Cocaine is Good for What Ails You

  

Since everybody is always asking me about the history of Coca-Cola, here you go--courtesy of the fine folks at wikipedia:

Fascinating History In-Brief

"The prototype Coca-Cola recipe was formulated at the Eagle Drug and Chemical Company, a drugstore in Columbus, Georgis by John Pemberton, originally as a coca wine called Pemberton's French Wine Coca. He may have been inspired by the formidable success of Vin Mariani, a European coca wine.

"In 1886, when Atlanta and Fulton County passed prohibition legislation, Pemberton responded by developing Coca-Cola, essentially a non-alcoholic version of French Wine Coca. The first sales were at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886. It was initially sold as a patent medicine for five cents a glass at soda fountains, which were popular in the United States at the time due to the belief that carbonated water was good for the health.

"Pemberton claimed Coca-Cola cured many diseases, including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence. Pemberton ran the first advertisement for the beverage on May 29 of the same year in the Atlanta Journal.

"By 1888, three versions of Coca-Cola — sold by three separate businesses — were on the market. Asa Griggs Candler acquired a stake in Pemberton's company in 1887 and incorporated it as the Coca Cola Company in 1888. The same year, while suffering from an ongoing addiction to morphine, Pemberton sold the rights a second time to four more businessmen: J.C. Mayfield, A.O. Murphey, C.O. Mullahy and E.H. Bloodworth. Meanwhile, Pemberton's alcoholic son Charley Pemberton began selling his own version of the product.

"John Pemberton declared that the name "Coca-Cola" belonged to Charley, but the other two manufacturers could continue to use the formula. So, in the summer of 1888, Candler sold his beverage under the names Yum Yum and Koke. After both failed to catch on, Candler set out to establish a legal claim to Coca-Cola in late 1888, in order to force his two competitors out of the business. Candler purchased exclusive rights to the formula from John Pemberton, Margaret Dozier and Woolfolk Walker. However, in 1914, Dozier came forward to claim her signature on the bill of sale had been forged, and subsequent analysis has indicated John Pemberton's signature was most likely a forgery as well.

The Most Difficult Gift to Buy This Christmas

Tickle-Me Elmo, eat your f***ing heart out--first Amazon pulls the book for some reason and now Phillip Greaves just sold his last copy of The Pedophile's Guide to Love & Pleasure to the Sheriff of Polk County, Florida.

How are all those lovers out there supposed to get their hands on what everybody wants this holiday season? Who the hell do they have to molest to get a self-published first-edition copy so they know what they should and should not be doing in the sack this winter? How can any substitute gift even approach the utility of this indispensable guide? Will the world drown itself in tears of disappointment this Christmas?

Stay tuned and put everything you value up on milk crates just to be on the safe side...

_

Estimated Market Price of a Rental Baby in Johannesburg

Is three dollars per day, according to the Harper's Index in the Jan.2011 issue.

Who rents these babies, you ask? Why, panhandlers, of course! Who else would you rent your defenseless baby to? It makes perfect sense--the panhandlers rent these babies to increase their daily wages by preying on sympathetic strangers and I guess the cost outweighs the benefit or there wouldn't be a market for it.

I also guess that for the most part these babies are returned unharmed or there wouldn't be a steady supply of babies, although that is just a guess. For all I know, the odds are 50/50 and the parents' desire to have the child/burden back is 50/50.

 
What sort of person rents out their baby to a panhandler in Johannesburg for the day? Is this person so desperate that they don't have any other choice and have thrown caution to the wind in the hopes of mere survival? Is it easier to let your baby do the work while you chill at home eating a $3 package of protein-enriched (hopefully) bonbons?

Or is this proof of yet another impending global movement backward--engineered by a bitter father named Karl Rove, most likely--where the babysitter pays the parent/s and the baby gets exactly the kind of crash-course in life he will need to survive, the Right gets an unregulated, cheap supply of labor/altar-boys, and everybody's too tired and malnourished to mount an effective rebellion?

Or is this baby rental thing all about the economy and I'm an idiot? Is this bonus baby-rental money allowing the impoverished parent/s of these children the luxury of purchasing a carton of "so cool" American cigarettes every week and it's so good for the American economy that all the rich people and their duped grassroots puppets will shoot you in the face with their concealed weapons if you try to be all communist and poke a hole in what is a mostly sorta-fine scheme they have going on? Well, if you discount the visceral discomfort experienced every waking moment by every single baby involved, that is--especially by those poor souls that never make it back to the rental house.

