09.27.06

silly npr reporter…

Posted in politics, fun at 8:51 am by Brandon

So, quite often on my way in to school, I listen to NPR on the drive. I’ve rather come to enjoy it (although, this morning Johnny Cash was riding shotgun with me). Anyway, before I switched over to Johnny Cash, I heard an NPR reporter utter something like this (don’t quote me on the content, I don’t remember it exactly. But, this is the jist):

[…]when responding to critics President Bush would argue that the situation in Iraq isn’t as simple as they cast the situation. President Bush would say that [the situation in Iraq] was much more nuanced (emphasis mine).

This may just be a minor clerical error, or some other form of overstatement…nonetheless, this statement struck me as exceedingly odd.

President Bush would never say that the situation in Iraq is “nuanced.”

In fact, the President would probably never say anything was nuanced. He’d never use that word. I doubt he even knows that word.

Sheesh.

03.22.06

jesus on a tortilla chip

Posted in fun at 9:21 am by Brandon

This was pretty good.

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02.25.06

frighteningly accurate

Posted in life, fun at 4:10 pm by Brandon

What Your Underwear Says About You

You tend to buy new underwear instead of doing laundry.

You’re not afraid to lay around resting your hand in your pants.
The Underwear Oracle

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02.16.06

a harmless little prank

Posted in fun, phished password fun at 7:36 am by Brandon

Holy crap. I write one post about whining about how I don’t have the time to blog and I get a day or two where I’ve got both the time and topics to write about. Let this be a lesson to all of you: Whining works!

Anyway, I had a stroke of genius recently. Well, maybe not genius, but this could be fun nonetheless.

You probably all get fake emails from Paypal and Ebay with ruthless and conniving internet sharks who are trying to ‘phish’ usernames and passwords from unsuspecting internet users. I thought it might be fun if we all fought back a little. I mean, there’s very little that either Paypal or Ebay can actually do to STOP account phishing. However, I suspect that an intrepid group of bloggers could actually prove to be, at very least, an annoyance to these illicit password phishing schemes.

Here’s how the scheme works: you’ll be sent an email from a company posing to be either Paypal or Ebay. They’ll request that you “update your records” or that you “have been bidding on an auction” (which you haven’t really). And, they’ll send you to a spoof website that is something other than paypal.com or ebay.com.

Here’s what I propose:

  1. Remain diligent about detecting fake Paypal and Ebay pages. When you find one, email the URL to me at fake@badchristian.com. (You’ll be able to find this post by clicking on the Phished password fun category on the right sidebar.)
  2. Here’s the fun part. Visit a few of the links that intrepid internet users have posted and go to those pages and fill out random bad information into the fake form (which looks like a real ebay or paypal site.) We may not be able to stop password phishers, but it would seem like a good idea to make them sort through huge quantities of useless information!
  3. Be sure not to use your own, or any real information.
  4. It would probably be best to make up new information for each time you visit a ‘phishing’ site. That way phishers wouldn’t be able to sort out repeat bad information.
  5. Google bomb this post with something like “fake ebay email”.
  6. Tell all your friends that in their spare internet time, the should make some trouble! Feel free to link to this post.

Questions? Let me know!

And, just to kick things off with a bang, here’s the first fake paypal phishing site:

http://ns1.bms.ac.th/~index/.confirm/index.php?MfcISAPICommand=SignInFPP

(Cut and paste the URL so as to avoid too much referrer garbage that could be picked up by the phishing site.)

ADDENDUM: Due to the sage advice of both James and Joe, who are clearly both more web saavy than I, I’ve offered a few suggestions. Instead of creating hyperlinks to the phishing sites, it would be most helpful, I think, to simply paste the URL in question into your comment. Also, if you do decide to participate in a little Googlebomb action, be sure NOT to include the “rel=”nofollow” ” tag in that URL so that this post IS registered with Google.

Also, if at some point you DO link to one of these phishing sites, be certain to include the aforementioned tag so that this site doesn’t get any extra ’search-engine-love’.

Finally, it might be most helpful email me the URL rather than to post it here…this will allow me to put your suggestion in the main post up in lights.

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02.15.06

if they sang their theology

Posted in faith, fun at 11:33 am by Brandon

So, as is so often the case in these here parts, the minute I write a post about being an absentee blogger is the same minute that I have an idea that I feel the need to blog about. This morning on the drive into East Lansing I got to thinking about fundagelicals, and, well, how much fun they really are.

I got to musing about how lots of fundagelicals sing a good game in church on sunday morning, but their theology isn’t really best represented. Thus, I thought I’d, you know, help them out a bit by penning some more appropriate words to popular praise songs. If this goes well, I may work on a few more fundagelical praise tunes. If it flops, well, that’ll probably be no surprise to any of us and I’ll stop.

So here we go:

Withdrawn from the World

(To the tune of Shine Jesus Shine)

Stanza 1:

Lord this world that you made is so dangerous;
We’ll form a militia so that it won’t injure us.
Movies, and gambling, and whores abound;
We’ll keep our heads in the sand unfound.
Withdrawn from the world;
All boys and girls!

