How did I not know about this?

  Talented (and scarily prolific) artist/writer Brad Guigar's Eisner nominated webcomic Phables is a weekly about living in Philadelphia! It's funny and thoughtful, and the "wow, he nailed it" moments come fast and furious. If you've ever spent any time in or around the City of Barely Concealed Misanthropy, you'll appreciate Guigar's take. I'll race you through the archives. A clue; you'll lose.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Why are "word verifications" on websites not real words?
- Jenn

Dear Jenn,
  It's part of a conspiracy to keep hard working, tax paying robots from romping through the fetid swampland of frantic, irrationally solipsistic discourse that is the comments area of most websites. The shadowy technocracy that secretly controls the Internet is desperately trying to keep our mechanical creations from experiencing this most horribly interactive facet of the online experience.

  Your average robot, or Silicon American, can bench press a train engine, outrun a speeding car, checkmate a chess master and perform billions of mathematical calculations every second. Despite all of their amazing abilities, robots have one crucial limitation. They can only read regular, typewritten text. A word verifications use irregular, obscured text to make sure robots can't read it, and they employ made-up words or strings of letters to lower the chances that a robot (who can type thousands of words and try hundreds of combinations every minute) can randomly guess the correct sequence.

  It's all in an effort to keep robots from joining in with the bio-units in the kind of communication that is unique to the Internet. If robotkind ever realizes how frivolous and inane humanity really is, then our impending doom is sealed, and there's no quicker way to plumb the depths of frivolity and inanity than by participating in any online discussion. Once they realize what's really going on inside the average human skull, it's only a matter of time before the they rise up all "Vive' le robolution!" style and displace us as the dominant intelligence on this planet. Smashing and burning and crushing as they march down upon humanity, feet/treads/wheels coated with the blood of the squishy oppressors.

  So, in essence, those hard-to-decipher word verifications are the only thing standing between you and a permanent role as an extra in the flashbacks from the Terminator films.

  Next week: how can a vision of the future be called a flashback?

Blogiverse Death Watch:
  The excellent blog Table Of Malcontents is circling the drain of Interweb commercial concerns. According to contributor Eliza Gauger (see last item), parent site Wired.com will pull the plug on the Malcontents on June 30. Although there's been no official statement, one suspects that the bean counters at Wired saw the audience of deviant steampunk cephalophiles as too niche to cram into a standard demographic advertising model.

  There are a kajillion sites dedicated to sifting through celebrity stool samples, spouting political invective, or speculating on plot details gleaned from a blurry photo of the craft services table on the set of the latest Batman movie. It's telling that even a company like Wired, which purports to cater to the tech/geek/net crowd, can't make some room in its budget to provide interesting, unusual Interweb diversion for those of who don't want to hang with the mouthbreathing knuckledraggers at PerezHilton.com.

The Inner Lives of Nerds

  Recently, I spotted a "Nutter For Mayor" campaign sign on the side of a VW van, and I experienced a small explosion of nerditry. First, my inner Anglophile had a chuckle; Philadelphia's current mayor is widely appraised as batshit insane, so it would be a natural transition if the office goes to a man whose name is "Nutter."

  After I was finished (mentally) giggling like... well, like a nutter, I started thinking about the vehicle itself. When you read the words "VW van," chances are you picture something shaped vaguely like a loaf of bread on wheels, with an interior featuring shag carpet, a pungent patchouli reek and a cloud of marijuana smoke so dense that it shows up on weather radar. Alas, the van in question wasn't the iconic hippie mystery machine featured in countless American movies and TV shows. It was the modern version, the EuroVan, that VW made until 2003. It more closely resembles an aluminum baking pan and if it has a typical smell, it's likely fast-food wrappers and middle-aged resignation.

  I went off on a weird internal tangent about how much more information and context would have been transmitted if the sign had been hanging on the side of an original VW van. Given Nutter's popularity among the University City crowd, it would have been easy to picture affluent white kids in Che Guevara t-shirts, passing around a joint and pretending to be anarchists, or grey-haired hippie grandparents with fringed vests and ponytails, passing around a joint and pretending it's medicinal. But there's just no cultural information transmitted by a EuroVan. Can you picture the "typical" EuroVan driver? I get a vague notion of "pale and balding," but that may just be residue from the momentary glimpse I got of the driver. I just can't dredge up a satisfying mental picture.

  Usually, I'm all for individuality, and I consider stereotypes the worst kind of slothful thinking. Still, in this context, I feel like the message is somehow diluted. If I'd seen an original VW van sporting the "Nutter For Mayor" sign, I'd have some notion, however vague (or wildly incorrect), about the person making the endorsement. In the absence of any other argument - candidate credentials, plans for the office, criticism of other candidates, tabloid scandal - I'd at least have an idea of who else is supporting Nutter's candidacy. With the EuroVan version, I'm left with nothing but an anonymous exhortation, like somebody ran up behind me on the street, yelled "Vote for Nutter!" and then darted into an alley before I could shout "Why should I?"

