I had never seen The Serpent & the Rainbow before. As he talked about the movie, I gathered that it was based on ethnobotanist Wade Davis’s (nonfiction) book about a Harvard scientist that was sent to Haiti in search of a “zombification” drug - it renders recipients completely paralyzed, but conscious. Doctors would often pronounce the recipients dead, and they’d wake up later in a casket under the ground.

He explained that as a punishment, the drug would sometimes be administered and the recipient would be buried as if they were dead. They would then be dug up days later and severely beaten, and then given brutal doses of the herb datura and set into the wild to fend for themselves.

I became aware of datura sometime back in high school, and was fascinated by it, particularly by the fact that people use it recreationally. I remember spending countless hours reading about people’s experiences with it in the Erowid Experience Vaults. It sounds absolutely insane, and I can’t imagine why anyone would ever go near the stuff.

Anyway, this really caught my interest - It was fascinating to hear about people being put through the wringer, psychologically, as a form of punishment. I think it’s safe to say that you would be a shell of your former self after going through all of this.

They went to Haiti to shoot the film, and Wes talked about some sort of ceremony that they attended. He said that people were dancing around a fire, and at a certain point, there was a noticeable switch in their behavior. He said that some of the dancers began to eat hot coals off of the fire. He had a glass of wine in his hand, and one of the people noticeably acting different approached him, took the glass out of his hand, and ate it, bite-by-bite. He saw no blood in her mouth, and she showed no signs of pain at all, but said that by looking into her eyes you could see that she was “not there”. I would imagine that this isn’t related to datura, but the behavior could be attributed to some sort of drug or voodoo practice.

He didn’t elaborate all that much on this, but he mentioned that someone involved in the production of the film was talking to one of the voodoo priests. He told him that he wanted to learn more about the whole “zombification” process. The priest replied, “then you will learn”.

I don’t think that the guy told anyone else about this right away. He was shacked up in his trailer, and communication was limited to very brief conversations through the door. After a day or two of this, with deadlines to meet, Wes and someone else decided that they had had enough, and wanted to get to the bottom of the odd shift in behavior. They demanded that the guy allow them into his trailer. When they finally got in, plates full of untouched meals were all over the place. Apparently the guy had totally gone off the deep end. They had to send him back to the US, and when he arrived at the airport, he didn’t even recognize his wife. Later, he said that the last thing he remembered was the priest telling him, “then you will learn”.

It’s crazy to think about how there are people so far removed from “society” as we know it, tucked away in these Haitian “secret societies” of sorts, that have the knowledge and means to do things to our minds that we know little to nothing about.

I realize that this is an awful recollection of the story, but he told it in about 2 minutes, so that was all that I gathered. I’d like to know more about this, but I wasn’t able to find any other interviews where he talks about it. Had the Q&A not taken place prior to the movie being shown, I doubt I would have been nearly as interested in the film itself. The movie was a bit over-the-top, so I’d imagine it is “loosely” based on the book. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got, just found it very interesting and I thought I’d share.

As an afterthought, I always associated Wes Craven’s name with the “Scream” movies. Horror nerds, you can tell me I’m an idiot, but I liked the Scream movies. I’m not a horror aficionado by any means, and I had no idea he had been directing movies since the seventies. Anyway, he announced that he will be working on Scream 4… So there ya go.

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Every few weeks, there is a new “get XX followers now!” scheme that pops up. I remember when I first started messing with Twitter (over a year ago) it was a service called Flashtweet. At the time, Flashtweet was free. You logged in, and the service would allow you to look at any Twitter user’s followers. You could follow all of them, and then wait for them to follow you back. Wait a few hours or a day or whatever, and then unfollow the ones that didn’t follow you back - Or unfollow all of them if you wanted. This seemed to work somewhat well, and I used to to build up Twitter accounts for some clients at the time. They still have rather large followings on the site, regardless of the frequency of their tweets.

The latest of these sites is Spread My Tweets! I messed around with it for a little while this morning, and it definitely works - You give it your login info, and it follows 15-20 people using your account, but in exchange, you get 40-50 new followers. I don’t know how new this site is, but it seems to be spreading like wildfire. I’d imagine that it is only a matter of time until Twitter tweaks their API or something so that the site no longer works.

The idea was appealing to me at first, but then it dawned on me - I have to be suspicious about the quality of the followers that you gain by using this site. I doubt many of them would end up being genuinely interested in the things you’ll be tweeting in the future, and most of them will most likely go through and unfollow when they’re done using the service. It really is just a number, and if these new followers won’t ever interact with you or retweet your content or anything, what’s the point?

Anyway, if you follow me on twitter, and happened to see some weird garbage this morning about gaining new followers, that was where it came from.

For more about these “get followers quick” methods, check out this post from KMK Blog.

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If I hadn’t already tried the site out and someone explained the site to me, I would have had no interest. When was the last time I used a webcam… Probably when I was in high school?

When I first went on the site, some of my friends were hanging out, and we ended up spending a good 2 hours on there screwing around. The vast majority of the people on there are either guys with their shirts off, guys trying to get girls to take their shirts off, guys beating it like mad (this happens a lot, need to be quick with the ‘next’ button), dorm rooms full of guys waiting to yell “HEY FAGGOT!” at you, fake celebrities (although the Jonas Brothers are apparently on the site all the time), or lemonparty/goatse surprises. Sounds awesome, right? I know I’m not doing a very good job at selling this site, but if you can stomach the things I just mentioned, it’s actually pretty fun to go on with some friends. You’ll be clicking ‘next’ a lot, but there are some pretty funny/bizarre things going on that make it all worth it. Oh yeah, and there are actually girls on there too… You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I ended up having a few long (10+ minute) conversations with people/groups of people. It’d be very easy to say that this site is for people with no friends or too much time on their hands, but I still think it’s a pretty cool concept, and if nothing else it provides some mindless entertainment on a Friday night while you’re drinking with some friends before going out or whatever.

This site is the sort of thing that reminds me that I’ve spent a lot more time on the internet over the years than my friends have. I click “next” and a guy hanging from a noose pops up. Friends say “holy shit, a dead guy!” I say “relax, it’s from Stile Project” (covered by yours truly here on March 5th, 2000) and then feel like some sort of weird wise old internet grandfather.

People displaying images like the hanging Stile, lemonparty, and other gross/amazingly awesome internet memes are most likely waiting to capture the look of shock/disgust on your face via screen shot and post it on /b/. So yeah, keep in mind that anything you do on here can very easily be saved and posted somewhere else.

If you don’t plan on checking out the site, but want to stay “in the loop”, here’s a good article about Chatroulette from NYMag.

Oh yeah, and if it isn’t implied already… “NSFW”.

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Actually, before watching this video, the only Progeria victim (is it pc to word it that way?) that I was aware of was this “juggalo” who made a series of YouTube videos and then disappeared from the spotlight.

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Buckethead - Shadows Between the Sky (v0)

“Shadows Between the Sky” is Buckethead’s 29th studio album. This is more mellow and in the vein of Colma and Electric Tears, but the technical guitar playing that you know and love is still there. I’m listening to it right now and really enjoying it.

Two posts in one day? Woah…

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Coheed and Cambria - The Broken

While on the topic of music… Have you heard about the “My Way Killings” in the Philippines? Apparently there has been at least half a dozen killings over the last decade after people sang Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” at karaoke bars. What is it about this particular song that would send someone into a murderous rage? Also… Is this notable? Or do people get killed at the drop of a hat in the Philippines anyway?

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I know I mentioned back in December that I was training for a half marathon. That was on January 10th. So in true jiglet dot net style, I’m only now reporting on it.

I didn’t have time to stretch in the beginning, because just like my last run, I was hanging out in a port-a-potty when the race started… I sprinted straight from the toilet over the starting line. Everyone wears running chips that register when going over the start and finish lines, so I could have slowed down a bit and stretched before beginning the race, but adrenaline got the best of me, and I didn’t want to be behind the pack… I would have definitely not paced myself in attempting to catch up with the rest of the runners.

Anyway, I really started hurting around the 11th or 12th mile of the run… I believe that this was due to my lack of stretching. I seriously considered stopping to stretch out because it felt like my knee was going to explode, but I was too close to the finish to stop. When the finish line became visible, the adrenaline became almost overwhelming, and I took off, passing a good 10 or so people. It felt awesome. The pic to the left was taken probably 10 seconds before the finish line, and I look like a robot or something, but you can tell I was really booking it.

My goal was to finish in under two hours, and I finished in 1:57:49, so I’m happy with that. My average pace was 8:59.2, and I came in 489/1056 in my gender (724/2442 overall). The reporting on my Nike+ is a little different, but that thing lies.

There is definitely something to be said for choosing the proper running music. I perfected my playlist over the course of several months during my training runs… Excerpts of Disco Biscuits jams provided the soundtrack for the majority of the half marathon, and they really kept me going.

I was pretty excited when someone sent me a link to a trailer for an upcoming Mega Man movie. You can see the trailer here.

A year of fail in review - There are some pretty ridiculous clips in this compilation. While watching it, I remembered back 3-4 years ago when I had hundreds of video clips (.mpg and .avi files) on my hard drive. People would upload them to directories and send them around on IRC and etc. I probably still have them all somewhere, but I’m sure every single one of them has made it’s way onto YouTube by now.

By the way, I thought that the Mega Man trailer was pretty awful. The trailer itself was boring and uneventful, so imagine watching the entire move… I had my hopes up, but I have zero desire to see that movie after watching that.

One last thing. Is this real? If so… I think I’m done with the internet for the day.

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1. “Alice (Underground)” – Avril Lavigne
2. “The Poison” – The All-American Rejects
3. “The Technicolor Phase” – Owl City
4. “Her Name Is Alice” – Shinedown
5. “Painting Flowers” - All Time Low
6. “Where’s My Angel” - Metro Station
7. “Strange”- Tokio Hotel and Kerli
8. “Follow Me Down” - 3OH!3 featuring Neon Hitch
9. “Very Good Advice” - Robert Smith
10. “In Transit” - Mark Hoppus with Pete Wentz
11. “Welcome to Mystery” - Plain White T’s
12. “Tea Party” - Kerli
13. “The Lobster Quadrille” - Franz Ferdinand
14. “Running Out of Time” - Motion City Soundtrack
15. “Fell Down a Hole” - Wolfmother
16. “White Rabbit”- Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

How did this happen? I realize that often times, soundtracks are just used as promotional tools for movies, and most of these tracks probably (hopefully) won’t appear in the movie… But come on. Why didn’t Danny Elfman take care of scoring the movie? Some real doo-doo brown right here.

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I’m no Apple fanboy (I don’t even own an iPhone), but this thing sounds pretty cool.

The iPad was born out of the question “everyone uses a laptop and/or a smartphone - is there room for a third category device in the middle?” So far, the things that stood out to me about the iPad thus far (coverage is continuing):

• Multi-touch integration, “super responsive and super precise”
• On-screen keyboard. “It’s a dream to type on”
• Music… Itunes store integration
• View movies and TV shows in HD
• Half an inch thin, weighs 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook on the market. 9.7 inch IPS display
• Powered by Apple’s A4 chip - “it screams”. 1GHz
• 16, 32, or 64 GB of flash storage.
• 802.11n, WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector
• “We’ve been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life… It’s got a month of standby life…”
• Compatible with all existing App Store apps. New SDK out today including iPad tools.
• An ebook reader (”iBooks”) that looks to rival the functionality of the Kindle.

“At $499 a lot of people can afford an iPad. 16GB is our base model. For 32GB it’s $100 more, and for $100 more than that you get $64GB. The 3G models cost another $130.”

The WiFi models will be shipping in 60 days, and the WiFi + 3G models in 90.

Update: Watching the launch was kind of cool, but once the hype wore off, I realized that I really don’t need one of these. My money would be spent much better elsewhere. If you’re up in the air about the iPad, check out Gizmodo’s 8 things that suck about the iPad.

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