1. this is for serious.

2. really though, I’m not kidding, the Guardian says so.

3. nothing I can say or show you could possibly adequately invoke the sheer terror that this event must have inflicted on the swiss.

here is the article:

Giant dog turd wreaks havoc at Swiss museum

A giant inflatable dog turd created by the American artist Paul McCarthy was blown from its moorings at a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a window before landing in the grounds of a children’s home.

The exhibit, entitled Complex Shit, is the size of a house. It has a safety system that is supposed to deflate it in bad weather, but it did not work on this occasion.

Juri Steiner, the director of the Paul Klee centre, in Berne, told AFP that a sudden gust of wind carried it 200 metres before it fell to the ground, breaking a window of the children’s home. The accident happened on July 31, but the details only emerged yesterday.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece (pictured here) would be put back on display.

The installation is part of an exhibition called East of Eden: A Garden Show, which features sound sculptures in trees and a football ground without goalposts. The exhibition opened in May and is due to run until October.

The centre’s website describes the show as containing “interweaving, diverse, not to say conflictive emphases and a broad spectrum of items to form a dynamic exchange of parallel and self-eclipsing spatial and temporal zones”.

Tuesday August 12 2008 11:49 BST

I subscribe to a 3.98 gaflillion (approx) rss feeds.

While catching up, I noticed a link on we-make-money-not-art’s feed to a wired artcle called “a nation of guinea pigs” - which, oh my god, promised to be the most amazing article ever written - A whole nation?! full of guinea pigs?! where? what are their primary exports? is the kinship system lineal or dravidian? etcetera.

and anyway.

the article was obviously not about that, at all*.

but to assuage my intense disappointment, I made the following:

that is all.

*apparently drug companies are exploiting corrupt south asian health regulations to perform questionably ethical clinical trials on lots and lots of resource-deprived people. which is awful. and not to be made fun of.

All I’m saying is, I sincerely doubt that this enraged burro was unprovoked… (my favorite part: “Around here, if someone commits a crime they are jailed,” Gomez said — “no matter who they are.”)

Donkey jailed for ornery
behavior

1 day ago - associated press

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (AP) — A donkey is doing time in southern Mexico for assault and battery.

The animal was locked up at a local jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances after it bit and kicked two men near a ranch in Chiapas state, police said Monday.

Officer Sinar Gomez said the donkey will remain behind bars until its owner agrees to pay the men’s medical bills.

“Around here, if someone commits a crime they are jailed,” Gomez said — “no matter who they are.”

The owner, Mauro Gutierrez, told The Associated Press he would try to reach a friendly arrangement to pay the men’s bills, estimated at US$420 (euro270).

The victims said the donkey bit Genaro Vazquez, 63, in the chest on Sunday and then kicked 52-year-old Andres Hernandez as he tried to come to the rescue, fracturing his ankle.

“All of a sudden, the animal was on top of us like it was rabid,” Hernandez said.

Police said it took a half-dozen men to control the enraged burro.

Chiapas police have thrown animals in the slammer before, including a bull that devoured corn crops and destroyed two wooden vending stands in March.

In 2006, a dog was locked up for 12 days after biting someone. His owners were fined US$18.

NOTE: I was very very close to calling this post “feather-man in the netherlands”.

It seems as though a bird-person has built a huge barnacle-looking nest on the side of an apartment building in the netherlands…

I would tell you more, but the website is in some sort of bizarre unintelligible ‘bird-person’ language:

found here.

I have just now noticed that Helen Q. ReadySteadyGo!-pants, the co-founder of my embroidery club and quite possibly the smartest person with whom I have ever shared french toast, has tagged me to continue a “6 unimportant things about you” blog-meme-a-mabob. Her response is delightful (also her blog is my pretty much my favorite ever).

here’re my 6 useless me-facts:

1) I can entertain myself for hours and hours by adding my own 3rd person backing vocals to songs sung in the 1st person, on the radio.

For example:

Meatloaf: I would do anything for love…
Me in a high falsetto: he would do anything for love…
Meatloaf: but I won’t do that…
Me, again: oh no he won’t!

ad nauseum.

(’hifi’ by artist chris silas neal)

2) I will go to great lengths to remove the white umbilical-cord-looking thing (called “chalazae“, see #4 & 13 in diagram below) from eggs before I bake with them. If I remove too much of the clean egg white in the process, I will crack another egg and replace the removed amount so that I don’t destroy the recipe. I know it’s harmless and tasteless and that technically its a sign of the eggs freshness, but it is not my fault that it is also the Grossest Thing Ever.

3) I have a small collection of celebrity hand-turkeys.