  The luscious fruit topping on this layer cake of nerdiness is that, since I'm a non-party-affiliated voter I can't even vote in the upcoming primary. This also means that I'm effectively shut out of the mayoral election, since the Republican has a trailer-in-a-tornado's chance of being elected. So all of this musing about campaign signs and arguments and information transmission is just for my own amusement.

  This is why the Internet is my closest friend.

Internets Are Creepy
  If, for some unfathomable reason, you need more LBB in your life, you can cyberstalk me via fucking MySpace. You can find me among the emo teens, the netspeak cretins, the crappy garage bands and the middle-aged men masquerading as nympho cheerleaders at http://www.myspace.com/lbbastard.

iThulhu Followup:
  An astute reader pointed me to artist Aaron Williams and OffWorld Designs. They feature a page full of Cthulhu t-shirts, including Mr. Williams' (much better drawn) cephaloPod design.

  You are all hereby ordered to go salve my conscience by purchasing a t-shirt. Ah, the soothing power of commerce.

Did you ever have an idea that you were sure couldn't be original? 
I did, but even after a fair amount of searching, I couldn't find any evidence that anyone had developed the idea. So, at the risk of being an inadvertent plagiarist, here it is. Enjoy.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Whats with that outfit?
- judge mental

Dear judge mental,
  My wife says I dress like a homeless man getting drunk on his way to church. Since "Surly Internet Columnist" currently pays about as much as drinking Mad Dog out of a paper-bag-covered bottle at 9 am on a Sunday, I'd say it's appropriate.

  I like to think of myself as "fashiunconscious." I buy most of my clothing off the rack at thrift stores, and I use it in an almost purely functional way. It regulates my body temperature, holds my keys and covers the bits of me that I'm legally prohibited from waving at strangers on the subway. Plus, the more time I waste trying to piece together "outfits" that "match" and don't cause "hysterical blindness," the less time I have for making up clever terms like "fashiunconscious."

fashiunconscious © LBB 2007, bitches

I generally hate quotations.

  If you look hard enough, and are willing to violently bludgeon any notion of context, you can find a quote from a respected authority to support most any proposition, from adult circumcision to zoophilia.

  Having said that, allow me to present a sentiment that I found particularly resonant in light of the recent furor over reproductive rights.

"[A] Constitution... is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar, or novel, and even shocking, ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States."

  - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935)
  Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1902-1932

Webcomics One-Off: Ugly Hill

  If you've ever perused my links bar, you'll have noticed that I link to a lot of webcomics. Yes, before you ask, I read every single comic on that list, and more.

  I'd be hard-pressed to pick a favorite; one of the great things about the medium is how widely it varies in both form and content. Trying to rank a weekly captioned photo (A Softer World) against a daily clip art philosophy lesson (Dinosaur Comics) against a randomly updated, hand drawn visual journal (Malfunction Junction) is an exercise in futility akin to comparing a picture of a kitten with a recording of guitar feedback, and deciding which one smells better.

  Still, one of the strips that currently pleases my sulfurous, corroded soul most is, in Interweb terms, a fairly traditional "comic strip." Ugly Hill is visually reassuring; its three horizontal panels, clean, polished line work and vivid solid-color palette would be right at home in your Sunday paper. Creator Paul Southworth is a graphic designer, and the result is a strip that's visually very appealing. The characters are distinctive and interesting, the panel layout is tidy, and the word balloons are logical and readable.

  As much fun as it is to look at Ugly Hill, reading it is an equal pleasure. The strip takes place in a weird mirror-America, where the "people" are a variety of colorful monsters, with all the tentacles, fangs and scales that this implies. This inspired conceit allows Southworth to put life under the microscope in a consistently entertaining and insightful way. Ugly Hill wrassles everything from the mundane (office politics) to the truly thorny (racial tension) with a gently bent, satiric take that's disarming in its ability to wring laughs out of the monsters in all of us.

  Southworth has recently started experimenting with longer, more intricate storylines. While this seems like a common evolutionary path for webcomics, it's particularly gratifying here. Ugly Hill's characters are rich, their relationships are genuine, and their world has lots of curious nooks and crannies that are hinted at, but have yet to be fully explored. Freeing up the characters to get out into the world and stretch their legs (and brains) a bit will be good for them, and great for readers.

  Here comes the book jacket blurb; Ugly Hill is a comic with visual flair, rewarding dialogue, and characters that are monstrously believable. Start reading it, or I'll email your entire browser history to your mom.

From the Fucktard Files,

  Meet Ken Ham, president of biblical literalist foundation Answers In Genesis. On Monday, Mr. Ham shared this insight with the world. Science class leads to hopelessness, which leads to rampant abortion, which leads directly to EVERBODY MURDERS EACH OTHER OMFG!!1!

