Starting off with some interesting reading: to get a good overview of the frightening future that is opening up before all of us, do your mind a favour and take the time to read The Ghost of Orwell is upon Us. Or if you don’t want to face up to reality, you could always go watch a short film clip of a cute little dog with sleeping sickness — watch (and I’m not making this up) Rusty the Narcoleptic Daschhund.
Then, as usual, the fascist dictator in the country alongside us, who is being given a free ride by our own overfed politicians, made the British papers again — read Mugabe Plans to Starve Voters into Submission.
Here’s good news for those who like to believe the government fiction of 9/11 — and specifically those supposed cellphone calls made from the hijacked airplanes. Phone companies have announced recently that “soon” they will have the technology to allow for cellphone calls to be made from airplanes. Read 9/11 and Cellphones.
Ever drank so much that you’ve passed out, and friends have taken your photograph in all your drooling, unconscious glory? (Although you may not have even known your picture was being taken.) Now there’s a comforting thought. To browse through a gallery of pix of unconscious people — or to see if you happen to be one of them — go look at Shamings. And for more pix — this time a follow-up to last week’s reported surprise-train-party in the United Kingdom — go look at Space Hijackers.
The UFO fans and buffs among you will recall the fairly detailed description given by Roswell UFO crash witnesses of a light, “tinfoil-like” metal that was scattered around, which could not be torn, yet when it was crumpled up by hand, it would regain its shape. Fifty years on, we seem to have discovered how to create this. Read and look at the pictures of Morphing Metal. For more of the “truth is stranger than …” stuff, read Courthouse Camera Catches Ghost.
The reptiles of the United States Republican Party will be gathering soon for their national convention, and all hell is likely to break loose — but the quieter (and odder) forms of protest will be around as well. How does an internet-linked bicycle that spray-paints anti-Bush slogans on to pavements sound? Go consider the fun to be had from Bikes against Bush.
The other gathering that is getting publicity at the moment is the commercial venture known as “the Olympics” — read The Olympics Are a Terrorist’s Dream. It doesn’t make things any safer — given the possible 9/11 connections and the recent passport fraud cases involving Israel’s Mossad — to notice that Mossad Is “Helping” with Olympic Security.
So how many cards with magnetic strips are you carrying around in your pocket? Many shops routinely hand out “club” cards of one sort or another, never mind the standard credit and ATM cards. Have you ever wondered exactly what information those cards contain about you? For a handy little gizmo you can assemble yourself, in order to find out exactly what data you are carrying around unknown to you, go browse through the slightly geeky Stripe Snoop.
If you go down in the woods today, you had better not be a teddy bear. Look at this odd site that is dedicated to killing off teddy bears in a variety of ways, some of them pretty spectacular. Why? Who knows, but go stare at the chaos of Ready Teddy Death!.
Or for real animals, try a recent news headline to make you blink: Blazing Bunny Burns Cricket Club.
Need to see political correctness gone mad? Take a look at Rap Lyrics Translated.
When good ideas not only go bad, but start hanging around on street corners and then go head to head with equally good political thoughts, you end up with Mecca Cola.
And for more rampant capitalism gone nasty, KFC has been trying to do damage control (as if that’s possible) following the release of a home video showing KFC chickens being stamped on, kicked and thrown against walls. Go read the news item and think twice before buying into the KFC advertising. Video of KFC Chickens Being Abused.
Staying with KFC for a moment, there are many chicken places that aren’t KFC, but would clearly like to be. Browse this page of various “fried chicken” shops doing their best to be mistaken for the big franchise at Bad Gas.
For all of you namby-pamby vegetarians like me, do yourself a favour and look through the latest news items involving animals in a variety of fields. There are many news stories available that don’t really get the attention they deserve. Read Animal Alerts.
And here’s a story you won’t have seen on local media, given the huge amounts of money that the “cereal” manufacturers pay to advertise their pseudo-laxatives to the public. Read Denmark Bans ‘Toxic’ Kellogg Cereals.
Sticking with the laxative theme, the American occupation of Iraq continues in the US’s attempt to turn that country into what is effectively just another colony, to be pillaged and sacked under the control of hand-picked stooges. Despite all the public-relations stories, for a glimpse at the reality on the ground read Fables of the Reconstruction. And I spotted this short but interesting press release titled Slow-Motion Holocaust in the Congo.
You probably don’t know too much about Venezuela, but the most important thing to know is that it is the third-largest supplier of oil to the US. So it joins the long list of countries being subverted, terrorised and overthrown in order to secure current and future US oil supplies in this final period of peak oil in human history. (There’s a very interesting documentary demonstrating what happened in Venezuela, called Chavez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised — keep your eyes open for it). The point of this is the article Venezuela Gets the Florida Treatment.
One needs to realise, though, that not all of a country’s people follow their leaders. In the US, there is a growing protest movement, not seen since the days of Vietnam and the skull-cracking chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention. But here at the edge of the empire, all we know and see mostly is the bland corporate-acceptable face of commercial US imperialism — so one can be fooled into lumping “all” Americans in the same boat. But this isn’t the case. To see some films showing the rising protest movement, browse through Flux View. And there are more films to watch at Kein.
Finally, for the usual total lapse in good taste. What’s better than porn? You guessed it — an online “pornoliser” that takes any normal, decent webpage and turns it into a happily foul porno-language version that the owners would not like. First off, the raw page where you can input your own URL and watch it get turned into something deliciously evil. Try The Pornolizer!. Next, as a frightening act of treason in action, see what happens to the Mail & Guardian Online‘s front page (and be warned, there are rude words) when you Pornolise the Mail & Guardian.
Then in some ways, the African National Congress homepage was made almost interesting and readable for the first time — take a look at ANC Pornolized.
Until the next time, if KFC doesn’t get me.