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“In the past, Grand Theft Auto has been severely criticized for being too violent,” says Conan O’Brien. “Well, the new version — I got it yesterday and was playing with it — it’s been toned down a lot. I’m not sure it’s better…”

[This was also posted to Global Nerdy.]

My friend Pete Forde suffers from “Rich Man’s Disease”, which the medical profession has given the less colourful name of “gout”. He saw my earlier post, Quackery in the ‘Hood, in which I wrote about the IonCleanse system, a footbath which purports to remove harmful toxins from the body…through your feet. One the ailments that IonCleanse is implied to cure or at least prevent is gout.

Like most people in the field of computer programming, Pete’s an empiricist and wants to put IonCleanse to the test. He’ll go in for a treatment, which will give us a chance to see the IonCleanse system as well as the brown goop up close. Of course, doing this costs money, and he’d like your help in raising the money for a session. Here’s his page at Fundable, a site for online fundraising. If you’d like to help Pete put IonCleanse to the test, go there and pledge some cash!

Recommended Reading

Ion Cleanse or Ion Scam? An article that points to other articles on IonCleanse. The short version: Ion Scam!

The b5media office is just south of Accordion City’s downtown Chinatown, so I encounter “Engrish” — gramatically incorrect versions of English from southeast Asia — quite often. It’s quite rare to encounter Engrish that accidentally makes sense, as with the T-shirt shown below:

“Think twice before making any trunk calls,” the shirt says. Given that the shirt was being sold at a store that carried mostly club clothing for women and the social phenomenon known as drunk dialing, I believe the intended T-shirt slogan was “Think twice before making any drunk calls.”

In spite of this gaffe, the T-shirt slogan makes sense. The term “trunk call” is an archaic term used to refer to a long-distance call. Long distance calls, especially made from mobile phones (on which most “drunk dial” calls are made), can get quite expensive, so you really should think twice before making them.

Maybe they should give away these T-shirts with new mobile phones.

My friend Nancy has had a contest with her sister for years: they’ve been trying to outdo each other in giving the other some kind of “Hello Kitty”-themed gift. In this contest, there are only two criteria for a qualifying gift:

• It must bear the image of Hello Kitty
• It must serve some useful purpose

There’s no end of the lineup of Hello Kitty products: I’ve seen laptops and iPods, toasters, vaccuum cleaners and yes, the er…personal massager.

There’s even an airline — EVA Air — that’s adopted Hello Kitty as a mascot. EVA Air use the Hello Kitty brand everywhere. And I mean everywhere, even on their air sickness bags:

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

I’d like to wish Mark Kuznicki, Accordion City’s greatest policy wonk, organizer of events like Metronauts and member of the Toronto Tech Community in good standing, a very happy birthday! I’ll see you at the SummerCamp party tonight, Mark!

These billboards produced by the Montana Meth Project are pretty striking. The question is: are they going to convince people not to do crystal meth?

Here’s a fun little exercise — can you identify the cartoon characters by their silhouettes in the illustration below?

Click the image to see it at full size.
Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

[This was also posted in Global Nerdy.]