Wrote this Forever Ago, Delayed

Sickie

Random Picatures
Deer and Cats
Weird Stencils
Warbot in Accounting
Tiny Japanese Deer

Gai-Gin
A comic I found linked the other day and read through. It's quite good, a slice of life about a girl living in Japan as part of a foreign language program. The comic is partly autobiographical and partly humorous, and the author seeks to present what she feels is a more balanced picture of the prospect of living overseas in a strange country.

I'm not expressing myself at all well. Probably due to my headcold making a resurgence. Pesky colds.

Some sample comics

Roach Motel
Stay With Me
They Can See Forever
Shark's Vagina

Nippon Basics (map)

Source: Gai-gin.com

3PS
The next comic I'm adding to my list is 3 Panel Soul. It's the latest from the guys who did Mac Hall. Very funny stuff.

Examples:

Younglings!
The Homosexual Agenda
Gay Bomb
Cherubim and Bear

Source: Three Panel Soul

Maxwell the Demon
Named after the famous thought experiment, this is a comic about Maxwell, an arch-demon of Hell, whose job is mainly bureaucratic, and who spends most of his earthly time with a long-time human love interest.

Which is not to say that he doesn't go out there and tempt people into eternal damnation.

Sadly, it JUST NOW went on hiatus. Sigh.

Source: Maxwell the Demon

Freak Angels
The new, free, web based Warren Ellis comic.

It's hard to tell precisely what it's about yet. The world came to an end, almost, and the handful of survivors are scratching out a living in the seemingly unharmed English landscape. Though almost everyone else is gone, and some of the people left have super powers.

It's weird, but that's nothing new for Ellis. It's also good, so far anyway, which is again nothing new for Ellis.

Source: Freak Angels

Banned Ad
A beauty product ad has been banned by the Brit agency in charge of, err, banning advertisements, because it offends people by satirically equating church and cosmetics.

OH NO MR. BILL!!

This is why prior restraint sucks.

Source: The Guardian

Skeleton
So some women flew into Munich with a skeleton in their suitcases.

Silly women. Germany doesn't need any MORE human remains.

Source: Raw Story
(For the record, nothing nefarious seems to have been involved. They were returning some old remains for a last-request reburial. They just did it in a very, very strange way)

Short People
They've got no reason to live. (it's a reference, look it up)

Also, they're jealous.

Short people should pray for a return to the Seventies fashion of stack heels, for the power of jealousy depends on how tall you are, the British weekly New Scientist says.

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and University of Valencia in Spain asked 549 Dutch and Spanish men and women to rate how jealous they felt, and to list the qualities in a romantic competitor that were most likely to make them ill at ease.

Men generally felt most nervous about attractive, rich and strong rivals.

But these feelings were increasingly relaxed the taller they were themselves. The more vertically challenged the man, the greater his feelings of jealousy.

For women, what counted most in jealousy was the rival's looks and charm, but these feelings were less intense if the woman herself was of average height.

The study also finds that tall women, while also more jealous, can beat up shorter women.

So that's something at least.

Source: Raw Story

Skittle Suspension
A kid landed in trouble for buying a bag of candy off of another student.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Contraband candy has led to big trouble for an eighth-grade honors student in Connecticut.

Michael Sheridan was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles from a classmate.

School spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo says the New Haven school system banned candy sales in 2003 as part of a districtwide school wellness policy.

I can't really bring myself to feel bad for the guy. He's part of the problem, as they say; a member in good standing, at least formerly, of the school's Vichy government.

These people are, by and large, complete tools.

Thus it's fitting that Mikey got hoisted on his own petard.

Source: AZ Central

Weird Update

Progress toward Madness

I Want One
So an engineer boffin has come up with an implantable screen to wear under your skin, powered by the glucose in your blood. He sees it as a future cell-phone/portable device interface, as it's even touch sensitive.

I WANT ONE NOW.

Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin.
The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.


On both the top and bottom surfaces of the display is a matching matrix of field-producing pixels. The top surface also enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, somewhat similar to tattoo ink. A field-sensitive material in the spheres changes their color from clear to black, aligned with the matrix fields.

Yeah yeah, it's gruesome. So what? Some people would say having your eye peeled like a grape then blasted with a UV laser is gruesome, but it gave me perfect vision and let me chuck my glasses. This would let me, err, freak people out and more easily get nagged by my mother.

