Baconized movie Quotes

Yeah this Scalzi guy has a thing about bacon.

Ever since I begun reading his blog I became infected with the bacon-virus. So for no apparent reason today I began to think of movie quotes where you could replace certain parts with the word bacon.

See if you can identify which baconized quote belongs to which movie:

- "It rubs the bacon on its skin or else it gets the hose again."

- "How about a magic trick? I'm gonna make this bacon disappear."

- "I love the smell of bacon in the morning."

- "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my bacon, in this life or the next."

- "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his bacon with some fava beans and a nice chianti."

- "...now you come to me and you say "Don Corleone, give me bacon."

- "Madness? This... is... Bacon!"

- "If you could've found out what bacon meant, I bet that would've explained everything.
- No, I don't think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe bacon was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Bacon is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece."

- "What is so great about bacon? It is a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores. What you call bacon, I call the rape of the natural world."

- "I will take it! I will take it! I will take it! I will take the bacon to Mordor!"

- "Do not try and bend the bacon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth....There is no bacon."

- "I like to keep bacon handy... for close encounters."

- "Shoot a bacon down a bug hole, you got a lot of dead bugs."

- "Hasta la vista, bacon."

Archived Bird Legs

A few years ago I read in a magazine that the city hall archive of Amsterdam has the preserved legs of pigeons in it's archives.

I forgot the article but kept remembering the fact that you can ask to view preserved pigeon legs at the city hall of Amsterdam.

Flashforward to last week: a colleague tells me she has to do an art project which has as subject courier pigeons. The pigeon legs anecodote that slumbered in the back of my mind crawls out of hibernation and a few sentences later she giggles at my story.

Today I spoke with her again and so intrigued by my story she actually went to the archive and got to see the legs. Well why does the city hall archive of Amsterdam contain dried out bird legs?

Apparently during WW2 when Amsterdam was occupied by the Nazi's, pigeon were considered to be possible illegal communication devices used by the Dutch resistance to contact London.
The Nazi's ordained that all pigeons should be kept in cages, be registered with the proper authorities and in no circumstances allowed to fly outside. (Then and now in the Netherlands you have a great deal of people who keep pigeons as pets, we call them 'duivenmelkers' which roughly translates as pigeonmilkers. Don't ask me why... )
The police had a unit called the pigeonbrigade who's task it was to register all the birds.

Eventually the Nazi's got fed up with all the pigeons still flying around and ordered the pigeonbrigade to round them up and exterminate all pigeon life forms in Amsterdam. Here comes the archive bit. Because most birds were registered the Nazi's wanted proof people had their pets killed. So chop went the bird's head, chop went it's leg and the registered bodypart neatly went into the archive.

And because the Dutch have a very hard time throwing anything away once they put it in an archive, till this day if you go to the city hall of Amsterdam and ask them for the bird legs, the reply you'll hear is: "Right this way, sir."

link ( unfortunate only in Dutch)

I love Sarah Jane... And zombies!

If you love zombies (and who doesn't love those adorable little rotting fleshmunchers?) you are going to love this short film.

The Pitch: A different kind of Zombie Film. A short film selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Jimbo is 13. All he can think about is one girl, Sarah Jane. And no matter what stands in his way - bullies, violence, chaos, zombies - nothing is going to stop him from finding a way into her world. NSFW Warning: Strong Language and Zombies.

I Love Sarah Jane

Did you have a good day?

Did you? I did and I concluded such by answering the next two questions:

1) Did you do something today that you feel is productive and constructive?

Why yes, I did. I had a good working day at the bookstore and I had nice session at university.

2) Did you fuck up something today?

Why no, I didn't. No fires, no sending the wrong e-mails to the wrong persons, no being unprepared for a test, not being bitten by a zombie or gnome and no emberrassing moments of a sexual nature.

Ah, how simple and happy life sometimes can be. Now where is that girlfriend of mine; it's time for a hug.

Educating Sarah...

hehe, not far besides the truth.

(via Boing Boing)

No this blog is not dead - It's just my lazy bastard

Right, that didn't take long for me to resume writing. Just a little bit more than three months.
Honestly, I was only planning on taking a day or two off and then continue blogging.
But as often happens one of my 'bad' internal advisors, let's call him 'lazy bastard', got hold of my external actions.

This inner reasoning went something like this:

Me: "Geeh, it's been two days since my last post. I should write something and get busy."

LB ( who sounds just like Bob Ross): "Now, now, two days is not that long a time. It's not as if a cute puppy will die if you don't post something now."

Me: "Yeah, but I figured tonight I have nothing important to do and tomorrow I will be all busy with other important stuff."

LB: "Precisely why you should relax. You don't want to be all stressed out tomorrow, do you?"

