A Coupla Links

• home
• about the authors
• about ZSN
• contact us

• Buddies

  • BertYarborough.com
  • Bored Mind
  • Chasing IQs
  • Interweb Hunt
  • PeterMailloux.com
  • philbeaudreau.com
  • Rebecca Philio
  • Shaimus
  • Shifting Creations
  • TrentonJay.com

• Obscure Inq

  • Abbr. Enth.
  • Boners Weekly
  • Commercial Upright
  • Fillet-of-Who
  • Obscure Inq
  • Table For Jake
  • 
  • 
  • Worship The Apple

Recent Posts

• Internet Commandments
• Inane Vernacular Vol. 6
• City Beachin’
• Tales from the Fear.net: The Nun
• A Whole Other Level
• You Look Bored
• The Dane Cook Effect
• Stimulatin’
• The Banes of My Existance Vol. 4
• City Sportin
• Meeting Hell
• So You Want a Job, eh?
• Obscure Inq Update April Twothousandandeight
• The Chicks and Balances Committee
• So You Want to Quit Your Job?

Comments

Topics

• abortion jokes
• boners weekly
• Chan this out
• Check This Out
• Christmassy
• City Guides
• comic
• dating
• drawings
• drinking
• Epic
• Fear.net
• food
• games
• geek
• Gentleman Mike
• halloween
• Hobos!
• inane vernacular
• Jobbery Nonsense
• mcnuggets
• nerd
• On Demand
• Operation: Boston
• pests
• pics
• Political Mumbo-Jumbo
• Rhyme Fiends
• science
• site updatery
• story time
• Tales from S&S
• Test Tube Life
• the apple
• Welcome There
• wraps
• WTF?
• ZSN v1.1

Archives

• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006
• August 2006
• July 2006
• June 2006
• May 2006

Internet Commandments

Posted by Tom on July 9, 2008

Recently (read: sometime in 2008) the Catholic Church updated its Seven Deadly Sins, to reflect things that are happening in the more modern, tecnhophilic age we live in. However, I say that they haven’t gone far enough! Why stop at only the sins? How about those Commandments? Moses was all well and good, but let’s face it, things actually carved in stone is so B.C. It is with this in mind that I, the Reverend Tom, has taken it upon myself to update the Ten Commandments, for a more modern age.

Namely, this one.

This project actually started some years ago on MySpace, when I became fed up with my friends being idiots, and subsequently created MySpace commandments (it should be noted that since then, I learned that all people on that site are idiots, and have since left my profile to rot away). These are them, in their unedited glory (well…I added bold just now, but didn’t change any words):

This is thy MySpace bulletin board, which connects you to your friends online.

1. Thou shalt have no false links within MySpace bulletins.
2. Thou shalt not swear unnecessarily in thy bulletin (come on, guys and girls…there could be kids on this thing, you never know).
3. Remember thy language and honor it (all this “omg!!!1!!” stuff has got to go. Keep it to AIM, not to here. We want to read messages, not nonsense)
4. Honor thy friends and their space (no bulletin wide slamming of people. Stick to personal messages or, you know, phone calls for that)
5. Thou shalt not murder thy language (“leet” or “1337” is not a real language, nor are dumb “omg” abbreviations. Bugger off with that)
6. Thou shalt not meet before thou speak (Never give out your personal info on bulletin boards, and be careful whom you give it to)
7. Thou shalt not steal (Feel free to repost quizzes, but don’t steal your friends’ answers. Be original)
8. Thou shalt not lie (Never, EVER repost chain letters, as they are completely worthless and idiotic, and rob society of brain cells. Trust me, your mom won’t die, your dog won’t get cancer, and your crush won’t like you either way)
9. Thou shalt not covet thy friend’s profile (Like something they have? Don’t get jealous, just find out how they did it)

All well and good, right? Well, that was great for then, but I have since moved on from the site. As of May of ‘06, I had joined ZSN, and since then have branched out to become one of the the Internet’s premiere writers (as well as hobologist, half of a dating advice counsellor team, a philosopher/haiku-er, and a guide to living in the dangerous, exciting Big City™). So, I felt it was time to maybe update my own Commandments. Therefore, I present to you, the readers - in conjunction with God - the new Internet Ten Commandments:

1. Thou shalt have no webs besides the Internet.
2. Thou shalt not LOLcats.
3. Thou shalt not spell like shit.
4. Furry and slash fan fictions are abominations unto the Net.
5. Nerds are thy saviors, and thy destructors. Make haste, to not incur their wrath.
6. Thou shalt not spam.
7. Thou shalt not troll.
8. Thou shalt not steal our goddamn pictures.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s coding.
10. Thou shalt recognize the awesome of Obscure, Inq.

Well, I hope that helps. Now if we can all just follow these commandments, then maybe, just maybe, people won’t get into pointless arguments in forums, in which they invoke the name of Hitler to win the stupid thing.

Then again, maybe not. It is the Internet, after all.

I’m ordained and have the certificate to prove it,
Tom

ZSN SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

Hold on to your hats, boys and girls. Soon, your friends here at ZSN will be bringing you a special event, one that has been asked for, begged for, and suffered for greatly. An event to shadow all other events. You will definitely want to make sure you’re here next Wednesday for it, as it may just be the most important thing you see all year long.

In fact, it’s so damn important, here’s a teaser picture:

[?]
Click here to Digg, Stumble, Etc

Topics: Check This Out, Epic, geek | 1 Comment »

Inane Vernacular Vol. 6

Posted by HP on July 2, 2008

Topics: inane vernacular | 11 Comments »

City Beachin’

Posted by Tom on June 25, 2008

Ah, hello my friend. It is a beautiful summer here in the Big City™, isn’t it? It’s just the sort of thing that makes one happy to be alive, and preferably outdoors. Yes, you could go to another sporting event, but wouldn’t you rather go soak in the sun while, say, floating in the water? Yes. Shut up, yes you would. So call up your friend(s) so you can get a ride, because it’s time to go to

The Beach - The beach is one of the great achievements of human civilization. It’s sand, water, and a handful of vendors selling you $10 ice cream and $3 cans of soda. And almost all beaches are beautiful places to relax and float in the gentle swells of the ocean currents. Then again, some beaches are mostly gravel and water splashing on large pointy rocks, so choose your beach well. If it has a name like “Death’s Anus,” you might want to stay away. It’s also worth noting that different beaches attract different demographics of people, which should also affect your choice. There are surfer beaches, tourist beaches, family beaches, old person beaches, “teen” beaches (generally characterized by medium to largish waves and groups of 16/17 - 30 year olds who will be wearing bathing suits that will make your’s fit very improperly very quickly), private beaches, public beaches, nude beaches, secret hideaways, and that island off Cape Cod that seems to be prone to shark attacks. The best beach I have personally ever been to was in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good beaches elsewhere. It just means that unless you’re in the Caribbean, expect some gravel and seaweed. Also, gigantically fat people. Now, once you have your beach chosen, it’s time to

Pack - Important items to put in your bag include, but are not limited to: towel(s), beach blankets, sandals, chips/crackers/cookies/sandwiches, water/soda/juice/lemonade/better lemonade, a bathing suit (or swimsuit, or whatever word(s) you use for it - but please, no man-thongs), sunglasses, a hat (or visor, if you enjoy looking like a fool), some book(s), maybe a magazine (not porn), a bunch of music, a beach umbrella, a knife to use to protect your belongings, Alka-Seltzer/instant potato mix to feed the seagulls…well, you get the idea. No matter what, though, don’t forget the

Sunscreen - Ah, sunscreen. This is the the single most important item in your bag. Especially if you are like HP, who is, in fact, so white, that he burned on a cloudy day (true story). In case you’ve lived in your parent’s basement your entire life, allow me to tell you:a sunburn is not a pleasant sensation, as you may be able to decipher through the use of the word “burn.” There are four levels of sunburn: level one is red and a simple rash, which is what most people get; level two is when it’s bad enough that your skin has small bubbles in the burn areas (this is indicative of the fact that you quite literally are being boiled alive); level three is basically burnt straight through to bone; and level four can best be described as “currently on fire.” When choosing sunscreen, keep in mind that the SPF number is how many times as protective this stuff is than your skin. Generally, if you’re a naturally tan person, or if it’s a cloudy day (and you’re not HP), you can get away with something low, like SPF 15. If your ancestors are people from anywhere north of, say, The Alps, you might want to get something a tad bit stronger (like SPF 8,000). Once you have the proper stuff, rub it all over your body until you’re at a point where you can luge down the stairs naked, then put the remainder in your bag and head out. So now that you’re packed, it’s time to hop in the car, turn onto the highway, and drive straight into

