Poking around Drudge this morning...ok, afternoon, I saw that there was yet another 'art happening' in which thousands upon thousand of people got naked in the street, most of whom probably for the first time in their lives. Now, I don't know much about art, but I know it's not particularly difficult or subtle to make an impression on people by slamming their eyes with thousands of naked people. Mona Lisa? That's subtlety defined; nothing extravagant there, just beauty in details instead of the weary inflation of subject matter that this knucklehead here is doing. Project stagnating? Just throw some nudists at it. That didn't work? Throw THOUSANDS at it. That'll get their attention, and that's really what this is all about, ain't it? Getting attention?

Or maybe it's because their all Belgians. Pervs.

Via Drudge

Nearly a decade after being left virtually speechless, a firefighter in Buffalo, New York, has suddenly started talking. Doctors are stunned, and trying to fully understand how the change came about.

The Red Sox did what?

Tim Berners-who?!

Atlanta? That bunch of grits-eatin', banjo-playin inbreds? Atlanta?!

Jesus, you mean to tell me you can't even smoke in bars in the freakin' Bowery anymore?

Put me back to sleep, fer chrissakes!

Some hooks are not meant to hold large objects, such as book bags. Not heavy objects, strictly speaking; despite the hook's appearance of solidity. You just assume the hook's going to hold, because that's what hooks do, after all. But the hook can be pushed beyond its capacity, in which case it will fail. A hook's failure will result in the load's succumbing to the force of gravity, and probably damage to the mounting surface.

Ain't it the truth.

Jeez, at neither the Munich nor Atlanta airports can you find a wireless network. I'll never understand these knuckleheads. At the Country Hearth Motel on Highway 17 in south Georgia you can sit in the parking lot and check your email, but in two of the world's most travelled airports you'd think you were back in the 70s. I wonder what these big airports are waiting for.

I'll have to get used to the time difference again. I just sat down and ordered a beer and kässpätzle at 8:30 in the morning. Mmmm...helles bier. Even though it's Erdinger, it tastes like sweet nectar going down. I knew there was something about this country I missed. Well, that, and you can still smoke at the baggage claim.

Welp, the trip home is over. The little lady was introduced around, to glowing reviews. There was plenty done: the Wreckyll, Atlanta Attractions, Savannah, Charleston, and the davidian compound we visited near Athens, Tennessee. Now, I'm sitting in a plane, about 3 hours away from landing in Munich. I'm sitting right behind the right wing, as seems to be my lot in life, I've never sat anywhere else on this flight.

Speaking of this flight, flew it the first time back in 1997, the first of many. I fell asleep before we left the runway, and woke up over Holland. Man-o-man, I wish I could still sleep on flights, now in my dotage. A friend of mine got a prescription for some sleeping pill, named something like Ambien, or Ambiex. He said he took one, and a little while later he just felt sleepy and lay down on the couch and took a nap. Sadly, that sounds like the perfect drug; at 35, I can imagine nothing better than taking a nap on the couch with the baseball game is on. I'd take that over heroin any day.

Hi, my name is Ken. Rube has foolishly given me permission, as well as a corresponding password, to contribute to this blog from the heart of old Europe. As I live in the U.S., it will make for some interesting perspective.

Me and the little woman just finished spending two wonderful days visiting Mr. Straight White Guy and his bonnie lass, Fiona. First of all, let me just tell you what a wonderful pair those two are. They really went out of their way to make us feel welcome at their beautiful compound, and showed us one hell of a time.

The first night, I met Eric's cousin, who shall remain nameless, namely because he was short-drinking us, remaining sober while the rest of us drunk ourselves into a good-natured stupor. The boys barbecued some good-looking ribs, and we spent about seven hours shooting pool in the garage, drinking beer, talking trash, and, for my team at least, beating Eric and Anna like rented mules.

(click on images to view full size)

This morning, Mr. Guy cooked us up a killer breakfast of biscuiits, bacon, and eggs, providing the groundwork for our foray into the world of newly-legal assault rifles. You'll notice in the first picture below, that Anna, who's never shot a weapon before in her life, just took out the three colored ballons that were attached to the post. In three shots, I might add. I needed about 15 rounds before bagging my third balloon, so, yes, I'm humiliated as both a man and an American, thank you.