Me: "I guess so..."

LB: " And besides you might see something interesting on tv to write about."

Me: "Well I am not sure if watching television will help me wri..

LB: " Oh look what is on the television, why it's that favorite episode of Star Trek. Ooh Vulcan ears. Isn't that nice and relaxing just sitting here?"

Me: ( inaudible drooling)

And here we are three months later. It's not just blogging. If it was I would be a far more productive person. It's also the little things like taking out the garbage before the trashcan threatens to fall over and crush me in an avalanche of junk. Or calling my mom so that she actually knows I am still alive. ( I have around ten voicemails now with my mom asking if I am still alive and if not, is it okay to use my old room as the new guestroom)

And my personal favorite: shaving.
It's utter ridiculious that I do not do this every day, but... well LB seems to have a thing for beards.
I hate beards. They are itchy, annoying and they make my face look like a certain part of a porn-actrice from the '70s.

And the worst bit is that my better halve refuses to have sex with me if I'm unshaven. SEX!
You'll think that would give me enough incentive to do it every day... two, three times or more. And I can't blame her for not wanting to be intimate with someone who feels like a horny hedgehog.

But alas LB seems to dislike being intimate.

Anyhoo I am back for now. Ooh look Star Trek is on.

I guess they saved a fortune on the coffin - Pringles designer buried in Pringles Can

Mmmh original cremated flavored chips.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"Dr. Fredric J. Baur was so proud of having designed the container for Pringles potato crisps that he asked his family to bury him in one.
His children honored his request. Part of his remains was buried in a Pringles can - along with a regular urn containing the rest - in his grave at Arlington Memorial Gardens in Springfield Township.
Dr. Baur, a retired organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Procter & Gamble, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice. The College Hill resident was 89."

link ( via Boing Boing)

Uncyclopedia - the Anti-wikipedia

Bit busy lately so not much in the way of posting. However I came across this beauty of a site that made laughing since yesterday: Uncyclopedia, the Anti-Wikipedia.

Filled with nonsense and inaccuracies, but funny as hell. I especially like their entry about Star Wars ( Japanese Opera):

"Written for the Japanese stage by the 18th century Japanese author Gorluca, Nōgaku Sen no Rikyu ichi-go ichi-e Dengaku Shirabyoshi Gagaku ("War of Stars") was a smash hit with local villagers, spawned five sequels, and is mentioned as the original inspiration to George Lucas for the modern Star Wars franchise. With a minimalist acting crew of two males playing every character and a painted background, the play was relatively cheap to create. In spite of its advantages, the sequels were not as good as the originals, much to the dismay of the young Japanese males who waited in line fourteen hours to see them.
The actors are on stilts and in costume, manipulating puppet hands to simulate action, just like good action movie stars should.
The 3-act play is presented in its entirety below, translated from Japanese to Korean to Chinese, back to Japanese, and finally to English..."

link to Uncyclopedia

Games need more sex to become mature - a stunning visual speech

In this little video, 9 minutes, professor Daniel Floyd at savannah college of Art and Design delivers a brilliant and visual stunning speech that the problem with games and sex is that they don't have enough in it.

Simply put if we ever want the computer game become a mature medium of art then we need to accept the presence of sex in games as well. Considering that the majority of gamers are above 25 this makes a lot of sense.

However as the whole Mass Effect sex scene fuss showed, games still have a long way to go before.

And even if you do not agree with his point, at least the video itself is worth watching.

via Boing Boing

I won! I won! I won! I wo... shut up, we know it now.

Last week I entered the writing contest John Scalzi was having on his own blog Whatever. The goal was simple: describe the events of the night of 19 August, 1994.

I wrote a little piece of statistics concerning that particular night. To my great delight last monday Scalzi declared the winners and I was the second runner up! <>

It's really amazing to be selected from all the different entries, a lot of entries were really good so I am really honored mine got picked out.

So what did I get? Well I will receive a autographed book by John Scalzi, which is very cool. So now whenever I lend out a book I can lend that one and just casually flip open the first page with the autograph. 'Oh yes, that. I can still remember how I got that one: it was the night of 19 august, 1994 and I was left with two others after a gruelling 72 hour lasting battle royale that started with 300 fame starving writers... "

Ahum, sorry about that.

And of course I also got my fifteen minutes of fame. My little piece got to shine next to the two other winnners, and you should really read those as both are brilliant pieces. Plus people really made nice comments. Reading that people enjoyed my little piece really put a smile on my face. Commenter 26 thanks for rooting for me!

So what will I do now? Well to be honest this contest really uncorked a bit of creativity, so I guess I will keep writing more. Look out for more flash fiction soon to come here.

