Random Quote of the Thanksgiving Weekend:

” [ … ] the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.”

- Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, from this fantastic quasi-political discussion (link sent in by nyx).

Female volunteers for orgasm machine needed. This is gonna be a huge hit among needle fetishists.

And here’s a bit of news that tech geeks will find utterly ridiculous. For decades, the priority by which your motherboard accesses your hard disk drives (or any other data drive) have been decided via the labels “master” and “slave,” with the master drive going first, of course. Apparently, some folks decided it wasn’t P-C.

CNN has been running a Michael Jackson-related story daily for the past week and a half, but a lot of you may find this timeline of Jackson’s troubles interesting. I especially like the first entry, January 1984.

This is fucking creepy. This new fad of using “realistic” masks to transform yourself is called Kigurumi, although I find it to be more bizarre than cool.

(link spotted on boingboing)

Unlike every other female I know, Cristy takes exactly 2 minutes in the restroom. I know this because we’ve stopped at every public restroom we’ve passed in three days, an average of one every three hours. I stand outside and wait each time, because she always takes the car keys in with her. She says, “Wait here, I’ll only be two minutes,” and I do.

Or “Stick around, I’ll be out in a bit.”

Sometimes I believe her, and stand outside like a dog. Mostly I wander around, poking about for something to eat. Once I found a half-eaten sandwich that had been left on top of a trash bin; I sniffed it carefully before wrapping it in toilet paper and stashing it in my jacket.

Another time I sat on the edge of the sidewalk and watched the black gutter water slide slowly out from beneath my left leg and towards my right. Sometimes a dollop of mucus would come along and leave a trail of yellow-green through the black.

This restroom right now is just a little porta-let on the side of the road, on the outside of a turn. The road is a thin layer of asphalt with about 2 decades worth of weathering. Mostly it’s just a bunch of tire tracks pointing in a certain direction.

The porta-let is a plastic blue box the size of a phone booth with a molded door and a porthole on either side so you wouldn’t suffocate. The handle looks slimey, and turns out to be booby-trapped. Cristy yells out as she pulls her hand away, and I see strands of white gum stretching out mozzarella-like from her fingers, swinging in the breeze. She yells again and tries to wipe it off on my shirt, but I’m already backing away.

The stench is so bad that Cristy has to leave the door partially open. The seat inside is broken in half and held together by flesh-colored packing tape. She makes me stand a few feet away, and to the right. She says, “Two minutes. Tell me if another car comes.”

But of course, there are no other cars. An hour ago we overtook a carabao pulling a wagon that had been overloaded with all sorts of wooden junk. Cristy didn’t stop though. As the wagon got smaller, I decided that I couldn’t conclusively say whether the man holding the reins was still alive. I said, “If that carabao were mine, I’d call it Bawie.”

Cristy pretends she didn’t hear me, and keeps driving. After that, all we saw was grass and dirt, with the occasional patches of concrete shooting up in between them. We don’t know where we are, but there was still a road.

The area behind the porta-let drops off sharply, about 12, maybe 15 feet, and I can hear water gurgling if I don’t breathe too hard. As I lean over it, I catch a whiff of a familiar fecal odor and drop back instinctively. After a moment I look again, breathing through gritted teeth. I see another porta-let at the bottom of the gully. The fall had bent it in half and it was bleeding out its refuse into a small stream. I frowned as the stream turned slowly khaki.

I fish around in my jacket pocket and find my old sandwich, still only half-eaten. I tear off small pieces, popping them in my mouth like jelly bellies. The stream below me has turned into mud. I ponder the stream and the bleeding porta-let and think, When did that happen?

I hear Cristy banging around and figure she’s almost done. I’m walking towards the car when I hear a familiar bell. Bawie comes plodding out from around the corner. There’s a froth of spittle around his mouth, and he looks mad. The driver’s body is being dragged along behind the wagon, bouncing around like a ragdoll. Bawie looks really mad, and I crouch down behind the car and hope he doesn’t see me. I pat my jacket pocket and am reassured when I feel my sandwich there still.

A couple of feet away, Cristy is stepping out of the porta-let. I am trying to wave her back inside, hide, be quiet, but by the time I can get the first syllable out, she has already started swearing. Bawie looks big enough to eat the porta-let.

Cristy jumps back inside and tries to pull the door shut behind her, but Bawie is plodding along pretty fast. When he slams into the porta-let, it could’ve been made of cardboard. It groans and warps and falls backward into the ditch. I can hear Cristy yelling inside. I am too scared to move.

Bawie sticks around for a long time, huffing. I don’t move for a good five minutes after he leaves. When I finally get the courage to peek down into the ditch, I see Cristy struggling to stand up. Her porta-let had landed right on top of the other one, and both had exploded outward like shit-covered flowers. She crawls up the incline, groaning, and her hand is slippery when I take it. When she isn’t looking anymore, I wipe my hand quickly on the grass and hope the smell doesn’t stick.

She collapses on the dirt, catching her breath. I sit down too, as far away as possible without being insulting. When she tries to straighten out her hair, wet clumps of dark brown spatter the soil.

She doesn’t cry or anything.

Finally, I say, “Have a sandwich.”

***************

The customary links to other Cristy stories:

Take the Keys and Run

Cristy Says Let’s Go

Depending on who you’re talking to, folks predict that the world’s fossil fuel resources will run out within 30 to 50 years. This little deadline has prompted scientists to try out all sorts of petroleum substitutes, including natural gas, soy beans and our very own locally-produced coco-diesel.

It’s interesting that scientists keep trying to prolong the life of fuel-based vehicles, when it seems that compact, electric-powered transportation is just waiting in the wings. Little faux pas like the ill-fated Segway hasn’t really helped convince people to hop on to the whole electric-transport bandwagon though (pun intended).

30 years from now, can you imagine what you’ll be driving to work?

Two weird movie-related links today:

Jediism, which is, as far as I can tell, a religion with roots in just about every religion you can think of, and just happens to share a name with George Lucas’ patented material. (link sent in by pavement)

The Meatrix, which is, well … you should just watch it. (link sent in by ezraulo)

Ooh! Ooh! A Gamerspeak dictionary! Don’t PK me while I’m kiting the NPCs, you fucking llama!

OMFG!@@! Michael Jackson — a child molester?!?

Random Quote of the (insert arbitrary unit of time here):

“Did I feel sexy? Oh yeah… they had to tell me to close my legs and hide my nipples. Because I was ready to go all out.”

- Carly Pope, on her FHM photo shoot.

A fantastic collection of Rock Album Covers that never were. I like The Doors and The Ramones covers in particular, but check them all out anyway.

This time-waster of a site lets you (and by you, i mean anyone) edit the text and images on its frontpage. The results are, as one would expect, absolutely ridiculous.