You know what? I should probably stop talking about it right now, lest I be branded un-American by the uneducated. I can't:

Will these poor children grow up at a record clip? What sort of indignities will they witness while lying on the sidewalk, teething on dirty broken beer bottles and used condoms, covering themselves in their own filth, occasionally getting yelled at by their smelly drunken homeless master, on whom his/her survival depends? What manner of squalor will they one day consider luxurious by comparison to their daily existence?

I Think I Know Who Should Accidentally Die Next, Oh Just and Mighty Lord

Ladies and gentlemen of the void, I hereby encourage you to feast your eyes on the most smug little *%^&@$# I've seen in a looooong time and then thank everybody you meet for the rest of your life that you were not cursed with her as your mother/sister/daughter/wife/self. Unless you were. [Sorry--but we won't take anything back and you know we shouldn't. -Ed.]



Once again--thank you, Katie Couric, for bringing us the hard news, the news nobody else has the stones to get out there and have somebody else point a camera at while you pretend to give a shit off-screen.

_

People in Mexico Must Be Afraid of Being Fed to Dogs for No Reason At All

The somehow-always-escalating violence in Mexico over the last decade has just got to stop being so crazy. Thankfully, despite their brutality, our era's thugs still pale in comparison to both the brutal conquistadors and the psychopathic tyrants they supplanted, but still--come on.

It's like Mexico is an episode/season of Breaking Bad--the best show on television--so no matter how bad you think things are going to get they always get much worse and keep you on the edge of your seat.

One day you're a respectable family attending a provincial bullfight, feasting on all manner of delectable street meat, and dozing in the cool shadow of a mountain of used plastic silverware and putrid diapers trucked in from Texas, the next day you have a sack thrown over your heads, get fed into a sausage grinder, and become a hasty buffet for a pack of alpha-male pitbulls raised to ruthlessly erase all evidence of your existence. For no reason. Well, other than the fact that some asshole druglords want to send the government agents and their employers (aka taxpayers) a message that they are not to be fucked with or everybody will die eventually die a horrific, carnival death.

Mayors getting kidnapped and stoned to death in the woods, their corpses lying in the back of a pick-up truck for days before being found?

Wacko lieutenants becoming famous for dissolving bodies in vats of lie? Headless bodies hanging from bridges when the President comes to town?

People's faces being peeled-off and sewn onto soccer balls?

Danny Trejo's severed head riding atop a turtle's shell?

It's like the Mexican druglords have spent the last ten years one-upping each other, hell-bent on bringing home the Most Sadistic Would-Be Batman Villain Ever hardware every year at their annual, always-fabulous Mexican Druglord Conference in Cancun and things are really coming to a head here, the fate of a nation in flux until one of the longtime favorites (or will it be a darkhorse?) is finally cast by Christopher Nolan in his next movie already. [C'mon, Chris, don't be selfish here--think of the people of Gotham. -Ed]

Only then will a winner be declared. Only then will these men tire of the game and get back to being productive members of society, stop destroying whatever they can get away with.

If Christopher Nolan fails us here (he will), no living soul in Mexico is safe. People invited to dinner parties will start making ridiculous excuses like "Oh, I'd love to come, Sandra, but I'm afraid my entire family might be fed to dogs for absolutely no reason if somebody happens to see us in the street" and it won't be funny because they would totally mean it.

Dogs and cats will be murdered in cold blood and often later eaten by starving Mad-Max scavengers--or used as bait to lure a meatier human out of hiding if they feel strong enough for a struggle.

Even budding flowers will fall victim to the casually lethal boot-heels of restless warriors.

Harmonicas can be quite deadly

Eventually the Wild West will reign again, as all men remaining in Mexico will be pitted against each other in a relentless series of unscheduled, unregulated, him-or-me machine-gun duels.

In the end, some Mexican-Jeff-Goldblum eccentric-billionaire type (or perhaps total-Bond-villain Carlos Slim?) will square up against a rough-and-tumble bully from the other side of the tracks and smile knowingly as he smites him with a remote-controlled missile to win--finally--the entire vacant blood-soaked nation as his playground/torture chamber.