Now, let's see some action! Here are some movies; just click to play, though you may need the free Quicktime software to view them.

Eric, running the table. Almost.

Brad with the manly, manly break.

Anna with the shot!

Rube talkin' trash

Three shots, three balloons. Nice shootin', Tex!

There's something about european girls with assault weapons that is just irresistible. Here's Fiona on the AR 15:

Of course, the shot-to-kill ratio would've suffered had it not been for Eric's coolness.

Remember kids, handle your firearms responsibly! Although guys, between you and me, there are few things on the planet that can make chicks pull mugs like these:

Those are gun-faces if I've ever seen one. All in all, we had ourselves a wonderful time. You can read Eric's version of it here.

We've invited Eric and Fiona over to visit us in Germany. Hopefully, they'll show up and we can take them snowboarding. Or just sit around and drink beers as big as tree trunks, either way, I'm easy.

Downright memed me, did he?

Courtesy of the Juju Man:

If I could be a scientist, I would start a vicious underground movement to stop research in the anti-aging field. Humans are not meant to live forever, and eternal life would mean the end of us as a species. We are not yet through evolving.

If I could be a farmer, I would build myself a veranda, with a porch swing, where I could listen to cicadas, watch my milk-cows fall asleep at sunset, and drink mint juleps. Naked.

If I could be a musician, I would never stop playing. I would be the hit of every campfire, the center of attention, just me and my bagpipes.

If I could be a doctor, I would see Catfish more often, I'll wager.

If I could be a painter, I would never contact the NEA for money. I would try to paint stuff people would enjoy, and put high value on, and keep the experimental stuff where it belongs, in the lab.

If I could be a gardener, I would plant azaleas.

If I could be a missionary, I would only do it doggie-style, and giggle at the irony.

If I could be a chef, I would spend all my energy elevating those two highest forms of cuisine, the hush puppy and the buttermilk biscuit, to the respected position in the culinary world that they so deserve.

If I could be an architect, I would try to bring gables back into fashion.

If I could be a linguist, I would translate this blog into latin, hebrew, and aramaic for posterity.

If I could be a psychologist, I would know why I can't get out of bed before noon.

If I could be a librarian, I would underline the dirty parts of every book in the building.

If I could be an athlete, I wouldn't take steroids, unless of course everyone else was doing it.

If I could be a lawyer, I would have the worst won-loss record since the '87 Braves.

If I could be an innkeeper, I wouldn't take yankees. They're rude, messy, and they don't tip.

If I could be a professor, I would be the most unpopular person in the faculty lounge, owing to my obsession with fart jokes.

If I could be a writer, I would probably get picked every now and then to write blog novella chapters, instead of the tight little clique of glory hogs and suck-ups that now dominate them.

If I could be a backup dancer, I would spend a lot of time explaining to people that no, I'm not gay.

If I could be a llama-rider, I would join the llama-riders' union and try to organize surreal steeple chases near Macchu Picchu.

If I could be a bonnie pirate, I would constantly be doing old Abbot and Costello routines with my trained parrot, Muffin. I would be the straight man.

If I could be a midget stripper, I would only strip midgets who had given me their permission beforehand, in writing.

If I could be a proctologist, I would come up with lots of jokes to take the edge off. "So," I would say, "You meet a lot of assholes in this job, too, you know." Stuff like that.

If I could be a TV-Chat Show host, I would blind-side child actors and fluff guests with loaded questions about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Now, I guess I have to pass it to 3 more people:

Sandy, of the Dirty Ashtray
Zonker, of the genetically engineered mutant turbo-liver
Mr. Dax Montana, overlord of the pimptastical bombastical red hat brigade

Not that they'll do it, lazy toids.

Since I met such a great new bunch of people at the Wreckyll, I figured it was time to update my musty ol' blogroll over there. Having met you all personally, I don't think y'all are the types that will get offended being linked by a site named You Bitch. As I said many, many times in Jeckyll: Nothing Personal.

