(Hi, Digg! Thanks for visiting.)

I wasn't sure whether to post this under amusing bits, or create a whole new category for "freakin' disgusting."
As a full-time student, and little-time earning a paycheque guy, I am now making purchases of computer equipment vicariously through friends and family members. One friend, after suffering through endless reloading of his XP machine because of bad hard drives, and innumerable virii, finally decided he wanted a Mac, but was looking for nothing fancy. I find a suitable -- and excellently usable -- PowerMac G4, of the "Quicksilver" variety on eBay. I bid, I win, I pay, it ships. I pick it up from the UPS depot in International Falls, MN...and when the UPS guy brings it out, I can hear it tumbling around in the box. Ouch -- not well packed. Sigh.
I sign for it, haul it out to the van, and slice it open, fearful of what I might find. Here's what I see:

Well, there's foam padding in the top, but not enough. Packing material pretty lacking. But....wait -- what is that, peeking through the foam? No, it's not.....

Yup -- it's a pizza box. Well, dead air crush space, not a bad idea to use. (Cue creeping sense of horror) You don't suppose it's....um.......

Hey, excellent -- I heard hardened, leftover pizza cheese and grease acts as an antistatic barrier! Lucky me.
Underneath yon bacteria-laden packing material lies the G4 in question -- somehow, amazingly, intact, apparently.

And, our illustrious eBayer appears to have included a keyboard with it, packed underneath the G4. That's a nice unexpected......(lifts the G4 up to see the keyboard)

Holy...mother....of....crap. I thought the pizza box was bad -- apparently, eBay is now suggesting using 2 litre pop bottles and milk jugs to protect my purchase. Could this get any worse or more disgusting?
Apparently, it could.

Observe, if you will, the milk jug in question. Good to know our favourite eBay seller isn't lactose intolerant -- and really, milk and pizza go well together. Besides, why not have more bacteria protection on the *other* side of the G4?
I was completely overwhelmed by the situation. How on God's green earth could anyone think that I'd do the Mypos Dance of Joy over the arrival of a computer, packed with someone's garbage?
Surprised -- nay shocked -- as you might be, gentle reader, the machine arrived, and the hard drive merrily engaged in the "click of death" on bootup. And was short half the RAM that it was supposed to have. And was a slower processor than first described. Oh joy -- hours of leg work ahead of me for a computer that ISN'T EVEN MINE.
After jumping through requisite hoops, I was finally able to get a partial refund, more RAM, and another HD out of the seller -- which he shipped sans garbage, much to my disappointment. I was thinking, "Smaller box, maybe this time I'll get a used condom, or a ziploc bag of cat hairballs." No juice. He did, however, ship the RAM and HD sans antistatic protection, as well. Sigh.

....you rule. Now, let's see the lawmakers step up, and enact the right legislation in the next six months. Now, we just have to hope that non-conservative heads prevail as expected in Canadian parliament this month.

I just finished watching Ghost in the Shell, a film that many said was a significant influence on the Wachowski brothers in their creation of the Matrix trilogy.
I'm a geek. I get geek stuff. I don't get this film.
I see the references as noted in the wikipedia article on the film, and their impact on the development of the Matrix trilogy. What I don't get is the "massive significance" that has been noted by many in the manga/cyberpunk/tech groups who revere this film.
It's kind of embarassing for me as someone who, if given the opportunity, would wholeheartedly support the embedding of camera and recording equipment in my body – believe me, I can't remember my name, let alone others, from day to day, and see this as a godsend - to not "get" this film. I feel the same way as I did when, 15 years ago, in university with my roommate Darren, watched "Akira," which was also labelled as an astonishing film with incredible impact -- and which I enjoyed until the last 20 minutes, in which it got so ridiculous that I wanted to shut it off. I guess I'm just not a manga kind of guy.