So, taking in a long-deep breath post-LSATs, I’m finally getting a chance to work on some new projects.

Namely, ROFLCon.

Over the next six months, the game is to attempt to put together a conference happening somewhere in the Boston area whose theme is “Fame and Celebrity On The Internet”. The guest list is to include a vast and disturbing menagerie of every important amateur internet celebrity and internet culture meme-seed in the last two decades.

This includes everyone from the creator of Homestar to the guy whose asshole is Goatse. Everyone from Numa Numa kid to the guy who started YTMND. Everyone from the guy who traded up from a paperclip to a house to the people who began the lolcat.

I’m process blogging the entire project at roflcon.org. Stay tuned!

As Blake wisely said, “Sure both of their ages added is still less than either one of ours, but if we multiply their ages we get how old we’ll be when we figure out what to do with our lives!”

Ouch.

Well, looks like the usual press of school and LSATs have turned my brief hiatus into something of a larger break. It’ll be safe to lay this Shit Is Bananas to rest until further notice. But, I’m definitely planning to put together another blog (i.e. Secret Diary of Lena Chen, some process blog for the Free Culture Space, etc) at some point this year. Stay tuned…

I’ll be out all this week on a family trip to Turkey, so, TSIB will be officially on hiatus-mode until next week, Sept 5th. I’ll be sure to drop a photo or two if I can grab some semi-reliable internet access over there.

Depending on her schedule, ever talented and brilliant Christina will be guestblogging here and being a powerhouse contender over at Dork and the Ivy.

kthx,

The Mgmt.

Stevie Levitt, writer of Freakonomics and kind-of-a-big-deal in the Cool Economics arena, recently did a fairly interesting op-ed with the NYT where he discusses how one goes about designing effective terrorist plots.

His proposal: roving bands of terrorist shooters coordinated to attack at similar times, in true economist fashion, maximizing terror for minimal cost.

If anything, it’s worth reading from the varyingly insightful and/or pompous comments that various readers have posted in response.

What’s morbidly interesting in this respect is that is that the op-ed suggests that acts of terrorism can be approached as a design problem more than a military problem (since the aim isn’t to destroy the opponent’s ability to resist). And, insofar as terrorist cells do their part in innovating in their chosen industry (terror), we can approach terrorism as an organizational design problem as well.

Remember Conway’s Law? — a group’s product is inevitably a reflection of the organizational structure that gives rise to it.

I wonder if it’s a useful way to explaining why terrorist cells have in fact NOT done something similar to Levitt’s suggestion. In the very least, you wonder if different kinds of terrorist organizations innovate in unique patterns, and how these innovations are shared across various groups — particularly a group like Al-Qaeda, which functions as a series of independent cells.

I mean, really…

Who knew there were so many of them?

Some favorites:

-Albinus of Angers, Patron Saint Against Pirate Attack

-Julian the Hospitaller, Patron Saint of Circus Workers

-Marculf, Patron Saint Against Eczema

-Isidore of Seville, Patron Saint of the Internet

-Bernadine of Siena, Patron Saint of Public Relations

-Joseph, Patron Saint of People Who Fight Against Communism

-Drogo, Patron Saint of People Who Are Unattractive

No kidding. Read ‘em and weep, boys.

Ah — the Internet, home to such amateur media genius/tinkerers as David Firth and Joel Veitch.

…and “Jazzuo” — author of the completely inexplicable game Sexy Hiking.

Details on the creator are sketchy at best and his website seems to have gone entirely defunct, but according to his listing at Portal of Evil, he’s some homebrew game designer living in Poland.

The game itself is pure, unadulterated madness.

You play a piebald egg-head guy with long legs, 3-D shoes (as one commenter wrote “LOL HIS SHOES ARE 3D!!! WHY?”) and a disembodied hammer-wielding pair of gloves. (pictured above)

This would be ridiculous enough, but from what I can tell, the entire game consists of attempting to climb over a single tree, located on some god-forsaken badly rendered platform in the middle of nowhere.

Though from what I gather from this review and its attendant comments — you might be able to pull it off with some luck and mad gamer skills.
But, needless to say, the game is, therefore, neither sexy, nor has anything to do with hiking.

This would make it the unintentional godfather of such Internet hits as One Dimensional Tetris, and Mario Battle No.1. In short, it is inane — and brilliant — all at the same time.

Jazzuo himself is pretty proud of his production, commenting under one critic’s review with,

i must say first of all that i think of this game as mine most odd and original game. The meaning of game is to simulate hiking on computer. And the simulation is just wonderful. I think the mouse usage is one of kind. Im proud of this game.

Ever prolific, Jazzuo has also created an equally ridiculous and painfully unfunny series of animations — entitled “Boobza Girl” and “John Packadge” — which all, for some reason or another, end abruptly, and are ridiculously amusing for Jazzuo’s vocal stylings. Like “Sexy Hiking,” they offer no explanation and are probably operating in some cultural space for which I have no context for understanding.

In other words, it’s totally worth checking out.

Available on YouTube, notable episodes include Packadge Episode 5, and “Hemies,” which should give you a sense of what you’re dealing with.

I <3 the Internet.

More reasons why Powerpoint rocks out.

This reminds me a little of that old nerd parlor game where you take a famous speech and use Word’s Autosummarize feature to generate these awesomely surreal fifty word 0r less summaries — perhaps the most entertaining example of which is the Bill of Rights.

Other awesome ones include The Ten Commandments and Beowulf.

Art from business applications = pretty awesome.

Brought to you by your friends at the US government.

1) ReadyKids! (Department of Homeland Security)

2)  AMSville, brought to you by the US Department of Agriculture

More insanity, after the jump

3) CryptoKids, brought to you by the National Security Agency

4) The Further Adventures of Kidd Safety by the Consumer Product Safety Commission

5) VAKids, brought to you by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs

6) FEMA for Kids, brought to you by the Federal Emergency Management Agency

7) Student’s Corner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The absolutely terrifying Kidz Privacy, brought to you by the Federal Trade Commission

9) NIST in Your Home, brought to you by the National Institute of Standards and Technology

10) Kids Place, at the United States Patent Office

More Dork and the Ivy today, pretty even day of fighting. Hwang +1, Chen +1.

It’s getting prohibitively long — so we might be moving the ongoing competition to its own separate blog. Stay tuned kiddies.

-Tim