Libertine: On the Prowl

Vidi, vici, veni -- I saw, I conquered, I came. _______________________________________________________________

Pretty Girls Are a Dime a Dozen

03:10, 2009-Apr-16 .. Posted in news .. 4 comments .. Link

Unless you're living under a rock, you've heard the story of Susan Boyle, a contestant who recently appeared on Britain's Got Talent.

Because of the 47 year old's unpolished, matronly appearance and manner, people in the audience openly mocked her as she took the stage. Similarly, the judges on stage, which included American Idol's, Simon Cowell, expected little to no musical talent from this contestant.

That all changed once she'd sung a few bars of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables. Cowell's jaw dropped at Boyle's phenomenal talent and all the pin-headed morons in the audience suddenly shut their traps and later gave Boyle a much-deserved standing ovation.

Good for her. Kudos to her for shutting up Simon Cowell for once in his life and for showing the audience that musical talent -- or talent of any kind -- is not tied to a person's appearance. She has yet again proven the truth of the old saying, "Don't judge a book by cover.".

Putting his money where his mouth is, Simon Cowell is reported to be setting up a contract with Boyle with his SyCo Music company label, a subsidiary of Sony Music.

With a talent like Boyle's, it doesn't (or shouldn't) matter what she looks like. She's the real deal. The entertainment world is chock full of pretty girls with only the barest modicum of singing talent, but a talent like Boyle's is a rarity and should be valued for the treasure it is.

Indeed, the outer packaging is of supreme importance for the dime-a-dozen bimbo singers, precisely because their talent is mediocre at best, and the flashy appearance is to make audiences forget their less than stellar vocal skills.

As far as I'm concerned, the singing world needs more Susan Boyles and fewer Ashlee Simpsons.

Three Stooges Movie

08:38, 2009-Apr-1 .. Posted in news .. 9 comments .. Link

As a kid in the sixties and seventies, I grew up watching The Three Stooges on TV every afternoon after school. I must have seen every episode dozens of times. Even now, I could accurately reproduce the opening music for each episode, as the tune is burned into my brain.

My friends and I would imitate Moe and Curly, with one doing the eye jabs, and the other putting up a hand between our eyes to block it. We'd do some of the other gestures, such as Moe slowly raising his hand in front of Curly, whose eyes would follow it up, and who would then be surprised brought it down suddenly to slap him on the face.

We'd do Curly's "woob, woob, woob, woob, woob, woob,", "nyuk, nyuk, nyuk", "wiseguy, eh ?", and his high pitched hum: "la da DEEEEEEE, la, la, la, la, deee". And naturally we'd try his breakdance-like thing of lying on the floor and spinning ourselves around in circles.

I've missed watching the Stooges, as I've never gotten around to buying their DVDs.

I heard the other day that a Three Stooges movie, which will be a modern version of the 1930s and 40s episodes, will be released in 2010. Jim Carrey will play Curly, with Sean Penn as Larry, and Benecio Del Toro as Moe. I think Carrey will be great as Curly, though he'll have to gain quite a bit of weight or put on a fat suit to pull it off. The other two I'm not so sure of, but perhaps Carrey can carry the entire movie if the other two prove to be miscast.

The movie will be released some time in 2010.

A Fantasy Brought To Life

01:26, 2009-Mar-5 .. Posted in news .. 3 comments .. Link

Nadya Vessey, a double amputee since childhood, now has a unique new proshetic to help her swim better.

It's a mermaid tail.

A couple of years ago, she wrote to the prosthetic department of a special effects company, Weta Workshop. Weta made the mermaids' tails for the 2003 version of Peter Pan.

"We have, over the years, done a number of things like this for people that have disabilities," a member of the Weta prosthetics department said.

The tail they made for Vessey was covered in a wetsuit fabric with added digitally-printed fish scales on it. The tail has four sections that allow some movement.

Pretty cool, huh?

Finally, A Hero

01:13, 2009-Jan-16 .. Posted in news .. 8 comments .. Link

In a time when most of the news is bad, and in this story when the news could have easily been very bad, we have a hero, a man who lived up to every definition of the word.

