HA.

3E approves

On the death day of Timothy Leary, one of the few UAT alums whose most common trips didn't involve Walmart or an IHOP...

The Criterion Collection

The Criterion Contraption: an effort to watch every single movie in the Criterion Collection (according to Wikipedia, there are currently 485 Criterion Collection films out on DVD).

A portal into the 3E world

Later this afternoon, if nothing disastrous happens, 3E unites. As a regular reader, you're probably drooling to get your grubby little peepers on what such a confluence of hardcore dudes looks like. Drool no more, perverts:

wow that thing is huge

That's what -- no. No.

Life sized blue whale

Video games

VIDEO games get a bad press. Many are unquestionably violent and, as has been the way with new media from novels to comic books to television, they have been accused of corrupting the moral fabric of youth. Nor are such accusations without merit. There is a body of research suggesting that violent games can lead to aggressive thoughts, if not to violence itself. But not all games are shoot-’em-ups, and what is less examined is whether those that reward more constructive behaviour also have lingering impacts. That, however, is starting to change. Two studies showing that video games have a bright side as well as a dark one have been carried out recently.

One, to be published in June by the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, was conducted by Douglas Gentile, of Iowa State University’s media research laboratory. He and his colleagues tested the effects of playing so-called “pro-social” games on children and young adults in three countries.

Good game?

why are you being mean to me?

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns

Watch all five, then try to deny that if John was shorter and fat and had a beard and was a famous person, he would be Zach Galifianakis. I am not sure which is my favorite.

Moutain Dew Throwback: REVIEWED!

I drank one last night. More like Mountain Dew Throw-Up! Am I right? It's like they mixed regular Mountain Dew with Diet Mountain Dew. This was obviously a ploy by the corn racket to convince us that we need HFCS. And it worked.

Scott Meets Family Circus

I am not sure why I am so fascinated with bad comic strips being adjusted on the internet.

Scott Meets Family Circus

science poster

from here

I allò és com es fan criatures!

Guanyadors de Lliga de Campions: Barcelona!

Fins ara pròxima estació, admiradors d'esports!*

*Learn Catalan.

with my mind she runs

faces

Face in Places

Ough

There are seven ways to pronounce the four letters "ough":

* dough
* tough
* hiccough
* bough
* ought
* cough
* through

So, there you go.

oh, be rational!

toothpastefordinner.com

thanks, Arthur

It's important to have a good sense of humor.

I'm Bill Cosby and you're Theo Huxtable....?

Me and your mom Claire just found a joint in your school book & want some answers.

What do you have to say for yourself Theo?

(studio audience goes "oOOooOOOOOOoh!")

[Yahoo! Answers]

Small fish, meet big pond: Burnley

Promotion: wrestled from the jaws of bigger, better teams. Your 2009 Promotion Playoff winners. Good luck with that.

Location: Burnley, Lancashire. As the center of the cotton cloth industry in England, it's where all that slave-picked southern cotton went.

Nickname: The Clarets.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Turf Moor.

Crest: Not as jarbled as Wigan's old crest, but it's getting close.

What they'll bring to the table (metaphorically speaking!): As far as I can tell, they play pleasant, attacking soccer. However, there's already a billion teams from the northwest in the EPL, plus they're the third team with the claret-and-blue color scheme.

What they'll bring to the table (literally!): This could be fugly. They DID knock off several big teams in cup competitions this year but let's be reasonable. Winning more than three games Not being relegated would be a sizable achievement.

...

So, a quick summary of the end-of-season movements:


Newcastle (after 16 years in the EPL)
Middlesbrough (after 11 years)
West Bromwich (after this one, underwhelming year)



Wolverhampton (5 years gone)
Birmingham City (just one year gone)
Burnley (first time up in 33 years)


3E officially endorses Birmingham City. This will end in disappointment. But moving on, it's less than three months until next season! We'll have EPL soccer again a good two weeks before any college football.

Not as popular for office pools.

2009 NCAA baseball tournament.

Good to see another sport that the SEC is actually good at. 8 teams in the field. Interesting factoid: Auburn, deservedly left out as the SEC's 9th best team, had a not-at-all-shitty RPI of 30th.