Traffic - Unless you leave at 6 (either am or pm), there’s no way to avoid the beach traffic on a hot day. Look at it this way - the Big City™ probably has over a million people in it, and there’s all of two to four beaches within easy reach. Of course they’re all driving down to it. Some things you can do to make your drive (read: waiting in your car) more enjoyable include: reading, listening to music, rocking the fuck out to loud music, making faces at other drivers, complicated dance numbers, sunbathing on your car, or Monopoly (depending on the size of your city, and the number of beaches, you may very well have time for a full game). Well, the traffic’s moving, and you’re arriving. Fantastic! Pay the man at the booth at the front of the parking lot, and head on out to the beach to claim

Your Spot - Where you set up should be determined by the following factors: your planned activities (swimming, playing in damp sand, sunbathing, kicking seagulls, etc), the number of nearby annoying children/rednecks, the smells, lanes of travel between your blankets and the bathrooms/showers/ice cream stall, and the number of attractive women/men (whatever your fancy) within easy non-obvious eyesight of you. Once you have your spot staked out, lay down a blanket (trust me here, there are many places on - and in - your body you don’t want sand), and put something relatively heavy on each corner. This is so that when the wind gusts, it won’t blow your shit all over the beach (and the wind will gust). You also want to keep any snacks in plastic bags deep within other bags, preferably wrapped in extra clothes or towels, as seagulls will home in and rip your bags open to get at your sweet, sweet, processed foodstuffs. Once you’re all set up and your stuff’s laid out, strip down to just your bathing suit, and run on down to

The Water - What the water is like depends 100% on where you live. In New England (USA), for instance, the water’s a murky green and loaded with seaweed. Down in Playa del Carmen (Mexico), the water was sparkling sapphire and transparent. Believe it or not, the (original)(scientific) reason that New England’s water is murky is because it is just teeming with sea life (also, pollution. Usually). Oh, what’s that? You’re afraid of sea life? No, no, don’t be. It’s nothing to be afraid of. Sharks don’t normally attack people, and certainly not in the areas (or with the frequency) you may think. The only thing you may have to worry about is jellyfish, and even then, they’re not that bad. It’s sort of like getting a painful shot of anesthetic to the arm (or leg, or whatever). Well….unless, of course, you’re allergic. Or it’s a Portuguese Man-O-War. Then you’re pretty much, as the doctors say, fucked.

Well, I hope that helped. Have fun swimming and all, and remember, bathrooms close at 5. I’m going go get going before I roast, but I’ll see you again. Have fun at the Big City Beach™, and don’t forget: Aloe is your friend.

Buliding sandcastles by the sea,
Tom

Topics: Check This Out, City Guides, Operation: Boston | 19 Comments »

Tales from the Fear.net: The Nun

Posted by Tom on June 18, 2008

The first installment of the ongoing Tales from the Fear.net series here on ZSN was, in a word, enlightening. I honestly couldn’t believe how someone could take something with so much potential, rape it, and then film it crying in the corner, a broken, hollow shell of the idea it wanted so hard to be.

Rather, I couldn’t believe that, until I finished watching the movie. Then I began to suspect something was amiss. Clearly, there are a batch of utterly retarded directors and producers out there, hell bent on destroying every last visage of American cinema. And this week’s entry, The Nun, is one hell of a leap toward that goal.

If you don’t remember the premise of the Tales review series, I’ll sum it up: I go to Comcast’s “On Demand,” go to “Free,” then look for “Fear.net” and choose a movie. And I do not watch them alone (that would be suicide. Literally. I would kill myself by the end. They could use these movies in Guantánamo). Okay, up to speed? Awesome. Then it’s time to forge ahead!

That’s right. The tag line is “Not all water is holy.” Get it? ‘Cuz she’s a nun. But here, she’s actually the evil reincarnated ghost of a nun that a bunch of Catholic boarding school girls (don’t get excited - they’re like 12 or 15 or some shit) murdered via drowning in a tub, and then dumped in the school pond. And because of that, her ghost reincarnates via water, and kills them one by one, apparently in the same way as the saint they were named after died, which is kind of convoluted for a ghost story. So, you know…unholy water. What a knee slapper!

It should be noted that at one point, late in the movie, one of the characters says “She needs water to appear!” Let me tell you right now, fair reader, this is a complete lie. This ghost/nun/floating bob just shows up where she wants; that is, unless dry Post-It notes, plane tickets, and bed sheets can be considered “sources of water.” Though, admittedly, when she goes in for the kill, she uses sinks, bathtubs, rain, and (in one particularly disturbing moment) a toilet. Oh, and speaking of characters: they all suck. The group of school girls consists of a whiner, a cripple, a pushy one, a girl that clutches her crucifix necklace and says things like “We shouldn’t be doing this,” and a girl that laid a priest.

