A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

"Don't you hate pants?"

Well you won't hate these, brought to you by Derek, friend of a friend. Why are they better than your run of the mill trousers? Because they're from the goddamn future:

If there's a more ringing voice of endorsement than Neil Diamond's, I can almost guarantee they'd also be pimping Future Pants.

How to impede in advertising

Introducing Honda's newest hatchback, the Belfry Fit:

Somebody's angling pretty hard for that Batman 3 product placement.

Maim Canada

Seriously though, WTF?

Another human foot encased in a running shoe has been found on the shores of British Columbia in Canada, the second this week and the sixth within a year.

Like four of the others it was a right foot, a police official said.

The foot was found near Campbell River on Vancouver Island and appeared to have been severed, a witness said.

Police, who are not speculating on this, are trying to determine the origins of the feet and whether they are any links between the discoveries.

Wow, more like British Colombia, right? Right?

Anyway, could it all be a bizarre podiatric coincidence?

"In the first four cases, police have no evidence that the feet were severed. It is too early to say if this foot was severed," police spokeswoman Annie Linteau said.

On Monday, a left foot was found on another island off Vancouver.

Like the previous four, it is believed to have become detached at the ankle, in a process called disarticulation.

Forensic experts say it is not unusual for body parts to become separated after they have been in the water for a long time.
[...]
Investigators are looking at the cases individually but are also trying to establish if there any links.

Forensics experts are taking DNA samples and police are also trying track down the manufacturers of the shoes and then the shops where they were sold.

But with so little concrete information, theories abound.

Organised crime, boating accidents - even the 2004 Asian tsunami - are all being offered as possible explanations.

This was no boating accident.

We'll look over the misspelling of "organized" for the moment and try to concentrate on who could possibly behind such gruesomeness? Canadian mobsters? Angry moviegoers clamoring for a sequel to My Left Foot?

But wait, this just in:

What appeared to be the sixth human foot to wash up on British Columbia's shore since last August is actually an animal's paw and seaweed stuffed into a sock, the provincial coroner's office said. Five feet had previously been discovered, all in running shoes, and investigators have not been able to identify any of them. But an examination by a forensic pathologist and an anthropologist concluded that the latest discovery was a hoax, the coroner's office said.

That's a relief. I mean, five was weird and all, but six would just be...crazy.

Your dorsal ocelli are like limpid pools

Isabella Rossellini is doing a series of shorts for the Sundance Channel called Green Porno, in which she acts out the mating routines of various invertebrates. It is simultaneously one of the weirdest and coolest things I've ever seen (and I suppose it's technically NSFW):

In addition to snails and earthworms, you can enjoy simulated hanky-panky with such arthropod luminaries as the dragonfly, bee, and spider, peppered with informative commentary like, "My anus would end up on top of my head. Unfortunately."

Admittedly, I went straight for praying mantis, and was a little disappointed that the lovely Ms. Rossellini didn't play the female.

"What's your problem, Kazanski?"

I have a separate e-mail account, linked to my name on the Film Threat boards, designed to catch queries/abuse regarding my work over there. Feedback comes in many forms; constructive, pejorative, and on occasion, illuminating. To wit, this message from "Xyborg Samurai:"

Given that America and Iran look set to duel with each other for dominance of the Middle East over the next 15 years or so ~ and with the emergence of the Persian Gulf as the main theatre in which American naval aviators will conduct the bulk of their future peacetime and combat missions ~ wouldn't it be ace if an older and wiser Tom 'Maverick' Cruise and Val 'Ice Man' Kilmer took to the skies in a Top Gun sequel, only this time riding F/A-18 Super Hornets out of the USS Ronald Reagan and going up against the kamikazes of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (the only aviators left who still fly "Maverick & Goose" F-14 Tomcats left over from the Shah era)?

And after getting shot down in the Strait of Hormuz and taken captive by the IRGC, Maverick and Ice find themselves in an Iran totally unlike the fanatical Islamist state of FOX news propaganda and are eventually freed through "dialogue-among-civilizations" diplomacy after having embarked on a journey of American-Iranian rediscovery that could make this film one of the schmaltziest yet ground-breaking pieces of inter-cultural rapprochement between two mortal adversaries who desperately need to extricate themselves from what could end up being a world-ending thermonuclear dance of death?

I just. Wow. It's...ambitious, but I can't say it sounds like much of an action movie. If I didn't know better, I'd think Erik Blevins had finally gotten his GED.

In God We Tru$t

The guy in line ahead of me at the post office was wearing an interesting t-shirt.

FRONT
I am BLESSED...

BACK
I have been empowered to SUCCEED and anointed to PROSPER.

Must be one big eye on that needle.

Talk to me, Goose

Entry #2 about the Vegas trip is coming up, as soon as I resurrect my laptop from the bowels of failed power supply hell. While I'm borrowing someone else's, here's a story to put you in the mood for holiday gluttony:

For decades, a few simple slices of turkey were all it needed. But now even the traditional Christmas dinner has been supersized.

Multi-bird roasts, where different types of bird are stuffed inside a larger one, have become the thing to carve this year - and the more birds involved the better.

One of the top-sellers is the Waitrose four-bird roast: guinea fowl, duck and turkey breast stuffed inside a goose. Demand has soared 50 per cent this year - even though each roast costs an eyewatering £200.
[...]
The surge in popularity may have something to do with TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's creation of a ten-bird roast on his show two years ago.

He stuffed an 18lb turkey with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock - producing a remarkable Russian doll-like dish.

But now his effort, inspired by recipes dating from Tudor times, has been dwarfed by a behemoth containing no fewer than 48 birds of 12 different species.

The species in question:

1. Turkey, 2. Goose, 3. Barbary duck, 4. Guinea fowl, 5. Mallard, 6. Poussin, 7. Quail, 8. Partridge, 9. Pigeon squab, 10. Pheasant, 11. Chicken, 12. Aylesbury duck

And some specs:

This massive roast, the proud creation of Devon farmer Anne Petch, weighs almost four stone (more than most airlines' baggage allowance), costs £665, and has enough meat to serve 125 people.

It contains about 50,000 calories and takes more than eight hours to cook in an industrial duck sized oven.

The spacing on that last sentence was screwed up, so I can't tell if that means the oven is sized for something called an "industrial duck," or if a regular duck-sized oven wasn't macho enough.

In any event, we have ostrich farms in Texas, right? I think you know what needs to be done.

"In the still of the night"

"I hear the...bear...howl honey, sniffing around your door:"

Rock star David Coverdale has been confronted by a black bear at his home in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

Writing on his website, the Whitesnake singer said the bear broke into a guest bedroom on Wednesday morning.

Coverdale, 55, recounted how he ran at the animal with an air horn canister and scared him into the garden.

The British singer, formerly of Deep Purple, said bear attacks had become a "daily worry" and that authorities had warned he may have to move out.
[...]
"I'd like to think it was the smell of my fab cooking that seduced him," said Coverdale, "but it was only a slightly charred bagel!"

Don't be so coy, Dave. It was obviously the memory of all those sensuous pelvic microphone stand thrusts that lured your ursine suitor to your door.

"Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice"

Pull down your pants and slide on the ice (courtesy of Jax):

It's not drunken driving in New Jersey if it involves a Zamboni.

A judge ruled the four-ton ice rink-grooming machines aren't motor vehicles because they aren't useable on highways and can't carry passengers.

Zamboni operator John Peragallo had been charged with drunken driving in 2005 after a fellow employee at the Mennen Sports Arena in Morristown told police the machine was speeding and nearly crashed into the boards.

Police said Peragallo's blood alcohol level was 0.12 percent. A level of 0.08 is considered legally drunk in New Jersey.

Peragallo appealed, and Superior Court Judge Joseph Falcone on Monday overturned his license revocation and penalties.

Zambonis are also rarely on the ice with actual human beings, unlike drunk drivers. Peragallo's still probably out of luck, as I'm sure the folks in charge of the Mennen Sports Arena won't cotton to dudes blowing a 0.12 while on the clock.

Peragallo, 64, testified at his trial that he did drink beer and vodka, but not until after he had groomed the ice. However, he told police he had a shot of Sambuca with his breakfast coffee and two Valium-pills before work.

A shot of Sambuca and two Valium? And you undersea rig welders thought you had stressful jobs.

"One thing about living in [Serbia] I never could stomach..."

All the goddamned vampires:

Serbian vampire hunters have acted to prevent the very remote possibility that former dictator Slobodan Milosevic might stage a come-back - by driving a three-foot stake through his heart.

According to Ananova, the politically-motivated Van Helsings, led by Miroslav Milosevic (no relation), gave themselves up to cops after attacking the deceased despot in his grave in the eastern town of Pozarevac. Milosevic popped his clogs back in 2006, while on trial in a UN war crimes tribunal for various unsavoury activities connected with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.

Miroslav Milosevic said "he and his fellow vampire hunters acted to stop the former dictator returning from the dead to haunt the country". His team explained that the wooden stake had been "driven into the ground and through the late president's heart".

Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia naturally condemned the desecration, while his daughter-in-law Milica Gajic said she "planned to sue the vampire hunters and accused the police of failing to protect the grave properly".

I admire any publication that freely uses the expression, "popped his clogs."

Milosevic is as good a candidate as any for undeath. I trust similar crack teams are fanning out across the globe to administer the same treatment to the likes of Pinochet and Mobutu (one assumes the heavy hitters like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would've risen by now if they were going to).

In other news, yes - I'm back from SXSW. No, I'm nowhere near caught up on my sleep or sobriety.

"Slow down, you maniac! Show some respect for a coffin full of bricks representing a young man lost at sea!"

The Wife occasionally mentions I have "anger issues." My standard response is that I have absolutely no issue with my anger. In those...exceedingly rare instances when I get pissed off, I express it openly and - on occasion - loudly. I sure as hell don't have an issue with it.

Even so, I can certainly agree that it's not in my best interests to order anything from RoadRage.com. The message cards are reversible (for reading through a rearview mirror) and feature (sort of) polite and vulgar versions. This is my personal favorite:

Living in Texas, I can't recommend the use of cards saying "I'm Following You" or those simply depicting a handgun. People here have been killed for far less. And how exactly is paging through a book of flip cards while driving any less irresponsible than driving poorly in the first place?

Whatever. I could use the "Get out of the fast lane, moron" card about ten times a day.

"And every night the monkey butlers will regale us with jungle stories."

Or, you know, stab us in the throat (via MetaFilter):

In a revelation that destroys yet another cherished notion of human uniqueness, wild chimpanzees have been seen living in caves and hunting bushbabies with spears. It is the first time an animal has been seen using a tool to hunt a vertebrate.

Many chimpanzees trim twigs to use for ant-dipping and termite-fishing. But a population of savannah chimps (Pan troglodytes verus) living in the Fongoli area of south-east Senegal have been seen making spears from strong sticks that they sharpen with their teeth. The average spear length is 63 centimetres (25 inches), says Jill Pruetz at Iowa State University in Ames, US, who observed the behaviour.

And the method of procuring food with these tools is not simply extractive, as it is when harvesting insects. It is far more aggressive. They use the spears to hunt one of the cutest primates in Africa: bushbabies (Galago senegalensis).

Bushbabies are nocturnal and curl up in hollows in trees during the day. If disturbed during their slumbers - if their nest cavity is broken open, for example - they rapidly scamper away. It appears that the chimps have learnt a grisly method of slowing them down.

Was it really necessary to point out how cute the bushbabies are? Would it be more acceptable if they were killing warthogs?

Using spears, eh? Y'all know what comes next, I trust:

Take that, space banana!

Space banana?

GEOSTATIONARY BANANA OVER TEXAS is an art intervention that involves placing a gigantic banana over the Texas sky. This object will float between the high atmosphere & Earth's low orbit, being visible only from the state of Texas & its surroundings. From the ground, the banana will be clearly recognizable and visible day & night; it will stay up for approximately one month.

Basically, the banana will be constructed like a blimp. Filled with helium, it will float between 30 and 50 km up in the sky. It will have a semi-rigid structure made of bamboo and a skin made with synthetic paper. Thanks to an extra load in gas and a valve system, it will keep its shape at all times. The final size of the piece will be 300 meters in length. The expected launching date is August 2008 from around Baja or Sonora, north-west of Mexico. The total cost of this project is roughly estimated at one million dollars.

I'd hate to see the tailpipe.

Back to phtagn

From the Nov. 19 edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram:

New Island Emerges

Crew members of a yacht sailing westward from the South Pacific island nation of Tonga toward Fiji say they witnessed the birth of a new island, which appars to have emerged from the Pacific during a volcanic eruption.

Those onboard the Maiken initially were puzzled by the vast blanket of pumice that they sailed through for several miles. But they later came across an uncharted steaming island in Tonga's Vava'u group, which was apparently created by an undersea volcano.

The crew described the new island as being one mile in diameter with four peaks and a central crater. Tongan government geologist Kelepi Mafi said he plans to visit the new chunk of rock if his country can afford to dispatch a military ship.

You might also want to bring along a mathemetician schooled in non-Euclidean geometry, and maybe a psychically-sensitive artist or two. The stars are right, after all.

Funny, she doesn't look like Lindsay Wagner

But she's still a bionic woman:

A former US Marine has become the first woman in the world to be fitted with a "bionic" arm that she can control by her thoughts alone.

Claudia Mitchell lost her left arm at the shoulder in a motorbike accident.

Her new arm works by detecting movements of a chest muscle that has been connected to the remains of nerves that once went to her real arm.

The first prototype was fitted to double amputee Jesse Sullivan four years ago. However, the latest version has been significantly improved.

Using it Ms Mitchell, 26, can now fold clothes, eat a banana and do the washing up.

"Washing up?" Kind of gives a new spin to "Your clothes, give them to me."

So what if it's not quite teaming up with aliens to defeat Bigfoot after he critically injured Steve Austin ("The Return of Bigfoot" from Season 2, duh). Baby steps, people.

The ends of the nerves that once controlled the arm were removed from her shoulder and connected to nerves in the chest muscle, some of which conveyed sensation from the skin above.

Over several months the transplanted nerves grew into the muscle tissue.

Once this happened electrodes fixed to a harness worn on the shoulder were able to detect impulses emitted from the nerves into the muscle and forward them to the arm.

These impulses are processed by a computer, which is able to direct the arm to make very precise movements.

All in all, this is very cool. And I don't even begrudge her the return of my vintage Terminator nightmares.

Oh, how the shoggoth of you clings...

I didn't see anything about the "noisome stench of a thousand tombs," so I have no idea if this description of the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's new scent, for R'yleh, is accurate:

The sunken city of the Great God Cthulhu. A hellishly dark aquatic scent, evocative of fathomless oceanic deeps, the mysteries of madness buried under crushing black waters, and the brooding eternal evil that lies beneath the waves.

No dice? There's always Azathoth, Y'Ha-Nthlei, and my favorite, Nyarlathotep:

Brooding, yet electric: the scent of buried secrets, roiling nightmares, the essence of the Crawling Chaos, the Father of Knives and Locusts, the Hunter in the Dark. This is the blackest of ritual incenses charged with flashes of ozone.

It's no Black Goat in the Woods With a Thousand Young, but whatever, my birthday shopping for The Wife is done.

Smack my Boll up

I cannot begin to tell you the number of people who forwarded this to me yesterday (though Michael was the first). Loath as I am to link to AICN, it's pretty worth it:

Towards the end of the filming of Postal, the five most outspoken critics will be flown into Vancouver and supplied with hotel rooms. As a guest of Uwe Boll they will be given the chance to be an extra/stand-in in Postal and have the opportunity to put on boxing gloves and enter a BOXING RING to fight Uwe Boll. Each critic will have the opportunity to bring down Uwe in a 10-bout match. There will be five matches planned over the last two days of the movie. Certain scenes from these boxing matches will become part of the Postal movie. All five fights will be televised on the Internet and will be covered by international press.

To be eligible you must be a critic who has posted on the Internet or have written in magazines/newspapers at least two extremely negative articles in the year 2005. Critics of 2006 will not be considered.

Folks between 140 and 190 pounds, send an email to info@boll.kg.de and help Uwe prove that he isn't a bad filmmaker through physical violence.

Well, he certainly isn't going to prove it through his films.

I appreciate the thoughts, guys. I really do, but there are a few problems:

1. I have yet to review an Uwe Boll movie. Alone in the Dark wasn't screened for critics (or anyone else with functioning retinas), and my procrastination with regard to BloodRayne finally paid off when Felix reviewed the DVD at Film Threat. There are a number of APCB-related blog entries, but I don't know if these count.

2. I also may be disqualified for writing an entry sort of defending the Bollinator earlier this year.

Okay, I just re-read it, and it's not a defense so much as it is an attempt at gaining some perspective.

3. I'm outside the weight parameters. Why it was set at 190 is a mystery to me, considering some of the more...Rubenesque internet personalities are well past that. The opportunity to appear in Postal isn't quite enough to get me to don the Vision Quest Hefty bags and dehydrate myself down to the requisite weight. And at 225, I'd probably have to cut off an arm as well.

4. Does Boll even understand weight class? There's a big difference between 140 and 190. Then again, the kind of people he's calling out probably don't even know how to properly throw a punch

5. And screw boxing, what about K1 or Pride fighting rules? Dangle the prospect of getting some ground and pound on Herr Boll and you'll have people coming out of the woodwork.

The hell with it, I say we get Takanori Gomi, tell everyone he's Chris Gore (they even have similar hair) and send him. The entire fight wouldn't be long enough to upload to YouTube.

"Can't sleep, clown'll eat me."

And how.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have finally found a picture that incorporates both my fear of clowns and my love of zombies, from the previously mentioned Miss McDonald:

If only she sold prints, I'd finally have something to offset my collection of Orange Julius memorabilia.

"Hey, kids, always recycle...to the extreme!"

Here's a little formula I came up with after seeing the freaky abomination that passed for a prize in my daughter's Happy Meal last Friday:

Lovable, yet borderline creepy Troll dolls             +            Consumerist, teen whore training doll Bratz            

=
"Trollz"

Ninja, please

"When you're staring down forty ambidextrous succubi with flaming pikes in their hands, you wanna be pretty darn certain that the naginata that you pull out wasn't forged out of PBR cans by a guy named 'Jingo' in Moose Jaw, Alaska."

From the Ask a Ninja website, a Real Ninja™ answers your questions. Question #14, about what kind of gifts to buy a ninja, is pretty good. Especially on the subject of gift cards:

"It's a gift that says, 'I don’t know you very well.' Perfect for a ninja!"

Courtesy of Ang, whom I always assumed was too busy to sink to blogging. How wrong I was.

"Where did the air come from?"

There's a video clip floating around out there showing University of South Carolina student body president Ryan Holt losing it after discovering his office has been filled with balloons. The gag is pretty standard stuff, and you've probably seen similar things in real life (we once filled a guy's underwear drawer with hand lotion, for example). Holt's reaction is midly amusing from a "spot the pompous proto-Republican" standpoint, but that's not why I'm posting it.

What I kept wondering, being a Big 12 alum, is why the VP of the South Carolina student body is walking around wearing a Texas A&M t-shirt? Granted, it's probably not as bad as if he wore one saying "Clemson," but isn't sporting another school's gear still a bit of a a faux pas on campus these days?

Unless, of course, they're worn "ironically," as would usually be the case for Harvard, Miskatonic, or Transylvania Universities.

"Don't Let All That Blood Go To Waste"

The marketing wizards at General Motors are having a contest where people can design their own Chevy Tahoe commercials. Needless to say, it's kinda backfiring on them.

Examples here, here, and here.

Check 'em out while you can, as I doubt they're going to be left online very long.

(via Metafilter)

Conclusive proof of a higher power

Though I have yet to figure out which one:

One of the Great Old Ones, most likely. These are right up Azathoth's alley. Regardless, I shall be scanning my grocery shelves in the coming weeks for my first bag spicy fried curtain rings.

[as seen on delicate flower)

It's not an army of super zombies, but it's a start

Via The Fat Guy, I see that the Taiwanese aren't sitting idly while waiting for the Chinese to cross the Straits of Formosa. They're making glow-in-the-dark pigs:

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark.

They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through.

The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.

The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island's stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease.

Not to mention providing live artillery markers for the Red Army.

Leaving aside the awesome ramifications of adding one species' genetic material to another (I'm holding out for endless rows of shark teeth and a scorpion tail), let's consider the nigh endless possibilities of luminescent pigs:

+ Power outages will no longer signal the end of a Pink Floyd concert

+ For use as nocturnal guard animals against Islamic burglars

+ Randy rural youths will have to be a little more discreet with their affections

+ Late night BLTs will be a lot easier to make in the dark

+ Babe 3: The Day After

+ Police department will save a fortune on those blood/semen-detector thingies

+ Easier for Circe to round up

Okay, when I've started referencing Odysseus, it's time to quit.

And the Dr. Seuss joke is too obvious.

Going back to Calley

As an addendum to my entry about Hugh Thompson, I have to relay the story of The Wife’s association with Lt. William Calley.

Obviously, she’s too young to have actually known Calley, having been born…some time after My Lai even took place. Her parents, on the other hand, were quite aware. The Mother-in-Law was a staunch liberal, and followed Calley’s trial with interest. The Father-in-Law was in the Army at the time, and while he probably didn’t follow the case as closely, he had a deeper connection. I’m not going to post family photos (especially when they aren’t my family), but trust me when I say that in the mid-70s, the Father-in-Law was a dead ringer for the man behind the My Lai Massacre. I’m told when he was in uniform and out in public during Calley’s trial in the late ‘60s, there were actual fears for his safety.

All that really proves is how drug-addled Americans really were in the 1960s, considering Calley was being tried in Ft. Benning, Georgia, while the Father-in-Law was stationed in New York.

The best part, if you want to call that, came in 1974, when Calley was going through his appeals. He got a lot of face time on the network news, and the infant who would one day become The Wife would point to him on TV, calling him “Daddy,” much to her mother’s dismay. Luckily, her dad retired from the Army, and no permanent mental scarring took place. That I know of.

Good thing none of her extended family resembles Charles Manson.

Phil Spectorhands

Seadogs passes along this truly frightening picture of everybody's favorite (allegedly) murderous record producer with the comment, "Is it just me, or does this picture of Phil Spector remind you of Edward Scissorhands?"

It's not just you.

My theory, since you asked, is that Phil became obsessed when his ex-wife sang with Eddie Money on "Take Me Home Tonight" in 1986. Having gotten by on only 2 or 3 hours of sleep a night for most of hIs adult life, however, he became confused as to who Money actually was, and so copped the look of the only other Edward he was familiar with in order to win Ronnie back.

What? It's possible.

Ripping yarns

You know, I like to think I'm pretty "hip" and "with it" when it comes to all things zombie, but every once in a while something like this comes along that just sort of makes you sit a spell and realize, when it comes to obsession, you're in the minor leagues baby (click for larger version):

That's one of the airport zombies from 1978's Dawn of the Dead. She's got more. Much more. Go check them out.

Thanks to The Thing That Walks Like A Man for the link

OMG WTF BBQ

I FORGOT TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCKS DAY LOL BUT DONT LISTEN TO ME LOOK HERE TO BE PWNED11!!1ONE:

CAPS LOCK DAY IS A CELEBRATION OF LIFE AND FOREVER SCREAMING TEXT FOR ALL ETERNITY AND LOVE

HERES WHERE I MAKE JOKE ABOUT A/S/L BUT YOU WONT LAUGH SO SUCK ON IT H8ERS ALSO GO HEAR FOR PICS LIKE THIS1:

LOL DAT IS TEH FUNAY L8Z

If bread is the staff of life

Then Shatner is life itself.

For those who insist on knowing what they're about to see before clicking, it's the climactic scene from Se7en, as re-enacted by William Shatner (as James T. Kirk), William Shatner (as T.J. Hooker), and...William Shatner (as the host of Rescue 911). There's a nice cameo, too.

Sure, the original had Oscar winners Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey...but this has Shatner. "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man" indeed.

If that first link gives you problems, try here.

"Oh, they didn't shoot a real horse... just a costume with two waiters in it."

Halloween is my favorite holiday: no family obligations, no pesky insistence on propriety or behaving well, and a clear-cut mandate to let your freak flag fly. Alcohol is also encouraged, at least in adult gatherings, and the best movies are always on TV.

There's also a distinct element of tastlessness. I usually went for maximum gore in my costumes (the zombie get-up with live cockroaches and frequently expectorated black sputum was my personal favorite), but I had friends who definitely pushed the envelope of public decency, dressing as abortionists, John Wayne Bobbitt, or Mary Jo Kopechne, for example.

She Who Shall Not Be Named isn't quite old enough to appreciate the joys of getting weird, but that didn't stop us from spiking her hair and putting her in ripped jeans and a "punk baby" t-shirt last year. This year we're discussing a few options: zombie (probably not advisable to put corpse paint on a toddler), Jason Voorhees (doubtful that she'd leave the hockey mask on), and a mummy (the front runner so far). I have to admit, however, that the following costumes (seen on Len's blog) appeals to the part of my brain that still likes horrifying the neighbors:

On second thought, we should probably just stick with the mummy. I don't imagine anyone on our street is related to Rameses the Great.

Speaking of cruelty to animals

Bee Dogs (dogs in bee costumes)

Via the fancy catfish

O Superman

I could never get away with this:

Hollywood star Nicolas Cage is celebrating after his third wife Alice Kim gave birth to their first child together yesterday. The Oscar-winning actor, 41, and Kim Cage, 21, welcomed their son Kal-El Coppola Cage in a New York City hospital yesterday morning.

Granted, I'd probably go for something like "Hal Jordan Vonder Haar" or "John Constantine Vonder Haar" if I was drawing from the D.C. pantheon. Provided The Wife suddenly fell into a coma immediately after giving birth.

What are the odds he told Alice it was a family name? She just might be young enough not to know any better.

Excuse me while I go dig up those Laurie Anderson MP3s.

"Send more quarterbacks"

'stina over at Texas Law Chick has an entry about a pretty remarkable guy. His name's Bobby Martin and he plays noseguard for Colonel White High School in Dayton, OH. He also doesn't have any legs:

Most of you can see where I'm going with this.

I think what this guy has accomplished is remarkable, truly. Personally, I'd probably be well into a smack habit after losing both legs. But let me just say if I was an opposing quarterback and saw this guy coming at me, my mind would probably be filled with images of Jerome Coleman from Return of the Living Dead:

The legless dead have a rich and storied tradition in zombie cinema, from Fulci's Zombi 3, to Return, to the Dawn remake, to this year's Land of the Dead. If Bobby's teammates really wanted to exploit the advantage he gives them, they'd screen one or all of these movies for the opposing team before the game in the hopes that they would collapse into a mewling fetal ball when the guy started coming at us.

Hey, it's what I'd do.

"Big fat guy. I mean, like, orca fat."

I need to turn off these "CNN Offbeat" e-mail alerts. My idea of what is "offbeat" probably differs greatly from their usual parade of water-skiing marmots and 3 year-olds who can fly a plane, but I don't imagine Time-Warner is too keen on mass mailing stories about octopus porn just to give me a laugh.

Occasionally, however, one of them piques my interest:

Anchorage zookeepers are installing a 16,000-pound treadmill to keep an isolated elephant from getting fat during the long, cold Alaskan winters.

The 20-foot-long treadmill was designed specifically for Maggie, a 23-year-old female African elephant that has become the subject of a national debate over the proper care for captive pachyderms.
[...]
Zookeepers said Zimbabwe-born Maggie would start using the treadmill in about two months.

As a youngster, I loved the zoo. I still think it's a great place to take kids so they can see exotic animals up close and personal (though not too up close, She Who Shall Not Be Named is particularly fond of cobras, for example). However, even a well-funded zoo is basically an animal jail, and while they're to be commended for helping protect endangered species and educating the public about other forms of wildlife and their ecosystems, I fail to see why an Arctic zoo should have an African elephant.

Maybe they could trade with the Houston Zoo for our snow leopards.

Burger Wars

The Punishment Due*:

The battle between SliPKnoT and Burger King is escalating.

SliPKnoT is upset over the Burger King ad campaign featuring a mock metal band called Coq Roq dressed in horror-chicken masks.

SliPKnoT said the masks are too similar to the ones they wear.

A letter from their lawyer posted on The Smoking Gun Web site points out Coq Roq members wear a gas mask, a kabuki-style mask and a mask with dreadlocks, which members of SliPKnoT wear. The letter said SliPKnoT fans have expressed confusion and criticism over what they think is SliPKnoT endorsing Burger King.

Okay, first of all, since when did they start spelling their name like that? Is SanDeE* from L.A. Story their biggest fan?

As for the complaint, this is Slipknot (caught rocking out in the lobby of their dentist's office, apparently):

This is "Coq Roq:"

Yeah. Between this and those horrifying ads with the guy waking up in bed with the Burger King, I don't see that BK IPO happening anytime soon.

Admittedly, I found the name Coq Roq pretty amusing, but unless their target market consists solely of emotionally retarded 30-somethings who giggle uncontrollably at dick jokes, they may be in a bit of trouble.

As for Slipknot and their "complaint," cower before the majesty of GWAR, you derivative assholes:

* Apologies to Megadeth

"Picture book, pictures of your mother"

These are freaking sweet, as Peter Griffin would say:

Welcome to the realm of "Haunted Memories Changing Portraits." Featured here are some of the most unique Halloween props ever offered! Simple, yet highly effective, these morphing images are designed to transform when you change your position. When your unsuspecting guests walk past them they will see these seemingly normal "relatives" change into hideously frightening creatures or macabre apparitions!

The picture change is a pretty simple trick and - to my mind - there are too many vampires. Still, you can click most of the pictures for a video clip showing the effect, which is nifty. And the clown is appropriately hideous, though, as befits all clowns:

I know without asking that I will never get official spousal sanction to put any of these in my house (unless I ever get around to redoing the garage), but that doesn't mean you can't. Especially if you're looking to get an early start on freaking out your kids.

Thanks to APCB research assistant The Thing That Walks Like A Man.

Of all the ideas to rip off from Resident Evil

I'm not sure "zombie dogs" is the one I would've gone with:

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans. ... Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.

The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.

But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

Pittsburgh? That has to be a joke. We all know what else happened in Pittsburgh, after all.

During the procedure blood is replaced with saline solution at a few degrees above zero. The dogs' body temperature drops to only 7C, compared with the usual 37C, inducing a state of hypothermia before death.

Although the animals are clinically dead, their tissues and organs are perfectly preserved.

Damaged blood vessels and tissues can then be repaired via surgery. The dogs are brought back to life by returning the blood to their bodies,giving them 100 per cent oxygen and applying electric shocks to restart their hearts.

Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.

What's your baseline for that? I love dogs, but when your normal feeding patterns can include crayons, dental floss, and other - less savory - delicacies, how does one determine they haven't gotten any dumber?

If true, it sounds pretty remarkable, I think I'd wait for a little more reputable source to confirm this before stocking up on delicious brains for Sounder.

"Give us a Super Squishee, Apu."
"One that's made entirely out of syrup."

It should go without saying that I see a lot of movies. I don't have much in the way of habitual behavior when I go to the theater. I prefer an aisle seat (the better to make a hasty exit should the place catch fire, and I can avoid the center sections, where most of the talkers seem to congregate), and I occasionally like to get a drink. A medium Diet Coke is my poison, of which I'll usually consume half and then eat the ice (another reason sitting away from others is a wise move).

Most of the promo screenings are at one of the two Edwards Theaters in town. A medium drink was, until last week, $3.75 for 24 oz. When I came in for my caffeine and aspartame fix on Tuesday, however, I discovered things had changed:

Cashier: Can I interest you in one of our combos?
Pete: Christ, no. Medium Diet Coke, please.
Cashier: That'll be four dollars?
Pete: Four? When did that happen?
Cashier: Uh, last week. I think.

Okay, whatever. Summer crowds are bigger, so Regal Cinemas (Edwards' parent company) apparently felt like squeezing a little extra profit out of moviegoers.

Pete: Okay, fine. Four dollars it is.
[the cashier pours my drink and deposits a cup of ridiculous proportions on the counter. The thing is clearly a 32 oz. cup.]
Pete: I'm sorry, I ordered a medium.
Cashier: That is a medium.
Pete: ...That's a medium?
Cashier: Yes, sir.
Pete: [realizing he can barely fit both hands around the thing]. Okay. Thanks.

Jesus. I assume hope people ordering the large (44 oz.) are sharing, because there's absolutely no way one human being can consume that much fluid in a movie that runs - on average - an hour and 45 minutes and not have to void their bladder like a beer-bonging freshman. Even worse is the drink that comes with the aforementioned combo, which is 2 liters (68 ounces) of soda goodness that comes in a cup with a bore like a 120-mm howitzer shell.

And forget bladder capacity. How much goddamned sugar is in a non-diet drink that big?

Paging Captain Obvious

CNN must be using scab headline writers these days:

College towns lead in marijuana use

Stay tuned for related stories about the evils of processed foods and how rottweilers don't like it when you poke them with a stick.

The article is actually about a study on drug and alcohol use by region, none of which makes the results any more surprising:

For marijuana, 5.1 percent of people around the country reported using marijuana in the previous 30 days. In Boston, the home of Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern and several other colleges, 12.2 percent reported using marijuana in the previous 30 days.

John Auerbach, executive director of the public health commission for the city of Boston, said the survey might not reflect current marijuana use in Boston because the data came from 1999-2001 national surveys.

Yeah, I'm sure recreational drug use didn't go up at all after 9-11.

Federal officials said they highlighted the marijuana report because it's the most commonly used illicit drug. But the survey also measures 11 other categories.

For example, the survey measures binge drinking -- defined as five or more drinks in one setting.

Nationally, 20 percent of people age 12 and older reported one or more episodes of binge drinking during the previous month.

Previous month? Try previous night.

They really need to scale that "binge" definition up for those of us who don't have a problem and can quit any time we want.

Boston scored high in that category, too, with nearly 30 percent of respondents acknowledging binge drinking.

That seems a little low. Guess this was a pre-World Series poll.

Just when you thought it was safe to drive into the water

After this similar story from last year, I think it's time to give the Cubans their own art car parade (via Fark):

No wonder the Coast Guard is pissed: "75 bucks? But we're all going to the same place!"

The saga continues

After publicly breaking up with her for her stingy tipping practices, I'd done my best to wash my hands of Rachael Ray. Over at Something Awful, however, An Evening with Rachael Ray is making me reconsider my decision:

She has Petrov's neck laid open like a cut of salmon and he's gurgling and kicking on the floor. I take a step back from the pooling blood. Giggles flails feebly at the blade, slicing his fingers and hands to ribbons in the process. Giggles never has a chance. Rachael buries the knife in his chest and only after he stops moving does she pull it out and backtrack to work on Pretrov's eyes.

"Corneas," she looks over her shoulder at me and there's that smile again.

You've probably read this sort of thing before. This one's...inspired.

I've cried while eating many times

But usually only after putting too much chili sauce on my vermicelli bowl at Mo Mong, or eating the Atomic Wings at Quaker Steak and Lube.

The subjects at Crying While Eating, however, appear to have actual problems. Or are faking it quite well.

Thanks to HWRNMNBSOL.

Time is not on my side

One of the unintended results of the all-day softball tournament in which I played on Saturday (which wasn't really supposed to be "all-day" except that our team kept inexplicably coming from behind and winning), was that I spent all of Sunday getting caught up on crap I'd meant to do the day before. Another side effect is the just-now subsiding limp in my mechanically reconstructed ankle, but that's not important right now. Bills had to be paid, closets cleaned, and The Wife doted on for Mother's Day (said doting consisting mostly of keeping the kid out of her hair while she read a book).

Unfortunately, other things fell through the cracks. Doing any sort of meaningful blogging (an oxymoron for this site if ever there was one) being the most obvious example. This is all my lame way of saying I missed the boat on blogging about Monday's Time Traveler Convention at MIT.

The convention was a mixed success. Unfortunately, we had no confirmed time travelers visit us, yet many time travelers could have attended incognito to avoid endless questions about the future. We had a great series of lectures, awesome bands, and even a DeLorean. We regret having had to turn away visitors, but there were capacity restrictions governing Morss Hall.

I imagine the time travelers in attendance were waiting for someone to be the first to approach the dais, as it were. If they have any regrets, they can always fire up the old flux capacitor and check it out again.

The event sounded like a lot of fun, and even though there was no way I could possibly have made it (in this century, at least), I want to apologize to Emily for not getting something up here sooner like I said I would.

You'll make great pets

Daphne Merkin had an excellent article (registration required) last Sunday in the New York Times Magazine about the obscene lengths some people go to in order to pamper their pets:

At the risk of drawing ire, I would like to suggest that there is something profoundly awry about the way our culture treats pets. To wit: We spend more money annually on pet-related supplies and services (an estimated $35 billion last year) than we do on toys for children. To wit: The New York Dog Magazine, which features un-tongue-in-cheek articles on whether or not to buy health insurance for Fido (5 percent of pet owners have insurance) and how to keep your canine in a custody battle ("Start a diary showing that you are the primary caretaker," advises Raoul Felder, divorce lawyer to the stars. "Note how many times you walk the dog"), is but the latest entry in a crowded field that includes Dog Fancy, Modern Dog and The Bark. To wit: If you're looking for a place to board your dog while you're on vacation, you could do worse than Canine Cove in Sausalito, Calif., a cageless facility offering a quiet area to watch TV as well as an outside lounge area.

How has it come to pass that outfitting a dog with a $1,380 Hermes crocodile-and-calfskin leash-and-collar set doesn't seem too absurd -- too shameful? How is it that our sense of humanity has been transferred to members of the animal kingdom -- the domesticated and overbred as well as the wild and exotic -- so that we lavish affection, money and moral outrage on them while we gripe about the homeless instead of empathizing with their plight and ignore our elderly altogether?

Merkin raises some fine points, especially regarding the animal rights movement's apparent greater concern for the welfare of lab rats and monkeys over those who might benefit from testing to find cures to diseases. She sets her position opposite the likes of Peter Singer, who want to equate human emotion with animals, and while I find myself siding with her in the respect that I'm more concerned about my sister than I am about her dogs, I suspect I'm coming at the argument from an entirely different philosophical standpoint.

Where Merkin chooses to castigate the pet pamperers for their apparent disregard for human suffering (she opines that the lavishing of material affection on our pets somehow eradicates some of the class guilt we feel for not being able or willing to genuinely help those of our fellow men who are in need) I choose to rudely remind everyone that we're talking about dumb animals here.

Reading about people who drop a grand for a dog collar fills me with the kind of rage I imagine that Zack de la Rocha kid feels when he sees a Christmas special. They're animals, for crying out loud. I love dogs, but if you tried to convince me the only way to keep my pooch happy was to spend $1300 for a Hermes collar, I'd laugh in your face while Fido whizzed on your Cole Haans.

The problem here is not that people are stupid (which may be the case), but that we're talking about heaping luxuries upon domesticated beasts. These are creatures content to eat their own feces and lick their own scrotums while spending three hours fascinated by a rubber mouse on a string.

I can see dropping $5 on a chew toy at Petco, but most dogs, for example, don't require much financial investment beyond sticking a tennis ball down a gym sock and supplying them with a bowl of Alpo a day. If you find yourself buying fur-lined sweaters and jeweled collars for Bit Bit, well, you're a horribly misguided individual who need to die so that your heirs might better distribute your wealth.

Just sayin'.

"Dying would be a stone groove, man."

Lotta death in the news lately, although the upside is that it's unlikely the next Pope will be in place for 25 years, necessitating 10 days of solid media coverage and more ink devoted to his funeral than to anything he did while alive.

In the spirit of the cruel fate that awaits us all, I've decided to share some of my favorite (real and fictional) obituaries and eulogies with you. You're welcome. And don't fear the reaper.

William Jennings Bryan by H.L. Mencken:

This talk of sincerity, I confess, fatigues me. If the fellow was sincere, then so was P.T. Barnum. The word is disgraced and degraded by such uses. He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without any shame or dignity. What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition--the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine.

Aunt Edna by Clark W. Griswald:

O God, ease our suffering in this, our moment of great despair. Yea, admit this kind and decent woman into thy arms of thine heavenly area, up there. And Moab, he lay us upon the band of the Canaanites, and yea, though the Hindus speak of karma, I implore you: give her a break.

Archie Bennitz by Archie Bennitz:

Archie was an avid fan of watching hockey. He asked that Mr. Bettman and Goodenow know that they are "skunks" for denying him the pleasure of watching the NHL on TV this year. he also asked that Mr. Bettman steps aside and gives Wayne Gretzky the job that rightfully belongs to him.

Hand Job by the Marines of 1st Platoon:

T.H.E. Rock: You're going home now.
Crazy Earl: Semper fi.
Donlon: We're mean Marines, sir.
Eightball: Go easy, bro.
Rafterman: At least he died for a good cause.
Animal Mother: What cause was that?
Rafterman: Freedom?
Animal Mother: Flush out your headgear, new guy. You think we waste gooks for freedom? This is a slaughter. If I'm gonna get my balls blown off for a word, my word is poontang.
Cowboy: Tough break for Hand Job. He was all set to get shipped out on a medical.
Joker: What was the matter with him?
Cowboy: He was jerkin' off ten times a day.
Eightball: No shit. At least ten times a day.
Cowboy: Last week he was sent down to Da Nang to see the Navy head shrinker, and the crazy fucker starts jerking off in the waiting room. Instant Section Eight. He was just waiting for his papers to clear division.

Jim Varney by The Thing that Walks Like A Man:

What was the nature of the phantasmagorical Vern? Perhaps He was a manifestation of Ernest's own fears and uncertainties made flesh in this manic, soul-crushing world, or the fevered imaginings of a tormented psyche resulting from the production of such films as "Ernest in the Army," "Ernest Goes to Africa" (aka "Ernest vs the Voodo King") and "Slam Dunk Ernest." On a more spiritual note, perhaps Vernon was a mere allegory for the faceless horde that has become humanity as we know it. After all, who actually sees--really sees--their neighbors in this terrifying age of barren spirituality and rampant technology? Aren't we all just invisible shades to our fellow man?

Edgar Allen Poe by Rufus Griswold:

Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this poor boy--his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery atmosphere--had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious--bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellant cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers.

Kurt Kelly

Mr. Kelly: My son's a homosexual, and I love him. I love my dead gay son.
J.D.: Wonder how he'd react if his son had a limp wrist with a pulse.

Richard Nixon by Hunter S. Thompson:

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man--evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him--except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

America

Heck yeah.

Via Metafilter

That's a bald statement

Busy day today, meaning I had the choice of either resurrecting something from my archives (which nobody wants) or presenting you with this little exchange I overheard at last Tuesday's Millions screening.

I'm sitting on the end of the aisle and the lights have just dimmed for the previews when a woman and her five or six year-old son come up the stairs next to me:

Son: But how will we find Daddy?
Mom: Look for the shiny head.

Laughed my ass off.

"Ted, you know, if I die, you can have my Megadeth collection."

Does your significant other give you grief for those comic book longboxes, or that sheld of Animaniacs figures? Point them to this guy's web page. Things could always be worse (via Metafilter):

Being an expert in pre-judging people, I can make the following assumptions about this gentleman:

+ He has no kids
+ Or cats
+ He does not live near any active fault lines, volcanos, or elephants
+ Dusting takes an entire day
+ He keeps his "special" collections in the basement

Sometimes I give myself the creeps

And sometimes Miss McDonald does it for me (via Metafilter).

Clowns are evil. Even if they appear in the guise of a perky Filipina.

Speaking of disturbing toys

Warning: Parental topics to follow. Those not interested should go off and amuse themselves by making fun of "breeders" and sleeping in until 10 on weekends.

When The Wife and I first found out we were having a baby, one of the ways in which I tried to mentally prepare myself for the ordeal miracle of child rearing was to familiarize myself with as many of the terrifying characters that make up the children's television entertainment pantheon as possible. Like most of us, I knew about most of the heavy hitters like Barney and the Wiggles already. And while I personally find them as annoying (and intellectually challenging) as an Ann Coulter editorial, I am also enough of an alleged adult to realize a big magenta dinosaur and a quartet of Australian closet cases aren't meant for me. Kids like 'em, and if mine ever succumb to their siren call, so be it.

But the Wiggles are pretty well known. Like Rugrats or SpongeBob, even the childless have heard of those guys. Therefore the next level of preparation involved seeking out TV shows and entertainers who would probably slip under the radar of those poor unfortunates lacking children but still awash in free time and disposable income. While researching the second stringers, I came into contact with the likes of Noggin's Moose A. Moose (possibly the most unenthusiastically voiced cartoon characters since Eeyore) and Dora the Explorer, not to mention Rolie Polie Olie. There's also a pantload of anime out there, but hopefully I can avoid having to explain what those tentacles are doing when we accidentally queue up Legend of the Overfiend instead of Legend of Himiko on Netflix for a couple years yet.

So far, so good. She Who Shall Not Be Named doesn't watch much TV, but what she has checked out tends toward the classics like Sesame Street and dad's new Bullwinkle DVDs. Given this, I felt confident that I could handle anything else we came across on the tube.

Unfortunately, nothing could prepare me for the eldritch horror from beyond the veil of night that is...Boohbah. What the hell are Boohbahs? Good question:

The Boohbahs are five colorful atoms of energy. Humbah (yellow), Zumbah (purple), Zing Zing Zingbah (orange), Jumbah (blue), and Jingbah (pink) are powered by the laughter and joy of children they encounter all over the world. The Boohbahs live in a glowing white ball of light, the Boohball, which travels from country to country when called by children. Each Boohbah has a "recharging pod" within the Boohball. The recharging energy is created by the laughter of children when they play with the Boohball, the Boohbahs and the Storypeople.