Hey, whatever--heavy is the head that wears the crown, right? Jeff/Carlos will kill 'em all, eat 'em, play the game, and figure the rest out later! Once he wins the competition!

After all, if the end result of all his efforts is for whatever reason less than ideal, he can always just drink himself to death at an abandoned luxury resort in Acapulco while writing one hell of a suicide note. If that is indeed Jeff/Carlos' path, I hope that he also has the foresight to attach the lengthy missive to a particularly-burly trained seagull's foot before he dies and send the winged slave to find A Living Person in America Who Would Open a Random Piece of Mail Delivered by a Seagull and Be Able to Make Some Sense Out of Nearly-Illiterate Post-Apocalyptic Pidgin Spanish with no delay.

Once I get my hands on that suicide note (ohpleaseohpleaseohplease) I can finally publish my (unrelated) bestselling novel about the unsympathetic, stomach-churning trials and tribulations of a notorious, suddenly-repentant-at-the-end, murdering asshole that The New York Review of Books will call "Lyrical, raw, and positively breathtaking--an astonishing debut focusing on a megalomaniacal prick who is so delusional he actually thinks he is a normal person, a person with strengths and weaknesses you can weigh, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that if he is not the spawn of Satan he may as well be."

That kind of success being something I could immediately take to the bank, I will probably set up direct deposit to an account in the Cayman Islands and never be seen or heard from again once the raucous celebration--for the humble but well-appointed launch of what will turn out to be the groundbreaking novel of a burgeoning Golden Era of Literature, the captain of the elite avant garde--winds down and I seize the perfect opportunity to sneak away unnoticed.

I will disappear in plain sight and live on the lam under the assumed identities of a series of retired international playboys who share a voracious appetite for women, adventure, and the fruits of the sea.

I will rewrite my memoirs for the rest of my life--on stained cocktail napkins stapled together--until I accidentally fall off a hotel balcony in paradise and nobody ever even figures out who I was, much less what wisdom I wanted to impart to the Earthlings I left behind.

But enough about me--what will all of you do, America? Will it even affect you? Will you even notice that your drunken trips to coastal Florida are not taking place in Cancun, a beloved resort you will never be able to visit for the rest of your life because murderous warlords own the streets? Will you join them or fight them when the furious, probing tentacles of their violence become too much to bear?

Please send me your well-reasoned answers and I shall peruse them with casual interest while traveling aboard one of my many identical yachts speeding in different directions across the vast watery stretches of globe, while wearing a clever disguise that just makes you want to weep for its beauty.

Thank you,
Goodtime Charlie

_

Crazy House

Looks like somebody in Vietnam caught a case of the Gaudis (see his Casa Batllo) and designed himself a regular Crazy House (see below). Elsewhere in the world, the crazy had nothing to do with Gaudi (maybe), but the buildings are just as fascinatingly beautiful.

CrazyHouse in Dalat, Vietnam, found here

CrazyHouse (street view?) in Dalat, Vietnam, found here

CrazyHouse2 in Ramat-Gan, Tel Aviv found here

CrazyHouse3 found here

Dessert:

Here is a website featuring many more interesting/crazy buildings from around the world:

http://www.roxanneardary.com/blog/unusual-architecture-from-around-the-world/

Enjoy your exploring, trusty internet explorers! And please see your nearest Boy Scout troop leader for your merit badge upon completion of your journey to crazy town.

_

So THIS Is Where Decolletage Leads You...

Anyway, so there I was casually using the term decolletage in a sentence and the next thing I know, I'm knee-deep in a Wikipedia-driven fantasy world, in complete disbelief at what I am seeing, imagining what it would be like for a 12-year-old boy to cruise the internet and discover all kinds of weird shit he probably assumes all adults are into.

Case in point (click image to enlarge or click here for link):

Sure, it may be awkward, take forever, only possible when breasts are of a certain size, and please only one partner, but mammary intercourse seems to be the way to go these days for people worried about pre-ejaculate, afraid of condoms, and in favor of pearl necklaces (you know who you are).

Plus, if the devil juice lands on your decolletage and not in your mouth, you won't have mouth babies!

