• Actuator Assembly
• All-Night Bender
• Amplfier Response
• Bitter Almonds
• Bitter End
• Bittersweet Chocolate
• Border Collie
• Border Crossing
• Buster Poindexter
• Buster Keaton
• Butterfinger
• Caesar
• Can Opener
• Catcher in the Rye
• Cedar Junction
• Cedar Chest
• Cedar Drawers
• Cocker Spaniel
• Consumer Awareness
• Consumer Goods
• Consumer Products
• Copperhead
• Cross-Compiler (AB)
• Disassembler (AB)
• Elevator Action
• Elevator Button
• Elevator Shaft
• Elixir
• Exeter
• Evildoer
• Explore Outer Space
• Feeder Pipe
• Fiddler Crabs
• Fiddler on the Roof
• Filler Items
• Former Tight End
• Governor Schwarzenegger
• Hoover Dam
• Impeller Inlet
• Inflator Figure
• Inner Back Bay
• Inner Ear
• Inner Harbor
• Inner Peace
• Inner Sanctum
• Innerspace (Movie)
• Inner Tube (See Also: Rubber Inner Tube)
• Inner Workings
• Insider Knowledge
• Inspector Gadget
• Liquor and Wine
• Liquor Box
• Liquor Filled Bon-Bons
• Liquor in the Front, Poker in the Rear
• Mike Ditka
• Non-Dairy Creamer
• Nutter Butter
• Oven-Stuffer Roaster
• Poconos (Terrible, we know, but bears mentioning due to this Onion article)
• Poker Face
• Polar Bear
• Polar Coordinates
• Preprocessor (AB)
• Pumpernickel Muffin
• Quarterpounder
• Resonator Cavities
• Raider Tight End
• Rochester
• Rubber Chicken
• Rubber Dinghy
• Rubbermaid
• Scout’s Honor
• Seeker Head
• Stream Parser (AB)
• Stretcher
• Sucker Cups
• Sucker for Punishment
• Sucker Punch
• Tailor-Made
• Taper Down
• Tinker Toy
• Tire and Rubber
• Tire Sealer and Inflator
• Toaster Oven
• Tokenizer (AB)
• Trick or Treat
• Tupperware (see archaic definition for “tup”)
• Upper Back Bay
• Uppercut
• User Interface
• Vacuum Cleaner Parts
• Ventilator Shaft
• Visitor Center
• Whippersnapper
• Whistleblower
• Wicker Basket
• William Shatner (FTW!!!!)

Bonus! Other pronoun-jokes:

• Official Dictum
• Parnassus

(Note: a lot of these come from this old MIT page)

5) A Dream

Once upon a time, in an era of shifting ages, there lived an evil toad-king and his beautiful fairy queen. You can only begin to imagine the size of the toad king; he was as big as the moon, so big that the layers of his being had manifested themselves as three separate creatures, one within another. The innermost creature was conscious, a evil grinning dwarf the shape and size of a basketball, with a nose that trailed down his face to wrap around his belly. This little dwarf nestled in the iris of a great pink eye, the size of a castle, an enormous unseeing thing that looked outwards but never spoke. The eye itself, as big as it was, was no more than a tiny ball of flesh dangling from the back of the great toad’s cavernous throat. One could only see the eye and the tiny dwarf occasionally, when the toad ate with its mouth open, or when it grinned stupidly at a passing court jester. The toad sat atop a mountain throne, impossibly large on top of the crumbling rock, an enormous axe by his side. the tiny crown, long lost, was said in legend to be somewhere atop his head.

“Gar, I smell a passing boar!” the tiny dwarf would echo out into the darkness of the toad’s mouth. “We’re so fucking hungry. Axe that thing so we can eat, you stupid fucking toad!”

The enormous pink eye would blink slowly, it’s fleshy wet lids rolling wetly over the cursing dwarf. Occasionally, the dwarf’s scheming would bear fruit, as the toad’s axe would fall upon the jester, a courtier, or perhaps a passing god. The three could feast for a hundred years on a lesser god.

The dreamer of this dream wonders how such an improbable being came to take the hand of the fairy queen, a tiny, lovely, winged thing that one could only see, briefly, as she shot off to the corners of her kingdom to aid her subjects. That is, of course, unless you were in need, in which case she was always there, holding your hand in her impossibly small one, helping you through things.

The dreamer also wonders how the toad was able to sire the fairy queen’s seven daughters. Seven vain girls with the beauty of their mother and the temperament of their evil father. The seven princesses were constantly riding out into the kingdom and wreaking havoc, intent on undoing their mother’s good work. They found it to be excellent sport.

In the great mines at the base of the toad-king’s throne, a boy labored away in indentured servitude. He was small, a human, as fragile as mortals can be. But in his chest burned the heart of a hero. And, in his eighteenth year, in a moment that was entirely impossible though it now seems like it could not have happened in other way, the fairy queen fell deeply in love with this boy. His entire life was to be but a second in hers, and yet in that blink of her eye she found the desire to hand over an entire existence to be one with another.