Hmm.

I still want one.

Source: Physorg.com

Morbid Auction
Ok, here's something even more gross than the tattoo thing.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - It is billed as the best pop culture collection ever assembled -- ranging from the gun used to kill the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy to the Wicked Witch of the West's hat from "The Wizard of Oz."

...

He said the Colt Cobra revolver used by Jack Ruby to kill Oswald in 1963, just days after Oswald was arrested for assassinating Kennedy, could fetch several million dollars alone. The initials of detectives who handled the gun are scratched on it.

"The whole world saw that unfold live and here's the very gun and the hat that Jack Ruby was wearing," said Ettinger, adding that the tag tied to Oswald's toe to identify his corpse and a lock of his hair were also to be auctioned.

...

Other items to be auctioned include a Federal Bureau of Investigation badge that belonged to the bureau's founder J. Edgar Hoover, a wig worn by Elizabeth Taylor for "Cleopatra," and the leather jacket worn by actor Brandon Lee when he was accidentally shot and killed while filming "The Crow."

Ok, so, why isn't Ruby's gun in a museum? For that matter, who lifted the jacket off of Brandon Lee's cooling body?

This is sort of sick.

Source: Raw Story

World of Goo
Neat looking game where you build structures out of living blobs.

WANT IT WANT IT WANT IT

Source: 2dboy.com

Themes in Cuisine
Japan always innovates when it comes to the weirdest stuff imaginable.

TOKYO (Reuters) - At Edelstein boarding school, the schoolboys wear lip-gloss, the headmistress has a weakness for homoerotic comic books, and there is only one subject: how to serve female visitors.

Welcome to Tokyo's first schoolboy cafe, the latest in a flurry of eateries in Japan where customers and waiters role play themes from manga comics.

In keeping with the schoolboy theme, waiters with manicured hands and soft voices pretend to be teenage students, chatting and flirting with well-dressed Japanese women playing the roles of benefactresses visiting the school.

...

"I'm in the flower arrangement club," whispers one girlish, long-haired waiter at the cafe, looking up from the book of German poetry he is reading.

All's not sweetness and light, however.

Sakamaki, the schoolboy cafe manager who has tapped that market so successfully, is already onto her next idea: a cafe modeled along 1920s Japan. That would match another big trend among Japanese youth -- nostalgia for pre-war Japan.

If I was in South Korea, I'd be on the lookout for the new lip-gloss wearing vanguard of the Second Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Source: Reuters


Lost
Some nifty lost comic weirdness from Marvel over the years.

Source: Fish1000.Biz

Funny News (Also, Entertaining)

Because We All Need A Laugh

Tokyo Frogs
So there's been a bit of a kerfluffle in Japan, where the nationalist governor made some.. humorous?... remarks about French that weren't taken too well.

Tokyo's outspoken governor, who was taken to court for a jibe against the French language, insists that he in fact loves France -- and even once had a French girlfriend.

Governor Shintaro Ishihara, known for his nationalist views, said in 2004 that French was disqualified as an international language as it was impossible to count in it.

Twenty-one scholars, teachers and translators, including seven French people who live in Japan, sued Ishihara for damages, saying they were defamed and their careers hurt. A judge threw out the suit.

Ishihara, 75, an acclaimed novelist who majored in French in university, stood by his remarks in an interview with AFP.

"Even the French ambassador told me he couldn't count in French," he said with a laugh.

But he added: "I love France. I was really good at French back in the day."

The man's really not kidding; he *is* good at French, and even worked as a translator for bringing French works into Japanese at one point.

Ishihara said he was friends with French writer Andre Malraux and philosopher Raymond Aron. He was also the first to translate into Japanese some of the "Contes Cruels," or "Cruel Tales," by 19th-century author Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.

Meanwhile, it seems that the French system for counting really is pretty retarded.

The French numbers 0 through 19 are easy enough, right?

For 20 through 69, counting is almost just like in English: the tens word (vingt, trente, quarante, etc.) followed by the ones word (un, deux, trois). The only difference is that for 21, 31, etc., the word et is introduced between the tens word and one: vingt-et-un, trente-et-un, quarante-et-un, etc.

