Our Wacky World—3/29/2013

More innuendo against rats (will it never cease?):

"A faulty switchboard was blamed for the incident, and in the kind of explanation that doesn't exactly inspire confidence, TEPCO says a 15-cm (6-inch) dead rat found 'near' the switchboard may have been linked to the failure. The company says it will further investigate the dead animal and possibly-associated 'burn marks' on the switchboard."

The Register

Here's a wider view of the alleged rodent. 

It's official: Jesus will show up this September—assuming this isn't another hoax site. And Obama looks like Satan (or vice versa). Even worse, he has a food taster.

CIA analysts recall the day they had to prepare for Dick Cheney:

"That month, Vice President Cheney scheduled a meeting with our Branch to discuss our assessment of Iraq’s relationship with al-Qaida and 9/11. It was his second visit to the Branch; there always seemed to be more questions. The Branch Chief called us together for a practice session in a bland conference room a few days before their arrival. At this so-called 'murderboard' session, we weren’t stripping down our analysis to find data we’d missed. We were practicing how to defend our perspective when questioned by the Vice President of the United States."

Wired

You meant to say the Sixth Commandment, right?

"The corpse of Modester Gida (30), who was from Nyamweda area in Mhondoro under Headman Mashingaidzwa's kraal reportedly left mourners shell-shocked after the deceased woman's vagina mysteriously disappeared and was replaced with a penis... 'What happened here was so scary. It's true a male organ grew on my aunt's body. We don't know what kind of a disease it is but we believe it's an act of witchcraft'"

My Zimbabwe

"Hearing all this, I was less shocked than intrigued. As an anthropologist who studies the region, I was familiar with the problem of penis snatching."

Alternet

"Johnson said in court Thursday that the trial will delve into the hip-hop music culture and the notion that a secret society called the Illuminati has control over the success of some performers. It was the belief that a sacrifice had to occur in order to join the Illuminati that allegedly incited El-Amin... Investigators recovered more than a pound of marijuana from the Athens Avenue home...as well as literature dealing with the Illuminati and its alleged connection to the music industry."

Richmond Times-Dispatch

"This man is a time traveler, James from the Future. He says he does not know what year he has come back from, but it is after the New Age or whatever you call it has already occurred, that great Transformation in Consciousness that will be happening any day now. (Many people expected it to occur in 2012, but were disappointed.) James says he does not know why he was sent back, but he thinks it is to act as a historian to make better records about what was happening before the Transformation."

Bad UFOs

"The National Rifle Association came under fire late Thursday from members of a gun-control advocacy group in Newtown, Conn., after reports surfaced of Newtown residents receiving robocalls and pro-gun postcards from the NRA."

Huffington Post

"Fifty-six-year-old Robert A. Lyzenga, a former pastor at Sunrise Christian Reformed Church in Lafayette, was charged Thursday with five counts of child exploitation and five counts of voyeurism... At least one external hard drive was found to have numerous videos and still photos of juvenile and adult females taken in the church’s restroom."

Dispatches From The Culture Wars

"...people are really overreacting about this there just some kids having fun all they did was break a couple of milk jugs the worst damage was that they knocked some cans down and break a single light it may be annoying for the employees but it certainly does not need SEVERAL misdemeanors maybe one thats all"

Gawker

"...a new utility sink is installed in the men's restroom outside the House chamber in the state Capitol in Nashville, Tenn. Legislative staffers and building administrators have sought to reassure some concerned lawmakers that the new sink was not installed as a special facility to support Muslim prayer rituals, but rather to make it easier for custodial staff to fill buckets and clean mops"

Tennessean

"...a federal jury in Alabama has found the president of the Republic for the United States of America guilty of a number of federal tax crimes."

TPM

Game over, man

Happy Anniversary

Well it was almost ten years ago that the Grand Debacle began. The peace, I mean. The war, the easy part, started ten years ago today. I'll jump the gun by thanking everyone ahead of time.

A big round of applause for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bremer, Wolfowitz et al for the most expensive clusterfuck in memory.

And that other guy—what was his name? Haven't seen him lately. Umm, uh... oh yeah, the fearless leader of glorious New Iraq, his royal highness Ahmed Chalabi, bullshit artist extraordinaire.

Special thanks to Curveball, without whose expertise at fooling the CIA (but not the Germans) the United States would now be under Islamic rule.

Last but not least, the ultimate thanks to Saddam Hussein, without whose direct responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and huge cache of WMDs the neo-conservatives would never have had the excuse they were praying for.

My condolences to all the dead: Iraqis, coalition personnel, Phil Donahue's TV show and especially the bin Laden family. Let us pause for a moment of silence in remembrance of Colin Powell's reputation and take one final piss on the desiccated corpse of enabler-in-chief Tony Blair's career.

Thank "Bob" Iraqi oil paid for the whole thing. We needed the money after George W. Bush cut taxes during a war. (OK, so he cut them before the war but he didn't put the money back...)

$Ω

"I sit in the darkness of my own device / and search my soul for paradise"—Roz Williams (R.I.P.)

Our Wacky World—3/10/2013

Having dealt with the Russian meteor, José Canseco now weighs in on gravity.

"Now we have to add Israel to the ever-growing list of countries that are home to bigoted shitbag soccer fans" Meanwhile, along similar lines in Egypt... Some Buddhist sexual harassment... '90s TV show theme song shuts down school system...

Beauty before comfort

How did the human race ever survive without "APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD BY CENTRIFUGAL FORCE"?

They have some dumb cops in Tennessee:

"The elderly couple would not seem to fit a profile for a cartel member, but the Tennessee police felt that they had made a critical mistake in their drug conspiracy. Their car had a picture of a marijuana leaf — apparently a common marking for drug mules. It turned out to be a Buckeye leaf decal. After being detained, the police reportedly told the Ohio State football fans that they needed to be more careful in the future and take off the decal. It appears to be the view of the Tennessee police that a picture of something looking like pot is enough for reasonable suspicion."

Turley's Blog

They have some dumb "pre-med' students in Florida:

"Washington, who said he's a 'pre-med" student at the College of Central Florida, said he would never intentionally hurt his daughter and only added less than a capful of bleach to about two ounces of her formula because a classmate from school told him she used the remedy with her child."

OCLA

They have some dumb teachers in Windsor:

"Parents at a South Windsor school are expressing outrage after teachers led graduating students to believe they were heading to Disney World for a year-end trip - only to reveal the next day that the kids were the butt of an elaborate joke.... One of the teachers recorded the scene on an iPad and it was later shown to another class so they too could join in the teachers' merriment."

The Windsor Star

There are some dumb people in office:

"'You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car,' he said. However, he said he had not 'done any analysis' of the difference in CO2 from a person on a bike compared to the engine of a car"

Seattle Bike Blog

"In a stunning, 134-page ruling, the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission this week ordered the six cops back on the job, finding that “the present state of hair testing for drugs of abuse ... does not meet the standard of reliability necessary to be routinely used” to fire someone."

Boston Herald 

"That's right, Vanderbilt's nondiscrimination policy actually discriminates against conservative Christians. So the state should sanction Vanderbilt by essentially abolishing its police force. We're not making this up."

Nashville Scene

It's that time of the year again—time for UFO nuts to get together:

"She showed drawings of supposed ET/human hybrids, in various stages of integration into the human genome, as well as photos of persons alleged to be late-stage hybrids who are (mostly) successful at passing for human. Some are fashion models, whose gaunt, angled face is said to demonstrate alien ancestry, although anorexia and heroin might produce the same effect."