PS--I still recommend using a dental dam [Check that link out! -Ed.], though, in case any stray semen finds its devilish way into your mouth, as it is certainly wont to do, although please keep in mind dental dams are only 96% effective against mouth babies. [Hey--every little bit helps, right? -Ed.]

PPS--Did you get a load of that drawing? Did they really need to show the pearl necklace on her decolletage? Who drew this thing? While part of me thinks this is awesome and hilarious, another part of me wishes it were sugar-free.

PPPS--I recommend clicking on the "Listen to this article" box on the actual wikipedia page; it's pretty funny...

_

An Open Letter to Teenagers Everywhere

Kids today really need to get tougher skins or they'll all be dead in five years and the world as we know it will slowly draw to a close, Children of Men-style.

A 14 year-old girl hangs herself because the friends of her alleged rapist were tormenting her?
Numerous high-school kids killing themselves because kids make fun of their sexuality?
Kids so afraid to go to school because they are getting bullied that they drop out, go into highly-medicated therapy, get even more depressed, and kill themselves later?

I love to break it to you, kids, but this shit has been going on since the dawn of human society. Deal with it, just like everybody has done for millennia. You are not special, this is not a new and more potent form of torture that the human psyche is unable to withstand.

You think it's awful that people make fun of you in the school cafeteria? That you get text messages that say "Suck my dick, faggot!" or "U R a lesbo LOL!"? That mean people write mean things on your Facebook page that you can immediately delete? Oh, no! Your life is so unimaginably difficult--nobody else could possibly understand because cell phones and Facebook and fags weren't around when they were kids!

It's 11/11--Make a Wish!

Here, I'll start off and then you can just ignore this entry and get back to taking pictures of your cats:

I wish I had a huge, sturdy oceangoing vessel to travel the world aboard indefinitely, with enough room for a rotating supply of friends and family to join me for segments of the lifelong voyage, a competent and good-natured crew to do all the work of actually piloting/maintaining the ship, maybe a tennis court, and definitely a hot tub.

It would look something like this:

Or maybe like one of these:

But definitely not like this:

Paul Allen's floating pleasure palace. In the absence of friends,

he takes aboard any sycophant that can find a room not used to store bags of cash.

What would it be like to live on the ocean? Who knows, but I'm sure I would get used to it and my pleasure would be derived more from the places I would be able to go, the random beautiful things I would see along the way, lengthy trips ashore in foreign locales on a whim, the close company of loved ones, and the eternal adventure of always being on the move.

"Where we headed, boss?"

"Anywhere!"

_

Gotta Love the Gamer Geeks (Sometimes)

This is one of those times:




[Thanks, Tomfoolery!]

_

Womb-Like Slumber Guaranteed--For a Price

This room at the Conrad (as in Hilton) Maldives Rangali Island looks pretty sweet, as long as a whale doesn't bump into it in the middle of the night or a hurricane doesn't throw a yacht at it.

Arrive at our Maldives hotel in style in a seaplane over the lagoon, dine in the world's first all-glass, undersea restaurant and indulge in luxurious spa therapies.

Sited in a picturesque corner of the Maldives, our luxury Maldives resort is spread across two islands, surrounded by a vibrant coral reef and lagoon. Twice voted 'Best Hotel in the World' and several times 'Best Resort', our Maldives hotel boasts 50 luxurious water villas, 79 exotic beach villas and 21 fabulous spa water villas with private treatment rooms.

Okay, time to paraphrase (so you don't have to read the word Maldives 400 more times): an 18,000 bottle wine cellar, a spa built above a coral reef (and probably killing it), 7 restaurants (including one underwater), and don't worry--there is also a souvenir shop, jewelry store, and high-end Italian clothing boutique on-site so you don't have to miss out on spending obscene amounts of money shopping just because you're in an island paradise, m'kay?

So, let's see...150 rooms at double occupancy is 300 guests on a good night. The staff for these 300 guests is probably around 300 (bellman, waiters, chefs, prostitutes, line cooks, dishwashers, reception staff, cleaning personnel, boat drivers, seaplane pilots, spa personnel, store clerks...).

Where does the product of 600 people going to the bathroom every day wind up on a tiny sandy island in the middle of the ocean? Did they create their very own 'human waste reef' on the side of the island nobody is allowed to visit? Where the "sea-monster" lives?

