From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: It's like a Swing-A-Ma-Jig without the swing and with a view of poo. Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 01:35:54 -0500 TomH (address@my.sig) wrote: > > chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties: > > > > The BabyKeeper: > > > > [...] > > > > Alternate caption for that photo: WORLD'S WORST SKYDIVING ACCIDENT > > Have! not! laughed! so! MUCH! in! days! You laughed so hard you lost the ability to tell me and Mozilla apart? Just 'cause I sometimes have luminous orange hair doesn't make me a Firefox. If I wanted to be a Firefox, I'd have to keep reminding myself, "Think in Russian, in Clint Eastwood's inner voice!" Am I the only one who remembers that movie? More importantly, am I the only one who liked to get a perfect score at the hardest skill level of the arcade videogame based on it? It was one of those ones you'll never be able to play again because your computer doesn't have a Laserdisc drive. I also loved "Astron Belt", but I hated "Dragon's Lair". Of course they eventually brought out a DVD conversion of "Dragon's Lair", as well as a Philips CD-i version, giving me multiple ways to choose not to ever play it again. It always amazed me that they somehow got people to accept the idea that "Dragon's Lair" was a game and not just a bad cartoon that occasionally told you you lost unless you forced yourself to play the tedious thing enough times to memorize it. Currently my favorite game is "GridWars 2" (for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux) and it kicks the ass of any sort of wimpy game that has fewer than two hundred glowing squares trying to crash into you every three seconds. None of that namby-pamby "Level Complete" nonsense, it just keeps dumping squares on you until your brain explodes. In other words, it's just like "Geometry Wars" (for XBox) except better and cheaper and withdrawn from distribution because of a legal threat. It starts off easy, but gets pretty interesting around the time you've scored a million points. You can still find a place to download it if you know how to not click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button in Google. > The trauma your social spending dollars will serve to RECtify in > future. In pictures. One of those sentences is hard to parse, but the other's really easy to parse because it's not a sentence. So thank you for covering all the bases so I can still find something I can read with my GridWars-addled brain. -- K. I miss Battle-Girl. And the arcade "Star Wars" -- it's just not the same on a computer without the wacky "Knight Rider" steering wheel. However, I don't miss "Knight Rider", 'cause I prefer more sophisticated pursuits, such as video games where I can shoot triangles at squares. I like my games to go so fast that they don't bother displaying anything other than squares and asterisks and stuff so that you don't get eyeball whiplash from trying to figure out what things look like while they're going at the speed of light. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: It's like a Swing-A-Ma-Jig without the swing and with a view of poo. Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 01:11:05 -0500 Bryce Utting (butting@ihug.co.nz) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > The BabyKeeper: > > http://www.mommysentials.com/babykeeper.htm > > O gross. What do you care? You're not a mommy or a baby... unless there's something you want to tell us to make today a very special day? > [...] (and I'm surprised you didn't point this one out): > > http://www.mommysentials.com/images/product_pics/large/5.jpg HOLY BROWN CLOUD BURNING BABY'S TINY EYES, BATMAN! No, I didn't get as far as the fifth image. I only looked at numbers 1 through 4, and believe me, once you've seen those, you don't want to look at any pictures of babies being forced to watch people doing number four. There must be something wrong with you if you went looking for extra pictures of babies being forced to watch Mommy doing a live performance of Steve Martin's "Comedy You Can Do" ("Boy, I really smelled up the place in there!") For the benefit of future generations, I'll preserve the above image here: The BabyKeeper, now with interactive origami gas mask: http://www.kibo.com/pix/2006/2006_11_baby_holding_paper5.jpg I think the only way that product photo could be more revolting would be if the baby were wearing noise-cancelling headphones with a little "Dick Tracy" arrow pointing to them, labelled "NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES TO SLIGHTLY DIMINISH THE HORRIBLE FARTING NOISES YOU MAKE ALL DAY." You have to wonder what mental model of the world is writhing around inside the brain of someone who would think a good ad campaign would be pictures of babies telling you that you stink (even compared to a baby.) I hate to think what sort of ads these people would make if they ran White Castle. Some people make good commercials -- like the Honda Civic commercial that's a pastiche of "Tron" -- and some people just use any excuse to dangle a baby in front of a farter. -- K. Other comedy pieces Steve Martin said You Can Do: razor, "Blue Boy", "DING DONG!" atom bomb, nose. I'll add my own here: euglena, Muppet, scabies. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Hey kids, wanna see my boneyard? Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 04:58:40 -0500 When I write an a.r.k article, sometimes during the final inspection for factory defects I decide it doesn't meet my quality standards, and I save it in a special folder where the articles which aren't good enough go. Recently, about 1 in 5 of my articles has been going straight into my reject pile, 'cause only 80% of everything I say is brilliant. The fact that my reject rate has been going up lately is a sign that my standards are going up because I just keep getting more talented. So, the fact that a larger fraction of my writings are total crap proves that they're all getting better. (Even my unposted, rejected articles are worthy of Pulitzer prizes, or at least rejection letters from the Pulitzer committee.) There are also a few things I never posted because they might hurt someone's feelings (aww, poor sensitive Internet nerds) or might get me deported. And sometimes I just write two different endings to a rant then have to keep only the one that's not boringly predictable. But the majority of the 20% of my articles I choose not to post are simply articles which aren't up to the exciting, thrill-a-minute standards of articles like this one. But I do save 'em all. So the question I need to ask you folks is, How much would you pay me to _not_ post a giant wad of all my rejected articles when you least expect it? What follows are random sentences from my "NEVER POST THESE" folder. Pay up, 'cause at any moment I could decide to subject you to the entire articles that would have contained these quotes: I WEALLY WEALLY WUV YOU I heard there's a first-season episode where Joel said you were originally going to be a woman but he ran out of "special parts" after he finished making Tom Servo. In any case, BUYING stolen software from a spammer makes anyone the biggest lamo in the world. Well, that's the problem. "Normal" isn't good enough for a cranky vegetarian. Windows is just the XBox operating system with a few extra things like a screensaver. I looked, and sure enough, it looked sort of like four radiopaque Nik-L-Nip bottles, except instead of being four tiny wax bottles of awful fake Kool-Aid, they were slightly different lengths indicating that they were fingers. I heard Garry Marshall tried to crash the Swinetrek into the Springfield nuclear plant. "Unisex" discriminates against bisexuals and asexuals. NEXT! I am starting to think that that cartoon sitcom might not be a documentary! Don't you know anything about the Pope's hat fetish? Though I'm not sure how you get the socks into those little glass ampules so you can crush 'em. Also, we all know that the Stealth Fighter coating was something they found in a 55-gallon drum aboard that crashed UFO. I like the concept of a "more careful" Michael Jackson. Sorry, but frustration over not being able to find their favorite blowtorch will make _anyone_ talk like R. Lee Ermey. Unless the nitwit was attempting to use the wrong end and was rubbing the handle on her. So, the next time they build a domed stadium, they should put more levels on it just to make sure either the Bible or Monster Manual is true. Okay, now the T-shirt says "ALL-MALE BACON BUTTIES". Real cops never hassle you over stuff like that. It's only retired cops that give you friendly advice about your clothing being a crime against humanity, as in, "Better be careful with that, as any cop could bust you for that, if they never had any actual crimes to worry about, like if they were retired or something." He's going to spend the whole episode getting the shit out of the Tubby Custard machine. I say that you and I should make a little wager. Let's have a sexy-off right here on the Internet. We'll program a big computer to determine which of the two of us is sexier and the loser will have to legally change his name to "Mr. Bob Hope" and I'll get a million dollars. But actually, I prefer hot peppers to religion or science. What if she has dentures, Kurt? So I say the news media should stop outing him over and over and pick on someone more interesting, like maybe if the guy who played Carrot Top was gay. How could you people forgo zinging this hilariously tragic situation? "They call it 'Largo' because when you sit on a dive stick, you make the