Some other stuff, before I return to my copyrant

I’ll continue talking about copyright and the entertainment industry in my next update. Promise.

The Randroid Who Stole Christmas

It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.

That’s the closing line of Leonard Peikoff’s essay, Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial, courtesy of the Ayn Rand site.

Phrase of the Day

“Grated Umbrella Handle”: this is what my co-worker Mike Skeet’s wife calls Kraft Parmesan Cheese.

The site that goes up to eleven

Guitar Geek. No, I’m not a guitar player, but I’ve always had a little bit of guitar envy. This site documents the equipment setups of various rock guitarists and bassists with beautiful diagrams. See what monster rocker Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath, baby!) used in 1971 and see what’s he’s using today. See the rig of the man who died Rock’s silliest death and the rig of the man who died Rock’s most Hemingway-like death (What? Hemingway was killed by his wife?).

The site’s collection is far from complete — for example, there’s no coverage of any members of my favourite cock-rock archetype band AC/DC (members…cock-rock…heh) — but it’s growing by the day, and you can suggest guitarists and bassists for inclusion in the list.

Did I mention how lovely the diagrams were? Pictured below is an example — the charmingly Zen-like rig of Joey Santiago, the other Filipino rock and roller named Joey, formerly of The Pixies…

Choose Your Own Adventure

Alter Ego. A very intriguing game where you start as a baby and make choices throughout your life that affect it until you’ve lived out your allotted span. Why does that sound so familiar?

If you like “choose your own adventure” games but find Alter Ego too existential crisis-inducing, may I suggest Choose Your Own Hemingway Adventure by the Ernest Hemingway Denigration Society or the really twisted game called Brad, the Game?

WELCOM 2 DUMPSVIL, POPULATN: U

The popular belief is that Muslim Law decrees that all you need to do to divorce your wife is to say “I divorce you” three times (Question 4 on this page says it’s not true and that you only have to say it once, as long as you’re doing so in a rational frame of mind). Singapore authorities have reversed their decision allowing men to send their wives divorce messages using SMS (text messaging on cell phones).

Here’s the sound file for the Homer Simpson quote from which I got the title for this story.