Sitting on the Fence

Last weeks news:

Last Monday a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated his bomb within a crowded shopping mall in Israel in the first attack of its kind for a year. A second attacker, wounded in the initial blast, was shot on the scene by a police officer.

"I saw he was alive, his hand was twitching, " The officer said. "He raised it again to try and activate the bomb, so I shot four bullets into his head and neutralized him."

and neutralized him.

To me, this the biggest case of 'extraneous information' since Niall Bunyan told me about how his unprecedented case of ring sting gave him a most unpleasant sensation of stinging ring. How's the terminology too. Neutralized. I was confused for a minute there, because I thought he was shooting four sprays of deodorant into an exceptionally smelly armpit problem.

Furthermore, and I can only speak for myself here, but when I'm in the market for neutralizing people, I always shoot them an even four times in the melon. You just never know when a suicide bomb blasted, three shot head wound mo fo is going to re-incarnate and start eating peoples brains. Don't laugh funny guy I've seen it happen.

One of these kids is doin his own thing..

The headlines that the MSN 'news' channel promotes each day are without exception shallow, vain, depressing, and regularly hilarious; mostly due to their having a complete lack of self-awareness. You'll see what I mean, quite often they'll print a final headline that manages to neatly insult the intelligence of the previous two, but you can tell it's unintentional. It's a bit like the family dog who doesn't quite get why everyone finds his conical neck brace so hysterical, but appreciates all the attention he's getting regardless. You can't blame him -- Understanding conical neck brace humour really is some next-level shit.

I've been saving a few of the better MSN headlines for a while now, and in lieu of finding a final one I've decided to run a bit of a competition, which we'll call the Amazing Stumblor Story Headline Omission Game for the purposes of continuity. I assume the acronym is non-offensive, I really don't have the time to check. I'm a busy guy.

The rules couldn't be simpler: alls you have to do is guess which of the following headlines have been concocted out of the oozy depths of my subconscious (one per game), and you will win an incredible prize!

Said prize remaining undisclosed due to the fact that it totally exists, ok?

Easy one to start with:

Cry Me a River

Blackwater Worldwide, the hapless mercenary outfit responsible for assisting the American war effort in Iraq made headlines again yesterday for, you guessed it, all the wrong reasons. You might remember their number one hit: 'I shot the Sheriff, but I didn't shoot those 17 innocent Iraqi Civilians'? Nah, me neither.

Anyway, this time Blackwater security personnel released a chemical known as CS, a substance similar to tear gas, from a hovering helicopter and nearby armored vehicle directly into a crowded Baghdad intersection because, and get this..

..the road was busy and they wanted to bypass a traffic jam.

Well why not? CS gas has only been banned by the International Convention of Chemical Weapons, who as we all know are just a bunch of pen pushing nerdburgers. I bet they don't even inhale. Pussies.

American army personal at a nearby checkpoint were also heavily affected by the gas. Afterwards the senior officer at the scene was quoted as saying:


"This was decidedly uncool and very, very dangerous."


Hold on. Five-o said freeze. Did I read that right?


"This was decidedly uncool and blah blah.."


Decidedly uncool?

Huh. Let me just run a few idle thoughts by you.

Frangipani bumper stickers
Croc Sandals
Being the only kid who forgot it was muck up day
Bike riding outfits
Farts in elevators
Engelbert Humperdinck

These are all things that strike me as being 'decidedly uncool'.

Now I could be yelling Marco at the wrong end of the pool here, but the use of a banned toxic chemical during a peaceful day in the middle of a civilian area to clear a traffic jam strikes me as.. oh I dunno... like an incredibly fucking reckless act of moronic violence?

Like I said though, I can be pretty clueless when it comes to what the kids find cool. I once wore a hat with a little propeller on the top of it because I was thought that sooner or later, I'd get up enough speed to take off. I didn't of course. Looking back, I'm just pleased that I wasn't relying on it in the event of a tear gas emergency.

I guess the lesson to be learned from all of this is that if you work near the Blackwater offices, make damn sure you car pool with them on the way to work. You certainly don't want to be caught being the red-faced blubbering guy on the street cursing the manufacturers of his propeller hat for carrying misleading advertising.

Trust me.

Totally Swede

They're "just breasts"!

This is the rallying cry of a network of women who have launched a campaign for the right to bathe topless at Sweden's swimming pools.

In a preliminary action in the middle of last month, seven members of the Bara Bröst network (literally translates both as 'Bare Breasts' and 'Just Breasts') hopped into a pool in Malmö wearing only bikini bottoms. Before long, they were whistled to the side and asked to leave.

"We want our breasts to be as 'normal' and desexualized as men's, so that we too can pull off our shirts at football matches," spokeswomen Astrid Hellroth och Liv Ambjörnsson told Ottar, a magazine published by the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education.

..

http://www.thelocal.se/9078/20071112/

I am behind these women 100%. If I'd have known that feminism involved chicks getting their kit off, I would have paid a lot more attention during that women's studies course I took last year, you know, rather than trying to mack onto the totally hot lecturer after class.

Ps. I'm moving to Sweden.

Politics. Show Business For Ugly People.

And there's no business like it, with the divisional lines between reality and fiction further being blurred this week by the American Supreme Court:

Not that they need encouragement, but politicians have been given the green light to lie about their opponents by the Washington state Supreme Court.

More than a dozen states have laws that make it illegal to say false things about political candidates. The laws are, in practice, aspirational. By a 5-to-4 vote Thursday, the Supreme Court in Washington state added that the law in the state was also unconstitutional.

...

[The International Herald Tribune]

Politicians begun exploiting the new ruling immediately, although no one seemed to be able to tell the difference.

I would just like to point out that although the government of a country should always be seen as a source of moral guidance, I am loathe to emulate my political contemporaries in this instance. If there's one thing that my years as a cage fighter in Brazil taught me, its to always be honest about your opponents.



Title quote taken from Jay Leno.

Anabolic Rhetoric

The two day White House environmental 'summit' concluded today with President George W. Bush outlining his plan to achieve what his environmental minister James Connaughton describes as the 'aspirational' goal of reducing greenhouse gas emisions.

When asked to clarify exactly what was meant by this definition, Bush declined, saying that while he aspired to answer the question directed at him, in reality he had no intention of actually doing so.