From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: What, nobody's mocked this yet? Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 00:14:31 -0400 Kenton Cernea (ordinaryk@gmail.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > American stores are currently trying desperately to get rid of copies > > of "Taiko Drum Master" just because it takes up more space than the > > system console itself (the box is big 'cause of the bongo-size > > drums -- just think if there really were an o-daiko available.) > > You'd be amazed what hardware hackers can do. Hell, I've completely > rebuilt $10 DDR soft pads to near-arcade sensitivity, so I'm sure an > o-daiko controller mod could be done. And I'm willing to bet somebody in > Japan probably has already. Nuh-uh. Nobody in Japan has a large enough apartment for that. The typical Japanese apartment is one foot by two feet, and only rich people can afford those (remember, a strawberry costs over a billion dollars in Japan, double that for the square ones), your average Joe Salaryman has to sleep in a Tylenol capsule. If Joe Salaryman owned an o-daiko, he'd probably have to live inside it, and wouldn't be happy if you tried to play it. > > In Japan, it's a big enough hit that they've released five sequels > > (basically, more song collections) as well as a PSP version for > > those who think that drumming is best done by pressing tiny little > > buttons on a pocket gadget. That's as lame as trying to play > > "Dance Dance Revolution" on your cell phone keypad. > > The sixth release has the Nihon Break Kogyo (Japan Break Industries, a > demolition company) company song; this fact alone makes me want to buy a > Japanese PS2. Big deal. That fact makes me want to start a demolition company. I mean a _legal_ demolition company. One which actually gets paid when I take apart someone else's home. Dismantling the tallest skyscrapers with a mix of karate, aikido, ninjitsu, and Zen meditation. I have the song playing now and it is SUPA AHSUM NUMBA WAN. It's the sort of theme song Ultraman would have if he was a secret agent and had anger management issues. Plus I think it may have been recorded in the Tardis. It's certainly the perkiest song I ever heard about the joys of smashing things. BUH-REAKU!!! The demolitionest song you'll hear this year: http://akuaku.org/misc/Nihon_Break_Kogyo.mp3 Now sing along with the karaoke version: http://www.nbk.gr.jp/melody/nbk.mid > And believe it or not, DDR is available for the Game Boy Color (Japan > only), complete with a mini-pad overlay that fits over the controller for > 0.1% more authenticity! Also, a lot of Japanese men have bought a new game that keeps the interior of their cars quiet! It has an overlay that fits over her mouth! Okay, that's a really old joke. I got noth-- BUH-REAKU! whoooooOOOOOOoooosh! -- K. So how much do we have to pay Tadanobu Asano to get him to play the song on his 80,000-volt electric guitar? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: What, nobody's mocked this yet? Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 01:58:53 -0400 Nick Bensema (nickb@fnord.io.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Video games achieved perfection with the invention of "Pac-Pix", > > except the entire system should be scaled up by 1000% so that the > > tiny plastic stick could be the same size as a real graffiti marker > > because I feel silly trying to scribble as rapidly as possible > > with a toothpick on a business card. > > I've long since wished they'd build each model of the Game Boy with > a 60% bigger screen, something that might fit on a tray table of an > airplane well. With the Nintendo DS, too. But they're not gonna. Japan has an obsession with making everything progressively smaller even though smaller is not better for things that have to interface with human hands. The new version of the Nintendo DS has an even tinier Greek cross pad than the old one. I want to send Japan a telegram telling them that the original Atari joysticks weren't big enough for my hands, so why do they expect me to be able to use a "+" the size of a "+"? My hands could crush their entire country. Wico knew how to make joysticks even I couldn't snap or crush. I also liked the size of Discwasher's joysticks, but I tended to snap them in half after a few days of play. But they did have nice pistol grips. Wico and Discwasher are now forgotten, since Americans have ceded the entire videogame industry to the Japanese. I've yet to see a video game company do the logical thing and offer a system where the controllers can be purchased in your choice of "child", "grown-up", and "American" sizes. That's all it would take to accomodate all three types of humans. They could still do the microscopic controls for the teeny tiny Japanese kids, but they should also do a medium size for salarymen in capsule hotels, and an extra-large size for those of us who wish our favorite gloves came in a size larger than XL. (I would just cut the fingertips off, but then I'd have to get a motorcycle.) Hey, Japan, here's an idea for you: You're not allowed to make videogame controls any smaller unless you also scale down your sword grips to the same degree. And then once you've royally pissed off all those samurai you'll learn real fast that things that go in hands should be the size of hands, and things that are used to kill people should fit in big manly man hands. You can't manhandle a tiny plus! Also, the entire world should manufacture hats that go past American size 7 1/2 (that's 60 cm around) for those of us who have the big brains. I tried to tie a bandanna on my head today and the ends barely overlapped enough to tie, so I have to stick to do-rags that have the long strings. And what really bugs me? There is no such thing as a "Medium Tall" size for everyday clothing. The only "Tall" sizes are for people who weigh twice as much as me. This is especially annoying when you consider that catalog models are usually required to be my height and weight even though the clothes don't fit them right (you never see these guys moving because their shirts couldn't possibly stay tucked in.) Is it too much to ask for a "Medium Tall" shirt and XXL gloves and a giant freakin' bandanna with normal-size flames? Still, if I lived in Japan, things would be worse. All the clothes in stores would be Barbie-sized. I probably wouldn't be able to find a single shirt that would cover my belly-button, and even if I did, they'd replace it with one 50% smaller every few weeks. (The shirt, not the belly-button.) And any Japanese hat would be so undersized for me, it'd have to be attached to my hair with a bobby pin. Sure, my waist is the same size as an average Japanese guy's, but I bet my head couldn't even fit into a capsule hotel. ATTENTION JAPAN, I WEIGH 150 POUNDS BUT YOUR STUFF IS STILL GROSSLY UNDERSIZE FOR ME. FIX IT OR WE'LL START SENDING OVER TYPICAL 300-POUND AMERICANS UNTIL JAPAN SINKS. -- K. I'm tall and skinny because I have that "long-strand DNA" that only geniuses like Mark Borchardt have. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: From the makers of "Baby Geniuses": "Elderly Ninja"! Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 04:18:59 -0400 [www.mercurynews.com] -> -> Last ninja: 'Be able to kill your students' -> -> HANS GREIMEL -> Associated Press -> -> NODA, Japan -- The teachings of Grand Master Masaaki Hatsumi -> echo through my head as he entreats me to attack a blackbelted -> disciple with a practice sword. "Always be able to kill your -> students," he says. -> -> Chilling words from a shockingly fit 76-year-old man who bills -> himself as the world's last ninja [...] -> -> Hatsumi is the only living student of the last "fighting ninja," -> Toshitsugu Takamatsu, the so-called 33rd Grand Master who was a -> bodyguard to officials in Japanese-occupied Manchuria before -> World War II and fought -- and won -- 12 fights to the death. -> Legend says that during one battle, Takamatsu snatched an eyeball -> from a would-be Chinese bandit. Yeah? Well, I'm _also_ the last surviving ninja. Legend says that I ate the Moon -- twice -- and am made of solid zinc, the hardest metal. Legend says that I won over 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 fights to the death, plus two games of live-action Tetris. Legend says if you don't believe me, I can reach into your ear and untie your bellybutton from the inside, then pull your heart out, show it to you, put it back, pull it out again, show it to you again but this time pretending it's your emergency backup heard, and then put it back again before you even know you died several weeks before I did this because of my Hawaiian Punch Of Retroactivity. Legend says I get hitsies. -> Today, Hatsumi's enemies are stereotypes Well, he should have an easy job beating them, since they're all really short and have thick glasses they can hardly see through. You can spot them by their yellow skin and buck teeth and the way they begin every sentence with "Prease, honolable sil," oh and also they make cheap knockoffs of American products which is why Nikons and Sonys are so inexpensive and American- made electronics still exist. Anyway, he should beat up all those hateful stereotypes, except that would make him prejudiced against stereotypes, which is even more racist than just believing in stereotypes, so he should apologize. Shame on him. -> and flagging interest in the ancient art. Ninjas are very interested in the ancient art of flagging! If you don't believe me, watch "Gymkata"! There's not one ninja in the whole movie who does anything other than pretend to be a flagpole! -> [...] -> -> In many ways, the curly-haired, wide-eyed Hatsumi has been a -> victim of success: He has helped make ninja an international -> household name by training followers from Chile to South Africa. -> But he also has watched his legacy co-opted by goofy caricatures -> such as "Mutant Ninja Turtles" and schlocky Hollywood send-ups -> like "Beverly Hills Ninja." Yeah, real ninjas are nothing like those. Real ninjas go around whining, "I WILL NOT BE MOCKED! STOP MAKING CARTOONS ABOUT ME! YOU CANNOT DRAW ME BECAUSE I AM INVISIBLE BECAUSE OF MY SOLID BLACK PAJAMAS AND BALACLAVA!" -> "I think it's pathetic," Hatsumi says of the ninja's modern -> image. -> -> A glance around the dojo suggests the average Japanese might -> agree. The vast majority of students are foreigners, often with a -> military background, who learned of Hatsumi overseas. That's -> because in Japan, ninjutsu is swept up in the wave of apathy that -> has sapped the ranks of traditional martial arts like sumo and -> judo. -> -> [...] -> -> "Young kids might be more interested in other sports that are -> flashy or fashionable," concedes Makinori Matsuo, an associate -> professor of martial arts at Tokyo's International Budo -> University. Hey, nothing is more fashionable than basic black, especially with a ski mask! -> "They tend to be turned off by the image of martial arts as -> sweaty and smelly," he said. Yeah, nobody wants their murder victim's dying words to be, "Argh, I see you ripped my heart out and showed it to me and you smell." Everybody likes to hear, "Argh, you just killed me, but gee, your hair smells terrific!" -> [...] -> -> But true ninjutsu, Hatsumi says, is self-discipline and balance -> in the boardroom and the battlefield. It's about mastering one's -> weaknesses, including laziness and fear, and exploiting a rival's -> needs, such as sex and pride. "Haha, I will now sex you to death!" bellowed the ninja as he untied the drawstring of his black silk pajamas. -> As he nimbly glides across the padded floor, Hatsumi showers -> students with cryptic proverbs straight out of Confucian scrolls, -> such as "anything can be used as a weapon" Oh, yeah, that Confucius guy went around beating people up with common household objects. He was such a violent bastard, especially when he had his hands on something like a shoelace or a stapler or a wet paper towel. -> or "ninjutsu is the sum of things in the universe." AND HOW THE UNIVERSE GOT INTO MY BLACK PAJAMAS, I'LL NEVER KNOW! I think Mr. Data said "Ninjitsu is the sum of things in the Universe" in that "Star Trek" episode where they went to the planet where everyone was a real ninja and they had to use a big computer to determine which of them was the last surviving ninja and Captain Picard made them agree to take turns being the last ninja and then they all hugged. Then Worf complained that they smelled bad. -> "Timing is the Hey, what's the most difficult part? -> most difficult," he adds, [...] Naah, you didn't tell it right. Better start over from the part about why the ninja fireman wore a red obi. -> Today, hundreds of ninja schools across Europe, North America and -> beyond trace their roots to Hatsumi. -> -> He has held training seminars for the FBI, CIA, the Mossad and -> for police in Britain, France and Germany. He has served as a -> martial arts adviser to films such as the James Bond thriller -> "You Only Live Twice" and the television miniseries "Shogun." Oh, so that's why the part where the army of ninjas infiltrated the mechanical volcano where the robotic spaceship that could eat other spaceships was being slowly lowered into it by a string was so realistic. From the moment Sean Connery shaved his chest to look exactly like all the other ninjas, I was awash in a sea of the all-too-plausible world of movie ninjas. You know, he's right. Movies like that ruined the image of serious ninjas. Whoever was martial arts advisor to that movie should be shot! -> Hatsumi has left his mark in other ways, authoring a dozen books -> in English and Japanese. -> -> He says he is not ready to sheath his sword anytime soon, but -> admits the question of who will succeed him as ninjutsu's world -> leader is a constant topic of gossip at the dojo. REAL NINJAS DO NOT GOSSIP! Maybe instead of pretending they're ninjas, his students should just claim to be Navy SEALs. That way maybe they'd get a little respect, at least until the real ones showed up and made them pee their pants. -> Only Hatsumi gets to choose the next grand master, and he's -> not giving any hints. It better not be van Damme. I would vote for Jackie Chan, except he disqualified himself by having that plastic surgery to have Anglo-style eyelids. A true ninja would just cut his eyelids off because he would never want some loser like van Damme sneak up on him while he was sleeping. Ninja never sleep. They do eat, but only once every ten years, and then only cotton candy. Solid black cotton candy. -> It's even possible it will be a non-Japanese for the first time, -> he says. I'd like to remind him that I don't mind it if people pronounce "Kibo" the Japanese way or the American way, so I've got both bases covered, so he has no excuse for not picking me, especially as I've been the world's only ninja for longer than he has. -> "Human beings always want to know what they cannot know," he -> says. "But you can never tell the future." Now he's slamming Willard Scott! Uh oh, this means Willard Scott's going to beat him up. -- K. I apologize for dragging "Star Trek" into this serious discussion of who is allowed to claim they're the last ninja. Up next: I work "Leave It To Beaver" into a discussion of who is allowed to claim they're the world's most powerful wizard. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: You guys and your damn hivemind! (Was: taiko drumming) Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:50:11 -0400 Last night, Kenton and I were discussing the potential joy to be had figuring out how to play an o-daiko at home (that's the huge Japanese drum that's everyone's favorite part of a taiko ensemble.) After posting about it (just after midnight) I wrote this: Behold! The power of the hivemind! After posting my followup, I Googled up pictures of o-daiko to save with the archived version of my article (for use in the "Best Of 2006" PDF to be published in 2059, in Esperanto) and stumbled across this: There is a major taiko concert down the street from me... tonight! And the local taiko group has a workshop in about a week... so, since my life consists of a constant stream of impulse purchases, I wrote a check, and if there are still any spaces available, next week I'm gonna get to whomp on some real taiko. I probably found out about it too late, but I'm going to try to get in. (I don't think I'll be going to the concert tonight, but I haven't decided.) Who knew I lived in such a taiko-rich community? I'm always complaining about the dearth of Japanese culture in Boston, but for once the hivemind came through and put taiko right here right when I had a passing interest in it. Good job, hivemind. But next time, tell me about the workshop a week sooner! I didn't post that last night, because I decided to wait and see whether I got into the touch-the-taiko workshop. I went to bed. This morning (well, at noon precisely) I was woken up by a pickup truck with a loudspeaker driving through my neighborhood at half a mile an hour. It was playing a very loud recording of taiko. Kids from the local high school were marching behind it (the school's where the concert is tonight.) It looks like it was just an around-the-block parade, but since I live at the opposite end of the block from that school, I'm in the taiko loop. Roving taiko recordings have hunted me down to bring the loudness to me. Well, it was better than that obnoxious ice cream truck. But still, being awoken by roving taiko trucks is a new level of abruptness. Curse the damn hivemind, always finding new ways to annoy me that are relevant to the newsgroup. What ever happened to the days when parades were help in the evening so that they wouldn't wake up those of us who stayed up late writing letters of application? You damn kids and your freaky hivemind! -- K. When the drum recording woke me up, I was in the middle of a wonderful dream where I was the star of a live-action "Mr. Magoo" movie, and since it was slowly turning into a lucid dream, I was consciously trying to find ways to be even less funny than Leslie Nielsen. But because the taiko truck interrupted it, I didn't get to find out whether my sequel ended with the same hilarious disclaimer as the pathetic Leslie Nielsen movie. AW FUCK THE ICE CREAM TRUCK JUST SHOWED UP!!! HOW DID IT KNOW I WAS TALKING ABOUT IT? I HAVEN'T EVEN POSTED THIS YET! DAMN YOU ALL!!! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: You guys and your damn hivemind! (Was: taiko drumming) Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 13:11:05 -0400 Correction to what I just posted: > > Kids from the local high school were marching behind it (the school's > where the concert is tonight.) It's not a high school, it's a community college. (AS IF THERE'S A DIFFERENCE.) But I stand by my assertion that the entire neighborhood was designed specifically to route trucks with recordings of drumbeatings directly to my bedroom. If I lived on the other side of the building, I could get satellite TV. On this side, I get the taiko truck. -- K. All the problems with my apartment building could be solved with one quick call to Nihon Break Kogyu. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: My Cat Hacked My Computer Angst Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 13:05:32 -0400 "BecauseImJustThatOriginal@gmail.com" (BecauseImJustThatOriginal@gmail.com) wrote: > > Catsxtechnology is always amusing. CAT SEX TECHNOLOGY IS NEVER AMUSING! If it were, then it could be used to make "Garfield" strips funny, and _nothing_ can make "Garfield" funny, therefore NO CAT SEX FOR YOU! > My cat likes to use the cd remote to change cd's and turn the volume > way up in the early hours. I see a great need: "PawSense For CD Remotes". I miss the days when video games were designed to mesmerize cats. "Pong" was the greatest cat toy ever. "PawSense" must have been engineered to be as unlike "Pong" as possible. The question is, how can we design a similar screensaver that keeps children from touching the computer? I'm thinking something with pictures of Carol Channing singing the entire text of a Thomas Hardy novel atop a big pile of Brussels sprouts. -- K. I always liked Brussels sprouts. But then again, I also liked "Pong". ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Spelling correction. Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 22:39:50 -0400 I should have written "kumidaiko", not "kumedaiko", in an article a little while ago, but I can't go back and fix it because no Usenet articles have been showing up here for the past few days, which means none of you are reading this so now you're all going to think I'm a lousy speller who's fluent in Japanese because you never saw this article correcting the spelling in that other article you didn't see. I don't speak Japanese, but I wish I could. Oh, and since nobody can read this, I'd also like to stab an ice pick into whichever television executive thought the title "The New Adventures Of Old Christine" would get people to watch a sitcom. This is because only when nobody is reading my articles do I feel comfortable talking about committing random murders -- all the other times I was either very uncomfortable or it was in self-defense. In closing, you can't read this, so I'm going to kill ten trillion people with a paper clip. Yay! -- K. Now, unbreak Usenet if you want me to stop imagikilling people who make sitcoms. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: What We Have Here Is A Failure To Think Things Through Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 21:53:43 -0400 Lots42 (lots42@gmail.com) wrote: > > At the local Walgreens, the anti-dizziness medicine is on the -bottom- > shelf. Of course, because those people will be on the floor sooner or later. They only put products for healthy people with good posture on the shelves at your eye level, and at my eye level it's all condoms up there where toddlers can't see 'em unless they're six foot two. By the way, the "anti-dizziness medicine" is really just a fifty-pound chunk of lead. You swallow it, you stay put. 100% effective, though there are some side effects you can't sue them over because you wouldn't survive taking the medicine in the first place. I suggest that if you're having dizzy spells, you shouldn't be crawling to the Walgreens in the first place. Just go some place dizzy people belong, like that wing of the Museum Of Science where they have "Barfing Is Fun And Educational!" -- K. So who made you dizzy? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: What We Have Here Is A Failure To Think Things Through Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 21:44:04 -0400 David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > Talysman the Ur-Beatle (talysman@gmail.com) wrote: > > > > Stores are also arranged to encourage you to walk > > around them in a clockwise direction, so some low-price high-demand > > items get placed farthest from the entrance, so you have to pass all > > the tempting crap on your way to buy one pencil. > > I think we've done this thread before - but all the Krogers' in Knoxville, > or near it, at least, are arranged so you go around counterclockwise. (Unless > the ONLY thing you're going for is beer or ice cream.) Stores are arranged around the idea that the door was in a particular corner of the store when the building was purchased, or if it's a new building, the door is placed where it will face the parking lot. The larger (non-misshapen) Stop & Shop supermarkets all have identical, carefully-engineered floor plans, but half of them go clockwise and half go counterclockwise depending on where they decided to put the door. There are also a few which are identical to half of the others except that the men's room is on the wrong side, so in order not to get confused when you visit multiple Stop & Shops, your mental model must incorporate separate checkboxes for "SUPERMARKET IS FROM THE MIRROR UNIVERSE" and "SUPERMARKET IS FROM THE MIRROR UNIVERSE EXCEPT FOR THE TOILET." Basically, even an antimatter Stop & Shop can have a regular toilet that swirls clockwise, and a seemingly normal Stop & Shop might have a contraterrene turboflush. In backwards Stop & Shop, toilet flushes you! It's clear a lot of work went into the retail psychology of the standard Stop & Shop floor plan -- they're good at funneling people directly towards the refrigerated, pre-jelled fake Jell-O that costs four dollars for four cents' worth of matter -- but the abrupt parity reversals as you go from market to market can give you something like an ice cream headache, except instead of ice cream it's caused by the fourth dimension. This is why I like the Super 88, because even if it decided to spontaneously reverse around me the sign would still say "88". I would simply ignore the "Repus" part because it sounds gross. -- K. My local Stop & Shop is one of the few deformed ones -- it's L-shaped -- and the second-closest one is the ancient Stop & Shop #1, which is bilaterally symmetrical and has that Jetsons-style roof over part of the parking lot. The third-closest one was the circular one which became the Bread & Circus which became the Whole Foods where weirdo hippies like to play mind games with the organic divider bars. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Taste the rainbow warriors! Date: Mon, 08 May 2006 14:50:49 -0400 [abcnews.go.com] -> -> Scientists Probe the Use of the Tongue to Help Warriors of the Future -> -> By Melissa Nelson -> -> The Associated Press -> -> PENSACOLA, Fla. -- In their quest to create the super warrior of -> the future, some military researchers aren't focusing on organs -> like muscles or hearts. They're looking at tongues. That's odd, because I'm licking eyeballs. -> By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other -> equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give -> elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish. I would think that would take all the fun out of war, if the soldiers were tasting sonar instead of just getting that wonderful coppery taste you get when you're about to kill someone. They're making war nerdy for everyone! Also, I'm not so sure fish are great warriors. Most fish I've seen are dumber than TV. At least the people inside my TV are doing something other than milling about aimlessly and trying to eat the pebbles at the bottom. Also, the people in my TV have learned how to never poop. -> Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine -> Cognition envision their work giving Army Rangers 360-degree -> unobstructed vision at night and allowing Navy SEALs to sense -> sonar in their heads while maintaining normal vision underwater -> turning sci-fi into reality. I wish I could envision their work doing that. Hey, wait, I can -- just let me tape this grid of electrodes, frictors, and firecrackers to the instep of my foot -- ah, that's better. Now with my foot, I can feel a picture of what it's like to use your tongue to taste radar. And I say, biiiiiiiig deeeeeeal. It's just fake synaesthesia. The real kind's much freakier 'cause the real kind can't be weaponized! I think everyone should get real synaesthesia because then supermarkets would turn off the damn Muzak. -> The device, known as "Brain Port," was pioneered more than 30 -> years ago by Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a University of Wisconsin -> neuroscientist. Bach-y-Rita began routing images from a camera -> through electrodes taped to people's backs and later discovered -> the tongue was a superior transmitter. Well, duh. Must've been a deprived child if he never got to taste a 9-volt battery. -> A narrow strip of red plastic connects the Brain Port to the -> tongue where 144 microelectrodes transmit information through -> nerve fibers to the brain. Instead of holding and looking at -> compasses and bluky-hand-held sonar devices, the divers can -> processes the information through their tongues, said Dr. Anil -> Raj, the project's lead scientist. I can imagine this might actually work (the tongue is pretty sensitive in terms of letting you read two-dimensional information through it, i.e. you can tell which part of your tongue the pointy candy is sitting on) though I think a more important direction for research would be to find a drug that can cure blukiness. It's a terrible social stigma to be known as a bluky person who goes around bluking and bluking until everyone else has to take a special chemical shower to get the residue off. -> In testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking -> in front of them and caught balls. And don't forget how Rutger Hauer in the American remake of "Zatoichi" could predict where the roulette ball was going to land so that he knew when the casino was trying to cheat by switching on the blinking LEDs under the wheel. See, here's the flaw in this research: Blind people already have super powers. Just