Gross Negligence

I brought it home.
And it died.

I fed it Tortilla Chips and Guacamole but it still died.

I played it a record of a symphony by Jean Sibelius but it died anyway.

It had plenty of daylight. It even went so far as to comment on how nice the daylight was.

Then it died.

I prepared a soft bed for it and read Jules Verne to it. It listened, fell asleep, and then died.

In the summer, I took it to the beach and built it a sand castle. Then it stomped on the sand castle and died shortly thereafter.

On Tuesday, I made it pancakes. It stared at the pancakes for about 7 minutes, then it went outside and drowned itself.

We sat on the sofa together and watched episodes of Seinfeld. About halfway through the third one, it stopped breathing.



My advice would be

next time, don't leave it with me.

Architectural Budget-Saving Tip #73 - The Triple-John Fallacy

With world markets crumbling, the unpredictable behavior of crude oil pricing, and the rapid dissapearance of available credit, the economy is headed, as the poet said, the rightway for a smackedbottom and i dont care who knows about it.

In response to this, we are all attempting (or not attempting as the case may be), in our various sectors, to find ways to reduce spending and/or the costs themselves through various methods including firings, undercuttings, overslappings, sidepinnings, bombings, burning of credit documents, gripefittings, pillaging of villages, teargas, paper-towel-usage-reduction, abatement, blackmail, sabotage, strategic whining, and humiliation, to name a few.

The architecture industry has been hit especially hard, since the rich people that architects depend on have become suddenly pessimistic and conservative (with their money, that is). To get through this dark, pathetic, and difficult time, it seems clear that we must start small. On this note, the Ad Hoc project would like to present: Architectural Budget-Saving Tip #73 - The Triple-John Fallacy.

The short of it is this: NEVER EVER, ever install 3 urinals in a row in a men's restroom. The middle urinal will NEVER get used. Save your client the $78.95 for the middle urinal, and watch them grin in self-adulation for having hired such a brilliant, cost-conscious architect. To explain, we imagine a situation with 3 Urinals labeled 1, 2, and 3, and 3 Men labeled A, B, and C, as well as the following postulate: "When given the opportunity to choose, the average man will NOT stand in a penis-exposed position directly next to another man."

The following tends to occur:

1. Upon entering the empty restroom, Man A will engage either Urinal 1 or Urinal 3 (depending upon whether he employs a right or left handed grip), in effect providing a possible Man B with an obligatory 1-stall spacing. Let's say Man A is a south-paw, and he therefore engages the right-most stall (Urinal 3), and initiates evacuation. (The grip-hand is used like a shield, protecting the package from unauthorized inspection.)

2. Upon entering a restroom with Urinals 1 & 2 free and Urinal 3 in use, Man B will instinctively pounce on Urinal 1, regardless of his grip preference.

3. When faced with this scenario, known as a "1-3 Split", Man C will improvise and execute a maneuver called a "Pre-wash Delay", in effect re-routing his motion vector toward the sink for a soapless hand rinse killing the 20-30 seconds until Urinal 1 or 3 is free.

In controlled experiments, the use of partitions seems to have no effect on this phenomenon, as walls only function to heighten the paranoia of being watched.

DISCLAIMER: The Ad Hoc project holds no responsibility for the cancellation of your project even if it occurs despite the $78.95 urinal savings. It that case it was most likely just a shitty design.

/Ad Hoc out.

Evidence of the Antimatterhorn found!

from Reuters:

A night janitor, sweeping corridor 233 between airlocks #28 and #29 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland has found the first evidence of the Antimatterhorn, once thought to exist at the geographic midpoint between the Matterhorn in Switzerland and the Disneyland Matterhorn replica in Anaheim, California.  

Working off of a sketch found in one of Albert Einstein's last notebooks, the National Science Foundation had approached Walt Disney in 1952 about subsidizing the construction of his latest ride so that they could attempt to reveal the existence of the Antimatterhorn, one of a handful of Holy-Grails in theoretical particle physics.  Disney had intented to reconstruct Mount Everest but with this new NSF-backing, changed his plan to build a replica of the Matterhorn instead.  Einstein's notes posit that the ultimate source of electronic sound should exist at the midpoint between the Matterhorn and a 1/100 scale model of the Matterhorn built near the San Andreas fault in Southern California.  This midpoint is on the northern tip of Newfoundland, nearly on the Quebec border.

Jens Schneider, working his second week without overtime pay for the budget-strapped multi-national LHC project, had moved a trash receptacle about 10cm away from the corridor wall, when suddenly he found a pair of headphones appear out of nowhere, magnetized to his ears.  He was then levitated 45cm above the floor.  Gradually, he was bombarded by bass frequencies normally not apparent to the human ear.  "Was ich gehört habe, habe ich NIE vorher gehört, " remarked Schneider.  "Ich habe danach den Ad Hoc Project angerufen weil ich dachte vielleicht Dr. Ad Hoc wüsste was wir machen soll.  Ich hatte recht." 

