Hi-res photorealistic computer model of a chameleon. (Img obtained from: http://n64media.ign.com/media/previews/image/chame1.jpg, 9/20/10)

Question: Wanting to get a chameleon! Help!?

I would like to know how much and what they eat and other basic details like cage size and humidity! Thanks a bunch! – Monica Square

Answer

At first blush, Lebanon, Indiana may seem like a small, unremarkable town, its only defining feature being its inordinate amount of obese citizens. But to dismiss it based on the denizens’ apathy toward personal care would prevent any true exposure to the town’s redeeming qualities.

When the "world's tallest single-piece limestone pillars" are your town's mark of fame, you know you've landed. (Img obtained from: http://imaps.indygov.org/newimagis/images/BooneCoCourthouse.jpg)

Lebanon is home to the beautiful county courthouse. The townspeople will be quick to reveal that it once had the world’s tallest limestone pillars upon its completion in 1911. Visitors should also make note of how quickly they were able to gain access into the town center. For only a population of 14,000, Lebanon features an inexplicable number of interstate entrances and exits. The amount of through-traffic this allows, in conjunction with the innumerable truck stops, gives vacationers a glimpse into the breadth of humanity that few ask for and even fewer wish to remember.

For visitors seeking activities, the bowling alley is unparalleled in both decrepitude and stench. Those seeking a tamer outing may wish to visit the public library where the books are not the only entertainment. The library also offers hours of aimless conversation with its clientele of senile elderly and destitute homeless.

With so much character, Lebanon has worked hard to make itself the sightseeing hotspot of central-northwest Indiana. And now that the new 24-hour Super Wal-Mart is complete, the town has nothing left but years of economic and cultural growth ahead of it.

Needless to say, my check is in the mail and you’re all invited to my yacht party after I receive it.

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 11:18:19 -0500
From: [Name omitted]
To: [Eng L202 class]
Subject: Your Papers

Dear L202 Folks:

I have no idea how to tell you this.  In nine years of teaching, I’ve never
had such a thing happen.  Indeed, I’ve never heard of such a thing
happening.

I kid you not: a rabid racoon has got your papers.  And is shredding them.
And vomiting on them.  Consequently, even after animal control comes (and
I’ve called animal control) the papers will be in no shape to be graded.

Please e-mail me new copies of your papers as soon as you can.  I know who
turned them in.  In fact, I had about half of them graded when this happened
(the raccoon made no discrimination between graded and ungraded
work–apparently both are equally good for the purposes of shredding and
vomiting).

I’ll give you the full story Monday.  I have no idea exactly how to tell it
right now.

I got a B.

Imagine a raised 1987 Ford F150 with rusted fenders instead of a svelte white sports car with duel rocket launchers. (Img obtained from: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/01/ir-smoke-screen.html)

The previous day’s ride had proven unusually interesting. A symptom of the budding spring season, I surmised. First, a pair of knuckle-dragging rednecks in a raised beater truck rattled within inches and belched black smoke into my face like so much Spy Hunter. Then further on, a family of Wal*Mart cyclists seemed intent on a head-on collision by riding down the wrong side of the road.

Taken in isolation, these events are hardly worth mentioning. Nay, I welcomed the idiosyncrasies to an otherwise uneventful ride. Little did I know, these two occurrences were mere precursors to the next day’s event; an event that would change my life forever.

I plotted a quick 25-mile loop to Thorntown and back. I left my driveway with nary a problem and proceeded to the highway, as I had done many times before. I sped down the shoulder until I was able to turn off on Hazelrigg Road. That fateful Hazelrigg Road. It was the last time I would ride that stretch of pavement in naïvety.

It began with a bark. If you ride enough, you learn to react to this noise instinctively, before your forebrain can decipher it for your conscious. I turned my head in its direction and shifted up two gears. The barking continued. I frantically scanned the roadside for its source. Then I saw it. A tiny brown dog, scrambling toward me. Time slowed as I prepared myself for a chase. The dog seemed to be moving unusually fast for its size. When it started across the pavement, it was not accompanied by the “skitcha skitcha skitcha” that usually accompanies dog paws. It was strangely silent.

