Archive for the 'Fun/Humor' Category
I satisfied my Latin requirement this past school year. In celebration — other than my own celebration with beer and meat and cigars — I feel it necessary to share the usefulness and wisdom of a nearly, but not quite, dead language:
Thank you XKCD. Hilarious.
I got memed in for a music list of sorts, a list of one’s favorite albums from each year that one has been alive. Well, there is something wrong with me. I am terrible, terrible, at keeping track of band names and associating the names with the songs, much less years when albums came out. After much searching through the internet of favorite bands, and again cursing the eighties for being a terrible decade (more on that later), I’ve been able to come up with this list:
1983: U2, War
1984: The Cars, Hearbeat City (A tribute to crappy music and sycophantic lyrics.)
1985: The Cure, The Head on the Door (A tribute to the death of the drummer during the eighties. What so bad about drummers that the eighties decided to kill them off?)
1986: Bon Jovi, Slippery When Wet (STEEEEEEL HORSE IIIIIIIIII RIDEEEEEEEE!)
1987: Rick Astley, Never Gonna Give You Up – Rick Rolled!
1988: Poison, Open Up and Say… Ahh! (Proof that “success” by being a sellout doesn’t get you anywhere.)
1989: Queen, The Miracle
1990: Michael W. Smith, Go West Young Man (A tribute to the fact that I didn’t know any better back then. I was only seven for God sakes.)
1991: R.E.M., Out of Time
1992: Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax playing Johannes Brahms Sonatas for Cello and Piano (This is beauty.)
1993: Counting Crows, August and Everything After (Hey, the early 90s was a hard time for music.)
1994: Queen, Greatest Hits (Because most came before my time.)
1995: Jars of Clay, Jars of Clay
1996: Cake, Fashion Nugget
1997: Sixpence None the Richer, Sixpence None the Richer
1998: Burlap to Cashmere, Anybody Out There?
1999: Switchfoot, New Way to Be Human
2000: Switchfoot, Learning to Breathe (I like ruts. And besides, they were my favorite band for a long time.)
2001: Five O’Clock People, In the Bleak Midwinter (Teh Awesome.)
2002: Damien Rice, O
2003: Sufjan Stevens, Michigan
2004: Lovedrug, Pretend You’re Alive
2005: The Decemberists, Picaresque
2006: Grand Funk Railroad, Greatest Hits (I had to work them in somehow, even if this is cheating.)
2007: Feist, The Reminder
2008: Five O’Clock People, Temper Temper
About the eighties, I see so very little of it to be redeeming. In fact, I commonly say, I am glad my youngest years were in the eighties, so I didn’t waste a decade with memories of bad synth music, neon with abandon, and Regan economics (*zing*). So I didn’t like the eighties, sue me. For above, I had also had a devil of a time trying to find for 1994 and 2007.
As for continuing on the meme, I tag people I think who would have a much better grasp of music: Chris, Ben, Adam, Michael, and Ry.
H/T: Strange Maps. Click on the map for a larger image. Finally we can know how everything will end up!
“Heaven is a place,” sang the Talking Heads, “where nothing ever happens.” Not so in this version of the Afterlife. This is what Heaven might have looked like in the Divina Commedia had Dante not been a medieval Italian intellectual, but a contemporary Californian comic artist, like Malachi Ward, who drew this map.
In Ward’s vision, Heaven is a place very similar to your local amusement park. Only better: it never closes, you don’t ever have to leave!
Beyond the Pearly Gates (emblazoned with the slogan You Did It!) is a Nu-Body Machine (1), instantly providing everybody with the body they’ve been trying to shape into while still alive. Catholics are welcome to Heaven, but are confined to a small section next to the entrance (2) where they can indulge their semi-idolatrous tendencies at the Throne of Mary (3). Others can try their hand (and their wings) at Angel Boot Camp (4), which is “great for Pentecostals and Charismatics.”
Those less inclined towards spiritual war could go for the snack bar (5), the marital coitus castle (6), the go carts (7), the dinosaur petting zoo (8) or Joab’s candy shop (9). Joab, a nephew of King David and eventually killed at his behest, was mainly known for his martial exploits, not for his sweet tooth.
Evil is not completely out of view in this Heaven: in fact, the Damned Viewer (10) allows you to visually check up on “Adolf Hitler, your philandering boss, the smug atheist next door and all the vile people you hate” get their comeuppance in the ‘other’, decidedly less amusing place. Maybe in Hell there’s a similar viewer, showing the Throne of God and Jesus (11) and the place where people can line up to sit, as if he were a giant Santa, on God’s lap.
And there’s more. Go to Family Land to chew the fat with pre-deceased loved ones (but wouldn’t you eventually bump into them anyway elsewhere in the park?). Visit the Arena of Answers, where the Illuminatron will tell you who really shot JFK, RFK and MLK. Go to Memory Land to relive your own finest moments or, if your existence was less than extraordinary, to Fantasy Land to relive somebody else’s. In the Hall of Heroes, visit with Abraham Lincoln, Moses and Princess Diana (among others). Visit America Land, where it’s always Memorial or Veterans’ Day.
Bowling for Columbine did it to the gun culture.
Super Size Me did it to fast food.
Now The God Who Wasn’t There does it to religion.
The movie that has been astounding audiences in theaters around the world is now available on a high-quality, feature-packed DVD. Own the taboo-shattering documentary that Newsweek says “irreverently lays out the case that Jesus Christ never existed.”
Trailer:
And my response to this trash? (I say trash because its about as over inflated as one could get.) Bwuahahahha. I’m not sure its even worth more than that as it purports to be a documentary (a problem there) and a uses fear tactics and strawperson arguments (more problems there as well). I’ve gotta go dry my eyes now from laughing so hard.
In a few hours, I will be on my way to Saint Pauls Journey into Philosophy up in Vancouver with a friend of mine. I may type of up a response so those who didn’t get to make it will be both jealous and informed. However, in the mean time, I have two little jewels for the reader.
1. From Wired:
Website Lets You Send a Post-Rapture E-Mail to Friends ‘Left Behind’
For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when — according to Christian end times dogma — Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.
“You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ,” reads the website, which is purportedly run “by Christians, for Christians.” The domain name is registered through an anonymous proxy service, presumably to protect the proprietors from the Forces of Darkness, and not because they’re up to anything shady.
The e-mails will be triggered when three of the site’s five Christian staffers “scattered around the U.S.” fail to log in for six days in a row — a system that incorporates a nice margin of safety, should two of the proprietors turn out to be unrepentant sinners or atheists.
Users can also upload up to 150 megabytes of documents, which will be protected by an unidentified encryption algorithm until the Rapture, then released to up to 12 nonbelievers of your choice. The site recommends that you use that storage to house sensitive financial information.
“In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys,” the site says. “There won’t be any bodies, so probate court will take seven years to clear your assets to your next of kin. Seven years, of course, is all the time that will be left. So, basically the Government of the Antichrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way.”
Of course, some of us would sooner trust the Antichrist with our stuff than turn it over to a company that hides behind an anonymous domain registration service, and doesn’t list a single corporate officer or employee by name on its website.
The company, You’ve Been Left Behind LLC, didn’t respond to an e-mail query, raising the obvious question of whether the Rapture has already begun.
2. And, because its Wednesday, it is business time:
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