It turns out that Alligators are hopelessly enamored with marshmallows. There are even tours through Louisiana and Florida where people can purportedly feed alligators by hand. Coming from a guy with only nine fingers, that is probably one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve heard of in months.

This actually makes a lot of sense if you know a little something about sugar:

I found an interesting and strangely touching article in the NYtimes on an alligator trapper in the everglades. Lots of fun fackts.

-In 1977 alligators were endangered, now there are over 15 million of them in Florida alone.

WrongDiagnosis.com

Tim was telling me about it last night. He used it to discover that he had a parasite that he got while sailing around in New Zealand (or something). You can input your symptoms into wrong diagnosis and their engine will tell you about obscure things you might have instead of what your doctors think. Quite handy, and great for hypochondriacs!

Speaking of travel, Tim, Star and I had a collaborative instructable that made the front page of Instructables.com. Check it out

Handy Tricks: World Traveler Edition

from: bembembang@gmail.com
to: wheatgrass#geemail + a gajillion other people
date: Tue, May 20, 2008 at 11:59 AM
subject: TONITE!! Bem!Bem!BANG! Party at the Star Lounge

From: TittyD ☮ wheatgrass@geemail.com
to: Will bembembang@gmail.com
date: Tue, May 20, 2008 at 1:23 PM
subject Re: TONITE!! Bem!Bem!BANG! Party at the Star Lounge

OMG! Animated star wars movie comes out in August!!!!!….!!!!!!!!!

Preview! :: Producer Nerd Guy Talking About Series! (includes anakins padawan!!)

I’d also like to take this opportunity to recommend the Revenge of the Sith Novelization by Matthew Stover. You can buy it on amazon for 1 freaking penny! “Outstanding” and “Better than the movie” come up a lot in the amazon reviews. There’s probably an obvious response in saying that besting a piece of shit movie is not exactly a literary feat. However, I believe the book is a masterfully written piece of science fiction in it’s own right. Here’s my contentious perspective: Episode 3 actually has a plot, it’s just so big and unexplained that most people don’t know it’s there.

Here’s a relevant review that mirrors my own opinions:

Here’s the critical difference that I think most people miss in the comparisons between episodes 4,5,6 (universally praised) and e’s 1,2, and 3 (nearly universally hated on). 456 were a self contained storyline. In fact, 4, was a self contained film bc lucas didn’t know if he was going to have enough money to make 5 and 6. Since then Lucas has become a gajillionaire and hundreds of novels, comic books, action figures have emerged to create a universe. Episodes 2,3 seem weird because they AREN”T self contained, they are slices of that universe. Yes, I agree that might have not been the best choice for a film release but once you accept it and eat the media around them a brilliant story comes out. Definitely Check the previews and at least look at the ep3 book.

Write your phone number and email address on a piece of paper and put it in your wallet. Also add your mother and fathers phone number and the contact info of a good friend/partner. That way when your wallet flies out of your pocket while running through traffic a crossing guard at the local elementary school will find it and call you.

I was at a party the other night and I met this guy Jon who is an organic farm inspector. He brought up an interesting point that bears repeating.

I am currently ensconced in Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass to the detriment of all else. It started slow and displays all the expectedly “unpredictable” plot loops of a children’s novel. Somewhere in the first 70 pages it switched silently from childishly bland to endlessly engaging. I adore it deeply and find much of my waking thoughts devoted to pondering how my life would be different if I had a fearsome and brilliant polar bear as companion.

I picked the book up because I heard, damn accurately, that it was good AND much to my delight I’ve discovered there is a film adaptation in the works! Just today I learned that it will emerge next week or thereabouts. sweeeeeet! Talk about instant gratification!

Now there is a bitter and widely recognized truth that the book is always better than the film. There are a few cunning plays for exceptions to this rule and I believe Fight Club is one of them because it, like the others, allows us to into the exceptionally gifted imagination of someone else. I had a tingling wait for the large, high definition trailer and it was astoundingly good and seemingly marksman accurate to the book. From the trailer it seems like The Golden Compass is going to be lord of the rings meets steampunk Harry Potter. I think I’ll be waiting in line on opening night.

I would love to present the trailer right here, in this very blog, but someone at apple or the film studios seems to have forgotten (or likely not learned in the first place) how the internet works. It doesn’t appear that I can do that (maybe i can, but it’s nonapparent). Searching for Golden Compass on youtube and clicking on the official trailer gives me a message that this video has been taken down bc it violates terms of service (ie copyright violation).

There’s a simple rule about usability and thus success on the internet that *should* be obvious by now…the internet is unimaginably vast and entertaining. Therefore every time you force large groups of users into making a choice, you will lose a surprisingly high number of them to some of the other fascinations on the internet. Many of the people running the entertainment industry came up in the days when there were three channels on television. To them, it makes sense to force the trailer off youtube with copyright suits so that users will have to visit the official Golden Compass Website ™ in order to watch the trailer. This is unimaginably dumb.

My studies have yielded what I believe is a useful (although incomplete) metaphor: Intellectual property is best viewed as a liquid and copyright is most usefully seen as an old and leaky yet functional faucet through which it can flow. Close the faucet off by tightening copyright and less intellectual property will flow. Sometimes this is both good and useful. Open the faucet and IP will gush forth filling whatever container is presented (the internet in this case).

Fundamentally, what is a trailer? A D V E R T I S I N G !!!
So why would you want fewer people to see that by tightening the faucet? because you grew up in the fifties and you don’t understand the tubes (they definitely aren’t a dump truck).

The internet is about relinqishing control, opening the faucet more widely than ever previously imagined.
….fuck. Now that I’ve written all this, I just found the trailer on youtube. Dammit, it seems that there is an *official* studio funded group called HisDarkMaterials.org given the rights to distribute all footage.

So here’s the official trailer in youtube format. You can watch it here, but paradoxically (almost), I’m going to recommend that you go and watch the hi def trailer on the official website. Like I said, lord of the rings meets steampunk harry potter. the extra resolution is worth it.

I guess most of my misplaced copyright rant is still mostly accurate, just apply it to a broader context or something.

++update++
I may have to back off my steampunk claim and replace it with a victorian scifi based stance.

the letter “Q” is nearly always followed by the letter “U” (statistically speaking that is all the goddamn time), it makes more sense to just drop the u and teach our children to pronounce the letter q like “kwuh.”

quality will now be qality.
quiet will now be qiet.

seriously, why use two letters when it makes more sense to use one?

if you’re dumb and have trouble seeing the obvious superiority of this system, take a qick look at the wikipedia page on List of English words containing Q not followed by U. See? Those words are almost all worthless, unless you’re trying to transliterate arabic (something i know all of you do every fucking day). If you are transliterating arabic you should really just be using a k instead of qu or just q. qabob? no, it’s kabob, duh.

on a related note, these are my four favorite highest scoring scrabble words. Yes, in my mind these things are directly related but you know what? fuck it, i’m not even going to explain why.

ZYMURGY 75 pts (beer makin)
SQUIFFY 75 pts (deeerunk)
ZOMBIFY 76 pts
MUZJIKS 79 pts (russian peasants)

Here’s another good one.

I found one on ebay for $250

::: via email {thanks Danny!!!} :::

Danny writes:

:

:

I think that “subject” is a misleading term for the title of emails. Actually it should be summary. Effective email people are good at choosing their subject headings such that they include critical information.

for example

subject: party = bad

subject: Party Tonight at TittyD’s House = Good

ideally you should be able to figure out what the email contains before you have to read it. also, the exceptions to this naturally and obviously sort out in the dichotomy between amiable correspondence (ie this blog post) and timely communications.

take home message: if the communique contains a deadline, answer or timely queston, put it in the subject.