Yes, this one too.

Robert Anton Wilson - Wikiquote:

"Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil."

Japan. Is. Awesome.

"This is a clip from 'Troop of One Hundred', taken from a Japanese comedy/prank show, where a 100 people chase after random strangers and you see their reactions. Totally harmless but their reactions are priceless."

Yeah, you can.

5PM How You Can Tell Who Went to Catholic School

Coworker #1: The film was so violent... I don't really like realistic-looking violence.
Coworker #2: Yeah, neither do I. Although, I did get some perverse enjoyment from watching The Passion of the Christ.
Coworker #1: But in this one it's all the nice people getting hurt.

500 Harris Street
Ultimo, Sydney
Australia

Overheard by: Dan
via Overheard in the Office, Jan 18, 2007

Warren Ellis does cranky old bastard better than almost anybody.

And almost always has a great point. Via his Bad Signal mailing list... On art and scifi -

"* And the only people who don't
like a little swagger are those
insecure souls who recoil when they
feel the art they consume is cooler
than they are. Which is a shame,
but the great project of art is not
to create a nice zoo for people who
are afraid of artists who can think.

* Besides, those people can always
go and watch DIAGNOSIS; MURDER."

Sandy continues her random camera odyssey.

That is some wacky hair.



She likes this one, but I think it makes her look all disillusioned and sad.



Goofy, yet oddly appealing. I think it's the tongue. Whenever girls do anything with their tongues, guys like it. It's Pavlovian. Woof.



The rest are what Sandy is forced to endure on a regular basis... me, far too engrossed in something on my computer.

"We take it very seriously" really means "We couldn't possibly care less."

Dan Gillmor on Public Relations-speak.

They Take it Seriously? Oh, Sure

...Try this: Plug “we take” and “very seriously” into a Google News or Yahoo News search. You’ll get hundreds of hits, albeit some repeats, where some big institution - corporate, educational, government, whatever - makes a giant blunder and then issues a “we take (insert the violated policy) very seriously” statement.

The news indexes of Google and Yahoo contain only the recent past, and not all media organizations. Run the same query on LexisNexis, and the number of hits grows exponentially. In other words, we have a trend.

...On December 14, after it was revealed that patients’ medical data went missing from a data-management company in Ohio, the healthcare provider’s spokesman intoned, “(W)e take this sort of thing very seriously,” according to a Pennsylvania TV station.

Taking things seriously isn’t limited to privacy slip-ups. A Texas district attorney, reacting to a Dallas newspaper’s successful campaign to unseal Catholic Church documents about alleged sexual-abuse cover-ups, said, “We take these kinds of abuse scenarios very seriously” (The Dallas Morning News, December 15).

And when a Maryland day-care center lost track of two children in a recent week, a spokeswoman told the local newspaper, “We are very sorry this has happened at our center and we take this matter very seriously.”

...Almost invariably, however, when I read or hear someone taking such things seriously, I think: They care mainly about getting caught, not screwing up. Otherwise, these things would happen far less often.

No doubt, this language is at least partly lawyer-driven. You can take something seriously - sort of, kind of acknowledging the mistake - while avoiding a hint of actual guilt.

But PR weasel-words don’t make the situation even slightly better, especially given the frequency of their use. They fuel cynicism and devalue the language.

A straight apology? That, we might take seriously.

"Become your own fantasy of yourself."

Warren Ellis gives you goals for the year. More at the link.

Warren Ellis - The 2007 Show

This year:

* Become your own fantasy of yourself.

* Urinate on something consecrated.

* Destroy someone's mind using only your eyes and words.

* Create a Title or Doctorate for yourself.

* Listen to one new thing every day.

* Understand in your heart that the Dog is the natural enemy of the Human.

* Spend at least 12 hours as an alien being.

* Force complete strangers to look at your "spaceship."

* Without getting arrested.

* Or married.

This week's PostSecret

Favorites from this week... much more at link - (PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.)