Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, part 4

For Part 3 of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.

Last night, I was the only person in the high-limit slots section of the casino resort I'm staying at. I overheard a pair of employees talking quietly at the far entrance to the high-limit area.

"Is that kid supposed to be in here?"
"I dunno, but he just put a shitload of money into that machine."


For the first time in my life, I'm part of the target demographic, the one that gets all the privileges. This is the complete opposite of college admissions, where I am in what's probably the most fucked-over demographic. It's about time us paintbrush-heads got some love.

Big casinos love young Asian males. Said demographic is usually associated with large disposable income, an addiction to gambling, and a willingness to make all sorts of stupid bets.

I started play at the resort on Sunday night. By last night, I had already qualified for the top tier(out of 4) of their Player's Club. This led to the following conversation:

Kyle: You qualify for airport limo service. You should get that next time.
Me: But seeing how I'd have to rent a car anyways, it means I'd have to go right back.
Kyle: Oh. Well, you should do it anyways.
Me: Hmmm. I'd have to dress for the part.

At this point, Kyle reacts along the lines of "Why the fuck would you want to be dressy, etc."

Me: No, no, you don't understand. It means I have to wear the rattiest clothes I have.
Kyle: *LOL*
Me: Dude, it's me we're talking about here. Wtf were you thinking?

For Part 5 of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.

Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, part 3.

For Part Deux of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.

The surreality continues. A few days ago, I drove south to Tahoe by way of Carson City. On the way, I passed a strip mall with the following signs in sequential order: "GUNS", "SLOTS", and "BUNNIES". Across the street was a liquor store and a "Payday Cash Advance" store. A few blocks down is a restaurant which serves a peanut-butter topped cheeseburger. I remain convinced that someone needs to stage an intervention for the entire state.

Later that evening, I was sitting in a hotel room with Kyle. Kyle had turned on the air conditioner, but it was making an annoying rattling noise because of a loose panel. Kyle goes "Hey, give me something heavy to put on the panel." In response, I toss him the inch-thick roll of C-bills that I had left the casino with.

Yeah. Before we used the Gideon bible instead(about the only use I've found for those things), we were using $11,500 to quiet a noisy AC unit.

Did you know that casinos will cash paychecks? In fact, they advertise this as being community-friendly. Yup, welcome to Reno, The Biggest Shitty Little City in the World.

For Part 4 of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.

Hurra Torpedo rokks my nano thinking world

http://www.hurratorpedo.org/
Hurra Torpedo is the world's leading kitchen appliance rock group. Since 1993 they have played for full houses all over their native Norway with their eclectic mixture of cover tunes and original material. Now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, their heartbreaking version of Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart is known all over the world .

We've All Got Cellphones, C'mon Let's Get Real

Saw Weird Al Yankovic over the weekend and although I'm just a semi-casual fan of his, I was blown away. Very very good show. A music and comedy multimedia extravaganza. Fo shizzle. The guy must've changed costumes at least a dozen times.

The title of this post is a song he co wrote with Michael Stipe of REM.
Here are the lyrics:

We all have cell phones.
So, c'mon, Let's get real.

Boycotting the news media and sponsors for appalling behavior

Please check out this News Boycott blog which is lambasting the news media organizations for repeatedly airing the Virginia Tech mass murderer's photos and videos. It has a petition to sign asking NBC news to stop it and apologize for their reckless behavior.

Being the cashier would've been cool.

Take a look at this commercial. Takeru Kobayashi, the world's #1 ranked competitive eater, buys a drink at a convenience store. Also buying a drink is Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas, the world's #3.

Hilarity ensues.

Odilon Redon

Symbolist painter Odilon Redon

This charcoal is Guardian Spirit of the Waters (1878) and can be found at the The Art Institute of Chicago

A first for 'Jeopardy!': What is a three-way tie for first place?

Let's disregard the fact that three way ties HAVE happened before on Jeopardy! (Think, everybody bets the farm and misses FJ, and they all go home losers.) This was simply the first three way tie of winners.



