan @ 4:18 PM 2 Comments