October 2007 Archives

Weird? OK. Sexual Offenders List? Maybe...

Man who had sex with bike in court - Telegraph

A man has been placed on the sex offenders’ register after being caught trying to have sex with a bicycle.

Robert Stewart was discovered in his room by two cleaners at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr, south west Scotland, in October last year.

On Wednesday Mr Stewart admitted to sexual breach of the peace in Ayr Sheriff Court, where depute fiscal Gail Davidson described how he had been found by the hostel workers.

"They used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white T-shirt, naked from the waist down.

Yup, the kind of knife MacGyver would have.

ThinkGeek :: Giant Swiss Army Knife

This unique special edition knife contains all 85 tools currently produced by Wenger (Maker of the Genuine Swiss Army Knife). These 85 tools can be used in over 100 functions and it's the World's Largest Swiss Army Knife. It's not exactly going to win any awards for lightest, smallest or most efficient tool but it probably will win you the title "King of All Gadgets". And even though this knife is a monster, weighing almost 3 pounds, don't worry - it does have a key ring so you can carry it on a belt loop.

He was like a Canadian to me.

'Camelot' star Robert Goulet dies at 73

Singer Robert Goulet has died at a Los Angeles hospital where he had been waiting for a lung transplant. His Broadway debut in "Camelot" launched his award-winning stage and recording career. He was 73.

Goulet was in good spirits as he waited for a lung transplant, even telling doctors before they inserted a breathing tube, "Just watch my vocal cords," his wife said.

The big-voiced baritone had been diagnosed last month with a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis.

Ah, classic SCTV comedy. Just in time for X-mas -- I mean Halloween.

YouTube - SCTV - Count Floyd's Scary Little Christmas Promo

Some crazy looking foods. Some of them just have terrible labels, others have terrible names. Some are just terrible.

TheMishMash.com: 12 Products From Hell

A favourite creationist argument is that if you had a bunch of watch gears and put them in a box, shook it around, you should be able to open the box and find an assembled and funtional watch. That is, if evolution is correct.

The biggest problem, of course, is that watches don't breed, aren't living, and cannot evolve. But if they could, it might look something like this:

YouTube - Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker

A terrific kid's book in the same vein as Edward Gorey's, The Gashlycrumb Tinies.

Baby's First Mythos

Spawned from the mind of horror king and Origins award winner, C.J. Henderson, ("The Things That Are Not There," "Tales of Inspector Legrasse") this book is a fun-filled must for every Lovecraftian everywhere. Lavishly illustrated with dozens of all new, highly detailed pieces by Erica Henderson, this is one of those rare instant classics that everyone is simply going to have to have on their shelf. It will also blast your child's soul as you teach them their ABCs and 123s - Mythos style!

Dude. Chill out, OK? And what's all this about Harry Potter being an X-tian story?

Dumbledore is not Gay: Taking Stories More Seriously than the Author | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow

No offense to an excellent author, but Dumbledore no longer belongs only to Rowling. He also belongs to her readers who have been given a series of books in which Rowling was free to say what she wanted to say. She wrote about Christianity openly by Book Seven, but if Dumbledore was gay, she decided to hide it. She hid it so well that there is no evidence of it.

At this point it is too late for Rowling to change the text. She cannot decide to kill Harry now . . . or announce that Harry is actually a vampire, a member of the Tory party, or antidisestablishmentarian. She wrote what she wrote and now it belongs to us.

An excellent use of the Littlest Hobo character.

Cectic - The Healer

Interesting point of view about the outing of Dumbledore.

Put Dumbledore Back in the Closet - TIME

But here is a gay man as de-sexed as any priest—and, to uncomfortably extend the analogy, whose greatest emotional bond is with an adolescent boy: scarred, orphaned, needy Harry. Rowling said at Carnegie Hall that in her conception of his character, Dumbledore had fallen in love long ago with Gellert Grindelwald when the two were just teenagers. But Grindelwald turned out to be evil, which apparently broke Dumbledore's heart. (Quite evil: Grindelwald is Rowling's Hitler figure, opening a camp called "Nurmengard" for political enemies in the 1940s. Dumbledore/Churchill eventually defeats Grindelwald/Hitler in a 1945 duel.)

But as far as we know, Dumbledore had not a single fully realized romance in 115 years of life. That's pathetic, and a little creepy. It's also a throwback to an era of pop culture when the only gay characters were those who committed suicide or were murdered. As Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1981) points out, in film after film of the mid-century—Rebel Without a Cause; Rebecca; Suddenly, Last Summer—the gay characters must pay for their existence with death. Like a lisping weakling, Dumbledore is a painfully selfless, celibate, dead gay man, so forgive me if I don't see Rowling's revelation as great progress.

