Archive for May, 2008

Heart-Pounding Tales of The Manliness of Men Vol. 1

Wound and Infection Treatment Stories #1

Tales written for discerning young ladies with a keen admiration of the manliness of the male half of the species, this volume deals with heart-pounding tales of men performing stunning feats of self-surgery and suffering such injuries as would surely destroy men of lesser manliness. Yet never fear! For these manly men always get the better of every trial and tribulation that comes their way! Read on for more exciting stories of the manliness of men!

Mark was a willowy, handsome young lad, with shoulder length flaxen hair which he brushed into his pale, rosy-cheeked face often to cover his sparkling, glassy blue eyes in impish defiance of social mores.

One fine summer’s day he sat on his back porch, clad in his favorite jean shorts. This in and of itself was nothing significant. Yet the story behind his reason for sitting thus when there was action, adventure and, yes, even danger to be had out in the wide world is indeed a stirring tale.

Being as clever and crafty as he was, Mark had made these shorts himself when his favorite pants finally ripped so significantly that his girlfriend at the time had insisted with the venom only a lifelong student of modern fashions could that he do away with them. Yet young Mark would not be denied pants so well-worn that they had become something akin to a companion. Indeed, many was the week which had passed without him parting with them long enough even to wash them. He simply couldn’t bear to part with these pants! No, this was a man of deep concerns in his life who simply would not give up the familiar comforts of the threadbare pockets, nor the subtle sophistication which came with the various inked designs which turned the faded denim into a black and blue patina which echoed his triumphant past’s loves, hopes, and outstanding feats of stunning bravery. It was as grave a sin as asking an honored crusader to part with the finely wrought chain mail which had saved him from savage and ignominious death through countless battles with fierce and pitiless Moors and Turks!

So passionate had our young Mark been when confronted with the possibility of losing this treasure, he had snatched up a sizable blade from the kitchen counter in heated desire for swift yet just resolution to this disgraceful feud between aesthetic schools of thought, and with such fervor did he hack away at the offending lower portion of his beloved jeans that it caused him several injuries. Indeed, he was not mindful of such lacerations! An impassioned and bold man such as this could have no room for outward manifestations of pain when there was a battle of wit and craft at hand.

So deep was his anguish at the mutilation of this jewel of his possessions that he hurled the remnants of the pants - along with the now crimson-stained blade - as far as his slim, tight-muscled arms could manage with a pained howl escaping his chest. Regrettably his then-girlfriend hadn’t the presence of mind to clear herself from the path of the flying objects, and suffered a nasty shock as sharpened metal pierced the drywall beside her head.

What woman can understand the true nature of such manly displays, when the depth of feeling must manifest itself in a true man’s course of action? Few can, and alas this was the last he ever saw of or heard from that young lady. Indeed, though he had won a victory over an intractable situation, she simply couldn’t understand the depth of his sincere heartbreak, nor his truer, sentimental nature. In his woeful mourning over losing both his love interest and a significant portion of his most treasured pants, he neglected to care for himself and the injuries he sustained during the confrontation.

As a result, he found himself sitting on the back porch of his home in a grim and pensive state. He had moments before prepared himself for the task which lay before him in that golden afternoon. The slanting sunlight pierced the smoky air around him and cast a beam better than a surgeon’s lamp on the site of his concern. One of the the wounds he had sustained during his heart wrenching episode of confrontational tailoring had taken a turn for the worse. Such a strong believer in independence was he that Mark was not employed and could not provide the sum necessary to visit a trained medical professional. Nor did he believe in such ridiculousness. As a true student of manliness he felt strongly that anything which could be accomplished by his own hand should be! Oft was he praised for such, and oft chided by those who did not understand. Nevertheless he was prepared for the task ahead of him. His anesthetic of choice was taking hold, calming him adequately for the work ahead.

