Angels from Another Pin
(The home of Captain Evil Pants)

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Anyone who isn't dead or from another plane of existence would do well to cover their ears right about now.
That's an entertaining rumor. Let's run with it.
I guess it's a racial or collective unconscious memory dating back to a more primitive time when Man was first learning how to use tools, and feral clowns stalked the veldt like grass-bound sharks.
Ninjas are silent. I'm a love ninja...on skis!
Will they offer me a decent trade-in on my gibbon?
Einstein hated frogs.
I'm going to remind you of this conversation when we're exiled to Cuba.
[He has] so much charisma that in the Bizarro world, he's Dick Cheney.
But invader's blood marches through my veins like giant radioactive rubber pants!
Personally, I think that when you've got a secret origin for your UNDERWEAR, you're criminally overwritten anyway.
listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go
Guesstimate. Marzipants. Frisbeef.
I don't think the phrase "umbrella stand" is in very good taste, sir.
I'm sorry, but StarCraft says I can't talk to you anymore.
This is such a lie that I am concerned that the package designer's pants may be on fire even now.
I suppose it takes a certain knack to make a night of unbridled passion sound like a stock market report.
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, / Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
All the planets to whom I spoke are trying their best to play it down
A horse is a horse, of course, of course; he follows a lifestyle we don't endorse. He drinks the blood of sheep by force: The vampire horse, Count Ed.
It keeps sayin' that, but I ain't lookin'.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
There are three things I have learned never to discuss: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.

(The Side of the Angels) Every day: Adventurers! Help Desk Narbonic Sluggy Freelance Letterman Top 10 Infraday: RPG World Weekly: Bob the Angry Flower Story Minute Sometimes: Acid Reflux The current time is: Halloween! And a full moon! Aiiiiieeeeeeee!

