C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

You guys didn't want to go with me to "The Gallery Project", so you missed out! It's still running until 4PM Sunday afternoon, so you still have a chance.

Just when you thought you didn't need yet another version of Linux...

Hot on the heels of Ubuntu Christian Edition is Ubuntu Satanic Edition, "Evil Edgy" release.

Just write your letter and it will be hand-delivered immediately following the exodus of the pure from the Earth. But you must be thinking to yourself, "How can the letters be delivered after the Rapture?" The answer is simple. The creators of this site are Atheists. That's right, we don't believe in God. How else would we be able to deliver your correspondence after the Rapture?

Yes, I went to the order form, and it appears that they are seriously taking money for this through Paypal. Actually delivering the letters would cost a lot of the money (if any) they're earning from this service. As funny and farcical as this site is, they need to set aside enough of their earnings (if any) in highly liquid safe slow-growth investments sufficient that they would be able to carry through on their promise, despite the certainty that they will not have to carry through on it.

If I promise to mail customers an umbrella in the event of worldwide inundation by flying pigs, and have no plan in place to gain the means to purchase said umbrellas, that means I do not intend to do it even if it happens. That would be fraud. The fact that we will never see the aforementioned porcine blitzkrieg would not make the earnings any less fraudulent.

But if they truly have a workable plan in place for the impossible, they are acting in good faith based on the beliefs of those who are losing out through this transaction and sincerely wish to do so. Casinos are no worse. For this, I toast the Post-Rapture Post.

( Read more... )Dear Uncle Matt,
How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? Please do NOT ask Mr. Owl, as he cheats!!
- Pop Tootsie
( Read more... )
Dear Uncle Matt,
I've noticed more and more people involved in polyamorous relationships lately. Whatever happened to good old fashioned fidelity?? Is keeping one's pants fastened around people other than one's spouse no longe fashionable?
- God Wears Prada
( Read more... )
Dear Uncle Matt:
I am in search of the PERFECT cup of coffee. Where can I find it?
- Roast Grind
( Read more... )
Dear Uncle Matt,
So, explain this to me: why lobsters?
-Puzzled
( Read more... )
Dear Uncle Matt,
I laughed when I read about your college and how they have a rule against optical intercourse and making eye babies. Were you ever tempted to watch a movie of people having optical intercourse. And what is the best optical intercourse you've ever had.
- Cornea Porn
( Read more... )

The village of Hell, Michigan threw a party yesterday because the date was 06/06/06. My friends and I visited, and found it to be strangely worthwhile.

It's a large clearing in a forest. I had to drive all over Hell's half acre to get there. The road to Hell is hemmed in on both sides with trees, and on 6/6/6, it was also lined with cars on either side for a couple of miles. The townsfolk clearly were insufficiently prepared; they did not expect tens of thousands of people to break Hell wide open. They had good intentions-- but they paved the road to Hell with asphalt.

The three buildings were the general store, the "Screams" ice cream shop where Hell freezes over, and the Dam Site Inn. Behind this restaurant I visited a river with a dam across it. This town is where Hell Creek is dammed.

It's said that "wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereby," but that was not the case. Other than the scattering of homes, the only three buildings in Hell had lines stretching out in which one could wait for an hour, more reminiscent of the line for Peter's pearly gates. Hell is long lines.

There were a lot of signs to stick your head through and take pictures with; hearses painted with macabre and beautiful illustrations; a bell with a huge wooden gong; souveneirs for $6.66; people wearing elaborate monster costumes and handbaskets; and a singing, guitar-strumming vampire from whom we bought CDs. And yet despite the quick depletion of everything to see in Hell, and almost nothing to do, the occupants of Hell had no fury like a woman scorned. Instead there were smiles everywhere. It was the typical fairgoing crowd, made up of hundreds of curiosity seekers from most walks of life, plus massive quantities of bikers and several extremely visible police. I expected to say "never was there a more wretched hive of scum and villiany" but ... no. Not so much.

I arrived too late to see the main attraction, which was a street preacher. He warned the revelers of impending catastrophe and offered salvation, until the bikers blew an enormous cloud of tire-smoke on him. (Image from the Detroit Free Press is here.) And the street preachers walked away; that means on 6/6/6 the bikers made the lame to walk. But they were still lame.

I'm kind of upset that I missed it because that's really what 6/6/6 in Hell Michigan is all about. We were there to celebrate that man's insane mythology just like we celebrate a TV show or a comic book. These tales would not have come down to us through the centuries without people who took them seriously. He was like that lady I met at a Star Trek convention who said that one day, after she fell down the stairs and hit her head, she started picking up transmissions from the Pliades constellation, and forgot 200 words of Klingon vocabulary.

The original author of the book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian Bible didn't take 6-6-6 seriously, and might be amused by the Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia of those who do. The attributes of the Beast, such as this number, were a set of euphemisms he used to represent Emperor Nero, who was persecuting Christians at the time. He couldn't come out and name the things he was talking about because he would get in trouble, so the entire book is full of satirical symbolism. Our own editorial cartoons will probably make no sense 2000 years from now, but I hope they don't become the source of a superstition.

( Images behind this link. )

Last year conservatives made a big deal about a supposed "War On Christmas" because some private business choose of their own free will not to participate in publicly decorating for the Christian holiday. There is a certain kind of Christian who feels persecuted if cities don't pay out my tax dollars to display Christmas creches on public streets and squares that are paid for by my tax dollars.

But now witness the terrornoia reaction when some girls did a cool and fun art project for April Fools' Day. Click here for a link to the article in the Akron Beacon-Journal and the article in the online Record-Courier. I have put in a call with the Beacon-Journal's Metro Editor in charge of local news to confirm that this is not just an April Fool's Day joke on the part of the paper and that the events really happened as described.

The teenage girls followed the instructions on a cool website to make life-size Super Mario Bros. power-up blocks and spread them all over the town. The bomb squad was called out to disarm these pinatas. According to the instructions on the website, the foil-covered cardboard boxes should contain a prize as a gift to whoever is lucky enough to find them. As anyone knows who has not lived under a rock for the last twenty years, question mark blocks traditionally dispense help and not harm. These decorations were intended to delight, not threaten.

Criminal charges are being brought against the five girls ages 15 to 17. Are we now criminalizing random acts of kindness toward strangers? Some artists put up beautiful decorations for April Fool's Day, and are actually being persecuted for it. See, this is what it would actually look like in December if there were a war on Christmas. The internet is banding together to make an outcry, and pay their legal fees if this laughingstock of a case actually makes it to court.

One of my favorite comments to the article was from a user named "disgusted by cowardice": "Hello Police? Yes, there have been several unidentified packages left under our Christmas tree. We saw a bearded man leaving the scene. Can you send in the bomb squad?"

To which I would add, "Hello, police? Someone has made a rainbow and sprinkled it with dew. I feel that the security of my homeland is all tingly."

The nice thing about decorating a public place with privately-funded question blocks is that the first person to find them is supposed to destroy them. If people put out their own privately-funded manger scenes which yield coins, flowers and mushroom-shaped chocolates when smashed with baseball bats, I'd be all in favor of it. Sounds like a fun holiday season.

netmouse's dad told her that she'll be a billion seconds old in August. That means I'll be a billion seconds old sometime in February. I would like to calculate when that would be, so that if scheduling permits I can throw a Billionth-Second party this month. I was born at two in the morning on June 17, 1974. Is there a website that will calculate it for me conveniently?

Finally an online game world that doesn't actually need any players. You create your character and then sit back and let him play the game for you. The Keyboard Shortcut menu is a model of intuitive brevity, copied in its entirety here:

Key	Description
Alt-F4	Exit Progress Quest

It's as simple as that. There are no graphics, only progress bars. The game hands your character an endless stream of exotic monsters to murder without any of that tedious worldbuilding or questing in between. In fact, according to the testimonials it might consist almost entirely of spyware. Straight to the point, this game.

"Elegant yet stupidly great"
A superb cross breed of the physical with the spiritual, at once Zen and Canadian Socialist, pure yet full of thick goopy mud.

I'm really enjoying answering the responses I got from yesterday's journal entry about the LJ meme in which people ask me anonymous questions. I'm going to preface the questions with "Dear Uncle Matt", and make up names for you, just to show that this LJ meme is not the boss of me!

Dear Uncle Matt,
If you could be any type of sandwich, what type of sandwich would you be and why?
For instance, I would be a peanut butter and jelly, because I am both sweet and nutty.
*Where's Bob Ubanks when you need him? :P
-PBJ

Dear PBJ,
1. You must be part of the cult of Hank!( Read more... )
Dear Uncle Matt,
have a question i keep meaning to ask you but keep forgeting when i see you on line do you view technology as a way to increase your social interaction and increase awerness of things social or do you view social interaction as a way to increase your knowledge of technology and increase awerness of things technological?
-Emperor Penguin

Dear Penguin,
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is, they make each other better.( Read more... )
Dear Uncle Matt,
also, if you were forced to choose, which would you keep freinds and social interaction (no tech, just you in a room with food to live on and freinds to hang out with) or your technology(assuming that there would be no one at the other end, just you. no one to blog with, no one to read your web sites.)
-Emperor Penguin

I'd take the friends and social interaction, but I'd probably also put up a cork board and start tacking messages and drawings on it.( Read more... )
Dear Uncle Matt,
What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?
-DNA

Dear DNA,
I am as much of a Douglas Adams fan as anybody. I even named a messageboard "The Electric Monk" and dedicated it to him. But the answer's not "42," I'll tell you that much. Ever tried to actually use "42" as the meaning of your life?
( Read more... )
Dear Uncle Matt,
Did YOU send those monkeys after her?!?!?!
-Dorothy

Dear Dorothy,
Deny, deny, deny. However, the monkeys are everywhere and read everything, so now you've given them a clue to her location. The monkeys are probably seeking an injunction and a search warrant right at this very moment. Nice going.
-Uncle Matt

And while we're on the topic of stalker animals:

Dear Uncle Matt,
Hummming....Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?
-Hummming

Dear Hummming,
I wish Alfred Hitchcock were alive, because I'd ask him. Night and day they hound me. I looked out the peephole in my front door just last week and saw this:

AAAARGH!
Fortunately most of the birds are penguins, since I help to run Penguicon. I say "fortunately" because penguins can't fly and thus have a lot of trouble appearing suddenly. They tend to appear gradually from the horizon and I can evade them if I keep moving.
-Uncle Matt

OK guys and gals, you can keep those questions coming by commenting on my last journal entry. If you have a comment on the answers, comment to this entry.