Hendricks' Talents

I haven't seen a full episode of Mad Men to date. That said, one of its stars has certainly captured my attention. And it ain't for her acting ability.

Yeah, I'm talkin' 'bout Christina Hendricks a.k.a. Joan P. Harris. She's got the look, she's got the curves and hoo boy has she got the talent.

About an F cup's worth, according to Boopedia. Quite a rarity for a celeb who hasn't had an augmentation or doesn't work in porn. Unfortunately, she's also off the market. Nonetheless, her pulling power's so great, she even gets hit on by gay dudes and other women.

Yet, despite her "gifts", there's something distinctly missing from her résumé. Yes, that's right, she hasn't done any nudey pics! What a waste! That said, it hasn't stopped certain entrepreneurs from making this fantasy a "reality". Here's Christina's photoshopped head on an amply curved woman's body. She's slick, wet and in the shower! Hold up, while I get my loofah!

What's our Franken-tina to do after her steamy shower? Why, towel herself off and grind some dude's cock on a couch, surrounded by shitty decor! Naturally!

Gotta love that cheeky smile at the camera. Even if it's the exact same pose from the previous picture! And somehow, the shape of her breasts and areolas transformed during that short venture. She's a woman of many talents, alright!

Shoulda Known That'd Happen

If you've been avoiding the news for a while and vaguely recall something about director Roman Polanski being detained on child sex offenses, but you don't know what's happened since, then you've come to the right place!

To get you up to scratch, read my previous entries here and here. In that order. I'll tell ya folks, it was looking like he was gonna get extradited alright. Reeeal close. But, considering his sphere of influence, I guess I should've known better than trusting he'd face prosecution for his crime.

The Swiss have refused to send the bugger off to the US. That effectively means he's a free man, once again. If you think this is a victory for filmlovers everywhere, then perhaps you should read what The Smoking Gun's uncovered about the actual case. Sobering stuff.

 

I'll tell ya, it's amazing what celebrities can get away with. Amazing how easy it is to overlook their misdemeanors if they've got films, fame or whatever under their belt. If it's not Nicole Richie's harrowing 82 minutes in jail, then we've got elements of the fallout over Mel Gibson's insane rage. Y'see, some folks are asking the serious questions in light of his racist ranting and death threats. 

Like, is his career over?

Jeez louise. Didn't they hear what he was saying on those tapes? And the thing they're concerned about most is whether or not he'll make a movie again? Why, cos he'll be broke otherwise? The guy's freakin' loaded! Sheesh.

The funny thing, the same thing was being asked back in '06 after his infamous, drunken anti-semetic and "sugar tits" tirade. So, right now, it's just a waiting game, really. But such is the leeway we give our celebs.

Also, is it just a coincidence that Whoopi Goldberg came to Polanski and Gibson's defence? Hmmm...

Sprucin' Up the Place

I've decided to do a bit of a spring clean and an upholstery of the blog. It's been too bland for too damn long, I tells ya!

The new Blogger templates have got me all fired-up. I've even added a LinkWithin widget, of dubious merit, to make it look all magaziney. Yes, that's the technical term I'll use. Anyway, the blog's gone from this crappy thing:

Ugh.

To the wonderfully spiffy thing you now see before you. Sure, it's not perfect, but it'll do. I was going for a bit of a newsy, magaziney, gossip site kinda look. Hope I pulled it off. That LinkedWithin thing sure does spruce it up, too.

Ah, I can't be bothered thinking up or sharing anything witty at the mo. Just wanted to show what the blog used to look like before I gave it the once-over. Hahaha!

Mmm, but I can't leave ya totally empty-handed. So, here's a story about a dude who was beaten up over giving a shitty karaoke rendition of Dio's "Holy Diver". Wait'll you see the perp's surname. It seems like a joke, but rest assured, it's legit.

Evaluating Ya Mug

I've previously covered Internet Disease, now for something far more cohesive and way more constructive.

Christian Rudder composed an extensive survey on the use of profile pics for dating site, OkCupid, and the success rate of certain shots. The myth-busting results were quite surprising. Even to its author. Here's a teaser:

But the facts were stubborn: your face doesn’t necessarily matter. In fact, not showing your face can in fact be a positive, as long as you substitute in something unusual, sexy, or mysterious enough to make people want to talk to you.

