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October 21, 2008
a day later » October 22, 2008

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets

There is an epic presidential election themed Yo Mamma Fight going down on Twitter right now. I follow Matt Haughey and Anil Dash, so I saw bits of it in their tweets and, thinking myself clever, tossed out a few and foolishly tried to keep up. But then Anil pointed to the super duper momma-lode, between Fernando Rizo and Lore Sjöberg. Realizing I was out of my league, I gave up and am blogging some of theirs instead:
# Yo mama so fat, she authorized a $700 billion bailout of Dairy Queen.

# yo mama so fat, she thinks the G8 is a Value Meal.

# Yo mama so fat, her other biography is called "The Audacity of Hardee's.

# Yo mama so fat, the only Supreme Court verdict she wants to overturn is HomeTown Buffet v. Yo Mama.

# Yo mama so fat, she thinks sub-prime is a steak cut.

# Yo mama so fat, McCain refers to her as "Those Ones."

# Your mama so fat, when they asked which menus she reads, she said "You know, all of 'em."

# Yo mama's so ugly, Obama said "You can put lipstick on a pig and it would look a lot like yo mama on dollar margarita night."

# you moms so fat ACORN registered her to vote *three* times.

# Yo moms so fat Russia can see her from *their* house.

# Yo mama such a ho, the tab for the federal bailout plan is "700 billion dollars, plus fifty cents to have sex with yo mama."

# your mama so stupid she tried to arrange the genres on her iPod to put Country First.

# yo mama so fat McCain gives patronizing air quotes when he talks about the "health of yo mama"

Well played, dudes. Matt suggests this time-stamped Twitter search link to get you started in the relevant part of @anildash's feed.

THIS IS NOT SELF PROMOTION

200810211729

IT TRULY ISN'T. For I have no direct connection (and very little contact) with the army of brilliant obsessives who are illustrating the list of 700 Mole-Men that appears in my new book.

ANY MORE than I was connected to them when they illustrated the 700 HOBOES from my last book.

OR TO Boing Boing back when Mark Frauenfelder put them up to it.

IT IS ALL GENUINE, GRASS ROOTS madness. And I am delighted and awed and scared by it. It's sort of the same way I feel about grass and roots.

That is all.

Nathaniel sez, "Sonicwall, the web content filtering vendor, now blocks XKCD as "Adult/Mature". A STICK FIGURE COMIC is now too mature for the internet. Classic."
As of this week I can no longer see XKCD at my office, due to SonicWall, a content filter service my company subscribes to. It is not blocked as "Adult/Mature Content". As this is the same service some businesses that offer public wifi use (Panera Bread in particular), this may mean XKCD has been dropped from a lot of public places.

I don't blame you, guy. I blame SonicWall. They're most anal about the smallest things. Only recently has my office gotten access again to MySpace, which was also listed as "Adult/Mature". principiadiscordia.com was listed as "Occult"; now it's still blocked, but listed as "Other". My best guess is that what did it for XKCD was the sexual positions strip...as far as I can tell, these people have little brain and less sense of humor.

SonicWall now blocks XKCD (Thanks, Nathaniel!)

Mighty God King's photoshopped classic sf/f book-covers is one of the funniest such exercises I've ever seen -- so good I've added the site to my RSS feeds. MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits (via Eat our Brains)
 Files Podcast Podcastgen1.1 Images 2008-10-09 20081009 David Horvitz Podcast  Files Podcast Podcastgen1.1 Images 2008-10-01 20081001 Upso 2 Hip Hop  Files Podcast Podcastgen1.1 Images 2008-10-01 20081001 20081001 Upso Regular
The folks at Saigon Market have posted terrific and very different music compilations by artists like Dustin "UPSO" Hostetler and David Horvitz, best known for traveling anywhere you want him to go, for a price. I like hearing what artists I like are listening to. Saigon Market podcasts

Previously on BB:
Converse designed by UPSO
New issue of UPSO's Faesthetic: UFOs!

MORE EXPOSED FLESH THAN YOU REQUIRE

BBtv: John Hodgman slashfic chartporn

A number of Boing Boing tv viewers asked for a higher-rez still of the Hodgman slashfic chartporn, a disturbing piece of fan-art which appears at the end of today's episode. And here you are: hi-rez image. Previously: (BBtv) John Hodgman: More Information Than You Require. This is not a book trailer, part 2.

When my car acts up, I try to ignore it, hoping it will fix itself. (And it sometimes does!) The driver of this car shares my sense of optimism in spades. I hope it works out for him. (Via Arbroath)

200810211120

"When being pulled out of a ditch, do not drive immediately back into the ditch."

(Via Criggo)

The Medical Journal of Australia reports that a woman who has complained of smelling like a rotting fish for most of her life has been diagnosed with a genetic condition that causes her to emit a disagreeable odor.
The woman has been diagnosed with an incurable genetic condition called trimethylaminuria, or fish malodour syndrome, which affects the smell of sweat, breath and urine.

"The characteristic body odour resembling rotting fish can be intermittent, variable and influenced by diet, hormones and medications," her doctors said in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Here's a video about another woman who has this unfortunate condition. "It's not just body odor, it can fill an entire room. And recently it filled an auditorium. It's a very heavy, dark, deep, intense smell."

Unfortunately, there's no cure.

Woman's fishy-smelling mystery solved

Hearse driver stalks woman

This is like a real-world horror film: An undertaker driving a hearse chased a woman through Sydney, Australia in the middle of the night. The funeral director, Adam James Lee, 37, is being sentenced today. From The Sydney Morning Herald:
The funeral director is also appealing against a conviction for obtaining a benefit by deception after his business, Caring Funerals, switched two bodies and cremated the wrong one.

His lawyer, Roland Bonnici, told Downing Local Court today that nobody in his right mind would draw attention to himself as a disqualified driver under the influence of alcohol by menacing another person with a vehicle, and therefore Mr Lee's actions should be considered a cry for help.
"Stalked at midnight... by a hearse"

Liz McGrath art show in Barcelona

 Images Tears Of The Crocodile:Iguapop Lion-2
Freakishly talented L.A. artist Liz McGrath has a new exhibition of her phantasmagorical sculptures and watercolors opening Thursday, October 23, at the IguapopGallery in Barcelona, Spain. The show, titled "Tears of the Crocodile," runs through November 23. Liz sent me a (no longer) secret link to the exhibition preview. I think it's a jaw-droppingly beautiful body of work. Liz Mcgrath preview

Previously on BB:
BBtv: Liz McGrath studio visit
Liz McGrath show in Los Angeles
Liz McGrath watercolor show

Author, minor television personality, and Boing Boing guestblogger John Hodgman returns to BBtv for more heretofore unrevealed spoilers from his large new book of fake knowledge, MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE.

In today's episode, we answer questions posed by Boing Boing tv fans via The Twitter, including one from Annalee Newitz of i09 blog which pertains to the subject of nude self-portraits.

You really should watch this episode all the way to the end, for a special surprise awaits you there.

Here are previous Boing Boing tv episodes featuring Mr. Hodgman.

Edna Jester, 89, of Blue Ash, Ohio, was arrested for taking a football away from kids in her neighborhood. Apparently, the ball kept landing in her yard and she was fed up. She refused police demands for her to return the ball, so they arrested her for petty theft. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:
"That's my only way of getting through to these children," Edna Jester said. "I'll give it back to them later, but not right now..."

(The father of the boy who owned the ball) said he never wanted Jester to be arrested.

“I just wanted the ball back,” Tanis said. “My son paid for the ball with his own money.”

Tanis said she has kept about 10 balls – basketballs and soccer balls – belonging to his children that went into her yard. Jester said she has kept only three.
Woman, 89, arrested for keeping football (Thanks, Rick Pescovitz!)

One year ago, writer and blogger Susannah Breslin pointed us to a shocking, sad story by Jeffrey Gettlemen in the New York Times about widespread rape in the African nation of Congo. Rape is used as a tool of war and civil destabilization, and the sheer scope and violence of the epidemic here is unprecedented. Here is that BB post, and here is an update posted a a few weeks later.

Today, a year later, there is a powerful followup story by Gettlemen in the Times. You really must read it. Susannah has a post up about this, and reactions, and how you can help, on Slate's new femblog, XX Factor.

[T]he UN has [since] declared such grand scale acts of sexual violence "a tactic of war." Now, Gettleman returns with another report from the frontlines. "Congo, it seems, is finally facing its horrific rape problem," he writes, "which United Nations officials have called the worst sexual violence in the world." Today, due to international attention, outside aid, and local efforts, a "culture of impunity" is breaking down, ending the silence when it comes to rape. More arrests of perpetrators are taking place than ever before, but, Gettleman is quick to point out, the number of those charged remains relatively small, particularly in a culture "where women tend to be beaten down anyway."

In makeshift forums, women are telling their stories. "'There was no dinner,'" one woman's tale begins. "It was me who was dinner." In the audience, several women wore T-shirts that read in Kiswahili: "I refuse to be raped. What about you?" Eve Ensler, best known for having written "The Vagina Monolgues," is seeking to put an end to the worst rape problem in the world. Ensler deems the phenomenon "femicide": "'I have spent the past 10 years of my life in the rape mines of the world,' she said. 'But I have never seen anything like this.'"

Rape In Congo, A Year Later: Change? (Slate XX Factor)

Photo: Honorata Barinjibanwa, a child rape victim in Bukavu, Congo, who became pregnant as a result of her attack. (Hazel Thompson for The New York Times / Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

I love this 1956 ad on the race to install adequate electrical infrastructure to accommodate the ballooning demand for gizmos and appliances. A little bit of word-substitution and you'd have an article from the past five years bemoaning the lack of high-speed wiring to the curb.

