For some reason, this line about Doug’s 1st Movie in Ebert’s review of The Matrix pops into my head every few months:

What happens then to the billions who have just been “unplugged” from the Matrix? Do they still have jobs? Homes? Identities? All we get is an enigmatic voice-over exhortation at the movie’s end. The paradox is that the Matrix world apparently resembles in every respect the pre-Matrix world. (I am reminded of the animated kid’s film “Doug’s 1st Movie,” which has a VR experience in which everything is exactly like in real life, except more expensive.)

That always sounded funny.

I’m jealous of Uzbekistan’s Door to Hell. Via Reddit.

Woot! Totally free money that’s not coming from anywhere important and with no long term consequences attached to its payment and no obvious need to ultimately recoup it and not at all a flimsy government attempt to confuse the populace! I’m gonna buy a dirt bike!

Forget all my previous discussions of potential car purchases, I’m buying a Tuk Tuk!

The Smoking Gun celebrity mugshot archive is pretty interesting. Did you, for example, know that Haley Joel Osment was arrested for drunk driving in 2006? I didn’t. There’s also a pretty amazing mugshot of Rosa Parks taken when she was arrested on the bus which was subsequently “lost” until 2004.

Other favorites: Andre the Giant, Janis Joplin, David Bowie and Shepard Smith!

Unlike the much classier list of 1,0001 Movies You Must See Before You Die posted by CrazyMonk, Wikipedia provides a list of mainstream films featuring unsimulated sex. I’ve seen none, though I did at one point have an acquaintance who owned a copy of Alice in Wonderland (A Musical Porno) and I was scheduled to, but ultimately did not, see Shortbus.

UPDATE: I actually own Pink Flamingos, but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.

The poster for Towelhead isn’t nearly as good as the poster for Baghead.

12 real reasons why potential jurors on the R. Kelly trial were excused from duty. The final two are fantastic:

Please call my mom - When one juror failed to show up for service, deputies called his house and his mother answered. She told the court that she didn’t know where her son was and that he hadn’t been “right” since he was shot in the head a while back. The judge and attorneys agreed to let him off the hook.

I blame R. Kelly for Sept. 11 - When the judge asked one prospective juror about his feelings regarding Kelly, he cryptically answered: “R. Kelly may have led the Taliban in attacking us on 9-11, but you can’t prove it.” You’re right, we can’t. In fact, we’re fairly certain that no one has ever tried.

I might take the second guy, he at least seems open minded.

Baghead has my favorite movie poster of the year:

Reminds me of this picture that Nacho used to have on his Friendster page, which would probably have made a better movie.

In the film Howard the Duck, it took eight people to play Howard.

The system I set up to automatically post new fauxlogisms seems to have died, but I’m going to be taking a break from that site for a little while anyway, so it’s not really a big deal. In the interim, though, here are the final two: falindrome and comebacklement.

MSNBC has a schlocky Dateline documentary called Into the Woods about “[a] brave high school girl tries to outfox her fugitive kidnapper after being held hostage for ten days in an underground bunker.”

Now, of course there’s also the award winning Sondheim musical of the same name:

It’s understandable how you might confuse the two, and Daniel Kells noticed that Time Warner Cable had in fact done just that:

There’s going to be some very unhappy musical theater geeks tonight (and some very unhappy fans of pedophile kidnappers).

What, are they coming up with ways to tax just me now? It’s getting so I can’t afford the little things anymore. It’s not right.

U Nu served as the only three odd Prime Ministers of Burma, halting the pattern only when overthrown by the military. When accosted by the general leading the coup, he asked “You too?” The general replied, “You knew, U Nu, you knew.”

Remember that scene in Contact when they first decode the visual aspect of the alien signal, and it’s footage of Hitler, which somewhat understandable freaks out many of those in attendance? Well, what if it wasn’t aliens playing with a quirk of television broadcast-signal history, but was instead the first wave of a space-based Nazi resurgence?

It could happen:

Via YesButNoButYes.

FROM: [Assistant Dan]
TO: All Students, All Faculty and Staff
DATE: Thu, May 8, 2008 at 4:57 PM
SUBJECT: Smoking

Today the Law Center had its second mulch fire this spring due to a discarded cigarette. If you smoke please do so in the smoking areas where ashtrays are provided. Please use the ashtrays. These smoking areas include the east side of Williams patio; the library quad; the northwest side of McDonough podium; the center of the Tower Green; the alley behind the Fitness center.

The University’s policy for a smoke free work place prohibits smoking at the entrances to the buildings. You need to move at least 20 feet from the building entrance before lighting up. Thanks for your cooperation on this.

Assistant Dean
Georgetown University Law Center
600 New Jersey Avenue NW
Washington DC

Let it be known, “the alley behind the Fitness center” is where a homeless man was stabbed two years ago. Smoke up!

Here’s the map that helpfully lets us know where we can smoke without starting a mulch fire, marked with big smiley faces!

Click to big-ify

Back-to-back foul balls caught by Dodgers fans sitting side-by-side.

I signed up for Mint.com hoping that I could use it as a free, online replacement for Quicken. It turns out that Mint.com doesn’t allow you to enter cash transactions (for no clear reason) so my hopes were quickly thwarted. I still get emails from them sometimes, though, so I went to the unsubscribe page, linked from the emails, to try to opt out. Here’s the page:

Ignoring the fact that I can’t uncheck the final checkbox, take a look at the totally legible submit button (or is it a clear button?):

It gets no clearer when you mouse-over it:

Oh, and it’s not just Firefox, here’s the site in Internet Explorer:

Same legibility problem:

Same mouse-over problem:

It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be able to unsubscribe. Go figure. Boo Mint.com, I hate you.

A written account of the original Milgram Experiment from a man who refused to shock the “victim”… he correctly guessed what the experiment was testing. He thanks his socialist upbringing for his insight. Via Reddit.

Crazymonk thinks he’s SOOOOO cool with his recent swarm of earthquakes. Well guess what, DC can have earthquakes too! Oh yeah, a 1.8! Good thing I had my earthquake kit ready to go.

If it’s not a sequel, and it’s not a prequel, it must be a midquel.

Guess who this man is?

Click to find out who I am.

He’s cleaned up a lot since the last time we saw him.

Common symptoms: “Other commonly associated symptoms are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramping, bloating, fever, urgency, and malaise.” Is it possible to suffer from both urgency AND malaise?