Internet? LAN? dialup? carrier pigeon? Squirrels?

High-larious story time. A couple months ago, the communications director for a Republican Congressman attempted to contact two blogger/computer experts and hire them to hack into the TCU computers and change his old college grades on the system.

Upon receiving the email request from this clown, the guys at attrition.org decided it was the perfect opportunity to mess with him, lead him along, and post all of the communications online. The “hackers” had no intention of actually following through with the hacking, but that didnt stop them from messing with the guy for weeks and PUTTING ALL OF THE EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS ON THEIR BLOG.

You must read all of the emails to get the full comic effect, but you know it will be good when in the first few communicaitons, the “hackers” tell him that phone communicaiton is bad, and emphasize the need for certain wireless networks and carrier pigeons or squirrels. By the end of the emails, the guy was stalking squirrels around Capitol Hill, taking their pictures, and sending them to the "hackers," just to show that he was serious about the endeavor.

The whole thing was picked up by technology news sites, political blogs, and various other news outlets. Some of the comments on this technology site are comic gold -- "Everyone knows that squirrels and pigeons have a protection from FBI spell cast on them, and cannot be photographed or photoshopped by FBI agents or those in collusion with them."

And yes squirrel-boy was fired last week.
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In the greatest piece of writing that our law firm has ever produced, my legal assitant had an editorial published in the Washington Examiner last week that was signed by “Hugh Jazzole”. Sound it out . . .Hugh Jazzole. Here is the letter.
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Hipster hotbed, Wonderland -- pretty safe
Explain why its fun to live in hipster neighborhoods again?
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Patton Oswalt correctly identifies Bush and Cheney as the Duke Brothers
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What a week for Agent Zero. The play of Arenas and the Wizards has allowed me to totally forget about the NFL (are the Redskins still playing?). Arenas started the week by dropping 60 POINTS on Kobe and the Lakers in an overtime win, and finished it up by dropping over 50 on the MVP in Phoenix in another overtime win. Now that is some exciting basketball, and the wizards are up to Number 7 in the ESPN poll. After the Lakers game, Kobe tried to downplay G.A.’s performance, but Agent Zero outclassed him once again on his blog

For the best player in the league to downplay what I did … I guess, I don’t know. I give him all the respect in the world. He is the No. 1 player in the league, by far. It’s like that. You don’t need to try to shadow box my 60. It was one of them nights when I was clicking and everything was going in so, I ended up having 60. That’s all there is to it.

And the best line of the post

Out of that whole game I probably took two bad shots. And, for me not to have a conscience? You’re right. When you’re an assassin, you don’t have a conscience. At the end of the day I thought he didn’t have a conscience, but I guess he does.

HIBACHI!
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Every year, Rex of the Fimoculous blog compiles a gigantic list of all of the various year-end best-of lists out on the interwebs. I have poured through this year’s version and what follows is my temporary list of the year’s top eight lists from fimoculous’ list of lists. I like lists - they make for easy writing.

1. Gawker: List Blog-Media Cliches
This is a list of the most over-used cliches in blogging this year. I use all of these in my lazy writing, so I will now try to use them at once in commenting on this list. OMG. Best list ever. Thought it was gonna be a bad list, but not so much. Oy, I use all of these lazy cliches, yo. Seriously, I use every one of them. What’s next, a list of every phrase I use when speaking too. Seeing how close this resembled my own writing made my spleen bleed. Ok, I think I just threw up in my mouth thinking of bleeding spleens. This listy goodness of a list-gasm is the new black. Ok now I am finally... wait for it... done. Um, that was stupid.

2. Best Videos.
This was clearly the year of You Tube. Many on the highlarious videos on this list were obviously featured here (not first) throughout the last year, including: The Leprechaun (my number 1), Little Superstar (my no. 2), One Bank, Lady Punch, White & Nerdy, Big Tetris, to catch THE Predator.

3. Webster Dictionary’s Word of the Year
I would have probably put Macaca at number one, but truthiness and google are a pretty damn good 1-2 punch.

4. Top 50 Lost Loose Ends.
Lost is great, for a while it was easily the best show on TV, but when are they gonna start telling us what the hell is going on. Remember us, the viewers.

