furtive explorations

I promise to rarely if ever use GET style requests on html-looking files. Even if I am forced to use crappy Cold Fusion to design a site.

See, at the movie tonite a buncha friends showed up from my previous pit of employment. We traded puns like "condifundimentalist: someone who only uses ketchup or mayo" and "condimentium: an apartment complex built entirely from mustard containers or the new food processor from Intel." Of course the movie was great (lines like "rub some funk on it!" kill me, thanks) but niggling at the back of my head the whole time was the previously mentioned wooley-freak-camel herder incident.

Before the movie started we congregated in the theater lobby like any other rabid pack of geeks, talking too loud and generally freaking out the pink-boys. While there I ran over to a friend I hadn't seen in a long time and gave her cudos on her professional art work for an Earth Dawn book. She mentioned having an online comic. (insert ominous music here.) I say "cool, you know I read shit-loads of those!" and she primly retorts (while the ominous music swells and all my friends start shifting into "you idiot mode") "yeah, I know, you have me on your page." (music switches to cymbals and crashing chords and cannon-fire)

Ouch. I didn't even know that some of the best art I've seen in ages was done by someone I've fucking bought art from before. What a maroon I am. So anyway, stop by her site and gape at art most of wish we could produce once or twice in our lives. Now, keep in mind she doodles stuff on napkins that is better than my best days. =P

Anyway I told her I would publicly castigate myself on the site in her honor. Of course, now that I've noticed that I'm not anywhere on her links list, I dunno why I'm getting all bent outta shape for her. Ungrateful, talented wench. =) =)

• err
• munch
• they built that city on rock and roll
• Shh, it's a secret
• BiKEENi-2001
• Zoologic? Ooh, comic!
• Mighty funny, you mean.
• New comic

If you run a Win2K webserver, be on the lookout for some worm/trojan/zombie thing infecting your system. Now is the time to hit Microsoft's IIS site and get up to the latest patches. People are using some nasty exploit to take over webservers and set them to DDOSing other sites. Very Nasty!

Luckily this box emerald.hostile.org is immune to most worms and root kits. Three vital things protect my webserver. One: it runs a really old and unpopular-with-hackers version of Linux, Two: I never installed a compiler or turned on most services, Three: It is a heaving piece-of-shit Pentium 133 with 32MB of memory running on a 256Kb DSL connection. Honestly, if you do take root on my crappy box make yourself at home. Add an account for yourself, see if you can get FTP to run in a fucking chroot for me, close the hole you exploited, and send me the new su password you choose. Thanks! =) Oh yeah, if you can find one that works and doesn't need to be compiled feel free to upgrade Apache as well so we can support all the neato toys in the newer versions. I'd like for users to have websites at http://[userlogin].hostile.org/ as well as http://www.hostile.org/~[userlogin]/ but 1.2.x Apache doesn't make that easy.

If you do wind up dealing with recalitrant Win2K boxes, try following these simple instructions to add tab completion to the command prompt! Very nice. It follows the newer tab-to-cycle-matches style popular with the non-bash using crowd.

First off, let me say that noticing Kraft® on a Velveeta® package is like suddenly noticing that there are rosary beads and the word Vatican all over Temple Square. How am I supposed to pit Mac'n'cheese vs. Shells'n'cheese when they are in the same corner?

OK, things that are "®" Registered or "™" Trademarked or "©" Copyrighted by their crack team of Kraft-y Lawyers. Notice that "Shells and Cheese" isn't down there. Someone should get fired for that fuck-up.

• Kraft® Kraft is just a brand now, not a company
• Velveeta®
• "IT'S THE CREAMIEST"®
• [Icon of a hand spinning a plate]™
• Dinner on Hand™
• It'll get eaten™
• real help in real time™
• [The whole box]© KF HOLDINGS (which is now part of Philip Morris)

These are things that are inexplicably printed on the box here and there. Some of them are even entertainingly strung about like ribbons or printed sideways.

• "And now for the weather. VELVEETA continues... currently it is raining Shells & Cheese" Har.
• "He's truly blessed" That one really FUCKING creeps me out.
• "One small step for man. One giant leap for VELVEETA-kind!" One more defining World Event defiled by corporate scum
• "Hey, betcha can't squeeze all the cheese out of the pouch in under 1.8 seconds!" Is there some sort of world record at stake here? Who times cheese squeezing to the tenth of a second? Plus I doubt you could get all the cheese out of the damned pouch in under 2 seconds even given a rolling-pin, vise-grips and a running start. I almost pushed all the cheese back in for a second try.
• Following three useful cooking steps was this "wacky" step: LOAD fork or spoon with creamy VELVEETA Shells & Cheese. Open mouth; insert utensil. Repeat as needed." Once the entire drawer full of silverware is in your mouth, please attempt to swallow. We hope to serve your illegitimate children after you are gone.
• Hundreds of satisfied Smiles in every box. Also, a few frowns and as much as .01% rat feces by weight.
• Real VELVEETA cheese sauce. That's like saying "Real Naugahyde"