Ah, the creativity of the megarich businessmen selfishly portioning out the world for their own gain...

Some more photos to entice you (book through me and I get a 20% vig): 

He's Back, Baby!

Yes, this is a real movie--directed by Jodie Foster, no less (discuss).

Yes, it was shot before (some of) that shit went down.

Yes, the notecard says something else on the real poster.

Yes, much like the man himself this project was a bad idea from the instant it was conceived.

Yes, you will probably see it with your family this holiday season and/or receive it on BluRay from a friend as a Valentine's Day gag gift.

Yes, you all should be ashamed of yourselves.

Aside from the movie crew's community-saving bribes to dozens of unemployed+underwater homeowners near the shooting location pretending to mow their lawn every day, probably the only good to come of this debacle is all of the anti-fan art out there on the web.

Viz:

Probably a direct quote as he walked to craft service for a handful of Peanut M&Ms.

I would much rather see THIS movie.

Probably an accurate assessment of what Gibson's golden years would have been like

if he didn't have $400 million in the bank and a team of parasites that live off him.

For even more anti-fan art, check out the endless comments on the post that inspired mine at Videogum.

_

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Fact: The Colored Bartender in The Palm Beach Story was played by a man who called himself Snowflake.

For this and many other reasons, I find it hard to imagine what it would have been like to be alive in 1942. Others reasons include having to wear a wool suit all the time, hats, hair oil, the everpresent cloud of cigarette smoke, propriety, World War II, racism, and the absence of rock'n'roll.

Only in a truly fucked-up world would a black man rise the ranks of the entertainment industry as a performer named Snowflake, parlay that modest success into the dream role of "bug-eyed black man in a white tuxedo getting shot at by wasted wealthy white hunters on a private train car from New York City to Palm Beach" in one of the biggest comedies of the year, and then have this article written about him in the paper:

NOW! That's What I Call a Church, Vol.1

Sagrada Familia, in Barcelona
Designed lovingly by the great Gaudi
127 years in the making and still unfinished
Still waiting for me to find my bride, I suppose
Or is it me who's waiting?

_

Welcome to Los Angeles, 2010

"Take a letter. To yourself.

"Here we go:

"I think everybody strolling the web who would click on this link below (either of them, actually) should be sent to a page where they are instructed to turn their ovens on and put their heads inside them.

"Whatever cog-in-the-wheel schmo we hire to write the copy for the webpage we should have this headline redirect to should make liberal use of his or her powers of persuasion, but it shouldn't be too difficult a task to birth prose effective in effortlessly eliminating that pool of people we're after for some reason I forget.

"Here's a first draft he or she can work from: 

"I probably shouldn't be telling you this, cuz it may put me out a job, but turning your oven on, getting it real hot, and then sticking your head in there for about twenty minutes is actually better for your hair than a professional blow-drying session with Vidal Sassoon. Try it now and I promise--not only will you look your best, but you won't spend any money on blow-drying for the rest of your life!

-- Antonio, Professional Hairstylist in London, England

"With schmaltz like that--and a photo of some handsome vaguely-foreign man in a button-down white cotton shirt holding a hairdryer and smiling in front of a mirror--I bet we'd have 15% of our target demographic put-to-bed after 72 hours on the web, as long as we hit the right sites, which shouldn't be too hard.

"Phase Two, once we earn enough advertising revenue, is to buy a thirty-second spot or two during Real Housewives of Appalachia to advertise our second-generation websites--"LA's Best Places to Encounter Paparazzi" and "LA's Best Corporate Tacos", which both link to a slightly-altered head-in-oven-pitch, with the same spokesman wearing different costumes and assuming different expert roles, so we only need to kill one innocent person when we're done with all this.

"We'd pretty much sack the whole lot after two episodes, by my calculations.

"So, whaddya say, Buddy-Boy? Are we partners?

"Should we take a blood oath and get started tonight?

"Affectionately, Dick Tracy, etcetera, etcetera.

"Well, so you read the letter now, what do you think?"

_

This Is How Uncool I Am

Does this look cool to you?

I cannot imagine why it would ever be something to do, but apparently in England people like to get together and consume spoonfuls of powdered caffeine at parties.

Huh? Wha?

