April 28, 2000 And the karma point goes to... my favourite monkey, for being the first American to call my webmail (the runner-up was that Crazy Uncle, who convincingly pleaded Blogger's case.. I haven't decided one way or the other yet, really). Thanks for calling, folks! Get down! VinylCheese presents disco dance lessons, complete with animated gifs to help with the tricky steps. Now where did I put my platform shoes...? I've developed an insatiable craving for Raisin Bran lately, one of the results being that I too have wondered why the raisins don't all wind up at the bottom of the box. Looking for more trivial cereal knowledge? You need to waste some time at the cereal character guide. This weekend is Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival, and appropriately enough, I haven't even heard of most of the movies (I really did mean to see American Movie, though). Woo! It's Friday night, and I'm celebrating the weekend by... reading new(-to-me) weblogs: From [randomonium] - HQ2O, bottled water for the cyberchic; From Grouse! - Hamlet, Dr. Seuss style; And finally, just go read Anil Dash -- delightfully surly. Hey, this place looks familiar... Yup, the ISP problems have finally been fixed, so I'm back. I think I might de-Bloggerize in a few days, but it should go smoothly... oh, and a shiny new karma point for the first groovy American to call my webmail line and tell me if it works. Much appreciated. Uh.. erm.. uhh.. sigh.. I was going to stay out of this, but I like the little 'come as you are' blogger ethic that's existed so far, and so I have to say that calling someone rude names for their published opinions is, well, very uncool. I guess that makes me a rabid, illiterate, pants-wearing grrrl? Get twernty with the Junior Stick It To The Man Kit! (There's an interesting discussion about this sort of stuff on MetaFilter today, too.) Visit the frame-happy homepage of the S.P.C.S.M.E.F., or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sea Monkeys by Experimental Filmakers. It's terribly unfair that Bud the mannequin is so much better travelled than I am. April 27, 2000 Praise Wendell! Out of the blue he posts the exact type of article I was looking for, a primer on the dangers of cross-site scripting. I'm a sucker for an interesting looking IQ test (yes, I know, I can powerfully nerdy), so I had to take the one at queendom.com. Of course I'm not telling the results, but I am pleased to note that I'm not getting any dumber in my 'old age'. From Ghost in the Machine come the answer to a question that I frequently have: Is Jesse Helms dead yet? Bah.. the author of this Boston Globe op-ed piece on the infamous "I am Canadian" ad has no sense of humour. Besides, it always makes me giggle when an indignant American gawks at our tax rates-- Yes, damn our universal health care and accessible post-secondary education! (from Arts and Letters Daily, which I just discovered, and already adore) Cineplex Odeon theatres in B.C. are giving away free popcorn this week, in "celebration" of the end of the projectionists' labour dispute. Under the final agreement, seventy-five percent of the jobs were slashed, and wages were decreased by more than half. Hope everyone enjoys their popcorn. April 26, 2000 Just a couple of posts today: Between my ISP doing "upgrades" for the last 48 hours, Blogger's flakiness, and the strange, bad noise my computer keeps making, I'm thinking it might be a good day to reintroduce to myself to the concept of watching T.V. in my spare time. (If I owe you e-mail, it might be a couple of days.) Hoorah! Conrad Black, who owns just under half of all Canadian newspapers, has announced a sell-off of most of his small, community dalies. Assuming they don't all get bought by the same company, there might actually be some diversity in the Canadian press again... Why pay good money to see "American Psycho" when you can just wait a few hours for the Columbine tapes, set to rock music by those groovy folk at the Littleton Fire Department, to appear online? Oh right, morals and common decency. I forgot. April 24, 2000 "You won't have O.J. Simpson to kick around any more...": Fire up the live feeds, CNN, because The Juice is still looking for the real killer by suing a phone company for records he says can prove his alibi. Whatever-- everyone knows the important question is what is Kato Kaelin doing right now? Mother Jones has an interesting article on the trend towards lenient court sentences for corporate crime. The Killer List of Video Games reminds me of some of my favourite childhood obsessions. Prepare to qualify! Holy... since the end of 1999, Microsoft's value has fallen by 240 billion dollars, or approximately the Gross National Product of Switzerland. This week is the 70th anniversary of hamster domestication. However, apparently hamsters aren't really suitable as pets as they're "an anti-social animal that prefers to live alone, is terrified of human contact and is unsuited to life in a cage." Not unlike myself on some days, really. Think your life is wired? Philip Torrone most likely has you beat: Along with a lot of other doodads, his car is set up to run the SETI@home screensaver when it's parked. Sweeeeet. All right, I promise not to mention anything more about a certain Cuban boy except this quotation from the excellent Q: "It doesn't matter how icky you find Communist Cuba -- people elsewhere find the United States to be just as nasty. But they don't have the right to take our kids in the name of trying to give them a better life." Somehow in a beer-fueled trip to the video store, my Easter visitors and I ended up with a copy of Pokémon: the Movie, and so I now feel obligated to warn you against making the same terrible mistake. The highlight of the movie was this Pokemon, called "Psyduck", which appears to fight evil by doing poor Macaulay Culkin impressions. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. April 23, 2000 Must... stop watching... CNN.. before.. head explodes. I really don't understand why America is supposed to be so 'upset' with Cuba-- obviously there's no realistic reason to be concerned that Cuba and Castro could cause some communist overthrow of the U.S., especially now that there's no opposing superpower providing political and tactical support for the tiny island nation. And I just can't buy that it's all part of some mission to provide 'democracy' to the world, considering the horrible history that the United States has for supporting or ignoring bloody tyrants around the world. If the freedom of all people was really such a driving concern, why not make some serious diplomatic noise about China, for example? So what is it that makes Cuba such a sticky issue? The only thing that I can really see is that this is all some remnant of the Cold War... it's considered impolite to still hate Russia, but Castro has never repented for choosing a communist philosophy of government, and so must continue to be villified. I'm not arguing that Fidel Castro is a perfect leader, or even that he's never been cruel or tyrannical, but why is he worse than any of the other nations with atrocious human rights records that the U.S. cheerfully does business with daily!? Personally, I'm just glad that a child has been reunited with his parent, and is out of the direct media spotlight for the first time in months. BTW: As a side point, so many talking heads are acting like it's completely unheard of for American children to be woken up in the middle of the night by authority figures with guns-- has no one in the media ever seen an episode of "Cops" before? I have visitors this weekend, so don't expect to hear too much from me until Tuesday. In the meantime I've made a few little additions to Pith including a nice sidebar link to my Launchcast station, and the number for my voicemail (I originally got it for offline friends, but feel free to call and leave your life story, or strange noises, or something). I'm not sure yet if the phone number works in the U.S. (although I suspect it does), so I'd appreciate some kind American checking it for me. If you're a Canadian weblogger, perhaps you'd like to join the new BlogCanada webring. As well, the plans are to post my rejuvinated webcam soon in a handy little pop-up, and the programming goblins are busy making a system for anyone to post a quote of the day. Stay tuned for more oh-so-exciting developments. April 21, 2000 And you thought you were going to party this weekend: "Aside from the [eleven real] crucifixions, dozens of penitents walked barefoot in the village of San Pedro Cutud, beating their bare backs bloody with sticks laced with broken glass." April 20, 2000 While I'll admit that "Night of the Lepus" is my favourite giant killer bunny movie, I'm not sure the formula would hold together for an even lower budget remake. You've gotta give the fellow points for sincerity, though. Is it just me, or does Presidential Barbie have a blonde version of Monica Lewinsky's shellacked 'do? Very scary nonetheless. I'm sure most of you already read misterpants, but if you don't, what are you wasting time around here for? Lately it's become one of my 'must visits'. A search for the side-effects of sleep deprivation (for, uh, no particular reason) turned up this ScienceDaily article, which argues that while the brain has 'back-up systems' for completing verbal tasks while exhausted, one's arithmetic skills are pretty much fried. I wish I had known about this before a certain disasterous math final in grade eleven: "Please excuse Jessica from today's exam, as her parietal lobes are sluggish." Take a stroll through the Museum of Bad Fads to see just how uncool you once were... although I still have a ball of Silly Putty around here somewhere. Even though it hasn't been updated in three years, this collection of ads from old comic books is still pretty extensive, including that old standard, Sea Monkeys. Wondering if there are any good movies to rent this Easter weekend? Emile Chase has some suggestions for you: "Zorro being a mysterious masked stranger, a man on horseback, who defends the oppressed against injustice, this reminds one of the Antichrist, a man on horseback, the Saviour of Mankind." Uh, yeah. Not wacky enough for you yet? Mr. Chase also has a theory of history that involves counting everything in 666-day intervals, and, ye gods, publicly admits that "Millennium" is one of his favourite movies. Well, that's just great. Now on top of cancer and heart attacks, smoking may increase the risk of cognitive decline. Really, I intend to quit any day now, it's just that.. umm.. oh.. what was I saying? Today's Salon has a four page article on the Peeps phenomenon, which moves me considerably closer to my goal of running the first 'marshmallow news only' weblog. Hey, I bet you can tell what I was doing last night. There's still a few things that need tweaking, but as usual if anything looks horribly wrong, let me know. April 19, 2000 The real question, of course, is why that wacky twernt guy was searching for "riding lawnmower reviews" in the first place... I've been spending the morning elevating my geek quotient by reading anything and everything I can find on XML and RSS (notice how I say "reading", and not "understanding"). In any case, if you'd care to join me in my newbie-ish quest, I'd recommend starting with the Webmonkey tutorials (as suggested to me by Neale), and then moving on to these RSS resources or some really thick XML tutorials. I was planning on writing something really snarky about Ananova, the virtual newscaster, but the servers appear to be too swamped to supply me with any comic relief this morning. In theory, though, I'm just not sure the world is ready for 'Anime Posh Spice' delivering the hard news every day. Update: I finally managed to see Ananova for myself by manually entering the url (http://www.ananova.com/video/news_lo.rpm) into RealPlayer, and I'm pleased to say that I now know what it would sound like if the computer from "WarGames" became a broadcaster. 'How about a nice round of news?' The Cannes Film Festival has released their list of films that will be screened. While, as usual, I haven't heard of nor seen most of the foreign entries, I'm looking forward to reading about the latest from John Waters, the Coen brothers, and Darren Aronofsky. April 18, 2000 The release of Deepleap has prompted me to finally add a search feature for Pith (even though I can't quite seem to make deepleap.xml work). Let me know if the search isn't working. Now that my curiosity has been piqued, can anyone recommend some beginner's resources for "valid and well-formed" XML and all the wonderful, wacky things one can do with it? April 17, 2000 More websites I could have used when I was a teenager: The Official Shotgun Rules Milk: Feat it. Worship it. Drink it. Now with reviews of milk in popular cinema! Really, Mike, could you have found a more patronizing, over-simplifying op-ed piece on the Washington protests?! I notice the author doesn't feel the need to contribute any concrete reasons why he thinks the protests are groundless, but instead seems to conclude that categorizing all participants as "rich youths" (including the mostly middle-aged, working class union members and third-world immigrants that were present, I assume) is enough. Perhaps, shockingly enough, many protesters feel that their presence is "work[ing] for a better life for themselves, their families, and their communities." I love this 'our fight was honourable, but you kids are just whining' attitude that some Baby Boomers seem to get in their old age. "G is for Gorey, who just passed away." (excellent Gorey links page from dumbmonkey) Hee hee.. from Slashdot come my favourite Microsoft bug yet. The sun, of course, revolves around Redmond... The British government is planning on placing over seven hundred defibrillators in public places. Officials have stressed that the defibrillators should only be used in case of cardiac arrest, but you just know that some little punk is going to try and give a mall Santa the shock of his life come Christmas time. In an attempt to spur a pair of pandas to mate, the Berlin zoo is planning to show them "educational films" of other bears who are, umm.. 'in the mood'. Who knew that 'panda pornographer' would be a viable career option? terraserver.com has satellite photos of Area 51 available for free viewing. Sadly, no little green men or unearthly spacecraft can be seen... April 14, 2000 A fellow who stopped by Pith thought I would like his collection of quotations "for people who can laugh at the fact that nothing's really funny," and gosh darnit, he's right. "NRA is people!!": Northern B.C. had a genuine celebrity in its midst when Charleton Heston gave a speech to local gun nuts (cunningly called the "B.C. Wildlife Federation"). Chuck showed off his socio-political know-how by saying that due to gun control, "more and more Canadians no longer trust their government." He then proceeded to part the Mackenzie River. All this media coverage of a certain little boy is irritatingly overshadowing stories about the IMF protests in Washington, D.C. Luckily, monkeyfist has a specific blog set up for all the latest news. According to an article in this month's Wired mag, the soon-to-be-opened WePick.com will allow users to pick a topic and have friends and family "use a browser add-on to select sites and pages they find relevant." Hmm.. Now why does that sound so familiar? If you're a logopheliac geek (sounds a bit rude...) like I am, you might enjoy The Word Spy, which reviews a new or redefined tech word every day. Apparently B.C. has been usurped as the home of the world's most potent marijuana by Manitoba, of all places. Looks like we'd better start opening up the fisheries again if we don't want the provincial economy to collapse... April 13, 2000 Some Candian buyers of Celine Dion's new CD are mistakenly getting an album by Korn instead. Once a video store gave me "The English Patient" instead of "Crash". I wasn't too upset, although I bet whoever got my movie was horrified... Brains4Zombies.com: Your online home for brains and brain-related products. Brilliant. (brought to you by Metafilter and Crazy Uncle Joe) Have I mentioned yet how much I hate looking for work? Oh, Deity(s), please just give me the chance to prove myself in a field that I love... In any case, lately when I sit down at the computer I'm more likely to contemplate my future than read "Salon", so forgive me if the posts are somewhat sporadic. I promise to be back to good old Jess in no time. April 12, 2000 Yes, I'm sure you already make a point of reading The Onion, but one of the articles so perfectly encapsulates my feelings about the Confederate Flag debate: South Postpones Rising Again For Yet Another Year--"'Make no mistake, the South shall rise again,' said Knox Pritchard, president of the Huntsville-based Alliance Of Confederate States. 'But we're just not quite ready to do it now. Hopefully, we'll be able to rise again real soon, maybe even in 2001.'" I think piasentin.com brings the total of webloggers from Victoria, B.C. up to three... April 11, 2000 While I wasn't paying attention, Jauteria started up again. Welcome back, John! Members of the North Olympic Shuttle and Spindle Guild (??) "are cranking out tiny wool sweaters as part of an international relief effort for fairy penguins affected by an Australian oil spill." I can't believe this article has no accompanying photos... the image of hundreds of little penguins wearing colourful sweaters would be cute beyond belief. (from Breaching the Web and Rebecca's Pocket) April 10, 2000 When you were a kid, did you ever wonder what your action figures did while you were away? Why, have a party, of course. Scientists may have discovered a "death gene", which might be responsible for cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and Alzheimer's. Mind you, my source for this is The London Express, which recently ran a story about the proliferation of baby-snatching Satanists in England. Apparently twenty-five percent of broadband PCs are quite vulnerable to outside attacks. We just got a software firewall for our cable modem a couple of weeks ago, and were pretty amazed at the number of port scans for various trojans. Everytime my hard drive is organized I get the urge to go on a shareware downloading frenzy, which is usually followed by a festival of uninstallations (there is nothing quite like amateur shareware for obtuse user interfaces, doncha think?). However, I've actually grown quite attatched to Katiesoft, which essentially creates four, four, four browser/application windows in one. I can't tell yet if it's quadrupled my surfing productivity, or just painfully decreased my attention span. Hee hee.. the Brunching Shuttlecocks have done it again with Fuzzy Logic Functions: An Overview, brought to you in the style of O'Reilly books. Slate has an interesting article which argues that the threatened "civil disobediance" by Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives is anything but. Just thinking about this whole debacle makes my head hurt. All of a sudden the media is full of speculation about Elian Gonzalez's mental wellbeing-- but why wasn't this an issue some months ago? There didn't seem to be too much interest the the psychological effects of losing his mother, living in a foreign country with complete strangers, or having the kind of media saturation that Madonna can only dream about. I saw an "Elian Update" on Entertainment Tonight, for heaven's sake! eBay has launched a Canadian version, which will hopefully help spur other ecommerce sites to do the same. Really, finding large retail sites that convert currency and ship to Canada can be a hassle... I may not have gained any insights into my personality from the "Little Astrology Prince Sushi Fortune Telling Center" (whew!), but I do know what I'm having for dinner. (from catherine's pita) I just can't get enough of those bootleg toys I mentioned yesterday. Behold the monstrosities that are "Girls Power Dolls", including, apparently, Chernobyl Spice. April 9, 2000 By the looks of this list, I am a confirmed Child of the 80's. And, for the record, Molly Ringwald is still cool. (from eleven seconds) Some people collect stamps, or books, or spoons, while still others collect cheap bootleg toys. My favourite is the fabulous Teletubby/Village People combo set. CNET, in an article about ecommerce branding practices, mentions that Yahoo has "Yahoomobiles", which means that "the company will paint any employee's cars with Yahoo's colors and logo." Aside from the sheer unlikeliness of an employee offering up their vehicle for this (it seems to me), one has to wonder: What official colours? Red and default background? Namedroppers.com lets you do keyword searches for top level domain names. Warning: I've wasted some serious time here this morning... Thanks to the Wired Magazine Phrase Generator, I'm ready to pepper my next job interview with statements like, "Savvy data is fast-tracking the innovative dynamic of the infobahn." Kathie Lee's ten year old son Cody is suing a tabloid for libel. And and I thought she only had Third World children do her dirty work. I finally found the "Shaft" trailer, and man, is it ever slick. While I'm mentioning Quicktime goodies, be sure and check out my favourite new commercial on Ad Critic. Beacuse "I am Canadian." April 8, 2000 I'm finishing up the conversion to Blogger today, so don't be alarmed if links and things are intermittently not working... If you have Shockwave installed, the Giger.com navigation bar is really, really cool. Feeling a little under the weather? Try a visit to the The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, including a handy little pitcher that makes refreshing "radium water". I'm currently reading "Fatal Charms and Other Tales of Fiction", by Dominick Dunne. The book is essentially just true crime stories and high society gossip, but it's presented with above-average class (unlike, say, Kitty Kelley, whose anecdote about the Queen Mother and a turkey baster in "The Royals" disturbs me to this day). Aliens are abducting our pants! The Sobetzk Street Boys: Not only an odd concept for a personal website, but also, hands down, the most powerfully ugly page background it has ever been my misfortune to witness. Enjoy. April 7, 2000 Well, it's finally happened. I have been assimilated, and now I too [heart] Blogger. Actually, it's just a 'test drive' for now, but I'm already looking forward to being able to quickly post without having to sit down and write out an entire entry. If all goes smoothly, expect to see Blogger-driven archives and the ubiquitous permanent link option sometime early next week. Politicians just don't understand: The British Parlimentary Speaker has banned breast-feeding in committee rooms because it "contravenes a ban on food and refreshments." I've already seen a few bloggers mention the new weblog listings at LookSmart, so let me just add my voice to those who feel the descriptions are kind of wacky. Sure, you may have originally visited Pith for the "commentary on politics, current events, and entertainment," but I know you keep coming back to "find an ICQ address" (?!). While surfing the Web, my Dad discovered that his grandfather Summerour's farmhouse was uprooted in 1992 and moved in its entirety to a Georgia nature preserve. The things you learn online, eh? If I had known about it earlier, I might have run off and joined the (Montreal) Circus School in my youth. Where were they during my high school's "Career Day"? Maybe I should just make do with some civil disobediance classes by The Ruckus Society, who's website thoughtfully provides a training manual for hanging from a billboard, among other things. Terribly, terribly clever: Oedipus the King as written in vanity licence plates. (from Larkfarm) Send me e-mail, dammit! All internally generated content by Pith and Vinegar©2000.