Cyde Weys Musings

Okay, so usually I don’t ever do posts that consist solely of an embedded YouTube video, but this one you have to see. Check below the fold.

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Thankfully, I no longer live in the rundown rented house that I called my home during my senior year at University of Maryland, College Park. That means no more housemates setting their socks on fire in the microwave (no, really). It also means no more contact with my former West African roommate who believes that shamans control the weather. Well, that was the idea anyway. But on the day that I moved out, I foolishly gave him my email address, and he just contacted me:

Hello Mr BEN,how are you doing?I just thought about you,and i would like to send you an email.I hope you are enjoying your job.I wish you good luck and success.By the way,whenever you will find a job’s opportunity in COMPUTER SCIENCES,try to reach me.I KNOW HOW TO PROGRAM WITH C++.Also,i know you are able of all when you want.THANK SO MUCH and i hope your candidate JOHN MCCAIN WILL WIN THE ELECTION.

I cannot come up with any kind response to him, so I won’t. But I don’t mind responding here, simply because there’s vast humor potential in his message. There’s the random capital letters. The meaningless platitudes trying to soften me up for the pitch (and in one of them he seems to think I am omnipotent). Then there’s the pitch itself: he’s really contacting me because he’s looking for a job in computer science. Apparently he thinks that the one semester of Intro to Programming in C++ he took (which I helped him with, mind you, so I’m aware of his lack of skills) is enough to qualify him to do the same kind of job I’m doing. Of course, I have a dozen years experience and a college degree in the field — but hell, he took Intro to Programming! I would love to hook him up with all of these various “computer science” companies I know so well, and they would be blown away by his qualifications!

This is the same guy who applied for a $999,999 educational loan online in response to spam (inputting all of his personal details in the process), was infected with numerous viruses and malware that took me several hours to clean, and eventually corrupted Windows, necessitating a reinstall (which I did, of course), because his version of shutting down his computer was to unplug it. He didn’t even know how the lock on the door to his room worked, so he ended up locking himself out several times, and I would come home from classes only to find him moping about in the common area waiting for me to pick the lock for him. Despite explaining many times that he should verify that the knob turns from the outside of his door before shutting it, he never really got it. So I have already helped him a lot in the past simply out of a sense of housemate’s responsibility, and now that I no longer live with him, I feel no more obligations.

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If you haven’t been following the ongoing breakup saga between Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Rachel “Canada’s Ann Coulter” Marsden, then you’re really missing out on a lot of drama. The Sydney Morning Herald article does a good job of explaining what’s going on, though it does kind of miss the conflict of interest angle that Valleywag covers.

All I can say is Jimmy’s relationship with Rachel definitely ended in much lulz, complete with his dirty clothes being auctioned off on eBay. Now that is quality. Oh, for such a “great” man to confront such pedestrian troubles, and then get steamrolled by them.

The comic Garfield has taken a lot of grief on the web in the past few days, most of it deserved. The comic has been around since the 1970s and it really just isn’t that funny. For instance, Garfield Without Garfield makes the strip much funnier by removing Garfield entirely. The resultant strips show Jon Arbuckle talking to himself, with hilarious results. The description says it all:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.

And then there’s Lasagna Cat, which is a collection of cleverly edited “tributes” to Garfield cartoons that start with a hysterical live actor costume reenactment of a Garfield strip, then segue into bizarre musical numbers. You must see it.

However, Garfield has also had its moments. This series of six strips, published in the week leading up to Halloween 1989, is actually very clever and thought-provoking. I wish more Garfield comics were like this, then I might actually bother reading it regularly. Some urban legends seem to be circulating saying that these strips are hoaxes; they are not, and were published in all newspapers in which Garfield was syndicated. I’ve linked the comics to Garfield.com’s archive as proof.

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I played a few games at the bowling alley earlier tonight with my coworkers. They were playing some great music — Time by Pink Floyd, Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf, even some Jimi Hendrix. Then everyone at the bowling alley got Rick’Rolled. I heard the opening bars of the song, wondering why it was so familiar, because I had never heard the song in a non-ironic context before, and bam, it hit me, and I was rockin’ out and I was never gonna make you cry, never gonna say good-bye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.

