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I may subtitle this post: “Things That Happen When You Have Nothing Planned”.

I love the conversation when you meet up with a friend: “so what do you want to do?”, and the reply: “ehh, nothing, you”, “yeah, I don’t know”. With my group of friends this conversation invariably ends in one of several ways: TV, Videogames, or Jam Session. It was after one of these conversations with a larger assembly of my friends we began to play beats from a keyboard and battle rap each other. This may seem like a totally legitimate course of action for some people, but a closer look at the social make up and musical taste of our group would reveal, without a doubt, that rapping is not on the top of our “fun things to do” list.

However, we ended up rapping against each other, with each other, and around each other. It was hilarious. We rapped about school subjects like geography and science as much as we rapped about the funny growth on my nose or each other’s sexual preferences.

So, to that unexpected fun burst of creativity i have found some fun links for improving the battle rap skills of those around me. Read these and take heed. Though it may not happen often, battle rapping may soon become a regular member of our “bored-time” repertoire.

1. How to SURVIVE a Battle Rap
2. Learn your flocabulary
3. Wiki on freestyle wrapping

Two articles on the same topic, from the same associated press release with two very different titles. I don’t really care to speculate on what gives. All I’ll say is, source matters. And also, it’s pretty clear that 1) the government is totally clueless about what it does and 2) people are dumb enough to trust this government with things like their healthcare and their retirement. I’d get the links for all that, but I’m lazy and you’re smart: FIGURE IT OUT. the sad thing is that of all the things we shouldn’t trust the government to do, protecting us and our borders is one of the things we should trust them to do. guffaw, guffaw.

And while I’m on the topic of the government of the people, I HOPE YOU PEOPLE VOTED TODAY. Whining on and on about how you aren’t properly represented. I know state and local elections are a lot more confusingly gray as opposed to the highly media-cized presidential popularity contests, but seriously if you care so much about your government and your rights start at the local level. You’ll thank me.

From the psycho teen angst department, I read this today in the headlines. I’m just gonna go out and say it here, that kid needs to be checked in. Look I know we all get dis-associative at times, but this is a little ridiculous. Plus his mom at least seems likable based on what I read in the article. And to the mom who took him to the hotel room: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Ok, telling his mom was the right thing to do, but helping him get into that situation in the first place. I’m betting that if that hadn’t have been a cop, you could be an accessory at worst and at best you’d find yourself wading in a pool of your friend’s blood. You get the gold star for the day.

Also, unless I’m mistaken, FOX or some idiot scientist/numerologist/statistician/whatever needs to check the math on this one. While it certainly is an interesting useless factoid, 1 in 10 IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM 407 out of 7634.

I must do this because I’m bored. Some kid in VA won the right to have an anti-abortion club in her school.  Now look I’m all about not killing babies, but some of these religious fanatics (I’m one of them… on some issues), need to get it in their skull that just as much as they have the right to an anti-abortion club, some smart-aleck’s gonna have the right to a pro-baby killing club. That’s the way free-speech swings and if you don’t like it, TOO BAD.

The airline industry sucks. I don’t know why it’s still around. Oh wait, yes, it’s coming back to me… consumers are idiots. Between the FAA’s ridiculous regulations and people practically dying while they’re trapped for hours in a plane taxiing around a totally inefficient runway system, the airlines are trying to take away your little peanut snacks. But apparently they’re getting better at leaving on time. Woooooo you also get a gold star for the day. I hope you airline moguls are happy.

I give up. I’m so burnt out on being negative and edgy that I just can’t go on. Here’s the rest of my links for this post sans-witty commentary.

Moron the farm bill - excuse me… More on the farm bill.

Radiohead goes out on good faith and the cheap punks take advantage of them. I said I was done commenting, well I lied. Now I download albums, I’ll be the first to admit it (as long as the moochers over at the RIAA aren’t knocking at my door). But seriously, what did you think would happen. Most of the people on the torrent networks are LEACHERS. And I’ll reasonably bet that the 60% or so who didn’t pay for the album are the punks that don’t share on the torrent networks.