large 'O' face!" Colonel Potter to investigate claims of infringement. If there's one thing worse than getting a dive stick up your ass, it's getting a dive stick with L. Ron Hubbard's face printed on the business end up your business end. Who do you think would win a hockey fight between George Takei and a Dalek? (Assume they make goalie pads that fit Daleks.) She then added "DOY DOY DOY IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE ANYONE HAS TAMPERED WITH THIS DOY DOY DOY" while looking at the slab of meat. I await hearing your theories on tool use. That's not why you get a cholostomy! You get a cholostomy if your car keeps bouncing up and down and your girlfriend has no eyebows. Speaking as a person who eats nothing but veal-fed veal, I am really sexy. Is it because I am not a girl? Or am I not as sexy as I think I am in the physics newsgroup? TAKESHI KITANO Weet? Also, I called Jane Curtin an ignorant slut, then I called Buck Henry "Bucko" just to cover all bases. Because if there were different sizes for each phenotype, then cross-breeding would -- as with corn -- result in bigger and bigger offspring, and thus Keanu Reeves would be Hollywood's record-holder, not Roddy McDowall. I can imagine her with a truck bomb driving around an embassy hundreds of times until she could get the right parking spot. In all fairness, Dairy Queen does exactly the same thing, except for the nudity and the gluing of the hands. It would suck to be a boy who had to be named Katrina because of some stupid hurricane. When the logician couldn't breathe, why did the doctors cut two overlapping holes in his chest? To give him a Venn Diaphragm! Those are from articles I chose not to post between April 1, 2005, and November 22, 2006. Pay up or you'll see the rest of them, as well as several million other unposted articles from 1991 to 2005. And you must continue to be grateful that I only post the articles which turn out really, really good. -- K. [...] because talking about lawn bowling is lame! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: In other news (was: Stop That Sentence!) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:23:31 -0500 David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > At the bottom of the article about the aforementioned headless dead thing, > > there was a link to this other equally important newsblob: > > -> > > -> PETA mistakenly targets church's nativity scene > > > > What, you mean baby Jesus isn't made from veal? > > I've just run into one of the limitations of Google - it can't quite reach > far enough to find what you _meant_ to search for. Thus, searching for > "headless and armless" won't actually turn up the verse > > A guest in a household quite charmless > Was informed its eccentric was harmless: > "If you're caught unawares > At the head of the stairs > Just remember, he's eyeless and armless." I said Jesus was made from veal, not from a can of Ogden hash. > > Did PETA want them to replace Veally Jesus with new improved > > Soylent Jesus made from people? > > This makes beef-y baby Jesus weep tears of broth! And you don't want to know where the chicken broth comes out. I think Ogden said something about the north of the cow being the source of moo while the other end's for poo, or possibly something was someone's gun, I don't really remember all those filthy limericks any more because I just watched that famous 1969 short film where some little boy told his little sisters Lisa and Maggie a story about animals while his father Homer filmed him, and the incredible super-countercultural preciousness blew all the dirty stuff right out of my brain. Then I remembered that that cute little boy grew up to make a few zillion dollars by personally drawing a few hundred zillion animation cels of a kid yelling "EAT MY SHORTS!" for eighteen years and the now-vacant parts of my brain imploded. What were we talking about, again? > > I like the idea of a veal Jesus. You could make one by mushing a bunch > > of Ikea's Swedish-style meatballs into a hollowed-out Cabbage Patch Doll > > and then peeling it and discarding the icky baby Jesus skin. > > And now, somewhere in New York, an upscale dining boutique is furiously > rewriting its menu. The Super 88 is not in New York, you bozo. And very few parts of it are upscale, and only if you think Hell Bank Notes are real despite having a picture of some guy from Disney's "Mulan" on them. -- K. PETA would love the Super 88, because they have a whole Vegetarian Baby Jesus section where you can get one made from any kind of tofu whatsoever. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Was the Space Shuttle programmed in Atari 2600 BASIC? Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:47:49 -0500 Dean Lenort (dean.lenort@att.