I type this with gleeful fingers because we got it on lockdown. Actually, it was on lockdown a few weeks ago but now it’s official. I drool over the Festival Kinetik each year and itch to get tickets. I normally just sigh and click away but Luis so kindly told me that we are going for Phase II of the fest. Festival Kinetik is Montreal’s Electro-Industrial-Noize Festival and there really isn’t much going on these coasts especially since I’m pretty sure the one held in Rhode Island is now defunct. Correct me if I’m wrong. This is as close to Wave Gotic-Treffen as North America will get. This four day festival usually takes place the weekend after my birthday, May 14th – 17th (four day fest if you can’t count). I’d love to go for all four but I guess I can get away with just one Phase for now even though I’d really really love to see Icon of Coil since I haven’t yet. Still, I think Luis and I will be catching the most crucial (for us) part of the fest. The following is a line up of the fest and if you’re interested, visit the official site for more info.

Phase 1:  Soiree/EBM/Industrial/Noise

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Professor Malcolm Coulthard:

Text messaging is in some ways like English was in Shakespearian times.  People have much more freedom to make up their own spelling rules.  And so its possible to distinguish people often fairly successfully.

That is from a lecture about forensic linguistics, which is used to determine for example whether a suicide note is genuine, or a text message sent from a missing person’s phone.

Forensic linguists have to pay special attention to the patterns in an individual’s language choices, but we intuitively pick up those subtleties about our friends or family.  I can usually tell easily whether an IM from a friend’s screenname is an impostor on the other end.

Are you serious?

(Click for larger)

I guess he likes chicken because it’s delicious.

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GET IT NOW!

I enjoyed these photo-sets showing all the things that happen in a hotel room.  The first set I think was inspired by the second.  The punk rockin party in #9 is great, and the expression on the guy’s face in #3 is priceless.  Some of them are a little NSFW.

Today’s blogisode is about neologisms, up and coming words that are forcing their way into the English language whether you like it or not.  Forbes magazine has a whole special multimedia section dedicated to neologisms and its interesting throughout.  Here are my favorites:

Gamer Speak For Newbs

The Word’s Tale

Nano-celebu-geddon!

I love the suffix -gate, which comes from Watergate, now liberally tacked on to anything even remotely scandalous.  Even the Chinese are using it.

The meaning of old words change too.  I found this episode of the Word Nerds podcast interesting.  They talk about how facebook and social networking have turned the word “friend” into a verb, and euphemized the word “stalk.”  I recently told my co-blogger Su that I hadn’t stalked her on last.fm lately, which is really not as bad as traditional stalking.

The following areas in Connecticut have a minor contaminated water alert:

Windsor, Hartford, West Hartford, and parts of East Granby and Windsor Locks.

Trace amounts of microscopic organisms have been picked up in the water supply in the above areas; they are being warned to boil their water at least a minute before using it.

The organisms pose no health threat, but this is being taken as a precaution for the possibility of other contaminants.

Original reports also included East Hartford, Glastonbury, Portland and South Windsor; but they have been removed from the alert. However, residents are being advised to wash produce with boiled water as another precaution. Here’s a nifty map for reference (from wfsb.com):

Check out this article for more info.

According to an article released today,  students who chewed gum during tests performed better. That’s right, all those years you were told not to chew gum in class may have had a slight to large effect on your GPA (That’s “Grade Point Average” for those of you who somehow don’t know). So spread the word and tell your teachers that they’re douches (please don’t  use the word douche if you plan on speaking to a teacher) for making your life, breath, and grade point average either miserable or sub-you during the pinnacle of youth, where a major part of your mental capacity is used to collaborate a future prediction of yourself. If not, and you’re reading this, then you’re probably in a situation where you can appreciate something like this anyway (unless you have a gun pointed at your head by a guy eager to learn the effects of gum chewing). So I say to you unleashing some ambiguous philosophy in the midst: Progress is hard and ever-favoring humanity. ”Humans”, IMO, are an endangered species. We’re just as casually dispensible as our neighboring species, if not more (nuclear weapons). It is our time to fight for our rights. If we don’t, it will set poor examples for generations ahead creating other poor school policies and policies in general. However, if we try and somehow fail, well, I’ll be getting coffee. For those of you who can’t read: your breath probably smells like goat cheese and I advise you to chew some gum.

Can I get a hell yeah?

http://geocities.yahoo.com/

It’s my sad duty to announce the death of GeoCities, Yahoo’s free web-hosting service and outlet for obsessed fanboys of every stripe. Let’s not dwell on all the lost X-Files episode summaries, garage band sites, and Magic The Gathering strategy guides. Remember the good times; the animated gifs, warez links, and guestbook spam wars.

 have read this poast