Gim out.

Font Vader

This a rather creative way of using fonts. Besides looking at the awesome image of Vader it's also fun to deconstruct the picture and see all the different letters and symbols used.

via Boing Boing

Amazing mural animation

This is a amazing animation made by the Italian graffiti artist Blu. It is hard to imagine all the hard work that went into making this. It's fantastic that someone would make this for free just to enrich other people's life.



via KK

The night of 19 August, 1994.

John Scalzi is holding a little contest at his blog Whatever; you can win a signed copy of his new book Zoe's Tale. The goal is simple: describe the events on the night of 19 August, 1994.

So I decided to have a go at it and the result is already posted on the comment thread for the contest. But of course I wouldn't want to deprive you guys from my writings, so without further ado:

The night of 19 August, 1994.

4.789.677.003 ideas were born.
80% involved sex.
45% were already forgotten after five seconds.
10,5% were big ideas for a novel, 1 of them eventually got blurbed on Whatever, another was unmasked as fiction on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
5,6% resulted in a divorce.
0,0001% had the solution to world peace, unfortunate it was thought up by a cat who’s owner mistook his message for peace as a cry for food. The cat had a nice diner.

30.887.239.969²³ spermatozoa went on a voyage that night.
99,99% panicked when they discovered they were out in the open air. They died within
five minutes.
0,004% kept bumping against glass. Then the cold came.
0,005% got on the right racing track but were thwarted by another team. The other
team was sponsored by milkman inc.
0,001% Made it to the egg. They were very pleased with the result nine months later.

3.987.452.221 pounds of food was consumed
74,5% consumed by humans. Icecream was a favorite that night.
25% consumed by animals. They loved their grass.
0,5% consumed by mould. Silently plotting their bid for world domination
0,0023% was human consumed by animals. Eight pandas had indigestion afterwards.

256.666 persons claimed to have a supernatural encounter.
68% claimed to be abducted by aliens. They had the sore ass to prove it.
12% said they spoke with God. One actually had.
11% reported they were terrorized by gnomes. The gnomes allied with the mould.
9% encountered a ghost. 20 people had watched a video seven days before.

3.798.333.113 pairs of shoes were used.
77% suffocated due to sweaty feet.
12,5% conducted sabotage against their slave-masters.
6% were thrown away. Enduring afterlife on the seventh tier of Hell: the fiery field of
chew toys for dogs.
4,5% were missed in action. They will be remembered.

23.566.016 acts of kindness were perpetrated.
68% involved candy, flowers and remembering a birthday or anniversary. They had an
assistant with a good memory.
18% was a kind word or two. Being kind only takes a minute sometimes.
12% was helping old ladies across the road. 255 grannies yelled they didn’t need to cross
the road.
2% was extraordinary. You can rent the movies to see it.

Japanese Show: movie moments with string

I have no idea what they are saying, but luckily we don't need to. The only thing you need is appreciation for the truly remarkeable movie enactments they pull of with string.

via VKmag

Suggest a book

At the moment I have finished reading every single book I have. This is rather odd for me because usually I am reading two or three books at the same time and five other ones waiting.

However this time I have nothing on my to read list. So to expand my horizon I will read any book that you guys suggest. Yep that's right, you can decide what book I will read next.
I am always excited to know what other people read and what books have had a profound influence on them. The best way to know a person is by the books he/she recommends reading.

So post your suggestions in the comments or send me a mail. I am eager to hear your suggestions. One thing though, you don't have to recommend the bible, I already read the spoilers.

Rec my Outpost

As stated before: I love zombies. Unfortunate the zombie genre does not attract the greatest of directors, so most of the time your average zombie movie is as brainless as the walking corpses on the big screen.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered not one, but two excellent new movies featuring the walking dead. The Spanish movie 'Rec' and the British made 'Outpost'.
Both are low-budget and non-Hollywood; both are excellent and bring a refreshing new take on the zombie genre.

Technically speaking both movies do not really have zombies. With Rec you have people infected with a kind of rabies that turn them into flesh ripping madmen, a bit like the rage-virus in 28 Days Later, and with Outpost you have Nazi ghosts who have the nasty habit of pushing iron nails into soft fleshy places.
But hey, if it shambles like a zombies, moans like a zombie and tries to bite you like a zombie, it really doesn't matter anymore what it is.

First Outpost. The story takes place somewhere in Eastern Europe in a war torn country. A scientist hires a group of mercenaries to take him to a deserted bunker. The group is led led by a gruffy sergeant played by the always excellent Ray Stevenson, best known for his role as legionnair Titus Pullo in the hit TV-show Rome. As soon as they arrive at the bunker all hell turns loose as the place is cursed with the presence of the earlier mentioned Nazi-zombies. Basically the story then turns into a 'this little piggy went to...' fest, in which the mercenaries are killed off one by one.
I really liked the pace and the gritty atmosphere Outpost contained. With minimal effects it really conjures a frightening and almost claustrophobic feeling that remains the whole movie with you. The only real drawback of the movie is that the story is not as fleshed out as it could have been. As soon as the characters and setting is introduced the remainder is used for scary and gory moments and not much more. A little bit more of whys and how's would have turned a good movie into a excellent one. But still, this is a must see if you're a zombie fan.

Then Rec. This movie really has a lot in common with the recent released Cloverfield, as that all the action is viewed through the lens of the character holding a camera. So the camera does not merely record but is also a part of the story itself, in effect it is as if you are self in the movie. The story takes place in Barcelona and it follows a TV-crew making a show about what the local fire brigade does on a average night. After a somewhat dull tour of the fire brigade building the action start to happen when the firemen are called out to break open the door of a sick elderly lady.
And this is the part where again all hell breaks loose. Without spoiling to much, the old lady has a nasty case of biting people in the throat.
The rest of the movie is just one long roller coaster ride with loads of adrenalin filled chases. Guaranteed you will be scared. In fact this movie is so scary that one of the trailers for Rec did not show any footage of the movie itself but reactions of a audience watching the movie. How cool is that?
Rec is a excellent movie and probably one of the better movies of 2008, the only fault being that it is a little bit short.

Both movies are made outside of America, but as often happens Hollywood is quick to make a remake of it. So of Rec there is already a remake called Quarantine. I have not yet seen the remake, but for some reason I think it will not be as good as Rec. Even more I wonder why Hollywood have to insist so much on always making remakes of foreign movies. Why can't the original be released in the US?

Anyhoo, besides my mutterings about bland remakes, I can suggest downloading these movies or buying them on DVD. That's the sad thing about independent movies, almost never you will get to see them on the big screen.

Don't let the pro-life people know

This is some serious 'makes you think, wonder and freak out' art.




"One of the central works in the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (until 12 May), Victimless Leather, a small jacket made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice, has died. The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened."


link ( via Futurismic)

It's Summer!

Today is a beautiful summer day in the Netherlands. I just had to make a picture of all the flowers.

Next time, use a dictionary...

or else you get a rather amusing and embarrassing moment if you use words you do not know the meaning of.

link

Random found amazing art

I like the next blog option the nav bar above has. It's like the equivalent of switching channels on a television, only then with blogs. Most of the time it's not very interesting, for some reason loads of blogs are about babies, not that babies can't be interesting, but basically if you have seen one baby blog, you've seen them all.

Sometimes however you come across something very cool, like Art of Danky. I have a weak spot for fantasy landscapes and he draws the most beautiful I have ever seen. I just had to share this one.

link

Art-Eggcident in Leeuwarden

Dutch artist Henk Hofstra's made these giant eggs in the centre of the city of Leeuwarden. They will stay there for six months. I hope Google Earth will make a new pass over the Netherlands before then. It would be cool to suddenly see giant eggs appear on the map of the Netherlands.

link ( via Boing Boing )

Worst kind of voicemail a parent could receive

Apparently a 22 year old American soldier had left his mobile phone on during combat. He bumped against the side of a Humvee and the phone accidently phoned the last number it had dialed: his parents.

So his parents heard three minutes of their son engaged in combat: swearing, shooting and yelling for more ammo, until the voicemail abruptly stopped at three minutes.
They had to wait for more then two hours before they could get any news that their son was okay.

Here is the link to the voicemail.

Make your own Iron Man suit - if you have a few billion dollars

Cool article at Wired about what it would take to actually build a Iron Man suit. Not surprisingly the US military already has a project for it.

link

Little Brother released with Creative Commons

Last week saw the newest book by Cory Doctorow released - Little Brother. Doctorow is one of my favorite bloggers at Boing Boing and he's also becoming one of my favorite writers. So I was rather excited about Little Brother, especially as the plot really hits a string with todays freedom vs. security debate: contemporary school children rebelling against the ever more intruding invasion of privacy these days; defeating tracking and snooping measures. It's even more interesting to read because the surveillance technology, and the ways to counter it, in the book are real or nearly real.

However if you are like me, always broke, the problem with wanting to read the newest releases is that it usually costs you money you don't have at the time. Luckily Doctorow is one of those writers who understands that it is better to have a lot of people read your work and not all of them paying, then to have every reader pay for your book, but not having a lot of readers in the end. So in the spirit that books should be shared as much as possible Doctorow released Little Brother as a free e-book under a Creative Commons license.


