And The People Have Spoken!

Vox likes me! Vox really likes me!

Not enough to let me do any sort of customization to my page, but at least I got the color scheme to not suck to much. Please, by all means, please come see me.

Contest Time!

Ok, people... contest time.

Contest The First - To Vox Or Not To Vox

Lostie has made a good case for me to move to Vox. Sure, my neighborhood there will be.... her, but it might be a start. maybe I can start blog-surfing and make some friends. There are downsides... extremely limited blogospherical customization. However, I had a look at it, and it's not actually that bad! I think they made some improvements. SO.... vote here! Vox, or not? (NOTE: I fully expect no-one to vote for this, so I might win 1 to 0 with my own ballot).

Contest The Second - A Marble By Any Other Name

During my time on the intertubes, I've gone by many names... Mighty Jalapeno, Wandering Wombat, Topper, Junkyard God, Catharsicide, Nega`Sonic, Zalgon 26 McGee, Whale Biologist, Marblehead Johnson, Mr O, Ominous Dominus, and others (I know Throkky is now running all these down on Google. Good luck with that.) On Vox, I'm already Mighty Jalapeno again, and I don't know if I want to go back to that MJ, or stay as Marblehead Johnson (IE, the new MJ), or go with something else altogether. Something new. Something me. Marblehead is just a rip-off from Bill Hicks, and Mighty Jalapeno seems to exemplify the young me (Yung Me was a hack compared to Mighty Jalapeno!) SO, I guess the choices are.... MJ #1, MJ #2, or something new?

And.... VOTE!

*crickets chirping*

Philharmonosophy (QotD)

QotD: If you had to write your autobiography in 6 words,
what would you write?

"Global Extinction: The Marblehead Johnson Story"

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

I've been informed by one of my loyal readers (which makes him fully 33% of my audience) that my blog posts are better when I don't regurgitate news onto all of you. I guess people have news sites that they rely on, and don't need me vomiting knowledge onto their computer screens (the reverse-peristalstic emphasis is mine). So, fine. Let's talk about non-news related stuff. One caveat, however: anything Jack Thompson does is free game.

For starters, I'm going to start off every post with a Question of the Day from now in (or a QotD, for those of you who are in a hurrt). I'll still have my brilliant, brilliant quotes, but they'll be slightly farther down, requiring you to use your track-mouse finger briefly (for everyone using a Mac.... PWND!! BWahahaha...) I'll probably have to invent my own QotDs, so that I'm not ripping off Lostie.

"I feel that we are all philosophers,
and that those who describe themselves as a ‘philosopher’
simply do not have a day job to go to".

Very true, man.

So what do I babble about here now? I dunno. I got most of my useless crap out a month ago (and looking back... WTF was I on?) Everyone who reads this knows everything about me (or at least know everything publicly known about me, leading them to think they know everything about me), so all I had to prattle on about was stupid stuff in the news. For instance, a lady in Toronto was fired because she hsvaed her head for cancer, to support a friend of hers who HAS cancer. Thanks to the Slashdot effect, the restaraunt is now in SERIOUS business trouble, because people stopped going there. It's perhaps MORE impactful than the business they would have lost by, say, having a bald female employee. Smooth move, douchebags.

Dammit, I backslid into the news. Curses!

Last night I made REALLLLLY GOOD crispy garlic-ginger pork from the Farmers Market pork I got a few weeks ago. Seriously, this was really awesome. It was actually crispy, which I attribute to having the frying pan on hot enough, but it was tender and juicy and delicious thanks to this pork (I've never EVER had pork chops half as good as I've had with the ones I got from the Farmers Market, and I barely added any seasoning to them!) It's a little over-salty (my bad), but a bit of rice should fix that up. To sum up: YAY PORK!

Also, I'm back on the French Press at work... Cantebury speed-drip from a Mylar baggie just isn't as good as it used to be, you know?



Hee!

Ok, movie time.

Whatevah! I Do What I Want!

"Censorship reflects a society's
lack of confidence in itself."

Jack Thompson walks out of his own disbarment hearing, metaphorically sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling "LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!" Awesome, buddy. Awesome.

Personally, I'm hope he gets disbarred. Right now, he's quite vocally retarded, but should he lose his license to practice his own brand of justice, he'll have to be vocally BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER, RETARDEDER! Just like the KKK being on Uncle Jimbo's "Save The Flag" side on South Park, Jack is doing more damage to his own cause than he could possibly know, and this is letting the "maybe games DON'T cause teh murderz!" argument gain ground.

Jack Thompson Forever! You go, girl.

So, the Vox Question of the Day will now be ripped off here. The question is: "Who was your worst teacher?" Now, some of the responses on Vox, linked from my friend Lostie's page, were pretty horrible, and Lostie's retelling of her mom's story was even worse (Communist China, 1950's.... female). By comparison, my teachers were either a collection of apathetic wage-monkeys or petty vengeful dickweeds. For instance: the math teacher who insisted I was cheating, because I was doing math in my head that he COULDN'T do. Or the English teacher who got mad at me because I got an A on the assignment she assigned to me, specifically, to be harder than all the other kids' assignments. Or the K7 teacher who got mad at me for reading books in class when I was supposed to be listening, and when he started asking me rapid-fire questions about the topic at hand, I got them all right, and he still took mny book away.

I know, I was petty, too. I was young, and I immodestly admit I was overbright for a large part of my childhood, and I was defensive about it (I got my comeuppance in college). Even so, I only had ONE teacher who said "Wow, you're right. Carry on," and it was the year and school after that where they got rid of the enrichment program for the A students. I NEED NURTURING! AND ENRICHMENT! And, uhm... more Aasimov books...

...

God, I'm lame.

Here's JACKY!!!

Do You Know About Judgement Day?

Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST...

Frank Zappa. Great man. Loves ice cream.

Ok, two news-y things today. One: Barack is in the house! He's far too socially responsible to say "hizzy", and I don't think he's caught up to the cutting edge of "fibbity fibbity foo" yet. Don't tell Chef. However, he does apparently have enough promise rings from his prospective super-delegate prom-dates to clinch the nomination in November, assuming that everyone votes the way they say they will (translation: no guarantee). One amusing thing about this is the INSTANT he was said to be "the winnar", everyone on the internets (the sections I frequent) immediately changed from pro-Barack to, if not pro-Clinton, at least anti-Barack. It was like the sound of their prayers being answered was the clarion call of doom.

Yes, Barack's middle name is "Hussein". Yes, his platform seems to be about staring into the distance with a slight, hopeful uptilt to his chin. Yes, he's about as inoffensive as damp white toast (which actually offends me, but I'm just trying to make a point). However, we need a Democrat in office, so that in four years, when the Republicans have finally had enough time to think on their apocalyptic ideals, they can put someone with two eyes, a conscience, a soul and balls into office. Barack lacks the balls, and Clinton lacks the conscience.

Good night, America... and good luck.

Also, I just want to mention the laughably retarded idea that has come around again only 5 years after it was deemed the Worst Technological Innovation: The DivX Disc. No, I don't mean the codec, I mean the DVD that you play once, and then it DESTROYS ITSELF.

Yeah, that's what people want to pay for. Want to know the punchline? The DVDs will be sold for 5 bucks, so they're like rentals. However, they can STILL BE RIPPED JUST LIKE A REGULAR DVD. Basically, whats going on is retailers are giving a HUGE PRICE BREAK to DVD pirates, by letting them rip DVDs for a fraction of the cost, while simultaneously creating a product that no non-pirate consumer with half a brain would buy.

Maybe you guys deserve Hilary down there...

Ok, enough of that. Here's my son's favorite song. Seriously, ask him sometime, it will either be "Judgement Day" or the following:

This Man Is A Genius

Adults are just obsolete children,
and the hell with them.
~ Dr Theodore Seuss Geisel

The more I read about this man, the more I really, really like him. I say this because on the weekend, my son sat me down, and read the ENTIRE "Fox In Socks" to me, except for the last page of the Tweetle Beetle Battle, and I have to say that's pretty impressive, given that he's six, and was only on Level 0 books at Christmas.

You make 'em, I amuse 'em.
~ Dr Seuss, in regard to children

Right on, Ted. Right on.

In other news, I'm finally back on the good stuff: Valerian. Many of you know it as the medicinal root that was prescribed to Jack in "Fight Club" to combat his insomnia. Well, blow me down when I found out that it actually comes in pill form, that it's an addictive narcotic, that it's cheap and non-prescription, and that it actually works!

See, a lot of the time I take an IB or two before bed, in order to actually KEEP me asleep. This also does really amazing things to my dreams, taking me from some short vignettes into the realm of multi-sequence miniseries', complete with surprise characters, plot twists, and commercials. Unfortunately, with IBs, I don't get any rest, which sort of defeats the purpose (and depending on my dream, defeats the porpoise).

But I bought more Valerian, and although I'd hoped I was tired enough to sleep without it, I can't deny how much better I feel in the mornings. My dreams are epic in scope, emotionally confusing and morally ambiguous, which makes it REALLY hard to tell from real life, and even though I wake up feeling like there's lead weights attached to all my muscles, I feel a HELL of a lot better, post-shower, than I do sans medication, or with the IBs.

So thank you, Valerian the Wonderdrug!

"If you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, then go home and burn all your records, all your tapes, and all your CDs because every one of those artists who have made brilliant music and enhanced your lives? RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrEAL fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high, they let Ringo sing a few songs."

Amusingly enough, the drugs conversation fits remarkably well with the Dr Seuss conversation. Isn't that amusing?

Yes, We Have No Disease-Resistant Bananas

On a traffic light green means go and yellow means yield,
but on a banana it's just the opposite.
Green means hold on, yellow means go ahead,
and red means where the fuck did you get that banana at...

Well, there goes the yellow phallic neighborhood. To sum up:

The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one — known as the Gros Michel — was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct. Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies — Chiquita and Dole — because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease... But now, Panama disease is back, and the Cavendish does not appear to be safe from this new strain, which appeared two decades ago in Malaysia, spread slowly at first, but is now moving at a geometrically quicker pace. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that though Panama disease has yet to hit the banana crops of Latin America, which feed our hemisphere, the question is not if this will happen, but when. Even worse, the malady has the potential to spread to dozens of other banana varieties, including African bananas, the primary source of nutrition for millions...

Now this is serious... but I can't be the only one who giggled a little bit at the idea of being an identified 'banana scientist'.



I can't believe I had that image on standby...

And on a completely unrelated topic, GOlgo 13 kicks everyone's ass.



Everyone's.