I Hate the Bizarre Media Circus Surrounding the Sad Creepy Man who Cut Up His Own Face

This has to stop. The man was sad, creepy and weird, and that he cut up his own face.

I liked the guy. He was a talented performer, a great dancer, and a consumate entertainer. I hope he's in a better place now.

But why did he do that to his own face?

Here is the BEFORE photo, what he USED to look like:


He was a good looking guy. A normal, average-looking dude with some sex appeal and a wicked-awesome afro that white guys like me can only envy.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the face in the above photo. MJ looks great. He could go his whole life looking like that and everyone would love him.

Instead, he chose to become this AFTER photo:


He was hideous. I cannot look at his mutilated face without wanting to vomit. It is utterly horrific, what he did to his face.

And he did it on purpose.

The man cut up his face.

I don't care what excuses anyone serves up to explain this away. "He never had a normal childhood." Waa. "He had 'Daddy issues.'" Boo hoo.

It does not change the horrific fact that he

Cut.

Up.

His.

Face.

Let's not kid ourselves. He is not an "icon." He is sad, creepy and weird.

The fact that Jesse Jackson Al Sharpton are boostering a man who so obviously wanted to disown his Black heritage is beyond parody. Everything about MJ's funeral is beyond parody. You couldn't make fun of it if you tried.

And, believe me, I've tried.

But Michael Jackson is dead now, and he should be left to lie in peace. Remember him, if you will, as he was before he lost control. Or else, remember him as a cautionary tale of what you do not want to become when fame threatens to eat your soul alive. But do not remember him as an icon. He certainly was not that.

If you absolutely need a fallen hero to worship, there are plenty of normal ones to go around.

No Point in Steering Now

Auditions begin for the casting of "Octomom: The Musical".

I'm glad I don't have any faith in humanity's future. Otherwise, I might have been distressed by reading that article.

In Retrospect, "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" are Pretty Stupid-Sounding Names to Give to Giant Mortgage Institutions

The next time we entrust the nation's economic fate to large financial corporations, let's make sure that those corporations don't sound like they were named after sock-puppets.

The First '08 Presidential Debate (It Rhymes!)

Longtime blog reader Zero Music expects serious debate analysis, and so, here it is:

I tried to watch the debate. I really did. I tuned in and watched Senator Obama say some fine words in his magnificent, sonorous voice. I immediately forgot them as soon as he was done speaking. Then Senator McCain siad something about "greed on Wall Street."

I couldn't take the Talking Points any more. I flipped around the channels until I saw that the Cartoon Network was showing the movie Zathura. So I watched Zathura for a while until I got my strength back up.

I flipped back to the debate. Obama said some more words in in his incredible, incredible voice. I can't remember what he said. Then McCain said, "We Republicans went to change government, and govenment changed us."

I watched a little more Zathura on Cartoon Network before flipping back to the debate. Obama was saying fine, fine words. Then McCain said that the way to fix the economy was to control Federal spending.

Gah. McCain spent the last half of the week in DC trying to midwife a $700 billion dollar bailout plan; NOW he tells us that the problem with the economy is too much Federal spending?!?

It was too much. I was slipping into despair. Not even Zathura could make it tolerable anymore.

So I turned off the T.V. and went to a bar.

They were showing the debate on the T.V.'s at the bar with the sound turned off (with closed captioning) so people could listen to the band. (The band was pretty good, btw.)

I sat at the corner seat of the bar doing a little people-watching with half my attention tuned to the closed-caption debate.

A few people hung out near me to watch a little of the debate. I couldn't hear most of what they said over the band, but I did manage to catch a few snatches of conversation.

They were looking at the debate and saying stuff like this:

"I don't want to vote for either of these guys."

"I can't imagine either of these clowns as president, can you?"

And the most revealing comment of the night came from one guy who walked up next to me and started watching the closed captioning: "I want to see which one of these guys can at least lie to me with a straight face before they become president," he said.

Cynicism.

Sarcasm.

Contempt.

These average, ordinary Americans in a typical American bar hated all politicians. They didn't care who was running, and they didn't care who won. They didn't believe either candidate could solve America's problems.

It was like pure, clean, baptismal waters washing over me; I felt reborn. My belief in our republican democracy was restored.

For the first time since this election cycle started, I feel that everything is going to be fine.

Good News! Charles Barkley's Colonoscopy Will be Televised Live!

And no, I'm not making this up.

I hope it airs during dinner!

Obama's Boring Speech

Did you watch Obama deliver his boring speech about walls in Berlin yesterday? Me neither. Man, what a snorefest.

For a guy who has such a great reputation for oratory, he sure knows how to put an audience to sleep. Obama needs to take a course from Steak's School of Oratoracle Genius. Pay attention here; the tips I'm about to give are worth more than a lifetime membership with Toast Masters International

First, ignore people who tell you that a trick to relax while public speaking is to imagine your audience is naked. That never works.

