I suppose I could write up a description of this how-to guide, but a description has already been written, and I am a busy, busy man after all, so here’s a quote:

I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve never really had a hard time getting beaten up. However, for the longest time, after someone kicked my ass, instead of going to jail, as I would have preferred, that person would just go wash-up. That is until I read this guide that I’ve written.

Clearly, this man is a genius. Depending on you level of tolerance for disgusting pictures of the human foot, you should also check out the aptly named stinky feet wherein the author attempts to infect himself with athelete’s foot. Possibly the funniest thing I have ever read in the Internet. Again, not for the squeamish.

A brief overview of why I no longer sleep.

Chinese Weightlifter Sets Five Records in a Day
116 pound Yang Xia, of China, lifts 220 pounds in the snatch event, and 275 pounds in the clean and jerk. Incidentally, I have difficulty not only with lifting my own body weight, but with actually lifting my body itself (From off the couch, for example).

Simon Whitfield Wins Gold, Acts Like a Nut
I assume you’ve all witnessed Whitfield winning the gold medal and subsequently acting like a nut. Top marks for spiking the finish-line tape into the ground. Where can I buy cereal with Whitfield’s face on the box?

Attractive Swimmers Advance to Final
Joanne Malar and Marianne Limpert have both advanced into the 200-metre individual medley finals. I understand that training and competition keep you fairly busy Joanne, but if you happen to get a chance, my address is matt@enjoypei.com.

Canada Decimates Kazakhstan
The Canadian Women’s Waterpolo team improved their record to 1-0-2 after defeating Kazakhstan by a score of 10-3. In an earlier match the Canadians had been up by three goals on the Americans but ended up settling for a tie. Canada plays the Netherlands at some point tonight when I should really be sleeping.

Background information: If you have not been already, visit FuckedCompany.com. Next, if you are not already aware of the auction of FuckedCompany.com, read about it here.

All of that information is required for simply to set up one of the better descriptions of Ebay that have read. The following is quoted from the FuckedCompany.com newsletter for Wednesday, Sept. 13th:

You might notice I took the auction down. Ebay was created in 1995 to
auction Pez dispensers. And it’s really good for auctioning Pez dispensers. If you’re interested in buying the site, drop me an email.

Village idiot and presidential hopeful George W. Bush is accused of using a subliminal message in an TV advertisement. After being advised on the meaning of the word “subliminal,” Bush denies the allegations.
Full story here.

Steve Martin’s third book will be hitting stores soon (yes, that Steve Martin). The novella, titled Shopgirl, follows Mirabelle through her lonely job, budding relationships – you know the sort of thing people write about. I’m not sure what I expected from a work written by Steve Martin, but from the excerpts which I have read so far, it seems quite good.

An excerpt from an excerpt:

Six days after their first date, which had cut Mirabelle’s net worth by twenty percent, she runs into Jeremy again at the Laundromat. He waves at her, gives her the thumbs-up sign, then watches her as she loads clothes into the machines. He seems unable to move, but speaks just loudly enough for his voice to carry over twelve clanking washing machines, “did you watch the game last night?” Mirabelle is shocked when she later learns that Jeremy considers this their second date. This fact comes out when at one abortive get-together, Jeremy invokes the “third date” rule, believing he should be received at second base. Mirabelle is not fooled by any such third date rule, and she explains to Jeremy that she cannot conceive of any way their Laundromat encounter, or any encounter involving the thumbs-up sign, can be considered a date.

Two excerpts from Shopgirl are available at Contentville.com and at Previewport.com.
It should be noted that Contentville is an ugly site and will require a (phony) email address before giving you access to the excerpt.

Do you enjoy chinese food (the simulated, americanized variety), or the song “Cats in the Cradle” (by Ugly Kid Joe or others)? If you answered “yes” to either question, do not go here.

The Onion is a site which hardly needs an introduction. A site actually driven by content worth digesting, it is one of the few websites worth visiting on a regular basis. The paticular genius of the site is the disguising of social comentary as low-brow humour.

This week they have outdone themselves. Someday, I Will Drive This Short Bus Myself, is an incredible well written, and touching* article, not just by The Onion’s standards but, I think, by anyone’s.

* Author is comfortable enough with his masculinity to be able to say “touching,” and mean it. No giggling either.

Nothing is more upsetting than a good domain name gone to waste. Well no, actually there are many far more upsetting events, and Sick.com could have proudly displayed any of them. At the very least it could have been a medical webiste or a porn site. However, Sick.com peddles e-cards. These aren’t just any e-cards either, these cards are “cards that bite!” They range from the inane , to the inexplicable , to the profoundly inexplicable. Can anyone explain these to me? Am I missing something? Is there a larger joke here which I am not grasping?

I suppose the quality of Sick.com isn’t entirely surprising considering the apparent leader in the field of e-cards, but if you want to make an “in your face” e-card, at least put some effort into it.

I was just like to take a moment to call my own judgement into question. Specifically, why did I assist in the creation of a website whose address I consistently misspell? In retrospect, as nifty a title as acts of volition may be, dogs and cats would probably have been a wiser choice.

An excellent book review on Salon today concerning a new book on network security and its inevitable failure by Brendon I. Koerner. The review touches on one of my more frequent complaints about computer software in general:

There are an average of five to 15 bugs in every thousand lines of code, which means that Windows 98 is riddled with somewhere between 90,000 and 270,000 oopsies. Since software vendors cannot be held liable for faulty code, thanks to those licenses they make users agree to, they have zero incentive to create better products — much to the delight of computer criminals, who revel in exploiting bug-ridden programs.

This is a slight overstatement. In theory at least, software developers attempt to improve their code so they don’t lose out to competing developers. Nonetheless, it has always seemed bizarre to me that a user is required to sign a licensing agreement before they have ever used the program. Can you imagine any other industry operating this way? “Sure we’ll sell you this car. But first please sign this agreement stating you won’t sue us when something goes wrong. Would you like Firestone tires with that?”

I certainly don’t pretend to know how things should work, but it seems clear to me that any industry which has an exemption from customers taking it to task for failing to live up to its own promises will not produce as high quality a product as it would otherwise.