Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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According to BrandChannel.com's readers' poll, the corporate brands with the most global impact in 2004:
1. Apple
2. Google
3. IKEA
4. Starbucks
5. Al Jazeera
6. Mini
7. Coca-Cola
8. Virgin
9. eBay
10. Nokia
They also have breakdowns by region, which vary pretty widely. Click the 'View Chart Results' box in the sidebar for the complete rankings. I'm a long-time Apple devotee, but the fact that they have come in first or second four years running makes me suspect some serious ballot-stuffing, hmm? Still, Al Jazeera at #5 is pretty surprising.
That's not the shape I thought of first, but let's go with spoon anyhow.
Yahoo News: Pope Loses Battle With Peace-Symbol Dove
The pontiff was addressing thousands of young people from an Italian Catholic organization who marked January as a month to promote peace. He was flanked at his studio window by a pair of 8-year-olds — a boy and girl — who urged the world to remember children who live in countries wracked by war.
John Paul prayed that young people, "who so desire peace, become courageous and tenacious builders" of peace. Each of the children at his side sent a dove flying, but the white birds, perhaps alarmed by Rome's unusual cold spell, almost immediately darted back into his studio.
Laughing, the 84-year-old ailing pontiff seemed determined to set the symbol free. He grabbed one of the doves as an aide returned the birds to the window sill, and he shooed it out the window and playfully patted the boy on the head. After a quick flight over the square, the bird quickly fluttered inside again as the pope grinned.
I've been trying to figure out the context of this photograph for quite some time now, and frankly, I'm more confused than when I first saw it. I can't even figure out whether it's work-safe or not.
Update: More than a few commentors say definitely not safe for work so, you know, worksurfers beware.
Update 2: And thanks to KJ, the picture is explained.
Update 3 (12Oct2007): The image is gone, after a request by the subjects of the photograph.
Drug warriors, take note.
Arrests for possession of cannabis fell by a third in the first year since it was downgraded to a Class C drug, official Home Office figures show. An estimated 199,000 police hours were saved, according to data from 26 of the 42 English and Welsh police forces. Cannabis was reclassified so that officers could target hard drugs. Minister Caroline Flint said new crime survey figures also showed that fears for a rise in cannabis use among young people were "wholly unfounded."
You can't tell me we aren't descended from a common ancestor.
A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say. The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates. Maybe that's like you or me buying People magazine.
The research, which will be detailed in the March issue of Current Biology, gets more interesting. The scientists actually had to pay these guys, in the form of extra juice, to get them to look at images of lower-ranking monkeys.
Interesting, though here's the kicker: "Platt and his colleagues [at Duke University] want to see how people will perform in a similar experiment." You need a scientific experiment to see whether men will pay money to look at women's bottoms? You do have the internet there at Duke, right?
I suppose when somebody says they are posting a link just so I can blog it, I should blog it.
A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it. Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.
He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out. But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through. He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.
And verily didst he pee his way from underneath the avalanche. I'm floored at the thought of drinking thirty liters of beer. You know how drunks are often unhurt in car accidents because they are so loose? Chalk up another one for alcoholism.
I gotta agree with Ogged, who gotsta agree with Ben Hammersley:
This kicks ass. (dial-up warning: 5.8 MB video)
I can't really explain why this song appeals to me so much, but I'll be singing it all week after listening to it for much longer than it probably deserved. I found it via Chaos Digest, where comparisons were made to Pavement, Oingo Boingo, Pere Ubu (mine), and King Crimson.
Badegerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadger...
When conservative columnist Armstrong Williams got busted accepting cash from the Bush administration in exchange for publicly supporting the No Child Left Behind Act, he intimated that plenty more columnists were prostituting themselves to the administration as well. Maggie Gallagher was the next one exposed, receiving over $40K from the Department of Health and Human Services. Here's number three.
One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, "Ethics & Religion," appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.
Somehow I don't think the count is going to stop at three on this.
Update (10:30 pm): On a related note, no evidence exists that Talon News' Jeff Gannon is on the payola train, but for a guy who condemned his fellow journalists for simply repeating "the talking points provided them from the opposition," he's been doing a hell of a lot of word for word transcription of the official GOP talking points.
You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a tender...
An Oklahoma senator hopes to revive cockfighting in the state by putting tiny boxing gloves on the roosters instead of razors. The Oklahoma legislature outlawed the blood sport in 2002 because of its cruelty to the roosters, which are slashed and pecked to death while human spectators bet on the outcome.
But State Sen. Frank Shurden, a Democrat from Henryetta and a long-time defender of cockfighting, said the ban had wiped out a $100-million business. To try to revive it, he has proposed that roosters wear little boxing gloves attached to their spurs, as well as lightweight, chicken-sized vests configured with electronic sensors to record hits and help keep score.
I smell synergy.
Amazing Feats of Armless People.
You really have to hand it to them. But, you know, not if they're standing. Shouldn't the Second Amendment cover this?
Of all the places to get drunk and lecherous...
A New Hampshire judge who was suspended for groping five women at a conference on sexual assault and domestic violence resigned on Wednesday, the same day a committee recommended he not get his job back.
An Attorney General also resigned after an investigation was launched into whether he had inappropriately touched a woman on the dance floor during late-night partying at the same conference. Apparently, these sexual assault workshops are lousy places to try to pick up chicks.
Japanese guy in giant monkey cosplay suit tries unsuccessfully to rob a convenience store, but does manage to get away (link has security cam photo). (via freakgirl)
"I am on a mission to eat these dumplings."
Volkswagen plans to sue the makers of the hilarious fake VW carbomber ad. If they can figure out who and where they are. Which they can't.
Your name could be worse.
...or are you just here for your mama? Oh man, but I live for stories like this.
A Sullivan County [Tennessee] judge threw out a case between a preacher and three feuding sisters and warned them to leave one another alone. All four faced assault charges that stemmed from a family scuffle and claims of being possessed by demons.
"This is the most ridiculous case I have ever seen in the court system," General Sessions Judge Bill Watson said Friday. "You people should be ashamed."
With a lead like that, you know I'm hooked. Note the ages of the folks involved here. God, I love the South in all its glorious grotesquery.
Reba Storey, 46, alleged the Rev. Clarence "June" Love, 83, called her demon-possessed and twisted her arm when he threw her out of church Jan. 9. Storey and her sister Mary Steele, 64, showed up a the Assemblies of Jesus Church wearing blue jeans to see their 88-year-old mother, Maude Yates. The church that has a total of four members forbids women to wear pants.
"He said, 'You're not wearing pants in my church, you demon,'" Storey said. "I said, 'I'm so glad I serve a God who can work through my pants.'" Love's girlfriend and a sister to the two women, 68-year-old Rosa Harrison, said the women grabbed their mother, shoved everyone else out of the way and tried to carry her out the door.
"You're not wearing pants in my church, you demon." I used to hear that a lot growing up. However, it was generally expressed in a surprised manner rather than as a command.
Love said he plans to return to his church, where he says the sisters have driven away the congregation. The preacher wouldn't say whether he still thought Storey was possessed. [...] Storey said she plans to continue her case in civil court. "Do I look like I have a demon?" she said. "That's defamation of character."
Sweet.
I'm a transvestite cuttlefish and I'll be your back door cephalopod. I eat more chicken than any man ever seen.
Cuttlefish may be the most talented quick-change artists in the animal kingdom. Single males can adopt a sophisticated feminine disguise to help them get near females that are guarded by large males. Now researchers have proved that the mimics, who can change their appearance instantaneously, are successfully mating with such females.
Each year, during the winter, thousands of giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama) gather on the southern coast of the continent to mate. The competition between males for the females is intense. On average, four males fight over each female, but the ratio can be as high as eleven to one. The winner of each challenge, usually a large male, guards his mate closely. But smaller males still manage to secure about a third of all matings. There is a range of tactics from which a 'sneaker' male can choose. The options include waiting until the consort male is busy fending off a challenge; meeting his mate under a rock as she prepares to lay an egg; and disguising oneself as an female.
In order to appear female, the male mimic must change color, hide some of his arms, and change the shape of the others. Marine biologists at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory watched five mimics off the coast off Australia and recorded 62 cross-dressing approaches, of which 30 were successful at deceiving the guardian male. DNA fingerprinting showed two of the mimics managed to impregnate a female.
The story includes a link to video of the hot gender-bending action, but I couldn't really make much sense of what was happening. Still, free cuttlefish fetish porn.
From Fugging It Up:
I question the choice of whomever dressed Laura Bush for an inaugural gala:
Any inaugural occasion would seem to demand something more formal than what is basically an extremely oversized shirt. The horrendous backdrop coupled with her Little Ma On The Prairie getup gives the impression that the President randomly showed up at a production of Little Mary Sunshine, and wandered on-stage during the curtain call to congratulate the cast.
G'night, Not-Jenna. G'night, Not-Not-Jenna. G'night, Paw. G'night Not-Jenna...
"Scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have identified a new cellular oncogene essential for the development of cancer. [...] The investigators have named the gene POKEMON (for POK Erythroid Myeloid Ontogenic factor)."
Because I have now received the link from three different sources...
Natural phenomena named after Frank Zappa.
Destined to replace the mudshark in your mythology, bitches.
Eric Doeringer's bong sculptures (water pipe or smoke filtration device sculptures, if you're standing in the store, naturally) are both aesthetically pleasing and functional.
Don't do drugs, kids. (wink wink)
(via blort)
Holy moly. Hide the other babies before he eats them.
"Ademilton, a 16.7 pound (7.57 kilogram) baby boy is seen at the Albert Sabin Maternity Hospital in Salvador, 1,450 kilometers 900 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, in the state of Bahia, on Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005. Francisca Ramos dos Santos, 38, gave birth to the healthy boy named Ademilton on Tuesday. He was the largest baby born at the Albert Sabin Maternity Hospital in its 12-year history, the hospital said. 'Obviously the baby was born by Caesarean section,' hospital director Rita Leal said."
Via BitchPhD, behold: Twinkies sushi.
See also:
I am in awe. I must cleanse my mind.
Ah, finally home after four days of sleeping (sort of) in a vinyl recliner and eating hospital cafeteria food. The burrito monkey was a mere four pounds, thirteen ounces when we left, since all newborns lose weight at first. The doctors believe there may have been some issue with the umbilical cord that kept him from getting a full load of blood while he was indoors. Smallest baby I've ever held - very little fat anywhere on him - but with very, very long feet. Everything is functioning fine, he's eating well, all systems seem go.
Thanks for all the kind words in the comments from the last post. I got to use dial-up internet for the first time in ages while I was at the hospital and it was a painfully slow experience, so click the extended entry link below for pictures.
I'm just home long enough to change clothes, so I'll be brief. Apostropher v2.1, Noah Joseph Barnes, arrived at 7:48 yesterday morning by emergency C-section. He's one tiny little monkey at five pounds, five ounces, but aside from having to keep him all wrapped up like a burrito to keep his temperature up, he seems to be fine. The missus is doing great.
Update (7:57 pm): Wherein questions from the comments are answered in one fell swoop.
Norbizness: Was "V354 Cephei" ever in the running as a first name?
No, but if he had been a girl, KY Cygni was a shoo-in.
Dug Steen: While version 1.0 (codename: Russ) has managed to survive for longer than anyone expected, I am beginning to find that it runs slowly and crashes more than it should.
Feed it more bacon.
Froz Gobo: If you eat that child I'm coming back over there to kick your ass.
If I eat a kid, it will be his older brother. This one would be a waste. Once you took out the giblets, he wouldn't fill a biscuit.
VARepublicMan: Who gets the 2 a.m. feedings?
My breasts are strictly for display purposes only.
Astronomers from MIT and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have seen evidence of hot iron gas riding a ripple in spacetime around a black hole. This spacetime wave, if confirmed, would represent a new phenomenon that goes beyond Einstein's general relativity. These observations, presented Jan. 10 at the 205th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego, confirm one important theory about how a black hole's extreme gravity can stretch light. The data also paint an intriguing image of how a spinning black hole can drag the very fabric of space around with it, creating a choppy spacetime sea that distorts everything falling into the black hole.
The article goes on to explain the highly technical observation process, but while I can vaguely follow it, my eyes glazed over all the same. So instead, I decided to look at pretty pictures and luckily for me, the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii just debuted their online image gallery with some very pretty pictures indeed.
Meanwhile, what was once the largest known star just got bumped down to fourth place, behind bloated red giants KW Sagitarri, V354 Cephei and KY Cygni. All of the new record holders are in our Milky Way and about 1500 times the diameter of our Sun, or roughly seven times larger than Earth's solar orbit.
The closer we look, the stranger it all gets.
Images returned by NASA's Cassini spacecraft cameras during a New Year's Eve flyby of Saturn's moon Iapetus (eye-APP-eh-tuss) show startling surface features that are fueling heated scientific discussions about their origin. One of these features is a long narrow ridge that lies almost exactly on the equator of Iapetus, bisects its entire dark hemisphere and reaches 20 kilometers high (12 miles). It extends over 1,300 kilometers (808 miles) from side to side, along its midsection. No other moon in the solar system has such a striking geological feature. In places, the ridge is comprised of mountains. In height, they rival Olympus Mons on Mars, approximately three times the height of Mt. Everest, which is surprising for such a small body as Iapetus. Mars is nearly five times the size of Iapetus. [...]
