One of the things you can rely on life to do is give you parents. One mother, one father sperm and eggs – it’s a time honoured recipe for keeping the planet full and if that’s not how you got here I probably need to increase my dosage again.
One of the things you can’t rely on is what your parents are actually going to do with you when you arrive.
Some of them will buy you bicycles, some of them will buy you cars, some of them will get drunk and run over your bicycle with their cars.
Some of them will try to do this while you’re still on the bicycle, pedalling hell for leather. If this happens the key thing to remember is that you can’t outrun him so avoid any long straights that will allow him to accelerate. Try to keep obstacles between yourself and the vehicle until you can find a good spot to ditch the bike and get away on foot.
If you’re harbouring memories of a more idyllic childhood than this then spare a thought for Deborah Perez, who reminisces fondly of the tender moments shared with her old man, Guy Ward Hendrickson. Debbie and Guy would spend hours together writing taunting notes to the San Francisco PD, lovingly embroidering Zodiac symbols on his favourite hood and occasionally if the mood took him they would go for a Sunday afternoon drive and a stop off for a quick double homicide at the golf course. Debbie’s father was of course none other than the infamous Zodiac Killer, who terrorized the San Francisco area during the late 60’s and early 70’s.
The Zodiac was never caught and the identity of the killer remains a mystery to this day, as was recently dramatized in a very long motion picture in which Robert Downey Jr. got to take drugs in character.
Perez, who’s childhood traumas have been raked to the surface by the crash of the US property market, has been trying to work through her issues by holding a press conference and is shooting a documentary about her life in an effort to reach closure and begin the healing process. Her lawyer and confidant, Kevin McLean assures us that "Everyone is going to say she is crazy, but we had psychologists examine Ms. Perez," As if we would think such a thing.
Perez has also produced some hard evidence to support her claim, namely some of the letters she helped write and the glasses of Paul Stine, a cab driver who was killed by the Zodiac in 1969.
Deborah’s biggest problem however is that Dennis Kaufman, also claims his stepfather, Jack Tarrance is the real Zodiac Killer and he can prove it for just $9-99. What’s more Dennis has 16 rolls of extremely old film which have been lovingly restored by an actual university professor and fellow Zodiac enthusiast on which you can almost maybe definitely see people shapes and man lying down with a tattoo! Dennis has also uncovered a knife which Jack may have used for barbeque, or murder (hmm saucy) and just recently found a Zodiac hood complete with symbol and eyeholes hidden in the back of an old speaker.
If you live in a world that runs on memes that spread across the globe in a matter of hours and sub cultures that spring up around the latest social network, or MMORPG, sometimes the slang can get a little confusing – even for the most hardened of Internet users. For this reason I like Urban Dictionary. I find it enlightening and often amusing to skim through the user submitted definitions for the latest buzzword, or catch phrase.
Here’s a user submission that caught my eye the other night as particularly surreal. Apparently doganuses is not at all taken with the spirit of blogging and has strong feelings about the use of some of the jargon attached to the scene. More after the jump.
It did get me to thinking – this rather strange and random outpouring of disgust and anger in the middle of cyber nowhere – about the similarities between cyber rage and road rage and the Internet as an outlet for the copious amounts of suppressed anger most people are carting around these days in our increasingly neutered society. Not guilty? how many times have you yelled curses at someone from behind your steering wheel in the last week…?
This in turn got my thoughts running towards the uglier side of such matters and the Internet as a vehicle for people to find outlets for their darker tendencies, such as was recently highlighted with the arrest of Phillip Markoff, aka the The Craiglist killer earlier this month.
Markoff is not even the first Craiglist killer by the way. Nineteen year old Michael John Anderson, claimed this dubious honour back in 2007 when he lured a young lady to his apartment with a babysitting advertisement so that he could shoot her and shove her in the trunk of her car.
Coincidentally I just finished watching the first season of Dexter and the loveable serial killer himself pays homage to Craiglist by using it to send a furtive message to the Ice Truck killer. We are getting increasingly good at humanizing our demons and letting them out to play aren’t we? A charming serial killer, who lives by a code and only feeds his urges on truly deserving victims – its an intriguing concept – no let’s not soft soap it – it’s an exciting concept! It’s justice in rubber gloves, with a scalpel, a bonesaw and an industrial-sized roll of shrinkwrap.
Dexter sums this up beautifully in his chilling narration of the final scene of the season finale where he imagines the crowd cheering for him.
“My Darkness revealed my shadow self embraced, yeah they see me I’m one of them – I’m their darkest dreams.”
Its brilliant TV, punchy story line, socially relevant and unafraid of itself and as long as we’re parading demons down main street I’m not about to miss the show, or the ride in the hand basket.
I do have this nagging question that won’t go away though… has anyone checked the brakes on this thing recently?
“You know if I had a buck for every time I’d seen a story like this, I’d have probably like, 50 or 60 bucks – seriously.”
Aubergines by Allah (presumably Halaal)
Stories abound of people seeing the Virgin Mary in their potato chip, or finding Jesus shaped stain on their bath tubs.
Allah, on the other hand, tends to be a little more camera shy, but he does get a kick out of writing his name on the strangest things – like this Aubergine.
You do have to admire Paul (Mr Grayhek) for putting a new spin on this one though.
As far as I can tell Paul had been deep in prayer about his unemployment, when the anointed one was kind enough to come down with a six pack (or 3) of brewskies to talk things over and ease the burden.
As the evening wore on he (our Lord and Saviour) went out back to relieve himself, ditched it over the dog kennel in the dark and left this hand print in a pile of rocks.
Never one to miss a marketing opportunity and help out a buddy, he urged Paul to get straight onto E-Bay and sell the book and movie rights (because you can’t actually sell a handprint you dummy)
Carmelo Cortez can heal fevers and manifest religious figures on rose petals. He meets regularly with the Virgin Mary to discuss his work and listen to music.
According to CNN Grayhek said he plans to use the money from the sale to pursue an unpaid internship in counselling when he graduates with a master’s degree in social work in two years. (and the more social the better).
I guess $250 bucks goes a long way these days – imagine how much could have been accomplished if he’d done a face plant.
A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly declassified documents show. [full story]
You know it doesn’t take an awful lot of paranoia – when you read stuff like this in the context of our dear friend Microsoft’s long running relationship with soft cuddly organizations like the NSA – to start you wondering if the browser vulnerabilities are really down to sloppy code?
/me wanders off to make himself a new tinfoil hat…
Le Whif is a revolutionary new way of eating chocolate – by breathing it! Imagine, chocolate without the calories. Be the first to try inhaled chocolate when Le Whif goes on sale later this month in four luscious flavors: mint chocolate, raspberry chocolate, mango chocolate, and plain chocolate. [Le Whif Site]
Ok it’s all very confusing, but it seems the good people at the Le Labo Shop have gone off and manufactured these chocolate inhalers called Le Whif, which you can stick in your mouth and use to pretend that you’ve just eaten ridiculous amounts of chocolate (which is what the young lady in the picture is doing).
Apparently this bloke (David Edwards), wrote a book called Whiff, which is a story about how people realize their dreams by smelling chocolate. (Quite frankly this is probably the least disturbing thing a book with that title could have been about) Mr Edwards book is a completely standalone artistic endeavor and not at all part of the choc flavored poppers ingenious marketing campaign.
In any event I can’t see why the French need this sort of thing as they’re already notoriously skinny.
However if you are a fat bastard unable to resist the temptation to inhale handfuls of Mars Bars all day, or if you’ve recently quit smoking due to excess peer pressure and are looking for something more socially acceptable to suck on in public, then perhaps Le Whif is just the ticket for you.
(Le Whif is not recommended for use by Lindsay Lohan.)
This one is dedicated to all the magpies who helped spread the Conficker worm.
Answer this simple true, or false quiz to find out if you are a Magpie:
Clicking on adverts is the best way to get cool free stuff on the Internet.
Emails from people I don’t know are exciting and full of surprises.
Sometimes the Internet helps me by putting free software on my computer.
Using your credit card number for age verification is perfectly safe.
Sometimes I cut myself while looking at shiny things.
Incredimail is one of my favorite free things I got from the Internet.
My favourite website is called Smileycentral.
If you answered TRUE, to two or more of these questions, you are a Magpie – please turn off your computer now, we are banning you from the Internet, for your own safety.
If you refuse to heed this warning – click on the link below once you have the Conficker worm, it will tell you that you have Conficker worm.
Back in February Obama launched a review of the US national cybersecurity infrastructure under the charge of Melissa Hathaway. Now Hathaway is set to take up the full time role as Obama’s cybersecurity adviser on the back of a set of legislation that will grant federal officials new powers to create and enforce data security standards for government agencies and the private sector.
Most significant in this legislation are a set of shiny new presidential powers that will allow him to declare a state of cybersecurity emergency, giving him the ability to shutdown public, or private networks, or portions thereof in the interests of national security.
Now if you’re like me, possibly you only paid attention to the warm fuzzy parts of Obama’s Internet campaigning and heard him make stirring speeches about net neutrality and protecting civil rights online and just possibly you fooled yourself into thinking that here at last was a man in power, who understood the Internet we grew up on – the one where you could do and say anything you wanted to under the protection of the ultimate free speech weapon, anonymity.
If so then consider this your wake up call. Obama loves the Internet, that much is very clear. However first and foremost Obama loves America He wants a safe America, he wants an Internet that’s safe for Americans to use and he is quite clearly listening to the likes of Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller (yes he is a real Rockefeller) when they say things like:
[Snowe] "If we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber-Katrina."
[Rockefeller]"We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs. From our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records – the list goes on."
Not concerned? Listen to what Leslie Harris CEO at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has to say:
“This is pretty sweeping legislation,” says Harris. “Seems the President could turn off the Internet completely or tell someone like Verizon to limit or block certain traffic,” she said. “There is a lot to worry about in this bill.”
To put this in layman’s terms. Obama is creating traffic laws for the Internet, very real traffic laws like you’ve never seen before, with very real traffic police and Obama and his traffic police will be able to block the roads control the flow of traffic and if they decide to – stop you from going to the wrong part of town.
Also you need to understand, that these kind of objectives can only be achieved through extensive monitoring of the traffic. Sure he means to protect your civil rights online, sure he means to protect your privacy, but you can’t hand out fines to people for traffic violations, if you don’t know where they live can you?
In good American tradition to be a real president and get what you want you really should have a war to fight and I think its quite clear – from the way he is gearing up – that Obama plans to fight his war online.
I’ve found myself locked in a back and forth debate over the last few days with an old friend who is a staunch ‘left winger’ and attended the G20 protests – the highlight of this event of course being the tragic death of Ian Tomlinson due to police brutality. According to the Guardian’s first article various witnesses saw any number of the following things occur to a person who may or may not have been our man. Mr Tomlinson was:
Attacked violently
Struck on the head with a baton.
He was rushed from behind by a riot officer with a helmet and shield
Flung by the arm, to fall forward on his head.
He hit the top front area of his head on the pavement.
Now, thanks to the wonders of digital imagery, investment fund manager, 38 from New York – who surely risked life, limb and sanity amidst the howling mob of anti-capitalist papparazi to capture what is amazingly the only available footage of the savage police attack on Mr Tomlinson you too can know the truth. Watch closely:
Now call me an insensitive bastard if you like, but after reading the wildly descriptive allegations about the extent of police brutality extracted on Mr Tomlinson I can only describe my reaction to investment fund manager, 38’s footage as a complete bloody let down.
But wait, there’s more.
Not content with trumping the right wing media with their shocking footage of a ‘baton wielding’ Officer X giving Mr Tomlinson a bit of a smack on the leg and then violently ‘throwing him to the floor’, the Guardian provides us with a follow up article detailing the accounts of the various ‘eyewitnesses’ who were hinted at in the original story. This is such a startling display of journalistic integrity with direct quoting of previously paraphrased statements that I’m left puzzled by only two small details:
Why did the Guardian not go through these statements and replace some of the bigger words with smaller ones?
And secondly why did they not provide these accounts in a braille format?
The reason for these questions?
Because the relationship between these wild accounts and the video footage is so incredibly thin that I am forced to deduce that the Guardian believes its average reader to not only be particularly dull-witted, but also just about fucking blind.
Allow me to elaborate.
Marcus Bensasson, 30, photographer, south London
“One image shows a bystander being shoved in the back with a shield at the very spot Ian Tomlinson collapsed.”