Clearly, that isn't 10 minutes worth of reading so I had plenty of time to build up steam. Also, while in the kitchen I noticed that we have really cute recipes on our paper towels. This is of course less than 8ft (2m) away from the Dobb's head bumper sticker that says "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." Recipes:

Friendship Sundae cutee spellinge
8 oz peanut butter
1 cup old fashioned syrup
2 cups chocolate syrup
1 fucking gal French vanilla ice cream
Peanuts or pecans
Whipped Cream
I assume the two of you eat until bloated like a tick, then purge and try to finish?

Recipe for Friendship Warning! This may cause your head to explode.
2 phone calls a week
2 cups of kindness
1 letter a month
4 Saturdays of Shopping
  Mix ingredients carefully, take turns stirring I've seen this pr0n film, I'm sure of it
  Heap with hugs and lace with laughter
  Sweeten to taste and sprinkle with smiles That film I'd rather not see
  Bake till memories turn golden

One: "Last Adams book planned." Yay! "According to the Independent on Sunday, the collection will contain The Salmon of Doubt - an unfinished new novel - and the screenplay to the proposed film of The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy." Double Yay!

Two: "He added that there was no question of any other writer completing the book." And so it will not suck! Triple Yay!

Billy-Bob Teeth

Both Bite Belly

Bite Ethyl Blob

Novelty Teeth

Nylon Civet

Clot In Envy

Redneck Teeth

Tend The Creek

Deer Tent Heck

Fox News Channel

Hen Sex Clown Fan

Lens On Wench Fax

Lady Marmalade (See story below)

A Mall Daydream

Oh and here is more of the in depth reporting you love Fox for: Christina's Grandma Says "Slut".

The company produces more than 1,000 gag items and grosses more than $58 million a year, according to testimony during the trial by company president Todd Green. The first time I read this paragraph I didn't see the '$' there and thought to myself, "Damn, they are effective!"

On Monday, a federal jury here awarded Billy-Bob's owner more than $142,000 in a copyright infringement lawsuit against one of his competitors, Bubba Teeth, a rival set of nasty dentures sold by the Indianapolis based Novelty Inc. I like the idea of rival teeth. They could battle to the death to settle these sorts of things in the future. "Oooh, a canine to the soft palate! Bubba really drilled that one! Another brush with pain for Billy-Bob!"

The most amusing thing is the tich-tich'ing from MSNBC, "The Manning fabrication broke even Hollywood’s lax rules. But the real scandal is what’s considered acceptable." Sure, they credit Newsweek for the article but it is still funny hearing those words from a news organization who for the past few years has drawn more suspicion than any. Heck, they didn't even hide being owned by one of their largest advertisers, they named the company after them. =)

To explain...no...that would take too long...to sum up... You're sitting around with friends late one night, and you suddenly start getting that tingly-brained deja vu feeling, only not only is the "this has happened before" thing going on, but you are ALSO suddenly transplanted brain-wise FORWARD in time and you are having deja vu about experiences that have yet to happen.

Friday night while playing a video game with a few friends, I flash-forward-deja-vu'd to Saturday night, when we were planning on having a bonfire. While sitting in the chair looking at the screen I suddenly was experiencing recollections of incidents from the future bonfire where my friends were giving me hell about the video game, and while in that flash-forwarded state, I had that tingly-brained deja vu feeling.

Other people experience this, right? Or am I just a freak? (Don't tell the government, or they'll send The Shop after me.)

If the show can keep the same jaunty saunter through surreal suburbia going, it should knock your socks off on Sunday evenings.

Best Moment? When the mortician is approached by a relative of a "client," and he hallucinates that she is mocking him and the complete loss of his dream. Wait for the scream. Watch everyone's reactions. Wow.

Sometimes...you...just...want...to...scream.

Damn, I am so Slick. Sometimes it hurts being such a pimp.

I was called a Heart-Breaker last night...by one of the most beautiful women I know. She was joking (mostly). I was laughing (mostly). Damn...I really didn't need that...

*pimp powers...deflate!*

*sigh*

How I feel about it.

How They feel about it.

Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between.

Since my relocation, I've been blessed to discover the wonders of the Internet and fortunate enough to gain employment in this magic land of Bytes and IPs, first as a TechSupport Rep, and later as supervisor of the systems for a local ISP [read -- minimanager]. After being sold twice, I left that company and am now working for a startup...the pay's less than I was making, but I'm not dealing with the incredible morons of my previous employers, either. Also, I'm making enough to travel to AR every so often and lord it over my friends [I'm hoping to force three or four of them to relocate as well, heh heh heh] while buying some decent hardware. So, if you are in Louisville some day, and a bottle-shaped obvious geek rolls past you on rollerblades grinning like an idiot...don't trip me, I've still got a few years of anger left to release and I don't wanna go to prison for killing you...