Wait, she what? That’s right, she banged the priest that presumably runs the place (one “Father Miguel,” or as the school girls probably refer to him, “Ay papi!”). See, she banged the priest, then went to the basement bathrooms, and used a home pregnancy test (how she got her hands on it, being in an obsessively nun-run Catholic boarding school for underage girls, we never find out). Sister Ursula (yes, someone named Ursula becomes evil underwater. I wonder where they got that from?) sees her, sees the test is a positive, and then, in what may not be a Pope-condoned action, takes the shower head from a nearby tub, turns the water up to what is probably supposed to be scalding hot, and then jams it up between the girl’s legs, in an effort to “purify” her. Her friends show up, and drown Ursula to save Mary (the girl with the priest’s kid. Yes, her name is Mary. I’m sure there’s not supposed to be any relation.), and then dump the nun corpse in the pond outside, somehow never being seen or heard by anyone.

Flash forward 18 years, and Mary is killed in her kitchen by the water-ghost-nun-spirit-thing, through a knife to the throat. Her daughter, Eva, watches, and then decides to investigate (Eva? That best not be what I’m thinking it is…). The rest of the original group of girls dies over the course of the movie (elevator chops off arms, crucified in shower, glass-window-guillotine, an oven, etc) while Eva and her friends - hard to understand Spanish girl, Spanish girl’s emotionless boyfriend who speaks in perfect high school freshmen actor monotone, and soon-to-be-priest they meet in Barcelona that falls for Eva (like mother like daughter, I suppose) - “investigate” (run around like idiots) and try to kill the water ghost. With harpoons. That sort of just appear out of a backpack, rather magically. Also, the soon-to-be-priest dies when water shoots out of a pipe and impales him on another nearby pipe at one point.

Also, there’s a twist ending. Let me save you the trouble of watching this sad excuse for entertainment, and tell you right here. SPOILER WARNING: IF YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO WATCH THE NUN, TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW. AND GO SIT IN THE CORNER. So, it turns out that the ghost apparently is possessing Eva. That’s right. The ghost of a murdered nun is possessing Eva, and using her to commit the revenge murders. Because everything wasn’t convoluted enough already. Never mind that the first murder was a fire in London that took place something like two weeks before this ghost was allegedly raised and possessed Eva. Never mind that Eva was about 18, tops (she looked like she was 16), and probably couldn’t lift an early-90s cell phone, let alone a fucking elevator with a grown woman inside of it up and down, eventually chopping the woman’s arms off. Also, then make it downstairs to the lobby before the elevator did. And that’s all aside from the fact that the only way to perform the glass guillotine murder would have been to magically move herself to the other side of a locked door, kick the woman through the window, and then drop the (apparently) incredibly sharp pane of glass on her neck. Oh, and then make it back to the original side of the still locked door, without moving a thing.

In the end, she does, in fact, harpoon Ursula’s ghost, which apparently means she has to harpoon herself. And, you know, I’m so happy that the movie ended, I won’t even point out that Eva’s arms were half the length of the harpoon gun, meaning she had absolutely no way to fire it into herself.

I’ll just thank whichever god it was that kept that movie from being any longer.

All in all, I think my favorite moments were the heavy-handed pop culture references, such as boring-guy’s “What is this, ‘I know what you did 18 summers ago’?” Or, the same person’s “Welcome to the Nun Witch Project.” Or maybe his “There has been an accident,” when the eventual-priest is impaled (Monotone never explains what the accident was, by the way). Fun Game: Hey kids, want to be just like Joel (the monotone character)? Then just say those lines with absolutely no change in pitch, decibel, intonation, emotion, or acting ability. See? You, too, can be in shitty Spanish horror flicks!

On second thought, my favorite moment was when the movie ripped off The Twilight Zone.

And on that note, I’m done.

Fucking penguins,
Tom

Topics: Fear.net, On Demand, WTF? | 12 Comments »

A Whole Other Level

Posted by HP on June 11, 2008

Topics: Check This Out, Epic, Jobbery Nonsense, Operation: Boston, drawings, geek, pics | 14 Comments »

Zero Shared Nickels is pleased with WordPress - Theme gutted, stripped, and birthed by HP.
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS)