the nth degree

ALL CHURCHES LIE — TRAPS ARE SET FOR YOU — BEAST...

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:22:51 -0700

ALL CHURCHES LIE — TRAPS ARE SET FOR YOU — BEAST COMPUTER

Gotta love batshit-crazy conspiracy theorists.

You,re doing it wrong.

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:38:36 -0700

You,re doing it wrong.

The four steps to comedic mastery.

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:24:00 -0700

1. Prospecting for humor
2. Mining the humor
3. Refining the humor
4. Presenting humor

— From an online guide for businesspeople claiming to help you Discover the Secrets of How To Think Like Your Favorite Stand Up Comedian! Nothing like business to treat humor like a harvestable resource. I’m surprised that last step isn’t “Selling the humor at a profit”.

Test footage of a pin popping a water balloon from a new...

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:08:54 -0700

Test footage of a pin popping a water balloon from a new high-speed camera — at 2000 frames-per-second, the fastest in the world.

Select Nuts: An Afternoon in the Castro, from Merlin Mann. (AKA,...

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:10:01 -0700

Select Nuts: An Afternoon in the Castro, from Merlin Mann. (AKA, Wizard Nonwizardd.)

What do you suppose...

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:50:00 -0700

“…is the scarcest item in Alaska? Women! Men who run from the States to escape them find that the shortage is a serious problem. They can’t find enough of the ladies to avoid. For the young woman back home, the opportunities in this land, devoid of ruffled curtains and home-baked apple pie, are readily imaginable. The ratio of males to females up thar’ is approximately 25 to 1. Surely any bright, husbandless girl cannot fail to see the desperate situation behind such a statistic and the limitless horizon beyond it.”

— An example paragraph from Shefter’s Guide to Better Compositions, 1960. Saddle up, ladies! Desperate, pie-less men await anything that can drag its penis-free torso up to Seward’s icebox. Your bright future awaits! (Except for the months of endless night. And the chronic alcoholism.)

“You Really Got a Hold on Me” by She & Him, from...

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:46:00 -0700

“You Really Got a Hold on Me” by She & Him, from the album Volume One.

The website for We Tell Stories, a free online publishing...

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:08:50 -0700

The website for We Tell Stories, a free online publishing project from Penguin Books. Lovely design, great idea.

"Yale art student Aliza Shvarts' senior art project documents a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminates herself while inducing miscarriages over and over."

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:14:00 -0700

"Yale art student Aliza Shvarts' senior art project documents a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminates herself while inducing miscarriages over and over.":

I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for art for art’s sake — I like Chris Ofili’s work and think Andres Seranno’s Piss Christ is genuinely beautiful — but this is pretty disgusting.

UPDATE: It was a hoax.

“Rockin’ Our Sales”, by Bruce ServicePack and...

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:02:00 -0700

“Rockin’ Our Sales”, by Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band — an internally distributed promotional video at Microsoft. Cool guys, eh?

The strange, strange story of Kaspar Hauser.

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:11:29 -0700

The strange, strange story of Kaspar Hauser.:

He stumbles into Nuremburg at 16, with a command of about 10 German words — half of which he only knows by rote. He learns to speak, and tells of being raised in horrific conditions: total darkness, no human contact.

The people who take him in — one after another, a long string of them — each begin to suspect something’s up, though. Hauser doesn’t seem to be telling the whole truth.

Factor in popular theories of abandonment by irresponsible royals, the possibility of a massive hoax, and modern DNA analysis… and you’ve got a great (if confusing) story.

From one man’s Refacing American Tender photoset on...

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:08:00 -0700

From one man’s Refacing American Tender photoset on Flickr.

"Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a..."

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:48:42 -0700

“Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.”

- From a description of a Peter Ustinov documentary in The Times. Serial comma or no: Punctuation will not save you here.

Living it up while I'm going down.

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:08:00 -0700

“As the emergency bell rang and rang, he began to fear that it might somehow—electricity? friction? heat?—start a fire. Recently, there had been a small fire in the building, rendering the elevators unusable. The Business Week staff had walked down forty-three stories. He also began hearing unlikely oscillations in the ringing: aural hallucinations. Before long, he began to contemplate death.”

— From an amazing article in the New Yorker. There’s a time-lapse video of the trapped man as well.

"So, the caterpillar has emerged from the cocoon… as a shark, with a gun for a mouth."

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:18:15 -0700

“So, the caterpillar has emerged from the cocoon… as a shark, with a gun for a mouth.”

- C. Montgomery Burns, from the Simpsons episode “C.E. D’OH”

So fucking true. (From boxforge.)

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:39:21 -0700

So fucking true. (From boxforge.)

"I would like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and Jesus."

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:10:45 -0700

“I would like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and Jesus.”

- Author unknown; an example cited in stylebooks as an argument for the Oxford comma. Seen at Crooked Timber.

On Tartanry.

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:10:25 -0700

On Tartanry.

"Dragon rock has a lot more fire, and burning in it than wizard rock. Wizard rock has more wands and,..."

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 02:38:00 -0700

“Dragon rock has a lot more fire, and burning in it than wizard rock. Wizard rock has more wands and, like, books and smartness.”

- Darius Wilkins, age 8, of ~~wizard~~ dragon rock band The Hungarian Horntails, in The Wizard Rockumentary: A Movie About Rocking and Rowling, which had its world premiere last night in Spokane.

"Businessmen they drink my wine plowmen dig my earth none of them along the line know what any of it..."

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:02:09 -0700

“Businessmen
they drink my wine
plowmen dig my earth
none of them
along the line
know
what any of it is worth”

- “All Along the Watchtower,” lyrics by Bob Dylan. Must mean new BSG tonight.