Recognize:

Last week, according to AOL Health, it came to light that Michael Lee Bedford, [a] British man, died after consuming "spoonfuls" of caffeine powder at a party with friends. AOL Health reports that Bedford had the equivalent of 70 energy drinks in his system at the time of his death in April. According to Dr. Eric Braverman, a lethal dose of caffeine would be about 10,000 milligrams — or 100 cups of coffee — the website reports. 

(courtesy Time.com)

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and bet there were no girls at this "party" and the guys were desperately trying to work up the 'caffeine courage' to fuck their pet robots in front of each other all night while they play videogames and laugh in high-pitched voices.

Either that or I guess I'm just not that cool anymore and it was not only a bitchin' party, but caffeine is also a breathtaking high I've been a stranger to for way too long.

Might be worth the experiment--I'll order a 60-gallon drum and see what happens. If it's empty in two weeks, break through my window, shoot me with a tranquilizer dart, strap me to a comfortable couch, and let me ride out the withdrawal til I'm back down among the mortals. A ride like that should be one you can walk away from.

_

Oh, to be young and feel like your opinion matters...

Huh. I wonder what the map would look like regarding issues such as gay marriage, ending wars, health care, taxes, and the legalization of pot.

Would it seem as crowded as the National Mall when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert took to the stage last Saturday?

Only one way to find out...

"Internet--somebody get to work on those maps, okay?"

We might be missing out on a giant social trend going on under the radar here in Planet America Inc--young people these days may be for the most part pretty easygoing and sensible compared to the older generations embarrassing the shit out of themselves* all over the country these days.

If only good were as contagious as bad.


*Sometimes literally, often into non-biodegradable diapers afterwards tossed unapologetically into the gyre

_

Don't Forget to Vote Today, Democrats!

Now that the Republicans have cast all those votes for every Representative up for election, it is time for the Democrats to take their turn.

Don't be intimidated by how many votes you will need to defeat the Party of No or by how many people tell you the polling place is no longer accepting votes--JUST DO YOUR CIVIC DUTY and get Democrats into office.

Why? Well, because although most of them are reprehensible human beings, they are slightly better than Republicans.

Here's why:

- They actually want to pass laws, rather than just say "No" to everything and accept bribes
- Most of them are in favor of stopping the ridiculous tax cuts for the rich and providing aid to the poor and unemployed
- They do not want to eliminate the IRS, EPA, Department of Education, or Social Security because they are smart enough to realize we would be TOTALLY FUCKED if that happened.
- They weren't members of the party that got us involved in two expensive wars, deregulated and then got into bed with the financial industry, and bailed out Wall Street with no strings attached

Do you need any other reasons?

Okay, they seem to frequent prostitutes a bit less than Repubs, fewer of them are self-loathing homosexual gaybashers, and their party chairman's wife makes the best potato pancakes you have ever eaten.

So get out there and vote, Democratic America!

Or risk 2 years of frustratingly constipated government/name-calling, as the Dark Side plots and rubs hands together mirthfully in a dark room, ushering in a 4-year period of pain, torture, and destruction unrivaled since the days of Sodom, after some as-yet-unnamed Teabagger demon rides a throne of skulls from the banks of the River Styx all the way to Warshington, atop a tidal wave of disembodied souls, and turns back the clock to 1848, when "shit was pure" and the evil corrupt rich white man ruled unequivocally, sans pesky liberal fruit flies buzzing around their luscious picnic basket full of money.

Your choice.

With love,
Your Senator

_

Little Girls Getting Owned

I know I will one day be gleefully banished to Hell by a vengeful God for laughing at these videos every time I see them, but I just can't help myself--they're hilarious.

Little Girl Owned by Trampoline:


Little Girl Owned by Swing:


Little Girl Owned by Bench:

And THAT'S why you don't put floppy hats on your little girls, parents!

Little Girl Owned by Soccer Ball:


Little Girl Owned by Dog:


More General Ownings:


I could watch these forever and I just might...

_

Scratch THIS, A$$hole...

If you thought Balloon Boy's Dad was crazy before (like when he faked that his son was up in a balloon at 7000 ft. for hours in an attempt to get a reality TV show), wait til you check out his latest invention, which unfortunately involves a lot of shouting:



Am I the only one who realizes how smooth that thing looks--how could it possibly compete with the scratching monster that is bark?

Here's to hoping this stupid prick fails to make $36,000 off this and has to start selling vital organs to pay back the police department for part of their emergency rescue bills...


(Thanks, Videogum)
_

Sometimes It's Hard

Breaking things like a karateman isn't always as easy as it looks when somebody does it successfully.

Just ask this dude, who appears to try the feat for the first time in front of a crowd with at least one video camera and no doubt an arsenal of snarky comments:



I just hope that poor Cobra Kai runt had enough meth in his gi to see him home before he got beaten-up by a gang of bored 12 year-old cheerleaders.


(Thanks, Videogum)
_

All the World Loves a Lover

For your viewing pleasure, here is an old Japanese cologne commercial made by the director of Hausu, starring Charles Bronson:



What a crazy piece of shit, eh? I would love to have been a fly on the wall during the meeting where the director explained his vision to the ad agency and client.

"Okay, so...he's in a candle-lit bar by himself, making love to a black piano player with his eyes. After thanking an insane old doorman on his way out, he drives home really fast to take off his shirt and pour cologne all over his body as he gives himself a rubdown and shoots guns. Guys will love it!"

"Wait--there are no women in this?"

"No! There are no women in Mandom--just men. Men who like to choke each other to death with the overpowering stench of their cologne-soaked half-naked bodies as they dance around the room, giggling and flirting. And shooting guns!"

"I see...well, what the fuck do I know? I named my cologne Mandom. Let's give it a shot."

For more Mandom, click here.

_

DUIs Suck

I'm sure those guys all did some bad shit, but you know those guards are pricks.

I guess they deserve each other.

_

Racists on Youtube Do the Darnedest Things

The Youtubes makes people famous--there's no way around that, it is one of the few truths in this world, so deal with it the same way that you deal with the fact that there will always be racist assholes waving Confederate flags, laughing at Larry the Cable Guy, and preaching religion and family values as they secretly give non-gay handjobs to random men in the bathroom of the gas station by the highway and their teenage daughters give birth because they were told condoms were wrong.

On Youtubes, as everywhere else, all fame is justified for one reason or another, although most would never admit the reason everybody knows who they are is because they are the biggest asshole on the planet, the worst dancer in history, or a complete moron totally unaware of anything beyond the stomping grounds of their youth.

Enter "Babe 27", who no doubt longs for the fate of her idol, Justin "I was discovered on Youtube" Bieber and will no doubt never receive it. Instead of cruising the world in a pimped-out Rascal scooter with cupholders, parting seas of swooning teenagers in towns whose names she can't even pronounce, Babe 27's flavor of fame will not result in any financial reward, respect, or sex appeal.

Instead, millions will laugh at her, share her humiliation with all of their friends, and move on, leaving Babe 27 to wither in their dust, cruel laughter eternally echoing in her ears no matter how many earmuffs she dons, a three-legged cat her only friend.

Enjoy:



"...and THAT is why you don't post videos of yourself singing in your bedroom on Youtube!"

_

Inside Job

I have been covering the financial sector for quite some time now, as the sole correspondent for Tell It Like It Is News, so the facts, figures, and villains on display in Charles Ferguson's Inside Job were hardly new to me. I know what happened, I know who did it, and I know exactly why--greed.

With that in mind, there were a few moments I felt the movie dragged (1h45m felt like 2h30m), but overall it was a surprisingly slick production chock-full of beautiful visuals and some highly-entertaining gotcha moments that make it well-worth watching.

And, as an added bonus for the ladies out there, Matt Damon's voice is also on display for at least twenty minutes in total. Although I am so manly I shave the bottoms of my feet, I got chills everywhere whenever he spoke. Money well-spent, Sony Pictures Ltd Intl Inc Megacorporation Nation-State.

Much like the villains in this tragedy have always claimed, there will be plenty of people out there who will hem and haw and tell you everything isn't black and white and it's really complicated but actually rich people getting richer helps poor people somehow.

If you believe these people you are dumb and you know it, which strikes at an important point of similarity that people in the media never seem to point out:

Just as the financial market demolition expert (aka 'Investment Banker') gets his conscience to swallow enormous lies in a series of more easily digestible incremental white lies, truth-bending, and questionable justifications, the Average American engages in a similar series of incremental lies regarding their limited exposure to ruin, the volatile nature of the "free-market" economy, the trustworthiness of those in power, the priorities of the rich, and the extent to which pure evil has permeated our society.