The problem: The thirty-year electric appliance boom is running into a snag—warns the National Adequate Wiring Bureau. Most houses and apartments were built with relatively small electrical requirements in mind. Already, 50% of the people in some areas who want air conditioners can’t buy them because their wiring is inadequate, one expert estimates. The sale of freezers, ranges, water heaters and other appliances is being slowed.

The solution: New homes built under the adequate wiring code of the National Association of Home Builders provide at least 100-ampere cable into the home—and adequate inside circuits. In older buildings— the answer is rewiring.

Adequate wiring means business (Feb, 1956)

Gabe and Max's Guide to Man Style


Our internetexpert friends Gabe and Max have teamed up with Details magazine to produce an informative series of videos on how to be a stylish dude. Video Link on the YouTubes.

Related BB posts: Gabe and Max answer Bing Boing readers.

Web Zen: contribute zen


penance
who in the what now?
one sentence
freak machine
sketch
halfbakery
box doodle
mai'nada
you look great today

previously on web zen:
contribute zen 2006
Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Googlephone unboxing photos


Boing Boing reader Meadhbh Siobhan says, "I got my G1 from T-Mobile a couple days early. Is it 'cause i'm a nice person? long-time t-mob subscriber? cause i submitted a bug fix for openbinder when i was working for PalmSource? ... who knows. but i documented the out of the box experience..." G1 Out of the Box Experience (picasaweb)

« a day earlier October 20, 2008
October 21, 2008
a day later » October 22, 2008

Recent Comments

  • "The real issue is that the BBC decided to invite Griffin on to the programme, but was under no obligation to do so. Nobody is talking about censorship or banning of political groups. There are a lot of tiny groups floating round, who hold mad ideas and might even get votes at elections, the BBC doesn't invite them on to their flagship entertainment programmes. It made an exception for an openly racist group, whose leaders are regularly recorded expressing agreement with Hitler and talking about hiding thei..."
  • "Sometimes I'll dream in third person and my dreams are always in color. I had a third person dream like that last night. The new thing for me is dreams heavily influenced by Second Life. I've had dreams with people flying around in the background like avatars and with having to wait for objects to rez. I need to spend more time outside, apparently...."
  • "Even beforehand, they're pretty creepy, but afterwards, damn. It's the mascara eyelashes that freak me out. Kids in makeup give me the heebie jeebies. Then again, I'm not that keen on it in grownups either...."
  • "MattF: even so, check out the Cree LR6 or LR4 (depending on the size of your fixtured) for a quality LED bulb that fits in a regular light bulb socket...."
  • "Much of the UK political community is today saying that they're glad he was finally dragged out in public so that everybody can see what he's really about. While commentators have previously been eager to label Griffin as a "racist" or "nazi", few people had actually heard his views before now. Now there are no secrets and no claims of 'suppressed truth', just a simple set of ideas that most people disagree with. The likely result of this is for him to gather support from the tiny minority of UK citizens wh..."
  • "Oh yes, boo-hoo, a poor startup like Apple can't break into the patent-encumbered field dominated by giants like Nokia, Motorola, Nortel, Siemens, HTC, and, uh, half a gazillion chinese, taiwanese, etc. handset manufacturers (hey, even Peek and Amazon are using the GSM or CDMA technologies - and thus are probably paying the licensing fees). AFAIR, the ITU rules specifically state that licensing has to be "fair and non-discriminatory", so Nokia, Qualcomm, etc. can't ask Apply any more (or less) than anyone..."
  • "I looked over the Yes Men page and it looks nothing like a parody to me. It looks like they honestly want to make people think the CoC made the website. There's no mocking, no humor, just serious-looking text on an authentic-looking website. If I do an impression of a famous person as political commentary, and I totally nail it - you know, I copy their voice and affect so perfectly it really seems like it could be them...am I then guilty of a crime? Is doing a good impression a crime, whereas doing a bad ..."
  • "I'm fine with Nick Griffin and the BNP getting the Two-Minute Hate ... so long as two minutes in the spotlight is all he gets. After that, let's move on and leave him and his little band of retro-blackshirts to the oblivion they so richly deserve...."
  • "as i recall, the hemp seeds aren't ground. check out the S&B brand of shichimi togarashi. also, the chow.com recipe is a little wonky... there should be chinese pepper/sansho in shichimi...."
  • "The other big issue with fluorescent light bulbs though is that they use mercury. Even ignoring the environmental impact of that, we break bulbs often enough that I have stopped using compact fluorescent bulbs entirely, and only use the tubes in covered light fixtures. I also wonder what percentage of CFL users use proper disposal methods for the bulbs...."