Could it be that time again? Why yes, I think so. Put your hands together and your jaw agape for despair-inducing forum post of the week!

"if they are lieng, and I dont want this to sound gayu for all you queer faggots, but if they are lieng im finding them and cutting there god damn sac off"

Thankyou, Nova-Inside.com! I dare not click on the link and see what this incisive intellect mustered for his other 289 posts, but I'm sure you'll make them public in time.

Happy Whatever

Okay, I can understand how it's possible to dedicate an entire shop to birthdays. They're hard to avoid, often expensive, and regularly addressed in the sort of last-minute rush - at least, they are when I'm responding to them. I can't understand, however, how it's possible that it's possible to fill said shop with shitty, shitty cards and a load of emotionally void, officially-licensed crap barely fit for giving to a disliked co-worker. I can't think of anything more likely to detract from your anniversary enjoyment than the knowledge that your pastel-shade, mawkish card and "comedy" T-shirt clad toy monkey came from such a barren place.

My quest having lead me to the exponentially superior but still disappointing shelves of WH Smith hy are there no funny cards any more? The On-The-Ceiling stuff was funny when it first came out which was oh, five years ago. Now it's tired and old and everybody's seen it, a status that its callow pretenders - poorly-Photoshopped animal photos and unfunny digs at knitwear catalogues - achieved almost immediately. I'm sick and tired of those bloody penguins, too. Can't the designers just admit that once everybody's seen your witticism it's time to get a new one, or are they forbidden by the goons of the Hallmark Cartel?

Science: great. As are the New Scientist headline-writers. I'm increasingly fascinated by what a ridiculous animal the platypus is; Gril contends that it's proof of the existence of God, which has a certain Pratchett-esque appeal...

Tech knowledge: Low, red

I suppose this shouldn't come as any surprise at all, but dear God, the Sims 2 community offers some of the most idiotic technical support information known to humanity. Consider this:

"I see alot of people having issues w gameplay etc. I had the same issues such as VERY slow, choppy, and just poor performance in general. As of last night the game runs perfectly and Id like to share the steps I took to achieve this and hope it helps a few people... The 1st thing I did was went out and bought a ATI AGP Radeon 9200 Video Card... Next I bought a AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU. That made a VERY Nice improvement, however I found out my motherboard was clocked at 100Mhz NOT 133Mhz. I set the jumper to 133Mhz and WOW!!! Now my PC133 RAM is clocked properley, and with this new Athlon Chip this game is AWESOME!!"

So you bought a new video card and a new processor, and it magically improved performance! Please stop affecting any level of tech-support knowledge now, please.

See? See?!

One of the reasons why I find software development interesting and nobody else does, ever

"During the run-up to Windows XP Service Pack 2 Beta in December of last year, there was a list of five bugs that the release management team decided were so critical that they were going to slip the beta until those bugs got fixed.

The third bug on the list: Deer Hunter 4 won't run."

I like Mr Chen.

Don't fancy yours much

Well, the pay may be low, but at least I can hold down a brief conversation about my job without saying the word "brand" 35 times.

Oh, great. What an utter waste of precious resources.

Wow. Virtual schizophrenia in Second Life.

Tax dollars at work

You absolute fucker.

(via Cardhouse)

Ace: mentally unstable toy therapy.

Something I feel compelled to note: I contributed to Defective Yeti's Tricks of the Trade piece, and was actually included. As the "auto mechanic", no less. Fame! No doubt inspired by my devastatingly illuminating contribution, he's now turned it into a website and (predictably) a potential book. More power to him, say I. Please do swing by and contribute; I'd add some more but I think it would probably dangerous to start making comments about jobs I still hold in some form.

Well, y'see, it really does look like shit. I am aware of the slavish devotion to style that informs this, but slavish adulation something that looks like a really cheap, crappy, Taiwanese monitor isn't that cool.

The cognitive dissonance is really quite fascinating, though.

It would appear that in America, Nintendos grow on trees.

Metacritic for the masses

New game: blog review revue! Simply install the Google Toolbar, head to your film of choice on the IMDB, and then right-click > Backward Links to see what the internet has to say about it. Naturally, it's all bloggers because they're the only ones who'd bother hot-linking the IMDB.

No need to thank me, I do this for the greater good.

The Onion isn't keeping up

City officials hope the effort will ensure that the rallies are calm and, at the same time, contribute to the economy.

It's late. I'm tired.

Defective Yeti has got it all worked out. I'd put some very safe money on the Shitload Of Nazis getting to the final, because frankly those bastards will never, ever, fall off the list of Handy Movie Bad Guys. Aliens, now - a spot of makeup and a romantic backstory and you've got something Nora Ephron could be persuaded to get involved with...

Highly original

Saw The Bourne Supremacy last night, unusually going on a whim and on my own. I'm quite fond of the original, so I'm pleased to report that the character and the franchise are still interesting and I can't see any reason why there won't be another film. The director, however, should be signing a contract right now to swear that he won't direct it. The camerawork is a largely unbroken stream of nauseating jump cuts between handheld viewpoints, giving a viewing experience akin to falling down a very long flight of randomly-located mid-European stairs while cars explode around you. This has the further negative consequence that the cast become so excited at the rare event of being in front of a fixed camera, they ham it up something rotten - enabling a noticeably weaker script to shine through.

Handily, I wasn't expecting it to be anything other than some solid spy-film nonsense, so it succeeded on most counts. I just hope they send the director back to making pop videos and get somebody who knows a bit about actual cinema to do the next one. Wow, what an authentically snobby internet remark.

And they make such loyal pets

I can't tell you how delighted I am to discover that there exists a store called Lobsters Online. Suddenly the dotcom boom seems more plausible.