WolfenGitmo

WolfenGitmo 

From BoingBoing comes word of a new computer game. Based on the classic Wolfenstein, wherein you run around shooting Germans (who scream "Ach, mein leiben" as they collapse) in this one you are a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

Naturally you have no weapons. Naturally your hands are bound. Naturally at the unveiling…

most people were just mad that they weren't able to do much but get beat up.

That'd be what we 'round these parts call a "well duh."

Kiefer Sutherland, King of Cool!

King Kiefer 

I have been praying for video of this momentous event, the moment when Kiefer took the crown from James Dean. And, at last, thanks to Defamer, I have it.

Still.

You can take the boy out of Canada, but you can't take Canada out of the boy; what the camera doesn't catch is Kiefer politely asking in advance if he can pay for all damage he's about to perpetrate.

"I hate that f***ing Christmas tree," he declared. "The tree HAS to come down."

Kiefer warned staff: "I'm smashing it – can I pay for it?"

A staff member replied: "I'm absolutely sure you can, sir," 

before immediately taking cover. He saw that look in Kiefer's eye.

Pulling pine needles out of his hair and t-shirt, he said to a hotel employee: "Ooh sorry about that…you're so cool. This f***ing hotel rocks."

Operation Global Media Domination: Lost in Translation

TIAWhen raincoaster checks the ol' raincoaster stats, she looks for many things: total hit count, most popular blog entry, signs of the coming Apocalypse…it's like necromancy, but you don't have to wash your hands afterwards unless you get very excited. Among the things that she looks for are links through which readers have clicked to arrive at raincoaster, the blog. And this one from yesterday particularly caught her eye.

It appears to be a Google translation of this post, a roundup of search engine terms that brought people to the blog. This is known as a feedback loop, and is sneakily effective in gaining new readers and hooking back the old ones, even if they were only looking for Narnia Mango Somali Porn.

Oops, I did it again!

Anywhoooo, the words on this page that were beyond Google's ability to translate were quite interesting. In the interests of creating a new, more selective feedback loop, and in the interest of confusing the Chinese, I will here list all terms in that raincoaster post found untranslatable by Google:

Narnia, Ian McKellen, Fatman, pervs, snotflower, creamer, ventibrevemocha, lattes, buggers, cholesteral, patchouli, eggnog latte, decaf, comin', Pablo, Sandford Tuey, raincoaster, voyeur, appy, tiaras, 9.11, WhiteSpot, Hogwarts, Deuel, Cates, vagina, spankin', Conference, shebeen, Wuthering, screencaps, jocari, Doktari, sumpin', slimin', spay, watchin'.

Did you ever do those assignments in school where you were supposed to use each of a whole snotload of words in a sentence? I was terribly literalminded, and always tried to get them all into one sentence, which drove my teachers nuts, but even I would have to admit defeat when faced with the above list.

FYI Here are today's search engine items that led here. I must say, we're getting better. Classier, weirder, and less Somali-porn-based. Some Somali trivia: You know Iman? When she left Somalia she took everything worth looking at with her.

beautiful agony, shit eating, dorks, eagle cam in Vancouver, Canada, Juvénal Habyarimana -site:africadatabas, Celebrity Censorship, jesus lego, birthday animation, cocaine corner, Giant Squid

Adventures in Yaletown: From the Archive

Monday, September 09, 2002

For this I must thank my friend Dale, who, as a former Beagle owner and hunter, came up with this brilliant get-rich-slowly-but-amusingly scheme.

Yaletown mosaic view

CoyoteCoyotes; heard of them? Fine critters, no doubt, just right for wandering the arid prarielands, rustlin' groundhogs and chasin' rats, but somewhat out of place in the Wired World of Yaletown.

Yaletown; heard of it? fine neighborhood. Full of rich, beautiful people who have the most amazing manners and who are really, really nice. Really. You want to send cards to their parents or something, they all turned out so well. Nothing bad ever happens there; I think it's a bylaw. All the buildings are either spankin' new fiberoptic wonders or reconditioned SOHO style lofts in old brick lowrises with professionally tended flowerboxes above and Starbucks below.

Yaletown is infested with coyotes.

How can this be? you ask. Easy. Easy peasy. The fact is that Yaletown is built right next to, or even on, the old Expo 86 grounds, most of which still remains barren. Sure, there are glossy highrises, but most of the area is still either a twenty-year-old deconstruction ground of broken paving and scrub grass, or it's Indy track, which is about as close to a desert plain as you are going to get in a temperate rainforest. So really, all you need are a couple of coyote singles getting together over a sixpack of Smirnoff Ice down by False Creek and next thing you know it is a Playboy Mansion for four-footed 'uns. The whole place is ringed with a fence that keeps people out, leaving it free day and night for coyote goin's-on. Gawd only knows whut them critters gits up ta.

So now when the sleek Iranian princesses go out in the mornings to walk Fifi the Maltese they must keep a keen eye out or Fifi may be dejeuner pour un petit loup. Merde!

Yaletown, the Mild West

Alors, my friend Dale put that whole grim tragedy together with the tourist trade and the money in being a hunting guide and came up with this:

The British are slowly losing the legal right run around with a pack of dogs and chase things to their deaths, and are missing the whole hound-hunting experience. Dale suggests that we get a pack of de-accessioned hounds and some old horses that don't mind tourists and one of those cool horns and we conduct a hunt through Yaletown and the old Expo lands. This would have to be done at night, as that is peak coyote-huntin' time.

Happy Coyote Hunters, perhaps with their Mount Pleasant kills?

Picture this: a dead-black night, with a cold, hard rain driving down relentlessly. A bitter wind sweeps the historic streets of Yaletown, setting the lofts to shivering on their firm parkade foundations. A lone creature stalks the night, skulking from Dumpster to Dumpster, gliding like the shadow of a ghost. It pads wetly on its four miserable paws, water pours like slowly waving icicles off its hollow belly. A flare of headlights, and two eyes glow in the darkness, pinpoints of seeking, of hunger.

Suddenly, a sound! Faint trumpeting in the distance, a gaggle of indecipherable noises. The coyote pricks its ears. The cacophonous music comes closer, invisibly, sourceless in the darkness, as if the Great Hunt of the Celts had descended to spread terror through modernity itself. As the mists part and the rain relents, for just a moment the coyote sees.

Hounds, dozens of them! Tall, strong, and hungry, a pack of foxhounds tears down Hamilton Street in a berzerker blood-rage! Behind, as many as twenty fat, rich tourists on horseback, wearing scarlet coats and bowlers and yelling "Tally Ho!" at the top of their lungs, with a guide and hunter tootling on a tiny horn that somebody used to use as a Christmas ornament. The coyote runs, past the Nygard showroom, past the Home Shop, past the yuppie brew pub and Beautymark Cosmetics, past Seattle's Best Coffee and Bar None, past Rodney's Oyster Bar and the neogothic building with the twirling letterblocks that must be art, they're so palpably useless. Can he make it across Pacific Avenue to the wastelands?

No! He has forgotten to push the button for the pedestrian light!

They bring him to ground just outside the Jugo Juice.
 Yaletown, primo huntin' territory!

Where they got the word “pixillated”

Honestly, digital distortion just makes this even better. Sometimes dropping acid is just redundant…like when you’re watching the Banana Splits perform “You’re the Lovin’ End.” With stuff like this forming the backdrop and soundtrack to my childhood, is it any wonder I turned out this way?