Chaos Theory

Woo!

Douglas Adams, online, in the voice, on mp3, lots of his novels.

Disney!

Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin: a wild ride through
the back alleys of toontown! The only ride
with a PG sense of humour in the G rated world
of Disneyland, you are zany, wild, and a little
bit of a loose screw. Energetic and colorful,
you go at full speed, even though your taxi-car
vehicles actually have four flat tires!
Despite your older humor, you are a kid at
heart and kids most relate to your cartoony
world and like you the best. You've been know
to make the adults a little queasy and a litte
bit dizzy. You leave your visitors dazed, a
little confused, but more often, extremely
amused. You take us to the places we'd never
see in a ride featuring the straight-laced
Mickey, but somehow you're still all Disney.


What Disneyland attraction are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Dirty lines from...

Harry Potter. Lots of uh, wand-whipping.

Oh, how romantic, let's get married at...

the racetrack. Given all the dust and shit there, ugh. "Instead of a reception, they'll have passes to stroll through the busy pit area for the first time as husband and wife. And what newlyweds wouldn't trade candlesticks and place settings for the commemorative embroidered Darlington caps they'll receive?"

Joss's Angel spoilers

Here. Oh, I wish I could hide the comments I'd like to make on this, but some things are cleared up.

I don't like this game, can I play something else?

Real Life, reviewed like a video game.
"Volumes have already been written about real life, the most accessible and most widely accepted massively multiplayer online role-playing game to date. Featuring believable characters, plenty of lasting appeal, and a lot of challenge and variety, real life is absolutely recommendable to those who've grown weary of all the cookie-cutter games that have tried to emulate its popularity--or to just about anyone, really.
In one of the stranger design decisions in the game, for some reason you have no choice in determining your character's initial starting location, appearance, or gender, which are chosen for you seemingly at random....The only problem is you're relegated to playing as a human character, though the game does randomly choose one of several different races for you (which have little bearing on gameplay and mostly just affect appearances and your standing with certain factions).
The gameplay itself is extremely open-ended, though it's structured in such a way that you'll have a fairly clear path to follow when you're just starting out. Real life features a great system whereby newbie players will automatically be guided along through the early levels by one or more "parent" characters who elect to take newbie characters under their wing. This is a great system, as these older, more-experienced characters reap their own benefits from doing a good job of guiding the newbie character along.
Typically, a character will learn of the numerous viable career paths available by undergoing schooling. This can be a long and tedious process, equivalent to the sort of "level treadmill" monotony that characterizes almost all MMORPGs.
Combat-oriented characters lead exciting but sometimes short lives in real life. That being the case, you'd think more players would be drawn to combat in real life, and in some territories, they are. However, the PVE (player vs. environment) aspect of real life is relatively unpopular, and the PVP (player vs. player) portion, while interesting, is far too risky for most of the population. That's on account of the game's very strict death penalty and punitive system--you may freely attempt to harm or kill any other player at any time, but you will then likely be heavily punished by the game's player-run authorities. The punitive system has loopholes and other problems, allowing certain players to elude punishment and continue to engage in various player-killing activities. But for the most part, real life does a good enough job of making the punishment fit the crime, as it were, so in most regions there's a relative sense of order.
Player death is a serious issue in real life, and cause for continued debate among players, who often direct unanswerable questions on the subject to the game's developers, who are apparently (and understandably) so busy that they generally keep silent. In short, players who die--at the hands of other players, by the occasional environmental hazard, or when their account expires--are essentially removed from the gameworld and apparently cannot return at all. This further discourages players from engaging in PVP combat, but it does help real life's rapidly growing player population from getting too out of hand (though eventually there will be a need for additional servers)."

*hoot hoot*

The boobie car.

This reminds me of the "Wall of Shame."

The "Wall of Shame" at my house is a section of the wall my roommate created in order to post her various rejection letters from jobs, many of which involved postcards and checkmarks that she laughs at. Well, Letters of Rejection seems to be the online version of this.

The Price of Rejection
* Four year Degree in Computer Information Systems = $25,534
* Newspaper = .35
* Copy of Resume and Cover Letter = .50
* Suit dry cleaning = 6.76
* Being rejected then putting the letter here for the world to see = Priceless

I would like to see a new form of rejection letter for a job. Something that cannot be misinterpreted, gets right to the point, and will not give any possibilities of false hope. Something as simple as a piece of paper with two boxes on it would do. On top of one is the word YES, and on top of the other is the word NO.
That or either, a letter that says, "You did not get the job nor will you ever get a job working with us. So stop thinking you will."

