Fun Stuff

Something Seems Fishy…

/ Shane / Leave a comment

When I was walking the kids to school this morning, I passed a notice pasted on a light pole. It’s not super common to have notices in my neighborhood, so I was curious, and I went to read it. It was for an archery tournament / costume carnival in our neighborhood.

Archery tournament / costume carnival? In my neighborhood? That sounds extremely improbable, but also awfully familiar…

I got out a pen to write “ROBIN DON’T GO THE SHERIFF IS PLANNING A TRAP”, but unfortunately the event already took place. No word on if there were any stork costumes or amazing arrow-splitting shots. Good luck, buddy, hope you made it out alive.

 

Science says I’m going to be eaten by zombies

/ Shane / Leave a comment

A new study shows that Chicago is a terrible place to be during the (inevitable) zombie apocalypse. Specifically, it ranks 49th out of the 53 largest cities in the U.S.

In general, I agree that big cities are terrible places to be during a zombie apocalypse. There are too many people, and each one of them is, at best, a leather-clad motorcycle raider waiting to happen, and at worst a member of the shambling horde, ready to be the straw that broke the camel’s back by adding *just enough* body weight onto your outer security perimeter to send you running for the hills. How does every zombie movie go? First you have the initial rush for safety, then a nice lull in the middle while the survivors consolidate their fortress, then the inevitable overwhelming tide of zombies overrunning everything.

If you hang around in a place as populated as Chicago, you’re practically begging for a tsunami of zombies.

However, I’m not so sure I agree with the methodology of this study. Far be it from me to question the scientific rigor of the researchers at CareerBuilder.com, but the metrics that they are looking at make no sense. Population density? Sure, makes sense. Equating the number of available handguns to the number of people in law enforcement? Yeah, come hang out in my neighborhood sometime. I guess all those guys hanging out on the corner are off duty cops.

But looking at the number of people in “biomedical research and development” makes absolutely no sense. First off, you don’t find a cure by sheer numbers. It kind of matters WHICH researchers you have working on the project (the guys studying which direction dogs like to poop in, for example, probably aren’t going to be a big help). Second off, if someone does manage to find a cure, it doesn’t really matter where they are. I don’t care that they’re in another city, only that they found a cure. Finally, your ability to develop a cure has nothing to do with your ability to hole up during a zombie outbreak. If someone, somewhere, wants to work on a cure, I highly encourage them to take that route, but it doesn’t help me secure my canned goods (and bee tee dubs, spoiler alert: there’s never a cure. All the aspirin in the world can’t cure someone who had their face eaten off two weeks ago.)

Look, I’m a software engineer, so I think I’m qualified to say that if you’re counting being close to MIT as an asset in a fight, you’re doing it wrong.

Okay, maybe it makes some sense to look at some of those things, but it seems silly to leave out vastly more important concerns. Who has the best natural barriers, like rivers and mountains? Who is closest to food warehouses? Military bases? CDC locations? Who lives the closest to Norman Reedus??

(All that being said, good work Grand Rapids! #12 overall. Who would have thought?)

Link via Andrew.

Knitting: a sure sign of villany

/ Shane / Leave a comment

From the truly surreal files, you remember the Batman villain Bane? This guy?

You notice anything strange in his hand there? Turns out that our buddy Bane is a fan of the fiber arts.

This may seem like a strange choice; as the article points out:

…it seems pretty out of place for someone set on destroying a city to all of a sudden have a penchant for arts and crafts.

Not so strange after all. Director Christopher Nolan modeled “The Dark Knight Rises” on “A Tale of Two Cities”, which makes Bane Madame Defarge:

She’s a villain from A Tale of Two Cities who has a passion for two things in particular — killing and knitting, as seen in this excerpt:

“Eh well! How then?” demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.

So that’s not one, but two knitting villains. Surely a coincidence. On the other hand, knitting teaches you patience and attention to detail, something that most villains could use a little bit more of. Anyway, it’s not like everybody who knits is evil…

::Slowly casts on stitches while staring you in the eye::

::Retreats into a dark corner::

::Leans back into the light so he can see what he’s doing…those stitches are tiny::

Link via Jen.

The President’s Bunghole, and other concerns

/ Shane / Leave a comment

It has come to my attention that not everybody has seen this. In keeping with being the last person on the Internet to break news, I give you this amazing audio, wherein President Lyndon B. Johnson orders a pair of pants (transcript here):

This phone call absolutely captured my imagination for several reasons:

  1. “And make the pockets at least an inch longer, my money, my knife, everything falls out”
    If anything signifies this was a different time, it’s the fact that the President carries a knife in his pocket. A knife! You don’t fool around with a President who has a knife in his pocket. Screw the Secret Service, you let an assassin come at LBJ, boy howdy. You don’t like LBJ’s policies on Vietnam? LBJ gonna cut ya.
  2. “these are the best I’ve had anywhere in the United States”
    The man wants some pants, and these pants are great! Excepting, of course, the pockets, zipper, waistline, crotch…okay, they could use a little improvement. See, this is a man with some very exacting specifications for his pants. I mean, you don’t get to be President of the United States without a little attention to detail.
  3. “the crotch, down where your nuts hang – is always a little too tight” “See if you can’t leave me an inch from where the zipper (burps) ends, round, under my, back to my bunghole, so I can let it out there if I need to” “because they cut me, it’s just like riding a wire fence”
    So much for my dream of being the first President to talk about my bunghole in the oval office.
    Where to even start. I mean, this is where it really starts going off the rails. You’ve got a sitting President casually talking about his neither regions, burping, you know, wherever the mood takes him. It’s good to be king.
    I just like how it’s all so casual, you know? It’s like, man’s got some specification on his pants, and he just wants to communicate them in the most straightforward manner possible. He’s not trying to be crass; he’s just trying to let Mr. Haggar know what he needs. (I would say he’s got better things to do, but then again, he did spent about 3 minutes describing a pair of pants).
    And hey, do you really want the president’s pants tight? Johnson’s got to *breath* my friend. If you’re making important military decisions, you’ve got to be comfortable. How are you supposed to lead a nation when wearing pants is like riding a wire fence?
  4. “because I’m running to a funeral”
    Not…THE funeral, though, right? Please tell me this conversation didn’t take place just before THE funeral.

Guitar solo or giant slug? You decide!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sure, if someone just snaps a picture of you rocking out hardcore, and presented that picture without context, you might look a little silly. Alternately, if someone snaps a picture of you holding an enormous, horrifying, slimy slug, and presented *that* picture without context, you might *also* look a little silly.

So I ask you, are these pictures photoshopped, or original?

(More at the link)