Month: June 2003

When asked if I believe in God, I usually answer with “Well, something got me through University.” At the engineering variety show night at Crazy Go Nuts University, I let them read my transcript as part of the between-act banter.

I accept the possibility that Jeebus might just have been a literary creation of some Israelis who got really high on ergot mold. He’d still be a good role model even if fictitious: after all, I count MacGyver, Encyclopedia Brown, Ferris Bueller and Columbo as my heroes too.

Let’s just say that Pascal is my bookie. And how can you disagree with a message that boils down to Bill and Ted’s credo, “Be excellent to each other”?

In spite of this, Christianity’s had a little bit of an image problem for a while. Some of the blame goes to the Americans. Don’t get me wrong: Americans are by and large wonderful people — at least part of my ancestry is American (I have blonde-haired blue-eyed blood relatives in Dayton, Ohio). Anyone who lives outside the U.S. knows that the Yanks have an incredible talent for becoming parodies of themselves. Had the Pilgrims been Buddhist, our friends to the south (as we call them in Canada) would’ve made even a guy a cool as Siddhartha Gautama look just as silly (and hey, lots of Western Buddhists are hard at work closing the silliness gap, particularly this chump).

Some of the blame goes to Creed. Their music makes me want to convert…to Devil worship.

But some of blame goes to a lack of good merch.

You can get really good Hindu T-shirts and Buddha pendants, but aside from some nice cross medallions, what do Christians have? Crap like this. (Admittedly, I’d be sad if Jack Chick stopped; he’s funny, even if unintentionally so.)

At least, until now.

X[alt]Gear sells some pretty cool stuff. Okay, maybe I won’t take notes in church like the suggest, but the notebooks seem pretty cool. The T-shirt designs are pretty nice, and unlike the Mormon prom fashions, they’ve got girlie Ts (“for Jesus’ girlz”, no less!). But the best thing — so good that I’m placing an order, seriously — is the ASCII art “Jesus fish” surfer dude neck thingy:

I realize that I’ve probably firmly entrenched myself in the Uncool Camp with this blog entry, but that don’t confront me none. I am, after all, an accordion player.

A tip of the hat to Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle for pointing this one out.

Recommended Reading

The story behind the “Jesus Fish”.

Landover Baptist. Funny, funny reading.

Blogs:

• AKMA’s Random Thoughts
• Gideon Strauss (although he’s on hiatus right now, while he visits his homeland)
• Real Live Preacher
• Relapsed Catholic

While searching for some images of AC/DC guitarist Angus Young, I stumbled across a page where a guy — based here in Accordion City, no less! — has created scenes of one of Rock’s greatest bands…in Lego:

Zed Lopez from MemeMachineGo! sent me a link to this BBC story about an accordion thief in the southern counties of England (that’s Fatboy Slim’s stomping ground, yo!) who got caught because he wasn’t a 1337 5KW33ZB0X0R:

Richard Browning was stopped in his car with the instrument hidden behind his driver’s seat, Lewes Crown Court was told on Monday.

The ?£150 price tag was still attached to the accordion although Browning, of Midhurst Road, Eastbourne, claimed he had been using the instrument to busk on the streets of Seaford, East Sussex.

But the police officer, who stopped the 31-year-old in August last year, challenged him to play a tune to prove it was not stolen.

When Browning failed to raise a note on the instrument, the officer arrested him for shoplifting.

Here’s the photo that was included in the BBC story.

I have no idea of if it’s the accordion in question, but if it is, it’s a helluva lot nicer than both mine put together. Hey, I’d have bought it — £150 is a mere CDN$340 (US$250) at today’s exchange rate. That’s not bad for an accordion with that many sets of reeds and clappers to boot, and challengege you to find an instrument that yields more bang, beauty and volume per buck.

(At the recent Om Festival, the acoustic guitarists werstrugglingng to be heard over the zillions of hand drums around the campfires, but my Titano student accordion cut through the din like a chainsaw through butter.)

