Another Wikiventure

Earlier today I was wondering what the word "Lovecraftian" meant. I hear it sem-frequently, and yet had no idea. Google to the rescue! Starting with googling "Lovecraftian" and clicking the wiki article "H.P Lovecraft"...

H.P. Lovecraft - The Rats in the Walls - Nyarlathotep - Cthulhu Mythos - Deep Ones - Dagon - Pantheon (gods) - Armenian Mythology - Armenia - Gavar - Cyclopean Masonry - Hayravank Monastery - Moses of Chorene - Hovnatanyan family - Saint Petersburg - Tsar Peter the Great - Russian Empire - List of Largest Empires - Mongol Empire - Ghengis Khan - Mongol military tactics and organization - Lamellar armour - Ō-yoroi - Samurai

At this point, I realized that four and a half hours had passed, and that my left leg was asleep. Damn you wikipedia! *shakes fist*

I have been searching for a job recently, and I answered perhaps ten or fifteen craigslist ads for jobs. I've gotten four replies! Unfortunately, none of them were for an actual job. Two simply sent me an ad to the same site that was saying "Use this site to post your resume, 5.95 a month". One was a little more clever, the email they sent was "Thank you for your application, to continue the process, please use this third party site blah blah blah fuck you."

The kicker though was two days ago, I got this email. I changed the name of the company and the mans name in the slim chance that it IS a real job.

Greetings Zach,

My name is John Doe and I’m the senior staffing coordinator at Possibly Fake Company, LLC.

I am pleased to inform you that you are being extended a tentative offer of employment for the available warehouse position within our company.

As mentioned in the posting, this position pays a competitive salary, plus benefits, and also provides potential to earn both pay increases and growth opportunities into supervisory and management positions. We are taking on new employees rapidly at this time, and are willing to make you an employment proposal, provided that you comply with the rest of the enrollment provisions.

This is a full-time position. Based on your previous experience and physical ability, you will be working either inside the warehouse in packing and shipping, outside on the truck-loading team, or operating a forklift. These jobs vary in pay as well as physical and mental demands. Your initial salary will be based on your experience level, as well as the results of your preliminary strength and logic aptitude exams. Some experience working in a warehouse setting is preferred, but not essential, as fully paid training will be given if necessary.

To comply with these terms and carry on to the last stage of the recruitment process, you are required to supply us with an up-to-date copy of your credit report to go in your employment record. We have a zero-tolerance policy in regards to theft of company property. Your score or payment history do not matter; rather it’s a safe method of verifying your identity, and will also serve as your acceptance of the position.

Your no cost report can be obtained here:

http://followthelinks.net/?lid=ogrnxq1

This link is unique to you! Once you have this completed please email me so that we may move forward. Do NOT include your SSN or any private information in any emails. We will in turn email you your new hire paperwork and give the times for your orientation.

Thank you again, and congratulations for being invited to join Possibly Fake Company, LLC.! If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly. Have a great day.

Yours Sincerely,

John Doe
Sr. Hiring Manager
fakeemail@notreal.net


I clicked the link, and started to fill out information until it wanted my social security number. I then discovered that the page URL was "followthelinks.net" but the page itself claimed to be "creditreport.com". This seemed fishy to me, so I googled "creditreport.com" to go directly to the website and avoid any shenanaginizing. What do I discover? The following two websites are the second and third search results

Creditreport.com is a scam and Avoid Craigslist Credit Report Scams!.

I sent back an email to the guy saying "You sent me a scam, but if the job is real, I am still interested!" He has not yet responded.

By the way I need a job, so if anyone has an extra that they aren't using, I would really appreciate you letting me borrow it until I can get one of my own. Thanks!

Of Drunkards and Heroes

I like to tell people that I follow politics, but I am too lazy to do any of the research myself. This is why I rely on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to tell me what I am supposed to think and feel. At the end of the show, a guest comes on to talk about something or other, and last week, Diane Keaton was the guest. Watch this please. You won't be disappointed.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Is she high, or drunk? Or both? I CANT TELL. In any case, this video is hilarious, and one of the better things I've seen in recent months. With one very notable exception...

THE AVENGERS. Oh. Em. Gee. Go see this movie. It is awesome. Anyone who knows me knows I have an irrational and borderline zealous love of The Lord of the Rings, but this movie might possibly be better than it. It is that good. Joss Whedon is the director, which is an excellent start. He was a little involved (sarcasm) in a show called Firefly* that was solid gold from start to finish. (if you don't know what that is... shame on you.) He shows his God-like abilities in full force here. Even though the movie has a HUGE cast of characters, somehow every one of them feels equally important and gets at least one "I'm a motherf***ing badass" moment. If you are a straight man, or a woman with similar inclinations, Scarlett Johansson wears THAT OUTFIT (see right) and flips around all over the place being Hot. Ok she also kicks ass and does cool stuff, but she looks GOOD while doing it. Her presence would make even a shitty movie 3/5 stars, but in a 5/5 movie? Its just not fair how good this movie is.

I have always been a huge fan of the hulk from the 60's-70's comics, and I never felt like the hulk movies really did him justice... until now. Every scene where the hulk appears becomes the very best scene that you've even seen in your entire life. Until you see the next scene with the hulk. If you are anything like me (doubtful but lets roll with it) You have had many conversations in your life that followed this structure:

Who would win in a fight, A-Man or B-Man? B can control animals, but A is faster and has laser eyes...

Needless to say I nerdgasmed almost solidly for the full 2 hours 23 minutes. I feel dirty, but I like it.

I recently discovered Yardsellr, a nifty little site connected to facebook that lets you buy and sell stuff. I made 50 bucks selling a few of my old magic cards last week, which is super awesome since I am not swimming in money at the moment. If you like buying and selling stuff, you should check it out!

*This is a link to watch Firefly for free online, so if you were one of those sad people that didn't know what it was (shame on you again!) then you can correct this by clicking the link

Elections.

I've been following the republican nominee race with various levels of closeness for the last four or five months, and it has definitely had its share of awesomeness. Notably, Herman Cain Quoting the Pokemon Song, Michelle Bachmann claiming that HPV vaccinations cause retardation, and, as a bonus slice of fried gold, Newt Gingrich revealing his plans to build a Moon Base. Yes. an honest to goodness moonbase. Still, none of those things brought me even half the joy that this comic I stumbled upon did. Go, ahead, click that image on the right and enjoy.

P.S. When I Googled "Michelle Bachmann" to get this clip, Google politely offered to finish for me "Michelle Bachmann Sexy". Wtf? Who is searching this shit?


A few days ago as I was feeding ol' Salamandy McGee, the sacrificial cricket clung to the edge of the tube instead of conveniently falling out. I tried to "scrape" it off onto the sides of the tank, but it wasn't letting go. Eventually I resorted to swinging the tube erratically in an effort to shake the little bugger (heh) off, and I accidentally flung the diminutive chirper directly into the water dish. As it started to drown, I panicked, but then with the clarity of mind that only comes in moments of crisis, I heroically scooped it out with my bare hand, and triumphantly deposited him on the safety of dry ground.

It was pretty comparable to a mother lifting a truck off her baby in a surge of adrenaline; one of those once in a lifetime events that get made into terrible lifetime movies. I was feeling pretty full of myself and superman-like after my rescue, but alas, the feeling would be short lived. Mere moments after the cricket was deposited onto the "safety" of dry land, Jethro darted out of his log and scarfed the little guy down before it had even shaken the water off of its legs. Talk about a letdown.

Speaking of letdowns, I was driving the other day and I saw a cop driving and texting at the same time. I was super excited and wanted to take a picture of him on my phone for evidence, then was crestfallen when I realized I couldn't...

Bad show

Tv and movie dramas should not have child actors. Occasionally you get someone awesome like Arya* from Game of Thrones, but the vast majority of children are really bad actors, creepy, or annoying. Game of Thrones had the right idea, aging almost every child-character 5-10 years so they would only have the bare minimum of kids involved. I suppose with all the boobs and violence flying all over the place its not appropriate having a bunch of kids on the set being all... youthful.

Now there is another show (recently cancelled) with an annoying kid called Terra Nova. I watched this dumb thing every week, and was ashamed of myself for doing so. The little girl character is a constant cheese-fest, if she was on full house the fake audience would go "awwwww" everytime she opened her adorable mouth. Considering that the premise of the show involves time travel and dinosaurs, you would think you would get some decent violence here and there, but noooooo. This show is much more interested in showing a little girl make friends at school, and draw pictures of her family holding hands under a rainbow.

Remember last week when I clearly established that in the future, guns shoot exploding frisbees of death? Well apparently in this future, guns only shoot sound. One of the problems that arises when you use a glorified loudspeaker to fight dinosaurs, is that sound doesn't kill dinosaurs. At best, they think "oh, this is mildly annoying" and at worst "Wow, that guy is making an annoying sound. I'm going to eat him now". Nobody on the show really seems to mind that they are powerless to stop dinosaurs though, because In Terra Nova, no one ever hurts dinosaurs. Ever. Even in self defense. Its as though the show creators were worried that animal rights activists would be upset if they showed their poor, defenseless CGI dinosaurs being harmed in any way or for any reason.