70 to 79 is trickier. In French, 70 is soixante-dix, literally "sixty-ten." 71 is soixante et onze (sixty and eleven), 72 is soixante-douze (sixty-twelve), and so on, up to 79.

80 is quatre-vingts, literally four-twenties (think "four-score"). 81 is quatre-vingt-un (four-twenty-one), 82 is quatre-vingt-deux (four-twenty-two), and so on, all the way up to ninety. 90 is quatre-vingt-dix (four-twenty-ten), 91 is quatre-vingt-onze (four-twenty-eleven), etc.

100 to 999 work just like in English, except that when you have cent at the end of the number, it takes an s, but when cent is followed by another number, the s is dropped. Also, note that you cannot pause after the word cent.
200 = deux cents
500 = cinq cents
350 = trois cent cinquante
872 = huit cent soixante-douze

1,000+ are similar to English, except that the separator is a period or space, rather than a comma (learn more). When reciting a number, you can pause to take a breath at the separator (after mille, million, or milliard). Note that mille never takes an s.

So French has at least sex separate ways to organize their numbers, including four under 100.

I have to say, I'm with the Governor on this one.

Sources: Raw Story
About.com

HULK SING
SONG MAKE HULK HAPPY

HULK TURN INTO BANNER

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY MAKE BANNER ANGRY

BANNER TURN INTO HULK

HULK SING

SONG MAKE HULK HAPPY

ERROR: RECURSION DETECTED

Source: Progressive Ruin

Schlussel Part Two
So, I tore Debbie Schlussel up a bit in the last post. Something about her being a colossal retard, I dunno. Just to be fair to the, ahem, lady, let's take a bit of a biographical look at her work, shall we?

Debbie Schlussel, 37 years old, supports her pundit habit by practicing commercial law in suburban Detroit. She is among the most proactive B-list pundits. Almost daily, she emails her appearance schedule, availability or sharp-elbowed conservative commentaries to 5,000 people in media and politics.

In the wake of North Korea's recent nuclear test, a hawkish Ms. Schlussel hit the radio circuit, saying U.S. officials responded too mildly in calling the test "a provocative act." "A Paris Hilton video is a provocative act," she said. "What North Korea did was an act of war." To get noticed, Ms. Schlussel says, "I've become the master of the confrontational sound bite."

...

Ask her to survey the punditry landscape, from the A-list on down, and she gets contemplative. "Who is good who does what I do?" she says out loud as she thinks. Soon enough, the answer comes to her. "Me!"

Ahh I see. She's a useless fame whore.

That explains a lot really.

Source: The Wall Street Journal (how's THAT for making my blog 'fair and balanced'?)

Half-Baked Reasoning
Sometimes you can make the right legal decision for the completely wrong reason.

Case in point, a Canadian court considering a traffic stop and drug search.

A Saskatchewan appeal's court upheld a decision that the smell of burnt marijuana is not evidence of illegal drug possession since by definition the proof has gone up in smoke, it said Wednesday.

"The smell of burnt marijuana does not reasonably support the inference that additional marijuana is present," the three-judge panel said in newly-released court filings.

Ok, ok, that sounds logical. We don't want a world where any cop can search any person on the basis of 'odors' that could be entirely in their minds, or better yet, fictitious.

Surely that's the logical reason that the Court used to reject this search, right? That the 'cause' for the search was a completely subjective 'I think it smelled like pot' excuse from a cop?

Wrong.

Archibald's lawyer Ronald Piche successfully argued the warrantless search and seizure were "unreasonable" because the aroma of burnt marijuana -- as opposed to raw marijuana -- infers that the drug has dissipated.

"How can you say you're in possession of something that doesn't exist," Piche told the daily Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Interesting perspective. If you test positive for cocaine in a blood test after a traffic accident, can you then argue that the cocaine no longer exists, as it's been assimilated into your blood?

Probably not. Marijuana smoke is still marijuana, pointdexter.

Except in Canada.

Source: Raw Story

They Were 11
They Were 11 sounds good. A psychodrama about 10 people who are supposed to spend 50something days alone on a survival expedition in space as a final exam for school entry... only 11 people show up on the ship, and then things start to go terribly wrong.

Duh duh DUH

Ok, this isn't so much funny. It's more entertaining.

Source: Anime News Network

The Human Condition

In Sickness and In Health

Heath Ledgerdemain
Well, it looks like Heath Ledger died of Teh Stupid.

The actor Heath Ledger died from an accidental overdose of six different drugs — painkillers and sedatives — the medical examiner said Wednesday, leading doctors to warn of the dangers of mixing prescription drugs.

That's right, Heath lovers. He was taking six different prescriptions for downers simultaneously.

Then he died. What. A. Shocker.

The medical examiner cited oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine as causing the actor's death. There was no mention of alcohol or illegal drugs.

That wasn't all, of course.

Ledger, nominated for an Oscar for his role as cowboy Ennis del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain," had returned to New York from London, where he had been making a Terry Gilliam film, days before his death. He told The New York Times in November that his most recent completed roles in the Batman movie "The Dark Knight" and Bob Dylan biopic "I'm Not There" had taken a toll and caused him to lose sleep.

"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," Ledger told the Times. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." He said he had taken two Ambien pills, which only gave him an hour of sleep.

Dude, if you have such a high tolerance to these drugs, or are already on so many, that Ambien has no effect... you are in seriously bad shape.

Oh well. Rack another one up for the Darwin Awards.

Source: Raw Story

Oh China, Is There Anything You Won't Poison?
The assault on food safety moves to Japan!

A deal to combine the frozen food businesses of Japan Tobacco and Nissin Food Products has been done in by tainted dumplings.

Ten people in Japan fell ill after eating the pesticide-laced dumplings, called gyoza, which were imported from China by a unit of Japan Tobacco. Nissin, known as a pioneer of instant noodles, then scrapped the merger, citing “differences on the issue of safety.”

Somebody must have seen Count Rudy on tv though, because they've come up with a convenient scapegoat.

A Chinese food safety official said that the dumplings may have been deliberately contaminated by “a small group who do not wish development of Sino-Japanese friendship.” The Japanese health minister has also raised the possibility of intentional dumpling poisoning, and Japanese police are investigating the case on suspicion of attempted murder.

Yes, that's it. It's not that the Chinese food industry has all the safeguards of a Ford Pinto in a demolition derby, or that this Japanese company did business on the cheap, dirty, quick side, and got into trouble; it's TERRORISTS.

DUH DUH DUH.

Source: Reuters

Theocracy Alliance
I always suspected that one day the religious nuts would realize they have a common enemy (me) and band together.

The head of the Anglican church said Thursday the adoption of parts of sharia law in Britain looked "unavoidable", calling for "constructive accommodation" over issues like resolving marriage disputes.

...

Williams went on to say it would be "quite wrong" to sanction a system which gave people no right of appeal.

"But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them."

He added: "It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of sharia are already recognised in our society".

I can think of a pretty easy way to avoid it. When religious people tell you that their church should get to run the government, tell them to go fuck themselves. If they insist, make sure to shoot first, Solo-style.

Easy-peasy.

Source: Raw Story

Hey Constitution! DART IN YOUR NECK
Sealab reference. Suffice it to say, Mukasey has turned out to be the complete scumbag you would expect of a Bush appointee and Giuliani acquaintance.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is back on the Hill today, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee. Paul Kiel is covering it at TPMmuckraker.

So far, he's dropped two big bombshells. DOJ will not be investigating:

(1) whether the waterboarding, now admitted to by the White House, was a crime; or

(2) whether the Administration's warrantless wiretapping was illegal.

His rationale? Both programs had been signed off on in advance as legal by the Justice Department.

So, we won't get any investigation of illegal wiretaps, illegal torture, etc, from the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.

Meanwhile they block all civil suits by saying it's a State Secret. So you have no recourse to the law anymore, as Floyd would say.

Not really that big a surprise, as I said. But it still hurts to swallow it down officially.

Source: Talking Points Memo

Sickness
So the Bushies are looking to spindle the Family and Medical Leave Act for their corporate masters.

Amongst other delightful provisions being proposed:

--You have to schedule your medical problems in advance, unless they're 'emergencies'. No points for guessing who gets to define an emergency.

--Your employer can discriminate against you for taking the guaranteed sick time, denying you bonuses and what not.

Ahh, America. Don't get sick. Ever.

Source: Raw Story