Month: June 2006

Tap tap tap it’s the newswire

  1. Here’s how to dissuade Iraqis from suicide bomb and IED attacks: we’ve gone and made a television commercial urging them not to. I especially like the description of the group that funded it: I call them an independent, non-governmental group of scholars, non political people,” says Plotkin. “Some may live in Iraq, some may live abroad. For a variety of different reasons—from safety concerns to wanting the focus to remain on the issue itself, they decided to remain anonymous.”
  2. In other War Pigs news, the fighter jets are going to have IP addresses now.
  3. NEOLOGISM ALERT: “Bro Job.”
  4. Here’s a bright idea. If you’re painting lots of things, capture the fumes and use them for power.
  5. Headline of the day! NUDE WORM TEMPTS WORLD CUP FANS
  6. Sure, it’s an oppressive technology that’l be used to disrupt free expression, but I still want a Ghostbusters-style slimer for Christmas.
  7. SMS isn’t just for teen hookups. It’s for desperate cries for help sent to aid organizations, too.
  8. There’s a good summary of the net neutrality problem from Joan Blades via an interview on Feministing.
  9. Congresscritters here are trying variations on the captcha to keep bots and other automation from emailing them, with predictably comic effect.
  10. You may insert your own “Dude, you’re…” punchline to this exploding Dell laptop story and photo.
  11. Wouldn’t it be a larf if we overfished so much that we ran out of fish oil and all got real stupid? Alarmist, I know, but…
  12. Now the Sheriffs Dept is in on the action using tiny drone airplanes to spy on us. Extra points for the name of the company making them: “Octatron”.
  13. Typos can be embarrassing or confusing. At times they can also result in massive litigation!
  14. Louisiana is still trying to find a way to get money from nutria somehow even though no one wants to eat them, make coats out of them, or even really meet one.
  15. You know that guy who volunteers a lot, runs for local office a lot, thinks pretty highly of himself, is always not only a vet but a Special Forces combat vet? Turns out he’s a multiple murderer instead. (Reg. required, use bugmenot etc.)

The stripes were of course horizontal

A couple of weeks ago I turned on the TV and stared into it for a few hours. It’s not my favorite medium, but occasionally I get this urge to watch real crap TV, the equivalent of stale Twinkies.

So, of course, I was watching “reality.” In this case, it was one of the many Cops-type police “reality” shows. This one was done in the cheapest possible way. All the footage was taken from the video cameras in cop cars that record vehicle stops. I assume this film was all either free or for a nominal charge since it’s in the public domain. They had that loud asshole ex-cop guy as the “host”, the one who does this on half these shows, but only voiceover. They weren’t going to pay him screen time.

Most of it was typical “greatest hits of the car cam” stuff. Guy pulls over and runs away. Guy fights cop. Guy is real drunk. And then, suddenly, beauty.

The cop was chasing this beat up ol’ truck who wouldn’t pull over. The announcer, in a fit of tragic irony, mentioned several times that the cop didn’t know this guy had just been cheated on by his wife and was being all crazy and stuff. Chase fun ensued, and finally the guy pulled over. Then he wouldn’t get out of the car. So far this was typical crap.

Then of course he tried to back into the cop and there was lots of stuff in reverse and yelling. Finally he got out of the car but clearly wanted a fight. He charged the cop and they grappled,

Whoo! Out of nowhere came another car which screeched to a halt. A guy got out of the car and joined the fight helping the cop. The announcer informed us that this was a heroic retired cop helping a brother in need. However, things weren’t going well for our heroes, since Angry Man was big, and really angry. This is when the beauty occurred.

Another car arrived and out burst A REALLY FAT MAN IN A RED AND WHITE STRIPED SHIRT AND A BIG SILLY HAT WITH A TASSEL ON IT! This man came roaring out of the left frame, grappled Angry Man, and then fell on top of him, immobilizing him. Cop & Bro were able to cuff Angry Man.

I swear this guy looked like Where’s Waldo with Obelix’s build. He was Comic Fat Man from Central Casting. He obviously gets up this morning and says “Time to put on my comic fat guy suit!”

Big Fat Guy in Striped Shirt needs his own shoe. Every week, the kids or the cops at the precinct will get in a big jam, and things will look pretty bad, and then BLAMMO! Outa fucking nowhere comes Big Fat Guy in a Striped Shirt and Silly Hat and saves the day! If possible he should save said day by falling on stuff, leaning on stuff, sitting on stuff, or otherwise using gravity and mass to his advantage. He could fall out of closets Fibber McGee style or roll down hills, or even crash through the ceiling.

I like Fat Guy in a Striped Shirt. I hope he shows up if I’m ever in trouble.

The news

This morning my phonepagerthing beeped with a message from emergencyemail.org: Bird flu in Canada, second case. That seemed appropriate. Their mission is to send me things like fire and flood warnings, DHS freakouts, declarations of war, and other items of urgent and frightening interest, and I think bird flu on the same continent as me is a good call.

I then went to my email and saw a CNN News Alert in my inbox. I figured it was the same thing and clicked. Nope: Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to be cited for failure to wear a helmet, not having a proper license at time of his June 12 accident.

I looked at CNN’s home page. Nothing at all about bird flu there. I went to Google’s News home page: nothing about bird flu on the home page. A search came up with ~130 stories, most of them about exactly what the emergency email people paged me with: two cases of bird flu in North America.

I wonder if there were actually direct threats from poultry producers to news organizations, or just the implied one of advertising loss? Because this kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident.

A Scanner Dorkly

Another visit to the psychiatrist means another load of Drug Ad Scans. Two of these are actually not from a drug ad, but from an osteopathic college’s fundraiser magazine. The other two are the standard brochureware. Below we’ll learn why misshapen closeted animal trainers are humanitarian, why Bob shouldn’t use the nail gun for a while, and the relationship between bipolar disease and endless green rolling hills.

Siegfried, Roy, and a construction guy with issues

THE SUGAR BEET HAS GONE INSANE

Rhizomania, also called “root madness” or “crazy root,” has caused significant losses in root and sugar yield. […] The most obvious symptom of rhizomania is a mass of fine, hairy secondary roots that consists of a mixture of dead and healthy roots. […] The disease is so infectious that even a few grams of infected soil can eventually spread to infect entire fields.
crazy root

Inland Empire Update: Homemade Mining Operation Considered Harmful

Montclair gold hunter digs 60-foot-deep hole in front yard

MONTCLAIR, Calif. (AP) A homeowner digging for gold in his front yard said he got “carried away” and ended up with a 60-foot-deep hole, authorities said.

Henry Mora, 63, began digging two weeks ago after his gold detector picked up a signal near his front patio.

“I figured, well, maybe there’s something down there you would logically conclude, right? So I started digging,” the semiretired musician said Wednesday.

Mora said he only intended to go down 3 or 4 feet, but he started finding gold dust in the dirt and the detector kept hinting that he was getting closer.

“It was still beeping, and that just gave me the idea to keep digging,” he said. “I think it’s a normal human reaction, especially when you think there might be gold down there.”

A neighbor who saw the mound of dirt growing on Mora’s lawn became concerned and called authorities Tuesday. Fire officials responding to the home found two men inside the unreinforced hole, using a bucket and rope to remove dirt. Mora had hired the two men to help him.

“We told him, ‘You’re done,”’ Montclair fire Capt. Rich Baldwin said. “It’s amazing no one got killed.”

Authorities fenced off Mora’s property and ordered him to hire an engineer to safely pack the dirt back into the ground.

Mora acknowledged his search for buried treasure was getting “totally out of hand.” Yet when asked whether he regrets starting the dig, Mora was conflicted.

“In a way yes, and in a way no,” Mora said, “because I think there’s still gold down there.”

immigrant schlong

So, O.C. goatee guy with the shiny truck. You think you’re badass because you blow 10 mpg in your lifted 4×4 and occasionally drive on a trail? Maybe because you have a buddy who did the Baja 1000 once? Let us show you an SU fuckin’ V:

http://www.icechallenger.co.uk/

This is a modification on the typical vehicle in Iceland, where instead of showing off the locals are concerned with getting around on a mixture of snow, ice, and sharp volcanic rock. Interestingly even though the thing gets shitty mileage it uses a tenth the amount of fuel it would take for an airplane to go the same distance.

via Autoblog and Forbes