The straw that broke logics back was when a velocorapter eats some dude alive, and they need to get his dogtags out of the things stomach. instead of doing the normal thing and killing the monster that is eating your people, they capture it alive, carefully surgically extract the dog tags, and then release it into the field twenty feet from their camp. Its like knocking down a wasp nest and then putting it back up inside the house. Its no wonder this crap was cancelled.

If you don't mind your PC games crappy, short and full of bugs, you might be interested in beta testing! Diablo III just launched its open beta, and there is also a Korean MMO called Tera That is beta testing until the 23rd only. Happy gaming!

Winter

I hate the snow. This wasn't always the case. When I was a kid growing up in Southern California, the snow was cool. It was this far off exotic thing; It didn't stroll into town every winter with the homeless, we had to drive to find it. Snow represented fun and frolic, snowball fights!

Now? Snow sucks. Its cold. It causes accidents. It delays planes. It causes people to slip on the ice and fall on their ass as their "friends" laugh, then quickly feign concern. It awakens the white walkers, and every time a kid gets triple dog dared to lick a pole they have to call out the fire department. This is a huge drain on city resources! No wonder the economy sucks; We have winter.

If you have a computer and like free games that are awesome, you should check out Tribes: Ascend. By far the best free game I've ever played. The premise is, Its the future! Guns now shoot explosive frisbees instead of bullets! And... everyone can fly! If those last two sentences didn't make you think "I need this inside me" than go watch Stargate: SG1 until you enjoy happiness again. And then watch this.*



"But, Zach" you say haughtily, swirling your fancy-person drink in a chalice "I just don't like things with space or explosions or excitement, especially when they are free!" Just get out. Go. I can't make a logical argument with you. There is no reason why free (FREE) access to exploding frisbee deathmatches at breakneck speeds should not be taken advantage of.

* I am aware that this video includes the word flag a comical number of times, but I give it a pass due to the bombastic awesomeness of everything else

Crickets and Worms

I mentioned before that I have a pet salamander; I caught him fair and square as he was crossing the street several months ago. My diligent google-based research on the care of salamanders informed me that crickets are the best food for them. Being the responsible* and dependable* person I am, I promptly went to the pet store and bought a bag of crickets for Jethro (the best salamander name ever) to consume. Have you EVER tried to extract only a single cricket from a bag of 25 of its living, jumping brethren? Its about as easy as typing with chopsticks while blindfolded. I finally managed to do it by just barely opening the bag, squeezing out most of the air, and then herding a single cricket towards the opening from OUTSIDE the bag while holding the whole mess above the tank. It took about 10 minutes. Unfortunately in my zeal I had forgotten that crickets, like MOST animals, need air to survive; The remaining 24 crickets were dead in about 2 hours. Well, I'm not doing THAT again.

* The claims made in this post are not evaluated by the FDA

Since that accidental massacre took place, I've been feeding Jethro a steady diet of mealworms, waxworms, nightcrawlers and other things used as live bait.

As much fun as it is to store vermin in my fridge behind the yogurt, I recently decided to step up my care for Jethro. I went out and got him some new moss, cleaned his tank all nice, and even decided to give crickets another try. Thats when I discovered THIS contraption. You put the crickets inside, with some food, and they crawl up into the little tubes to escape the light. When its time for some of them to get eated, you pull the tube out, evict as many of the tenants as you please, and then replace the tube! The guy who invented this is probably some kind of evil genius. No doubt he spends his off hours stroking white cats and designing elaborate ways to kill Mr. Bond.

My nephew saw the cricket box yesterday, and excitedly asked me when I had gotten pet crickets. I told him they weren't pets, I was only keeping them so I could feed them to Jethro. He screamed "NO YOU CANT FEED THEM TO HIM, THEY ARE TOO CUTE". It took me a long time to calm him down, but at least I wasn't feeding him mice.

Life

I went running on the path behind my house today, and a woman walking a dog without a leash was coming towards me. I stood to the side to let them pass, but apparently the dog saw this as a threat, and charged me while barking. I turned my back and just ignored it but apparently this is ALSO a threatening gesture, because the creature then decided the only reasonable action was to repeatedly jump on my back. I looked to the woman for help, and she just smiled at me, said "Oh stop it jack" in a jovial manner and continued to walk towards me at a leisurely pace. Upon reaching me (Without stopping mind you) she laughingly said "Sorry, he gets a little excited sometimes!" and then proceeded to walk past me. Her dog joined her a few seconds later with a few final barks to make sure I wouldn't dare give pursuit. Not cool.

I saw the hunger games a few days ago; I had my doubts as it was only rated pg-13 and the subject matter is... well, violent murder, but I feel like they did a fantastic job and I highly recommend it.