Gnorb.NET

Title says it all.

No, I wasn’t asked to be on the show.

Instead of putting up an insightful and witty post this time (one without the word “booger” in the title), I’ve instead decided to follow suit with Renagade Zen and post a picture of myself as a South Park character.

Using the South Park Character Generator, you can — and should — do the same. (For anyone interested in posting their South Park character picture who doesn’t have any place to upload it, just email it to me, norb@gnorb.net and I’ll store it on the server for you. Note that images can’t be hotlinked from anywhere else, though. Sorry.)

For the record, there’s no option to choose a fat body, which eliminates the possibility of about 65% of the US population being able to create true-ish self-portrait (that includes me), but allows us to see what we’d look like if we were paper cut-out cartoons and in shape-ish. Also, I know the whole “South Park” thing is somewhat (a decade) old, but I checked with 1997 and no, it didn’t mind if I borrowed its joke for a while.

The meme continues…

Edit: Here’s The Wife:

Alright, here’s a quick quiz I got from this New York Magazine article on Stephen Colbert. See if you can tell which of these statements are by right-wing talking head Ann Coulter and which by political satirist Stephen Colbert:

1. “Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do. They don’t have the energy. If they had that much energy, they’d have indoor plumbing by now.”

2. “There’s nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell.”

3. “I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.”

4. “Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘Kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and answer to the name Muhammad.’ ”

5. “I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.”

6. “[North Korea] is a major threat. I just think it would be fun to nuke them and have it be a warning to the rest of the world.”

7. “Isn’t an agnostic just an atheist without balls?”

Remember, one’s supposed to be a political intellectual, the other a comedian playing a partisan idiot. It’s sad that you can’t really tell the difference.

Answers

Coulter: 1, 4, 6
Colbert: 2, 3, 5, 7

Note: Originally I had intended never to put this post on, but after seeing The Wife’s reaction to the post I couldn’t help but go ahead with it. My apologies in advance.

I just caught this little bit on the BBC about the unveiling of Richard Branson’s Virgin Spaceship. Good reading, especially if you’re hoping to take a flight in one of those in 2009.

Unfortunately, it seems that as of late, my mind has been taken over by the characters of South Park. Again. It’s like being a freshman in college all over again. I say unfortunately because after I read this the first thing that came to mind was a little bit of a script (which I suppose could be classified as a “fan script”) involving the kids off in space with Richard Branson on the Virgin Spaceplane. For the moment, forget you’re reading this and turn on the TV of your mind.

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Alright, too much car talk, as was recently pointed out by a reader. Time for another edition of Le Linkage to move things in another direction! (Actually it was moving in another direction anyway, and there are another couple of car posts coming up. My sister’s car was just stolen, so I’m helping her find a car. Not that I’ll be discussing that, but I have a few more bits of info I think would be helpful for people looking to buy a used car. Now I’ll shut up and start this episode of Le Linkage.)

Searching for Free Music with Google: Using this page, look for any artist or any song and with the help of a special a Google search query, this site may well just find it for you. Heck, I even found stuff by Sun Yan Zi, which is almost impossible to come by in this side of the world.

Strangest grammatically correct English sentence: Really, if you’re into grammar and the weirdness of the English language then you’ll love this short article on the strangest grammatically correct sentence in English. After reading that, I thought of my own: “Dogs dogs dog dog dogs dogs dog,” which translates to “Dogs other dogs chase, chase dogs other dogs chase.” Can you come up with others?

Drivers! Glorious Windows Drivers!: There’s nothing I hate more about software than having to find drivers. The problem is especially bad if you’re using Windows, since the OS is pretty much useless unless you have the drivers needed for it to work properly with your computer. (In Linux this isn’t much of a problem.) Anyway, if you’re stuck for drivers, this site may just have what you need.

Hope, Despair and Memory: An essay by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel discusses why for him, hope without memory is like memory without hope. “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” This essay is especially powerful given recent world events.

Ubuntu System on a Memory Drive: The coolest thing about CD-based Linux distributions is the fact that you can have your Linux distro just about anywhere. The bad part is that with those distros, you really can’t save anything so you’re pretty much relegated to single session computing. Sure, you can set up printers, have programs load up at lightning speed, and even download stuff off the Web. But if you’re the type to tote your OS around on a CD for use in different places, you’re also probably the type that likes to customize his environment, and that’s where the problem is: one reboot and it’s all over. Well now, if you use Ubuntu, you can save your system settings (and other items) on a memory drive! Just plug this baby in and you have YOUR computer with YOUR stuff back, with just a CD and a memory card. How cool is that?!

Alan Watts MP3’s and Podcasts: If you enjoy eastern philosophy, but don’t have the time to read a bunch of texts, then the downloadable Alan Watts lessons are definitely for you. If you know who Watts is you’ll know the value of these recordings. If you’ve never heard of the guy, click on one of the links and find out a bit about him.

Online Game: Proximity: This game’s pretty simple: Place your pieces in such a way as to make most of the board yours. What gets complicated is the strategy involved in order to make it happen. Very addicting, fun game.