How To Spot A Psychopath

It’s not often that you get spam with this sort of clarity:

From: “Hayes, Bryan”
To: dan@dansdata.com
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 03:08:14 -0500
Subject: Message subject

Message subject

%CUSTOM_CONTENT

%CUSTOM_BIZLINK

Bryan Hayes

%CUSTOM_QUOTE

Regrettably, there was no X-Mailer line with the name of a spamming program in it, so we don’t get to know (possibly after some detective work) with what software “Brian” failed to fill in the form before clicking the “Send 100,000,000 e-mails” button.

(The sending server was, according to ancient tradition, a Chinanet IP address.)

I look forward with enthusiasm to the reduction in spam bandwidth consumption that’ll occur when we all start getting tiny little messages that just say “%NIGERIAN_SCAM” or “%DICK_PILLS” or “%BUY_SOME_STOCK” rather than the informationally equivalent uncompressed versions.

I presume that almost all of you dorks will, without my prompting, read the latest PA and its newspost.

For the benefit of the three of you who would not otherwise have done so (and who would therefore have missed out on the word “shitwizards”, which I feel obliged to state at this juncture is not only an obviously marvellous name for a rock band but will, I suspect, now become at the very least a nerd sub-meme, you see if I’m wrong), I was startled to see Tycho’s Doritos ad concepts.

I found them startling because they were advertisements which did not fill me with the urge to punch the face of the person responsible.

OK, the third one has a certain distasteful Nike-ish swagger, and the second one sounds too much like the work of Ray Smuckles to be considered on its own merits.

But the first one?

I’d seriously consider buying that chip.

Yes, I’ve been drinking.

What?

You got a problem? You wanna fight about it?

OK, you guys go and fight about it, then. I’ll stay here and maybe watch a Supreme Commander replay.

This is the Slashdot thread about a not-terribly-good example of the Gee, Isn’t It Funny That Crappy Computers Used To Cost A Lot Of Money genre of article.

The Slashdot thread contains, as is often the case, pointers to some rather more entertaining stuff.

Like this.

This ad, and two more like it, ran from 1979 to 1980 if somewhat flaky online sources are to be believed. If those dates are right then Tom Baker took the Prime’s advice; he married Lalla Ward in 1981.

And then divorced her sixteen months later.

Lalla’s been married to Richard Dawkins since 1992, a development which the Prime apparently did not foresee. 1992 was also the year in which Prime Computer ceased trading.

Another of the Prime ads:

Doctor Who had, of course, postulated far more impressive computers than this on numerous occasions, so Tom’s trademark enthusiasm was in this case difficult to justify.

In another piece of nerd synchronicity, the vast master computer system on Gallifrey was called The Matrix.

To be fair, Sputtr does look like a pretty good way to introduce your grandma to all of the nifty stuff there is out there on the Web.

“Check it out, Gran! Just type “crochet” and click one of the buttons!”

Metafilter is really not the best place to post about a site like this, though.

They’ll make fun.

(And they’re more about this sort of thing, anyway.)

I’m pleased to see see this degree of cheerfulness in a self-promoting Wiki-weirdo.

(I have edited a grand total of two links to my site into Wikipedia, in case you were wondering.)

It certainly beats (and I use the word advisedly) those dudes who devote most of their waking hours to finding Wikipedia articles in which a picture of their penis can defensibly be deployed.

As I write this, Monsieur Allyn has frickin’ colonised the raincoat article.

Possibly the best line of cartoon dialogue ever. It almost makes up for the rest of them.

Defeating Cthulhu should, of course, actually be about as difficult as defeating Jehovah, but the only alternative is that He end up ruling the world, which would significantly impede further progress of the cartoon series. So.

(You can download the video for offline viewing by using this.)

I am indebted to commenter Bruce for the information that I am currently Google’s number one hit in a search for “rough tongue bald pussy”. Which search you can perform, if you are not at work or if you work somewhere rather mellow, by clicking here. I await with enthusiasm the inevitable torrent of funny-smelling AdWords cash.

If you turn SafeSearch on, though, the results become much more disgusting, since they’re now mostly about bald spots on people’s tongues.

There. That ought to clear your palate again.

On cheating in motorsport.

Water-filled tyres, five-gallon fuel lines, wafer-thin body panels, nitromethane boiling out of the engine oil and into the air intake, cars that can run just fine when their engine isn’t meant to be able to get any air at all, and apparently pretty much everything Smokey Yunick ever did.

If you’re not doing something that makes them change the rules next year, you’d better be doing something that at least forces them to clarify them. Angrily.

A short piece from Salon on the debasement of the word “fun”, when applied to activities for children which obviously bloody aren’t.

(In case you don’t know, this URL has, for months now, been the quick way to convince the Salon site that you’ve sat through the ads that qualify you for a “day pass”.)

Herewith, some outstanding video clips (as in, not a whole series of something) that everybody linked to when they were new and exciting (years ago, in one case).

But you, gentle reader, may have missed out on one or more of them. So I don’t feel too guilty about this Outside-Scoop blog post.

The title links go to the pages where you can find the big full-resolution versions of each for download.

Big Brother State:

Buggy Saints Row: The Musical:

Mercury Joe:

Rockfish (soon to be a major motion picture!):