Promoting Movies the Hard Way

It's a pretty competitive market in the film world. People go to many lengths to get their movies seen and generate the big bucks. But, I gotta say that the film release party for Danish sex comedy, Bordellet (1972), really took the cake when

famous Danish millionaire Simon Spies showed up, took off his clothes and started having sex with members of the film's female cast, in front of the press. The resulting photos naturally made front page news and are still reprinted frequently.

After extensive research (read: some light Googling), I suspect that the following photo from Rud Kofoed's "Ny dansk storfilm om Simon Spies", depicts the publicity stunt in question:

I should point out that the flick was Denmark's "first full-length hardcore pornographic feature film", so that might not be too surprising. However, what might be surprising, is that the movie was a mainstream release. That is, not solely intended for some back alley porno theatre. Mind you, 1972 also saw major distribution for Deep Throat. So, obviously, something was in the water that year.

iBrain

Is it possible to fill our body's hard-drive space (brains) with too much information? An episode of Married...with Children touched on this concept. Sort of:

Bud Bundy: You have to understand, Kelly's brain can hold anything. But there are some things you have to know. One: that it's totally empty.
Al: Woudn't you know it.
Bud Bundy: And two: that you can't just shove information into her head. You have to be careful. Feed her information slowly, bit by bit, drop by drop, until she's full.
Al: Full?
Bud Bundy: Oh, yeah. Kelly's brain can actually get full with information. And then you got to be really careful. Because each new thought after that will totally replace an old one. That's why Kelly forgot to wear a blouse on the day she went to take her drivers ed exam.

However, according to Paul Reber, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, we don't have to worry too much about our brains reaching capacity storage levels for quite some time:

For comparison, if your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that storage.

The Secret to Blog Success?

So, what's the secret to having a successful (read: heaps of people reading it) blog?

Well-written? Engaging? Quirky? What exactly lures a devout and populous readership?

According to the British Psychological Society's "Quantity Not Quality Key to Online Popularity", it could simply be the sheer volume of posts:

Susan Jamison-Powell from Sheffield Hallam University presents the findings of a study of the activity of 75 participants in an online social community, and their popularity. The participants were recruited to a new community within popular social blogging site Livejournal.com, on which people post entries about their daily lives which are shared on the pages of others within their communities.

The researchers looked at a number of factors including: the number of blog posts each participant had made, the total word count of their blog posts, the tone of their posts - whether they contained negative or positive words - and the number of friends they had. Each member of the online community was asked to rate their impressions of each other member on a scale of one to five (one being very unattractive and five very attractive) after one week.

They discovered that the popularity of participants could be accounted for by their activity within the community, but not by the tone of their posts. "The more words a person had contributed, the more attractive they were rated by the other members of their community. The strongest factor was found to be the total number of words they had contributed over the week," said Susan Jamison-Powell. 

Her claims haven't gone without criticism, however. Take Chris' "New Study Suggest Blog Post Quantity Trumps Quality for Online Popularity", for instance. His post even earned a response from Susan Jamison-Powell, herself.

Nonetheless, if her study is on the mark, then it could certainly affect the way blogs and probably other media, are written in the future. I think we online folk respond to quantity because of the nature of online media, itself. Websites aren't generally great works of literature we treasure in our hearts, and re-read time and time again. We're largely invested in immediacy. Being up-to-date. And there's heaps of competition. A recent estimate claims there's as many as 70 million blogs out there.

Also, sheer quantity affords more of a hit-and-miss approach to quality. It's very much a production line process. Mass producing for the masses. As long as the overall product serves the "customer" decently enough, a few "flaws" here (read: writing quality) and there won't matter so much. In fact, the very art of spewing forth as much content as you can, would (ideally) improve your overall writing ability. Why else do writers advise hopefuls to "Write! Write! Write!"

Keep digging away at that hill, and you'll find gold eventually.

Ghost Writers in the Sky

For those not-in-the-know, a ghost writer is "a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person."

