If you know me at all, you'll know that I'm an avid reader of BoingBoing (except when they briefly flirted with shumping the jark by making 75%-90% of their posts on anagram transit maps). I find it even more useful now, with my plans to become a System Lord. I'd figure that if anybody would be full of obscure bits of trivia and wacky facts, it'd be a System Lord. However, BoingBoing appears to be understaffed at present. They don't actually make any money on their site, so they can't exactly afford to hire anybody else. From what I can tell, they appear to have one staff member who does nothing except click Reload every three seconds on The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that BoingBoing shouldn't be posting these. It's not like anagram transit maps, where anybody who is 1338 enough could make them. No, Laugh-Out-Loud Cats are both a snapshot of cartoon history and a priceless source of humor. I mean, where else could you possibly find pictures of cats saying things like, "Invisible sandwich" or "Visible sandwich?" I'll tell you where. Only behind paywalls.

The problem, as I see it, is that this person is wasting his or her time, and BoingBoing is missing important news. You have probably all heard about the guy who was tasered by the cops after asking John Kerry a question. BoingBoing reported it here. What they missed because they were reloading Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, though, was the story of Emily Delafield, a African-American woman in a wheelchair who was tasered to death by the police. (Thanks to mshades for this tip!) This simply should not happen. What about more mouth-watering photos of long horses and other delicious animals? Technology exists that can click Reload every three seconds for us, freeing BoingBoing's staff to find cogerent news stories like this.

If you don't use LJ, you may not be aware of our amazing (but free and open-source) technology called feeds. Using this amazing LJ technology, for example, science_blogs is set up to automatically post updates from ScienceBlogs. I'm pretty sure that, for less than it would cost to hire someone to click Reload, BoingBoing could get some kind of LJ-like feed system set up to automatically post each and every issue of Laugh-Out-Loud Cats.

What about it, BoingBoing? I'm sure LiveJournal's tech people would be willing to help you out with this.

Boing Boing is still posting bunches of remixed transit maps. I guess there's not much else to report since Sony and other people have stopped writing bad DRM software and big corporations have stopped trying to tell their customers what to do with stuff they've purchased.

I got into an online argument with a fanatical opponent of free software and copyleft, and I completely ripped him a new one. My arguments were far more cogerent than anything he could muster, and it was just a bloodbath. I sent the transcript to Boing Boing, since they used to be interested in this kind of thing. I was totally prepared to be rejected, since plenty of people rip anti-free-software people new ones every day. It's not really new or exciting, and Boing Boing specialized in new and exciting things. What I wasn't prepared for was the automated reply I got just a few minutes later. It informed me that my submission did not mention "remixed," "transit map," or "anagram," so it wasn't really likely to be a "wonderful thing." It also explained that the Boing Boing staff might eventually get around to reviewing it, but that they were busy recovering from a bout of laughter after reading the remix of LA's Red Line. "`Modest Nuns Tavern!' That's the funniest thing *EVER*!!!1!一!" the message said.

I did some digging on this and I'm going to make sure that everyone out there knows how to make one of these amazing hot new anagram remixes of a transit map or other photo. You'd think it's hard, judging from the attention it is getting on Boing Boing, but with the handy Miss Kitty's Guide to Making Amazing Hot New Anagram Remixes of a Transit Map or Other Photo Guide, you'll be making them faster than the Boing Boing staff can fall out of their chairs with laughter. Here's how you do it.

1. Find an image of a transit map. You might be saying, "No way can I find such a thing! I see why these anagram maps are so hot!" Well, with this handy Google hack, you can find bunches of them. Go to this link: http://images.google.com/images?q=subway+map&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images and you are set. Thank goodness for Google hacks.
   
2. Now go ahead and download that image. Odds are good that it will be in a format that some kind of graphics editing software can handle. If not, you may need to use your mad hacking zkills to convert it into a format that graphics editing software can handle.
   
3. Once you have it in a format that graphics editing software can handle, fire up your graphics editing software. If you don't have any, you can probably find it through yet another Google hack: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=graphics+editing+software&btnG=Search.
   
4. Depending on how much memory (known to people with mad hacking szills as "REM") your graphics editing software takes up, you might want to swap this step with the one above. Anyhow, you'll need an anagram generator. Again, you might say, "But Miss Kitty, don't anagram generators sell for thousands of dollars? Is making amazingly hot anagram maps really worth thousands of dollars?" Well, that might have been true in the bad old days before Google hacking. Now the more perceptive of you will know what I'm going to suggest at this point. Yep, it's another Google hack, and it's so good that pretty soon even the ultra-rich will be throwing out whole drawers full of old anagram generators. However, I'm not going to just post a link to it. That's not fair to you. You should learn to hack Google yourself. Improve your mad Google hacking skzlls! Here's how:
   1. Go to www.google.com
      
   2. Click on the text entry field (to the left of the button that says "Search!").
      
   3. Use your keyboard or other text entry device to enter the text "anagram generator" (with or without the quotation marks).
      
   4. Press the "Enter" or "Return" or some such key on your text entry device or use the mouse to click the "Search!" button to the right of the text entry field.
      
   5. Revel in awe of your mad Google hacking skizzs.
   
   
5. Look at the names on the transit map and type some of them into your newly found anagram generator. Maybe write them down: make a table in which one column is "Words Originally on the Map" and "Anagrams of Those Words" and fill it with words originally on the map and anagrams of those words. You don't need to put much thought into this step. The anagrams you come up with don't really have to be that funny. "Ah jerk thumps" is just as likely to get you Boing-Boinged as the more carefully crafted humor of "Ah jerks thump."
   
6. Use your graphics editing software to cut and paste the letters of the words on the map so that they look like anagrams for those words.
   
7. Submit your map to Boing Boing. How? Well, you might expect this to involve a Google hack. Not so! Instead, you can rely on my mad Boing Boing hacking zzzzzs: behold the instructions!
   
8. Wallow in your new-found Internet fame.