Gordon Freeman: Jerk.



Also from the same demented mind: roller-coaster bowling.

That demented mind is that of Shamus Young, whose blog I recently subscribed to. He is responsible for the hilarity of DM of the Rings, which has earned itself a spot in my "favorite webcomics" list on the right. He is 1) a geek, 2) a gamer (both tabletop and video), 3) a programmer, and 4) (this one is especially rare given the first three) a self-described devout Christian. It's nice to be able to visit a site devoted to my interests without worrying too much about how the author will find fit to offend me with language or ideology this time.

For those with WAY too much time on their hands.

500th Post!

And happy 4th anniversary, F.U. News!
Have some cake.

And in honor of the 4/500th postiversary, I present
Joe's Favorite 10h F.U. News Articles.

10. The Gallery of Windows in Our Lives.
F. More True Stories from College: The Queue.
E. A Geek Tragedy (with a happy ending).
D. What do Cockroachs and Hearing Loss Have in Common?
C. An Open Letter to All Hollywood Movie Studios.
B. Cross Sums.
A. The Adventures of Ion, Intergalactic Milk-Man.
9. I have Come to Soil Thine Toiletries.
8. Mess Hall Memories, Part I.
7. Planning Ahead FTW!
6. Dave Playing "Those Endearing Young Charms".
5. Movie Reviews: Lawrence of Arabia/Dr. Zhivago.
4. Kittens of the Serengeti.
3. Ask a Drill Instructor: Christian Formation.
2. Skymall.
1. Condo Shopper.

Runners-up and honorable mentions:
Most obscure: F.U. News in History: Antony Von Leeuwenhoek Discovers Bacteria, OCD.
Only on this list because Mr. Pickles said he thought it was funny, but hey, Joe will take any praise he can get: OSHA Office Model of Unsafe Workplace.
Funniest article based on a line from Sham Shpade/Biggest rip-off of The Onion: Before I Kill You, Allow Me to Give You a Tour of My Secret Base and Explain My Entire Evil Plot in Detail.
Second funniest computer game reference: Point/Counter-Point: Max Payne.
Funniest computer game reference: Worlds of Incredible Wonder Await Those Looking for Adventure, Provided They Can Turn on the Power.
When I'm famous and everyone in the world reads my blog, the guy from this article is going to feel so stupid for ticking me off: I'm So Sorry I Had the Audacity to Park Next to You.
Article that started the tradition of blogging about my business trips: I Need Naught but to Partake of Thine Magick Fire.
Article that inspired me to buy the "Support the Municipality" shirt: My Heart Is Heavy with the Guilt of My Sins.
Just Plain Nuts: Nature's Harmonic Simultaneous Time-Rhombicosidodecahedron.
Most True to Life: So Sorry, but You Can't Graduate Until You Take a Pointless Elective.
Article which was supposed to have a sequel to celebrate the release of Animaniacs on DVD, in which the same pictures would be used, but in the picture of the box opening, The Murloc was supposed to photoshop the Warners to make it look like they were jumping out of the package but she never did so my perfectly good idea went to waste: Package from City 17.

What Blogging Was Invented For

And now, in traditional F.U. News fashion, we bury the informative, educational, and otherwise entertaining content with a photo dump (preferably of cat pictures), random link, or YouTube video.

Celebrating 4 years of virtual non-contribution.





3-Digit Interstates

Hey, at least I put the cat pictures in a slideshow.

Your Daily Dose of Cul-chuh.

Lochinvar
By Sir Walter Scott

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He staid not for brake, and he stopp'd not for stone,
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he enter'd the Netherby Hall,
Among bride's-men, and kinsmen, and brothers and all:
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,)
"O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"

"I long woo'd your daughter, my suit you denied; --
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide --
And now I am come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."

The bride kiss'd the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaff'd off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She look'd down to blush, and she look'd up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar, --
"Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a gailiard did grace;
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bride-maidens whisper'd, "'twere better by far
To have match'd our fair cousin with young Lochinvar."