People say what the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, did was a miracle. Perhaps so, but one glance at his resume will show that it was less of a miracle, but more sheer competence and skill, made possible by many years of experience. He is a graduate of the Air Force Academy,with two master's degrees attained later, who flew F-4 fighter planes from 1973 to 1980. In 1980, he took his present job with US Airways. He is also an expert in airline safety, involved with several organization devoted to airline safety. There could not have been a more qualified pilot to handle the emergency landing of this plane.

It's interesting to note that at 57, Sullenberger would have soon faced mandatory retirement at 60, had the rule not be moved up to 65. It was believed that such pilots were "too old" to continue flying. However, the passengers owe their lives to his long years of experience and this story might not have had such a happy ending with a young pilot with far less experience.

I'm sure I join most people when I say that I would confidently board any plane that Captain Sullenberger would be piloting.

He is the hero of the day, but there were other heroes as well: the rescuers, both professional and amateur, who quickly and competently responded to this disaster. This was the second important role in ensuring that all 155 people on board survived, by limiting the time that the passengers were exposed to the frigid water. NYC should be rightly proud of its Public Safety employees and also the concerned citizens who pitched in to make the rescue a success.

Finally, some good news for a change.

A Bit of Justice

02:42, 2008-Dec-5 .. Posted in news .. 3 comments .. Link

Today, OJ Simpson was sentenced to at least fifteen years in prison for his part in a hotel armed robbery. The judge rejected his apology, telling Simpson, "It was much more than stupidity." Judge Jackie Glass refused to permit him to go free on bail while he appeals, and Simpson was led away to jail after the sentencing.

The judge repeatedly reiterated that the sentence in the Las Vegas case had nothing to do with Simpson's 1994 acquittal in the slaying of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Maybe so, but these fifteen years are the only justice that Simpson will get for the slaying of his wife and Ron Goldman in 1994. The Goldman family, unsurprisingly, is happy with the sentence.

"There's never closure. Ron is always gone. What we have is satisfaction that this monster is where he belongs behind bars," Fred Goldman said.

Man Trampled to Death By Mob of Shoppers

01:17, 2008-Nov-29 .. Posted in news .. 6 comments .. Link

Most people by now have heard the story of the Wal Mart worker who was trampled to death by Black Friday customers who literal took the doors off the hinges yesterday, which gave an entirely new meaning to the concept of a "doorbuster sale."

What the fuck is wrong with people? Is the need to acquire a few cheap gimcracks at a slightly lower price than normal worth someone's life? I don't even understand why these sales still generate crowds so big, considering now that people can shop online from the comfort of their own homes.

After reading about this tragedy from several sources, I thought back to the events of September 11, 2001, when an approximate 13,000 to 15,000 people evacuated successfully from the World Trade Center towers. Despite it being an emergency situation where lives where clearly in danger, and where panic would have been understandable, I've never heard any reports of people being trampled to death during the evacuation. Rather, I heard several stories of people stopping to help others whose physical limitations hampered their ability to escape on their own, some even giving their own lives in such sttempts.

The memories of that day only serve to underscore just how despicable the actions of yesterday's mob of Wal Mart shoppers were.

Thoughts?

World Toilet Day

01:32, 2008-Nov-21 .. Posted in news .. 5 comments .. Link

It seems as if there is a holiday for everything. Today,I heard that November 19th was World Toilet Day.

Yes, you heard right. The crapper has its own holiday.

I googled it and found the World Toilet Organization website. Apparently, it's not a joke.

Among other things the World Toilet Organization seeks to provide toilets for the 2.5 billion people worldwide who do not have access to modern toilets.

It also lobbies for more public toilets in densely populated areas in order to curb the problem of outdoor urination, which would serve to reduce the number of arrests for public urination.

Man Jailed For Having a Brown Lawn

09:55, 2008-Nov-10 .. Posted in news .. 6 comments .. Link

About a month ago, 66 year old Joseph Prudente was sent to jail. His crime?

Having a brown lawn.

That's right, he was sent to jail for brown grass! Prudente, who lives in a Home Owner's Association neighborhood in Florida has been having money problems recently and was barely able to afford keeping up with his mortgage, let alone spending money on lawn care.