Now we know the truth: Gorgon wasn't really Melvin Belli, it was the Boohball all along.

Now that I think about it, this reminds me more of that Battlestar Galactica episode with the Ovions. Or, for those of you born after 1980, The Matrix. It seems like only a matter of time before the diabolical Boohbah complete their global network of Energy Extraction Modules, each containing a small child, their eyes propped open while they're forced to watch an endless series of Winnie the Pooh and Dr. Seuss cartoons and poked with robotic fingers in order to keep the laughter coming. All between force feedings of nutrient paste, of course.

The Teletubbies were bad enough; nonsensical multicolored blobs of gibbering protoplam that they were, but there's something far more sinister about this Boohbah phenomenon. I mean, they don't even have mouths...where's the goddamned sound coming from? And what's all this crap about Storypeople?

A group of children bring a present for the Storypeople to the center of the Magic Spiral and blow it into Storyworld through the power of Boohbah magic.

Just as I thought, they're in cahoots. Get my gun.

"Just a small town boy"

One of the many reasons to simultaneously love and hate the internet: Steve Perry fan fiction (via Metafilter):

By now Nancy is up and once again trying to get out of the kitchen. She runs past Steve but he grabs her around the waist and spins her around. He has her pinned against the refrigerator. His face is about an inch from hers.

"I’m going to ask you this question again. If you look me in the eye when you answer it, I might believe you! Are you screwing that guy!?"

Nancy puts her hands on his chest and she looks him right in his eyes and without blinking, or even wavering

"No!!! I am NOT screwing him…!!!"

Powerful stuff.

Fanfic is everywhere these days, seems like no matter how much you Keep on Runnin', you can't Escape. Any Way You Want It, these mysterious writers will continue to Lay it Down, and while some welcome it with Open Arms, others insist on going their Separate Ways, so you might as well Be Good to Yourself and check it out.

As for myself, I will Faithfully continue to read the site, and if you ever find out who the author of this story is, please Send Her My Love, since I'm pretty sure the Girl Can't Help It. She was Raised on the Radio, after all.

Okay, I'm done.

"Hello, that sounds like a pig fainting!"

I heard about this prank a couple weeks ago, but hadn't seen any pictures until today. It seems a group of Yale students dressed up as members of Harvard's pep squad and passed out crimson and white construction paper to the home crowd at Harvard Stadium prior to the annual Harvard-Yale game. They informed the crowd that, when they raised their construction paper in unison, they'd be spelling out "Go Harvard" for all the world to see. Hard as it may be to believe, the Yalies weren't being entirely honest:

Of course, Harvard won the football game, which probably raised its BCS ranking from 187 to 185.

Then again, Yale's about 40 years behind the curve:

Well played.

Ho ho homeless

Being the 4th largest city in the country, Houston has a lot of homeless people. Sure, the cops do an admirable job keeping them out of my upscale urban neighborhood, but every day you'll still run into them at the gas station, or by the underpass. Most hold signs describing, in brief, the conditions that led them to their current state. Things like, "Lost Job" or "Need Medicine" or "Have to Feed Kids."

I'm not made of stone, which means I'm probably a sucker, but I give money intermittently to the down and out I come across. Usually it's a buck or two, but if someone shows a little panache - a bit of a middle finger to their status - I'll kick in quite a bit more.

There was the guy on the Drag in Austin with a sign saying, "Need Beer. Why Lie?" And I donated freely to him until everybody started imitating him. Then there was the homeless kid in Dupont Circle in D.C. who came up to me as I was walking home from work and asked for a donation to the Church of Satan. He got a fiver, and it was even tax deductible.

But if I ran across this guy, I believe I'd have to empty my wallet:

Courtesy of Die Puny Humans

One of the reasons I gave up on screenwriting...

Is that I could never come up with anything as good as the pitches in these query letters (courtesy of Query Letters I Love):

An ancient, evil civilization conquers a metropolis, trapping nine players of utterly different interests in an ultimate struggle for survival. The band Lost Cause plays at an underground club. All rocks! An uproar in the back of the crowd quickly evolves into a tsunami of slaughter. The club erupts into sheer chaos, as Thin-Men carve a macabre path of destruction. Suddenly, time and light are manipulated.

This almost sounds like one of Erik Blevins' Slade Ripfire treatments. Though I think I'm most interested in seeing how you'd film a "tsunami of slaughter."

Then there's this one:

"It is the glamorous and gaudy age of the 1980's...Glam Rock, big hair, Ricky Schroder and SILVER SPOONS reign over pop culture. Relations between the two Super Powers is breaking down. The Cold War is at its most fragile state. In these tenuous times, SEAN, a lone CIA agent, and his twin brother, VINNY, the lead singer of a famous glam rock band, must swap identities in order to destroy a Soviet Super-Weapon.

The author sees this as a possible Richard Greico vehicle. I dsagree, and see a perfect opportunity for a sequel to The Experts.

"The World has imploded on itself. Evil Robot plans an Empire built on the backs of remaining humanity.Can a man from the pass survive the hate of a savage woman and save humanity before the sands of time run out…?"

Now I know why none of my scripts sold: no Evil Robot.

"We have just polished our latest script SAVAGE, an action adventure about two men who crash on an uncharted island inhabited by a lost tribe of Amazon women that mate with men, then kill them. The men must get off the island before the breeding cycle is over.

Now in production at Andy Sidaris Films.

This last one may be my favorite:

"Santa's son breaks racial, religious, and socio-economic stereotypes in this Holiday charmer. Christopher Claus must choose between his family's legacy by accepting a pre-arranged marriage to the Halloween Witch's daughter, or be disinherited by marrying the Tooth Fairy's daughter, who is not a Holiday Person, for true love. Help comes his way via his two best pals, Hannukah Hal, a Jewish mensch, and Kenny Kwanzaa, an African-American prince."

Finally, a Christmas story even Jews can love.

Go read the rest. I've already spent way too much time there today.

Best book report ever

Is there any doubt that To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the greatest books of all time? Of course, it's been so long since I read it that I guess I'd forgotten all about the ninjas, flying pirates, and Harper Lee's use of the Earth's moon as an ultimate weapon. But don't take my word for it, check out this book report some guys from Stanford kindly put online.

Thanks to TTTWLAM.

And Scout works much better as a robot.

"I'm not the man they think I am at home"

"Oh, no no no."

William Shatner is (along with Lynda Carter, Snidely Whiplash, B.A. Baracus, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team) the patron saint of APCB.

So it is with no small sense of joy and wonder I present for you our man on the NCC-1701 like we all want to remember him: singing Elton John's "Rocket Man" in triplicate. For those who've never seen it, or those who saw that Family Guy episode where Stewie paid homage to The Shatner's performance and wondered what the hell was going on, enjoy (link via Metafilter).

"Ain't seen you 'round Burger World in a while."

Len and the BC-dot-C have already commented on this, but I'm still marveling at its sublime majesty:

As many fast-food chains are catering to the health-conscious, Hardee's is introducing the biggest and thickest of its Thickburgers — one with enough calories to make Ronald McDonald blush.

The chain on Monday rolled out its Monster Thickburger — two 1/3-pound slabs of Angus beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered sesame seed bun. The sandwich alone sells for $5.49, $7.09 with fries and a soda.

Even a news release touted the Monster — at 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat — as "a monument to decadence." Add fries and a soda and a single meal would involve more calories and fat than most people should get in a day.

Silly reporter. Americans are not "most people." Now excuse me as I wash down this Krispy Kreme with a mocha frappuchino.

The introduction comes at a time when McDonald's, Wendy's and other fast-food giants are offering salads and other lower-calorie fare. Subway advertising has long used patron Jared to tout the low-calorie items on the menu.

Hardee's has gone another direction.

The restaurant, founded in the 1960s, was originally known for its charcoal-broiled burgers, but eventually expanded its menu to include roast beef, fried chicken, even hot dogs.

That changed in April 2003 when Hardee's went back to burgers — and big ones. Sales for the 2,067-restaurant chain have risen steadily since the introduction of the Thickburger family. Same-store sales are up 7.8% this year.

Some friends and I had the idea, several years back, to open a restaurant called Dying Young. It would feature no salad bar, not diet menu, and no "lite" beer or soft drinks. Smoking would be allowed, as long as it was cigars, and all our cooks would be ex-cons (think Mel Sharples, only with more tattoos and less discriminating taste in women).

Then that stupid Julia Roberts movie came out and ruined everything.

I'm certainly not going to criticize Hardee's for seeing a niche and going for it. This isn't like sneaking beef broth into french fries or improperly storing meat...I mean, look at that damn thing. It's almost as big as your head. Nobody's going to finish a Thickburger and somehow think they've eaten something not likely to cause spontaneous arrhythmia.

Unless they're one of the inexplicable breed who thinks their "super-sized" Big Mac value meal is somehow made healthier by the inclusion of a Diet Coke. In which case, they'll probably be dead from something like sticking a knife into their toaster long before heart disease can kill them, anyway.

When cocks are outlawed

Well, you know the rest:

No cockfighting in Oklahoma, the Supreme Court says.

The justices turned down an appeal today from cockfighting supporters, who have lost at the ballot box and in courts.

Oklahoma voters in 2002 approved a ban on the blood sport, in which knives or cutting barbs are attached to roosters, which usually fight to the death.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld voters' decision earlier this year, prompting the appeal to the Supreme Court. Justices rejected it without comment.

This may be one of the last things the Supreme Court does that I end up agreeing with. Cockfighting - hilarious name aside - is pretty sick. I have no special love for chickens, except when made into delicious buffalo wings, but it came as a surprise to hear that someone actually argued that having dumb birds kills each other for gambling purposes should be legal.

Such as...

Attorney Larry Oliver, in filings at the court, said that the law was so vague that people could be arrested for watching blue jays fight in their back yard.

"All birds fight by nature," he wrote. "This Oklahoma statute was drafted by radical animal rights people who exacted a constitutional overkill in their pursuit to ban everything associated with cockfighting."

Because only a radical animal rights person would think the "sport" of cockfighting could be enjoyed by anyone other than trepanned hillbillies, I guess.

When voters approved the anti-cockfighting law, Oklahoma was one of three states that permitted the sport. Louisiana and New Mexico still allow it.

Finally, something to rub in the face of my Sooner friends.

Not that it won't be trumped by "0-for-5" and Texas' stunning teen pregnancy rate.

Sherry Todd, an assistant attorney general in Oklahoma, told justices: "The right to conduct cockfights is not a fundamental right. In fact, the federal government and 48 states have enacted some form of law prohibiting cockfighting."

Todd also said that the law "does not criminalize the enjoyment and/or observation of the natural activities of birds in their natural habitat."

Meaning the Discovery Channel's "Birds Gone Wild" series is safe for another season.

Dead and loving it them

Man, those Sawyers really were ahead of their time:

Tim shoves past his mother and grandmother, and in the process, knocks Esther Dunlop, age 76, to the floor. Esther lies there unmoving; Tim's sister, Megan, picks up her grandmother and sets her back in the chair, straightening her hair and closing her mouth, which had popped open in the fall. The ease with which the skinny 14-year-old has righted the older lady is almost startling, given Esther's seemingly sturdy frame.

No one says anything about the cake or the candles, which have since burned themselves out and are sending up wisps of smoke, like incense at a Mass for the dead. The imagery is appropriate. What is not readily apparent from this scene is that Mrs. Dunlop expired in June because of a massive cerebral hemorrhage; she died instantly as she lay on the couch in the Braswells' home, where she had lived for several years, watching a rerun of her favorite show: CSI: Miami. What now sits before Timothy Braswell's melting ice cream cake -- blue hair and all -- is her lifelike, taxidermied corpse.

UPDATE: Research by the ever-intrepid Michael (detailed in the comments section) points very strongly to the likelihood that this is a hoax, as most sane people who read the article suspected in the first place. The lovely and talented boxing octopus is working on independent confirmation.

UPDATE 2: It is indeed a hoax, as my source (whom I cannot name) has confirmed.

The rest of the original entry is under the "More" link.

I'll skip some of the subsequent text, which describes the Dunlop family's decision to forego a regular funeral or cremation and instead opt for "humidermy," the process used by a company called Preserve A Life to "mount" your loved one.

Yeah, I know...gotta be a joke:

In the case of Mrs. Dunlop, [Preserve A Life representative George Canetti] advised, she could be "mounted" in a seated position, so her family could enjoy her presence at family functions, or just watch Jay Leno with her. He also quietly advised that, even though it didn't seem possible as the family was grieving, there would be times when it would be inappropriate to have grandmother in plain view. During those times, her countenance could be stored in the hallway closet, since her legs could easily be adjusted to a standing position.

Indeed, Gloria says all these months later: "When we have friends over, friends who don't know about what we've done with Mother Dunlop, we put her out of sight for the evening. I know some people will think this is really weird, but it's been so comforting having her here with us. I think, if she could talk, she'd be pleased. Sometimes, it's almost like she never passed away."

Of course, she can't talk, because her vocal cords and brain have been removed, along with the rest of her organs and bones. If there's a way she could cry out in indignation from beyond the grave, perhaps she would.

Then again, you've got her mouth.

Where, pray tell, does one put a skinjob (Blade Runner term) "out of sight for the evening?" Suppose someone goes to the wrong closet, or accidentally enters the second bedroom, or is one of those annoying partygoers like yours truly who likes to root through all of his host's belongings. What about our state of mind?

Gloria admits that having a dead body in the house isn't for everybody, and it's not without small problems, outside the realm of what unknowing visitors might or might not think of the family's actions. Though Preserve A Life has by all accounts done a marvelous job of treating Mrs. Dunlop's skin, stretching it over a fiberglass model made to fit her proportions exactly, and inserting glass eyes, with the option of leaving the eyelids open or closed, there are occasional rips and tears that have to be daubed with a special putty from the Preserve A Life Home Repair Kit. Additionally, a lingering, musty smell sometimes hovers about Mrs. Dunlop, an odor technicians at Preserve A Life say has nothing to do with death, but is a natural product of the skin of seniors, referred to by some as "that old person smell." Gloria often leaves potpourri near Mrs. Dunlop's body, or simply uses Glade air freshener.

No word on whether or not "Preserve A Life" plans to distill "old person smell" and market it to people nostalgic for the memories of their grandparents' homes. Why stop at merely causing focused and intense psychological damage to your children, after all?

Unfortunately, accidents are bound to happen when you mix household pets with delicious deceased relatives.

For instance, in early September, while Robert was out of town and Gloria was having the carpets cleaned, she leaned Mrs. Dunlop against the house in the backyard for the better part of a week, placing her under a tarpaulin.

"I was rushing around because school had just started and everyone was going in a different direction," she says. "You know how it is. Then I was all like, 'Where did I put Mother Dunlop? Oh, right, out back!' I probably shouldn't have sent Timmy back there to get her. But he was 12 and strapping for his age, and since all of Mother Dunlop's insides were removed during the Preserve A Life process, she's very light. I didn't think anything of it."

Unfortunately, there was nothing to prepare Tim for what awaited him under that covering. Seems Gloria had forgotten about the fact that the family's backyard is turned into a lake during irrigation, and the skin from one of Granny's feet had rotted away from the moisture. The other foot -- in fact, half the leg -- was gone. And just as Tim began to yell, Gloria saw the family's dog, Sparky, dragging something across the back lawn. It was Mrs. Dunlop's chewed-off appendage.

For this same reason, shallow graves and canines don't mix. Don't get me started on how many of my family's backyard BBQs have been ruined by lazy diggers and curious pets.

Getting over my initial revulsion to this article, I eventually became a little more curious about Preserve A Life's methods, and how many twisted ghouls families have opted for the procedure:

...since the 10-year-old Canadian corporation quietly transplanted itself to the Valley's sunnier climes last spring, setting up shop in an abandoned medical facility just south of Van Buren Street, 30 deceased have been humidermied at the facility using one of two methods: traditional taxidermy, wherein a human body is shorn of its skin and hair, the skeleton and internal organs disposed of (either through burial, cremation or tissue donation), and the remainder mounted over a mannequin made to order; or freeze-dried with the internal organs intact, the corpse drained of all fluid and consequently only a fraction of its original weight.

These human "replicants," as the 57 employees of Preserve A Life refer to them, are then hand-delivered to next of kin, and installed according to the family's wishes. Children have been posed on bicycles and skateboards, grandmothers in rocking chairs, and grandfathers playing boccie ball. One woman wanted her husband posed on his favorite Harley wearing a Hells Angels motorcycle jacket, while in the case of a lesbian couple, the surviving woman wanted her longtime companion dressed in a Frederick's of Hollywood French maid outfit, cut so as to reveal her buttocks and bosom. And in one of the most disturbing trends, some casualties of the Iraq war have even been mounted in full dress uniform, and posed saluting or waving the American flag.

Hey, look at that, the revulsion's back.

But how does one choose between freeze-drying and old fashioned taxidermy?

But there are drawbacks to both procedures. With freeze-drying, it's difficult to do realistic enhancements afterward, like breast or penile enlargement, because the implants cannot survive the freeze-drying process. Also, with freeze-drying, if the individual in question is obese, there may be some leakage of fat once the replication process is complete. And finally, because the skin is not "tanned" the old-fashioned way, vermin have been known to lay eggs in the dried flesh. "For some pests, like moths or cockroaches, a freeze-dried corpse is like a big hunk of beef jerky," admits [CEO Bryce] Cunningham.

That entire paragraph pretty much buried the needle on my internal "Oogh"-Meter, and I saw Nekromantik. Twice. Once on a date.

Before we go any further, I should probably clarify that I never really cared one way or the other what happened to my body after my inevitable death from autoerotic asphyxiation. At the time, however, there were few options: burial, cremation, and maybe as "Exploding Zombie #4" from some future horror flick. That being the case, I have to congratulate the alleged Preserve A Life company for finally coming up with a postmortem option I absolutely refuse to consider. In fact, I'm going to change my will to specify that any family member who attempts to "humidermy" my corpse will be haunted in perpetuity by my ghost until, Ju-On style, they jump out of a goddamned high rise.

For those who can't afford to have the entire body preserved, Preserve A Life offers a plethora of less expensive options. For $1,750 (discounts are sometimes available), you can have just the individual's head mounted on a plaque, and for $750, the limb of your choice. (One lady actually had her husband's right arm taxidermied, with the hand holding a removable ashtray.) A swatch of your loved one's skin can be treated and affixed to a pillowcase or a blanket, so that you can always have him or her next to you -- which Cunningham considers a bargain at $250. And ears, toes and fingers are dead cheap, from $50 to $100 to preserve. Cunningham says the most popular use of these "leftovers" is as key-chain fobs, which, he asserts, "make great conversation pieces."

That ashtray one's a pretty good gag, but all told it sounds like multiple offenses against various corpse violation statutes (assuming such things still exist...damn liberals). If that's not the case, can you just get someone's buttocks preserved and stuffed like a cushion you can kick when you get pissed off at all the debt they saddled you with by dying?

I probably shouldn't ask.

By now (assuming you haven't already chucked biscuits), you're probably wondering what other sorts of things are possible with your fully poseable upholstered mannequin.

For Leonard Scholl of Gilbert, verisimilitude was also a big part of having his new bride, Cynthia Scholl, humidermied. They'd only been married three days when Cynthia was impaled by a cast-iron pipe that had jostled loose from an 18-wheeler in front of them as they were making their way up the Pacific Coast Highway along the California coast. Driven by an intense desire to be with his beloved, Scholl gave Preserve A Life a call after seeing one of their ads, and they fulfilled Scholl's request to have the brown-eyed lass installed in his bedroom, wearing only her negligee.
...
"Our favorite time was Friday night. After work and dinner out, we would get comfortable, lie in bed and drink a glass or two of good Merlot before, well, you know. I still cherish that night of the week with her, and when I wake up the next morning, she's there beside me. As long as I can hold her hand in mine, I'll be happy."

There's more of the article, but my heart's really not into commenting on the rest of it. Maybe my attitude towards death and the afterlife are out of touch, but so be it. I'm not Egyptian. And, again, maybe the whole thing's an elaborate hoax.

Read it for yourself, by all means, but especially enjoy the pictures. I can't decide if my favorite is the woman rubbing the patch of skin sewn onto a pillow, or the little boy mounted on a scooter.

Thanks - for nothing - to The Thing That Walks Like a Man.

More crap from Germany

The BBC has the latest poop on Martin Luther and the Reformation:

Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century. The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg.

Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds.

The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat.

I've written before about the German obsession with the bowels, so I imagine the scientific community over there is - you'll forgive the expression - shitting themselves with delight.

The lavatory was built in the period 1516-17, according to Dr Martin Treu, a theologian and Luther expert based in Wittenberg.

"What we have found here is something very rare," he told BBC News Online, describing how most buildings preserved from that era tend to have served a grander function.

The toilet is in a niche set inside a room measuring nine by nine metres, which was discovered during the excavation of a garden in the grounds of Luther's house.

Dr Treu said there can be little doubt the toilet was used by Luther, the radical theologian who argued for a more "earthy Christianity", which regarded the entire human body - and not just the soul - as God's creation.

Not much I can add to that...

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to nail up a few theses of my own, in a matter of speaking.

Kaiju cum laude

Legitimacy, of a sort, for fans of movies featuring guys in big rubber suits beating the crap out of each other:

He's attacked other monsters and terrorized Japan for decades. Now Godzilla is confronting academics who want to wrestle with his legacy.

The University of Kansas plans to pay homage to the giant lizard later this month, organizing a three-day scholarly conference for the 50th anniversary of his first film.

It's not just about celebrating campy creature features. Planners want to provoke discussion of globalization, Japanese pop culture and Japanese-American relations after World War II.

Ha ha, no. Planners really want to sit around the hotel bar and laugh at the fact that they received grant money to put on a freaking Godzilla conference.

"I would like people to take Godzilla more seriously," said Bill Tsutsui, a history professor at the University of Kansas and author of the book "Godzilla on My Mind," which discusses the history of the monster's movies.

The conference that begins Oct. 28 will offer speeches, panel discussions and free screenings of Godzilla films, including "Gojira," the Japanese movie that started Godzilla's career in November 1954.

Atop the movie theater will be an inflatable 28-foot Godzilla balloon. Items from Tsutsui's collection of Godzilla memorabilia will be on display in the university's main library.

Organizers anticipate problems stemming from conference attendees mistakenly stopping at one of the fine auto dealerships on the outskirts of town, many of which also sport large inflatble dinosaurs.

The notion of a serious Godzilla conference drew puzzled looks on campus.

"It's kind of odd," freshman Kathleen Schafer said. "I didn't think scholars would be interested."

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have to hurry to my 'History of Rock and Roll' (University of Texas) midterm, then I'm off to the library to study for 'Feminist Cyborg Fiction' (UC Santa Cruz), 'The Films of Clint Eastwood' (Brown), and 'Music Video' (Northern Illinois)."

The franchise was widely known for its campy special effects. Godzilla films featured men in dinosaur suits stomping around miniature urban landscapes and some monster battles that, Tsutsui acknowledged in his book, seem more like professional wrestling matches.

When an American version of the first film was released in 1956 re-edited to include new scenes featuring Raymond Burr of "Perry Mason" fame the New York Times dismissed it as "cheap cinematic horror-stuff."

"It is true there were some bad, bad films produced, particularly in the late '60s and early '70s," said Igarashi, who plans to lecture at the conference on the 1964 movie "Godzilla vs. the Thing," in which Godzilla battles the giant moth, Mothra, and its offspring.

"However, the movie I talk about, which focuses on the struggle between a 164-foot tall, fire-breating lizard and an oversized, highly flammable insect, is rightfully considered a classic of the genre. No questions about the twin fairies, please."

Our (Hell) house is a very, very fine house

Metafilter has an article about "outreach" kits for churches wishing to construct their own Hell Houses this Halloween season. Hell Houses, as most of you know, are Christian-themed haunted houses that depict the stark horrors of modern society and dread repercussions of sinning against God. But with a message of, y'know, hope. There's a great documentary about the phenomenon (which started right here in Texas) floating around as well.

This is my favorite part of the article:

What issues are addressed by The Hell House Outreach Kit?

Our nation needs to know that much of what they are being fed by the liberal media and entertainment industries is lies and falsehoods. Hell House will allow your church or ministry to boldly proclaim the truth of the word of God.

Damn you, Brit Hume.

Tour Production:
Homosexuality — No one is born gay. Genesis 1:27 says that God created man in His own image. Homosexuality is sin and is not just an alternative lifestyle.

No one ever mentions Genesis 1:27.5, which says that God liked to let His hair down by heading down to Castro and hitting some bars on the odd weekend.

Abortion — It is not merely a surgical procedure or the removal of a mass of tissue. It is the taking of a human life!

Don't you get it?! Our exclamation points make it true!!!

Suicide — The solution to your problems and depression is not found through ending your life. Let Jesus carry you through those tough times and be the strength you are searching for.

Unless, of course, Jesus tells you to kill youself, then it's probably a good idea to do what he says. He's Jesus, after all.

Drunk Driving — The false highs and constant lows of alcohol are never more sobering than when you realize that you are a killer.

And even more sobering when you realize you just crashed into a bus full of fetuses.

Satanism — The occult is very powerful and not something to toy with. Jesus Christ possesses the only power greater than the kingdom of darkness.

"I thought dabbling in the black arts would be good for a laugh. How wrong I was."

Hell — Hell is not an eternal party place. It is the home of never-ending torment, anguish and permanent damnation and separation from God.

Wait a minute..."not an eternal party place?" That means I've been lied to by, uh, well, absolutely nothing, I guess.

Except maybe that goddamned liberal media.

Heaven – Heaven is the eternal reward for those whose names are written in the Book Of Life. It is a place of exquisite beauty crowned by the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ and His holy angels

Man. Hell actually sounds more entertaining.

Personally, I think the stage production sounds better:

Stage Production:
Domestic Abuse — A phenomenal surprise beginning to the production starts by including this scene. The home and family is a major target for the kingdom of hell and abuse is fuel on the fire for doing damage to marriages and relationships.

That paragraph gives me a headache, but I think it means that the God wants Daddy to beat Mommy like he would Satan. That's comforting.

Rave Scene — Youth culture often sees itself as wildly indestructible. The underground world of rave clubs and drug usage proves to be a deadly combination, and hell's demons rejoice.

You know, I wish Quincy was still on the air. I bet I would've loved the "Rave" episode.

Teen Suicide — The seemingly insurmountable stress and pressure of teen life is amplified by the dark shadows of Satan's schemes. Suicide is the result.

And if they commit suicide while playing Dungeons and Dragons at a rave, that's a trifecta, and Satan gets 10 to 1.

Mother's Womb Abortion — A young mother is miraculously given the opportunity to learn from her mistake upon being blessed with a visit by her aborted daughter at four different ages of life.

I hope one of the stages is "Aborted Daughter has Abortion." Wouldn't that create some kind of infinite temporal loop? I think I saw that on Star Trek once.

Catholic versions will have fathers visited by the potential offspring of every sperm they've spilled outside of procreative intercourse. It'll take considerably longer.

Drunk Driving – Four teenagers are out on a Friday night high, alive and buzzed after the prom. There's just one problem: this night ends with two that are dead and two more left to deal with their horrible guilt and shame — and hell's bad boys will make sure of that.

But in an inspirational twist, those two drunk drivers go on to become President and Vice-President of the United States of America.

Gay Wedding — The sacred institution of marriage between a man and a woman is further disgraced by the unholy union of a man and a… man, and Satan wouldn't have it any other way.

The hell with that...fast forward to Gay Honeymoon. That's where all the action is.

Hell — The eternal fury and fire of hell is portrayed as the hell-dwellers, gate keeper and Satan declare that every person there is destined to burn forever in constant pain and agony.

These kits only list for $299, so I'm skeptical about how much of Hell's "eternal fury and fire" will actually be portrayed. At best we can hope for a few Black Cat firecrackers and a smoke grenade.

Heaven — This particular heaven scene also has an angelic rescue which brings all the attention to glorious eternity. A wonderful connection also occurs between this scene and the abortion scene with a surprise reunion in heaven! Jesus explains restoration and gives everyone the chance to pray the prayer of salvation.

We get to see an angel get an abortion?

That tears it, I'm going to Hell House this year. I'm sure there are several being held in Houston (I hear Second Baptist and Abundant Life Christian Center have held them), I just need to find one. Who's with me? We can meet for drinks beforehand and bring big foam fingers declaring our deity to be #1.

Or #2, if you're Muslim.

How to guarantee your kid will need therapy - Pt. 1

This beats the hell out of the time my mother drew eyebrows on me in black Sharpie for my "nuclear mutant" costume.

A young Bush supporter wears her hair braids in the shape of a "W" made by her mother using a bent clothes hanger for a campaign visit by US President George W. Bush in Rochester, Minnesota. (AFP/Tim Sloan)

Supporter, eh? I remain doubtful that any kid forced to sit still while their mother spent a couple hours braiding her hair into the shape of a "W" would have anything but icy loathing for the candidate in question. But don't believe me, just look at her face.

[This is bipartisan, by the way, as braiding a "K" would be even more problematic.]

And given this administration's record on reproductive rights, she may want to hang on to that coat hanger.

A Perfectly Cromulent Blog: Going for the cheap laugh since 2003

Hey Grisham, I got yer package right here.

For the record, I was playing golf with OJ at the time:

Authorities are investigating a suspicious mailing -- initially thought to be a bomb -- that was sent to bestselling author John Grisham at his farm in Albemarle County.

"It appeared to be a potentially explosive device," said Lee Catlin, a spokeswoman for the county. "But a state police evaluation determined it was not a functional explosive device."

County fire marshal Bob Lowry said Tuesday the large envelope was placed in Grisham's mailbox Saturday but was not delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.

Those Illuminati buffoons misunderstood me; I didn't wish death on Grisham, just his career.

Bring out your dead

Saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow last night. As some of you have probably already heard, writer/director Kerry Conran - in addition to shooting the entire movie against a blue screen and digitially creating everything except the actors - also "resurrected" footage of deceased actor Laurence Olivier to depict the film's villain, Dr. Totenkopf.

Like most, I was a little squeamish about the idea (we all have fond memories of those Fred Astaire vacuum commercials, I'm sure). I can say, without divulging too much, that it's actually done in a pretty logical fashion which, given one of the more obvious inspirations for the film, makes a certain amount of sense.

But that's not important. What is important is that The Thing That Walks Like a Man (who joined me for the screening) and I both realized all the indignation the use of Olivier's likeness is sure to elicit among some reviewers may be less a stunt by Conran and more of a savvy post-mortem marketing move by Olivier himself. If Jenna Jameson (bear with me, this has a point) can film dozens of scenes and put them on ice for release after she "retires" from adult films to have kids, why couldn't Olivier (or Brando...or Divine, for that matter) have done something similar?

Now, plenty of actors are looking into licensing the use of their images after death, but I'm talking about the potential existence of footage shot by Olivier to ensure his estate never went broke. Why, there could be a sequel to As You Like It out there right now (Any Which Way Lou Like It), or generic product endorsements ("Hi, I'm Laurence Olivier, star of such classic films as Clash of the Titans and Inchon. Making those movies sure was fun, but I'm here tonight to talk to you about the most serious evil facing our society today: miscegenation."). And since we know Olivier was a smart man, there's no reason to think he didn't step out of the boundaries of, *ahem*, conventional cinema. I admit, the thought of some amateur Super 8 featuring Olivier and Joan Plowright doesn't intrigue me, in a financial sense, as much as the possibility that he and Errol Flynn got drunk one night and put together a scheisse video on board the Zaca.

You know Errol would've been into it.

The greatest thing I have ever seen

Far be it from me to make fun of someone for staging a performance piece set to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On," because who among us hasn't been there? But I was struck by this young man's sincerity, as well as the mortal desperation that went in to putting this video presentation together. The phrase, "Hopefully you'll call me after this," uttered as he begins his tour de force, really says it all.

Thanks to the Thing Who Walks Like A Man, even though we'll ignore the fact that he probably stumbled upon this during one of his thrice-daily internet searches for "pimp."

And make sure to pay attention around the 2:05 mark for some very special garment rending.

For Peenman, wherever I may find him

A picture is sometimes worth less than a thousand words:

"Dude, check it out. I paused the DVD right where Friedkin spliced in that frame of the leering demon face."

I suppose you can do better?

It's a doughnut, people - Pt. II

A scant four months after APCB brought you the story of Hawaiians overloading storage bins on inter-island flights with Krispy Kreme doughnuts comes this story of suckers in DC waiting in line 13 hours for the opening of their new Dupont Circle location (via Fark):

The nation's capital became the latest to join the craze Tuesday, when the city's first Krispy Kreme shop opened. About 150 people waited in line outside the store in Dupont Circle - some for as long as 13 hours - to get their hands on the goodies. They were rewarded when workers gave out trays of doughnuts to the crowd shortly before 6 a.m.

Rami Genauer was awarded a dozen free doughnuts each week for a year for being first in line. The District of Columbia resident said he had been waiting with his folding chair since 4:30 p.m. Monday.

"It's a spectacle," Genauer said, standing amid a sea of sleeping bags, pillows and inflatable air mattresses. "The doughnuts are just secondary," he said, adding that he plans to give them to the homeless.

You evil bastard. Like their lifespans aren't short enough.

13 hours? I've waited in some embarrassing lines in my life (Episode I and Adam West's autograph, to name two, and I was only 6 or 7 for that last one), but never 13 hours. They're still just doughnuts.

The 800-square-foot store expands the chain's presence in the region to three, with stores already in operation in Alexandria (website - news) , Va., and Rockville, Md.

You know, in 13 hours, you could drive back and forth from Alexandria about 22 times. Or watch The Godfather three times. Or reverse some of the horrible psychological damage you've done to your kids. Just a thought.

Quote of the day

"Although you may consider purple, blue, and pink beautiful colors, effective Monday, they are not acceptable hair colors." - Announcement at our local high school this morning.

Still no word on the status of monkey knife fighting

Man, Hong Kong really needs a college basketball team:

In Hong Kong, 115 people have been arrested following a police investigation into alleged betting on insect fights.

A police spokesman said the Far East Friends of Crickets Social Club was raided following a surveillance operation by undercover officers.

Cricket fighting is legal in Hong Kong, but gambling on the result is not.

What's the PETA stance on something like this? Is it below the group's radar because they're insects? And let's face it, doesn't everyone takes a certain godlike thrill out of stomping the bejeezus out of tiny creatures in order to give more importance to our meaningless lives?

On second thought, don't answer that.

Cricket fights, which were a popular pastime in the 1950s and 60s, are quite rare in modern Hong Kong.

For one thing, the widespread use of pesticides has reduced the availability of suitable fighters.

And now we know why there have been so few Mothra sightings in the last decade or so.

Curly shoots first?

Check, please:

George Lucas, a longtime foe of "colorized" movies, has sharply criticized Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment's decision to release two Three Stooges DVDs today (Tuesday) that will allow viewers to watch them in either their original black-and-white or digitally colored versions. In an interview with the Associated Press, Lucas said, that the Stooges' slapstick comedy belongs in a black-and-white universe. "Would color distract from their comedy and make it not as funny anymore?" Lucas said. "Maybe just the fact that they're in black and white makes it funny, because their humor is dated. But by putting it in black and white, it puts it in a context where you can appreciate it for what it was. But you try to make it in full living color and try to compare it to a Jim Carrey movie, then it's hard for young people to understand. ... It's not fair to the artist."

Someone is obviously confused by the critical point here; that Columbia TriStar is giving customers the option of watching either the black and white or color versions. This is unfathomable to Lucas, who refuses to release the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy on DVD, forcing fans to sit through the same kind of updating he's bitching about here. Worse, he continues to pile even more CGI into the films. Certain aspects of the original trilogy are "enhanced" (the space battles, filling every square inch of the Mos Eisley scenes with crap), while others are still woefully dated (the state-of-the-art Asteroids graphics of the Millennium Falcon's targeting computers). Does this not "distract" from the viewing experience?

The ones who should really be offended by this are the "young people" Lucas talks about. It wasn't bad enough that he thought they'd embrace Jar Jar Binks, who's destined to go down as one of the most loathed characters in movie history, but now he's saying that youngsters are too stupid to realize The Three Stooges aren't contemporary comedians. This in spite of the show's music, clothing styles, and the fact that all three principals (even Shemp) are long dead.

And I'm still waiting for my Howard the Duck special edition.

You scream, we all scream

Sick of the blatant liberal bias in your freezer section? Tired of flavors with anti-American names like "Cherry Garcia" and "Karamel Sutra?" Well, look no further...Star Spangled Ice Cream is here.

From the touching tribute to the Gipper on the front page to Ted Nugent's stirring endorsement of their "Gun Nut" ice cream, I think we've finally found something as deliciously cold as Ann Coulter:

"This ice cream is awesome!” proclaims The Nuge. “After I kill and grill it, I top my wild game off with a bowl of GUN NUT!"

No word on The Nuge's endorsement of banging underaged girls, however. But who cares? SSIC donates $1 to the Gun Owners Foundation's education project, which includes advice for dealing with a visit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. No pushing, kids!

And check out these great flavors:

Choc and Awe
I Hate the French Vanilla
Nutty Environmentalist
Iraqi Road
Rushmallow

What, no Kerry Waffle Cones? Or Gore's Sour Grape? What about Hillary Carpetbagger Crunch? You guys obviously aren't trying very hard.

(Found on Bob and David's web site)

Kraut, kraut, let it all out

Tom DeLay is either clumsily attempting to deflect growing criticism of his fundraising activities, or he's as big an idiot as we've often suspected:

A super-sized Statue of Liberty, holding aloft an order of french fries, is adorning food tray liners in Subway restaurants across Germany. And House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, is angry enough about it to lose his lunch.

"This is every bad stereotype about corporate America come true," DeLay said in a news release.

The ad in German, whose headline translates as "Why are Americans so fat?" is a promotional tie-in to the movie Super Size Me, director Morgan Spurlock's take on life in the fast-food lane.
...
Subway officials point out that the prime images on the tray liners — the goateed, fry-stuffing madman and the Rubenesque Lady Liberty — were both borrowed directly from the movie promotions running in Germany.

DeLay is obviously unaware that it's essentially "anything goes" overseas when it comes to advertising. I've always liked the fact that otherwise serious American actors and artists can usually be coaxed into making a whiskey commercial in Japan, or selling noodles in Malaysia (many ads of this nature used to be availble to view on AdCritic, but it looks like you have to pay now).

Besides, I've been to Germany and let's just say it wouldn't surprise me if Subway was finding a sizable audience for lowfat alternatives over there as well.

I guess for some companies, corporate patriotism is as flexible as Jared's waistline," DeLay said.

DeLay objected to the ad's parody of the Statue of Liberty, "one of the most recognizable American symbols."

And he complained aboutthe flier including a quote from filmmaker and "pathological partisan" Michael Moore, whose anti-Bush diatribe Fahrenheit 9/11 has become the Democrats' choice for best picture.

Moore is quoted as saying, "The only time I have been scared for my life has been going through a McDonald's drive-through."

DeLay said, "For Subway to thumb its nose at its American customers and promote Michael Moore's blame-America-first conspiracy in a foreign country is very concerning."

His comments about recognizable American symbols are well taken. After all, he's been parodying a Congressman in another one of our most recognizable symbols - the Capitol - for years.

Morgan Spurlock struck a deal with Subway to use Super Size Me to promote Subway's healthier menu. In the process, they put a porky Lady Liberty on some placemats. I'm no big city political analyst, but certainly there are other things a U.S. Congressman could be worrying about besides bitching at a fast food company for engaging in the same sort of behavior fast food companies have been engaging in since the 1980s.

Like, say, explaining how money donated to your children's charity ended up paying for luxury suites and yacht cruises, for starters.

As for the placemat, I would've used a Blazing Saddles theme, and found some way to incorporate the line "Fourteen is my limit on schnitzengruben" in there somewhere.

Don't give her any ideas

Len points out a tactic that might be as effective against exasperating husbands as it is against disobedient teens: selling their video game console on eBay:

UP FOR AUCTION OR FOR SALE DUE TO PUNISHMENT

PLAY STATION 2
PS2
USED
PLAYS GREAT! ASK MY SON

Remind me to get that laundry put away when I get home.

Meshuggah white men

Irritating the government is one thing, but when Michael Moore starts pissing off America's sinister cabal of game show hosts, watch out (via Fark):

DALLAS (Wireless Flash) -- Michael Moore should hope he never meets up with game show host Bob Eubanks in a public bathroom.

"The Newlywed Game" host has had a feud with the "Fahrenheit 9/11" director ever since Moore's 1989 documentary "Roger and Me" showed him telling an off-color joke: "Why do Jewish women never get AIDS? They only marry a**holes, they don't screw `em."

Eubanks claims that he only told the joke because he thought the camera was off, and insists the joke was told to him by a Jewish friend.

"Some of my best friends are Jews," Eubanks added, "And I love Jewish entertainers like Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springstein."

While he thought the joke was innocuous, the furor over it cost him a job at CBS and forced him to apologize on "Entertainment Tonight."

Eubanks is reportedly planning to join James Watt, Al Campanis, Marge Schott, and the ghost of Jimmy the Greek on the newly created Cultural Diversity Panel at Bob Jones University.

I for one welcome our ape overlords

Nothing bad ever came from sticking things in monkey brains, right ? [Thanks to The Thing that Walks Like a Man, who doesn't get any more love here until he answers his frigging e-mail]

Brain implants have been used to "read the minds" of monkeys to predict what they are about to do and even how enthusiastic they are about doing it.

It is the first time such high level cognitive brain signals have been
decoded and could ultimately lead to more natural thought-activated
prosthetic devices for people with paralysis, says Richard Andersen project
leader at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, US.

I've read enough. Sure, now we're able to control the monkeys' actions, but what happens when Skynet disables the global defense grid and takes command of worldwide electronic systems?

That's right: monkey terminators.

Somebody get James Cameron and/or Charlton Heston on the phone.

Reach for it

200 years after the incident, descendants of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton staged a re-enactment of their ancestors' famous duel:

Antonio Burr, a descendant of Burr's cousin, arrived by rowboat in period costume and fired a replica of the .54-caliber pistol that mortally wounded Hamilton 200 years ago in the July 11, 1804 duel. Douglas Hamilton, a fifth-great-grandson of Hamilton, feigned the historic hip wound, dropping to one knee and then falling to the ground in a sitting position.

The event was the families' first meeting in two centuries.

"It wasn't something on my top 100 list, but it was nice to meet Antonio Burr," Douglas Hamilton said afterward. "He seems to be a very nice man, though I'm not sure I'm going to be on his Christmas card list."

Those were the days. The quality of political violence has really declined in this country, when you think about how long ago it was before something on the level of the Vice-President (Burr - setting the bar for the office so low Spiro Agnew would have a tough time stooping to it) squaring off with a signer of the Constitution (Hamilton).

I'm also fond of Preston Brook's Congressional cane-whipping of Charles Sumner in 1856.

Nowadays, we have to check out other countries like Russia and Indonesia for our political brawls. But not to worry, for I'm sure we Americans can look forward - in about 180 years - to descendants of Linda Evans and Joan Collins bringing the Krystle-Alexia catfights of Dynasty back to life. I'll take what I can get.

More entries from the insomnia file

I was listening to some old recordings of the Reverend Jim Jones earlier tonight (don't ask) and was struck by the similarities between his speaking/preaching styles and those of the late Sam Kinison. Both relied not only on the obvious evangelical method of getting their points across, but also on sheer volume. The two sound eerily alike as well.

Not to take away anything from Kinison, who was a gifted comedian, but nothing outdoes authentic insanity for effective oration.

"Scientists have proven that the Sasquatch, he is real"

I might have stayed in academics if I could've gotten my doctorate in cryptozoology. Luckily, my local newspaper keeps me up to date on the endless pursuit of the enigma that is Bigfoot:

J.E. "Smokey" Crabtree lives way down in the river bottoms of southwest Arkansas -- a remote land where aquamarine light filters through eerie forests, water moccasins slice S-trails through duckweed-filled swamps and mystery is a living, breathing, tangible thing. It's there that the welder-turned-author first heard the call of the wild.

"It screams out, kind of like elephants," Crabtree said of the giant apelike creature he believes prowls the soggy woods near his Fouke, Ark., home. "It's come to our place several times at night aggravating the animals."

Crabtree, 77, has written three books about the "Bigfoot" creature, one of which became the basis for the 1973 cinematic thriller The Legend of Boggy Creek. Crabtree's often found huge footprints in the mud, he said, and his son once discovered an 8-foot-tall simian tangled in a fence near his home.

On Saturday, Crabtree will detail his decades-long hunt for Bigfoot at the third annual "Southern Crypto Conference" at Conroe's Lone Star Expo Center. Other speakers will include Bob Gimlin, who collaborated in the 1967 filming of an alleged Bigfoot in California, and Houston musician Ken Gerhard, who has searched the Texas-Mexico border for the giant thunderbirds of Native American lore.

I can only imagine the melting pot of humanity that would attend something called the "Southern Crypto Conference." Mocking as I may sound, however, I think it would be wicked keen if - in addition to Houston's plagues of cockroaches, mosquitoes, and fire ants - I also had to contend with ape-men rooting through my garbage. Who needs video games when I can sit on my porch and take potshots at pterodactyls trying to make off with my family?

As for Crabtree's claims, I'll simply point out that rural Arkansas is still the only place I've ever seen flyers advertising a dwarf tossing event, and that was in 1983 (before it was appropriated by the mainstream). You guys are going to have to do better than the coelacanth if you want to escape the fringes of animal husbandry.

If I may be allowed to channel Dan Savage for a minute

I'd tell most couples out there that going to sex clubs is one of those things - like how many kids you want and where you want to end up living - that you should probably talk about before getting married:

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- The ex-wife of Jack Ryan, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, alleged in court papers filed in 2000 that he took her to sex clubs and asked her to engage in sexual activity in front of other patrons. ... At a news conference Monday, Ryan reiterated the denial he made in his initial legal response to the charges by TV actress Jeri Lynn Ryan, in which he called the allegations "ridiculous" and "smut" and insisted he was "faithful and loyal to my wife throughout our marriage."

That may very well be, but Ryan's in the wrong party and the wrong state for those kind of shenanigans. Grumbling has already begun among Illinois Republicans that he needs to withdraw, and even the Washington Times describes him as "badly trailing" Democratic opponent Barack Obama in recent polls.

If all this was consensual, I'd agree with both Ryan and Obama that the issue isn't really relevant to the campaign. Sexual peccadilloes, provided they don't involve minors, lack of consent, or (I guess) corpses don't have a lot of bearing on someone's ability to govern, so if two adults want to get their freak on in public, what's the big deal?

Problem is, it doesn't sound like both parties were equally enthusiastic:

Jeri Ryan said her then-husband took her on three "surprise trips" in the spring of 1998 to New Orleans, New York and Paris, during which he took her to sex clubs. She said she refused to go in the first and went into the second at his insistence.

"It was a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling," she said in the court document, adding that her husband "wanted me to have sex with him there, with another couple watching. I refused."

She said on arriving at the third club, in Paris, "people were having sex everywhere. I cried. I was physically ill. [He] became very upset with me and said it was not a 'turn on' for me to cry."

"Stop that blubbering, she-devil! A man has needs, after all, and who are you to impede my biological imperative to nail 7 of 9 in front of a bunch of leering, Gallic perverts?"

These days, I suspect the fact he was in France might be more damaging to his reputation than the sex club stuff. And of course, he's telling a different story:

In his legal response to her allegations, Jack Ryan said while he did arrange "romantic getaways" for the couple, they "did not include the type of activities she describes."

"We did go to one avant garde nightclub in Paris, which was more than either one of us felt comfortable with. We left and vowed never to return," he said.

Those were heady days...Meet Joe Black changed everyone's conceptions of what love could be, while our own Commander in Chief's behavior opened a whole new vista of carnal possibilties. Can you really blame the guy for getting caught up in the whole cultural zeitgeist?

Ryan said he believes voters will not hold the allegations against him.

"I think that when voters look into their hearts and minds and say, 'Can we trust this fellow Jack Ryan, or does he try to do the best he can, or is he in this job for the right reasons?' I think they'll see that same sincerity to try do the right thing, though knowing that in the end that I am human and I do fail."

"And besides," he added, "Look at the rack on her. I mean, who wouldn't want to hit that? Am I right?"

Ryan then proceeded to exchange high fives with several reporters.

Understatement, thy name is law enforcement

The CNN link reads: "Police: Bodies in lake 'suspicious'"

Suspicious? What makes them say that?

PLEASANT PRAIRIE, Wisconsin (AP) -- A father and two sons missing from Chicago for more than a month were identified Sunday as the bodies that washed ashore on Lake Michigan bound together by nylon rope and tied to bags filled with sand.

Must be the nylon. Wisconsin murderers typically use hemp rope. And cinderblocks.

Lame jokes aside, and as Tim points out in the comments, it's a horrible story.

"This is the Big One, Elizabeth!"

That Madonna:

Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone has a message for the world: "Call me Esther."

Madonna, after all, isn't exactly kosher if you're into Kabbalah. So the Material Girl has claimed the Hebrew name of Esther.

This announcement comes in the middle of her Re-Invention tour and just days before the release of her third children's book. Her latest, Yakov and the Seven Thieves (Callaway, $19.95), hits bookstores on Monday.

"Just days," eh? Good timing. Still, it beats Scientology.

In an interview to air Friday night on ABC's 20/20, Madonna/Esther talks about her faith, adding that although she was named after her mother (who died when she was young), the superstar isn't dishonoring her memory with the name change.

"I wanted to attach myself to the energy of a different name," she says in the interview.

That's a good idea, and since I can't claim any expertise on centuries-old Jewish mysticism, I'm attaching her new name to the energy of TV's classic Sanford and Son.

Madonna can still be "Esther," or "Aunt Esther," as she'll come to be known.
Husband Guy Ritchie is "Fred."
Family friend Rosie O'Donnell will be "Lamont."
Their daughter Lourdes now goes by "Grady."
Rocco is "Julio."
Someone will also have to get a goat for the family and name it "Chico."

There'll be hijinx galore as we see repeated clips on Entertainment Tonight of Guy shaking his fist at Rosie and calling her a "big dummy."

These Reagan tributes are getting out of hand

This story sort of throws that "USDA Approved" label into an unflattering light:

French fries may be the bane of low-carb diets and obesity foes, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a federal judge in Texas have another name for the popular food: fresh vegetable.

U.S. District Judge Richard Schell last week endorsed little-noticed changes by the USDA to federal regulations that govern what defines a fresh vegetable. The changes were made at the behest of the french-fry industry, which has spent the past five decades pushing for revisions to the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act.

Known as PACA, the law was passed by Congress in 1930 to protect fruit and vegetable farmers in the event that their customers went out of business without paying for their produce.

Under an obscure USDA rule, most frozen french fries have been considered fresh vegetables since 1996. Now they all are, under a revision last year that added batter-coated, frozen french fries to the list of fresh produce.

Seems to me that "fresh produce" could be largely defined as something you found in the...I don't know...fresh produce section of your grocery store. Sure, it would need some tweaking to keep out things like beets and those shortcakes they sometimes sell with the strawberries, but it would effectively keep out crap like Ore-Ida Deep Fried Arterial Bombs Crinkle Fries.

It's fitting, perhaps (and maybe a little suspect), that all this hits the fan less than a week after Reagan's funeral:

The french-fry rule calls to mind the USDA's attempt in 1981 to classify ketchup and pickle relish as vegetables, an idea that was dropped amid public protests.

Good times. This latest ruling almost blew it out of the water, though:

Though a USDA news release announcing the revision says caramel-coated apples also will be considered fresh fruit under the Batter-Coating Rule, officials say the gooey treats would not be included because coating it changes the character of the fruit and makes it a candy.

Frying and battering potato strips, however, does not change the character of a potato, they argued.

Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, said it "boggles the mind" that the USDA would label french fries a fresh vegetable because most commercial fries are fried in oil laden with heart-clogging trans fat.

I don't know that potatoes should be included as a vegetable, period. Nobody eats a potato with nothing on it, baked or not. They're merely delivery systems for sour cream and bacon bits. There's always chili or chopped beef, as well. When completing other dishes, they're covered in cheese ("That's a quality side") or butter. Reliance on the spud almost wiped out the Irish, and to this day the best use I've found for one is as a projectile.

It's too late for Dan Quayle, but maybe we'd all be better off if the tater was banned forever.

One from column A, one from column B, and your choice of soup

I think my favorite part of this story is when they refer to Jolie as a "busty actress:"

Tomb Raider star Angelina Jolie is desperate to fulfill her dream of creating a multi-cultural family of adopted children. The busty actress recently went on a goodwill mission to Russia - where she met with adoption officials and visited orphaned Chechen refugees - to improve her chances of obtaining a Russian child. The gorgeous 29-year-old already has one adopted tot - Cambodian orphan Maddox, who became a member of her family in March 2002. A family friend tells website Pagesix.Com, "By the end of the year, if everything goes well, she will have a new baby. The adoption process is already under way. Angelina has always wanted a rainbow family, children from all countries."

I'm too lazy to look it up, but is Jesse Jackson still married? 'Cause he and Jolie sound like a match made in PR heaven.

While I have the utmost respect for adoption and for those who put up with all the beauracracy and BS to take in unwanted children, Jolie's approach kind of creeps me out. She's the one opening her home to these kids, so she's obviously free to use whatever criteria she chooses, but maybe she could've found a better template than the Global Beer Challenge, is all I'm sayin'.

"Chilling. Absolutely chilling."

Not my words, but rather those of the proprietor of the Jesus of the Week page in reference to this week's selection:

My personal caption would read, "Grizzly Adams, after bringing Ben to the petting zoo, suddenly hit upon a horrible idea."

Thanks to The Thing That Walks Like a Man for the link.

Monsters of Rhinoplasty

Back in the halcyon hair band days of the late '80s/early '90s, musicians were always challenging each other to fights. One example that I (dimly) recall was when Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil was supposedly going to take on Guns 'n Roses frontman Axl Rose. As I remember it, Rose called Neil out for claiming he'd put the beat down on GnR guitarist Izzy Stradlin, and then Neil, on MTV, challenged Rose back. There was posturing aplenty (Neil took a month's worth of tae kwon do, or something, and Rose was always quite brave about jumping into crowds to pummel people when his security detail was close at hand), but nothing ever came of it, of course.

Now, as both singers have lapsed into obscurity and aborted comeback attempts, perhaps it might be more entertaining if they continued their idiotic pissing contest in the plastic surgery arena.

In the blond corner, Vince Neil:

Rocker Vince Neil begins a three-month extreme makeover today for MTV's version of "The Swan."

"I call him `The Mallard,' " said Lia Gerardini, Neil's girlfriend.

At 43, the frontman of the legendary rock group Motley Crue is the first rock star to join the reality re-do craze.

The new Neil will be revealed August 28, after seeing a lot of a trainer, a plastic surgeon and a lifestyle counselor.

Starting today, he consults with a plastic surgeon and cuts out drinking.

I have no idea what that "mallard" comment means. If "The Swan" is supposed to refer to an ugly duckling that grows up beautiful, doesn't "The Mallard" signify one that ends up ugly?

I'm also curious as to what surgical modifications Neil is going to request. Having seen both his and former bandmate Tommy Lee's, uh, "home movies," I can definitely suggest one area for improvement.

And in the paranoid schizophrenic corner, W. Axl Rose:

Axl Rose, now something of a recluse, has apparently spent his time getting some very appearance altering plastic surgery. He looks like a totally different person after a light face lift, cheekbone implants, and assorted chemical peels that have left his skin rosy pink.

For some reason, I saw the GnR "comeback" on the VMAs, or the MTV Movie Awards, or whatever stupid program it was. I recall thinking Axl was the one who should've had the bucket on his head. That gruesomely stretched mug was bad enough, but those dreadlock implants really were the piece de resistance.

I think I speak for everybody when I say that I'm hoping for a reconciliation. After which, they can go out on tour with Courtney Love and Lil Kim and do a rousing set of covers from "Plastic Surgery Disasters" by the Dead Kennedys.

When clowns attack

I hate clowns:

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - A clown who goes by the name of "Spanky" has been arrested on child pornography charges while traveling with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, federal agents said.

Thomas Riccio, 23, of Jacksonville, Fla., was arrested Friday by Fayetteville police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to face 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, the federal agency said Tuesday.

Leads from a federal investigation in New Jersey linked Riccio to a company in Belarus that provided credit card billing services for more than 50 child pornography Web sites internationally, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement spokesman Dean Boyd.

Police and federal agents searched Riccio's computer and found thousands of images, many involving young children participating in sexual acts, authorities said.

And I've always hated clowns. There's not much difference between an exaggerated smile and a mouth full of eager fangs to a kid. what's more, I was taught that red noses indicated an unhealthy love of demon alcohol. Had I been a little younger when Poltergeist came out, I would've had nightmares for months over the clown-under-the-bed scene instead of the mere weeks that actually resulted.

It probably wasn't until high school that I first learned about John Wayne Gacy and his penchant for entertaining kids while dressed as a clown. Reading about his killing 33 young men and boys sealed the deal for me: my kids aren't hanging around any of those greasepainted ghouls.

I'm sure we'll eventually end up taking our children to the circus. I even imagine my wide-eyed daughter will point to the clowns on the floor and ask, "What are those, Daddy?" And I'll calmly reply, "I'm glad you asked, honey. Those are vampires, sentenced to a lifetime of ghastly servitude for their foul crimes. Because they bathed in the blood of innocents, they are condemned forever more to caper and perform for children. Don't be fooled, though: if they were to get loose, they'd kill everyone here in an orgy of jugular-slashing carnage."

She'll thank me later.

"It's time for regime change, brother!"

Mt. T, Hulk Hogan, and a gone-to-seed He-Man team up to take out President Bush and Voltron, while the Teletubbies gun down Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il.

No, I'm not kidding (thanks to the Thing that Walks Like a Man):

Personally, I think the Dean Scream is the most effective special attack, and don't mess with the Kerrytron.

"Who run Bartertown?"

There was an article on CNN yesterday about a University of Louisville professor attempting to keep the Ku Klux Klan off campus by claiming they're a terrorist organization. An interesting strategy, but what got me was the picture of the KKK's man in Louisville, Jim Kennedy:

Pretty appetizing, I agree. But I was immediately struck to his resemblance by a character in a certain post-apocalyptic Australian movie series. As futile as it might be for us Mad Max fans to speculate on the lives the characters led before the Oil Wars, I think we've solved the mystery of The Collector's past:

That sucking sound

Children of the night, shut up (via Fark):

PORTLAND -- You've seen them in scary movies, comic books and maybe even in your nightmares, but have you ever seen a vampire in real life?

You probably have if you live in Portland.

"Generally a vampire is anything that feeds off the energy of others," says 19-year old art student and vampire, Raven.
...
Raven claims she's a psyonic, or psychic vampire.

Psychic vampire? Except for her age, she sounds like every girl I dated from 1990-92.

I actually had more that I was planning on saying about this, but really, what teenager hasn't claimed they were a vampire/Wiccan/Andy Warhol at some point?

In fact, the phrase "19-year old art student" says more than I ever could.

Making "Zowie Bowie" look like a reasonable alternative

Gwyneth Paltrow has given birth to a daughter, and saddled her with a rather unfortunate name:

LONDON - Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow has given birth to her first child, a daughter called Apple, a spokesman said today.

Paltrow, 31, and her British husband Chris Martin, 27, lead singer of the band Coldplay, said they were "ecstatic" after the baby was delivered on Friday following a long labor at a London hospital.

I don't know how much input Martin had in the naming process, but something expecting fathers should always take into consideration is a moniker other kids can't easily make fun of. The youngest Paltrow can look forward to "Crapple," "Rotten Apple," "Fritter," and whatever else her cruel classmates can come up with.

Which will be ten times worse if she ends up going to one of those snotty British private schools.

"We are 900 miles over the moon," the couple said in a statement released by Martin's spokesman Murray Chalmers.

Chalrmers quickly followed up this statement with, "And due to the parents' sudden death from lack of oxygen, the now orphaned child will be raised by her maternal grandmother."

"900 miles over the moon?" That's just silly.

"There appears to be a frog in my bidet."

Spring and summer are frog season in these parts, and while not exactly on the same decibel level as cicadas, the little bastards can be loud. When we moved into out first non-apartment housing several years ago, I began hunting around for solutions to the racket that sprang up outside our bedroom window every night.

The following conversation - between myself and a Houston Garden Center employee - actually took place and is, to the best of my memory, accurate:

PVH: What did you say these things are called again?
HGCE: Rio Grande chirping frogs. They're a Houston-specific variant.
PVH: Gotcha.
HGCE: What were you looking for, exactly?
PVH: I just want something to make them avoid the area right under my bedroom window, if you've got anything like that.
HGCE: Uh huh.
PVH: I don't want to kill them, necessarily, but something that..I don't know...drives them into the neighbor's yard would be fine.
HGCE: Have you tried rotenone?
PVH: No, what's that?
HGCE: Well, adding it to any standing water will essentially make the water unlivable, which will drive the frogs out.
PVH: I see.
HGCE: Did you ever see the movie Creature from the Black Lagoon?
PVH: [blinking] Uh yes, actually.
HGCE: Well, they used rotenone to capture the Creature.
PVH: ...
HGCE: And he was an amphibian.
PVH: I'll take it.

It worked, too. Who would've suspected that all the answers to modern man's pest control problems could be found in 1950's horror movies?

If only there was something to help me with my mantis infestation...

"This word you keep using, I do not think it means what you think it means."

Melanie at delicate flower discusses the furor over Oprah's recent show about teen sex and offers a link to a representative sampling of e-mails collected by The Smoking Gun from outraged viewers who were obviously too stricken with horror to turn the channel.

Her favorite is the e-mail containing the line, "It was so offensive that my child's head literally exploded." While I can only pause to consider the mess that poor woman had to clean up, I personally can't decide if I prefer the e-mail from a person claiming to belong to an organization called Citizens against Unclean Network Trash (mind the acronym), or the helpful citizen who also offers a (sadly blacked out) list of books that should be removed from public libraries.

I'm surprised Oprah viewers are allowed to read anything not sanctioned by Her Royal Winfreyness in the first place.

"Wake up. Time to g'die."

Remember a couple months ago when we discussed the problems with koala overpopulation on Kangaroo Island in Australia?

Okay, just pretend like you do. Anyway, it seems the koala explosion (ew) has led to calls for some extreme veterinary justice:

Some 30,000 koalas on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of the state of South Australia, are stripping the island of its native gum trees, destroying the ecosystem and causing a koala famine, say environmentalists and national parks officials.

"We are talking thousands of starving koalas," said Sandra Kanck from the Australian Democrats, Australia's third major political party.

"While they may be cute and cuddly we need to get beyond emotion to reality...my suggestion is professional shooters do it quickly and cleanly," Kanck told Reuters on Friday of the proposed cull.

Cold blooded. Still, what's the alternative?

The South Australian state government has rejected calls for a cull, preferring sterilization and relocation.

The Australian Koala Foundation also opposes a cull of the koalas, which on the Australian mainland are struggling to survive as urban development destroys their habitat.

I'm confused, if you sterilize them and move them inland, they're just going to have a similarly difficult time on the mainland, right? And from a strictly conservationist perspective, wouldn't dying of starvation without knowing the joys of parenthood be worse than simply starving to death?

Think of the mental anguish, you heartless Ozzie bastards.

Kangaroo Island tourist operators say a koala cull would severely damage the island's tourist industry.

"The koalas are so hungry they are eating pine needles," said Kanck. "What will tourists think of a habitat of denuded trees with desperate, starving koalas roaming the damaged landscape?"

I don't know what tourists will think, but I suddenly got an idea for a screenplay featuring ravenous, zombie koalas. I think I'll call it The Phascolarctos and the Furious.

"And if you're in jail...break out!"

Truckasaurus!

Actually "Robosaurus," a loving tribute to Truckasaurus, but still 30 tons and four stories of car-crunching, fire-breathing, prehistoric insanity:

In this photograph released by the U.S. Air Force, Robosaurus, a 40 foot tall, 30 ton mechanical robot breathes fire after eating a car during a demonstration at Airfest 2004 in this recent undated photograph taken at the March Air Reserve Base, in Riverside, Cali.

Finally, the Pentagon is wasting our money on something with serious military applications. Set that baby loose in Fallujah and those insurgents will be knocking each other over in their stampede to surrender.

"Do you have any idea what kind kind of things can fall into an industrial sausage press, not counting rodent hairs and bug excrement?"

What's Spanish for "long pig" again? Oh, here it is: cerdo largo. Thanks, Babelfish.

Why do I ask? Masque on this:

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- A tamale vendor in western Mexico was arrested after police discovered a carved-up body in his home, a spokeswoman for state prosecutors said Wednesday. The vendor denied using human flesh in his food.

The vendor, who sold tamales from a cart, was arrested Tuesday after police received an anonymous tip that he had a dismembered body in his house, spokeswoman Lorena Cortes said.

Police entered the home and found body parts, some of which appeared to have been boiled with herbs, Cortes said. Officials were trying to determine if tamales found in the house contained human remains.

Everyone shrinking in revulsion right now should take a walk down memory lane and remember the last time you had a hot dog. Chances are a little human flesh would've upped the heart health quotient a fair bit.

The suspect told police he killed the man, who has not yet been identified by police, in a drunken argument on Monday, but he denied using the body parts in his tamales, Cortes said.

The story was front-page news in Mexico, where one tabloid headline screamed: "Tamales of Death!"

Man, that's a great headline. I would've added, "¡No me gusta!," but I'm sure they wanted to treat the situation with all the respect and solemnity it deserves.

And he ain't wearing no clothes...

Good times. Good times (via Fark):

It is 30 years since the word streaking entered the English language - courtesy of an Australian accountant who bore more than a passing resemblance to Jesus.

Michael O'Brien set the ball rolling when he invaded an England-France rugby match at Twickenham in April 1974, wearing nothing more than a smile.

It's been over 30 years here in the States. The 1973 Oscar streak is still a high point in Academy Awards history (as is presenter David Niven's response[1]), but I didn't catch it when it aired, and I was largely oblivious to the phenomenon until high school. Streaking, Old School notwithstanding, always seemed like a '70s thing, and any naked running around I did in those days was explained away by the fact I was a toddler.

Three decades on and streaking has been accepted as part and parcel of our sporting culture.

We've had people getting their kit off at the football, the cricket, the tennis - even the Richard and Judy weather map, for goodness sake.

Streaking is, I guess, preferable to random people running out on the field fully clothed, if only because you can't help but wonder where they'd be able to hide any possible weapons. I think it's a mostly harmless - if occasionally annoying - distraction. Even so, it's hard to keep things like the attacks on Monica Seles and Tom Gamboa out of our minds. Never mind that for the last few years, we're keenly aware of the attractiveness of large crowds as targets. And you'd probably still be hard pressed to convince players or officials on the field of play that such people don't pose a threat.

Quite by coincidence, I hear there was a streaker at Tuesday's Cards-Astros game.

I can't tell if streaking is on the rise or if it's just something temporarily latched onto by marketing geniuses. GoldenPalace.com has certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of the Super Bowl streaker and adult film actress Brittney Skye at last year's U.S. Open. Maybe some enterprising future streaker will take the NASCAR approach and obtain multiple sponsors to bedeck his/her naked bod.

Anyway, I'm not much of an exhibitionist, so I've never felt the urge to let it all hang out. Fortunately, it looks like the fairer sex is starting to pick up the slack, as it were:

But the title of streaking queen has to go to 22-year-old Tracy Sergeant, whose crowing glory came at the Indoor Bowls Championship in 2000.

A statement from officials read: "After having studied the whole unsavoury incident on 43 occasions, including slow motion replays, we have decided against implementing a rule that spectators should remain clothed at all times."

At least they were thorough. In any event, we seem to have missed the boat to the utopian vision of Streak Dome '97.

[1] "The only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping... and showing his shortcomings."

It's a doughnut, people

And I thought Hawaiians were smarter than this:

Hawaii residents love Krispy Kreme Doughnuts so much that they often stock up at a new store in Maui before boarding inter-island flights back home, overloading airline luggage bins along the way.

"The locals bring so many boxes of doughnuts on board that we can't always fit them on our flights. Some people will put five or six boxes in an overhead bin," says Mark Dunkerley, president of Hawaiian Airlines.

It's too bad Krispy Kreme didn't have a store in Montevideo, Uruguay back in 1972. That rugby team might not have had such a rough time in the Andes.

Something similar happened in Houston when Krispy Kreme opened its first store here a couple years ago. People stood in line for hours...HOURS...to get doughnuts.

I'm not much of a doughnut eater, and Krispy Kremes are okay, but the standing in line for food phenomenon is something I thought you reserved for bread in the Soviet Union or bags of flour when the latest UNICEF shipment came in. Maybe if kobe beef dropped to .89 a pound, or Jamaica Blue Mountain. But a doughnut?

Doughnut shops are sprinkled liberally across the Hawaiian islands. But the novelty of a major chain, combined with the widespread custom of "omiage," a Japanese word that refers to the custom of bringing gifts home to family and friends, have given rise to the commuter doughnut.

Far be it from me to denigrate another culture's mores, but you'll be welcomed a lot more warmly at my house if you're toting a six pack of St. Arnold's Amber. Save the doughnuts for your dumbassed co-workers.

Post-Giuliani NYC street people

It took me a while to figure out what was wrong with this story, besides the obvious:

NEW YORK (CNN) - Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a Manhattan hospital early Friday morning after police responded to several 9-1-1 calls from residents complaining he was "acting erratically" on an Upper East Side street corner and "accusing them of being FBI agents," police said.

New York Police department officials told CNN an "intoxicated, uncooperative" Skilling was taken into custody at approximately 4 a.m., after the officer on the scene determined him to be an "emotionally disturbed person." Police took him to a midtown hospital for evaluation.

Skilling is staring at a life sentence in the hoosegow, so I suppose he can be forgiven for wanting to drown his sorrows a little. And if he's not the ex-CEO of Enron, he gets thrown in the tank overnight, pays his fine, and no one's the wiser.

And yet, this New York City is a far cry from the Rotten Apple of the late '70s/early '80s, when anyone accusing passers-by of being federal agents would simply be accepted as local color. Area residents would avoid eye contact, and his behavior would be chalked up to general societal malaise. There might've been a few beatings by young toughs, but the police probably wouldn't have been so solicitous.

Then again, anytime a millionaire wigs out, it's comedy gold.

Why I Love the Internet, Pt. 142

Just because you can, go to Subservient Chicken, type your command, and watch the chicken in a garter belt do his thing. If you've ever seen the 1972 movie Blood Freak, you'll get an extra jolt from the chicken's resemblance to a post-transformation Steve Hawkes.

I didn't spend too much time there, but I did manage to get him to do the macarena, shake his rump, push it real good, scratch his balls (it's not a real chicken, lighten up), and choke himself. That last one made me laugh more than I care to admit.

Thanks to The Sneeze (which is keeping a running list of successful commands).

Runway Day Women #12 and 35

I must've paid more attention in my training than I thought, because that Bob Dylan Victoria's Secret commercial sort of caught me off guard while I was watching my tape of Tuesday's episode of The Shield. Better lingerie than hemorrhoid cream, I guess, and I'll bet Sting probably feels pretty stupid right about now for licensing his songs to sell cars to senior citizens instead.

Still, the libidinal whiplash resulting from the ad's constant switching back and forth between the ample Adriana Lima and the antediluvian Dylan almost caused the vertebrae in my neck to snap.

Speaking of The Shield, I can't imagine it's going to be very long before the FCC starts screaming about the profanity, nudity, and (in this week's episode) fairly graphic man-on-man forced oral sex depiction on basic cable. Not that I really care, but the brutality on that show rivals any Howard Stern on-air description of lesbian bikini wax.

At least it's not The Swan.

Then there's this, from the Hollywood Reporter:

John Woo has optioned Nintendo's best-selling video game franchise "Metroid" for the big screen. It's the latest move demonstrating the director's commitment to interactive entertainment properties because it comes as Woo is developing three original titles at his Tiger Hill video game studio using Hollywood talent. ...

[Producer Brad] Foxhoven said the plan is to release the first film before 2006. "Everyone involved is looking at this as a big-budget picture," Foxhoven said. "We see a tremendous opportunity to launch a film franchise with Nintendo as a partner."

Just like the long-running "Super Mario Bros." series of award-winning films, I guess.

Finally, and because I'm your source for Police Academy news, Bubba Smith gives us some bad news:

Have they ever thought of doing a reunion movie? Yeah, I think we might do one this year.

Theatrical or for TV? Theatrical. If we get all the people we want. We can get the whole cast, but there are some people that we want as our children who would be going in.

You’d be training a new generation. Yeah.

So Steve, Marion, Michael all want to do it? They all want to do it again.

Guttenberg is reportedly holding this up, as he's still trying to decide between Police Academy 8 and Three Men and a Pregnant High School Dropout Into Ritual Scarification.

He died for our fashion sins

For the Easter season, a crucifixion story of another kind (via Fark):

AN ADVERTISING campaign featuring a "crucified" semi-naked model with Liverpool RC Metropolitan Cathedral in the background has sparked anger amongst the city's religious leaders.

The image, which is promoting a new range of designer T-shirts, has been condemned as "blasphemous".

The photograph features former Page 3 model Debbie Turpin, 23, on a cross with Liverpool's Roman Catholic Cathedral in the background and bears the caption "Don't sacrifice your style".

A bad pun, to be sure, but no worse than anything that's shown up on this site.

Liverpool-born model Ms Turpin is covered by just a T-shirt printed with the logo and her tortured facial expression has been described as reminiscent of the controversial Mel Gibson movie, The Passion Of The Christ.

Reminiscent to the extent that any imagery of a person on a cross is, I guess.

The photograph, which was commissioned by Chester-based internet fashion company bdbx, can be seen on the firm's website www.bdbx.com

Whoa. That picture's pretty hot. And I'm not even into martyr porn or anything.

Monsignor Peter Cookson, Roman Catholic dean of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, said: "It's bad taste, disrespectful and, if you are a believer, it is blasphemous. ...

"The boundaries of what's acceptable to use to sell goods has drawn back, but I have never seen anything as outrageous as this, certainly not something which uses our building.

The Roman Catholic church doesn't seem to share Cookson's stand, at least, not with regard to priests using their pulpits to sell something else profiting from the Crucifixion.

Cllr Warren Bradley, executive member for Leisure & Tourism, said: "I'm disgusted. It is Easter and we should be reflecting on Christ's teachings. We are celebrating the Year of Faith in Liverpool and we don't want to be associated with this type of image.

"It's not something we will be supporting as a city. We are the European Capital of Culture and there are so many good things going on in the city."

Liverpool is the European Capital of Culture? When the hell did that happen? Did Rome burn down again? Somebody firebomb Paris?

Bdbx was set up by 20-year-old fashion designer Alec Stacey who said he stands by the campaign. He added: "This fashion range is all about youth culture, being in your face, not being afraid to break the rules and challenging convention.

"Excuse me, but 'proactive' and 'paradigm?' Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?"

"The photograph reflects the rebellious nature of youth culture and I think the young people who see it will understand where we are coming from. Liverpool's the city of culture and bdbx is about youth culture and I thought it was appropriate."

Oh shut up. The photograph reflects an excuse to put a topless blonde chick on your web page and generate lots of profitable publicity. Mission accomplished.

Jeez, people didn't make this much of a fuss when Terence Trent D'Arby posed on a cross for some French mag back in the '80s. Of course, it was Terence Trent D'Arby.

Hoop Stalkings

I'm on to you, Tom Penders.

You showed up in Austin without much fanfare back in 1989. At least, not much fanfare that I noticed. It was my second year of college, and my...extracurricular schedule didn't allow me much time to pay attention to the basketball team, frankly. Still, I attended a few games. I can only assume that's when I caught your eye. Was it my wild shock of matted hair? My faded Misfits t-shirt? My erratic personal hygiene? I may never know.

You left UT in 1998. There was some story fabricated about grade scandals and payoffs, but I knew it was just because you'd finally tracked me down. It makes sense now; I moved around so much between college and grad school that I probably didn't have the same address for more than 9 months at a time, which made me hard to keep tabs on.

So in 1998 (a year and a half after I'd left), you rolled into DC. By then, I was starting to have my suspicions. I mean, what are the odds that a basketball coach just coincidentally ends up coaching teams at the two schools you attended? You made it look good, oh yes, I'll give you that. You coached GW until 2001, biding your time and secure in the knowledge that - since I'd gotten married and relocated to Texas - I wouldn't be moving around so much. It was just a matter of time before you followed me again.

And now you're in Houston. Very clever, choosing a school I've never attended to coach this time, but don't think I haven't gotten you figured out. I'm taking my family and we're moving somewhere you couldn't dare follow us without showing your hand; somewhere college basketball is such a joke no self-respecting coach would ever follow me there.

That's right, we're moving to College Station.

"And you're going to spend an entire summer going blind on paperwork because a Signalman Second Class smoked a dime bag of oregano."

Now that's good garnish (courtesy of my friend Mac):

MIAMI -- Police say a 5-year-old boy brought a bag of marijuana to school and was sprinkling it over a friend's lasagna at the school cafeteria before a monitor intervened.

Police say it is unclear whether the kindergartner at Gratigny Elementary School even knew he was carrying the drugs on Monday.

...

Initially, the boy, who had tried to hide the bag with his feet when the monitor approached him, "may have said it was oregano," said Mayco Villafana, spokesman for Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

Sounds like Mommy was confused. If you're going to hide the weed in an oregano shaker, at least get another spice dispenser for the actual oregano. Otherwise this horrible web of lies you've woven will spiral out of control.

School police took the matter to the state attorney's office and in addition to speaking with the boy's family, police are looking into whether an older friend asked the boy to hold the plastic bag. The case was also referred to Florida's Department of Children and Families, Villafana said.

School bullies are going to be unstoppable if they realize they can start getting pot as well as lunch money from little kids. Maybe it'll mellow them out, though.

Shatner-ific

It saddens me to note that no one else seems to be commemorating the 73rd birthday of actor, author, horse breeder, French speaker, vegetarian, and the original (and still the best) captain of NCC-1701: William Shatner. It's not too late, though, as there are still a variety of ways for everyone to celebrate their inner Kirk:

+ Load up on Star Trek trivia at StarTrek.com. Don't get caught by co-workers or friends, however, as you may never live it down.

+ Read the editorial reviews for Shatner's Tek series at Amazon. Just don't read the actual books.

+ Head over to Shatner's official website and get the straight poop on the man himself. It doesn't hurt that daughter Lisabeth is quite the babe.

+ Repent your heathen ways and convert to the First Church of Shatnerology.

+ Relive Kirk's greatest moment.

Happy Shatner Day, everyone!

What's your favorite swear word?

Channel 4 has put together a rather interesting advertisement (thanks to my friend Matt for the link):

The United Kingdom television network Channel 4 has produced a commercial consisting entirely of celebrities giving an example of their favorite swear words.

The spot is the latest in a series of short promotional films produced by the network in which actors who appear on Channel 4 are asked to answer personal questions. In this case, the answers were edited together so that the entire commercial consists entirely of swearing. The examples begin at the "F" word and continue from there.

The commercial features more than 50 actors and celebrities, including a large number familiar to American audiences. Participants include cast members from U.S. shows such as "The Osbournes," "The West Wing," "Scrubs," "The O.C." and "Without A Trace" -- including Ozzy, Sharon and Jack Osbourne, John Spencer, Richard Schiff, Peter Gallagher and Anthony LaPaglia.

Check it out here. Far and away, the most popular (with the Americans) is "fuck," although hearing Janel Moloney (Donna on The West Wing) say, "I like cunt" is a beautiful thing.

I prefer a little complexity, so mine is "rat fuck son of a bitch," as uttered by Hudson in Aliens. What's yours?

So that's what he meant by "long pig"

Guess the Canadian authorities aren't big horror fans. Anyone with at least a passing knowledge of Motel Hell or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre could've seen this coming:

VICTORIA, Canada (AFP) - Authorities in the western province of British Columbia warned that pork from a farm owned by accused serial killer Robert Pickton may be contaminated with human remains.

British Columbia Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall called on "anyone who may still possess frozen pork meat products from the Port Coquitlam farm of Robert Pickton, to return those products to police."

Kendall said federal police approached the provincial Centre for Disease Control "to inquire about potential health risks for individuals who may have consumed pork meat processed or slaughtered at the farm, given the conditions they discovered at the site."

While I can't conceive of anyone holding on to the meat for culinary purposes after Pickton was arrested in 2002, I can just bet some people are keeping it in the deep freeze until the trial. Then you can count the seconds before "Pickton Pork" starts showing up on eBay.

They say that Feldman, Corey owns one half of this whole town

Because no one else will give it to you, here's your semi-annual Corey Feldman update:

Corey would like for all visitors to help support John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential campaign!

Strangely, and endorsement from Feldman is probably less embarrassing these days than equivalent support from Barbra Streisand or Alec Baldwin.

Onward.

Corey is currently in filming a movie called THE BIRTHDAY. The film is also starring Erica Prior (and other names will be posted soon) It is a dark comedy/phsycological thriller and is being directed by Euginio Mira who is being hailed as the Quentin Tarentino of Spain.

I have no idea what this means. A cursory look through the usual search engines for +"Eugenio Mira" +"Quentin Tarantino" yielded a sole hit, the "F" page from a Spanish language online movie store that included Mira's sole directorial effort, Fade, and Four Rooms, which featured one Tarantino-directed segment. Still, it's entirely possible Mira is also a motor-mouthed pop culture junkie with a cartoony gore fetish. We'll have to wait and see.

Corey would like to thank everyone who participated in the Goonies 2 Petition - The turn-out was great and Corey will be bringing the petition to the studios shortly!

I'd like to thank everyone who signed the petition as well, for once I get my hands on it it will allow me to track each signatory down and bludgeon them to death with my autographed John Matuszak helmet.

There is currently a series in the works for VH1 which will unite Feldman & Corey Haim once again!

And today Echostar and Viacom announce they've settled their programming dispute. Coincidence? I think not.

Science!

Actually, this was more of an excuse to use my Ka-Bar, but science was furthered. Sort of.

Those of you waiting in slobbering anticipation for the inevitable vivisection of the mystery pod I found in my backyard, wait no longer. The results are in, and...I still have no idea what the hell it is.

Click "More" if you think you're prepared to face the shocking truth.

Pictures. I got pictures.

First, the doomed object accompanied by the instrument of its destruction (click for larger image):

Next, the post-mortem photos. The interior was very similar to that of a pineapple, in both color and texture. It smelled, as best as I can describe, like wet plant. It also left a rather foul slimy residue on my knife.

Finally, a close up.

Science marches on, the mystery pod goes into the trash, and I wash my hands thoroughly. This is what passes for entertainment at my house these days.

Be careful of the Blob

Having crapped out with the one gonzo gardening person I'm friends with, I can now throw this puzzler out to the vast APCB viewing audience. Namely, what the hell is this?

I found it in my back yard a week ago. It was situated in such a way to lead me believe it didn't fall from a tree (I have pecans and live oaks back there, which I'm pretty sure are incapable of producing such a...thing). I'm open to possible explanations, and will probably dissect the specimen (with pictures) in the next few days.

Unless someone can authoritatively tell me it came from outer space, or something.

UPDATE: Edited to scale down that entirely too large image.

Catharsis

For those of you who feel that life might be getting the best of you today, click here.

Now, don't you feel better?

Total Koalho

Sorry. Weak '80s music reference.

Everyone knows (or should know) the possibly deleterious effects of introducing an animal species into another habitat. So what do you do when the species in question is just too damned adorable to exterminate?

ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) -- Cute, cuddly and fast breeding, thousands of koalas are eating themselves out of a home on an Australian island. But authorities are refusing to heed conservationists' pleas to reduce the population, fearing a backlash from tourists and animal rights activists.

South Australia state Environment Minister John Hill said tourism would drop dramatically if koalas were killed on Kangaroo Island.

I'm surprised tourism hasn't already suffered, what with people going out to someplace called "Kangaroo Island" only to find it full of koalas. I'd sure as hell want my money back, or at least a free ticket to Shark Bay.

Matt Turner, scientific officer for the state's Nature Conservation Society, said state authorities need to thin the koala population to preserve the ecosystem of the island, 45 miles off the coast of South Australia state. Koalas were first introduced to the island 100 years ago.

"Some areas of the island, the trees are so heavily defoliated that trees are actually dying," he told The Associated Press. "They are having a devastating effect on the island."

Pity we didn't know the ravenous little buggers' stunning destructive powers during the war in Vietnam. Nixon and McNamara could've flushed the VC out using crack koala deforestation units without exposing our troops to Agent Orange. That's the military for you, always relying on science.

Turner believes the population should be reduced to a small population of koalas that can be kept in an enclosed area for tourists to see.

"But there is no political will," he added. "When you start talking about culling native wildlife, particularly cute and cuddly ones, there is a community backlash and that is what basically has forced the government into ... a position where they cannot do any culling."

Perhaps if people were forced to live with one of the spiteful little beasts, who have a predilection for scratching and urinating on those handling them, they'd be more open to the idea. I'm curious to hear what Goldie, our resident Adelaidean, has to say about this compelling issue.

Calls for population control like this always raise hackles. There was talk of hiring people to shoot pigeons nesting in Texas A&M's Kyle Field when I was younger, and you'd have thought they'd suggested drowning kittens instead of shooting a bunch of flying disease bags. Of course, it's not the koalas fault they were plopped on the island. Call it a do-over.

I think I know the guy for the job, too. I went to Louisiana many years ago to attend the wedding of a friend of the girl I was dating at the time (everybody got that?). It was a small town, but nearly everyone living there was a person of some importance at the nearby DuPont plant and lived in a pretty impressive plantation-style house. The father of the bride had what is probably the only big game trophy room I've ever been in. He'd shot it all...lions, Cape buffalo, wolves, a giraffe(!). It reminded me of the line in Unforgiven where Bill Munny remarks that he'd probably killed everything that's walked or crawled.

The guy showed the room to me during a lull in his daughter's reception, and after expressing what I felt was the requisite amount of awe at the large carcasses, I went on to examine some of the smaller ones. Most were birds, but I'm sure there was a woverine and a badger or two. One in particular caught my eye, however. It was an otter.

I leaned in closer to examine it, not really believing someone could actually bring themself to shoot one. I asked the man, "Is this really an otter?" "Sure is," he replied, with a perfect mixture of inebriation and smugness. "Wow," I continued, "Did you have to stalk it? Or did it just run up to you and sniff your rifle?"

My date hustled me out with some speed, so I didn't get any contact information. But I figure any guy who can blow Tarka away probably has the mental flexibility required to shoot a few hundred koalas.

"Oh, don't thank me. Thank an unprecedented eight-year military build-up."

The Thing That Walks Like a Man knows my affinity for all things zombie, which is why he felt it of critical importance to notify me of this article in Wired:

Soldiers' moms will no doubt be horrified. But the Pentagon is looking into ways for GIs to fight for up to five days -- without eating a single meal.

During a mission, soldiers in the field typically don't have the time, or the inclination, to chow down. That lack of food can affect their battlefield performance. So Darpa, the U.S. military's far-out research arm, wants scientists to figure out if soldiers can operate at top levels -- without lunch breaks.

"The question is: 'Are there temporary biochemical approaches we can use to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of soldiers when they're already worked to exhaustion?'" said a Darpa life sciences consultant, who asked not to be named.

I'll bet he did. He probably remembers what happened to the guy who started SkyNet in T2. You bet your ass if I survive the coming zombie soldier apocalypse, I'll be sending someone back in time to drop a couple pounds of C4 down Darpa's air vents.

The agency has a couple of ideas on how this might be done: A cocktail of nutrients or so-called "nutraceuticals" could help build endurance. Lowering soldiers' core body temperature might keep them from overheating. Or, perhaps, the change could be made at the microscopic level, by turbo-charging mitochondria -- the cell's energy suppliers.

Or why not just animate dead grunts, a la Universal Soldier? How about recruiting the downed pilots from the "B-17" segment of Heavy Metal? They'd be especially motivated to fight, as their very survival would depend on how many enemies they could defeat and devour.

Maybe the Pentagon could research what spell Mickey Mouse cast in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" that reanimated pieces of broom. Then they'd really only need one soldier to start with.

The Darpa project, called "Metabolic Dominance" or "peak soldier performance," is part of a wider, future-facing Pentagon research push to develop grunts who are pretty much immune to normal human demands. The agency has sunk millions into programs to reduce the need for sleep and is investigating ways to keep injured GIs pulling the trigger for days on end -- without help from a medic.

Why do I keep thinking of that Bloom County strip with the "giant space laser Frisbees?"

But enough of these Pentagon maniacs, their minds are obviously addled by their bloated wallets. Surely some respected scientists can impart some sanity onto these proceedings?

"What this seems to be asking for is fantastic in every sense of the word," said Marion Nestle, the former chair of NYU's department of nutrition, food studies and public health in an e-mail message. "Calories are calories, laws of thermodynamics still operate, and humans are still human. I think they should use robots."

No, you fool! That's just what the robots want!

Finally, Darpa simply wants to find ways to control hunger. And the agency is looking at nutraceuticals, natural products and traditional nutritional supplements to give the body what it requires when there's no food around.

These components of Metabolic Dominance, at least, are more in line with ongoing Pentagon research to supply soldiers' nutritional needs more efficiently.

I was half expecting someone to recommend brains.

Delicious brains.

"They love, and share, and love and love and share..."

At A Perfectly Cromulent Blog, the greatest love of all is happening to us.

Because I'm lazy this evening, here are some more personals from the Austin Chronicle:

1) ACTION FOR Animals Benefit Bash. You: sexy, drunk, goth girl wearing rabbit fur jacket. I was like...Good Gracious! Coffee sometime? Cheesecake? #3093

If she was wearing a rabbit fur jacket at the Action for Animals benefit, and you were attending in earnest, there might be some problems. Or was this an "Action for Delicious Animals" shindig?

AMERICAN FLIGHT #1863 from Dallas. You: curly-haired boy, yellow t-shirt. Me: fidgety girl next to you. Wanted to offer you cookies but was preoccupied with thoughts of crashing. #3023

Heh. An offer of "cookies" might've kept both of your minds off crashing.

JANUARY 29TH, YOU: Sexy brunette buying Love Potion at Thrift on Fifth ME: Getting inked next door at Telepathic Tattoo. Wanna mingle potions? Call 3115

If there's anything more romantic than someone offering to swap fluids while sitting in a tattoo parlor, I don't know what it is.

OLD NAVY GATEWAY . You: Girl, singing, Eagles T-shirt. Me: asked if you were a fan. You just liked the shirt. You left before I could embarrass myself. "I'm a Believer". #3113

Dude, you already embarrassed yourself by trying to use the Eagles to strike up a conversation (and in an Old Navy, no less), then you follow up with a Monkees song reference. This is self-immolation approaching the scale of the scene in Swingers when Jon Favreau calls the girl he just met and leaves 20 messages on her machine. Move along.

"If word gets out about this, Krazy Klown Airlines will be a laughingstock."

An American Airlines pilot appears to be in some hot water for promoting Christianity on a Los Angeles to New York flight:

Passenger Jen Dorsey told CNN's American Morning, "We were just at the beginning of our flight. The pilot came on to greet everyone and give his comments for the morning, and he said he'd recently been on a mission trip, and he'd like all the Christians to please raise their hands."

Fellow passenger Karla Austin said, "He said, 'If you are a Christian, raise your hand.' He said, 'If you are not, you're crazy.'"

The pilot asked passengers to look around at each other and use their 4 1/2-hour flight wisely or "just sit back and watch the movie," Dorsey recalled.

Maybe it's too obvious, but as a pilot, it seems the easiest way to get those "crazy" passengers to reconsider their heathen ways would be to put the plane into a nosedive and scream, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!"

As St. Christopher once said: there are no atheists in a 737 caught in a flat spin.

"You want to pick on immigrants? Then pick on Willie!"

Call me soft on the issue, if you must, but I think we should let these guys in already:

MIAMI (Reuters) - A group of Cubans who tried to sail to the United States in a 1959 Buick car fashioned into a boat were intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, relatives in Cuba and Cuban exiles said on Wednesday.

[Four of the eleven people on board] had already tried last July to reach Florida in a vessel made from a 1951 Chevy truck, only to be picked up by the Coast Guard and sent home.

"They sealed the doors and added a double bottom, steel plates for a bow and a propeller," said Eduardo Perez, cousin of Luis Grass, at his home in the Havana suburb of Diezmero.

We could get them a guest spot on Monster Garage, for starters, and cameo roles in some Miller Lite commercials. Then there's the talk show circuit, a spot guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live, and the inevitable slide into alcohol and pill-fueled depression.

Who are we to deny these people their shot at the American Dream?

"Man, if this is happening here, I'd hate to think of what's happening in Euro Itchy and Scratchy Land."

A member of the 101st Airborne stationed in the town of Hatra in Iraq realized last month he was in the area where William Friedkin's The Exorcist was shot. Interesting enough, but then comes this bit:

"And then the Army hatched this idea," [Exorcist director William] Friedkin continued, "to turn the whole area into a tourist attraction and call it 'The Exorcist Experience.'"

I don't know what's more disturbing: the idea of watching Friedkin's horror classic in order to unwind after a long day's patrolling, or this growing trend of horror-based attractions. Late last year, for example, it was reported that plans for a Dracula-based theme park outside Bucharest were back on track:

The park will include among other things a giant Dracula roller-coaster, catacombs and a house of horrors.

And to keep Romanians happy there will even be a PR makeover to make it clear that the legendary Vlad the Impaler was actually a brave defender of Christianity, and nothing like Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Vlad Tepes bravely defended Christianity by sticking merchants and boyars from his native Wallachia on giant spikes, and cutting off the genitals and breasts of "unchaste" women, among other things. There are no reports of him turning into a bat or drinking blood, however, so...whatever makes the Romanians happy.

Now, any mook can slap together a ride based on a movie or TV series (or vice versa, in Disney's case), but it takes stupendous gall and a certain brand of visionary genius to try and come up with an entire theme park based on the life of a brutal and/or insane despot.

Which is what I've decided to do. Several times.

If we accept the roughly 550 years since the end of Vlad the Imapler's reign as sufficient time to forgive a ruler his capricious nature or sadistic cruelty, then hold onto your hats for the coming torrent of tyrannical family destinations:

Roman Holiday World (Rome, Italy) - featuring
Caligula-La-Land: Where you can roll around in a Scrooge McDuck-sized pile of denari in the Gold Coin Room, just like the Roman bad boy himself. Bring your own horse for free admission and drink tickets.
and
Nero My God to Thee: Head over to Great Balls of Fire Island, an interactive exhibit where you'll start a conflagration and see how quickly you can blame it on a handy minority community (NOTE: a similar theme is also planned for the "Reichstag Round-Up" in the as-yet undeveloped Adolf Hitler park).

Juana de Loco Beach (Castile, Spain) - Each visitor will get their very own coffin to drag around with them as they traverse the park.

Anna of Saxony City (Breda, Germany)- Try your luck in the lightless Brick Room, where you can exchange hallucinations and ravings with your fellow park patrons. Nightly contests are held to see which drunken female guest can best ridicule their husband's sexual abilities.

Crazy Ivan's Terrible Thrill Zone (Moscow, Russia) - Test your strength with our variation on the Polar Bear Club, where you try to throw your "enemy" into freezing water. In historic Novgorod, visitors are given a spear and a torch and timed to see how fast they can sack the local visitor's center.

And coming soon...

Ludwig II's Bavarian Boogaloo (Fuessen, Germany) - Guests are given a box of Legos and a set amount of time in which to construct three castles. Failing that, they're declared insane.

Stalin: The Experience (Volgograd, Russia) - Ride the twin roller coasters Collectivization Cyclone and Purge 600K to victory over the imperalist running dogs (NOTE: actual dogs not allowed in S:TE).

Maodievel Times (Beijing, China) - Take the Great Leap tram to Cultural Revolution Waterpark. Your Little Red Book of coupons is good at all area gift shops.

Pol Pot Gardens (Angkor Wat, Cambodia) - Where every year is Year Zero! Celebrate the rejection of Western social institutions with an S-21 badge, a complimentary bowl of rice, and your very own prop AK-47. Wear contact lenses.

I think I need a shower...

Wouldn't it be lottery?

Well, hell...all the other kids are talking about it:

Texas to install self-service lottery ticket machines

AUSTIN - Texas lottery officials plan to install about 1,000 self-serve units at retail outlets across the state to dispense tickets for games like Lotto Texas, Mega Millions and Cash Five.

The ATM-like machines will also be able to scan tickets from previous drawings and tell players whether they have won money.

"We think the players will like them," lottery spokesman Bobby Heith told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "You can purchase your tickets and check to see if you have a winner without taking up the retailer's time."

Taking up the retailer's time. Right.

Heith is being too kind to the thousands of closet ticket purchasers who complained because they either a) don't want to be seen publicly dropping money into the yawning pit toilet of Lotto purchases or, b) would rather not have to deal with the vast unwashed masses at their local Gas 'n Sip.

Many of whom, I'm told, smell just awful.

Self-serv lottery kiosks are the latest development in removing actual human beings from the customer service loop. We've had automated phone menus and pay-at-the-pump gas stations for years. I'm just waiting for my neighborhood grocery store to put in a "U Dispense It" methadone booth.

Hopefully it'll come in some flavors besides "methadone."

Living the dream

Someone in London has acted out one of my fantasies (via IMDb):

Pop star Justin Timberlake was punched in the face by a fan as he walked into his end-of-tour party in London on Sunday. The hunky American singer was reportedly hit as he entered the Rex Club in Soho following the last date in his British tour, so he refused to come out and meet his many female fans waiting outside the venue for fear he would again be assaulted.

I guess Timberlake's off the list. Fortunately, my personal file of celebrities that need to make an appointment with Mr. Fist is about as thick as the Book of Kells.

Inside the venue Justin told reporters, "It is just crazy over here in Britain, I f***ing hate coming over here."

I find this an odd remark, since Timberlake's brand of candy-ass hip-hop easy listening is virtually indistinguishable from much of the forgettable Britpop garbage they seem to like over there.

Sweet python of Zion!

Fine, it doesn't rhyme (nor is it geographically accurate). Still, that's some snake:

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian villagers claim to have captured a python that is almost 49.21 feet long and weighs nearly 992.07 pounds, an official said Monday.

If confirmed, it would be the largest snake ever kept in captivity.

A fifty foot reticulated python is more serpentine than even Axl Rose could brag about. However, it still isn't the "perfect killing machine." That, as Paul Sarone told us, is the anaconda.

Growing up out west, we did a lot of camping. And we dutifully shook out our boots in the morning and our sleeping bags at night to make sure no desert beasties had decided to take up residence. I have a difficult time conceptualizing growing up in a place where you could sleep an entire family inside a snake.

It's too bad Harry Chapin's dead

Because I think we're about due for a sequel to "30,000 Pounds of Bananas:"

VILNIUS (Reuters) - Residents of a Lithuanian resort received an early Christmas present when 50 tonnes of bananas washed up on the Baltic coast.

"The current came from the southwest, where storm winds probably knocked a container of unripe bananas off a ship," said Jonas Vigelis, head of the area's Sea Patrol and Rescue unit.

That, or the recon battalions of the Gorilla Invasion Force dropped their supply shipment prematurely. Watch the skies.

"This sort of thing happens now and then. One time we got oranges, another time some good lumber," Vigelis said.

All of which are doing a great job keeping you sheep rooted in the same place. Maybe another reading of Watership Down is in order, particularly the part about Cowslip's warren.

Gimme a P!

New Yorkers once again find themselves on the front lines of the battle for basic human freedoms:

Go ahead, make fun of the fact that several City Council members introduced a bill Wednesday to have more restrooms set aside for women than men in most buildings. To women -- and one male law professor -- it's a matter of gender equity.

"Women need more restroom facilities simply because women take longer," John F. Banzhaf III, a public interest law professor at George Washington University Law School, said Wednesday.

It's hard to argue with blistering logic like that. And why, pray tell, might women take so long in the bathroom?

Because they often have small children to tend to, they wear more clothes, and, as Councilwoman Yvette Clarke put it, there's that anatomical difference.

"We don't have the same type of equipment that men have," Clarke said.

The Rosa Parks of the "potty parity" movement, if you want to call her that, was Houston's own Denise Wells. Wells was arrested in 1990 at the Summit for using the men's facilities out of frustration over long lines for the ladies' room at a George Strait concert. This case led to studies of time spent by men and women in the loo by Virginia Polytech Institute and State University and Cornell, both of which shockingly concluded that women take roughly twice as long as men. The studies were followed by statutes in several states and changes to plumbing and constructions codes in others. Most newer ballparks and arenas have facilities that reflect these findings. Bank One Ballpark in Arizona, for example, has 12 toilet fixtures for every 1000 men and 15 for every 1000 women.

I haven't seen long womens' restroom lines in a while. Of course, I no longer go anywhere that could even be considered remotely "trendy," and my recollections of such lines are from various clubs. The last few music festivals I've attended have had a slightly higher Port-A-John to female ration, but that just means everyone gets to stand in line an equal amount of time.

And maybe start fights, which is always good for a laugh.

Another, seedier, aspect to this topic the CNN article doesn't mention is the fact that men have the great outdoors to use as their toilet if need be. I won't cop to anything, but parking lots, alleys, and highway overpasses are all handy spots for the man on the go to, uh, go.

Nobody knows this better than the French. When I was in Strasbourg, we had great fun sitting on the balcony and watching the various male clubgoers and general pedestrians stop and water the masonry. Occasionally we would shout encouragement.

I'm not saying this is a Good Thing. Just pointing out another result of our not having "the same type of equipment," as Councilwoman Clarke put it.

Reason #87,322 why there will never be peace in the Middle East

A baby born to a Muslim family in Bethlehem is causing quite a stir:

The boy has gained attention for being born with a large birthmark across his cheek that roughly forms in Arabic letters the name of his uncle, Ala, a Hamas militant killed by Israeli troops after he was suspected of having planned a suicide bombing.

The family, devout Muslims, called it a divine message of support for the Palestinians against Israel, although some local Christians preparing for subdued Christmas observances have quietly dismissed it as lacking religious significance.

God was unavailable for comment. A spokesman confirmed the Almighty had to leave in order to "appear in a tortilla in Mexico."

Statements made by the kid's family, and the presence of several thousand Muslims at his house would appear to give lie to remarks made by "local Christians." It might not have religious significance to you guys setting up the candles on Jesus' birthday cake, but these people seem to take it pretty seriously.

Which, of course, is part of the problem:

Despite the commotion, the imam from the camp's main mosque entered the crowded living room, traced a finger along the swirling birthmark -- which finishes behind the baby's right ear -- and pronounced it a "gift from God."

The story goes on to say that the child was also named for his dead uncle. No pressure, kid. Still, as much as I'm inclined to pronounce young Ala screwed, I can see three possible outcomes:

1. Completely gives his life over to Allah, culminating in another asinine suicide bombing death. A "martyr" is born.
2. He grows up Muslim, but quietly withdraws from the radical front lines in an attempt to lead a peaceful, nondescript life somewhere.
3. Opens "Ala's Al-Jizzateria," the first gay porn video store in Jeruslaem following the peace treaty of 2021.

I'm holding out hope for #3, but I'd settle for #2.

New trends in bodybuilding

Dislocated elbows.

Links go to pictures that you probably shouldn't look at, unless you found Riggs' escape from the straitjacket in "Lethal Weapon 2" amusing.

Both of these incidents took place at the World Weightlifting Championships in Vancouver. Furthermore, both pictures are at the top of Yahoo's "most popular" photo listing, proving that injury to others is as hilarious as ever.

Especially when it happens to people in better shape than we are, I guess.

Because nothing amuses friends and co-workers like a walking rectum wearing a judge's wig

Clarence Thomas jokes aside, the folks at thewalldirect.com are selling maquettes from, you guessed it, Pink Floyd's "The Wall:"

The boxed set includes Scorpion & Pink, Teacher, Marching Hammers, Eagle Warplane, Judge and the exclusive Megaphone Hammer not available outside of this special edition boxed set!

I think any of these would supplant Bender and his suicide booth for best conversation piece on my bookshelf, though I'm not sure why the "Eagle Warplane" gets preference over "Fascist Bashing Homeless Guy's Head In" or "Faceless Students with Optional Meat Grinder."

The "Wall" statues join the Movie Maniacs line and the Jenna Jameson dolls in the growing number of action figures for adults. Although "action figures" is a bit of a misnomer, since all these particular toys are likely to do is sit on a shelf somehwere, reminding their owners of the folly of spending upwards of $25 for a hunk of plastic they're never going to use.

Except, perhaps, for the Jenna doll buyers. And frankly I don't want to know about it.

If characters from movies like "The Wall" are getting licensed for toys, it can't be long before manufacturers make the jump from fantasy and horror straight into regular drama. Then we can look forward to a torrent of truly inappropriate action figures. The possibilties are endless: Archy Hamilton from "Gallipoli," for example, captured just as his chest is opened up by a Turkish machine gun. Or how about Bunny doing some impromptu rifle butt rhinoplasty on the Vietnamese kid in "Platoon?" Or Jimmy Cagney with the grapefruit in "The Public Enemy?"

And then, when all of Tony Scott's and Martin Scorsese's movies have been mined ("I'll take a 'Henry Hill Pistol Whipping' figure from 'Goodfellas,' please."), we can finally get to the figure everyone wants: Hoke from "Driving Miss Daisy."

"That's our word for making fun of you!"

Time to come up with another slur for homosexuals:

The evolution of 'queer'

Originally a synonym for "odd" or "unusual," the word evolved into an anti-gay insult in the last century, only to be reclaimed by defiant gay and lesbian activists who chanted: "We're here, we're queer, get used to it."

Now "queer" is sneaking into the mainstream -- and taking on a hipster edge as a way to describe any sexual orientation beyond straight.

I'm a sucker for anything with a "hipster edge." Tell me more.

"I love it because, in one word, you can refer to the alphabet soup of gay, lesbian, bisexual, questioning, 'heteroflexible,' 'omnisexual,' 'pansexual' and all of the other shades of difference in that fluid, changing arena of human sexuality," says 27-year-old Stacy Harbaugh. She's the program coordinator for the Indiana Youth Group, a drop-in center in Indianapolis for youth who may place themselves into any of those categories.

I'm not sure I grok the difference between "pansexual' and 'omnisexual." The mental images produced by both terms leave me a little queasy, however, probably because I take "omni" to mean, well, "everything." Goats, vegetables, appliances, what have you.

James Cross, a 26-year-old Chicagoan, personally likes the term "metrosexual," meant to describe straight men like him who are into designer clothes, love art and fashion and even enjoy shopping (much like "queer-eyed straight guys").

So "metrosexuality" = "self-absorption?" Whatever exfoliates your boat.

Uh oh. Cheese it, the Fundamentalists are here:

"['Queer' is] not a particular word we're concerned with," says Ed Vitagliano, of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Mississippi. "It's that the media and the entertainment industries are such powerful transmitters of values for only one side of this controversial issue."

You guys are still playing the "liberal media" card? How totally gay.

Chick-a-boom

Nothing starts the day off like a new Jack Chick tract. In his latest, "The Sky Lighter" (no relation to "Sky King") Chick takes an expected stance on the issue of fanatical Muslim suicide bombers (he's against them) and ends with this bit of wisdom:

Jesus is the only way to heaven. All who follow Islam will be cast into the lake of fire.

If you ask me, Chick drops the ball with his new one. Sure, Jesus tells Abdulla that Muhammed is a liar and that he's going to hell, but where's the eternal-damnation-as-Cramps-video depiction of the Inferno we've come to expect? Where are the cavorting devils, smoldering caverns, and writhing figures of the damned?

Talk is cheap, Chick. If you're going to threaten the heathens with the big molten lagoon, they deserve a little visual payoff.

Plenty of nice Chick touches abound, however. There's the fat cleric sweating lustily over his description of the 70 virgins that await the young bombers, and the blissful look on Christian convert Yusuf's face as he reads the Bible to Abdulla.

"Yusuf," eh? Could this be a deliciously subtle dig at the former Cat Stevens?

Oh, that Chick.

Here comes the sun

And you thought coronal mass ejections were a thing of the past, or at least the past few days:

Our planet endured the brunt of the first storm Wednesday and early Thursday, hurled Tuesday by the third most powerful solar flare ever observed, without major problems.

But late Wednesday, solar scientists observed another big solar explosion, one of the top 20 on record, accompanied by another huge stream of supercharged gas headed in our direction. It could arrive as early as Thursday afternoon.

From a scientific perspective, this is all terribly intriguing. From a science fiction perspective, it's enough to make me start watching the skies for Vogons.

"It's like the Earth is looking right down the barrel of a giant gun pointed at us by the sun...and it's taken two big shots at us," said John Kohl of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"I have not seen anything like it in my entire career as a solar physicist. The probability of this happening is so low that it is a statistical anomaly," he said in a statement Thursday.

A word of advice: no one associated with something as impressive sounding as the "Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics" should be making references to the sun shooting at us. Also, remarks to the effect that you've never seen anything like this before should not be used outside the context of a remake of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast.

NASA has taken precautions as well with its most precious cargo, astronaut Mike Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri on board the international space station.

Foale and Kaleri, the only humans currently outside the protection of Earth's atmosphere, are retreating during peak exposure times to the living quarters of the station, which provides the best radiation protection.

NASA had better take precautions when they get back as well. Namely, keeping them under heavy guard and close observation to make sure they don't exhibit any signs of "fantastic-ness," lycanthropy, or wearing of black tights. Or just to make sure they don't bring back any space vampires.

"This latest CME will sweep past our planet on October 30th or 31st and could trigger renewed geomagnetic storming. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras tonight," said NASA's Spaceweather.com on Thursday.

Observers as far south as Texas and Georgia observed auroras the night before.

*snort* Some parts of Texas, maybe. Here in Houston you'd have a hard time seeing a nuclear airburst with all the ground illumination.

From my stone, dead hands

This, THIS, is the bitter fruit of fanatacism:

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- A French police station has been stuck with a room of homeless garden gnomes, victims of a wave of gnome abductions, after a new bid to trace their owners failed.

Only a trickle of people showed up for Monday's "gnome return day" at the police station in Saint-Die-des-Vosges, near the eastern city of Strasbourg, and only one person was reunited with a stolen gnome, police said.

About 75 kidnapped gnomes were recovered in 2001 after a group called the Garden Gnome Liberation Front released them, leaving them on the steps of the Saint-Die-des-Vosges cathedral.

So what happens to these gnomes after they're "liberated" by the GGLF? Only starvation, rabies, and predation by larger lawn predators, like flamingos and jockeys.

Besides, what makes the GGLF so sure these gnomes don't like being domesticated? Our gnome "Chauncey" enjoys a pastoral existence in our lawn, while "Milton" keeps watch from the kitchen windowsill. Sure, there's some resentment, but this is only natural between gnomes who work outdoors and those who live a relatively comfortable life in the house. Believe me, Chauncey has a better life now than he ever would were he released into the wilds of east Texas.

If President Bush is serious about the War on Terror, he'll take action against these dangerous radicals. Otherwise...well, I'll let the police tell you:

"In wanting to set them free, the Liberation Front has virtually imprisoned them," policeman Sylvain Brucker told Reuters, adding the local prosecutor could decide to sell the kitsch garden ornaments in a police auction.

That's right: slavery. Even worse, enslaved by the French.

Zut alors.

"Want some mary jane?" "Thanks, hep cat."

So the Office of National Drug Control Policy has a web site listing the street names of various narcotics. It only takes a few seconds of casual reading to realize that police informants, if not the police themselves, are seriously jerking with the ONDCP.

2,300 street terms. That's probably 2,000 words more than the average person uses in a week, whether they're referring to drugs or not. With almost 1,000 terms devoted to marijuana ("righteous bush") and heroin ("hero of the underworld") alone, it can't be long before the expressions become meaningless. Even two of the original terms for pot - "grass" and "weed" - were everyday words. It seems completely nonsensical that various items found on someone's grocery list can be mistaken for "dope."

Imagine, if you will, this hypothetical wiretap transcript:

Whatcha watching?
"Predator."
That movie's the bomb.
Ah, I think it blows.
Whatever. Have you seen my Kate Bush CD? It was right here by my biography of LBJ.
I haven't seen it since the tea party.
Oh well, I'm gotta zoom to the store. Need anything?
Some tea, some macaroni, a box of crackers, dog food, mayo, and some nose drops for my ragweed.
That's whack.
Yeah. I'm gonna make a sandwich.

Harmless slackers? Or psychopathic drug fiends? You be the judge.

6 degrees of Schwarzenegger/Ventura

Enough with all the "Predator" politics talk. I know, I know...Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse "The Body" Ventura were both in "Predator" and both went on to become governors. Since then, the "Predator connection" talk has barely let up: Carl Weathers should run for President; Bill Duke should run for Senate; Kevin Peter Hall should star in a sequel to "Harry and the Hendersons" where the Sasquatch hunts and kills the Dallas Cowboys one by one.

Okay, I made that last one up. Good idea though, huh?

Lost in all these columns and blog entries is the fact that Schwarzenegger and Ventura were in two other movies together. Most cinemaphiles will remember their team-up in 1987's "The Running Man," which took Stephen King's story about the role of media in a bleak and brutal future and turned it into a pro wrestling movie. Still, I'd wager Jim Brown or Yaphet Kotto would have a better shot at public office than Carl "Apollo Creed" Weathers (would you elect a man who couldn't stand up to the Russians?).

Even less well known (admittedly because Ventura had such a small role) is that both governors also appeared in "Batman and Robin." Arnie was the gleefully homoerotic Mr. Freeze, and Ventura briefly played a guard at Arkham Asylum. Forget all that "Predator" crap, think of the possibilities: President George Clooney, Elle Macpheron, Vendela, and Vivica A. Fox as Supreme Court Justices, Nicky Katt as Secretary of Entertainment, and Schwarzenegger as Ambassador to the United Nations.

Of course, I'll have moved to Canada by then. Arnie would sure get the French whipped into shape, though.

"And that's for Crazy Nights!"

BREAKING NEWS: Former KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick shot near the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Los Angeles.

The shooting was reportedly accidental, and not retaliation for the five sub-par KISS albums released during Kulick's tenure with the band. Gary Cherone and Gilby Clark were said to be "relieved beyond words."

There has been no comment from the official Bruce Kulick web page at this time.

Love to love you baby

At APCB, the love between two complete strangers with nothing more in common than their mutual desperate pawing through the local "alternative" weekly can be a beautiful thing.

More goodies from the Austin Chronicle:

1) THE WINSLOW BOY, 9-11. I was The Jerk; maudlin girl Under Siege by Simple Men outside Emo's. Needed Deliverance; you didn't Say Anything. Could you give this Charmicarmicat the Antitoxidote? #2376

Dude, I appreciate your cinema references, but your genres are all over the place.

2) WE TALKED ON the bus to ACL fest on Sun. You(a kinesiology major)in maroon shorts and white shirt. I should have asked for your name. #2397

You had me at "kinesiology major."

3) SOUTHSIDE BINGO - You: orange dobber drinking red wine from a bag. Me, blue boy making eyes between games. Maybe we can play together sometime. Montreal? Vegas? #2292

She's a fishing float? Smooth.

Gorilla, you're a desperado

With apologies to the late Warren Zevon:

Big gorilla at a Boston zoo
Bolted his enclosure for some open space
Attacked a two-year old, her sister's friend too
How does he keep breaking out of that place?

This is the second time in two months "Little Joe" has found a way to escape his pen at the Franklin Park Zoo, in spite of the presence of a 12-foot wide moat and electric fences. After attacking a 2-year old girl and a teenager, he wandered the neighborhood for a couple hours until brought down with tranquilizer darts.

Zoo New England CEO and President John Linehan says young, male gorillas are particularly restless, which might explain his behavior. Overlooked, however, is this excerpt from the AP story that shines some light on Joe's motivation:

The gorilla was captured near a football stadium close to the zoo.

He must have heard that the Patriots need some help on their O-line.

The Case Of Encyclopedia Brown's Mangled Corpse

Speaking of classics, this week's Onion has the shocking story of the death of famed detective Encyclopedia Brown:

IDAVILLE, FL—Police are currently investigating the death of police detective Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown, 49, whose body was discovered in a Dumpster behind the Idaville Public Library Monday.

Police discovered Brown's badly beaten, nearly decapitated body after the detective failed to respond to routine radio check-in calls. Pages from Brown's battered casebook, which contained such cryptic entries as "Whales are mammals, not fish," and "Dinosaurs and cavemen did not live at the same time," were found stuffed in the detective's mouth.

Larry's blog has an entry on the prospects for a 4th "Law and Order" series. I wonder if Dick Wolf ever considered putting together "Law and Order: Idaville?"

"And you won't believe the "Law and Order" twist: wristwatches create tan lines!"

Say it ain't so, schmoe

Leonardo Leonardo: "Kill him!"
Plug: "Sir, I'm just a publicist."
Leonardo Leonardo: "Well then, kill him with bad publicity."
Plug: chuckles "Sir, there's no such thing as bad publicity."

According to London's Evening Standard, which has offered some wry coverage of the David Blaine stunt, all is not well with the Dangling Prick:

As Blaine's starvation spectacle in London descended into farce and violence - with even Sir Paul McCartney, as the Evening Standard revealed last week, launching into a four-letter tirade - across the Atlantic, Blaine's management could only watch the TV reports in horror as one of their prize assets threatened to become a reviled and pathetic figure, his ignominious and faltering stunt broadcast worldwide.

"What we saw appalled us," one of PMK's management said yesterday. "David is a huge star, a brand name in America on which an entire campaign was based and, suddenly, across the Atlantic, all the hard work and planning was being blown away. It left us dumbfounded."

A "huge star," eh? There's some interesting PR. Where exactly did PMK get the idea that a "brand name" in America would work in Britain? They drinking a lot of Bud Light in London these days?

The article goes on to tell of frantic 11th hour meetings between PMK, Britain's Channel 4, and Sky Television about the prospect of taking Blaine out of the box prematurely.

It's not simply that Blaine has fallen foul of the British penchant to poke fun at any kind of pretentiousness...Rather, at the heart of this story is a clash of cultures and ambitions. There are Blaine's American PR people - with their eyes on further multimillion-dollar "performances" around the world - and, up against them, British television executives, well-schooled in the art of hyping "reality TV", for whom Blaine's event is just another exercise in the ratings war.

Sounds like Blaine's people should be thanking the British for exposing their plan of further "performances" for the farce it is. If the moron can't hang peacefully in London, England - one of the few U.S.-friendly countries remaining - how's he going to fare in France? Or Germany?

Maybe they should've started in Toronto.

By last week, the Americans had had enough. "Blaine's management are beyond livid," one source privy to the dramatic meetings told me. "Basically, in their view, the British TV people didn't seem to care what happened to him as long as the ratings were up. This isn't "Big Brother." Frankly, he could die in there and they wouldn't give a s***. A spectator could die."

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning. Shocked, shocked I am that British TV people only care about ratings. American audiences - who put "101 Things Removed from the Human Body" and the Victoria's Secret special at the top of the ratings - will be equally surprised and offended. One Channel 4 exec reportedly responded to PMK's assault with, "You wanted publicity and you've got it." Word.

What are the odds they're already planning for Blaine to stage his death?

Heading the list of complaints the Blaine team brought with them from New York was the appalling lack of decent security at the site. "The security firm should be sacked - I mean, what is this? A public hanging? You can't have pictures of bloodied spectators being led away appearing around the world. What does that do for David's image?"

Is this a trick question? What kind of PR guys are these, who aren't even trying to exploit the whole death-defying angle to their advantage? Maybe Londoners are reacting the fact that Blaine's actual image is really quite boring, and are trying to spice it up.

The Standard goes on to describe Blaine's rise from middle-class obscurity, then returns to the PKM, that perpetually irate PR firm, and their efforts to find a London-based publicity team that can salvage the rest of the stunt.

One idea being discussed in New York is to create a proper VIP centre under the box in which visiting celebrities can come and "talk" to Blaine via hand-written cards they could hold up.

I suspect most visiting celebrities will put as much space as possible between themselves and Blaine, after what happened to Sir Paul and everything.

Another is to erect an electronic screen in which members of the public could text him messages from mobile phones.

Good idea. They can keep a running tally of how many times "Sod off, wanker" is sent.

"Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?"

Robot-human love is one of those taboos that really hasn't been explored enough for my tastes (or maybe it has and I've just been blissfully unaware of it). The topic was touched upon in "A.I.," and there was a love-hate dynamic that ran through "Blade Runner." But with all the web sites devoted to sexing up animals, vegetables, minerals (or inanimate objects, anyway), and...other things, where are the pages devoted to hot, robot-meatbag action?

Oh wait, here's one:

She throws her arms around the Spaceknight's neck as he lifts her in his arms. She gives his faceplate a long kiss. Then she looks into his red glowing cyborg eyes and says...

Nope, couldn't get any further than that. However, whether you're a fan of Marvel's "ROM the Spaceknight" or just appreciate vaguely creepy fanfic combined with a level of obsessiveness impressive even for the internet, then "ROM and Me" is the best and most disturbing site devoted to a third-tier comic book character you'll ever see.

Thanks and therapy bills go once again to the Thing That Walks Like a Man.

It's a bird! It's a flan! It's...

Angle Grinder Man!

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- He wears a baby-blue spandex jumpsuit and shiny gold panties, gloves, cape, boots and goggles. He wields a giant, metal-cutting circular power saw.

He is Britain's self-styled "first wheel-clamp and speed camera vigilante cum subversive superhero philanthropist entertainer type person." That's who.

For those not familiar with industrial machine tools, an angle grinder is the saw best suited to cutting through plates of steel, such as, say, the wheel clamps that authorities use to immobilize illegally parked cars in London.

Noisy bastards they are, too. AGM must also have super speed - the better to escape the forces of government oppression - to accompany his wide selection of power tools.

All a clamped motorist has to do is call AGM's hotline and out comes the roadside rescue superhero to saw through the brace and release the car.

No, Angle Grinder Man! That's how they catch you!

Oh, what am I saying? AGM is surely too clever for such trickery.

Angle Grinder Man says his actions are a political protest against "the arrogant contempt that politicians hold for the people who put them in power."

So he's a "superhero with a message," kind of like the Super Friends (when they were on TV) or G.I. Joe. That's nice. Kids need a positive role model.

"I totally outlived Jesus"

This sensitive young man gives voice to all the disenfranchised thirty-somethings out there:

Yeah, I outlived Buddy Holly, James Dean, and now, the big one: Christ Almighty, Himself! That's no small thing. I might not have done as much good in the world, but if I want to, I totally have the time! Shit, I'm probably going to live twice as long as Jesus!

Boo-yah! Burn on you, Jesus!

Indeed.

Love on the rocks...ain't no surprise

More cream of the Austin Chronicle personals here. Not so much the "love that dare not speak its name" as "the love that should probably just keep its mouth shut."

APCB is all about spreading the love. Or spreading something, at any rate.

1) Shout in the dark. You: angry bum at spillway, "calling the cops" at 5 a.m. us: naked swim team having a wrist-breaking good time -- how about a rematch? #2236

2) June. Chevron at Riverside and Congress. I held the door for you. Trust me. You noticed me. Call me. #2182

3) You: scar on face. Me, shaved head. Us, Dobie bathroom. Want to try more?

I suddenly feel like Al Pacino in "Cruising."

The illusion of talent

"His name is Blane? That's a major appliance, not a name!"

Where would we be without cheap shots (especially from a guy with the last name "Vonder Haar")? If we're lucky, we wouldn't be getting constantly harassed by passers-by like celebrity con artist David Blaine. He's evidently having a bit of trouble with the locals during his latest publicity stunt:

t was probably inevitable, given the publicity the event received on live television. Over the weekend, onlookers threw eggs at Blaine's cell 9m above the ground, women threw their fish and chips on the ground and exposed their breasts in an attempt to break his fast and his will, and a man who grew bored watching Blaine sleeping on the permanent TV coverage left his home in South London at night and arrived at the site with a large drum, which he banged to wake Blaine up. The attempt succeeded.

Cry me a river. This is an "endurance test," right? So endure.

The London mob is nothing if not inventive. One group teed up golf balls on the Tower Bridge approaches and attempted to drive them at the glass box, until security guards confiscated their clubs.

A spokesman for Sky TV admitted there had been a number of incidents during the first night, and that security had been tightened, with the erection of a 2m fence around the site and a doubling of the number of guards.

I'm certainly impressed by the man's steely resolve in the face if adversity. But wait, this just in:

But Blaine may have broken his own rules. Yesterday the box was lowered close to the ground to have the egg stains removed, and he is said to have exchanged a few words with his girlfriend, German model Manon von Gerkan. Once he was up again his support team held up a notice reading: "We need to keep all verbal communication to a minimum."

Hm, a "support team" and a supermodel girlfriend. Blaine is less Houdini than P. Diddy. And what's this crap about being lowered to the ground? What kind of 21st century pole-sitter is he?

Blaine's team still has the jitters about hooliganism. Richard Bellars, 22, from South London, a fellow magician, was told off for throwing a playing card at the cage. "I'm trying to break the world record for throwing a card, which currently stands at 216 feet and 4 inches," Bellars explained.

"I've been having a conversation with David in sign language," he said. "I held up two fingers to show him I intended to stay here for two days. He upped the bidding by holding up four fingers, so here I am until Thursday."

That guy is my new hero. There you have it folks; proof that the Brits are smarter than we are. Where were the egg-throwing masses when Blaine was pulling his stunt in the block of ice in NYC last year?

Oh, that's right. He wasn't actually in the ice the whole time anyway.

You're out of the club

The LA Times has a report on some shiny, happy Goths:

Getting in Touch With Their Dark Sides -- in a Happy Way

In what has become an annual ritual, nearly 1,000 black-clad, death-rocker types from around the country invaded Disneyland on Sunday for what organizers officially bill as Bats Day in the Fun Park.

Attendees simply call it Goth Day. The event started five years ago with about 90 people going to Disneyland for the simple irony — a morose crowd in a place best known for making people happy.

Right. Simple irony. Sounds more like when you catch your friend, the indie film fan, renting "Forrest Gump." At Blockbuster.

For the clueless, or those who mistakenly think being Goth means wearing trench coats and worshiping the devil, a crash course on the subculture, which originated in the 1980s: Gothness is about appreciating darkness — whether in music, literature, clothing or a theme park ride.

Do they play Sisters of Mercy in the Haunted Mansion?

The event is held now because the park has longer hours in summer and the last Sunday in August is the first non-blackout day for season ticket holders. And you'd be surprised how many Southern California Goths have annual passes, said San Diego Web designer Joey Large, 33.

"Most of the Goths I hang out with are not dreary people," she said. "They're pretty perky."

The disconnect between Goths and Disney isn't as great as one might think, Large said, adding that Disney has a lot of evil — think Pirates of the Caribbean, the "Nightmare Before Christmas" movie or Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty's nemesis.

The "wenches" in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride had to be shown carrying food so it would look like the pirates chasing them were hungry and not, in fact, drunken rapists. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is about as evil as "Space Ghost Coast-To-Coast," and Maleficent...well, she's pretty bad ass. "Sleeping Beauty" came out over 40 years ago, however, and she still got killed by the good guy. Hell, they all do: Scar, The Queen from "Snow White," Ursula, Jafar, Gaston. In my opinion, the Gothiest Disney villain was Cruella DeVille, and she lived.

Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but if you're a Goth and you want to take your kids to Disneyworld and get your picture taken with Belle and Mary Poppins, don't make excuses and claim it's all because "Disney has a lot of evil." It does, but it's the boring "exploit our third world labor force" brand of evil, not the cool kind. Be up front about your weakness for the Mouse and hopefully, some of your brethren will understand.

The rest will snicker at you behind their black, laqcuered fingernails.

Love don't cost a thing

Especially when you find it in a free weekly newspaper.

Here at APCB, we believe that love is a dish best served cold. So periodically, we'll post personal ads (usually one of those "missed connections," since they're the most hilarious) culled from area weeklies in the hopes of helping two people find that special someone. Enjoy.

NOTE: These are actual ads from last week's Austin Chronicle.

1) 6/03 Travis County Detention Center. I was in for public intox, you stole nachos from 7-11. We talked all night about joining the carnival. Ready to run my tilt-a-whirl? Call. #2157

2) You: Led me to the secret keg, left the party when your friend ran into the cactus. I helped cancel your credit card, lit your cigarettes, miss your conversation. #2094

3) Green Muse, hot afternoon, July 1st-ish. I shooed a fly from the pastries and you covered them. Wanted to chat but was meeting someone. You're hot as donut grease. Brandon. #2101

I think if someone ever tells you you're "hot as donut grease" you should marry them immediately.

They'll ban Joe Walsh's "ILBT" next...

To the Sir-Mix-A-Lot Mobile!

Thai ban for "Big Flabby Buttocks"

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's culture ministry has issued a list of 18 love songs -- including "Big Flabby Buttocks" -- which it wants to ban as part of a campaign against music it says could encourage promiscuity or marital infidelity.

The list was compiled by the ministry's Culture Watch Center and includes songs which contain "improper" content or are offensive to "public decency," The Nation newspaper reported Friday.

Songs on the list include several by two of Thailand's best-known artists and one song that was released two decades ago but has only just come to the attention of the moral guardians, The Nation said.

I'm sure some of you would say that if the government of Thailand wants to maintain "public decency" they'd issue a ban on big flabby German and American tourists who come to Bangkok on "sex cruises" for the purpose of banging underage girls. Baby steps, people.

Rather than being overly conservative, [MR Chakrarot Chitrabongs, permanent secretary to the culture ministry] said the agency was simply doing its job preventing negative changes to Thai society.

Because cracking down on the sex tourism trade would damage the economy, apparently. I can't wait until 2040, when the most popular reality show in America is "America's Funniest Snuff Films," and the moral custodians in Thailand are up in arms over DJs playing George Michael's "I Want Your Sex" at wedding receptions.

Is it a pine box?

No? Pity.

Magician Blaine to Be Suspended Over River Thames

LONDON (Reuters) - American magician David Blaine, dubbed "the modern day Houdini," is to be suspended in a glass box over the River Thames in London for more than six weeks without food.

The flamboyant, 30-year-old New Yorker, famed for spectacular stunts atop poles and frozen in ice, is to be hauled into solitary confinement on Sept. 5 in what he called "the most extreme exercise in isolation and physical deprivation ever attempted."

"Modern day Houdini?" Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Houdini actually, you know, escape from things? How does getting suspended in a box like a window washer make you comparable to the greatest escape artist of all time?

We have thousands of people in America subjected to isolation and physical deprivation in this country, you self-absorbed publicity whore: we call them 'homeless.' Starving yourself for no reason doesn't make you a magician, it makes you an idiot.

You want respect for your "art?" Jump over the damn Snake River Canyon.

"You might remember me from such celebrity phone calls as..."

Hey, are you looking to give your next anniversary a little extra 'oomph?' Or would you like to congratulate a friend on his big promotion? More importantly, do you delight in hearing former A-list celebrities humiliate themselves? Me too, so let's head over to Hollywood Is Calling.

Here's the scoop from the Houston Chronicle:

At HollywoodIsCalling.com, a scrappy-looking 2-month-old Web site, all that's required is your credit card number or electronic check in the amount of $19.95, and within seven days you can expect to hear from one bona fide, if slightly faded, celebrity wishing you Happy Halloween, get well soon, or congratulations on your retirement. The 15-second phone call works out to over a dollar a second, which is, if you think about it, a small price to pay for the privilege of knowing that, for example, hunky Lorenzo Lamas is incredibly excited that you're turning 40.

Only $19.95?! For Lorenzo "Chilly" Lamas?! Where's my Discover card?

Wait a second, what other personalities could I could exploit with my sawbuck?

You can order up Fred "Rerun" Berry, who sounds, by the way, extremely eager to talk to you.

"I bet you that I've made more calls than anyone on this service," Berry says, explaining that he'd rather phone his fans than meet them in person because some of them are rather odd.

On the '70s television show What's Happening! Berry used to play that funny, heavyset, dancing character named Rerun in a red beret and suspenders. In his real life, Berry has experienced drug and alcohol problems, gone through recovery, gone through six marriages to four women and become an ordained minister. But he seems happiest being thought of as lovable old Rerun. He legally adopted the nickname as his middle name, and even now, at 52, he wears his trademark beret and suspenders during public appearances. When he calls his fans through Hollywood Is Calling, he tells them it's Rerun and says a line from the show, "Hey-hey-hey." Sometimes they scream.

That sounds like an appropriate reaction, followed by, "How the hell did you get my phone number?"

Some of the celebrities listed on the site seem harmless enough (David "Makin' It" Naughton, Greg "B.J." Evigan - I'd rather get a call from "The Bear"), but there are several there I wouldn't allow in my home, and don't particularly want harassing me over the phone. Todd Bridges, for example, or the Barbi Twins, who frankly scare the shit out of me.

A call from Lou Ferrigno would be wicked awesome, however.

Many of the celebrities involved admit there is a certain amount of embarassment, although "Rerun" insists hearing the excitement on the other end of the phone is reward enough. Others aren't so charitable:

"Well, obviously it's a way to make some extra money," says Lamas. "I mean, why else would I take time out of my day to call perfect strangers?"

Oh, I don't know. Maybe because they're not making a sequel to "Gladiator Cop?"

What about erotic cakes?

Bakery domain/pr0n story coming up. But first, fun with quotes:

B.J.: "Frank, it's the oldest profession."
Frank: "A bakery?"
Col. Potter: "Tarts!"
Frank: "Tarts? Peach? And strawberry?"

U.S. site triumphs in 'bimbo' bout

GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- The U.S. owner of Web site bimbo.biz Wednesday fought off a legal challenge from Spain's Bimbo S.A., pledging that he would never use his site to sell competing bread or cakes.

Californian Lars Taylor insisted that not even the famous Iberian baker could claim as a trademark a common word defined in Webster's dictionary as slang for "a morally loose woman."

His still-blank site, Taylor said, would probably cater for the "adult, novelty and humor" market -- far from the family oriented merchandise associated with the Barcelona-based firm, and unlikely to confuse Web surfers.

I love cultural differences. The bewilderment the Spanish feel at the American defintion of "bimbo" is close cousin to the involuntary juvenile snickering I fall prey to whenever I see a Bimbo truck on the highway.

Cybersquatting is pretty obnoxious, but I agree with the UN copyright agency that this wasn't the case here. Besides, most people Googling for "bimbo" aren't looking for sliced wheat.

They might be looking for buns, however.

G.I. Joe could kick his ass

Un-freaking-believable.

BBI proudly introduces the latest issue in its Elite Force series of authentic military 12- inch figures, President George W. Bush in naval aviator flight uniform. Exacting in detail and fully equipped with authentic gear, this limited-edition action figure is a meticulous 1:6 scale recreation of the Commander-in-Chief's appearance during his historic Aircraft Carrier landing.

Coming soon, the George W. Bush Texas Air National Guard figure (image not available) and the George W. Bush DWI action figure, complete with Maine arrest report.

Please, Mr. Plesiosaur

So Werner Herzog, best know for directing the classic "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," is making a documentary about the Loch Ness monster. Herzog, according to the film's web site, will lead an expedition team to to "learn the real story behind the monster." He's accepting applications for cryptozoologists, paleontologists, eyewitnesses, and biologists to join him on his excursion.

At last count, there have been 4 documentaries, 3 movies, and 1 "Simpsons" episode based on the mystery of the Loch Ness monster. None of the documentaries have turned anything up, and none of the movies have done much to horrify audiences (besides giving Ted Danson a starring role).

Herzog apparently hopes to settle, once and for all, just what's in that damn loch. It isn't clear if he'll be working with Dr. Robert Rines, the Loch Ness Project, or Professor Frink and his vaunted Frog Exaggerator.

There is no monster, people. Loch Ness is too cold, it's fresh water, and I spent an hour riding around it in a tour van, staring at its maddeningly flat surface without blinking once, and I didn't see a damn thing.

There's still hope for the yeti, though.