Yes, in the near future, time will become so poluted with people time-tripping because watching their own plain walls melt and their own bleak existence swirl around them isn't enough. In order to get a good enough fix, they are going to have to flip back through time to better places to trip on, like the court of Henry the 8th or the middle of a SuperBowl extravaganza (other than the shitty one with Aerosmith and Britney gargling their murderous way through a perfectly innocent song, who's tortured cries of "oh god, just a little laryngitis" went unheeded by cruel, cruel fate) or maybe even a nice sports-victory riot before they were outlawed in 2034 after the "Daryl Strawberry/Dennis Rodman Clone Affair" destroyed a good portion of World-MCI-Nestle-Benz-AOL-Warner-Turner-Ford-Times Rollerdrome along with almost 100,000 people and a really expensive parking structure.

Oh yeah, I'm blaming my tendency for run-on sentences on future atemporal drug use as well. Blame for my random misuse of the comma I place squarely on society as a whole.

More importantly, she got my name right and knows that I'm not being mean to her. *whew*. And she can fart bats for which I'm everyday thinking up new uses. That is a much better super power than my "Independent Eyebrow Control", "Weak Sarcasm", and "Spurious Non Sequitur" powers.

• Comic Book Resouces is on the edge of my interests but may not be on yours. Handy site with some good writing about the comic book life.
• GPF Comics crosses my radar on a regular basis. I was a regular reader for a while but it just never quite clicked. Based on some of the current goings on I may have to pick it back up.
• Its Walky hasn't done much for me yet either but I plan to give it another try too. Mostly based on his transformers sub-site which you might want to check out even if you aren't "comic inclined" since it is just plain funny.
• Fans! How did I forget about that one? (good on Inktank for reminding me)
• Gamer Hotties is way funnier than I imagined and not nearly as overtly sexist as I hoped. =) They balance and I'll stick around to keep an eye on this one some more. May last check on them was the first few weeks so it has gotten a lot goofier since then.
• Microcosm still kicks ass. Man I wish I could draw like that...
• Dan is unabashedly game/geek related. At 14 strips it already shows real promise. It caught the eye of Penny Arcade's "wacky" proprietors, for instance.
• Adventurers gets a fine (if long =) URL upgrade.
• Warp 9 To Hell is damn good. Give this one a special eyeballing. (nods to PA on this one too.)
• High Fiber Comics' disturbingly subtle "poo" related title belies a much more violent and yet still scatalogical comic mind. (ditto on the PA nod here.)
• Decorative Edison is of the clip'n'paste photo style that is all the rage with the kids. Worthy of a later look. (damnit, PA again. Giving credit sucks, I'm going back to pretending that I get all these through osmosis or meditation or google or something.)
• Voices In My Hand has popped up multiple places and for good reason. I read quite a bit of this one's archives all at once.
• Scrubs shouldn't be left out. It almost was though. Good stuff there.

Geez, ONE of these just about has to amuse you. What the heck is wrong with you, huh? I mean really, there is all kinds of funny on this page there you sit all grim and natty. It just bugs me, man. =)

UPDATE: *ahem* *coff* HOLY COW, BATMAN! Why didn't I have the brains/friends to direct my browser to Webcomics.com? Am I really that stupid??? *sigh* Sadly, the answer is yes...

Speaking of pissing and moaning, my new love over at <shes come undone> thinks my name is "mike" rather than "mark". *sniff* Of course, since I fucked up the name of her blog when I linked it before I guess that just makes us even. =)

What worries me is that she thinks I may be making fun of her. I guess I wasn't clear enough that I really swooned (try to think of a manly "faint" when you hear that word rather than a poor southern belle throwing a hand across her forehead in shock that someone could be so rude. Thanks, it sounds real gay but I'm trying to rehabilitate the word so that it can go back to having a useful and productive life) at the thought that I'd inspired someone else so much that I'd be one of the only links on their page. It made me tingly inside. The good tingly rather than the "I just drank a soda that had hundreds of ants in it" tingly.

And I continue to return to her page not to shame her but to snag gems like this for posterity: "its a good thing that im a sociopath, now you might be asking yourself why thats a good thing. And i would tell you, except i dont care enough about you to bother." *floomph* "Floomph" is the sound of me swooning in that non-gay yet tingly way we discussed earlier.

BTW, if this entire summer, whenever you are at a park or a picnic or a concert or anywhere outdoors, if you catch yourself paranoically double checking your soda for a massive stream of swimming ants between each drink, feel my pain!