This is smart, because most people are willing to try things when they are free and then pay for the real book when they like it. I know I will buy the book when I have some money, but in the mean time I can enjoy the free e-version. Plus I can link it here so that it evens reaches a bigger audience. I've read the first few chapters today and this book should be read by every sf-fan.

Get. Reading. Now.

Gruesome but very beautiful Japanese drawings

I found these drawings of japanese anatomical drawings earlier on the net, but at time they were without any text to explain what they were about. Now however there is some information that explains the details and history of these fantastic if a tad bit morbid drawings.

link

When history has a voice

I like to read about history. For some reason it intrigues me to know how people lived in earlier ages and it is always handy to know why things are as they are today.

So I was very excited when I discovered this site today: soundportraits.

It is a site that collects audio interviews with historic value. I can't stop myself from listening more interviews. The sound quality is very good and all the stories you hear will make you stop doing anything else and just sit back for a while.

You have the story of a ex-confederate soldier about the day Lincoln died. You can listen to the only English eye-witness account of the bombing on Hiroshima ever. Or listen to the tale of Billy Mcune, a texas prisoner who was sentenced to the chair only to have it turned into life because the Governor was so touched by the songs he wrote.

This is just one of those sites that proves the Internet is one of the greatest creations by mankind.

Oh for crying out loud

I always have two distinct feelings when going to a highly anticapted big blockbuster movie. One of joy, finally I get to see the movie I have been waiting for months; one of dread, high-profile movies tend to attract the scum of the cinema visiting civilization. For some reason there is a large group of people who do not understand that talking is not required to watch a movie. They simply cannot comprehend that the majority of people in the room do not wish to hear their comments, or would even be happier if for some fluke reason a small meteorite would vaporize the chatterbox on the spot.

So my two friends joy and dread accompanied me when I went to see the highly anticipated Iron Man movie. It's great, I'll post a review in a few days when I have collected my thoughts about it in a coherent story that contains more then sweet and ooh and aah and drool.

Anyhoo I entered the cinema and the first thing I did was scan the room for little groups of children. Avoid these, for they will wreck your movie experience by their inability to keep their mouths shut and their ability to produce loud farts.
I found a nice little spot far away from any potential nuisance and laid back to relax and wash my self in the greatness that is Iron Man. The fact that only ten seconds after I sat down two jipjapping ladies decided to sit right behind me, was of course to be expected. Luckily the movie was played loud out enough to drown out most of the chatting. Yes I told them to shut up, but another thing these people have in common is apparently a five minute memory span.

But I have endured far more in the past than to let two noisy ladies wreck my movie experienc. So the first fifteen minutes I was basking in Iron Man greatness. Suddenly I heard a noise that disturbed me greatly. However this was a noise that not even the greatest nitwit could have brought into a cinema without feeling ashamed, so I assumed perhaps I was just imagining things.
Then it sounded again throughout the whole room, and again, and then some more, and then it decided to keep on going.

This. Cannot.Be.True.... I thought to myself.

However the yelping sounds were all to real.
The sound of a baby crying.
What on earth makes a parent think that you can take a six months old baby to the movies?

You would expect that any parent with babies would have the following reasoning:
A) babies are afraid of the dark and very loud sudden noises; B) cinemas are known for being rather dark and Iron Man suprisingly has a few loud explosions; C) because of that babies will cry during the whole movie, maybe even annoying other visitors who have paid good money to see the movie without baby sounds; D) therefore you should not take your baby with you to the movies, ever.

Unfortunate the mother of said baby lacked such basic reasoning, making you wonder about the future her child has.

Never in my most gloomiest estimates about irritating cinemawreckers would I have have even thought about crying babies in cinemas. Alas, people will never cease to amaze you in their creativity for stupidity.

This concluded my rant for this week.

Gim out.

Expanding the oath of hippocrates - TF2 style

Double fun today. A new update for Team Fortress 2. One new map and new achievements for the medic. Even more fun, gaining achievements unlocks new weapons for the medic. Uber.

Link to the new medic achievements

Link to the new map and medic weapons

Queens Day - the photos

Today is Queens Day here in the Netherlands so me and my girlfriend went out to celebrate. I made pictures and one of them was a picture of this adorable girl dressed up as a farmer girl. You can view the rest on Flickr.

Link

Japanese Gadgets - me wantz it

Over at Makezine a interesting article featuring all kinds of cool gadgets out of Japan. Apparently this is already volume 12 in a ongoing series.

I especially like the frog can crusher.

Link

The good, the bad, and the truly ugly

I like to know who visits my blogs. I will be honest and admit that it gives me a rush to know people viewed and actually read what I wrote. However I also use it for practical purpose so that I know what people liked to read, always know what your audience wants.

