Category: stardate

OJ: hey what is that japanese New Years lucky bag word?
BRAIN: lucky bag word?!
OJ: nevermind google search helped me
OJ: fukubukuro

Fukubukuro, or “Mystery Bag,” is a Japanese New Year’s Day tradition during which merchants sell sealed bags of various items at a substantial discount, often as high as 50%. Shoppers may get some great deals on the contents of these bags – even if they don’t know what exactly they’re buying.

BRAIN: oh right
BRAIN: like a grab bag
OJ: yeah
BRAIN: we have that at Obon
BRAIN: except since it’s so americanized I never knew the japanese name for it… (plus I hadn’t done it for new years)
OJ: there is something in singapore called a “lucky dip”
OJ: which is a raffle thing
OJ: you buy a ticket (5 or 50 or whatever dollars), get a draw and a number

OJ: Japan celebrates NY on 1/1 correct?
BRAIN: yes
BRAIN: you have to clean your house
BRAIN: and have friends over
BRAIN: with a lot of food available
BRAIN: generally there’s some enka awards on TV

OJ: interesting, so similar to some of the chinese traditions for lunar new year
BRAIN: what happens for that?
OJ: lots of diff traditions depending on rural village
OJ: common ones include: big meal, or vegetarian meal
OJ: clean house
OJ: pay off debts
OJ: eat oranges or pineapples (pun on words)
OJ: “lucky money” / “red envelopes” from married people to kids (nieces/nephews also)

BRAIN: related: I found out recently what you do with your daruma after the eyes are filled in – you burn it at the temple at the end of the year
OJ: oh… interesting
OJ: i want a Hello Kitty daruma but i won’t fill it in or burn it
OJ: unless hmm, i had extras
BRAIN: so what, she’d just be eyeless forever?
OJ: yah
BRAIN: so so sad
OJ: well u fill in one eye?
OJ: or you hae one with both, but don’t make a wish
BRAIN: what!
BRAIN: a free ride for HK daruma?!
BRAIN: wtf, that’s even worse!
BRAIN: you commie!

Halfway through I’m at Macy’s and there’s a ton of people made up like the Neanderthals from the GEICO commercials. They stay in character, just going about their business shopping (I can’t recall any clerks who were Neanderthal-Americans), and occasionally being loud about being discriminated against in a Cro-Magnon-centric world. Although I don’t think we’re supposed to use that phrase anymore.

The phenomenon is so awesome it’s hard not to giggle constantly. I tweet that it’s happening (I used Twitter in my dream about GEICO!!), before talking to an elderly woman in a wheelchair, being pushed by a relation. They are both Neanderthals. I both play along and try to get her to break character, making a comment about picking up something with her feet — I’m not sure if she’s turning into a chimp, or I’m just stupid, or if I’m baiting her deliberately — she almost breaks character but does not.

Later my friend Jackie and I sneak into a big party on the roof of a hotel downtown… it turns out to be Tom Hanks’ birthday party, and Richard Branson is there with a cloned triceratops.

Tom Hanks is sitting with a friend at a small table while everyone comes up and wishes him happy birthday (he looks young!), and when I do, he seems to mistake me for someone else because he thinks we may have met before. Either we actually have met before and I’m fuzzy on it or I capitalize on his confusion, because I give him one of my MOO cards with the little weird images from my films on it.

LATER as I’m awake, I realize the GEICO mascots aren’t actually Neanderthals, they are early modern humans, just “cavemen.”

SUMMARY:
Roomites: there is nothing remarkable about this particular bad movie. You are just revealing your own sparse cultural exposure.

“The Room” is a real bad movie. It now has a hipster following that are amazed that a bad movie exists. There are heavily-attended screenings of this movie. They have DISCOVERED THE BAD MOVIE. Congratulations!

it’s not that I don’t go see bad movies, or even revel in them – the annoying part is the notion that this movie is somehow special. Where were these jerks when the grindhouse movie theaters were shutting down? The UC Theater?

They are dilettantes. Fuck them in the eye.

At some point, someone will tell you about The Room! And how it’s so bad! You have to see it! I lost count a while ago.

Hey: there are lots of obscure movies you should see, young thing. Actual good movies deserving of your evangelism! and great “bad” ones like “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!” Decades of cinema, waiting to be seen… but you likely won’t, because all your retarded friends won’t be doing it. So go get an ironic tattoo of a kanji you can’t read and get out of my face. Or write me a check.

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes

Pentagon Supplier for Rifle Sights Says It Has ‘Always’ Added New Testament References

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

…

“It’s wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws,” said Michael “Mikey” Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.

“It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they’re being shot by Jesus rifles,” he said.

Weinstein, an attorney and former Air Force officer, said many members of his group who currently serve in the military have complained about the markings on the sights. He also claims they’ve told him that commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as “spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.”

He said coded biblical inscriptions play into the hands of “those who are calling this a Crusade.”

Man, these guys. Good work exposing our military to lawsuit Trijicon! This is in addition of the obvious violation of the Bill of Rights. And giving ammo to Islamic “hey stop invading us” countries. They so crazy.

This is what makes me disbelieve conspiracy theories about 9/11 being planned by reactionaries: reactionaries in general are so fucking stupid, they endanger their own interests on a routine basis– they’d NEVER be able to pull something off without screwing themselves.

A couple days ago Diane and I came back from the gym, early in the morning before I went to work. On the way in I ran over a hose left in the driveway… we checked it and it was not crushed. But that was weird, why was the hose in the driveway? Looking at the other hose, we saw it was on, and a torrent of water was running into the garden. The bush where the water was running was soaked– it had been running for a while.

This was bad – neither of us could remember turning the hose on for the past few days, even weeks. No one had visited us for at least a week. The only conclusion was that someone had walked into our yard and turned on the hose. To mess with us maybe? Either that or… GHOSTS!!!

Trying not to freak out, we put aside our concerns about hauntings. Someone had been skulking around our house, and our water bill was bound to be astronomical. We called the police.

When the police got back to us shortly after, the officer reassured us.

OFFICER: I already know who it is. There’s this “street personality,” David, who has a thing with water. If he sees a hose or something, he’ll hose down your porch, or wash your car, water your plants… if you left a broom out he probably would have swept the driveway.
DIANE: if I have the gate closed, will he come in?
OFFICER: No, and it’s just if he sees your hose. You can get rid of him; one of your neighbors told him to go away and he never came back.

This seemed to fit – I remember a few days before Diane had left her car under the carport and for some reason she had rinsed it off, on a day that was raining. I thought it was weird at the time, but thought nothing of it…

So, a couple of observations here:

Somehow, it feels less scary if it’s a crazy homeless person who is compelled to water lawns, than if it’s a random, unknown person.

Also, there’s something kind of goblin-ish about David. It feels like a tomte or domovoi or something, complete with incantation to offend/make him go away.

Anyway we’re keeping the gate closed now.

BRIAN: Everlasting Gobstoppers would be a terrible product, unless they were on a lease-only payment plan
KATHERINE: Why is that?
SEAN: Because Katharine, if they last forever then soon everyone will have one and then there will be no need to buy anymore.
KATHERINE: But that’s the point so the poor can have candy everyday too! And it’s good for denists!
SEAN: But it’s not good for the person who made the candy.
KATHERINE: He can be a denist!
BRIAN: You guys need to take this act on the road

My cousins crack me up.

I’m rereading Atlas Shrugged, and I have to say it’s a lot less frustrating this time.

The first few times I tried to read it, the arguments of the “weak” characters (the villains) were so exasperating, mainly because they seem unmotivated to me. The brother Taggart says something along the lines of “making money isn’t important,” but what businessman would EVER say this? He also wants to give business to the underdog supplier, even though the supplier is less competent, because it’s more “fair.” Which is also ridiculous.

Thanks I suppose to the absurd incompetence and blatant lies of the failed Bush Administration, I am now much more able to recognize a reframing device.

This exchange which opens the book is an appeal to anti-anti-Monopoly Legislation. But the argument for anti-Monopoly laws isn’t “it’s more fair.” I suppose you could look at them this way, but the way I see it, their benefit is not intended for small business owners. The real benefit is consumer protection, so the monopoly cannot charge arbitrarily large prices for a given product (the consumer has the choice to consume the competitors’ product or service). To see the desirability of this scenario, look at your cable bill. You always have the option of NOT having cable TV I suppose…

My new realization is: I think this actual benefit was well understood at the time Rand was writing, so I have to assume she’s doing it on purpose. Which again points to her classist hypocrisy. If Objectivism is about an objective reality and everyone doing what is in their own best interest, how is encouraging monopolies in the consumers’ best interest? And there will always be more consumers than producers, especially for the high-margin goods and services required to support Rand’s titans of industry. She’s basically taken the working part of Utilitarianism and thrown it away

AYN RAND: *pisses in JB’s cheerios*
JEREMY BENTHAM: What a bitch!

From another angle: monopolies are actually bad for businesses operating in a consumptive role outside of the monopoly. If I have an ice cream store, and there’s only one company that makes paper cups, and they suddenly choose to charge $5 a cup… I’m screwed.

My theory as to the motivation for Rand ignoring reality like this: it is easier to disregard one’s philosophical opponent if one paints them in one’s OWN MIND as unreasonable. Example: Liberals hate America! Liberals want to destroy jobs! Liberals like killing babies!

Life is easier to live if you ignore all contradictions. LA LA LA I’M NOT LISTENING TO YOU… it’s even easier to be a follower of this kind of thinking nowadays, because the media outlets will provide you with these justifications themselves.

I was in a conversation with a relative who is a genuine dittohead… I asked him why it was Liberals Hate America, or any number of other questions requiring some kind of model of his chosen adversaries… he never had an answer. To him, The Liberals were and still are a crazy group of monsters who act completely randomly, with no rationale at all. All he knew was that they do these things that are bad. It never occurred to him to wonder why.

I remember people having this problem with al-Qaeda. I suppose they still do. Yes, al-Qaeda hates America… but… why? What is their actual plan? al-Qaeda is not “COBRA” from G I Joe; their big idea is not just randomly blow things up. So what is their deal? How are they served by terrorism? Most of the time, people have never even wondered this question.

THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE: …aaaaand here comes Zoe, star of Sesame Street! Zoe who paved the way for female muppets everywhere!

PAVED THE WAY!?! How can you forget Betty Lou, or Prarie Dawn?! Prarie Dawn, before she left Sesame Street to start a family…

PRARIE DAWN: look at him Bert! Look into his eyes! He’s your SON Bert!!

MELISSA: Nigerian priests are declaring children
MELISSA: who need to be excercised
MELISSA: so they will pour acid down their throat
MELISSA: family members will pay to have an “excorsim” done which ususally involves mutilation
MELISSA: cutting of the skull
MELISSA: arms legs you name it
MELISSA: while they’re all awake
BRAIN: wow, does that work?
MELISSA: no this is extremely poor villages
MELISSA: and a way for the priest to make money
MELISSA: by targeting those that cannot defend themselves
BRAIN: so the kids are still possessed after the exorcism?
BRAIN: that is just bad business
MELISSA: there was Never anything wrong
MELISSA: with them in the first place
BRAIN: well yeah, except they are possessed
MELISSA: this is just the “newest,” trend
MELISSA: for those to make money
BRAIN: that is nothing to play with there
BRAIN: you got to get that spirit shit out ASAP

A couple weeks ago I went to the Pacific Pinball Expo, which was awesome as always.

I played a whole lot of pinball! There were some really tricky E/M era games there (pre-computer chip), the majority of which I think were from the private collections of the guys who run Lucky Juju.

A very cool feature was the lectures given by some of the pinball designers and artists who were guests of the expo.

Some of the more interesting machines I played:

• Flip a card – a basic collect-the-targets game. EM, simple yet effective
• Spectrum – very NOT simple – the playfield is covered with a giant grid of colored lights – hit the appropriate color target to be in time with the rotating lights. Apparently based on the logic board game “Mastermind.” Another cool feature: there are drains up-field near the top of the playfield – but if the ball goes in there, it gets shot out the bottom much faster than the ball would actually be able to travel. It’s an illusion called a “shell game” where another ball closer to the flippers has replaced the drained ball.
• Theater of magic
• Pinball magic – skill shot with hat, magnetic wand
• Spirit has a spinning back glass and extra flippers for saving and little curly cue things that change the direction on the ball
• Orbitor 1 –
• Motordome –
• Black knight and Pharaoh have magna Save
• The Machine: Bride of Pinbot – had a rotating upper board (her face) that one of the ramps drained to, also a plastic drain that used ridges to double as two drains depending on which entrance
• Creature from the black lagoon has a vortex

I’ve recently been very interested in making my own pinball machine… surfing around, I found Future Pinball, which might be a good way to prototype it.

Some notes I took from the talk by John Trudeau:
Q: how do designers determine the angle and placement of ramps etc so that flipper hit will be likely to get there?

A (liberally paraphrased):
• mostly trial and error. We have a bunch of machines and we see where the ball goes for different angles of the flipper. We eyeball it.
• The length of the playfield is standardized, and even the angle is standardized – it’s generally between 6.5 degrees and 8 degrees, as measured from the bottom of the machine, which is meant to be parallel to the floor.
• the more tricky question is: when placing another flipper partway up the playfield, how does one place a “bonus” ramp so that new flipper is likely to get the ball in there? The answer is we use the same range of angles, but we just rotate with respect to the new flipper.

John showed us a model of an unproduced pinball, which he modeled in SolidWorks.

John Trudeau designed:

• at …?
  • Rocky
  • Spirit
  • Striker
  • QBerts quest
  • Krull (three level)
• Gameplan / Gottleib / Mylstar
  • Attila the Hun
  • Alien star
• @ Premier technology
  • Rock
  • Raven (Rambo as a girl)
  • Hollywood heat
  • Genesis (reveals a robot)
  • Gold wings
  • Monte Carlo
  • Spring break
  • Tx sector – has a “shell game”
  • Victory
  • Silver slugger
  • Robo war (clone of sinbad)
  • Excalibur (another update)
  • Deadly weapon
• @ Williams bally
  • Bugs bunny
  • Bride of pinbot
  • Black rose
  • Creature from the black lagoon
  • Judge dredd
  • Flintstones
  • Congo