And now for some software.

Visuwords - I really like this. Particularly because it’s like a thesaurus, but better.

Mofuse - This looks interesting, especially if you’re big into accessibility/mobility. I used to have my blogs compatible with the iPhone and some Mobiles at one point.

And finally, of interest to some in my close circle: This dude lived in Trappe.

Spring-Ford Reporter:

To the Editor:

Halloween. I like it. Lot’s of people like it. There’s much to do with Halloween. From decorations and cooking to costumes and candy, people busy themselves with preparing much for the merrymaking involved with the holiday. Decorations have always been a great way to communicate the holiday spirit. But to my recollection, the decorations of Halloween never rivaled the intensity of Christmas decorations, that is, until recently.

Houses and store windows alike are now full of pumpkins and gravestones, ghouls and monsters alike. They draw the attention of the passer-by and capture the imagination of children seeking out their Halloween treasures of candy. One particular store had windows that absolutely blew my mind to pieces. After a pleasant night of said Halloween Merrymaking, a small group of my friends and I decided to have our own Halloween parade along the sidewalk of Main St. in Royersford. During that walk we passed a store that many of us had passed countless times before without much scrutiny. Its windows are usually decorated in concert with the season and are always pleasant to look at in passing by. But this night my friends and I were intent on finding entertainment and so, I was surprised at the gravity with which this store’s windows held our attentions and our wondrous amazement.

Not that many store’s don’t make windows worth examining, but to me I think there was something more, something that made these windows worth more than just examination, something that made these windows special. Something so quotidian to the daily by-passer, but so sublime when one slowed the pace of their life to really take in the artful arrangement that actually spoke with such a beautifully haunting narrative. Windows done well will always have a narration, but windows that narrate with a voice that has no other purpose than to whisper the haunting prose of the artist’s visual memory have the ability to enslave the viewer’s mind’s eye and wholly capture their imagination.

But how could such a simple and everyday window arranged with simple and everyday objects be arranged for a holiday to speak with such a voice? I would say that this is an example of the idea that the sum of the parts will always have a greater effect that the parts themselves. With dolls and chests and lace, ghosts and ghouls and picture frames, the obvious elements simply looked like Halloween. But with more examination the details became the basis of the haunt. Dolls that hid in a chest beside an over-sized hand and seemed to be peeking out on a world that was totally foreign to them. A ballerina on point refused to face her audience. Perhaps she was in the middle of a spin, but most seemingly, she was not interested in her audience or she had something to hide. Faces of famous people like Michael Jackson painted in gaudy exaggerations of facial color then framed as if they were the masterpiece - stared out into the window scene. At the center, a woman whose face was unspeakably rotted was comforted by a headless husband as she sat silently on her rocking chair. But behind it all was the orchestrator of the scene. It was the silent partner that stared straight into your soul, but could not be found. And when you did find that head hidden in the far back corner of the scene, you spent all your energy not to reel away in complete terror at what you had found.

some interesting surfing for you today. though not very exciting. I was listening to my music this morning with my awesome sony headphones when i noticed some earwax. eww. well, i was curious, so here’s some random, probably useless info on earwax via wikipedia.

also via wikipedia, by way of my brother. Fernet-Branca, a liqueur we had last night that tasted like someone mixed whiskey and gin together. I enjoyed, he enjoyed it, and come to find out, its base is a grape, with a lot of herbs and spices (not unlike gin). So good, i think i’ll be getting a bottle in the not-to-distant future.