Chorus:

Withdrawn from the world
Hiding from all creation
Withdrawn from the world
May hell burn every nation
We’re so afraid
Come back today! (2x)

Stanza 2:

Those unbelievers, Dear God, they’re so awful;
The godless bastards will burn in hell.
We’ll pay lip service to saving the lost;
Meanwhile we’ll work on trademarking the cross.
Let’s run from all sin;
Ignoring what’s within!

Chorus:

Withdrawn from the world
Hiding from all creation
Withdrawn from the world
May hell burn every nation
We’re so afraid
Come back today! (2x)

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01.25.06

the definition of TMI

Posted in fun at 2:22 pm by Brandon

All you “would be” single gals look out. Seems there’s a kindly fellow named Josh who’s on the lookout for a foxy babe. Read the link and you’ll see just what I mean.

Hear ye, hear ye, single men at all the corners of the earth. Let this be a lesson to you: Thou shalt not self-disclose awkward amounts of information on the internet, thus saith the Lord, selah.

In the end, though, I feel bad for the fellow so I thought I’d send a little traffic his way.

Hat tip: The Feminarian

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01.02.06

news and notes

Posted in life, beer, fun at 1:25 pm by Brandon

Okay, if you’ve been checking this new place out and liking it, well, then good.  I’m glad you have.  I’m still rooting through the code and making a few functionality changes, but I’m sort of liking this new theme I downloaded from the wordpress collective.  I thought ’twas snazzy, so I’ve been working on making it mine own.

If you’re curious I’m using these plugins:

  1. Akismet by Matt Mullenweg- Which came with the newest version of wordpress and it handles spam (so far, it does so quite nicely).
  2. Bunny’s Technorati Tags by Stephanie Booth - This one allows me to simply plug my tags in on the bottom of my post writing screen instead of futzing with the HTML like I used to have to do.
  3. Gravatar by Tom Werner - If you noticed Allison’s comment, there’s an avatar of her daughter Maya (sp?).  This is done by a plugin called gravatar.  If you’d like to have your own little avatar, go over to Gravatar and upload a picture you’d like to represent yourself.  It’s a bit cheesy, but hey, I’m a sucker for new technology that provides little to no functionality, is a waste of bandwith (even if it is someone else’s bandwith), but is freakin’ cool.
  4. Recent Comments by Nick Momrick - As you notice, there’s a link to recent comments (as there has been) on the right.  I had to change the ORDER BY portion of the SQL statement in the plugin to order by comment_date rather than by comment_id because when I made the switch from B2evolution, my comment id’s got royally screwed up…probably beyond all reconciliation; however, the comment_date fix seemed to help.
  5. Stattraq and StatCounter - I’m using both.  This is area I’m least impressed with WordPress thus far.  I can’t find a good stat program to save my life.  B2evolution had a nice package included in its backoffice.  If you know of a good plugin that would simplify my stat tracking and be comprable in quality to what I had with b2evo, I’m all ears.
  6. WP Comment Quick Tags by Thomas Montague - This was inspired by Zalm’s blog.  I just think it’s nice and handy for commenters to be able to click tags rather than having to screw with the html tags on their own.  I hope you agree.

In other, more exciting, news: I drank my first litre of Chimay Grande Reserve on Christmas Eve this year!!!  It was as good as I had dreamed.  I was even allowed to do my own pouring–which, if you’re not really into bottle conditioned Belgian ales, is pretty important–so no nasty yeast gulps at the end.  I honestly couldn’t taste any off flavours.  ‘Twas everything I’d hoped.  I’m afraid, though, that I’m hooked.

I had another beer too, a Belgian.  But, damn if it wasn’t right before the Chimay and my memory as to what that beer was was simply washed away by the scent of Chimay in the warm Florida evening.  When I come across it’s name, I’ll give some notes on it.

I know that some time ago I set out to become the Sufjan Stevens of beer.  As with many of the little side projects and hobbies (aside from blogging) that I like to take on, this one slipped to the wayside.  Well, friends, I’d like to pick up where I left off here writing more about beer in 2006.  We’ll call it a New Year’s Resolution.  And, while we’re on the topic of New Year’s Resolutions, I’m thinking its time for my annual pseudo-diet.

Some of you may think it odd for me to talk about beer drinking and then announce my intentions of dieting.  A fair feeling, I suppose.  I have no intention of drinking any less beer as a part of my diet, I’ll tell you that up front.  However, I’m going to have to cut a few classic singles (*cough* or doubles *cough*) with cheese out of my diet, and I’ll probably have to drop down to one chipotle grilled stuffed steak burrito per sitting, too.  I’ll keep y’all posted, as my weight-loss escapades can be entertaining…to other people.