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > -> The problem, according to Hale, is that the shuttle's computers do > > -> not reset to day one, as ground-based systems that support shuttle > > -> navigation do. Instead, after December 31, the 365th day of the > > -> year, shuttle computers figure January 1 is just day 366. > > > > WORST CALENDAR PROGRAM EVER. > > > > I mean, seriously, sucky programming. > > > > I see two possible fixes for this, assuming that the budget doesn't > > allow them to add a line of code: > > The code does actually get "patched" on occasion when a problem that is > deemed critical turns up. So just take a few minutes using that disk I > gave you seven years ago to figure out what updates need to be made and > I'll see about getting you on the agenda for the board that manages the > orbiter software to see about presenting your proposed updates. I can't, I sold the disk to an International Supervillain because I needed chocolate milk money. They said they were going to use the disk to get something called a "NOC list" with their prototype RISC 686 with AI. Note that the International Supervillain I sold it to (for one million Canadian Euros) was not any of the Al-Qaeda operatives who used to live in my apartment building, nor was the International Supervillain my even more evil landlord, who was too busy ripping off both me and Al-Qaeda to implement any master plans involving flying the Space Shuttle through the Chunnel. > [...] > > The problem actually isn't so much that the orbiter software will now > assume it's calendar day 366, but that the ground software and the orbiter > software will be out of synch after the rollover because the stupid ground > software does know that it's day 1. I'd go in to further details about the > specifics of the issue and the workarounds that have been tested, but Chris > Franks would be the only person who would find it interesting. Then isn't the correct solution just a matter of making the ground software stupider by taking _out_ a line of code? Clip & save ---> NOP NOP NOP NOP NOP Note that I just gave you a wholly implementation-independent solution, unless you're using some sort of super-secret Government-issue computer that's so powerful that it's incapable of performing a NOP. In which case, when you tell it to NOP, it'll yell "ERROR! ERROR! I CANNOT NOT BE AWESOME! ALSO, THE LAST DIGIT OF PI IS 7!" > > Most of NASA's problems could be solved by not letting the government > > tell them what to do. Also the government should give them more money > > so they can do lots of cool stuff without the government telling > > them what to do. > > I heartily endorse this service and/or product and/or budgetary > recommendation. I agree, and we could bring it about if we all wrote on the backs of our income tax checks, "THIS MONEY NOT TO BE USED FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN SENDING PEOPLE BACK TO THE MOON, OR IN THE CASE OF DANNY BONADUCE, JUST SENDING HIM TO THE MOON AND LEAVING HIM THERE." I just had the misfortune of seeing Danny Bonaduce's game show, "Star Face", on the Game Show Network. It's the only game show that may be too dumb even for dumb people who like dumb game shows. The game is that Danny Bonaduce shows you a photo of Kevin Federline, and then you have to press the button and say "That's Kevin Federline!" to win. Then you have to do the same thing with a photo of Joey Buttafuoco except instead of saying "That's Kevin Federline!" you have to say "Joey Buttafuoco!" That makes it twice as hard. After that there's a bonus round where Danny Bonaduce shows you a close-up of a pair of breasts and you have to say "Those are Fergie's boobs!" and that's followed by the final round where everyone has to wear cardboard Joan Rivers masks to answer questions about whether or not Joan Rivers has ever had plastic surgery. I swear that is the actual episode I saw. It really is a game show revolving around Danny Bonaduce showing you photos of third-string ex-celebrities. (Danny himself is second-string because the fact that he's pointing at a picture of Joey Buttafuoco must mean he's somehow more important, and because I'm slamming Danny's idiotic show that makes me really important, so I win even though a headless chicken could outsmart this game show.) I took down an actual quote from the show so you can appreciate the wit and wisdom of Danny Bonaduce. Behold: "You know, what Kevin's done to Britney makes me wish he was a transvestite so I could smack him!" I must not be smart because I don't get the joke. I swear I was not watching this show on purpose. It was just because my TiVo had a hiccup because it thought Sunday was the eighth day of the previous week. Also, it apparently couldn't find any other shows about Joey Buttafuoco to force me to watch. See, if you think you're not gay, your TiVo calls you gay until it turns you that way. Then once you're gay, TiVo's "You're so gay!" approach stops being insulting, so it switches to just reminding you that there once was a Joey Buttafuoco, in order to coerce you into paying the cable company to shut off the Joey Buttafuoco Channel. And this is why I don't have time to fix your Space Shuttle right now. -- K. Here's an idea for some replacement programming for the Game Show Network: NOP NOP NOP NOP NOP NOP ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: And how was your year? Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:20:25 -0500 "tamaraharris@rogers-removethis-.com" (tamaraharris@rogers.com) wrote: > Tamara, you might want to check the settings of your program since your From: header is giving me contradictory information about whether or not to remove things. Now I don't know which side is your real address! I'm so confused. I don't want to remove the wrong thing and accidentally pull out the Jenga block that's holding up the whole Internet, like in that "Doctor Who" episode they never aired after I made it up. > Okay, I've received enough emails asking why I haven't been on ARK in a > long time. oTTo said it best when he basically reiterated my concern > that I am tired of boring you with all of the stupid medical crap that > has plagued me for the past 5 years. Dude, this is a.r.k! We live for minutiae, whether they're medical issues, videogame programming techniques, or critical reviews of thirty-year-old game shows! So it's okay for you to be tired of posting about it if you want, but we reserve the right to be grumpy if you get tired of posting before we get tired of reading. The correct way to approach a.r.k is to pretend you're writing bondage porn, except replace all the descriptions of what types of knots are tied to D-rings located on straps fastened to where with descriptions of what your doctor did, or which ghost in "Pac-Man" had the best artificial intelligence, or whether they should have rearranged the "Match Game" seating so that Brett Somers would always go last. Basically, just tell a story but leave in all the obsessive details nobody but someone with a very specific obsession would care about, because a.r.k always has a few people who need reading matter to feed that particular obsession, and all the others vicariously enjoy other people's obsessions. So your "stupid medical crap" might be boring to you and not stuff you want to disclose, but... a.r.k _demands_ to know every possible detail that would violate every last shred of your privacy, because we love you. Also, we really missed you and geez I'm glad you survived. > Plus, being the token sickie has lost its appeal. Being a token sickie is better than being a token sucker. How long do those kids who put their lips on subway turnstiles live? That's like eating dinner off a dog's asshole. I don't care if the subway tokens are worth a buck or two, I'd pay that much _not_ to put my lips on anything subway riders have been touching, because all subway riders are filthy idiots except for me. > However, due to popular demand, I've decided to recap > the last 14 months for you -- > > September 2005 > > Developed a cough. Thought is was a cold. Cough persisted. Fool > finally dragged me to see a doctor about 2 weeks later. > > Pneumonia was the diagnosis. Chest X-Ray confirmed a 4 cm. "density" > in the upper lobe of my right lung. > > Antibiotics and a referral to a pulmonary specialist. Well, at least one good thing will come out of your density -- you can get a note from your doctor saying, "Please excuse Tamara from swimming class, because she has density." Density could also come in handy during the Middle Ages, depending on how you want to score on the witch test. Of course, a _real_ witch would be able to alter her density at will so there's really no point to the test, unless guys in the Middle Ages just needed to keep torturing women so their wives would willingly spend twenty-three hours a day making the medieval equivalent of instant Jell-O. > October 2005 > > Coughing like mad. Can't sleep, can't breathe very well. Everything > hurts. Pulmonary guy is baffled. Can't quite figure out what this > lung density is. I recall that in either "Superman" or "Superman II", there's an explanation that Superman gets super-strength from his high "density". I'd suggest suing those movies for lying to you about density equalling strength, except it would be sort of mean to go after Christoper Reeve, what with him being celebritydom's token sickie. Also you'd need a time machine, or at least you'd have to turn the Earth counterclockwise to make time go in reverse but you shouldn't do that too often because it's not good for the gears inside the Earth. > November 2005 > > Still coughing. In much pain. More