I fixed them on my side and created a simple patch to fix the issues. After I sent it to Ryan via an email, he quickly updated it and thanked me on his site. I recommend you check out his plugin if you use WordPress and the Amazon wishlist functionaity.

Mucophagy

Some research suggests that mucophagy may be a natural and even healthy activity, which exposes the digestive system to bacteria accumulated in the mucus, thereby helping to strengthen the immune system.

I’ve been saying the same thing for years. Along with that awesome fact are “Men can breastfeed”, “The Gay Bomb”, “Erections After Death”, “Hypnotizing Chickens”, and a few others. You should go and read them all. Be sure to read the comments as well because I was literally LOLing after reading some of them, so don’t miss out on that.

Cranky old lady who hates music

Noise is music that uses unpleasant or painful or extremely loud or discordant sound. Noise is also a very dangerous musical trend that is hell bent on destroying civilized culture, this anti-cultural movement is quickly sweeping the globe, and is very dangerous to our youth.

Everything on her “site” is “hell bent” on destroying america. She even invokes 9/11 as rationale for invading the foreign territory of popular culture, forgetting that she was once young. Naturally, Mothers Against Noise is trying to mobilize parents to inspect the music collections of their children and summarily destroy selected evil artists’ CDs such as Radiohead, Andrew WK, and Merzbow. What the hell is Merzbow, and where is Marilyn Manson in that list?

This cranky old lady isn’t the best writer in the world, as evidenced in a few choice passages:

Many will say even if some of the lyrical content of noise is not offensive, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because it is usually effected with a lot of well… effects and you cant tell what they are saying anyways. Then answer me this, if it doesn’t matter then why aren’t they singing about birds and waterfalls and living in a wonderful world??
…
In this post 9-11 world we have to fight harder and smarter than our enemies. We must arm our self with knowledge and seek to shine light where there is only darkness.
…
These people hide behind the guise of “artistic creativity” while in reality they are out to destroy any trace of art.(How contradictory is that folks?)

“I mean, what IS the deal?? And who do I talk to about airline food?”

She asks for stories from parents, and as far as I can tell on this one-page “site”, she has one horribly concerned parental story:

It comes with a lyric sheet of some of the most horrid descriptions of pedophilia and fantisies of sex with AIDS patients.
…
Right now I amvery upset and do not know what to do. I do not want my son to become a pervert. I do not know how he got interested in this stuff at all. And I thought Marylin Manson was the sickest thing around.

Ahh, there Marilyn is!

The noise scene is also structured a lot like terrorist organizations, they work in small numbers with no clear leader and work feverishly on their ‘music’ often self releasing cds and records (I might add if you heard most of this stuff, youd see why). This makes our job a lot harder since we do not have a handful of larger record companies to boycott or pressure.

Poor her.

“M. Smith” invites you to email her or join her yahoo group to discuss “some of the biggest offenders conspiring to destroy the souls of our youth.“. I suggest you do; we must protect our children from the terrible secret.

[Thanks to Cat for the link.]

I thought I was going to have to open photoshop and try to individually change the rasterized images since I didn’t have any vector files (psd) to work with, but thankfully some guy (he didn’t put his name on his blog) created a PSD version of the Kubrick theme, including rasterized and vector layers. Naturally I went with the premade vector layers, overlaid a new image on top of it, and about 10 minutes later, I had the theme I had always dreamed of. Thanks “some guy”!

In other news, I got my roommate Courtney to start a blog. He wasn’t using his domain for anything except email, so I set up wordpress and a nice theme for him too. I even photoshopped his picture onto the green hillside He couldn’t help but use it, after I did all the work.

Sure, Overstock might lure you in with their ads featuring a seductive austrian woman prancing about in a white wonder world of online commerce, but what really awaits you on the web site? I hate Overstock.com. Don’t get me wrong, I shop there, but I hate it the same way I hate Wal-Mart, and I hate it too, but for different reasons. Read on to see why I hate Overstock.com.

Overstock has great prices on a lot of things. I just got done shopping for my Mother and Granny on there. Yes, I call her Granny. I was minding my own business trying to buy some things, and I felt instantly pressured, by an online store with no physical connection to me.

When you are trying to sort through the pages that are designed in such a way to sell you the highest dollar items first, you come across “Almost Sold Out” signs on a lot of the items. They are trying to make you think “Hey, some guy might buy this before I can and it’ll be sold out before I can buy it!” It’s high pressure sales without the salesperson on commission.

OK. I can accept that. They want to move their items. But what about this? A “Sold Out” sign on items? What are they trying to get you to think there? “Oh man, Overstock sure does move product. Even the ones that don’t say ‘Almost Sold Out’ might be sold out before I’ll have a chance to deliver my money into their grubby paws!” I don’t get it. I’ve never seen a retailer brag about being sold out of something that I wasn’t even looking for in the first place. It’s just odd.

Well, it worked. I added multiple items to my cart, and wouldn’t you know, even an item that didn’t say “Almost Sold Out” on it said “Only 10 Left!!” on an animated gif on the cart page. They were trying to make me check out immediately. Well, I didn’t. I said, “I don’t believe that. They couldn’t possibly sell out while I’m shopping.” I added another item to my cart, and wouldn’t you know, now it says “Only 5 left!”

Well, that worked too. I checked out immediately, because I didn’t want my gift shopping time to go to waste, but I don’t know if I’ll shop there again. I probably will, just as I volunteer to be abused by Wal-Mart, but it’s not right. Capitalism, sure, it’s great, but just let me shop on the site. Don’t hustle me out the door.

And to top it all off, when I got done, this is what I got after paying with my credit card:

You are very important to our small company. We are trying to make the best tasting banana water ice pops that we possibly can. We are also trying to keep our price as low as possible.

If you have an idea, or don’t feel you have received your money’s worth, please call TOLL FREE weekdays 9-4 eastern time at 1-800-322-3642 or visit our website at www.budgetsaver.com and let us know.

Thank you for trying Budget $aver®.

I’ve never felt like a company was talking to me before when I’ve looked at the back of their package, so I thought I’d pass it on. Their banana flavored popsicles are delicious, and extremely inexpensive. I paid $1.50 plus tax for 18 packs of the “water ice pops”, each containing two “pops”. 4 cents per “pop” is a steal, and you can get them at Wal-Mart and Brookshire’s, at least around here.