31 October 2001 It's Halloween! Time for spooks and witches and stuff! We start off today with the Philadelphia Ghost Hunters Alliance. Harmless product trademark or the Mark of Satan? You decide! Just north of me in Bucks County, PA, is the haunted Hansell Road. This one is a little creepy: The mysterious moving coffins of Barbados' Chase Vault. Tonight's full moon is the first one on Halloween in 46 years. And it's a blue moon. And it occurs right around midnight. OoooooOOOOOOoOoOoooooo!! 30 October 2001 Gravity-based game number 1: "SF Cave," a basic implementation of the gravity-and-rocket genre. Frenetic and blocky-looking, but addictive. (There is a mirror of the site here.) Gravity-based game number 2: "Among the Clouds," a beautiful and unhurried game. 29 October 2001 One of the anti-Taliban military leaders in Afghanistan is a fifteen-year-old boy. The old Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game, ported to Java. Bring your towel. 26 October 2001 A small village in Nepal has one telephone and wooden computers, but it's joining the 21st century. Mike Ryan Why settle for a boring this-page-not-found error when you can play Zork instead? 25 October 2001 On October 10th, Representative Baird put forward an amendment to the Constitution which would allow for the appointment of temporary representatives to Congress if more than a quarter of the membership should die or become incapacitated. Nice way to calm the nation, Baird. Real smooth. A guy from Aldan, PA, which is just a couple of miles from my house, received an email from Saddam Hussein. I would just like to state, for the record, that the world is getting too damned bizarre. This one is for Ivy: Civilization III is being released soon! Mike Ryan 24 October 2001 Heaven help us: the whackos have started thinking that World War 2.5 means the end times are near. Nitrogen triiodide explodes when you touch it with a feather. Ice becomes a dangerous bomb. This and all the other things you learned about as a young and foolish kid (but were never young and foolish enough to actually try) can be seen among the chemistry movies Mike has found. Mike Ryan 23 October 2001 My father found some fossils which a paleontologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences (a kind fellow named Jason) thinks are the remains of an ancient oyster bed. Now we need to date the fossils, which he found atop a layer of marl in central New Jersey. Geography links for the NJ area: A detailed stratigraphy of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The famous Haddonfield hadrosaur (which is on display at the Academy) was found in marl from the Cretaceous near Dad's site. (Search for the word "marl" on the page.) According to the City University of New York, the marl soils in New Jersey were laid down in the late Cretaceous along the Atlantic coast of North America, and often contain marine fossils such as oysters. Therefore, I think Dad's oysters may be from the late Cretaceous. That would make them around 70 million years old. Mars Odyssey arrives at Mars today. Go NASA, go! Scientists have found--and I swear I am not making this up--the most boring place in England. What evil lair is complete without a brain in a jar? 22 October 2001 A week in the life of a telemarketer. I wonder if Ben has days like this. Dear Kids of Afghanistan proves that irony isn't dead. It's merely aiming in a slightly different direction. 19 October 2001 Cows! Yes, cows are the true measure of a video game's worth! (I want to see their reaction to Cowmandos from Angst Technology.) Mark Sachs Ben thinks people are getting too attached to their cars. I think this is the next logical step after the Aibo robot dog... Ben Loukota Happy Halloween, power users! 18 October 2001 Cinxia is both the Roman goddess of marriage (for whom the information is scanty at best) and a rather pretty kind of butterfly called the Glanville Fritillary (Melitaea cinxia). I have completed the DNS update for the server which runs Angels from Another Pin, so you should now access AfAP via http://cinxia.com/afap/ or http://www.cinxia.com/afap/. Miranda, the broken moon of Uranus, may not have been broken after all. The game of Zendo looks like a lot of fun, in a Kung-Fu-sensei kind of way. 17 October 2001 Steven Hawking has been worried a lot lately. Glenn Juskiewicz Matt wants to know how much higher-level math he has to learn before he can understand quantum mechanics. Matt Smith 16 October 2001 Okay. So the President asks for children to send in donations to the White House. And the Postal Service is watching for odd-looking packages that might contain anthrax. So this means that there are a lot of odd-looking, child-created packages meandering through the postal system headed for the White House to panic the Post Office. World War 2.5 is too weird for me. Ghosts and cellphones. Who ya gonna call? Glenn Juskiewicz Rudy Giuliani, Lord Mayor of New York. 15 October 2001 The New York Times has found the printer who made the Osama bert Laden posters in Bangladesh. CBS is considering a comedy based on the WTC attack. This had better be a joke. Thinking long-term? Invest in a Dyson sphere. Looking for a job in the technical world? You can still get one by bottom-feeding and by knowing XML, ASP, or JSP. The folks at Need to Know pointed out this Transformers costume that actually transforms. 12 October 2001 Mark's game is nearing release. On a cool note, the tank designs look a lot like Mark's designs in his demo game, Star Rescue. Another case of anthrax has sprung up, this time at the mail room of NBC. The Nintendo War has started: Look at the pretty pictures, the spokesmen will say, and don't ask us too much about what we're doing. Jedi Update: The British government have no sense of humor at all. Glenn Juskiewicz Lessons from the Blitz: cities are more resilient than we think. Need some electricity? Why not get some from ancient Mesopotamia? Eeeeee! It's Invader Zim! (This and Samurai Jack are two cool new cartoons.) 11 October 2001 The five-day forecast: terrorism. You know that Osama bert Laden thing? It's true. The Force is not so clumsy or random as a census. Glenn Juskiewicz The minimum necessary for life: lithoautotrophs require only water, heat, and volcanic glass. These three things are present on a small number of planets and moons in the solar system. We have found the Springfield Police and Chief Wiggam: Two cops took a helicopter on a doughnut run. Ben Loukota 10 October 2001 Happy birthday to my mother, who I am given to understand is a fashionable 29 years old. Puppet government: There are a few photos on the newswires which show Bert from Sesame Street with Osama bin Laden on posters being carried in Bangladesh. It looks like someone slapped together a poster using pictures from the Internet, and just happened to get one of the ones from the old Bert is Evil site. Or it could be a really silly Photoshop hoax. You be the judge. Safety lessons from Anubis. Mark Sachs Before you peruse this article on why songs get stuck in our heads, start thinking about some tune that you can hum to yourself while reading it. Or, I promise, one of the songs mentioned in the article will get stuck in your brain. 9 October 2001 The cancer grows: Electronics Boutique buys a large retailer in France. (Someone should tell the Register that EBUS and EBUK are basically the same company, owned by a shell company which is traded on NASDAQ as ELBO.) Information for the non-scientist: We were discussing quantum entanglement on Sunday. Cyberpunk advertising comes into existence. In Hungary. Glenn Juskiewicz Chess is an intellectual exercise that requires imagination. Sue Monroe I have never watched Politically Incorrect, because its format (get a bunch of actors onto a stage and have them pronounce their uneducated views on the events of the day) makes me ill. However, I had wondered what caused the ruckus over the show--a ruckus which made it all the way up to the President's spokesman. So I looked it up. Bill Maher is an idiot; that about sums it up. A box which may be a time capsule from 1808 has been unearthed in Dublin. Glenn Juskiewicz Here's one for Ivy: Discover which character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer you most resemble, through a series of goofy yet...(no, they're just goofy)...questions. (I would appear to be Buffy. ... ... You guys in the Peanut Gallery be quiet!) 8 October 2001 A temple from the Persian occupation of Egypt has been found on the edge of the Sahara. Glenn Juskiewicz Dear India and Pakistan, we're understandably jumpy right now, so stop being idiots or we will smack you in the heads. Thank you for your kind attention to this matter. Sincerely, The Rest of the World. Peaceful political protest is found to be legal in Philadelphia, even if it ticks off the Republican National Convention. Shhhhh! Be vewwy vewwy quiet. I'm hunting Twinity. 5 October 2001 Scientists discover one of the genes which control language and speech. Here's some culture hacking on a grand, in fact almost awe-inspiring, scale: Two mucisians in Australia have copyrighted the little musical tones you play when you dial a phone number--any phone number. If big, evil corporations that copyright things just to bilk the public out of money really believe in the utter sanctity of copyright law, they will have to pay these guys through the nose. Brilliant. 4 October 2001 I'm sure most of you have seen the fake picture of a tourist at the top of the World Trade Center. Now some enterprising photomanipulators have placed this guy, whom I've been thinking of as the Accidental Tourist, at a lot of other historic disasters. Fusion reactors creep closer to reality. (Includes some cool photos of experimental reactors in action.) 3 October 2001 Some people are driven to make works of art and some people can drive their art to work. I especially like the Midlife Chrysler with its Zenguin decal. Continuing our oddly Star-Trek-obsessed issue of AfAP, we bring you: "Dude, are you sure you're not from Earth?" 2 October 2001 For Matt: Bob meets the Borg! In 1998, Douglas Adams gave a speech in which he discussed computers, evolution, memetics, and an artificial God. What if the folks from Slashdot ran Star Trek? One example: "Borg would cite things as being 'offtopic' rather than 'irrelevant'" 1 October 2001 On a clear day, you can see forever. Strong ethics: Bob Hare spent years studying psychopaths, and invented the PCL-R test to indentify criminals who are psychopaths. After many years, he is now on the warpath to stop the use of his test by politicians and lawyers who bend the test to their needs rather than using the test as it was designed.

(The Other Side of the Angels) Talk: Discussion Terrorism Features: Dark Cloud The Frank Lloyd Wrights Folks: Project Apollo

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