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generic gift cards by Betatester.
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even living here for quite a while, there are some behaviors i don’t get in america…
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one is all this gift card craze… it’s considered rude to give money as a gift… but it’s not to give a limited currency, full of limitations?
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yes, the industry pushes it because it’s free money for they: 40% of gift cards are not reclaimed.
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but, generic gift crds? gift cards that can be redeemed on any shop? are they reinventing the concept of money?

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infinite petroleum fantasy by Betatester.
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Welcome to psycho denial, or the infinite petroleum fantasy(oh yeah, we’re’born in it)
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nobody actually produces any goods

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panopticon mickey by Betatester.
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i love it, i love it, i love it, i love it, i love it, i love it!
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the fangs. the multiple eyes swimming like spermatozoids, eager to inseminate. the childhood companion gone bad. the evil smile. the greediness, the broken promises. that’s america for me! i love it!
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update: lanika points me to mickey feio. Assuming how american copyright laws got distorted after the friendly mice, it’s an act of civil disobedience to disrespect it, huh?

The officer discerned that I was not American. Presumably, my accent provided the clue, although my lack of racial etiquette–mouthing off to white police officers in a “high-crime” area in the middle of the night– might have suggested that I was an outsider to the racial dynamics of police encounters. My assertion of my rights, my attempts to maintain my dignity, my confronting authority (each a function of my pre-invisibility blackness) might have signaled that I was not from here and, more importantly, that I had not been racially socialized into, or internalized the racial survival strategy of, performing obedience for the police.

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fuck, this is good!

2004’s Scariest Halloween Costumes

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i think it’s kinda redundant to talk about horror in an age of terror and uncertainity (i’m talking about this administration), but americans are excited with halloween.
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so, here are some 2004’s Scariest Halloween Costumes
, like abu ghraib prisioner, arrested protester or jena bush’s liver.
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now that’s entertainment!

pirates and emperors
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a cute animation about american external policy… at least a honest answer for the "why do they hate us so much" question.
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(roll the mouse over the image, it’s so sweet!)
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and talking about videos, how about another one showing some creepy teenagers’ reactions while playing doom 3?

promethea DVD
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I’m used to read comics on my computer (all I have to do is to turn my notebook to the side, and view the pages as a slideshow) and since I installed iDVD, i was dying to try it out.
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so, I decided to make a comics DVD, which means, a slideshow DVD with an entire comic collection. I wanted to make sure the navigation was the same or better than the paper version, so I decided for a comic I didn’t read it yet and I would surely love. alan moore’s promethea seemed like a good bet.
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below are some screenshots of my progress. sadly, I realized I had no more blank DVDs to spare, so I have to wait till I’ll buy a new batch.
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click on each image to view it bigger, with technical notes (another nice feature of flickr). then, roll the mouse over each square to read them.
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DVD cover menu: this one is default from iDVD. since you can’t use more than 12 chapters and I had 31 issues, I organized each 3 issues on one.
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chapter detail: iDVD shows the exact same folders and organization from iPhoto (pictures) and iTunes (music). it’s no good at refreshing, tho, so the best move is to organize all folders & pictures on iPhoto, and then start on iDVD.
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project map: iDVD has a limit of 99 images on each slideshow, so a manga has to be chopped down, for example. it worked fine with american comics, tho.
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disclaimer: I made it for my own consumption, and although I downloaded the entire collection from bittorrent (bad boy) I also own the editions. i guess I don’t have to bother about it, since ABC comics is a small company, and instead of think “ohmygod, those little rascals found another way to rip us off” they’ll probably think “hey, another source of revenue for our collections, and look: it’s cheaper to produce than our trade paperbacks!” (sadly, it only works good on dvd notebooks - you have to rotate the monitor to read it)
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update:sadly, ABC comics is a branch of wildstorm comics, which is an offshot of DC comics, owned by warner. shoud I wait the media conglomerate unleash its minion of ferocious lawyers upon my (literaly) poor soul, or is the plutocratic police state of amerika not done yet?