Sometimes, ghost writers even write for the dead. Ever wonder why V. C. Andrews is still publishing books, even though she died in 1986? Yep, ghost writers.

Even celebrity tweets aren't safe from this chicanery. I mean, shit. They can't even come up with 140 characters on their own? Sheesh.

Anyway, for more insight into this field, read Brett and Kate McKay's interview with ghost writer, Dean Zatkowsky. Hell of an eye-opener.

Narcissistic Octopus

Looks like Internet Disease has spread from humans to the animal kingdom, at least going by this article from Stuff.co.nz:

Putting his camera up close to get some footage as the octopus clung to a rock behind a clump of kelp, it suddenly thrust out a tentacle, grasping the camera.

"Out of nowhere it just completely shot straight for me," he said.

In an initial panic, Mr Huang said he "freaked out" for a bit to free his arm before realising the octopus only clung to the camera.

Eventually managing to free its shiny new $700 toy, the octopus swam off with Mr Huang giving chase, while the camera, being used for the first time, continued to record.

And yes, the footage is out there. But when American biologist, PZ Meyers, tried to embed it in a blog post, he stumbled onto the naughty cephalopod's hidden agenda: "That's when I realized the octopus's real intent: he wanted to make videos that were shareable and publicly accessible."

What Is Big Bird?

Ever wondered just what kind of bird Big Bird, of Sesame Street fame, happens to be?

Unfortunately, the answer's not so clear-cut:

It is believed that Big Bird is probably a giant canary. However, in an episode of Sesame Street Big Bird was asked if he was related to the cassowary, he replied, "I'm more of a condor." On a 1976 episode of Hollywood Squares, he said he was a lark. In the film, Don't Eat the Pictures, Osiris calls Big Bird an ibis.

Peekin' at Pedon

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Menfolk are Happy Folk

I'm normally not a big fan of chain mail, but I'm gonna share this one ("FW: Men are just happier people", Friday, 5 March 2010 4:09:30 PM) from my inbox.

I like its simple-minded coverage of the Great Gender Divide (especially as it was sent to me by a woman), and find it pretty true to life. So, here goes:

MEN ARE JUST HAPPIER PEOPLE

NICKNAMES

• If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.
• If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat-Boy, Gas-man and Four-eyes.

EATING OUT

• When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in $20, even though it's only for $32.50.  None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
• When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY

• A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
• A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.

BATHROOMS

• A man has six items in his bathroom:  toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel.
• The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337.  A man would not be able to identify more than 15 of these items.

ARGUMENTS

• A woman has the last word in any argument.
• Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

FUTURE

• A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband. 
• A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife..

MARRIAGE

• A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
• A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does.

DRESSING UP

• A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
• A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL

• Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
• Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING

• Ah, children.  A woman knows all about her children.  She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
• A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

THOUGHT FOR THE  DAY
A married man should forget his mistakes.  There's no use in two people remembering the same thing!

SO, send this to the women who have a sense of humor and who can handle it ... and to the men who will enjoy reading it.

Guidos on TV

A little while ago, I gave some coverage to the shoe-scraped culture that is Guidos.

Well, they now have their own show. 

It's called Jersey Shore (kind've like an orange-skinned version of Laguna Beach). Daniel O'Brien writes a scathing overview of the series:

MTV’s Jersey Shore, a new reality show about self-described Guidos and Guidettes sharing a house in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, caught my eye. Not just because I spent the first two decades of my life in New Jersey, but because I’ve been looking for something just like this show for a long time, because it finally means we can move on: MTV’s Jersey Shore is the Worst Thing to Happen to the East Coast Since 9/11.

The show's already managed to generate a porn parody, which O'Brien also brilliantly dissects in "The Jersey Shore Porn Parody: A Critical Analysis".

Ancient Anomalies

I've always had a thing for "out-of-place" artifacts. That whole "alternate" history thing. They have a way of showing that the ancients weren't as "dumb" as we might like to think.

One of the more well-known examples is the Antikythera Device, a piece of complex machinery found in an ancient Greek shipwreck in 1901. It's believed to be 2,000 years old. No one even knows exactly what it was used for.

Check out World-Mysteries.com's "Strange Artifacts" page for more examples of these archaeological anomalies.