Well the good news is that today for the first time someone actually stumbled upon this blog by searching on google. From Singapore nonetheless, go Singapore.

The bad news is though that I can also see what that girl or guy, although I am almost convinced it is a bloke, was looking for on google. It was bad.

The truly ugly thing is that the exact phrase that was used, is... 'tania's blowjob assistant'

I used these three words in the Virgins for net-neutrality post and apparently you can now find me on google using that phrase.

I am so proud that google indexed me with the phrase 'blowjob assistant'.

Nifty poster for "Evil Dead: the Musical"

Best poster ever! To bad this musical is only in Toronto, but if Evil Dead: the Musical ever comes to Europe I will be on that front row.

( via Boing Boing )

Net Neutrality and a rather unorthodox way of defending it.

The internets have been in a kind of turmoil ever since the new CEO of Virgin, Neil Berkett, said in a interview that according to him net neutrality is bogus. Simply put net neutrality means that a provider does not discriminate between the websites and internetcompanies that pay them and those that do not. However Virgin suggested that they ought to discriminate; putting the websites that pay them on the fast lane, faster content loading, and those that do not pay Virgin on the slow lane, slower content loading and thus less user comfort.

Now this is rather serious as it would effectively mean that Virgin would decide for you which websites are easily accesible and which are not. Not surprisingly this has caused a lot of protest and already a movement that defends net-neutrality started and is growing as we speak.
So far nothing out of the ordinary. Here you have your average protest site, with some nice although a bit amatuerish protest-video's on it. The message is clear and they show how you can contribute by posting your own protest-video or putting their banner on your website. The only thing out of the ordinary is the rather, ahum, prominent insight the video-hostess shows on camera. But hey, it is 2008 we are no longer cavemen who stop functioning the moment we see only a hint of a boobie.

However after searching a bit more about net neutrality I came across what is probably the most unorthodox way of defending net neutrality. Our video-hostess returns and this time she 'promises' to make a man out of every virgin that is willing to defend net-neutrality.
Clearly this is a joke, the video-hostess who goes by the name of Tania Derveaux is a Belgian political activist and a few years ago she promised to give 40.000 blow'jobs' if people would vote for her during the elections. She kept her word and to everyone who voted for her a video was sent with Tania's blowjob assistant, a japanese actress, who simulated giving oral stimulation.

Now I have mixed feelings about this whole 'get the virgins support' action. On the one hand it is kind of funny. Personally I don't think it is really that funny but I applaud the effort to combat greedy Virgin CEO's in a lighthearted manner. Plus it does gets the attention of people, especially the 18+ plus virgin kind of people.
But on the other hand I wonder if these kind of jokes do not do more harm then good for the cause. It's hard to take a protest movement serious when one of its figureheads is willing to trade sex for support, even when it is meant as a joke. And it might also push away the people that would otherwise have supported you. The whole degrading of women issue I leave to the feminists, I want to stay as far away from that discussion as possible.

I wonder. I just hope it won't bite the pro net neutrality in the behind.

Gimmie's Discussion of the week: does the suit makes the Iron Man?

Usually when I hang around with friends at some stage the conversation transforms into a debate about stuff only people with mildly nerdy inclinations could argue about. So to preserve these discussions for later generations I decided to make it a weekly thing on Gimmie Blogs here.

Every week I'll post a question for you guys to discuss about in the comments. Questions can be about almost anything, it can range from politics to the deeper question of who was first: the egg, or the gnome?

And feel free to e-mail me with your own suggestions.

Our first discussion topic arised last night in the guildchat of my World of Warcraft guild. The excellent movie Iron Man is due to hit the cinema's so peeps were talking about the man in the iron suit. Things were pleasantly peaceful until somehow the discussion arose if Iron Man is still Iron Man if he does not wear the suit. Basically there were two sides: the first argued that the suit makes the Iron Man, so without his suit he is just a ordinary man, a rich one but ordinary nonetheless.

The other side claimed that it was not only the suit but also his personality that makes Iron Man the, well, man of iron. Yes his suit gives him his powers, but it is the man and his drive for doing good things that makes the superhero Iron Man. If say another person would wear the suit you would just have a bloke in a hightech combat suit, not Iron Man.

So does the suit makes the Iron Man, or is it something that comes from within that makes this superhero iron? Discuss!

Bizarre

Now this is a rather bizarre story. I wonder why no one just stood still for a moment to realize it was a false alarm. If the police is going to pull out every time someone calls about a bloke with a camera they will have severe problem with getting other things done, say catching criminals?

The Typing Race

Now this is a excellent way to learn to type with speed. It's fun, you can compete against other people and as a bonus you get to read snippets from books and movies that might interest you.

