transmothraFox News is now pretending that disgraced Republican congressman Mark Foley is a Democrat! Simply incredible. The lies and bullshit that they spew on the unsuspecting and curiously unbefuddled masses just continue to grow in scope and effect. How this may affect the elections is anybody’s guess, but if enough people who get their news exclusively from Fox are duped that easily, it may turn ugly.
For all the weird-ass searches that lead people to briefly look at the endless bytes of useless information here (“asshole jam“? “extinct dog breads“? “tied up aardvark“? “death trajectory“? “nucular powered ufo“? What’s wrong with people? If anyone can shed light on these pressing issues, please contact me.), the one that gets me is the search for pomes something or something pomes.
A pome is a fleshy fruit, like an apple. A poem is a work of poetry. There’s a reason I spell it pomes: Jack Kerouac did it. It’s just an unpretentious way of being pretentious (or a pretentious way of being unpretentious). It’s redundantly poetic. It’s word jazz.
Now, if you’re actually looking for a fruit, then we’re cool. We’re more than cool. I respect you, because you actually know what a pome is.
But if you’re spelling the word poem wrong for no other reason than you’re an idiot, you’re an idiot. Just take a gander at the image above. See that? Of course! You had to see that. Google asks you if you really meant what you typed in. You may report to the gas chamber now pls k thx.
Most Americans Agree with Evolution – that’s a bit of a surprise, given the current climate in this country. Still, assuming you can still find a knuckledragging specimen of evolutionary failure, you can use this Scientific American article to knock them down a rung or fifteen.
Earth’s Temperatures Near Million-Year High
I know at least one moron who says that global warming isn’t real, and another who claims that humans bear no blame and therefore have no responsibility to fix the problem.
People who turn a blind eye to the coming age of fire will find themselves in hot water soon enough. If we don’t reduce carbon emissions drastically and quickly, we won’t have the opportunity to live to see what we humans could have accomplished as a civilization. We will fail and we will die out and humanity (and other forms of walking, flying, crawling, and swimming meat) will be extinct if action is not taken. This is a looming catastrophe, and history shows that catastrophies do not magically fix themselves.
Did you know: If you’re really serious about getting your favorite greasy politician elected, you could
or you could
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin killed by stingray | The Australian
I always thought this poor guy took things a little too far. Maybe he was just crazy or had a death wish. R.I.P. Steve Irwin :(
Hilarious Huffington Post piece: what Republicans see when they look at the NY Times
Holly’s home. She’s doing so much better but isn’t 100% yet. If i had to pin it down, i’d say she’s about 66.2%, give or take about 1.3% or so. Roughly.
We had a tough time today. Since my blood pressure is somewhat high, i’m just going to cut open an artery and let it vent for a little bit and hope that you, good reader(s), don’t mind too much. Maybe you can even empathize.
2 pm: I get to the hospital about ten minutes after they told her she’d be released. Maybe an hour later, i’d stepped outside for a cigarette. When i got back, there were suddenly about 6 or 7 whitecoats standing around her bed, brandishing clipboards menacingly. I’d missed most of the sermon, so i’m of little help now and have to do a lot of reading. Their leader advised her that they’d need to get a quick blood sample from her before she left so they’d be ready for her appointment on Monday. The throng exited as one shortly thereafter.
Another hour and a half passed before a nurse came in and said that they already had blood from earlier that day that they would use and that we hadn’t needed to be waiting all that time. The lab rats (probably Umbrella Corporation sleeper agents), from their cavernous, heavily fortified underground lair deep beneath the hospital, never called the nurse to inform her of this fact. Being the messenger (and thereby the bearer of bad news), we shot her dead on the spot and ran out of there as fast as our little legs could carry us.
We got to the pharmacy a short time later. I was starving, but i acquiesced to Holly’s unreasonable demand for insulin. She is, after all, a diabetic, i suppose. Here’s what happened at the pharmacy:
First (to back up just a tad in order to give some indication of the trouble that was to follow soon enough), we found that the hospital had greedily stolen her temporary insurance card. I’d noticed most of the staff eyeing it covetingly, then glancing at us with great contempt, finally turning back to stare, drooling, at her little 2×3 piece of the American Health Care Industry Pie. Each of them followed the exact same pattern and had the same hungry, insurance-card-addled look in their hollow little eye sockets. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Now that i know for sure that there are indeed addicts working there, you bet your ass i’m going to report it to the FBI.
Needless to say, we got to the pharmacy, dropped off the prescription, and then had to trek back to the apartment to print another insurance card. The printer, obviously, jammed on us, leaving us with a crooked, besmudged piece of crap that no pharmacist, in their right mind or not, would (or indeed should) have taken. Luckily, the pharmicists were all definitely drug addicts and definitely not of the correct mental state required to do their job within the boundaries of good sense, as evidenced by this next bit, and by the fact that they were all shaking and jerking violently, and babbling in some foreign moon-speak among themselves.
