Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 10:31:57 -0400
Subject: [ark] Re: ice cream flavors...

In alt.religion.kibology, kibo@world.std.com wrote:

David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote:
>  James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote:
>  >  You just reminded me that I need to fix the program I wrote that
>  >  sucks down a specified number of the most recent images posted
>  >  to any LiveJournal site (they publish an XML listing of all
>  >  recent changes, but they change the format of the data or the
>  >  names of the URLs every few months.)  There, I just went and fixed
>  >  it.  Now my "SEE WHAT PERCENTAGE OF LIVEJOURNAL USERS ARE EMO KIDS"
>  >  button works again.  I just ran it and it found a bunch of people
>  >  w ho look dopey and also a great photo of a replica '60s Batmobile
>  >  after a major car accident and I hope Robin was killed again.
>  
>  Anyone can write the webpage that just displays the last 40 pictures.

Well, duh.  All's you gotta do is parse this:
http://www.livejournal.com/stats/latest-img.bml

>  Kibo _analyzes_ them, and mocks them at the same time!

Okay, here's the most recent 40.  Let's see if we can find any
self-portraits of emo/goth kids who don't have someone else to
hold the camera for them, and can't set the camera down because
they don't know how to work the ten-second timer.  This may
not be the best time of year to do it, what with school being
out, but let's try for hair-over-the-eye self-portraits.
But we'll probably at least find some terrible webcomics,
exuberant drawings of furries with black rectangles where it
counts, and pictures of garage bands with insane Russian captions
burned into them.

THE 40 NEWEST LIVEJOURNAL IMAGES BEGIN NOW!

 1.  broken image (PNG file saved without the proper filename extension --
     and it turns out to be -- DING DING DING!  Emo boy with hair over
     his eyes and red slashes through the picture!)

 2.  broken image (someone attempted to do <IMG SRC="something.html">
     to link to a news article)

 3.  old, faded photo of topless women playing rock'n'roll while
     wearing Lucille Ball's eye makeup and giant Dynel wigs

 4.  picture of a phoenix captioned "aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
     YOU GUYS PISSED ME OFF SO MUCH I HAD TO ARISE FROM THE FLAMES
     TO BLOG ABOUT IT" in Adobe Minion

 5.  A weepy greeting-card-type image made from photos of
     Harry Potter and some gal, captioned "Lost Without You"

 6.  small, blurry, washed-out, grainy frame-grab from some anime show
     that was converted to a GIF too many times, leaving the image
     only barely visible

 7.  403 Forbidden!

 8.  the word "You", which is the marker indicating someone's
     position on one of those OH-SO-IMPORTANT "what political
     leanings do you have?" tests that people feel they need
     to post their results to

 9.  misaligned composite of two photos of a gloomy, blurry laundry room

10.  The standard little "userinfo.gif" icon that's used 390 times 
     per LiveJournal page -- for some reason these sometimes show
     up on the list of new pictures.

11.  DING DING DING!  Gal's self-portrait, out of focus,
     multicolored hair, and way too proud of the fact that
     she's wearing makeup

12.  hot air balloon either inflating or deflating, unless it's
     meant to be that shape

13.  guy sticking his tongue out in a photo that will render him
     permanently outside the dating pool.  Bonus points:  Around his
     neck, he's got a dangly little inverted cross.

14.  automatically-generated collage of random words in different
     fonts, with a big gray "SAMPLE" across the front of it because
     you haven't yet paid for your own copy of this awesome
     automatically-generated rectangle of garbage

15.  Typically poorly-doodles webcomic with stick figure explaining
     (in crooked lettering) that people with their own Wikipedia entries
     have bad bathroom hygiene

16.  screendump from someone's MMORPG session ("Succubus readies
     Blade: Ku.")

17.  Timothy Leary's creepiest smile ever

18.  dolphins

19.  a really bad drawing of a strawberry, or possibly an octopus
     having sex with a bicycle seat covered in staples

20.  DING DING DING!  Self-portrait of someone's eye, all blurry
     and with a datestamp burned into the corner in red fake LED digits

21.  a tarot card, whoop-de-freakin'-doo

22.  two little princesses

23.  an even worse-than-average webcomic, involving two talking stick
     figures, and one of the words of dialogue was crossed out then written
     again because they figured out how to spell it halfway through
     writing it (in other words, there's no "G" in "BACKPACK")

24.  poster:  "FOR EVERY ANIMAL YOU DON'T EAT, I'M GOING TO EAT THREE"
     in Arial Bold (with straight single quotes for apostrophes)

25.  poster for the movie "X-Men III"

26.  very white men holding golf clubs in front of the world's
     whitest building

27.  hipsters smoking while looking at a cool trompe l'oeil ceiling
     designed to look like you're looking at a funeral from below

28.  "COME CHECK US OUT IF YOU'RE A BISEXUAL FEMALE" in some
     cheapo comic-book-style font

29.  a banner made from a publicity photo for the movie "The Lost Boys"
     about teenage vampires, and I don't even have to click on it
     to know that there's going to be icky slash-fic past it

30.  antique photo of an old-timey guy in an ill-fitting derby
     holding some sort of weird little mutant asymmetrical guitar
     (technically known as a "harp mandolin", an ancestor of
     Spock's wacky Vulcan lyre)

31.  small photo of a drag queen

32.  very nice black and white photo of a monument to something, somewhere

33.  old black and white photo of a guy in a trenchcoat walking
     away from the camera

34.  Woman smiling uncomfortably as somebody photographs her crow's feet

35.  "   welcome to
            the
       Bicycle museuM
             of
          AmericA     " in Goudy Oldstyle

36.  Blank diploma YOU can buy!

37.  DING DING DING!  Woman's self-portrait with hair over one eye
     and camera held above one temple.  Bonus points:  She included
     her boyfriend in the background.

38.  someone's birthday party

39.  guy driving a racecar, or possibly sitting in it, because
     still photos of racecars always look like they're holding still

40.  "Penny Arcade" webcomic strip, and not one of their best ones,
     but still a million times better than 99.99% of other webcomics

But wait!  These things flood in so fast that while you were
reading this word --> nougat <-- 40 new images arrived!  The newest 40:

 1.  very disturbing drawing of a baby getting a banana jammed
     through his forehead.  Well-executed and also a cry for help.

 2.  invisible image

 3.  "Help Veronica Mars Get a Full 3rd Season" banner (Arial Bold)

 4.  banner for "brisbane's finest gig guide" in some font that
     apparently doesn't have capitals


 5.  Photo captioned "I'm usually a music elitist... But I LOVE
     Teddy Geiger... [...] I really think we could be friends,
     just based on the things I've read about him..." in Arial Bold

 6.  scary old guy shaking his fists while hugging a flag

 7.  someone attempting to hold up a two-page sign saying "THE FIRST
     DAY OF THE REST OF OUR LIVES" in crazy-person lettering, with
     their hand almost completely obscuring one of the nouns

 8.  two women, I dunno, "You must be logged in to view this
     protected entry."  Ha ha, images from protected entries show up
     on the list of recent images so we can see them and not quite
     no what they are.  I think they might be lesbians.

 9.  glass-bead necklace wrapped around chopsticks

10.  blurry extreme close-up of a dashboard thermometer saying "104 F"

11.  a tote bag

12.  full-resolution photo of cars driving on a road

13.  hairy dog

14.  drawing of four people who do not appear to have their joints
     in the same places as humans, captioned "Brothers doesn't have
     to mean blood." in Times New Roman, and one of the four is
     wearing a shirt that says "Say NO TO Pants" in mixed-case,
     and also, he looks a lot like me.

15.  picture of an anime chick covering the area from her chin to
     where her cleavage would be if she weren't just a cartoon

16.  it's very tiny, but I can tell that Guy With Glasses is even
     happier than Guy Without Glasses!  And I think they're in a band!
     They'd pretty much have to be!

17.  painting of a psychedelic spiral

18.  two kids from the "Narnia" movie, or something, I dunno,
     I didn't see it.

19.  screendump from someone's MMORPG session

20.  arrow pointing to Fairbanks, Alaska

21.  photo of a trash can with a "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner in it,
     made more poignant by the 45-degree slant to the camera.
     Poor Batman!

22.  random street scene

23.  family reunion on the veranda

24.  a banner reminding us that actor Jon Heder isn't really dead

25.  drawing of a goth girl executed entirely in curlicues

26.  photo of a painting of a smiling family and their pumpkins

27.  Web comic with cut-and-pasted digital stick figures speaking
     in the Verdana font while pooping

28.  that photo we're all sick of of the jet allegedly breaking
     the sound barrier

29.  nice ink drawing with bilingual English/Russian caption:
     "KILL DEBIL:  HARRY POTTER-4 BY TARANTINO"

30.  broken image (from "http://70.84.102.91/x/blogquiz.net-blog/3")

31.  a starburst

32.  thumbnail of some collage of "Star Wars" characters with fireworks
     coming out of their heads.  To see what it was I read that journal
     entry.  The highlights:  "What is going on with LJ?  [...]
     I actually watched TV last night!"

33.  a wacky cartoon about the life of a "bacterium", which is
     actually drawn as an amoeba.  Bonus points:  Mixing black
     and blue ballpoint in the same panel.

34.  "My braces will distract you from noticing that my two eyes
     are different sizes!  I'm going to grow up to be Paloma Picasso!"
     Bonus points:  "Invader Zim" t-shirt.

35.  pet rat

36.  blurry picture of somebody's foot as they climb through a window

37.  a hilarious joke screendump of what happens when you type
     "telnet Mordor"!  Except without the "hilarious" part.

38.  Iraqi corpse.  Some sort of copyright notice burned into the
     picture, and it's unreadable, but I can tell it's Copperplate Gothic.

39.  people at a beach being blasted by the unbearable lightness
     of overexposure coupled with the fact that their skin appears
     to be boiling away because it was saved as a JPEG with
     well above the maximum allowable level of lossy compression

40.  WOW I ASSEMBLED A WHOLE JIGSAW PUZZLE SO I PHOTOGRAPHED IT!
     LOOK, I KNOW HOW TO DO JIGSAW PUZZLES!  THEM'S THE BRAINIEST
     PUZZLES SINCE THAT ONES WITH THE DOTS WHAT HAD NUMBERS!
     Also, the puzzle's a drawing of anime characters.

Okay, I did eighty.  Do I need to do 20 more to make it an even hundred,
or have you had enough LiveJournal in your lives for one day?

                                        -- K.

                                           LiveJournal makes a.r.k
                                           look like a pathetic e/n
                                           festival of -- wait, I
                                           got that backwards.
                                           We're on the good one, right?

                                           I think the fact that a.r.k
                                           doesn't support pictures is
                                           what keeps out the riffraff.
                                           That, and the fact that only
                                           the cool people have avatars,
                                           and mine's in extra bold.