Weirdness
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Deep thought
If you had to think of a name for a band or rugby team, you could do a lot worse than the Green Apple Splatters.
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Everything’s bigger in Texas
I was just watching MSNBC‘s storm coverage. They sent all 5 foot 4 inches of Rita Cosby to Galveston to be buffered by the wind, eerily resembling a Saturday Night Live skit.
They later cut to a local affiliate who also had sent people to Galveston. Texas newscasters, at least the hurricane covering variety, were around 230 pounds each and barely moved. It was a weird contrast.
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The West turns into Rome
Dutch Talk-Show Host Plans to Take Heroin on TV
I’m not one to interfere with evolution, but if there is an audience for this sort of reality TV, it’s a very sad sign.
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Hookers for the handicapped
No, really it’s true. Be glad you don’t pay taxes in Denmark.
The Danish government is under attack for paying for its disabled citizens to have sex with prostitutes.
The official ‘Sex, irrespective of disability’ campaign pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.
The legal guidelines advise: “It could be of great importance that the carer speaks to the prostitute together with the person in their care, to help them express their wishes.”
Via the Kaus of Slate
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Thursday rapid fire
- Bush Urges End of Trade Tariffs, Subsidies – this would actually be a legacy worth remembering, and probably the first “Conservative” thing he’s done (with the exception of the tax cuts) since becoming president.
- You Don’t Save What You Don’t Own – a nice summation of the bus thing in NOLA
- Trial Of The Century: Keillor V. MNspeak.com – Someone else approximately shares my feelings about Garrison Keilor
- Via the Agitator
From Colby Cosh…if I can’t have a libertarian paradise where state power defers to social power, or use recent events to urge others to the wisdom of such a state of affairs, I’m willing to propose a second-best for America: replace the three branches of republican government with permanent joint rule by Wal-Mart and the Salvation Army. Go on, tell me you could honestly do worse.
- I can’t find a link to this anywhere, but Commie-Rocker Steve Earle sold one of his songs to be used in a truck commercial. It was quite the talk of the DBT email list (which I still read periodically)
- Since we don’t hear anything about hurricane relief in Alabama and Mississippi can we assume that state and local government did their jobs there?
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Sunday rapid fire
- Big Lebowski Fest – I peruse Wikipedia trying to find the population of Louisville and find their entry on the annual Big Lebowski festival.
- A fine post by Dave Kopel on the current gun grabbing in New Orleans.
- And would you believe that a Hot Brown isn’t a term for some vile act?
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Get ready to recoil in horror
When you see this column by Christopher Hitchens.
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Rapid Fire
- Anti-rape condom aims to stop sexual assaults – it’s a female condom, and it would be quite effective
- Storms Vary With Cycles, Experts Say
- Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
- Pizza Man Bombing Remains Odd Mystery – This is still the strangest crime of the new century.
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Horrible people
3 stories, all found in one day,
First the merely classless
Osbourne Says She Evened Score With Maiden –Sharon Osbourne says she cut Iron Maiden’s power during a concert on this summer’s Ozzfest tour. The wife of rock icon Ozzy Osbourne has accused the heavy metal group’s singer Bruce Dickinson of badmouthing her husband on stage.
“Dickinson got what he deserved,” Osbourne wrote in a letter to the group’s manager. “Was Dickinson so naive to think that I was going to let him get away with talking … about my family night after night?”
During the same show in Devore earlier this month, Iron Maiden’s members were pelted with eggs and debris from the crowd.
Not that I care that much about Iron Maiden these days, but that was just ridiculous. It’s an insult to any notion of professionalism.
To the horrible and sordid
Word that Sgt. Dan Kennings had been killed in Iraq crushed spirits in the Daily Egyptian newsroom. The stocky, buzz-cut soldier befriended by students at the university newspaper was dead, and the sergeant’s little girl–a precocious, blond-haired child they’d grown to love–was now an orphan.
They all knew that Kodee Kennings’ mother had died when Kodee was about 5. The little girl’s fears and frustrations about her father being in harm’s way had played out on the pages of the Daily Egyptian for nearly two years, in gut-wrenching letters fraught with misspellings, innocent observations and questions about why Daddy wasn’t there to chase the monsters from under her bed.
It turns out Daddy didn’t exist. And neither did Kodee.
The Tribune went to southern Illinois to learn about the bond between Kodee and Dan Kennings, and the life Kodee would face without her hero.
Instead, eight days of reporting revealed elaborate fabrications and intricate lies. There is no soldier named Dan Kennings. The charming girl people came to know as Kodee Kennings is someone else entirely, a child from an out-of-state family led to believe that she was playing a part in a documentary about a soldier.
I recommend reading the whole article (fairly short).
To the truly despicable
Small, pitiful groups of perverse traitors cloaked in a warped, hate-filled and degraded version of Christianity are tirelessly traveling across America, cruelly protesting at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq.
They are scheduled to stop in Middle Tennessee today, in Smyrna and Ashland City, to dishonor the solemn services and add to the horror and grief of those who mourn Staff Sgt. Asbury F. Hawn of Lebanon and Spc. Gary Reese Jr. of Ashland City. The Army National Guardsmen served together in the 278th Regimental Combat Team and died in an enemy attack Aug. 13 in Iraq.
Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., will be there, not to spread the comforting Gospel of Jesus Christ, but to spew a disgustingly vulgar and crude message of gay hatred while celebrating the death of U.S. soldiers.
This evil little congregation, led by Fred Phelps, gained infamy for showing up at the funerals of homosexuals to taunt family and friends and to promote their own unique brand of hatred. This summer they started picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in battle with placards that say, “We hate gays” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.”
I did some research, and its’ a Kansan named Fred Phelps and his cult, oddly called Westboro Baptist Church. It’s a very strange group, even for cults. Most of the members (around 100 or so) are related to Phelps by either blood or marriage, and a disproportionate number of them are lawyers. One of the main reasons they do this sordid display is to incite violence against themselves and later lawsuits against official entities who “let” it happen.
Wife beating and child abuse are seemingly specific tenets of the faith and there is some weird alignment with the Nazi Christian Identity groups as well. It’s hard to imagine a more loathsome group of people.
Original links via Instapundit
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Oddness
As of right now, Kinkos.com has expired and would seem to be available.