Probably a lot like the Kobe Beef Burger, but saltier. Or maybe it tastes like humans...

Peppers and Smoke - Fire and Flavor in the Lone Star State

What a twist!

The 10 Most Asinine Movie Twist Endings | Cracked.com

#8. Signs (2002)

The gimmick:
Aliens with a ridiculous weakness.
An elaborate scheme (of divine intervention).

The twist:
Aliens are H20 intolerant. Bonus twist: God has a lot of free time on his hands. Extra bonus twist: Instead of being scary-looking, the aliens look like naked burn victims.

Embarrassing movies, actually.

Poster Art - Lost in Negative Space

Interview with German cannibal Armin Meiwes. He even looks creepy.

First TV Interview With German Cannibal: 'Human Flesh Tastes Like Pork' - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

"The flesh tastes like pork, a little bit more bitter, stronger. It tastes quite good," he said.

He said that when he was a child, he had enjoyed his mother reading him the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," about a witch who traps two children and prepares to eat the boy. "The bit where Hansel is to be eaten was interesting. You wouldn't believe how many Hansels are whizzing around the Internet."

This Snopes article nicely summarizes a lot of the misconceptions about Canadian Health Care.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Canadian Health Care

- What they don't tell you is how much we pay in taxes to keep the health care system afloat. I am personally in the 55% tax bracket. Yes 55% of my earnings go to taxes.

The highest federal income tax rate in Canada is 29% (for persons with annual taxable income over $120,887), and the highest provincial income tax rate in British Columbia is 14.7% (for those with annual taxable incomes over over $95,909). The typical upper-income level Canadian taxpayer is not in a 55% tax bracket.

By way of comparison, a typical upper-income level American taxpayer residing in California pays a roughly equivalant share of his income (40%-45%) in combined federal and state taxes, even though the U.S. has no national health insurance program.

Kind of a weird idea to list the top 70. I mean, how many vampire movies have been made?

Top 70 Vampire Movies of All Time

7. Near Dark (1987) A young cowboy is seduced by a new girl in town only to find out he has been kissed by a vampire. Slowly turning into a creature of the night, he is persuaded to join up with the girl and a roaming band of ghouls. But when his own father and sister become targets in the vampires' endless search for 'food,' he is forced to choose between loyalty to the vampires, or loyalty his own family. (Directed by Kathryn Bigelow)

This is just so awesome.

YouTube - Futurama - Bender's Big Score - DVD Preview

I was going to name the title of this post "Does Left Behind Games Eat Babies?", but I didn't want to be slapped with a lawsuit about misleading information pertaining to the Left Behind series of games.

More of the story is here, here, here, here, and here.

Cleverly done tribute to both films.

YouTube - The Dambusters a la Star Wars

Huh. Valid question, since he asked a Muslim guy to tell us the difference between him and a terrorist.

Daily Kos: Can You Tell The Difference Between Glenn Beck and a Sociopath?

It's not often that CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck runs across a point worth making -- he is famously demure and objective, and not at all an intellectual thunderchud propped up in front of a television camera because CNN looked at their demographics and decided that appealing to the vapid, stupid and bigoted was a far cheaper way to run a network than any of the possible alternatives. But he has a good point here. How, indeed, are we to tell the difference between a brown person who is reasonable, and a brown person who is trying to kill us?

It is a troubling question, and one that got me thinking. How can we tell the difference between evil people and good ones, based solely on their race or religion? How is a reasonable person -- like, say, a news anchor for a major media outlet -- to know which ones to hate, which ones to fear, which ones to merely suspect, and which ones to give a pass to?

We'll start calling thes things YARSS.

DiFatta twice detained for lewd conduct in mall restrooms - Breaking News Updates New Orleans - Times-Picayune - NOLA.com

St. Bernard Parish Councilman Joey DiFatta, who on Thursday withdrew from the 1st Senate District campaign, has been stopped twice since 1996 for suspicion of engaging in lewd behavior in public restrooms in Jefferson Parish, records obtained by The Times-Picayune show.

DiFatta, 53, acknowledged that reports he had been stopped are true, but he denied any wrongdoing in both cases. He said he was not prosecuted in either case and has no arrest record.

"If I had done something wrong, I would have been arrested," DiFatta said Thursday afternoon. "I was not. I will deny that I was involved in any activity of that nature."

Well, it's something that most Republicans would frown upon -- and then get caught doing:

The report said DiFatta slid his foot into the deputy's stall and tapped the deputy's foot. In the report, Conley noted that such activity is common among men to indicate a willingness to participate in sex.

The deputy inside the stall, Detective Wayne Couvillion, responded by tapping his foot, and DiFatta reached under the partition and began to rub the deputy's leg, the report states.

The detective asked DiFatta, "What do you want?" according to the report, and he replied, "I want to play with you."

DiFatta also used a hand signal to indicate that he wanted to engage in sex and used language that indicated the same, according to the report. Conley, who is now the Kenner city attorney, confirmed the report's authenticity Thursday.

A fascinating read.

Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII - washingtonpost.com

The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Oh, but I really really want to speculate...

Dead Reverend's Rubber Fetish - October 8, 2007

An Alabama minister who died in June of "accidental mechanical asphyxia" was found hogtied and wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, according to an autopsy report.

Investigators determined that Rev. Gary Aldridge's death was not caused by foul play and that the 51-year-old pastor of Montgomery's Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone in his home at the time he died (while apparently in the midst of some autoerotic undertaking). While the Montgomery Advertiser, which first obtained the autopsy records, reported on Aldridge's two wet suits, the family newspaper chose not to mention what police discovered inside the minister's rubber briefs. Aldridge served as the church's pastor for 16 years.

Immediately following his death, church officials issued a press release asking community members to "please refrain from speculation" about what led to Aldridge's demise, adding that, "we will begin the healing process under the strong arm of our Savior, Jesus Christ."

It's enough to make one lose their faith...

Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts U. - Yahoo! News

Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors' expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter's senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as "underage males."

From the goons at Something Awful.

The 22 Most Awful Moments in Science Fiction

#14 Hercules gets a spaceship

When I heard Kevin Sorbo was going to be starring in a straight-to-syndication scifi series based on the dream journal of Gene Roddenberry I nearly blacked out from pleasure. Hercules meeting a posthumous Gene Roddenberry concept that couldn't make it to the WB might seem too good to be true on the surface, but it turned out that Roddenberry's Andromeda was precisely as good as it sounds!

Like Earth: Final Conflict, another of Roddenberry's Tupac projects, Andromeda had a much darker atmosphere than the Utopian Star Trek. Take, for example, the muscular Nietzscheans who follow the ancient teachings of Nietzsche about wearing little vests to show off their pectorals. They live on their own planets and really hate the evil humanoid bats, just like Nietzsche always said.

If you liked Farscape, but you hated the Muppets and the characters and the story, then Andromeda is definitely worth buying on DVD. It's also worthy of its 14th place spot on the list of Most Awful Moments in Science Fiction.

This is ludicrous.

PC World - Jury Orders Woman to Pay $222,000 for Illegal Music Sharing

A federal jury in Duluth, Minn., on Thursday ordered a Minneapolis woman to pay US$220,000 to six music companies for illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted music over a peer-to-peer network.

The 12-person jury said Jammie Thomas must pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs that were the focus of the case. In their complaint, the six music companies that sued her had claimed that Thomas had illegally shared a total of 1,702 songs over the Kazaa file-sharing network, but they chose to focus on a representative list of 24 songs.

The verdict was greeted with dismay by many in the blogosphere who have been following the case closely for some time now.

Two very unpopular blogs about (and definitely not affiliated) with Blackwater. This is very specifically stated in each blog's byline, despite the blogs being veritable marketing tools for the mercenary agency (and using actual marketing materials from their website, as well as providing links to the Blackwater website).

This person is definitely either a current, or former, or future employee of Blackwater, the mercenary outfit named after waste water contaminated with feces.

About Blackwater

Blackwater Facts

We're supporters of Blackwater USA, the heroic private security company that has lost more than two dozen of its own men while protecting American diplomats, VIPs and others in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. We set up this blog shortly after the September 16, 2007 incident in which terrorists attacked an American diplomatic convoy near Baghdad, because we were fed up with all the misleading media coverage.

A rather insane commentary by World Net Daily's Judith Reisman on masturbation-induced impotence. I was going to put this under the "Sex" category, but it's a little too kooky. And, no, the quote was by Karl Marx, and he said "religion is the the opiate of the masses." If you're going to quote-mine someone, at least cite your source, and get the quote right.

WorldNetDaily: The impotence pandemic

Pornographically Induced Impotence is now a national pandemic, raking in untold billions for pornographers and their satellite businesses as well as from the marital discord and despair it produces.

From the Playboy mansion to Capitol Hill, from the Las Vegas bordellos to newlywed bedrooms, from Fortune 500 offices to Ivy League dorms, men and boys are habituating to the rewards of their own hand, provided by Hefner et al.

Public policy analyst Shaunti Feldhahn was interviewed recently about her church lecture program that included her research on men's "fixations on pornography."

Someone once dubbed pornography "the opiate of the masses," an endogenous drug high called "lust" that makes wholesome sensuality seem run-of-the-mill. Pornography triggers high states of fear-shame-lust arousal ("flight/fight/sex"), quite the opposite of love. Therefore, devoted couples often confess dismay at finding pornography more arousing than their marital embrace. Many wrongly assume their love is weak. Yet, the strength of love requires an absence of the shame, fear, even hate that is the basis of lust.

I was just going to skim over this article, but it has an entry for Turducken. If this isn't an indicator that Americans are fattening up, I don't know what is. Suddenly, turkey isn't good enough anymore -- we have to stuff it with two other birds as well.

The Eight Most Fattening Foods of Fall - To Your Health - MSNBC.com

8. Turducken This combo wonderbird is a trendy entree you might want to forgo. It contains turkey, duck and chicken wrapped together for a new twist on the usual Thanksgiving meal. In terms of your diet, that twist may be for the worse: one serving of Turducken has 749 calories and 34.5 grams of fat. Try limiting yourself to one bird and skip the crispy skin. A three-ounce serving of skinless turkey has 130 calories.

Interesting point. Once could buy three of the inexpensive cameras for the sales tax on the more expensive one.

A $150 versus a $5,000 Camera

Yes, if you are a geek with a microscope there are differences, but that's for geeks who look for these details as a hobby unto itself. For normal people who actually enjoy photos there isn't any difference for 80% of what you might want to shoot. Many people who read my site buy and own too many cameras. They enjoy dissecting photos for engineering details (as I often do on this site) more than they enjoy making photos. They're often the same guys who buy too many other toys. Those are the people who keep insisting you buy a more expensive camera, since it justifies their perverted hobby. It doesn't make any better photos.

Granted, I think BMI is a bit overrated, but I think the labels in this Flickr photoset are appropriate for most of the pictures. We, as a western society, are starting to get pretty thick around the middle. The question is "how do we address this?" Do we start loving our bodies in their current fattened state, or do we look at possibly unrealistic and potentially unattainable ideals for guidance?

Illustrated BMI Categories - a photoset on Flickr

Illustrated BMI Categories, a Flickr project where you can see what "underweight," "normal," "overweight," "obese," and "morbidly obese" BMI categories look like on real people.

Online magazine of urban exploration. What's even better is that these guys are based out of Toronto. They've got cool articles and images of places they've broken into explored.

Infiltration

Infiltration offers a mix of the practice and theory of urban exploration in areas not designed for public usage. This site is the online companion of the paper zine about going places you're not supposed to go. All 25 issues of Infiltration remain in print for your offline reading pleasure. It's black and white, but you might like it anyhow.

Very cool website with information on how to scope out those "interstitial places."

Web Urbanist - Urban Exploration: Beginner’s Guide to Adventures in Building Infiltration

Have you ever been drawn to the calm beauty of abandoned buildings, or even tempted to explore forbidden structures in the urban landscape? For some, urban exploration is a hobby or even a mission. Many urban explorers are also adept photographers who create amazing images showing the beauty of abandoned spaces.

Here's something to go with those Cthulhu in a bottle kits for Halloween.

aranamuerta.com - Blog Archive - Witch Kitchen Jars

Apparently the Folson Street Fair in San Francisco came under fire for using a poster that parodied da Vinci's "The Last Supper":

Forget for a moment that it's a really fantastic picture -- how is parodying da Vinci's painting a sacrilege, especially considering that "The Last Supper" is one of the most parodied paintings in existence? And what sets this one apart from all the other parodies? Hmmm?

Skeptico talks about it here.

Dan Savage collected a few other examples of "The Last Supper" that didn't get so much attention, suggesting the Folson parody was targeted because of the homosexual aspects of it (and, presumably, the homosexual aspects fair as well). Strange, since the other parodies are probably just as controversial. They cover themes such as fast food, sexuality, science fiction, alternate religions, and, um, quilts.... In each case, the central character is likened to Christ, and this can make a profound statement, depending on the context.

My personal favourites are the Zombie Last Supper (Great Zombie Jesus!):

... and the Star Wars Last Supper:

Other Last Suppers: Where's the Outrage? | Slog | The Stranger | Seattle's Only Newspaper

I also found an X-Files Last Supper. They should add this to their list: