slightly lower prices and artificial scarcity used to exploit a population, which is facing social pressure to consume beyond their means, in an effort to prop up a dying economy.

A couple links from drudge…

Wal-Mart worker dies in Black Friday Stampede

Four others hospitalized, including a pregnant woman

Some of you may know of another band I recently helped start. Well, we’re the Theatre Zombies and we recently made some crude recordings. Feel free to listen to them on our MySpace and add us as a friend.

We’re very heavily influenced by the Misfits; most of our songs will be about various horror movies…and possibly about getting diarrhea from Taco Bell and other establishments.

Speaking about explosive diarrhea, fellow Ninecent blogger Khalid plays guitar in the band. I’m on drums, and my friends Mike & Rob do bass and vocals, respectively.

Rob has written most of our songs so far, with Khalid and Mike coming up with some stuff as well. We also cover a couple Misfit and Ramones songs. I think we’ll have to learn Pet Sematary at some point.

Feel free to give us a listen, and post any comments or questions you may have.

From National Geographic News:

A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible’s camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—”elbowed” Magnapinna squid…

Video of it can be found at the original article.

More pictures here.

Also, more pictures below:

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In a shocking move on Tuesday, Digg.com announced that ‘Top 10′ stories will no longer be allowed in the Digg news feed.  In fact, all list stories, such as those beginning with ‘Top 5′ or ‘The 26 Most…’ are included in the ban.

“This is total madness.” commented one Digg reader.  “Where will I go for top ten lists?  How else will I find the top ten celebrities who play World of Warcrack [sic] or the 10 Cars That Damaged GM’s Reputation?”

The move was announced on Tuesday amidst concern that Digg was taking on too many top ten lists, potentially causing a “top ten list bubble.”  A senior research analyst on social bookmarking says that too many top ten lists can dilute the top ten list pool, creating top 10 lists of other top 10 lists, and so on.  “This leads to an alarming systemic risk.  Digg has to tread carefully until the top ten list bubble can correct itself.”  ‘Top 10 lists’ account for almost 99.999999% of the Digg home page.

One blogger who had just finished writing a post called “The Top 10 Reasons Ron Paul is more messiah than Barack Obama” was outraged.  “I rely on digg for a lot of my traffic.  This is really going to drop my hit count.”  The same blogger had to upgrade his server last month after the flood of traffic from digg to his epic: The 26 Best Lists of the Top Five All Time Best David Letterman Top 10 Lists.

Digg officials couldn’t be reached for further comments.

No, not that game, but a different game. A game that has no point but to frustrate you and make you wish the person who created it suddenly imploded (a pretty embarrassing way to go, but deservedly so). You can check out what game I’m talking about here. Thanks to my colleague and fellow ninecents blogger, Mike, I can now attribute moments of sudden unhappiness and fits of rage to his recent discovery of this so-called game which has no purpose but to bring anguish and mental suffering to one’s life. Well, as a result of all the misery I have suffered in the 2 weeks I have known about this game (most of it because of Mike merely mentioning that he lost), I have decided to come up with a new game. Being the extremely competitive person that I am, this new version of the game will inspire future confidence and satisfaction to all those that play it. I call it:

The Awesomely Awesome Game

Rules:
1. Whenever someone says they’ve lost the game, say, “You bastard!” and either kick them in their genitals or elbow them in the breast, man or woman, respectively.
2. Point in the general direction of the person you disabled and snicker wildly.
3. After a couple of seconds of snickering, apply the palms of your hands to your own belly and laugh heartily.
4. Proudly exclaim, “Crap! I just won the game!”
5 (contingent option). While the person you maimed is still disabled, repeat step one depending on how badly they aggravated you by trying to bring you down with them.

I started playing this version of the game today, and it has almost immediately brought me great success and mental happiness.

Follow my instructions and soon you too will be proudly saying, “Crap, I just won the game!”

The GC5 were a punk band from Ohio. The first time I saw these guys, they played a show at UConn. It was at the African Students Association (ASA) club, located in the bottom floor of the old student union. Remember Papa John’s and those crappy burgers from Jonathan’s?

No? Damn, I’m old.

Anyways, it was a really good show even though there was probably 15 people there, including the other bands. They were touring with the Hudson Falcons at the time, promoting their new split, “67,104 Miles Later”. I think at some point during the show a bunch of really old people (around their early 50’s) were doing some kind of a jitterbug during various sets. At that point, it sealed the fact that this was the best show I’ve ever seen.

Through the magic of teh intarwebs, I later stumbled upon the GC5’s album, “Never Bet the Devil Your Head“, which is one of my all-time favorite albums. It’s one of those rare albums you can have playing in the background for a long time and never get sick of it.

Unfortunately, the band broke up around 2003. Various members went on to pursue other bands such as The Magpies and Doug McKean & the Stuntmen. Although their official website no longer exists, they still update their MySpace page from time to time. Be sure to yell at them to play another reunion show.

Here’s their last.fm page if you wanna take a peek at some of their other songs. Otherwise, here are some videos:

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The press, mainly MSNBC in this video, are going haywire about Sarah Palin’s apparent lack of compassion for turkeys that are butchered for Thanksgiving dinner.  Sure, its not the prettiest thing in the world, but people seriously need to grow up.  Reality check: you have to kill if you want to eat.

I’m going to assume most of these people in the press are not vegetarians, but if the idea of a turkey being slaughtered makes them squeamish, maybe they should reconsider their Thanksgiving feasts.  It is cognitively satisfying to go about your life not knowing what a turkey butchering looks like.  But life is as morbid as death.  We are lucky to live in a time when we can comfortably go about our lives and rarely experience the putrescence that underlies them.  Imagine our ancestors if they were such sissies!  We wouldn’t be here today.

Take this as an opportunity to appreciate that, thanks to the division of labor, you don’t have to experience animal butchering before your every meal.  Shielded as you are from the unpleasantness, it is your moral duty to occasionally remember what your food is before you decide to eat it.  If you are truly uncomfortable with animal slaughter, then don’t eat animals.  But remember: you have the nutrition of animals to thank for the leisure to make such a decision today.

When they drop headlines like “GOV. SARAH PALIN KEEPS TALKING WHILE TURKEYS GET SLAUGHTERED BEHIND HER” and “GOV. PALIN APPARENTLY OBLIVIOUS TO TURKEY CARNAGE,” what do they expect her to do?  Maybe one day the press will catch Joe Biden gnawing on the flesh of a poor innocent cow with blood on his lips, looking content, as if he was actually enjoying it.  Ugh, the horror!  Maybe they’ll really pound him for it.  Yeah, I doubt it.

Thanks to a note posted on Facebook, of all places, I was able to grab this link out of mid-web and post it on our beloved site here at ninecents.net… suddenly I want some McDonald’s, a Coke and a cigarette. Not much to say here, just read the article.

Notes:

1. Of course, of all places, I find an article on a potentially devastating and evil substance called “Dark Matter” on Facebook.
2. I’ll bet (not a contract) that the “Dark Matter” they found is nothing more than polar bear droppings (more commonly known as poop). In other words, this “Astrophysical” object could really just be an “Astrophecal” object.
3. Dark Matter and Dark Energy make up 95% of the nerd population in the known universe.
4. Dark Matters will be premiering on NBC this fall, featuring Steve Quarkle as the Winslow family’s nosey and obnoxious next door dark particle, played by Keanu Reeves. “Whoaaa… Did I do that?”

Hat Tip to www.blog.wired.com and the guy on facebook who posted the note.