Man this porn looks good

Seth Rogen and Kevin Smith come together to make a movie? Oh sweet celluoid nectar of the silver screen...er...my TV at home, I cannot wait to revel in your extra-feature laden DVD.

To have the Apple guy say the words "more like Glen and Gary suck Ross's giant meaty c--k" just sucks the blood out of your inner Miss Nancy's complexion.

Thankfully, the film ended up garnering an R instead of the dreaded NC-17.

Incidentally, for more insight on how movies receive ratings (and for an interview with Kevin Smith on how he had to fight for R ratings for Clerks), I highly recommend the documentary, This Film is Not Yet Rated.

There was an RNC?

What is so great about Sarah Palin, other than the fact that she looks better than Joe Biden?

The malarky surrounding the recent Republican convention was downright hilarity. Since when does a lame-ass VP-nominee feel the need to take shots at the Presidential nominee, especially when she one-ups Obama on the whole 'inexperience' issue.

She is younger and less experienced than the first-term Illinois senator, and brings an ethical shadow to the ticket. A governor for just 20 months, she was two-term mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 6,500 where the biggest issue is controlling growth and the biggest civic worry is whether there will be enough snow for the Iditarod dog-mushing race.
...
The pick earned McCain praise Friday from evangelicals and other social conservatives who have been skeptical of him. "Conservatives will be thrilled with this pick," said Greg Mueller, a conservative GOP strategist.

The price for that support could be high. Palin's lack of experience undercuts GOP charges that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief. McCain said in April that he was determined to avoid a pick like Dan Quayle, the little-known Indiana senator whom George H.W. Bush put on his ticket in 1988. The choice proved embarrassing.

Her comment about Obama, talking one way to some voters and a different way to others was laughable. I'd have liked to see her deliver the same style speech she gave at her old Pentecostal church.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."
...
"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.

I recommend you check out the link to that speech, as there's a charming video that allows for a more visceral experience of the crazy. The pastor, Ed Kalnins? He makes Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright look like Mother Teresa.

What you see in a terrorist -- that's called the invisible enemy. There has always been an invisible enemy. What you see in Iraq, basically, is a manifestation of what's going on in this unseen world called the spirit world. ... We need to think like Jesus thinks. We are in a time and a season of war, and we need to think like that. We need to develop that instinct. We need to develop as believers the instinct that we are at war, and that war is contending for your faith. ... Jesus called us to die. You're worried about getting hurt? He's called us to die. Listen, you know we can't even follow him unless you are willing to give up your life. ... I believe that Jesus himself operated from that position of war mode. Everyone say "war mode." Now you say, wait a minute Ed, he's like the good shepherd, he's loving all the time and he's kind all the time. Oh yes he is -- but I also believe that he had a part of his thoughts that knew that he was in a war.

Interestingly enough, the Wasilla Assembly of God website is now unavailable except for the holy cache. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the McCain-Palin campaign leaders made a quick call up to AK and had to enact some damage control. Odd how we're not seeing any media backlash on this one, though. Dare I suggest that Ed's comments aren't perceived as inflammatory because he's white, and more in line with the current administration's take on the "War on Terror"?

So hurray for the Palin nomination! Thanks Sarah, for making the current Republican party seem like a bunch of angry, fearful, hateful wackjobs. It makes it easier for everyone on election day.

I, like George Washington, favor a heady dose of the separation of Church and State...otherwise, y'know...we get all fundamentally suicidally and killy-like. Just like those terrorists your pastor denegrates!

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.

(George Washington, letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 726.)

Chrome, you're the chromiest

Chrome is good...aside from the whole theological takeover parody I suggested, the browser is sweet. My favorite is the 'stats for nerds' tool, which lets nerd nerd it up in the nerdiest way possible. You will note that I am probably a nerd given the Wikipedia page open in this scenario.

Pretty cool stuff. As one comment I saw on ars, Chrome has "the snappy". It opens fast, pages render fast, and there's some clever architecture built into it to make the search experience better. I can see Ubiquity-like features on the horizon. I like how if one tab crashes, the multi-thread architecture [supposedly] limits the amputation to the affected tab, and not the entire browser session.

Google even went ahead and put together a clever stylized online googlebook with renderings of the developers explaining the design approach and some of Chrome underpinnings and why it works the way it does. It's open-source, so folks can add features and fixes as with Mozilla's Firefox.

Evil, clever bastards.

Google forays with a new open-source religion

Bolstered by its continued success in generating billions of ad dollars, strong brand recognition, the creation of an iPhone competitor (based on the Android platform), its forthcoming new browser (with long-term competitors being IE, FF, Safari, and Opera), Google has finally decided to offer its version of theology.

Google's PR department released this statement:

"It's going to be an open-sourced model that allows faith-followers to synergistically strengthen their core beliefs with a ubiquitous de-centralized deity. It's based on the OpenSocial API, which is the foundation for a host of successful web appliances, namely Orkut. We realized that in order to be true to the mantra 'don't be evil', we would need to create a new theological construct in order to legitimize more aggressive revenue-generating advertising models. In addition, we believe that we have something new to offer certain members of various demographics who find themselves removed or disconnected from reality.