Then… the idiot girl taking the prescription couldn’t spare the mental resources to navigate the tricky, tricky phone prompts while calling Holly’s new insurer. Since she couldn’t verify the coverage, she simply handed the card back to us and advised us of her incompetent state, albeit more vaguely than that, and not in so many words. She also made a big damn deal about not knowing what brand of lancets the doctor had prescribed, telling us as much as that she was entirely without the power to ask us if we knew what brand monitor we, obviously, already had. We showed them the monitor and explained that that wasn’t a big problem, but that we needed to get test strips and couldn’t find any; so being that Holly’s a newly diagnosed diabetic and since they must have them behind the counter, would they please give us more information? Not hearing this, they continued bickering about the godforsaken lancets.
Holly called the insurance “people” [citation needed] and straightened everything out, telling the pharmacist that she has to be reimbursed and that her coverage is only for $100 a year anyway. I wish like hell that the previous sentence was just some kooky hyperbole, but it’s not. Holly plunked down $160 and we were on our way to grab some quick dinner and head the hell home.
Except that we didn’t get the test strips. The god damn test strips that every diabetic from Moses to B.B. King must have to keep an eye on their blood sugar level. The things that keep a diabetic away from the brink of danger. The things we already made a big deal about, while they were busy making a big deal about jack shit.
We got the test strips. $95 for 100 of ’em. It wasn’t pretty, but we got them all right. Don’t tell Homeland Security you read anything here about the, uh, incident that happened at the Walgreens in Bellbrook, ok?
Global warming is all in our minds. Also an apparent figment of our imagination: more than 100 people (so far) who have died as a direct cause of the current heat wave sweeping California.
While NASA has actually removed the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” from its mission statement, an obvious sign that the idiotic monkey-hear, monkey-repeat global-warming deniers in Washington have them under their ridiculously fat thumbs, they’ve also been cutting or delaying programs intended to figure this climate change thing out.
So, has the politicization of science gone from merely hurting children by denying the obvious reality of evolution to actually killing people by denying the obvious reality of the global warming catastrophe?
So who’s on the side of citizenry, if our government wants to roll over and play stupid while we roast in the ever-increasing temperatures that are currently making our little planet a little less inhabitable each day? (Certainly not Republicans, who defiantly show their disgust with the poor by continually voting not to increase the minimum wage, all the while voting to give themselves raises and give tax cuts to the poor rich people in this country.)
What’s the real deal here, then? Is the U.S. government trying to enslave its own people by creating an environment where we have no recourse or protection from calamity without paying? Has America finally been turned over to Big Business? Where has all this incredible ignorance come from, and why is it actively trying to take us back to the Dark Ages, when common people were literally at the mercy of all-powerful tyrants? And how is it that We, the People, are actually letting this happen to us?
National Film Board of Canada: 50 animated shorts – excellent stuff!
Dr. Miracles – short film. Completely juvenile, and hilarious. ER gone badly weird.
This Flash “mind reader” seems spooky at first – until you figure out how it works (but do try it first, following the site’s instructions): Notice that the symbols repeat. Also notice how one number may have different symbols when you repeat the process. Then, notice that you can’t just pick a symbol, you HAVE to do the math. NOW… try this: Do the math for 5 different numbers. Do you see a pattern? They’ll all be the same symbol! So no matter what number you pick, if you do the math and pick the correct symbol, it will ALWAYS be right!
Bizarre fish with human-like teeth caught in Texas lake. (Not just human… British.)
Speaking of which… catfish, um, really get this big?!
Bandai’s hilariously weird “God-Jesus” robot toy from the 1980s.
Experiments in the Revival of Dead Organisms. Fucking creepy. Found via Grey Lodge Podcasting Company’s YouTube link dump.
Mazen Kerboj, musician and artist, blogs from ground zero in Lebanon. Check out his improv piece, Starry Night, during which you can hear bombs and air $raid$ sirens in the background. Beautiful and unsettling, all at once. Read his blog and pass it along. Chilling. I hope that he stays safe. He seems like a good man. He says things like:
“we know you are with us. we know you are seeing us. we know you hear the fucking bombs we are hearing. we know you worry for us. but don’t. because you know we are tough guys. you know that we’ll [survive?] this shit. you know that we survived massacre and we’ll do it again today. you know we’ll see each other soon. keep in touch and stay with us.”
People get ready: all this Middle East violence is giving the End-Timers a serious hard-on for the Rapture. A sicker bunch of fuckwits probably do not exist. Zealots are fools. It is religious zeal that has got the world into the mess that it’s in now. How do you spell worldwide suicide? Z-E-A-L-O-T-R-Y.
Zealots of the world: fuck you. I do hope that you all die the vainglorious deaths that you ridiculous, ignorant fools are all hoping for. So GO APESHIT FOR JESUS/MOSES/MUHAMMED! Kill each other to bloody, pulpy fucking smithereens and let the rest of us get on with our futures!
Lookit what hatred can do (photos from arabist of the Israel-Lebanon conflict)
Warning: some extremely graphic images of victims of Israeli war violence in Lebanon.
It’s too bad that the assholes in Hezbollah have to literally ruin the lives of Lebanese civilians by incurring the extreme wrath of Israel (who, let’s face it, pulled the trigger in the terrible images linked to above). I’ve always had a great fondness for the Lebanese. I had a childhood friend who (if i remember right) was Lebanese (he didn’t speak a word of English but we had fun, i hope), and who couldn’t love the country that gave us the late, great Khalil Gibran.
Extreme bad behavior never benefits anyone, whether coming from aggressors or defenders. Violence is violence. If this is how we solve our differences, then the human race truly is doomed to extinction, and godspeed.
130 years ago, a genocidal maniac was finally put down. Long may Gen. George Armstrong Custer rest.
NDNs pwnd U sucka!!1!!
Henry Rollins: A Love Letter To Ann Coulter
“But mostly, Ann, you will shut the fuck up.”
Priceless!
Top 10 places to find royalty free, public domain, stock photos
Stephen Hawking in the news: “It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species… Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.” – He’s also working on a children’s book a la Harry Potter, sans magic. Dude!
Footage of meteoroid hitting the moon.
Court orders Bob Taft (Governor- OH) to disclose potentially scandalous records. Corrupt Bob must give up. What a loser.
Aussie lyrebird is like a freaking dictaphone of nature! I’ve heard wild stories about this bird, but hear it imitate – perfectly! – a buzzing chainsaw, and two different camera shutters!
After the Rodney King riots in South Central, the city gave residents a plot of land in good faith. How nice! They’ve since turned it into the largest urban farm in America! Unfortunately, it is at this very moment under corporate and police attack. It seems the land was dubiously sold out from under The People to developers. Shame, shame, shame! This is outrageous, and reeks of the kind of “indian-giving” that white people are most famous for.
Don’t even try to cancel AOL. They’ll just give you the runaround and, erm, ask for your father. WTF.
Sexy ro-bots having sexy sex.
An even weirder video: “dancing” Japanese girls teaching defensive English. I guess. Don’t make fun of them.
EFF‘s The Corruptibles!
In the St. Louis, MO suburb of Black Jack, “Family Values” means getting legally married, or living on the street in a cardboard box with your kids.
CBS News: Black Jack, Mo., To Evict Unmarried Couples With Children From Homes
Mayor Norman McCourt said starting Wednesday the city will begin trying to evict groups who do not fit into Black Jack’s definition of family…
So, essentially, this means that if this kind of thing flies, the gummint will have a say in who you’re with, where you live, and how many children you have. What’s shocking is the the idea of evicting a couple with children. Homeless kids, i’d hazard, are never good PR for a city.
“Soldier killed detainee in violation of ROE“; “Soldier killed detainee while handcuffed”; “1 strangulation found outside isolation unit”; “1 blunt force trauma and choking, died during interrogation” (there are three of these); “Soldier drowned detainee, body not found”; and “died sleeping after interrogation.” (source)
To this day, no U.S. agent has been prosecuted for “torture” or “war crimes”:
“The heaviest sentence imposed on anyone to date for a torture-related death while in U.S. custody is five months — the same sentence that you might receive in the U.S. for stealing a bicycle. In this case, the five-month sentence was for assaulting a 22-year-old taxi-driver who was hooded and chained to a ceiling while being kicked and beaten until he died,” said Goering. [emphasis mine -ed.]
“While the government continues to try to claim that the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody was mainly due to a few ‘aberrant’ soldiers, there is clear evidence to the contrary. Most of the torture and ill-treatment stemmed directly from officially sanctioned procedures and policies — including interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,” said Javier Zuniga, Amnesty International’s Americas Program Director. (source)
“When religions are practiced, as they are by a majority of those in developed nations, today, as a kind of nostalgic little ritual – a community event or an excuse to get together and not work – it doesn’t really screw anything up too badly. But when they radically alter our ability to contend with reality, cope with difference, or implement the most basic ethical provisions, they must be stopped.“Like any other public health crisis, the belief in religion must now be treated as a sickness. It is an epidemic, paralyzing our nation’s ability to behave in a rational way, and – given our weapons capabilities – posing an increasingly grave threat to the rest of the world.”
Texas teen smokes pot while on probation, gets life sentence while a well-connected killer smokes crack and is no longer even on probation. Same judge. Judge Keith Dean, of Dallas, to be precise about it.
Why this disparity of justice? Or is there disparity, in the eyes of the man charged with interpreting the law?
Judge Dean, a widely respected 20-year veteran of the Dallas criminal bench, said he wouldn’t discuss the two cases because he might have to rule on them again someday. In general, he said, he tries to evaluate “the potential danger to the community” when someone violates probation “and what, in the long run, is going to be in the best interest of the community and the person themselves.”
Meanwhile, the kid, 16 years older now, has tried to commit suicide and where is the outcry, i ask you?