chuggnutt.com

Don't let the title completely fool you, this entry is a rant, as much as anything else. And don't think that I'm some sort of pop culture otaku; I'm usually behind the curve when it comes to such things, especially music.

But I seem to consume a fair amount of it anyway, and so here we are.

What do I really have to say about pop culture? Read on...

The news on KTVZ tonight about the former Rajneesh land being sold caught my ear and got me reflecting a bit on that particular period of weirdness in Central Oregon history. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "dark day" in Oregon history like the interviewee on the news did, but it was definitely weird.

The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was an Indian (from India the country, not Native American) spiritual teacher who in 1981 came to Oregon, where his followers bought The Big Muddy ranch outside of Antelope and started a commune there. Naming the commune Rajneeshpuram, they attracted all sorts of attention among the locals, mostly negative.

Understand, this part of Oregon in the 80s was much more conservative and rural than now; the majority of the population was based in agriculture (farmers, cowboys) and operated on Good-Ol-Boy-ism. So the idea of a cult moving in and then taking over the town of Antelope was met with open hostility.

It didn't help that the Rajneeshees had a number of odd practices and goings-on as well. They all wore red, for instance. They owned a large number of Rolls Royces and the Bhagwan would ride around in them everywhere. They carried machine guns in open sight.

And when I said they "took over" Antelope, I'm not kidding—they registered to vote there and got a referendum passed renaming the town to "Rajneesh." They were able to do this because some 7000 of them lived in the commune.

Sheela, the Bhagwan's Number Two person, was a real piece of work. When authorities started investigating the Rajneesh commune, the crazy stuff came to light and Sheela and several leaders "were indicted and convicted of several crimes, including immigration fraud, wiretapping, first and second degree assault (poisoning) of two public officials, and the attempted murder of Rajneesh's personal physician."

Sheela and the Rajneeshees also have the dubious honor of perpetrating the largest germ warfare attack in the history of the U.S., when they infected a salad bar in a restaurant in The Dalles with salmonella—sickening over 750 people.

The Bhagwan went on the run and was caught back east in North Carolina and deported. The sheriff or whoever who was involved in the capture appeared on the news, drawling, "We caught us a Bag-wahn from Ory-gun."

Strange days, indeed.

(Pure geek post.)

This is sick (not in the gross sense): 6502 compatible compiler and emulator in javascript.

In JavaScript.

If you don't know what any of this means, that's okay. I can't hardly get my head around it either.

Via JWZ.

Jake first found and posted this: the Bend Bulletin has their own official, bonafide RSS feed. It's about time! That means I can finally take down my hacked-up RSS scraper feed for them.

So, this is official notice that I'm deprecating my Bulletin RSS hackfeed, by implementing a redirect to the official feed, and then I'll be killing off the script entirely. So all three or so people who were using it, be warned.

We had a great spring break trip to San Diego last week, and while we took a bunch of pictures, there are three especially that I couldn't resist posting here. Mostly because they're so messed up and random.

The first two are from Legoland. That place is like the Lego Disneyland—lots of rides and fun things, with Lego sculptures everywhere. Pretty straightforward concept, right? That's why it's totally awesome to run across something like this:

I wants me a Lego Skeleton Kit™ bloody well right now.

And among the various other Lego sculpture decor, most of which was themed and made sense, there was this:

What. The. Hell??

Best. Themepark. Ever.

Earlier in the week, we visited the Fleet Science Center, and they have a section especially for kids there called "Grossology." While most of the Grossology exhibits are pretty much what you'd expect, there was no way I could pass up taking a photo of this genuine video game:

Yep. Played it. Need a PlayStation version.

Writer Charlie Stross has a blog post entitled Why the commercial ebook market is broken that's a really good read and puts forth a thought I hadn't really considered before:

My take on ebooks is that they are — and should be seen as — the cheapest form of disposable literature.

"Disposable literature." I like it. I should probably point out that this isn't meant to be derogatory; rather, Stross is using it in the same sense as for mass market paperbacks: cheap, portable, easy to mass-produce and replace.

I'm not sure I have more to say about it at the moment... I'm kinda letting the concept roll around and ferment in my head a bit.