Shameless stolen from Warrenellis.com: “A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it�s actually the far less ominous 616.

The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing.

Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. He said: �This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people�s names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula.�

�satanists responded coolly to the new �Revelation’. Peter Gilmore, High Priest of the Church of Satan, based in New York, said: �By using 666 we�re using something that the Christians fear. Mind you, if they do switch to 616 being the number of the beast then we�ll start using that.�”

(Stolen from Warren since the source is not opensource)

(Does anyone hear the sound of air escaping slowly from a pinprick in a billion Christian conspiracy theories?)

It’s Xbox. It’s an RPG. It’s set in the East. It’s made by Bioware, makers of the best RPG engine and games EVER.

Why haven’t I bought it yet? Good question. Damned fine question.

Oh, and the website is incredibly well put together. The best use of Flash technology that I’ve yet seen — unobtrusive and not unnecessarily blingy.

“Let’s not ruin the fun of debauchery with romance.”

-Neely Harris

One small misstep and that phrase becomes “martial bliss.” That’s funny to me.

Because really, there’s such a thin line between love and war.

The ceremony, I imagine, was beautiful. I was in meetings until 6 PM, so I wouldn’t have any way of knowing for sure — though brides and grooms all seemed incredibly happy about where they were, and that’s all that matters.

Glad that it happened for all four involved. Four really good people who all deserve each other — in their respective pairings, I should say. Double weddings required careful semantics…

And the after-party reception was nice. Got to see a lot of people that I don’t see often enough, a few more that I haven’t seen in what may be years, and only a few that I was hoping had been hit by trucks and eradicated from the planet.

All in all, the best wedding that I’ve been to in quite some time.

You know, I keep trying to type “wedding” as “weeding.” I wonder what that says?

I’m not sure whether PostSecret was set up as an art concept or something more scientific or philosophical. Whatever, it’s an extremely moving experience. Keeping in mind that some of this is art, surely — and therefore expressly created with an emotionally manipulative component. That said, there’s some stuff on here that is pretty powerful, even with a grain of salt.

[thanks to OuterNet]

CNN.com – Texas House to cheerleaders: Don’t shake it – May 5, 2005: “Texas lawmakers sent a message to the state’s high school cheerleaders Wednesday: no more booty-shaking at the game.”

You can pummel yourselves into oblivion on the football field, but don’t you dare turn anyone on while cheering them on.

Something is backwards here….

Oh, yeah. Texas. America. Never mind. I remember now.

Even consequences have consequences.

In other news, my finger appears to be slowly dissolving, as though I were dipping it into the acid well I keep in the back yard each night.

Hey, the bodies have to go somewhere…

Q: What do you call a black guy flying a plane?

A: A pilot, you fucking racist.

The bridal ‘grab and run’ : printer friendly version: “‘Every good marriage begins in tears,’ a Kyrgyz saying goes.”

Hell, at least if they begin that way, the ending’s no big surprise, right?

Time : “Thusly, introverted people often measure large periods of time happening in very short periods of time, in relation to the measurements which might be derived if one were to focus on the outside world as a means of time measurement. Because of this, introverted people are prone to ‘losing track of time’, as they may perceive that, on a general basis, large amounts of time pass between events in ‘reality’ which most people would consider to be temporally significant but which they themselves would not find any significance, relative to their own perception of the passage of time. Therefore, introverted people are more likely to spend ages thinking about ‘something else’ and to not realize when a large amount of time has actually passed in terms of a system of temporal measurement they have no interest in maintaining. If a large amount of time spent thinking is equal to a short amount of time in ‘outside reality’, then it becomes difficult to distinguish at which point a large amount of time has transpired in ‘reality’ without counting, equating and making differences with the apparent time-frame of outside reality. However, no experiments confirm or discount this hypothesis so far.”

[Wikipedia scares me. You can follow links forever and still keep going on to new things. My head hurts.]