March 02, 2003

Homeland Alert 1.2.5

Since reviewing this application would be excruciatingly boring, I’ve decided to present this list of what actions I plan to take at each alert level. Note that this table assumes a steadily increasing alert level.

Lethargic:

  • Stage a play featuring my collection of miniature plastic dogs entitled In Which Sparky Learns the World is Not Like a Swiss Cheese.
  • Listen to my collection of “smooth rock” records.
  • Teach myself to dance the Crazy Old Man.

Low:

  • Dig nuclear bomb shelter—it’s quiet, too quiet.
  • Line walls of shelter with glass bottled root beer—I hear it gets pretty warm in a nuclear blast, so I’ll need something to drink.
  • Listen to my “slightly rough rock” records.

Jitter:

  • Perform my imitation of a power sander.
  • Overdose on Maalox.
  • Spend quality time on the john regretting hasty action.

Guarded:

  • Shower, avoiding all Australian soap products, since they are party to the Global Monkey Conspiracy.
  • Take a nap.
  • Purchase a watchdog. Rename to Butch from the decidedly un-doglike Jinglepants.

Elevated:

  • Kick watchdog.
  • Avoid elevators like the plague. Easy, since I live in a shanty behind the Maalox factory.
  • Make pancakes, without blueberries.
  • Go to hospital for lacerations to groin area.

High:

  • Make pancakes, with blueberries.
  • Kick dog out onto street in emotionally charged situation involving Ivory dish soap.
  • Take bath, once again avoiding Australian soap products.

Severe:

  • Make pancakes, with chocolate chips and syrup.
  • Catapult a rock at a passing plane.
  • Rethink the advisability of stationing trebuchet on a hill overlooking the shanty.
  • Take dog back in. It really wasn’t his fault, since I had beef jerky in my shirt pocket.

Extreme:

  • Frantically rebuild house.
  • Consume the pancakes previously stockpiled. If an alert level has been skipped, make and consume skipped pancake types.
  • Consume remaining Maalox, to flush pancakes.

Overdrive:

  • Realize that I forgot to rebuild the bathroom. Begin saving urine to extinguish any conflagration.
  • This level calls for extreme bread product consumption. Kick waffle production into overdrive (notice the clever use of “extreme” and “overdrive” here).
  • Shit a brick of half-digested pancake on the floor.
  • Listen to Michael Franks tape Barefoot on the Beach, until the tape loopeth 1,000 times or the doomsday cometh.

ExitToShell() Software, for a product lacking any real purpose, especially with its several-day lag in actually updating the status, I give you a 9.4. Don’t spend it all at once.

Download Homeland Alert

Posted by jan at March 2, 2003 10:17 PM | TrackBack
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Posted by: Website on March 3, 2003 01:09 AM

Oh my god! That must mean..

Damn commie bastards!

Posted by: Thuros M. on March 3, 2003 04:47 AM

Cool! From their website by way of Google's cache http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:rwyW5MG9vaoC:www.exittoshell.com/products/index.shtml+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Homeland Alert displays the current Homeland Security Advisory status for the entire country in the menu bar. Homeland Alert has a high CPU load sensitivity and may not correctly display the results from time to time or may fail to work on some internet connections.

Posted by: Johan Kool on March 3, 2003 10:45 AM

"Line walls of shelter with glass bottled root beer?I hear it gets pretty warm in a nuclear blast, so I?ll need something to drink."

Good call. FYI glass bottles are less likely to absorb radioisotopic-emissions, you wouldn't want any metallic cans around to soak up that sweet fallout.

"If you increase the shielding around a radiation source, it will decrease your exposure. For example, if you stand out in the rain without an umbrella, you will get wet. But, if you use an umbrella to shield you from the rain, you will remain dry and protected." -- http://www.epa.gov/radiation/students/what.html#protection

Posted by: Double Worsted on March 3, 2003 08:51 PM

Yeah, I was bummed, the last two terror alert changes took days to be reflected. If it updated within a half hour or something, it might be worth something.

Posted by: pudge on March 4, 2003 07:00 AM

I havent downloaded it and looked at the code, but Im guessing it "updates" from something on his own website... and he is just lazy about keeping up with the current alert level.

Posted by: on March 4, 2003 08:39 AM

This whole "Homeland Alert" thing is a joke invented by the government in conjunction with the media to scare Americans into agreeing with the Bush Administration's power grabs and increase sales in the slumping duct tape market.

Everyone is desensitized to it anyways, considering that once a week we get a warning that "something is supposed to happen somewhere, but we don't know what or where. just keep an eye out for anything suspicous".

Posted by: Aaron Faby on March 4, 2003 12:41 PM

Or you could just check our DefCon status via the Amazing Closet Cam, which also provides a chillingly accurate representation of George W's brain:

http://www.spiny.com/closet/

The Amazing Closet Cam is for lovers, not haters.

Posted by: lurking darkly on March 4, 2003 05:17 PM

Alright! I suggested to PVT that they highlight this POS. :-)

Yeah, it does check the website to update its status; it gets its value from this URL:

http://www.exittoshell.com/cgi-bin/homeland_alert2.pl

Of course, the company appears to have been so humiliated by their appearance on PVT that they have closed their doors.

(Just kidding ... they were on their way out already; I remember this from prior drafts.)

Posted by: Mike Harris on March 4, 2003 09:26 PM

Thanks for the laugh I need one =)

Posted by: on March 4, 2003 10:36 PM
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