Welcome to the fray:

Acidman
Catfish
The Dax Files
Divine InnerBitchin'
Fistful of Fortnights
Georgia
Grouchy Old Cripple
Key Issues
Meanderings
Moogies World
Parkway Rest Stop.
suburban blight

Feisty Repartee (of course!)

If you were at the Wreckyll, and I don't have you linked, just let me know. That brain cell might not have made it off the island in one piece.

I think South Carolina was one of the last states to rid themselves of the Confederate part of their state flag. After the Wreckyll, I took my baby up to Charleston. Driving through the back-roads of rural South Carolina, one sees that the race relations are still stuck somewhere between the Civil Rights Movement and Amistad. Stopping at a gas station near Columbia, I noticed that they actually had a light-brown colored iced coffee drink called the 'Moo Latte'. What the fuck? You crackers aren't even trying up there.

Jesus, I'm wondering now if Velociman's Artillery Punch wasn't subtly affecting us all, threatening all who drank it with slow madness. Can anyone explain to me what the hell is going in this video?

Excerpt:

Straight White Guy: So, how would you jerk off a marmocet?
Dax Montana (in Red Pimp-hat with purple feather): I don't know, I'm not the person who had that job...

The Wreckyll is over now. I'm not going to be able to write about it until tomorrow, I figure, when the liver-swelling goes down to an acceptable bulge under my sternum. I've got tons of pictures, and more than a couple of videos that will have to be filed under 'incriminating evidence'.

Eric is a wild-man, as everyone knows, but Sam, 'Hollow-leg' Zonker, Jim, and Christina more than held their own. You guys are maniacs, and I've got pics to prove it. Don't forget, videos were enough to get Terry Schiavo's plug pulled; there's no telling what they're going to do to y'all once these get out.

Pictures will definitely be forthcoming.

The ring finger and pinky of both hands. My tongue when I wake up, most mornings. The tops of my feet, if I happen to be lying on my back. My left elbow. Along my left calf, where the hair has fallen out. The palms of my hands. A four-inch vertical strip on the left side of my forehead, running up under my hair, where there's a scar from an old war-wound. I'm going numb, one piece at a time.

Eventually, over years, the numbness will work its way inward, making my arms heavy and difficult to steer with, easing the pain of the shoulders, both of which I've separated doing various stupid things, and the hip, which I broke in college, and the muscles of my lower back, which always seem sore, ever since I broke thirty.

Once the numbness makes it to my heart, I guess that will be that.

Well, outside the tornado sirens are going crazy, there's a grey eerie sunlight, and the cat's hiding behind the sofa. If you don't hear back from me, I'll say hi to the Wizard for you.

The world, without the moral guidance that only a Pope can bring, refused stubbornly once again this afternoon to spin out of its orbit and into a black hole of anal sex-play and contraception. The will of the West seems to be made of sturdier stuff.

At any rate, it's time to play plant the Pope. I wonder if the Catholics will go nuts and knock him out of his coffin and tear off parts of his body to keep as relics. Nah, only a bunch of complete nutjobs would pull that kind of stunt.

Well, just got through with the really tough work, and now it's time for a cookout! Y'all have a nice weekend, and don't forget Saturday Night at Manuel's Tavern!

Wow, now this is what I flew all the way over here for. It's 80 degrees outside, sunny, and I'm sitting in a café in East Atlanta, drinking coffee and enjoying wireless, surrounded by big, comfy chairs and non-judgemental people of mixed races who are also tapping away on laptops, although generally of the *ahem* Windows variety. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, just saying.

Of course, the whole café is non-smoking, but I'll look past that. I'm not sure I can get any work done in such a clean-air environment, but I'll give it a shot. Or go play frisbee, one or the other.

UPDATE:

Ouch. Sorry baby, but as they say: better her than me.

Debauchery for a Good Cause.

On Saturday, March 26th, there will be a benefit for Frank of Virginia-Highlands at Manuel's Tavern on North Avenue. Frank collapsed four months ago at work, and has been in the hospital ever since. He has fought his way back to possible recovery, even after doctors pronounced his case hopeless months ago. He's back from the brink of death, but will probably be in the hospital until at least early next year.

