Hooverville II

Uh-oh - someone's telling!

And because I do so love getting thrashed and snarked:



France 24 news report on Ontario Hooverville, featuring more sub-prime meltdown victim residents.

Team America, Meet Team Hamas

Children's puppet show, Street-no-Sesame style.

Presented as a mirror, not a finger point.

Article here, via Neharnet/Watching America.

Bikini v. Zombie

SONY BMG: WATCH THIS NOW!

Sony Sued For Pirating Software

according to the folks @ Zeropaid, big effin hypocrite BMG busted itself by calling for tech support to Pointdev on cracked software they pirated...
French article here.


Looks like it's time for some of that always in style Franco-dance craze, "Le Petard Hoisting."

Best Quote: " “We are not interested in an amicable settlement”

thy fearful memetry

'nuff said.

Gamblers Do So Love The Buffet

It appears that there is a real connection 'twixt risk-taking, predation, and vegemaniarianism, at least in the 'it's just a theory' Simian part of the brain.

"Chimpanzees turned out to be big risk-takers, being invariably tempted to go for the grand prize even if this also meant frequent disappointment.

Bonobos, like humans, were strongly risk-adverse, and preferred to go for the fixed, dependable reward.

The chimps' love of risk is in keeping with previous findings. Compared with bonobos, chimpanzees are more patient, waiting longer to get their hands on a delayed treat.

And their risk-taking strategy is also confirmed by the fact that, unlike bonobos, they hunt, kill and eat colobus monkeys. If the hunt comes off, the group gets to feast on protein-rich colobus meat -- if not, they all go hungry.

The distinction is intriguing, because in many respects the two primate species are very similar, having diverged from a common ancestor less than a million years ago, which in evolutionary terms is recent.

They have similar body size and appearance and share much of the same behaviour and social hierarchy.

The difference, though, lies in their diet. Both apes feed heavily on fruit, but bonobos also tuck into herbaceous vegetation on the ground, which is a more reliable source of sustenance.

In addition, bonobos may also have access to larger fruit patches, facing less competition within a given patch than chimpanzees.

So what makes chimps gamble is a clever survival mechanism -- their food resources are less certain, which means they have learnt to cope with going for big or bust, say the authors, led by Sarah Heilbronner of Harvard University and Duke University, North Carolina."

Link to article in full here.

Guess that explains THIS:

Don't Ask! Just Click It!

Father Cholesterol?

Meanwhile, at The Daily Soul

Bully says: What if Clark Kent worked for Barry, not Perry, White?
Check it out.

Same Zone, Different Day

As always we can count on CNN's Kyra Phillips:


To Get The Story Straight:


To paraphraze a prez:
"It depends on what the meaning of the words 'safe' is."

Trend Spotting: Copycat Craigslist Hoax House Ads

Same story, different victims:

Oregon:
"House Ransacked After Craigslist Hoax"


Washington:
"Cruel Craigslist ad trashes home"




Is this becoming the American version of the UK MySpace Party From Hell meme, as experienced in Belfast, Durham and Surrey?



Which has morphed into an alt.career in the antipodes:

Wavin’ Your Banner All Over The Place

Kinda makes you wish there was a whole K-tel compilation album and cheap commercial to go with it....

Mz. White Is Watching

"and then it happened"

The Empress of Taste reminds a generation of why it has done so little, while endowed with so much...

come with us now, to those halcyon days of yesteryear when 9 year olds were taught to fear the onset of something that was called "jr. High."

Return of Hooverville

What if there was a Depression and Nobody Told?

Tent Cities - 21st Century Hoovervilles - springing up outside Los Angeles to no media notice.

I live there, and the first I hear about is on the BBC?

Good thing we have Consolidated Media, Inc. running the show...
lying and obfuscation are much more efficient now.

Reason for Pearl Harbor Attack Revealed

That Damn Mouse!

Figures.

Speaking of Kirby

Guess who I am seeing next week in Vegas?

And with this guy, no less:


See ya there?

Dwiff Sez "Don't Ask! Just Click It!!!"

tis turned into teh wikud awesome weekend.

Cell Phone Investigator 7!

Takashi Miike!

'Nuff Said, Offendi!