• Frank Black (from the pixies) - collected by me at an album signing at a barnes and noble.
• John Entwistle (bassist of The Who) - collected by my crosscountry-roadtrip-#1 friend, christian.
• Question Mark (of ? and the Mysterians) - collected for me at this year’s ponderosa stomp by my dear friend nick.

4) As a child, I thought the small chicken pox scar in the center of my forehead was where my unicorn-horn used to be.

5) I sometimes participate in harmless fibbery, en masse. Here are a sampling of untruths I have helped spread:

• The pasta-serving-spoon/fork-thing is technically called a “Supple Gaga”.
• The speed limit on Minnesota highways is relative and determined by momentum - the higher the mass of your vehicle, the slower you are allowed to drive. Hence motorcycles can go 100 mph while 18-wheelers must go 35.
• Regis Philbin invented the choco-taco.
• I have a silent ‘3′ in the middle of my name: “mere3dith”.

6) Ever since 9/11, I have a cnn.com-compulsion. I was in college at the time and we did not have a television in our campus-apartment. So to get the most updated info about the attacks, I clicked the browser refresh button on cnn.com over and over. And now, out of a sort of ptsd-meets-ocd habit, I still check cnn.com randomly and often. This explains why I am often the first to hear about important breaking cnn.com-worthy headlines, for instance on today’s homepage: “don’t adjust monitor: puppy IS green“.

I am supposed to get 6 others to do the same, like an evil chain letter, but how about some of you post your 6-unimportant-things in the comments? or not, either way.

Apparently, France is trying to send the semicolon the way of the dodo. This Guardian article offers both sides of the ancient punctuation debate. Read the whole article; it’s totally worth it.

Jeanette Winterson: PRO-semicolon

“I like them - they are a three-quarter beat to the half and full beats of commas and full stops. Prose has its own musicality, and the more notation the better. I like dashes, double-dashes, comashes and double comashes just as much. The colon is an umlaut waiting to jump; the colon dash is teasingly precipitous.”

Richard Hugo: ANTI-semicolon

“If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons.”

Gertrude Stein: Could care less

“I use it. I’ve no feelings about it - it’s just there. People actually get worked up about that kind of shite, do they? I don’t fucking believe it. They should get a fucking life or a proper job. They’ve got too much time on their hands, to think about nonsense.”

*cough*

My question for France: Ok, so you don’t like it in sentences… whatever. But how do you expect The Internet to express itself properly with out ; ) ?

In honor of NSTGD’s 1st Bloggiversary today (first post 4/4/07), I will be sharing with you a random sampling of totally true facts* about the reclusive and mysterious wolverine species.

#1. The wolverine is the state animal of Michigan.

#2. Their saliva is an exotic aphrodisiac.

#3. Wolverines are not badgers.

#4. Wolverines cannot eat peas using a knife.

#5. Wolverines can not, contrary to popular opinion, easily be portrayed by british actors.

#6. Former President Gerald Ford was the Michigan football team’s MVP in 1934.

#7. Wolverines thumbs are imposing but NOT opposable.

#8: “Wolverines” anagrams to “wore snivel”.
#8a: Also, “loner wives”.

#9. Mating season is in the summer, but the actual implantation of the embryo in the uterus is stayed until early winter, delaying the development of the fetus.

#10. The title part in “Benji” was originally intended to be played by a wolverine, but unfortunately their salary requirements were beyond the budget of the film.

#11: If a wolverine spots its shadow, that means six more weeks of hiding from wolverines.

#13: Wolverines fear the number 12.

#14. There are 3 sub-species of wolverine: the common Grey Wolverine, the Domesticated Wolverine and the endangered Diamond-clawed Wolverine.

#15: Two out of three dentists prefer not to be mauled by wolverines.

#16: The “secret” ingredient in Aunt Louise’s “wolverine stew” is cinnamon.

#17: Wolverines know how many roads a man must walk down.

#18: Wolverine mythology is exactly like Greek mythology, except Charon does not use a ferry to transport souls across the Styx. He uses a surfboard.

#19: They do not like Pina Coladas. They do not like getting caught in the rain.

#20: Wolverine ate my baby.

#21: It only took 38 wolverines and 37 typewriters to recreate all the works of Shakespeare. (Wolverine #15 used a Blackberry.)

#22: Wolverines hold their own Scrabble National Championship, usually at a Denny’s near the Human version. The letter V has been banned from regulation play, for reasons unknown.

#23: When Wolverines take quizzes in Cosmo, they almost always circle C, which usually means they’re saucy attention whores.

#24: C.M. Coolidge turned to his infamous “Dogs Playing Poker” paintings when his “Wolverines Playing Texas Hold ‘Em” idea fell through. The Wolverines kept check-raising before the flop, and also they ate his cat.

#25: Wolverines are derided by other office animals for their lack of productivity. They do, however, have all the high scores on Minesweeper.

#26: Wolverines make up 7/8th of the Idaho Supreme Court. The lone remaining member is an Elk carcass that they have been feeding on for a week.

*credit to -j. (NSTGD-Commentus-maximus/friend-extraordinare) and mace (fellow blogger/dumbo octopus fanatic) who both long ago collaborated with me to provide some of the completely factual material listed above.

I’m sorry, this is just too exciting not to share.

Dwarf crime a ‘growing problem’

Thieves are robbing long-distance coaches by sneaking dwarves into the luggage holds in sports bags.

Once inside, they slip out from their hiding places to rifle through the belongings of unsuspecting travellers.

Then they take their loot back to their hiding place and wait to be collected by another gang member when the coach reaches its destination, reports The Sun.

They have stolen thousands of pounds in cash, gems and other valuables in recent months.

Swebus, which ferries thousands of Brits across Sweden, has been among coach firms targeted.

A spokesman said: “We have had reports about several thefts by dwarves on the stretch between Vasteras and Stockholm.

“We’re thinking of installing video cameras.”

A Stockholm Police spokesman said: “We are looking at our records to identify criminals of limited stature.”

If you ask me, which you totally didn’t, your legal-employment options, as a little person, are none too varied (backing up kid rock or starring in dunkin donuts commercials etc) and it’s certainly not their fault that their DNA picked the short straw, so to speak… I say, more power to ‘em.

please allow me to share with you an actual headline, from an actual super-real-totally-and-entirely-nonmadeup news source:

CITY BATTLES GIANT BLOB*

LEWISTON, Maine — A large, mysterious blob has taken over a major sewer line in the city of Lewiston, leaving public works crews stumped as to how to budge it.

According to city officials, the stretch of 12-inch pipe on Main Street backed up on Jan. 13, and the city has been trying unsuccessfully to clear the line ever since.

Deputy Public Services Director Kevin Gagne told News 8 the doughy, 90-foot mass is comprised of grease, flour and rags.

Gagne said the city has chosen to replace the 170-foot line at a cost of between $40,000 and $60,000. Work is expected to begin this week.

shhhhh.. hush now, dearlings, shhhhhhh, there there, I’m frightened too.

*It is possible that I look a few liberties with the original photo.

The news and the interwebs have been all a-flutter with NASA’s release yesterday of the photo below, very clearly showing a humanoid “sasquatchy” thing mid-leisurely-stroll in the desertous wastelands of Mars.

As a no-less-than-thoroughly-enthusiastic fan of both generalized cryptozoology and the elusive sasquatch, as well as a proud collector of sasquatch cinema, my first thoughts were: “OH SWEET MARY H. CHRIST, my prayers have been answered! Bust out the bubbly, there is proof of bigfoot’s existence! and OMG! ALIENS! yay!! no. SUPER yay.”

That is… until I took a closer look at the larger picture - I noticed a familiar face in another mass near the “sasquatch”:

If you look at the photo above it appears obvious that the popular focus on the “sasquatch” is merely a ruse to conceal the fact that, after significant budget cuts in a weakened economy, NASA decided to sell Mars to George Lucas, who subsequently colonized the planet with popular Star Wars creatures.

BUT! as seamless an explanation as that may be, you mustn’t be so easily convinced, my dearlings… NASA also released the following somewhat-zoomed-in photo…

With amateur CSI-viewer talents, super-sleuth-skills and Science ™ in tow, I felt it necessary to zoom in closer, only to discover that, no, it is neither Chewbacca, nor a sasquatch.

It is Teen Wolf.

Yes, David Bowie, there is Life on Mars.

Underneath all that hair, you’re still a dork, Scott.

“Liberté, égalité, butteré” - mr phipps

In a victory for crustacean-sentience-activists everywhere, several dozen death row lobsters liberated themselves from their fishtank shackles, broke out of the supermarket and started heading down the street, narrowly escaping a boiled and buttery future. Oh my starsfish, genius. If only someone had thought to video the lobster exodus.

from speigel online:

Lobsters in Germany took fate into their own claws and broke out of an Asian supermarket. They now face a brighter future in an animal home.

Not all lobsters are so lucky.

Dozens of lobsters destined to be boiled alive made a successful getaway from an Asian supermarket in the German city of Stuttgart in the early hours of Sunday morning, police said.

The clawed crustaceans, some of them up to 15 centimeters long, managed to crawl out of their crates, which had been poorly secured with wire mesh, then scurried across the floor of the supermarket and squeezed through the metal shutters covering the front of the store. The front door had been left open by mistake.

“The breakout was successful,” Katrin Brandeis, spokeswoman for the Stuttgart police, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “Passers by alerted the police at 1:45 a.m. reporting a large number of the animals heading down the street.”

The escape may have saved their lives. “These animals weren’t ever going to be pets,” Brandeis said. “Now they’ve been taken to an animal home. The supermarket hasn’t got in touch with us.”

thank you to the lovely rachelle for fowarding the article.

from the UK’s Telegraph, “How men could use their testicles to fix their hearts“…

I, for one, do not find this surprising in the least.

this is all.

from cnn.com article “Full swimming pool stolen”:

Daisy Valdivia is annoyed that someone stole her backyard pool — and baffled at how they did it without leaving behind a splash, drip or trace of the 1,000 gallons of water it contained. Valdivia awoke to find her family’s hip-high, inflatable, 10-foot diameter swimming pool gone from her back yard Wednesday. Valdivia told The Record of Bergen County the theft must have occurred between 1 a.m., when her husband went to bed, and 5 a.m., when she awoke. She’s amazed someone could steal the pool that quickly and just wanted to know “what the heck they did with the water,” she said.

This is, clearly, the greatest crime of all time. I will now solve it in 11 steps.

THE FACTS:

1. The missing swimming pool was 10 ft in diameter and contained 1000 gallons of water at the time it was stolen.

2. This water was not dumped at the site, hence they moved both the pool AND the water.

3. all within a 4 hour period.

4. 1000 gallons= 8330 lbs*

5. The average man can deadlift (a term I have never in all my days on this earth used until this moment) a maximum of between 185 - 235 lbs**.

6. If a team of the strongest men*** decided they needed their very own 1000 gallon swimming pool, it would take, at-the-very-least, 36 of them to lift it, with all the water inside. (8330/235 = 35.45)

7. Forklifts and towtrucks and cranes and robots other such machines that have the lift-capacity to carry 8330 lbs are very noisy and would have left track marks in the yard.

8. Where do you find groups of 36 super-strong men, without swimming pools? What do we know about these men?

A. they are very very quiet.
B. they like to swim.
C. they couldn’t afford to purchase their own swimming pool.

9. Equivalent swimming pools on the Interwebs cost around $80.

10. $80 divided 36 ways = $2.22/each, thus each individual member of the 36 super-strong, yet highly-budgeted, thieves had less than $2.21 to their names.

11. How is this possible? How can you survive with only $2.21? How do you buy food? Pay for your home?

THE ONLY LOGICAL CONCLUSION BASED ON THESE INARGUABLE FACTS:

Clearly, the 36 thieves own and operate (hence their strength) a communal farm that provides the food necessary to survive, and the surplus food covers the property cost alone.. not enough to give them more than $2.21 each to spend on the non-essentials, like, say, a swimming pool.

But, why, you wonder, wouldn’t they dump out the water too? Because water isn’t free when you own land.. Their farm is obviously nowhere near a lake or ocean or river or pond. No water in the pool = no swimming and we all know how important swimming is to these men.

I will send my findings to the police so they can start searching land-locked commune-farms for 36 chlorine-smelling, pruny-fingered farmers.

*Gallons into Pounds: Multiply the specific gravity of the liquid by 8.33* (weight in pounds of 1 gallon of water); then multiply this result by the number of gallons, to obtain the weight in pounds: source.

**According to here.

***I can assume that it is a group of men because according to Science ™, women prefer to swim in the ocean, or any body of water influenced by tides/the moon.

In another episode of “crocodile fanatics making less-than-wise decisions regarding proximity to wildlife”, dr. brady barr took a crocodile head, a canvas/metal reptile-camouflage garb smeared in hippopotamus poo, and frolicked amongst his crocodile-brethren.

More Crocodile-Disguises:

* Roger Moore, in the Bond Classic “Octopussy“, uses a one-man crocodile-submarine to cross a croc-infested lake in India.

* Next time, THIS guy will entire the crocodile lair:

* Crocodile-skin-clothes, eww. Maybe if the woman below (in a Dolce & Gabbana, croc-skin-lined coat) were also wearing these shoes, this belt, and this crocodile-clutch, she could also be confused for the real thing.

* Sadly, though they are the first two people you might think of, neither Steve Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter) nor Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) technically fit within this category.

* Perhaps only tangentially relevant, I have to share the first photo result from a google image search of “man dressed as crocodile”:

Astronomers just found the biggest most ginormous star EVER. It is 114 times the mass of the sun. criminy! that’s one big star*.

The most giggle-positive part of the story, however, is that they found the star using the Very Large Telescope (VLT). No joke. It is called the “Very Large Telescope”. It’s in Chile, they could have called it “Telescopio Muy Grande” or something. Scientists aren’t generally known for imaginative nomenclature, but they certainly phoned-it-in with “Very Large Telescope”.

*not to be confused the 70’s power-pop band.