Back in the 1980s, a few thousand devoted followers of a religious sect called the Church Universal and Triumphant relocated to a 32,000 acre Montana ranch and began preparing for the Apocalypse. Claire Prophet, their aptly-named leader, predicted a devastating Soviet missile attack on the United States set for April 23, 1990. Responding to these doomsday visions, the sect began stockpiling weapons and creating fallout shelters to survive the attacks. (The church still lives on, albeit in a mainstream form.)

Audio recordings from internal church services surfaced sometime during the late-1980s and were released on Faithway International’s Sounds of American Doomsday Cults Volume 14. Unfortunately, the album’s out of print and unavailable through Aquarius Records, but I have several of the tracks in MP3 format (thanks Daryl).

The highlight of the batch is the Invocation For Judgement Against And Destruction of Rock Music (3 MB MP3), a three-minute roster of ’80s rock and pop stars sentenced to eternal damnation for various crimes against God. You might recognize it from Negativland’s “Michael Jackson” off of Escape from Noise, which samples it heavily. Follow the weirdness with this partial transcript.

The new version of the MAME arcade emulator plays several popular games from the modern era (post-1995) of arcade gaming: Area 51, Cruis’n USA, Cruis’n World, Vicious Circle and Maximum Force. The catch? The Area 51, Vicious Circle and Maximum Force ROM files are over 520 megs each, and Cruis’n USA requires a 4Ghz+ CPU to run at full speed. (In other words, you’ll need a computer that runs at nearly twice the speed of today’s high-end desktop PCs.)

In Bangkok, “Waxy” apparently means “leather-clad briefcase cowboy.”

I updated my Dictionary Domain page, which lists all the remaining available .com, .org and .net domains named after dictionary words.

Domain squatters seem to be releasing plenty of great .org domains. Browsing the list of domains released in the last three months, you can find some gems in the .org namespace (at the bottom of the list). Some that caught my eye: gummy.org, soapy.org (for a SOAP site?), taunt.org, betcha.org (Long Bets, maybe?), desist.org (a cease-and-desist watchdog site?), dimwit.org, redial.org, lowbrow.org, shuteye.org, and upcoming.org. Leave a comment if you register any of them.

Wired published an article about tonight’s Memefest event, and mentions that Jeff Hermann will be bringing along his playable 3-foot-tall, 100 pound Gameboy. Take a look at the Game Man photo gallery for more.

If you’ve recovered from Thursday night’s Halloween celebrations (we’ll be at the West Hollywood block party), check out Friday evening’s Memefest at the C-Level media space in L.A.’s Chinatown district.

The conference/screening is focused on Internet fads and how/why they propagate, one of my favorite subjects. My close personal friend, freelance writer Dave Cassel of Destinyland and Gettingit, will be presenting along with several other net/art geeks. (I was originally scheduled to speak, but had to back out at the last minute because of prior obligations.) The C-Level guys are very entertaining, so you have my personal guarantee that it won’t suck.

For those that don’t live in Los Angeles, it’s Ambiguously Gay Satan!

Record label EMI is hiring a vice president for their Anti-Piracy division. (“P-P sharing”? Is that anything like watersports?) Via the Pho discussion list. Update: Anil points to a CTO job listing for Warner Music in New York, that “challenges current technology selection and rational” and evaluates “P2P warfare.” This means war!

We recently launched a new website at work, and an accompanying research library. It doesn’t validate yet, but I’m proud of it. Not just because of the clean design and improved usability, but because of the extremely powerful software that powers it: a practically-unknown content-management system called Bricolage. Update: eWeek published a glowing review of Bricolage.

The most compelling functionality of Linux over Windows, by far, is virtual desktop support. (For those unfamilar on the concept, it’s the ability to create multiple desktops with different windows on each.) When in Linux, I can keep separate desktops dedicated to e-mail, web surfing, and programming, and switch between them immediately.

Window managers for the Linux-based Gnome and KDE display thumbnails of the desktops, let you drag windows across desktops, and allow you to switch between desktops using either hotkeys or by moving the mouse across screen borders. As it turns out, only one of the 20+ third-party Windows utilities supports all of these features: Enable Virtual Desktop. Try to ignore the awful web design, and just download it. It costs $19.95 to register, but it’s worth it if you’re a Linux expatriate.

Or you could wait until Microsoft implements virtual desktops in Windows natively, which is right around the corner if these Windows Longhorn beta screenshots are to be believed (1, 2).

From this unusual page about the Simpsons in Thailand, check out the three censored screen grabs of Patty and Selma. In addition to banning smoking in most public places, the Thailand government mandated a ban on depictions of smoking on television. Still, California is stricter on one count: you can smoke in bars and nightclubs in Thailand. (Found while searching for this Simpsons sound clip.)