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OH HOLY CRAP THIS IS HORRIB— waaaaaaiiiiiit a minute…

I’d like to take this moment to be (as far as I can tell) the first to point out that

8 March 2003

is a hoax or publicity stunt.

Scroll down and look at the photo of the fire-damaged negatives he retrieved from the camera.

Now wonder to yourself why there were developed negatives in a camera.

My favorite parts are the ones like these:

“I’d been told by a friend that if the cursor ever moved by itself and there was a ‘whirring’ from the hard-drive, they were the sure signs that indicated someone was hacking into my computer.”

“My eyes bugged with surprise as I heard a ‘clicking’ sound. Someone was tapping my phone.”

Just think how distrubing it must be to be being monitored by an Classified Central Processing Agency which has the technology to monitor all of the search engines in the world, yet can’t hack a Windows box or tap a phone without tipping off the person being monitored.

(Also, would you be surprised to learn that all of the “geographic” sites are the same server?)

And lastly,

“That was why they had tried to destroy the photographic evidence in the first place.”

I hope when I get involved with a Classified Central Processing Agency, their operatives are as strategic as the villain in a James Bond film, like these ones are.

AGENT 99, YOU MUST ENSURE NO-ONE GETS THE FILM INSIDE THIS CAMERA. WELL, UM, WE TOOK THE PICTURES AND DON’T WANT ANYONE TO SEE THEM. YEAH, OK, I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT EITHER. NOW SHUT UP AND DESTROY THEM! REPORT BACK WHEN THE CAMERA IS HALF-MELTED AND THROWN OFF A CLIFF NEAR A TRAIL. WE WOULDN’T WANT ANYONE TO FIND IT.

Rich

10 responses to “OH HOLY CRAP THIS IS HORRIB— waaaaaaiiiiiit a minute…”

  1. Now wonder to yourself why there were developed negatives in a camera.

    Quote: “Overwhelmed with curiosity and excited anticipation, I immediately took the camera to my darkroom… Most of the film was badly damaged, parts of it having disintegrated due to extreme heat. I developed the strips of film that were salvageable.”

    Now, I’m not saying that this guy isn’t on the far side of sane by any means, and I’m sure it’s either a hoax or a psychoceramic THIS SMUDGE ON THE LENS LOOKS LIKE A MARTIAN sort of thing. What an odd fellow.

  3. Another update:

    This started showing up on Usenet from “two” people on Oct 16. I say “two” because both happen to be posting to a dozen newsgroups related to conspiracies from the same dialup in Melbourne. One is a hotmail account, Jimbo50055@hotmail.com, which is bogus:

    rcpt to:<jimbo50055@hotmail.com>
550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable

    The other is gintilas@siginysis.com,
    and siginysis.com is registered with the same registrar (godaddy.com) that 8march2003.com
    is registered with.

    George Gintilas of Melbourne started posting to Usenet about it on the 16th as himself,
    and on the same day decided he should post about it from a Hotmail account. George has
    never posted to Usenet before from either of the addresses he posted with on the 16th, although
    he knows about Usenet, having posted there occasionally in ’97 and ’00.
    He’s a new-ager with a “Radix” consultancy. See his website.

    My money’s on George.

  4. Bits that make me think of Australia, or at least of Not American:

    • “Trekking”
    • “Holidays” (thanks Substitute)
    • “forest inferno”
    • “pieces of the jigsaw”
    • “my four-wheel drive”
    • He has separate sites for China/Japan/HK and for Australia. I don’t think a
      North American would think to split those up into separate areas, but if you’re
      in Australia, you know that its connectivity to the rest of the world can
      leave something to be desired.

    (That said, all of the regional domains are pointing at the same machine in the
    United States, which is also where 8march2003.net points. Cybersquatting crackpots?
    He missed .org, which is a porn site.)

  5. I noticed that too. Wlonk-o must have been too engrossed with the rest of the madness to catch that bit.

    Now I’ll say right now that I’ve never developed on my own any piece of film that’s been exposed to significant heat (or any film at all; I’m doing paper now). I do know a bit about the chemistry involved, and I’m thinking an exposed piece of film with the latent image of an adorable puppy sitting on a gorgeous model’s lap could easily become something confusing and horrifying if you burn the camera and throw it off a cliff.

    And speaking of which, making a camera body light-tight isn’t a trivial matter, and damaging it like that is a good way to introduce light leaks. If undeveloped film were still in there and it’d been out for quite some time, wouldn’t the pictures be fogged beyond recognition?

  9. No, the negatives were burned after developing. And if he enlarged them himself (and not on a 1-hour
    photo shop’s printer), then he’d cut them into singles for enlarging, not into strips. Even if he did that
    after taking the picture (doubtful — why cut them like a machine, and *then* like a manual darkroom),
    I think you’d have a hard time getting those in an enlarger.

    And remember, there’s a reason your film comes with a temperature range on the box. :-)