"Do Not Try To Imitate"

Barry Gray enters the fray!

Church of Mysteronology?

"I Am Become Meme; The Spreader Of Mindwaste"

Look at all the trees growing from the seeds I planted, and no branches back to me and my readership of two.

Sob.

Well at least Kino should get a good sales bump.

Recipe for spread:

Combine pop culture memes in new ways.
Have consumerable tie-in.
Plant in only the most fecund of soils.
Scratch head in wonder as it quickly spawns new seedlings across the memesphere.
Realize the words "Fight With First Ever Robot In A Motion Picture" is some powaful mojo.

Houdini Vs. Evil Robot

TEH AWESOME!

Robots! Biplanes! Niagara Falls!

Harry Houdini pwns Indiana Jones in this trailer for Kino's upcoming release of restored editions of his silent era thrillas.

RESPONSE VIDEO!

So, who is doing the VO?

UPDATE: De-Anonymized! Deeyamn! http://uk.youtube.com/user/AnonymousFacts
Scroll down, and behold the faces of Anonymous! Well, some of them. According to CoS.

UPDATE UPDATE: account suspended! did Anonymous resort to a fraudulent DMCA takedown? Did YouTube scramble to protect privacy? Stay tuned!

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: account suspended but "outing" videos STILL up at individual URLs!
Normally when someone gets suspended the videos go too, no?

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: "Someone" posts fraudulent threat video from supposed "members" of Anonymous. Someone tried to use BG image to track video watchers. Someone violated privacy. Someone forgot to read their terms of service. Somebody got pwned.

You see, unlike somebody, anonymous users contacted the feds about those fake threat videos. Unlike the 'threatened.' Who, you know, one would think would at least dial up DHS about anthrax letters and bomb threats.

Funny. Well, at least those horrible anonymous terrorists dropped a dime on themselves for the threat videos. Very noble.

For Superhacker Terrorists on Steroids. And we all know what hacking on steroids leads to.

Uncharacteristic Participation

A Nautical Plant has sallied forth with the following challenge.

I participate, if only to confirm that I have less than 10 readers, much less friends.


Here are the rules
(adjust to conscience)

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.

2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.

3. Post them here for everyone to guess.

4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.

5. GUESSERS: NO Googling/using IMDB search functions. I mean, you can cheat if you want, but all that would do is make you win. Do you really want to win?

6. One movie guess per blogger (or other audience member). Don’t be a blog hog. (Ha! I just made that up. And, clearly, it is the most clever thing invented since the death of Voltaire.)

Ready? Set? ...Go!

I have no choice but to dismiss you. It breaks my heart, but I can't expose my guests to your firearms. It may be wrong of them, but they value their lives.

“Izzat Renoir’s Rules of the Game, ?” asked Helen Kim as the judges nodded sagely.

I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

I'm not as afraid of Godzilla as I am of the editor... he's meaner.

The Han River is very broad, Mr. Kim. Let's try to be broad-minded about this. Anyway, that's an order. So, start pouring.
Young pen pal Helen Kim correctly calls out “The Host!,” making it a two-fer.

I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know, at one time I think I secretly wanted to be a writer.

And a riveting young lass nails it with the correct guess of Philadelphia Story. However, the staff feels compelled to point out that PS is not properly termed a “Cary Grant movie” but rather a “Hep Flick.”

You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

And we have a winner with the correct guess of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly from young expat JR Degan!

Sorry don't get it done, Dude. That's the second time you hit me. Don't ever do it again.

Some big, hardboiled egg gets a look at a pretty face and bang, he cracks up and goes sappy!
"It's Kong!" screams the stained wretch.

Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.

The unknown paul_james_harrington shows that dudes know All About Eve.

I can't help what I do! I can't help it, I can't...

it's another two-fer as the sw demonstrates that she knows her ABCs and her Langs from Lorres.

Bow Your Heads

It's not every day the creator of an entire culture leaves us. And so, in respect, some Auden:

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.


What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.


Update:
Recommended post by Sgt. Shiv @ http://donwood.blogspot.com/2008/03/no-puns-just-death-of-giant.html

Key Kids! It's Satan!!!

Carefully study this picture to see the abominations contained within.