Total Dismay

I have a guilty pleasure. It involves watching illegally uploaded movies on YouTube. The best way to do this is to just type ‘Part 1′ into the search bar and keep clicking through until you get something you like. I recently watched Man On The Moon with my kids. I legally rented the movie when it had just come out and I didn’t let them watch it back then. The funny part of the story is that I let them watch the intro where Andy Kaufman as played by Jim Carrey complains about the film and proclaims it over before rolling what appeared to be end credits. They believed me when I told them that that was in fact the end. They thought I had been ripped off. They went to bed.

A scene that I keep recalling involves Andy’s agent complaining about Andy and Bob concocting gags that are only funny to two people on the entire planet. I identified with that scene. On that note, here is something that I just spent a few minutes of my life creating…

If you are the other human being that finds it funny, please get in touch.

My last post was a commentary on the disappearance of a blog. Almost immediately after I had posted that, my blog went tits up thanks to hackers. It has happened before and I just wait til the first of the month when I get new bandwidth before going in and removing the bajillion spam links that they put in my header code.

In the meantime, Mr. Fabulous got his blog back up and running. Seems it was some error and not malice that affected his web presence.

For some reason, the largely unreported allegations being made by Larry Sinclair have gotten me thinking about the psychology and sociology of lying. The short YouTube video in which this man makes his claims doesn’t have any ‘tells’, but rehearsing and doing several retakes gives him a great advantage. There is also an extended radio interview of Larry, carried out by a controversial conspiracy theorist.

Larry’s tone and mannerisms on this audio reminded me of a liar that gave an audio interview last year. My other blog, Slamboard.com was used to help expose a fraud last year. It features surveillance pictures taken of a Diet Guru who had been using fake after pictures stolen from a mail order bride website. The interview was recorded some time before that.

Heidi Diaz had been sort of anonymous as Kimmer, the founder of Kimkins.com. When a critical mass of people became very doubtful about her claims of weight loss and the safety of her diet plan, an affiliate arranged an audio interview that he had hoped would put everyone’s doubts to rest (or not). There is this amazing moment on this audio interview where all but the truly delusional can hear the lying. The interviewer changes his tone quite perceptibly after that moment.

Larry Sinclair gives his interview to a man who loves anything that is hard to believe. I only listened to a small part of it.

The Jagermeisterbraunschweig.jpg is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia’s deletion policy.

I don’t think this is fair. Please do your part to make sure that it remains for the education and entertainment of future generations. I think that there should be a Hollywood movie made about the drama. I think that Ben Stiller should play the guy wearing yellow jersey that started so much controversy.

If we allow those tyrannical wiki editors to run roughshod over the rights of contributors to add images of Germans with bad 70s hair in football jerseys, who knows what they’ll do next.

TAKE A STAND

Das ist des Jägers Ehrenschild,
daß er beschützt und hegt sein Wild,
weidmännisch jagt, wie sich’s gehört,
den Schöpfer im Geschöpfe ehrt.

I was a bit off this morning. It looked like it was shaping up to be a beautiful day, so I put a load of wash in the machine. Our washing machine is in a small courtyard that is half under cover and half opened to the sky. After I put the wash in, I decided to move the drying rack out into the open part to get more air and sun. It contained some clothes that are vital for this evenings plans. Then I sat down to have my morning coffee in the office. When I took my cup back out to the kitchen, I was greeted by the spectacular rainbow you see in the picture. As always, the rainbow was more amazing to the naked eye than it appears in the photo.

The rest of the story involves me forgetting about the laundry while I go out to take a picture just before the downpour and then uploading it DURING the downpour. When I heard someone exclaim later on, it took me a good five seconds before I realized the the clothes had gotten rained on.

When there is a fake Santa in every mall and department store in town and when IMDb can tell you what actor portrayed Santa in every movie ever made, it is hard for a kid to believe that there is one true Santa. If they get a letter from Santa with an actual signature they can be pretty sure that it is the real thing right?

Letters From Santa are better than Skyping Santa or hearing Santa on the radio because they are a permanent record of your correspondence with one of the most generous and well traveled people in history.

A movie promoter paid to have a trailer embedded on the landing page of YouTube today.

A pivotal moment in this video involves a man firing a gun in a church.

The people who arranged this promotion may not have made the connection yet. The folks at YouTube may not have noticed it yet. I did. The top story in America today involves a man firing a gun in a church.

There were dozens of flyers left that advertised free walking tours. There was only one card left advertising a litre of beer for 6€. Mmmmmm…..Beer….

I did the math and that beer special isn’t very special. I may have been spoiled by spending the last two years in a country with cheap beer. Everything in Florence was a bit on the expensive side in my estimation. This impression was tempered by the fact that we lucked in to a few freebies. We went to a free performance of some popular opera pieces that was followed by a free wine tasting.

If you operate a 24 hour convenience store that is adjacent to a bar… and you have no sense of right and wrong… you might want to make a bulk purchase of these cheap personal blood alcohol meters from Chinavasion.

Note: The result of this test gives BAC for reference only Chinavasion does not take any legal responsibility.

I would suggest that you print a statement absolving yourself from responsibility as well. I think you could put a pretty big markup on these things. If you ever buy one, don’t breath in, as they might be toxic.

I didn’t ask Jarheadboi if he was homosexual. If I did, I would hope that he wouldn’t tell me. I don’t have to ask whether he likes the gay-themed video game Manhunt 2. He is very worked up about it.

He has an undeveloped plan to petition against the ESRB, which he calls a pussy organization. Pussy is not the most derogatory word in his lexicon, it’s just the name for the thing he dislikes the most, don’t ask me why.

One detail that seems to have eluded Jarheadboi is the fact that the ESRB is a self regulatory body. This means it is not an outside body trying to cramp the game manufacturer’s style. They are the game makers, and they are in the business of covering asses.