The Boston Molasses Disaster really is fascinating

I’m going to pause here, right at the beginning of my riveting article about attention, and ask you to please get all of your precious 21st-century distractions out of your system now. Check the score of the Mets game; text your sister that pun you just thought of about her roommate’s new pet lizard (“iguana hold yr hand LOL get it like Beatles”); refresh your work e-mail, your home e-mail, your school e-mail; upload pictures of yourself reading this paragraph to your “me reading magazine articles” Flickr photostream; and alert the fellow citizens of whatever Twittertopia you happen to frequent that you will be suspending your digital presence for the next twenty minutes or so (I know that seems drastic: Tell them you’re having an appendectomy or something and are about to lose consciousness). Good. Now: Count your breaths. Close your eyes. Do whatever it takes to get all of your neurons lined up in one direction. Above all, resist the urge to fixate on the picture, right over there, of that weird scrambled guy typing. Do not speculate on his ethnicity (German-Venezuelan?) or his backstory (Witness Protection Program?) or the size of his monitor. Go ahead and cover him with your hand if you need to. There. Doesn’t that feel better? Now it’s just you and me, tucked like fourteenth-century Zen masters into this sweet little nook of pure mental focus. (Seriously, stop looking at him. I’m over here.)

Over the last several years, the problem of attention has migrated right into the center of our cultural attention. We hunt it in neurology labs, lament its decline on op-ed pages, fetishize it in grassroots quality-of-life movements, diagnose its absence in more and more of our children every year, cultivate it in yoga class twice a week, harness it as the engine of self-help empires, and pump it up to superhuman levels with drugs originally intended to treat Alzheimer’s and narcolepsy. Everyone still pays some form of attention all the time, of course—it’s basically impossible for humans not to—but the currency in which we pay it, and the goods we get in exchange, have changed dramatically.

In defense of distraction

From the blurry collector's set

You know what this country is missing?

Awkward black puppets.



Think how much better off the ol' U.S. of A. was in 1996.



Given that we now have a black president, I'm surprised someone hasn't stumbled on to remedy already.

A bad season for the Northeast.

Throw yo signs up.

Five years gone.

Also too, if you'll look to the right, I'd like everyone to notice how large Charlie's ass looks.

Stairway to Gilligan's Island

As good a way as any to celebrate the weekend.

Very special Happy Birthday Lauren discussion post.

CHARLES, GET OUT OF THERE!

Good news, everyone!

We still can't have 40s though.

From all of 3E: Kudos Ms. Carpenter

"Take credit hungrily, for even if little you have done, great credit you deserve."

- Yoda

One way to make a living, I guess

On Amazon.com, somebody is selling a book called 31 Days to Fix Your Finances. But it's a free series put out at The Simple Dollar, where you can read it in its entirety online or download a free e-book. My favorite part is that some guy, Leon H. Rountree III (fake!), has a copyright inscription inside the book.

Trent Hamm, who actually wrote it, doesn't seem too upset about it, even actively encouraging this sort of thing, but I would be hoppin' mad. Also, it's ranked #856,765 in books, which means that a. this guy is making at least something off of it, and b. some idiots are actually buying it.

Randy Newman Little Boxes

See also

Don't look away! These are men, men like you!

The pinnacle of the early 80s cannibal boom. The director was required to parade the actors in an Italian court to verify that he had not made an actual snuff film.

Ball roll

I demand someone teach me how to do this.

Our main export is crippling depression

I am packing my bags.

The Cleveland Tourism Board gave me 14 million dollars about 8 months ago to make a promotional video to bring people to Cleveland. As usual, I waited till the last minute and I ended up having to shoot and edit it in about an hour yesterday afternoon. I probably should have invested more time.

So The Cleveland Board of Tourism was not happy with the first video that I turned in. In fact, they said that upon viewing it, three of the board members moved away.

twitter

Also, a great timewaster.

Movies I am actually ashamed of owning

WARNING: Utterly reprehensible! Please, do not watch.



From the DVD commentary (which features the director and an actor, recorded at different times due the the apparent disgust with the actor at having agreed to be in the filthfest and the director's unfettered arrogance):

Note: both almost unintelligible through syrupy Italian accents

Director: The girl to the left... is Zora Kerova... a Czechoslovak .. um.. ah.. woman.. from Prague.

Actor: Zora Kerova... the name seems the fakest of them all, but it's the only real one because she is.. *laughter*.. Polish or something.

On a related note, IT'S CANNIBAL WEEK AT 3E! Come back tomorrow for more horrible, horrible sleaze!

Tha Captainz Catch

NOTE: Tha Captain did not actually catch this. His was at least twice that big.

The world's best visual illusion

Here, the baseball one. I'm sure there's a way to embed that, but I'm also sure I won't figure out how.

Hand drawn maps

The Hand Drawn Map Association.

3E presents: Other, different songs with the word "Jump" in them

Anchorman was the last funny movie I liked...

...or will ever like. It's not like it was sooo great that no other movie can ever replace it, it's just that I drew a line in the sand after it. NO MORE FUNNY MOVIES. By the way, this wasn't in Anchorman and it really isn't all that funny either.

What I can't understand is ...

... why so many people have a negative view of the police.

3E Presents: The two best songs titled "Jump"

Crazies face-off: not really

Ok, since we're pretty clear that Mean Gene Ray wins every face off, this is as good a place as any to just list crazies. How about a white supremacist review of They Live, a fantastic movie and the best Rowdy Roddy Piper feature film ever made? It comes from Elena Haskins, whose email address is NotAZombie@aol.com, which is pretty awesome. I imagine that visiting that webpage has put me on some DHS watch list.

A muscular White construction worker arrives in an unidentified American city to get work because construction halted along with the failure of many banks in his home town. The White construction worker with the unfortunate character name of John Nada (nada means nothing in Spanish) is played by professional wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper, a muscular blonde man of pleasing proportions [hot! -ed.]. He is warned off from sleeping on a construction site by the White foreman, whereupon a compassionate black man tells John Nada where the local hot showers and free food homeless encampment is.

[...]

John Nada has a very human reaction to being confronted with alien invaders and goes on a shooting spree, carefully avoiding harming humans and terminating aliens wherever possible.

According to the rules of politically correct films, all White men have black buddies, so John Nada must persuade the compassionate black man to put on the mysterious sunglasses in order to understand what danger the human race is in. The black man refuses. John Nada decides to use force to MAKE the black man put on the sunglasses. The street fight that follows is at least 7 minutes in duration (though it seems longer), with blows to the groin and organs that would severely injure most mortals.

I think the craziest part of this review is the idea that this fight scene is not amazing. What a crazy mother! Looks like he chose to start eatin' that trash can.



The website (Wake Up or Die, not YouTube) also has "Reproduction in part or whole strictly prohibited without advance written permission" at the bottom, which I am violating.

Babies

WHAT IS IT like to be a baby? For centuries, this question would have seemed absurd: behind that adorable facade was a mostly empty head. A baby, after all, is missing most of the capabilities that define the human mind, such as language and the ability to reason. Rene Descartes argued that the young child was entirely bound by sensation, hopelessly trapped in the confusing rush of the here and now. A newborn, in this sense, is just a lump of need, a bundle of reflexes that can only eat and cry. To think like a baby is to not think at all.

Modern science has largely agreed, spending decades outlining all the things that babies couldn't do because their brains had yet to develop. They were unable to focus, delay gratification, or even express their desires. The Princeton philosopher Peter Singer famously suggested that "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all."

Now, however, scientists have begun to dramatically revise their concept of a baby's mind. By using new research techniques and tools, they've revealed that the baby brain is abuzz with activity, capable of learning astonishing amounts of information in a relatively short time. Unlike the adult mind, which restricts itself to a narrow slice of reality, babies can take in a much wider spectrum of sensation - they are, in an important sense, more aware of the world than we are.

Inside the Baby Mind

A little advice for those of us working in higher education

Here, the importance of lecture:

In the age of computer-based learning, lecturing gets treated like Model-T Ford. Don’t be deceived; lecturing remains a staple of the academy and it’s likely to remain so for quite some time. University class sizes have swelled in the wake of budget cuts that have delayed (or canceled) faculty searches. A recent study of eleven Ohio four-year colleges reveals that 25 percent of introductory classes have more than 120 students and only a shortage of teaching assistants has kept the percentage that low. At the University of Massachusetts, 12 percent of all classes have enrollments of over 50 and lectures of over 200 are quite common. As long as universities operate on the assembly-line model, lecturing will remain integral to the educational process.