The boy did not notice the burgeoning love of his queen, however, as he was questing into the heart of the mountain, struggling in ever-deeper mines in search of something that he was sure was there. A freedom, somehow, from the tyranny that the world had rained in lashes upon his back and in walls of unyielding rock.

One day, the boy’s pick broke through the wall of a giant cave. As he stepped in, he saw that it had been carved out by an ancient tree, roots sinking deep into the earth and branches pushing upwards into the rock above. Immediately, he realized that this single tree supported the entire base of the mountain. In a single flurry of chopping, the boy could fell the tree and collapse the toad-king’s throne, crumbling as it was from the king’s weight and the decaying slime that issued from his pores. The boy snuck away from that place, vowing to bring back an axe the next morning to bring the toad-king down from his throne in an avalanche of crushing rock.

That night, the fairy queen came to visit the boy, as over the years she had found increasingly tenuous excuses to be at his side. But this visit was not to be one of her happy, heart-fluttering evenings. She saw that night that the fire in his heart had raged into his eyes, and she feared what the boy might do with his hatred for the king.

She did not know what to do. She could not speak to him that night, nor even look into his flickering eyes. In desperation, she asked her seven daughters to follow him, to see what he was to do, and bring him to her if they had to. For though she knew her husband had done terrible things, she did not believe that anyone should be killed for their transgressions, nor did she believe that anyone should kill in hatred.

The following morning, the princesses crept after the boy as he found an axe and wound his way down through the tunnels to the ancient tree. They discovered him just as he was about to take his first swing at the base of the tree. Enraged by the realization of what he was about to do, they tore the axe from his hands and ravaged his body with their claws. Then they dragged his limp body, struggling with its last bits of life, back to the surface, and flung it at their father’s feet.

The queen was overcome with grief when she saw what had happened to her only love. She flew upwards and upwards, ever higher, beating her wings, pleading for the boy’s life. The king, seeing the love with which his queen cried out, picked up his axe and with a single, cruel motion, ground its base into the boy’s stomach, dealing him a final, mortal wound.

The queen’s heart sank like a stone. Her wings went limp, and she followed her heart to the ground. Her body landed in twisted agony beside his, and in this last breath, they looked into one another’s eyes, searching for their sadness to have a meaning.

And as the last bit of air left their lungs, the boy finally realized how much he loved the fairy queen, how much she had loved him, and with the connection complete, they were able to share one last dream with one another. . .

Life began again when they met, the boy and the fairy queen. There was giggling in the tall grass and poking at one anothers’ awkward bodies. In time, they were married, the princely young boy now a king, and the seven daughters they raised together rode off in all directions to bear the light of their kingdom to all the surrounding lands.

They had made much of their lives, the boy and the fairy queen, but amidst their accomplishments and royal responsibilities, the intensity of their love –a thing that, unbeknownst to them in this dream, had survived death– had faded. And it was once again upon death that the boy king and fairy queen found something that life had hidden from them until the last moment. And again, they dreamed. . .

A farmer and his wife planted millet on the side of this green hill, filling the valley with their laughter, and every night they wept with the joy of their closeness. They had a young son who trundled wildly after them pulling his little wooden cart behind him. He would squeal with excited laughter whenever his parents lifted him up to the sky. I am so happy, the father cried one day, saying it only before he and his wife were overcome with the force of that feeling. The joy of that moment multiplied infinitely with its preciousness, for it was ending. . .

For it was the last flicker of life that they had of that dream, that dream that filled the last bit of light of a dream dreamt by a boy king and his queen, the king and queen living a life in the last moment of agony of two would-be lovers, bodies twisted at the feet of an evil toad king.

As you can see, the body of the post is made up of quotes from other news sources, colored in blue. This is a format that I really like; mashed up news from many sources. Some blogs like this are even explicit about reporting on biases; the sources themselves are sometimes a part of the story.

What 80beats is doing well is to start developing a UI around the mashup text, allowing a very natural flow of the prose. Using blue text and the occasional editorial brackets means the reader can easily ignore the sources completely and read the post as an uninterrupted piece of content. The references are there, though, for anyone who desires more context.

And i think that’s what drives me to keep looking for cool places to hang out or live. That’s why I love reading about Austin, Portland, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and other meccas for creatives, indies, and dropouts. The act of reading the articles about these places, followed by the act of imagining myself traipsing around these places, is purely fantasy–but that’s what some people are driven by. Maybe “fantasy” is the wrong word: you are driven by the sense that life is still big, and possibilities abound, and that you are free enough to craft, shape, mold that life into something that fits you. You know that you can’t change people (in Shanghai, everywhere) but you dream that there is some kind of place where you can just “fit in.” A place that resonates with you, that somehow possesses the kind of people and culture you need to thrive, to do your work, to relax and enjoy life properly, to lead a good life.