One of its more startling examples is the "Piri Reis Map". It was a map drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, an admiral in the Turkish fleet. What makes it unusual, are certain geographic inclusions:

The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC.

Reis included notes on the sources he drew upon for his map, some as old as the fourth century BC. But we're still left with a confounding question:

The official science has been saying all along that the ice-cap which covers the Antarctic is million years old. The Piri Reis map shows that the northern part of that continent has been mapped before the ice did cover it. That should make think it has been mapped million years ago, but that's impossible since mankind did not exist at that time.

Further and more accurate studies have proven that the last period of ice-free condition in the Antarctic ended about 6000 years ago. There are still doubts about the beginning of this ice-free period, which has been put by different researchers everything between year 13000 and 9000 BC.
The question is: Who mapped the Queen Maud Land of Antarctic 6000 years ago? Which unknown civilization had the technology or the need to do that?

Cracked Samples

Although Cracked was a pretty crappy humour mag, its website has some pretty damn good articles. Here's a selection I've been reading, with rough attempts at appropriate subject designation.

History

• Jacopo della Quercia, "6 Assassination Attempts that Almost F#@ked the World".
• Jacopo della Quercia, "7 Books We Lost to History That Would Have Changed the World" .
• Neal Nicholson, "The 5 Most Terrifying Civilizations in the History of the World".

Mysteries

• Jacopo della Quercia, "6 Insane Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened".
• Andy Guerriero, "6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain". 

Revenge

• Jacopo della Quercia, "6 Historic Acts of Revenge That Put 'Kill Bill' to Shame".

Review

• Cracked Staff, "The Top 5 Everything of the Decade (For Better and Worse)".

War

• Jacopo della Quercia, "The 5 Most Widely Believed WWII Facts (That are Bullshit)".

I Heart Silphium

Silphium was a plant so popular in the ancient world, that many believe it was farmed into extinction.

Why was it so popular? Here's the break-down, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Aside from its uses in Greco-Roman cooking (as in recipes by Apicius), many medical uses were ascribed to the plant. It was said that it could be used to treat cough, sore throat, fever, indigestion, aches and pains, warts, and all kinds of maladies. Chief among its medical uses, according to Pliny the Elder, was its role as an herbal contraceptive.

Interestingly, there's a probable link between its use as a contraceptive and contemporaneous depictions of the plant's seed/fruit:

There has been some speculation about the connection between silphium and the traditional heart shape (♥). The symbol is remarkably similar to the Egyptian "heart soul" (ib). The sexual nature of that concept, combined with the widespread use of silphium in ancient Egypt for birth control, and the fact that the seeds of silphium are shaped like a heart as shown in the left illustration, leads to speculation that the character for ib may have been derived from the shape of the silphium seed.

Here's the illustration in question:

Uncanny, isn't it?

What If the Atom Bombs Hadn't Succeeded?

What would've happened if Little Boy and Fat Man hadn't pounded Japanese morale into submission during World War 2?

Operation Downfall, that's what.

A plan was drafted for a massive Allied invasion of Japan. This wasn't going to be an easy feat, as only a few of their beaches would've been suitable for landing. Thus, the anticipated casualties of this proposed invasion were staggering:

In a study done by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April, the figures of 7.45 casualties/1,000 man-days and 1.78 fatalities/1,000 man-days were developed. This implied that a 90-day Olympic campaign would cost 456,000 casualties, including 109,000 dead or missing. If Coronet took another 90 days, the combined cost would be 1,200,000 casualties, with 267,000 fatalities.

And another estimate:

A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7 to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.

Not that I'm supporting nuclear warfare here, but thank goodness the Japs surrendered when they did.

Just Over Two Years to Go

Still worried about the world ending on December 21, 2012?

This Cracked article should dispel your fears. They do a bang-up job of uncovering the source of this particular apocalyptic scenario:

It all started in 1975, when a bunch of New Age authors / hippies decided to take a break from their social worthlessness to talk about the Mayan calendar. Since this was not long after the whole "Age of Aquarius" craze made popular by the 1967 musical Hair, these sacks figured there might be a growing market of hipsters to learn about the new "age" . . . the Mayan calendar would enter on December 21, 2012. Sounds pretty harmless, and it was.

And then entered Terence McKenna...

All Aboard the Sex Ramp Express!

What do you do if you're morbidly obese and find it difficult to, uh, consumate your love?

Bring on the sex ramp!

Mexico's Manuel Uribe married his wife Claudia Solis two weeks ago after being whisked to the ceremony in a flatbed truck

He managed to slim down to 300kg from his peak weight of 570kg but was still unable to have sex on his wedding night — until friends built him a metre-long ramp made from reinforced concrete, Britain's Daily Star newspaper reports. 

The ramp allowed the 37-year-old to raise the lower part of his body so his bride could access his genitals.

 How's that for romantic?

Amityville Follies

I gave some coverage to the Amityville Horror a little while ago, and today, I came across an interesting 2005 article concerning one of its participants.

Christopher Quaratino was one of the children who lived in the infamous house, and claims that the events depicted were "exaggerated to the point of  fiction".

Interestingly, he also asserts that mysterious happenings did take place:

But he insists his stepfather at the time, George Lutz, brought the troubles on himself by dabbling in the occult and then amplified what paranormal incidents did occur to profit off books and movies about the house. "He's a professional showman, in my opinion," Quarantino said of Lutz, whom he said he clashed with many times before leaving home at 16. "I just feel as though we're being exploited."

George Lutz could not be contacted, as he's been dead since 2006.

Kroeger's Follies

Here's something for the Nickleback knockers.

Lead singer Chad Kroeger is apparently capable of a rather nasty partytrick. 

But I don't think you'd want him to demonstrate it.

Let's just say it gives "Something in Your Mouth" a whole new context. Yeah, I think that kinda gives it away.

Like a Breath of Hot Air

Well, it was bound to come to this eventually.

Farts.

Snicker if you will, but Brenna Lorenz's "Facts on Farts" almost makes them sound distinguished.

She answers various queries on flatulence like "What makes farts stink?", "Why are stinky farts generally warmer and quieter than regular farts?" and "How does a fart travel to the anus?"

She handles them all with a matter-of-factness which is almost endearing. Check out her response to B_read's "Why is there a 13 to 20 second delay between farting and the time it starts to smell?":

Actually, the fart stinks immediately upon emergence, but it takes several seconds for the odor to travel to the farter's nostrils. If farts could travel at the speed of sound, we would smell them almost instantly, at the same time we hear them.

Like I said, she's a pro!

Ocean Reclaims the World

In "Modern-Day Babylon" and "Before the Bubble Burst", I gave some coverage to the opulence of Dubai's resorts for the rich.

There's a bit of an Ozymandian parallel going on. You see, one of its famous attractions, "The World", is slowing sinking into the ocean.

How the mighty have fallen, indeed.

More than Noise?

Think electronic music is nothing but a bunch of bleeps and bloops?

Yeah, me too.

Nonetheless, Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music gives some pretty good coverage of the genre and its offshoots. Check out the "Downtempo" variety on its own:

Phantom of Porn

Sure, you can read Phantom of Pulp's "The House of Horror Ruled!" for the scary stuff, but it also manages to incorporate some great covers of Color Climax super-8 titles (see: cover 1, cover 2, cover 3 and cover 4). 

Gotta love 1970s europorn!

Re-Opening the Polanski File

Wondering how Polanski's rape case compares with a Yemeni child bride dying during birth?

Uh, maybe not.

Nonetheless, check out Christopher's Hitchen's eye-opening "Save the Children: Thinking about Roman Polanski's Vile Child Rape in a Global Context."

Beaver Meets Its Match

It's amazing how much of an impact the Internet has had on our lives.

Few would appreciate this as much as the Canada's Natural History Society. After all, they were forced to change the name of their 90-year-old official magazine, The Beaver, because "porn filters are stopping it from reaching potential online readers."

A Slight Drinking Problem

A patron was refused a drink in a pub near Plumpton, so he did what any sane, rational man would do.

He went on a  fucking rampage!

A security guard who tried to prevent the manager being attacked was hit in the face with a bar stool by the customer, who threw another stool through a window and left.

"Police went to a home in Kenneth Crescent, Dean Park, a short time later and arrested a 35-year-old man," a police statement said.

"During the arrest police will allege the man kicked one officer in the face while a second was kicked to the head and shoulder.

Sweetin Sour

And speaking of Ms. Sweetin, here's some more articles covering her autobiography.

There's Katy Hall's "Jodie Sweetin's Memoir: Meth, Ecstasy, Plates of Coke After 'Sobriety' " for The Huffington Post, Jenny's "Unsweetined" for TakeMeAway and "Jodie Sweetin: I Snorted Meth at Olsen Twins Film Premiere" in UsMagazine.com.

Tenner for a Tanner

Here's another addition to the where-are-they-now files

Remember Stephanie Tanner from Full House? You know, the one who used to say, "How rude!"

"Stephanie Tanner (Jodie Sweetin) Gets Her Own Reality Show", What You Do That For?

Well, her actual name's Jodie Sweetin and here's one of her latest claims to fame:

"Jodie Sweetin -- Full Blouse", TMZ.com.

Don't worry, she was only giving a lapdance to her husband. Well, husband of the time, anyway. They took a trip to Splittsville in 2009.

She's since written an autobiography called UnSweetined: A Memoir, which details her descent into drug and alcohol abuse. 

Her IMDb page also reveals she's had a moderate amount of acting work since Full House wrapped up.

Insy Wincy Spider...

Careful where you hang your washing in Atherton.

The residents of a property there, managed to snap a pic of a spider in their backyard. Of course, this isn't newsworthy in itself, except that the Golden Orb Weaver was in the midst of eating a fucking bird:

"Spider Eats Bird", Local Cairns News.

A Chestnut-Breasted Mannikin, to be precise. 

I should point out that there are other spider species known to eat our avian friends. For instance, there's the Australian Bird-Eating Spider, which, despite its name, "rarely eats birds". 

Oh, and there's also the Goliath Bird-Eating Spider, which have been known to feed on "rodents, lizards, and even bats".

Pleasant dreams!

Jarred by the Law

Keith Roy Weatherley, 46, drew police attention after they noticed he was parked in a no-stopping zone before noon, on October 26, 2009. When he saw them, he made a break for it. They also noticed that he was fumbling about with his hands in his lap, and suspected he might have been armed.

Stephen Ryan's article explains what happened next:

The chase lasted five to 10 minutes, with a top speed of just 20 kmh, before Weatherley was stopped at Centenary Drive, Newcastle. He refused to leave the car.

Four officers used batons and capsicum spray to remove him.

They found a 750-millilitre jar around his penis and noted that Weatherley attempted to continue "pleasuring himself in between bouts of wrestling".

Funnily enough, he was caught near a place called Nobbys Beach. And if that wasn't unusual in itself, a search of the car turned up the following items: "pornography, a home-made sex aid, women's stockings and a Jack Russell terrier."

The incident is also covered here.

A Peak Inside My Received Files

I get some pretty strange things sent to me by my mates on MSN.

The following gallery is a teeny sample of the cornucopia of bizarre imagery that haunts My Received Folder. I'll provide the filename of the pics, and the date they were received. And maybe some commentary, where I see fit.

"image001", Friday, 29 December 2006, 1:39:54 AM.

This is definitely one of the more tamer images that appears in the folder, as you'll see from the next pic.
 

"tubmute", Sunday, 7 January 2007, 9:58:19 PM.

I do recall that this one was a piece of Photoshopped tubgirl vengeance against a nasty IRC character, by a friend of mine. I'll print more in another blog entry.

 

"trouser snake anyone", Wednesday, 21 February 2007, 12:23:35 AM.

Going by the re-named title, I'm pretty sure that it's from a mate of mine who likes to send me pics of gals he fancies (or finds amusing) off MySpace, Facebook or other social networking media. Nothing spectacular about this one.

 

"babybottles", Monday, 2 April 2007, 3:37:33 AM.

This one was sent to me by a nurse from Scotland. Don't worry, no babies were harmed in the making of this picture. Just another prank pic meme kinda thing.

"4y7xnc7", Tuesday, 2 October 2007, 1:43:49 AM.

Sent to me by a chat buddy absolutely obsessed with memes and trolling. Looks like he should be in the previous pic, don't it?

Well, that'll do it for now. Stay tuned for further glimpses inside My Received Folder!

Another Freakin' Randomist

I'm not overly keen on my username, i.e., The Randomist. Gotta think of a better one.

However, I just did a Google search to find out if any other mentions of my blog or username are out there (sad, I know) and came across a blog that actually has my username as its title.

Behold Annie's The Randomist.

Yet again, the blogger's use of the name predates mine: her first post is from November 2, 2008. However, she's also allowed it to sit about gathering dust. Her lastest post, lamenting the death of her laptop by an errant baseball, was on February 5, 2009.

To her credit, her blog is at least quite lavishly illustrated, even if it covers annoying teen things like fashion and Twilight. Also, she tends to cover multiple topics (3, on average) within the same post, so I'll tip my hat to her, there.

Jung's Red Book

Influential psychiatrist, Carl Jung (1875-1961) wrote a manuscript between 1914 and 1930, that he dubbed Liber Novus ("New Book").

It was most likely never meant to see the light of day, but is an extraordinarily illustrated tome and insight into one of the most influential people of the 20th century. It was finally published in 2009 and colloquially-renamed The Red Book, due to the original's red leather binding.

"The Red Book by Carl Jung", { feuilleton }.

Sara Corbett charted the book's progress to publication in "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious" for The New York Times. Here's a snippet:

Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.

Of those who did see it, at least one person, an educated Englishwoman who was allowed to read some of the book in the 1920s, thought it held infinite wisdom — “There are people in my country who would read it from cover to cover without stopping to breathe scarcely,” she wrote — while another, a well-known literary type who glimpsed it shortly after, deemed it both fascinating and worrisome, concluding that it was the work of a psychotic.

Gray's Bibliography

Paul Gray composed a list of "Required Reading: Nonfiction Books" for Time. They include works on economics, psychoanalysis, politics, child-rearing and nature.

Some interesting choices, there.

100th Post

Yep, I've just cracked the hundredth mark.

I wrote the first blog entry way back in October 7, 2009 and, as of this writing, I've achieved a grand total of zero comments and no followers. Hooray! Obviously, no one's reading this thing apart from myself. But, do I care?

Hell no!

To paraphrase a famous line from Field of Dreams (1989), "If you build it, they will come." So, as long as I keep stocking this thing up with the menagerie of topics I skim through, someone will eventually read it, dagnabbit!

Anyway, enough loser talk. Time to cover a few things in celebration of this momentous occasion.

The Yakub-Xenu Parallel 

I'm not sure if you're overly familiar with the Nation of Islam's teachings, but their doctrine on their Satan-figure, Yakub, has bizarre, racist sci-fi overtones:

According to the Nation of Islam (NOI), Yakub (also spelled Yacub or Yakob), was a scientist alive "6,600 years ago", responsible for creating the white race, a "race of devils". The doctrine of Yakub was first proclaimed by Wallace Fard Muhammad and was later developed by his successor Elijah Muhammad.

Yakub created white people by a process of grafting the "black " to a "white" from the original black population of the world. According to the Autobiography of Malcolm X, all the races except the black race were by-products of Yakub's work. However the "black race" included Asians. "Whites" were defined as Europeans and Jews.

It took 600 years for Yakub and his successors to fully whiten his creations. This was achieved under a despotic regime on the island of Patmos. The reasons for Yakub's actions are unclear.

It goes without saying that this is not mainstream Islamic belief. Anyway, now compare this to what is taught about Scientology's "devil", Xenu:

Xenu, also Xemu [...] was, according to the founder of Scientology and science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology dogma holds that the essences of these many people remained, and that they form around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm. Members of the Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story.

Ok, so they're not that similar, both both involve some form of genetically engineering humans. Not to mention sounding utterly looney.

Spider Saga 

When David Thorne, Adelaide, was informed by his utilities company that he owed $233.95, he tried to pay it using this picture:

You can read the e-mail exchange between Thorne and his utilities company here. The story doesn't end there. The spider picture was put up for sale on eBay and attracted an incredible bid.

