The Junk Drawer

A junkie runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. [William Burroughs, Junkie]

International Pancake Day

Filed under: Yo-Yos and Uno Decks — Matthew at 11:36 am on Tuesday, February 28, 2006

I know there is at least one brooder whose favorite breakfast food is a heapin’ helpin’ of fruit covered pancakes.

Today would be a good day to go to IHOP, according to Snopes.com.  Between seven AM and two PM on February 28 (today), IHOP will be offering its patrons a free short stack of pancakes in celebration.  Better move your butt over there before two o’clock rolls around.

Interesting Postmodern Comic: 1/0

Filed under: Yo-Yos and Uno Decks — dhalgren at 8:44 am on Tuesday, February 28, 2006

I just ran across this while researching Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Looks fun and playful. Enjoy–TC

Why I love Apples (even though I have had to replace two [2] hard drives in the last month)

Filed under: Newspaper Clippings — dhalgren at 10:00 pm on Friday, February 17, 2006

Apple’s ode to hackers
Developers embed poetic warning deep in OS X software

SAN JOSE, California (AP) — Apple Computer Inc. has resorted to a poetic broadside in the inevitable cat-and-mouse game between hackers and high-tech companies.

The maker of Macintosh computers had anticipated that hackers would try to crack its new OS X operating system built to work on Intel Corp.’s chips and run pirated versions on non-Apple computers. So, Apple developers embedded a warning deep in the software — in the form of a poem.

Indeed, a hacker encountered the poem recently, and a copy of it has been circulating on Mac-user Web sites this week.

Apple confirmed Thursday it has included such a warning in its Intel-based computers since it started selling them in January.

The embedded poem reads: “Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he’d do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don’t steal Mac OS!/Really, that’s way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc.”

Apple also put in a separate hidden message, “Don’t Steal Mac OS X.kext,” in another spot for would-be hackers.

“We can confirm that this text is built into our products,” Apple issued in a statement. “Hopefully it, and many other legal warnings, will remind people that they should not steal Mac OS X.”

Go hang a salami

Filed under: Yo-Yos and Uno Decks — Matthew at 10:01 pm on Tuesday, February 14, 2006

While reading a Wikipedia article on Bob Dylan’s brilliant music video, Subterranean Homesick Blues, I discovered this Weird Al parody of both the song and the video.  Note the Allen Ginsberg lookalike, with a deliberately fake-looking beard.

I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I’ve been a Weird Al fan since I was in Elementary School.  I remember in fourth grade, everyone was singing his parody of the Brady Bunch theme song, which was merely the lyrics to the original song set to the tune of some now-forgotten eighties pop song.

This parody of Dylan took some real creativity, however. Al’s lyrics are in fact palindromes, sentences that spell new sentences when written backwards.  Thus we have the lyric, “Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog,” sung with an impeccable Dylan twang.  Brilliant stuff.  Enjoy!

100 Most Dangerous Professors

Filed under: Lint and Toenail Clippers — dhalgren at 5:41 pm on Monday, February 13, 2006

One day, I will make this list….Todd
David Horowitz’s List of 100 Most Dangerous Professors in the U.S.

The Professor’s Colleges and Universities

Arcadia University: Warren Haffar
Ball State University: George Wolfe
Baylor University: Marc Ellis
Boston University: Howard Zinn
Brandeis University: Gordon Fellman, Dessima Williams
Brooklyn College: Priya Parmar, Timothy Shortell
Cal State University, Fresno: Sasan Fayazmanesh
California State University, Long Beach: Ron (Maulana) Karenga
City University of New York: Stanley Aronowitz, Bell Hooks, Leonard Jeffries, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Columbia University: Lisa Anderson, Gil Anidjar, Hamid Dabashi, Nicholas De Genova, Eric Foner, Todd Gitlin, Manning Marable, Joseph Massad, Victor Navasky

(Read on …)

What happens

Filed under: Lint and Toenail Clippers — Mel B. at 4:59 am on Sunday, February 12, 2006

When there aren’t any posts in a while…

Mel B. goes crazy. It’s late. She’s got a password to the blog. There isn’t a category that really fits insane tripe.

What happens when she sees a picture of Donald Trump, these thoughts come tumbling out.

My fantasy is that someone will sneak into the Donald’s sumputous bedroom
one night and give him a haircut.
Every time a see a picture of him, I look, in vain, to see where the bald
spots would be. Sometimes I imagine I can see something through a trick of
light.
I’m just tired of guessing.
Have some respect. We don’t believe that haircut. Many men look sexier bald (though I don’t believe it would help you.)
And if it’s really your hair, then get a decent haircut. It’s like a small
furry animal died on your head.
Now that I’ve written this, someone will carry out my evil plan and the
Donald will buy and sell and buy and sell me a dozen times.
Ah well. At least my curiosity will be satisfied.

Pat Robertson on SNL

Filed under: Yo-Yos and Uno Decks — dawn at 4:54 pm on Monday, February 6, 2006

Just a little something that came across on The Wittenburg Door Insider recently. Too funny not to share.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys

Filed under: Yo-Yos and Uno Decks — shelby at 2:14 pm on Friday, February 3, 2006

I just have to share this with you all. Oh, the possibilities. It’s Monk E-mail from CareerBuilders.com. Choose a chimp, dress them, place them and you have three different ways of making them speak. One of those ways is ultra-fun because you can use your phone and CALL IN a recorded message in your own voice! Send it on to friends and/or co-workers from there. The way I figure it, any time you have a talking monkey, life is good.

(I’d insert the image here but I’m having trouble uploading photos too.)

Photo Test

Filed under: Unread instruction manuals — Matthew at 3:17 pm on Wednesday, February 1, 2006

I am just testing the photo upload feature of WordPress. Following is an image I took from the catalog of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. It’s an anti-war poster from Vietnam.

Two More Casualties

The above picture is a linked thumbnail. When I tried to use the original, it defaulted to an unlinked thumbnail. I think the reason is that the frame containing the text of a blog post is a fixed width. If the picture is too large for that fixed width, the editor uses an unlinked thumbnail by default. If you encounter this problem, you might try down-sizing your image in a photo editor such as Photoshop. In fact, let me try that now.

Two More Casualties

OK, that didn’t work. This requires some more research.

…to be continued…