Bad UFOs


So the Hitler Channel is running a new series entitled The Bible. How (bad) was it?:

"With the pace of a music video, the characterizations of a comic book and the political-correctness quotient of a Berkeley vegetarian commune — laughably, the destruction of Sodom is depicted without the faintest hint of the sexual peccadillo that takes its name from the city — this production makes Cecil B. DeMille look like a sober theologian."

I hear that the CGI angels really kick ass at Sodom. (Hollywood Reporter) On a related topic, some Ark builders would like your money.


Frightened white people speak:

“I believe they will put together a racial force to go against an opposite race resistance, basically a black force to go against a white resistance, and then they will claim anyone resisting the black force they are doing it because they are racist ....we were healing quite well as a nation on racial issues until Obama came along and now we have a lot of racial discord... If Obama can take your guns away he can take your car, he can take your home, he can take your bank account, he can take your very life”

Rightwing Watch

"Here are some other recent examples of sleep texts, as posted on Twitter and Instagram:

• "Wtf did they put in those little bomb things."
• "No bounces issues with monh..., pillow helps"
• "I legittt wish veggird were enough to fuelme"
• "The bullet holes really look great on my teddy bear."

CNN

"God will dispatch an angel to lead miracles; rid you of your enemies; bless you with prosperity; heal you; give you longevity; give you an inheritance you knew nothing about; and give you back everything the devil has stolen from you. In other words, these are the ways in which the TBN Praise-a-thon is about you and not about Paul and Jan Crouch or Steve Munsey or Benny Hinn or Eddie Long or anybody else making more money. Instead, if you give, you will be blessed in miraculous ways."

Salon

"The vials were sealed, labeled, and placed in Brooks's office until a waste-management firm could arrange a pickup. Johnson, who was raised Mormon and attended undergrad at BYU ('where figure drawing classes models wore bikinis or speedos') immediately claimed censorship. 'I am happy that he had to sit with 68 vials of my cum in his presence'"

NYmag


"Sain told police that he didn't mean to threaten Fields, and regrets the language he used."—No doubt. Here's an example:

"Rhonda Fields, N----- C---, Mother of -----, Death to Both, All N----- Back to Africa, F--- you, F--- Your Laws, I Keep my 30 Round Magazines, There Will Be Blood!, I'm Coming For You, N----- B----"

Occupy America


Prosperity Gospel is the cash cow of evangelism and now you can take a test to find out if your church is living up to its tenets:

"Does your church teach that God wants you to be a millionaire, yet your pastor is the only millionaire in the congregation? - 1 point"

Religion Dispatches


File this under "sounds really fucking familiar":

"His bestselling 1954 book The Seduction of the Innocent convinced parents and politicians alike that comics were a direct cause of violence, drug use, and homosexuality among young people. It led to the restrictive editorial code issued by the Comics Magazine Association of America, and a national movement to keep comics away from children and teens... Though Wertham claimed his evidence came from thousands of case studies, it turns out that he was lying."

io9

Speaking of best-selling books, here's the latest way how to buy that status.

"The son of American evangelist Benny Hinn was arrested in Brazil after allegedly beating up a deaf and dumb man during one of his father's rallies"

Mail Online

“'Concerning the question if alligator is acceptable to eat during the Lenten season...yes, the alligator is considered in the fish family...' The archbishop said he agreed with the parishioner that the alligator is a 'magnificent creature that is important to the state of Louisiana' and which is also 'considered seafood.'”

Catholic News Agency

"Most of the Slot Guru’s winnings are given to complete strangers. 'I love to give money to people who never expect it. Going up to someone and handing them a $100 bill in the casino when they least expect it makes me happy. Giving to others is what I believe the lord wants me to do. It’s all about Karma,' said the Slot Guru."

Dispatches From The Culture Wars

"SaharaReporters has uncovered a document indicating that a million dollars of Bayelsa State’s poverty alleviation fund was spent by then Governor Goodluck Jonathan on bringing American entertainers Beyonce and Jay Z to Nigeria in 2006."

Sahara Reporters