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reach'd the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
"She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

---------------------------------------------------

The thought process that lead to me remembering this:
Dancing->SPCB->Misty Copeland->Aaron Copland->That one time the DJ on KUSC read the poem about how he thought the Stallone movie "Cop Land" was about his favorite composer->That DJ always read a poem to announce the next piece, after the Writers' Almanac->Writers' Almanac, hosted by Garrison Keillor->That one time Mom gave me a homework assignment to listen to Writers' Almanac at 5:00pm, because she heard it at 8:00am and knew I'd like it->Garrison Keillor read "Lochinvar" that one time; Mom had assigned it because I had just recently read "Lochinvar" in my literature text book.

Why do I remember these obscure details? Why? Why?

Backstory on the poem. It was my literature reading assignment, which I was frustrated with because I didn't understand it. Mom had to take the time go through it with me and explain it. Reading it again after all these years, I think I appreciate it a lot more. Perhaps a larger vocabulary helps. Then again, I think my literature books helped my vocabulary.

Random fact: I think this poem was the first time I encountered the word "ere" meaning "before".

Statshot: 4/500 Postiversary
A look at the numbers that shape FU-News.

In honor of F.U. News' 4 year/500 postiversary, here are two Statshots about the blog itself.

Most Commented Articles:

Contributors to F.U. News.

Point/Counter-Point.
FU-News 4 years/500 posts.

November 20th marks F.U. News' 4th anniversary, and with more than 495 posts already, the coming 500th post marks another milestone. We asked two leading experts what they think.

Point: Four years is quite a near-accomplishment.
By Leeroy Jenkins.
Wow. Four years, huh. That's, like, twenty years in internet time. Seems pretty incredible that Joe's been able to stick with anything that long. I mean, that's longer than he's been married. That's as long as he was in college. That's as long as some presidential terms. Who'd have thought Joe would have had an attention span that long? I mean, I figured he'd just get bored and forget the whole thing after a year or so. But to come up with consistently mediocre ideas and half-baked articles for four years? That takes... what's the word? Not skill, no. No, not talent either. Um. Averageness?

Counter-point: Psh. Four years is nothing. Now 500 posts, that's almost something.
By Gordon Frohman.
Whoopdie-freaking-do. Four years. That means... what? The Earth has crossed the same point four times since he made his first post? Big deal. Now 500 posts, that's almost an accomplishment. Being able to pull 500 nearly-coherent thoughts from that empty skull of his is nothing short of incredible. I mean, that's like one thought for every mile in the Indy 500. Can you imagine a driver going around the track and every time he crosses the finish line, he makes a blog post? I didn't think so. Joe can. Because he's had 500 thoughts in his life time. Now that's just shy of impressive.

Rebuttal:
LJ: Yay. 500 posts. Who freaking cares. It's only significant in base ten. No one cares about 1F4h posts, now, do they? And he's only done what, half of them? Three quarters at best. And the last couple hundred have been nothing but pictures of his cats and links to sites BBspot linked to first. Wow. Such originality. You'll pardon me if I don't swoon with excitement. Now four years. That's quite the, um, quite the thing.

Counter-rebuttal:
GF: Go soak your head. No one cares how long he's been doing it. All that matters is that the number is BIG and ROUND. Four is neither. And who uses base sixteen anyways?

At this point, the debate degenerated into a cartoon-style swirling ball of limbs.

True Tales from Customer Support.

The Murloc writes

LOL! directly from one of our customers that a rep on my team just helped: (first off, they needed to call tech, but they called us instead... L2R)
Customer: "It's asking for disk 2 and I hit ok, and it doesnt like it."
Rep: "did you put in disk 2?"
Customer: "no, should I?"

Here are some emails we have received from customers (obviously translated through Babelfish, quite badly at that):
"The answer is the correct password, and my electronic fuel tanks fail to receive your letter"
"My numbered account throws to lose because my PC suffered the attack of the wood horse procedure,"
There are definitely bright moments to this job.

Portal: The Flash Version.

For those of you who don't have Valve's Orange Box, you can experience all the thrills and puzzle solving of Portal with none of the good graphics and GLaDOS humor!

Link.

Uncle Arnie Kills People!

From the greatest action flick evar: Commando.

Photo Caption Contest

Think of the best caption for this picture, and you could* win a prize!




















*As with all F.U. News contests, the winner gets squat.

Because Mrs. Pickles Asked For It.