I wonder how this would work in a school environment.

Edit: My average wpm is 55.

A post about nothing

Usually I start the day by checking my mail and then have a quick look over at Boing Boing to look for anything interesting. Usually it has a bit of interesting news, websites that are worth a visit and yet another book to add to my ever increasing 'to read' list.

However this morning something peculiar happened. Between the post about new stuff and the latest gadgets suddenly out of nowhere a post called 'Untitled 1' appeared.
Besides the rather enigmatic title this post was empty. No text, no picture, nothing.

And yet people are swarming to it like moths to a light bulb. Comments are posted by the second. Last count was 256 comments, while on average a post gets around 50.
Bizarre how 'nothing' on the right location can draw so many people.

Or as one commenter said: 'It's like when a kid gets a really big, fancy present, he/she usually most enjoys playing with the empty box.'

How do you mean, there is a octopus on my date?

Ever since Blizzard introduced the Draenei as a playeable race in World of Warcraft, I wondered if not more then a few on the Blizzard staff have a kind of aliensex fetish. They knew already what players were doing with night elves in Goldshire, the equivalent of the Red Light District in Azeroth, so surely they must have foreseen the whole range of perversions that would open up by adding aliens with tentacles to the game.

Speaking about tentacles, John Scalzi one of my favorite SF writers made one of his short stories available on his blog, for free! The story revolves around the question how a romantical date with aliens would be like. I had a big smile while I read the story and some of the aliens Scalzi comes up with are hilarious.

The story is free, but if you like it you can always make a donation. Half of it goes to charity, so do your bid for humanity and donate in the name of alien sexuality.

link

Amnesty Waterboarding Ad

Amnesty is launching a new ad that shows a man being subjected to waterboarding, a interrogation technique currently used by the U.S. government whereby terrorist suspects have water forced down their throat simulating drowning.
Pretty shocking footage and this is just a few seconds with a actor in a controlled environment, imagine how it must be in reality.

The thing is though, besides the obvious wrongness of employing torture, why do people think you actually get useful intelligence out of it? Most people will tell everything you want to hear after only a few minutes of waterboarding. Even Dubya would probably admit he masterminded the 9-11 attacks if he got a few gulps of waterboarding.

Oh well, I am pretty sure that whichever candidate wins, Barack, Clinton or Mcain, the use of torture will be put to an end, hopefully.

Link to Amnesty Ad, not suitable for young children.

Funky milk

Never knew milk could be so much fun with just a little bit of extra.

(via Boing Boing)

Queens day

In exactly one week the orange fever will hit my country, the netherlands, again. Every year on the 30th of April the whole of Netherland dresses up in orange clothes, wigs, makeup and then proceeds to party the whole day long; drinking large amounts of beer and singing ever increasing offtune ' Oranje boven, leve de koningin'. ( It translates into ' Orange above all, long live the queen', it sounds better in dutch )


30th of April is Queensday in the Netherlands. On that day we celebrate the birthday of our queen and also the fact that we still have a royal house. It's amazing how many germans and french always come to celebrate as well; not so happy now that you discarded your kaiser&king, eh?

Queensday is a day full of traditions. For example on this day people are allowed to sell their old stuff on the street, usually resulting in parents trying to get rid of all the old and unused toys of their children. While in Amsterdam a kind of booze filled orgy erupts with loads of concerts throughout the city, it is tradition that our Queen visits a town and takes a tour of the place. ( it gets even more exciting in a few more sentences )

Now you have to realize that in the Netherlands there are only a few big cities so this usually means that our Queen visits a very small place, a village, every year. This of course is a big thing for a small village, so usually when a place is bestowed with such a honor they make damn well sure they have the event well organized. The Queen arrives and is welcomed by the local mayor who proceeds to show her all the exciting stuff that happens in his town: the local soccer club, little children that sing a song for the queen and the ever present game of 'Koekhappen'. ( Koekhappen is a game where a little cookie is hanged from a string in the air, the goal is trying to eat it without using your hands. It is for this reason our Queen always brings her sons with her so she doesn't have to do that )

And that's basically Queensday. Yes it's corny, but for some reason Queensday is always a day in the Netherlands when everyone is happy and having a great time.

Oh yes, the reason why I started blabbering about Queensday is this commercial I saw last night. Two things you need to know: 1) Our Queen is famous for wearing rather large and extravagant hats; 2) The term ' even apeldoorn bellen' is used in the Netherlands when you need to call your insurance because something very bad happened.

Gim out.

Graffiti art

Oh this is funny. I like graffiti when someone actually knows how to do it, plus this one makes you think about the ever increasing use of surveillance.