Thorne was also interviewed by Marketing Magazine for his story behind the affair (part one and part two).

Party! Party! Party! 

And lastly, to get in the spirit of the festive occasion, check out Danny Gallagher's "The 10 Greatest Parties in Movie History" for Film School Rejects for a lil' inspiration.

If you're more interested in something true-to-life, then check out "The Most Extravagant Dinner Parties in History", "World's Best Parties!!" and "10 Biggest Parties Around the World". Olé!

Never Have to Worry About Losing These Shades

A video currently going viral, depicts a bloke named "Matthew" getting sunglasses tattooed to his face.

Idiotic, you say? Well, yes. But, there've already been questions raised about its authenticity:

It has since emerged that the video was posted on YouTube by Ray-Ban through Never Hide Films.

The production company has produced several viral marketing successes for the sunglass brand, including one featuring a man catching shades on his face in a variety of unlikely situations.

I know it's a bit premature, but going on that fact alone, I'm gonna chalk this one up to "hoax".

Dream Still Lingers

Sure, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) was a bit of a sleazebag and questions have been raised over the level of originality deployed in his writings and oratory, but it's still easy to be stirred by his noble cause, which was punctuated by his famous "I Have a Dream" speech of August 23, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Thankfully, the good folk at American Rhetoric have reproduced it for your reading pleasure. Here's my favourite portion:

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Yep, Another Randomness Blog

In "Ooh...Competiton", I discussed my growing awareness of other blogs dedicated to random topics, mentioning that, "I'll cover others I come across at a later time. When I can be bothered."

Well, now I can.

The latest one to garner my attention (to be honest, I've come across it before), is Blog of Randomness by Ruth a.k.a. "Devilish_Jelly_Beanz". Its tagline gives the gist of it: "Exactly what it says in the title :D Jokes,meme's,videos whatever... just random stuff heh".

Just like the last blog I covered, hers predates mine: its first entry (which isn't allowing me to specifically link to) dates from March 27, 2006 and merely features an image of a cat with a halo 'round its head, behind a sign reading, "Nobody's Purrfect".

Although, I'll give her points for sheer volume: at current count, she has posted 184 items against my 97 (including this very blog entry). Of course, I've accumulated my amount since October 2009. Also, hers appears to be primarily composed of YouTube clips, bad jokes and surveys on herself.

Her blog is at least much more up-to-date than others of its type: its latest post is from December 1, 2009.

Appearance-wise, it's horrible. Not that my blog's black, pale green, light grey and purple motif is much to write home about, but it still beats her pale blue background, proliferate ads and brown and pink text:

She also appears to have a spin-off blog called, The Blog of Me, which has the following dictum: "The Blog Of Me.....where you can read my ramblings :) Might be interesting, might be boring, might even be just plain random and silly. But whatever it is, ya free to read it heh".

It includes several posts devoted to cysts (See: "ONly a couple more days...", "No results yet", "And the results are in" and "A quick blog").

The blog's got a much cleaner design (still yucky, though), but's still rank with ads. In her defence, they're probably a stipulation of blog.co.uk, rather than an attempt to gain an (incredibly meager) income.

Caught in the Web

Another article for The Independent by Johann Hari posits an interesting query: "The First Decade: Has the Internet Brought Us Together or Driven Us Apart?". Here's a snippet:

But is it more? Recently, an old friend I hadn't seen for 10 years committed suicide. I instinctively went to her Facebook page, and so, it seemed, had everyone else who knew her, leaving messages of regret and love and loss. I found myself reading over her old status updates. She was clearly trying to communicate pain and isolation – but we all missed it, leaving inane comments and thumbs up and tossed sheep below every plea for help. Could we have known, if we had read it less casually? Or am I projecting backwards?

The contrast between the transitory nature of a Facebook status update and the permanence of death made me wonder if all this social networking is actually a way of keeping people at a distance – a way of having a "friend" but not having any of the commitments and duties of friendship. When the sci-fi novelist William Gibson first put forward the notion of "cyberspace", he described it as a "consensual hallucination", where we pretend we are together, when in reality we are alone. It seemed true that night.