Iapetus is a two-toned moon. The leading hemisphere is as dark as a freshly-tarred street, and the white, trailing hemisphere resembles freshly-fallen snow. The flyby images, which revealed a region of Iapetus never before seen, show feathery-looking black streaks at the boundary between dark and bright hemispheres that indicate dark material has fallen onto Iapetus. Opinions differ as to whether this dark material originated from within or outside Iapetus. The images also show craters near this boundary with bright walls facing towards the pole and dark walls facing towards the equator.
Cassini's next close encounter with Iapetus will occur in September 2007. The resolution of images from that flyby should be 100 times better than the ones currently being analyzed. The hope is that the increased detail may shed light on Iapetus' amazing features and the question of whether it has been volcanically active in the past.
(via BitchPhD)
Remember the endless refrain of "It's better than it was under Saddam" from the various hawk factions? Remember how even the folks opposed to the war felt the need to trot it out prophylactically? Well guess what: for the vast majority of Iraqis, life isn't better than it was under Saddam. In fact, as this article by Dahr Jamail makes heartbreakingly clear, it's much, much worse.
Think about that for a minute: one of the most loathesome dictators on Earth, in a country crippled by war and sanctions, and we've managed to make the day-to-day life of most Iraqis starkly worse than that. There's a certain perverse impressiveness there.
Now that Iraq to the Future, Part III: the Salvador Option has begun arriving in theaters near you, make sure you do not miss Tim Dunlop's Cliff Notes version of Episodes One and Two. Really - don't miss it, or else the title of this post makes no sense whatsoever. You may as well catch Billmon's condensed version of the prequel as well, though it certainly isn't nearly as funny. Then again, it's hard, hard work making the mass murder of innocent civilians by your own government humorous.
Back during the endless, teary farewell to Ronald Reagan, I was taken to task by some for being insufficiently reverent in his hour of saintly ascension. Well, go click Billmon's link and the links therein and read the sort of ugliness we were not just turning a blind eye to, but actively training and funding. I'm not a Christian, so I don't have to forgive, see? If I believed in Hell, I'd believe Ronnie was screaming his ass off right now, waiting for John Negroponte and Otto Reich and George W. Bush to come join him. Fortunately for them all, if my suspicions are correct, he's instead just slowly turning into dust, with the same blissful disregard of others' lives by which he lived his own.
It's the same distaste I carry for Colin Powell, who inexplicably still manages to give a chubby to nearly all of the otherwise reasonable people I know. Again, since I'm not a Christian, I'm under no obligation to forgive him for his long, long history of complicity in horrific human rights abuses. Oh, I have a suspicion how he has managed to escape the same vilification the rest of that amoral crowd of hypocritical moralizers usually receives, but I guess that's probably best left unspoken.
I've been keeping it light here recently because, well, it's been a really bleak period for America these past few months and years and we all need a laugh. But, you know, they bring these f*cking vampires like Negroponte back into the government and then he crawls over the moat and starts enacting the same death squad schemes he got famous for the first time around and after a while I just get disgusted with this entire country. At least, anyhow, the half of you that voted for that prissy, half-witted, trust fund screw-up with his ridiculously fake southern accent and even more ridiculously fake religious pretensions.
It's not as though all this was some sort of secret. Either you knew better or you're a zen master of willful ignorance. I can see getting fooled once; but this last time around, you just didn't have an excuse. Huff and puff all you like: at least I didn't vote for torture and death squads and I'm one of those immoral secular humanists that rolls his eyes when you blather on about some mythical "culture of life" that ends as soon as the umbilical cord is cut. Half of this country would use week-old pigshit as body wash if it had the Stars and Stripes and a photo of a bloody Jim Cavaziel slapped on the package. I should start lining up the venture capital.
So now I've blown off the steam I needed to release and you can feel free to use the comments to tell me how I'm alienating middle America and hurting the Democratic Party. Fill 'em right on up.
IPS police and Marion County child protection workers are investigating an incident involving two first-graders who officials said were caught trying to have sex Wednesday at an Eastside school. District officials worried that the incident may have signaled that at least one of the 6-year-olds had been abused before. A child psychologist acknowledged that possibility but said the behavior simply could have been an attempt to copy something seen on a video or cable TV.
"One of them may be a victim," said Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Duncan Pat Pritchett. "We're waiting for the conclusion of the two investigations. At that age, that's learned behavior."
The names of the two children have not been made public. But the girl and boy, who were released to their parents, received five-day suspensions and could be booted from classes at School 69 for the rest of the year.
Having been a six-year-old about 30 years ago and having raised one kid through that age, I know that what looks like scarily precocious sexual behavior can certainly happen without sexual abuse to spur it. Kids are natural scientists, y'know, and without much actual detail to rely on here, it's hard to say whether this is really cause for serious concern or a nervous administration overreacting to a game of doctor. I vividly remember getting busted for a similar infraction at right about six years old myself, and in retrospect I'm sure it looked horribly incriminating when the girl's parents walked in. Believe you me, they freaked right on out. Nonetheless, being two knuckles deep in her rear end honestly was nothing more than my best re-creation of getting a shot, as I'd always been facing away when getting them myself and, really, it seemed the obvious place to put my hypodermic finger. I can recall quite clearly being completely flummoxed at the resulting uproar. So who knows?
On the other hand, maybe the Indianapolis Public Schools should look into renaming this school. Seems like that's just asking for trouble.
Atrios notes that Bush now holds the title as the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs during a four-year term.
End of 2000: 132,441,000 jobs
End of 2004: 132,266,000 jobs
During that period, the population has grown by an estimated 12-13 million people.
And we do mean all of 'em.
Representative John Cosgrove has recently introduced a bill to the Virginia legislature that will make it a misdemeanor crime for any woman who's experienced a miscarriage - at any stage of gestation - to fail to report that miscarriage to local law enforcement personnel within twelve hours.
Our friend Maura is trying to call attention to this important issue; she's written about the bill here. As she explains, the information a woman will be forced to provide to law enforcement will include (but will not be limited to) her social security number, her race, her educational background, her marital status, the extent of her prenatal care, and her full reproductive history.
Right.
To the cops.
This is insanity. Have a miscarriage, be required to call the police and give them all your personal details to be recorded in a database for, well, who really knows? Go ahead - take a wild guess as to which party Rep. Cosgrove belongs.
Update (1/8, 4:20 pm): Cosgrove has responded to the site that initially broke this story, and his letter is worth reading. The important paragraphs:
The requirement for the twelve hour notification timeframe comes from the method that a coroner would use to determine if the child had been born alive or dead. After twelve hours, it becomes next to impossible to determine if the child was alive due to decomposition gasses that build up in the body.
My bill in no way intends that a woman who suffers a miscarriage should be charged for not notifying authorities. The bill in no way mentions miscarriages, only deliveries. However, after discussing the bill again with our legislative services lawyers, I have decided to include language that will define the bill to apply only to those babies that are claimed to have been stillborn and that are abandoned as stated above.
Via Fark, I see that Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch has released their winners for this year's most ridiculous product warning disclaimers. Starting with the runners-up:
Congratulations to all the contestants. You're all winners in my book. Now, for our grand prize winner...
But, but, how else am I going to get the middle of my back clean? That's not silly, that's just counter-logical. The thermometer is demanding a recount.
Chances are I won't post here again until Sunday; I've got a weekend function for which I have actually rented a tuxedo and I'm scrambling to get a bunch of stuff finished at work so that I don't have to come in here during breaks in the festivities. Furthermore, all this is contingent upon the missus not calling up and saying, "You know, I'm pretty sure I'm starting to have a baby now so maybe you should come take me to the hospital, Slappy." Perhaps Froz will have something for you in the interim.
So, I leave you with one link, and if you only read one thing on the internet today, this should be it.
Something something girlfriend gave me a boner something...
Remember when getting your girlfriend's name tattooed wasn't old fashioned? These days, you could get talked into undergoing a biopsy in which you and your partner would have to donate a sample of your bone cells, the tissues then get harvested in a lab, grown until a mass of bone has developed and then used as material for a ring.
Well, maybe you could get talked into a bone biopsy, but I'm pretty sure I'd pass. I just carry my ex-girlfriend's head in a backpack instead. Guess I'm old-fashioned like that.
Well, that clears things up.
Angels Baseball Monday announced the team has changed its official name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. This change is effective January 3, 2005. The inclusion of Los Angeles reflects the original expansion name awarded by Major League Baseball in December 1960 and again returns the Angels as Major League Baseball's American League representative in the Greater Los Angeles territory that Major League Baseball expects the team to serve.
You are expected to serve, Angels. Applying this nomenclature to the NFL would also yield the New York Giants of New Jersey, the New York Jets of New Jersey, and the Washington Redskins of Landover.
So, The Poor Man is trying to swear off Alan Keyes' Renew America site, the home of such luminaries as Kaye Grogan and Jen "the media won't tell you that Laci Peterson was murdered by Satanists" Schroder, but that's a bit like swearing you won't stare at the car wreck as you drive by. The columnists are, of course, delightfully batty, but the real red meat comes in the open forums. And when I say red meat, I mean utterly incoherent word salad. Take it away, Rev. Dr. R. Peter Johnson of North Platte, Nebraska!
RenewAmerica Forum: Isn't it a domino theory instead of a conspiracy theory? Isn't it one drugged profoundly challenged poor soul stalking, stiffing, stuffing and eventually killing another? Isn't it the rampant exploiting of innocent people pharmed unto slavery? Doesn't it originate with one awful event where life's energy is taken from someone who was temporarily unprotected? Despite increasingly enforced codes of silence, this topic which surfaced especially during the 1960's is important to discuss within nonviolently friendly circles today. While some fear there aren't sufficient beings in the world now to discuss what a conspiracy theory would be if one were to be formulated or which groups would qualify, your RenewAmerica Forum question is inviting. Thanks to the prevalence in past RenewAmerica Forum postings of what smacked of regressively assertive, mainstreamed, profoundly challenged contributors with their stolen unchanged rough drafts, there has been a dearth of pithy writings which could've helped avoid some of the recent disasterous stunts pulled around the universe. And, if "conspiracy theory" is a new people pharming drugs enforcing product line, then, please, excuse this instructive effort online rough draft.
Suh-weet. And that's only the second comment in the thread...
...Let me stand next to your fire.
Things you should not do at home: imitate Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival. A Greensburg man has suffered burns to his lower legs after telling police he was torching his guitar Wednesday. Police say David Kemerer set fire to his guitar in his apartment, and debris littering the floor also ignited.
And the wind cries, "Dumbass."
Again, points awarded for originality.
Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri failed to appear before a British court Tuesday, complaining his toe nails were too long and he could not walk. Abu Hamza, who is also wanted by the United States over 11 alleged offences, was charged by British police last year on 16 counts including one terror-related offence. He had been due to make an appearance via video-link from the high-security Belmarsh jail in London where he is being held.
"Hamza has physical difficulties. He is unable to walk. He has been perambulating barefoot around the prison," said defense lawyer Peter Hynes. Prosecutor Adina Ekiel added: "He is complaining that his toe nails are too long."
He can't walk, but he can perambulate like a pro. Color me skeptical that long toenails are too much for this guy to sit in front of a video camera.
I'm sure The Poor Man or Sadly, No will do the ritual disemboweling shortly, but in the meantime, I'll take the first whack. The lovely and talented Kaye Grogan (Kaye has many published poems, one published book, and has been featured in a popular woman's national magazine. She is currently working on two books for children. Her hobbies include photography and she has won photo contests all over the world.) has a new column where she attacks the issue of illegal immigration with her famed disregard for both basic logic and the rules of written English. Hey, lady, if you can't bother to learn the language...
We hear about how lax and unstable our borders are — breeding grounds for terrorists if you will, and yet, so far, beyond a bunch of congressmen throwing their hands up in the air — no one wants to address the issue logically, much less implement a viable solution.
Stand back. Kaye's about to address the issue logically. Our borders are unstable? Funny, aside from adding Alaska and Hawaii almost 50 years ago, they've been remarkably stable since, oh, the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. Also, our borders are breeding grounds for terrorists. Very, very skinny terrorists.
Before we can deal with everybody and his brother wanting to come to America, there is going to have to be fewer incentives to make the transition so inviting to foreigners. Why not come to America where fairy tales do come true for everybody except American hard workers?
Everybody loves fairy tales, after all.
Next come all the freebies and perks from the brow sweaters who seem to be sojourners in their own country when it comes to their own "pathetic" benefits. And because some employers don't want to pay decent wages to American workers, they create the "taking candy away from a baby" syndrome when they hire immigrants who work for cheaper wages in cotton fields, and assembly lines.
This word, sojourner, I'm not sure it means what you think it means and I'm confused by the sarcasm-implying quotes around pathetic. Also, I can't make heads or tails out of the "taking candy away from a baby" syndrome as it relates to picking cotton. But moving along...
Our jobs are moving out-of-the-country so fast, they take on the appearance of the Road Runner. Companies go overseas or to Mexico to employ cheap labor, which starts a domino effect. Who wants to makes five dollars a day, when they can make five dollars (or more) an hour, for the same job in America?
So the Mexicans are pouring over the border to take jobs from hard-working Americans while we're moving all our jobs to Mexico? Ha ha! Stupid Mexicans. Guess we showed them. Now if we just seal the border, they won't be able to get back across to Mexico to find work. How's that for thinking outside the box? Pwned!
Frankly speaking, it's not a laughing matter when we can't seem to secure our borders whether it's intentional or just plain neglect. Makes one wonder how on earth the United States has been able to win wars in the past — when people in power cannot seem to secure our own borders. What other conclusions can most people come up with other than our borders are too lax for ulterior motives? Ulterior motives can mean a lot of things, but in conjunction with such favoritism being shown to foreigners, the motives are suspect at the very least.
That paragraph is so beautifully incoherent, it defies comment. It could stand on its own as the perfect shining example of Groganosity, except for this next one.
The president is of the mind set — if foreign workers are documented and have ID cards, somehow somebody can keep up with where these people are at all times. This is like an illusionary mirage in the desert. Keeping up with Americans is not an easy task, so how on earth can foreigners who cross the borders (at will) be tracked? Scientists can track down, and keep up with a bovine that crossed the Canadian border into the United States for months, but they can't keep up with illegal immigrants. Maybe all immigrants should have a cow awaiting them when they cross the border and have the cow shackled to their wrist. It would be very difficult to be discreet and hide with an object as big as a cow following along behind you, especially if you go into a china shop.
I think I'm in love.
If you have some free time to spare, you should check out this collection of short films by Australian animators. Some really amazing, if unsettlingly creepy, works here.
I had forgotten about it until wasmyth reminded me in the comments, but the first post on this site went up two years ago today. 2148 posts, 7087 comments, and one completely lame election later, here we are, older and sillier in every respect. I guess that's some kind of accomplishment, though of what sort is a bit obscure. Good on us anyhow. Hopefully we've made you laugh, think, and squirm uncomfortably in the process.
Thanks for reading and thanks especially to everyone who's commented, emailed, linked, and all those other things good friends who have never met do.
Over at The American Street, we ran an open poetry contest for works built around Donald Rumsfeld's infamous quote: "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have." For the purposes of the contest, the phrase was shortened to: "You go to war with what you have." I served as one of the panel of judges, and let me tell you, it was no easy task choosing three, because so many entries were really first rate. I'm not saying that perfunctorily, either. I'm very particular about my poetry. The full run of entries can be read here (56 entries split into 7 posts):
Group 1, Group 2, Group 3, Group 4, Group 5, Group 6, Group 7.
The three winners are here, and they are fantastic. The grand prize winner is one of the most powerful pieces of verse I've read in quite some time. I'd also like to give a shout out to two very short pieces that didn't make the cut. The first is by cleek, who can be found in comment threads all over blogland.
Into the morgue, a truism strode
Nobody turned to look
"You go to war with what you have!"
Eyes stayed closed, hands cold
And julia penned the first haiku that ever sent chills up my spine.
first you go to war
with what you have and then
they blow pieces off
Still giving me chills. Congratulations to everybody involved and to TAS honcho Kevin Hayden for the stellar idea. As difficult as it was narrowing the field to three selections, the process was a great pleasure.
And I say, it's alright.
That Colored Fella has the diagnostic scale, and apparently I'm the poster child for the disease, with a score so far off the top of the scale that I stopped calculating after a couple months' worth of archives. I was alerted to the new classification of my condition by shoveldog, who will be sitting in the circle with me at group therapy time. Get your kum ba ya-yas out, mi hermano.
Those of you who have met me in the real world are familiar with my slavish devotion to bacon. Left to my own devices (which, for obvious reasons, I seldom am), I will eat superhuman amounts of the stuff, a tendency that likely accounts for my svelte, cat-like physique and my unblemished, porcelain skin. However, even I, the Grand Mufti of Hickory Smoke, learned a few things from Bacon Magazine's list of little-known bacon facts. For example, I'll bet you didn't know it could give you psychic powers, did you? Don't bother answering. I already know what you're going to say. I just wasn't sure how I knew.