As part of an extended development process, our team conducted focus groups with [among others] Second Life denizens, as well as individuals tinkering with cybernetic implants and found that while people enjoy their metaphysical experiences there is a certain degree of spiritual emptiness as we have not yet been able to reduce the human soul to a binary expression, nor digitally quantifying the aforementioned emptiness.

With much experimentation, we discovered as a way to accomplish these tasks, and in doing so, uncovering the means to similarly generate a host appliance capable of monitoring and upgrading soul programs, thereby improving the quality of virtual life. Sergey and Larry dubbed this host: DaemonLord, in a sentimental gesture to a long-lived family of processes well-known in those versed in computer science concepts.

Beta-users of DaemonLord will receive secure access to the development site, and complementary surgery to integrate proprietary mechanisms designed to facilitate the entry into the virtual environment, nicknamed Temple. As the user spends more time in Temple, his or her body would normally atrophy, however Google is committed to maintaining both a healthy body and virtua-soul, so initial testers will be configured with electrical stimulation in order to prevent physical decay.

We plan on maintaining DaemonLord and Temple by the revenue generated by users within the environment, as micro-transactions (similar to papal indulgences) and various implementations of the existing AdSense and AdWords platforms."

Needless to say, there's been some explosive responses from the general user community. Religious leaders have yet to release a formalized comment on the situation, but President Gee-dub did have these questions:

"So...if I snort some of that digitalized nose dust in that there etherland of pagan goodness, will it come up in my pee-pee test that I have to take for Uncle Dick every month?"

...and...

"Does this mean that I can hook up with Sarah Palin in this new-fangled Temple thang? I'm tryin' to talk Laura into a threesome! Man, that Sarah could moose-wrestle me into submission any Temple session!"

Thank you Sarah Palin....mmmm....tasty

I was all fired up to do a little something on Sarah Palin, and found that the dailykos had already delivered a lovely piece on why:

1. she's ineffective
2. Alaska is effed, and the GOP is scrambling
3. the rhetoric used to highlight Obama's 'lack of experience' blows up in the GOPs face with her nomination
4. the neo-con star chamber, led by His Exalted Evilness Karl Rove still runs things

I'm feeling better every day about the upcoming Presidential election. Haters move out of the way. We're going to have a President who speaks in complete sentences and doesn't make up words without knowing that he's made up a [albeit cool-sounding] word. If only we could install stupidfilter for Dubya, then at least we wouldn't need to contend with his failed policies AND his mind-numbingly lame diction.

Facetown....ghostbook?

Ricky Gervaise = Whoopi Goldberg

I swear to Yahweh, that if both the Facebook movie and Ghost Town come out in the same year, I will gouge out my own eyes, pack the empty sockets with kosher salt, and ram my head against the nearest marble vertex until my skull splits open and I can see my own gray matter patter to the floor and make little bloody smacking sounds when they hit.

And doesn't Téa Leoni look great?! Wow! She's totally hotter here than in 'Bad Boys II'. David Duchovny is a lucky guy, but that's why he gets songs written after him.

Seriously...why did some troll think it was a good idea to make a Facebook movie? Mark Zuckerberg is a d-bag, and Facebook...is a WEBSITE! What's so wonderful about making a movie about a website? Do we really need a movie about a website that puts you in touch with your old friends from elementary school? I'm going to throw this out there: if you're not in touch with them now, maybe it's for a good reason.

Maybe if Facebook started killing people, and they had the whole 'The Ring' thing going for it it might be compelling, but a movie about some dudes who made an exclusive social site for like-minded d-bags at Ivy League universities [good for branding, giving it a solid heritage, pass my snifter of cognac, won't you Reginald?], then rolled it out to the proles [read: State schools], where they effectively tarnished their image forever with the Beacon privacy debacle? What's the denouement? Zuckerberg becomes the youngest billionaire ever, and initiates his own Logan's Run bubbleworld to keep the 30+ folks in check? OK...maybe that's too dated of a film for his 'young' demographic...how about 'The Island'! That was a wonderful tale that probably meshes well with his junior high school experience.

I can't wait for the DVD...so I can film myself burning it on the stack of 'Facebook: The Movie' posters, and make multiple postings of it on youtube...not really...in reality I will just not attend the film in the theater, or in any paid streaming fashion. If I do choose to see it, I'll pirate a copy.

Then again, from the little that's been said about the book, it's supposedly brutal in critique of said Zuckerberg. In this case, it might be worth a viewing...from a pirated source of course.

My God...It's full of stars

With the same wonder that Dave Bowman expressed when entering monolith-initiated time-space travel, Ubiquity redefines today's web experience.

If you're using Firefox, then you need to install this plugin. It allows you to bring up a contextual command interface where you can perform a variety of tasks from your Firefox browser.

Searching, emailing, integrating maps into email, searching for Flickr pictures, post directly to Twitter...amazing.

Check it out in action:

For example, you install the Ubiquity plug-in, then visit a site you want to email to a friend. Instead of copying your friend's email or site URL, then opening another tab to start a gmail session, you bring up the Ubiquity console and start typing your friend's name. Ubiquity links up with your gmail account to find contacts that match that pattern.

Then select the address you want by arrowing to it and hitting enter, which will cause the another tab open in a gmail session with the recipients email address already populated, with the message you specified, with the link to the page you were visiting.


Simple, but very powerful stuff. It's like wormhole technology for the web.