So, there will be a trivia contest, lots o' drinking, and lots of interesting people to meet, including me, Rube. All the proceeds are going to Frank's hospital bills.

Check back here for the exact time, and updates.

Frank's not doing too good. The time for Saturday is 7:00 PM, and y'all are all welcome to come by for free food and drink, as long as you pay the $25 for admission. Now come on out and get yo trivia on. Says Leigh. And she should know.

Howdy, Folks! (Hey, Sweetie!)

Been a couple a days. How y'all doin'? I landed in Atlanta on Monday afternoon, and have spent a little time settling in. It's a lot better than I thought it would be. There are W '04 bumper stickers everywhere, for example, and a nice low buzz of fear instilled by Bushitler and his jack-booted thugs at CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Consitution. That Rove is a genius; his tendrils are everywhere, and Project AmeriKKKa is coming along nicely.

Spent a little time with the cat, restrained myself from whipping my mom's new poodle with an electrical cord, and celebrated my grandmother's 74th birthday last night in the one bad mexican restaurant in north georgia, the one without any vegetarian dishes. And when did mexicans come up with a "brisket burrito" anyway, what the hell?

At any rate, I'm tooling around Atlanta now, in case any you North Georgia boys want to get together and warm up a little for the Wreckyll. Yacht Club, anyone?

Yabu's actin' all high-brow on us, telling us we're watching too much television, and that we should read books. Well, I say 'fuck that'. If I wanted to read a book, I'd join the boy scouts again or something similar, where you'd be expected to read books and stuff, weak metaphors notwithstanding.

I can think of several movies that were better than their book counterparts:

"The Shawshank Redemption", for example. The book (short story actually) was great, but the film was even better.

"Stand By Me" was based on a story in the same book, and it was also a damn fine movie, which I found better than the written version.

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is also a possibility. Both the book and movie pretty freaking good.

"Bladerunner" walks all over the short story it was based on, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep", as does "Star Wars", which was a book Lucas wrote a couple of years before the movie came out.

"Re-animator" is better than the H.P. Lovecraft story it was based on, although that's not really fair, considering the story was only about 3 pages long.

"Bram Stoker's Dracula", corny as it is, is less corny than the book. The book is absolutely horrible.

Frankenstein, however, is a great book, even better than the fine film version starring Robert de Niro, IMHO.

"The Ten Commandments" is better than the Bible, if only because it's shorter and got better editing.

There.

I almost never trust my gut. He's almost always wrong, for example when he's telling me I'll puke if I drink one more whiskey. Pfffft. I haven't puked due to alcohol or illness in over 10 years, I'll tell you when I'm a-done drinking, you bastard little gut. You mind your own business, like processing large amounts of fiber and vegetable material into nigh-unpassable log-jams that are shameful yet exhilarating for the right people. For my kind of people.

At any rate, in reference to what Sam's got up at the moment, I'll agree with little mister pay-your-bill-and-let's-get-some-sleep gut. That chick killed her own driver after the motor block got shot out and the car ground to a halt. Maybe even before. There's no way that an Italian Secret Service agent is going to try and run an American roadblock, period, especially not to protect a communist reporter, which is worse than counter-productive: It would be the quickest way to get her killed that you could think of. Secret Service agents, even Italian ones, are many things, but they're not stupid. That's a high-skills job.

We all know it; she should just admit. Bitch killed her own bodyguard, mark my words.

My girlfriend is in the shower right now, preparing for her big night. She's old enough now, so I figured it's time for her introduction to the beautiiful, sensual world of Southwestern Corn Bread. When she comes back to the kitchen, I'll have it waiting for her, hot and ready. She's Bavarian, and therefore had a conservative upbringing, where the subject of Southwestern Corn Bread was often treated as taboo, or dirty, something to be done with shame or loathing, and only when absolutely necessary.

This is where I feel our different backgrounds complement one another. Where I come from, Southwestern Corn Bread, when shared among two people who love each other, is a beautiful, noble thing. Perhaps the best of things. It is something to be celebrated; it is something that binds two people closer together.

