More links unfettered by elaboration

Toyota Prius
Snoopy.com
The Road to Springfield
Nuclear Blast Mapper
Powers of 10
Lightning Bolt Comics.com Online
Warren Ellis Forum discussion of above site
George W. Bush is a robot
Lincoln Park Trixie Society

Salvation

I apologize for not having posted in quite some time. I have been busy developing my screenplay. It is shaping up to be the Citizen Kane of bikini movies. I can see the little statuette over my fireplace already. Although perhaps I am seeing it over someone else’s fireplace, which occurs to me because I do not have a fireplace. Damned unreliable psychic flashes.

Go visit these sites:
www.emotioneric.com
www.dancingpaul.com
www.neofuturists.org
www.warrenellis.com
www.ninthart.com
yabs.comicbookresources.com
zot.comicbookresources.com
www.proaxis.com/~half/BeanWeb
www.igia.com/epil-stop
groups.google.com/lucas
www.clambake.org
www.politicalcompass.org
court.it-services.nwu.edu/idealog
www.mightybigtv.com
www.duniho.com/fergus/enneagram/test

Or don’t, if you’re a loser.

Is the Hey moving to a Monthly or Bi-Weekly format? Because I haven’t gotten a new one in some time.

You should know by now that many of your readers rely on the Hey for relief from their drab workaday lives. This being undisputably the case, I hereby call, on behalf of all Heyites, for a revitalization of the Daily Hey as a true Daily, or Weekly if Daily is too ambitious — academic institutions being the frantic, fast-paced places of constant change and innovation that we all know them to be, I as much as any — so that the average, hard-working, Hey-reading global citizen can once again enjoy the diversion from reality, however temporary, fleeting, shallow and narcotic-like, that a cursory glance at each new Hey affords.

One idea, if “Weekly Hey” seems too cumbersome or rhyme-deficient a name, is to forgo The Hey as a title altogether, and rebrand oneself as the “Weekly Cheek”, or, slantwise, the “Weekly Check”, or even, in a clever workaround, the “7th-Day Hey”. Alternately, in a tribute to Norman Rockwell’s alma mater, one could call it the “Saturday Hey”, and “post” the new edition each Saturday evening at 10:15 sharp. That would be a cunning “cure”.

Puns and pop music references aside, good friend, let us put behind us these dark days of infrequent and spotty publication, and gaze ahead to a future of limitless Heys, commenting on all manner of interesting social and cultural phenomena, offering a pristine window into the maturing, self-doubting soul of Generation X, eulogizing popular humorists, skewering the inept, upraising the meek, and soldiering on through remarkably slow download times and browser compatibility difficulties to deliver, through it all, like a rock, like a tower, like an island in a sea of dispiriting, worldweary ennui, a few minutes each day (or week) of blessed diversion to its deserving, patient, voiceless readership.

Thanks.

I.F.C. Hammond-LeKaak

Douglas Adams, R.I.P.

Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series of books, of which I am a fan, passed away from a heart attack yesterday at the age of 49 – that’s the official story, anyway. Rumors have been circulating online which reveal that Adams’ untimely departure was actually the result of a slight warp in the fabric of spacetime which had the unfortunate effect of erasing him from existence.

Now, I’ve read the arguments against the existence of warps in the fabric of spacetime. But I have seen such warps with my own two eyes. On the train this morning, a large, chubby, bald man with a beard and dark sunglasses entered the car behind me and sat down across from me. The headphones this man was wearing did nothing to dampen the Kenny-G-type soprano-saxophone-based easy-listening music he was listening to at a very high volume. In addition to this he was swaying his large head back and forth, not just bopping along in time to the music, but engaging in some sort of complicated cranial choreography, almost ritualistic in its complexity. Suddenly light began to bend along the contours of his body, and space itself began to distort. I had to look away lest I lose my sanity; in fact, I think that I have lost a portion from that mere second. The light around the man continued to bulge and pinch and bubble, and as the train pulled into my station, the man swirled out of sight.

So rest in peace, Douglas Adams, and wherever you may be, I hope that this other guy’s headphones are more effective on the other side.

I am drunk.

So it snowed today. It SNOWED today!?!? It’s the middle of fucking APRIL!!!! Goddamned Chicago. I’m going to move to Hawaii. Also my gay marriage will be recognized there.

So no one ever leaves any comments, not that anyone visits the site or that I say anything worth commenting on, but maybe I’ll get rid of them since they’re so damn UNPOPULAR.

I still can’t believe George W. Bush is president. STOP THE WORLD, I WANNA GET OFF! I’M GETTING DIZZY AND STUFF!

I will delete all of this later.

a 150 proof

BACKGROUND.

I was on Usenet a couple of weeks ago, and some idiot was trying to defend use of the phrase “a 150 years”. He claimed that “a 150″ was how to say “a hundred and fifty” as opposed to “one hundred and fifty”, which he claimed sounded “stilted and pompous”. When people told him he was wrong, he launched into a diatribe about how this is English, not French, and there is no governmental agency determining the rules of the language, and thus the rules of the language were to be determined by popular usage. When informed that he was the only one defending this phrase, and thus that it was not popular at all, he said that he wrote “150” on a card, asking random people to pronounce it. He said most of them said “a hundred and fifty” and so that made him right. When told he was missing the point, and that “a 150″ would mean “a a hundred and fifty”, he would accuse people of being “language fascists”. He refused to listen to what anyone had to say because they “gave no reasons to support” their arguments. So I wrote this formal proof.

PROOF.

Prove: “a 150 years” is a silly phrase.

Given:
1. The numeral 300 is pronounced “three hundred”.
2. The numeral 200 is pronounced “two hundred”.
3. Numbers can be used as nouns AND adjectives.
4. Adjectives modify nouns.
5. Nouns can be modified by multiple adjectives.
6. Nouns cannot modify nouns.

Assumed:
1. The indefinite article “a”, being singular, is roughly equivalent to the adjectival number “one”. Thus, “a year” equals “one year” equals “1 year”.
2. The adjectival phrase “hundred” minus the “one” or “a”, as in “hundred fifty” or “hundred and fifty” or “hundred-dollar bill”, implies a singular hundred, or 100, unless other numerical modifiers are added, as in “two hundred”.
3. The phrase “one hundred and fifty” is equivalent to “one hundred fifty” is equivalent to “150”.
4. In the phrase “150 years”, “years” is the noun, and “150” serves as the adjective that modifies that noun.
5. The phrase “a one year”, when “year” is the object noun, contains a redundancy. (When there is a hyphen, as in “a one-year trip”, “one-year” becomes an adjectival phrase.)
6. Redundancies are silly.

Point #1
a. The numeral 100 is pronounced “one hundred”. (G1, G2)
b. It can also be pronounced as “a hundred”. (A1)

Point #2
a. “[one hundred fifty] years” is equivalent to “[150] years”. (A3)
b. “[one hundred and fifty] years” is equivalent to “[150] years”. (A3)
c. “[a hundred and fifty] years” is equivalent to “[150] years”. (A1, A3, P1b)
d. “[hundred and fifty] years” is equivalent to “[150] years”. (A2, A3)

Conclusion #1
[150], [one hundred fifty], [one hundred and fifty], [a hundred and fifty], and [hundred and fifty] are all variations on the same numerical “word”. In the case of “[150] years”, the numerical “word” serves as an adjective. (P2a-P2d, G3, G4, A4)

Point #3
a. “a [one hundred fifty] years” contains a redundancy. (A3, A5, C1)
b. “a [a hundred and fifty] years” contains a redundancy. (A5, P1b, C1)
c. “a [hundred and fifty] years” contains no obvious redundancy. However, as we showed in Conclusion #1, [hundred and fifty] equals [one hundred fifty]. Therefore, the phrase contains a redundancy. (A2, A5, C1)
d. “a [150] years” contains a redundancy. (A3, A5, C1)

Conclusion #2
The phrase “a 150 years” is silly indeed. (P3d, A6).

POSTSCRIPT.

The poster acknowledged that I did back up my reasoning, but then he went back to the “one hundred and fifty sound stilted and pompous” argument, which means he continued to miss the point. The guy was almost certainly a troll, although seeing as the thread went on for weeks (to which this proof was my only contribution), it may not have been a troll, as trolls have much shorter attention spans than that. People on crack also have short attention spans, so that can’t be it either.

And yes, I am a loser for (1) writing out a formal proof on something so inane (2) using usenet lingo (3) using usenet and (4) enumerating the reasons that I am a loser.

Overheard on the Train

“I’m sorry, could you sit somewhere else?”
“Why?”
“You’re sitting on my wife, sir.”
“Whatever.”

“Did you pay to get on this train?”
“Actually, I fell out of a helicopter and landed on the platform.”
“That would explain the open fractures.”

“This is Jarvis. Doors open on the left at Jarvis.”
“Jarvis was the Avengers’ butler.”
“That’s nice, honey.”
“Alfred is Batman’s butler.”
“Hmm.”
“The Fantastic Four didn’t have a butler, but their mailman was named Willie Lumpkin.”
“All right.”
“Richie Rich’s butler was named Cadbury, but Richie Rich wasn’t a superhero.”
“Okay.”
“Unless you count being the world’s richest kid as a super power.”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t.”
“I want a divorce.”

“Mommy, should I trust the government?”
“How the fuck should I know? Eat your fruit roll-up.”

“[Current Fox News in the Morning co-anchors] David Novarro and Tamron Hall are a good-looking pair. However, unlike [previous Fox News in the Morning co-anchors] Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano, they aren’t fucking each other.”

“What did you think of the Oscars the other night?”
“They were great! I won Best Supporting Actress.”
“Wow! Enola Gay Harding! Can I have your autograph?”

“This car smells like poop.”