Dopey Asexuals Who Don’t Watch House Create Really Stupid Petition

I am an asexual (or Gray-A, if you want to get down to it, which is even more relevant). I am a virgin and I plan to keep it that way for the forseeable, regardless of whether my peers find that weird. Well-I’ll-just-be-weird-then.

Several possibly-retarded asexuals out there in Intarwebbia have begun a disturbingly dopey petition to the “Vice President of Broadcast Operations” (what?) about an episode of the program House that involved two asexuals who were Gray-A, saying that the “portrayal” of asexuals was false/wrong/bad/herpderp. The petition states:

The House episode “Better Half” which aired on January 23, 2012, represented asexuality very poorly by attributing it to both medical illness and deception. The episode encourages viewers to meet asexuality with skepticism rather than acceptance, to probe asexual people for causes of our “condition” rather than to accept us as a part of the natural spectrum of human sexual diversity. This misinformation could have severe negative consequences on asexual people around the world, especially youth, who are struggling to come to terms with themselves and find acceptance. We ask the executive producers of House and the executives at Fox to reconsider portrayals of asexual characters and engage the community to find narratives that are appropriate depictions of asexual people and relationships.

As an asexual (and therefore having a credible opinion), I declare these ignoramuses to be mentally incompetent for the responsibility of tying their own shoes. House is not a documentary about medical cases, by which sound advice may be procured! Any assertion of actual medicine practiced on House can taken as authentic medical accuracy with as much confidence as one might have in the expectation of a job well done upon assigning a giraffe to organize the Republican National Convention using only coconuts, in groups of three, in Swahili.. yesterday.

It’s a fictional show (FICTIONAL!) about a doctor who has the bedside manner of nutrient-deprived cougar loosed inside a closed room filled ankle-deep with jackrabbits, who deals with patients of varying maladies with a blunt-coldness that is funny mostly to I’m-sorry-my-brilliant-joke-offended-you-/sarcasm kind of people. Did you see that fictional bit? Was that fictional portion unclear?

What we have here is actually a case of a strange demographic of hyper-political people, who insist that “characters who have a unique trait” are not, ever, merely characters in a fictitious story that appears on their TV screens — heavens no! — but instead are actually spokespeople and/or official ambassadors of all people of the world who posses a vaguely-similar idiosyncrasy.

His Noodly Goodness forbid, that fictional characters be >> in a completely made-up story, about totally made-up individuals, that exhibit a trait that a small swath of actual citizens also possess << ..be THEIR OWN PERSON, instead of some kind of stereotype or representative of those trait-holders across the globe.

The people who wrote up this petition and those who signed it are painting on their foreheads a giant L in that kind of permanent black marker that is smelly to High Hrothgar as soon as you pull the cap off.

Further, the people upon whom this supposedly unfair stereotype might be pressed — the kind of person that makes general presumptions about the authenticity of maladies by watching dark comedies involving a doctor with a fake accent — are also retarded if they actually do add this supposed stereotype to their portfolio of other such mass-assertions regarding a people-group they’ve never encountered as dictated to them by the bountiful wisdom of overtly untrue television programs.

Dhimmitude and Obamacare: No Connection

There’s an email forward making the rounds suggesting that Obama’s medical insurance requirement actually secretly establishes a pro-Muslim legal precedent of some kind, under the name Dhimmitude on “page 107″..

The Snopes article about it says that there are exemptions for religious groups but does not offer any specific examples.

While Dhimmitude is a real thing (and a smart one, in my opinion — I think medical insurance altogether is an absurd waste of time and money that only contributes to the high cost of medical, rather than preventing it), it’s not noted in the health care bill. Further, I wouldn’t even bother suggesting that the health care bill even has “pages”, depending on what font you print it out as, because it’s just text that can be resized and still retain its original purpose.

Dhimmitude is not actually an Islamic concept, per se — it is a sharia law concept, which is the a legal system employed by many countries dominated by Muslim populations, but isn’t precisely tied to “Islam” necessarily. The word comes from adding the suffix “-itude” (wiki) alongside sharia’s Dhimma concept, of a state whose citizens are granted residence in exchange for taxation, whereas “Dhimmi” would be a citizen of that state.

The writer of the forward unreasonably suggests that the bill’s “conscious exemption”, as applied to religious groups, caters specifically to Islam and is therefore some variety of “establishment” of Islam into American culture — when instead it could just as easily be applied to the Amish, as establishment of an Amish foothold in the US government. The word “Dhimmitude” does not even appear in the text of the bill.

Pit Bull Owners Flunk Listening Comprehension Over McDonalds Ad, Begin Growling

In the news lately has been how McDonald’s has rolled over and played dead to pressure from (surely a narrow) segment of their customer base — people who either own a domesticated dog species “pit bull” or otherwise have a strange fixation on promoting a healthy image of them — after McDonald’s ran a radio advert comparing the act of trying something new as being less risky than trying to pet a stray pit bull, among other more-risky topics.

Okay first, all jokes aside about how pit bull owners are sloped-forehead retarded — the advert was not suggesting that stray pit bulls in general were risky (which they are), or that “food safety” was the topic.

A Sensible Interpretation of the Advert
The advert, above, was about the risk of trying something new.

Now, trying a new McDonald’s product is predictably REMARKABLY NOT RISKY. I think this should be fairly obvious, unless you have an aversion or allergy to an ingredient (in which case all food, McDonald’s or otherwise, could be suspect).

Now that the premise has been established that there is NO RISK from trying a new McDonald’s meal item, a list of other riskier activities is listed:

1. Petting a stray pit bull.
2. Shaving your head to see how it would look.
3. Naming your son “Sue”.
4. Giving your friends your Facebook password.

Given this scaling, with the level of risk for trying something new at McDonalds being ZERO, and giving your friends your Facebook password being 4, on a scale of 0 to 4, petting a stray pit bull is only rank number one — AND YET PIT BULL OWNERS ARE OUTRAGED!

Pit Bull Owners Outraged At The Ad Flunked Creative Writing
I would put petting a stray pit bull, on this scale, probably at number 2 at least. Naming your son Sue wouldn’t be terrible — since the trend has already been established. I had an old gent neighbor named Jan, and Ashley is a newly popular boy name, so Sue isn’t terribly far off, kids will tease any other kid about anything.

It is fairly unanimous and common knowledge, however, that petting stray animals is dangerous. The point is not specifically about pit bulls (whereby pit bulls are mentioned simply as an example) being dangerous, but that STRAY animals (in general) is risky.

The inclusion of “pit bull” is merely by example of a stray animal (out of all stray animals) risky to pet. The ad could just as easily have said petting a stray little mouse, or a stray bunny rabbit, or a stray dog of any other breed.

People who lack understanding about using style in writing would predictably flunk the reading comprehension portion if this were to appear on a standardized test.

Pit bulls being animals, petting stray pit bulls would be risky. The web is generally in agreement with the fact that petting stray animals is risky behavior. RISKY in this case, suggests that DANGER IS POSSIBLE but not necessarily that doing so is always dangerous.

A high RISK suggests that the confidence or ability to determine a dangerous situation from otherwise is difficult to immediately establish, that caution should be advised — with any animal. Strays present a situation of uncertainty, as to whether the animal, of any breed, has had proper immunizations, has been declawed, or isn’t injured, isn’t upset, has no parasites, hasn’t had proper nutrition and is madly hungry, or a whole host of other perfectly plausible issues with being stray. The emphasis of the example of pit bull is that it is STRAY and therefore RISKY about whether these variables are ideal for the safety of petting.

The problem with the visual portion of the above “alert” going out is the omission of the word “stray” and instead suggest that the advertisement instead claims petting “pit bulls” is risky. So essentially, pit bull enthusiasts are getting upset over an advertisement that was misquoted to them and they trusted that source enough to act out upon it without bothering to check out the facts first.

If you are a pit bull activist and checking things out first before you get crazy mad over nothing, to you I say: Bravo.

If you are a pit bull activist and got crazy over nothing before checking things out first, to you I say: You’re a dope.

In summary, Reasons People Are Upset About The Advert:

1. They can’t figure out the purpose of the ad.
2. They can’t understand how literary style offers “pit bull” as a random example of a stray animal that is risky to approach.
3. They’re unable to determine that the ad is actually, by comparison, calling the topic they’re upset out LESS RISKY than other fairly UNRISKY behaviors.
4. They’re dopes.

Will there be a Ferris Bueller 2? No. The teaser was for the Super Bowl Commercial.

As far as I can tell, there will not be a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 2″ film released in theatres — the teaser ad getting quite the rave is instead just a teaser for a Honda CR-V commercial by all appearances.

I checked IMDB, and there are no entries for anything Ferris Bueller for 2012, not even a post-production project — unless it’s code-named something else to throw us off (but that would be a terrible idea).

Honda has, however, released a lengthier version of the commercial already, which re-creates some of the scenes from the first film.

To be fair, I think you should keep a keen eye out that Honda hasn’t made any reference to anything about a “Ferris Bueller 2″ or anything of the kind — the attention-grabbing users who upload clipped version of the original teaser have been titling the video as movie trailers are not from Honda and are merely trolling crazed nostalgics into an uproar.

By all appearances so far, especially from lack of any coverage of a Ferris Bueller 2 pre-production, post-production, or anything-production project from any upcoming-film site that I’ve been able to detect, the Superbowl advert is all there is.

But even still — could the buzz instead be a toe-testing-the-water ploy to see whether America is ripe for green-lighting a Bueller 2 feature film?

Is the Dolphin Hunt in Denmark Cruel and Illegal?

There’s a Facebook post making the rounds that came from an email forward from about 2009, according to this Snopes article.

The problem with the post is that it contains several factual errors and seems to rely upon speculation and emotionally-charged accusations instead of verifiable sources.

The Faroe Islands are not in Denmark. The Faroe Islands, while in proximity to Denmark (out into the ocean and quite a distance north) and under the larger Kingdom of Denmark, have their own individual government and regulating body — similarly as Northern Ireland is not governed by England while still within the United Kingdom, per se.

It doesn’t happen every year. It’s not a single event where whales are mass-slaughtered, there are generally several attempts over the period of a year, bringing 50-100 with each attempt. Most attempts happen over the summer months, and the totals are cumulative yearly — not all in a single catch.

The practice isn’t cruel. At least, it’s not cruel as far as slaughter of animals is concerned in general. The practice is heavily regulated so that established techniques are followed in order for the practice to continue without undue concern from protection groups.

Nowadays, the hooks are actually blunt-tipped and the whales are apprehended by with the hook by the blowhole (like a nostril), not stabbed. Only the whales that are already dead are handled with the sharp hooks. Once brought ashore, A section of their spinal column is cut so that death comes on quickly, usually in less than a minute to minimize suffering as best as possible. The cut also severs an artery, so there is a lot of bleeding.

In my estimation, a well-practiced spinal cut and bleed-out wouldn’t be a terrible way to go — suddenly going numb and seemingly falling asleep from blood loss. It might be suddenly frightening, but if it came unexpectedly like a car accident, I wouldn’t have worried my whole life about it.

In comparison to other, more contemporary forms of livestock, these whales spend their whole lives in the natural habitat of their own selection rather than cramped, confined, man-made dwellings and do not experience stressful transportation or rough handling by impersonal machinery while alive. The catch lasts perhaps a few minutes and is unexpected, having lived and bred among their own in the wild. They’re not caught in painful traps or mishandled in ways that haven’t already been heavily regulated in response to advocacy groups.

There’s no risk of endangerment. The operation is communal (not commercial) so Islanders are permitted to participate if they wish, and the catch brings in around a thousand per year — whereas estimates of the overall population suggest around 200,000 exist of the short-finned variety, and about 1,000,000 of the long-finned sort.

So Nyuh Shi Dae / SNSD / Girls’ Generation on Letterman 01-31-12, Live with Kelly 02-01-12 is A GIANT BLINKING NEON MESSAGE TO THE AMERICAN MUSIC INDUSTRY

My favorite Korean girl-pop group Girls’ Generation known to hipster American fans as SNSD, the initials for their Korean name, So Nyuh Shi Dae.. will be performing on the David Letterman show on January 31, 2012 and then the following day on Live! with Kelly (formerly the Regis and Kelly show) the next morning!

I’m both excited and happy for them to expand their audience, but also slightly annoyed that I will no longer have the novelty of nosebleed-swooning over an obscure foreign 9-hottie pop group =P ..so perhaps I’ll post my list of hipster inb4 comments that everyone will probably be saying:

1. I’m so impressed with their English!
2. They’re so [slim/leggy/hot/gorgeous]!
3. Why did I listen to ablestmage back in November 2009 when he first mentioned it?

HD TVRip of Letterman segment for January 31, 2012 Perf:

(To grab this in hi-def MP4/FLV, try here)

HD TVrip of Live With Kelly segment for February 1, 2012:

(to grab this in hi-def MP4/FLV, try here)

This would actually be a pretty good opportunity for the American music industry to take some notes on how artists should release material, in ways they currently don’t –

PAY ATTENTION AMERICAN MUSIC INDUSTRY

1. Release versions both with and without vocals — it essentially doubles your sales opportunities, and prevents cheesy karaoke versions that butcher the originals. There are a lot of us out there that really like the music of songs by popular artists, but are turned off by the vocals (Nickelback comes to mind). If there was a instrumental version option, I would buy all of their albums flat out. You’re totally just throwing away a gigantic potential source of revenue.

2. Research how deep the following is for SNSD and recognize how dedicated fans are to recording and sharing things even like commercial spots and random event footage they appear in. If you were able to cull all of these clips into a central location, fans could celebrate their fandom of a group without having to use filesharing services to swap recorded clips among each other, which are difficult to share with people on Facebook and such because of their technical nature. You’re completely discarding BRILLIANT advertising revenue potential by avoiding it.

3. Take a giant clue from the Korean system by creating a weekly or nightly live performance popularity contest (Inkigayo, for instance) by which a lot of artists perform on stage before giant live audience and people can vote on their favorites. It’s a perfect opportunity to ride on the American Idol demographic, but doubles as a chance for American fans to be able to see their favorite artist AND be exposed to live performances of similar artists in a tour-style setting for cross-promotion. I am completely baffled as to why this kind of thing doesn’t exist already. It’s kinda like the musical guest for a late-night talk show, except the show is all about musical guests and not interviews. There are plenty of interview shows like Letterman and the Tonight Show. Give us a musical guest show of established artists and let us vote.. let us feel as if we have an active say in our favorite music!

4b. Drastically shrink the size of albums (as far as track number), and release only a few tracks, and spread it out over a year. You could spread an album of 12 songs instead out into maybe 3 albums of 4 songs each. Focus more on online sales and go digital. CREATE RARITY with physical copies by producing limited sets, and the demand with shoot up. The fact that every mom and pop shop can get their hands on a hard copy is part of what makes buying physical discs increasing lame, and reduces the value of owning the real thing.

5. Make “making-of” DVDs for each single. You guys are totally missing out on a giant source of revenue by only releasing a single album for a group, and pretty much nothing else but random tours and occasionally appear on a show more focused on celeb interviews with music as a filler. Establish a massive and engaging “fanservice” arm of promotions, by offering us loads of audio-video goodies to buy, not just clothing.

6. Gives us more multi-person groups instead of almost strictly solo artists. SNSD is a perfect example of how the Backstreet Boys or NKOTB formula still works, but try it with girls this time. Gives us opportunities to vote on our favorite (perhaps by including voting tickets in with physical album sales), who can then have a prominent solo-ish portion during a weekly/daily performance as described in #3.

7. AUGMENT THE TOUR CONCEPT. Tours can create FRUSTRATION with fans because they can’t see their favorite bands live due to limited seating, distance, absurd ticket prices, and stage setups limited to the local venue’s resources and acoustics. Create instead only periodic, rarer live performances outside of the #3 suggestion, in a massive single venue in regionalized points around the US, and not in some major city, using modular Woodstock-ish set-ups that are company owned and not governed by just whatever is available. Why only offer such limited seating to a showing of a band, when you could have OCEANS of fans coming to see the group. How is OCEANS of paying fans not better than sold-out seating? SOLD OUT means you LOST POTENTIAL REVENUE. In addition to tours to give us a more personal feel, be way more interactive with fans with contests, voting opportunities, and general PR that just some lousy commercial for an album.

8. Get on the ball with sponsorships, in a big way. SNSD does a lot of sponsorships — and in some cases create/performs songs specific to that sponsorship, such as their Intel “Visual Dreams” track (below)..

..not only do you get a sponsorship fee, but you also get an opportunity to release that sponsorship opportunity AS A TRACK or even its own special promotional album, to increase incoming revenue. Fans are so into collecting SNSD advertising, the Vita 500 energy drinks and even commercials for regular things like Domino’s Pizza are great additions to artist collections.

SNSD is bringing an incredible and engaged industry along with it, and the American pop industry DESPERATELY needs to take a giant HINT on how to run the game stateside. I haven’t purchased anything from the music industry in a really long time partly because the PR and fanservice is so dreadfully uninteresting and unengaging. SHAPE IT UP!

“I am going to (country) for x months /days” from Facebook explained

Intercepted from those crafty women trying to somehow bring about Breast Cancer awareness without actually saying anything about it (sounds about like how women communicate, huh?), comes this new Facebook/Twitter trend –

“Ladies, it is that time of year again! It is time to raise awareness for Breast Cancer. Remember the status about our bra color or where we put our purse?? It made more people aware of the problem as it went viral on FB and made the news.

Don`t tell any MEN what the status means! Copy, paste and resend this message to all your girl friends, let`s see if we can make it work like before, keep them guessing, let`s see if we make the news!

The idea is to use your birthdate, month and day only, no year!

Write: “I am going to live in (see corresponding city for your BD month below) for (day of your BD) months and a happy face.

Ex. if your BD was on February 14th, then I am going to live in London for 14 months!! :0)

January – Mexico
February – London
March – Miami
April – Dominican Republic
May – France
June – St. Petersburg
July – Austria
August – Germany
September – New York
October – Amsterdam
November – Las Vegas
December – Columbia

Optional: use “days” instead of “months” if your birth date is higher than a normal trip might be, such as for “27 days” whereas months might seem obviously untrue ~_^ “

Petition To Dr Pepper About Shutting Down Dublin? Read This First.

In north Texas, there’s a town called Dublin — famous for its primary industry, a bottling plant that has produced and distributed the Dr. Pepper brand of soda for the longest of any current distributor, around 120 years in operation.

The Dublin distributor made a name for itself and had quite a loyal following among “Peppers” (people who drink Dr. Pepper) who would seek out cans and bottles distributed from this single plant.

The Dr. Pepper/Snapple company (hence DP/S) recently came down on Dublin, on a trademark dispute, regarding Dublin‘s decision to break contract.

The reason Dublin Dr. Peppers are leaving the market and the reason the Dublin plant operators are losing their livelihood — is because of their own decision to purposefully break contract by (a) distributing out of territory, and (b) using a custom Dr. Pepper label.. is what brought the hammer down, not DP/S trying to ruin our fun.

In the same way that a landlord has complete liberty to evict you if you bring pets into property you’re renting, when the rental agreements states that pets aren’t allowed — so does DP/S have complete liberty to shut down operations that break contract with the original agreement.

Dublin Dr.Peppers would still be around if Dublin Dr.Pepper had kept to the agreement.

The reason a dam holds up a river so it won’t wash a town away, is because of the strength of the dam. When you take away pieces of the dam, you risk drowning the town.

When you have a peace treaty with a superpower, but go against the terms of the treaty by your own, willful decision, you bring upon you the threat of annihilation.

When you make an agreement with DP/S to distribute their product — and it is DP/S’s product, not yours — but you decide to break the terms of the agreement, you, yourself, risk destroying the market you’ve built and secured.

Laying blame on DP/S for taking down Dublin is like blaming the water for flowing down on you after you yourself destroyed the dam!

It’s like throwing a rock up into the air, and then blaming gravity for when it hits you on the head as you walk away in ignorant, peace of mind!

It’s sad that the town of Dublin is losing its major industry, and that the people there are losing their jobs — yes, we agree on that — BUT THE BLAME GOES TO DUBLIN.

Dublin created their own label, and created a kind of contraband market for their contract-breaking label that should not have existed in the first place, according to the agreement they had with DP/S. Grievances should be directed to those who created this false-market of Dublin-branded Dr. Peppers, not DP/S for enforcing the original terms of the agreement.

Note, however, that DP/S does still sell the sugar cane variety of its Dr. Pepper soft drink, but just through a different distributor (who can actually obey the rules) so the sweeter tasting, non-HFCS formula isn’t disappearing from the market — just the “Dublin” brand label is leaving.

Dear Super-Rich American(s)

Dear Super-Rich American(s):

I’d like a single lump sum of $300,000 on which to live — with the promise that over the course of the rest of my lifetime, I will have, myself, given away at least $400,000 out into the US economy.

The benefit to you, I admit, is largely novelty.

Sincerely, ablestmage

Why You Should Become An Imperial, Not A Stormcloak

In the game Skyrim, you’re given the option to either side with the Imperials or the Stormcloaks. Skyrim is one province of the continent of Tamriel, on planet Nirn, upon which the Elder Scrolls games are based. The Stormcloaks are “true” Nords of the Skyrim region who wish to freely worship Talos, and hold this as their primary reason for fighting the Imperials. The Imperials are a kind of police that enforce the laws of the Cyrodiil, of which Skyrim is one part. The Imperials were at war with the Elves at one point, and as a concession in a treaty for peace, decided to permit the Thalmor (a religious clan of Elves) to police Skyrim in search of Talos-worshippers in what amounts to a ban on Talos worship. The Imperials never or rarely enforce the ban, and desire free Talos worship as much, if not more, as do the Stormcloaks. The Thalmor enforce the ban because they believe Talos is not a god, and Talos-worship amounts to idolatry of a man, since they assert a man cannot become a god. The Nords believe Talos did become a god.

That said, in the game, I believe you should side with the Imperials, not the Stormcloaks. Here’s why.

The Imperials and the Stormcloaks are united in their desire to make Talos worship a right of every Nord, but the Stormcloaks refuse to admit it. The Imperials only agreed to the ban (that they only rarely or never enforce — only the Thalmor enforce it) as a bargaining chip to end the war with the Elves.

The Stormcloaks are a cluster of poorly organized lay-abouts, who just sit about and moan about how they can’t worship Talos out in the open like they used to, with the Thalmor roaming the neighborhood. However, instead of attacking the Thalmor directly — which are far fewer in number and are essentially there only because the Imperials have a treaty to let them in.. the Stormcloaks decide to attack the Imperials of their own blood. WHY?

Can’t you see that the Imperials are surely using this treaty as a strategy against the Thalmor, to let them in, and then suddenly make the strike? They can’t contact their Elven brethren when they’re way out in Riften or someplace, so that would be a prime opportunity to commit a fatal blow, an “Order 66″ as it were, against the Elves while their backs are turned believing themselves to be in security from attack, when instead the Imperials are simply sharpening their swords and lacing them with Drain Magicka poisons. The Stormcloaks are totally messing up the plan.

The best plan, if the Stormcloaks could actually think for a second, unlike the meat-head Ah-nold stereotypes they appear to be, is to become an Imperial, rise up through the ranks, and then sucker-punch the Thalmor with a surprise attack that will shatter their foothold and turn the tide widely into Nord favor. The Stormcloaks should be in support of Imperial efforts, not hampering it with their incessant whining and poorly-organized attacks that only strengthen the Thalmor advantage!

The Imperials, to use a metaphor, are becoming employees of the Thalmor, but using the money earned from it to buy a poison dagger to stab the Thalmor as they drift off to sleep in the big cushy office chair, believing they’re in safety and power..

Shadow Hide Y… er… Long Live Talos!

Master List of Music Puns, “Not Your Forte” Etc

(feel free to add your own in the comments, no registration required)

I didn’t want my kids to join band or orchestra, and risk being exposed to so much sax and violins.

It only leads to treble.

How clef-er.

I’ve been told I’m pretty sharp.

These jokes always fall flat.

People just don’t measure up.

We just don’t have the staff for it.

Didn’t you get my note?

I’ve had to scale back.

It’ll just take a minuet.

There have been some minor setbacks.

This was a major development.

Pfff!

This was just a prelude to a repeat offense.

I didn’t mean to de-bass your comment.

I think your G-string is a bit tight.

They’re not really my forte.

You’re not really in tune with what’s going on, are you?

Hey — give it a rest, retard.

It built up with a crescendo, but then went mute.

Wouldn’t mind putting some spit in THAT valve!

I think your valves need some oil.

Can’t you reed?

O-boe-y!

I have the weirdest tromboner right now.

Could you pass me that tuba toothpaste?

Don’t use that tone with me.

I just jazzed my pants!

No matter what card I play, he always has a spade to trumpet.

On a high note, however…

Pitch the idea to me tomorrow.

I got caught tambourine with the security settings.

You should triangling — it’s all in the wrist.

Mmm! These cello pudding pops are amazing!

I didn’t mean to harp on you about it.

Are you calling me a lyre?

We’ve really got to guitar act together.

Why did you banjo? She was too vocal.

I like how you conduct your business.

It was an accident! I didn’t mean to harmony one!

Well that was off-key.

She’s a great girl — you should meter next time!

The package is on its way, bound fermata-gascar.

Could you repeat that?

Wouldn’t mind practicing some of THOSE fingerings..

We’ll be working in concert with other professionals.

Tour three should do it.

This ring cymbalizes so much to me.

We couldn’t hire anyone full-time, but I supposed we could always just timpani-dy person from the shelter.

Blast it!

Keepin’ it trill, bro.

Do not open with a sharp instrument.

I think I’ve found a snare in your plan..

Are you sure? Yes Embouchure!

Master List of Skyrim Tricks – Infinite Magicka, Quick Leveling Skills, Etc

This is just a hastily-assembled list of tricks for the gaming-system versions of Skyrim (not PC) that I’ve gathered from the general Skyrim community at large. I don’t take any credit for them — just wanted to compile a list of them for other adventurers out there =)

~ Infinite Gold Trick While You Sleep IRL ~

1. The easiest way to make gold without tricks is to chop wood. At most mills, there is a chopping block on the grass somewhere and a woodcutter’s axe lying around nearby. Take the axe, and walk up to the chopping block and activate it. You’ll go into a little animation to chop wood, and if you let it go (for about 30 seconds) when it’s done you’ll end up with 6 pieces of firewood. Take the firewood to the mill owner, and he/she’ll pay you for chopping them and take the wood. On average, the payment comes out to about 1 gold per second waiting for the animation to complete, or 60 gold per minute. The problem is that when the animation is over, you’ve got to look back down to restart the process — but not if you’ve got a companion with you. If you go into the command mode, you can order a companion like Lydia to chop wood for you, and your view never changes — you’ll just need something to press the button repeatedly. If you can figure out some kind of device that will press the button to order the character to chop wood repeatedly, and turn off the TV/monitor while you go to bed for the night, you could conceivably wake up in the morning and have one metric s#!t-ton of firewood to give to the mill owner. At 1-gold/1-second, if you were to sleep for 6 hours and no dragons were to attack or whatever system you set up to press the button didn’t get interrupted, you could have 21,600 gold worth of firewood when you wake up the next day.

~ Infinite Magicka ~

1. “After doing the College of Winterhold quest where you get the “Mystical Tuning Gloves” and purge the magicka reserves, keep the gloves and use the healing spell and equilibrium, while wearing the Archmage outfit and Savos Arens circlet, then switch to another spell, for some reason my magicka bar disappeared and i actually had infinite magicka, I then used telekenisis and rubberbanded my R1 and in 10 mins got Lvl 100 Alteration,” says one YouTube commenter. I haven’t tried this myself, as I’m not that far into the Winterhold quests, but looks promising. [via (from a comment)]

2. There’s at least one way you can essentially get infinite Magicka but requiring you to pause time for a few seconds, without needing to do some advanced quest first. You must have an item that increases your Magicka, such as a helmet that when equipped raises the number amount of total Magicka available to use. Once you cast all of it complete down to nothing, simply go to your menu, unequip it and then reequip it, and your magicka increases automatically (without having to wait for it to restore slowly). It’s easier to simply put the magicka-boosting item on Favorite, and from the favorite menu un/reequip while you’re in battle. The larger the Magicka boost you get from the item, the longer you’ll be able to cast without having to pause to un/reequip. [via]

~ Infinite Speech Leveling ~

1. In Riften, go to the Black-Briar Meadery and speak with Ungrien at the counter. Choose the option “Tell me about Maven Black-Briar” and after his response, you’ll get the option to Persuade. Select it, and you’ll get experience — but the option doesn’t disappear. You can go back and ask about Maven Black-Briar again, and persuade again, as often as you like. Continually pressing A will repeat the same conversation over and over, so you don’t need to switch conversation options to do it. Set up the controller on the floor with a book on the button under your foot while you’re at the computer surfing the web, and you can just tap your foot in the meantime, and change your perk options at each level up. I’m tapping my foot as I’m typing this very entry… [via]

~ Infinite Sprint ~

1. To sprint normally, you tap the left bumper (LB, above the left trigger), but doing so drains your Stamina. Instead, hold a torch in your left hand, and a sword in your right. Have the sword out and ready to fight, but sheath it and immediately begin sprinting by repeatedly tapping LB so that you run out of Stamina and it starts to flash. When it begins to flash, just hold down LB and you can sprint until you let off LB, regardless of whether you’re out of Stamina. [via]

~ Buy The Whiterun House Without Spending Gold ~

1. Although you’ll still need 5000 gold on hand for the trick to work, you’ll end up getting to keep it all. I must add, however, that when I tried this myself (which I saved first in case there was anything weird about it), I could not buy the decorations for the house afterward for some reason. The trick is to visit the man you buy the house from in the early hours of the night, say 3am or so, when he’s asleep. When he wakes up, he’ll be standing right next to a nightstand or wardrobe. When you agree to buy the house, back out of the conversation before the gold is deducted from you, and immediately put the gold in the nightstand or wardrobe nearby. He’ll still give you the key, but you can just get your gold back out of the place you put it, and keep it.

~ Infinite Destruction / Infinite One-Handed / Infinite Two-Handed Training ~

1. Near the very beginning as you’re being led out during the first dragon attack that saves you, try to trap the person leading you, such as by standing in front of him so he can’t move forward. We will never attack you, and you can used fire/weapons on him as much as you please.

~ Infinite Conjuration Training ~

1. Find a slaughterfish (a fish that attacks you) and step out onto the shore so that it is still in attack mode but can’t reach you. Cast a conjure weapon spell, and sheathe it back making it disappear, and repeat. As long as you’re in battle with something (also such as an archer that is far away but shooting arrows at you, or a chasing enemy that gets stuck in water similarly) then you can keep conjuring new weapons as much as you please and still get experience credit for it.

~ Infinite Restoration Training ~

1. Locate a dungeon trap that will be triggered indefinitely, such as the kind that shoots fire by stepping on a pressure plate or fires darts continuously. One example is a fire pressure plate in the cave where there Greybeards send you to locate the Horn, that shoots fire up continuously by standing on it. Simply stand on the plate or whatever device that causes damage, and continuously heal. If your magicka gets too low, just move off it and wait for it to restore, then repeat.

~ Infinite Illusion Training ~

1. Dual-cast Courage on any NPC. [via]

I am gradually updating this list, so if you find something concrete, please add it in comments and I’ll see about adding it =)

Contagent Thinking – Definition

Contagent Thinking is the thought process or rationale that suggests “touching A to B and then touching A to C is like touching B to C” via evidence that is generally logically unsound. The phrase is generally used in a negative context by those who believe they do not use such rationale, such as a person who is at ease with operating a public restroom’s flush handle with their bare hands instead of having to kick it on “like a germaphobe would”. A piece of bread is suddenly inedible after falling onto an employee break-room table, for risk of being contaminated by the hands of any other employees that slept on, sneezed over, or otherwise tainted that table unbeknownst to the bread owner’s arrival — regardless of whether any employee actually did — to the contagent thinker.

