jeremyjarratt.com

When i am dead, i wish to be burned to a crisp, and have my dirty ashes scattered by close friends wherever they please.

It is my wish that whatever organs are desperately, vitally needed by someone else in their direst hour be given to them, free of charge, with the condition that such license to use and/or modify shall be taken up by them also, and that no derivative works shall result in profit. After all, i am an open source, Creative Commons person.

My stuff shall be dispersed however my few close friends see fit, with the understanding that of course my dear love Holly should have pretty well everything to start with, shared mainly with anything my dad & uncle  might want (so you better ask them all real nice if you want my Cure CDs). However, Tony D. is not to have anything until he sobers the hell up. There’s no point in giving anything to a man who’s only going to exchange it for crappy booze or some other escapist bullshit. On the other hand, his wonderful daughter Abby is welcome to just about anything she chooses.

I want my unfinished work to be wrapped up somehow. I don’t care how, so long as i become extremely famous and fabulously wealthy after death. Just don’t screw it up like you do everything else. This is Important Shit.

A grave marker will be permitted if anyone wants to bury my ashes, as long as the epitaph is funny as hell. My suggestions:

• “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”
• “Whew! Good thing that’s over.”
• “Oops!”
• “Not here, and not there either.”
• “Thankfully gone, decidedly forgotten.”

If you have something better, go for it.

No serious religion shall stake a claim on any part of my death, including but not limited to any services performed to mark my exit. No rites or stupid ceremonies are to be performed, with the lone exception being that my homies will be permitted to spill some on the curb for me. No spiritual messages are to be given, and no priest of any faith shall officiate. It is to be wholly remembered that i was a devout agnostic, who leaned heavily toward atheism. Anyone caught claiming that i somehow had a soul that lived on after death shall be haunted by my fictitious ghost forever, or until they come to the conclusion that i am not haunting them at all, whichever comes first. I lived through enough horse shit; i don’t need to deal with more of it once i am dead and gone forever. My passing should be viewed as permanent. There is to be no prayer of any kind, except in jest. Silent meditation is permitted, but please: no god shit, and no afterlife crap.

Two religions which are permitted practices and/or short rites are the Church of the SubGenius and the P.O.E.E. (disciples of Eris, goddess of confusion - i think), and they should mock the whole goddamn thing, if they even bother to show up. I also do not mind Buddhism all that much.

No flowers, please. Take your money and donate it to a non-religious charity that does work with AIDS patients or research, breast cancer (again, patients or research), homelessness, runaways, asthma, the environment, civil and/or human rights, putting an end to consumerism, humanitarian efforts, nuclear disarmament, or anything related to promoting atheism or agnosticism or the like.

On the other hand, any services performed to mark my escape from this terrible veil of lies should have a darkly humorous bent, and anyone eulogizing me must include at least one tasteless joke at my expense, or (more preferably) the expense of others. Weirdness should be encouraged at any cost. Attempts should be made at gallows humor. Thou shalt have joy, and laughter, damn it. Death is nothing serious. Be wholly glad i am gone!

I totally just felt an earthquake! In Dayton, Ohio! I have not experienced that since way back in the 80s!

The house vaguely shook, and i heard a slight rumble, followed by the house creaking and popping, woodly. My first thought was that we were being invaded by something [non-supernatural].

Wacky!

Is it me, or are they deliberately trying to slowly reveal Gaius Baltar as some sort of twisted, ironic Jesus figure on the new Battlestar Galactica?

If true, it’s pure, sick genius.

If false, thank the gods for lifting the crushing weight of that overly hackneyed analogy from our collective shoulders.

More human remains have been found at the former site of the World Trade Center.

According to the Washington Post article above, ~20,000 pieces of people have thus far been found. ~2,749 died in the attack. This means that, statistically, every person who died at the World Trade Center that day was blown into an average of about 7 pieces.

Really brings it home, huh?

