A few years ago, Kelly and I started donating to Goodwill on a regular basis. For a while, we didn’t keep records of what we gave, but then we decided to start claiming that stuff on our taxes (especially when we were going to owe!). We just keep tick marks of each piece that we donate, and then use a donation valuation guide to tally it all up at year-end. A note on the valuation guides: Goodwill nor the Salvation Army have an “official” guide, so use discretion. Imagine explaining claiming $6 for a ripped Def Leppard t-shirt to an IRS auditor. Each few months, we end up donating a couple of trashbags full of ill-fitting clothing and stuff that we never use. In the end, we cut our tax bill down considerably, and the Goodwill benefitted.

Kelly’s family also adopts Angel Tree children instead of exchanging gifts. Again, tax-deductible and much better than having to hem and haw over what horrifying sweater to get your gram! I helped out one year, and was given charge of a 13 year old kid and proceeded to kick out the Christmas present JAMS (literally!) It was a lot of fun.

Finally, the venerable Hunter Dixon for the last few years has been flexing his B&N muscle and buying a bunch of books for children with donations from friends. With the employee discount, he can purchase just tons of books for kids. It’s great! And to top it all off — he donated his poker winnings for December to the cause, thereby making this year the most bookalicious for needy kids. In the end this year, the official final tally was $360, allowing us to purchase 103 books. Dang. That’s awesome.

Hoo-ray for charity!

So, the Flying Spaghetti Monster craze has been brought to work by M@. For those uninitiated, the FSM is the primary deity in what has become known as Pastafarianism. It is now a bona-fide Internet craze.

But why? Why would someone create such a thing? Well – the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a parody religion made up to combat the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to give intelligent design (ID) equal time with evolution by natural selection in biology classes. Turns out that these Pastafarians believe that “Global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct consequence of the decline in numbers of pirates since the 1800s.” Considering Kansas has given the go-ahead to teach ID, they are obligated to teach FSM, right? Who needs Science when you have good storytelling and lobbyists.

You can get all the information you’ll ever need about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster here:


Venganza.org, the “official” site

FSM @ the Uncyclopedia (much more comprehensive that the Wikipedia entry)

The FSM Cafepress Store

BoingBoing post

and finally… the best German headline I’ve ever seen:

Mein Gott, ein Nudelmonster! @ der Spiegel

Took a late lunch today, and I have this to share:

I don’t know if ALL Thornton’s around town are going to switch over to the abomination that the Blankenbaker Road store have become, but if they do – be forewarned.

I occassionally would walk over there to get a tasty sandwich (of my own choosing) from Subway. The old ladies (angry) who worked there were a constant source of amusement and scorn for us here at Power. “What kinda bread you wont?” “I got 3 different kinda cheese here, honey!” All shaking their fists at the system that has entrapped them and relieved them of their dreams and wishes and what-not. Such was their ire that occassionally they’d Peter North your sandwich, despite your tearful pleas of “go light on the mayo”. This back-and-forth required a certain skill. Those uninitiated were always welcomed to try their hand. Eventually you’d master that skill and you’d get a tasty sandwich of your choosing. This whole human drama, for whatever reason, has been put to an end.

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Gone are the clear sneeze-shield and brass rails that decorated the Subway. Gone is the underground-themed wallpaper. Gone are the 5 loaves of bread to showcase the wealth of choice. Tthis has been replaced with an opaque stainless-steel hood so high that you can’t see the hands of the people making your sandwich. Also, the counter is set some 4 feet back, thus only separating you further from the people that will make your sammich. The real deal-breaker — the real slap in the loaf is this: YOU NOW ORDER VIA KIOSK.

Part of the reason I went to Subway (aside from the cheerful banter with the Subway hags) was to actually SEE my sub being made to the specifications I had previously uttered to the sandwich artist! If I said “hey, I’d like light low-fat mayo” I could see them putting the mayo on there and say “WOAH WOAH WOAH” when I had enough. But now I can’t see the sammich before it’s done and for all I know those ladies could be naked from the waist down (GAH!)

