furtive explorations

OTOH, outsidethebox.com, .net, and .org have all been snapped up and wasted on "not found"s or "coming soon"s. And insidethebox.net and .org are NF too. insidethebox.com is the dim exception here. They are hawking the "Net Board" which is basically a stiff webpad that you tie? strap? nail? staple? glue? screw? to your leg.

It's a sad sad world. Hope yours is merry with Holiday glee. Or, if you are someplace nasty, that all the bullets wizzing through the contested desert that you and you timeless enemies have been fighting over who gets to live in for myriad ages at least make a faintly musical sound.

Oh hey, this post looks a little harsh on DFA. Bold is really, like, you know, bold and stuff. I was actually pretty happy that someone else feels like an angel in heaven loses a eye when ever Network Solutions rings up another dingbell at the cash register.

• StripTease doesn't live up to it's name at all. Except the funny pun way... One to keep an eye on a for a bit.
• Shaw-Island is a new strip by an artist who was sorely missed from the scene. Or at least that is what all the artists are saying. =) Eyeballs firmly on this one, he's a decorated veteran back for more blood.
• Dr.Lobster is an acquired taste, like lemon butter or human feces. You don't start out loving it, you have to be convinced. Sharp, subtle, and rather nasty at times, you'll grow to love it. Or not. You have to respect "A Comic an Hour Week", Read all 120 of em.
• ModernEvil may well be worth your time too, specially if you like Lobster there...

Axer doesn't do comics, just art. But Whooboy what art. Check it out for some eyeball candy that won't stare at you but still looks good.

Don't be fooled by the datestamp on this one, this blogger entry was my notes field at work today... This was really posted within a few minutes of the one above it that I'm going to write just after this one. I may have gotten lost in the plu-future-imperfect grammar there but you get the idea...

BTW, The people at VH1 actually found a leatherish? top that makes Carmen Electra look frumpy. How hard could it be to find a leather top that is tight, shiny and fits Carmen? Check it out at the VH1 link there...

And can I register a decent domain name for my domocile? NO! Why? Because GeekHaus.com, GeekHaus.net, and GeekHaus.org are all taken. And they all suck. I hate it when good domain names are wasted. Particularly when I want to use them!

Grrrrrrr.

For those of you that are curious, the offending style sheet directive is background: no-repeat;! If you use that in the style sheet, bye bye BLOCKQUOTE indenting. weird, huh?

Snowmen on Christmas cards reinforce traditional gender stereotypes by reflecting men in prominent, public roles and women in private, domestic situations, according to new research.
Auuugh, Auuugh, Aaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuggggghh, Auiiiigh! Red... Mist... Before... Eyes... Must... Not... Burst... Arteries! WTF kind of snowmen do they build over there? We just stick carrots on em for noses, we don't wrap them in aprons and stick cookie sheets in their hands over here.

Art historian Dr Tricia Cusack believes the festive figures represent a return to a more conservative, patriarchal view of society than exists today.
Art Historian? Doctor? Good grief, is she even qualified to make these sorts of judgements? Seriously, not to come down on any one out there who has an Art History Doctorate, but we need new words for Doctor. One that means Medical Doctor, one that means serious professional in a real field, and one that means sucked off a bunch of lumpy white snowmanish phalli in the art department.

The Birmingham University academic, who studies cultural meanings in visual imagery, was prompted to research the topic after shopping for Christmas cards.
So, she got the idea while shopping? Hello, nurse!

"Snowmen in representations on cards were becoming more and more common and a kind of icon up there with Father Christmas, robins and holly. It's become even more marked in the last few years," she said.

"I wanted to know why they should be so popular."
Robins must be a Loony-land thing. And yes, it is an icon. How is this a suprise over there? Have they begun sporting large crotch bulges and started playing poker? Are they grilling out more?

In the research, which has been published by cultural history periodical New Formations, Dr Cusack also describes snowmen as reflecting the festival spirit of overeating and excess dating back to Medieval times and beyond.
Uh yeah, overeating and constructing large snow sculptures go together hand and glove. Haven't you guys noticed that child don't build snowmen anymore, only fat people do? That is why they have carrots for noses and coal for eyes. Once you've eaten all the good food, why eat carrots. And since you've just laid on the winter fat, you won't need that coal to keep you warm. Makes perfect sense to me.

In promotional literature from the university, she writes: "In both the UK and US, Christmas has been gendered as woman's realm in its emphasis on children and family.
Yeah, when I close my eyes and think of Christmas I don't think of a guy nailed to a cross or my Dad being home from work for a week assembling all our presents or some fat elf crawling down the chimney. Nope, all I can see is vagina, vagina, vagina. Seriously, I'll never look at St. Nick poking his head into the chimney the same way again.

"The snowman's location in the semi-public space of garden or field reinforces a spatial-social system marking women's sphere as the domestic-private and the men's as the commercial-public."
Follow this with me, because I'm not sure of the logic here... Is she saying that snowmen enhance the division between the traditionally man's outerworld and the traditionally women's homeworld simply because it is in the yard? Holy shit! By this logic we're going to have to rip down all our doors if we ever hope to break the glass ceiling. Is mankind's dominance over the dolphins reinforced spatial-socially everytime we build sandcastles? I guess that makes sense, we build fences to force our neighbors into submission.

Whew, That should hold me for a day or two...

Given the recent trends in music, I would like to officially predict that the #1 singer of 2015 will be a Latin computer-generated 8 year old with artificial breasts the size of two VolksWagon bugs.

If there is one thing I've learned, it is this: When the cops come to your door, make sure you're not wearing just an undershirt. It's like a free ticket to jail.

If Microsoft has enough clout to get their own Windows Key on every new keyboard, isn't it about time for them to condense CTRL, ALT, and DELETE into one easy key?
Niftyness Look here for the best stuff.

On a related note, there's the Lingua Ravia. Overlook the title...it gives you a rather handy reference to rave/electronic lingo. Good to know if you're going to understand your wire-head friends.

This hypothetical city is big enough to have 3 major U.S. Interstates that thanks to a benign as in cancerous but not often deadly government all meet in a single intersection. Given that the city is large and modern, it has a cool digital highway alert billboard system on all the major roads into and out of the aforementioned clusterfuck intersection.

Now, given the redneck situation and the imminent storm situation and the "driving" situation and the digital sign solution, what do you think is flashing on the big orange programmable signs?

CAUTION: BE AWARE OF SNOW AND ICE REMOVAL TRUCKS

Given all that, what kind of accident did I see within a single mile of that warning? That's right, yeah, you got it, a snow and ice removal truck that had spun out of control and plowed (not an idiom folks, it has a plow) into a guardrail just past a tunnel.

What? You thought that the signs were warning the car drivers to be careful around the plows, rather than be careful of the plows? Did you miss the whole redneck bit? Try and pay more attention class this might be on the next test right after the one where we see if you can continue breathing all by yourself.