Ultimate Machine Combat is all about cars and mayhem.

Ultimate Machine Combat is the new show from the creators of TLC's >> Junkyard Wars and Channel 4's >> Scrapheap Challenge. It will test machines and drivers to the limits of their tolerances and beyond.

That's where you come in. We are looking for the 30 most brilliant teams from around the world to engage in Ultimate Machine Combat. The format is simple and like all good games, the rules are too. Each week, three teams enter the arena but only one team lives to fight another day.

Each team we choose will get 30 days and a pot of money to build the ultimate fighting vehicle. You will build it in your own backyard and then we will transport it to our secret arena where it will fight to survive the rigours of Ultimate Machine Combat.

We will be giving you enough money to build a no-frills vehicle, but if you want to spend more, we won't try and stop you. You may even enlist extra help with the engineering, although only three of you will travel to the competition. […]

Well, here were are again. You have no idea who I am, don't you?

Not only am I capable of helping you, but I've done so twice already.

I can meet all your requirements except one -- the one where you retain your memories of everything's that happened to you up until now. Normally, it would be possible for you to remember the present (and all events leading up to it) when you go back into the past, but you kept insisting that you also want your aging to be reversed. I can only do that by reverting you to your past state, which means that events leading up to what you call "the present" wouldn't have happened. Which means you'd have nothing to remember. See the problem? […]

From: TimeTravel@dns-host.com
To: <saint@ultranet.com>
Subject: Time Travelers PLEASE HELP!! ..
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 01:42:33
If you are a time traveler or alien disguised as human and or have the technology to travel physically through time I need your help!

My life has been severely tampered with and cursed!! I have suffered tremendously and am now dying!

I need to be able to:

Travel back in time.

Rewind my life including my age back to 4.

Be able to remember what I know now so that I can prevent my life from being tampered with again after I go back.

I am in very great danger and need this immediately!

I am aware that there are many types of time travel, and that humans do not do well through certain types.

I need as close to temporal reversion as possible, as safely as possible. To be able to rewind the hands of time in such a way that the universe of now will cease to exist. I know that there are some very powerful people out there with alien or government equipment capable of doing just that.

If you can help me I will pay for your teleport or trip down here, Along with hotel stay, food and all expenses. I will pay top dollar for the equipment. Proof must be provided.

Please be advised that any temporal device that you may employ must account for X, Y, and Z coordinates as well as the temporal location. I have a time machine now, but it has limited abilitys and is useless without a vortex. If you can provide information on how to create vortex generator or where I can get some of the blue glowing moon crystals this would also be helpful.

Also if you are one of the very, very, few beings with the ability to edit the universe PLEASE REPLY!!!

Only if you have this technology and can help me please send me a (SEPARATE) email to:

Robby0809@aol.com

Please do not reply if your an evil alien! Thanks

Every time they ACTIVATED THEIR WONDER TWIN POWERS, you were going to see something stupid. Jayna could turn into any animal she could pronounce, but Zan got screwed. He turned into water or things made out of water. Like a wave or a water raincoat. Most times he just chose "water" and splashed into a purple mess. He did it with confidence, though. Jayna always seemed like she couldn't decide at the last minute. "Shape of a... a... deadly unstoppable... PHALREXIAN.. TRANGLOMITE!" Not Zan. No matter what crappy thing he turned into, he was excited to help out. An ice rollerskate might not stop the villain by itself, but it couldn't hurt. Actually, now that I think back, it usually did. I guess he was trying to make up for his embarrassing power by never doing anything right.

I know you're thinking, "She gets to turn into giant monsters and he turns into a puddle with a face; it's not fair!" Maybe it isn't. But what good is a kangaroo without an ice bowling ball? What good is a purple camel without a water top hat? And how is a seagull supposed to carry the monkey without an ice gondola?

corybantic \kor-ee-BAN-tik or kahr-ee-BAN-tik\ (adjective)
     : like or in the spirit of a Corybant; especially : wild, frenzied

The big name in goddesses in Phrygia (Asia Minor) in the fifth century B.C. was Cybele (also called Cybebe or Agdistis), the "Great Mother of the Gods." According to Oriental and Greco-Roman mythology, she was the mother of it all -- gods, humans, animals, plants, nature itself. The Corybants were Cybele's mythical attendants, and they worshipped her with an unrestrained frenzy of wildly emotional processions, rites, and dances. "Corybantic," the adjective based on the name of Cybele's attendants, can be used to describe anything characterized by a similar unrestrained abandon.

ShaneIvey: OK - moderation is now in place.
ShaneIvey: Sorry to have to do it, but dang, what noise.
ShaneIvey: Here's how we'll do it. Jhonen can talk to everyone. He will answer questions.
ShaneIvey: Send your questions to me via whisper and I'll pass 'em along.
JhnenV: yes, let's try that.
JhnenV: My screen is filthy with whispers.

* * *

ShaneIvey: Q: What were your personal thoughts on the episodes getting pulled after Sept. 11?
JhnenV: I understand the reasoning behind it, but it all got so reactionary.
JhnenV: It is STILL just a cartoon, and they made it seem like we would bring about the collapse of civilization if we aired that ep.
ShaneIvey: Any word on whether the shows that were pulled will go back on the air? Or when?
JhnenV: We've managed to save two of the best, most recently an episode named "the Girl Who Cried Gnome".
JhnenV: They felt it was offensive because it showed rescue workers trying to get a girl's foot out of a gopher hole.
JhnenV: I mean, that's just sad.
ShaneIvey: Q: Will Zim be offered for retail purchase at any point, possibly in a 'director's cut' format?
JhnenV: No plans for a dvd set have been mentioned, but we're all dying for one.
JhnenV: NICK doesn't really do dvd things, unless it's one of their movies.
JhnenV: So, sorry. I'll let you know when we find out.

* * *

ShaneIvey: Q: What type of toys of Invader Zim will there be?
JhnenV: I'd love to see a GIR toy like an AIBO.
JhnenV: except it simulates stupidity instead of intelligence.
JhnenV: It will actually chase children and scream at them.
ShaneIvey: Oooh... I'd pay good money for it this Christmas... Any discussions with Nick about toys actually happening?

* * *

ShaneIvey: Q from Maskedmon: What was with that Mexico place at the end of Walk of Doom?
JhnenV: Um...that's a hard one to answer.
JhnenV: It was a changed ending...
JhnenV: so here goes:
JhnenV: It was a joke about how ZIM KNOWS how to get home now. he's positive he knows the way to home....
JhnenV: but he is SO wrong he ends up in mexico, and there was a sign that read "welcome to Mexico", showing just how wrong ZIM was.
ShaneIvey: Plenty of tacquitos for GIR! Unless Taco Bell made them up.
JhnenV: But The standards people thought it was offensive to Mexicans.
JhnenV: Despite the fact that I'm Mexican and it was MY joke)
ShaneIvey: Seriously? How screwy! Did they say WHAT was supposed to be offensive about that?
JhnenV: So we took the sign out, and made it into just a surreal, horrible ending with disco music.

Wireless Free Mendocino vehemently opposed MCN's plan to offer wireless broadband from the moment it was announced as an item at a school board meeting last spring. A series of public forums were launched, in which technophiles argued in favor of the service, and the anti-wireless folks -- including a woman who appeared at one meeting wearing dark sunglasses and protective headgear to ward off stray signals -- insisted that the plan was dangerous."

[…] I make a list of some of the words laid out on the boards: LEZ, GOBO, VOGIE, TAOS, FOVEAL, GUID, MOKE, JEREED, LEVANTER, ZAYIN, GLAIVES, SHELTIE, DOVENED, CAVIE. They all are alien to me. And as for my beloved Q, I learn that it is a Trojan horse. Sure, it and the Z are the only tiles worth 10 points, but clinging to the Q for too long in hopes of a big score, as I did against Diane, prevents you from drawing letters that offer a fresh chance for a bingo. A lingering Q is like an unwanted houseguest, gnawing on your nerves, consuming your attentions, refusing to take the hint and get lost. I've let the visitor raid the refrigerator, plop his feet on the coffee table, and channel-surf.

Even the least accomplished competitive players memorize all of the acceptable Q words that don't require a U (there are ten, plus their plurals), with QAT the most frequently played. But, novice that I am, I pass up QAT as too skimpy for my precious high-scoring letter, hoping instead that randomly plucking tiles from the bag will lead to the kind of play that would move Diane to whack the clock and announce her score with smug self-satisfaction. QUEERS isn't it. It is worth too few points to have justified inaction for so long. (In competitive Scrabble, each player has twenty-five minutes to complete a game; "go over" on time and you are penalized 10 points per minute.) It is the result of ineptitude, and of desperation. Desperate Scrabble players normally lose.

And I do. The Q play unnerves me. […]

"'Twas a great liberty to take!"
(I fired up like a rocket).
"He did it just for punning's sake:
'The man,' says Johnson, 'that would make
A pun, would pick a pocket!'"

