loonyblog.

According to an article in today’s Mercury News, Friendster, that bizarre little fad for helping vapid trucker hat wearing hipsters in Williamsburg discover one another (okay, that was a cheap shot…I apologize), turned down a $30 million buyout offer from Google. That’s right, they were offered a $30 million dollar buyout. From Google. And they turned it down. I mean, I guess I can understand why, since they instead managed to raise $13 million in independent venture capital, but that in and of itself is downright freaking insane.

Let’s set aside for the moment that the dot com burst is still a painful memory for anyone who lived, worked, or was within earshot of the stretch of NYC once known as Silicon Alley or the barren wasteland of abandoned office buildings that makes up much of Silicon Valley. To raise any venture capital these days is a major feat (I should know…we just did here at netomat!), but in order to get any funding from any venture fund requires some serious, hardcore business plan (well, maybe not every fund), and I have seen nothing on Friendster that couldn’t be replicated in a weekend by any halfway competent programmer.

If the Friendster model of social interaction really does become the next big thing, it won’t be as an independent entity. It’ll be as part of one of the big matchmaking sites like Match.com, Lavalife or Nerve. And that’s still a big if. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Friendster quickly goes the way of such other once high-flying dot coms as Pets.com, Blue Mountain or snap.com.

Hey, it’s Halloween, so why not get the scrap scared out of you? retroCRUSH has posted their list of the 100 scariest movie scenes of all time, and it’s actually a really good compilation. I’ve seen a pretty large percentage of the movies on this list (I don’t know if I should be proud of that or not) so it was nice to see some of the less well-known scenes that made the cut.

I can’t say I really think the pink elephants scene from Dumbo belongs on the list, but it was nice to see them mention Return of the Living Dead, which is an oft-overlooked movie because of the fact that it’s half parody, half horror movie. Other clever picks include the Large Marge scene from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (which I must admit, really did scare me the first time I saw it) and the eyeball scenes from Zombie and Un Chien Andalou. There’s just something about eyeball piercing that’s horrifying on a gut level.

Totally absent from this list (probably for good reason) is a movie that absolutely scared the crap out of me when I was a kid…Superman III. Yes, Superman III, the one that featured Richard Pryor and Robert Vaughn, and was more comedy-laden than any of the other Christopher Reeve Superman movies (well, except for Superman IV, but that was unintentional). Superman III is a very silly movie, but at the end, there’s a scene where Vera Webster (played by Annie Ross) is absorbed by the giant evil supercomputer and turned into a robot. Looking back on it, it’s not a very scary, or graphic scene…but for some reason as a kid this horrified me. Even as an adult, that residual fear stays with me as I watch the movie. When the scene finally arrives, it’s not scary in the slightest. But the childhood memory of that fear has its own affect.

I’m sure everyone has one or two movies like this. I know there are people who found E.T. to be scary as all hell when they were younger, and I’m sure there are people who haven’t gotten over the trauma of seeing Optimus Prime get gunned down in Transformers: The Movie.

I’m probably going to watch a movie this evening, and I haven’t decided if I’m going to watch a traditionally scary movie or Superman III. In the end, which is scarier? A movie I know was made to scare me, or a film that unintentionally permeated my childhood nightmares?

Today’s word of the day on Yahoo:

Plastic

DEFINITION: able to be molded, altered or bent

  EXAMPLE: The new material was very plastic and could be formed into products of vastly different shape.

SYNONYMS: adaptable, ductile, malleable, pliant

Just in time for Halloween, there’s a great interview with Stephen Bissette up at Comic Book Resources. Although he sadly retired from comics back in ‘99, Bissette is really a master of horror comics, and his greatest contribution (yes, I’m putting this above his work on Swamp Thing) was the brilliant anthology Taboo.

Taboo was pure magic. It was horror comics done right. Yes, there were some purely E.C. influenced stories in there, but it also managed to produce stories of true horror, something I haven’t seen in comics since. Take a look at the Taboo Legacy page on Comicon.com to see what a profound effect this had on the comics industry. From Hell, Black Hole, Through the Habitrails, Lost Girls, Joyride…all of these major graphic novels got their start in Taboo, and that page only scratches the surface of the anthology’s contents.

Bissette says in that interview that he lost a fortune running Taboo, which is a real shame, much like the fall of Tundra was a terrible blow for the industry (however poorly and irresponsibly run Tundra was, you can’t deny that some of the best books of the last few decades came out of there). Also a shame are the stories that never got off the ground. I still have my pre-order bonus mini-book of Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli’s Sweeney Todd, and between that and the first (and only) installment that ran in the last issue of the magazine you could see something great starting.