This quote caught my eye:
AP article

The show contacted a mathematician who calculated the odds of such a three-way tie happening - one in 25 million.

Hmmmm. I wonder how he came up with those odds? A frequentist maximum likelihood approach would go something like this: Observed ties for first place / Total Number of Episodes.
1 / 4000 or so? The ML odds would then be 1 in 4000.

1 in 25 million ? Then (1-1/25000000)^4000 gives 99.98% chance it won't happen after 4000 independent trials.

Jeopardy is clearly non-random and the people aren't dice thrown in the air. Ties happen a lot and it's definitely not a 1 in 25 million chance.

We could devise models of average contestant behavior, look at frequency of two way ties, etc. but that would be way beyond the scope of this blog post.

Innovative Juggler, Greg Kennedy

This guy, Greg Kennedy, is an IJ, innovative juggler:


Juggling without gravity - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

Blog roundup March 12th 2007, Chimps, Megamachines, Art, Hats, and Drafts

Some random blogs I've been perusing:
The Dark Lodger opines about the Senegalese Chimp Emerging Market for High Tech Industry

Seve Jobs of Apple has announced the new 40gb istick to be released to the chimp market next week. Not be outdone in the news, MicroSoft has released a statement that win-stick 2.0 has a security update and all older win-sticks versions must be rebooted prior to "power jabbing." Wii has also announced a verson of the wireless wii-stick. The barkless version is still in beta testing due to unintentional release.

Notes From the Megamachine has been resurrected at Wordpress (formerly at Blogger) Will the technate be constructed in the 07? Tune in to find out!

The Confidence Artist weighs in with his 65 artist field

. No Michelangelo? For shame!
Be sure to check out his STOOPID HAT ROUNDUP. YEAH, BABY! Micky Free is not a girl, aight?!

And last, but not adsensely least:
reports on the NFL combine and NFL draft

Rokk on have a great Ides of March!

Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, part 2.

For Part 1 of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, go here.

Nevada can be an interesting place for the naive. When Kyle's parents visited, they drove around and did the touristy things. Upon passing a sign for the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, Kyle's mom exclaimed "Oh, how cute! They raise bunnies!"

"Uhhh, no mom. That's a brothel."

I would like to note that we did not visit any brothels, so the peanut gallery can STFU now.

On Thursday, Kyle and I went in to Reno to run some errands. We ended up being comped the buffet at the Peppermill, which is the gayest casino(and by extension the gayest building interior) I've ever seen. You're greeted by purple and rainbow carpets once you get into the parking lot lobby. Further in, there's neon purple and rainbow everywhere. It's a better epilepsy inducer than Pokemon ever was.

The buffet itself was interesting mostly for its variety- sections for carveries, salads, Mexican, Asian, and dessert. The prime rib was nothing to write home about(why do people insist on cooking prime rib to medium well? Blasphemy.), and the salads were okay, but the thing that blew my mind was the wonton soup. The wontons themselves weren't bad- actual pork, green onion, etc. However, the soup was otherwise identical to the chicken noodle soup over in the next tureen, sans noodles.

The dessert section was interesting in that a lot of desserts _looked_ good but really weren't. The only thing that was actually good were the visually unimpressive chocolate chip cookies. I got this little circular cheesecake thing which tasted pretty bad. So I told Kyle that hey, maybe I could make it look like I ate more of it by breaking it up into pieces. This did not have the intended effect, as the cheesecake somehow expanded in volume when I left a wreckage of cheesecake smear all over my plates. Oh well.

Unfortunately, it is still pretty cold(comparatively) around here. Otherwise, Kyle and I would go golfing. This has the potential to be a real disaster, as neither of us have ever golfed before. I've hit some balls and been to a driving range, but Kyle hasn't even swung a club before. The plan was to go see if we can get maybe 6 holes in within the time it usually takes people to get 18. And not to flip the golf cart.

For Part 3 of Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, click here.