In a sense, it is a method for short-cutting research by simply emotionally eliminating all potential for “contamination” by germs as a failsafe method to avoid illness — but is often seen instead as wasteful and potentially more hazardous to prevent the body’s exposure to common sources germs it could easily handle to better prepare itself for future exposures that cannot be predicted.

Ablest Video Picks – October 29, 2011

Okay, yeah, so it’s been more than a week. I need to get this down to a routine instead of every month-ish like I had been with the image queue =P

WTF – Korean Nose Rollers ~~~ I have just been gobbling these videos up over the last 24 hours. I really did have to pop a melatonin to make myself sleepy so I would go to bed, watching their videos about Korean culture. These two, who are married, are like the perfect college friends you never had, who are funny all the time. They have two current serieseseses going on, TL;DR where they explain something at length about Korean culture or such, and WTF (Wonderful Treasure Find) where they try out and talk about a weird commercial product they bought while in Korea, like Nose Rollers or Eyebrow Tape.. Just BRILLIANT material all around.

Settlers of Catan Book Trailer ~~~ So the popular board game The Settlers of Catan is getting a novelization, and lately books have started getting their own “trailers” (like a movie preview/commercial).. I doubt I’ll get it, especially after seeing this trailer, but I’ll still enjoy a game or two =)

Fails of the Weak #57 ~~~ This is a regular feature for this channel, showing matchmaking games from Halo Reach where someone screwed up royally. Most of the fails are really ordinary, but a couple of them really shine through, like the exploding ghost in this one..

Halo 1 Original Tricks – p1 – Hold 3 Weapons, Cryo-chamber Glitches ~~~ This is the first in a new series of videos I’m making, to vaguely correspond with the release of Halo: Anniversary.. tricks and glitchy fun things that happen in Halo 1 (the original) to see if such things ever happen or are possible in Anniversary..

David Calvo juggles and solves Rubik’s Cubes ~~~ Not only can this show-off solve one of these annoying cubes.. but he can do it in one hand.. AND while juggling two other cubes in the other hand! ¬__¬;;;

State of the Mage Address ~ Oct 2011

I’ve become a pinch disillusioned with my creation here, after realizing there are around 15-20 regular daily front-page hitters, whereas most of my daily hits (150+) come from a single page I made 3 years ago about free Xbox Live one-month trials. I’ve decided to suspend that page (turning it into a draft form so it won’t appear to the public, but so that it still exists) and then gauge the impact.

It’s nice to say that I’ve created a blog that’s gotten over a million hits since it began, and has such a powerful Google pagerank that I can post about a fairly wide range of topics, search for my topic on Google within an hour, and find my blog’s article about it within the first couple pages of results.

I’m heavily considering switching over to a daily video format, in the sense of perhaps 5 videos per day with descriptions, like unto the style of several other video aggregators I regularly visit. For example:

SNSD – The Boys ~~ Finally, the next MV of super-gorgeous Korean pop group So Nyuh Shi Dae after a lengthy wait.. starting today! Thankfully Sunny’s hair is just a wig, and my Korean version of oshimen, YoonA, is the first one we see ^___^ but darn it, if I can’t keep hearing who let the dogs out in the chorus ~__^;; The rappish-section during mixed into the chorus reminds me of After School’s Bang! track, too..

Deviant Electronics – Oystadub ~~ Going through some old backup discs, I found a collection of goa-trance tracks a friend mailed me and had a bit of a memory stroll, way back from 1997 ~_^

Woman Defends 8-yo Boy From Grizzly ~~ David Letterman (an American evening television show host) interviews a woman who, with the help of her horse, repelled a giant American grizzly bear from a boy out on a wilderness tour. Great questions and backstory!

Voted Worst TV Ad in America, 2011 ~~ The results are in from a Consumerist poll, suggesting that this Luv’s commercial featuring animated diaper-clad youngsters competing for the greatest fecal eruption with no leakage is the worst America as to offer. As someone who will not be having children ever, I thought it was pretty fun to watch =)

How DNA Copies Itself ~~ Although we may disagree on how this process got started, I think we can each privately marvel just the same at the fact that this process did at some point begin and that it still continues to occur seemingly automatically..

I’ll see what I can do about getting one of these five-video posts going at least more than once per week, and will be suspending the random image posting for a while (unless popular demand insists upon its return) =)

Random Image: Brush With Greatness

Try writing 300 or more words about this picture.
Bonus points if you don’t use the words in the title!

Random Image: Long Ago, Crunch

Try writing 300 or more words about this picture.
Bonus points if you don’t use the words in the title!