October 31, 2003
Badass correspondent of the day
Gareth Jones (1905-1935), was a British journalist who, among other things, exposed the horrible famine in Stalin's Soviet Union and predicted WWII shortly after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, before his untimely death at the hands of Chinese bandits on the eve of his thirtieth birthday.
The Most Useless Quote of the Day Ever
"A military spokesman in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he could not comment on the battle."
-New York Times
White House Patriotic Poster Collection
Check out the WhiteHouse.org Patriotic Posters page for some good ole war time morale boosters, albeit from a Republican slant.
I have pasted them all over my cube and expect to see FBI agents (or at least my friendly local HR representative) paying me a visit in the near future to dismiss my presense from the building. Then I'll be home early for the annual Reese Halloween Bash!
October 30, 2003
The foreign policy quiz
The e-thepeople, umm, people have put together a simple little foreign policy quiz. Turns out I am a Global markets/Diplomacy-Human Rights-Cooperation kind of foreign policy thinker. Take the quiz and tell everyone where you fit in.
Oops. I forgot Memphilter's anniversary!
You may have noticed that over the last two days the venerable Memphilter took a break from providing the general just-better-than-banal insightfulness and took to hawking drugs for diet and erectile dysfunction. Let me tell you that this was not intentional by any means. It turns out that I had registered the domain name on 10/27/02, and that I had only registered it for a year. As I can at times hardly recall my middle name, I surely didn't recall that I needed to re-register memphilter.com. Well, now you know what happens when you fail to re-register in a timely manner. Luckily, the domain was not hijacked by Lithuanian mobsters, as I had originally thought, and now everything seems to be back to normal. No harm no foul, I s'pose. And if a young woman got skinnier on the ephedra offered here, or if an old man got his first boner in years because of my memory lapse, well isn't the world just a little bit better place?
October 28, 2003
All things are as they were then, except, when CBS is there, YOU are there!
Walter Cronkite's commentary on the CBS radio and TV program You Are There.
October 24, 2003
Quote of the Day
"If I showed up at Paisley [Park], would you let me in your front door to talk about Judaism?"
-Minneapolis resident Rochelle, on being proselytized by Prince.
October 23, 2003
A self-reflexive moment
As those of you who read Memphilter probably know, mainly the posts here are about interesting or funny or disturbing things that members of this small group of friends find while skirting responsible citizenship and bottlenecking national productivity. Rarely are the posts about Memphilter itself, but I just came across something that is, in my estimation, worth noting.
But first, I digress. I am in the midst of moving to New Orleans, and extremely busy with planning all that moving entails, as well as trying to tie up loose ends at work in Cincinnati. Consequently, I have been living out of hotels and flying and working long hours and have not been online a lot. That much is evident, I'm sure.
Despite the fact that I deliberately took a couple of small steps to make this weblog a place that would not attract an audience much larger than this group of friends (and that, my friends, has been a major success!), I occasioanally scan through the referrer logs or do a Google search on "Memphilter" to see who is linking to the site. Since my participation here has been spotty lately, I did just that. To my amazement, a Google search tonight revealed an incoming link to one of jimoto's posts from this spring. Standing proudly next to links to the Quakers' American Friends Service Committee, the Duke University Library, and Harper's magazine, is a link to jimoto's post and then a bevy of sarcastic comments, the best of which is giappino's forgotten classic: Does dogshit go to heaven?
And where does the link come from? An Al-Jazeerah editorial! Holy fucking shit, indeed.
Backward Masking your wav files
Remember backward masking? Remember spinning Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" backwards through the old Donny and Marie record player to hear a bunch of garble that someone told you had something to do with weed? Surely the prevalence of backward masking couldn't have anything to do with the anomalous arrangement of sound waves reproduced in reverse. Of course, as many have learned the hard way, backward masking is the deliberate, mind-altering work of lucifer or beelzebub or whoever infiltrated the field of rock-n-roll and led to songs like Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything for Love". The point of this post is not to assail the clear-cut insanity that was (and still is, in some cases) the mainstream suggestion that backward masking was destroying the youth of the world; instead, it is to show you that, sans-turntable, you can still try to decipher that garbled message embedded in the music you listen to with this handy Backward Masking Utility at talkbackwards.com.
