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YES! SOMEONE HAS FINALLY MANAGED TO GET A PIC OF A SPAGS TRUCK AT BLDG #19!!! I only ever see them in motion, and the roommate didn't get it last time when I shouted, "FOLLOW THAT SPAG!"

Yup!  I've seen them moving on my way to work time after time, but never long enough for a shot.  So I drove by them Saturday, saw it parked there, figured it wouldn't be moving, and took the digital camera out today.  My girlfriend was happy to come along and we found a mustache vending machine inside, which she fed, then wearing her prize the remainder of the day.

There were 3 Spags trucks in a row.

You'll have to excuse the angle, the fence was actually really high and my girlfriend is both not as tall as me and not standing on the wall that I am.

The Spags truck itself will be posted in Pics III:  The Afterbirth.

The Mariner's Revenge by The Decemberists - 8 minute long sea shanty

We are two mariners, our ships' sole survivors, in this belly of whale,
Its ribs our ceiling beams, its guts our carpeting, I guess we have some time to kill.
You may not remember me, I was a child of three, you were a lad of eighteen.
But I remember you, and I will relate to you, just how our histories interweave.

At the time you were a rake and a roustabout,
Spending all your money on the whores and hounds.

You had a charming air, all cheap and debonairre, my widowed mother found so sweet.
And so she took you in, her sheets still warm with him, now filled with filth and foul disease.
As time wore on you proved a debt ridden drunken mess.
Leaving my mother a poor consumptive wretch, oh, oh.

And then you disappeared, your gambling of years, the only thing you left behind.
And then the magistrate reclaimed our small estate, and my poor mother lost her mind.
Then one day in Spring my dear sweet mother died.
But before she did I took her hand as she dying cried:

Find him, bind him, tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters,
drag him to a hole until he wakes up, naked, clawing at the ceiling of his grave.

It took me fifteen years, to swallow all my tears, among the urchins in the street.
Until a priory took pity and hired me to keep their vestry nice and neat.

But never once in the emply of these holy men,
did I ever once take my mind from the thought of revenge.
One night I overheard the prior exchanging words with a penitent whaler from the sea.
The captain of his ship, who matched you toe to tip, was known for wanton cruelty.

The following day I shipped to sea with a privateer.
And in the whistle of the wind I could almost hear:

Find him, bind him, tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters,
drag him to a hole until he wakes up, naked, clawing at the ceiling of his grave.
There is one thing I must say to you, as you sail across the sea.
Always your mother will watch over you, till you avenge this wicked deed.

And then that fateful night, we had you in our sights, after twenty months at sea.
Your starboard flank abeam, I was getting my muskets cleaned, when came this rumbling from beneath.

The ocean shook, the sky went black and the captain quailed.
And before us grew the angry jaws of a giant whale.

Don't know how I survived, the crew all was chewed alive.  I must've slipped between his teeth.
But oh what providence, what divine intelligence, that you should survive as well as me.

It gives my heart great joy to see your eyes filled with fear.
Now lean in close and I will whisper the last words you'll hear, oh oh.

I felt like I should write in the idea I've been tossing around for a while - a humor blog that reviews reviews.  Everything is reviewed by everybody and it's frequently done poorly even in major media outlets.  Roger Ebert is basically the only film critic I respect because he rates movies how they're intended - a popcorn blockbuster can get the same rating as a serious Oscar contender because the former isn't trying to be a serious Oscar contender thereby making it as successful in its intention.  The blog would basically be aiming at needlessly pretentious reviewers who spend more time jerking off over their own language or asshats who assign political/religious meanings to everything.

Also, this guy's writing reminded me of The Elemenstor Saga and Song of the Sorcelator - Penny Arcade parodies on generic fantasy writing.

"A flash of lightning tore through the tumult, illuminating the grizzled Elemenstor and his ambulatory dresser." --Book 1, officially the first line of The Elemenstor Cycle

As I'm sure some literary enthusiasts are aware, the act of reading can be akin to the act of worship.  Our altars are the evening easy chairs or quiet spots where we practice these rites.  We may lend our minds to each well crafted sentence, our souls to each developed character.  Or in the case of Delgotha, we may practice self flagellation.

Regular readers may be aware of our rating system, which ranks characterization, story, prose, and our miscellaneous category to be determined by the reviewer.  The length of the excerpt submitted limits how well one might see the ending, thereby potentially rendering this review useless:  I believe every character in the story to be the same character.  It is only by this explanation that two characters' either presume to know the other's side of the conversation, eliminating crucial communicative dialogue while speaking focused on trivialities.  Characterization - zero.

The story is a refreshing take on an old, sad tale.  That of the enormously overwhelmed army of good against the sadistic and disgusting army of evil.  With dragons.  Story - zero.

