entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

Well, it wasn't enough for LJ's Russian corporate masters to move the servers to Russia.  They disabled HTTPS, too.  I'm done here.  I might bother moving to dreamwidth.

[ronebofh, 2wanda, and elmuchacho are cleaning out the garage at their old house in order to hand over a clean garage with the rest of the clean house to the new tenants.  WAYNE, a douchebag neighbor who looks like Wilford Brimley with a shit-eating grin, walks across the street.]

WAYNE: Hey! How's it going?

RONE: Going all right.  We got tenants for the house, so we have to finish cleaning up the garage before they move in.

WAYNE: Tenants, huh? Good! Is it a white man?

RONE: What's that?

WAYNE: White man?

RONE: [pauses, somewhat incredulous, then smiles] No.

[WAYNE laughs and walks away.  Suddenly, his head explodes, Scanners-style.  RONE rubs his forehead.]

RONE: [sotto voce, to himself] Shoulda done that years ago.

So, until recently, one of your online social circles was plagued by a complete fucktard, one that made you miss the last fucktard who wasn't that bad but who nonetheless left several years ago after receiving a lot of abuse due to being a fucktard, and then in another online social circle, you find the first guy, so you give him another chance, and, well, he's still a fucktard, and even his friends tell him, "Dude, you act like a fucktard."

And by "you", i mean "me".  Anyway, i'm tired of fucktards.  The content that i'm seeing on Google Plus reminds me a lot of good Usenet discussions, and by "a lot" i mean "sometimes it's fucking exhausting to keep up with the crap."  It doesn't have the softness of Facebook that's primarily fueled by your high school classmates and your family.  And it's even higher in nerdrage quotient than LiveJournal's peak, and it's perhaps similar in quality to Twitter but has much larger caliber because there's actually room to expand commentary.  So of course we are waiting for Google to fuck it all up because they're very eager to get on with winning the "next Microsoft" title belt.

Fucktards... why did it have to be fucktards?

In a contemporary re-imagining of the classic tale, Gulliver is a big-talking mailroom clerk who, after he's mistakenly assigned a travel piece on the Bermuda Triangle, suddenly finds himself a giant among men when he washes ashore on the hidden island of Lilliput, home to a population of very tiny people.  At first enslaved by the Lilliputians, and later declared their hero, Gulliver learns that it's how big you are on the inside that counts.

torkington: RMS: "Copyright a tyranny that is intolerable, unenforceable, and must be changed."
ronebofh: we really need an RMS bingo game. or drinking game. probably both.

Fap on! *fap* *fap* Fap off! *fap* *fap* Fap on, fap off... the Fapper.

I think that the Kindle is a complete failure.  How the hell do you start a fire with this thing?

If you ever wondered how Jeph Loeb got a job writing Batman, Warren Ellis found his submission letter.

During the "don't ask don't tell" repeal hoohah back in March, i learned a new historical tidbit: the US Civil War started because the Union wanted to station gay soldiers at Fort Sumter.

The Vatican is a rogue nation run by people who systematically protect pedophiles worldwide; it's time to invade and provoke regime change.

When i see the iPod silhouette ads, i amuse myself by thinking that they depict people who've just been shot.

How to get from Wank to Fucking in about 3 hours.

analogue n. a conversation that originates from the talker's behind.

To the woman in the red Volvo station wagon with the "A GODLESS NATION CANNOT REMAIN FREE" bumper sticker: die in a fire.

Michelle Childerley, who describes herself as an animal communications expert, told CNN that all animals -- as well as humans -- possess a psychic ability, with telepathy the main way of communicating among many species.

CNN: the world leader of gaudy, hollow journalism.

Offsides rule in futbol is like calling a violation if the Lakers don't pass three times before a shot. Artificial and unnecessary.

I'm not sure what qualifies as "artificial" in a game that is, perforce, man-made, but as far as weird rules that feel forced, football's "players with numbers in certain ranges may not be downfield to receive a forward pass unless they report to the referee as eligible" rule is pretty high on my list.  In baseball, there's the classic infield fly rule.  And then there's basketball, with multiple instances of rules created to stop a single player (e.g., George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain); how's that for "artificial"?

I find it intensely disappointing that there are only 17 Google hits for "Smeg Whitman".

You know what?  I'm officially done with you.  Your insane, stultifying Murray Chass impersonation in your AVClub interview where you babble about how much you hate the stat revolution in basketball was hugely disappointing, but then you followed that up with your craven, spoiled whinge about Belichick's 4th-and-2 decision.  You're transparently trying to become once more a "tortured Boston sports fan".  Your efforts are effectively a karmic counterweight to that wonderful, sublime article about the Dooze you wrote in January; in effect, you shat all over it.

So go cry to your daddy if you want, and do what you have to do to keep the gravy train going, but i am no longer going to tolerate the insipid and inane references to embarrassing crap like pro wrestling, reality TV, and pornography because "in the end, you're entertaining."  You aren't entertaining anymore; you're just another mainstream mediot with a disproportionate sense of self who's desperately opposed to admitting that things often change counterintuitively for the better.  Keep it up, and your kids will be hating your guts in a dozen years.

brendan_nyhan accurately sums up my feelings regarding Wanda Sykes's repulsive humor.