Monday's Maddening Meme 7.20.15

I came across this meme on Facebook and it immediately made me cringe, so I thought I’d explain why it’s so damn stupid.

Continue reading “Monday's Maddening Meme 7.20.15”

Monday's Maddening Meme 7.20.15
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Monday’s Maddening Meme 7.20.15

I came across this meme on Facebook and it immediately made me cringe, so I thought I’d explain why it’s so damn stupid.

Continue reading “Monday’s Maddening Meme 7.20.15”

Monday’s Maddening Meme 7.20.15

The Weird, the wacky, and the bizarre 6.17.15

Stray herd of goats in Savannah caught with Cheetos

When I first read this headline, my gast was flabbered. My mind conjured up images of a group of anthropomorphic goats sitting around a dining room table gloating gleefully at how they’d stolen another batch of Cheetos and gotten away with it. Then a SWAT team busts into their home and captures them red errr orange handed. While loading the goats into the paddy wagon, the law enforcement officials are heard saying ‘Baaaaaaaaad goats’.  Aaaaaaaaaaaanyways, the real story isn’t quite that bizarre, but it’s still amusing:

Five goats found wandering in the Savannah area will soon be on their way to a loving home.

Savannah-Chatham Metro Police say they found the livestock standing in the road of 52nd and Exchange Street on Monday.

With the help of animal control — and some Cheetos — they were able to safely capture the goats.

A patrol officer had found the animals impeding traffic as they wandered along the city’s streets, drawing a crowd of amused bystanders.

One juvenile goat was captured in a fenced-in yard, but the other five proved difficult to corral – at least until a spectator gave his bag of Cheetos to an officer to use as bait.

The snack food Cheetos was used to lure the goats in and grab them, so they could find a new home.

Animal Control supervisor Christina Sutherin says there was no problem finding someone who wants to adopt the goats.

“The community has had a wonderful outpouring of concern for the goats well-being. We do have an approved adopter. They’re all going to go to one individual and location. We have secondary applications just in case that falls through, but there is a happy ending for them.”

Sutherin told WSAV-TV the goats could not be returned to the owner, because the individual already has multiple violations in reference to livestock within city limits.

Continue reading “The Weird, the wacky, and the bizarre 6.17.15”

The Weird, the wacky, and the bizarre 6.17.15

Oh brother

Thanks to one of the readers of this blog, I’ve discovered that the images on the post ‘My furry four legged companions‘ are borked (sigh…I’m sure that’s not the only post I’ve made with that problem). For those interested in seeing pics of my cats, here’s one of Cassie, one of Kayta before she lost weight, and one of Kayta after she lost weight. As for the dogs, here’s an awesome pic of Krystal, and here’s one of Sham (who is really my roommates’ dog, but I care for him like he’s mine).

Oh brother

Pop Culture Link Round Up 2.12.15

Chris Banner is a fan of Batman. That’s actually an understatement. ‘Obsessed with Batman’ is a better description of him (and I don’t mean this in a bad way; obsessions are not inherently bad, and Banner is harming no one with his).

You could call Chris Banner’s love of Batman a true passion. Well, it’s actually more of an obsession.

“I’ve got a problem,” he confessed. “Everything I have is a bat. All my tractors have bats; my trucks, bats. Socks, underwear, you name it. I’m bat.

From the boots to the bat-cave and a custom-built Batmobile, Banner has made his being Batman his third job. He even patrols his hometown of Valley Center, San Diego, as the Caped Crusader.

His ride, he built from scratch, stripping down a 1947 Ford Galaxy and rearranging its engine and radiator. The work took about a year to complete, and it includes a camera to help him back up, a custom-made dashboard, lights and a smoke machine.

“It’s all made of fiber glass,” Banner told NBC 7 Wednesday. “It’s 22-feet long, and it’s one heck of a machine to drive, especially when you’re Batman.”

The batty fanatic started collecting his favorite superhero’s gear after he got his first Robin costume at age 7. Now, he’s turned his love toward a good cause. He produces live Batman shows about 40 times a year, sometimes for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

“You know some of these kids only have so much time left, and to put a smile on their face, it makes them happy. It’s worth it to me,” he said. “Makes that whole day better so hopefully I got to a good place.”

Bringing light to the lives of children? That’s a really awesome thing for him to do. I tip my hat to you good sir.

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By way of This is Colossal, here are some images of some amazingly beautiful hand-made resin bangles infused with bark, leaves, flowers, plants and shells. These bangles and more are available for purchase at Faerie and Etsy.

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Oooh, a new album from Florence and the Machine will be available on June 2. Here’s a video of the first single, ‘What Kind of Man’ (warning, the video is NSFW):

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You may have been miffed by the palpable lack of a juicy Sophia-based plot in the second season of Orange Is the New Black, but fear not: OITNB is no longer the only TV series on which actress/trans activist Laverne Cox will appear. It’s just been announced that she’ll be co-starring as Cameron Wirth, a transgender attorney, in CBS’ next legal drama, Doubt (no relation to nuns). The role was allegedly written specifically for her. Wirth is described in The Hollywood Reporter as being as “competitive as she is compassionate. She’s fierce, funny and the fact that she’s experienced injustice first hand makes her fight all the harder for her clients.” Cox will appear alongside a yet-unannounced star, who’ll lead the show with her title-influencing doubts: this main character is another attorney who’s romantically involved with a client being charged for an act of brutality. The script will be penned by Grey’s Anatomy writers Tony Phelan and Joan Rater.

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How the hell did Patrick Bertoletti consume 444 wings in 30 minutes?! Seriously, where did he put all that food? I love wings as much as the next guy, but after about 15 wings, I’m full. Does he have a few extra stomachs?

If your planning on serving wings at your Super Bowl party on Sunday, don’t invite Patrick Bertoletti. We have a feeling he won’t be craving wings anytime soon. The Chicagoan, known by his competitive eating stage name as “Deep Dish” gobbled up 444 chicken wings in 30 minutes this afternoon at the 23rd annual Wing Bowl in Philadelphia. By doing so Bertoletti smashed the previous record of 363 wings set last year and barely edged out his rival (and prior record-holder) Molly Schuyler, who came in with 440 wings.

About 20,000 people gathered at Wells Fargo Arena to watch contestants duke it out in the grand battle to be the one true supreme wing champion. “I have the sweats but I feel a lot better because I know I don’t have to eat any more chicken wings,” Bertoletti exclaimed after his victory. In the last two minutes alone, Bertoletti consumed 50 wings by ripping apart the wings and stuffing the meat into his mouth. Bertoletti was still chewing for two minutes after the contest ended.

For that matter, how did Schulyer consume 440 wings?

Daaaaaaaaaamn!

Pop Culture Link Round Up 2.12.15

How exactly does this work?

Shortly after my sixteenth birthday (in December 1991), I began working at a pizza buffet restaurant in Huntsville, Alabama. Beginning as a dishwasher, I made it up to the position of assistant manager (like He-Man, I had the power! Bwahahahaha!). I enjoyed working with most of my fellow employees while I worked there and developed friendly relationships with many of them. As a result, when I began struggling with my sexuality, and most especially when I came out of the closet, I shared my thoughts with several people I worked with. How could I not? I was friends with several of them and this was an important subject.  Wow. That sounds so run-of-the mill. It wasn’t just an important subject. It was something that shaped my life in ways that I didn’t understand back then. Hell, I didn’t even have the language to describe my thoughts and feelings–not in the way I do now, 23 years later. In any case, because of how I was struggling with my sexuality, and because of how you can’t just turn these thoughts off, I brought these emotional concerns to work.

Fast-forward to January of 2010 and one of the most horrible experiences of my life. I’d just lost my best friend, Micah Williamson. On January 7, 2010, I came home and discovered his lifeless body in his bedroom. It was literally the worst day of my life. Typing this out right now is making me well up in tears. We weren’t just best friends. If I were inclined to believe in silly woo or religious bullshit, I’d say that we were soul mates. But I’m not, so I’ll just say that we were as close as two people could be without being in an intimate relationship. His death devastated me and continues to affect me to this day. I took a week off from work (I was working at the Fish House in Pensacola, FL), bc really, I was a near-incoherent mess in the days following his death. I didn’t eat. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t sleep. All I could do was cry. How do you turn that off? I knew popular wisdom said that I was supposed to turn off all that emotional turmoil when I went to work again. And yet, when I returned to work a week later, everything was still raw. I remember needing to find a private spot to cry a few times during my first shift back at work. I couldn’t turn off the emotions. I couldn’t leave them at the door, as I’d heard so many times that you’re supposed to do in the workplace.

I still don’t know how to do that.

How do you just turn off your emotions or block out the pain you’re going through? What if it’s the hospitalization of a loved one or an impending surgery that you’re dreading? What if it’s the thought that your car is going to be repossessed for failure to make your monthly payments or you’re coping with your house having burnt down?

All of this is fresh in my mind because of a recent conversation between a co-worker, D, and myself. D, along with her 3 children, was living with her sister and they found out that they had to move out by the end of February because her sister’s lease was up and she was planning on moving. Unfortunately, for reasons that I don’t completely recall, D said her sister got the date wrong. Instead of the end of February, the lease was up the second week of February, and D currently has no options. She has no place to move to. No place to live at. With three kids that she loves dearly.

Shortly before the conversation I had with D, I noticed that she and our General Manager were having a discussion. They were not in a private area talking; nonetheless, I didn’t attempt to listen in on what they were talking about. It didn’t seem like a casual conversation. In fact, it seemed like D was being chastised for something. That’s speculation on my part of course, as I don’t know what they were talking about. But when I thought about their talk in the context of what D told me about losing her home, I began to wonder: was our GM telling her she needed to leave her personal problems at home?

That’s the genesis of this post.

I’ve heard so many times that when you’re at work you are supposed to leave your personal problems at home. But no one ever tells you HOW that is supposed to work. No one says “these are the steps you take to ensure that when you are at work, your personal problems do not affect you”. I’m not entirely certain that following these “words of wisdom” is even doable.

How do you leave your problems at home when you’re about to be evicted and have no place to stay?

How do you leave your concerns at the door when you’ve lost your best friend?

“Leave your problems at the door”–how is this accomplished when you’re struggling to deal with your sexuality?

23 years after I entered the workforce, and I still don’t have an answer to this question. I’m beginning to suspect there isn’t one. If anyone out there can explain to me how this is supposed to work, I’m all ears.

How exactly does this work?

The weird, wacky, and bizarre (NSFW)

(Please note the use of the Oxford comma in the title of this post. Oxford comma FTW!)

A deer hunter in Wisconsin found out the hard way that deer don’t like being hunted. The 72-year-old man was hunting with family members when he shot and wounded a deer with a crossbow. What happened next was quite…interesting:

According to the Fond du Lac Reporterthe man was out hunting with some family members on a trail near the town of Taycheedah, when he shot and wounded a doe with a crossbow. It seems the deer was still mobile enough to get away after being shot, and the hunter was unable to find her.

Fond du Lac Sheriff’s officer Jeff Bonack says that the hunter went back later to try and track the deer, when he received what was, no doubt, the surprise of his life. Bonack describes what happened.

Apparently the man was going through some thick brush and the deer leaped out and went after him. The doe struck him in the leg with her head.

The man was taken to St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac on Friday evening. There is no word on his condition. Bonack says, “I’m guessing the deer got away.”

Having read many a response by gundamentalists in the wake of various shooting tragedies over the years, I think I know the proper response to this story. The only way to stop a bad guy with a crossbow is to…

Arm all deer!

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 Mother sees stars

…on the back of a school bus and thinks they are a sign of Satan.

One Mid-South, Memphis, Tennessee mother is all in a tizzy about stars in the taillights of a school bus. She considers them signs of Satan.

As if public schools don’t have enough to worry about, am I right?

Robyn Wilkins was so worked up over the “signs of the devil” that she made sure to take a picture of the bus’ evil taillights when it was stopped in Cordova. She stated:

Anyone who fears a God, if not God and Jesus Christ, should be outraged.

According to Wilkins, any good Christian should be gnashing their teeth with outrage over the stars. After all, how could the school system allow such a thing? Pentagrams on school buses? Forget that they are also harmless five-pointed stars as depicted on the American flag, of all things. No, these stars are EVIL because they’re upside down. Uprights stars are patriotic and should be saluted, pledged to at the beginning of each school day, but flip them upside down and place them on the taillights of a school bus transporting those kids to school and suddenly they are riding in Satan’s sled to fire and brimstone. It’s blasphemy!

The absurdity of it all doesn’t stop there, though – parents are also fighting it out online over social media. Some claim the taillights are hilariously subliminal messages from God’s fallen angel, while others realistically dismiss it as a nothing – a design without intention, malice, or evil symbolic significance.

None of the concerned parents need worry about anything. By the time they are school-aged, most children have already gone through enough religious indoctrination to ward off the demonic power of schoolbus taillights.

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The moon.

If it was a star, life as we know it wouldn’t exist.

If it was a planet, don’t you think we’d have learned that along with Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto? 9 planets ring a bell?

Not for two QVC hosts:

Recently, if you happened to surf passed the QVC home shopping network, you may have been treated not to discount clothing lines or low, low prices for cookware, but instead two people, both seemingly average, adult humans, yelling at each other about whether the Moon is a “planet” or a “star.”

While showing off a series of floral patterned cardigans, QVC’s Shawn Killinger inexplicably tells her guest, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, that one of his products looks like “what the Earth looks like when you’re a bazillion miles away from the planet Moon.”

At first you may charitably assume that Killinger simply misspoke, but rather than correct herself, she digs deeper by asking Mizrahi “Isn’t the moon a star?”

Mizrahi disagrees. “No, the moon is a planet, darling.”

They start to squabble, before Killinger demands to know if the sun is a star. Mizrahi: “I don’t know what the sun is. We don’t know what the sun is.”

We do. The sun is a star.

At this point, with the camera still awkwardly focusing on a blouse that nobody is paying attention to, the set has devolved into Mizrahi, Killinger, and the combined efforts of the QVC staff scrambling to find out what the moon is.