5. Poplicks: Best Quotes of 2006
It is actually an great list. All of my favorites are included, and a few new ones that I should have known. The quoted include Lil Wayne, Borat, Michael Scott, Johnny Drama, Bush, Jimmy Carter,
--"Occasionally. One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps.” CNBC's Maria Bartiromo

6 Pitchfork: Top Tracks of 2006
Maybe not the best list, but lots of links indie rock songs to download.

7 The Late Greats: Top 2006 Songs of 2006
Just a cool idea for a list. I should have thought of it first.

8. Badger Herald: Top Five Comedians
All solid choices, all comedians I rocked out to this year or featured on Redonkulous, and no stinkin Dane Cook. --David Cross, Jim Gaffigan, Patton Oswalt, Demetri Martin, Zach Galifianakis. (Would have also liked to see Eugene Mirman and Todd Barry on the list- Word).
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Happy Holidays. Shabbat Shalom, motherfuckers.

Top Joints of 2006

At the urging of SCG and RSJ, here are my top 10 albums of ‘06. I really haven’t listened to that much new music this year as I am still discovering the top joints of 05, and I tend to like a lot of boring-ass indie rock - but here goes nothing

Best albums of 2006

1. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
(Shakey Dog MP3) (Random Peter Rosenberg interview with Ghost)
- Most plays in my Ipod this year, most consistent MC in the game, and a required entry on every party mix I made this year

2. Drvie By Truckers - A Blessing and a Curse
(making of the album -- the video - featuring many of the album’s great songs)
(rockin live)
(acoustic live)
- Rock, Southern-fried but pure rock

3. M. Ward - Post War
(“Chinese Transalation” - live)
(And again live on Letterman)
- Amazin Folk-rock, really unlike anyone else out there

4. Josh Rouse - Subtitulo
(video)
- Not his best work. Dangerously close to easy listening, but I still dig it.

5. Pernice Brothers - Live a Little
(Live)
No amazing standout tracks that will blow your mind, but absolutely no filler. Maybe the only album of the year that I could listen to, on repeat, multiple times - without ANY track skipping.

6. The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely
(video)
More stuff that is really different. For starters the voice is not for everyone -- as evidenced by the first comment on the you tube video I posted, and I quote:

“seriously...god damn this is the most annoying shit I have ever heard in my life. The lyrics are retarded and the guy looks like he needs his ass kicked. If this is what music is coming to, then god help us all”

How is that for an endoresement.

7. Regina Spektor- Begin to Hope
(video one)
(video two)
(live with just a piano)
-no clue how to really describe her, once again a quirky one, watch video two and you will immediately love it or hate it

8. Small Sins - Small Sins
(doin wacky shit onstage)
- New Canadian Indie Rock - token completely under-the-radar band - that nonsense above was the closest I could find to a video with good sound

9. Radney Foster - This World We Live In
- The list needed a token country-ish record

10. Sparky’s Flaw - One Small Step EP
(Myspace)
-Ok, so I may be a little biased on this one

Cut and get the F out

Via Spoony D, Here is one of the greatest websites ever. I often talk about the future where internet will replace your TV and cable service, but Find That Show Dot Com has actually taken a very small step tin that direction by tracking down links to dozens and dozens of shows on sites like Daily Motion - all one free-click away.

If you havent already, everyone should check out It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. (More picks to come later).

How many work hours (weeks) could I kill watching the three hour premeire and then all three seasons of Battlestar Galactica.
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I tend to stay away from commercial rock radio in favor of my Ipod. But has commercial rock radio been supassed by....actual commercials.
Blue by the Fruit of The Loom Guys kicks ass. Actually as good as anything put out by Coldplay
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10 Part roast of BaBa Boooey.
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Has anyone alerted the collective nerds of the interwebs to the video of Lonleygirl’s cover shoot with Wired.
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Because it is unquestionably established that bitches can’t hang with the streets

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Continuing with my earlier project of finding badass Documentaries on the internets and watching them during downtime, I have a few more choice-finds for you:

OutFOXed
What: Amazing documentary about how Faux News twists and distorts the news into some kind entertainment-propaganda-front for the Bush administration.
Highlight: Bill O’reilly claiming that only once did he say “shut up,” followed by about 10 clips of him doing just that. http://www.sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com Hah - an organization of hope.