Many a literary giant has strode onto the writing scene with a horribly misunderstood style which would later be venerated as one to have changed the form forever.  It is with a certain amount of confidence that I might take the risk of declaring this simply not one of those instances.  Prose - zero.

My fourth and final score I shall call "Needlessly Complex Nomenclature."  It was determined by dividing the number of characters appearing in the book - 97 - by the average number of syllables per name - 8.08 - arriving at the NCN score of 12.  Calling the score arbitrary would be unfair.  The number came from a combination of genuine spite and disgust.

The average of the four scores brings Delgotha to a three out of five stars.  Three stars that, should there be any deity for our little religion of reading or any greater justice at all, will supernova and eliminate our author.  Unkindly.

Ok, a Perky Goth chick who isn't a hacker but she's a Marine Biologist named Edwina - she goes scuba diving, but her nose ring gets stuck at the bottom of the ocean cause a Lobster grabs it with pincers - also she happens to be an extreme vegan, so she doesn't want to harm the lobster cause they have rights to, but the lobster pierces her oxygen tank then she drowns.

.. Good for 1 use only. Then they can explain the crazy psychology using Advanced Linguistics and Sewing Patterns then just make vegans look wrong.

Or just make a show about meercats again.

I forget why I wrote that, probably with good reason.

But I suppose its a good idea to look at the character dynamics and stuff. I always like it in shows when theres a character who puts another down, and theres obvious conflict .. cause then you can get into it and be like "Oh no way what a bitch!!"

Realistic hacking portrayal - NECESSARY.  A lobster piercing an aluminum or stainless steel tank with its claw - TOTALLY ALRIGHT.

all they sell is jack daniels....   

Transfer to another university.

This is why you should drink Bells. Your standards are WAAAAAAAY too high.

What the heck's a Bells?  Over here Glenfiddich 12 is priced equivalently to pretty damn good bourbon, so I'd rather go with the latter given the choice.

Why won't they give it to you?  Isn't it their JOB to get you drunk?

College bars are retarded.  I ordered Glenfiddich 12 year (not a great scotch, but the only single malt they had) at my Commencement Ball.  I ordered it neat, they gave it to me on the rocks, then asked me what I wanted to mix it with.  I looked at her and said "It's scotch," to which she replied "We aren't allowed to serve anyone alcohol without mixing it with something."  There being a 20 minute long line behind me, she let me go, with my fucking ice-ruined scotch in hand, thankfully not further ruined by Coke.

Fuck university bars.

[BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!]

Requia, please understand that this decison goes far beyond the DVD which started this whole thing.


The SC used that as an excuse to reverse an entire pile of previous laws and rulings.  If they said, "sure, it's ok for a company to release a character assasination of a political figure a week before elections" and left it at that, I'd probably be ok with it.  But they decided to dismantle most of the framework behind campaign finance reform.

That's what I'm pissed about.

Wait.. I thought that conservatives hated activist judges.

Yeah, they really should have stayed more true to their mora-BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

 

Between this and the NE Meatup, this looks to be the year I meet some of you fuckers in the flesh.

The delicious, delicious flesh.

Seriously though I'm looking forward to it.

Frankly I'm disgusted with all of your reactions to this.  For our nation's history, corporations have been abused and tossed aside without treating them like the people they are.  Listen to yourself, talking like corporations have some kind of consipracy against the common man.  You know, that's what some people say about the Jews and, worse, international bankers.  The corporate world has a long history of practicing American values at their finest without expectation of reward or accolates.  Their hard work, their leadership, their righteousness is that to which we owe our thanks.

And you're all calling them less than human, you're all telling us that their voices don't matter.  Well as some of you have already said, in our history the voices of women, black people, homosexuals, and the deeply religious have been silenced.  We can look back on that now and know it was wrong to do that, just like in the future we can look back on this thread and see how corporatist and intolerant we're all being.

Even the Supreme Court can recognize that corporations are people.  I just wish the people were as forward thinking.

My  hat's off to you, Dear Sir.

Frankly I'm disgusted with all of your reactions to this.  For our nation's history, corporations have been abused and tossed aside without treating them like the people they are.  Listen to yourself, talking like corporations have some kind of consipracy against the common man.  You know, that's what some people say about the Jews and, worse, international bankers.  The corporate world has a long history of practicing American values at their finest without expectation of reward or accolates.  Their hard work, their leadership, their righteousness is that to which we owe our thanks.

And you're all calling them less than human, you're all telling us that their voices don't matter.  Well as some of you have already said, in our history the voices of women, black people, homosexuals, and the deeply religious have been silenced.  We can look back on that now and know it was wrong to do that, just like in the future we can look back on this thread and see how corporatist and intolerant we're all being.

Even the Supreme Court can recognize that corporations are people.  I just wish the people were as forward thinking.

New Bedford is pretty goddamn filthy.