I'll be gentle, and take the burden of the Southwestern Corn Bread upon myself. I repeat, I shall be gentle. Perhaps when I'm back in Germany, we can invite her sister over for some hot 2-on-1 Southwestern Corn Bread action.

UPDATE: That may very well have been the best damn piece of Southwestern Cornbread I've ever had. Just...damn!

but I was bored, and figured a little self-meme-abuse was in order. So, let's see, what's the nearest book. Ah, "Vor Drehbeginn. Effektive Planung von Film- und Fernsehproduktionen." (Peter Dress)

Page 123:

Bei Pfändung und Beschlagnahme auf den Auszahlungsanspruch, ruht dieser und tritt erst wieder in Kraft, wenn die Pfändung und Beschlagnahme aufgehoben ist. Der Produzent tritt bereits jetzt alle Rechte und Ansprüche aus sämtlichen abgeschlossenen und noch abzuschließenden Verwertungsverträgen, in dem in 4 Ziffer 2-genannten Umfang hiermit an die Bank ab. Die Bank nimmt hiermit die Abtretung an.

You dig that? Die Bank nimmt hiermit die Abtretung an, dude. Words of wisdom, my friend. Words of wisdom.

So so, the open source community is abuzz that the Mozilla Foundation is considering dumping the Mozilla Suite in favor of Firefox. I thought that was the plan all along, but I guess I was mistaken.

I like using the Mozilla Suite for several reasons. I'm the kind of person that takes notes with the HTML composer, because it generates cross-platform, linkable, formattable documents, and plus the little button's always been down there in the lower left-hand corner. The mail client is better than Thunderbird, and has worked well with IMAP servers since at least Netscape 4. The chat client always struck me as a waste of 8x16 pixels. The sidebars are cool.

That being said, I've not used it for months on Windows, and only sparingly on Mac or Linux. On Windows, Firefox is the go-to guy, because I rarely surf on Windows anyway and I'll be damned if I'll fire up that spyware-injector from Microsoft. On Mac and Linux, however, KHTML has got me convinced.

C'mon, KDE geeks, and get Konqueror and KMail ported over to Windows!

Dear fellow residents of Germany: If somebody's raping you on a daily basis, are you sure you want to start paying for their Viagra? Jungs, don't load the mugger's gun for him, 'k?

via Augie

Why is it that under Linux, in this year of our Lord 2005, Firefox still hangs when XMMS is running? Why is it that all my CUPS print queues are named lp-something, with the comment 'configured by redhat-printer-config-0.6.x', when I'm not running Red Hat, but Fedora Core 3? Why is there still no way to reconfigure X11 without restarting it? Why is all this a problem, when Linux is supposedly the most advanced operating system evar?

Well, because Linux isn't really the problem. Linux is a kernel. It works pretty well, all things considered. Firefox isn't the problem either, nor is XMMS. Firefox hangs because XMMS has the sound card open, and some browser plugins really don't like that. Apparently they don't teach people to thread around blocking calls in programming class any more. The problem is integration, and it exists in Linux because people are so busy tossing out cookie-cutter distributions that nobody thinks about actually making sure their shit is usable.

The open source community has given anyone looking to build their own desktop a huge head start. There are building blocks for every aspect of system functionality, but there still isn't anyone who's tied them together into a free desktop without making a huge mess of things. Consider the following open source software projects:

• CUPS
• Samba
• Apache
• X.org

•
These are system-level services that are useful on any desktop. One interesting tidbit about these packages is that they are simultaneously available on the world's most usable operating system, Mac OS X, and the world's least usable operating system not written in Brainfuck, Linux. The difference between the two is only in management complexity. OS X has a preference pane which controls basic configuration options for Samba, CUPS, and Apache. With Linux distributions, virtually no work was put into making sure these programs are either easily and consistently configurable or even installed with sensible defaults. They just took the things, made RPMs out of them, and tossed the steaming pile out the door. Otherwise, there's no difference between the platforms' implementations of these software packages.

