majiksznak

What do we know?: a discovery channel style spoof starring Bob Odenkirk (formerly of Mr. Show).

TSA has probably already seen this: an interview with Brian Greene on the Colbert Report. Funny stuff.

This picture is so awesome... SO AWESOME. Yes, you too can be the proud owner of an MC Hawking CD.

I ask Doomsday who the motherfuckers be,
"some punk ass bitches from MIT."
The fucking Institute, man I should've known,
I say meet me at my crib and hang up the phone.
Playtimes over I got a job to do,
and the world will be less crowded by the time I'm through,
and I'll keep rolling while bullets fly,
cause all my shootings be drivebys.

I remember seeing some of this stuff a few years back. It seems like MC Hawking has taken an anti-fundamentalist creationist stance since I last saw. Before, it was all just about tappin' bitchez, popping suckaz, and dropping science.

My $99 electric snow shovel has proven itself to be worth the money I spent on it.

I'm not entirely sure if it makes clearing snow faster or if it just makes me want to do it more because I'm using a fun gadget. I may never know... One gripe: to be on, you have to be squeezing the handle. You must do so hard enough that my hands got sore just keeping the thing turned on. This, I must circumvent.

It's a pain in the ass to maintain, but this is the layout I want to go with from now on. The CSS is really, really messy, though. Questions? Comments?

Thanks to Heather for the free artificial Christmas tree! Once I get some decorations on it, it's going to be so goddamn festive in my house.

And with X-Files Santa by its side, it'll be unstoppable.

Engrish.com has a bunch of new stuff since I last went there. This one reminded me of the Monty Python Spam sketch...

I must see this movie.

Hey, IE users: 3 guesses as to what I broke in IE... Hint: it rhymes with fabric shack.

There you go: an RSS feed for the recent comments. Put that in your RSS reader and, um... use it.

Doesn't have the same ring as "put that in your pipe and smoke it", but oh well.

These guys are amazing! A guitar player and bass player pull off some amazing riffs. Does anybody know who these guys are?

A really funny advertisement featuring a giant cock. Totally safe for work.

Very cool! Time-lapse photography of the locks of the Panama Canal

Sketch comedy: Waiters nauseated by food. I'm pretty sure that's Steven Colbert of the Colbert Report (formerly of the Daily Show).

McDonald's Employee Simulator. When it came time to write in my diary, I wrote, "I made 5 hamburgers today. I want to die."

Still yet another funny t-shirt store.

Here's a really good George W. Bush impression by Will Ferrel. Yes, you heard me: a funny bit on SNL. Will's got George's "repeat the same thing several times in different ways such that a total lack of understanding is implied" thing down pat.

It's actually an air humidifier / purifier, but the picture looks somewhat dirty.

That's it! This is the sign that the End is Near: a treadmill bicycle. I shit you not.

Check out my latest acquisition: a holiday snowman decoration. It's wicked cute, and I got it from my awesome girlfriend.

An Onion opinion piece on Sony's DRM rootkit fiasco. Brilliant. The middle one especially sums up the ridiculousness of the whole thing. Sony and other DRM-supporters need to realize that making legal purchasing worse than illegally obtaining intellectual property is retarded.

So apparently, you can calculate how much good or evil there is in text by applying certain formulas. For instance, having a number of words starting with vowels that is divisible by 7 means you are good... According to The Gematriculator, my site is mostly good:



You'll note that Hymie's site is 61% evil.

Just for kicks, I ran the result of searching for "cock" on my site through the Gematriculator, and got some interesting statistics:

Value of phrase "i should get some, like, gloves or something."	2223 2223=13x171
Value of phrase "it's about 7 degrees here."	1196 1196=13x92
Value of phrase "9000 says: and yes, i am a cock."	1898 1898=13x146 1+8+9+8=26=13x2
Value of phrase "majik sznak says: good to know."	2973 2+9+7+3=21=7x3
Value of phrase "very good."	1326 1326=13x102
Value of phrase "you're cold, and i'm fine!"	1426 1+4+2+6=13
Value of phrase "it's cold where you are, but not where i am."	3640 3640=7x520 3640=13x280 3+6+4+0=13
Value of phrase "majik sznak says: cock!"	2038 2+0+3+8=13
Value of phrase "post # 390 it's funny, because i wasn't talking about my 9 inch cock!"	4897 4+8+9+7=28=7x4
Value of phrase "post # 446 haha!"	448 448=7x64
Value of phrase "" man: that just makes fun of itself."	2048 2+0+4+8=14=7x2
Value of phrase "mostly because it has cock featured prominently on the container, and partly because i like coconut."	6967 6+9+6+7=28=7x4
Value of phrase "for some reason, drinking a small amount of coconut milk from a coconut after you've smashed the thing open is totally different than chugging around 250 ml of the crap."	9543 9+5+4+3=21=7x3
Value of phrase "the little fork is meant to be used to grab the thin slices of actual coconut floating in the drink."	5116 5+1+1+6=13
Value of phrase "" "cock juice?"	413 413=7x59
Value of phrase "com/pranks/imposter/imposter."	1582 1582=7x226

I am sans-iPod for probably 6 weeks. I finally decided to take it back to Best Buy for service. The list of problems:

1. The buttons press themselves: just sitting on a table or the car seat, it will stop as if I had held down the play button or magically skip to the next track
2. The battery life is down to 1 or 2 hours
3. The last time I tried wiping it clean and reloading it, I got an error copying to its hard drive

I give myself a week before I get the shakes.

Richard Simmons on Whose Line is it Anyway? This is a prime example of why improv veterans scoff at this show.

Anyway, if you want to see Richard Simmons being extremely gay (and who doesn't), click on the link!

You too can own a beautiful Norwegian Blue parrot. Careful: they stun easy...

I'm listening to an audio book talking about how fishy it was that Sauds and Bin Ladens were flown out of the U.S. while all flights were grounded after September 11, 2001. Earlier in the same audio book, they talk about how the US has this extremely important deal with rich Saudi Arabian families (the Sauds and the Bin Ladens) to make sure that oil comes in and that Saudi Arabia gets protection from its neighbours.

Michael Moore spent some time on the subject in Farenheit 911, saying how fishy it was...

My question is this: didn't it make perfect sense to do so? They've got this deal going with these extremely powerful families. If they didn't get them the heck out of the U.S. and even one of them got lynched by U.S. citizens, wouldn't it have caused the whole relationship to break down? Wasn't the evacuation of these people an action taken to prevent a potential war between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.?

I know that there are learned types reading this: please comment.

A brilliant ID-themed Onion opinion piece from last week.

Video: people dressed up as anime characters.

Hey: remember Jack Thompson? Well, he got his license revoked and was kicked off his court case against Sony and Rockstar games.

Someone needs to make a YTMND of this. Some older guy who clearly isn't a native English speaker singing along to "What is Love" by Haddaway.

Another rendition of the music from Super Mario Brothers? Yes please. There are so many similarly themed videos that it's getting so hard to care, but these guys get points for execution. They aren't the best marimbists (I just made that up: it's mine) in the world, but if you can get past that, it was pretty well done.

Snorg Tees. Good stuff including, "I'm kind of a big deal".

Dibs.

Russel Peters in New York. 58 minutes, 37 seconds of stand-up comedy on Google Video.

Engadget has a great headline on this ridiculous cell phone: "The SK Telecom PT-S170 flipping, sliding, and swiveling nonsense".

Didn't Mr. Burns do this?

Video: stop emo haircuts. Some funny, funny pictures here. Reminds me of "The Emo Song":

Reality constricts around me tighter than a pair of my sister's jeans, which look great on me by the way.

If I said I liked girls, I'd only be half right.

The hardest-game playin', hardest-swearin' gramma that ever was.

I don't know what this is, but the bit in the middle makes me think "ninja bondage".

Generate your own warning labels. Let's have your best ones. (Email them to me if you don't have web posting capabilities.)

http://www.tunewear.com/english/product/tetran/index.htmlReally cute earbud holder thingy.

I saw this recently, but never posted it. Jesse has reminded me of it. I'd never actually gone past the first page. So cruelarious. Reminds me of a good idiom:

The odds are good, but the goods are odd.

The moral of the story: clean your pickup truck.

A game where you defend the walls of your museum from modern art by shooting at it.

Wal-Mart employee fired over Christmas explanation.

An awesome bit on the Colbert Report. I can't say anything about it: it will ruin the surprise.

Can't... stop... making... Pillsbury Doughboy... do the running man! Actually, the running man and the robot, over and over.

I like Slashdot's title for this story: Literature Teeters on the Edge of a 'Gr8 Fall'.

Thanks to Jesse for pointing out another webcomic that has the occasional gold. It's called Bigger Than Cheeses. Thanks to Jessica for pointing out this ID-themed comic.

Wow. The troops in Iraq are real geniuses, aren't they?

Music video for Braces Tower - Eleven Twelve: a remix of that pinball song from Sesame Street.

The Vroombox. I forgot who I was talking to about this: I saw something similar a long time ago. It's a device that plays a different car's engine sounds through your car's stereo.

Yes! Thanks to the iPod Linux documentation, I was able to create a C program that reads my iPod database. The next step is a doozy: I'd like to make something that mounts the iPod library as a removable disk. The contents will consist of a bunch of directories that mimic the iPod structure. Well, that's one possibility. My main goal is to provide an interface to the files on the iPod but with drag & drop functionality (for dragging into VirtualDJ, for instance).

Opening iPod database.


MHBD [mhbd]

Header Length: 104
File Length: 5580632
Number of Children: 2
ID: 0



MHSD [mhsd]

Header Length: 96
MHSD Length: 4135290
MHSD Type: 1


MHLT [mhlt]

Header Length: 92

Number of Songs: 5550
==================================================
Title: Eyes
Location: :ipod_control:Music:F04:01 - Eyes.mp3
Album: Bee
Artist: Bonham, Tracy
Genre: Folk
Filetype: MPEG audio file
Comment: Track 1
==================================================
Title: All Thumbs
Location: :ipod_control:Music:F09:02 - All Thumbs.mp3
Album: Bee
Artist: Bonham, Tracy
Genre: Rock
Filetype: MPEG audio file
Comment: Track 2
==================================================
Title: Shine
Location: :ipod_control:Music:F07:03 - Shine.mp3
Album: Bee
Artist: Bonham, Tracy
Genre: Rock
Filetype: MPEG audio file
Comment: Track 3
==================================================
Title: Freed (Live At Joe's Pub - NYC)
Location: :ipod_control:Music:F04:04 - Freed (Live At Joe's Pub - NYC).mp3
Album: Bee
Artist: Bonham, Tracy
Genre: Rock
Filetype: MPEG audio file
Comment: Track 4
==================================================
Title: Black Dog
Location: :ipod_control:Music:F09:05 - Black Dog.mp3
Album: Bee
Artist: Bonham, Tracy
Genre: Rock
Filetype: MPEG audio file
Comment: Track 5
==================================================
Title: Back From Space
Location: :ipod_control:Music:F12:01-amon_tobin-back_from_space-st.mp3
Album: Out, From Out Where
Artist: Amon Tobin
Genre: D&B
Filetype: MPEG audio file
Comment: Shinobi Tunes 2002
Description text: Amon Tobin
==================================================
Title: 02 Schmetterlinge
Location: :ipod_control:Music:F11:02 - Schmetterlinge.mp3
Album: Verliebt - Fan Edition
Artist: Blümchen - Verliebt
Genre: Dance
Filetype: MPEG audio file
.
.
.

Curses! Before leaving for work, I had to shovel. I had to shovel about half an inch of snow, which is right at the limit where my electric snow shovel basically does nothing.

Thanks, Jesse, for giving me another rad webcomic to read: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Exhibit A.

I'm guessing I'll have a chance to try this bad boy out tonight. This both fills me with rage and glee, as I detest clearing snow but enjoy trying new toys. That, and I'll get to see if it sucks so I can take it back.

I thought I had ensured you all 30 snow-free days, but I guess not.

From a Slashdot discussion on DRM, user "Golias" makes this excellent point:

When you buy clothes from a department store, the tag is removed and you are free to wear alter, and lend out the clothing however you see fit.

That's because their shirt can't instantly become six billion more shirts, which you can give away for free (or sell for next to nothing, like AllofMP3.com does) and take away any reason for anybody else to buy one from them.

Selling recorded music is a multi-million dollar industry, the owners of which surely don't want to just give up, just because technology has made it fantastically easy to rip them off.

If you don't like DRM, suggest another way for them to sell music. (And no bullshit answers about giving it away and making their money off concerts and t-shirt sales. Suggest a solution which doesn't involve simply giving up all that sales revenue.) If you can't come up with anything better than what's out there now, why would you be surprised that they can't either, and are desperately experimenting with so many bad ideas?

Thems get blowed up real good. The Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot. How sweet to see the little girl operating a machinegun.

More proof that audiophiles will swallow any bullshit: Black gunk that you spread onto your op-amp chips to turn transistor amp sound into tube amp sound.

This is what you agree to when you click "agree" after putting a Sony CD into your computer:

1. If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. That's because the EULA says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer possess the original CD.
2. You can't keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a "personal home computer system owned by you."
3. If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids "export" outside the country where you reside.
4. You must install any and all updates, or else lose the music on your computer. The EULA immediately terminates if you fail to install any update. No more holding out on those hobble-ware downgrades masquerading as updates.
5. Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to "enforce their rights" against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this "self help" crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm.
6. The EULA says Sony-BMG will never be liable to you for more than $5.00. That's right, no matter what happens, you can't even get back what you paid for the CD.
7. If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.
8. You have no right to transfer the music on your computer, even along with the original CD.
9. Forget about using the music as a soundtrack for your latest family photo slideshow, or mash-ups, or sampling. The EULA forbids changing, altering, or make derivative works from the music on your computer.

An article on Sony's CD EULA.

Your very own Charlie Brown tree.

The Onion continues to be awesome... "I'm Very Interested In Hearing Some Half-Baked Theories".

As an ill-informed pseudo-intellectual with a particular interest in the unverifiable, I'm always on the lookout for some partially thought out misinformation. So, if you have an uninformed solution to a dilemma that doesn't actually exist, don't bother double-checking your information. I'm all ears.

But if Atlantis really did exist, then where did it go? It couldn't have just disappeared without an unreasonable explanation. I was about to give up on the whole matter when suddenly it hit me: It probably washed away, and it's too deep underwater for scientists to find it. All it takes is a little supposition mixed with critical theorizing and you can easily stumble on a tenuous half-truth that really makes you think.

Brilliant stuff.

Brilliant! This guy started with a red paperclip and is gradually trading it up for better things. He traded the paperclip for a pen, for example. He is now up to a 1000 Watt generator. He wants to keep going until he gets a house or something.

No, I did frigging not.

ID-watch news:

The Globe and Mail writes about a new educational standard in Kansas. There are reader comments.

Video of the Gorillaz playing live. Cartoons on stage.

I'd post a link to the site I stole this from, but it's awfully rednecky, so instead, here's a list of some of the best examples of poorly chosen domain names:

• www.molestationnursery.com - Mole Station Nursery
• www.therapistfinder.com - Therapist Finder
• www.expertsexchange.com - Experts Exchange (They've moved to experts-exchange.com
• www.powergenitalia.com - Power-Gen Italia
• www.whorepresents.com - Who Represents?

Of course, there's www.penisland.com, but they don't count because the domain was chosen to be ambiguous...

True office story:

Me: "What be shakin'?"
Coworker: "I'm eating my yam."

It occurs to me that I haven't put Bari's blog in my weblogs menu. Silly!

Audiophiles will buy anything (and I mean that literally and figuratively).

Do you like retarded web fads? Of course you do. Here's my version.

For those of you who aren't familiar with YTMND, here's the Wikipedia article.

When you make a movie, do you really want to give it a tagline of "Welcome to the suck"?

Happy Birthday, Fane! Here's a birthday mad-gab for you.

Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
You     1     like a     2    ,
And you     3     like one too.

Oh man... Check this guy out. Nice garbage bag jacket, too! I bet the nerdy ladies are all over Broody McDorkmeister.

Luxury sea-view apartments! These are the Thames Estuary Army Forts from WW2.

Know what's awesome? aAGoogle image search for "Hasselhoff".

There are a lot of good t-shirts in this collection. Including The Dinosaurs Died For Our Sins.

Here's a feature I haven't posted in a while: funny search terms that bring people to my site!

jackie chan shit windmilling

I searched for this on my site but couldn't find it. I was pretty sure I'd posted it, but it may be in a comment. The controvertial Relationship Ladder theory.

Know how some people are afraid of laser pointers? Here's your chance to reinforce that fear / burn them for being stupid!

A force to be reckoned with, the inimitable Hymie the CONTROL robot has joined the fray and set up his own web log. Welcome!

You know what cheeses me off? Flaming, flying skulls. Granted, it's specifically the ones that fly towards me and hurt me that I hate, but they give the rest of them a bad name. Screw you, flaming skulls! Screw you.

I'm reading a book called "Only Forward" (that I'd read many moons ago and found rather worthwhile). Amazon.com has an excerpt that you should check out. Skip to Chapter 1 and start reading. Hilarity. The book gets pretty weird by the middle. It actually loses its "hard-boiled detective novel" feel gradually, then gets pretty insane, but it never stops being very interesting.

A really awesome Japanese magician performing for a giggling gaggle of girls.

Video: "Comic Strip" by Serge Gainsbourg (featuring Brigitte Bardot). Some insanity from France in the Sixties. That site features a lot more retro goofyness, so check it out.

Ever wonder what the instructions on those weird electric doo-hickies you find in bathrooms really mean? Wonder no more!

Interview where the interviewer can't stop laughing. It's really quite horrible: it seems like it's a really serious subject. I wish I knew what they were saying.

In the future, I will be a luddite. More talk about how the U.S. movie industry wants to destroy your TV.