Here, the ten commandments of lecturing. My favorite:

IX. Thou Shalt Not Lecture Outdoors.
Unless you’re a botanist or geologist there’s no pedagogical reason to teach outside. The first gorgeous day of spring semester will bring a clamor to meet underneath the spreading maple students spy from the window. Don’t do it! That hour will pass with female students tugging at short skirts to maintain modesty, men in khakis seeking not to get grass stains on their trousers, fidgeting when everyone realizes the ground isn’t as comfy as it looks, attention lapses every time someone walks by, the cupping of ears to hear comments carried off by the breeze, and untold amounts of day dreaming. You’d be better off declaring a learning moratorium than trying to teach outside.

Your 3E NBA Playoffs Care-O-Meter

Oooooh, comin' in somewhere between flossin' and trimmin' the toenails. Better luck next year, lazy black guys.

West Brom, we hardly knew ye.

Shatner and Star Wars

The look on everyone's faces at the beginning is the best part.

2/3 of this band was on 30 rock last week.

Since Charlie can post a video where the visual is a skateboard, I can post a song without lyrics. FACT. Also too, congratulations Manchester United. 18 titles, that's very nice.

He does at one point rap about golf

Jal Sparks: Day 1

"Godspeed, you spicy bastard."
- Tlepolemus

"There is no omen more promising than a typographical error."
- Pythophanes

Chipmunk vs. Star Wars

A photoset.

Botched police raids

A map. It lets you filter it geographically, by year, or by result.

Abstinence Race Update: MILESTONE.

"If she isn't spectacular, she isn't worth it."
- Fred Ashe

3E Presents: Catchphrase Friday

You want to be the coolest cat on the block? You've got to have a catchphrase! With the weekend coming up, 3E is here to help. Every time your gin is running a little low, or your debit card gets rejected due to insufficient funds, just let 'em know:

"My [item] is empty, but my balls are titanic."

Be the coolest guy around this Friday, 'cause it's Catchphrase Friday.

Solitude and prison

Anderson was the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when, on March 16, 1985, three bearded men forced him from his car in Beirut at gunpoint. He was pushed into a Mercedes sedan, covered head to toe with a heavy blanket, and made to crouch head down in the footwell behind the front seat. His captors drove him to a garage, pulled him out of the car, put a hood over his head, and bound his wrists and ankles with tape. For half an hour, they grilled him for the names of other Americans in Beirut, but he gave no names and they did not beat him or press him further. They threw him in the trunk of the car, drove him to another building, and put him in what would be the first of a succession of cells across Lebanon. He was soon placed in what seemed to be a dusty closet, large enough for only a mattress. Blindfolded, he could make out the distant sounds of other hostages. (One was William Buckley, the C.I.A. station chief who was kidnapped and tortured repeatedly until he weakened and died.) Peering around his blindfold, Anderson could see a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. He received three unpalatable meals a day—usually a sandwich of bread and cheese, or cold rice with canned vegetables, or soup. He had a bottle to urinate in and was allotted one five- to ten-minute trip each day to a rotting bathroom to empty his bowels and wash with water at a dirty sink. Otherwise, the only reprieve from isolation came when the guards made short visits to bark at him for breaking a rule or to threaten him, sometimes with a gun at his temple.

He missed people terribly, especially his fiancée and his family. He was despondent and depressed. Then, with time, he began to feel something more. He felt himself disintegrating. It was as if his brain were grinding down. A month into his confinement, he recalled in his memoir, “The mind is a blank. Jesus, I always thought I was smart. Where are all the things I learned, the books I read, the poems I memorized? There’s nothing there, just a formless, gray-black misery. My mind’s gone dead. God, help me.”

He was stiff from lying in bed day and night, yet tired all the time. He dozed off and on constantly, sleeping twelve hours a day. He craved activity of almost any kind. He would watch the daylight wax and wane on the ceiling, or roaches creep slowly up the wall. He had a Bible and tried to read, but he often found that he lacked the concentration to do so. He observed himself becoming neurotically possessive about his little space, at times putting his life in jeopardy by flying into a rage if a guard happened to step on his bed. He brooded incessantly, thinking back on all the mistakes he’d made in life, his regrets, his offenses against God and family.

His captors moved him every few months. For unpredictable stretches of time, he was granted the salvation of a companion—sometimes he shared a cell with as many as four other hostages—and he noticed that his thinking recovered rapidly when this occurred. He could read and concentrate longer, avoid hallucinations, and better control his emotions. “I would rather have had the worst companion than no companion at all,” he noted.

In September, 1986, after several months of sharing a cell with another hostage, Anderson was, for no apparent reason, returned to solitary confinement, this time in a six-by-six-foot cell, with no windows, and light from only a flickering fluorescent lamp in an outside corridor. The guards refused to say how long he would be there. After a few weeks, he felt his mind slipping away again.

