Links (10/30/08)

From my regular trolling of the interwebs:

A shocking alleged hate crime by those evil-doers at Fox.

Weird lego men washing up on the shores of Britian. A sure sign of the apocalypse.

Supposed diaries from the Great Depression that prove to be scarily, suspiciously prescient.

Not a link for the psychologically fragile.

Terrible porn movie ideas.

The entire cast from The Wire is campaigning for Obama in North Carolina.

New sexy Halloween costumes for women, including the ever popular Sexy Elephant man costume.

The freakish, apparently true tale of Brian Peppers — internet meme, pedophile, Toledo native.

Christian loonies worship before the golden bull of Wall Street. Literally. Isn’t this the sort of thing that brought plagues of locust in the Bible? [h/t Ted]

Did you know that some Christian dingbat has dubbed today the “Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies?” Well here they are, at the Wall Street bull statue thing, praying to Jesus for money. The dingbat has explained, “We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems.” Don’t they know that God taking over the economic systems would be SOCIALISM from SPACE?

And here’s a super geeky site where some Japanese guy photographed all the locations from Edward Yang‘s masterpiece A Brighter Summer Day.

And finally, a clip from Troll 2. You won’t believe how bad it is.

109 Year Old Daughter of a Slave Votes For Obama

This story is amazing, highlighting just how recent our sins of slavery were and how monumental an Obama presidency would be.

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country’s first black presidential nominee.

The rest of this story is here. {via Daily Kos]

The Idiots Who Rule America

I stumbled across this at Daily Kos. Chris Hedges is a Pulitizer Prize-winning report formerly of the New York Times. And he’s mad as hell.

Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. They are stunted, timid and uncreative bureaucrats who are trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions which will satisfy the corporate structure. They are about numbers, profits and personal advancement. They are as able to deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase company profits as they are able to use taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they think, is a secondary product of the free market. And they slavishly serve the market.

[snip]

Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities. Democracy, like individualism, is not based on personal gain but on self-sacrifice. A functioning democracy must defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens. This is not happening. The corporate managers and government officials trying to fix the economic meltdown are pouring money and resources into the financial sector because they only know how to manage and sustain established systems, not change them. Financial systems, however, are not pure scientific and numerical abstractions that exist independently from human beings.

Wow! This sort of thing just isn’t said in polite company in Washington/Wall Street, yet it’s EXACT what everyone needs to hear. For the love of God and all humanity, read the whole article here and then send it to grandma and the kids back on the farm.

Naked Pursuit (1968)

This independently produced pink eiga has all the hallmarks of a Koji Wakamatsu movie, like Go, Go Be a Virgin A Second Time — namely radical politics and naked women — but little of its poetry. The plot, as such, is a 60s radical sees a girl on the beach, he tries to rape her, and — after a whole lot of flailing around on the sand — she escapes missing a couple articles of clothing. Repeat until naked. Throw in some news footage of student protests and the Vietnam war and that’s pretty much the movie. It’s a pretty thin plot to be stretched for 73 minutes, and though the director, Toshio Okuwaki, does his best to pad it out with trippy sound effects, excessive use of slow motion, and bizarre unmotivated zooms. At it’s moments, it has a unhinged dream-like quality that reminded me a bit of Woman of the Dunes (perhaps it was all that sand) but for the most part it’s a dull, poseurish flick that pretensions of art, but in reality is flaccid crap.

Links (10/17/08)

From my regular trolling of the tubes of the interweb:

There’s this weirdly elaborate flash depiction of Sarah Palin’s presidency.

Post debate McCain hilarity. I love the internet.

Gourmet cannibal found guilty.

Product placement movie posters.

An article about how most traditional Japanese hotels refuse to let gaijin stay there. And here why those motel’s might be right in having such a policy.

I will never look at Ewoks in the same way again.

And then there’s this utterly bizarrely clip from Song of Norway.

Words About To Be Exuviated

These are the words that dictionaries want to ditch to make room for 2000 some odd additions — essential  terms like “bling” and “OMG” no doubt. I love old, little used words like these. My favorite is muliebrity: the condition of being a woman. Now if I can figure out how to use that in a sentence. Link.

Abstergent: Cleansing

Agrestic: Rural

Apodeictic: Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration

Caducity: Perishableness

Caliginosity: Dimness

Compossible: Possible in coexistence with something else

Embrangle: To confuse

Exuviate: To shed

Fatidical: Prophetic

Fubsy: Squat

Griseous: Somewhat grey

Malison: A curse

Mansuetude: Gentleness

Muliebrity: The condition of being a woman

Niddering: Cowardly

Nitid: Bright

Olid: Foul-smelling

Oppugnant: Combative

Periapt: An amulet

Recrement: Refuse

Roborant: Tending to fortify

Skirr: A whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight

Vaticinate: Prophesy

Vilipend: To treat with contempt

Links (10/3/08)

From my regular trolling of the interwebs:

First off, there’s this really cool, very creepy gallery of abandoned cities in Asia.

Two links from one of my favorite blogs, Strange Maps. One shows the route taken by someone going around the world but besting Phileas Fogg but 40 days. And the other one compares the population of Chinese provinces versus that of whole nations. Bottom line: there are a lot of Chinese out there.

China freaks out over rising teen suicide rate and takes decisive action. No, not encouraging its citizens to consult mental health professionals. Instead they pull “Bunny Suicides.” [h/t Ted]

Scientists in the UK are developing a thinking cap. No, really. it supposedly stimulates the part of the brain that lets you see the big picture, allowing you to unlock your “inner genius.” Or something like that.

Time Cube. WTF is this all about?

Here’s a really perversely fascinating article about Benjamin Franklin and his numerous conquests.

And then there’s this really freaky story about pirates and something suspicious in an Iranian tanker.

A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates.

Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Requisite Sarah Palin link: you knew this was coming. From Craigslist:

Looking for a Sarah Palin lookalike for an adult film to be shot in next 10 days.
Major adult studio.
Please send pix, stats etc. ASAP
Pay: $2000-3000
No anal required

No word on who’s playing the moose.

And then there’s this video, which gave me a headache.

Doodle Scrawled Four Years Ago Predicts the Future

Given the weirdness of the past couple of weeks, the temp art I did while wiling away the hours at WaMu now seems downright prescient. Go figure.

October is National Toilet Tank Repair Month Among Others…

National German Heritage Month
Italian-American Heritage Month
Filipino American History Month
LGBT History Month
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
National Domestic Violence Awareness Month
National Pet Wellness Month
Disability Employment Awareness Month
Diversity Awareness Month
National Pizza Month
National Pasta Month
National Dessert Month
Country Music Month
Family History Month
National AIDS Awareness Month
National Book Fair Month
Gourmet Adventures Month
National Car Care Month
National Pretzel Month
National Pickled Peppers Month
Vegetarian Awareness Month
National Seafood Month
National Cosmetology Month
National Apple Month
National Depression Education and Awareness Month
Polish American Heritage Month
National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Month
National Popcorn Poppin’ Month
Computer Learning Month
National Stamp Collecting Month
National Applejack Month
Cook Book Month
Gourmet Adventures Month
Hunger Awareness Month
National Caramel Month
National Cookie Month
National Joe Cann Month
National Country Ham Month
National Health Care Food Service Month
National Kitchen and Bath Month
National Pork Month
National Restaurant Hospitality Month
National Roller Skating Month
National Spinach-Lovers’ Month
National Sun Dried Tomato Month
&
National Toilet Tank Repair Month