This Is 40?

Hello, my sweet...yes it has been a while since we've seen each other.

Sadly, I feel it may be a while until we see each other again, and I suspect it will happen when I least expect or plan it.  The fact is there's too much to do, too many things to draw my focus, and not enough time to spend frivolously on observational humor, web links, and found photos.

Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed every minute of it, and it has been as much an identity and ideology as any truly dedicated endeavor, but there are times that you recognize where a cycle starts and ends, and for now, this is a good point to make that mark.

It was difficult to allow this to fade away and phase out, the process becoming outwardly evident over the last year and a half with the inconsistent postings, but for me, it was harder because this fit perfectly into the spot reserved for self indulgence and exacerbated by a(n) (un)healthy obsessive / compulsive streak.  Once, it was imperative to make those multiple posts - up to 10 a day, in order to satisfy that urge, and even when that was broken and a more reasonable three were made, it was something that took some adjustment to be capable of.

So today I'm marking my 40th birthday, and like so many symbolic gestures, it occurred to me that it was timely, or at least time, to acknowledge the true pleasure and love I've had curating IOvUF, and for any and every single person who took the time to read a post.  And before we bookend this with a look back to the origin, I'll liberate, er, appropriate this perfectly poignant and spot-on speech by the late-and-always-great Dave "Oderus Urungus" Brockie for some context:

Nothing has changed...nothing has changed here.  We're still the wonderful, down-to-Earth, kinda motherfucking homosexual, butt-raping, dogfucking, kinda motherfuckers you love.  And let me tell you one thing...if any of you guys, or any of you girls, wanna come backstage after the show - get sucked, fucked, smoke some crack - it's okay by me.

Now, without any further ado, take it away guys...

Tuesday, April 17, 2007: Revisiting The Big Bang

Really, it was more like the Big Whimper, but nonetheless my sense of wasting time triumphed over productivity and I shat out Living To Die. The concept was based on a combination of things The Good Doctor and I humored ourselves with, starting with the poignant final words of Roy Batty -- “time to die”. And much like the realization that all our moments and memories will eventually be lost like tears in the rain, so was the reaction and cynical afterbirth of the LTD philosophy – necessary and immutably true.

The mantra was a follows:

First you are born. Then you have a pretty good time for about 25 years. Then it is time for you to fucking die. I didn't make the rules. But I will enforce them.

In a sickly, sensible way it worked. The futility of jobs. The failure of relationships. The sacrifice of watching your dreams die. Nobody said that it was going to be easy, but no one said that it was going to be this hard, and at least we had the forethought to remember to smile stupidly while we were taking the beating. Yes, it sounds morbidly pessimistic, but it’s not.

Meanwhile, back in the oft-forgotten MAGNAband forums, I was hacking and slashing away at the same stupid brutality that life provides as both sport and amusement daily. In the hope of stunning people into thinking with radically sensible ideas I ingratiated myself with Schadenfreude. Sadly, some twat on Blogger has already claimed that perch on the web, and she actually thinks that her own pathetic, dull misfortune is going to provide us glee. News flash, sweetie – there is zero interest in your blandness. I’ve been in traffic that was more interesting that the pointlessness of your existence, and the fact you lucked into camping on one of the most kick ass site names is tragic. Let us all hope nothing but the worst for she who volunteered to be the schadenfreude touchstone, as it is by default no less than what she deserves for making such an egregious claim. Yet we digress…

In spite of a set of misanthropic tendencies, egotistical embellishment, keen awareness of stupidity and a lack of regard for restraint or correctness as a result, I have made the next evolutionary step philosophically. For a long time I fixated on the concept of an immovable object and an unstoppable force, and their inherent opposition to each other, which fit perfectly with my quasi-dualistic reasoning (which like the Soul Coughing song of the same name postulates “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago” – and that’s loose meta-logic). The dichotomy is still there – living to die, as is the contrast of two concepts, but IOvUF is the examination of the complete nature of opposition, of being both caught between either side as well as being objectively aware of it.

Granted, all of that is a touch excessive given the overt applications here – satire, mockery, criticism, enlightenment, adoration, and creativity – not some revelatory direction in which to restyle my (your) existence. But we’re all still living to die, so while this may be nothing more than another voice for the vocal, it has changed, and for that I take pause to note -- before -- it is time to die.

Photoshop Gives The Interweb The Racial Diversity From Their Stars It Wants

Who Is Twitter?

Beevolve, a social media marketing firm (that sounds redundant), analyzed 36 million Twitter profiles to break down the range of users. Sounds like a lot of shitty work done by interns...

The average Twitter user is a 28 year old American girl who has an iPhone, has 208 Twitter followers while following 102 people, tweets a lot about fashion and family, likes the color purple and uses "love" quite frequently in her tweets. If this describe someone you know, then you should rethink who you are friends with.  If you're a celebrity or involved in the media and arts, it makes perfect sense, but nobody needs to be chirping  about how much they like the a dress at the mall.  It's not as bad as Facebook, with all the "hey look at me, pay attention to me" posts about what people had for breakfast, but still awful.

