shopping, zombies

One Year Blogoversary – It All Comes Down To Zombies And Shopping

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It was a year ago today when I began uploading my thoughts to this blog. That first post was about a zombie apocalypse.

I am looking for help from the readers of this blog now.

We are out shopping at a supermarket when the zombie apocalypse becomes evident to us. The front of the supermarket is made up of floor to ceiling glass windows. There are two sets of automatic glass doors on either end of the front of the supermarket. There is also a service entrance in the back, which is a steel door and locked from the inside.

There are hundreds of zombies outside in the front parking lot. There are about fifteen zombie shoppers in the supermarket. There are five zombies out back. All of the store’s employees are zombies.

The zombies are the slow-moving, George Romero kind. You can kill them by removing the head or destroying the brain.

Assume that all non-zombies in the supermarket arrived by motor vehicle.

Quick, we need to decide on a plan! What are we going to do? What do we need to take care of in order to survive?

I need to know what our priorities are, and we need to decide on tasks and have volunteers for each task.

Together we can get through this! I know it!

SO LET’S GO!

google, swearing, word fun

Google Will Not Say That

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I was monkeying around with Google a bit.

One nice feature of Google is that if you accidentally mistype something you’re searching for, Google tries to guess the text that you intended to type.

I’ll actually use this as a feature in some cases. Say there’s a scientific phenomena or some other such thing for which I can’t quite remember the proper name.

I’ll pop a close approximation of it into Google, and I’ll usually be able to get the correct spelling of what I’m looking for after hitting “Search”, often displayed to me as:

Did you mean: [correctly spelled term]

So, I thought it would be funny if I got Google to say something naughty, like Did you mean: asshole

But dammit, it appears that Google doesn’t like to swear.

I did a little scientific experiment, using a more common expletive, “asshole” and compared it with a lesser-used though no less colorful word, “asswipe”.

First, let’s type in the words with their correct spelling.

Search for asshole:

Ooh! Over 24 million hits. That’s a pretty popular swear word.

Now let’s search for asswipe:

That’s not a shabby search result total, but at under 400,000 that’s significantly smaller than the results for asshole.

Now, let’s intentionally misspell both words, in the exact same manner.

Let’s search for asssdwipee

Hmm, no results, but Google thinks I might be looking for “asswipe”.

Now let’s search for asssdholee

No results, and Google has no suggestions for me! It doesn’t matter that “asshole” brings back 60 times the results that “asswipe” does, and that I am misspelling the two words in the same exact manner. Sorry, Google cannot help you!

__________________________________________

I am of course not constructing a scientific theory backed up by hills of proofs and anecdotal evidence.

However, I challenge you to type in some text in Google where it will suggest the word “asshole” as what you were really searching for. Come to think of it, why not also try to get Google to suggest any of the seven dirty words?

UPDATE:

My brother took my challenge, and I must say I am impressed.

boingboing

So Ends The BoingBoing Pandering

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Here we are, on the eve of my one year blogoversary, nearing the arbitrary deadline I have set for myself to be honored on the pages of BoingBoing, like such blogging luminaries as Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein and Becca.

I have shown the world Super Mario Homemade Macaroni and Cheese.

I have given it a Steampunk bar of soap.

I have even translated a short story into the vernacular of a zoned-out seventh grader, a voice all too absent from our intellectual discourse in this baby-boomer dominated world.

Will my sort of not half-assed efforts pay off? I don’t know.

I do know that if you want to see I, Splotchy BoingBoinged, you have the means within your power.

If you have seen something cool on my site, whether it was yesterday or a year ago, you can suggest it to the tastemakers of BoingBoing here. You’ll be glad you did. Actually, I’ll be glad you did, and isn’t that really the same thing?

If I do not make it into BoingBoing before the arrival of my blogoversary, don’t worry. I won’t wilt like a fragile flower. Sure, there will be weeping, but it will be the strong, silent kind.

And I do have one last trick up my sleeve.

boingboing

Scroogled, Translated Into The Language Of A Procrastinating Seventh Grader

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BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow is also a fiction writer. He wrote a cautionary tale of Google, security and privacy titled Scroogled for Radar Online (if you don’t want to be bothered to click through several pages for the complete story you can get it in one long page here).

Periodically I will see links to different language translations of this story made by diligent multilingual BoingBoing devotees.

However, I have yet to see a translation of this story done by a procrastinating seventh grader who sort of just skimmed it at the last minute. Until now, that is.


Scroogled!

Greg got off a plane. He was a brown unshaven nut and he was looking good. But then later he wasn’t feeling so good when he was waiting a long time and he was sweaty.

So Google is everywhere. Their doing all security now.

Greg used to work at Google and liked it, but then he didn’t want to work there anymore.

“Hi.”

The officer took his card and was staring at a screen a lot. He had some food on his lip.

The officer asked him about a long time ago, and Greg said, why do you want to know about that.

Greg said what are you talking about model rockets.

Yeah, the officer said.

Greg was kind of sick to his stomach. No, it’s okay.

Okay.

But then the officer was still bugging him.

There was a girl Maya who worked in a chocolate lab. She had teeth and a drooling problem. They had a couple dogs. She was explaining all about the security that Google was doing, and it was really scary.

Greg was crazy surprised. What’s up with Google he asked Maya? They’re supposed to be good and everything? Why are they evil cherries?

Maya said they were evil cherries and Greg should just deal.

They were quiet for a minute.

So Google is crazy mad with the spying Greg asked Maya.

You betcha Greg.

Oh, Maya isn’t with Greg, she is a lesbian, but it’s okay.

So then Greg started working for Google. HE DIDN’T HAVE A CHOICE!!!!!!

Maya killed herself because Google was crazy mad with the spying. But Greg got a couple of days off, which he probably needed.

THE END?!!

politics

What a POTUS

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I only have recently heard the term “POTUS” (an acronym for President of the United States), but now every time I hear it spoken or read it in print a certain image is conjured up for me — one of a disinterested, slack-jawed moron that got to his unearned position through powerful connections and money rather than through hard work, dedication, and intellectual honesty.

So, here’s to you, POTUS!

movies, two buck schmuck

National Treasure 2 Bucks

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There are only a few more days left before the LaGrange Theatre mercilessly jacks its ticket prices from two dollars to three fifty. So, I thought I might as well try to squeeze one more cheap movie out of them before the next time I want to patronize their establishment, when I will have to choose to either feed my family or celebrate le cinema.

What were my choices tonight for 9-ish features at the LaGrange?

No Country For Old Men – I actually saw this in a first-run theater, and didn’t feel like watching it again.

I Am Legend – I saw this one at a first-run theater too! What the hell, am I a cinematic butterfly or what?

National Treasure: Book of Secrets – Alright, I’m game!

Wow, is Nicolas Cage looking sexy or what?!! No? Okay, sorry.

So, I must confess I was actually looking forward to seeing this movie a bit. Despite my self-loathing, schmuckish self, I actually kind of enjoyed the first National Treasure movie. I mean, it was kinda silly stupid, and I wanted that Riley Poole dweebo sidekick to get hit by a meteor, but I had fun watching it.

In addition to this, a major role is played by Jon Voight, who was something like a patron saint at the Davis Theater, the cheap moviehouse in my old Chicago stomping grounds. Don’t believe me? Hey, the truth is out there — I even made a bar graph about the man.

There was actually a brand new Goofy cartoon that preceded the movie. Guess who hates Goofy? Yes, you’re right! It’s me! Now please don’t misunderstand me — I greatly admire a movie studio willing to devote time and resources to bring the public an original work of animation. It’s definitely an artform to be cherished. But… I hate Goofy! Eff you, Goofy!

We then slide into the movie, which starts in the past, in the days following the end of the Civil War. We see an ancestor of our protagonist Ben Gates translating a page from John Wilkes Booth’s diary, and blah blah blah, Lincoln is shot, Gates’ ancestor realizes the person he is translating for is a member of some nefarious treasure-hunting organization (it was called Kentucky Fried Chicken, or something remarkably similar to KFC) and tries to destroy part of the diary, only to be shot by the KFC man.

Back in the present day, Ed Harris shows up with a page of the diary to interrupt Ben Gates’ (Nicolas Cage) stupid lecture about Lincoln, brandishing a missing page from Booth’s diary. Because the name of Gates’ ancestor is written on the diary with other Lincoln assassination co-conspirators, people immediately assume that Gates was the mastermind behind the assassination. This is supposed to be the motivating factor … y’know what? I’m done recounting the plot. It’s stupid. It’s a stupid, stupid plot. Do you want to know how stupid the plot is? The screenwriters that are attributed to this movie are listed in the credits as “The Wibberleys”.

So, in the end after a lot of hokum and nonsense, they end up finding a golden city under Mount Rushmore. Somehow this proves that Gates’ ancestor didn’t help kill Lincoln. I’m sure it’s all very logical when you diagram it all out.

Here’s some random observations.

Ed Harris is the bad guy in this movie, but he seems to wildly vacillate from being a noble man and a dickhead. I realize there are noble dickheads out there, but his nice and dickish parts didn’t seem to fit together well — it was more like the director said, “Ed, in this scene you are Jackson Pollock on a bender!” Or, “Ed, you’re in mission control talking to the guys up in the Apollo 13, and you have a styling flat-top haircut!”.

Ed Harris has some henchmen that follow him around for part of the movie. One guy’s sole purpose seems to be to pull people from their car so he can get in, drive and crash into things.

In this movie, we get to meet Ben Gates’ mom (and the elder Gates’ ex-wife). So, Gates’ dad is played by Jon Voight. Who are they going to get to play the mom? Why it’s none other than Helen Mirren, celebrated British actor and star of Prime Suspect, a detective series I have been frantically Netflixing! I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad for her role in this movie, so I chose to feel nothing. I FELT NOTHING.

Harvey Keitel, who had a relatively small part as an FBI-agent-who-is-also-a-Freemason in the first film, also makes a small appearance in the sequel. In the original movie he flashes a little subtle Freemason jewelry, but as he is introduced in this movie, I believe the man is wearing Freemason suspenders. I’m not kidding.

So the movie ends and I decide to sneak over to catch the last few minutes of No Country For Old Men. When I had seen it the first time, the ending kinda confused me. It seemed a bit abrupt and stupid. I did confirm, yes, the ending is a bit abrupt and stupid.

The next review I do from the LaGrange will cost me $3.50! Please donate any spare quarters to the Two Buck Schmuck fund, to allow us to continue the richly entertaining commentary you have come to expect from this hallowed blog.

Excelsior!

jung vf fcybgpul?