hey, here’s some fun news for those of you who like the idea of every search engine inquiry you make, every web page visit you vist, and every email you send retained as a record for the US government to review: In a radical departure from earlier statements, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that requiring Internet service providers to save records of their customers’ online activities is necessary in the fight against terrorism. exactly how it is necessary or how this would translate to catching terrorists or thwarting terrorism is not explained. does just the term ‘terrorism’ or suspected terrorist give a probable cause for such interference? where do you draw the line in the name of safety & security? i think this quote from the news article is a good perspective in terms of government regulation:
“A monumental data trove is a crazy thing from a privacy perspective,” said one person familiar with Friday’s discussions. “It’s crazy that the U.S. government is going to retain more data than the Chinese government does.”
UPDATED / RELATED:
great follow up/tie-in article titled how to protect yourself from big brother posted on the website traveling forever. in depth with ‘how to’ charts from the electronic frontier foundation. found via the mighty digg.
and now on wired, read crashing the wiretapper’s ball, where wired sneaks in a reporter to the ISS World Conference, a no-press-allowed conference for companies that sell wiretapping equipment to law enforcement, ISPs, telcos, and repressive governments. be sure to check out the photos of evil internet/cellular spyware gadgets from the conference. via boingboing.
brought to you by military research and development, new modular carbon fiber wings enable paratroopers to travel distances of 200km (over 124 miles) from one high altitude jump. The new wing jump system is reportedly 100 percent silent and difficult to detect using air & ground radar systems.
next meal time if someone says ‘these pancakes will be a religious experience’ or ‘jesus - this tastes amazing’ they may be correct. embolden your next omlette, flapjack, or fry-able food item with the welcoming image of the son of god with the jesus pan. and though you may end up burning in hell for all eternity, at least your food won’t burn and stick ’cause the jesus pan is made of non-stick material! yay! thank you jesus pan! via metafilter.
just saw the 3rd x-men movie, x-men: the last stand. i was worried it would be called x-men: the last gland. it has major suck potential with the brett ratner directing. but hey - it didn’t! it was good. my two nerd thumbs are up! there’s a good opening scene, famke janssen, nice action sequences & fights, the use of the phrase ‘oh my stars & garters’, lots of surprises, & more famke janssen. me likey! so there you go. go see it! and here’s a big tip if you’re planing to see the movie: definitely stay after the credits roll to the very end of x-men: the last stand. there’s a very key scene at the end. so stay.
hey, if any of you out there wondered what termites look like as they begin swarming out of the corner of an old building or the garage of a victorian home, here are some pictures …
for the lazy lettuce fans and big time jah praisers out there, some good news that you may already know: there is no link to pot smoking and lung cancer. zero. zip. nada. study shows no increased risk for even the heaviest marijuana smokers. neato! and even though numerous studies state that marijuana smoke contains 50% higher concentrations of chemicals linked to lung cancer than cigarette smoke, researchers feel it’s the THC connection and THC’s anti-tumor properties. there you go!
you can see the lovely drawings and assorted artwork of mr. alexander kori girard not only on his website but soon up close & personal at his show coming up in june. june 1st (thursday) 2006 to be precise (note the large & printable flyer below too). titled Braided Peoples, Kori’s show will run from june 1st through june 14th at tudo azul gallery (136 fillmore SF CA 94117). see you there.
all around cool cat isaiah seret is up and blogging. this sucks for me ’cause it means he won’t be sending in any more links for me to post. but that’s being selfish of me. so check out ninja pleaze when you get a chance. it merits being on your daily / weekly blog roster.
movie mash-up moments make me laugh. the last really good one was the re-take on The Shining. now, such crafty powers have been unleashed on a more biblical scale. time to pre-order tickets to that awesome new teen comedy drama religious flick called 10 things i hate about commandments.
eventually, all ads will be like this. for now, it’s an iPod spoof. a good one at that. witness & enjoy iPorn (featuring daft punk). good stuff.
a strange and mysterious package arrived today at the giantmonster rural headquarters - with no return address. the ’send to’ address is written in what at first appears to be a child’s handwritten scrawl, but reveals a certain sophistication upon closer inspection. who sent it? and more importantly - what could be in the box? it’s not ticking, that’s good.
so then let’s open it find out …
Continue reading ‘mysterious package ….’
no, that’s not the name of a fancy new wax job. i’m talking about the discovery of what is being called ‘the brazilian stonehenge.’ located on top of a hill, 127 large rocks of stone where found in the state of amapa, brazil. the stones weigh several tons each and appear to have been laid out to help pinpoint the winter solstice.
wanted to send out a congratulations to team polizei (& alex roy, mentioned about 8 posts ago) on winning the 2006 gumball 3000 rally (unofficial, of course). a high honor!
do you know who the yes men are? have you seen the movie about the yes men called the yes men? these are the same guys who brought you the fantastic barbie liberation front (or BLO) where voice boxes for barbie dolls and gi joe soldier toys where switched and then repackaged & placed on store shelves. brilliant! they also did a great social commentary on the WTO, seen extensively in the yes men movie, and on the DOW chemical company. anyway, on may 7th, 2006, the yes men, posing as representatives from halliburton, where recently invited to speak a corporate conference sponsored by LexisNexis Mealey publications. there, the yes men enveiled halliburton’s solution for global warming: the SurvivaBall!