It took me years to track down every issue of Taboo. There are eight in total (seven issues plus one “especial”) and they’re all gems of horror goodness. Steve Bissette still sells most of them through his website, if you’re looking to pick some up, but be warned, they’re quite pricey.

Recently, DC Comics announced Toe Tags, an upcoming horror anthology that will list George Romero as one of its first contributors. It sounds like they’re on the right track with this one, but it won’t have the size, ambition, quality or sheer style that Taboo did in its day. Much like Raw set the bar for the alternative comics anthology, Taboo set such a high standard that we may never see its like again.

I’ve been sifting through hundreds of resumes for the last couple of days here at the day job, so I figured I might as well share another bit of resume wisdom (here’s my first post on the subject, if you missed it).

This one’s pretty straightforward: putting your photo on your resume really isn’t going to score any points. At best it’s going to elicit giggles from random people in the office. I know you think you’re really sexy, and that’s going to help, but I’m afraid that’s just not going to work with me. For one thing, I’m male, and for another, I’m married. So there.

And of course, if you’re a Java developer, you really should know better. I mean, have you ever seen what Java developers look like? It’s quite scary.

If you really have your heart set on including a photo, for god’s sake please have the courtesy to pick a decent one! As a general rule, the photo on your driver’s license or passport really shouldn’t be pasted on your resume.

From the AP:

“Bush Blames Terrorists for Iraq Attacks”

And you can bet it’s true, too. Nothing gets past that president of ours.

Last night as I was on my way home, I stepped off the subway, walked out of the station and was waiting to cross the street when someone ran up to me and asked me the following question:

“Did you write a book?”

“Not that I know of,” I replied.

“Oh,” he said, noticeably disappointed, “you look like someone on the cover of a book.”

And with that, he walked off.

Clearly he had mistaken my adonis-like physique and long, flowing hair for that of Fabio, the model, “I can’t believe it’s not butter” spokesperson and author. Or that’s what I’m telling myself anyway, because most other authors don’t really have the sort of look anyone would aspire to.

Regardless, that was a nice change of pace from my usual commute, as it seems like more often than not I find myself sitting next to the cast of Get Your War On. Which is entertaining the first couple of times, but after three days in a row you just want to fwap these people into submission.

I happen to like David Cross, and think he’s a very funny guy, but this satirical article in Wired is totally unfunny. Whether he’s making lame jokes about games like “Ann Coulter Stop the Presses 2004″ or “Extreme Special Olympics” (*groan*), the article falls flat on nearly every gag. You can find a better article in any random issue of The Onion (like…this one, for example).

Despite my original hesitation to do so, I upgraded my desktop machines at both home and work (Dual 1.25GHz G4 at home, iMac LCD 15″ at work) and my iBook to Panther over the weekend. So far I like it, although I haven’t been blown away. The best thing I’ve noticed so far is just how easy it was to upgrade. I did the “archive and install” method, which worked perfectly. It was a much smoother transition than Jaguar, which had all kinds of residual glitches.

As far as the new features go, they’re a mixed bag of nice and ho-hum additions. Exposé is great, although I keep forgetting to use it (I’ve even got a mouse button bound to it, and I still forget). The new command + tab method for switching programs I like, except for the fact that it follows your mouse position, and I keep hitting command + tab when my mouse is in the exact center of the screen, causing me to switch to the wrong program by accident.

My favorite new feature is the overhauled Finder. I still use the wonderful Default Folder X for handy keyboard navigation (and all those other features) but for most situations, the new Finder and open/save menus are a huge improvement. Fast User Switching is cool, although that’s only necessary on my iBook, which Heather and I share (and since that doesn’t have a particularly strong video card, it doesn’t show the nifty cube when switching).

Safari 1.1 is an improvement, but not in the way that would benefit me the most. Unfortunately, just like I observed back in August, it still takes an eternity to load pages from IGN. I figured out that this is because of some weird JavaScript thing, and so when I’m compiling my nightly LNC posts for Shacknews I just disable JavaScript…but it’s a pain. And here at work, on my much slower iMac, IGN pages can take an unacceptable several minutes to load if I’m not careful. Still, there’s been a slight speed bump, and Safari is my default browser across the board again, so it’s a step in the right direction.

There are of course lots of other new features in Panther, but they aren’t too important to me. I’m glad I upgraded, since moving forward all OS X software is going to require it, but I’m not nearly as enthusiastic as some have been.

I’m not going to claim any higher power at work here…but it’s tough to deny that there’s something awfully strange about the fact that Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in Mel Gibson’s upcoming controversial film The Passion was struck by lightning during filming. And the assistant director was struck as well. Twice.