antibiotics. CT scan and chest > X-Rays again. > > WHOAH! It really *IS* tuberculosis after all. And to think that some > random stranger at the blood lab asked me if I had TB..."are you > sufferink from da tuberculosis?" Who knew? Tuberculosis is why you should never build a fort out of other people's dirty mattresses. Unless they're air mattresses, in which case they're safe and you can make a swell bouncy castle. Just be careful when you try actually using it -- the first jump's okay, but you only get one before the big kerplooie. > December 2005 > > Admitted to hospital. Actually quarantined in hospital. Nice fancy > room. Private and all. Nobody can see me without wearing a mask. > Fool tells the doctors that if he were to catch something from me, he'd > already have it so he wouldn't put a mask on. Hospital told him that > they were not liable if he got sick. > > Bronchoscopy. Ever had one of those? Don't. Death would be a more > pleasant experience. > > Lung biopsy. Tubercular cavity now invaded with the Aspergillus > fungus. (And you were impressed that Zixia could grow mushrooms on his > carpet. Feh on that! I can grow them in my lung!!!) > > Oh and all of my ribs are broken. From coughing. This *totally* > freaked out my doctor. He immediately put me on massive doses of > calcium. Plus Fentanyl for the pain and more antibiotics as well as a > decision to put me on something called INH. Dr. Rose-Marie can explain > all of this if she is still around. I think Aspergillus will grow on pretty much anything. Note that you have to call it by its first name because if you mention its last name people will accuse you of being a racist, whether or not you were TV's Kramer, and if you are, for the rest of your life people will be asking you to explain what the significance of "with a fork up your ass" meant. Kramer's meltdown ranks right up there with Dan Rather's "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" attack as something he'll spend the rest of his life being unable to explain. As far as INH goes, I don't know what it is either. Unless it's an Internet abbreviation for the Internet abbreviation for "I Have No Joke Here", but that wouldn't make any sense because I'm sure at least one of us can think up a clever joke about broken ribs. Possibly something like "What goes 'scrunch, scrunch'? Marilyn Manson blowing himself after cracking all his ribs." Except clever. And a joke. Let's get to work on this. Surely we can come up with something hilariously wacky about ribs. Unless it only hurts when you laugh, in which case, I stand by the insane thing I said about Marilyn Manson, because funny-strange is as good as funny-ha-ha. Surrealism is the best medicine, although Cubism's even better if your problem is that your eyes are on the same side. > January 2006 > > Getting sicker. Weight down below 90 lbs. More drugs. Developed > thrush in my mouth and throat. Ow. Mouth, gums, throat all covered > with white gunky crap. Hurts to eat, hurts to drink...hurts, hurts, > hurts. Plus my ribcage still hurts like crazy and breathing is > becoming a dreaded chore. Fentanyl works great but it really makes me > wonky. So I either slap on a Fentanyl patch for 72 hours or deal with > the pain. I chose the Fentanyl patch. I don't blame you. What's bad about being wonky? Having a prescription makes it okay! Plus it enables you to enjoy sitcoms. Seriously, there must be a lot of people on medicated patches if "The War At Home" is still on the air. > February 2006 > > Still going downhill. Night sweats, nausea, fainting. Doctors are > scratching their heads. Nobody knows what to do. Meanwhile, I'm > scared shitless. > > March 2006 > > It's a blur. I don't really even remember it. But I am still terribly > sick. Now here's a missed opportunity! If I wanted to tell a.r.k all about some period in my life I was unable to remember, I'd just make up something. Like maybe I was abducted by talking bacon who challenged me to a game of pinball to determine whether I should be President or Vice President of the Bacon Planet but then I hit the ball too hard so the pinball machine exploded and also the Bacon Planet exploded too because they accidentally put it in the pinball machine and oh yeah the pinball machine was really big, which is why you couldn't see it from Earth, which proves my story's true. > April 2006 > > My pulmonary specialist referred me to *another* pulmonary specialist > who actually has experience in dealing with aspergillus. More X-Rays > and more CT scans. And YES!! ANOTHER bronchoscopy!! Woohooo! The > only benefit to having a bronchoscopy is the shot of morphine in the > butt just before the procedure. Someone please call dibs on this band name: "Morphine In The Butt". They could have a battle of the bands against "Suppository In The Head". > May 