Oh. My. God

I've seen some geeky things in my life. Stupidity abounds in the human cosmos, and it's all catalogued on the web. Why we feel, nay, are compelled to share our complete lack of real life with the rest of the world, I have no idea. The people at www.raptureme.com take the cake.

You'd think, from an evolutionary standpoint, that outing yourself to the world as a complete nutjob would hurt your chances of procreating, wouldn't you? I mean, Grog is a caveman, he's really into his cave paintings, but he's only into cave paintings depicting bison taking antelopes against their will... you have to figure that the women Grog hangs out with would figure that "something's a little off with this guy" and wouldn't choose him as a father for their children. Similarly, foaming at the mouth over the statistical probability of Jesus' second coming like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters has got to put a little cramp in your swingin' single lifestyle... But apparently not.

So where do people like this come from? I mean, their very existence could potentially shatter the whole evolution thing... Answer me these questions:

1) If evolution kills off the weaker members of the species, and Man has survived since the beginning through his mind alone [we clearly don't have many other attributes that would give us an evolutionary edge, save for the opposable thumb], then why have these fuckers survived? Shouldn't there be a strong evolutionary pressure to pull these people out of the gene pool?

Take a look around you. I'm generalizing here, and being a horrific elitist snob bastard (yeah, your point is?), but who has the most kids these days? It ain't the PhD's.

Is there a built-in evolutionary mechanism to produce lots of dumb people?

2) Was Darwin wrong, does God take care of these people, and is that why they continue to exist? Is God's kind of person a narrowminded, mouth-frothing idiot with just enough education to put together a quasi -scientific website about the coming rapture with phrases like "Rapture Index above 145: Fasten your seat belts "

Say what? Was this in the Release Notes of the Bible somewhere? (Bible 3.55.1, Release notes, section 7: How to calculate the Rapture Index.) Is this poor bugger who runs the site like Moses? Every day, he gets an email from God:

Day 1: Thou shalt build a website
Day 2: No, a blog doesn't count
Day 3: Use Apache, for Christ's sake. You're not going to use Microsoft products to spread my word... don't you know which side he's on?
Day 4: Okay, okay, enough with the cute flash animations. Bandwidth isn't free, even here in Heaven. The Cherubim are bitching at me that we need another T1 line. Cut it back a bit.

Haven't these people heard of the "watched pot will never boil" idea? Maybe Jesus *hasn't* come back because they're tracking his every move. He's sitting up there on a cloud, smoking a cigarette... he flicks it off into the distance and shakes his head in disgust. Then he notices God standing next to him.

"You going down anytime soon?" asks God, looking guardedly hopeful.

"Naah, look at 'em. Got their panties in a bunch over the number of porn newsgroups, and for some reason they think that the stock price of Microsoft has statistical significance related to the likelihood of me coming back."

"I mean, fuckin' look at what they're doing. They're trying to predict when I'm returning. Haven't they read the books, don't they get it? Predictable is not my thing. I didn't go down there and spend thirty odd years putting up with... with... that... Look, I didn't get famous down there and spread your word by being predictable. Predictable would have been to stay a carpenter, have kids, and retire."

"You miss the wood, don't you?"

"You have no idea, Dad. You should see what they've come up with now. I mean, I was pretty good with the hand tools, but the shit you can do now... If I *DID* go back, and I'm not saying I would, but if I *DID*, first place I'd go is Home Depot. Routers and rotozips and... " Jesus stares off into the distance. "Moses would have had an easier time of it these days, with the tools they have now."

God smiles wryly. "No he wouldn't. He'd never have got planning permission, and he wasn't a certified professional engineer. They'd have crucified him."

Jesus winces.

"Sorry, figure of speech."

Jesus nods. "I'd love to go back, but I know how it would be. CNN and Fox News wouldn't leave me alone. Talk shows. There'd probably be a reality show on me. Hell, the History channel people wouldn't leave me alone for years... candid interviews about Mary Magdalene..."

...

Have a nice day. Hope the rapture comes soon, statistically speaking.

Rapture ! Pshychederic gore trancer !

This is a fantastic Japanese brog. Be sure to check out:

"Night Scooter Team"

and

Odd Japanese Van Culture

Freak waves the real monsters of the sea - Environment - www.smh.com.au

Freak waves the real monsters of the sea - Environment - www.smh.com.au

Wow. Apparently two large vessels sink ever week on the high seas.

a) That's very scary.
b) Man, if we could figure out where these waves were, it would make for wicked surfing.

Baraka

Baraka - This is an incredible movie, shot in 70mm format. It's impossible to describe. If you've seen it, you'll be happy to know that several other films by the same team are listed on the website, as are films by other filmmakers. Of note is that Phillip Glass scored Goddfrey Reggio's films.

Multi-Level Moves

MLM - the most agile person on the planet.

Even spokesmen have bad days...

Winnebago Man

What happens when the outtakes from promotional videos get put on the web? Hopefully none of your prospective customers see it.

Stanleys's mouth is actually larger than his head. 

Unbelievable RC Helicopter flying...

RC

and unbelievable motorcycle antics:

Moto

The internet is shit

The internet is shit

2002 Honda VFR 800 VTEC Interceptor Hard Bags 2700 miles "World Class Sport Tourer".
If you want a souless, beligerently flawless, consistently ugly from front to rear motorcycle, that evokes less emotion than the male population of England then buy it and never get laid as a result of parking it outside a bar at closing time. Save $$$$$$ Why buy new? ***SOLD***
 

Bush military records found! At Last!

GW Bush Military Record

Burned retinas

How are those high-powered bulbs working out for you? 

Vegas Big Meat

Vegas with Jere Peterson's 240 Metzeler conversion. Jere is out of Osceola, Wisconsin, and does this as a kit now. 

Gifts...

How about a muzzle, for starters? 

Staffie Mode #2

Stanley and Zoe: Mode 2: That Couch Is NOT Moving
 

The twins

Studies in contrast. On the left, a Harley-Davidson Sportster from squarely in the "gleefully leaks oil" era. If ever a bike was misnamed, it was the sporty. On the right, a Honda VTR1000F SuperHawk. The Sportster has 1200cc, and turns 5500 revolutions per fortnight. The SuperHawk has 996cc (being Japanese, it is required by law to say so somewhere in the graphics), and spins to the moon, and would probably refuse to leak oil if you drilled a hole in the cases. Senor Asco was nowhere to be seen that day. 

Sex on wheels, part II

Duke swingarm... drooool. 

Sex on wheels, part I

Why is it that *everything* KTM makes is so beautiful? Duke front wheel. 

Staffie Mode #1

Stanley and Zoe: Mode 1: Full Tilt Boogie 

Your bike...

...and sometimes you just need to tell somebody what you think of their bike. First Thursday, May 2004 

Which one's mine?

Sometimes, you just need a reminder of what kind of bike you ride... 

Small Japanese Holes

Okay, so no hits on "heterogeneous." I guess everybody is more educated than I thought.

We got this wonderful bit of Japanglish at work today:

"As there is no chaplet, a shift may occur."

What? What's a chaplet? I turned to the web:

Main Entry: chap·let
Pronunciation: 'chap-l&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English chapelet, from Middle French, from Old French, diminutive of chapel hat, garland, from Medieval Latin cappellus head covering, from Late Latin cappa
1 : a wreath to be worn on the head
2 a : a string of beads b : a part of a rosary comprising five decades
3 : a small molding carved with small decorative forms

So it's a wreath?... a rosary?

I looked around, and all the top hits on Google showed that it had some religious significance. The email referred to a drawing, and it appeared that, to the Japanese, a chaplet was a small hole.

I'm discussing the email with a coworker, and explain that I think that chaplet has some religious significance, but that the drawing showed a hole.

"So it's a Catholic hole?" he asked.

"No, it's holey, not holy..."

Minimoto!

It's the only motorcycle that will fit inside my MINI... 

I bought this off Ebay a couple of weeks back as cheap fun. It is fun, except the Chinese craftsmanship leaves a little to be desired. There's nothing seriously wrong with it, but the setup was horrible. The chain was too tight, the rear wheel was misaligned, the fuel line leaked, etc. After a bit of fettling though, it ran quite well and scooted around fast enough to get some good lowsides in. Oh, and the front brake couldn't be adjusted so that it didn't drag and actually worked, so I had to do some drilling and re-engineering.

The lowsides were a great chance to test my riding gear. Padded knees, heavy duty boots, built-in body armor. For the most part, everything held up really well (especially my Alpinestars S-MX boots- they took all the abuse and saved my ankles and shins from some road rash.) Less well-designed, though, were the First Gear Speed Pants. Knee padding; check. Knee padding in right place? Not so much. Maybe it was the position I was in on the pocketbike (something that can only be likened to a monkey fucking a football while trying to assume a yoga pose named "Monkey fucks football with knees articulated"), but when knee contacted asphalt, the knee padding was conveniently located 2 inches higher than the knee/asphalt contact point. The "Ballistic Cordura" fabric lasted, for oh, about 6 inches worth of sliding. This left my knee to handle the other couple of feet. Not very pretty. I'll get some aftermarket velcro patches and knee sliders to sew on top of the holes, we'll see how that works out.

The pocketbike is a hoot, actually. It's nice being on something that you really don't care about crashing. It was the first bike that I was able to go out and use all of the tire on the first time out. I was actually rolling off the edge of the tire, that's what caused the lowsides... watching some of the videos on the net, it looks like correct cornering technique is to hang your inside buttcheek off the seat, allowing the bike to stand up a little more.

Another amusing aspect of riding the pocketbike is the balance wheelies. The bike weighs almost nothing, and you sit fairly close to the rear axle, so just by leaning back and tugging a bit, you can loft the front. Hilarious fun, and maybe the safest way to learn to do wheelies known to man. I'm going to have to work on these.

Pocketbike!

Cheap chinese pocketbike, full sized helmet. 

Just saying...

Gizmodo

Hmm... looks like my kind of place. Any tech site that contains the sentence "Now I don't want to say these pigf@#$ers f@#$ed a pig or anything" can't be too bad. What drew me in was the phrase "I'm not saying, I'm just saying..." a phrase that somebody used to say to me. Turns out, they were partially right. They were actually saying.

Well, this seems like a good way to keep track of my meanderings on the web and through life. I'm getting tired of scrolling through my favorites list, but a blog should be searchable, right? It also has the advantage of being viewable from work... heh... I can't wait to see the "Inappropriate Site Notification" screen.