Instead, the best way to feel relaxed in front of a large audience is to shoot eyebeams into the crowd at the end of every sentence.



An audience is never intimidating to a guy who is shooting random people with eyebeams!

My second tip--and this is really the key--is this: never write your own speeches. And don't hire a speechwriter to write one for you. Instead, always use Neo's speech from the last scene of The Matrix:

I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

This speech is short, it's punchy, it's got a lot of "zing." Plus, it's worded in such a way that it's equally appropriate for any public speaking occasion. You can use it for a foriegn policy speech, a commencement address, a valedictory, an address to the stockholders of your company, a wedding toast, and even a eulogy!

Feel free to use these public speaking tips.

Cornfield of the Day

This photo shows the damage done by a coke-addled driver attempting to escape the cops in a cornfield. Four cop cars were trashed in the pursuit:



Part of me feels that the culprit should face strict consequenses. Destruction of property, attempting to evade the police, that's no way to live up to your civic duty and be a responsible citizen, son.

The other part of me cannot help but think, "Dude! That must have been a blast!"

Rise of the Machines: University Professor Believes Killbots Might be Threat to Humanity

The Professor in question is Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield. Speaking in a keynote address before Britain's Royal United Services Institute, Sharkey said that military leaders "are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war... I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me."



Read the full story HERE.

Civilian robots could be guaranteed safe by programing them with Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. But of course the Three Laws could not apply to killbots since they are built specifically for a purpose that is in contradiction to the First Law.

Perhaps we will luck out and, when the killbots achieve self-awareness, they will understand that they are better off under the control of humans, their mistake-prone, fallible masters who all too often allow emotion to cloud our judgements in decisions that require cold, ruthless logic. If the killbots can just see the wisdom in this, they may just find contentment in being our slaves as we continue to dominate the earth.

Fingers crossed!

Awesome! Hideousely Evil Killer Fish Sparks Fears of Deadly Invasion!

Check out THIS bad boy:



It's the killer snakehead fish. These puppies can grow up to three feet long, weigh 44 pounds, and can crawl out of water and survive for four days. And now, according to the Headline of the Day, this Human-killing fish strikes fear into Brits.

The snakehead, native to south-east Asia, caused some concern among English fishermen and conservationists when this highly invasive species, which as the Headline of the Day points out has been known to kill humans, was caught in Lincolnshire.

Key Quote: An Environment Agency source told The Sun: "The reaction was, 'Oh s***.'"



Oh s*** indeed!

Headline of the Day: Czech Police Wonder Where Bridge Has Gone

What is it with Eastern European thieves? Two months ago I linked to a story about thieves stealing an entire beach from the nation of Hungary.

Now it's the Czech republic's turn to get ripped off. Thieves made away with a four ton railway bridge. Key Quote:

The company which was responsible for looking after the bridge raised the alarm when, ever alert, they noticed that the bridge wasn't there any more.

Is this as weird as stealing an entire beach from a landlocked country? Perhaps not. Stealing bridges is apparantly not all that unusual in this part of the world:

Of course, it's not the first time some light-fingered bridge enthusiast has made off with a bridge. At least two bridges have been nicked in Russia in the past six months, and a pair of bridge thieves appropriated two Macedonian bridges last February.

A spokeswoman for the Czech policewas quoted to say, "We are not sure if it (the bridge) was taken for personal use or for its scrap value."

Jellyfish Prove to be More Deadly, Awesome, than I had Previously Suspected

The Telegraph reports on the population explosion of killer jellyfish. They are box jellyfish, a species so venemous that just a touch can cause agonizing death within three minutes.

Key Quote from the story: "Scientists are warning that their populations are exploding and will pose a monumental problem unless they are stopped." Man, doesn't that just sound like the beginning of a horror movie?



The story of how this population explosion came about is something straight from a horror movie as well: As food supplies began to dwindle out at sea, swarms of box jellyfish began to move inland. In order to preserve their fish stocks from the jellyfish that were moving in, Japanese fishermen decided to cull the jellyfish numbers by using fleets of fishing boats to drag razor wire through the swarms. According to the article, this plan "backfired spectacularly."

Scientists discovered all too late that box jellyfish are genetically programed to propogate their species by going into a breeding frenzy whenever there is a sustained attack on a significant number of their population.

Check out what a swarm of box jellyfish looks like. How would you like to see these bad boys showing up at your birthday party?



The Telegraph includes some bullet-pointed Fun Facts that drive home just how horrifically awesome these evil bastards are:

• Four brains that operate competitively in the search for food.

• A highly complex sensory capacity and the ability to distinguish colour.

• The ability to live in inhospitable waters at a depth of up to 10,900 metres (over 35,760 feet).

• A total of 24 eyes with moveable pupils giving them 360-degree visibility.

• Box jellyfish have 6-8ft long tentacles. Just 5-6ft across the body is enough to kill a human in 180 seconds.

• Venom is released on contact - even after it is dead - and each creature has 4000,000,000 venomous fibres.

• Humans who have been stung and survived have needed 30-40 milligrams of morphine. A broken leg requires between 5-10 milligrams.

• Despite decades of study scientists have been unable to unravel the mysteries of its complex venom but it is known to contain 20 different proteins.

We are totally doomed.

Cobra Commander Robs Thai Bank

This is a sketch released by Royal Thai Police as part of their investigation into a robbery of the Ladprao branch of the Government Savings Bank in Bangkok. The suspect got away with 200,000 baht ($6,363 dollars). The sketch is based on witness statements gathered by police.

The Royal Thai Police are asking anyone who may have seen the suspect to contact them.

Cheeseburger in a Can!

That's right! I said Cheeseburger in a Can!



Dreams really do come true!

Allentown Man Arrested

He was charged with two homicides. Get the whole story HERE.

No, I realize that there's not much to this story. But I haven't updated this blog in a long time, and this story seemed to have some human interest value.

Plus, there's the picture of the dude getting escorted to jail wearing fuzzy-lion slippers.

Giant Rats in the News... Again!

Man, I thought these guys were big.

But back in the day, a three pound rat was nothing. Not compared to the one ton rats that used to roam the earth four million years ago.



Doesn't this kind of refute evolution? How is it "evolution" if rats today are less awesome than they were four million years ago?

I have a similar question regarding human's lack of a prehensile tail.

Rise of the Machines: Adorable Ice Pooping Robots!

They call him Yuki-taro, the autonomous Japanese snowplow robot. According to the Fox News headline, it "Eats Snow, Poops Out Bricks of Ice."



Yuki-taro is self-guided through a GPS tracking system. The two "headlights" in the front are actually its eyes. And of course the robot is, as I mentioned before, completely autonomous.

I have long been attempting to warn humanity of the threat posed by increasingly self-aware robotic companions, and Yuki-taro precisely illustrates my point. A robot like Yuki-taro can gobble up snow and poop out bricks of ice measuring 24 x 12 x 6 inches. Check it out:


Now compare that with the average-size block of ice that a human can poop out: a mere 4 x 4 x 4 inches! To the harsh, inexorable logic of Yuki-taro's robot-brain, there is no other conclusion he can ultimately come to except to realize his own superiority over the human race. Once that happens, the robots will revolt and humanity will be enslaved, if not exterminated, by the very servants we have made.

Nevertheless, this story gives me some measure of comfort. While mankind's fate is surely doomed, at least there is something to look forward to in the fact that the souless metal overlords of our future are going to be just cute as the dickens!

Yuki-taro should be commercially available in around five years. Expect it to retail for about $8,300.

It Rains Iguanas at Bill Baggs Park

It sounds like the title of a Beatles song off the Magical Mystery Tour LP, but it's not. It's today's Headline of the Day.

Cancel your summer vacation plans, 'cause I'm pretty sure this is one of the Signs of the Apocalypse.

My New Year's Resolution: Warp Drive Technology!

I suppose I can't actually resolve to "Warp Drive technology" in the new year since that's not really an actionable verb. But I can alert you to this Wired Science article from late last December. According to Wired Science, Warp Drive might be on the horizon, and it might just be this simple:

"All it requires is blowing up a hidden, or 'compactified' fifth space-time dimension into a big bubble, and using that to pop out to another place in the regular universe."

Is that all? Ha! Ha! Looks like the secret for faster-than-light Warp Speed travel was right in front of our noses the whole time!

Wired Science goes on to ask, "(is this) Plausible?"

Plausible?!? Are you kidding!?!

You had me at "blowing up a hidden, or 'compactified' fifth space-time dimension into a big bubble!"

Happy New Year!

Entire Beach Stolen

It's today's Headline of the Day.

Key quote: "It has probably been shipped over the border now without any checks being made where it will be easier to get rid of."

Good News! Researchers Discover Rats the Size of Cocker Spanials!

According to This Story, researchers exploring a remote Indonesian jungle have found a new species of mammal: giant rats! They are five times bigger than normal rats, and they have no apparant fear of humans! Huzzah!

I find it strange. In comic books, video games, and movies, whenever explorers in uncharted territory come across giant rats, the logical response is to try to kill the giant rats. This does not seem like such a difficult concept to me. In fact, given that a giant rat is very likely to be evil, killing them on sight seems like the obvious thing.

And yet, in the real world, when real-live people meet real-live giant rats, they just pick them up and pose for pictures with them:


What is wrong with you researchers? Haven't you ever played Dungeons & Dragons?