The Root of Evil
What: Documentary by renowned atheist and author of The God Delusion. No mention of the spaghetti monster though.
Highlight: Dawkins meets with Megachurch Mega-Pastor Ted Haggard who has a “hotline to George Bush.” Haggard tells Dawkins that he is arrogant, that the bible is infallible, and preaches on how gays will be punished. You might recognize Haggard because a few months after this video, Haggard was caught buying crystal meth from his regular gay hooker. 100% True story.

Jeff Buckley BBC Documentary
What: Just what it sounds like, a documentary on one of the great singer-songwriter-guitarists of the '90s who couldve been one of the all-time greats if not taken from us too early
Highlight: Would have been this video if included.
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On to political news, as always -- stop reading if you dont care

For some reason we are still in Iraq. Almost all experts now agree that we are trying to police the Country during a civil war and that the Iraqi people themselves want us out. Yet we continue to be stuck in that nonsense, and despite the reccomendations of the ISG, Bush is probably going to send MORE troops. The only good argument for staying, has always been that a civil war will break out if we leave – too late for that. Well finally a Republican Senator has joined the many democrats calling for us to get out. Wow is this speech great - and amazing that it is finally coming from a Republican and not just democrats
Senator Gordon Smith: "I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal." .... "So let's cut and run, or cut and walk, or let us fight the war on terror more intelligently than we have, because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way."

Meanwhile the current republican congress has left our troops so underfunded that they are forced to write home and beg for SILLY STRING in order to detect trip wires in Iraq. How about giving our troops real tools to fight this war, or even better, getting them the hell out of that civil war.

Straighten my new mind's eye

Does anybody know where I can get a flying spaghetti monster tree ornament for my side of the tree. This tree topper looks good,but Im not that crafty. Im also considering hanging some beakers, bunsen burners, or evolution type stuff.
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In my four years at JMU (and three years of weekends back there during law school), I thought we had every variation of beer pong down, but we NEVER got around to the father-son dunk contest. I don’t think literary giants at Gorilla Mask could have set up THIS CLIP any better:
“Reason number eight million why "Dad's Weekend" is the best time you'll have at college: Balding, shirtless old men executing table-crushing beer pong dunks.”
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If the Colbert Report can coin the term "truthiness,” why cant Redonkulous Links invent and popularize the term “donkiness.” According to Wikipedia, after its use by Colbert, “Truthiness was selected by the American Dialect Society as the 2005 Word of the Year, and by The New York Times as one of nine words that captured the spirit of 2005.”

“Donkiness” is the next big thing - pay attention New York Times.
This blog is ALREADY the number one hit on the Dutch Google for the term "donkiness," and the international phenomenon is ready to explode. We are #1 in the Netherleands - Cant you just imagine all the Ducth children returning to their windmills after playing some Total Football, kicking off their wooden shoes, and using “The Google” to research some donkiness....good stuff.
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Here are the first five episodes of the brilliant-but-cancelled sitcom Arrested Development

I always thought this show was good but felt like I was missing something or that I was somehow not “in” on some of the jokes. Well watching the first episode alone seems to have cleared up a lot of that.
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Via fimoculous, A random Mitch Hedberg quote generator...fun for hours
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Bst episode ever of Dateline NBC’s “to catch a predator”
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Here are my continuing efforts to have your internet replace your TV --- or at least give you something to do during "down time" at work.

Fimoculous (yes him again) linked this comparison of many of the embedable video players, that are located all around the interwebs. While the post examines the quality of these various players, I am just happy to learn that there are so many more Youtube clones that I can browse for sweet sweet content. Don’t you still remember when the best distraction on your computer was minesweeper.

Speaking of online video as distraction, I have now taken to playing full length documentaries on my work computer whenever I am doing work that is not super thought-intensive or whenever im stuck with busy work. I have found that Videosift is a great tool for finding these documentaries, and here are a few goodies I’ve foound

Making of Sgt. Pepper

Baghdad ER

Tons of Docs from comic genius, Bill Hicks

The unseen Beatles

The Road to Guantanamo
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I don’t know if Rock Star Joe and the Giant are doing their annual music lists, but I think that M. Ward is taking the lead right now as my album of the year, even though I have not personally met a single other person who listens to him.