The Null Device
2000/12/4
Life, liberty and the pursuit of bootywhang: Microsoft's PR people have posted an ad to a PC magazine, saying that PC users were better lovers than Mac users -- and an identical one to a Mac magazine saying the opposite. Hmmm; reminds me of an amusing article I saw about how Macintoshes make better courtship devices than PCs.
The strange little gulping noise from her throat, would ordinarily be message enough but you're revved up, and you start to tell her about the clock chipping you did last weekend and how you had to hack the DLL in order to get the IDE address to register. She starts to backpedal as you describe the ordeal of finding the correct dip switch setting for your new modem. With wild hand gestures you launch into the details for finding the secret passage from level 7 to level 8 of the game you've been playing over the net, but the object of your desire has fallen to the floor clutching her throat.
Interesting: This somewhat cryptic fragment suggests that there will be a film about the rise and fall of Factory Records. Should be something to look out for.
Like songbirds, whales have memes. When a group of Australian whales met a group of Indian Ocean whales, the former adopted the latter's (apparently catchier, or otherwise memetically fitter) song, discarding their own. (via FollowMeHere)
Conservative-conformist US chain store Wal-Mart is at it again; firstly they made it impossible for people outside big cities to buy rebellious music (which, granted, probably does cut down the frequency of high-school massacres by denying proto-goth kids access to Marilyn Manson CDs), and now they have made a "business decision" to ban emergency contraceptives -- whilst at the same time stocking Viagra. If you're in the US, you can send them a fax to protest.
Paul Maliszewski was employed as a hack writer at a business newspaper run by narrow-minded philistines, and so he did what anybody would have done in his place: he wrote Swiftian satires, under a variety of pseudonyms, and had them published. His works included a management guide derived from a CIA torture manual, and various letters taking the unwritten assumptions of the magazine and its ideal readership and maginifying them to psychoceramic proportions. (via RobotWisdom)
Canadian indiekid/blogger Kathleen Gallagher has a list of the 10 worst pop songs of all time. I'd agree with most of these. I'd add all commercial-dance, anything that Babyface or Max Martin has had a hand in, and any watered-down imitation of black musical genres performed by a pretty white girl (or a group of pretty white boys, for that matter), but that's because I live with gustatorily-challenged people who listen to that kind of dross, and are assertive about it being every bit as valid as actual music that someone was inspired to create.
A twice-divorced Melbourne man, fed up with women, has married his widescreen TV. Mitch Hallen is quoted as saying, "my telly has given me endless hours of pleasure, without fussing, fighting or backchat." Wonder what he'll do when digital TV comes in and his "wife" is obsolete.
Pataphysics in the News: In Austria, a group known as the Society of Surplus Thought is having a chindogu-esque exhibit of failed inventions, such as the roll-up zebra crossing, the heated garden gnome that melts snow and the transparent suitcase designed for easy customs inspection. And it looks like turning into a permanent fixture; the Austrian government has agreed to subsidise a Nonsense Museum to house the exhibits.
Missing the point: You know those web sites which show ads and, if you click on them, donate the revenue to charities? Well, some latter-day Einstein has come up with a a program which automatically "clicks" on the ads, without human intervention. Mr. Sachs says that with his invention, you can cause thousands of dollars to be donated each year. Well, at least until the advertisers cotton on to the scam and the whole click-for-charity concept goes belly-up.