O.J. Simpson: Pirate!
Category: Obsessions
Seth David Schoen’s latest entry features a mention of the EFF and the CBLDF in the same section. It’s Seth David Schoen: Brendan’s Pet Issues Edition!
Seth also writes a great little story-essay about confabulation, the practice of making up reasonable, untrue explanations for events and then completely believing them. Some people believe “that confabulation is actually our normal method of thinking,” he says. This is not too far off the mark for me–I constantly catch myself coming up with perfectly sensible stories for actions (being in the theater building late at night, say, or buying snack cakes) for which ordinary reasons already exist. It’s a bad habit, but when you have a memory as bad as mine, it comes in kind of handy. There is, after all, the distinct possibility that the explanation I just made up (to apply to an action for which I’ve forgotten my original reasoning) is actually the real one.
It’s also good for explaining bizarre trivia. I have a good stock of facts in that category, but precious little background on them when challenged. If you ever ask me something you really need to know, and I give you a strange answer, you should probably call me out on it. (I’m usually right, but even so.)
Actually, the reason I started my running commentary on this vitanuova entry is because of the first section. It describes his brilliant exploit of the Southwest LAX-OAK commuter flight system, which is like something you’d see pop up in BlogNomic. Seth and I actually discussed LAX-OAK commuter flights on the day I got to hang out at the EFF offices, since Maria and I (and maybe Monica) will be taking advantage of them this summer.
Do you read vitanuova? You really should. Not only will it make you smarter, it will also free Dmitry! Vitanuova: Freeing Dmitry since March 2001.
To: xorph@xorph.com From: support@xorph.com Subject: Notify about your e-mail account utilization. Dear user of Xorph.com, Your e-mail account has been temporary disabled because of unauthorized access. Advanced details can be found in attached file. Best wishes, The Xorph.com team http://www.xorph.com
And then of course the attachment is a pif file. Wow. One of the better social engineerings I’ve gotten in a while–it certainly beats the hell out of MyDoom. As always, of course, it’s not entirely bad English-free, and then there’s the fact that I am the Xorph.com team.
I still maintain that if anybody ever manages to use all the right words, spelled correctly, in an email virus, that virus will rule the world. Fortunately that won’t happen, thanks to the deep and powerful stupidity of all virus writers. It’s almost like a paradox.
CNN: ‘Peanut Butter’ finally free from ‘Jelly’
Even if it weren’t such a neat story, that might be my favorite headline ever. O Homer! O Virgil! Sing unto us of the legendary Struggle of Peanut Butter!
I took a couple chunks of my last vacation days to continue work on the Wall of Glory project, now significantly bigger than that picture shows–it covers a lot of the east side of my room, and has extended onto the door. The numbers so far are twenty-five Penny Arcades, eighteen Checkerboard Nightmares, thirteen AZWPs, three of my own comics, one each from Random Frog Children and Skinny Pandas, and four Grimbleses (you may remember the Grimbles as the only comic that updates as slowly as I do). Oh, and of course the Ninja Assassin Algorithm, which I can’t reprint for fear of its falling into Russian hands.
It’s a pretty great freaking wall. I’d like to make a project of papering my entire room with my favorite comic strips, but it’s going to be hard enough as it is to take these down if I don’t live here in seven months. Plus, eh, I’m kinda tired now.
I say “you gotta believe” a lot, because… well, I believe it, philosophically and biologically. It’s a motto and a mantra. I don’t think I’ll ever know if I picked it up subconsciously somewhere, or whether it’s just one of those examples of convergent phrase evolution.
Turns out there is a specific person to whom it’s ascribed, though, and his name was Tug McGraw, and he died yesterday. His obituary is sad, but it’s also good reading. He lived what he said.
Hey, Strother got a blog! Well played, Strother! (You may remember that I have talked about Strother before.)
As Sumana inadvertently pointed out to me the other day, because I run NewsBruiser, my use of the verb “to blog” to mean “to publish in my interweb journal” is actually deprecated. “To bruise” is just more specific, not to mention way more not-bleeding-yet-edge. I need to start using that instead.
Tangentially, how far do you think the logical extension of “cutting edge”-style slang can actually go? “Virgin material, untouched by an edge?” “Substance unaware of the edge’s existence?” “Prehistoric stuff existing in a world where edges have not yet been invented?” It kind of loops eventually, I guess. “So far beyond the cutting edge that it’s actually on the other edge, the one not doing the cutting.” I wonder what Anthony Burgess would say.