The Atomic Deathray
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Santa Claus, aka Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, etc. has received $4,840 in compensation after the Danish Air Force killed Rudolph the Reindeer during a flyover.
The veterinarian who examined the dead beast concluded that Rudolph had died from the shock of the deafening noise made by the fighter plane.
Translation: A sonic boom shook Rudolph’s innards into a bowlful of jelly.
So here I am, laying in bed at two o’clock in the afternoon, feverish and queasy as all get-out from some damned bug that’s either something my daughter brought home from school or courtesy of one of the 5 bazillion new people hired at my company. I’m vaguely hungry, but every time I crawl down to the kitchen and look in the refrigerator my gorge rises faster than post-Katrina gas prices. In a couple of hours I’ve got to suck it up, get in the car and pick Naomi up. That’s all Las Vegas needs: another dizzy, hallucinating idiot careening through traffic while puking out the window.
Ugh.
I spent some time looking up old friends on the internet. Big mistake. Now I’m nauseous and depressed. I’m happy for them, though. I have to try that whole “not failing at everything you do” thing they’ve got going.
But this post isn’t supposed to be about me. It’s actually supposed to be about the beautiful Plutonian Nipple-Goddess, but that’s neither here nor there. (Very bad, very inside joke about an early piece I wrote. Never mind.) Anyway, I noticed that I’ve got so many unfinished draft posts on this blog that to write a new one I have to scroll down three-and-a-half pages. Face it: I’m never gonna get around to finishing the things. Besides, some of them are so old the sites are gone. Time for another big messy collection o’ random links!
Well, that’s it. Amazing that a total cop-out can make me feel so virtuous. I suspect that I’m going to really hate it when my fever goes down and I read this later. Eh. As Slim Pickens said under similar circumstances in Dr. Strangelove, “Wooooo-hoooooooo!!!!”
You kiss your mother with that mouth?
According to this revolting Guardian story, a Chinese company is taking advantage of the current lack of controls on cosmetics treatments being marketed in Europe. How, you ask? By manufacturing the collagen for injection into womens’ lips from the skin of executed prisoners and aborted foetuses, that’s how.
According to an “agent” who declined to be identified:
The agent told the researcher: “A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus.” This material, he said, was being bought from “bio tech” companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China.
He suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. “In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that western countries can make such a big fuss about this,” he said. Speaking from his office in northern China, he added: “The government has put some pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile.”
The agent said his company exported to the west via Hong Kong.”We are still in the early days of selling these products, and clients from abroad are quite surprised that China can manufacture the same human collagen for less than 5% of what it costs in the west.” Skin from prisoners used to be even less expensive, he said. “Nowadays there is a certain fee that has to be paid to the court.”
“The traditional manner,” eh? I was not aware that in China the word “traditional” is a synonym for “disgusting unholy abomination.”
: This post marks the debut of the “Now, That’s Just Gross!” category here on Atomic Deathray. I’m not entirely happy with the icon of a dead rat floating in filthy water, but it’ll do for now.
This is just unbelievable. A group of US corporations want to abolish leap seconds because, get this: their software programmers screwed up badly and failed to take them into account.
Leap seconds are needed because the rotation of the earth is slowing down. Since we now measure time based on the decay of radioactive elements they’re required to keep our time system in sync with the actual rotation of the planet. The next one is due at the end of 2005.
And some GPS manufacturers want to monkey with something as fundamental as time measurement simply because their programmers are incompetent? That’s akin to a sign painter demanding that the definition of the mile be changed because he got the numbers wrong on some mileage markers.
It’s four-fifteen in the morning as I write this; woke up at three from a nightmare about flooding and soldiers and people reduced to barbarity and haven’t been able to get back to sleep.
Interesting word, “barbarity.” It comes from an onomatopoeic Greek word for non-Greeks, an imitation of what they thought foreigners’ speech sounded like: bar-bar-bar-bar… It means “them” as opposed to “us.”
Which is pretty much what happened in New Orleans. Poor people, Black people, weak people: them. The recent nasty, racist emails making the rounds exist to drive the point home: they are not like us. They trash rest stops. They loot stores. They are barbarians. There’s even an acronym in sociology for it: NOKD. Not Our Kind, Dear.
Well, I’ve got another idea of us vs. them. Redraw the lines a little bit.
A certain percentage of humanity are flat-out jerks that Just Don’t Get It. They’re too mean and stupid to understand that hurting people without ever letting them get up and dust themselves off is not a good survival tactic in the long term. They don’t have any concept of history; if they did they’d be soiling their drawers. They seem to be incapable of drawing any parallels between themselves and, say, the eighteenth-century French aristocracy or the policymakers of the Vietnam War.
The concept of generosity eludes them, although “eludes” is probably not the right word since that implies something searched for and not found. They don’t search. Really, what kind of monsters see the misfortunes of their fellow man, of their fellow citizens, merely as opportunity? As a window for no-bid contracts and a chance to get some laws on the books that will increase their ability to hurt others?
Sometimes I get the feeling that some folks can’t work up an appetite unless there are a few starving kids pressing their noses up against the dining-room window.
It’s a lack of empathy, an inability to put themselves in the other’s shoes. They’d be something to pity if they weren’t in charge. But they are. They’re bullies, and I reject every mean-spirited, selfish, ugly, stupid, hypocritical, greedy, racist thing they represent. They are grasping, rapacious brutes hiding behind the skirts of patriotism and religion. They are a stain.
Barbarians. Them.
According to NBC’s Brian Williams, electricity was restored to sections of New Orleans’ warehouse district 30 minutes before Fearless Leader drove through, but went dark again an hour after he’d left.
The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It’s enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it… jump to certain conclusions.
When I was a kid my stepfather would mistreat my sisters and me when there was nobody around, but in public he was the Best Dad on Earth. When we’d tell our Uncles and Aunts and Grandparents what he was doing they refused to believe us. Mom, who’d been in a violent abusive relationship years before, just sank deeper into impotent depression.
He had everyone fooled for a long time, but once in a while the mask slipped a little bit. Eventually the rest of the family caught on that he was an abusive asshole. It was too late for us kids, of course, but at least nobody believed his Great Guy bullshit anymore.
Sound familiar?
It’s not five o’clock yet. Why isn’t it five o’clock yet? Argh! It’s still not five o’clock. Is some malevolent deity just screwing with me?
Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?
And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this [slight chuckle] is working very well for them.
The following is with sincere apologies to Louis Armstrong. Satchmo was from New Orleans, so I think he’d understand.
What A Beautiful Mind
I don’t watch the news — there’s no controls;
Pictures of coffins depress the polls;
I just think of myself — what a beautiful mind.I see piles of debris — how picturesque;
Those homes were eyesores, it’s for the best;
I just think of myself — what a beautiful mind.The colors of an oil slick shine on the brown
panicky faces of folks as they drown;
They’re crying for help, but I’ll sit this one out;
All that I’m sayin’ is it’s working out.I see babies die — less mouths to feed;
Their moms steal water out of greed;
I just think of myself — what a beautiful mind.The colors of an oil slick shine on the brown
panicky faces of folks as they drown;
They’re crying for help, but I’ll sit this one out;
Hear what I’m sayin’, this thing might work out.I see babies die — less mouths to feed;
Their moms steal water out of greed;
I just think of myself — what a beautiful mind,
Yes I think of myself — what a beautiful mind.
I hereby release these lyrics into the public domain. Should someone wish to record them as a protest of this administration’s callous disregard for human suffering, please feel free to do so, but credit me. I’d like bragging rights to my grandkids if it helps bring these sociopaths down.
Here’s a puzzler for you.
It’s bad when a restaurant in China is closed down for putting stir-fried Siberian tiger on the menu. There are only a few hundred of the critters still alive because, as is often the case with an endangered species, flaccid idiots believe eating them will promote perpendicular plumbing.
So how exactly are we supposed to feel when it’s revealed that the restaurant has actually been serving donkey meat marinated in tiger urine instead? I’m glad it’s not really tiger meat, but still…
You gotta figure donkey meat’s pretty rank to begin with. My internal ickometer pegs it at a couple of gags past rat-kabob. And we all know how quickly your average tomcat can render the atmosphere in an apartment unbreathable. Just imagine the ungodly stench.
Screw that. I’m a man of science. Imagining stuff is for sissies. Let’s see if we can actually recreate the experience!
- 1 12-oz. can bean sprouts
- 1 small head green cabbage, chopped
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 3 cups hot water
- 1 lb. chunk Baba-Looey butt, thinly-sliced
- 5 cups plain unscented cat litter
Spread cat litter in a medium-sized casserole pan. Leave pan unattended in a small room with four male housecats, along with plentiful food and water, for six weeks. Pour hot water into litter and stir. Strain slurry over sliced donkey and let stand overnight.
In a wok, heat oil until bubbling. Toss in marinated donkey. Stirring continually, sauté until your eyes burn. Add bean sprouts and cabbage. After second or third retch, season to taste with soy sauce. Serve hot over boiled hair clogs. Call Poison Control Center immediately.
Important safety warning for extremely literal morons: This was a joke. I am not serious. Please, DO NOT REALLY MAKE THIS DISH. It would PROBABLY KILL YOU. And for God’s sake if you do make this dish DO NOT EAT IT NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU THINK IT WILL MAKE YOUR PENIS!
While Karl Rove is busy transmogrifying Bush’s lethally racist/classist delay in getting help to the Gulf Coast into a heroic rescue effort and the Chief Justice’s seat on the Supreme Court is being retrofitted with plumbing for flushing our remaining civil rights, let’s take a breather. It’s time for a much-needed laugh.
I know that Genitalia in the News is generally reserved for floppy bits that actually end up being reported in public news outlets, but this post to Lounge of Tomorrow is just too funny to pass up. Enjoy.
Muchas gracias to John H. for turning me on to this one.