Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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MDMA: it's tumor-lickin' good!
The illegal drug Ecstasy and antidepressants have the potential to halt the growth of cancer cells, according to researchers at the University of Birmingham in England. In laboratory tests, the scientists found that amphetamine derivatives such as Ecstasy and weight loss pills, along with antidepressants such as Prozac, blocked cancer growth in more than half of 17 lymphoma (white blood cell cancer) samples. Cancer growth was slowed in nine of the 17 samples when they were exposed to antidepressants and in 11 of the 17 samples when they were exposed to the amphetamine derivatives, BBC News reported.
My momma warned me that drugs might stunt my growth. Much better if they stunt the growth of my growths. The longer I look at the word "growth," the less it looks like a real word. (via Dr. Menlo)
My Movable Type installation is acting squirrely this morning. If you try to post a comment, you are likely to get a 500 server error. Reloading the main page sometimes makes the comment show up, sometimes not. I don't have time to troubleshoot it right now, so I apologize ahead of time if you encounter problems.
Leaving tomorrow for a long weekend in the NC mountains with my boys and their cousins, so another short period of postlessness this way comes. Quick hits in the meantime...
Think all the talk of American theocrats is hyperbole? Guess again. A Christian (and GOP, of course) judge in Indiana tells Wiccan parents they aren't allowed to teach it to their child.
"The history of comedy is the history of ancient peoples, rich in culture and learning, hitting each other in the balls."
"The source of the world's biggest sperm bank may soon run dry if Danish authorities decide to tax donors, Cryos International Sperm Bank said on Wednesday." Perhaps they could work out an arrangement with this NC (former) dentist who seems to have plenty extra and now probably needs the money. (registration-free link here, but the other one contains much more detail).
Darth Vader is busy busy busy these days.
Monkey see, monkey Hindu.
West Virginia sometimes seems like another planet. Then sometimes other planets seem like West Virginia.
Juan Cole: "Sometimes You Are Just Screwed"
Mark Longmire's romance novel cover remixes. Very, very funny, and the reader-submitted ones may be even funnier.
And finally, to Congressman Jones (NC-3): Nice of you to finally notice, you halfwit.
Prophet Yahweh put out a press release on Monday.
Prophet Yahweh was blessed to discover the lost, ancient art of summoning UFOs and spaceships on-demand. There is a difference between UFOs and spaceships. UFOs are usually small flying objects: glowing orbs, metallic spheres, satellite-type flying machines, etc. And, their flight patterns suggest that they are not of this world. But, spaceships are large futuristic vehicles that are clearly designed to carry passengers in like you see in the movies.
Since 1979, more than 1,500 UFOs and/or spaceships have appeared on Prophet Yahweh's signal before witnesses or at unawares. During this time, he was performing his summons privately with only those close to him as witnesses. But, starting June 1st until July 15th (45 days) Prophet is going public by opening up to the news media. He will demonstrate his ability to call down UFOs and spaceships, on-demand, for them to film and photograph.
Prophet is in direct telephatic contact with his space being friends. They have revealed that they will send UFOs as soon as Prophet starts asking for them to appear. Also, before the 45 day summoning period has ended, a spaceship will descend and sit in the skies over Las Vegas on Prophet's signal. The spaceship will hover in the sky, not far from Nellis Air Force base, for almost two days. All Las Vegans will be able to see it, day and night, before it goes back up into space.
Well now, that's going out on a limb, isn't it? Sign up at his website (where he explains that "[m]y name is Prophet Yahweh, and it means: 'prophet of YAHWEH' ") to see the streaming broadcasts of his summonings for the low, low price of $7.95 a month! And remember his three covenants with YAHWEH:
1. I promised to use the same rules the holy prophets abided by to summoned sightings from YAHWEH.
2. I have entered into a holy covenant with YAHWEH that's sealed by a vow of poverty.
As time went on, it dawned on me that all sightings, ever filmed, should belong to all people on earth and not to any single individual! Because of this, I made the following third covenant to the most holy and wonderful YAHWEH as follows:
3. I promised YAHWEH that if He considered my cause, and used me to make His UFOs and spaceships known to the world, that I would immediately donate all videos, He allows me to film, to the "Public Domain" and make them "Royalty Free."