i have been toying with idea of getting rid of this blog as a link sharing method. my commentaries, while enlightening and witty (i’m sure), can be time consuming and tedious. plus in my social web surfing way of life, i’ve come to be the generator of several social feeds (del.icio.us, etherealnation.net, flickr, digg, google reader, and several others). a while back i found tumblr, made an account, didn’t figure out what it could be useful for, and just gave up. well, in my quest to minimize my data output (more accurately, simplify) i went back to tumblr, and added in a ton of my data feeds. here is what has happened: my tumblr. sorry to say it doesn’t look like it backfills anything, so there isn’t anything posted there. but don’t worry, it will soon be waaaay too full of stuff for most normal people. so eat your hearts out (on glaring lack of privacy). similar, quicker, but not quite as nice is soup.io.

i do a lot of work with people who work with a lot of other people. do you know what this means for me? MAJOR SCHEDULING ISSUES. so i found timebridge. i’ve recommended it to the people in my life who swear that it would take a full day just trying to schedule 30 minutes with 5 busy people. and the good news is they’ve actually started using it, and so far, it’s really nice. simplified, it’s almost like a business version of evite. but, it allows for alternative date suggestions and it can put the agreed upon meeting time into your google, msoffice, or ical calendars.

and finally for a bit of science, check out nasa’s page for a neat article about a sun spot taking on the shape of the trilobite. also, here’s the video. it’s pretty intense. i mean for one thing, you’re watching the magnetic waves emanating from the surface of the sun. and for another thing, according to the article you’re actually seeing into the sun.

This is a long time coming and a really late post. I apologize. I got so busy surfing, I forgot why I was surfing - to editorialize my little slice of the web. So here’s three gems from this morning’s surf.

CNET has a decent article about search engine privacy. There’s plenty of interesting survey data linked to in the article. Search engines are basically reacting to the insane security breach AOL had last year when users could pull up all the search terms that went through AOL at a certain point in time. These privacy issues are also being addressed because, as the article points out, search histories are beginning to be used for criminal convictions.

Have you ever sealed a bacon and an egg in a sealed environment and let them rot? I haven’t. That’s why I like the internet. I can learn from other people’s experiences in a fraction of the time. Great pictures included.

Companies like FOX have equal access to wikis. Surprise? Not really. Changing articles to reflect their company in a more flattering light? Priceless. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were entire PR armies bent specifically to monitor and edit wiki articles to serve a corporation’s pleasure.

i just found this blog/zine/whatever site that keeps track of web-based apps. it is now both in my reader and in my del.icio.us and i plan on reading it frequently to learn of new and awesome apps to use on the web.

another site worthy of a del.icio.us tag, bust-a-name helps you find the domain name that you want and that is available.

i don’t usually link to lew because i typically find the articles interesting enough for myself, but rarely enamoring (or MOtR) enough to post here. this particular article addresses the quagmire that is US involvement with nuclear weapons.

Snow in Buenos Aires. I’m not too good with international weather patterns, but apparently this only happens every hundred years or so. For those who are geographically challenged: google maps.

Apparently not an uncommon thing to do, but the guy who is Harry Potter wears the same clothes everyday to fool the Paparazzi. I’m not sure how effective it is, but it at least sounds pretty clever.

GOP conspiracy theories are in the thick these days. My ole buddy santorum has been hinting about attacks on the us. now if i hinted that there would be attacks on the US in the upcoming months you can be sure as hell i’d be sent to Gitmo. I’m just sayin’s all.

and to continue my hegemony against the us, this Irish economist points out that the international community is pretty fed up with our economically retarded policies of borrowing more, spending more, and saving nothing. somebody needs to be saying it. bread and circus??? and in case you’re wondering, here’s what he means by two fingers.

AppScout posts a little article about a webapp called 71 miles. I haven’t been able to check it out for myself, but it looks promising.

If you’re going to get a new cellphone, you may want to check out exPhone to find good directions on how to donate or recycle your old cellphone.

Also in the cellphone sphere of the webernet, check out cellswaper. You can sign-on and swap around your annoying contract to either get a shorter one or get rid of your old one.

Freak out about oil? Freak out about water? Just freak out because humans will destroy the earth? I dunno, but here’s a couple articles about 1) running out of water and 2) stop drinking bottled water.