The wound in question was a clean slice whose depth had allowed all manner of dirt in, and despite having been liberally (albeit indirectly and not deliberately) splashed with cleansing alcohol during the last two weeks it was now a very angry shade of red. The protective layer of dried blood was flecked with dirt and a clear fluid leaked from beneath it with only the slightest pressure. If it was painful to look at, it was surely more painful to actually have and feel, yet young Mark showed no pain or fear. With a trusty pocket knife in hand, he paused only once to take a deep breath and hold it in before exhaling in a great rush. A sagely expression came over him, making his heavy-lidded eyes seem cloudy and distant. With a dazzling quickness he sliced open the hardened surface of his grave injury and Oh! what happened then! A rush of milky fluid rushed forth, gleaming wetly under the light of the afternoon sun. Unfazed by such Mark quickly wiped it away and proceeded to squeeze with the all the somber detachment of a true warrior. Once the rupture in his smooth skin was running with the pure crimson of a clean cut, he wiped his hands off on the comforting cloth of his shortened jeans and simply sat. Clearly this quiet contemplation was his way of cleansing his spirit as well as the site of his bodily harm.

His phone rang and with all the unhurried grace of a seasoned general, Mark reached in his pocket, saw that the name on the phone simply said “Cunty Whore That Dumped Me” and thumbed the silencer with unperturbed ease.

This concludes our first installment of Heart-Pounding Tales of The Manliness of Men Vol. 1: Wound and Infection Treatment Stories! Won’t you join us next time for more thrilling, fascinating and stirring tales of manly men and their aplomb in the face of mortal wounding and dire infections?

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The Joys of Network Administration

The network administrator is one of the funniest, most dedicated, generally awesome guys I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet. This morning I got copied on an email he sent to one of my co-workers regarding a rather unfortunate circumstance: a client of his was one of those people who gets a chain letter and forwards it to EVERYONE in their address book. This naturally included my co-worker, and the presence of giant attachments, unwanted witticisms and lots and lots of animated gifs was really starting to cramp the guy’s style.

Network Admin to the rescue! Below, with some redacted names to protect identities (because I try to be polite like that) is the solution.

Hey Todd,

I can block his e-mail address from hitting our server, but unfortunately he wouldn’t be able to send any e-mail to us at all if that happened-/probably/ not a good idea if he’s a client.

You can delete them, but the best thing to do is to ask him to stop sending them in the first place. The easiest way to do that is to make **ME** the bad guy, so the fucking idiot doesn’t get all offended and shit. Try something like this:

/”Good morning Mr. Latent Pedophile,

I can’t put into words how much sheer, unadulterated joy your wonderful e-mails have brought me. You see, before I starting receiving your witty and carefully crafted mass-produced chain e-mails my life was but a meaningless shell. Being on your “send” list has truly been a divine gift from above. Not only has it made me a better man, but flowers smell better, the sky is brighter, and food tastes better.

Best of all, it no longer hurts when I pee.

Alas, there is a problem: You see, the network administrator here is a real “type-A” knuckle-dragger. He’s an angry, angry man-the type of guy who has driven away anyone who has ever tried to love him. He is verbally abusive to his co-workers, and his breath is so bad that the paint around his desk *is actually peeling. *He monitors all of the network traffic to and from our e-mail server. Yesterday he waddled over to my desk, belched, farted in my general direction, and //then started screaming at me about bandwidth issues and security concerns. For this reason I must beseech you to stop sending me these types of messages. He assured me that if I receive any more he was going to dock my pay $10.00 per megabyte-so you’re most recent message for example could cost me $13.20.

I’m not sure how I’m going to cope with not receiving future chain letter messages from you. Alas, I may have to take up clown punching, chicken choking-or some other constructive way to vent my inhuman rage against the man. Thank you for your understanding.

I weep alone,

Todd T.
Resident Badass
“/

Give that a shot dude. Let me know how it works out.
*
**
Chris
*

Oh Chris, it is truly an honor to work with you!

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Twitter Updates for 2008-05-28

  • it’s wednesday? really? wednesday? what an odd week #
  • @johnherman the hadron collider thing? crud. I almost forgot that we’re all doomed. beginning of june or july. I forget which #
  • @snowbear oh dammit man! #
  • work all day on making a website fit someone’s given specs and they call it “under construction” and “embarassing”? gee, thanks a whole … #
  • I think the Mars Volta gets their lyrics from reading spam emails. I’ll still listen to them. well, the first two albums anyway #

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Words to Know: Shaking Off the Dust

Now here is a bit I haven’t done in quite some time! The Words To Know series had all but died. Tonight I feel like shaking the dust off, brushing away the cobwebs, and putting WTK to work once more. I’ve decided to go easy on the old girl, by featuring two terms, and peppering the descriptions with other delightful terms to incorporate into your vernacular. On we go!

Our first featured term is: Adroit - This is a handy way to turn a shocked and braindead exclamation of “Whoa! Skills!” into a pithy bon mot. For example, when watching Sonny Chiba in the film The Street Fighter, one might be able to say something like “That was the most adroit instance of someone’s testicles being pulled off I think I’ve ever witnessed!” Not-work-safe clip below for those who may not have had the good fortune to see the whole film. (Which, by the way, I strongly recomend to anyone.)

Our second word for the day is: Obstreperous. Obstreperous is a fantastic word to use to describe someone’s putrescent offspring who have decided that it would be a fantastic time to start various types of boisterous carrying on (running, yelling, messing with others’ belongings, etc.) when you have just been sealed onto a several-hour flight. It certainly passes over in polite conversation a lot more readily than simply turning to your seat mate to comment that the plane’s younger passengers are in fact “little fucking assholes” who should, in fact, have a rigorous application of chloroform applied to them posthaste. To make such a comment could be considered maladroit - the opposite of our first featured word - due to its utter lack of tact. The child pictured below, though adorable, may be one of these children whom the label of “obstreperous” applies.

this child may or may not be one of the obstreperous monsters previously mentioned
Or perhaps these three might be more prone to various hijinks.

Hope you enjoyed this edition of WTK as much as I did! (If you did, won’t you show some comment love?)

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Twitter Updates for 2008-05-27

  • Just blocked @johntesh you keep your slow jams and your spammy links to yourself, mister! #
  • my kingdom to work with a more efficient CMS. Oh wait, we can’t! fucking proprietary database structures! #
  • man is it ever stuffy in here! #
  • WHOA major thunder just now! #
  • @ajvchuk new type of sushi or new place for sushi? #

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Design-a-Vagina Contest to Re-run

Friends of RKNet may recall our first attempt at a contest, the Design-a-Vagina contest. Friends of RKNet may also recall that the contest, minus Dr. Hypercube’s brilliant concept submission was a spectacular failure.

Perhaps the contest was simply too ahead of its time, perhaps it was simply released from the nest before it was truly ready to take to the skies. Whatever the case, the concept behind the contest did not go entirely unnoticed. I received a very positive communication from a woman from North One Television, who wrote in the hopes of finding out the results of the previous contest.

It was with great regret that I had to inform her that no results were posted on the site… because there weren’t any results to post!

However, every day is another opportunity to turn things around. A documentary is being produced called “The Vagina Dialogues”. In the interest of reaching more people and getting people’s opinions on what the “visually ideal” vulva is like and people’s opinions on the things people do to achieve that ideal, we will be posting the details of the new, improved Design-a-Vagina contest very soon. Changes will include a more cohesive, thoughtful theme, and the presence of real prizes this time. Suggestions for prizes are welcome. In addition to submission-based prizes, we are also considering promotion-based prizes. (Suggestions for this portion are welcome also.)

Details on the documentary are below for those interested in getting a jump start on considering the overall theme of the contest.