They have plenty of statistics, like the average Twitter user has tweeted 800 times, and only 26% of users favorite Tweets? You can read them here...but don't tweet it.  Tweeting is for assholes.

Biz Marquee

I'm happy that one of my former improv buddies as not olly generated a career in film and television, but also has gone behind the scenes to find success.  Battleground premieres today on Hulu and is it's first scripted series. JD Walsh (and producer Marc Webb) talk about it here, and these clips may make him a little more recognizable.

Meme, The Movie

You can see 20 others, and the background on each...

Down The Rabbit Hole

You start off checking up on an Los Angeles band on a Australian fan site that gets you to a YouTube page for girl in Ohio. You follow the interweb where it takes you... 

Imagevoloution

It's simple - just take a transparent image, go to Google Image Search, and ask it to find similar images. Take the top result and feed it back in...2951 times.

College Humor's Internet Justice League

Teh Kitteh Rok

The kitten covers.

ThunderLOLCats

xxx.xxx

It's time to get your XXX on! The .xxx domain is the first to be approved for commercial use since since .co was in July 2010.

Registered trademark and brand holders will get the opportunity tomorrow to secure .xxx domains, and on the cheap! Top-level domains usually cost around $50 a year to retain a URL, but the ICM Registry (who gives the domains to third parties like GoDaddy and Network Solutions) will let brands purchase their .xxx domains for a one time $200 fee. They have 50 days to claim their domain. After that period, there will be a 17-day period where domains are sold exclusively to the adult entertainment industry, and that's where the interweb land grab will really take effect.

Aside from all the permutations of "teen babysitter" getting registered, it's a genius move to open up the purchase to trademark holders, who will likely purchase www.mcdonalds.xxx or www.apple.xxx just to keep the domains off limits to others. There's a lot of brands out there, and at $200 a pop...

The Best Show In The Universe

What Did The Pot Call The Kettle, Part II

Wherever there's money made, there will be lawsuits to try and get a piece, hence the class-action suit filed by Jonathan Tasini looking for part of The Huffington Post’s $315 million acquisition payday from AOL.

By his accounts, Tasini figures the volunteer copy run for the past five years ended up generating a third of its sale value - $105 million. Naturally, he doesn’t explain how he got to that number, no why the site should be expected to pay for work people gave it for free. His major gripe is that users and contributors are frequently asked to help build a Web site without getting any financial compensation. Well sure, but the trade for content is exposure on a nationally recognized website. What's that worth?

It makes a good quote to hear him decry the "modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation", but if so, then Tasini himself is no sharecropper. In fact, has too has a blog that invites readers to contribute. And no, he doesn't pay them.

GAWKER took Tasini to task about his own site, which conveniently is based on the same model as The Huffington Post, using reader contributions. The biggest difference is that his site hasn't made nearly the impact - or money, to make it a target for suits. In response to their questioning, Tasini replied, "Oh, I see what you're doing. Are you comparing my little blog to the Huffington Post? That's absurd." Not so much, and they also found out that you're better at profiting from talking about representing the little guy than actually winning anything from them.

Binged!

Is the best way to beat the competition to join them? Enter that question into your search window and check the results!

In May 2010, Google took notice that Microsoft's rival search engine Bing was consistently turning up the same sites when someone would enter unusual misspellings. Search Engine Land - who not only goes into great detail about the result snatching, but also uses an excellent and relevant picture from Real Genius in their post, shows "torsoraphy" as an example. Google corrects it to the correct spelling of "tarsorrhaphy", bringing up the relevant search results for that term. With Bing, the misspelled word gets no correction and still lists the "tarsorrhaphy" results.

By October, Bing had started showing a greater overlap with Google's top results than previous months, including instances where both search engines told listed exactly the same page in the number one spot. Sure, there were lots of searches that did not come up the same, but Google suspected Bing had done something to its search algorithm to make the results to be more like Google's. They figured that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser could be sending back data from Google searches to Bing.

Google crafted a sting to confirm their suspicions, and created a "one-time code" that would allow it to manually rank a page for a certain term. They also made close to 100 "synthetic" searches of the most random, obscure searches that could be entered - searches that returned a tiny number of poor quality matches or none on Google or Bing. Once they integrated the code, Google placed a "honeypot" page to show up at the top of each synthetic search. As Search Engine Land simplifies, "The only reason these pages appeared on Google was because Google forced them to be there. There was nothing that made them naturally relevant for these searches. If they started to appeared at Bing after Google, that would mean that Bing took Google’s bait and copied its results."

Google engineers started on December 17. By December 31, some of the results started appearing on Bing. Microsoft's PR machine countered with the expected "we do not copy Google's results," but it's hard to deny or explain otherwise...

Four Thousand Bad Ideas

There's nothing better a gas main explosion - like the one from Philadelphia last night, to tie into this post.

We've hit 4,000 posts.
Now, I'm not one to make light of tragic events (that often), and it is certainly sad that people were killed as a result of this accident, but in a way it's kinda fitting. Like this blog, for some it is difficult to look at,  generally unpleasant to think about, and could have (potentially) been avoided. But for others, it's something to regard with interest, no matter how unsavory or outside your comfort zone, because it serves it's purpose of adding depth and knowledge to your day.

