This Is How The World Ends #10

(Off the suggestion "BBQ sauce" by David)

FRIDAY DINNER

"I hope you all don't mind but I tried something new."  Fredrick was almost bubbly this evening as he placed the plates of food before us.  It was slow going because he only had the one arm and his prosthetic right leg below the knew was just a touch too short.  "I experimented with the White #16 and Yellow #5 to make a something like mashed potatoes.  I think they came out pretty well.  Not that I can actually remember what potatoes even tasted like."  Fredrick laughed and everyone else politely laughed along with him.  Except me.  I wasn't in the mood to laugh.

Out of the five of us, Fredrick was the best cook and, as always, he managed to make the processed "food" elements that gave us most of our nutrients into something that actually looked like food.  And since it was Friday night, we were actually having our special dinner with real meat.  And, in spite of myself, it smelled delicious.

Jessica looked done at the thin slices.  "Barbecue? You made barbecue sauce?"

Fredrick sat down and tucked his clothe napkin into the front of his shirt.  Something about that felt vulgar to me.  Tacky.  Disrespectful.  "Yep.  Not only that but...." With a flourish, he removed the lid from ceramic dish on the table to reveal a thick brown fluid.

Peter leaned over and stuck the tip of his pinkie in it and stuck it in his mouth to taste.  I restrained the need to wince.  "Gravy!"

"Yes," said Fredrick with obvious pride.  "Yeah, I know that barbecue and gravy don't really go together but I thought it might make the potatoes feel more like potatoes." And with that he took a large spoonful and dripped it unto the mound of white on his plate. 

Looking at the four of them, I could see the anticipation and hunger in their eyes as they readied themselves to dig in.  We rarely stood on any sort of ceremony but this was Friday night dinner.  Fredrick was staring at me with that stupid grin on his face.  In someways, I was glad that he was to cook tonight since I knew the meal would be excellent.  But it irked me the joy he took in it.  Cooking Friday dinner always bothered the rest of us but not Fredrick.

The others awkwardly avoided my gaze which also made me mad.  I suppose it was a no win for them and me.  I looked down at my plate, both ravenous and nauseous.  The meat looked so delicious, lined with crispy fat and red with juices.  My stomach ached at the smell but my head rebelled at the thought.

Fredrick coughed.  I looked up at his questioning but smiling face.  I knew he didn't mean it, but I felt like I was being mocked.  I took a deep breath, knowing my roll.  "We thank you, Fredrick, for preparing tonight's meal," I said in measured tones.

He, in response, said brightly, "And we thank you, Noah, for providing it."  And with that they began eat.

We rationed the food substitutes we had slowly, keeping ourselves alive a long as possible.  We had no idea what we might be waiting for since we hadn't had contact with anyone in months and were isolated.  The last communication we'd had was jumbled and confused.  We could only guess when (or if ever) they'd be able to mount a rescue.  After six months, we'd realized that there was a gap in the nutrients, some type of protein we weren't getting.  So we'd come up with this solution.

I suppose it was an extra special Friday.  When our turn came up, we got to chose what got provided for the meal.  And I, unlike Fredrick, was not ready to give up an arm yet.  So this was our first thigh as my shins had been offered up on my previous turns.  I knew that the extra meat made this a large meal. And all that fat rendered down made the gravy possible.

The pain from the surgery still hurt.  I looked down at the bandages just below my right hip, where my leg had been just 24 hours before.  I refused to take any more painkillers because if I was going to have this meal, I wanted to be able to at least taste it since we had so few pleasures.

I pushed past my disgust and cut a piece of the succulent me.  Spear it with my fork I slowly drew it to my mouth and held it on my tongue.

Adam Frucci works his way through The World's Largest Cheeto

Adam is a brave man. The sound is the worst. I can just feel the inside of my mouth getting cut to shreads.


World's Largest Cheeto and the Optimus Maximus from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

This Is How The World Ends #8

(This is more a scenario than a story.  Similar to #1, I suppose.  Actually the more I look at itm the more I see that it is almost exactly the same.  Ah, well.  And, to be honest, my knoweldge of computer science and security is slight.  I really have no idea what I am talking about.)

PATIENCE

The most amazing thing about the maker of the ConF virus is how longer term their plan was.  They weren't thinking in terms of weeks or months or even years.  Decades and more.  That is what they planned for.

They saw, back in the first years of the 21st Century, where it was all heading and they started the ground work then.  I don't know if they knew, or even suspected, at the time what ConF would eventually be used for.  I don't even know if when it was finally triggered if it was the original designer or if it had been passed on to their children or whatever.  Moot point, I suppose.

ConF was discovered early and warned about.  In the first five years, much effort went into eradicating it, or at least defend against it.  But in those days, the internet was a wild west, massive and relatively uncontrolled.  Most computer security was based on protecting the individual and only attempting to minimize the impact at large.  There was no way to "inoculate" each individual computer system.

Usually what happened was that there would always be some computers that were infected when the virus triggered.  Once triggered, they did whatever they did (crash systems, steal information, etc.), often forcing the individual system operators to cleanse their computer.  Just like a biological virus, it was only once symptoms appeared that people took action.

And that was ConF's genius.  It took no action.  Every few months it quietly called out to different sources and got new instructions, which was usually just a new date and new address to check for the next set of instructions.  The computer security community would hold its breath on each date, only to exhale with a new sense of dread when nothing grand happened.

Each instructions also tweaked its code, getting past whatever new counter-measure that had been put up.  Between dates, ConF infected a new set of hosts.  New counter-measures would be set up and the cycle would continue.  But each time it infect more new machines than machines it was removed from.  

Most hackers at the time were looking for a quick buck or a quick brutal attack.  The reasoning was to strike before counter-measures could be put up: quickly infect as many computers it could and then go into action before too much defense could be mounted.  A race, a mad sprint. That of course meant there was a limited amount of computers it could infect.  And once it went into action, it often killed its host system.

If a biological virus that kills its host too quickly, disappears.  One that lingers for years, infects many, eventually causing much greater damage.

As time went on, the general populace forgot about ConF.  You can only be warned so many times before you just don't pay attention anymore.  The security community kept monitoring it, kept alert, but as the years went by it just became one of thousands of vague dangers.  And since it never caused damage, it drifted into a minor box on a checklist of every security update and new operating system.

After a few years, there was a subtle change in how ConF was updated.  Instead of each copy getting the same updates and the same tweaks, mutations were being mixed in.  It took quite awhile for anyone to notice.  It was alarming.  Just as you can create a vaccine for a few dozen types of influenza, there is always the chance of mutated form to get through the cracks.

New warning went out.  There was a new minor panic.  But the word had become so used to hundreds of viruses and security warnings that when nothing yet happened, the world quickly forgot again.

What the creator of ConF counted on was our reliance of the internet and its structure.  It was never designed to be a global tool, used by every man, woman and child on the planet.  It grew so quickly and too many systems became dependant on it.  Instead of replacing the internet in whole with something more stable, it was just boosted and repaired over the years.  In bits an pieces it became something new and different, again and again, but never all at once.

And in the gaps ConF evolved and proliferated, silently waiting.

The internet began to be connected to everything in our daily lives.  Not only in our financial and global infrastructure, but on very personal levels.  Our lives became stored on our computers.  And as the internet migrated into phones that we carried with us twenty -four hours a day, we relied on having access to everything all the time.  And as technology progressed, it became simpler and easier and more intuitive.

Until we started getting implants tied directly to our brains.

Although ConF was never mentioned, the fear about security was of course great.  There were warning and reassurances and there would always be people who would never use it and there were always people who wanted to be one of the first.  The temptation of was of course too great and more and more people had the procedure.  Once you witnessed someone with almost perfect recall and who could call forth almost any piece of information with just a thought, it was hard not to desire it for yourself.

From there it was a gradual increase of power and usefulness.  Control was introduced.  Why just call up a recipe when you could (for a small charge) have the skilled hands and taste of the great chefs in the world downloaded into you?  Why send a sexy video to your lover when you can transmit not just the sensation of your touch but also the depth of you actual emotions?  Sure, there were hiccups and abuse.  Just like malicious spam before it, filters were created.

The information being passed was scale that would be inconceivable just ten years earlier.  And hiding in all that ConF existed.  It remained extremely small and simple that it was lost in flood.

As the 21st Century pulled to a close, the human race had truly involved into something new.  We had moved beyond just tool users t a race that could communicate across the globe with a thought.  Our ability to process information and utilize it was seemingly endless.  An era of unimaginable science and philosophy and art had dawned.  If ever there was a golden age of man, it was then.

And then ConF received new instructions.

It is not that every person on Earth was infected.  It was one in ten, but that was enough.  One tenth of the population suddenly became totally controlled by an outside source.  It was as if an invading army, coordinated and with all the skills of trained killers and an infinite rage and passion appeared out of nothing amongst us.  Within the first night, billions were killed at the hands of their family and friends and people on the street.  They were in every part of society, including access to the most closely guarded hardware the and systems the control what the internet had become.  Once the security measure were removed, ConF could infects billions of new people.

