8 Ways to Sunday

What’s with this recent fad toward bullet hole decals on cars? Is this not just the stupidest, most poserish act of wannabe gangstaism yet?

Today I had the mixed privilege of witnessing what must be the most ludicrous manifestation of this trend yet. A middle-aged white guy in a red ball cap, let’s call him Fred, driving a green Ford Escort with a single bullet hole decal above one tail light. Yeah, way to go Fred the Escort Driver — you are so very ghetto.

At least it seems the fad is scraping the bottom of the barrel now, and will soon disappear.

A beta version of the new Yahoo! Messenger is available for free download. It looks like it has a lot of cool new features.

I’m selling a bunch of used PCMCIA network cards on behalf of my school’s IT department, and I get a cut of the proceeds and reimbursement for my eBay fees. The cards come in two lots of 50. There are Xircom model RBE-100 Ethernet adapters (no dongle required) and 3Com model 3CRSHPW696 802.11b Wi-Fi cards.

All of these cards come from the college’s student laptop program, and they all worked at the time they were removed from the computers. Since they’re used, however, they are being sold as-is.

If you’re interested, or know someone who might be, please go check it out. The prices are very reasonable.

It’s really all so much mental masturbation, but it’s fun, in a way, and isn’t that what’s masturbation’s all about anyhow?

The “page 23, sentence 5″ meme spread like wildfire through the blogosphere, packed to the rafters with logophiles like so much dry kindling. In it’s wake has come some of the most extensive analysis and meme-tracking I’ve seen in my short blogging career.

Chris Vincent was the first meme-tracker I discovered, though not the first to attempt it. By far the most thorough and successful job was done by Kellan Elliott-McCrea at LaughingMeme, sticking so slavishly close to classic meme theory as to become sneakily self-satirical in the process. Paulo of How Now Brownpau? also gave it a shot before discovering Kellan’s analysis, and was clever enough to point out that tracking the meme had become a meme in and of itself.

It’s not over yet, either. The meme has mutated into a half-dozen new variations, including a haiku version and an exquisite corpse version that I plan on trying here when I get back home to my books. There’s also a “post 23″ version based on your own blog that should be easy enough to pull off, though I shudder to think what I might find.