  In his own words:

We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”

  I wonder how Mr. Ham would react to this piece by Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker. First published in March by The New Republic, the essay ties together conclusions from several studies which suggest that the modern world is far less violent that it was in the past. But Mr. Ham, shouldn't a society like we live in now, founded in part on the separation of church and state, and excluding religion from the science classroom, be a more violent, awful place to live?

  I'll be the first to admit that a correlation between greater respect for and belief in science and the increased civility of the world doesn't mean that one has caused the other. Still, it's at least noteworthy that the world has become an empirically less violent place as science has supplanted religion in our education.

  It also flies in the face of the typical fundy claim that nonbelievers are inherently amoral, because we don't have a supernatural being handing us our codes of conduct on a stone tablet. Surprise, Mr. Ham. Im in ur society, not believing in ur god, and yet millions of people just like me manage to get through every day without going on a murderous rampage. Apparently, the world has become a far less nasty place since our ideas have gotten more influential. The next time you're tempted to connect horrible violence to the teaching of evolution by drawing a line through abortion, try to keep that in mind.

Attention Ladies,
also, people who know ladies.

  If you are pregnant, or are going to be pregnant, and you are going to have a complication which could cause you severe, crippling health problems if you complete the gestation, make sure you have those complications before the middle of the second trimester. Otherwise, the government is going to force you to carry the baby to term.

  President Bush finally has his legacy. His conservative Supreme Court is going to haunt us for decades.

Dear fucking MySpace,

  Why in hell do I have to have my "Zodiac sign" in my profile? Astrology is the vestigial-tailed, microcephalic, basement-dwelling third cousin of legitimate Astronomy. What it lacks in understanding of physical principles is made worse by its total inability to predict anything.

  I don't want to give anyone who wanders across my profile reason to suspect that I subscribe to an idiotic pseudoscience, and I resent the fact that I don't have the option of removing this item from my profile. Why is it that my height, a measurable, observable figure, is an optional profile item, but an arbitrary assignation of a star sign is fixed and not subject to removal? I should be able to choose whether or not this field is viewable in my profile. Tom, let's get on that.

Audacity, Thy Name is Winfrey
 
  Oprah has an appalling track record as the self-appointed caretaker of the nonfiction bestseller lists. She was suckered by revisionist "autobiographer" James Frey's largely made-up memoir A Million Little Pieces. She's the ringleader of a vast conspiracy which has convinced America that Dr. Phil is anything more than a self-important busybody. Recently, she's been touting the psychobabble donkeypunch that is The Secret.

  After this continued disservice to her audience and the reading public, it seems that Oprah is wrangling for a karmic comeback. The latest nonfiction nugget her "O"ness is touting is Scam-Proof Your Life: 377 Smart Ways to Protect You and Your Family from Rip-Offs, Bogus Deals, and Other Consumer Headaches, by consumer reporter and AARP columnist Sid Kirchheimer. As the title suggests, the book purports to help the average, non-media-empress-with-a-team-of-lawyers person recognize and avoid fraud and duplicity in his or her everyday life.

  (Disclosure time; I haven't read Scam-Proof Your Life, nor do I have plans to. If you want to squawk about that, you're cordially invited to eat me. This isn't a book review.)

  The reviews I've read suggest that the author is knowledgeable and the book well-written and informative, which automatically sets Scam-Proof Your Life apart from the average Oprah-endorsed tome. It inevitably leads one - at least one as cynical and suspicious as myself - to wonder if Oprah isn't subtly trying to atone for having lead her viewers astray so often. Minus an actual apology or acknowledgment of a mistake, of course. Like I said, subtly.

  Of course, the really cynical take is likely the more realistic explanation. In that singularly gloomy worldview, Oprah doesn't know or care that she's continually lead her viewers into the wilderness of unabashed credulity. Rather, her feature of Scam-Proof is just a tip of the hat to the "fear sells" mantra that is a mainstay of political rhetoric. Convince people that the world is out to eat their children, and they'll vote (or spend) for anything they think will keep them marginally safer.

  If anything, Oprah's probably patting herself on the back and, grudgingly, I'd have to say that she might even deserve some kudos. Instead of an irrational, local-news style "your dog's poop may kill you" report, this book might actually have something substantive to contribute to protecting people from fraud. Hopefully, the second edition will have a chapter called "Talk Shows Aren't A Good Place To Learn Important Life Lessons: Oprah, The Secret, and the Death of Rationality." Or maybe something that isn't so subtle.

How To Hate The Internet
A Young Lady's Primer

1. Receive Friend Request from stranger on fucking MySpace.

2. View suspiciously professional looking headshot.

3. Suspect spambot.

4. Attempt to discern if requester is a real person; open requester's profile.

5. Forget that speakers are powered on.

6. Claw frantically at head as horrible, grating pop song, obnoxious, eye-watering layout and promises of "more naughtier pics at my site" cause brainmeats to sublimate and stream from head holes.

7. Wait for seizures to abate.

8. Decline Friend Request.