In the last 5 years more and more women are choosing to have both aesthetic and reconstructive surgery. Surgeries such as vaginal tightening, labiaplasty and vaginal rejuvenation are being performed in NHS hospitals and in numerous private clinics around the country and this documentary aims to understand why women are becoming so concerned about the way they look and feel down there that they are resorting to plastic surgery.

Over the next few months our presenter will meet a number of people with differing views about vaginas – ranging from medical experts to mums and teenagers. She will look into how sex education is taught in schools, how men feel about women’s vulvas, how different cultures feel about vaginas and how over the past 20 years women’s perceptions of their bodies appears to have changed so dramatically - surely our grandmothers would never have considered having genital surgery?

We are very keen to address the issues that still remain taboo and make vagina-related topics not something to dismiss and laugh about, but a part of the body to understand, appreciate and admire.

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No Other Explanation Necessary 8: La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Gatochy brings another glorious classical painting to Flickr!
Frank Cadogan Cowper, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1926 via Gatochy\'s Flickr stream

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Twitter Updates for 2008-05-26

  • googletalk + twitter doesn’t work right now. If I’m going to keep up an alternative must be used, ’cause I doubt i’ll stay on site enough #
  • @drhypercube I’ve got a sidekick 3 that I bought off a co-worker for way cheap, finally turned on all the services for it #
  • where’d all these new followers come from? And why do so many of them seem geared towards pushing a sales agenda? tsk, et tu twitterverse? #
  • @geechee_girl ok, twhirl looks like a winner! I didn’t want a new app, but this is nice. #
  • @theproxy well at least that makes some kind of sense! i’ve seen several new followers that don’t make sense & do seem to be selling stuff #
  • not sure what I want to do today. nothing sounds good! #
  • i just painted all my nails for the first time in ages. it’s kinda nice actually. #
  • i’d love to hang out poolside somewhere with a fruity umbrella drink just no way of making it happen right now though #

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High-larious High-jinx: Airport Security Boo-Boo & Ancient Pot

It’s a two for one special! Come for the paraphrasing of a pretty funny BBC article, and stay for the hook up on ancient cannabis usage!

I happened to pop my head into the ectochat and what to my wondering eyes did appear but a BBC article link!

Upon following it I discovered that this story was indeed lol-worthy as had been indicated.

A rather dedicated but less-than-thorough customs official at Japan’s Narita airport hid a 142 gram baggie of weed into the side pocket of a traveller’s suitcase. The goal was to test the sniffer dogs in a real-life training exercise.

The dogs, however, failed their exercise by not detecting the baggie at all. To make matters worse, the official who hid the 142 gram (that’s 5 ounces for those not familiar with metric) bag couldn’t remember in which suitcase he’d hidden the weed!

That’s right, some lucky schmuck walked out of Narita airport with 5 ounces of free marijuana! Awesome right? Not really, when you consider Japan has rather strict laws against possession which could net this traveller a prison sentence. Officials admitted their mistake and are encouraging the person who got the baggie to come forward in order to avoid unnecessary legal troubles.

In my search for more specifics about the laws, I came across a really interesting history of cannabis, beginning with its place in the ancient world. Which is admittedly far more entertaining than the original BBC story I mentioned. After discussing the knowledge - or lack thereof - by the Greeks, and the ancient Japanese and Indians, it moves on to an entire passage on the history of cannabis in the Arab world.

One of the most fascinating ways to explore the ancient world, I think, is to track a substance or supply through the ages. It brings to light ancient trade routes, how information was shared, which cultures were accepting of new things and which closed themselves off. Following marijuana in such a way is a two fold path. On the one hand you get to see which cultures adapted the plant for use as hemp fibers, and how as a valuable supply the plant travelled the world. You also get to track its history when grown and used as a psychoactive substance, and the attitudes of the cultures which were aware of those properties.

All of that and much, much more at druglibrary.org. If you’re someone who visits Erowid frequently for reference on drug-related matters, I might suggest adding this to your repertoire also.

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Twitter Updates for 2008-05-25

  • pff to return stuff to target and get more wine! #

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