And had I swiped it, I would’ve:

a) Removed the tag

b) Rocked the house if asked to play it!

Recommended Reading

I once had to establish my bona fides to a duly appointed officer of the law with my accordion in this story about The Star Spangled Banner and anal sovereignty.

I’ve just received not one, but three emails with the subject line “Security measures” from the address “service@paypal.com” asking me to verify my personal information. Something seemed wrong; it’s not like PayPal to send the same message three times and they tend to have good copy editors who wouldn’t let bad grammar like this slip by:

Your As part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website, we are undertaking a period review of our member accounts. You are requested to visit our site by following the link given below:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=verification

Clicking on the link took me to a PayPal welcome page, but the URL that appeared in the address bar was:

http://www.paypal.com@207.44.196.35/~redbarpr/cgi-bin/webscr%3fcmd=verification/

Note the boldfaced part: it’s not the secure site https://www,paypal.com (the “s” in “https” means “secure”) but some other site that has the phrase “www.paypal.com” at the start. The server is actually 207.44.196.35, which is some other machine.

Maybe it’s my recent (and not-so-recent) experience with grifters, but something seemed wrong. I decided to click on the link, expecting to see a Viagra ad. Instead, I got a page that looked like the PayPal login, except with a title in mangled English: Identify Your Verification. On a lark, I logged in by typing in random junk into the “login ID” and “password” fields and got taken to a page that looks just like a PayPal personal profile page, complete with spaces to fill out your name, address and credit card number. It was some kind of fake PayPal site built in the hopes of harvesting unwary users’ personal information and credit card numbers.

It turns out that the server on which these bogus PayPal pages were hosted does not belong to the scammers. Rather, it was broken into and used as a launching point for the scam. The site’s owners have taken down the pages and posted an explanation.

BoingBoing points to more information at Kung Fu Grippe about this scam.

“Joey,” said Tabitha the Cute Hot Dog Stand Girl, “you’re a slut.”

“‘Slut’ is such an ugly word. I prefer the term female enthusiast.”

Recommended Reading

Here’s a National Post article about Accordion City’s 24-hour hot dog stands.

Although I came up with that line independently, it seems that I’ve been beaten to the punch. Dang.

The Voodoo Magick Box

A friend of mine told me about his experiences with the Voodoo Magick Box this weekend. Apparently, it’s some kind of device that provides a “high” electronically. You spread some contact paste on your earlobes, then place the machine’s clips on them, turn the machine on and enjoy the buzz.

According to the web site, the Voodoo Magick Box can:

• Be a non-addictive narcotic substitute
• Provide relaxation and relief from stress
• Relieve depression and anxiety
• Improve memory and concentration
• Enhance sexual performance
• Fight insomnia

That last one is interesting, as it sounds like something straight out of William Gibson’s Fragments of a Hologram Rose. In that short story, a character named Parker can’t sleep without the aid of an “inducer”.

Here’s the site’s description of the “high” provided by the Voodoo Magick Box:

Almost immediately you will experience a strong feeling of inebriation, as if you had just slammed back a few martinis. The feelings of intoxication will be coupled with a sense of pleasant relaxation. During use some people will notice a subjective change in their body weight. You might feel heavier at first and then lighter, or you may simply feel lighter initially. You will also begin to notice psychedelic flashes of light in your peripheral vision. A relaxed state remains and a profound sense of alertness is achieved.

It sounds intriguing, but think about it for a moment: you’re running current through your head. Naturally, the FAQ insists that it’s safe.

Of course, the site implies that all the hot chicks are doing it, and hot chick trumps brain damage any day!

Savant for a day

The New York Times has an article covering a machine with a similar theme. Apparently, a device called a “transcranial magnetic stimulator” — yet another box with wires running to your head — can cause people to “suddenly exhibit savant intelligence — those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most often appear in autistic people”.