Sunday, December 29, 2013
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Santa Claus Gets Shot
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Monday, December 23, 2013
Man Installs Festivus Pole (made of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans) inside Florida State Capitol
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Who's Dumber - Phil Roberston or A&E?
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
You Would Have Strip Searched Her, Too
How to Convince People That You're Jesus in 5 Easy Steps
A.J. Miller has decided he is Jesus. He has moved with his followers to a rural compound near Kingaroy, Australia, and an estimated 60 people have joined him there. These kinds of arrangements usually end pretty well. How does he pull it off? He follows the 5 easy steps... |
Friday, December 13, 2013
Bruce Jenner Just Got Weirder
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Obama Livens Up Boring Mandela Memorial, Gets Smack Down
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Restoration Gone Wrong, Goes Right
Monday, December 9, 2013
Let's Give Everybody $2,800 a Month
Thursday, December 5, 2013
What's the best black tea in America for the price? It's a surprise. Trader Joe's.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
61% of Americans still believe JFK was killed by a Conspiracy
President Kennedy, all smiles, less than one minute before he was shot. |
I've been a conspiracy buff my entire life. I'd say it's been more than a hobby, and less than an obsession. To a great degree, this was instigated by the murder of one man, John F. Kennedy, nearly a decade before I was born.
When I was a child, JFK's death was still on a lot of people's minds, as a sort of given. It was a gigantic presence, and adults often talked about where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news. Probably what cemented it for me was that every now and then, you could actually watch Kennedy get murdered right on TV. Abraham Zapruder had filmed the whole thing.
If you like, you can watch the Zapruder film right now, slowed down and in super digitized modern high quality (WARNING: very graphic footage - watch at your own risk):
The JFK Assassination was The Moment when everything went sour, when the American dream died. This had a lot to do with the fact that, at the time, most people seemed to believe that some part of the US government, maybe in cahoots with the Mafia, had killed him. That the murder wasn't just a random assassination by a crazed lone gunman, but was in fact a coup d'etat.
Most people thought the official story was ludicrous - that Kennedy had been killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, an idea that stood in opposition to mountains of evidence to the contrary, and which required one "magic bullet" to penetrate both Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally a total of seven times.
Funny how times change. As the years pass, an interesting thing is happening to public opinion about the murder.
First off, it's always been a rule that major media personalities have to believe in the official explanation, and have to foist that explanation on their audience. For example, in our era, people as far apart in the political spectrum as nice, reasonable, liberal hero Rachel Maddow, and rabid right wing pit bull Bill O'Reilly, both profess their devotion to the official story.
But even in the absence of any compelling evidence for that story, the general public is also starting to believe it. Check out this handy dandy infographic from a Gallup poll conducted in November of this year (click to enlarge):
As recently as the year 2000, 81% of Americans polled believed that Kennedy's murder was a conspiracy. Only 13% believed it was the work of Lee Harvey Oswald alone. Those numbers had stayed reasonably consistent for 25 years. Now, just 13 years later, 61% of Americans polled believe the murder was a conspiracy, and 30% believe Oswald acted alone.
What's causing this change? I believe there are several reasons. The generations who lived through the Kennedy assassination (and for whom it was a raw and open wound) are slowly dying off. Media mind control techniques are slowly being perfected. And those techniques are being marshaled to discredit conspiracy theories in general, especially in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
As a result, people are gradually coming around to the official way of seeing things.
Monday, December 2, 2013
A photo of Scarlett Johansson's Ass...
...will get you web traffic.
I was on Facebook yesterday, don't ask me why. And someone posted the above screen grab from maybe Tweeter or Instamagic or some fucking thing. Which is a picture of a famous celebrity named Scarlett Johansson who a) is a pop singer, or b) a movie star, or c) has a sex tape, or d) stars on Celebrity Rehab.
Or all of these. Or none. I honestly don't know, and I'm too checked out to ask the Googler. I've heard the name. I've seen her on the cover of supermarket tabloids. That's plenty.
I clicked on the photo. Of course I did. Two million years of evolution and survival of the fittest demanded it. Reason is a raisin taped to the head of a 2,000 pound charging, raging bull of primal drives.
So, as I say, I clicked on it. Which brought me to a nice inspiring blog called Go Kaleo, and a post about how women should be proud they have cellulite. Which is cool with me. I'm proud of women who have cellulite. I'm proud of people who talk about personal tragedies on television. I'm proud of dogs who have three legs. I'm proud of everybody.
But digging deeper, I found some research which suggests that most people who clicked on that photo were not really all that interested in cellulite. If you look at the amazing graphic below (click to enlarge), you'll see that by a significant margin, the largest group of people who clicked on the photo were men who wanted to get a better look at Scarlett's Johansson's ass (48% of all clickers).
Following that were women who wanted to get a better look at Scarlett Johansson's ass (33%). This suggests that 81% of clickers just wanted to see that ass a little better. If you add in the 7% who didn't know why they clicked, you've got an astonishing 88% who probably didn't even realize the article was about cellulite. Only 12% of clickers were women who were concerned about cellulite. Not one man (0%) shared their concern.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
The Blowjob Date
One day I picked up a hitchhiker.
I
was driving into Portland, Maine, from where I lived outside the city.
You come into town through this rundown section, cross over some
railroad tracks – the freight trains stop traffic there sometimes –
there’s a payday loan place, a McDonald’s, some cheap retail stores.
The County Jail is near there, and then the Greyhound bus station. Vagrants and various down-on-their-luck types often blow into town on the bus.
The County Jail is near there, and then the Greyhound bus station. Vagrants and various down-on-their-luck types often blow into town on the bus.
It
was raining out, a steel gray rain typical of Portland. Makes
everything look like shit. A young woman stood by the side of the
street, her thumb out, hitching a ride. She wore a pair of jeans and a
gray hoodie sweatshirt.
What I figured was this: it’s cold, it’s raining, and she needs a ride to the other side of town – where the homeless shelter and the soup kitchen are. It happened I was going that way. My gym’s over there, in another bleak wasteland full of junkyards and parking lots.
What I figured was this: it’s cold, it’s raining, and she needs a ride to the other side of town – where the homeless shelter and the soup kitchen are. It happened I was going that way. My gym’s over there, in another bleak wasteland full of junkyards and parking lots.
I pulled over, just a little past her.
She
walked to the car, opened the door and climbed up inside. She was
soaked, her clothes saturated with the rain. She took her hood down,
releasing a blondish ponytail, and I realized she was a lot older than I
first thought. Maybe 50, but an old 50. Fifty hard years, like 50
going on 100.
Then I looked again. Every time I looked at her I saw something different. The woman was like a mirage in the desert, a shape-shifter. This time I guessed 27. It was impossible to tell. The face was young, but pale and too thin. The eyes were old.
Then I looked again. Every time I looked at her I saw something different. The woman was like a mirage in the desert, a shape-shifter. This time I guessed 27. It was impossible to tell. The face was young, but pale and too thin. The eyes were old.
Old.
She
paused to light a cigarette, cupping the flame in gnarled hands. Her
fingernails were dirty and chewed down to the skin. She didn’t ask if I
minded.
“Where are you going?” I said as I pulled out into traffic.
“I’m looking for a date,” she said.
I was busy watching the cars ahead, too busy to focus on what she was saying. “What are you looking for?”
“A date. I’m looking for a date.”
I’m
slow, in the sense that my brain seems to work slower than other
people’s brains. I hear slowly. People say things and I have no idea
what they’re talking about. Don’t tell me a joke. Five minutes later, I
get it. It’s a common thing with me.
I
puzzled over what she’d said. So she was out in the rain, looking for
her date. Maybe he had ditched her, stood her up. Now she planned to…
what? Find him?
Well, I wasn’t about to drive around looking for him. I wanted no part of that. I had things to do.
“You lost your date?” I said.
She
turned and stared at me. We were stopped at a red light. I looked at
her. I almost asked how old she was, but she talked first. She spoke
in slow motion, so even someone like me could understand.
“A blowjob date,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m
looking,” she said, even slower this time, because now she realized she
was dealing with an imbecile, “for a blowjob date. Is it you?”
I sort of laughed. It was more of a snort. “You want to give me a blowjob?”
“Exactly. Not for free, but pretty cheap.” She nodded to herself. “You’ll like it.”
I
looked at her again, really seeing her for the first time. I couldn’t
begin to guess at her age. And I couldn’t think of much to say.
“You were hitchhiking.”
She shrugged and smiled. “That’s what I do.”
Thoughts
flooded my mind. It was like complex math. Blowjobs, money, promises
made, promises broken, undercover cops and diseases, all added up,
subtracted, divided and multiplied by the square root of sweet nothing. In a few seconds I had my answer.
“No thanks.”
Now
that I finally got it, I acted. I didn’t ask any more
questions. I didn’t try to tell her about Jesus, or about serial
killers. Maybe I should have. Instead, I pulled the car over to the
side, reached across her and opened the passenger door. She didn’t
move. It was raining harder now.
"Get out." I said.
"Get out." I said.
“What?” she said.
“Get out of the car.”
“Really? You’re sure?”
“Oh yeah.”
She slid out into the cold, dirty, New England rain, and I drove away. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, she was still there, standing on the corner. She already had her thumb out.
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