October 22, 2003
The Gematriculator
If you thought Kabalarian name analysis was the holy grail, have I got a deal for you! Dr. Ivan Panin developed the science of Gematria, which allows one to do analysis that looks like this on a passage of text. Without getting all technical and mathematical on you, let me just say that such an analysis will tell you incontrovertibly whether or not that passage is inherently good or bad. What's that you say? Don't have the statistical chops or the time to get Gematrical on a selection of text? Never fear; let the Gematriculator do the heavy lifting for you. I am happy to announce that El Destructo's Earworms post below is 82% good, 18% evil.
October 21, 2003
October 20, 2003
Attack of the Earworms
Science has finally addressed the question of why songs get stuck in your head. Among the most common "earworms" are the damned baby back ribs song and a certain mind virus from the Baja Men that raised questions from both the libertarian and Christian right as well as the pacifist and animal rights left. The international controversy was covered in papers as far afield as the Daily Namibian and Hindustan Times before thankfully petering out sometime last year--which goes to show that there is only one universally understood rap song.
October 16, 2003
HAPPY MPW !!!
For those of you keeping count, here's another little gem to add to your list of reasons to be grateful we have George W running the show.
"...and gay men have an average of eight partners a year outside of their supposedly “committed” relationships."
DAMN! Where did they get these numbers? I don't think I've been laid eight times in the last TEN years. But seriously folks, the HRC (and I) encourage you to get involved.
October 14, 2003
October 10, 2003
Free Tommy Chong!
The 65-year-old apologized to the court and his family, saying he "got carried away" with his movie character. He admitted once having "a drug problem with marijuana" but said he beat it by redirecting his energy to salsa dancing.
--Tommy Chong, actor, salsa dancer, bong merchant.
Alas, poor Topanga, I knew him, Memphilter; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times! Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
Badass of the Day
Melinda Lopez (via Fark)
October 08, 2003
The Golden Gate to the netherworld
Many jumpers wrap suicide notes in plastic and tuck them into their pockets. “Survival of the fittest. Adios—unfit,” one seventy-year-old man said in his valedictory; another wrote, “Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache.”
These from an excellent New Yorker piece about Golden Gate Bridge suicides.
October 07, 2003
Prescription drugs from Canada
This article is pretty interesting on several fronts. I like the fact that Republicans and Democrats are actually working together against the Bush Administration in regards to subverting FDA regulation and also against the absolutely un-American, inhumane, shit un-universe behavior of the pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies love capitalism and free market competition until someone actually competes with them. Then they want big government intervention to swat down those who threaten their gajillion dollar industry.
Uncle Bob's Glass Eye
Here is the featured eBay Auction of the Day.
October 06, 2003
Jack-O-Lanterns Anyone?
With All Hallow's Eve coming up at the end of the month, it is time to sharpen those pumpkin carving skills. For the pros out there, check out Extreme Pumpkins, whose Jack-O-Lanterns include pyrotechnics and other f/x, as well as famous trucker mudflap iconography. For the carving challenged, start at Pumpkin Carving 101 and work your way to pumpkin masterdom. If all else fails, you can carve pumpkins the way I do. For the record, my favorite all time pumpkin is still jimoto's TCB-in-a-Flash jack-o-lantern. Please post photos of your pumpkin creations here!
October 05, 2003
You think he'd ease up a bit after five years
Rev. Fred Phelps has plans to erect a Matthew Shepard monument in a Casper, WY park.
October 03, 2003
You Can't Argue With This
This is the greatest link ever posted in the history of blogs. If you don't believe me, you're an unAmerican elitist.
October 02, 2003
Quote of the Day
"That is the whole story: Anas is ready to die for Yasir Arafat but wants to live for the University of Memphis."
-Thomas Friedman name-checking the local institution of higher learning in today's NY Times.
October 01, 2003
Bizarre Record Sleeves
Pull out that vinyl and see if you can top the sleeves and covers featured on this site. (Note that each section has multiple entries; use the pointing hand icons in the right window pane to see more in that category.)
Wrangler butts drive me nuts!
This is my review of the movie "Road House"
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