I was surprised to see someone jailed for what is a civil matter; I don't understand why the HOA did not take him to civil court. Or better, why they couldn't have worked with him, considering his circumstances. It's not as if brown grass is the crime of the century.

Personally, I'd never live in a HOA community; I couldn't hand over my privacy and freedom to a bunch of neighborhood Nazis who see nothing wrong with putting a sick old man in jail over brown grass. You'd think the man had killed somebody by the way they reacted

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. Some citizens in his community saw a newspaper article about his plight and decided to do something about it. Two companies donated new sod and several volunteers came to Prudente's home to tear out the old grass, put in new, put in mulch and flowers and replaced his broken sprinkler system. Prudente was released from jail once the HOA had verified that the work had been done.

Even though I believe that HOAs are evil incarnate, the response from his community renews my faith in humanity, after all.

Thoughts?

Useful Shit

01:59, 2008-Oct-1 .. Posted in news .. 5 comments .. Link

San Antonio, Texas plans to be the first U.S. city to harvest methane gas from human waste on a commercial scale and turn it into clean-burning fuel. The main byproduct of human waste is methane gas, which will soon be converted into natural gas to burn in power plants.

The residents of San Antonion produce about 140,000 tons of shit (more euphemistically known as "biosolids") a year which will convert into enough natural gas to generate about 1.5 million cubic feet per day.

Methane gas, which is a byproduct of human and organic waste, is a principal component of the natural gas used to fuel furnaces, power plants, and other combustion-based generators.

It's just too bad we can't turn our shit into gasoline...

An Odd Trip

12:14, 2008-Jul-6 .. Posted in news .. 1 comments .. Link

An Oregon man, Kent Couch, realized his dream on Satirday by flying in a balloon-suspended lawnchair from Oregon to Idaho. He flew 235 miles in nine hours in a lawn chair attached to 150 giant, helium-filled, party balloons.

Flying about 100 to 200 feet from the ground, he ended his trip by shooting some of the balloons with a BB gun to lower himself to the ground.

"If I had the time and money and people, I'd do this every weekend," Couch said before getting into the chair. "Things just look different from up there. You've moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity."

I had to laugh when I heard about this -- it sounded exactly like something Homer Simpson would do. And, in fact, there was a King of the Hill episode, where Bill Dauterive did this very thing, though, of course, it didn't turn out as well for Bill as it did for Kent Couch, as you would imagine.

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Life On Other Planets?

12:22, 2008-Apr-23 .. Posted in news .. 3 comments .. Link

During a lecture he gave on Monday, scientist Stephen Hawking expressed the opinion that he believes that it is likely that life exists on other planets in our galaxy. He said that given the size of the universe, it is unlikely that Earth is the only planet to develop some sort of life.

"While there may be primitive life in our region of the galaxy, there don't seem to be any advanced intelligent beings," he said, though he did not discount intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe.

In his opinion, the lack of success by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project to discover signals from an alien civilization suggests that none exist within several 100 light-years of Earth. He offered two reasons why this could be so: aliens intelligent enough to beam signals into space may also be smart enough to build civilization-destroying weapons like nuclear bombs, he said. More likely, he added, is that primitive life is likely to develop, but intelligent life as we know it is exceedingly rare.

I would add a couple of other possibilities: there could be intelligent alien life that simply isn't at the level of technology to send or receive such signals or to recognize signals as such and it could be that our receiving equipment isn't sophisticated enough to receive signals or we're already getting them but not recognizing them.

Hawking, however, dismisses UFOs and stories of alien vistation and abductions. "Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdos?"

He also stressed the importance of ongoing space explorations, primarily as a way to ensure the long-term survival of the human race. "If the human race is to continue for another million years we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said.

We Are Family

12:24, 2008-Mar-30 .. Posted in news .. 5 comments .. Link

Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society looked into the genealogy of the three main Presidential candidates and found some rather interesting family connections.

Barack Obama is related to six American presidents through his mother's side: George Bush Sr and Jr,, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, and James Madison. He is also related to Dick Cheney, Winston Churchill, General Robert E. Lee, and Brad Pitt.

Hillary Clinton is related to Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Celine Dion, Alanis Morrissette, author Jack Kerouac, and the wife of Prince Charles, Camilla Parker-Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall.

McCain's ancestry was somewhat harder to trace because the records available for his family were not as complete as for the other two. Researchers were able to find that he is a distant cousin of First Lady Laura Bush, however.

Obama and President Bush are 10th cousins, once removed, linked by Samuel Hinkley of Cape Cod, who died in 1662.

Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, linked by Edwin Hickman, who died in Virginia in 1769. Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, declined to comment on the senator's ancestry.

Clinton and Jolie are ninth cousins, twice removed, both related to Jean Cusson who died in St. Sulpice, Quebec, in 1718.

It makes me wonder who I am related to. Casanova, perhaps?

Italian Court Usurps Parents' Right to Name Their Child

12:02, 2007-Dec-19 .. Posted in news .. 7 comments .. Link

When a little boy was born to an Italian couple fifteen months ago, they decided to give him the unusual name of "Friday". They went on to register his name at city hall as Friday and a priest also baptized him under that name.

Five months later, a busybody city hall clerk was sufficiently bothered by this unusual name to inform a tribunal, which then notified the parents that the boy's name was "invalid" because Italian law forbade parents from giving children names that were "ridiculous or shameful".

When the parents declined to change their son's name, the court ruled that the boy would be registered thenceforth as "Gregory", as he was born on the feast day of a saint with that name.

In other words, the government told the parents what their child's name was.

As of yet, this particular type of governmental meddling has not occurred in the US. But I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the Good Taste Nazis hit the department of vital statistics here.

It's not that I think that Friday is a great name. On the contrary, it's annoyingly trendy and gaggingly cute. My taste in names runs to the classic; names that have stood the test of time and which have not been altered with "creative" spellings.

But neither is "Friday" a "shameful" name as the court claimed. It's easy to say and easy to spell, and if the boy doesn't like it, he's always free to change it as an adult. I'd never name a kid Friday, but I think these parents were well within their rights to do so.

And governmental meddling doesn't get much worse than to tell a parent that they cannot name their own child.

I could have understood the Italian court's position if they'd given him a name that was truly degrading, such as "Shitload" or "Cumstain". I'd not have had a problem with the court refusing to register such a "name" then. But even in such an instance, I still would allow the parents to choose a more appropriate name, instead of choosing one for them. And don't even get me started on choosing a name for someone based on religion.

For their part, the parents have vowed to continue calling their son Friday, even though he will be compelled to sign his name as Gregory on all official documents when he gets older.

Thoughts?

Give It Up Already, Pam

07:17, 2007-Dec-17 .. Posted in news .. 16 comments .. Link

After getting married for the third time to Rick Salomon this October, Pamela Anderson is already filing for divorce.

"I paid off a poker debt with sexual favors, and I fell in love," Anderson said during an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show, when asked how she met Salomon. "It's so romantic." Anderson owed a whopping $250, 000 in gambling debts when she struck the deal with Salomon.

But romantic? Don't make me laugh. Fucking to work off a debt might have been practical and cost effective for her, but I'd not call it romantic by any stretch of the imagination. And, though libertine as I am, if I accepted sex in lieu of a debt paid, I'd not call it romantic. There's no shame in calling a spade a spade. This was a business deal, nothing more -- love had nothing to do with it. Sex and love aren't the same thing and though they sometimes happily coincide, this is one time where it definitely didn't and there's no need to justify this exchange by saying it was.

Some people just don't need to be married. I'm not meant to be married in the way marriage is currently understood, and I've accepted that and have lived in a way that better suits me. It would seem as if Pam Anderson is also ill-suited to marriage and would do well to accept it and stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole, so to speak.

Thoughts?

Neighbors

12:25, 2007-Nov-18 .. Posted in news .. 9 comments .. Link

A recent photo of the Earth and moon taken by an unmanned Japanese spacecraft orbiting the moon.

Another poignant reminder of how we're all on this small, fragile lifeboat together hurtling through the cold void of space.