“The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way,” said Fred Wolf, a Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida. “This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change,” he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.
here’s the full text of the yes men speech, titled what noah new: old models for new conditions, given at the conference. so good! to help further such highly necessary corporate satire and fun-poking, you can donate to the yes men via their paypal site.
haa-haaa! this is great! behold the shiny, mighty, and decorative power of tinfoil and what it can do to an office cubicle in this flickr photo set titled birthday at work (& happy birthday evadedave!). love that stuff! more such cubicle tomfoolery can be seen at cube jinx dot com. such as another foiled office cubicle, a not so delicious popcorn filled cubicle, the newspaper wrapped & covered cubicle (wow - nice wrap job!), and balloon cubicle! make more please!
odd that it’s not the staggering amount of drugs and alcohol that could cause 62 year old keith richards to never be able to play guitar again but rather it may be a fall from a tree. that is sad news. this just brings up another issue - that trees should have labels on them. damn trees! they are not safe! so tall and motionless, just begging to be climbed. kids, if you’re out there, remember: don’t climb trees! just say no to climbing trees. you have your whole life ahead of you. don’t throw it all away by climbing a dumb tree. anyway, get better keith!
who wants candy? let me see a show of hands … what? no hands? hello? here’s something new for casual fridays at work. mom always said to never take candy from strangers. this may prove her to be correct.
here’s a really lovely music & sound experiment using flash actionscript called the whitney music box - brought to you by the talented jim bumgardner of krazydad.com and coverpop.com. read more about the whole process and thought behind the whitney music box on krazydad’s blog entry on visual harmony. my favorite is variation 6: 48 tones in one octave. the whitney music box is based on the theories of john whitney (more on john whitney here and here) and his book digital harmony. the cool thing about the whitney music box is that while john whitney was interested in turning musical ideas into motion graphics, jim bumgardner’s whitney music box does the inverse - turning one of whitney’s key animation ideas back into music. very very cool.
you know those semi-retarded questions people sometimes ask to get a conversation going, such as ‘if you were stranded on a desert island, what albums would you like to have with you?’ well, even though that gilligan’s island scenario would never happen, i do know one of the albums i would bring: james brown’s funky people. easily the one album i’ve listened to the most and never find it tiring. full of heavy funk & soul hitters such as maceo parker, lyn collins, and fred wesley. there’s also a mighty part 2 and part3. below are five fantastic feeling tracks from part 1. please enjoy.
download:
James-Browns-Funky-People-sampler.zip (18.4 megabytes)
ye mighty track listing:
JBFP - Pass The Peas
JBFP - Gimme Some More
JBFP - Think
JBFP - Damn Right I am Somebody, part 1 & 2
JBFP - (It’s Not The Express) It’s The JB’s Monorail, part 1
my friend alex roy is racing once again in the gumball 3000 rally. what is the gumball 3000? did you ever see the movie cannonball run? it’s the same thing (sort of). anyway, mr. alex roy races for/with team polizei, 3 time gumball rally winners. their car is a tricked out bmw M5. you can watch a clip of alex talking about team polizei and some of their winning strategies. or you can watch an infamous video of the team polizei’s italian police escort, where alex and team polizei somehow convinced the italian police to give them an escort through the streets of florence during 2005’s gumball 3000 race. go alex go! you can also track & watch the progress of the race via live.gumball3000.com. do it!
i signed an online petition a long while back that would request for george lucas to release the original & unaltered star wars trilogy for sale on DVD. don’t know if it worked. it might have just caused little dollar signs to form in mr. lucas’s eyes. whichever the case, this september, the original and unaltered star wars trilogy will finally be released on DVD. the dvd will be available for a limited time (remember that this has always done by lucasfilm to create massive movie pre-orders) from september to december. nerd party at my house.
cocaine. heroin. LSD. marijuana. PCP. opium. synthetic opiates. mescaline. peyote. psilocybin mushrooms. amphetamines. methamphetamines. what so special about these drugs? they may soon all be legal in mexico. the law allows for personal use only, which grants one person of age 18 years or older to legally possess half a gram of coke, a couple of Ecstasy pills, several doses of LSD, a few marijuana joints, a spoonful of heroin, 5 grams of opium and more than 2 pounds of peyote. under the proposed mexican bill, selling drugs or using them in public still would be a crime. and anyone possessing drugs still could be held for questioning by police, and each state could impose fines even on the permitted quantities. still, it’s pretty amazing legislation to counteract the huge profits of drug dealing and trafficing. if anything, this may save the giantmonster office staff thousands of dollars in flights to the netherlands.
UPDATE: to good to be true. under pressure from the united states, vincente fox pussies out backs down on the proposed drug law, one day after his office declared that he would sign the bill into law.
… you are A #1. so i haven’t posted anything about my trip to new york city. and how damn great it was/is (both new york and the trip). so many things to like about new york city. man, it was fun. i miss it! i will have to post up some pics and experiences soon. for now, i hope these tracks/soundbytes from the escape from new york soundtrack will suffice. enjoy!
download:
Escape-From-New-York-Soundtrack-Sampler.zip (9 megabytes)
ye mighty track listing:
Escape From New York - Snake Plissken
Escape From New York - You Are The Duke of New York
Escape From New York - The Duke Arrives / Barricade
Escape From New York - 69th Street Bridge
Escape From New York - The Name is Plissken
it’s may 2nd - my brother scott’s birthday! so a big, mad, giant, crazy HAPPY BIRTHDAY goes out to my brother scott, a.k.a. vincent scott fiorenza, to celebrate his 37th year of rocking planet earth! i love you scott - happy birthday!!!
sent in from my friend isiah, please watch & enjoy this song & video from the group potions made by children titled picture of a bird. really cool & imaginative homemade animation going on there featuring hand-sewn dolls, paper cutouts, illustrations, puppets, and some great colors. found via wired blog.
all the hullabaloo about the new 