I was talking with a friend recently and she brought up the concept of resting in Jesus, which has something to do with easing your troubles by taking comfort in knowing that Jesus will take care of them for you. It’s a perfectly vacuous concept, of course, except I had never heard it called by that name. So my first response when I heard her say “resting in Jesus” was, and I kid you not:

“Oh, you mean like a tauntaun?”

I am:

• A. Incredibly glad she’s not religious, because:
• B. She got the Star Wars reference

I’m hard-pressed to conjure up another spur of the moment thought that’s quite as offensive as the thought of slitting open the belly of the Christ and resting inside his corpse.

I’ve been pondering for awhile now why the Internet sucks so much. Sure, it has its good points (like free knowledge), but it also has the largest collection of idiots ever assembled in one place, virtual or not. All you have to do to verify this for yourself is to spend a few minutes browsing through random profiles on MySpace (don’t spend too long though; that level of stupidity is contagious). Some of that has to do with the anonymity that is frequently afforded on the Internet; after all, if you fear no repercussions, no damage to your reputation, then you won’t hold your tongue. But the problem goes deeper than that.

The problem is that the morons are incessantly vocal with their idiocy while the smart people generally know better and only pipe up when what they have to say is actually worthwhile. Let’s use this blog as a case study. The level of commenting here is overall pretty decent (though active moderation plays a bit of a role in that). But there’s one particular post that has attracted attention from the absolute worst of the web’s denizens: my post about Zwinky.

Zwinky is a crappy online “game” targeted at children, and it shows. The comments on that post are simultaneously ignorant, vulgar, poorly put together, and unnecessary. Like an intrepid scientist studying a fatal disease in a Petri dish, I have resisted destroying that which I know is evil in order to better study it, so the comments remain thoroughly and dangerously unsanitized. I dare you to read through all of those comments in their native state and not feel terrible for the prospects of humanity’s future.

These kids are just so damn dumb. They don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to punctuate, they don’t really know how to write at all. It’s as if their English teachers tried their best at the Sisyphean task, realized the futility of it, and then, in sheer desperation, began having sex with their students in order to be sent to adult prison, where at long last they are no longer tormented by idiot kids. This is what IM speak does to people! And it’s horrendous! I tried to make a “New Rule” to elevate the level of conversation:

All comments must observe proper written English punctuation, spelling, grammar, capitalization, and proper style. All offending comments will be subject to immediate disemvowelment at my sole discretion. I don’t know if it’s all the lessons on creationism or sex with teachers, but it seems like they’re not teaching kids writing anymore in schools?!

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Q: What’s a suicidal teen’s favorite vehicle?

A: An emo moped.

Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all decade.

I work for a great company. How do I know? This email just went out to everyone in the office:

Hi everyone,

Nate and Andre have requested fifteen (15) pieces of Popeyes fried chicken each for Thursday, so they can have their long-awaited showdown (what I like to refer to as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre). I wanted to give everyone a heads up so 1. If you planned on working from home, now you have a reason not to, 2. If you want to throw down with these two titans, inform me so I can also order you fifteen (15) pieces of Popeyes, and 3. If you want Popeyes, I’ll be taking orders tomorrow morning. Or, you can email me with requests before noon on Wednesday.

Let’s have a good 2008, in terms of massive quantities of unhealthy food.

Yeah, that’s right, we do eating contests. At the company meeting last week, Andre won the company-wide “Work Hard, Eat Harder” award. Now Nate is attempting to dethrone them. This is a rematch of their previous battle, in which Nate won by eating nine pieces of fried chicken in ten minutes. This time there will be no time limit though.

This has to be the best contest ever: Take a paragraph from a book and add a zombie. Think about how that might work for a few seconds, then read an example of how it works with a Jane Austen novel. Pure awesome. I cannot believe nobody’s ever done this before.

I shan’t be entering the contest, but I most definitely will be zombifying a famous work of literature and posting it here for your (hopeful) enjoyment. How could I not? This is the best idea ever.