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Designer Rick Owens’ new collection lets you rock out with your cock out

In what looks like a bid to take street harassment to a whole new level, designer Rick Owens has a new collection out–one that involves drapey cloaks and penii.  See for yourself:

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Kentucky lawmaker thinks he is above the law, cites archaic 1891 law to justify driving drunk

[Ke]ntucky state Sen. Brandon Smith’s (R) lawyer argued in court on Wednesday that he should not be charged with driving under the influence because of a provision in the state constitution, WKYT-TV reported.

Smith was arrested on Jan. 6, the opening day of the legislature, and charged with speeding and a DUI after allegedly blowing a .088 on a preliminary breath test. He was also reportedly caught driving at 65 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone.

But attorney Bill Johnson filed a motion to drop the charges saying that, according to Section 43 of the state constitution,Smith should not have been arrested in the first place.

“The members of the General Assembly shall, in all cases except treason, felony, breach or surety of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance on the sessions of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House they shall not be questioned in any other place,” the section reads.

Johnson told the Associated Press that the provision was added to state law in 1891 to “keep legislators from being bothered by people who would arrest them during sessions.”

As the Frankfort State-Journal reported,authorities said that Smith refused to take an official breath test after being taken to jail.

However, Johnson said that his client was “told that he had ‘refused’” after trying to reach him on the jail’s phone for 15 minutes and failing because the phone did not work.

Under state law, Smith’s driver’s license would be revoked if he refused to take a test. But Johnson requested that Smith keep his license until a decision is reached on his motion to dismiss the charges. The senator’s next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 12.

Ah, the laws only apply to the plebes.  Gotcha.

The weird, wacky, and bizarre (NSFW)

Pop Culture Link Round Up 1.14.15

Sylvester Stallone is returning to ‘Rocky’ and ‘Rambo’

Sylvester Stallone has revealed his upcoming slate of projects, beginning with traveling to Philadelphia to begin filming the Rocky spinoff Creed.

The Expendables star tweeted about his plans for Creed, as well as potentially confirmed the rumored title for Rambo 5, aka Last Blood: Rambo (or Rambo: Last Blood, as was reported recently).

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 May it rest in peace-giant gummi bear slain by one-two punch of liquid nitrogen and shotgun blast (2:16 video)

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Hi-Def images of ‘Pillars of Creation

In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope took a photo of columns of celestial dust and gas in the Eagle Nebula. Originating 6,500 light-years from Earth, these columns, known as the ‘Pillars of Creation’, became one of NASA’s most iconic images. The Pillars of Creation said “cheese” once more in 2009, when the Hubble, using a newly installed high-definition camera, took another image. An image recently released by NASA:

Click on the link to see a more detailed image (as well as an infrared one).

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 The Great White Crib

Staten Island, New York-based Joseph Reginella, a sculptor and toy designer at Toxic Teddies, has created an amazing Jaws-themed crib for his infant nephew that makes it look like the little boy is on a boat and being attacked by a shark. Reginella’s crib design was based off of a drawing by Bob Hough. More photos of the fierce baby bed are available to view on Facebook.

(more images of this killer crib at the link)

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 Front-loading washing machine converted into fully functional aquarium

Dean Eaton (a.k.a. lava_lump), the owner of an appliance sales, service, and parts business in Rochester, NY, recently took on the challenge of converting a front-loading washing machine into a fully functioning, well-lit aquarium to house several GloFish. Working with a friend, he stripped and cleaned the washer, installed LED lights, and suspended a tank inside the machine. Viewed through the convex surface of the washer door, the magnified interior presents a cool look at an aquarium lit up by color-changing LEDs and fluorescent fish.

Overall, the project took about 50 hours of work and less than $400 to buy all of the supplies and equipment. Not bad for an incredibly unique, one-of-a-kind aquarium! The DIY fish tank now sits in the showroom at Rochester Appliance, where it attracts its fair share of attention and awe from customers and their kids.

To learn more about the building process and the final product, check out Eaton’s posts on Imgur and Rochester Appliance’s blog.

(more images at the link)

Pop Culture Link Round Up 1.14.15

Le Chat Noir is displeased (video)

A new four-legged addition to the household has made famous Internet cat Henri le Chat Noir quite unhappy:

I don’t know who Henri’s owner is, but xe may want to keep an eye on that dog. There’s no telling what Henri is teaching it (one of the lessons has got to be ‘Lounging on laptops’).

(via Neatorama)

Le Chat Noir is displeased (video)

Guess the skeleton

South Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee has created a series of sculptures using wire, resin, aluminum sticks, and paint. These works of art represent the skeletons of various fictional characters.  Can you figure out what highly animated fictional character each skeleton belongs to (without cheating)*?

These sculptures (and more) were featured as part of the “Animatus” exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland in the summer of 2008.

*The answers can be found here.

Guess the skeleton