Category: Weird

If Southerners Do Not Want To Be Cast As Ignorant Bigots

Then when people try to ban atheists from sitting on the city council, the response should be a question along the lines of, “Are you on drugs?”:

North Carolina’s constitution is clear: politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office.

Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution.

Voters elected the writer and builder to the council last month.

“I’m not saying that Cecil Bothwell is not a good man, but if he’s an atheist, he’s not eligible to serve in public office, according to the state constitution,” said H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.

It should be noted that H.K Edgerton flipped out some time ago, and can now can be found at Civil War reenactments wearing a Confederate uniform and waving a Confederate flag.

There is a point where you treat “Gums, the village idiot”* as “Gums, the village idiot,” or, by taking him seriously, you become a village of idiots.

*Virtual Kewpie doll for anyone who gets the reference.

Something To Blow Up, Burn Up, and Make Mayhem With

Click for full size



Good times, good times………


(on edit) I love the car

When I was a young lad, fresh out of college, I came across some bad influences in my life, and they introduced me to the Peeps® sacrifice. (Hi Cris, Hi Tom)

The marshmallow birds were immolated with lighter fluid, dismembered with axes, run over by a 1973 Ford Malibu, and all manner of heinous violence was done against them.

When they brought me into their perverse observances, I had just one question, “Have you ever tried SolidOx Pellets?”

They knew not of this little bit of (now unfortunately discontinued) Hardware Store fun.

SolidOx pellets were (The product appears to have been discontinued) basically Sodium Perchlorate with some fiberglass and Manganese Dioxide to have them burn in a controlled manner. They were associated with an oxyacetylene (might have been oxy-propane) torch, and you were supposed to strike them like a match, and then toss them into a pressure tank, where they would supply oxygen, without the bother of actually storing pressurized oxygen.

What I had discovered in my teens was that they burn ferociously, making both much light and much heat along with the oxygen (and a fair amount of smoke).

The end effect is rather similar to what you see on shows like MythBusters when they work with thermite, and it will burn its way through relatively thin sheet metal, as many a destroyed cheap hibachi can attest to.

In any case, the “coven” of Peeps® sacrifice knew not of SolidOx pellets, and thus I was their path to new enlightenment.

We applied the holy pellets to all forms of Peeps®, as well as one rather ratty and very old pillow, which had through the juxtaposition of degraded stuffing and hair oils achieved a wondrously explosive finale (thanks for the Pillow, Diana).

Looking back on it, I’m surprised that I am typing this with all 10 fingers.

Please note that I have not been paid, nor receaved any products of schwag from Just Born® or any of their agents, though, if they would like to send me some of their goodies, I would be most grateful.

The official press release from Just Born® follows after the break.


PEEPS & COMPANY™ TO OPEN ITS FIRST RETAIL STORE IN NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND – 07/14/2009

Bethlehem, PA, July 8, 2009 –Just Born, Inc., maker of PEEPS®, MIKE AND IKE®, HOT TAMALES®, TEENEE BEANEE® and PEANUT CHEWS® candies, is pleased to announce that it will open its first retail store, PEEPS & COMPANY™, at National Harbor, Maryland. In addition to its great tasting candy, PEEPS & COMPANY™ will offer an array of high-quality branded items such as apparel, gear, china and toys within a fun, branded retail location.

Slated to open this fall, PEEPS & COMPANY™ will be located at the very center of National Harbor’s dynamic main plaza and the branded environment will be custom designed by the Chicago Office of RTKL Associates, Inc. Directly in front of the PEEPS & COMPANY™ store is Seward Johnson’s famous statue, The Awakening, along with sweeping views of the beautiful Potomac River. The store’s location is at a converging point for residents and thousands of visitors arriving by metro bus, car, and ferries, which dock at the piers in front of the store.

In a joint statement, David Shaffer and Ross Born, Co-CEOs of Just Born, commented, “This is a momentous occasion for Just Born, our family of associates, and fans of our candy. For years, we have seen tremendous growth and excitement in our brands, and received many requests for a store in just the right location. In an extensive search, assisted by Cooper Retail Consulting, we selected National Harbor which promises to meet all of our needs.”

National Harbor: Rising from the banks of the Potomac minutes from Washington D.C. and just south of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Prince George’s County, MD, National Harbor is a 300-acre, mixed-used development that includes five hotels (including the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, the largest such facility on the East Coast), thousands of residential units, tree-lined promenades with scores of shops and offices, a marina and much more. Created by Washington, D.C.-area developer, The Peterson Companies, the project will command a mile and a quarter of the Potomac.

