Category: Miscellany

Homeless posts that need to be beaten, set on fire, and pissed on…not necessarily in that order…

25 Things I Learned from Watching Master of the Flying Guillotine

  1. NEU! is the perfect soundtrack for a flying guillotine…or any krautrock really…
  2. Flying guillotines have awesome eyebrows…
  3. Blind flying guillotines need both krautrock and big bushy eyebrows to guide them down treacherous mountains.
  4. Doors are for amateurs, REAL masters just jump through the damn roof!
  5. Jumping is a skill.
  6. Holding your breath makes you light enough to walk on the rim of a flimsy basket.
  7. If you’re REALLY good at holding your breath, you can walk across the wall and ceiling. This is the natural progression of the “jumping” skill, and may come in handy if you ever have to fight a blind person, or that Dhalsim guy from Street Fighter 2…
  8. Flying guillotines have to wear a NAZI bib so everyone knows they’re evil.
  9. Flying guillotines are vegetarians, which is also evil.
  10. Thai kickboxers must snort and belch after every sentence – it’s a character trait.
  11. In order to activate his ass-kicking power, Thai kickboxer must do a crazy little dance…serenaded by an invisible pungi.
  12. Thai kickboxer has to prove his prowess by beating up a bunch of extras while his evil friends just kinda show up and get to fight.
  13. That Yogi Tro Le Soung was clearly a rip off of Dhalsim from Street Fighter II.
  14. Also, yoga is a form of Kung Fu.
  15. Plus having really long arms lets you choke the bejesus out of people…who knew Yoga was so brutal!?
  16. Ironically named, “Yakuma Wins-Without-a-Knife” does in-fact use a knife to win.
  17. Ironically named evil Ronin are pretty in pink.
  18. The penalty for a dine-and-dash in China is death by flying guillotine.
  19. The most practical way to kill the real one-armed boxer is to kill all the one-armed men you come across – it’s not like China is a big place or has a large population or anything…how many one-armed guys can there be? Well, according to the movie, there were three.
  20. If your enemy is too skilled to beat in a fair fight, just lock him in a burning hut and roast him alive. That’ll teach those damned foreigners to enter our open, regionally-unrestricted contests!
  21. You don’t have to keep a life-debt to a foreigner if you don’t want to.
  22. Kung Fu tournaments are a good place to see all the south-east asian ethnic stereotypes err “different styles of Kung Fu”.
  23. Kung Fu tournaments sorta make up the rules as they go along…
  24. …and have no discernible brackets.
  25. Kung Fu masters who can walk on the ceiling use surprisingly little actual hand-to-hand combat, relying instead on elaborate traps. Go underhanded handi-capable hero! Yay!

Windows Fun

“It’s like that scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where that guy I kinda look like rips that dude’s heart of out of his chest and shows it to him before he dies. That’s some ‘Mortal Kombat’ finishing move shit right there!”

– Satya Nadella on Windows 10…probably

Windows 10 has brought with it some glorious new features as some users have discovered. One fine young gentleman in particular caught my attention:

w10_2

Don’t listen to Venkat, that ain’t legal advice, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about! So here’s my legal advice (check your mail for my invoice):

 

  1. Bill Gates left Microsoft over a year and a half ago, and was replaced by Satya Nadella, who is clearly doing a fine job!
  2. Your mouse pad isn’t working because you haven’t upgraded its driver to Windows 10. The firmware is corrupt, so you need to take it outside and beat it against the side of your shed repeatedly until it becomes soft and pliable again.
  3. You don’t need speakers or the internet, both are obsolete features that Windows 10 no longer requires – these have been replaced by an infinite repair loop.
  4. You can’t restore your previous Windows because Satya threw a brick through them. He’s angry at you and wants your business to fail. You must appease him with a modest donation of two thousand pan masala wrappers while chanting, “Satya Ma! Satya Ma Shakti De!”
  5. You are indeed trapped by Microsoft and should accept your Karma. If you are lucky, you will be reincarnated into a Linux or Mac user.

Important Quotes

listen

“When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it.”

– Yogi Berra

Addendum A: If you’ve ever run out of forks, you will understand.

Addendum B: Also, it’s not stealing if you call, “dibs.”

Addendum C: You don’t even have to wash it first, germs are good for you and put hair on your chest!

Big Jim’s Wisconsin Survival Guide

So, you are unfamiliar with the Dairy State?

Might want to know a few things before committing to the move?