A really boring article about yawning.

Hilarious blog entry about Iranian news reporting that 1)the US (implied) is using squirrels to spy on Iran and 2) that

Maybe, Imam will use UFOs to attack his enemies.

Now, I’m not saying this is a valid source (note the massive attack of popup ads), but it is at least entertaining.

I’ve probably blogged about this before but, the open sourced cellphone has begun selling developer editions for 300$ or so. I’ll be keeping my eye on this over the next couple of years. I’m not sure but as far as I know this is the first example of a commercially available opensourced hardware/software object.

while i’m still skeptical about carbon output issues, makemesustainable is a neat take on social webbing that let’s you calculate your carbon footprint and take practical steps to reduce it.

Bebo vs. Facebook vs. Myspace: bbc reporting that myspace is loosing ground to the two. God I hope so. Myspace is so UGLY. Personally, I like virb.

CNSnews (who I’m not too familiar with) is reporting on a bill meant to stop idiots Feinstein and Edwards (and others) from reviving the fairness doctrine. Screw that… why stop there? WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE ELIMINATE THE REST OF THE BACKWARDS, SOCIALIST ALPHABET SOUP LEFT OVER FROM THE DEPRESSION. Thanks for representing me, you bastards of human life.

A pretty comprehensive grid of iPhone rankings from valleywag. I probably won’t be getting one. My dream is an FOS platform phone that I can skype with. I’m dying to ditch cellphone providers and their abusive contract practices.

I didn’t even know about these songs until guitar hero. I grew up under a rock.

Neat article about an experiment in WWII that gifted sailors with infrared visibility through their diet. I smell an “Infrared Pill”, it would sell like hotcakes. At least I would buy a bottle.

Just a couple little tidbits in the morning rush of things.

Found a neat little piece of software that tracks the programs you use on your computer similar to the way last.fm tracks the music you play on your media player. It’s called Wakoopa, and you have to download a little program on your computer for it to work. The signup is really easy and the weberface is really clean and seems easy to use. I haven’t actually gotten to stretch it’s legs though because I believe work is blocking me from being able to connect the program to their servers. I’ll bring more news on that when I get it to my lappy at home.

I’ve been listening to Further Seems Forever a lot recently. This is an album that I got from someone at work without thinking too much about it. I’ve always heard a lot about them because of their relationship to Dashboard Confessional, but never really got into them. Well, like I said I was listening to their album, How to Start a Fire, and I just got really into it. So I checked it out on wikipedia, and they broke up last year. Bummer.

it’s kind of a slow day at work, and i feel that i’ve been delinquent in my surfing/slacking duties. so i give to you another really long list of internet goodies of the moment.

i’m tempted to put this weird food entry into the abusables department. alas, i will spare us all the fear factor like suspense and give you the frog shake from south america, via megnut.

Somehow, rotten tomatoes gave the upcoming movie “Knocked Up” a 90%. This movie is from the guys that did 40 year old virgin, and all i can say is, “not as good as grandma’s boy.” Now back me up on that one.

From my friends over at the freakonomics blog i give you the wildly titillating headlines of Pravda. I have nothing else to say about this, except wildly out of context hilarity.

Those witty researchers at ask yahoo are at it again. A pretty informative, entertaining, and useless factoid on a homeless man who owns the record to most arrests ever.

I’m a huge fan of the short-lived scifi series firefly, and the subsequent movie, serenity. That said, after further research and planning, there is a really very good chance that I will attend a benefit screening in philly. It benefits women’s equality and rights worldwide.

I wasn’t aware this was even happening, but apparently, there was a sizable digg uprising over a series of hexadecimal numbers that is a key to unlocking dvds. your usual money grubbing mpaa suits were involved, and in the end, i think the light side of the force won out.

Up next: Instructables round up. but i don’t feel like doing it quite yet. maybe this afternoon.