The author certainly has a point about that last bit, as there are many "we're keeping your resume on file, we're not going to outright say anything to you whatsoever about job status" letters here. Like the perkiest rejection letter ever.

There's also the icky stuff like this. "One of the necessary changes we've made is in reducing our availability to you by phone. This change was required in order to guarantee that our Recruiters are constantly reviewing qualified candidates like you and matching them to job opportunities. We hope that you understand the need for this change and want you to know that, under different circumstances, we would prefer to speak to each of you whenever you call. Please support us by communicating with us through email until we are able to match your skills and experience to one of our openings." Rather like trying to call the unemployment office.

*snort!*

My favorites here are the musical rejections. There's the nice one: "We have been in uproar recently trying to decide a musical direction for the label. I think we finally made it. Unfortunately although we like your material we don't think it is going to fit in. Good luck elsewhere and be sure that we will be kicking ourselves around Cornwall when we here you on the radio." And then there's the pissy one: "We are a gospel label. Your music is not gospel and therefore we are not interested. The few seconds we listened to was vile and unimaginative and more akin to some kind of assault than music. Please do not send us any more."

I love stuff like this.

http://www.devilbunnies.org/sounds/ozzy-fudd-64k.mp2
Ozzy Fudd: The Rabbit Slayer.

I totally agree with this.

This fellow campaigns for more vacation in America.

"Some 13 percent of American companies now provide no paid leave, up from 5 percent five years ago, according to the Alexandria-based Society for Human Resource Management. In Washington state, a whopping 17 percent of workers get no paid leave. Vacations are going the way of real bakeries and drive-in theaters, fast becoming a quaint remnant of those pre-downsized days when so many of us weren't doing the jobs of three people. The result is unrelieved stress, burnout, absenteeism, rising medical costs, diminished productivity and the loss of time for life and family.
In 1910, President William Howard Taft proposed a two- to three-month vacation for American workers. In 1932, both the Democratic and Republican platforms called for shorter working hours, which averaged 49 a week in the 1920s. The Department of Labor issued a report in 1936 that found the lack of a national law on vacations shameful when 30 other nations had one, and recommended legislation. But it never happened. This was the fork in the road where the United States and Europe, which then had a similar amount of vacation time, parted ways. Europe chose the route of legal, protected vacations, while we went the other -- no statutory protection and voluntary paid leave. Now we are the only industrialized nation with no minimum paid-leave law. Europeans get four or five weeks by law and can get another couple of weeks by agreement with employers. The Japanese have two legally mandated weeks, and even the Chinese get three. Our vacations are solely at the discretion of employers. The lack of legal standing is what makes vacations here feel so illegitimate -- and us so guilty when we try to take one."

He did a chat on Washington Post today and had some good replies.

"The reaction of the business community to date has been what you would expect -- mostly irrational fear and believing the sky will fall in. But if you look at enlightened companies with a three-week vacation policy, they find that their profits and productivity are soaring as a result. So it's really a question of educating the business community and letting them know they're shooting themselves in the foot by not allowing people the time to re-energize and make themselves more productive on the job.

Not only do you have a long holiday, but its one that's also protected by law which is the big distinction with the U.S. where we have no law that provides legal legitimization for vacations.
In general large corporations do have better policies, but its marginal. They're all starting to cut back as well and there are all sorts of devices being used to trim vacation time -- one spreading like wildfire now is the PTO where sick days are lumped in with vacation days and vacation is held hostage to your health. This is a growing problem if you have any sort of health problems during the year."

I actually asked him how he was going to do this and he said, "Well, I'm pretty much in agreement with you and that's why Work to Live is lobbying for a three-week minimum paid leave law. The honor system that we currently have isn't working. Just like it didn't work last year when Congress quickly passed new laws to regulate the accounting and exec compensation practices to save companies from themselves.
We believe that a national law is the best way to protect those who can't protect themselves. It's the same principle as the minimum wage, which has been an accepted part of labor law now since 1938. We need the same sort of law with the minimum paid leave and that will ensure that everyone gets three weeks after a year on the job, which these days when people change jobs so often, nobody's at a job five years anymore to get three weeks.
The other part of the discussion is we have to convince our elected officials that vacations actually improve productivity. We can do that by showing the methodology that Australians and Europeans use, such as planning them at the beginning of the year, and cross-training which means when someone goes on vacation, several colleagues can fill in for them while they're gone. So the job is getting done while you're on vacation."

I hope he succeeds. My current job isn't bad, roughly speaking- most people here get at least three weeks and there's a lot of vacation time taken. Technically, I get twelve days or so as a peon, which is a vast improvement from my last job (one week after a year).