ninme

BizarreRecords.com. Broken into such self-explanatory categories as “Nice Ladies!”, “Dummies!”, “Christmas Cheer!”, “Mulletts!!”, “Men in Uniform!”. Yes, Mullets!! got two !-marks. Then there’s “Big Hair for Jesus!” This is important stuff, people. It’s this sort of thing that has turned entire generations off Christian Music forever.

Wow, some of these belly dancer ones.. Well, some of them are horrible, but some of them.. We should drop them over the Middle East as a sort of psy-ops thing. Hahahah: “Dance Into Your Sultan’s Heart.” Oh my god.

engadget - NYT: Cellphones and VCRs undermine North Korean regime, by Marc Perton

He sent this to me yesterday and I just found it lurking behind my other windows. Sorry.

Chances are you’re not going to find the latest goods from LG or Samsung in North Korea, but little-by-little, technology is bringing change to the hermit kingdom, according to The New York Times. Cellphones, though officially banned, are now commonplace in areas of the country that border China, where they can receive signals via towers on the Chinese side of the border. Prepaid calling plans — often paid for by South Korean journalists — let Northerners communicate with relatives and others in the South. The technology with the biggest impact, however, is the VCR, which has become a must-have item. Smuggled decks — ditched by Chinese upgrading to DVD players — are apparently widely available, and tapes of South Korean soap operas are the latest rage. The government has responded predictably, by railing against Southern influence and cutting off electricity without warning and then inspecting VCRs to see what tapes are stuck inside. But some experts believe the damage to the repressive regime is already done: “They are gradually learning about South Korean prosperity,” Andrei Lankov, who studied in the North, told the Times. “This is a death sentence to the regime.”

This is why I don’t understand why people can still believe that closed societies can remain closed. All this business about maybe change will happen, maybe it won’t. It has to change. There’s no avoiding it. There always were cracks in closed societies, and stuff like cell phones and VCRs are just making those cracks huge culverts. It’s silly.

Market Watch - TiVo shares soar on Comcast deal

Woohoo!

Too much free time alert (sorry, Peter, it’s true).

Hard|Forum - DOOM 3: Project Mars City Mod

I like the keyboard on page three. It’s a nice touch.

My favourite custom-built PC case so far Peter showed to me a couple years back online somewhere, and the guy had built a coffee maker into it. It was awesome.

Good heavens, it has a wee little smoke stack. This thing belongs in the freaking Smithsonian.

We’re all pretty excited that there’s a preview/docu-thing out for the Wallace and Gromit movie.

I still say, though, that the guy narrating these things needs to be taken out and shot.

Alexander Payne - They Stopped Calling It Rendezvous

A conversation began, conducted solely by library title, and it continued for the next couple of hours. At one point I offered my AIM screenname, identified myself as the kid with the 3 on the back of his neck. She didn’t talk to me online. She didn’t leave her table to talk to me in the coffee shop. I didn’t dare approach her, personal space and all that. But we kept talking.

Move over anonymous roses.

Read the whole thing.