Following the discovery, the Ad Hoc project has positioned a mobile workstation onsite to investigate further and will oversee all future developments regarding the Antimatterhorn and its potential influence on humanity.

what is known:

1. The Antimatterhorn is the new multi-tronically charged music project overseen by Dr. Ad Hoc.

2. The Antimatterhorn is an extension of the concept of the antiparticle to the Matterhorn, where the Antimatterhorn is composed of antiparticles in the same way that the Matterhorn is composed of particles.

3. Mixing the Antimatterhorn and the Matterhorn would result in the annihilation of both.

4. Mixing the Antimatterhorn and the replica of the Matterhorn would result in the annihilation of Disneyland.

5. The Antimatterhorn cannot be stored in a container made of the Matterhorn or Disneyland because it would annihilate both itself and the container.

6. The Antimatterhorn, when charged, can theoretically be contained in a combination electric field and magnetic field known as a Penning Trap.

Check back here for future releases regarding the Antimatterhorn

/Ad Hoc out.

how to optimize the system

first select the the people
rotate the people 180 degrees
mirror them so they face each other
put each on a different layer

create a folder
give the folder a name: "Them"
move the people into this folder
move this folder below the "sky" layer and above the "ground" layer

open the folder

adjust the contrast so that the people are stronger against the background

create a new layer "sun"
move this layer above the "sky" layer
use the paint bucket to fill the window with a yellow color

add trees and plants

apply the motion filter

print

wordological wordism: fyootch

to fyootch:

to time travel backwards, locate friends and contemporaries of one's ancestors (and/or the ancestors themselves), and intervene somehow in reaction to things they are going to do later in life.

various usage examples:

In my dream, Shawn Penn fyootched his great-great-great-grandfather a mean one.

Shawn Penn is a bastard fyootcher.

Cyberdyne Systems sent a Terminator to 1984 to pull a major fyootch on Sarah Connor.

In a textbook sci-fi-counter-fyootch, John Connor sent Kyle Reese back to 1984 as well.

Biff Tannen committs negligent-self-fyootch in Back to the Future II, followed by a Marty-Mcfly-counter-fyootch whose murder is averted only by a classic Doc-Brown authoritative-rescue-fyootch.

the following dreamt on 23 feb. 2009 -

Shawn Penn, great great great grandson of Sean Penn, was visiting me from the year 2165 and had brought me a trans-conciousness device with which I was supposed to swap consciousnesses with Sean Penn and attempt to control his violent urges so as to avert some sort of cultural apocolypse that he is going to bring about in 2012.

a wordological wordism: "schumacher" (v.)

schumacher (auf Deutsch: schumacher)
usage: (to) schumacher (something)

to embellish, alter, or manipulate something for ANY or ALL of the following reasons:

1. a 3-picture deal
2. $16.4 million
3. widespread appeal
4. putting asses in seats.

Origin: In the mid-90´s, as a kind of modern-day (and high-profile) version of Ed Wood, film director Joel Schumacher took the reins of an otherwise respectable filmmaking tradition (Batman) and turned it into a tour-de-FARCE. With nothing even remotely harkening to the creativity and zaniness of the old TV show nor the darkness and slick stylized storytelling of the two Tim Burton Batman projects, the (count 'em) two Schumacher Batman films took the series (and superhero films in general) to an all-time low. Appearing as though Schumacher called all the A-list celebrities he knew and asked them to run around in costume on a Hollywood sound stage, Batman Forever (1995), and Batman & Robin (1997) have come to represent a period of complacency, over-indulgence, and what-the-fuck-is-this-itude in Hollywood cinema. Recently, Christopher Nolan has resurrected the legend yet again, more so in the Burtonesque tradition (minus a kick-ass musical theme from danny elfman), and going perhaps more extreme into gritty realism (which apparently everyone has to do now because of, I dont know, terrorism and Computer Animation?) It was as though, following 9/11, everyone was like, "Shit! violence IS real! I had no idea...from now on, we better stick to representing reality!"...but I digress. Anyway, while the new films have been well received, The Ad Hoc Project is concerned that Batman has become a bit of the village bicycle and would like to encourage the general superhero discourse to move on (read: lots of pressure on The Watchmen).

*NOTE: While normally we attempt to champion fair and balanced reporting, the staff here at the The Ad Hoc Project must confess that we unanimously feel that the first Batman film, Batman (1990), is really the first and best post-modern attempt on the story. Tim Burton´s storytelling skills, his collaboration with danny elfman and prince, and his signature balance of realism and style, combined with some awesome casting decisions and performances make the film the only one necessary. The next 5, we find irrelevant. Also when lined up next to each other, we feel that the Batmoblie from the first film is 47% more "menancing", and 62% "cooler-looking" than the Batmobile from any of the other films.