I know I could have used some insight to help blend in with the locals when I first arrived! Here are a few tips that will help you fit in and avoid being chased by an angry, cheese-hat wearing mob:

  • There are just three seasons in Wisconsin: Deer season, Green Bay Packer season and mosquito season…and they overlap
  • Cheese can be added to anything! In fact, it can be a complete meal in and of itself.  e.g. beer and cheese soup..recipe coming soon!
  • Milk is sold in plastic bags
  • You are more likely to be shown pictures of caught fish than their children
  • The entire state shuts down opening day of deer season
  • You’d better be a Packers fan and never say you don’t watch football! You’ll be looked at like you just landed on Earth!
  • Beer is a food group
  • Bucky Badger is a demigod, peace and blessings upon him
  • Wearing Mossy Oak pants and a blaze orange sweatshirt is semi-formal attire
  • Snow is a great beer cooler
  • Fishing isn’t a hobby, pastime or sport – it is a fucking passion!
  • If you don’t own at least one boat, people will view you with distrust and apprehension
  • Never ever say you don’t like Culver’s Butter Burgers – them be fightin’ words!
  • Ed Gein or Jeffrey Dahmer don’t make for good table conversation topics
  • If you are from Chicago or New York, you will never have pizza again as you know it!
  • Bratwurst is acceptable for breakfast, and even encouraged!
  • Don’t let the snow fret you, the icy rain that will inevitably follow is much worse
  • Famous Dave’s barbecue is the best in the World! To say otherwise is akin to saying you hate Wisconsin…and Native Americans!
  • Although you can’t enter a tobacco store until you’re 18, you can play with Barbie dolls on a pool table in a tavern at the age of 3
  • Milwaukee is Algonquin for, “The good land.” Alice Cooper said that, and I believe it, and you’d better believe it too you unworthy cretin!
  • Outside of the authoritarian egalitarian progressive liberal hellhole, the good people of Wisconsin love their guns!
  • Towns have more bars than churches. Praise be Bacchus!
  • There are many small stores that sell everything from guns, ammo, food, beer, camo clothing and bait all under one roof!
  • Indian casinos, ’nuff said…
  • Everyone smokes, nobody quits
  • Wisconsin natives can’t even spell al pastor taco let alone make a decent one!
  • Frank’s Hot Sauce is not only considered to be good, but spicy
  • Sausage gravy comes from a can or packet; biscuits are of the frozen variety
  • People think Chili is something made with elbow macaroni
  • Cottage cheese is a substitute for ricotta in lasagna
  • You can trade smoked fish for a 4 wheel drive vehicle or snowmobile!
  • Most bars worth their salt have a monthly gun raffle
  • Between 2 and 5 A.M. Kwik Trip is considered fine dining
  • Skiing is done on small hills, not mountains
  • Ducks are amphibious vehicles!
  • Fish fries are important community events
  • Thar’ be bears!

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

A few years ago, I read a book by Joel Best called, “Damned Lies and Statistics.”

The title is based on a phrase popularized by Mark Twain, though it’s origin isn’t firmly established….goes something like this:

“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics”

The book began with what Best described as, “The Worst Social Statistic Ever.” The quote was, “Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled.”

When taken literally, that would mean that 35 trillion American children were gunned down between 1950-1995. What the author meant to say was that the total number of child deaths by firearms in 1950 was half what it was in the year 1995.

Surprisingly, the US population grew by some 73% from 1950 to 1995, so it would follow that other counts, such as deaths would also be about double. Point being that statistics should not be accepted blindly. That brings me to a new one I saw today floating around the interwebs:

More Americans were killed by guns since 1968 than on the battlefields of all the wars in American history.

The specific figures are based on estimates from PolitiFact.com:

  • Firearms-related deaths between 1968 and 2015 was about 1,516,863
  • The total number of casualties related to all wars in US history was approximately 1,396,733

I’m not being paid to do this, I don’t have a professional research staff, and my Terminator Robot isn’t programmed to do that for me…yet. So, rather than gather and correlate 47 years-worth of data, I’m just going to pick on 1968’s mortality rates instead.

According to the US Census Bureau, the population that year was approximately ~200,700,000. Referencing the Vital Statistics of the United States 1968 Volume II – Mortality Part A , the total death count was 1,930,082.

That’s over half a million more deaths than all of the American casualties of every US war in American history combined! Impressive, huh?

Of those, 9,425 people reportedly died from “firearms and explosives.” It doesn’t break that figure down to gun-related deaths only, nor does it distinguish between homicide, suicide, war or accidents. That’s accounts for a whole 0.488% of the total death count that year. This is about 1/6th the number of motor-vehicle deaths, which came to 54,862, or about 5.7 times as many deaths by vehicle as there were by firearms and explosives.

The point (if there is one) is this: I can quote unqualified, out-of-context statistics based on incomplete/erroneous “data” to make bogus conclusions too!

In Summary

  • Think for yourself. Don’t rely on eye-grabby statistics
  • Do your own homework and take other facets into consideration
  • Terminator robots aren’t a good source of important information…yet