2006 > > Back in hospital. The plan was to G-Tube feed me (tube in navel) and > strengthen me up for surgery to remove the upper lobe of my right lung. > Weeks pass. I'm bored, sick and completely freaked out by all of the > surgeons talking about what is involved with a lung lobectomy. Problem > is, they can't operate. The aspergillus has suddenly decided to become > "necrotizing aspergillus" and they can't risk cutting into me without > releasing the fungus into my thoracic cavity. Oh joy. Oh bliss. > > I should mention that I had another lung biopsy, too. If I ever have to get a biopsy, I'm going to drive the doctors crazy by asking them over and over to promise me they spell it with just one "o". "And after your bioopsy, we're going to perform a total whoopsiedoodle, followed by an internal fuckup!" > June 2006 > > Taking 32 pills a day. One, Voriconizole, costs $1,800 every 15 days. > If it weren't for Fool's insurance plan covering much of the cost, I'd > be dead. You're scaring us Americans. We can't believe your drugs are that cheap up in Canada. Less than two million dollars a pill? Scandalous! Prices for everything are so high down here that our government still can't convince anyone to use dollar coins. What we need is a hundred-dollar coin, so we could take a roll of them with us when we need to rent two DVDs from Blockbuster. You better believe we're proud of our inflation. > July 2006 > > Several more CT scans (I've had 15 to date). No improvement. > Developed pneumonia again. > > August 2006 > > Meds adjusted. Voriconizole is making me *very* sick. Dosage reduced > to 200 mg instead of 400 mg/day. CT scan showed a teeny-tiny reduction > of the aspergillus. Coughing up really gross stuff that looks like raw > liver. Doctor says that it is actually scar and lung tissue. So, > really, I was hacking up a lung. Hmm. I was going to tell a.r.k all about the scar-removal gel I've been using on the little rough patch on my knee, but suddenly it doesn't seem all that important. I'll see if I can find a way to cough up my knee. (Competitive illness is a guy thing.) > September 2006 > > Dazed. A walking zombie. Projectile vomiting without any warning > whatsoever. Oh, that could be _anyone_ who just came out of the "Bewitched" movie. > October 2006 > > CT scan shows a small reduction of the fungus. Not contained enough to > operate. However, I did gain 6.8 lbs. Or maybe the fungus gained 6.8 > lbs. I don't know. Say, have you ever seen the movie "Matango, Fungus Of Terror"? > November 2006 > > Well here I am. Sitting at my computer for the first time in months. > I have to have regular blood tests to check on my liver function > because the Voriconizole can cause fatal liver damage. Problem is, not > only can they *not* find a "workable" vein, my blood is not clotting > properly so I bruise and bleed a lot of the time. Oh, geez. Not clotting is a pain. I've said before that the worst advice my mother ever gave me was to take aspirin right before going to the dentist, the result of which was just my blood spraying all over him for the whole time he was drilling. Being unclottable _and_ having to have large needles poked into you sounds like an unpleasant combination. On "Star Trek" they have those futuristic air-syringes that can inject you without making a hole (and they even go right through your shirt, which is important if you're on one of the later shows where you can never take off your shirt because your muscles are part of it) but I don't think they ever featured a gadget that can suck blood out through your skin without making either a hole or a Vulcan Space Hickey. > I'm gonna see a hematologist in January and have a repeat CT scan in > February. From what my doctor told me and Fool, it looks like they are > going to go ahead with the surgery, regardless, in the new year. > > Frankly, I'm at the point now where I just want them to cut that > frikken crap out of me and let me live my life again. Well, whatever happens next, I'm glad you've come through the really rough spots without turning into someone who only likes "The War At Home" and the "Bewitched" movie. I hope you keep getting better and better, because sooner or later I'm going to come up there and challenge you to another game of pinball. > So, how was *your* year? Ask me again in a few days. You'll know why when it happens. In the meantime, stay calm. You've been getting better, and you're going to keep getting better. I know this because I'm obviously a health expert, as I'm the healthiest person on the subway. -- K. Did you hear that Tokyo just announced they're going to build a thing just like Toronto's CN tower, except bigger? Maybe if that happens, the customs people in Toronto will stop being such big jerks if I want to visit the CN tower next time I come up there. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Marc Goodman, please virus scan your hard drive Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:31:52 -0500 David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > Mark Edwards (Mark-Edwards@comcast.net) wrote: > > > > Marc, > > > > I have received two emails from you, with subject lines of "Henrie", > > and attachments with embedded viruses (Beagle or Bagle or something > > like that), as reported by McAfee. This might be a good time to do a > > full virus scan of your hard drive. > > Well, if they're anything like the usual stuff these days, they're not > from Marc. They're from someone who's forging the From: header to make > it look like it's from Marc, who's found both your address and his > address somewhere, to try to deliver the virus to you (and probably > to Marc also). Viruses that send out this sort of thing get their imaginary "From:" and "To:" addresses from places like your Web or Usenet cache, so they will tend to grab handfuls of addresses from the same newsgroup or message board or whatever. I think some of the spammers may also be directly mining the Google Groups archive. Basically, they're always desperately looking for more addresses to hit. Anyway, sometimes the bogus addresses are unrelated to yours, but often the "From:" and "To:" were mined from the same source which is why a.r.k posters get a lot of spam claiming to be from other a.r.k posters. YOU LURKERS HAVE IT SO EASY! ESPECIALLY YOU THERE IN THE BLUE PANTS! YES I CAN SEE YOU! > (Checking out the Received: headers usually spotlights this in a heartbeat - > most legit emails from one ARKian to another don't take detours through Korea > or Roosia...) I've always wondered why we don't have more people from outside the U.S. and Canada posting to a.r.k. After all, in France they love Jerry Lewis, so logically in weirder places they should love me. Why aren't I huge in Tokyo? -- K. I mean like Godzilla, though just being famous there would also be acceptable. But what I really want is to be huge enough to step on all those tiny breakaway buildings they have. RRRAWRRRR!!!! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: A Public Service Announcement Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:44:14 -0500 shelly (shelly@cat-sidh.net) wrote: > > If you find yourself listening to headphones in public, or at work, > where other people are nearby, try to remember not to hum along with > the music. Because if you do, you will end up sounding like a > mortally wounded manatee, and nobody wants to listen to that. Trust me. One of the things I like about the iPod taking over the music-player market is that Walkmans and Discmans always had headphones where everyone else on the subway train would hear an annoying yet unidentifiable "TSSH! TSSH! TSSH! TSSH!" leaking out of the earpads. Because modern digital music players usually ship with earbuds instead of headphones, they don't need to play stuff as loud (that helps the batteries last) and a tinny version of the beat won't trickle out. Stores are now full of portable DVD players, and people appear to be buying them (even though all except the Sonys have on the order of 3 hours battery life, definitely not good) but I haven't yet seen anyone using one of these on the subway. I look forward to seeing what sort of social problems arise as people start watching movies on the subway, especially because we're already being deluged with news reports of people being busted for watching porn in moving cars. I figure if people do anything sleazy in their own car, they're even more likely to do it on the subway, so I predict that once the portable DVD players have a long enough battery life to be worth buying, we'll have to put up with people watching "Stop My Ass Is On Fire 7" on the Green Line. I just bring my tiny portable Nintendo, and I play it with the sound turned off, because you really don't need sound to enjoy all the "POP THE VIRTUAL BUBBLE WRAP IN 3 SECONDS OR LESS" games I have. I don't have to hear it because I already know what bubble wrap sounds like. And, you'll appreciate the fact that I'm not the sort of person who would turn the sound off on their Nintendo but make their own bubble-wrap noises with their mouth. Someday I should freak people out by bringing something like Blip or Merlin or Mattel Electronic Football on the train. I love Blip just because it's the absolute opposite of fun and yet it's the only steampunk video game ever created to exploit cheap parents at Christmas. Never again will we see any toys as insane as a wind-up, mechanical "Pong" knockoff. -- K. I always hoped they'd do a mechanical "Pac-Man". I do have the mechanical "Tetris", but it's really missing most of the gameplay, i.e. it's just some Legos that don't stick together.