like how Beethoven was a great composer because he was completely deaf, blind people have all sorts of magical abilities whether or not you stick some electrodes on their tongue. That's why so many of them have been samurai swordsmen over the years. Being blind lets you use the Force because it's been proven that eyesight destroys midichlorians. It's true because I'm pretending it was in a movie!!! -> A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, -> has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the -> inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics. I like this application. It seems quite workable and useful, and if you go throughout your day being able to taste your spatial orientation, whenever you eat spaghetti you're going to think your head's all twirled around. -> Michael Zinszer, a veteran Navy diver and director of Florida -> State University's Underwater Crime Scene Investigation School, -> took part in testing using the tongue to transmit an electronic -> compass and an electronic depth sensor while in a swimming pool. -> -> He likened the feeling on his tongue to Pop Rocks candies. But hopefully it tasted better. After all, the swimming pool probably just tasted like chlorine-flavored Pop Rocks, and not the awful artificial watermelon-flavor ones they sell at that candy store in the half of the mall nobody ever goes in. And also I hope for all the money they're spending on this that they got more than three seconds' worth of candy. Seriously, is there any candy that takes less time to enjoy? You get maybe one and a half mouthfuls per packet, assuming you don't have an above-average mouth, which puts this candy in the same "Meh. I blinked and I missed it." category as those little wax bottles with the half-teaspoon of Kool-Aid inside. It's like if Rice Krispies not only dissolved by themselves but came individually wrapped. -> "You are feeling the outline of this image," he said. "I was in -> the pool, they were directing me to a very small object and I was -> able to locate everything very easily." I am now imagining swimming in a pool filled with Pop Rocks. I'm adding that to my to-do list, right below "scuba dive in a giant Lava Lamp" and "swallow a nuclear bomb so tiny that it just tickles." -> Underwater crime scene investigators might use the device to -> identify search patterns, signal each other and "see through our -> tongues, as odd as that sounds," Zinszer said. Forget the military applications. I'm thinking the key application of this cool new weird technology will be for people who want to go to raves but don't know where to find any and just have to sit at home with their flicker goggles and their Aphex Twin CDs and their back issues of "Mondo 2000". Adding sparkly electrode sensations dancing around the tongue would make your average everyday set of flicker goggles more fun, 'cause then you'd be able to taste the fake migraine instead of just seeing a fake migraine! Short shameful confession: I do own hypno-goggles. But I don't think they're quite as good at inducing sensory distortion as just watching "SpongeBob SquarePants" with the TV set turned upside down. -> Raj said the objective for the military is to keep Navy divers' -> hands and eyes free. "It will free up their eyes to do what those -> guys really want to, which is to look for those mines and see -> shapes that are coming out of the murk." -> -> Sonar is the next step. A lot depends on technological -> developments to make sonar smaller hand-held sonar is now about -> the size of a lunch box. Do modern kids even know what a lunch box is any more? I thought that all schools had switched to forcing the kids to buy "hot" food so the schools could get kickbacks when the kids choke down their McDonalds brand McNuggets with Coca-Cola brand bottled Cokes and the dreaded Mystery Brand Misspelled Tator Tots Immune To Trademark Lawsuits. -> [...] -> -> Work on the infrared-tongue vision for Army Rangers isn't as far -> along. But Raj said the potential usefulness of the night vision -> technology is tremendous. It would allow soldiers to work in the -> dark without cumbersome night-vision goggles and to "see out the -> back of their heads," he said. They can't just use mirrors, because if an enemy soldier fires a machine-gun and 100 bullets hit your mirror, you instantly die from the energetic release of 700 years of bad luck. -- K. I bought a bunch of glass and silver paint and every time I make a new mirror I have another seven uninterrupted years of good luck. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: fun with big drums: evolution of the taiko thread Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 21:43:05 -0400 So, last week, in alt.religion.kibology, we were talking about video games with strange controls and I mentioned "Taiko Drum Master" and everyone was all like "Nuh-uh, that sucks because it's a taiko game" and I was like "Nuh-uh, it probably just sucks because it's got tiny plastic taiko" and everyone else was like "Nuh-uh, we didn't say that" and I was all like "Nuh-uh, it says you did right above this" and everyone was all like "Waah, Kibo, stop beating us to a pulp with your enormous biceps" and I was all like the President of the Universe and stuff and Fonzie was all like "Ayyyyyyyyy" and we all had ice cream and I just forgot what I was going to say. Please remind me what I was about to say to further insult your intelligence. Oh, right, "Taiko Drum Master" coming tragically true. Today I spent three hours pounding on Japanese drums. The biggest (and most expensive) of the ones I got to whack was an actual Japanese chudaiko (the sort carved out of the middle of a tree -- proper taiko, even the six-foot-wide ones, are carved from single pieces of wood.) A chudaiko is just barrel-sized, not that much bigger or smaller than the larger sizes of Western rock & roll or symphonic drums, but the difference is that when you're playing these things you're beating the hell out of them with riot batons in order to make as much deafening noise as possible. I was with a group of about 20 people, all pounding the daylights out of these things while screaming. After various stretching and drumming and vocalization exercises, we played "Taiko Uno", which is apparently a common game for taiko groups. Everyone in the circle plays a measure in turn. If you play "doko-doko" the next player gets to go, if you play "DON! KON!" the order reverses, and if you play "doko" and then scream then the next player gets skipped. Play continues in this fashion until someone has all the cards, but because there are no cards play continues in this fashion until you have accumulated enough chi to defeat an army of ninjas through loudness. Bear in mind that swinging two nightsticks above your head to pound on something is a far cry from pushing the tiny buttons to play the PSP version of "Taiko Drum Master". Also, we didn't attempt to play "My Sharona" or "Walking On Sunshine". Most of the things we were banging out, as amateur kumedaiko players, would have sheet music something like "||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|||||||||||||||||!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|||||| ||||||||||||||||HAI!!!" assuming that that's the correct notation for noises that make the walls vibrate. (I wonder how the upstairs neighbors felt.) It was interesting to have the rare opportunity to do something where my stature was a handicap rather than a benefit. I was significantly too tall for these drums designed for Japanese guys, meaning I had to use a really wide stance (straining my leg muscles) and also because my arms were longer than everyone else's I had trouble keeping up with everyone else (remember that fight scene between Bruce Lee and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? That's me, the guy who is slower than Bruce Lee because he's not so tiny.) Anyway, getting to work with an actual, live taiko drum master was way cool, even though I wasn't very good at it and we didn't get to sing "Nihon Break Kogyu". (No tap-dancing Takeshi Kitano, either.) I heartily endorse this activity for anyone who likes exhausting physical activity, knows where to find a roomful of big drums, and is under seven feet tall. -- K. And because today I was a drummer for three hours, let the drummer jokes commence. "Hey, what do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?" ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: an important new euphemism has just been invented Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 22:31:22 -0400 Over at www.chud.com, Devin Faraci wrote: -> -> Last week I headed to Los Angeles to cover the Over the Hedge -> press junket. Garry Shandling stars in that film as Vern the Turtle, -> and he showed up for the roundtables, seeming incredibly -> uncomfortable. At the end of the interview his yellow felt tip pen -> exploded in his pants. I dare anyone to wander aimlessly downtown with a large stain while yelling "MY YELLOW FELT-TIP PEN EXPLODED IN MY PANTS!" His sitcoms were brilliant, and now he's again contributed to the world of comedy by inventing something new you can do to disturb people. Go ahead, yell it: "DRINKING ALL THAT GATORADE MADE MY YELLOW FELT-TIP PEN EXPLODE FOR TWO WHOLE LITERS!" Bonus points if you wear a Garry Shandling mask. If you don't have one, you can make one by turning a Sammo Hung mask inside-out. -- K. I wonder who I would most resemble if I could turn everyone else inside-out? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Joke... Has... Landed! Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 22:13:38 -0400 In a completely unrelated note, I just got a joke Dan Aykroyd made thirty years ago. Yesterday I freaked out when the ATM in a convenience store said WELCOME TO I R V I N G M A I N W A Y I was so startled, I nearly choked on a Nerf ball. But then I realized that was the actual name of the chain of Canadian-owned gasoline stores, not "Blue Canoe". So I paid for my Bag O' Glass and left. I would show you a picture of my ATM receipt to prove this, but all the letters P through Z just look like blotches due to Canada using Metric. -- K. Sincerely, The Invisible Pedestrian. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Down Bone Hatred -- The Spam -- The Movie! Now with extra hatred! Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 17:21:22 -0400 This just in: -> From: "Mr,Emmanuel" (allfeell@yahoo.com) -> Subject: DOWN BONE HATRED -> Date: Mon, 8 May 2006 22:11:13 +0700 (WIT) -> -> Dear Sir, -> I have a captivating movie script for production which will yield a -> high return on investment, as it contain all it takes to rule the -> world movie industry. It do? It am good script? It crush Superman to rule Bizarro World movie industry? -> I'm interested in you producing my movie script title: DOWN BONE HATRED. Sure, just send five thousand dollars a letter and I'll send you your title on a three-by-five card suitable for framing. -> It is a fresh idea and original. This is a family film. The script -> is all about four families, the characters exibited between the -> Dad, Mum, Kids. What role does the school scenes potray. The script -> is for one location. Not many characters are involved. It has 51 scenes, -> with 116 pages. It would be better if you removed one of the locations. -> That you don't like and love me is no wrong, as you can't like and -> love everybody but that should never ever be to your parents. But my -> pains is that you claim to like and love me but you lie. -> Psychological trauma of hatred goes beyond the flesh and bone, down -> to the marrow. If all pretext and lies were to be true, hatred and -> it's aftermath would have been won. Hatred is let out of the bag -> once it goes down the bone. Little do you know the the great pains -> you course people through your unweighted attitudes and behaviors. -> What went wrong with these families and the effect of their actions -> outside their homes. Whose shame and whose glory? Whose wrong, Dad, -> Mum, Kids, Friends or Neighbors. "it contain all it takes to rule the world movie industry" = "I have emotional scars that I can only express through semi-coherent spamming"? Hmm. Tell you what, Mister Comma Emmanuel. Remove any one location from your script, take the lie out of the name of your time zone, drop the "My movie script must be great because I spammed you about it because I was bullied as a child" attitude, remove another location from the script, watch "American Movie" and "Overnight" and "Ed Wood" to learn that you don't even have what it takes to be considered an incompetent wacko by the standards of Hollywood, let alone Super Awesome King Number One Of The World Film Industry Of The Earth, suck my toes three times, remove another location, send me all the candy in the world except whatever weird caterpillar-based candy you have down there in Indonesia, remove eight more locations, then I'll give you a whole dollar to produce your movie with. Otherwise, I'm gonna hate you down to the bone. THE BONE, MAN. AND THEN I'M GONNA HATE YOUR BONES TOO. AND THE MARROW! THE MARRRRRROWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!! I'LL HATE YOU ALL THE WAY PAST YOUR BONES TO THE MAAAARRRRRRRRRRROOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!! -> Hatred can not be concealed forever, as it's outburst is always -> negative. Have you ever tought of the traumatic experience of -> someone dropped in the middle of a sea without a life jacket. No, but that would make a really good movie compared to whatever the hell you think you're pitching. I am now writing a check to someone other than you to finance the filming of "Plunked!: A Tale Of Wet Survival!: The Movie 2000!" which will win ninety Oscars on every planet in the Solar System. -> The lingering of long life concealed hatred of these families on their -> members has been exposed when they needed to hid it most. No -> positive co-operation in down bone hatred. The uncompromising pains -> of failure due to hatred. I will like to hear you truely say to me, -> I hate you. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. I hate you for 51 scenes and 116 pages and lots and lots of locations. I hate you for making this too easy. I hate you for not realizing that in space, there is no up or down to bone hatred. I hate you for making me wonder about the concept of compromising pains of failure. I hate you because you're probably not reading this. Finally, I hate you for making me go to Google to look up that your zany time zone is in Indonesia (which is one of the many dozens of locations where I now hate you.) -> The spontanious reflex action of hatred goes beyound the -> bone and marrow of the victims. The moster of hatred has excalated -> to a great wild fire. You fool! Don't you know you're not supposed to ride excalators in a fire? When in a fire, you should always go straight up in an evilator! -> The exasperation of down bone hatred by these family members on -> others before the entire thousands of spectators and millions of -> viewers. The character exhibited in the stadium by these family members -> is their true picture. No place to hide. Stadium? So the one and only most perfect location your entire movie is set in is a school's football stadium during the Hate Bowl? -> The scary of the children is the uncovering of the parents. Who then -> is the horror, Dad, Mum, Brother or Sister? In a paradise of -> deception, who then is fooled? The greatest war , is the war of the -> unknown. The pandemonium of down bone hatred scenerio came to a point -> of rethinking in the stadium. I'm sorry, but whatever the hell you're trying to pitch, it's never going to rule the world's intergalactic movie industry forever throughout all time and space, because it's too insane even for the Shaw Brothers. You're starting to make J-horror look comprehensible. And Wong Jing look sophisticated. And "A Tortured Sex Goddess Of Ming Dynasty" look pleasant to watch. And Uwe Boll look talented. Then reduced me to using sentence fragments because your spam pitch is so awful. Thus, I hate. You. -> I can't believe my husband will one day become a wolf. You are no -> longer the man I use to know. My Dad has become a horror to me. My -> Mum has become a horror to me. My Sister has become a horror to me. -> Keeping away will be to my safety. Dear Mister Comma Emmanuel's Husband The Werewolf, Please eat his face already. Thank you for this valuable service. Sincerely, Someone Who Wants Mister Comma Emmanuel To Get His Face Chewed Up Real Good. -> When you spend vitually all your time to your job, it become -> detrimental to your family life, no time to care for your family. -> Everyone feel the impulse. -> Morris and Doris have created hatred for their children in their -> specified choice of child sex they love as both made it pronounced. -> They agreed to give birth for once and now both have toss the coin to -> each other fifty, fifty affair. Buh? -> The birth of my two kids have brought a love turn around between my -> wife and myself. I'm Mummy's pet and I'm Daddy's pet is a great -> problem. What an outsider cannot do to me is what you have done to -> me, love cannot be forced out of someone. There is difference between -> being good and doing good! -> How does the future look like, when a child says, I'm more happy at -> school, outside my home than being at home. Do you think Hollywood movie producers have a lever they can pull that drops a banner from the ceiling during these sorts of pitches? A large "NOT A PITCH BUT A SAD CRY FOR HELP" banner would save so much time whenever someone brings in "Down Bone Hatred" or "Eyes Wide Shut". -> What relationship has valentine celebration got to do with hatred, as -> there are a lot of valentine cards. -> Misinterpretation of gifts from both kids by their parents. Dear Marilyn Vos Savant, You are standing in a room with only two exits. They are doors labelled "Mister Comma Emmanuel's Idea Of What A Movie Is" and "Archimedes Plutonium's Idea Of What A Movie Is". And behind neither of these doors is anything resembling a movie. Which door do you choose? -> People appreciate the gift of nature, why can't my Mum appreciate me -> for once. -> Do you view seeking advice from a counselor on how to coup with your -> Daddy's or Mummy's darkside as washing one's dirty linens outside. -> There is co-inccidence in some things we do, of which they are the act -> of luck. Luck cannot be ruled out, as one might just feel like doing -> something and futurnately, it becomes the right thing. -> Wrong actions from parents send wrong signal to their children. Okay, this has now destroyed so many of my brain cells that I can only respond in the most lame, beaten-to-death style possible: A "Star Trek: The Next Generation" parody. CAPTAIN PICARD Troi, do you sense something? COUNSELOR TROI It is incomprehensible... but so much pain... (SHE GRABS HER STOMACH AND BARFS. WORF LOOKS INTERESTED.) MR. DATA Captain, I believe what the Counselor is saying is that we are enmeshed in an endless field of vomitrociousness. WESLEY Hi, I -- WESLEY'S MOM Shut up, Wesley! (smacks him) I hate you to the bone with my space down bone hatred through your bones! (smacks him again) I am washing my dirty linens outside in the stadium of down bone hatred! GEORDI Captain, we're losing control of this excalation! In five minutes, our warp core will excalode! LETTERMAN And now to do some evil by changing a letter... (LETTERMAN TURNS LT. WORF INTO LT. WOLF. WOLF EATS THE FACE OF MR. COMMA EMMANUEL.) CAPTAIN PICARD Well, that's over with. (SUDDENLY THE SHIP SPLITS OPEN AND HE FALLS OUT. HE FALLS THROUGH THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE AND IS PLUNKED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN WITHOUT A LIFE JACKET.) CAPTAIN PICARD I have learned a valuable lesson. And I am sorry if my drowning creates any more down bone hatred. (drowns) WESLEY Surprise! This all took place on the holodeck! (WITHOUT WARNING, A GIANT WAVE OF SPAM WASHES THROUGH THE HOLODECK, DRENCHING EVERYONE WITH PINK GREASE EXTRACTED FROM THE MARROW OF PIGS FILLED WITH DOWN BONE HATRED. EVERYBODY IS DROWNING IN SPAM.) CAPTAIN PICARD The spam has come true! All hands, abandon script! (THE END.) And now, back to the pitch from our movie genius from a country that has moved beyond talkies to spammies. -> They live in pretty deceit. The brightness of love can never be -> comprehended by the darkness of hatred. We can live together it is a -> matter of understanding. Who is serious and who is funny? Competition -> between love and hatred, who wins? What does it take to say I am sorry? -> Four families are in the major scenerio. Three are families with vary -> degree of hatred within them. One family of love won it all. Love is -> master over hatred. -> -> Yours Faithfully, -> Emmanuel. Eh. Needs the world's biggest pile of chimps. -- K. There really should be a special awards show for imaginary movies that crazy idiots post to the Internet. I will now write that special imaginary awards show and post it to the Internet. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Down Bone Hatred -- The Spam -- The Movie! Now with extra hatred! Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 18:36:26 -0400 David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > There really should be a special > > awards show for imaginary movies > > that crazy idiots post to the > > Internet. I will now write that > > special imaginary awards show > > and post it to the Internet. > > Promises promises. So of the various things I posted this weekend, which ones did my Internet provider decide not to propagate? Did you get the one that contained the 3,000-page special imaginary awards show? Or just the one about the tongue radar, the one about Taiko Uno, and the one about Garry Shandling pretending he doesn't pee his pants? Did you get the ones about the mirror-image supermarkets and the one where I used an ATM inside Dan Aykroyd? > Dave "but just in case I'm preparing mental popcorn" DeLaney That's what KFC calls their chopped monkey brain fritters. Of course, it costs them a lot of money to use real monkey brains, because they have to throw away the rest of the monkey (monkeys aren't good for anything once they're too dead to roller-skate) so KFC is trying to develop a new version of Animal 57 that tastes like monkey brains, unlike the current one which tastes like poisoned chicken. This is why I prefer Popeye's, because they still make their jambalaya out of genuine human-fed veal. (It's not cannibalism if the calf eats it for you!) Also I heard Subway lies when they claim they bake their own bread. That's not baking, that's just touching! -- K. So what flavor popcorn do you have in your brain? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Taking the last remaining traces of "fun" out of school Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 17:22:15 -0400 Here's a TV news item I saw linked from Fark.com: [www.katu.com] -> -> Is litigation taking the 'play' out of kids' playgrounds? -> -> May 8, 2006 -> By Susan Harding -> -> PORTLAND, Ore -- Most adults can remember the carefree days of -> childhood, climbing trees and jumping from swings, often on -> schoolyard playgrounds. But the only people who watch local TV news are people who can't remember back that far. -> Climbing, swinging and sliding was once a rite of passage during -> recess, a time for adventure, to see how high, how far and how -> fast we could go as a kid. -> -> Today, kids find themselves grounded, victims of a culture of -> fear and injury litigation. -> -> A growing number of school districts are going so far as to ban -> the game of tag and are even posting signs that read "no running -> on the playground." They don't understand the logic that little kids use. They're going to see a "no running" sign and realize that it prohibits running but not flying ninja kicks. And when the kids get chastized for breaking the other kids' faces they'll scream "BUT I WASN'T RUNNING!" After that, the signs will be amended to list every possible verb, but one of these huge signs will fall over, killing everyone. -> Is there real danger on the modern playground? -> -> Safety advocates say yes and want to eliminate it. -> -> Their first target: swing sets. -> -> They've convinced Portland Public Schools to remove all swings -> from elementary schools playgrounds. But on the bright side, the schools are getting some new equipment. For instance, the bathrooms will now be equipped with three seashells. -> But even a playground inspector finds the removal of swing sets a -> little over the top. -> -> He says that swinging creates motion and is an important part of -> childhood development. That quote will come back to haunt the schools in about twenty years when people start suing because they failed to graduate from medical school because they never learned to swing. -> But the safety advocates don't stop there. -> -> Portland Public Schools have also rejected merry go rounds, tube -> slides, track rides, arch climbers, and teeter totters. If they really want to lengthen the kids' lives, they shouldn't ban teeter totters, they should ban Tater Tots. -> At Grant Park in Northeast Portland, some parents embrace a new -> plastic enclosed play area, noting that the construction of the -> play equipment does not have sharp corners, and soft surfaces are -> used in many areas. In my day, elementary school playgrounds were made from soft cushy grass completely covered with thick layers of concrete, asphalt, and more concrete. Why? Because the rest of the world -- such as the classrooms, and the gymnasiums, and the homes -- also has hard floors, and kids run around in those places but still grow up. If they want to stop kids from getting hurt, three words: NO FUCKING GYM CLASS. "Now, Little Billy, you can go outside and play on the nice soft surfaces, right after we finish teaching you to get hit in the face with dozens of overinflated dodgeballs..." -> [...] -> -> Our lawsuit happy culture has schools and parks installing -> low-to-the-ground play structures that some have derided as -> "dumbed down." "Whee! I am going down a slide!" was just too brainy. Plus the kids could never get on the slide anyway because Albert Einstein kept hogging it. -> Now, it seems, anything with moving parts is a lawsuit liability, -> and in some places, that even means moving legs. That's why kids everywhere now play that safe new game where they just take turns strangling each other. That involves the least motion possible, at least once the motor cortex is destroyed. I'm glad schools are now encouraging kids to play the choking game instead of letting them do dangerous things like possessing physical instrumentality. (This is how the Krell got their start -- they banned swingsets and within minutes their planet was doomed.) -> In Broward County, Florida, there's a new rule on the playground: -> no running. -> -> A parent there commented that "no running on the playground, -> that's kind of like no playing on the playground" and another -> called for a review of what exactly was "safe" or unsafe. The "No Playing On The Playground" signs won't last long, because someone will correct them to "No Playing On The Playnerf". In the future, it will be illegal to mention hard surfaces! Anyone who does will be arrested and put behind noodles! -> So what can kids still play? -> -> Not dodge ball or tether ball, that's still too dangerous. And in -> Beaverton, at Barnes Elementary School, rules there forbid the -> game of tag. This means that at the precise moment that the new rules went into effect, someone in Beaverton became "It" forever. His new nickname is "Perma-It". Also the new rules can never be repealed because of the "no givebacks" clause. -> In Salem, an elementary education director says "we don't -> encourage the game of tag because it encourages fights." Then how will the kids learn to play hockey? -> But at Catlin Gabel, a private school, there's an entirely -> different philosophy at work on the playground. One where monkey -> bars, slides and other playground favorites are used daily by a -> roiling mass of youngsters, some who come away with skinned knees -> or other minor boo-boos. Yeah, but those are just the rich kids who can afford to go to a private school. Gravity doesn't work the same on them. That's the only explanation why rich people's monocles stay up! -> Kids there are taking chances, even jumping from swings, and it's -> all encouraged. I want to get a job providing this sort of encouragement: "JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!" -> An adult watching the students play says it's really the nature -> of childhood to take small risks and find out what they can do -> and what they can't do. But on the other hand, society also needs to produce adults who are afraid of ever doing anything, because otherwise there would be nobody to put on safety gear and slowly ride the tricycle down the gentle incline on "Chiseen". -> One child psychologist points to the rising trend of childhood -> obesity in defense of letting kids play like kids. -> -> National statistics indicate 34 percent of kids are overweight, -> with obesity projected to be nearly 50 percent in the year 2010. hmm. 2006 -- 34% 2010 -- 50% therefore (50%-34%)/(2010-2006) = 4%/year therefore 2023 -- 102% By the year 2023, even kids who don't exist will be fat! And I wonder GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES why kids GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES are getting GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES so GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES fat. Can someone please give Jamie Oliver some medication so he wouldn't be so obnoxious, because then maybe people would listen to him? -> But safety advocates point to different numbers, saying -> playground accidents cause 200,000 injuries nationwide each year, -> and 17 deaths. So close the playgrounds completely! There will be zero playground deaths if the kids go play in traffic! -> It's a debate that is sure to continue, as some say kids can -> never be safe enough, and others feel that if kids can't jump -> from the swing set and maybe skin a knee, they are not learning -> valuable life lessons. Another valuable life lesson: This was the closest to serious journalism that TV news ever comes. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Taking the last remaining traces of "fun" out of school Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 19:53:02 -0400 Talysman the Ur-Beatle (talysman@gmail.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > And I wonder GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES why kids GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES > > are getting GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES so GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES fat. > > Speaking of GREASY SCHOOL LUNCHES, our favorite website about school > lunches is no more. I checked the Harrisonburg, VA website where we > found all those yummy pictures of italian dunkers and plastic pizza, > but [...] If there are any photos of the menu items, they are no > longer online, as far as I can tell. Not to worry. I'll go hunting for new ones to make fun of when I have a chance -- it'll give me something to bash keys about the next time I'm on a long train ride with a bunch of people who hate the sound of angry typing. > The sad thing is: even though the website looks better, I doubt this > means the food has improved. These days it's hard to even consider the stuff food. The way I currently think of it is I ask myself, "Do any of these products contain any nutrition?" 'Cause schools are pushing new frontiers in discovering substances with less nutrition than Jell-O. On an unrelated note, I'm currently addicted to spicy olives. I'm aware they don't have much nutritive value -- and loads of salt -- though getting a lot more olive oil (and, of course, more hot pepper) in my diet can't hurt. But mainly I'm just having daily cravings for the olives with the red stuff stuck to them. Is that so wrong? I also can't get enough pureed coconut cocktail and V-8 (no, not at the same time) so I'm ingesting insane amounts of fiber in liquid form. I worry that I might discover a way to get too much fiber, and then I'll turn into cardboard. -- K. Even "Mr. Bungle" knows that it's not politically correct to call them "Italian dunkers". They're now "multicultural habitual alcohol users". ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Taking the last remaining traces of "fun" out of school Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 19:38:24 -0400 Paula (mmmtoblerone@earthlink.ent) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > If they really want to lengthen the kids' lives, they shouldn't > > ban teeter totters, they should ban Tater Tots. > > So you were responsible for the tater tot ban in our school district, > huh? You BASTARD! Anna and Mimi haven't bought cafeteria lunch > since. Well, you know I've always had a fascination with school lunches, and the crappiness thereof. They taste terrible, they contain no nutrition, they turn kids into strange zombie creatures, and worst of all, the menus are so uncreative. ("How should we misspell 'Tater Tots' this week?" is the extent of it.) Jamie Oliver is a well-known British restaurant chef. He's best-known for being the incredibly obnoxious a-hole on the reality show "Hell's Kitchen" a couple of years ago -- that was one of those shows that came on after something I liked but contained enough negative entertainment to cause me to bodily hurl myself across the room to tackle the remote the moment the previous show ended. He's quite the jerk, and any show which revolves around "LOOK! HE'S STILL BEING A JERK! LOOK AT HIM BE A JERK!" is intolerable. But, around the time he was making that, he started ranting to the British press about the unhealthiness of the swill kids are served at school, and everything he said was completely reasonable, even though they had to bleep half the words. It became a pretty big deal in England, this battle between the TV chef loudmouth and the companies making turd-like food such as "Turkey Twizzlers". So, his next show was "Jamie's School Lunch Project", which is now airing on cable in the US (I think it was on in England last year.) It's basically just him going into schools and trying to beat some sense into the administrators, the lunch ladies, the suppliers, the parents, and the children. What's fascinating is watching how tortured he is over the fact that he can't understand that kids actually like eating the exact same bad-tasting, unhealthy grease every day of their lives and not the better food he cooks for them. He doesn't seem to have a grasp of the way kids have weirdly defective food preferences, and it's highly amusing seeing him feeling bad over these interactions with kids who are absolutely intractable, even compared to him. Last night's episode had him holding up various vegetables and asking the kids what they were, and not one of them knew what asparagus was, but they could all recognize a Domino's logo with the name removed. Then he made them cry by trying to take away their lunch boxes. (I'm not sure getting the kids to spend one day not eating gross food is worth traumatizing them for life. Even after they grow up, they're still going to wet their pants whenever they see a guy with bad hair cursing.) The series will have to either end with him getting Tater Tots, Turkey Twizzlers, Alien Faces, and Fish Feet banned throughout the British Empire, or else he'll explode and then the kids will pelt him with potato greaseballs. Anyway, congratulations on having a progressive school district, providing it was a blanket ban on meals consisting of nothing but deep-fried starch, and not just "We're banning Tater Tots because we got some money from McCain, manufacturers of their competitor, Cheaper Tots." Although they contain no nutrition of any sort, Tater Tots are fine as an occasional side dish with an actual meal, but schools tend to serve meals that consist of nothing but that sort of extruded greased starch, over and over, 'cause all the meat and vegetables have to be saved for more important sectors of society, i.e. put into gourmet dog food. It's amazing how poorly the United States treats the children in its public schools, feeding them worse stuff than prisoners get. 'Cause kids aren't smart enough to realize they outnumber the teachers and could -- no, should -- take over the school. -- K. Another "reality" series, "Honey, I'm Killing The Kids", is a worse piece of trash than any of the food it purports to rail against. Remember, if your kids ever eat anything that was canned or frozen, they'll grow up to WEAR GLASSES! But if you feed them only hand-picked raw vegetables, their glasses will slowly evaporate over a five-year period while making WHOOSH ZOWIE noises to let you know it's real science! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: a cheap shot at a beloved cartoon character Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 17:23:19 -0400 From a journal abstract linked from MetaFilter.com: [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] -> -> Addiction. 2001 Nov;96(11):1663-6. -> -> Cannabis-induced Koro in Americans. -> -> Earleywine M. -> Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, -> Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA. -> -> AIMS: Koro, an acute panic reaction related to the perception -> of penile retraction, was once considered limited to specific -> cultures. The disorder has appeared as part of a panic response -> to cannabis, but only in citizens of India. This study looked for -> cannabis-induced Koro in Americans. Hmm. This explains why SpongeBob has no penis. If you don't believe me, watch the first episode. It begins with SpongeBob sleeping in his underpants. When his alarm clock goes off, he jumps out of them and into his square pants. That reveals two truths: (1) you can clearly see his lack of a penis, and (2) he likes to keep his non-penis in an unfurnished basement. Also, his pants aren't square, they're oblong. But an unfunny cartoon show already owns the word "oblong" so there you go. He's SpongeBob SquarePants, he lives in a pineapple under the sea, he lost his penis from smoking the weed, and he don't wear no underpants when you meet him at the shopping mall. In fact, the next time SpongeBob is at your mall, you should just stay home. He's funnier on TV than when he's at the mall. Less flammable, too. Who knew that foam rubber could burn so fast? Anyway, I did a little digging and found other papers that say drugs are bad because they can make you think you have no weenie: => Urol Int. 2006;76(3):278-80. => => Cannabis-induced koro-like syndrome. A case report and mini review. => => Kalaitzi CK, Kalantzis A. => Department of Psychiatry, Athens General Hospital G. Gennimatas, => Athens, Greece. => => [...] In the West, koro syndrome has been reported only in => relation with various somatic, psychiatric and drug-induced => disorders. The vast majority of non-psychiatric cases was related => to neurological disorders or intoxication with cannabis or => amphetamine. This is the first case of cannabis-induced koro-like => syndrome ever reported in Greece. -> Addiction. 1994 Aug;89(8):1017-20. -> -> Koro following cannabis smoking: two case reports. -> -> Chowdhury AN, Bera NK. -> Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Postgraduate Medical -> Education & Research, UNDCP Nodal Centre for Drug Abuse -> Prevention, Calcutta, India. -> -> Koro in the background of drug abuse is quite rare. The present -> report of Koro during the first experience with cannabis is the -> only account of its kind in the world Koro literature to date. -> The nature and extent of this genital depersonalization is -> discussed. "Genital depersonalization" is disturbing, because it implies that the normal state of affairs if "genital personalization", which makes me wonder what people have been doing with Bedazzlers. But wait! The condition's been officially named! => Int J Clin Pract. 2004 Jul;58(7):717-9. => => Whizz-dick: side effect, urban myth or amfetamine-related => koro-like syndrome? => => Bloor RN. => Academic Psychiatry Unit, Keele University Medical School, => Staffordshire, UK. => => A case is presented of a patient who described a koro-like => syndrome related to amfetamine use; this consisted of a => perception that his penis had reduced in size and was at risk of => being sucked into his body. He described this as Whizz-Dick. This => condition was also reported independently by amfetamine users => attending a drug-addiction clinic. They described Whizz-Dick as a => temporary penile shrinkage secondary to amfetamine use. => Descriptions of penile shrinkage related to amfetamine in => literature and from Internet sources are described. The => relationship between Whizz-Dick and koro and its possible links => with other psychosexual problems previously reported to be => associated with amfetamine use are discussed. I didn't know that British people spelled it "amfetamine", though of course I've heard of "Whizz-dick". It's like Spotted Dick except also like Toad In The Hole. By the way, when England first tried to export Toad In The Hole to China, they mistranslated its name as "Carbonated Beverage". Spotted Dick is always on the minds of British medical professionals: [news.bbc.co.uk] -> -> [...] -> -> 'Spotted Dick' will replace 'Spotted Richard' after -> it was decided patients are capable of overcoming -> their blushes long enough to ask for it. -> -> The name change was originally introduced three years -> [ago] by the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust. The problem is, the name's still offensive to poor little Spot. He wants it renamed "Bi-Coloured Richard". Except that that's offensive to people who are, you know, (whispering) "mixed", so from now on it'll just be called "Pudding With Raisins That Usually Don't Have Wings". Be sure to look for Spotted Dick and Zincfinger in an exciting new James Bond movie about fruit flies: => EMBO J. 2005 Dec 21;24(24):4304-15. Epub 2005 Nov 24. => => Spotted-dick, a zinc-finger protein of Drosophila required for => expression of Orc4 and S phase. => => Page AR, Kovacs A, Deak P, Torok T, Kiss I, Dario P, Bastos C, => Batista P, Gomes R, Ohkura H, Russell S, Glover DM. => Cancer Research UK Cell Cycle Genetics Research Group, University => of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. => => The highly condensed chromosomes and chromosome breaks in mitotic => cells of a Drosophila mutant, spotted-dick/pita, are the => consequence of defects in DNA replication. Reduction of levels of => Spotted-dick protein, by either RNAi or mutation, leads to the => accumulation of cells that have DNA content intermediate to 2N => and 4N in proliferating tissues and also compromises => endoreduplication in larval salivary glands. The Spotted-dick => Zinc-finger protein is present in the nuclei of cells committed => to proliferation but necessary in cells undertaking S phase. We => show that Spotted-dick/Pita functions as a transcription factor => [...] "Spotted-dick/Pita functions" sounds like an entire category of restaurants I wouldn't go to. Unless "pita" is just an acronym for "pain in the ass" in which case it's a category of mathematics where all the story problems have raisins mixed in. And now, I'd like to leave you with something new to worry about. -> Med J Malaysia. 1995 Jun;50(2):175-7. -> -> "Koro"-like syndrome affecting the tongue--a case report. -> -> Chin CN, S'ng KH. -> Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti -> Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. -> -> A 52-year-old man presented with a 2-year history of episodic -> retraction of his tongue into the throat with a belief that he -> will die if the retraction is complete. You'd better think about your tongue right now to make sure it's not doing that. Can you feel where your tongue is in your mouth? If it feels like it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, you're normal. But call a doctor immediately if you ever stop noticing that your tongue is getting bigger. -- K. Oh, how I miss the days back when Charles Schulz could still cause cultural mayhem. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: a cheap shot at a beloved cartoon character Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 14:49:28 -0400 David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > [...] (I sometimes think that the BEST way to get American men > to start exercising again would be to remind them that the fatter > you get, the shorter your penis gets...) Yeah, but Orson Welles more than made up for it by having big balls. If you ever meet Maurice LaMarche, you should ask him to do an impression of what Orson Welles would sound like with a different penis. Then get John DiMaggio to yell "WOOOO!" in a robot voice. Then you'd have a whole cartoon, provided people didn't mind that you didn't bother drawing any pictures. So in conclusion, if someone is fat but has a tiny penis, I'd rather encourage them to make movies like "F For Fake" than lose weight. My current theory is that the original title was "F For Fuck You Audience, Gimme My Money And Color Me Gone!" Man, I love how Orson loved to kick audiences in the teeth. As opposed to George Lucas, who just induces that sickening feeling of disappointment by adding more Ewoks every time you blink. The other guy in Hollywood who makes up for whatever his endowment might be by having big balls is James Woods, who is so tough that he was able to do a movie where he had the world's largest vagina and nobody dared laugh. Of course, that was a Cronenberg film, and he's not interested in giving his actors giant penises, just extra penises and the occasional giant killer vagina. Him and Takao Nakano should get together sometime and compare their perversions. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, fat people should lose weight. Then there will be more food for those of us with big penises. Also, SpongeBob is no Roddy McDowall. > Dave "harnessing one national obsession to counteract another" DeLaney I don't think that you're wearing the parachute harness right. -- K. I have Nakano's "Killer Pussy" (but only without subtitles), and I can't find his "Queen Bee Honey". If anyone has "Queen Bee Honey", I want a copy: http://xoomer.virgilio.it/amasoni2002/shl/internationals/queen_bee_honey_(2001).htm ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: a cheap shot at a beloved cartoon character Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:30:00 -0400 Glenn Knickerbocker (NotR@bestweb.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > => perception that his penis had reduced in size and was at risk of > > => being sucked into his body. > > If your penis has reduced in size and is at risk of being sucked into > your body, you can bet you won't perceive it. Depends on what your hand was holding at the time. > I'm not saying anything about why I might believe this except > that I wish I had no reason to know the Latin word for a small > piece of cloth. "Hankie" is Latin? I tried to Google "small piece of cloth" and found this: -> Prepare a small piece of cloth for oiling your flute. -- K. But what am I going to do about my bassoon? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: typing with nine fingers Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 17:58:22 -0400 Nick Bensema (nickb@eris.io.com) wrote: > > I've been typing with nine fingers for a month now. Fortunately I > can type fast anyway. Hey, you're still seven fingers more advanced than most of the Internet population, or eight above the WebTV users. > A month ago I cut my right index finger badly. A lot of skin died. > And I think there was some nerve damage. Look at the bright side: Now you can touch the hot stove all you want and it won't hurt! (If you want it to hurt, that's a different problem.) > What I have now is a finger with an extra lump of skin that may or > may not be dead, I can't tell because I can't feel anything on the > lump. I'm hoping that there's new skin underneath it and the lump > will fall off and eventually the nerves will re-emerge. Because > what I have now is gross-looking and I can't type with it, and I > suspect it's dangerous to have a protruding numb spot on something > that sticks way out like a finger does. It'll get caught on something > and I won't know it's bleeding until two hours later. I had a finger injury many years ago that left a little numb spot. The sensation did gradually return as the nerves grew back, but it took a long time (a few years.) But that finger's fingerprint still has a little hiccup in it, which is what has caused me to think about a life of crime, providing I can think of a way to crack safes without using the other nine fingers. > On top of that, I got food poisoning two weeks ago and it still > hasn't gone all the way away. That's not food poisoning. That's the bird flu. The first symptom of bird flu is that the wings start to droop and then the birds lose the ability to fly. Can you fly? If not, you've got bird flu. > And, two of my favorite local friends have stopped answering my > email, and I haven't been able to catch them on the phone. One of > them has only acknowledged me on LJ to point out that my criticism > of a beer commercial revealed a Vulcan-like humorlessness. Vulcans don't drink beer. They all drink kombucha, which is like beer would be if it were made from moldy tea instead of from hops. In other words, the galaxy's worst near-beer-like beverage. Think about it -- if Vulcans weren't the people behind kombucha, why would it have a Vulcan name, and why would it taste like space urine? > So, I'm 28, and I've lost my dexterity, my digestive system, and > my sense of humor. What's left? You can cure all those ailments with a magical health drink called "kombucha". It will help you live long and prosper without any risk of you actually getting drunk. -- K. The other way you can make your hand better is to sprinkle powdered lye on it, then blow up a Starbucks. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: typing with nine fingers Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 18:42:58 -0400 David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Nick Bensema (nickb@eris.io.com) wrote: > > > > > > I've been typing with nine fingers for a month now. > > > > Hey, you're still seven fingers more advanced than most of the > > Internet population, or eight above the WebTV users. > > He's got me beat, most of the time, by three to five. (On my right hand my > middle finger does nearly all the work. I don't know why. GET AWAY FROM ME > WITH THAT SPRAY-ON KONTEXT-AWAY!) My unique style involves using both index fingers, both middle fingers, and both thumbs (the left thumb works the shifter, the right thumb does the space bar) in a brilliant new version of rapid touch-typing where the keyboard is only divided into half as many zones as it used to be. Basically, I have a finger for QWE and the ones below them, a finger for RT, a finger for YU, a finger for IOP, and the two thumbs do all the formatting and pass the savings on to you. Hmm, make it six and a half fingers total because sometimes I use the right pinky on the Return key. But a lot of the time the right index or middle fingers work that one too. My fingers are multipurpose tools, like a Swiss Army Knife except actually useful. > Dave "fingering all of you mentally RIGHT NOW" DeLaney Keep your popcorn off my body! -- K. My Tab key is very shiny from all this indentifying. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: What do I need to repost? Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 18:54:48 -0400 So, which of my articles from the past several days do I need to repost because they never escaped onto the real Internet? Here's the most recognizable sentence from each of the 11 candidates: 0 > But still, being awoken by roving taiko trucks is a new level of abruptness. 1 > CAT SEX TECHNOLOGY IS NEVER AMUSING! 2 > All the problems with my apartment building could be solved with one quick call to Nihon Break Kogyu. 3 > You can't manhandle a tiny plus! 4 > I would simply ignore the "Repus" part because it sounds gross. 5 > I suggest that if you're having dizzy spells, you shouldn't be crawling to the Walgreens in the first place. 6 > I was with a group of about 20 people, all pounding the daylights out of these things while screaming. 7 > In a completely unrelated note, I just got a joke Dan Aykroyd made thirty years ago. 8 > If you don't have one, you can make one by turning a Sammo Hung mask inside-out. 9 > I'm going to kill ten trillion people with a paper clip. 10 > That's odd, because I'm licking eyeballs. Please choose the correct numbers from the menu corresponding to the articles I wrote that you want to see again. As a bonus, I'll even waive my usual fee for correcting the typos. -- K. #6 is the best one, because it's the only one which invites people to make fun of me. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: What We Have Here Is A Failure To Think Things Through [repost] Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:11:08 -0400 David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > Talysman the Ur-Beatle (talysman@gmail.com) wrote: > > > > Stores are also arranged to encourage you to walk > > around them in a clockwise direction, so some low-price high-demand > > items get placed farthest from the entrance, so you have to pass all > > the tempting crap on your way to buy one pencil. > > I think we've done this thread before - but all the Krogers' in Knoxville, > or near it, at least, are arranged so you go around counterclockwise. (Unless > the ONLY thing you're going for is beer or ice cream.) Stores are arranged around the idea that the door was in a particular corner of the store when the building was purchased, or if it's a new building, the door is placed where it will face the parking lot. The larger (non-misshapen) Stop & Shop supermarkets all have identical, carefully-engineered floor plans, but half of them go clockwise and half go counterclockwise depending on where they decided to put the door. There are also a few which are identical to half of the others except that the men's room is on the wrong side, so in order not to get confused when you visit multiple Stop & Shops, your mental model must incorporate separate checkboxes for "SUPERMARKET IS FROM THE MIRROR UNIVERSE" and "SUPERMARKET IS FROM THE MIRROR UNIVERSE EXCEPT FOR THE TOILET." Basically, even an antimatter Stop & Shop can have a regular toilet that swirls clockwise, and a seemingly normal Stop & Shop might have a contraterrene turboflush. In backwards Stop & Shop, toilet flushes you! It's clear a lot of work went into the retail psychology of the standard Stop & Shop floor plan -- they're good at funneling people directly towards the refrigerated, pre-jelled fake Jell-O that costs four dollars for four cents' worth of matter -- but the abrupt parity reversals as you go from market to market can give you something like an ice cream headache, except instead of ice cream it's caused by the fourth dimension. This is why I like the Super 88, because even if it decided to spontaneously reverse around me the sign would still say "88". I would simply ignore the "Repus" part because it sounds gross. -- K. My local Stop & Shop is one of the few deformed ones -- it's L-shaped -- and the second-closest one is the ancient Stop & Shop #1, which is bilaterally symmetrical and has that Jetsons-style roof over part of the parking lot. The third-closest one was the circular one which became the Bread & Circus which became the Whole Foods where weirdo hippies like to play mind games with the organic divider bars. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: What We Have Here Is A Failure To Think Things Through [repost] Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:11:47 -0400 Lots42 (lots42@gmail.com) wrote: > > At the local Walgreens, the anti-dizziness medicine is on the -bottom- > shelf. Of course, because those people will be on the floor sooner or later. They only put products for healthy people with good posture on the shelves at your eye level, and at my eye level it's all condoms up there where toddlers can't see 'em unless they're six foot two. By the way, the "anti-dizziness medicine" is really just a fifty-pound chunk of lead. You swallow it, you stay put. 100% effective, though there are some side effects you can't sue them over because you wouldn't survive taking the medicine in the first place. I suggest that if you're having dizzy spells, you shouldn't be crawling to the Walgreens in the first place. Just go some place dizzy people belong, like that wing of the Museum Of Science where they have "Barfing Is Fun And Educational!" -- K. So who made you dizzy? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: fun with big drums: evolution of the taiko thread [repost] Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:12:06 -0400 So, last week, in alt.religion.kibology, we were talking about video games with strange controls and I mentioned "Taiko Drum Master" and everyone was all like "Nuh-uh, that sucks because it's a taiko game" and I was like "Nuh-uh, it probably just sucks because it's got tiny plastic taiko" and everyone else was like "Nuh-uh, we didn't say that" and I was all like "Nuh-uh, it says you did right above this" and everyone was all like "Waah, Kibo, stop beating us to a pulp with your enormous biceps" and I was all like the President of the Universe and stuff and Fonzie was all like "Ayyyyyyyyy" and we all had ice cream and I just forgot what I was going to say. Please remind me what I was about to say to further insult your intelligence. Oh, right, "Taiko Drum Master" coming tragically true. Today I spent three hours pounding on Japanese drums. The biggest (and most expensive) of the ones I got to whack was an actual Japanese chudaiko (the sort carved out of the middle of a tree -- proper taiko, even the six-foot-wide ones, are carved from single pieces of wood.) A chudaiko is just barrel-sized, not that much bigger or smaller than the larger sizes of Western rock & roll or symphonic drums, but the difference is that when you're playing these things you're beating the hell out of them with riot batons in order to make as much deafening noise as possible. I was with a group of about 20 people, all pounding the daylights out of these things while screaming. After various stretching and drumming and vocalization exercises, we played "Taiko Uno", which is apparently a common game for taiko groups. Everyone in the circle plays a measure in turn. If you play "doko-doko" the next player gets to go, if you play "DON! KON!" the order reverses, and if you play "doko" and then scream then the next player gets skipped. Play continues in this fashion until someone has all the cards, but because there are no cards play continues in this fashion until you have accumulated enough chi to defeat an army of ninjas through loudness. Bear in mind that swinging two nightsticks above your head to pound on something is a far cry from pushing the tiny buttons to play the PSP version of "Taiko Drum Master". Also, we didn't attempt to play "My Sharona" or "Walking On Sunshine". Most of the things we were banging out, as amateur kumedaiko players, would have sheet music something like "||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|||||||||||||||||!|!|!|!|!|!|!|!|||||| ||||||||||||||||HAI!!!" assuming that that's the correct notation for noises that make the walls vibrate. (I wonder how the upstairs neighbors felt.) It was interesting to have the rare opportunity to do something where my stature was a handicap rather than a benefit. I was significantly too tall for these drums designed for Japanese guys, meaning I had to use a really wide stance (straining my leg muscles) and also because my arms were longer than everyone else's I had trouble keeping up with everyone else (remember that fight scene between Bruce Lee and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? That's me, the guy who is slower than Bruce Lee because he's not so tiny.) Anyway, getting to work with an actual, live taiko drum master was way cool, even though I wasn't very good at it and we didn't get to sing "Nihon Break Kogyu". (No tap-dancing Takeshi Kitano, either.) I heartily endorse this activity for anyone who likes exhausting physical activity, knows where to find a roomful of big drums, and is under seven feet tall. -- K. And because today I was a drummer for three hours, let the drummer jokes commence. "Hey, what do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?" ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Joke... Has... Landed! [repost] Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:12:25 -0400 In a completely unrelated note, I just got a joke Dan Aykroyd made thirty years ago. Yesterday I freaked out when the ATM in a convenience store said WELCOME TO I R V I N G M A I N W A Y I was so startled, I nearly choked on a Nerf ball. But then I realized that was the actual name of the chain of Canadian-owned gasoline stores, not "Blue Canoe". So I paid for my Bag O' Glass and left. I would show you a picture of my ATM receipt to prove this, but all the letters P through Z just look like blotches due to Canada using Metric. -- K. Sincerely, The Invisible Pedestrian. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: an important new euphemism has just been invented [repost] Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:12:52 -0400 Over at www.chud.com, Devin Faraci wrote: -> -> Last week I headed to Los Angeles to cover the Over the Hedge -> press junket. Garry Shandling stars in that film as Vern the Turtle, -> and he showed up for the roundtables, seeming incredibly -> uncomfortable. At the end of the interview his yellow felt tip pen -> exploded in his pants. I dare anyone to wander aimlessly downtown with a large stain while yelling "MY YELLOW FELT-TIP PEN EXPLODED IN MY PANTS!" His sitcoms were brilliant, and now he's again contributed to the world of comedy by inventing something new you can do to disturb people. Go ahead, yell it: "DRINKING ALL THAT GATORADE MADE MY YELLOW FELT-TIP PEN EXPLODE FOR TWO WHOLE LITERS!" Bonus points if you wear a Garry Shandling mask. If you don't have one, you can make one by turning a Sammo Hung mask inside-out. -- K. I wonder who I would most resemble if I could turn everyone else inside-out? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Spelling correction. [repost] Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:13:19 -0400 I should have written "kumidaiko", not "kumedaiko", in an article a little while ago, but I can't go back and fix it because no Usenet articles have been showing up here for the past few days, which means none of you are reading this so now you're all going to think I'm a lousy speller who's fluent in Japanese because you never saw this article correcting the spelling in that other article you didn't see. I don't speak Japanese, but I wish I could. Oh, and since nobody can read this, I'd also like to stab an ice pick into whichever television executive thought the title "The New Adventures Of Old Christine" would get people to watch a sitcom. This is because only when nobody is reading my articles do I feel comfortable talking about committing random murders -- all the other times I was either very uncomfortable or it was in self-defense. In closing, you can't read this, so I'm going to kill ten trillion people with a paper clip. Yay! -- K. Now, unbreak Usenet if you want me to stop imagikilling people who make sitcoms. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Taste the rainbow warriors! [repost] Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:13:37 -0400 [abcnews.go.com] -> -> Scientists Probe the Use of the Tongue to Help Warriors of the Future -> -> By Melissa Nelson -> -> The Associated Press -> -> PENSACOLA, Fla. -- In their quest to create the super warrior of -> the future, some military researchers aren't focusing on organs -> like muscles or hearts. They're looking at tongues. That's odd, because I'm licking eyeballs. -> By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other -> equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give -> elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish. I would think that would take all the fun out of war, if the soldiers were tasting sonar instead of just getting that wonderful coppery taste you get when you're about to kill someone. They're making war nerdy for everyone! Also, I'm not so sure fish are great warriors. Most fish I've seen are dumber than TV. At least the people inside my TV are doing something other than milling about aimlessly and trying to eat the pebbles at the bottom. Also, the people in my TV have learned how to never poop. -> Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine -> Cognition envision their work giving Army Rangers 360-degree -> unobstructed vision at night and allowing Navy SEALs to sense -> sonar in their heads while maintaining normal vision underwater -> turning sci-fi into reality. I wish I could envision their work doing that. Hey, wait, I can -- just let me tape this grid of electrodes, frictors, and firecrackers to the instep of my foot -- ah, that's better. Now with my foot, I can feel a picture of what it's like to use your tongue to taste radar. And I say, biiiiiiiig deeeeeeal. It's just fake synaesthesia. The real kind's much freakier 'cause the real kind can't be weaponized! I think everyone should get real synaesthesia because then supermarkets would turn off the damn Muzak. -> The device, known as "Brain Port," was pioneered more than 30 -> years ago by Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a University of Wisconsin -> neuroscientist. Bach-y-Rita began routing images from a camera -> through electrodes taped to people's backs and later discovered -> the tongue was a superior transmitter. Well, duh. Must've been a deprived child if he never got to taste a 9-volt battery. -> A narrow strip of red plastic connects the Brain Port to the -> tongue where 144 microelectrodes transmit information through -> nerve fibers to the brain. Instead of holding and looking at -> compasses and bluky-hand-held sonar devices, the divers can -> processes the information through their tongues, said Dr. Anil -> Raj, the project's lead scientist. I can imagine this might actually work (the tongue is pretty sensitive in terms of letting you read two-dimensional information through it, i.e. you can tell which part of your tongue the pointy candy is sitting on) though I think a more important direction for research would be to find a drug that can cure blukiness. It's a terrible social stigma to be known as a bluky person who goes around bluking and bluking until everyone else has to take a special chemical shower to get the residue off. -> In testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking -> in front of them and caught balls. And don't forget how Rutger Hauer in the American remake of "Zatoichi" could predict where the roulette ball was going to land so that he knew when the casino was trying to cheat by switching on the blinking LEDs under the wheel. See, here's the flaw in this research: Blind people already have super powers. Just like how Beethoven was a great composer because he was completely deaf, blind people have all sorts of magical abilities whether or not you stick some electrodes on their tongue. That's why so many of them have been samurai swordsmen over the years. Being blind lets you use the Force because it's been proven that eyesight destroys midichlorians. It's true because I'm pretending it was in a movie!!! -> A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, -> has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the -> inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics. I like this application. It seems quite workable and useful, and if you go throughout your day being able to taste your spatial orientation, whenever you eat spaghetti you're going to think your head's all twirled around. -> Michael Zinszer, a veteran Navy diver and director of Florida -> State University's Underwater Crime Scene Investigation School, -> took part in testing using the tongue to transmit an electronic -> compass and an electronic depth sensor while in a swimming pool. -> -> He likened the feeling on his tongue to Pop Rocks candies. But hopefully it tasted better. After all, the swimming pool probably just tasted like chlorine-flavored Pop Rocks, and not the awful artificial watermelon-flavor ones they sell at that candy store in the half of the mall nobody ever goes in. And also I hope for all the money they're spending on this that they got more than three seconds' worth of candy. Seriously, is there any candy that takes less time to enjoy? You get maybe one and a half mouthfuls per packet, assuming you don't have an above-average mouth, which puts this candy in the same "Meh. I blinked and I missed it." category as those little wax bottles with the half-teaspoon of Kool-Aid inside. It's like if Rice Krispies not only dissolved by themselves but came individually wrapped. -> "You are feeling the outline of this image," he said. "I was in -> the pool, they were directing me to a very small object and I was -> able to locate everything very easily." I am now imagining swimming in a pool filled with Pop Rocks. I'm adding that to my to-do list, right below "scuba dive in a giant Lava Lamp" and "swallow a nuclear bomb so tiny that it just tickles." -> Underwater crime scene investigators might use the device to -> identify search patterns, signal each other and "see through our -> tongues, as odd as that sounds," Zinszer said. Forget the military applications. I'm thinking the key application of this cool new weird technology will be for people who want to go to raves but don't know where to find any and just have to sit at home with their flicker goggles and their Aphex Twin CDs and their back issues of "Mondo 2000". Adding sparkly electrode sensations dancing around the tongue would make your average everyday set of flicker goggles more fun, 'cause then you'd be able to taste the fake migraine instead of just seeing a fake migraine! Short shameful confession: I do own hypno-goggles. But I don't think they're quite as good at inducing sensory distortion as just watching "SpongeBob SquarePants" with the TV set turned upside down. -> Raj said the objective for the military is to keep Navy divers' -> hands and eyes free. "It will free up their eyes to do what those -> guys really want to, which is to look for those mines and see -> shapes that are coming out of the murk." -> -> Sonar is the next step. A lot depends on technological -> developments to make sonar smaller hand-held sonar is now about -> the size of a lunch box. Do modern kids even know what a lunch box is any more? I thought that all schools had switched to forcing the kids to buy "hot" food so the schools could get kickbacks when the kids choke down their McDonalds brand McNuggets with Coca-Cola brand bottled Cokes and the dreaded Mystery Brand Misspelled Tator Tots Immune To Trademark Lawsuits. -> [...] -> -> Work on the infrared-tongue vision for Army Rangers isn't as far -> along. But Raj said the potential usefulness of the night vision -> technology is tremendous. It would allow soldiers to work in the -> dark without cumbersome night-vision goggles and to "see out the -> back of their heads," he said. They can't just use mirrors, because if an enemy soldier fires a machine-gun and 100 bullets hit your mirror, you instantly die from the energetic release of 700 years of bad luck. -- K. I bought a bunch of glass and silver paint and every time I make a new mirror I have another seven uninterrupted years of good luck. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: The Return Of Kibo: The RPG Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 15:12:48 -0400 Talysman the Ur-Beatle (talysman@gmail.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > A couple days ago I was in an Army surplus store and I bought this > > really nice Croatian camo shirt (the Serbs had ordinary greenish- > > black camo, so naturally the Croatians needed to have the exact > > opposite -- weird orange-rust camo.) When the clerk was ringing up > > my shirt, I saw that there was a Czech rubber truncheon under the > > counter, > > The other thing I would like to say is that, when I read that paragraph > above, jokes about rubber Czechs rubbing their truncheons under the > counter (IYKWIM) collided in my brane and I EXPLOIDED. All I can think of to say is "Cleanup, in aisle pants!" and that's not worth saying, so I won't. > The other other thing I wanted to mention is that I am still planning > on making that RPG using the smiley emotidice. I already know what the > game will be called, and what it will be about: RETRACT YOUR LIES: The > RPG. Oh really? Post proof or retract. > [...] > > But when I will get to these games, I'm not sure. I have a whole stack > of RPGs in varying degrees of development. My current game, which is > actually somewhat playable right now, is probably the most kibological > RPG ever: a solitaire RPG designed to allow you to play a roguelike > game with paper, pencils and dice. Yes! Nethack without a computer! But then how will we keep score so that I'll know if I'm better at that version than Wil Wheaton is? Also, it better be better than the random dungeon tables in the back of the first-edition AD&D "Dungeon Master's Guide". I actually tried playing that solitaire once (as the instructions suggested could be done) and had only drawn three rooms on the map before deciding it was just going to lead to a huge stack of overlapping rooms shaped like pentagons, octagons, and other polygons too math-oriented to use in a real dungeon. > > and I have always (since the age of two) wanted a real > > Soviet-bloc truncheon, so I asked to inspect this one (I wanted > > to make sure I wasn't spending six dollars on a used one I'd have > > to wash the bloodstains off) but they had a rule that they had > > to hold my ID while I looked at the truncheon. I guess that they > > were afraid I was going to hold up the store with the six-dollar > > bendy rubber stick so they wanted to be able to identify me > > afterwards. > > See, a real robber would have paid the six dollars for the truncheon, > which as I recall does not require showing ID, and THEN robbing the > store, retrieving the six dollars in the process. Hmm, I'll have to test your theory. I suspect that would work, because it's one of those stores where when you use a credit card, they ask to see a photo ID, and then when you say "I don't have one" they let you use your credit card anyway, because they want your money whether it's really there or not. I really like the Croatian camo shirt. I wish I could find matching pants. Also, a Croatian truncheon. And one of those side-handle batons with pointy ends, like in the movie "Invincible Armour" but I don't want it if my tonfa would be accompanied by lots of incidental music stolen from "Logan's Run", because there's no better way to suck the fun out of deadly weapons than by reminding people of "Logan's Run". A tonfa is not a popsicle! -- K. The trailer for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" also used the "Logan's Run" music, and incidentally, I found a shop in Chinatown that has the old VideoCD release of the _original_ edit of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", but I still think they should rework it again to add some tonfas. Spock would be good with one. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: TV for babies... Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 05:55:23 -0400 Today's the launch of BabyFirstTV, a 24-hour TV network just for babies. Of course, many of the others are already for babies (how else do you explain the writing on Spike TV's "MXC"?) but this one is only for babies. [theedge.bostonherald.com] -> -> BabyFirstTV developers say their programs are designed to -> help parents interact with their children. A red ball bounces -> across the screen and subtitles tell the parent to ask their -> babies what color it is, for instance. How about a subtitle which says "HEY PARENT, TURN OFF THE TV AND ACTUALLY INTERACT WITH YOUR BABY!"? The best part: It costs $9.99 a month. So, basically, you're paying ten bucks a month to be able to point at a ball that says "POINT AT THIS BALL TO MAKE YOUR BABY THINK YOU'RE IN CHARGE AND NOT THE TV." I assume someone also manufactures a special baby-proof TV set, to keep the baby from turning off BabyFirstTV. According to www.babyfirsttv.com, the categories of programs for children who are too young to focus their eyes or recognize simple shapes include: * Thinking Journey * Language Playground * Imagination Lane * Feelings Garden * Numbers Parade * Sensory Wonderland * Rainbow Dreams The last one's just for gay babies. The International Gay Baby Conspiracy hasn't yet recruited enough gay infants to launch an all-gay-baby channel (to be named Gayby TV) so it's squeezed in here next to Sensory Wonderland, which is like "Pat The Bunny" except the bunny feels like smooth glass. I think my favorite program (in the "Rainbow Dreams" category) is "Mobiles", which is like looking at some pieces of cardboard hanging from a string, except better because it's on TV so it doesn't require the baby to even try to focus their eyes, partly due to the 2-D TV screen, and partly due to the way real mobiles are positioned on the ceiling because babies at just the right age to be enchanted by mobiles can't sit up to look at the TV. [www.babyfirsttv.com] => => Each episode features a different animated mobile in motion => against the backdrop of soft and soothing music. Wow! Not just a regular mobile, but an "animated mobile"! I'm going to go tell Alexander Calder so he can go invent their opposite, the animated stabile! Anyway, this new network should shut up all those brats who keep complaining that "Teletubbies" is too grown-up. Personally, I think the only parents who will subscribe are the ones who are so incredibly lazy that they'd rather pay $10 than jiggle their keys. -- K. Coming soon: TV for fetuses. Including a special program that distracts them while they're being aborted. ...too far? Well, I guess you'll just have to watch The Apology Channel 24 hours a day to find out whether I'll ever apologize. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: TV for babies... Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 20:57:44 -0400 Paula (mmmtoblerone@earthlink.ent) wrote: > > [...] If you are so lazy and so uninterested in your children > that you will park them in front of a tv screen in their bouncy seat > instead of actually interacting with them, you should have to pay far > more than 10 bucks a month, and the money should go to the > intervention programs that will later have to clean up the mess you > made of them instead of to the tv people who helped make that way. Putting your babies in front of MTV For Babies for eighteen hours a day is only bad for them if you don't have HDTV. HDTV can do no wrong because it has twice as many letters as "TV". In fact, HDTV has as many letters as "3-D TV", or more if you know the difference between letters and numbers, therefore HDTV is more real than 3-D. HDTV is as real as 6- or 7-D TV. The extra D's are for the extra dementia you don't get when watching HDTV. Me, I still watch Video CDs. Those are good for stimulating baby's tiny brain because the baby has to learn how to change discs halfway through the movie. Today I bought a unique edition of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" on Video CD -- it's the 2002 "Director's Edition" except the title sequence doesn't say "The Director's Edition" and the box art still looks like it did in the 1970's. Plus the back of the box explains that "Star Trek" comes true in the year 2265, though you're only allowed to know that if you can read Chinese. I now plan on buying some babies just so I can put them in front of my low-def TV and let them watch this odd Chinese version of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" until they're old enough for the Turkish "Turist Omer In Star Trek". Then I will run advertisements saying that if everyone in the country sends me $10 a month I will let my kids stop watching it. -- K. If you send me $20, I won't make anyone else watch it either. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Walgreens Update Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 21:43:57 -0400 Lots42 (lots42@gmail.com) wrote: > > I got a reply from Walgreens... > > > Good afternoon, sir. Sorry to hear your unpleasant shopping experience > at our Walgreens (address deleted by me). Thank you for your email to > our corporate headquarters. Thanks for your imput on our drug > placement. "Suppositories usually go in the butt!" > Hopeful corporate will revise the drug planogram to suit > our customer's need and safety. We thank you your email and your > business. Have a wonderful day. "Planogram"? What, your local Walgreens makes you swim through a three-dimensional tesselation of octahedra? Well, I guess that's better than mine. Mine's at the top of an impossible staircase. They did recently take out that building's little map of the emergency exits that said "YOU ARE HEAR" in the middle. Now there's no map, so I can't sea whether I'm hear. > --- > > Now is it just me or does this reply scream 'Form letter that tries to > pretend it's not'? > > Did the sentence preceeding this one make sense? I'm not so sure it did. It would've been okay as long as it wasn't pretending it did. Life is more fun when you allow yourself to be incoherent. In any case, that's more fun than trying to talk to retailers about planograms. And remember, if it tastes like a suppository, it goes in the butt, unless you're one of those Escher creatures made entirely out of butts, in which case watch out for the giant foramanifera invading the margin from that Haeckel print next door. -- K. I like pictures of little things that aren't really alive 'cause they're just drawings. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: help me graduate! Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 22:13:05 -0400 "Black-Box Abstraction" (ridd1emethis@aim.com) wrote: > > So I'm in an anthropology class right now and our final project needs a > paper topic involving people and computers (not difficult). One of my > friends is doing an ethnography of WoW players, and I for some reason > decided an ethnography of ark would be a good idea. I'm not sure you can stretch out "They're very, very white, even the black guys" into a whole paper. Unless this is one of those courses where the prof was cool enough to say "You can submit a term paper, or, write the words 'TERM PAPER' on a 3x5 card..." > [insert cutscene of nerdly CS major trying to pitch this idea to > skeptic professor] I always press the space bar to skip the cutscenes. Unless you're talking about Takashi Miike movies, in which case the scenes with the most cutting are the best ones. Hey, have you seen "Visitor Q"? It's like an anthropology term paper, except more disgusting. I bet you could get a whole dissertation out of trying to explain why Japan is allowed to make movies like that. > Feel free to not answer, but if you do want to respond, please do so > before the 17th since that's when the thing's due. Thanks. > > How did you end up on this group? One day I was riding my pogo stick and it got stuck in a really special pothole and while I was waiting for the tow truck to assist me some cops came and put a bunch of orange cones around me and barricade tape which said "CAUTION: WEIRDOS ENCLOSED". Eventually a lot of other weirdos ducked under the tape to join me because obviously the highly descriptive tape didn't want them to be outside any more. This community was renamed "alt.religion.kibology" by Mark Twain, who was riding past on a better pogo stick (one with fancy shock absorbers that kept it from bouncing.) You know the rest of the story, except for the part after next week's plot twist where I hit Jack Bauer over the head with the Stanley Cup. > Why subscribe? What brings you back every week/month/five minutes? I was going to say "inertia", but it's not even that. It's more like unertia. > What's ark's purpose? It's a cookbook! > Would ark be different if it was in a medium other than usenet? Would > it even beable to exist? Marshall McLuhan once said, "If a.r.k didn't exist, the Internet would be what it is today." Then he and Mark Twain beat each other with hockey sticks and bled to death so nobody won the Stanley Cup this year. > What're your opinions on flavor-blasted Goldfish? You can't spell "goldfish" without "oldfish", and you can't spell "flavor-blasted" without "vor-bla", and you can't say "vor-bla" without accidentally writing a "Doctor Who" episode, probably one of the old ones where guys in wetsuits with Froot Loops glued all over chase people around really slowly, not one of the new ones where the Daleks can't withstand the onslaught of The International Gay Agenda. Episode three of "Return Of The Curse Of The Secret Of The Legend Of The Time Of The Antithesis Of The Eradication Of The Repetition Of The Vor-Bla" was the one where only the Australian version accidentally played the theme music backwards so you could clearly hear Paul McCartney saying "EAT GOLDFISH! EAT GOLDFISH! AND LOTS OF PORK!" That was the episode which ended with the Doctor being permakilled by a nuclear bomb, followed by a trailer for the next episode where the Doctor did a crossword puzzle that spanned time and space. > Is there anything in particular that should be included in the > ethnography? A refund form. > Any other questions you think I should be asking? "Where should I send your million-dollar refund?" > Am I going to get trolled to death for posting this? Not unless you get fingerprints on my Stanley Cup. > thanks for your time. No problem, and you better post it when it's done. Hey, this isn't going to turn into that "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode written by Harlan Ellison, is it? 'Cause I don't care if you're James Caan, I refuse to be Walter Koenig. I demand to be George Takei or better. -- K. Who needs a pecking order when we've got me? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt