Complete Randomness

[Eddie Pinz]

EL is poops!

[elfprince13]

I has poops!

[Rei]

Oi, Americans, what is WITH some of your states?!

[starlooker]

The list of states I would be willing to live in just keeps getting smaller and smaller.

Although, having been a student in the public schools of a highly conservative West Texas town quite a few years ago, I will say that most of the edits/changes in slant were provided by my teachers, anyhow.

*Starts reminiscing semi-fondly about the basketball coach/ninth grade history teacher who compared every major event in US history to some basketball-related event in Happy, Texas (where he used to live). And he would also cite Ruch Limbaugh as a credible source when he was waxing political.*

[BonitoDeMadrid]

This looks ultra cool and ultra painful. The weapons of the future, today?

[human.]

Oi, Americans, what is WITH some of your states?!

I totally wrote to my congressman about that! Reading through the actual amendments makes it harder to tell the conservative bias, though. The part that really annoys me is that the requirements for members of the State Board of Education allow for a dentist (without specialization in anything education, that I know of) to be chair of the board (though he's not anymore, and he recently lost his seat, anyway).

[zeroguy]

what is WITH some of your states?!

They're in the south, that's what's with them.

[Mich]

A couple cool music videos that I feel like sharing, not really because they have good music, but because the content itself is entertaining:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpaPBCBjSVc - The Black Keys, Tighten Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIBXWF9we2Q - Greg Laswell, Take Everything

[Gravity Defier]

My mom is all sorts of cool, so this isn't a huge concern but why is it all my worst Freudian slips happen when she's around?

Two months ago, I was talking to my little brother, my mom, and my friend Steven over a nice Tucson pizza and two of us said the same thing at the same time, resulting in a jinxing on me. I called a time out and asked if Steven played the same way I did as a kid, where you have to get the other person a soda or they have to say your name three times to break it. He said yes, that's how he played, too. I ended up asking something like "Want a [other word for rooster]?" I can't remember exactly, anymore.

Recently, Jason Derulo's song "In My Head" was on the radio while we were in the car. As I turned it up, I looked at her and said, "Man, I love this head. Oh, that didn't come out right, did it?"


Since I figure the Universe wants me to look like a perv in front of my own mother, I've started going with it. I asked her to help me with my hair (I'm lazy, but more importantly, I love having my hair played with); when she went to put mousse in her hand before sticking it in my hair, I asked "Is that mousse in your hand or are you just happy to see me?" Probably not the best or most sensible thing to say to a relative but whatever, we chuckled over it.

[human.]

I got a new laptop! But it's really distracting me from packing up my room...

[Petrie]

I fall?

[Gravity Defier]

Are you there, Pweb? It's me, G D.



I'd just like to point out there's an inverse relationship between how much the rest of you post and how much I do. If you value your brains at all, you'll post more; otherwise, I can just keep going with the awful jokes and general stupidity. And that's a threat/promise.

[CezeN]

During an IRS audit, the auditor looked at the tax payer and exclaimed...

... "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable."

"I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it," says Ralph. "How about a demonstration?"

The auditor thinks for a moment and said, "Okay. Go ahead."

Ralph says, "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye."

The auditor thinks a moment and says, "No way! It's a bet."

Ralph removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor's jaw drops. Ralph says, "Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye."

The auditor can tell Ralph isn't blind, so he takes the bet.

Ralph removes his dentures and bites his good eye. The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Ralph's attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.

"Want to go double or nothing?" Ralph asks. "I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between."

The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there's no way this guy can manage that stunt, so he agrees again.

Ralph stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, and urinates all over the desk.

The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win. But Ralph's attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.

"Are you okay?" the auditor asks.

"Not really," says the attorney. "This morning, when Ralph told me he'd been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you'd be happy about it."

[locke]

Go Christianity! such an awesome religion:

a fifteen year old was raped by a respected church member, was forced to apologize to the congregation for the sin of getting pregnant from the rape and then was whisked out of the state

While her pastor, Chuck Phelps, reported the alleged rape in 1997 to state youth officials, Concord police detectives were never able to find the victim. The victim said she was sent to another church member's home in Colorado, where she was home-schooled and not allowed to have contact with others her age. It wasn't until this past February that the victim, who is now 28, decided to come forward after reading about other similar cases, realizing for the first time it wasn't her fault that she had been raped, she told the police.
...

Over the next few months, the girl became suspicious she was pregnant. She called Willis (the alleged rapist), who brought over a pregnancy test that came up positive, she told the police.

"He asked me if I wanted him to take me to a neighboring state where underage abortions were legal . . . and he would pay for an abortion," she told the police. "He then asked me if I wanted him to punch me in the stomach as hard as he could because that might cause a miscarriage."

...

The victim told her mother about the pregnancy. Soon after, Phelps was also alerted.

The victim said Phelps told her she would be put up for "church discipline," where parishioners go before the congregation to apologize for their sins.

She asked why. "Pastor Phelps then said that (Willis) may have been 99 percent responsible, but I needed to confess my 1 percent guilt in the situation," the victim told the police.

"He told me that I should be happy that I didn't live in Old Testament times because I would have been stoned."

...

At a night meeting of the church's fellowship in 1997, Phelps invited Willis to the front of the room. Willis apologized to the group for not being faithful to his wife, Earle said.

"I can remember saying to my husband, I don't understand it's any of our business why this is being brought up," Earle said.

Phelps then told parishioners a second matter was at hand; he invited the victim to apologize for getting pregnant.

"I can still see the little girl standing up there with this smile on her face trying to get through this," Earle said.

...

Earle, who left the church in 2001 after 19 years, said it was regular to see young girls who were pregnant called to the front of the congregation to be humiliated.

Rob Sims, another former member, said the discipline sessions were formulaic - Phelps would read Bible verses, give a limited overview of what happened and then each person would read a statement.

"(The) statement agreed that they had done wrong and why they 'now believed' that they had sinned," he said. "Then Pastor Phelps would give a few closing remarks and then a vote would be taken to remove the guilty party from membership or to keep them in membership but under discipline, or something to that effect."

http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/p ... -relocated

I consider that about par for the course of the evangelical christianity I grew up with. Always good to remember that catholicism doesn't have a stranglehold on abusing kids.

[locke]

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100602/ ... s=news_rss

New England fishermen have mixed feelings about a programme designed to allow overfished species to recover. Mark Schrope reports on how catch shares have scientists fishing for answers.

[jotabe]

We have to assume the mindset that, the same way we cannot afford game meat to be more than marginal in our global meat consumption, fished fish cannot be more than marginal in our global fish consumption.

[elfprince13]

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100602/ ... s=news_rss

New England fishermen have mixed feelings about a programme designed to allow overfished species to recover. Mark Schrope reports on how catch shares have scientists fishing for answers.

The Alaskans implemented real ITQs and are doing marvelously for it.

[zeroguy]

This is from the sports thread... it seems so out of place to continue saying something there, and the discussion in that thread has moved on anyway. So, it's going here.

I have to ask: Is there a school for nerds like you, zero, Satya, Mich, etc. where they teach you when/where/why/what/how to use those images?

it's called 4chan.

Well, there's many places. We've sort-of mentioned them before, saying 4chan, "the *chans", imageboards, etc. The largest (as far as I know) and most famous board in the english-speaking world is /b/ on 4chan. But there are many other imageboard sites, and 4chan actually has many other boards, and I'm told many actually have rules, and tend to have useful and helpful conversation, etc. I believe /v/ and /tg/ are a bit less... intense than /b/, but they have an actual subject focus (videogames and tabletop gaming).

The "first" imageboard was 2ch (I believe 4chan was based on futaba channel, which was an offshoot from 2ch) in Japan. Over there, allegedly imageboards (2ch in particular) are popular enough to be noticeable by mainstream media. There's this book called Densha Otoko which was based around real 2ch-related events, and was turned into a television series and maybe some other stuff. I just find the culture interesting... I wrote a longish post talking about onymous/anonymous forums a while back; that was talking about imageboards.

A lot of internet-style humor comes from Something Awful, as well (4chan's creator was an SA member), which is a more traditional web forum (though membership costs money). I believe we had an SA pwebber at some point, but I forget who it was. Let's Plays came from SA, for example; raocow was an SA goon.

And while I'm talking about them, "Let's Play"s are really rad.

Yeah, okay, that's enough.

[Mich]

And, for the record, I have never used an image macro on this board.

From what I can recall.

I may be wrong.

But I don't think I have!

Although zero is right and that's exactly how I learned.

I've been in the process of reading (I hate video LPs) a Let's Play of Animal Crossing. It's pretty great.

[Gravity Defier]

I may have lumped you in just because you're a game nerd. I certainly didn't expect a real answer but go figure, two of them went and gave me one, anyway.



Either way, I appreciate your lack of images posting style. The Internet and I are actually involved in a love/hate relationship, where I use it but hate that I can't live without it and it loves to hold that over me while annoying me with garbage like "heh," "LOL," kthxbai, those images, and more!

Clearly I don't belong anywhere near the internet.

[elfprince13]

Even if you don't browse the *chans or SA, you pick up appropriate usage through second- and third-hand exposure on Digg, tech/nerd/game forums, ICHC, /., etc.

[CezeN]

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1xGHUa/www.cardtoss.com/

How far can you get?

[Mich]

For anyone interested in tabletop RPGs, or thinking about trying them out, or anything like that, Saturday is Free RPG Day. Along similar veins as Free Comic Book Day, drop by any participating hobby shop and you can get something free, whether it's a figurine, or a quickstart guide to a new game, or an adventure for an existing one, whatever. Most places have events planned for the whole day, too, to teach newcomers and oldies a thing or too. Check it out at http://www.freerpgday.com/. Naturally, I will be out of town all of Saturday, and there are no shops on the way.

[megxers]

Today in the bookstore there was a good looking guy who was looking at Ender's Game, and he grabbed the most obvious copy (with an awful cover), but then it looked like he was going for Enchantment (which made me cheer inside even more). Instead, he had grabbed a differently covered Ender's Game. A true connoisseur.

[locke]

do you work at the bookstore or were you man browsing rather than book browsing?

[megxers]

I was man browsing at Powell's. Have to enjoy my last month in the Northwest I still managed to buy many more books than I needed to.......

[locke]

I've been to Powell's once, best bookstore ever. My coffee mug is a Powell's mug.

[Rei]

I've only been to their booth at the ICMS at Kalamazoo. Which is still pretty awesome.

[Petrie]

*whistles* C'mon, midnight! I have a long (short) night of sleep deprivation ahead of me.

[Graff^]

I like(drum roll please)......Barnes&Nobles!!

[Syphon the Sun]

I don't understand the latest rules for the Pweb challenge.

[Jayelle]

I don't understand the latest rules for the Pweb challenge.

Yeah, I'm a little fuzzy too.

[neo-dragon]

Dudes! Apparently there was an earthquake of some sort in the greater Toronto area! I didn't feel it though.

[Psudo]

Oi, Americans, what is WITH some of your states?!

To counter, here's a state cutting American history up to and including Lincoln out of the history curriculum. Do you prefer your schools teaching the free market and and downplaying slavery, or that America began with segregation and failed reconstruction, only to be improved by the unionization and welfare that washed in after the Depression? They both seem pretty lousy to me.

[Gravity Defier]

I don't understand the latest rules for the Pweb challenge.

You know how in Alvin Maker, everyone has a knack? Apparently, mine is the subtle art of making no sense to 99% of the population.

The task is pretty simple but apologies for the confusion. There are 7 questions I will ask over the course of the week. You, as well as everyone who is not one of the people I named, may answer the next 6 - feel free to answer the first but it won't count. For each one you correctly answer, you get points (whatever number is bold red on the scoreboard for you).

I'll be trying very, super, extraordinarily hard to keep the image updated nightly so people can watch and make sure I'm not screwing up.

If, when next Tuesday rolls around, you've answered, say, 4 questions correctly and your red number was 30, you will have progressed 120 squares. You won't have finished, so you don't get a full 10 points but I believe that would put you squarely in the 8 points range. Do the bonus for 5 on Tuesday, and you're 13/15 possible.

Wait... so those special few get an extra chance at points? Doesn't seem very fair.

I was going to jokingly/semi-seriously say they aren't special but it would sound wrong, while still being technically true. I guess I went and said it, though, eh?

Top of page 6 of that thread, about two weeks ago, I asked for people to make sure I had active email addresses. I don't need them this week but I will next. A quick thumbs up post, a PM, an IM, any would have sufficed.

The five people who got to start on the first question are the people who gave a thumbs up-PM-IM. I know it's super easy to assume I have everyone's email address but I hardly ever use e-mail addresses for Pwebbers, so I asked to be sure. As it is, I will now have to ask people who stopped playing but who I still need them for because I simply never had them in the first place.

Unfair of me? I don't know. It's certainly possible.