( via Bruce Schneier)

Diary of a zombielover

I love zombies. I mean I really love zombies. Not in the necrophiliac penetration of the bum way, but if there would be one thing you could wake me up for in the middle of the night its zombies.

Unfortunate most things that are about zombies are just plain brainless pulp. This means that most of the time I find a movie or book that has to do with zombies, it's usually the biggest crap on earth. Even porn has a better storyline then some of the zombieflics out there.

Luckily these last years have seen a steady increase in quality zombie products. World War Z is one of my favorite books, Shaun of the Dead and the remake of Dawn of the Dead were quality and every monday I get my zombie fix from this lovely webcomic.

But still everyone of these gems all pay tribute to the one man who is truly the godfather of the zombiegenre: George A. Romero.

Night of the Living Dead and the original Dawn of the Dead are one of my favorites and it has always saddened me that I would never see a Romero movie where it belongs: on the big screen. ( No, I did not go see Land of the Dead in the cinema because it was utter crap and Romero unworthy. I blame the studio not the godfather )

However Romero luckily returned to his independent roots and revived his Dead series with Diaries of the Dead. Unfortunate since it is a indie movie this means it will almost go straight to DVD and I was afraid I would never get to see it on the big screen. Imagine my elavated jumps of joy when I discovered that Diaries of the Dead would be screened during the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival. So last friday I bought myself a ticket and finally went to see zombies the way they are supposed to be viewed: enlarged and with dolby surround.

I can honestly say that Diaries is one of the better of Romero's movies, maybe even his best one. Diaries rebooted the whole universe so it starts at the beginning, making a new fresh start. Well as fresh as a movie that revolves around walking, rotting and smelly corpses can be.

The story revolves around a group of students and their professor making a little horror movie of their own. However when zombies begin to appear everywhere the group decides to flee and the young moviemaker decides to document their flight.

The whole movie you view through the eyes of the characters themselves, almost as if you were there. This considerable adds to the fear factor because you feel as if you are jumped by the undead instead of some geezer on the screen. Although there are some scare moments, there are not a lot of them. What Diaries does is creating a tense feeling you have the whole time your watching. Yes your safe now, but only for the time being. The next zombie is always just around the corner.

Funny enough Diaries is also one of the more funnier Romero movies, there are a few jokes in the movie that will make you laugh aloud, especially the part with the Amish.

It does not mean however, that Diaries is perfect. The actors are not really that good and some of the lines are just plain annoying. Also the social commentary what always made the other Dead movies so great really doesn't work in this one. Yes you have bit about the big tv networks contorting the truth but for the rest you basically follow a group that tries to survive.

In the end Diaries is a great movie and even if you don't love zombies the way I do, you will still like this one. Now I just have to get by on the pulp before the next Romero.

First

They say that on average each day 70.000 new blogs are created. Two thoughts come to me. The first: wow that is a lot of a blogs. The second: why on earth would I want to start my own blog if there is already more then a life's worth of reading blogs on the net?
Frankly I don't know. I guess the thought of writing just appeals to me and considering till date I have not yet completed a literary masterpiece or got asked to write a column for a renowned newspaper, blogging seems the best way to write and have people read it to.

Right reason for blogging, check. What's second, oh yes: what the heck I'm I going to write about?
Now, now, don't be afraid I won't bore you with the personal details of my life. No blogs about discovering that eating Chili in the evening leads to some interesting results in the toilet bowl the next morning. ( I fear that at this moment, somewhere, someone devoted a website of detailing, archiving and visualizing the peculiarities of his or her crap )
So that leaves things that are actually interesting. Hmmm, yes, interesting. I guess that would cover interesting things I run into on the web and in real life. Oh and don't forget my cat, cats are always interesting. The fact I don't have a cat yet is a minor inconvenience. I've always wanted a cat, but alas my current appartment is just to small for one. That does not however mean I can't already imagine the peculiarities and adventures of my future cat. I'm still discussing with my girlfriend if we are going to call him Biggie or Fatty; it's going to be one big, fat, red cat.

And oh yes, history. Especially the rather peculiar tales of history that make fascinating material for blog posts. Did you know for instance, the White House is called white, because the English burned it in 1814 and afterwards they used white paint to cover the scorch marks?

So that's probably how my blog is going to be. Random interesting stuff with the occasional tidbit of history and ramblings about a imaginary cat.
Things to blog about, checked.

And of course when I am almost done with my first post I realize I forget something very important: I forget to introduce myself.
The name is Gimeor, Gim or Gimmie for friends. No, my parents were not tree-hugging hippies that they gave me such a name, because it is not my real name. It's the name I've used for years now on the web and as such it has become a kind of second name for me. It only felt natural to use that name to sign my posts with.

Introduced myself, check.

Gim out.