As i just explained, this too is the source of my discontent with China–it’s just too far from my fantasy city-state world where everyone is cosmopolitan and educated, stylish and cultured. Of course, I have never been anywhere that really comes close to that ideal. And even places like Paris and Athens that do come close only do so because I’m viewing them through the rose-colored glasses of the stranger, the one-time tourist. Delve deeper and you’ll no doubt hit a strata of complete asswipes too.

Here’s the full post.

Date: 07/7/2008 3:08 pm
Subject: Hey
Message:
Hi,
it’s been a while since we talked,
I hope you are doing good.
I got a new page for the cam app, take a look!
[link to spam site]

Smart, those spammers. They know I’ll open a message from a friend. That is, of course, until I start ignoring all Friendster messages altogether. Which begins now.

Voila: instant community/social feature, completely disintermediated from our site. The web being what it is, nowadays, he doesn’t have to run a server or get permission from us. Innovation accelerates…

Here’s a link to his announcement.

Check out, for example, their tutorials on how to install Tor on your browser so that you can upload to or browse Demotix without leaving a trail.

Here’s the info from the release:

As many of you already know, my partner Jonathan Tepper and I have launched Demotix, a website for user generated news. Think of it like Flickr or YouTube, but only for original photo/video news taken by freelancers or the man on the street. They/You tell us what is going on, we tell the WWW and the world’s mainstream media. As of today, our site is now live. You can visit us at: www.demotix.com

Why are we doing it?

• Only four US newspapers have foreign news desks (the NY Times, LA Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal), and there are only 141 US foreign correspondents currently working today (in print and broadcast media)
• In the UK, a 2006 study of the broadsheets showed that more than 50% of the news was directly attributable to press releases
• The world’s media (over 90%) relies on the wire services – the Associated Press and Reuters – for their news. But some 80 countries, or 40% of the world’s nations, have no bureau from either agency.

The news is shrinking daily. We hope Demotix can plug that gap, and more. We hope Demotix will bring Web 2.0 to journalism. We hope to be giving a megaphone to the man and woman in the street with a story to tell.

Eventually we hope that Demotix will be THE place where anyone in the world can go, in safety, to upload news – major, minor, local, cultural, political, whatever. Even before launch, we have agreements with the Daily Telegraph, Newsweek, La Repubblica, and others – and will now supply them with a daily wire and picture feed of ‘citizen’ news. We have also built partnerships with Reporters Sans Frontieres, Witness, Global Voices, Committee to Protect Journalists, Committee to Protect Bloggers, Index on Censorship, OpenDemocracy and others. I have just come back from Cuba and Iran where the feedback we received was fantastic.

Please visit our site and let your friends and colleagues know that we exist (even better, pass this email on to everyone in your address book). Ideally, ask your friends who have interesting photographs and videos of great stories to upload them. And bear us in mind for whatever you witness. We need all the help we can get, so if you know anyone we should speak to or anyone who might be of help to us as we launch the start-up, please put us in touch.

Thank you for your help and please visit our site: www.demotix.com

HELIO + Virgin Mobile USA= J

Two great companies team up to bring you more.

HELIO and Virgin Mobile USA are teaming up to combine our strengths and deliver a better mobile experience. On June 27th Virgin Mobile USA announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire HELIO.

HELIO would gain access to Virgin Mobile USA’s extensive distribution network and broad customer base, while Virgin Mobile USA would gain access to HELIO’s exclusive, high-end devices and premium services. Both companies look forward to coming together to bring exciting prepaid and postpaid opportunities to their customers.

Q: What does this mean for current HELIO members? Can I still use my HELIO device, while keeping my HELIO service plan and number?

A: Current service plans will continue without interruption. HELIO members are at the center of this transaction and we’ll continue to bring them the innovative mobile services they’ve come to expect.

Q: Can new members still sign up for HELIO service?

A: Absolutely. HELIO will continue to offer exclusive, high-end devices and our innovative All-In plans.

Q: Will the HELIO brand be retained, or will everything migrate to Virgin Mobile USA?

A: Over time, we expect that all aspects of the customer experience will be integrated under the Virgin Mobile USA brand. Integration of the direct sales channel will begin immediately, and we expect that existing HELIO products and services will soon be offered through the Virgin Mobile USA website at www.virginmobileusa.com.

Q: So what’s next?

A: We’re excited by the possibilities our new, combined team offers. We have some big ideas, but as you can imagine, a little bit of housekeeping is in order before we share them. Stay tuned!

Q: Does this affect my current contract with HELIO in any way? When Virgin Mobile USA does acquire HELIO, can I end my current contract without paying an early termination fee (ETF)?

A: HELIO contracts remain in effect and unchanged by this transaction. HELIO members who wish to end their contract early will still be subject to an early termination fee (ETF).

– Your friends at Helio