Surprisingly, Bacon Magazine's Christmas cookie recipes contain absolutely no bacon, though I suspect that is merely a typographical oversight. After all, nothing says "Merry Christmas" like bacon-wrapped sugar cookies. Mmmmm. So just order the cookbooks already. I'm down with OPB.
(via All Night Surfing)
As if it wasn't already bad enough working for McDonald's, now you have to clean up this.
Armed with a high-pressure hose and a bucket of octopi, hundreds of protestors in this Mediterranean town pelted a McDonalds restaurant due to open this week with the slimy seafood. Between 300 and 500 people gathered on the banks of the Sete canal, across from the fast-food outlet, playing music and yelling anti-junk-food slogans across the water, as police barred them from reaching the restaurant itself. Aiming the hose across the water, they catapulted fresh octopi -- a local delicacy, known here as the "pouffre" -- towards the town's first McDonalds, which had been set to open on Saturday.
An octopus cannon. Well, they certainly earn points for originality. I have a picture in my head of several hundred people on a riverbank, erupting in French-accented cheers every time an octopus goes hurtling across the river and ruptures against the golden arches. It's like a scene from a Monty Python movie.
Ashlee Simpson and her sister, Jessica, can both belch the alphabet.
"When I burp the alphabet, my favourite letter is G."
Mm-hmm. This is what it takes to get your own show on MTV?
There’s a faith to gardening. No action moreso than putting a seed in dirt lays a consciousness vulnerable to the accusation of foolish faith. It is only the lore of those more knowledgeable, or of those who have simply come before, on which this most critical of human activities relies. With the proper tending, including the approximately perfect dose of that most precious resource, dihydrogen monoxide, the dry, hard, seemingly dead discard of consumption that is “the seed” can defy untrained expectations and germinate, setting in motion the magic of growth that supports all life on Earth.
And for the management of this precious resource, in order to facilitate agricultural production and to dictate economic development patterns, enormous sums of ‘money’ – that calculus of human and, far less accurately, ecological, productive worth – are spent.
How coincidental that the water started running the same day 2005 did.
I saw Bear Creek come to life today. No, no, the creek’s been named far longer than my dog has; although, he didn’t hesitate adopting it as his own. Late yesterday afternoon I saw a small rapids filling up the 60-year-old, dug-out pond upstream of the house with Sierra Nevada water and by noon today access to the other side was restricted to those willing to drench their pantaloons or their fur. You can take your guess who was.
The faith of the eastern gardener is compounded when he moves out west. For I know it will take years to overcome the inconsistency that the most fertile farmland in the world, cultivated more productively than any other in human history, receives not an inch of rain all summer long. With the exception of a few significant rivers, even the arteries of that planetary circulatory system, “the hydrologic cycle,” dry up for better than 6 months out of the year.
Where all water on the planet’s surface disappears annually, it takes an ambitious variety of faith to entertain embarking on economic endeavor, much less agricultural investment. I think that flavor of blind faith in the future, necessitated by annual desertification, is intricately entwined with the boom and bust cycle that has characterized California from the gold rush through the dotcom exuberance of one hundred fifty years later.
So once again, like every winter (with a few notable exceptions, just to keep us on our toes), water dramatically flowed down across the Sierra Foothills this New Year’s weekend. It filled reservoirs, replenished wells, spread fish, and freed all manner of wildlife from recluse, like the pair of Mallard (I think) Duck that Bear flushed from a downed Oak crown as we walked along the waterway.
The excitement of it all lifted our spirits. Yet the justification for our jaunt today, this secular Sabbath of New Year’s Day, the retrieval of the daily paper at our mailbox by the most upstream portion of the creek, congealed one thought in my mind: water not only brings life, but death as well. The faith that water will provide for bounty yet stay within its bounds when doing so is apparently a false one.
But yet: those less fortunate in the world offer their fair share for disaster relief – and this is demonstrated by the stuffed jar of change destined for the Red Cross by the cash register at the gas station in the poorest neighborhood on the outskirts of Stockton, CA (posterchild of post 90s bubble urban decay – unemployment rate > 20%).
No relief effort is up to efficiently coping with the scale of this disaster, but that does not absolve those who have resources at their disposal from doing more than they by all rights ought to. Here’s a call, because “the ownership society” will likely be too busy valiantly defending their monetary rights against inefficiency.
This disaster ranks right up there with the worst in history, not to mention the worst of this century. Of what, exactly, are you a citizen? Who, and by what reason, are your compatriots? What are you made of?
Give.
