Feed Sheed

What are all those spurs doing in the background, anyway? Oh yeah, getting owned by Sheed.

I make things...

Just finished building a subwoofer. Total cost was around $60 not counting some of the tools I bought. Sounds great. I did the trim and staining myself. Hooray for DIY.

Speaker spikes look cool.
This makes the place go thump.
The new setup

BiPolar Bash 2005-06: NYE in LR

Finally a post about the New Year's Eve party that took place at my house. I've needed 5 days to recover from it, I think. So basically we had about 40 people stop by our house at some point for New Year's Eve. I think everyone had a good time. The theme was classy before midnight, and trashy after. Verdict: Success! Total bottles of champagne consumed: about 12-15. Total people who came to our party: 40-50? Amount of mulled wine consumed: 5 liters. Number of piles of vomit on the balcony of my house: 4. Number on the stairs: 1. Amount of fun had by all? Boundless. Hopefully enough to last until next year because I can't handle another until then. Pictures coming...

As a Christian, I love the Internet.

Last night I found a link to a whole set of reviews on Amazon.com by this man. As Screenhead.com pointed out, the reviews taken as a whole can be seen as farce, but taken individually are probably much more believable, if only slightly so.

I have come to appreciate the creativity of people within very specific sets of rules or "places." The guy who made the "Warthog Jump" video using the video game Halo is not a novelist or even a short story writer, but he did create a unique discourse of sorts within the strict physics and setting of a video game that exists outside the intentions of the game (that is, outside a plot or the rules of any of the multiplayer games).

Noel Hurley, the given name on all these "Christian" reviews, if he is indeed fictional (a safe assumption, imo), has created a character that exists solely within the review section of Amazon.com's website. No review is more than about 5 sentences long, and all center around items that are, for the most part, Christian themed.

His character is consistent and complex, and there is almost a narrative that emerges from his reviews. For instance, he reviews a cross shaped cake pan, which he then mentions in his review of So You Want to Be Like Christ: "I only have a cake a week nowadays and that cake is in the shape of a cross." His dog, Geoffery, and his wife also get multiple mentions. His wife seems to disapprove of some of his behavior like when he dresses up in a plus size economy nun costume "a couple of times a week when my wife is out - there's nothing weird about it it's just a bit of fun." Noel Hurley is more than just a prank reviewer; he is a multi-faceted Christian who bakes cross shaped cakes and keeps secrets from his wife.

The character serves as more than an interesting joke and study in character creation, though, since it also appears to satirize Christianity, Amazon.com reviewers, and, one could argue, the capitalization of Christianity as well. And yet it is done in the relative anonymity and within the strict confines of the Amazon.com review section. Pretty brilliant.