Blog Archives
Keep that shit to yourself and stay in your fucking bunker
The (not-) Mayan nonpocalypse may have come and gone but since the coming year has a 13 in it I think it’s not too unlikely that some weapons grade bellend somewhere is predicting our doom sometime in the next twelve months, especially given that the last end of the world had barely finished not happening before people were recycling the tired excuse that the dates had been miscalculated – amusingly the only thing about the whole unevent that was at all predictable. So with that in mind, a belated look at what Foamy the Squirrel had to say shortly before the Big Fat Nothing of nine days ago.
I’m not sure I believe him.
So, er, not worth $38 a share then?
Facebook according to Cracked.com:
The problem with Facebook is not Facebook. It’s every asshole you ever met showing you every asshole picture they ever took of every asshole they ever met who posts every asshole thought they ever had about every asshole date, job, party, school, funeral, porn shoot, exorcism, ritual suicide and box social they ever attended. The sarlacc hasn’t seen a gaping hole so big as the spiritual asshole Facebook represents. It’s everything. It’s always everything every day and it never ends.
And that’s unlikely to be a mainstream view or Facebook would be Facebroke already by now.
Meanwhile on the planet Grauniad…
Which is ridiculous, of course. Despite the genuine reason for middle class angst about the chicken you’d just phone the farm. Too many carbon emissions involved in actually going to check it out.
Hot lesbians live next door…
… to Foamy the Squirrel (tip of the akubra to John Galt in the comments on the last post).
And tangentially related, I see that Archbishop Cranmer has had a couple of responses from the ASA on that traditional marriage ad business. He also notes the ASA is now headed by one time Labour MP and openly gay lord Chris Smith. That might explain a few things, though I very much doubt why the gays’ preferred definition should be forced on Christians and other traditionalists – or for that matter why the traditional definition should be forced on gays and their sympathisers – will be one of them.
Let the train take the strain
Yesterday evening I had a brief Twitter conversation with the Ambush Predator in which she mentioned that her local Tube station was playing Elgar. This sounds like a stroke of genius and has the potential to serve as a useful public information system for those who know the code. Bank station could have Pink Floyd’s Money while St Pancras could stay classical and use Ode to Joy to let passengers know that the Eurostar is nearby and Ride of the Valkyries could be moved around the network as needed to warn passengers that the next stop looks like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Turned out it’s nothing like that and is just, hoperfully, to reduce vandalism, but in turn that reminded me of a story I saw the other day about Queensland Rail’s poster campaign to encourage train etiquette…
… has been, er, kind of hijacked.
QUEENSLAND Rail’s online train etiquette campaign has become the butt of internet jokes with parodies of the “polite” posters going viral.
In a twist similar to that experienced by the notorious “Qantas luxury” Twitter competition, commuters have embraced the invitation to “personalise the etiquette posters” and post them on social media sites.
Many have taken the opportunity to highlight some of QR’s failings.
One banner takes a dig at Premier Campbell Newman.
“Jim waited five years for a train. But it never came. Because Campbell spent all the money on tunnels.”
And then things start getting a bit, well, Ocker.
And yet the thing is that if I’d been reading that in cramped and ancient carriage on the District Line while stood in a pool of someone else’s piss and listening to some bloke trying to make up for his lousy mobile reception by talking loudly enough that his caller can hear him without it, I’d think that the jokes still have a point. Not that pissing yourself is encouraged on Queensland trains as far as I know. I keep hearing about what a weird bunch Queenslanders are but they’re not that odd up there.
How videogames are really causing more violence
Click for linky
THEY’RE JUST FUCKING GAMES. HTH.
And yes, I’m resorting to cartoons because I’m still busy.
Australia – it fucking knows how to build women
From the people (possibly) responsible for Australia’s economic health, and (probably not) happening tonight in pubs all over Australia.
Hands up everyone who was slightly sick at the thought of a screw down crown cap going where we all first thought it was going. FFS, that might have affected the taste of the beer.
Australia’s economic health
Could this be the reason why?
Admittedly I’m not all that sure if it would work with, say, retsina but with the Euro in the shitter and having been downgraded again the other day Greece may as well give anything a shot at this stage. More seriously any medium of exchange that’s hard for the state to control, and of course take its slice from, can’t be a bad thing. Joking aside I wouldn’t be surprised if this is already going on anyway.
Alternative medicine poll
The manipulation of an smh.com.au poll has again thrown the spotlight on online voting.
Late last month the Herald reported on a lobby group of more than 400 doctors, medical researchers and scientists – dubbed Friends of Science in Medicine – that is pressuring universities to close down alternative medicine degrees, arguing the practices have no scientific basis.
On February 4, several experts were interviewed for a new article on the topic and the story was accompanied by an online poll asking readers “Should universities teach alternative medicine?”
Voting progressed steadily at first but on Tuesday votes began skyrocketing from about 125,000 to more than 877,000 by the time voting closed on Thursday. The end result was 71 per cent “no”, 29 per cent “yes”.
The number of votes in the poll was about eight times more than the number of online readers of the story, a clear indicator that the poll had been gamed. Fairfax technical staff said the poll logs all but confirmed that the voting had been manipulated.
Nonsense. All that’s happened is that somebody diluted the ‘no’ vote to make it much, much stronger than it was to begin with. Carry on as you were.
Try getting this on a plane
Oh noes, it’s the terrorpot, waging its never ending jihad against the great Satan, coffee. More of this kind of thing, please. A far better response to terrorism than allowing our governments to protect our liberties by taking them away and locking them up where no one can get at them.
Tip of the Akubra to Mrs Exile, though who she’s shopping for I have no idea.
Ill windmills
In case either of my readers (hi, Mum) were wondering the lack of posts this week isn’t a sign of anything more than that I’ve been a bit busy. I certainly haven’t suddenly started believing that all is right with the world after all because clearly it isn’t. I just haven’t had the time to seethe about it at length in the blogosphere and have had to settle for occasional quiet seethe-lets in the car instead.
And I can’t offer much this evening either for the same reason, but I just wanted to point out this from The Daily Mash the other day:
Chairman Lord Turner said: “The only problem we can possibly foresee is if it’s not as windy as we think it’s going to be.
[…]
The report was welcomed by the large energy providers who said that if they were going to pick a figure of out of thin air for how much more they felt like charging people then they would probably have chosen £110 as well.
Lord Turner added: “It’s not that green technology is, in itself, massively expensive, it’s that if it doesn’t actually work then you have to get the energy from somewhere else. Usually from people who aren’t very nice.
“So you end up with an expensive thing that doesn’t work all the time plus expensive energy from horrid people. And that is massively expensive.
“But it’s fine, because it’s going to be windy.”
Yes, and just the other week we saw that they’re just as good when it’s a bit too windy, didn’t we?
The Angry Exile 