Fresh perspective on the Geneva Convention

Mr. Feathertop at John C Wright's blog reminds those of us who have had their judgment dulled by why-can't-we-all-just-get-along-ism (and that includes myself) that the surest way to encourage good behavior is with a system of rewards and punishments and not with mere pleading. The Geneva convention should not be looked at merely from the perspective of what it prevents those in power from doing to those who qualify from the convention’s protections.

Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner

My Head Asplode.

This commercial caused my brain to crash.

After it rebooted, all I could think was "fuh?" followed by "buh?" and finally "wuh?"

Why are there Pringles in Silent Hill? What's Lara Croft doing in Silent Hill? Why is she carrying a blow dryer, a spatula, a tape measure, a tennis racket, and a feather duster? Why does she have a Rubik's Cube in her bra? Why, dear lord, WHY?

(Why does she look like she's about 16 years old?)

Forced to ponder so many imponderables, forced to piece together so many disparate pieces, my feeble brain is forced to come to one inescapable conclusion: Brain made this commercial. Yes, who else but the World's Smartest Mouse, who else by the power behind the plot to build the world's largest clothes dryer and entrap everyone in static cling, could come up with such a fiendishly confusing commercial. I'm sure his plan looks something like this:

1) Confuse the world's gamers with a commercial of utter bizarre-ness.

2) In the ensuing chaos, TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

Babby's First Halloween.

I miss Tom.

No, wait. I don't. I just miss making movies with him.

Catechebulary.

His Excellency Most Rev. Donald W. Trautman, bishop of Erie, has been working to prevent the implementation of the new translation of the Roman Missal. One of his concerns is over the vocabulary, and he is concerned that some of the words may be beyond the grasp of Joe Pewsitter. (What Does the Prayer Really Say has been covering the story. You can find entries here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Since charity demands that we assume that His Excellency must just simply be too busy to take, y'know, two minutes of a homily to explain what some of these words mean, F.U. News has taken it upon itself to help defuse the situation by defining these words and giving usage for each.

*ahem* Let us begin.

in·eff·a·ble (ĭn-ĕf'ə-bəl)

adj.

1. Clever; cunning: I tried to screw him over with legal speak, but he was ineffable and saw right through it.
2. Incapable of sexual attraction; frigid: I walked up to the hawt chick in the bar and tried to get her digits, but she was ineffable.
3. Able to be placed in the letter "F".

con·sub·stan·tial (kŏn'səb-stăn'shəl)

adj.

1. Of or relating to narcotics, particular those of an illegal nature: arrested and sent to prison for possession of consubstantial material.
2. The state of being on board a submarine with a guy named Stan.

in·car·nate (ĭn-kär'nĭt)

adj.

1. Having an intense fear of carnivals or fiestas: We wanted to go to the state fair, but Sue is incarnate.

v.

1. To be turned into an automobile: Steve was incarnated as a Ford Thundercougarfalconbird.
2. A word that the designers of the game Indigo Prophecy don't know the meaning of: the girl has a pure soul and has never been incarnated.

n.

1. My friend, Nate, who sits around in his car all day.

in·vi·o·late (ĭn-vī'ə-lĭt)

n.

1. The rage a conductor feels when the violist misses the entrance for his solo for the umpteenth consecutive time.
2. An early 19th century art movement that focused on producing artwork of reddish-blue and light purple hues.

ob·la·tion (ə-blā'shən, ō-blā'-)

n.

1. A type of mocking cheer practiced in some rural European areas that involves clapping while giving a raspberry: the peasants showed their distaste for the performer's interpretation with a standing oblation.
2. A perverse sexual act involving a woodwind.

ig·no·min·y (ĭg'nə-mĭn'ē, -mə-nē)

n.

1. The first word of the Sign of the Cross, in Latin: Ignominy Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
2. A shameful display of lawn ornaments, esp. one involving lots of gnomes.
3. A very small fire: After hours of rubbing twigs together, all I had to show for it was an ignominy.

adj. -ious

1. The loss of a PvP battleground to a team consisting entirely of gnomes: an ignominious defeat.

pre·cur·sor (prĭ-kûr'sər, prē'kûr'sər)

n.

1. The emptiness between each blink of a cursor on a computer.
2. The letter audible immediately before the bleep in censored dialog that is only there so you know what word is being said.

suf·fuse (sə-fyūz')

v.

1. To use a consubstantial narcotic.
2. To use some poor woman who doesn't know English very well to try and get signatures to end women's suffrage. Jimmy Kimmel is an ass.

un·van·quished (ŭn-vān'kwĭsht)

adj.

1. Never having lost to an Aston Martin Vanquish in a race: After twelve races, the Ferrari was still unvanquished.

Browser Fight

Time for another holy flame war. For some reason I now have five web browsers installed. Naturally, I decided to run them all at the same time. How about a standards-compliance matchup? First up, the Acid2 Test:

Surprisingly, Firefox is the only one that failed. Next, the newer Acid3 test (I need another monitor):

Only Opera reported a perfect 100/100 and matched the reference rendering. Chrome has a graphical artifact, although it reports no errors. Oddly, Firefox and SeaMonkey report different scores although they use the same rendering engine. Microsoft haters will love the FAIL on IE. Lastly, a memory usage comparison:

Don't ask me why my mouse driver takes 20MB of memory. Chrome and IE each run two processes even when only displaying one page, so the browser with the lowest total memory footprint is Opera. I only just installed it last week, so I may actually try it out now to see how well it works.

An Imaginary Bag of Marshmallows™...

...to whomever can identify this spider, found hiding cozily in between our bed sheets.

Found in "Damien's" Halloween candy bucket:

What's the first thing I thought of?

Pretzels are not candy! (You get egged! You get egged! You get egged!)

New post on my literary blog for those who are interested in Space Pirates.

Just sayin'. You might check it out.