Booyah!

And it only took a bazillion attempts.

Commercials are pretty much word soup these days

BWM would like you to know that

Performance now is all about logic.
That some cars cost as much as $1500 to maintain is one thing.
That others cost even more is quite another.
That a BMW costs you nothing to maintain, defies all logic whatsoever.
And in turn makes it the most logical choice of all.

It's English. . .I think. Those are English words, anyways. That they have no semantic meaning is another thing whatsoever. I understand what they're trying to say here - honestly I do, and I understand what they want you to hear as well. What they want you to hear is this:

Performance now is all about logic.
That some cars cost as much as $1500 to maintain is one thing.
That others cost even more is quite another.
That a BMW costs you nothing to maintain, defies all logic whatsoever.
And in turn makes it the most logical choice of all.

Thing is, what they're actually saying is that some cars cost less than a specific amount to maintain over an unspecified amount of time and some don't. Also that performance is logic and providing a service contract with your cars isn't logical, and therefore, presumably, not performance. I'm not quite sure about that last bit though, since defying all logic is apparently quite logical.

I used to think that the people who made these things were really, really smart, and that they chose their words with great care, but I'm starting to suspect that they're just spouting gibberish and don't even realize how retarded their nonsense ends up sounding.

Riots in Tehran, Crickets on Cable

I have been completely captivated by what's been going on in Iran for the last day or so - glued to my screen, actually. If you haven't been paying attention, or if you've been paying attention to the wrong sources, you'd think that there was an election, Ahmadinejad won a new term and there were some people mildly upset. The local media here is saying things like "World Reacts to Iran's Disputed Election" and "Ahmadinejad hails election as protests grow" on their sites and dedicating little if any time on their broadcasts.

What's really happening over there seems to be much more profound and much more brutal. The only problem is that there are no official sources, no authoritative reporters. There are, however, people twittering from Tehran, people posting images of bloodied protesters and recounting the disregarding of ballots and the abducting of dissidents. Nothing's clear right now, except that what is happening in Iran bears little semblance to what the major American news networks are reporting. According to the internet, Tehran is on fire, but according to the news, Tehran is mildly peeved. You be the judge.

Imagine hundreds of people talking about football!

An early 90s news report on a new phenomenon named "Internet", where people come together to discuss interesting topics in a polite, well educated environment. Choice quote: "There's not a lot of cursing or swearing."

Adam Savage on Failure

Adam Savage was one of the speakers at this year's Maker Faire; his speech was on the subject of (professional) failure and how it helped form his career. Well worth the time: Adam's speech in full

Omar and the Joy of Life

I have to assume that the naked guy trying to fly a kite from his odd little enclosed balcony is Omar and that he's enjoying life. Taken in the Tenderloin, if memory serves. It was a long time ago.

Yosemite Falls

More Yosemite pics on my flickr feed, of course. Also, Pete made a collage, as one does.

The best tilt-shift time-lapse monster truck rally you'll see all day

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

More nature

Or a decent facsimile thereof - I'm not sure that a butterfly colony inside a glass dome inside a museum inside a park can be counted as nature.

Pictures of things

By noon or so it was clear that my clients had all taken the day off, so I decided to get out of the house for a bit. Pictures ensued



More on Flickr

Mashup Time!

Pete (who has a new site), posted one of those Apple silhouette ad parodies that absolutely everybody has seen. Hence this monstrosity - or is it a meta-monstrosity? Anyways, I went and made t-shirts out of them. Buy them, that I may eat.

Even my henchmen think I'm crazy

Jonathan Coulton is teh awesome



Also: Skullcrusher Mountain

My new favorite quote

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Kung Fu Monkey

A worthy cause

An anti-prohibition march, I suspect.

And what do we do when springtime rolls around?

Plants are in - tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and cilantro this year. Hopefully I'll do a slightly better job this time around - last year the strawberries got strawberry mites, the cucumbers got sudden cucumber death syndrome, the onions got acute onion dwarfism, and the tomatoes got birds. The peppers were nice though.

Happy vernal equinox!

Here's your Ostara flower. I was at the zoo yesterday taking pictures and admiring the unique sights and smells zoos always have on offer and, because I'm weird that way, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to take a picture of this one flower. The people walking by must have thought I was quite mad, but that's okay. Cuz I am.

When we were very young

When I was eight, I played outside. I rode my bike to the seven eleven, where I bought comics and slushees. My friends and I built underground forts in a vacant lot*, yet somehow I didn't once get murdered by a stranger. So this struck a chord.

Some days, we’d go exploring in the woods. Our minds full of fantastical stories of bad guys chasing us, we decided we must build a tree house. So we gathered up scrap pieces of old wood, rusty nails pulled out of rotting pieces of equipment, and a hammer someone nicked from their father’s toolbox. Then we’d nail this crap to a tree.
[. . .]
And we survived.
Hell, we didn’t just survive. We flourished.

The world is no more dangerous than it was thirty years ago. The parents bubble wrapping their kids today spent their own childhood playing with discarded building materials and eating bugs. So what gives?

*Pits covered with cardboard, technically, but who's counting?

Patrick Stewart's Magnum Opus

Sesame Street, in case you hadn't guessed.

Death by hanging - the ebay way

ebay's probably cheaper, but I don't want to get scammed. On the other hand, I don't have to leave my house. Then again, Target's hanging deaths may be of questionable quality. So many difficult choices to make, so little time.

This, though, is a thing of beauty

I give you The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, a 2005 animated short that has a marvelous steampunk feel to it. Do click the little HQ button in the corner and watch it in full screen - the tiny window doesn't do it justice.



The official site has some nice desktops and a screensaver.