The bottom line is, shit exploded and I'm trying to be profound in a slightly humorous way - take it how you will.

Sorry for the lack of fanfare, but you can get nostalgic from our 3000th back in October of '09 which has a ton of links to my favorite posts. Our fourth birthday is in April, so maybe we'll fill in the gaps with a mini-best of since the 3K marker. Or maybe you'll have to wait until the 5 year / 5K anniversary. Sometimes I can be a dick like that...

Anyway, thanks for putting up with / indulging me.

Did I Fire Five Shots Or Six?

The interweb is a wonderful place, full of lists and databases.  Everybody knows the movie one, and some folks even take a peek at the adult film one, but what if you want to find out what gun your favorite actor used in a particular flick or TV show?

The Internet Movie Firearms Database can tell you about Arnold's AMT Hardballer .45 Longslide from The Terminator or Chow Yun-Fat's double fisted Norinco Type 54 (Tokarev TT-33) in Hard Boiled.  Aside from rocket launchers, grenades, and various other explosive devices, the list has weapons that don't even exist.  The LAPD 2019 blaster? The Morita Mk I Rifle?  Yep, they've got the pictures and details.  And you can not only search by title or weapon, but they even have it listed by actor.  Finally, I can see Harrison Ford used both a DL-44 Blastech blaster pistol and Smith & Wesson M1917 Revolver! Its a very cool way to waste time nerding out.

Google Beatbox (And Other Misuses)

Google Translate has a feature where you can hear the words pronounced and spoken...and now it's been twisted into something even better.

As you see above, just go to Google Translate, where the translator is already set for German to German translations.  Already there is "pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpkzvpvzk kkkkkk bsch", so just hit listen and rock out!  You can put your own in the translation box, and there are other languages it will work with too.  Or you can just enjoy really crass, disgusting, oddball things being said. Very okay computer!

Weezer Sucks

There's a growing opinion that Weezer has not been able to replicate the quality and songcraft of their debut album, and that each successive album has been worse than the last.  But James Burns hates Weezer so much, he's trying to raise enough money to get them to stop making music altogether.

Recently, Burns launched an online fundraiser to collect $10 million in hopes of sending Weezer to early retirement, The (Seattle) Stranger reported. Despite only raising $2000 to this point, the movement isn't so much about his own feelings for the band, but rather the anguish Weezer has cause their followers. "This isn't about me. This is about Weezer fans," Burns wrote on the website. "This is an abusive relationship, and it needs to stop now. I am tired of my friends being disappointed year after year."

Drummer Patrick Wilson jokingly responded to raise the stakes.  "If they can make it to 20, we'll do the 'deluxe breakup!'". The Stranger interviewed Burns, and he said he'll try and go the distance to raise the money. And as for angry reactions to his fundraising, Burns claims he doesn't mind.  "I am not afraid of Weezer fans," Burns said. "I can take it. Besides, I'm doing this mostly for them."

Weezer's latest album arrives in early November, so he'll have to step it up if he's going to stop that release.

UPDATE: Looks like Jimmy has gone all soft and weak - like Weezer, album after album. He posted the following:

Hey, I’m going to break character here for a minute, okay? Okay. The amount of attention this thing has gotten is unreal. I expected to ruffle a few feathers, but this is pretty insane. So, I’ll be shutting this campaign down at noon on Monday.

Why?

Well, I didn’t raise $10 Million, and Weezer are still a band, but I accomplished everything I ever hoped to.  I figured since the internet wasted so much of my time with all the ridiculous articles about the new Weezer album, I thought I’d return the favor and waste some of the internet’s time. Boy howdy, did I succeed. So in case there was any doubt (and if there was, all I can say is that you’re dumber than me) that this campaign was anything more than a giant piss-take, I’ll leave you with these last words: I did it for the lulz.
toodle pip,
James

Take Care Of Yo Hair

Believe it or not, if you interweb hard enough, this video will lead you to Laura Bell Bundy.

Kill-Face(book)

Last week, a list of the names of 69 young men in Puerto Asis, Colombia was published on Facebook. "Leave town in three days", they ominously warned, "or you will be executed." Now, three on the list are dead! That's teach people to not fear anonymous posts on the interweb!

On August 15, two days before the list was published, 16-year-old "student" Diego Ferney Jaramillo and 17-year-old "CD retailer" Eibart Alejandro Ruiz Munoz were killed while riding their motorcycle to another town. Both Munoz and Jaramilo were on the list, which grew to 100 total names as 31 girls were added as few days later. What police thought was a hoax became serious after 19-year-old Norbey Alexander Vargas was killed, and 16-year-old Juan Pablo Zambrano Anacona was injured (by Vargas' killers) on August 20. Both teens' names were on the list.

Authorities don't know who put the list together, though a gang called Los Rastrojos is active in the area, as well as longtime Colombian Marxist rebel group FARC. Reports state the list is now "blocked," though it's unclear what it was exactly on Facebook —a note? An event? A page? And I'm just wondering if it's just easier to unfriend them rather than hunt 100 people down and kill them...