from the open-mouth,-insert-foot dept.
According to someone who goes by the name ironburl, former DC mayor Marion Barry has delivered some really choice sound bites over the years. Check them out at the Hall of Marion Barry Quotes. Personal fave: “I am clearly more popular than Reagan. I am in my third term. Where’s Reagan? Gone after two! Defeated by George Bush and Michael Dukakis no less.” We need more politicians like that.
from the yes-sir,-sir dept.
He doesn’t mention it until the bottom of the page, but supposedly nearly all of the 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do in the U.S. Army are things he was actually commanded by higher-ups not to do. Which makes it fairly, you know, funny. At least to me.
(Update: URL pointed to new home for Skippy’s List, thanks to Hiro.)
(Later update: Dammit; these Skippy URLs keep going AWOL. It’s almost like there’s a conspiracy against the guy, or somethnig. So, anyway, in the immortal words of, um, well, just about anybody who’s ever gotten fed up with something, “Fuck it.” I’m just pasting the damn things below. Follow the link, or scroll down, for your Skippyisms.)
from the power-too-cheap-to-meter! dept.
With a full line of Telco Powered Products, the folks at Mike Sandman Enterprises seem to be on to something. As they point out, “The Phone Company is a FREE Source of Electric Power!” Allegedly developed by scientists from Russia’s “Chernobyl Electrical Institute”, the list of products includes my personal favorite, the Telco Powered Vibrator (because “there’s a lot of stress when the power goes out!”).
from the say-it-ain’t-so,-Joe dept.
So, everyone’s favorite Jamaican psychic, Miss Cleo, turns out to be just another personal-makeover artist from L.A. Like Vinnie says in My Blue Heaven, “Some people steal your money, but these people steal your heart.”
from the is-that-a-ring-in-your-pocket,-or-are-you-happy-to-see-me? dept.
I’ve been an obsessive Lord of the Rings fan for the last 25 years or so, and can’t gush enough about what Peter Jackson & Co. have done with the movie, but I still got a big kick out of Rod Hilton’s Lord of the Rings: The Abridged Script.
from the that’ll-show-’em dept.
In case you missed it last week, Jeremy Lott, writing for The American Prospect Online, had a few choice words for Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review Online, for suggesting that nuking Mecca in retaliation for a hypothetical future terrorist attack might not be such a bad idea. The National Review Online, you’ll recall, is the same bastion of insightful analysis that previously gave us Ann Coulter’s “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” screed. Sheesh.
from the gimme-that,-it’s-mine! dept.
Back in the good old days, circa early ’97, on a Sunday morning not unlike this one, I got this weird phone call from some clown who claimed that by registering the lies.com domain name I had violated his trademark. Hilarity ensued. Read on for the full story, reprinted from the old, pre-Slash version of the site.
lies.com vs. CTT domain name dispute
A company called Creative Think Tank, Inc., is trying to use unfounded claims of trademark infringement to obtain this site’s domain name.
The facts of the dispute are pretty much laid out in the following correspondence:
If you want to send comments to George Rafter, the president of CTT (actually, I suspect he’s the only employee), or to his lawyer, Richard M. Klein, here’s the contact information. No flames, please.
George Rafter
Creative Think Tank, Inc.
12540 Edgewater Dr.
Cleveland, OH 44107
(216) 521-3004
Richard M. Klein
Fay, Sharpe, Beall, Fagan, Minnich & McKee
1100 Superior Ave., Suite 700
Cleveland, OH 44114-2518
(216) 861-5582
E-mail: 6338200@mcimail.com
Postscript: So, I bet you’re wondering what eventually happened with all this. The answer is, I got to keep the domain. George Rafter sent me a scary-sounding email flame shortly after the correspondence above ended, but shortly after that he registered another domain to host his magazine, and shortly after that he decided that the Net wasn’t the get-rich-quick scheme he was looking for, so he let the domain lapse and moved on to bigger and better (or at least other) things. Meanwhile, I’m still here. Woo hoo!
John Callender
jbc@west.net
from the have-you-heard? dept.
I’m usually among the last to catch cultural phenomena, so the whole Wesley Willis thing may already have come and gone in your neck of the woods. If it hasn’t, though, and if the thought of a paranoid schizophrenic who writes in-your-face lyrics sounds interesting, you really should check your preferred song-swapping service for Cut the Mullet, which gets my vote for the best Wesley song ever.
from the when-good-customers-go-bad dept.
It’s kind of an oldie, but in case you haven’t seen it before, here’s my friend Aaron’s story of his brush with Best Buy’s receipt-check policy. Grrr.
from the really,-this-doesn’t-happen-all-that-often dept.
So, after getting my shiny new Slash site all up and running, random sunspot activity (or something) promptly fried my server’s power supply and motherboard. Thanks to the Herculean efforts of the good people at Cyberverse, however, I’m now back in business. Yay.
from the don’t-you-wish dept.
It really chaps my hide when the marketing types take a perfectly good Net term and misuse it. Like the folks at Webclipping.com, who use their site’s FAQ page to answer burning questions like, “I already check Web search engines frequently, why do I need WebClipping.com?” Why indeed.
from the just-when-you-thought-it-was-safe dept.
As you may have noticed, lies.com is now running Slash, the software underlying Slashdot. I haven’t quite figured out where all the bodies are buried yet, so expect some rough edges for a few days. In the meantime, feel free to sign yourself up for one of those soon-to-be-collector’s-items low-number user accounts.
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