Happy Slap TV

Following the latest fad, kids are running all around London slapping random strangers and capturing the event on their video phones. This isn't just playful slapping, though - I'm talking full on violence. Kicking people in the head. Knocking down fast-moving bikers. In the name of jokes. Boredom. See for yourself in a video compiled by blogger Alfie Dennen. Some kid in the background is cackling the entire time. Warning, though - if you can't stand violence, skip the video. The whole fad is revolting. I guess it's racially charged, too. Just what the world needs, right?

Do YOU Believe in Bigfoot?

A Manitoba man has allegedly captured footage of Bigfoot in Manitoba, north of Winnipeg. The FOX show A Current Affair has since bought the rights to air the video twice on its show in a couple weeks. All this has led me to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, which has compiled all reported sitings of the Sasquatch and a neat little physiological analysis. Sadly enough, I find this all pretty interesting. There are still regular sightings in North America, often by groups of people in the middle of the day in the remotest mountain regions. Could they all be faked or imagined? What if we do have a distant relative hidden in North America, naturally selected to avoid human contact?

*smack*

Mm.. wow. I need to get some sleep. Sorry. I'll stop.

A Free Man

Having gone through five mechanical pencils and plenty of sanity, today I am emerged fully rid of all finals. I finished up Cognition this morning and my 40 minute (!) Italian exam yesterday morning. Done, and it feels damn good. My handwriting's approaching normal, too.

Today, the weather is shit and getting shittier by the minute. Went for a wander with John and John to look at "garage" sales, found absolutely nothing. One guy, whose ad on the McGill classifieds went something like this,

I must be CRAZY to offer things so low, but I am!!! Everything must go today!!!
Insanely cheap prices, Everything must go today!!! Get this stuff out of my house!!! Many Free Items. 3475 Durocher 1-8pm

had a one room apartement that smelled like (yea, you guessed it) shit and tried to sell me toilet paper and a half-used bottle of windex. No furniture. It was just him in there and a guy who looked suspiciously like the Boustan deliveryman trying to buy a broken phone. We backed out real quick. Others sold only repetitions of Ikea, and if I wanted cheap particle board I'd go there myself and choose something that actually looked nice.

Home in five days, neuro appointment tomorrow, St. Sulpice on Friday night. Move-in date: the 1st. If we can get the stubborn tenants-whose-lease-ends-on-the-30th out first.

Vimeo: Video Tagging

Vimeo is del.icio.us meets Flickr in movie format:

This is a site for organizing and sharing your video clips. Vimeo also makes it easy to watch your friends' video clips, or to view clips that have common subject matter.

Apparently you can also assemble longer movies from the short clips, and even view "Automatic Movies" compiled based on a tag search (example tag: concert). Still in beta, but most certainly worth a little attention.

Woman Stoned To Death in Afghanistan

In the first such incident since the end of the Taliban, a woman accused of adultery was publicly stoned to death in Afghanistan. From Reuters:

Amina, a 29 year-old married woman, was publicly stoned to death on the basis of a district court's decision on Thursday in Argo district to the west of Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan, they said.

Her accomplice recieved 100 lashings.

Huffington Organizes Celeb Blog.. Meh

The New York Times reports that Arianna Huffington, columnist and former independent candidate for governer of California, has created a blog to be written by the likes of Walter Cronkite, Norah Ephron, Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, and Vernon E. Jordan Jr. News, politics, nature, that sort of thing. With all the popularity blogs have been getting recently, I guess this isn't so surprising. The NY Times bills the upstart as a competitor of The Drudge Report, though really it's just another celebrity vanity project - one that us mere mortals may comment on. Assuming, of course, that celebrities even write the thing. They might as well hire minions to do it for them. Don't expect candid as-they-see-it reporting, either. Remember, they have reputations to look after.

Nah. For entertaining, insightful, uncomfortable blogging I'll stick to the unknowns out there who find their voice through this medium. That's how it started, anyways.

K-Rock 96.5 Off The Air

For those of you who live in Seattle and enjoy, uh, "alternative oldies classic rock," today must be a sad day. In a move typical of umbrella ultramegacorp Infinity, which owns most of the radio, K-Rock 96.5 abruptly stopped broadcasting recently and is now filling the dead air with movie clips and Don Henley.

Ex-96.5-DJ Andy Savage has this to say:

Andy, Steve, Jodi & Ron want to apologize to everyone who made us their first choice every morning. We sincerely wish we could have said something on the air to let you know what was going on but we had no idea. It came as quite a shock to us. All we can say is please check this site again soon, we shall return to a radio near you...in the meantime, browse the site and check out the cool things we've done with many of you in the past year! And thanks for your patience...

The station is switching to Jack FM format: pre-packaged, pre-programmed, pre-scheduled radio from somewhere else. Hoo-ray.

Slow Wave: Collective Dream Diary Comic

Slow Wave is a set of internet comic based on reader-submitted dreams. The sheer randomness is hilarious, as is the perfectly portrayed idiotic submission of the dream state.

1337 Hacker "Bitchchecker" Wreaks Internet Havoc.. On Self

Check out this hilarious 'hacker' dialogue from an IRC chat. Attempted DOS attack goes awry. Very awry. FYI, 127.0.0.1 is always the ip of the computer you're using, and any activity directed there comes back to you. See the results.

bitchchecker: shut up i hack you
Elch: ok, i’m quiet, hope you don’t show us how good a hacker you are
bitchchecker: tell me your network number man then you’re dead
Elch: Eh, it’s 129.0.0.1
Elch: or maybe 127.0.0.1
Elch: yes exactly that’s it: 127.0.0.1 I’m waiting for you great attack
bitchchecker: in five minutes your hard drive is deleted
Elch: Now I’m frightened
bitchchecker: shut up you’ll be gone
bitchchecker: i have a program where i enter your ip and you’re dead
bitchchecker: say goodbye
Elch: to whom?
bitchchecker: to you man
bitchchecker: buy buy
Elch: I’m shivering thinking about such great Hack0rs like you
bitchchecker: Quit (Ping timeout#) [he crashed his own computer]

He tries three more times, eventually deleting his own hard-drive. I'm still laughing.

Mock Terror Attack Video

Here's a crazy 30 minute video of a news team practicing for an all out attack on the United States. The black plague in New Jersey, a suicide bomb, a plane used to deliver mustard gas in Connecticut, and thousands dead or injured. It is clearly improvised, but scary nonetheless.

I Are Invigilatored

Spent the day feeling like a prisoner at the hands of the invigilators, a group of sadistic $10/hr fiends who proctored (sounds comfortable) my two-in-one tests today, for I am a conflict student. Yes, that's right - I commited the grevious offence of registering for two classes who eventually decided to schedule the same exam period, and because of my actions I have had to be dealt with quite specially. This morning around 8:45, I arrived at my Bio exam (5 hours before the normal exam) and was told not to talk to anyone including myself, except for the invigilators. Such a terrible word. I took my exam, was escorted into the bathroom after, sat in silence for another two hours, and then was herded with another girl to my linguistics exam at the hands of Herr Chief Invigilator herself, who couldn't help but glance at me every two seconds as if I was about to commit murder. Or call my friend and spill the answers to the exam. Either way, no respect. None. Took linguistics, had to "invent" a brand-spanking-new grammar unit in French, and left in a daze.

Well, that was my day. The week's been spend studying and stressing. Tonight we're going out, though, and then I'm watching a movie with Kalei. Home soon, moving into the house sooner, done with exams on Wednesday.

Ah, but I hear drunk people outside. Must run.

Kids With Cameras

Kids With Cameras is a non-profit organization that teaches photography to marginalized third-world children, handing them cameras and providing an incredible inside look at their world. It was created after the release of the moving documentary "Born into Brothels," which captures the lives of children growing up with prostitute mothers in the red light district of Calcutta. Some of the photos have been uploaded to Flickr, and they're beautiful.

Extreme Fundamentalism, What?

These Ultra-Christian t-shirt designs scare the hell out of me. How can these people claim to be so different from, say, the ex-Taliban? The similarities can be striking, and yet one side is consistently cast as evil: a religion of death, of discrimination, of abuse. Still, there are a huge numbers of Fundamentalists in the United States, with views just as extreme and right-wing. They even breed the occasional terrorist like Eric Rudolph, who expresses his religion with bombs. Sounds familiar. Yet, without a proper amount of education and perspective, this understanding is utterly lost on those trying to comprehend the state of the country and of the major religions of the world. Read a proper survey of world religions some time (check out The Religions of Man, by Huston Smith), and you'll discover something of the highest importance: we're not all so different as you might think.

That House

I put pics of that house I'm moving into next year here on Flickr in case you're interested. We're looking for summer sublets in May, June, July, and August.

The place is on Rue Cherrier a couple blocks from St. Denis. Great location, 9 1/2, 14 ft. ceilings, tip-top. Contact me if you need a place.

Returned!

Hey there, sorry for the lack of activity over the last couple of weeks. I went home last Thursday the 31st of March, and while I had a wonderful weekend at home with Kalei, I also went through a pretty serious single event that has had me in the hospital since I got back to Montreal. Importantly, I've been discharged today to a beautiful sunny city and I'm feeling healthy. There's nothing terribly wrong with me. Thank goodness.

Final season is upon me, though I am deferring the roughest couple (my handwriting still needs work).

Oh, and I have a place to live next year! I'm moving into a house with four people: Elaina, Jaren, Sebastian, and Maddy. Elaina's one of my good friends, and called me last Monday to see if I'd be interested in replacing someone who backed out of their plan. Sounds like a wonderful place, and I couldn't be happier with it.

Well that's all I have energy for now (my typing sits with my handwriting), but there'll be more later. Lastly, though, I want to give a huuuge thanks to all my friends who came out with such wonderful support over the last week, to my parents, and of course to Kalei who was always there.

Now, sleep.