Back to the kiosk… when I was about ready to finish my order, some Thornton’s-clad douchebag strolls up next to me and starts pointing and explaining to me what to do next. I stopped him mid-sentence and said “Thanks, but I think I can handle this.” Turns out he’s some executive from Thorntons. He then tore off my receipt as if I couldn’t do it myself and handed me a coupon to get the deal for the day. All of which were within arms reach to me, and made painfully obvious.

So I get my food, which turned out to be a Turkey Sub and some waffle-cut fries (that was their deal for the day). I noticed they didn’t pull the fries out of a fryer like you would expect, but instead pulled them out of some oven-like contraption. DAMN. That stuff is straight-up frozen! And judging by the wide array of other foods they sell (pizza, toasted subs, corn dogs, etc) most of that crap will be frozen as well. I’ll tell you that I was not looking forward to this sammich at ALL.

The food was acceptable, but only because I paid $3.79 for the whole lot of it. Subway is far, far better and I certainly didn’t get EXACTLY the sammich I wanted like I would have normally. I only plan on going back to attempt to push that crap-worthy system to it’s very limits. Like asking that all the condiments be put on “lightly” and demanding that I see the sandwich after each step. Hopefully my skills of sammich-banter will incite a riot, or at least some accusatory remarks from the former Sandwich Artists that are now relegated to impersonal food contruction. As Charlie put it: “It’s like a vending machine with someone trapped inside” (paraphrase). Yeah, that’s it exactly.

While paying for my food at the main checkout, the cashier and I started up a conversation. As she was struggling with the new computers to run my card through as credit, I remarked “Modern convenience sho’ is grand, isn’t it?” She leaned in close (as to not be heard by the Thornton’s execs) and said “We are all about to friggin’ snap here…”

Note: this is repost of an email I sent out ot my friends. It was well received and made a girl giggle on her birthday, so I guess it’s worthy of mass broadcasting. And yes, while I was formulating this rant I did feel like Pat from Achewood.

Further note: This new-fangled Subway replacement is called SubWorks!. To quote the Thornton’s website: “The SubWorks proprietary food program allows customers to order top-quality sandwiches and other food items via a touchscreen menu—and then to receive orders in three minutes or less.” They forgot to mention the subjugation of human interaction.

The Beeb reports: US TV set for ‘Jesus wife’ storm.

A leading US TV news reporter has said her network is taking a risk with a news special which asks whether Jesus Christ had a wife.

That network is ABC and the show “Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci” is loosely based on Dan Brown’s best-selling mystery-history novel “The DaVinci Code”. Needless to say, the Catholic League isn’t really happy about all this — and I hope they try to “stick to the facts” on this, and try to keep the sensationalism to a minimum.

Meanwhile, Jesus is struck by lightning for the second time.

Holly (she’s no dumbass) sent me an op-ed piece at CNN entitled Believe It, or Not and it discusses the shift in American Christian faith (including Catholics, mind you) where more and more Christians believe in the idea of the Virgin birth and that God is the only key to morality (among other things).

As the author Kristof states: “The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time.“

Man, that worries me quite a bit. People that don’t know why they should believe what they believe. I know the word is “faith”, but damn! There are ridiculous numbers of pieces of evidence that state that the Bible isn’t “the word of god”, but a constantly edited piece of literature. Many things that are the bedrock pieces of the faith are later “add-ins” by the clergy. (The “why” of that is another argument all together).

I don’t intend to impugn religious beliefs here but faith is indeed turning away from the hard texts and more into an almost oral tradition of mysticism and mythology. Know your faith, and question it. Know more, assume less.

so, i was walking through the parking lot of a neighborhood Kroger grocery store today, and I saw a heavily-stickered car. Reading further, I saw quite a few religious statements of the Christian variety. Yes, the Darwin fish being eaten by the Truth fish (or maybe it was Jesus) — either way, Creationism was the ideal set forth. Right next to that was a large sticker stating:

[that we better get] “Back to the Bible, or it’s Back to the Jungle”.

Now, I don’t know what they intended by this “Jungle” thing.
This states that we were, at one time, in the jungle — like the apes that we didn’t come from due to evolution. Yeah. Ah well. Most cars don’t inspire such thought.

Thank you, giant-Christian-stickered-car!

I give unto thee, a pamphlet from the Church of Scientology, circa 1976. link lifted from DiePunyHumans, now with more RSS!

BTW, get the skinny on Scientology over at Operation Clambake.

Hey all! MaxMok (aka Garrett Barkley Spillman) has bought and subsequently reviewed Max Payne, what appears to be the kick-ass game of the year (so far). A hard-ass New York copper with no family (thanks to the Mafia!), with great noir-esque storytelling, a robust and Matrix-esque playing environment. Sounds cool. Anywho, read Gary’s review below
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I bought Max Payne yesterday. Normally, I never buy computer games, much less software of any kind if I can’t help it. In this case – I couldn’t help it.
Basically, Max Payne is John Woo’s wet dream wrapped in a windows-compatible video game.

You play Max – hard-boiled New York cop with a dead wife, dead child, hatred for the mafia that killed them and currently being employed by the DEA as an undercover agent posing as a mob thug in order to bring down a large drug ring.
Oh – did I mention Max, having lost his entire family, has shit to lose and therefore, gives fuck-all about blowing holes in people with high-caliber firearms?

So… Isn’t this like… Soldier of Fortune meets Serpico? Not really.
The game is a 3D, 3rd person shooter. Much like tomb raider however with better camera angles and a hero not built like a brick house.
Furthermore, to distinguish Max Payne from previous shooter games – the game is frighteningly realistic. From the chrome on a car bumper, to the snow falling, to the cracked tiles in the subway, to the bloodstains on your meaty, cop hands – the hardware T&L and the modeling as well as motion-capture are the best I have seen in any PC game to date. I mean, shit looks real – Max looks and moves like you or I would (albeit, a little more angular and much more surly). The endless hordes of mafia thugs, placed in the game for the sole purpose of getting shot multiple times by you even have this air of individuality. The game engine goes as far as to randomly generate the models and textures of the thugs as so its possible that each and every thug has a slight bit of distinction from the last guy you plugged full of lead (providing you have that feature set active in the game options and you openGL hardware can deal with it).

Oh – did I mention the Bulletime ™ ?

Oh yes – this game has Bulletime ™ and its yours to command. You see, the designers of this games are a bunch of Scandinavians – who we know to have frequent and easy access to all kinds of drugs from across the borders in Holland. Take that in account and the fact that these gifted programmers have a penchant for watching lots and lots of Hong Kong action movies and have probably seen the Matrix 23 time already and masturbate to the quarterly Heckler & Koch firearms catalog. Now you may have an idea of what direction this game takes. By the way, this goes without saying but this has to be the most violent game I have ever played.

The game mechanics are easy to understand and take forever to master. The game is broken up into chapters, which are then broken up into episodes. Plot and story are interjected between killing and rampaging though stylized graphic art sketches, giving the game an overall comic/graphic novel appearance. The levels play out just like an action movie. Its easy to imagine Max Payne being translated into a feature film starring Bruce Willis and a shitload of Eurotrash terrorists. The level puzzles are about as oblique as the plot to many an action flick – “Bad guys coming up the stairs, doors are locked, hmmm… I know – I’ll shoot and the window and jump for it! Yeah!” The rest is elementary – ratatatat yo.

The real meat and cheese of this game is of course, the shootouts. As much of an action movie this game emulates, you’d think this would be cake, especially on the introductionary difficulty level. This is not so. Max can only soak up so much damage before he keels over in a spiraling 3D death throe and the difference between a flesh wound and instantaneous death is evident in the games physics. In other words, aim for the head… Because the other guys are aiming for yours.
The best the game gets is of course, the firefights. The first major gun battle of the game takes place in a NYC subway station. In most FPS I’ve played, the formula is simple – walk in, pick off guys or more aptly, run in and dismantle opponents with a blaze of assorted guns and ammo. In the middle of the mayhem, there’s pretty bump-mapped and light-sourced scenery for which to feast your eyes upon. It’s a kind of laid back firefight. This is not at all the case with Max Payne. I made the sad mistake of trying to take in the rich, geourgous and realistic scenes of the dirty substation control room, despite the fact that there’s a horde of bad guys with bad dispositions and itchy trigger fingers. Oh shit – I’m dead already!?

And that’s the frustrating part of this game. Unlike John McClane – you’re not bulletproof and your ass will die… Many, many, many times. Often in the same spot.

This however, I feel is the intended design put forth by the programming team. Each battle is an action set piece. The real game is to figure out how to execute stunts and use Bulletime ™ to keep from getting killed. Let me paint you a gory picture.

I walk up to the door of the substation control room. I open and upon entry, there are six armed thugs waiting in the room. The thugs do not waste time, nor catchy but ultimately bad jokes, they just go for the sawed off shotguns and glocks they be packin’.
I however am armed with two 9mm Barettas, which in HK terms would make me a walking god. In this case, I guess you could see it that way. I hit the Bulletime ™ switch and everything goes all Matrixy as I dive headlong over as desk, firing at anyone in the room. Shots fly out, leaving little slow-mo vortexes behind them. I take a shot in the arm just before I hit the ground and roll. Its pretty easy after I get to my feet, as I dodge multiple rounds from the gangsters. The important thing here is to keep moving. If you stand still, you will surly die. At this point, I am actually, physically screaming, “die motherfuckers, die!” as I Bulletime ™ my way around some poor schmuck while I unload an entire clip into his chest. Keeping with the Hong Kong traditions – ammo is as plentiful as water in this game. I go though 78 rounds in seconds. All 6 gangsters are really, truly and utterly dead. I’m not. Woo haa!

To conclude – this is the best PC game I’ve played all year. If you like gun violence, the Matrix, Dirty Harry and Hong Kong action cinema, just go buy the game today at your local retailer.

I got to go to a baseball game for the first time in FOREVER last Saturday (the 7th). Methinks the last time I was at a game was at the horribly dreary Cardinal Stadium, where our own Louisville RedBirds (no longer around) were playing. That field was just depressing. It doubled as the college football field in the off-season, and was a rusty, hulking mass.

Oh, how things have changed. The baseball gods must have shined on Louisville, because we are now blessed with the Louisville Slugger Field, a truly cool little park. Surrounded by downtown, and the river front (including Riverfront Park), it’s a smallish park (it’s only the minor leagues, you see), but it’s got some cool amenities. The left field sports a little grass hill were you can sit all free-style, and the right field sports the “Overlook Grill”, which has a bunch of picnic tables and such. It’s just damned cool.

Well, anyway, the Louisville RiverBats won in extra innings over the Columbus Clippers, 5-4. I took a bunch of pictures, but this one is the coolest. A 270 degree panorama from our seats on the first base line.

According to this article over at Daily Radar, Sony’s EverQuest, the massively multiplayer online role playing game has topped 300,000 players, with 68,000 simultaneous users at peak.

Just to make things worse, “Evercrack”, as it is known to the junkies, is due for another expansion (read:another hit), “the Scars of Velious” in December.

Fun Fact!: “The Scars of Velious” was originally named “The Track Marks of the Damned”, but changed for obvious reasons.

This article is dedicated to Chuck Pearsall (aka BovinaLoca), who I’m sure we will not hear from until the spring thaw after the release of “Scars…”