“I find myself trembling sometimes for no reason,” he wrote. “I’m afraid I’m beginning to lose my mind, to lose control completely.”

Hellhole

I think The Onion made a grapist joke once....

Now you'll have the Duck Tales theme song stuck in your head for hours

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The boss is here

3E approves

...and is cooking RIGHT NOW.

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson

Here is part of a freedman's 1865 letter to his former master, who wants him to leave Ohio so to come back to work in Tennessee.

I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

My favorite part:

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

The rest, wherein he requests eleven thousand dollars in back pay, here.

Are you suggesting that the technique of the full-court press is not magical???

Here. Original.

Is it weird how successful are all these peddlers (some bright, like Gladwell, some stupid, like Thomas Friedman) of the obvious and the obviously wrong?

need to own it

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

anything? yes.

How to nail an interview

go blazerz

cfb APR scores.

.
.
.
120. UAB 875

Their is 120 teams in majjur college fotball.

Spare me your space age technobabble, Attilla the Hun

Vacation: over. 3E: back.

Happy Mother's Day!

Schoolsoutforsummer.

It had to be. It just had to.

5.27.09

surprised Charlie hasn't linked to this already

Don't front. You've got nothing better to do.

My dad died of alcoholism... AHHHHHH!

Paranoia the destroyer

Baseball

It just kinda de-emphasizes the whole impact of the BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA, you know? Plus, where's my fucking HEYCOLDBEER and HEYHOTDOG guy? I totally saw the HEYPRETZEL guy, but missed the other guys because of BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA and I didn't hear BAMARAMARAMAheyhotdogRAM-ARAMARAMA, see? Look, if you go to a baseball game and it's 900-million-degrees of brain-baking sunshine like it was the other day, you're not really gonna be up for a whole lot of yelling and screaming while you are Root-Root-Rooting for the Home Team like it says in the Bible we are supposed to do. You sit on ass and watch the fucking Game, man. You pay attention. You observe the pitching. You notice the shifts in the infield and outfield when different batters are up. You knock back a coupla hot dogs or maybe a "Half-Smoke." You drain a cold beer or two. Life is Good for a few short hours. And guess what? That is totally Appropriate for the Baseball.

It is a pastoral sport, man. The famous Dead Comedian George Carlin did a whole "Baseball vs. Football" routine, wherein he made clear the Militaristic Theme of Football vs. the Lovely Day in The Park Theme of Baseball, so you can go and Google that shit while I ask the Rhetorical Question: Why the fuck are they always trying to make the Baseball like Football? Can't we have stuff be different? I have attended and enjoyed Football games and it's usually way fucking colder than I would like it to be and everybody is all amped in the fullest non-military expression of Militaristic Society, and that's the Football, man, bring a Pocket Flask, all kindsa Greco-Roman Weirdness, people hollering with painted faces, screaming, "Tailgating" with Feverish Consumption of Mass Quantities of alco-beverage, Roasting of various Meats, lotsa BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA, and vomiting in the parking lot. Good Times, man, seriously. It all makes sense in the Gladiatorial Empire of a sport that celebrates the Big Game with Roman Numerals, totally fucking awesome, man, just don't get your Football in my Baseball, OK?

God Bless

Useful

Do I Have Pig Flu (.com)?

wait until the twinkie starts spewing.

3E approves

spurious CHARGES!

take that you stupid, filthmongering pigeon.

UPDATE:

Birmingham City done got promoted. Here's a live shot of the celebration:

Small fish, meet big pond: Three Contenders

For one of these three teams, this weekend will see PROMOTION CLINCHED. Until then, the only thing clinched will be butt cheeks! In anticipation!

Exhibit A: Birmingham City

Location: The Pittsburgh of England.

Nickname: The Blues, Bluenoses.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: St. Andrew's Stadium.

Crest: Geographically dubious. Why is there a gigantic lake in Poland?

What they'll bring to the table (metaphorically speaking!): They're from Birmingham and they're righteous enough to proudly bear it in their name unlike their snooty neighbors at Aston Villa.

What they'll bring to the table (literally): In 2008, they were doomed from the beginning unlucky to be relegated. In 2010 they'll be extremely fucking lucky eager to stay up.