When it was within feet of me, I saw it. It was no tiny dog at all, but a squirrel. My life flashed before me as I remembered countless stories told of squirrel collisions more devastating than any run-in with a dog. I recalled accounts of squirrels darting out in the road and getting tangled in the front wheel’s spokes, destroying the bike, and catapulting the rider.

Squirrels were unpredictable. Their trajectory was almost impossible to plot. Dogs were different, they were predictable. Dogs often took a parabolic arch. They would aim for where you were at each moment. As you continued forward, they would curve up to meet you, relying primarily on brute speed to intercept you from behind. Squirrels are different. They tend to pick a straighter line and sprint, damn any obstacles that may appear in their path.

But here I was, faced with a squirrel. I neglected the sprint. I reasoned that, were I to go headfirst over my handlebars, I would be in a much better position to brace myself without my weight shifted forward over the pedals. I had broken a collarbone once before and had no desire to do it again. Exhausting all possible options, I laid the decision in the squirrel’s incapable paws. When he was within inches, we locked eyes. We both knew collision was imminent. But with grim determination, the squirrel sped on. He seemed to be taunting me, “Let’s see who wins this one, human.” But I already knew the answer: he was heading for my rear wheel. I imagine he tried to split the gap between wheels but he seemed to make a crucial error while calculating his speed, my speed, or his path.

I felt my rear wheel jump and skid slightly. I prayed the squirrel wasn’t on his way up in my back wheel’s spokes, soon to become clogged in the seat stays. I looked over my left shoulder and saw his furry brown body go cartwheeling three feet into the air. He made no sound. I conjectured that if the impact hadn’t killed him, the landing soon would. I expected to see his furry brown body twitching indignantly on the ground. It hit with a shuflump. It began to writhe and contort itself.

It found its footing and skittered off into the woods. I breathed a sigh and smiled. We had both averted disaster. As I rotated my head forward, I caught a glimpse of a small dog frozen at the end of a driveway. It had seen the entire thing. After the manic barking that set off that fateful chain of events, it was now speechless.

Vince "Offer" Shlomi with his fabulous ShamWow (you'll be saying "wow" every time).

Apparently overwhelmed by the Hollywood lifestyle, he retreated back to the profession that had always served him well before the star-studded hustle and bustle of fame: he started selling appliances at swap meets again. He bided his time for a number of years in this position until his next big break.

He must’ve asked himself, “Vince, you absurdly intelligent and trustworthy man, who makes good stuff? Why, the Germans, of course!” He took this revelation and his natural showmanship and began marketing the ShamWow. Seemingly overnight–and due entirely to his natural talent and nothing else–he was rocketed to national success yet again (although I’ve never heard of anyone actually buying a ShamWow). Even those who were put off by his googly grifter’s eyes were won over when Wikipedia discovered that he had had a stroke.

But many of Vince’s greatest fans noticed something missing from the ShamWow commercial. Sure he kept the shameless condescension and the third-rate production value, but what of the terrible sophomoric humor? Yes, Vince had sold out. But then, almost as if he had heard the subtle disappointment, he unflinchingly invited us all to “love his nuts” and began selling the Slap Chop. He had finally reached the perfect compromise between his awful sense of humor and his knack for selling useless shit nobody needs.

And, for awhile, times were good; but all good things must end. It seems no one can reach the top without also making enemies. Schadenfreude, the Germans call it. These people wait in the shadows, just hoping someone will slip up so they can make their move. They don’t care who they ruin or how. And then last Friday, it was Vince’s turn. After all the goodwill and trust he had worked years to build up, Vince Shlomi was arrested. And what did he do to receive the government’s misplaced ire? He beat the ever-loving shit out of a hooker.

(Img Obtained From: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0327092sham1.html)

OnLive (Img obtained from: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10202688-235.html)

What server-side gaming is, if you are unfamiliar, is the answer to PC gaming’s primary problem–the gaming system itself. This problem is two-fold:

1. Unlike consoles, games designed for PC must run on a swathe of different setups. The result is often an increased number of bugs and glitches.
2. For the user, it is always an expensive uphill battle to maintain a machine capable of running the latest games; e.g., PCs must be upgraded often and usually at high cost.

