Tag: imported

Were you shattered by the news that Pamela Anderson is taking a year off from work? Not to worry. Pamela will lend her voice to the superheroine “Stripperella,” part of TNN’s “new lineup of mature-audience cartoons.” What are her superpowers, you may ask? Well, her “hair-a-chute” is a “do that allows her to float to safety from great heights,” “her patented move, known as ‘scissor-ella,’ involves squeezing someone’s head with her thighs until he’s unconscious,” and she is equipped with gadgets like a “lie-detecting chest (put your hands on it and she knows if you’re telling the truth) and an under-the-tongue scanner (she can lick anything to send a digitally captured image back to the computer).” As the article asserts, this isn’t a joke, although I really thought it was. I have a feeling that this cartoon might be a little more controversial than the new He-Man one I mentioned below.

The Cartoon Network is set to debut a new version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (link goes straight to a RealVideo clip). I don’t know, seeing the clip makes me think that they’ve really changed some of the basic premises of the cartoon, which I happened to watch quite regularly back in the ‘80s.

The confectionary company Cadbury’s latest advertisement is a blunder worthy of W. The ad, which debuted on India’s independence day, of all times, compared “a brand of chocolate to the disputed territory of Kashmir and [describes] both as ‘too good to share.’” For those who aren’t aware of why this is controversial, India and Pakistan have been disputing the Jammu and Kashmir region for some time, or as the article points out, this is “the Indian equivalent of comparing a chocolate bar to the conflict over Northern Ireland.” Pretty damn ignorant…

An article by Technology Review submits that although everyone remembers the Wright Brothers as the Fathers of Flight, Glenn Curtiss’ achievements and innovations in aviation arguably had a larger impact on the history of manned flight. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Check out the The Bad Fads Museum for “fun and fascinating fashion, collectible, activity and event fads of the last 100 years.”

Chindogu is the Japanese word for a “weird tool” or a “(nearly) useless” invention. You really need to take a look at some of these wacky inventions; I think the cat duster slippers are my favorite. And because you just can’t get enough weird Japanese inventions, check out the International Chindogu Society’s page or buy 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu at amazon.com.

India’s Supreme Court is trying to find out why Coke and Pepsi have painted advertisements on the side of the Himalaya Mountains. I know this sounds like a joke from The Onion misreported by Beijing, but I assure you that this story is a reliable one from the BBC. Apparently this is not a case of just one piece of graffiti, but a series of advertisements along a 56-km stretch of mountain side that is supposed to be “protected by environmental laws.” This is just corporate marketing arrogance gone out of control; do they really think that the Himalayan monk demographic is going to be the site of the next Cola Wars?

Update: As some of you may have noticed, I’ve made this into a “team” blog. My best friend (and best man) Matt (Shaft) will now be adding his rants, raves, and interesting links to the mix, all the while realizing that since I have admin control I can change and manipulate his posts according to my exacting standards and frivolous whims. Just kidding. I’ll probably just insert a random spelling error every now and then and make fun of it later. 😉

But seriously, I’d like to officially welcome Matt to the site and know that he will enrich it with his contributions. I realize that the commenting system on the site is still pretty flaky, but please feel free to let us know what you think about our entries and the site in general. I think I speak for us both when I say that we really appreciate any and all feedback.

It is not often that you have an experience that sounds like a story that your grandparents would tell you. You know the stories that start with “One winter it was so cold…” or “During the flood of ‘33 we had to…”. By no means is my tale one of great hardship or survival, but it’s something that is unique in my lifetime. My story to my grandchildren (many years from now), will start something like this: “In the summer drought of ought-two in Maryland it was so dry that the trees turned brown and lost their leaves in early August. We had to rake the leaves from the streets and lawns while it was over 95 degrees.” I realize that this is not the 1930’s dust bowl, the Labor Day Hurricane, or the Knickerbocker Snowstorm but it is bizarre and memorable. In truth we have not had rain in a long time, and it is very noticeable everywhere you look in central Maryland. The broadleaf trees are taking it especially hard.

It looks like NASA lost another spacecraft. Reuters reports, “NASA’s Comet-Hunting Spaceship May Have Broken Up”. NASA has had a hard time getting things right lately, as the trail of missing and broken spacecraft shows. I think that space exploration is very important, but it is hard to imagine that this is the same NASA which put men on the moon. Hopefully they can get things together and do something extraordinary (besides the Hubble Telescope) in my lifetime.