Anyway, like I said, I’m going on a pseudo-diet.  I call it this because if I don’t I’ll feel like I’m on a diet.  This could induce a panic attack that only a three pack of double cheeseburgers w/ no pickles could cure.  I’m trying to stay away from such ’self-medication’ if you know what I mean.  I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be able to cut out of my diet, but I think I’ll probably start with fast food.  (My palms are already getting sweaty just thinking about the “saturated-fat-withdrawal”.) I’ll probably also try to cut back on cream in the ole’ coffee.  Like I said, I’ll keep you posted.  The goal is to drop around 40 pounds.

…

Okay, are you through laughing yet?

…

How about now?  Good.  I know 40 is a lot of pounds, but let’s be honest for a 6 foot 4 inch behemoth such as myself, it should be roughly attainable.  In reality it’s only a tad over a half a pound per inch.  And, yes, it’ll be tough, but if I can lay off the cheeseburgers and learn to get by on a strict diet of rabbit food like carrots and lettuce and perhaps cucumbers I should be able to make some headway.  Hell, and if the past is any indication, lettuce should really do the trick (even if it’s not the kind of trick I want it to do).

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12.01.05

quell those dreams of publication

Posted in fun, grad school at 10:46 am by brandon

Hi everybody. Brandon here. Yeah, I know, you hardly know me any more. I’m so busy with school and school work, you’re feeling ignored, I know. Fortunately, there’s probably only about three of you around to be reading this little plea for help.

Anyhow, I apologize for the light blogging of late. I do hope to get back on top of things–though it probably won’t happen for real until next semester, or during Christmas break at the earliest.

But, here’s my goal today. For a study I’m planning, I need to come up with some vignettes. And, if these vignettes actually resemble, you know, real life, that would be a big plus. Here’s the kind of vignette that I’m looking for:

I need examples of uses of risky humor that you’ve used, or have heard at work. Some types of risky humor that I’d love to hear about: sexual humor, use of profanity, etc. What I’d like you to do is to type your little vignette up (if possible into a little script of who said what to whom) and post it as a comment. If you wish, you can change your little monniker so that we all don’t know who you are.

Also, I’d like you to include some explanation of how the comment was taken, what the sex of the sender of the risky humor was and what the sex of the receiver of the risky humor was, what was the context (construction site vs. cubicle land vs. law office, etc). And, anything else you can think of that might be pertinent.

What’s in it for you? Of course, there’s the obvious fun times sharing funny stories of risky humor at work. And, on top of all of that, we’ll all be able to read through the little collection of vignettes and have a bunch of laughs…won’t that be great?!?

What?

What else is in it for you?

Geez. Demanding aren’t we? Well, I suppose I could, if I choose your little vignette to use in a study I’m putting together, I could publish your name (or pseudonym) in the dedication section of the article if it should ever be published. Oh, and you’d have my eternal gratitude, n’ shit. Now, I’m not promising that it’ll be your name up in lights, here. I’m still planning on taking most of the glory for your hard work, but in small type on the bottom of the page, someday, you could see your name–possibly even displayed tastefully.

So let’s have at it. Tell your stories of risky humor…and for the love of all that is good and holy, let’s not censor.

11.11.05

thoughts on the funny

Posted in fun at 9:35 am by

Sometimes, I just need to write. I know, it sounds like an odd way to blow off steam. And, I readily admit that I am, in fact, a geek. Something’s been bugging me about my blogging habits, of late. I think what gets my goat is that I haven’t really turned out anything laughable in a while.

Now, I know all three of you stop by for my in depth cultural and religious critique, by sheer wisdom in the face of adversity and my patient, kind hearted demeanor (yes, friends, that was me laying the sarcasm on with a shovel). But, sometimes, a blogger has to write to make him / herself laugh.

Oh, I could just remember back to the time I wrote about my trip to the swankiest mall in Michigan (and the events that transpired therein). Or, I could, perhaps peruse my thoughts on the perfect rinse. But, I wish, this Friday I could recount a new story. One that hasn’t graced the pages of a bad Christian blog yet.

But, quite honestly, I can’t think of something worthy of telling. And, that positively depresses me. Have I really run out of material? I mean, sure, Benjamin and I could go on another masturbation euphemism rampage, paranthetically, if anyone would like to participate in a google bombing of the previous link, I’m in favor. Or, I could weigh in on Benjamin’s flag debate. (If you’re wondering, a great place to get your daily dose of funny is at Benjamin’s site. If you don’t visit regularly, start now.)

You know, in the end, remembering those funny blogosphere moments are almost as good as creating another. So, that was my personal trip down funny memory lane, what’s yours?

11.10.05

which muppet are you

Posted in fun at 7:46 am by


You are Statler or Waldorf.
You have a high opinion of yourself, as do others.
But only because you are in the balcony seats.

ALSO KNOWN AS:
Those two old guys in the box.
SPECIAL TALENTS:
Heckling, complaining, being cantankerous

QUOTE:
“Get off the stage, you bum!”

LAST BOOKS READ:
“The Art of Insult” and “How To Insult Art”

NEVER LEAVE HOME WITHOUT:
Their pacemakers.

What Muppet are you?
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