Server-side gaming rectifies these problems by processing the game entirely on some external server somewhere while the video of your gameplay is streamed back to you. In OnLive’s case, you would buy the device, plug it into whatever has a screen, plug it into the Internet, choose the game you want to play, then you play. The novel thing is that you do not download the game, it stays located on the server you’re connected to. Through the magic of the intartubes, the server processes the input you make from your controller at home, then sends back the subsequent video.

The technologically savvy should be seeing some issues with this by now. The largest concern that has been raised so far is lag. The demonstration at GDC seemed to be fairly successful, but they were connecting to a server on the other side of a wall. Since your input must be sent through the intarwebs before it is processed, any lag that would normally be seen on a conventional online game will be effectively doubled. There’s no way around that. This problem could be reduced by maintaining a certain number of server farms. Of course, nobody is going to want to connect to a server on the other side of the country to play their game–lag could reach unplayable levels–so the farms will need to be distributed across the intended service area. And God forbid OnLive actually becomes successful (although I don’t think anyone honestly believes that will happen) because due to the retarded amounts of processing required, there would need to be a nearly inconceivable amount of servers–not an entirely impossible task for the likes of Google or some other Internet giant, but OnLive is being developed by a handful of fairly ugly men who apparently haven’t thought about releasing this device on a national scale.

Among calling it The Phantom 2.0, the folks on the Listen Up podcast theorized that OnLive’s sole purpose is to be bought out. And that’s the American Dream, isn’t it? Thinking up an idea that will never conceivably work and finding some unwitting investor to unload it on.

That video naturally led to this video through the natural Youtube progression Lion King calls The Circle of Life©:

That related to Bizkit, whom I hope everyone has seen already:

And that left me with a golden retriever attacking a fucking shark; which, despite its 16 million views and astronomical awesomenisity, I had not seen yet:

I know many people have been asking, “Justin, you ruggedly attractive man, what do you do during your day that makes you so awesome?” Well this is it, this is what I do with my time. I hope you have learned from this slice of life I have presented unto you, now go forth and conquer.

Perfect for commuting and just leaving outdoors. Great for everyday use. Great “Winter bike” I cant remember if it is a Mens or a Womens, but I know its a 3 Speed. Pick up only. Bring a shovel.

Intriguing, no? Here’s the link: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/997600199.html

While we’re at it, if you haven’t seen this one yet, here it is: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/765370039.html

The problem with Twitter, though, is that it’s function is basically limited to the essence of the Internet’s fundamental problem: noise. E.g., it encourages people to believe that I, or anyone for that matter, care what they’re doing/thinking at any point in the day, let alone every goddamned second. When you think about it, Twitter is an incredibly simple idea, and it encompasses many of the things that can be right with the Internet – usability, simplicity, and social networking. On the other hand, these typically used to be the secondary traits of a good service, not the service itself. In other words, Twitter stripped away every substantial aspect of a good product and left only the bells and whistles. It is the reality TV of the Internet.

And naturally people flocked to it because it allows you to express your thoughts without having to explain or defend them. When blogs caught on, there was an impetus for people to write more than a single sentence. Blogs compelled the user to learn how to string together a coherent line of thought and opinion into a work of some intrinsic value worth reading. And although too many seemed to use blogs in a similar way to Twitter, they didn’t have the 140-character limit as an excuse and you weren’t left with stupid shit like 140it.

It seems, though, that Twitter is beginning to fall prey to the same forces that caused the downfall of the of Myspace, Second Life, and Crocs. No, not child molestors, but publicity. When a comedian bitching about a nonexistent word is enough to write a news story about, or when congress is too busy wasting their time to do their goddamned job, you know the grassroots elements that supported Twitter are no longer there. As such, I wouldn’t be surprised at an impending implosion of Twitter and the coinciding rise in some other endearing and worthless service. At least until the media stomps all over that too.