In other words, just as the banker knowingly swallows the lie that he is not evil, his victim also swallows the lie that the banker is not evil.

And so, whether he realizes it or not, the victim is kicked down another rung on that great big ladder from serfdom to Lord, forced to scramble to make ends meet, cut back on spending, get another job, get deeper in debt, etc, until the house of cards ultimately crumbles--at which point he is hopefully old enough to die.

I am a firm believer that the root of most of the problems facing America today is the fact that people don't want to know what is happening in the annals of power. They intentionally ignore the news, ignore the altruistic activists, ignore the canaries in the coal mines, because deep down they know the Warshington/Wall Street elite is so evil they would rather not know the details. Ignorance is bliss, none of my business, everything seems fine, that's just the way things go, the market is cyclical, the Matrix is actually pretty cool, yadda yadda yadda.

Well, to all of you out there who think ignoring a problem of this magnitude is okay because you have yet to be turned out on the street yourself, remember this:

The ostrich with his head in the sand eventually gets bitten in the ass.

_

Return to Serfdom

How do you know your job sucks? When they attach semi-permanent suicide nets to your employee housing:

Foxconn Technology Group — the Taiwanese company that manufactures hardware for Apple, Dell, HP, Nokia and Sony and has been hit by a dozen suicides at its plants this year — is holding rallies at all of its factories to raise morale. The theme? “Treasure Your Life, Love Your Family, Care for Each Other to Build a Wonderful Future.” The impact so far? Check out the picture above.

In case the rallies, slogans and pay increases don’t raise morale enough to stem the tide of suicides, Foxconn left suicide nets in place at its facilities that are designed to catch workers before they hit the ground, although it removed them from one facility.
"No matter how hard we try, such things will continue to happen,” is how Louis Woo, assistant to the founder of Foxconn’s parent company Hon Hai Precision Industry explained the situation at its factories, in a statement.

After the rallies, Foxconn left them up at all of its factories except for its Taiyuan Campus location, said Woo in his phone statement, because more employees there have the support of their friends and family. The nets remain in place at the other facilities.

(courtesy Wired)

Strange that an employee workforce of 470,000 people [Literally! -Ed.] living in dormitories on the same campus would not make some friends to build support networks.

Or maybe when they try the prison guards dump barrels of hot oil on them and stretch them on one of the racks in the mess hall?

If there was ever a more direct modern parallel to medieval serfdom, I don't know I don't what that would be...

Long live King Woo, Lord of Foxconn Castle, loyal subject of King American Corporations!

_

Like Mother, Like Trash

Ava Sambora, daughter of Heather Locklear (right) and Richie Sambora

Yes, she is too young to be dressed like that in public (13).

Yes, that is totally appropriate clothing to wear as a model in a fashion show for a clothing label called White Trash Beautiful.

Yes, that is a clothing line run by her father.

Yes, her mom's face never moves.


The world sure is a messed-up place. But at least it also has this in it:

And this:

And also this:

_

Message Received

This just in from the Mexican front, via Huffington Post:

Violence peaked in Tijuana in 2008 amid a showdown between two crime bosses – Fernando "The Engineer" Sanchez Arellano and Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental, a renegade lieutenant who rose through the ranks by dissolving bodies in vats of lye.

Garcia was arrested last January. While killings have continued, the most gruesome displays of cartel violence – decapitations, hangings and daylight shootouts – subsided.

Last week, in the wake of Calderon's visit, several bodies were found beheaded and hanging from bridges in Tijuana, leading to fears that the cartels were resuming brutal tactics to send a message that the government is not in control.

Vats of lye? Ohhhhhhkay. Huh. Considering all this new shit comes in the wake of that rural mayor getting stoned to death in the back of a pick-up truck and the following certified-nutso statistics, I find little reason not to believe them:

Upon taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of troops and federal police to fight drug cartels in their strongholds. An unprecedented 28,000 people have been killed in drug gang violence since.

Ciudad Juarez has become one of the world's deadliest cities amid a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels. More than 2,000 people have been killed this year in the city, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Oh, Mexico...I love you but you're bringing me down.

_

For Your Consideration: