First, he skydives. Now, Hawkins has his wife’s name tattooed on the inside of his lip. Man, he is one crazy mofo. If you are in Vegas and considering ink, be sure to check out Austin’s Ink. Hawkins loves ‘em.
Recently on the IDGA Writer’s SIG, someone asked for help selecting an office chair. As one might expect, the Aeron from Herman Miller was a fan fave. I used to have one at work and I loved it, so I offered my two cents. Here it is my post, which has been edited and expanded for additional clarity.
I’ll echo the sentiment about the Aeron. Everyone had them at my old dotcom. Yes, they were extravagant. Having said that, I agree with Sherri/Joel about the cost-benefit ratio. Like most dotcommers, we worked very, very long hours and I firmly believe that the Aeron helped prevent general fatigue, repetitive use injury and sickness brought on by exhaustion. The Aerons were so beloved, that most employees made special arrangements to move them to their new offices when our company was assimilated Borg-style by a large telco.
When setting up my home office, I looked the Aeron and the Lifeform but elected to go the cheaper route. Before coming to my senses, I went through three “cheap” Office Depot chairs ($70-$150 each). Each of them broke down relatively quickly and I experienced significant back, shoulder and forearm pain from the hard plastic arms … even through the so-called padding.
After three failures, and over $300 wasted, I chose the Lifeform because it uses memory foam, which greatly improved my sleep patterns when my wife and I invested in a memory foam mattress. Over a year later, back, shoulder and forearm pain are all gone and my productivity is way up. Still, I would have bought the Aeron if I had it to do over. Ergonomically, the Lifeform is champ. However, the build quality is not as tight as the Aeron and the breathable mesh of the Aeron is something I greatly miss.
Bottom line, when people spend as much time in their chairs as writers, programmers and artists do … it is foolish to scrimp on the one tool they will use more than any other. An Aeron is an investment … in you or in your employees. If the price point scares you away from the investment, check eBay. Aerons can always be found there for far less than market prices.
NOTE: I bought the cheaper, fabric covered variety of the LifeForm, which is apparently not available online.
Read the caption closely. Now, chuckle like an eighth grader. 
For more sophomoric chuckles, check out the Top 15 Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels from YesButNoButYes.
As previously mentioned here, here and here, Carlos Mencia has been accused of ripping off material from other comics. Again, the evidence mounts as it is pretty clear that Mencia used a classic Bill Cosby bit as the foundation for one of his.
At some level, all art is derivative. The thing that strikes me about this situation is that Mencia denies it so vehemently. I think he would be better served to acknowledge that some of his material is an homage to older comedians and point people to the source. This way everyone wins. Will he man up? It remains to be seen.
Incidentally, when I saw Ralphie May perform on the Last Comic Standing tour here in Vegas, he did a bit which I recall thinking May had lifted from Mencia. With the mounting evidence against Mencia, I am now inclined to think it worked the other way around. I’ll have to do some digging and find the bit because I do not recall it exactly, just the “what a ripoff” thought.
This one claims he rips off Sam Kinison. I see the connection, but think it is a little weaker than the other accusations.
Finally, Pauly Shore sounds off on the whole situation.
Longer explanation: This morning we received a note to our security mailing address about unusual and highly exploitable code in WordPress. The issue was investigated, and it appeared that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original code. We took the website down immediately to investigate what happened.
It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution.
The note says it all. If you run Wordpress 2.1.1, click here to upgrade ASAP.