    -- Phantasmagoria, by Lewis Carroll

paronomasia \pair-uh-no-MAY-zhee-uh or pair-ah-nuh-MAY-zhee-uh\ (noun)
     : a play on words : pun

Puns (essentially, humorous uses of words to suggest more than one interpretation) have their share of critics as well as fans. Coleridge, for example, called puns "the lowest form of wit." "Paronomasia," which derives from a Greek verb meaning "to call with a slight change of name," can simply be a synonym of "pun." But it can also be used, somewhat playfully, to suggest an uncontrollable urge to make puns (as if it were a dread disease, rather than harmless word play). For example, in the July 6, 1980 New York Times, William Safire announced, "an epidemic of paronomasia has raced around the world." And on January 1, 1989, Jerry Kobrin of The Orange County Register resolved to seek treatment "for a near-terminal case of paronomasia."

Something sinister has been done to the world's preeminent icon of the art and science of bad taste -- the plastic pink flamingo.

Don Featherstone designed the plastic pink flamingo in 1957 -- an achievement for which he was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize some 39 years later.

Recently the manufacturer, Union Products of Leominster, Massachusetts, altered the flamingo mold to remove the Don Featherstone signature that has graced the rump of every genuine Featherstone-designed flamingo manufactured since 1986. They have refused to answer inquiries from the public or the press.

On the scale of world events this is not important, but it is wrong.

The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) has teamed up with the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) to call for a boycott. Before you buy a new plastic pink flamingo, peer at its butt. If you don't see Don Featherstone's signature, go buy a used bird instead. […]

It's not often you see a man on TV being burned to death, and rarer still when there's play-by-play. I wandered past the TV tonight, expecting to see the TiVo recording another dismaying iteration of the Simpsons, and I saw a man strapped to a metal chair, revolving counter-clockwise while he was blasted with hot air, licked by flames, steadily deprived of oxygen and interrogated by an unseen Torquemada. Here's the good part: it's a quiz show. Here's the really good part: the answer to the question was "Lego." The show is called The Chamber! and it features people who are mildly tortured while answering questions that wouldn't tax a ten year old. And I'm sure that's the next show: ten year olds are strapped into The Chamber and given age-appropriate mortifications, such as being held upside down with their heads in a toilet bowl and mechanically rotated at greater velocity. Fifteen year old boys will be tortured by suspension over a supermodel in front of their parents.

What about morris dancers/cosplayers/people who do ice sculpture based on David Brin's "Uplift" books?

The Geek Hierarchy v. 2.0 incorporated a lot of categories that didn't make it into v. 1.0. Given RAM enough and time we might be able to include finer gradations and more categories, and maybe there'll be a version 3, but right now you can pretty much assume that if you're into something too specific and/or rare to make it onto the unabridged chart, you're way geeky.

What about computer programmers, sysadmins, tech writers and so forth?

Occupations didn't make it in, because in the author's experience they don't really matter. Java programmers who are into LARPing aren't seen as any more or less geeky (in the pejorative sense) by their peers than tech writers or gas station attendants who are into LARPing. In a theoretical future version, technological hobbies like overclocking and making a lot of noise about Open Source may be incorporated.

In mid-December 2001, Google unveiled its improved Usenet archives, which now go more than a decade deeper into the Net's past than did the millions of posts that the company salvaged from DejaNews. Now on a browser near you: a glimpse of the prehistory of the Net culture we all take for granted today. The first "me too" post! The first "Make-Money-Fast" post! It's enough to make even a relative newbie nostalgic for a past she never experienced firsthand.

The debut of the archive touched off a flurry of chatter among the geeks on Slashdot, some of whom had been there back in the day. There were some grumbles. Imagine what it's like to see your flames from 15 years ago, when Usenet still had the population of a small town, now searchable by anyone on the Web.

"Glad I've changed my e-mail address since those long, (best) forgotten days. It wasn't me, I swear," joked one poster to Slashdot. Another one griped: "It's like having naked baby pictures of yourself stapled to your forehead when you walk around." (Google vows that at the author's request, they'll delete old posts; so if you want to be the Internet equivalent of a rare-book burner, go right ahead.)

So last week after the weekly shopping trip, I make a nice big pot of coffee -- and woe, it was flavored. Someone had poured a pound of Hazelnut-Vanilla-Mochy-Minty Tutti-Anise SpecialTyme Blend into the UNFLAVORED grinder. This has the same effect of opening a letter full of anthrax in a six-story office building -- ruined the pound, the pot and the cup, all because someone who thought their morning cup should taste like an ice cream cone can't read a sign that's on the *$(#$! grinder itself.

New law No. 1: It shall be illegal to be this stupid.

2. It shall also be illegal to manufacture or possess flavored coffee within a 100-yard radius of real coffee. Let me point out a necessary fact: Coffee IS a flavor. "Hazelnut-flavored coffee" is akin to "goat-flavored shrimp." If you want flavored coffee, you are a girl, and should be directed to the small tins of General Foods International Blends, aka girl coffee.

3. It shall also be illegal to take the previous sentence seriously.