And you never knew whose mind had already been infected, waiting for their instructions to kick in.  Sometimes it wasn't total control, and you could see in their eyes they were horrified at what they were doing, trapped in their own bodies.

Still, it couldn't get everywhere.  For whatever reason, some implants were better protected than others.  But many died as they tried to remove their implants by themselves with whatever tools at hand.  Even with the skills of a surgeon, it is difficult to perform a brain operation on oneself with nothing more than a pair of scissors or a hand held laser designed to cut a pot roast.

ConF rules the planet now, the whip that controls three billion slaves.  We are building something, a structure of some sort.  It reaches into the sky, still just a skeleton but slowly taking shape.  I am trapped in this shell, at the mercy of my unknown master, placing nano foam into molds.  Most of the people around me have dead stares but there is a young woman near me who still has live behind her eyes.  We can't speak to each other but we still share any moment we happened to be facing each other.

For over eight decades ConF waited.  And now I wait to see what it impels us to build.  All I can do is wait.

FESTO

I have no real idea who FESTO is, but I have quickly become convinced that they are a subsidiary of CYBERDYNE.

First, I saw this lovely video. It makes me want to immediately book a Thank You, Robot & Fat Penguin show just so I have a solid excuse to post this everywhere.

But then it gets weirder.

Here's a large Air Jelly... Pretty but creepy..


Or ones in the water...


And, finally, my greatest fear... robotic rays. Seriously, if the future is going to be filled with these, I'm done.


...oh, god... giant robot rays in the sky...


I'm climbing under the covers now. You can listen to your robot dj overlords all you want.

Simple idea with bizarre results: insert dried spagetti into hot dogs, then boil.

Gross?  Sure.  Fantastically freaky?  Yes.

(via Boing Boing)

This Is How The World Ends #6

(I fell behind this weekend, I know.  Here's a lengthy one.  Thanks to Anna and especially Nicole for research help.)

THE BOOK

In what may have been the worst case of miss shelving in the history of time, the book was placed in the children's section of the Greylock Public Library.  Somehow it ended up slipped in between National Velvet & The Neverending Story, which is curious since the book gives no indication of its title.  How it end up at the Greylock branch at all is curious as well.  There are only so many copies and most are guarded extremely closely by their owners.  But the copies of the book have been known to surface in odd places at odd time, so it is not without precedence.  And this was one of those small Massachusetts's sea towns where these sorts of things seemed to happen.  It may have even been by design.  

Young Nicolas Brogan  felt drawn to the book.  The unadorned leather binding, the deep brown stains in one corner.  The rough edges of the pages.  The tattered red silk ribbon bookmark.  The rusted metal clasp.  It was a bit over sized but not to stand out amongst many of the children's books.  It was perhaps thick, but it was not a complete edition of the book at only 400 some pages.  (The last know complete edition, John Dee's flawed translation from the 1603, ran over a thousand, if accounts are to be believed.)  What decided it for Nicolas was the short glance at the inside.  The chaotic drawings and mess of words.  And especially the hand written notes filling the margins, scribbled in at least a dozen different hands.  He was good reader for an eight year old but many of the word, even the letters themselves, were foreign to him.   But fragments could be deciphered.  On the top of one page, someone had written in a shaky letters

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.

Nicolas knew it wasn't a normal book.

The librarian paid little attention to what was being checked out.  She scanned the barcode taped to the spine (which, oddly enough, came up as The Places You'll Go) and sent him on his way.  Nicolas' mom was distracted by the fact that her Pilate's class had been cancelled and only asked him if he had found something interesting.  "Uh huh," mumbled Nicolas, clutching the volume to his chest.  She left it at that as she juggled driving and texting and wonder what the hell she was going to make for dinner.

Late that night, Nicolas huddled under his covers with a flashlight and flipped through the book.  It made little sense to him but the drawing were neat: animals and creatures; men and women doing things he only had a vague notion were naughty; lines and curves; knifes and swords.  Nicolas wanted more than anything to understand but the words seemed to scuttle across the page.  But he was a determined young boy.

The book, of course, has driven men mad.  Just reading it can open one's mind to horrors beyond horrors.  Perhaps the fact that Nicolas had so little experience of the world to place it in context shielded him from having his reality ripped inside out.  Or perhaps it is that a child's mild is ready to accept anything, has not been made rigid by years, that it was no different from believing that the worlds of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings could be real.  The hows and whys are not important.  The facts are that Nicolas Brogan focused his entire attention on the pages and managed to sound out words that had not been spoken in decades.

Through random circumstances everything was aligned that night.  It was the right time of year and the right stars were in their right positions in the sky.  The elements of the ritual just happened to be amongst the things an eight year old boy collects on his journeys through the neighborhood: an old coin (that happened to bare the likeness of Emperor Septimius Severus and had last been owned by a lady of the night); the skull of a bird (that had happened to drown in the first rain of Spring); a stone in the shape of a heart; an iron spike (that happened to have been driven into the lung of a police officer).  The tooth beneath Nicolas pillow in fact covered at least three of the elements required, including "a sacrifice of one's own flesh."  At the moment Nicolas finished whispering the words, his parents climaxed together in joyless copulation in the room below him.

A ritual that many before had failed at before him, that had destroyed souls and shattered minds, was complete to perfection by Nicolas Brogan under his Transformer sheets.

Nicolas pushed his head out from the covers at the silent tearing sound.  The air at the end of his bed split and cracked and opened up.  It opened up into the depth of the nothingness beyond our world, a void that sunk into infinite abyss.  A chaos of black could be glimpsed.  Great globes of of light approached the opening.  Surrounding the globes were tendrils of amorphous black flesh, blood and pain, flowed and crept from the nearest globes as they broke apart.  In time primal, the eldritch, hideous horror of the realm of The Old Ones, the monstrous noxious form of the formless, drew itself towards our world.  And a voice of a thousand souls immortal, murderous and vile, frothed and spit and addressed the wide eyed Nicolas.

"You call me, the Lurker of the Threshold, into your world.  I am Yog-Sothoth.  All-in-one.  One-in-all.  Yog-Sothoth is the gate and the gate is Yog-Sothoth.  Time is nothing to me as I am all time.  Into your world Yog-Sothoth spews and the era have man shall end.  That is the trade.  Infinite knowledge for my passage to the realm of flesh.  All that has been known and all that has never been known and all that shall been know has been tasted in Yog-Sothoth's maw.  You call me and that knowledge is yours to be had.  Power and suffering beyond measure.  All you have to do is say the words, but, be warned!  For this knowledge can–"

"Am I getting a Wii for Christmas?"

The formless thing stopped moving at the edge of the opening.  A silence stretched into the emptiness.  Nicolas has shifted out from the covers, the book still in his hands, and sat bouncing on his knees at head of his bed.  

Yog-Sothoth remained unmoving.  Slowly it opened its maws and slithered, "Um... What?"

Nicolas picked at his nose and said, "You know everything, right?  I really want a Wii and I didn't get one for my birthday so I really really want on for Christmas.  Am I going to get one?"

Yog-Sothoth shifted slightly.  "The secrets of the universe are open to you... and you want to know... if you are getting a... Wii... for Christmas?"

"Yes. If you don't know just say so."

"I am Yog-Sothoth, All-in-One, One-in—"

"You said that part."

"Okay, yes.  You are getting a Wii.  Your dad hid it in his closet above his ties."

"Sweet!"

The Lurker swelled again, it protoplasmic tendrils gripping at the edges of the rip.  "Now!  What other mysteries to you wish to have stabbed into you small mind, to be enlightened and blinded and–"

"Why did Sally throw a rock at me yesterday?"

"Look, there is so much–"

"And babies.  Where do they come from?  It has to do with s-e-x, right?  Do you know where my G.I. Joe got lost?  Why does orange juice taste weird right after I brush my teeth?  Timothy said that dinosaurs are just birds, but he's a liar, right?"

"Well, I–"

"When can I have my own dog?  I think I like Sally and Dad said she likes me too but it is stupid to throw rocks at someone you like, right?  I am I going to be an astronaut?  Are there really aliens in space?"

"Oh, oh.  I know that one!  In the great void, The Old Ones, the They, live and shall–"

"Why are tomatoes gross but not tomato sauce?  Can you make ice cream with Twizzlers in it?  Why do people have ear lobes?  If Optimus Prime fought the Power Rangers who would win?  What is better, burritos or pizza?  Can you be an astronauts and NASCAR driver?  How about Wolverine and Optimus Prime?  Timothy said cooties are real, but they aren't, right? And–"

Yog-Sothoth had backed from the opening and was slowly closing it.  The globes of light dimmed as if trying as unobtrusively as possible to slink from the room.

"Where are you going?"

"Well, you know, this is not really my... um... expertise.  Really, kid, you should ask your parents.  So I'm just gonna go."

"But..."

"Look.  Try me in a few years, okay?  I'm not going anywhere.  Because, well, you know... All-in-one..."

"One-in-All..."

"Right!  So... um... yeah."

And with that, the Lurker of the Threshold closed the porthole behind him.  All that remained in Nicolas' room was the slight smell of fish and cobber.

Nicolas picked his nose again and thought for a few moments.  Then, remembering that in just two months he would be opening a Wii under the Christmas tree, he crawled back under the sheets.

Later, the book fell between the foot of the mattress and the endboard and unto the floor under the bed.  It would lay there, next to G.I. Joe for quite awhile.

Not me.

I think the only reason I have "Christopher Scott" on Google Alerts is to make me sad.  It is just too common of a name.  90% of the results I get are Christopher Scott's arrested for drug dealing (usually meth).  Then there was the whole death row inmate thing from last year.

Today I have been getting a lot of results.  Because Christopher Scott was charged in Harrisburg, PA... charge in the death of a baby.

Sigh.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Look. It's playground equipment. I can't say it is safe for work but you should get that from the title of the video.

So so horrible. The Giz post also linked to an hold post about the horribly conceived light switch below.

(via Gizmodo and Gizmodo)

For Eliza for Ben

(via Hello Kitty Hell)

Starship Troopers takes on child abuse

In no way am I making fun of child abuse here.  However I have no idea who thought this was a good idea.

UPDATE: Here's another.

(via Topless Robot... which is quickly becoming my favorite nerd-blog)

Hellraiser Pincushion

From CRAFTZINE.com.

At some point yesterday I stumpled onto Topless Robot.

First, great name.

Second, I am certainly enjoying their level of geekitude. Like todays, The 10 Most Easily Averted Mad Science Disasters.

For example:

6) Improving Piranha Efficiency, Piranha/Piranha II

Piranha are like miniature sharks that live in fresh water and understand the value of teamwork. Step into the water they inhabit and they'll strip you down to the bone in seconds. Luckily, they are relatively fragile, able only to exist in their native warm-water rivers. Leave it to the Army to pump them up a bit, making them hardier, able to live in a wider variety of environments (including salt water) and, yes, smarter - then act all surprised when they escape and take down a camp full of kids downstream from the testing facility (Piranha). Then, unsatisfied with the carnage from the first batch of experiments, they figured adding some wings and the ability to breathe air would be a hot idea (Piranha II). It turned out about as well as you might expect.

I know January is a slow movie month but...

'Paul Blart' edges out 'Underworld 3' to win the weekend.

And this being the first weekend after Oscar noms.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're are only hope... oh, shit..."

Here is a darkside Obi-Wan Kenobi designed for the Star Wars Battlefront III being developed by Free Radicial... until Free Radical closed up shop.

Pretty bad ass.

(Kotaku also snagged cel phone video of an in-house presentation of the game back from November.  Looked pretty awesome, most because half way through it appears you can play an Ewok in crotch biting attack.)

(via Kotaku)

Bad Movies

What with The Room and watching The Hillz (which is what you get if you mixed Less Than Zero with a white trash Boyz in the Hood, threw in Paris Hilton and then took out all the good parts), bad movies have been haunting me lately.

Well here is the upcoming Hybrid which is not about a Prius.

(via shocktillyoudrop via ohnotheydidnt via Gizmodo)

Meme of the week: The Room

Not the real trailer but a real movie.

"The Room" trailer from George Gross on Vimeo.

There's is a ton of backstory about this film.

(via Bluvband)

"C is for Catastrophe and that's good enough for me!"

The cover of the October 1976 issue of Sesame Street magazine.

(via, you guessed it, Boing Boing)

Yes, but does she speak parseltongue?

I can watch all sort of special effects and I'm fine. I had to stop this almost immediately. There is nothing wrong about it but it just triggers fear in me.

However the goth in me thinks the teeth are hot.



(via Boing Boing)

"Well, I blew that resolution..."

Sign at a Duane Reade on Jan. 1st.

(via The Gothamist)

The Cool, Refreshing Tatse of Tentacle Rape

Tentacle Grape, the caffeinated grape soda.  Actual product.

"This new beverage, inspired by the genre of adult Japanese animation called Hentai, is a perfect caffeine rush for gamers, cosplayers, and comic book fans."

I was about to qualify that, while it is a real product, it is also tongue in cheek... but that phrase is too close to the topic.

(via Kotaku via Bent)