Something tells me that Prophet Yahweh is going to disappear on May 31.
In response to all the right-wing blather about obscure college professor Ward Churchill being some leading representative of the Democratic Party (despite being practically unknown before his "little Eichmanns" comment), I offer you this:
Churchill, who was once registered as a Libertarian, told his class in February that there was no real choice between "Republicrats and Democrans." Records show he has not voted since 1992.
"I still identify as a Libertarian," he said last week. "But I'm getting ready to register as a Republican."
Churchill's class was about conflicts between the FBI and American Indians. The lecture that day in February covered an alleged plot to frame anarchists for domestic bombings after World War I, and ended with Democratic patriarch Joseph Kennedy Sr. advocating Adolf Hitler and selling whiskey illegally during the Prohibition.
Hmmm. It must really suck when reality intrudes on your strawman-burning party.
I'm not a big Star Wars fanboy, though I like giant cgi explosion spectacles as much as the next person. I'll go see the last installment once the lines die down and I'll enjoy it for what it is. I have, however, been enjoying reading the usual humorless right-wing suspects denouncing the film as an intergalactic Fahrenheit 9/11. The crème de la crème was penned by the notoriously homophobic, right-wing, science fiction writer, Orson Scott Card (a North Carolinian, I'm sorry to admit). Card apparently believes that the Jedi are a bunch of atheistic, aristocratic liberal elites - clutch the pearls! - who "have way too much power."
If you haven't read it yet, you should, just to get a flavor of the overwrought projection that passes for conservative "thought" in 21st century America. I'll not bother dissecting it, since I'm already late to this game and others have done a fine job of it so far. Lance Mannion and Jaquandor have a couple of the best explanations of how Card and others manage to miss, oh, pretty much every point that could be missed. However, for the real "sheesh" kabobbing, we turn to PZ Myers:
I've liked a few of Card's books, but his commentaries convince me that I would not want to be in the same room with the guy, not without an emergency chemical shower and the possibility of a rapid, rocket assisted exit. This time, he is irate that people would actually like the Jedi religion.
It's one thing to put your faith in a religion founded by a real person who claimed divine revelation, but it's something else entirely to have, as the scripture of your religion, a storyline that you know was made up by a very nonprophetic human being.
Wha...? Your irony meters may have been spared if you didn't already know that Card is devoutly religious. Your meters are glowing heaps of radioactive slag right now if you knew that Card is a devout Mormon. [link added -'r]
Ha! See, Orson, with the exception of the random oddballs, the folks claiming Jedi as their religion on census forms generally do so as a joke, or at least fully cognizant that it's a movie. Swallowing Joseph Smith's bizarro "revelations," though, takes a very special sort of suspension of basic logic disbelief. I mean, once you get past the squeaky clean exterior, the LDS just believe the damnedest things and not, let's be clear, in any sort of kitschy, tongue-in-cheek manner.
Anyhow, the cherry atop Card's Oblivious Sundae is this:
It's a terrible thing, I suppose, for a writer to invent a religion and then discover that he and all his friends are on the wrong side of it.
You should ask that pacifist hippie Jesus about that one.
We do grow 'em crazy down here.
An 86-year-old woman has been sent to jail after police said she called 911 dispatchers 20 times in a little more than a half-hour to complain about a pizza parlor. Dorothy Densmore remained in jail Tuesday charged with misusing the 911 system, a jail spokeswoman said.
She told dispatchers Sunday that a local pizza shop refused to deliver a pie to her south Charlotte apartment, said Officer Mandy Giannini, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police spokeswoman. She also complained that someone at the shop called her a "crazy old coot," Giannini said. Densmore wanted them arrested. Instead, police came to arrest her, and she resisted, Giannini said.
It's unusual for someone to face charges for nonemergency calls, Giannini said. But on Sunday, Densmore kept calling 911, even after she was told to stop, Giannini said. When an officer arrived at her apartment, the 5-foot-tall, 98-pound woman attacked him, Giannini said. Densmore scratched him, kicked and bit his hand, she said.
And as it turns out, this ain't the first time, either.
In March 2004, police said she called 911 about 10 times after she was asked to stop, a police report says. She then threatened to hit the officer with a chair when he came to arrest her, the report states.
You have to love Southern gentility and manners. Of course, while dealing with crazy old coots is occasionally dangerous, it's usually entertaining (at least at first) and mostly familiar 'round here. Up in New Hampshire, on the other hand, they've graduated from crazy old coots to full-fledged zombie attacks. I'm not certain whether or not this represents progress.
Just down the road at NC State, researchers are working on designing gritty, bad-assed plants to grow on Mars.
Take the cold tolerance of bacteria that thrive in arctic ice, add the ultraviolet resistance of tomato plants growing high in the Andes mountains, and combine with an ordinary plant. What do you get? A tough plant "pioneer" that can grow in Martian soil. [...] The plants would probably be housed in a greenhouse on a Martian base, because no known forms of life can survive direct exposure to the Martian surface, with its extremely cold, thin air and sterilizing radiation. Even then, conditions in a Martian greenhouse would be beyond what ordinary plants could stand. During the day, the plants would have to endure high levels of solar ultraviolet radiation, because the thin Martian atmosphere has no ozone to block it like the Earth's atmosphere does. At night, temperatures would drop well below freezing. Also, the Martian soil is poor in the mineral nutrients necessary for plants to thrive.
The team uses the techniques of gene splicing to remove useful genes from extremophiles and add them to plants. [...] To prove their concept, the team took a gene from "Pyrococcus furiosus," a microbe that lives in the scalding water issuing from deep sea vents, and inserted it into a tobacco cells. The gene, "superoxide reductase," removes toxic oxygen atoms and molecules that are generated in organisms under stress. The gene was successfully incorporated into the tobacco cells and functioned without harming them. The team plans to transform plants with genes for cold tolerance as the next step in their research.
In other news, the Mars Global Surveyor, orbiting Mars since 1997, snapped a blurry photo of the Mars Odyssey craft (in orbit since 2001), marking the first time one spacecraft orbiting a foreign planet has taken a picture of another. Down on the surface, while the Opportunity rover has been stuck in the sand for about a month, moving less than a foot, the Spirit rover "has finally found the kind of geology you can really sink your teeth into."
Warning: Using The Force™ may result in severe injuries.
Two Star Wars fans are in a critical condition in hospital after apparently trying to make light sabres by filling fluorescent light tubes with petrol. A man, aged 20, and a girl of 17 are believed to have been filming a mock duel when they poured fuel into two glass tubes and lit it. The pair were rushed to hospital after one of the devices exploded in woodland at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.
Okay, how about we pour gasoline into thin glass tubes, light the gas, then use the tubes to duel? How cool would that look? What could possibly go wrong?
The brain trust has been transferred to a specialist burns unit.
I'm back from vacation and what a lovely vacation it was. A solid week of wine-fueled idling on the sound side of Rodanthe (third house down from the top left, specifically). We arrived early Saturday afternoon to note that between ourselves and the two other cars already there (carrying one person each), we had five cases of wine for the week. The house was completely swank -- more than any beach house I'd stayed in previously -- reminding me again just how much I'd like to be stinking rich. Sure looks nice from here. One of our crowd noted that, deprived of an internet connection, I actually sleep quite a lot, though I suspect cracking a bottle every day at noon helps at least as much.
So, I'm back to the paying gig now and while I'd like to promise new hilarity and insight, I have some serious catching up to do, so I'm not likely to write much. Every time I say that, however, bursts of posts tend to follow in rapid succession, so your mileage may vary. I only just got to post this now because I returned to find my website non-functional due to the dreaded 'Resource Limit Exceeded', server admin speak for "comment spammers on your site nearly took down our server." So, a new round of anti-spam measures are in place now: the scripts are re-named, the comments link will not open a pop-up window but will go to the individual post with comments instead, and you'll need to preview before you can post a comment. I stopped short of requiring TypeKey registration, but that could be next if the assault continues.
Until I get caught up (or bored catching up), I'll leave you with Hufu - The Healthy Human Flesh Alternative for vegetarian cannibals. It's finger-lickin' good.
Anybody else find it odd to see a Confederate flag in this milieu? I realize that Hawaii is well south of the Mason-Dixon line, but still. Most self-identified "Rebs" I've known weren't exactly Thoreau-style spiritual retreaters.
Shorter Michael Medved: Grown men having sex with 13-year-old girls is less worthy of condemnation than belonging to the Democratic Party.
Also, this.
People in Henderson are talking about the massive sculpture of a woman's legs, spread open on Welcome Avenue. At first glance, it looks more like something you'd find at a strip club, instead of a quiet neighborhood.
A backhoe contractor, Ricky Pearce poured concrete into hand-drawn molds to create the 40-ton, 17-foot-high legs. Then, he lifted them into place with a crane. Complete with some landscaped foliage, strategically placed, the display is making some folks chuckle, and others shake their heads in disgust.
"The project took about three years," Pearce said. "I was inspired by Marilyn Monroe's legs, with the skirt blowing."
Really? Compare and contrast. I can sorta see it, I suppose. To add to the general hilarity, the sculpture sits between two churches. On Welcome Avenue. See if you can spot the non sequitur in the following quote.
Pearce said he doesn't think there's anything in the sculpture a kid shouldn't see.
"If they learned a little bit more about this and stayed away from drugs, they'd be better off," Pearce said. He also sculpted Marilyn Monroe's high heel shoes, but said they don't fit the legs. They are located not too far away on land that Pearce rents out.
There is simply no way to spin this as good news.
An unchastened insurgency sowed devastation across Iraq Wednesday as experts here said the country is either on the verge of civil war or already in the middle of it. In the course of the day: Four car bombs detonated in Baghdad; a man wearing explosives at an army recruitment center in Hawija, north of Baghdad, blew himself and many others up; a car bomb exploded in a marketplace in Tikrit, north of Baghdad; and the country's largest fertilizer plant was heavily damaged by a bomb in the usually quiet southern city of Basra. Meanwhile, U.S. Marines were winding up a remarkable pitched battle against surprisingly well-equipped and determined insurgents on Iraq's western border. Some 76 Iraqis were reported killed and more than 120 wounded in the one day of violence.
With security experts reporting that no major road in the country was safe to travel, some Iraq specialists speculated that the Sunni insurgency was effectively encircling the capital and trying to cut it off from the north, south and west, where there are entrenched Sunni communities. East of Baghdad is a mostly unpopulated desert bordering on Iran.
I recommend you read the whole article. The only question left now is whether the civil war has just begun or has been underway for some time. I take no pleasure in saying "we told you so," but we told you so.
I constantly heard arguments leading up to and during the invasion that if we didn't remove Hussein, then he would just stay in power until he died, to be replaced by one of his sons. I think the latter is false: Qusay was an ineffectual drunk and Udai was hated and arguably psychopathic. The idea that either of them could hold power for any amount of time is questionable at best. The death or fall of Saddam (and I don't think lifelong rule was in any way guaranteed, either) would likely have set off a series of palace coups and an ugly civil war, which is, of course, where Iraq is probably headed now, no matter what we do.
But at least then we wouldn't be stuck in the middle of it, having claimed responsibility for the entire horrific affair. [...] We cannot control this situation. We will not control this situation. How many people - Americans and Iraqis - are we willing to sacrifice before we admit it?
A whopping lot, as it turns out. I wrote that in August 2003. It took a bit longer than I expected to really erupt, but now it has. No major road in the country is safe to travel. Daily civilian death tolls are in double or triple digits. Baghdad gets electricity for eight hours a day with the rest of the country lagging behind that. The oil industry is unable to get production back to pre-war levels. Reconstruction money has disappeared down black holes. And the DoD still has that $300 billion charge sitting on its MasterCard for this lovely state of affairs.
Here's your war, Mr. Bush, the one you proactively sought, the one for which you invented evidence, the one over which your salad-tossing sycophants demonized opponents as, at best, soft-headed and cowardly and at worst, traitorous and anti-American. And for the war supporters in both parties, please look at the carnage that you enabled. Look at the arc of violence (because we're nowhere near the top yet) and tell me how, two years after the fact, you were correct and Iraq is better off than it was before we invaded. Please, look me in the eyes and tell me, so I can decide whether you are hopelessly deluded, grossly dishonest, or just starkly amoral.
Male mosquitofish with bigger sex organs get more tail, but also tend to get eaten.
A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that for some fish species, females prefer males with larger sexual organs, and actually choose them for mating. That does not exclude males with an average-sized sex organ, called a gonopodium. These fish out-compete the larger-endowed males in a predator-laden environment because they have a faster burst speed than the males with larger genitalia, who lose out because the size of their organ slows them down, making them ripe for capture by larger fish.
In grade school, I was a slow runner and got beaten up a lot. Just sayin'.
Just when you think the Powerline clown brigade couldn't possibly get any more ridiculous, Hindrocket comes tumbling out of his little VW Bug to demonstrate just how badly your imagination is failing you.
It's great to see someone standing up for colonialism, especially British colonialism. I agree wholeheartedly with this observation, for example:
Had Britain had the courage to face down Gandhi and his rabble a few years longer, the tragedy that was the partititon of India might have been avoided.
Wow. Where does one even begin with a statement as blissfully ignorant of history as that? I'll tell you where you begin: here.
(via Ted Barlow)
An excellent examination of the oft-mistaken nature of imperative sentences in pornolinguistics, via (who else?) Ben Wolfson.
Exhibit #47623 on how the modern conservative movement is devolving into a Bush cult of personality: the Bushfish. I may just be old-fashioned, but some folks might consider this blasphemy. Some folks like, say, anybody who knows what the word means. Y'know, if that dim-witted, prissy, trust fund screw-up is the best your god can send as an emissary, it's time to start shopping for a new god (I'd suggest starting with Don). This one obviously hates you.
As long as we're on about fish, how 'bout casting your line and reeling in a half-million dollars worth of underwater hashish? Luck of the Irish, indeed.
Speaking of fishing, I leave Saturday morning for a week with old friends at the glorious Outer Banks and am trying to get everything wrapped up at work and at home before we depart. Therefore, while you may see the odd post here or there over the next couple of days, there's a good chance you won't. And you'll definitely not hear from me at all next week. So, if the next few days prove as busy as I suspect, I'll talk atcha ten days or so from now. In the meantime, don't press the big red button.
(thanks to Ben and Erik for the bushfish and hashfish links)
The first edition of Israeli Prime Minister bobblehead dolls is available now!
"DeLuco [...] was visibly embarassed as he told the five-member panel of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that his accuser's description of his erect penis simply doesn't match the facts."
Visualize music samples through history.
The strange case of Dick Dasen, the rich, conservative, Christian pillar of the community with an expensive habit involving teenaged methamphetamine addicts.
"Santolia said the remote town of 38,000 people has been unofficially celebrating Orgasm Day for years, but that the town's former mayor had vetoed a bill making it an official municipal holiday. The city council passed a law Saturday creating the holiday."
Nothing says "class" quite like this...
...except for Wookiee Boots.
The makers of Pfwoot, the world's first inflatable bong, warn users "do not sit on it in its upright position," and want to make clear that the 9"x4" tube is not a life-saving flotation device. How f***ing high do you have to get before either of those warnings are necessary?
And predictably, Hot Chick Stoner BBQ is sold out. I guess that will teach them to put it in the Children's DVD section.
The dumping of raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean was an issue one man wanted to take to an all-candidates meeting in the Victoria-Beacon Hill riding Friday morning, but the costumed crusader was not allowed in.
James Skwarok arrived dressed up as "Mr. Floatie," a two-metre tall turd representing POOP, People Opposed to Outfall Pollution. He wanted to highlight Victoria's daily dumping of 120 million litres of raw sewage, but when he was barred from the meeting he said the refusal left him "a little bummed out."
(via GristMill)
Our mysterious commentator "by at" (my brain invariably sees the moniker as "by at ch") points to another unfortunate logo in much the same vein as the Arlington Pediatric Center. Straight from the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, behold: The Institute of Oriental Studies.
Update: Wow. That didn't take long. Gone already. Thanks, browser cache!
They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but sometimes the title is all you need: "A woman identified by authorities as Denise Coke was arrested after a drug-sniffing dog discovered 33 pounds of cocaine in her vehicle."
When a church starts pulling crap like this, it's time to yank their tax-free status. I'm deadly serious about this. The second link up there contains contact info for NC's senators, the church, the IRS, and more. Especially if you are a fellow NC citizen, I encourage you as strongly as I possibly can to take the time this weekend to raise a polite stink about this. If, like me, you were raised Baptist, I'd encourage writing (again, politely) to the church itself.
In a time when millionaire lunatics like Pat Robertson get network news airtime to propose that government officials should only be allowed from his preferred faiths, sane people can't afford not to hit back.
Just before 5:00 pm yesterday, I got a call at work and the little Caller ID screen tells me it's the YMCA, where the junior apostropher goes for afterschool. I answer the phone and the woman on the other end tells me that "Keegan had an accident on the playground and hit his head." Sure, that happens. He's a pretty rough and tumble kid and I don't sweat scrapes and bruises. I ask if he's alright and she replies, "He's okay, but there's a lot of blood and we've called the paramedics to come look at him. We need you to come on down here as soon as you can."
Well now, "lot of blood" puts an odd shading on "okay" for me. The drive through Durham at rush hour is a frustrating series of red lights and assorted idiots clogging my roads. When I arrive at the Y, an ambulance is parked in front. Inside the building, he is indeed okay - obviously a bit shaken but calm. He looks pretty frightful though, hair on one side of his head sticky and matted, his jeans and shirt all spattered with blood. It isn't a bad cut but a scalp cut is always a pretty impressive show. The EMTs have pretty much stopped the bleeding with pressure, but it was obviously going to take a stitch or two to close.
So, off to Urgent Care where they shave a bit around it and put three metal staples in his head. Pretty Frankensteinish to look at, all in all, and I worried about him feeling self-conscious about it when he went to school this morning. I shouldn't have. Being an old man myself, I forgot that the consensus opinion of a bunch of second-graders would be: "Dude, that is awesome! Let me see it again!"
He asked tonight if he could keep the staples in permanently, because "that would be really, really cool." Great. I can see the future.
Some days it just seems like nothing goes right.
Franklin E. Carver, 67, of the 2700 block of Greenwood Lane, shot himself five times - three times in the head and twice in the chest - inside his home Wednesday, but none of the shots was immediately fatal, authorities said. Carver then got into his customized van and drove 10 minutes to the Clark Bridge, where he parked in the bicycle lane and jumped off the south side of the bridge as a frantic motorist called 911 from a cell phone. [...]
The Madison County coroner said Monday that preliminary autopsy results indicate Carver, who had several convictions, died of drowning. During the autopsy, performed Sunday, doctors pulled five small-caliber [.22] bullets that had lodged in Carver's body. The three shots to the head did not penetrate the skull, while one shot to the chest missed vital organs and the other struck the liver.
Stephen Colbert is getting his own show, but Dave Chapelle is AWOL.
Anybody else spot the resemblance?
Drugs: start before you stop.
Bacon Strips Bandages
"Ouch! That smarts! Treat your minor cuts, scrapes and scratches with the incredible healing power of a designer bandage from Accoutrements. And if a fancy bandage isn't enough to dry up your tears, how about a FREE TOY! Each comes in a 3-3/4" tall metal pocket tin and contains a small plastic trinket to help make even the ouchiest owies feel all better in no time. The 3" x 1" Bacon Strips are cut to look like small slabs of bacon. Fifteen per tin."
(thanks, Rick)
Here in North Kakalacky, we don't have to fake it.
WILMINGTON, NC (AP) -- A man who ordered a pint of frozen chocolate custard in a dessert shop got a nasty surprise inside -- a piece of severed finger lost by an employee in an accident. Unlike a recent incident at a Wendy's restaurant in California, no questions of truth have been raised about the finger served up to go at Kohl's Frozen Custard and found later at home by Clarence Stowers. Officials from the state departments of agriculture and labor went to the shop Monday, and the owner confirmed one of his employees lost part of a finger in an accident with a food-processing machine.
Unfortunately, every conceivable pun for this story was already used with that weak California pseudofingereating incident, leaving none for the genuine article just a few short weeks later. Thanks, poseurs. So instead, we'll just go straight to the horse's mouth.
"I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream ... to make it a treat. So I said, 'OK, well, I'll just put it in my mouth and get the ice cream off of it and see what it is.'" Stowers said he spit the object out, but still couldn't identify it. So he went to his kitchen, rinsed it off with water -- and "just started screaming." [...]
Shop owner Craig Thomas said the employee who lost the finger had dropped a bucket while working with a machine that dispenses the custard. He tried to catch the bucket when the accident occurred. Thomas told WWAY that several employees tried to help the injured worker, and that a drive-thru window attendant apparently scooped custard from the bucket into a pint before being told what had happened.
Update:This is the second finger that same custard-mixer has eaten, but only the first one to make it into a customer's mouth. The link includes a picture of the first creamy, frozen amputee, throwing a gang sign showing his missing fingertip in front of the store.
While national statistics show that people do lose fingertips on the job, they rarely do so in situations where they can get into food. Mark Zak, an economist with the U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that in 2003 the agency recorded 5,620 nonfatal fingertip amputations in private workplaces that resulted in the loss of at least one day of work. He said only 300 of those occurred at leisure and hospitality workplaces, a category that includes restaurants and ice cream parlors.
No specific statistics are available on how often amputated digits actually end up in the food supply, said Fred Blosser, a spokesman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
The burger arms race has begun.
Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, which lost its crown as the home of the world's biggest burger earlier this year, is now offering a new burger that weighs a whopping 15 pounds. Dubbed the Beer Barrel Belly Buster, the burger comes with 10.5 pounds of ground beef, 25 slices of cheese, a head of lettuce, three tomatoes, two onions, a cup-and-a-half each of mayonnaise, relish, ketchup, mustard and banana peppers - and a bun. It costs $30.
"It can feed a family of 10," said Denny Liegey Sr., the restaurant's owner.
Denny's Beer Barrel Pub had offered a 6-pound burger - with 5 pounds of toppings. In February, a 100-pound female college student became the first to eat the burger within the three-hour time limit. Kate Stelnick, of Princeton, N.J., was awarded a special certificate, a T-shirt and other prizes and Leigey picked up the $23.95 tab for the burger.
One month later, the Clinton Station Diner in Clinton, N.J., introduced a 12.5-pound burger dubbed Zeus. So Liegey responded, and the Belly Buster was born.
How big is a fifteen pound burger? Well, this is their previous champion (six pounds of beef), so adjust upwards accordingly. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the cup and a half of mayonnaise. For what it's worth, Oleg Zhornitskiy still holds the official record for eating mayonnaise, at four 32-ounce bowls in eight minutes. Bon appétit, y'all!
Update: The more I think about this, the less sense I can make of it: how is there no bacon on this burger? Be honest. Wouldn't you have been much, much more impressed if it were topped with 16 ounces of thick cut bacon strips? You're damn skippy you would be. Start writing your letters now, or else the terrorists will have won.
