majiksznak

Guinness Book of World Records. I don't know... some of this stuff is retarded. I feel like I could just make something up and get a record in. Most jelly beans scooped from one bowl to another using a coffee mug. There you go: I bet that's not in there!

The Ultimate Showdown!

Top 50 Music Videos of 2005. I haven't watched any yet, but it looks promising.

Awesome. I love when Dan Savage completely tears into someone who is a complete ass. Check out the second letter and Dan's response.

The Superficial: Ricky Martin is so straight you'll turn gay.

Interview with Bobby Henderson, the creator of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Another gallery: The Year in Pictures by MSNBC.

This happens to be rapper "Fifty Cent's" choice of mouthwash.

I'm officially adding Celine Dion to the list of people who chap my ass.

I happened to catch her on a French TV show. Apparently, the French don't hate her like we do...

This despite her childish, sycophantic manner of speaking. She started off by sucking the collective dick of France for about 10 minutes, talking about how much she loves it, misses it, and has it in her heart even when she is in California. Add to this the fact that every time she says "Rene", I lose a thin layer of tooth enamel, and you can imagine how much trouble I had staying in the room.

After a lip-synched song with a few accompanying tenors, they played an old clip of a song featuring her name that may have been the inspiration for her being called Celine. I don't know: I was trying not to pay attention. After the clip, she was tearing up. Here's what finally forced me to leave to retain my sanity: she said, "why, sometimes, do the good memories make you cry?" Vomitous! That tears it!

I had to take my leave from the TV room. Thanks for ruining Christmas, Celine: the turkey tasted better on the way down.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Wicked, wicked stuff. Flipping and kicking and jumping, oh my. This appears to be "bullshit-fu", which is totally awesome.

From now on, this is the only way a bartender gets a tip from me.

I totally did well at the gift exchange at work. I got a joystick that plays Xevious, Pole Position, Galaga, Mappy, and Ms. Pac-Man. My original plan was to get the gift I brough back... A travel mug and this puzzle. I totally want to try it, but the retro-lust got to me.

Reuters' Pictures of the Year. Courtney Love: what a fox...

AAAAAAGH! The most frightening Santa Claus ever! Pope Benedict XVI looks like Emperor Palpatine...

Know those email worms that say stuff like, "The FBI has detected that you do illegal things"? Well, this guy turned himself in after getting one of those. Turns out he had a bunch of child pornography on his computer. Email worms finally did something to help the world!

Holy crap that guy can jump. Not only that, but check out the crazy cover of "Magic Dance" by David Bowie (from Labyrinth).

If you've never seen The Daily WTF and you're a programmer, shame on you. It's great fun. Here's one from a Cascading Style Sheet at work:.LDBold {
font-weight:bold;
}
I want to cry...

I find this hilarious. Basically, it's a remote controlled car with spraycans that prints out messages on the ground as it drives. Think of it as a mobile ink jet printer...

Remember how we'd collectively decided (I'm pretty sure) that people who can't use their technology shouldn't have it? I reiterate. GWB on his colour iPod:

This thing's a clunker compared to the Shuffle

He also implies that he doesn't know that you can randomize songs on all iPods, not just the Shuffle.

A UK reality show that I heard of a little while ago just ended. They had convinced 3 people that they were being blasted off into space... It was a total hoax. They gave them each £25,000 for the embarassment.

We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom.

That's a part of the recent decision made by a court over a Dover PA school board push to require students to hear a blurb before being taught evolution:

The statement said Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps."

Really, I feel that the quote I opened with sums up the whole I.D. debacle. There are plenty of reasonable discussions you can have about the theory of evolution, I.D., creationism, etc., and there are many schools of thought when it comes to the origin and development of life on Earth. However, the recent hubbub uses psuedoscience to try to wedge religious doubt into secular schools by taking advantage of a very narrow-minded version of creationism. There's a lot more to it, and there are more versions of it than we are seeing in the news.

Movie idea: Adolf Hitler is cloned by Neo-Nazis, but decides on a career in baseball instead of evil. The movie follows his trials and tribulations as a batter for the New York Yankees. I call it, "Switch Hitler".

I just finished reading Spares, another novel by Michael Marshall Smith (author of Only Forward). I guess the guy has a real word-on for getting weird halfway through a book. As with Only Forward, I was totally captivated by the book the whole way through, and during the first half, thought it was going to be humorous sci-fi detective novel.

Not so.

Spares gets big time weird. This time, the actual idea surrounding the weirdness didn't strike me as much as the concept in Only Forward, but it came with an explanation centering around cats that I enjoyed. Since I can blab about it without ruining anything, I will...

At one point in time, a stoner notices that cats are never on the right side of a door. You put them outside, they want in. They want to get into a cupboard, then they want out as soon as they're in. So he decides to follow his cat around outside in the woods as it keeps searching for whatever it's looking for... and follows it through a door into another world.

At any rate, Spares has a lot of particularly horrifying things happening, and the main character has an even more checkered past and present than the one in Only Forward. The author manages to balance descriptions of terrible events with humour thanks to his ability to transition between them seamlessly.

Here's a quote I liked enough to bookmark. He was describing an area where a lot of artists lived:

You can't throw a brick without hitting someone rendering something in watercolors. It's sometimes fun just to throw the brick anyway.

I'm definitely going to seek out more by Michael Marshall Smith.

If you're interested in that kind of thing, when you post comments, there is a new button that you can click that will tell you what words, if any, may be spelled incorrectly.

Fun!

Tom Cruise plugging a Scientologist mind-control device into the back of Katie Holmes' head.

This Flash demonstration of the retouching of some girl illustrates what gets done to make cover models "more appealing". I remember seeing a show on TV that showed the retouching of a picture of Elizabeth Hurley. They lengthened her legs to a crazy amount (120% or something) of their original size.

"I love the Chronic... WHAT -cles of Narnia!" Thanks, Nick.

The guys from The Lonely Island are awesome, and it's good to see them on SNL. If you liked that, be sure to download "The Heist".

Doonesbury Comic featuring Intelligent Design. Thanks, Rob.

This Flash game accurately simulates life on a farm.

Sure you can write a letter to Santa, but what about Christopher Walken? Doesn't he deserve a Christmas letter? This is done by the same guy who paints Bea Arthur battling a giant squid.

Yuuuuuuuck!

My childish dream of receiving a brand new iPod as a warranty replacement have been dashed. I called Best Buy to ask how repairs were coming along, and they're waiting on a battery that was ordered from Apple... While this means that my iPod's youthful battery life will be restored, it also means they aren't just going to hand me a new one. Not only that, but they estimated I wouldn't have it back till mid-January. I brought it in November 23rd. Merry Christmas, Majik Sznak: I hope you like disappointment.

Photo gallery! Arinn, who posts from time to time, takes good pictures. Check it out.

So there's a gift exchange game wherein you pick random gifts but then get to steal gifts from other people. I'm sure you've played it. It seems to be referred to as a Chinese Gift Exchange, which seems sort of racist and sort of ignorant. I'm not sure what the original deal was with calling it that, but that's the vibe I get. I'm not the only one.

At any rate, I figure my readers can come up with some much better gift exchange ideas based on cultural stereotypes. Here's one I just came up with:

French gift exchange:

- Buy only overpriced gifts: the brand should account for 90% of the cost of the gift.
- The gifts go into a pile at the end of the room, and everyone lines up. Feel free to bud into line if you can get away with it.
- When everyone is inline, ring the bell. At this point, everyone rushes into a huge crowd around the gifts, pulling and grabbing at what they want.
- When you're done that, open your gift. If you don't like, it, throw it at someone, who has to drop theirs and yell, "I surrender!"
- After the exchange, everyone must talk about how brave they were.

P.S. I'm French, so I can say whatever I want. That's how it works.

All right: let's hear your submissions!

The Register makes fun of Wikipedia.

Here's a hypothetical entry, containing two serious errors.

Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1462 and published the Theory of Relativity.

We can see that it is 13 words long: an "error rate" of one every 6.5 words.

Now here's a longer version.

Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1462.

Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger snake

He published the Theory of Relativity.

This version is 114 words long, and contains only 2 errors - an "error rate" of one every 57 words. That's almost nine times more accurate - and very much proves Barry and Ernest correct.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. Scantly clad girls use their bodies, the worst acting on the planet, and bad, confusing analogies to teach calculus.

An awesome video: how to enjoy sushi. Now you too can learn how to order the endangered animals not on the menu!

Cute Overload. A blog dedicated to posting cute pictures.

The new Swiss Franc bills... now with more foetus, skull, and AIDS virus. These are the winning designs of a contest, so no guarantee these will end up being the new Swiss bills.

News profanity screwup.

Remember that professor who got beaten up over Intelligent Design? The Onion chimes in.

At least, I think it's a Japanese game show... I don't know. If your day is making way too much sense, watch this video.

From The Onion:

Pat Robertson Says Pie Not Delicious

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA?Televangelist Pat Robertson, who recently condemned the town of Dover, PA for accepting evolution and called for the assassination of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said during a Sunday broadcast of The 700 Club that pie is not delicious. "Pie is a corrupt and foul-tasting pastry-covered baked-fruit abomination that shall turn to ashes in the mouth of the misled eater," Robertson said during his 11-minute anti-pie tirade. "The pious eat not the pie, knowing it an unclean thing, nor the crust, nor the filling. Get thee behind me, pie!" Stunned 700 Club viewer Melody Blaker of Houston told reporters that that the evangelist had "abandoned common sense."

Order your copy of Stacker today! It's the first ever video game guaranteed to have no effect whatsoever on your children.

We're confident that the new 'reluctantly interactive' content engine we designed will prevent any excitement or emotional involvement, inappropriate or otherwise, on the part of the player.

Apparently, the American Family Organization has pressured Ford into ceasing gay publication advertisements and gay event sponsorship (heh: I said "gay event").

Scroll down all the way in this article for more details.

Yes! That $100 electric snow shovel blasted through 2 inches of wet snow. I totally recommend the little bastard.

Barney the Purple Dinosaur video set to a 2pac track. Simple, silly... Entertaining.

Wow! I'm not sure if this was staged, but I'm thinking it wasn't. Siskel and Ebert basically at each others' throats.

Now these guys are real geniuses. Special bonus humour in the URL.

These guys perform the most extreme stunt ever. I recommend you turn the sound off while watching it, as the moronic comments make me want to puke.

I'm selling a Motorola C330 series cell phone (tiny phone: the C332 is the model with an ergonomically shaped faceplate, though I have another faceplate that makes it look like a C333: boxier). The phone is unlocked, so can be used with any carrier that uses SIM cards (not Telus).

It goes for $50 USD with a plan on T-Mobile in the US. I'll probably get $80 CAD for it on eBay because it's unlocked and you aren't tied to a plan, but I wanted to see if anybody I knew wanted to buy it.

Anyone interested?

What's more fun than a badger in a box? Nothing.

MC Jelly-D. Freestyle rap competition. Here's a sample:

You come once, and I come by the dozens.

Kick ass. Slightly NSFW part where some girl shows up wearing only American money on her chest.

An old SNL bit with Richard Pryor: racist word association job interview.

Jon Stewart responds to a piece that Bill O'Reilly did saying how Jon is the waging war on Christmas.

Yes, that's right, genius, everything is a friggin' sign from God. Here's Chris' comment on this story:

You lost a winning lottery ticket? It's a sign you are a dumbass.

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I didn't.

50% of HDTV owners don't use HDTV. It is for this reason that I should be allowed to walk into someone's house, examine their setup, and if they have screwed it up, take their TV as my own.

Destroying a Porsche. It turns out to be a lot harder than you'd think. In fact, even though the first thing they do is drop a piano on the hood, that doesn't seem to be enough.

Here's another modified trailer. This time, a new take on "A Christmas Story".

Merry Christmas, everyone! Link to full size image

From this CNN article: Ann Coulter was giving a speech to University students, and cut her speech short due to boos and jeers, then started a Q/A session with this magnificent statement:

I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am

Thanks for the link, Chris.

Mitch Hedberg was a really good stand-up comic. Once you've watched the video, check out some other quotes of his. You sort of have to do it that way because unless you can imagine his peculiar style of delivering jokes, some of his jokes aren't as funny. He's got sort of a southern U.S. accent but without too much drawl, and carefully separates his words. He seems to avoid contractions. The guy could probably say "Ah, would like, a twinkie" and it would be funny. Here's an actual joke of his:

I went to the park and saw this kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don't know why: that's what they're supposed to do. Now if he had had a chair on the other end of that string, I would have been impressed.

Yay! Awful. Thanks, John!

Funny spelling mistake: "avator" instead of "avatar".

Avator: Mighty defender of online personas.

Dreamy! From the World Chess Beauty Contest web page.

So, a coworker of mine bought a fancy 42" plasma TV. It does 720p natively. The difference in video quality from a $2000 (several years ago) DVD player providing 480p output and a $200 modded XBox outputting upscaled 720p is noticeable. So if you're going to buy a $3000 high definition TV, make sure you get a DVD player that will upscale to 720p.

Gaaaaaaay.

Deflexion is a board game... with LASERS! I so want to play this. You move pieces around. Some of which have double sided mirrors, others single. If the laser hits a piece on its non-mirrored side, that piece is taken out. The object of the game is to eliminate the opponent's "Pharaoh" piece.

I got this picture from here. I think it's a funny picture. That is all.

TSA linked to this on his page: Professor beaten; attackers cite KU creationism class.

Oh, TheSpaceAdmiral, I think I've found the search terms you say you've been spoofing to confuse me:

monkeys pooping on lucky girls

And if it's not you, then I fear for the future of humanity.

I saw this picture on the World of Kane website. Totally Austin Powers.

In this article, The Register reports:

Bill Gates has hinted he thinks DVD could be the last disc storage format.

They're discussing the XBox 360 and the upcoming Sony PS3. It reminds me of the famous (but bery likely untrue) "640k of RAM ought to be enough for anybody" Gates quote. It seems like a pretty funny thing to say. I'd like to know what The Register's source is.

I hadn't seen this until recently, and it's pretty awesome. Jon Stewart on Crossfire.

Just in time for the Holidays, the 10 Worst Christmas Gifts.

An excellent short documentary (documentary teaser trailer?) involving poor aliens that land on Earth.

I'm not familiar with the original feud that has thus far culminated in this open letter, but basically, it's David Cross setting things straight with Larry the Cable Guy. David Cross being funny and smart, it's a good read.

A coworker just emailed me that no famous video of Ann Coulter talking about how Canada should be nice to the US because the US allows us to live on the same continent. It got me thinking about my theory: that Ann Coulter is this generation's Andy Kaufman. I keep feeling like 10 years down the road, we'll find out that she was acting the whole time, just getting people riled up and seeing what she could get away with.

This can't be real. It smells like what hardcore right-wingers think of those heathen atheists. That, or these atheists are just interested in making atheists look bad. Here's the link, but right now it's overloaded.

So nerdy! So good. Scrollbar scarves.

A very special Harlem Globetrotters Christmas.

Having trouble remembering things? Use mnemonics to help!

Pandora. A service based on the Music Genome Project that recommends music based on what music you say you like sounds like.

So, like, check it out.

It's just too easy to make fun of people on MySpace. Of course, just because it's easy doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.

This is a kickass Firefox extension that shows you thumbnails of all the tabs you have open. For those who aren't Mac-users, they are taking the name from the Mac OS X feature "Expose" which does something similar, but in an oh-so-sexy way. Google cache link of that website.

An insulting receipt from Blockbuster.

Get your own "No Christmas for Sony" badge.

Speaking of Gunther, Here's more hilarious retardedness! Check out the video for Tutti Frutti Summer Love. So much wrong in that video. Warning: full frontal male nudity blurred but not blurred enough for my taste!

Girl: You can make me do all those crazy things I've never dared...
Gunther: It's a no-no... And you like it.

Oh, it's fruity all right.

So retarded, but so funny.

If you rearrange the letters in his name, you'll find secret santa and satan are the saaaaaame!

Oh man. These guys are like the Gunther of metal or something like that.