Category: Uncategorized

A sign of the times perhaps?

County research has shown that Klingon has gone from being a fictional tongue to what many people — and not just fans — consider a complete language, with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary.

If a patient speaks only Klingon, the county is obligated to respond with a Klingon interpreter. So officials have decided to include it with about 55 languages, some of which, such as Russian and Vietnamese, are widely spoken, and some, such as Dari and Tongan, are seldom spoken.

The county’s purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway, greeted the request to include Klingon with skepticism.

But, she said, “There are some cases where we’ve had mental health patients where this was all they would speak.”

I have a new favorite movie from the Prelinger Archive. Your Name Here is the ultimate generic industrial film, built around every script and visual cliche from late-50s industrial films.

I was probably one of the few people left who still cared enough to watch, but last Sunday’s episode of MTV’s 120 Minutes was the last. I don’t know when it was exiled over to MTV2, but 10+ years ago I never missed an episode – most of the time recording them in case I fell asleep.

MTV2 is replacing it with something called Subterranean, I’ll give it a shot, but I’m not expecting anything good.

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

Because you never know when you might need it… how to create blood splatters in Photoshop.

Mark, a lawyer, was woken at 5:24am by an automated telemarketer. This is a detailed account of how he sued and got $500 from the telemarketer, with plenty of details to help others repeat his success.

Friends The Lovetones are touring the west with the Brian Jonestown Massacre in May. Known dates are:

May 1 – Los Angeles – Spaceland
May 2 – Sacramento, CA – Old Ironsides
May 3 – San Francisco – Cafe du Nord
May 4 – San Francisco – Cafe du Nord
May 5 – San Jose – Blank Club
May 7 – Portland – Satyricon
May 8 – Seattle – Graceland
May 9 – Vancouver BC – Pat’s Pub
May 10 – Victoria, BC – Thursdays
May 13 – Denver – Larimer Lounge
May 15 – Las Vegas – The Rock
May 16 – Flagstaff, AZ – Monte Vista Lounge
May 17 – San Diego – Casbah

Check ’em out…

And as they say… hilarity ensues. Well, not too much hilarity, but last week’s episode (April 23) of Off The Hook is well worth the download and listening time if just for some firsthand information on how big business and the government plan to join toegether in the deployment of tech against you in the name of “security”.

Also in last week’s episode:

• An actual recording of the CIA-funded “chili fries” faux Saddam rap song (check out Clandestine Radio.com when you get a chance).
• The details of some obituaries CNN inadvertently placed on their website.
• Details on how to get a free subscription to Homeland Security Solutions Magazine.

So I loaded up iTunes 4 and QuickTime 6.2 and ripped a CD that I’m very familiar with (Spiritualized’s Lazer Guided Melodies) at 128kps AAC encoding and compared it with a 192kps mp3 encoding. I’m not a hard core sound engineer and the only spectrum analyzers I have are my ears and my admittedly rather poor hearing.

Bottom line: I can’t tell the difference between the two encodings. In fact the only difference I could tell is the total file size. 83.9MB for the complete album as mp3s. 56.6MB as AACs.

Might be something to this after all…

Nick Ring points to a news article buried in all the Baghdad looting stories.

Scientists say looters took refrigerators full of the deadly viruses last Friday, but they’re not sure what’s actually missing.

“They are in containers, all of these things taken together, cholera, AIDS and black fever,” chemist Rasa Al-Alaq said. “The viruses that are lost, we have no idea where they went.”

U.S. sources are concerned that polio and hepatitis may have been stolen, in addition to other viruses that may not be reflected in the official records in Baghdad.

The Iraqi scientists say they have no idea who took the material. They don’t know whether it was swept up in the looting rampage or taken by someone who knew what they had.

And if you needed more proof that the entire invasion plan was a modernization of a Keystone Kops plot…

U.S. Marines were sent to guard the facility today after Iraqi scientists reported the dangerous material had been removed by looters.

Er… Oops?!