Amber Night

Set aside an hour and sixteen minutes, and watch this.  You’ll be glad you did.

The first time I saw Subway’s promotion to get a foot-long sandwich for $5, I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I’d seen since…well since the last ridiculous thing I’d seen, which I think might have been me trying to convince myself that I still fit into those jeans I used to fit into.  Anyway, what made it so ridiculous (the Subway promotion, not the jeans, which needs no explanation) was that the promotion was a celebration of Jared’s weight loss on a Subway-only diet.  Just to be clear here: Subway is celebrating weight loss by selling food in bulk.  It’s like celebrating the end of a war by rounding up the POW’s and…um…selling them by the foot for $5 each.  Gross.

Then I saw this, and I didn’t feel so bad about my jeans.  So the Mayor of Oklahoma City challenged residents to lose a bunch of weight.  A key sponsor?  Taco Bell.  I shit you not.  And Taco Bell’s reward for residents hitting the 100,000 lbs lost mark?  Free goddamned tacos:

Hey, I’m on vacation all week, so nothing new this week.  Have fun!

The short version: PZ Myers, Biologist and angry Atheist, gets angry.  Why?  Because a student who steals a communion wafer gets death threats from angry Catholics.  Student presumably shits pants and returns wafer, prompting Myers to pick up the torch, upping the ante by offering to desecrate a wafer, or—we can only hope—build a 50 foot tall rampaging Jesus Golem.

Much hillarity ensues.

Much more hillarity ensues.

Terrorist threat level in The Matrix increased to “Whoa.”

Inevitable death threats ensue.

Inept asshat uses wife’s work account to send death threat.  Asshat’s wife (who’s all like “wait, wut?”) is promptly fired.  Angry Asshat blames everyone except himself.

Baby Jesus weeps and makes a poopie.

Scene.

This response to the “Obama as terrorist fist-jabber” cartoon doesn’t go quite far enough, but it’s a start.  I’m firmly in the “it’s satire–inept and unsophisticated satire to be sure, but hey whatevs–get the fuck over it” camp when it comes to the The New Yorker cover, but I wonder how funny McCain supporters would find a satirical drawing of McCain’s cowardice and treachery or (haha!) collaboration with the enemy.

In my continuing effort to keep you apprised on all things Saget…

From Comedy Central:

Actor John Stamos is jumping into bed with COMEDY CENTRAL as Roast Master for this year’s “COMEDY CENTRAL Roast of Bob Saget.”  The event tapes in Los Angeles at the Warner Brothers Studio lot on Sunday, August 3.  The “COMEDY CENTRAL Roast of Bob Saget” will air on Sunday, August 17 at 10:00 p.m.

Mark Jacobs on the recent decision to cut 4 classes and 6 cities out of Warhammer:

“This has nothing to do with EA,” he said, pointing out that this was entirely a Mythic decision, and it isn’t a directive from the company which many MMO players feel has a dubious history in our genre. “they had zero input in this. This is not something we went to them with and said ‘hey guys, we need an extra few months…’ and they said ‘no, you must ship on this day’. They don’t even know about it. It’s not a discussion we would have with them.”

(emphasis mine.)

Yes…you, faithful gamer, are learning of these profound tidings, freshly ground, brewed, and strained through the fine silver mesh that is mmorpg.com, even as the shadowy entities who rule EA with Madden-like totalitarianism dream their dark dreams, submerged in luminous baths of Sanya Thomas’ bitter, bitter tears, unaware of the strange, prophetic happenings leagues away, deep within the Fairfax collective.  When at last the elders emerge from their unlife-sustaining torpor, it will be…too late.

To do this video any justice at all, see it in full-screen mode.

(NSFW for suggestive images)

GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.

(thanks to Mox and his Russian women fetish.)

James Wallis explains the physics of World of Warcraft, and how Blizzard nerfed gravity:

This means, if Azeroth really is a spherical planetoid with a diameter of 12 kms, that the planet must have an average density of roughly 5850 grammes per cubic centimetre. That makes its average density more than 500 times greater than lead. (I am indebted to Dave Morris for his assistance with these calculations.)

The extreme density of Azeroth would explain why it is impossible to pick up many objects from the ground, including ones that you have just dropped. As soon as a discarded object hits the earth we theorize that it picks up a thin coating of superheavy dirt, making it impossible to lift. Living creatures avoid the effects of this dirt sticking to their extremities by having evolved frictionless pads on the soles of their feet. This observable phenomenon, endemic to Azeroth, is known to virtual-world scientists and animators as “foot slide”.

After which commenters the Scientific Community proceed to expose Wallis’ whimsical analysis hard science to general asshattery scientific scrutiny.

(Part 2 here.)