Exhibit B: Sheffield United

Location: Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

Nickname: The Blades. (the sword kind, not the daywalker kind)

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Bramall Lane.

Crest: I don't remember a Prince of Persia merit badge, but okay.

What they'll bring to the table (metaphorically speaking!): Not a whole lot. Just a date on the schedule.

What they'll bring to the table (literally): A city like Sheffield not having a Premier League team... why, it's like Youngstown not having an NFL team! They couldn't stay afloat last time, but ask any Sheffield United fan: "WATHC OUT MANUNITD WERE COMIN 4 U." Blades Up!

Exhibit C: Reading (pronounced "Redding")

Location: Reading, Berkshire.

Nickname: The Royals.

Stately, Non-Commercial Stadium Name: Madejski Stadium.

Crest: I love things that are quartered.

What they'll bring to the table (metaphorically speaking!): A couple of American players, I think.

What they'll bring to the table (literally): Call me Krazy, but despite being the longest shot at promotion, I think they have the best shot at staying up if they get there. They were a top 10 club just a few years ago.

I am not a fan of horse racing

The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved

I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit. There was a slim chance, I thought, that I might be able to catch the ugly Britisher before he checked in.

But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and RAF sunglasses. There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman’s description and he seemed puzzled. “Don’t let it bother you,” I said. “Just keep in mind for the next few days that we’re in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You’re lucky that mental defective at the motel didn’t jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you.” I laughed, but he looked worried.

“Just pretend you’re visiting a huge outdoor loony bin,” I said. “If the inmates get out of control we’ll soak them down with Mace.” I showed him the can of “Chemical Billy,” resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management’s Scotch and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been very friendly to him, he said. “I just told her my name and she gave me the whole works.”

Happy May Day

May Day, the most awkward of holidays.

May Day is associated with the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half of a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations, regardless of the locally prevalent political or religious establishment.

As Europe became Christianized the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, and All Saint's Day. In the twentieth century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.

[...]

May Day can refer to various labour celebrations conducted on May 1 that commemorate the fight for the eight hour day. May Day in this regard is called International Workers' Day, or Labour Day. The idea for a "workers holiday" began in Australia in 1856. With the idea having spread around the world, the choice of May 1st became a commemoration by the Second International for the people involved in the 1886 Haymarket affair.

Tha Captainz first attempt at BLOG: August 13th, 2005

Got dumped. Took a while to get back on the blog wagon. This is why Tha Captain now prefers dinner-for-one. The God-tastic quote at the beginning is from one Eric Fillebaum, the blond bombshell that makes other blond bombshells feel inadequate by comparison.

13th-Aug-2005 12:59 am - call me clorox because i'm harmful if ingested

"I have not posted in months, but what a better time to do it than a big thanks to everyone.

I just wanted to thank everyone for all the prayers that were sent up to the big guy while I was in the Hospital. I have never in all my days felt the power of prayer like I did then."


right on, big guy! (but not the big guy upstairs!)

well i have not posted in months, but what a better time to do it than a big thanks to everyone. ha, not really. you're all tools.

on a more serious note, i apologize to everyone for the long layoff. i was just getting my shit together for an awesome post (don't call it a comeback!) but i lost all my notes. man, i would lose the shirt off my back if it weren't attached to my shoulders! seriously, though, i have been thinking long and hard about where i need to go with this livejournal o' mine. any suggestions can be mailed to jesus@bible.org. hehe, who knows if he even checks it.

i am currently not wearing a shirt! too bad you peepholes don't know who i am or even my gender! perhaps you should be aroused. perhaps disgusted. perhaps a bit confused since earlier i botched a metaphor and said my shirt was attached to my shoulders! whoooa nelly, this web is tangly! well, i am out like a prom dress!

• Mood:witheredblisteredburntpeeled
• Music:johnny cash!

BOING.

Apparently awkwardboners.com is no more. sorry.

Shelves for life

Book shelves that turn into a coffin. Also "Shelves For Life is a self-initiated project to further explore ideas of built-in sentimentality within our possessions. The aim is to make stronger emotional relationships with our belongings and encourage life-long use." Eh, whatever. I think I have enough books to make seven or eight coffins.



I like this, but it's not how I want to be interred. Put me out to sea like this, although I'd prefer to be a vaguely humanoid concrete structure.

your Congress, ladies and gentlemen

Hoot Smalley sounds like a cartoon character, a tiny owl with a big heart.