Well, there is one thing: X11. X11 on Linux is a dinosaur, and is the single biggest impediment to a good free desktop. There's been some progress made after the implosion of XFree86, but the initial spurt of activity seems to be over, and we're still editing XF86Config and restarting eighty times just to get the fucking mouse-wheel to work. Except now it's called xorg.conf, but don't let the name fool you, it sucks just as bad. X11 on the Mac, on the other hand, just works, as we've come to expect. It's not made by X.org, and is not a fork of XFree86 as far as I know.

For a while, I was convinced that Linux's problem was the sheer complexity of the installations out there today. I've got a Fedora Core 3 server in the office with 799 RPMs installed. A server shouldn't need that many, in my opinion. I mean, really, what do I need X11 and gnome-print for if neither X nor Gnome are on the server? It's irrelevant, really. The problem isn't the complexity of the distributions, at least not directly. It may seem like an insurmountable job for the distribution's builder's just to make sure everything works without crashing, let alone actually trying to get any of the own software written that may make something useful out of the 4-gig 'basic' installation.

So maybe, just maybe, they should just start with a base package of the kernel, and nothing else. Tack on an FTP client. Make sure it works correctly, test it a bit. Ok, now let's take a look at those building blocks.

CUPS

I'll admit, I was taken in at first by this article on CUPS' usability problems. CUPS does fail to provide a sensible printing environment for users who just want to print, which would mean most of us. Then I thought about the fact that OS X uses CUPS without the problems this fellow had. In fact, the CUPS problems I've had using OS X only showed up when I was using a Linux machine as a server. Under Linux, I still have absolutely no idea which driver I should use for my HP Deskjet 930c. There are about 50 different drivers called 'New Deskjet 900-series' in the configuration pages, and some foomatic things, and then there's some gimp-print drivers that almost sound like what I need, and all the ones I've tried out to this point provide truly shitty output when printing from a CUPS client, be it OS X or Linux.

Connected to the Mac, it just works, and OS X filters the printer drivers in some way, so that the correct printer driver is easy to find and provides good-looking output. So, the CUPS system itself is not the problem. It needs a management UI, which should be provided with the distribution, and it needs to be installed with sensible defaults. It's my LAN, I want to print to that shared printer, OK?

Samba

I'm comfortable configuring samba from the smb.conf file, but aside from changing the server string and the workgroup, there's nothing to see here, move along. Build a start-stop applet, and put it where I can find it.

Apache

We're trying to build a networked desktop here, so let's just make another start-stop button for this thing. Some sensible defaults, like user-directories enabled, run on port 80, and show directory listings, don't follow symlinks, you get the picture. Ok, we're moving now!

X.org

This is really hopeless. There are no sensible defaults, because of the wide range of graphics hardware and input hardware out there. This is the most basic piece of a GUI-based system, and it's the weakest point of integration in any Linux distribution I've ever installed.

I've never seen a customized or enhanced version of X11 in a Linux distribution. Have you? There are no effects or enhancements that don't come first through the CVS at X.org, which is a rocky, bare, and lethargic place just like its predecessor at XFree86. I'm not sure how well anyone can create management tools for X.org, but maybe somebody out there will one day make a xorg.conf-editor that actually works half as well as the display properties dialog in Windows XP.

Once we've got these 3 elements & 1 albatross working stably, Linux will actually be ready to move into the user applications level of integration. That part should be easy.

My girlfriend had to get up early this morning and go to the doctor. Some sort of girl thing, I believe, and I've left the details as sketchy as possible in my little pea brain. Right before she left, she bent over to give me a little peck on the forehead, and my first experience of the morning was a face-full of beautiful, shining cleavage. Every day should start that way.

After she came back from the doctor, we ate breakfast. I didn't have much of an appetite, so I pardoned myself early and got ready for work. When I came back into the kitchen, she was sitting in the corner of the kitchen, playing footsie with herself. I'm still not exactly sure what that was about, but it was strangely exciting.

On the way to work, I walked past a clothing store, and there was an attractive young asian woman fondling a naked female mannequin. She was just staring into space, running her hands slowly up and down the hips of this well-proportioned, though headless and armless torso. She noticed me licking the glass and giggled nervously. She probably realized she had been added to that twisted playlist that runs on repeat in the dollar-a-minute peep-show booth that my brain has become.