Have to Put my Resume in With These Folks

Leeds University advertises for lap dance research officer:

The advertised position, in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, is for: “Research Officer – The rise and regulation of lap dancing and the place of sexual labour and consumption in the night time economy”.

The advertisement further stipulates that “prior experience of conducting research in the female sex industry” is essential.

Of course, if this does not appear on Letterman, Leno, or Stewart, they aren’t doing their jobs.

Needless to say, Sharon* is not amused at my suggestion that I apply for the position.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Signs of the Apocalypse

Lou Dobbs is looking to run for office, and he’s selling himself as a friend of illegal aliens:

Lou Dobbs is looking at any number of possibilities for a political career, such as running for Senator from New Jersey, or even the presidency. And he would of course be running on a signature issue of…his great friendship with the Latino community, and support for amnesty for illegal immigrants, and a path to citizenship???

What the F$#@ is Up With This?

OK, I don’t generally follow the comings and goings of newspaper personnel, though I do read Romenesko, a kind of gossip central for the news gathering biz.

So, when there was sudden and abrupt bloodletting at the Moonie Washington Times, fired senior editorial staff, including the right wing hack John Solomon, I figured that this is simply an artifact of some bizarre family thing with the Moon Family, patriarch Sun Myung Moon will be 90 in January, and there was some sort of weird family thing.

After all, many family owned businesses are dysfunctional family owned businesses, and without a board of directors, any institution under private ownership can pretty do whatever they want.

Well, so I snickered, and then moved on, until I read that armed security guards had been stationed on the 3rd floor, where senior management works, and that staff had been told that they could not use the elevators.

When you are using armed guards to keep out editorial staff, it’s odd.

There are rumors that the paper will be shut down, though considering the nature of its management, they could be constructing a giant statue of papa Moon out of Brie cheese too.

Someone Was Trying to Steal Money

Tin Foil Hat Time!

I don’t know if it was insider trading, or just the standard front-running that accompanies the high frequency trading out there, but the fact that the New York Stock Exchange was unable to report trades for much of the morning due to a flood of “erroneous” trades is a byproduct of some thing to do with the seamier side of the markets.

My guesses:

  • A software glitch on a machine doing computerized trading.
  • Someone trying to capitalize on inside information using high speed trading (which, BTW, the NYSE does not do HFT, so it gets odd).
  • A deliberate attempt to take down reporting so some sort of funny business could get done in the dark.

In any case, a lot of people were trading blind as a result, which makes for much potential for mischief:

NYSE Euronext (NYX.N)(NYX.PA), the parent of the exchange, said the delays followed “an inordinate influx” of orders received as Friday’s session got under way. Later in the session, the company had to temporarily transfer quote processing to a backup system before the problem was resolved around noon.

The exchange’s quote delays caused some tickers to be locked, but a NYSE spokesman said trades were continuous throughout.

“It was an influx of erroneous orders which were caught before they were executed,” said Ray Pellecchia. He could not say where the orders came from.

Yeah, and it could just be an ordinary f%$#-up, and I’m being a conspiracy nut.

Were they Boinking Each Other?

Have you heard about Northwest flight 188?

They missed Minneapolis. They overflew it, then turned, and returned to land at the airport, and the plane was promptly swarmed by cops.

The facts that we know are that the flight lost contact with air traffic controllers for over an hour, that they over-flew Minneapolis by about 150 miles, and landed over an hour late.

Well, at first they said that they had a “heated discussion,” and now they have provided further detail, saying that, “they became distracted during an extended discussion of crew scheduling that included their use of personal laptops.”

Seriously, this is nuts. They were out of contact with ATC for over an hour and missed Minneapolis by 150 miles.

This is not a discussion of “crew scheduling”.

Maybe one of them is sleeping with the other’s wife, maybe they are sleeping with each other, or maybe they were playing a MMORPG like World of Warcraft, or doing a Doom death match over a null modem cable.

It could also be that they just dozed off, the airlines are doing their best to work these guys to death…But a “heated discussion of crew scheduling”?

Yeah, and my dog ate my homework.

ouch

Russian Woman Gives Birth to Giant Baby:

Russian woman, Svetlana Tagantseva, 28, a resident of the city of Samara, gave birth to a very large baby. The newborn, who looks like a six-month-old boy, weighs 6.75 kilos (15 lbs). The baby boy is 62 cm [24 ½ in (!)]tall.

Doctors of a local maternity hospital say that they have never seen such a large newborn in their entire life.

Svetlana was last seen brandishing a hammer and anvil and mumbling about her husband’s genitals.