Month: August 2014

It’s Friday afternoon, it’s nearly Labor Day weekend. We’re on the home stretch, here. Maybe kill a little time by reading about the week’s events, what do you say? Honestly, I’m as surprised as any of you that anything happened this week. I’ve been too busy watching the Simpsons marathon to pay much attention to anything. And yet, things happened anyway. If you were busy announcing that you secretly got married in France this week, odds are you missed it.

Judged by the color of his suit
ISIS is still on the move, protests continue in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.K. raised its terrorism threat level, but President Barack Obama wore a tan suit during a press briefing this week, and it’s all anyone would talk about. Female politicians said the president got a taste of what they deal with every day, while critics said he is clearly out of touch. In response, Obama vowed to wear a tuxedo T-shirt at the next briefing.

Hello Person
The internet was rocked this week when it was announced that Hello Kitty is not, in fact, a cat. A spokesman from Sanrio, the company that owns Hello Kitty, said that the beloved character is actually a little girl, rather than a cat. She even has a pet cat. Nothing makes sense anymore. Up is down, left is right, dogs and girls are living together.

The fight for four inches of room
What’s worse than flying on a plane? Flying on a plane and the person in front of you reclines their seat. And what’s worse than that? Having your flight diverted because passengers argued over reclining seats. That happened twice this week. In one case, a passenger used a product call the Knee Defender, which prevents seats from reclining, and the passenger in front of him got mad. This is the best possible publicity for the Knee Defender, which plans on releasing a product that keeps toilet seats from being put down, called Pee Defender.

A new law that would change the standard of consent for sex in California colleges to actual consent has active and potential date rapists confused.

The new law would change the rote standard of “no means no” to “yes means yes.” This means that, rather than putting the burden on sexual assault victims to say no, it would require those wanting sex to make damn well sure that the person whom they are entering is OK with that.

However, that’s still too complicated of a message.

‘I feel like their hearts are in the right place, but the implementation is a little too excessive,’ Henry Mu, a 24-year-old biology major at California State Long Beach told the Press-Telegram. ‘Are there guidelines? Are we supposed to check every five minutes?‘

[…]

‘How does a person prove they receive consent shy of having it videotaped[?]‘ Joe Cohn, the legislative policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, told Inside Higher Ed.

Yeah, what’s a guy to do? Talk to the person he’s about to risk pregnancy or a contracting a sexually transmitted disease from? If date rapists could talk to women as people, they wouldn’t have to rape their dates.

Geez. California, amiright?

The Audubon Society of Minnesota wants the Minnesota Vikings to replace the glass found in their stadium with bird-safe glass, solely because birds are flying into the glass and dying.

God clearly does not want these avians to live. If the NFL can’t be concerned with trying to be even remotely friendly toward women, what makes some bird watchers think that the Vikings will be worried about suicidal birds?

When you’re as handsome as Englishman Jude Law is, typecasting is just an occupational hazard. Some filmmaker somewhere always pictures you as “perfect” to play some right-proper gent or another.

On the flip side, when you are as talented as Law is, you can forge your own opportunities and hop off the typecasting train. That’s exactly what he does in writer-director Richard Shepard’s dark English comedy Dom Hemingway, a giddy blend of style and attitude that plays like a cross between a Guy Ritchie and Wes Anderson film.

Unfortunately, it’s also a little lightweight, just like Guy Ritchie and Wes Anderson films can be. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Dom Hemingway’

“We’re not some big city comp’ny,” says a suspender-wearing judge in Columbia.

“I do declare that our state has no time for such frivolities as cup and ball, much less kickball. As such, I proclaim that a worker is a worker, and if they take part in frivolities while on the company’s watch, no matter if they are or are not on the clock, they are due fair and just compensation. A man is due what his labors reward, is he not?”

The judge takes a handkerchief out of his coat, dabs at his brow then takes a sip of his iced tea. In the heat, it cools his hot disposition.

South Carolina has conquered the debate of whether an employee taking part in a company kickball game is due workers’ compensation, but still has yet to figure out indoor air-conditioning.

Bugs are usually at the mercy of our mighty vehicles, but they are starting to turn the tables.

Suzuki is recalling some 19,000 cars because of spiders in the exhaust. Yes, the spiders have struck cars once again. According to the company, the Kizashi cars, which apparently exist, says that spider webs in the fuel vapor vent hose can clog things up and possibly lead to fires.

The good news is that should the your car catch fire, at least the little bastards that caused the problem will die with it.

With scenes like this …

… and this …

… in Ferguson, Mo., it’s easy to see why many of us are wondering if we maybe, quite possibly went an eensy-bit overboard in arming and outfitting our police forces over the past 13 years since 9/11. In fact, it makes complete sense to lose our minds when seeing these weapons of war aimed at civilians. It kind of, you know, makes it look like the police think we’re the enemy, and they’re put in power to put us down like mad dogs in the street.

But, you know what’s really weird? That scenes like this …

… and this …

… didn’t inspire the same kind of response.

Yes, the Ferguson Police Department — and many other police departments — are militarized to the point where even Rob Liefeld would throw up his arms and say, “That is way too many ammo pouches, guys. That can’t be proportional to what the human body can carry.”

But, looking at the second pair of photos and the following trends, I’m starting to think that police departments aren’t loaded for manbearpig because they’re police. It might just be because police departments are mostly made up of white males, and white males have gone full-bore Klingon insane.  Continue reading Take it from Snee: You are not a warrior

After years of looking like panda jerks in the comments of any online post that mentions feminism, it appears that Male Panda’s Rights Activists, or MPRAs, have been proven right. At least one female panda has been caught faking a pregnancy for special treatment from zookeepers that she has no intention of letting out of the “friendzone.”

Zookeepers at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding reported that Ai Hin exhibited signs of pregnancy for two months and then suddenly stopped. During that time, she was moved into a single air conditioned room and received “more buns, fruits and bamboo.”

According to one of the zookeepers, “Some clever pandas have used this to their advantage to improve their quality of life.”

See? And if this happens in a zoo, you know it totally happens in the wild, too, where female pandas will convince a male panda to marry her and then conveniently miscarry. And at that point, it’s too late for the male panda. He’ll have to give her half of us bamboo for the rest of her life.

So, you win this round, MPRAs. But you still look stupid in a fedora.

The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy except when he’s stuffed.

This is the battleplan being put into place in Meredith, New Hampshire. As we all know, geese are jerks, straight up. They will attack anyone, anywhere and they’re highly territorial, though owning no territory. Even worse, they’re Canada geese, meaning that for the first time in history, a town in the United States actually is being besieged by a gang of illegal immigrants.

But Meredith is prepared. Despite the town being located so far north that you wouldn’t expect a desert animal like coyotes to be living there, stuffed versions of coyotes are being placed all along the waterfront and lawns in order to scare off the birds.

And by jove, it’s working. But it may not work unless the coyotes are moved regularly in order to fool the geese. So if you’re a resident of Meredith, move them around and put some fear into Canada geese.

Whores of Satan, rejoice: the Town Council of Front Royal, Virginia has made a deal with the devil! Fortunetelling will be allowed within the town. Let the trumpets of Lucifer ring out!

In a 4-2 decision, the town council decided to strike down a ban on fortunetelling, “gypsies” and “magic arts,” whatever those are. Demons were heard shrieking with delight, as they set about plans of spreading Satanism and introducing criminal elements that are so often associated with things like tarot cards.

Concerned citizens said they worried that without the ban, children would be put in danger of temptations of evil. The Lord of Darkness himself was unable for comment.