At the very spot…
Dr Justin Meggitt, 40, senior lecturer in religious studies, Cambridge University
Whom I shall not quote directly, tells a gripping tale of a police force drunk with power, unleashing their hounds of oppression on dashing young male protestors who’s only crime is the lobbing of the odd plastic bottle at the establishment lackies, but where oh were Dr Meggit is Ian Tomlinson? Did you see him, or was your attention too heavily focused on the plight of those young men?
Anna Branthwaite, 36, freelance photographer, south London
“It wasn’t just pushing him – he’d rushed him. He went to the floor and he did actually roll. That was quite noticeable. It was the force of the impact. He bounced on the floor. It was a very forceful knocking-down from behind. The officer hit him twice with a baton when he was lying on the floor.”
“So it wasn’t just that the officer had pushed him – it became an assault. And then the officer picked him up from the back, continued to walk or charge with him, and threw him. He was running and stumbling. He didn’t turn and confront the officer or anything like that.”
Anna, oh Anna. If only your experienced camera had been as swift as investment fund manager, 38’s…or your imagination.
Recall with me the footage, We quite clearly see Mr Tomlinson standing by the bicycles unpropelled by the forces of police brutality, His hands are in his pockets his expression is something I can only describe as grumpy. no doubt he is bloody annoyed at having to walk a detour around the mess protesters and police have made of his route home. He does not show any signs of having just been in a scuffle, he has no visible blood gushing head wounds. He then instead of moving smartly out of the way, walks deliberately and slowly in front of the biggest clump of them and for this visibly annoying act delivered unto him is a quick smack about the leg with a baton and a shove in the back that sends him falling forward onto his hands by the looks of it after which he sits on the ground, has a word or 6 with the officers and then is helped up and wanders off.
So please Anna, please would you care to elaborate for me at exactly which point he was beaten while laying on the ground and then picked up and violently propelled forward to be thrown to the floor again?
Kezia Rolfe, 27, NGO researcher, east London
“I saw him suddenly fall back as though flung down with force. It was as though he had been spun. He fell and hit the top of his head hard. I was shocked. He lay on the ground for around 30 seconds without moving before a protester helped him up.”
Kezia mate, with respect, did you spend the day researching lager? The whole incident captured on video barely takes 30 seconds. The man was pushed and fell forward. If you look at the stop motion he gets his hands out palm down just before falling out of the frame. For him to have spun around and struck the top of his head in that last foot that is off camera would have been in complete defiance of the laws of physics.
Amiri Howe, 24, actor/musician, west London
Another stirring tale – Amiri will no doubt be capturing all of this in the script for his one man performance art show, perhaps he’s started already…
“We saw a couple of scuffles happening. Our friends were inside trying to get out – no water, no food, we wanted to get them out. Police started coming forward. Missiles started to be thrown.”
I like this about Amiri, because he wasn’t afraid to admit that people were throwing stuff at the angry law enforcers.
“The guy [Tomlinson] was stood there. He got hit near the head with a baton. It was like a pencil, he just fell to the floor and hit his head again when he hit the floor.”
The other thing I like about Amiri’s story is that it’s almost as creative as Anna’s and yet fundamentally different.
Finally lets hear the words of investment fund manager, 38 – perhaps the only sane person there at the time:
“I saw him wandering around [before he was attacked]. He was just taking a look. He just got too close to the police line. [When he was attacked]” …
“Then I looked at the footage again and thought ‘my God, it’s the man they pushed to the ground’. It must be him it was minutes later who collapsed.”
There are numerous other accounts of the events after Mr Tomlinson collapsed, what’s important to note about them is this:
No-one indicates seeing any signs of a visible head trauma or of any blood on the man’s head, face, or clothing.
No one seems to indicate that he was attacked again after the incident caught on video.
There is very little to suggest in the way that he, or the police behave on the video to suggest that this was the continuation of a previous incident.
So really in conclusion can we see this as anything other than the tragedy of a man with a weak heart in the wrong place at the wrong time, being handled a bit roughly by a police officer who was most likely already at the end of his tether after a bloody long day of dealing with angry slogan chanting, bottle throwing protesters.
We all have the right to be human beings who make mistakes, even the ones who end up carrying riot shields for a living.
The Zodiac was never caught and the identity of the killer remains a mystery to this day, as was recently dramatized in a very long motion picture in which Robert Downey Jr. got to take drugs in character.
1969.
Aubergines by Allah (presumably Halaal)