Acidman's writing about bats. I used to be afraid of spiders, but I was never afraid of bats. Bats were always kind of exotic and cool, even though they were everywhere when I was a kid. Spiders, on the other hand, were just flat-out scary. I despised those hateful little bastards. It probably dated back to the time when we were swimming at my grandpa's pool, and my dad got out of the water and put on his tanktop, only to discover that a black widow had moved in and staked out a claim. Despite being a big tough man who had survived marriage, spoiled children, and repeated attempts by the Viet Cong to shorten his life, his reaction could only be described as "losing one's shit." Not that I blame him. He handled it a lot better than I would've. At least he didn't scream, "for the love of God, take the children!" as I undoubtedly would've.

Despite being somewhat tough in other respects, I suffered for years with arachnophobia. Even little wolf-spiders would set my blood a-curdling. I never got over the fear until I met this little beauty: the Gold Weaver Spider, of the Australian Persuasion(I've got a great photo of this bastard. I'll post it as soon as I can find it). The Gold Weaver is about as big as a dinner plate, and likes to build her web across bike paths and swimming pools. She's the biggest land spider in the world, and I actually touched one. That was right before I wet my pants, screamed like a girl, and finally got over my arachnophobia. Pretty much in that order.

As for bats, Australia doesn't really have bats, as far as I can tell. They've got flying foxes. Picture a bat with red hair and a 7-foot wingspan, and you've got a flying fox. If you're scared of anything in the animal kingdom, just go to Oz, and you'll see enough of them on a day-to-day basis to get over it.

It's cold outside and snowin' like a bastid. I could really use a warm, sunny patch of grass and a cooler full of Budweiser right about now.

1. Who the hell do you think you are?

I am the all-being, master of space, time and dimension. And I live in Europe.


2. So, other than blogging, what's your job? Do you work at some fast food joint, dumbass?

I am a self-employed designer, programmer, writer, and network administrator. Fast food joints pay better.

3. Do you have like any experience in journalism, idiot?

I am, hilariously enough, a book critic for a local magazine. That cracks me up.

4. Do you even read newspapers?

In Europe, you don't 'read' newspapers. You turn to page three and look at tits, the way God intended.

5. Do you watch any other news than FOX News propaganda, you ignorant fool?

I don't get Fox. In fact, I don't have a television. I used to have a television in my old apartment, but there were never more than three channels that came in, and they were always showing cheese documentaries.

6. I bet you're some moron talk radio listener too, huh?

I have no car, and thus no radio. I listen to 80s trash on my iPod sometimes, though.

7. So, do you get a fax from the GOP each day for what to say, you @#$% Republican parrot?

No, I get my marching orders per email.

8. Why do you and your blogger friends want to silence and fire everyone who disagrees with you, fascist?

Because they disagree with us, and it's unpleasant when people agree with us. Get me?

9. Are you completely ignorant of other countries, or do you actually own a passport?

See 1.

10. Have you even been to another country, you dumb hick?

See 1. I went to Belgium once, too. I think that's in Europe, too, but they talk all funny.

11. If you're so keen on the war, why haven't you signed up, chickenhawk?

Because I am what the kids today would call a 'pussy'.

12. Do you have any idea of the horrors of war? Have you ever reached into a pile of goo that was your best friend's face?

No, but this one time I dropped acid, and I reached into a pile of silvery, morphing goo that used to be my best friend's copy of "Watchmen" (Dave Gibbons, Alan Moore). Very unnerving.

13. Have you ever reached into any pile of goo?

Yes. While making veggie burgers, you'll spend about 15-30 minutes with your hands in a big pile of lentils, mashing them into a sort of yellow-brown paste that smells like the breath of Satan with curry-powder for effect. Then, you stuff the lentils into a plastic bag and lay them on the patient's chest to avoid contamination, and calmly administer morphine while waiting for a medic.

14. Once again, who the hell do you think you are?!"

I...I don't remember. I used to be taller and better-looking. And funny. Now, I'm going bald on my left leg and can't think of anything to say.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get down to the immigration office and get my residence application turned down.


Via Ravnwood