Check out this angrily passionate editorial by the great Keith Olbermann re: the new, absolutely diabolical Military Commissions Act. (Read up on it and know that this is terrible and insane.)

[youtube]uqxmPjB0WSs[/youtube]

YouTube has an amazing video of RuBot II - The Rubik’s cube solving robot. I so want one. My birthday’s coming up, but the creator’s website isn’t, so I have no idea if they have a Wishlist feature. [UPDATE] I was typing in the wrong address; it’s http://mechatrons.com/.

[youtube]jkft2qaKv_o[/youtube]

This is the new version of RuBot by Pete Redmond from Dublin, Ireland. It’s very different to the prototype but it has to be the coolest looking robot solver ever. There are cameras in the eyes of the head that scan the cube before the pneumatic arms solve it. It usually solves the Cube in a max of about 50 seconds (not including the scan) no matter how much it is mixed up.

The solving algorithm is taken care of by Herbert Kociemba’s Cube Explorer software and usually solves the cube in a maximum of about 20 moves. In this video, the cube wasn’t mixed up too hard so RuBot was able to find the optimum solution.

Thanks to all of those who think it is too good to be true. That is a real compliment!

Sometimes I look at all the wonderful and good things that mere people have done throughout the vast, untold millennia of history, and I feel such an upwelling of pride for my fellow human beings, and the accomplishments of this incredible civilization that we have created, that I believe I just might explode.

And sometimes I just want to stab my fucking eyes out. O, how cruelly naive I can be!

Also at work today, i received an e-mail that gave me an idea for a new micro-podcast (which i’ve christened a nanocast; get it?), and the following, unrelated, e-mail (spacing, spelling, and complete and total obliteration of conventional rules of syntax and grammar intentionally left intact for humiliation):

Two thing return .  29.99  and   14.99   just one return no . Just two  things back to you .  Still owe me  14.99   that is correct and miss one   don’t say 14.99   I bet that you forget put on it .    Thanks  !

[sic]

(Translation: I also returned another item which I noticed you do not have listed on the return confirmation e-mail which I have received but failed to include for your reference. Can you provide further information on this issue? Is it possible that it could have somehow been lost?)

Q: What was the customer’s name?

A: If you guessed “Sharon Rogers,” you’d be sadly correct. Not only that, but she was from Arizona.

Bonus: If you can guess to whom those other names belong, you are not only smarter than “Sharon Rogers,” you are indeed worthy of being enshrined as a Thinking Person.

NOTE: names and places have been changed to protect the imbecile’s privacy.

Massive props to Karina Garcia, Political Chair of the Chicano Caucus at Columbia University, where she is a senior, for taking on that racist, slimey, pig-fucker Jim Gilchrist (founder of the anti-Mexican Minuteman Project, a vigilante group which patrols the US-Mexican border, taking the law into its own shotgun-carrying hands).

Recently, he was at Columbia University, where his lap dogs kicked a student, who was passing in front of the stage, in the face. The resulting chaos, in which students waved banners and protested peacefully, was labeled by his hatemonger group (and, go figure, by FOXNews) as a “riot” by “thugs”! You can see a clip of this happening at the link below. Hopefully someone will post this to YouTube soon…

Check out the RealPlayer video of Gilchrist on the progressive syndicated program “Democracy Now!” (128k stream, 256k stream) where he abruptly cuts off a barely-begun debate as soon as he is asked a question. What a coward.

Fox News is now pretending that disgraced Republican congressman Mark Foley is a Democrat! Simply incredible. The lies and bullshit that they spew on the unsuspecting and curiously unbefuddled masses just continue to grow in scope and effect. How this may affect the elections is anybody’s guess, but if enough people who get their news exclusively from Fox are duped that easily, it may turn ugly.

Iraqis Plan to Ring Baghdad With Trenches

So that’s what the future of democracy looks like! I can hear it now: “Thank you for bringing democracy to our formerly sovereign nation, Americans!”

No wonder the entire world hates the United States. No wonder at all.