the science of laughter
Each “ha” is about one-15th of a second, repeated every fifth of a second, he said. Laugh faster or slower than that and it sounds more like panting or something else.
cussing
I, for one, am glad that the media made a big deal about Joe Biden’s f-bomb. If our culture doesn’t keep swear words taboo, I won’t be able to enjoy articulating those four letter delectables. Oh, to curse with the relish of a ten year old boy again! How I long for it!
blogging and the new
For one, it beats the hell out of just simply reading it:
Whether something’s “new” or “breaking” is a concern for newspaper writers seeking scoops. There’s no reason on Earth a website creating general entertainment bits or comedy should feel any obligation to flood its pages with constant new material. If what’s written in the site is written well, and timeless, the site should work like a book. The reader can click in, scan the volumes of text and read what he or she likes. The only reason website content producers feel the need to crank out “New! New! New!” shit every day is because they’ve decided, for reasons beyond me, to compete with the 90% of bloggers who do nothing but grab hot stories, comment on them and link other comments about it from people in their network of friends. That’s not an audience – that’s an echo chamber. And lumping that stuff in with actual writer-created material is a horrible confusion of content with amateur editorializing.
When I post something on clusterflock newness is not even a concern, I just try to echo the funny, culturally relevant , and/or things that make me think. (via Lone Gunman)
photo out of context
(via Matthew Battles)
J.A. Tyler’s marvelous
Mud Luscious Press chapbook series has just issued my Dr Polidori’s Sketchbook. Celebrate with me.
Update: I changed the link to go to the chapbook page. [DB]
Drunk man tried to revive dead opossum
5 a.m.
A beautifully crafted piece about the AHL_5am map secret in Action Half-Life:
And if the AHL community was the mecca for crazy mappers, then Hondo was God. The immaculate deathmatch maps Hondo constructed were dwarfed by the secrets buried underneath them, areas so cruel, opaque and imaginative they felt like claustrophobic expeditions into a broken mind.
Two of Hondo’s secrets even tied together into a single epic saga where players traveled through time trying to defeat an inter-dimensional beast known as Hgrethedelon, who appeared as a giant, unblinking eye. To look upon Hgrethedelon was death, and one of these two linked secrets ended with players marooned on a floating island that gradually broke apart to reveal a city-sized eye staring up at them. Players were giving no choice but to fall into the inky iris, and drown.
AHL_5AM was Hondo’s swansong- on the surface a cramped city downtown intelligently designed to facilitate action and player motion, few of the players who dived around it blowing holes in one other knew what lay beneath their feet. Behind a secret portal in 5AM was a labyrinth so nightmarish that the only person who knew the way through was Hondo himself. No player had ever seen the end of it, and trying to decompile 5AM to look at it in a map editor would crash whatever software you were using.
So, of course my friends and I had to try and beat it.
I feel like I need to give this a try. Who wants in?
quote out of context
My Lords, I was in total ignorance that there was anything of the nature of a mouse helpline until this Question Time. Can the Chairman of Committees tell us what helplines there are for Members of the House on other issues that we do not know about?
from the comments
A friend of mine went to some big asparagus festival in Galt, or some place like that, and didn’t pee for the entire day for fear of the port-o-pot stench.
dear clusterflock
Do you like, or are put off by, the neon glow of vitamin pee?
grammar school south
Asking a boy trying to learn English in the south to break words into syllables is just mean.
Winston vs Police Car
If you want to see a video of a dog ripping off the bumper of a police car, this is the video for you.
(Give it a minute or so to get going.)
quote out of context
Perhaps the tin-foil-hat-people have had it right all along.
geek graffiti
12. Suck my Dickins
And many more.
(via marginal revolution)
Daryl Scroggins
Imagine my surprise, when after years of entering random acquaintances’ names in Google, I found Daryl Scroggins and with that, this blog. My name is Cary and I lived two houses from Daryl beginning in late 1966 through mid 1968. Daryl was infamous in the local schools for many things; saying “Reorngh!” being the most memorable. Has anyone ever seen a picture of Daryl’s first motorcycle? Does Daryl still say, “Reorngh!”? I do.
Bullying?
I’m watching Anderson 360, tonight. A girl committed suicide, after a few months of abuse. I’m not asking anything more than wondering how such things happen. I felt oppressed a little by those around me in high-school. There were moments of physical violence, I once sat on the floor of the schoolbus because no one would let me sit next to them three on a seat. I was no where close to suicide at the time. Nor, really have I ever been. Still, some times I wonder how I survived it.
I never let my parents know what I was going through. At the time, I couldn’t imagine what help my parents could have offered, had I told them. There is something about surviving being totally alone in what one is going through.
Somehow, I didn’t want help. I would like to think I am who I am today because of it. I am also sure I am damaged, a little, for my reluctance to trust others to help me.
Browsing some art…
It is important that experimentation is encouraged at a time when the entire film industry is in transition
Uma Thurman’s film, Motherhood, sold 12 tickets opening weekend in the UK.
a thought
Perhaps this question just shows that I am an old man who has no idea what the kids are doing these days, but how come I haven’t heard of people using social media as an outlet to raise funds for ridiculous parties in venues that would normally be obscenely expensive to rent out? Think about it. 600 people chipping in $30 bucks? That, my friends, has the makings of a serious rager.
Cat Stevens – Wild World
I have, IMHO, a pretty great story about this song. It is one of a handful of stories that I only tell in person, so feel free to ask if you ever run into me.
I can’t get San Francisco out of my teeth
A man, a plan, a toothpick, a town.
The Rohnert Park, California, resident, a surfer and competitive freestyle Frisbee player — who also likes to transform his house into a castle for Christmas — has poured 3,000 hours into his 9-foot-tall, 20-pound simulacrum of San Francisco. Ripley’s Believe It or Not offered Weaver $40,000 for his 100,000-toothpick town, but he turned it down without hesitation. “Other than my wife and my son, this is the most important thing in my life,” he says. “I just regret that my mother wasn’t able to see it while she was alive.”
I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos
Chatroulette cover of Lady Gaga’s Telephone
(via kottke)
Old Ford On US 366, Mason, TX 76856
now available on dvd
As provocative as the “I hate my penis” moment was, my favorite moment was still the enraged screaming of “What is that smell?!”
(thanks, Aaron)