Now that you've listened to it. You can't unlisten to it.

Scientific Theories Renamed.

As Calvin so famously observed, scientists lack creativity. They can imagine all the matter in the universe exploding out of a point smaller than the head of a pin, but they can't come up with a more creative name than "the Big Bang". He then so creatively renames it "the Horrendous Space Kablooie".

With that in mind, I think we need to get to work renaming the more boringly-named scientific theories. I'll give some current theories' names, a description of the theory, and some other suggestions. Feel free to throw in your contributions in the comments.

Giant Impact Hypothesis (Wikipedia).
This ultimately-cool scientific hypothesis states that the formation of the moon resulted after a roughly Mars-sized planet, called "Theia", which formed in Lagrange point 4 or 5, and when the Earth was only a few dozen million years old, struck the Earth at an oblique angle. Much of Earth's and Theia's mantles were thrown off into space; Theia's core sank into Earth's core; And about two percent of Theia's mass ended up as a ring around the earth, which, over the next hundred years coalesced into the moon. This helps to explain certain things, such as why the moon orbits the Earth at roughly Earth's equator, and certain similarities in composition between the Moon and Earth.
Possible new names:
The Most Hugely Gigantic Explosion in the World.
Inter-planetary Billiards.
Impact! When Worlds Collide: A New Film by Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer.

Supermassive Black Holes (Wikipedia).
Nevermind that "black hole" is a boring-enough term for what it names, but now scientists think that most, if not all, galaxies have formed with a black hole between a hundred thousand and ten billion times the mass of the sun in the center. Interestingly, the density of said black holes may be less than that of air, since the volume of the black hole increases as the cube of the radius, while the mass increases merely linearly.
Possible new names:
The Stupendously Huge Pit of Doom.
The Inescapable Ball of Suck.
Unicron: Destroyer of Worlds.

Velociraptor (Wikipedia).
In recent news, paleontologists have discovered that Velociraptors had feathers. This was shown by the presence of quill knobs on the fossils. What's interesting to note is that quill knobs are not usually found in flightless birds today, which indicates that at least the ancestors of dromaeosaurids could fly. So now we have the most fearsome predator ever to stalk the Earth, and which, possibly, could fly. And the only name they can come up with for it is swift thief. (Yes, yes, I know. The Velociraptors in Jurassic Park were actually Deinonychus, which means a slightly-more fearsome "terrible claw".)
Possible new names:
Vicious, Bloody Killers of the Late Cretaceous.
Winged Doom.
Death by Sharp Pointy Teeth.

Intelligent Design (Michael Behe's Amazon.com blog, because I don't trust Wikipedia on this one).
So most scientists claim to love how science challenges belief. They love to point to examples like that of their Saint Galileo, who nobly and heroicly stood up against the Evil Catholic Church, which was doing its utmost to force ignorance on the masses to keep any sort of learned men from challenging the house-of-cards that is Christianity, for the slightest challenge to any of its teachings would make it collapse (the actual story of Galileo is not nearly as dramatic; the Catholic Encyclopedia has a good explanation of what really went on with that whole Church-Galileo-Geocentrism thing). But heaven help you, should you challenge their beliefs. For instance, even though any decent mother's son what calls himself a scientist will acknowledge that scientific theories are ever changing and, erm, evolving, its best not to rile them by suggesting that Darwinsim doesn't explain everything and the theory might do well with some changing and, erm, evolving.
Possible new names:
And God Said, Let It Be Complex.
Not The Same Thing as Creationism.
Eat It, Darwinists.

I must be an incredibly evil person that articles like this delight me. "Oh, good," I say to myself. "One step closer to the inevitable market collapse, after which I will finally be able to afford a home."

Patrick Stewart continues to be awesome

From a British sitcom about extras. The best part is at the end. (Crudity warning: contains dialog about naked women)

Holy Crap These Guys Are Funny

I don't know if any of you have ever been to Barats and Bereta before, but I just stumbled on them today and nearly peed myself (I seem to be getting old...). Anyhow, in case you've never seen them, here is a sampling of there humor. It seems very reminiscent of college videos like the ones that Joe and I did.

(links warning: some of their videos contain language/crudity [yes, it is a word because I say it is])