Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Kill Me Please

Adam Sandler
Kill Me

[spoken]
Ok, I just want to warn you that when I wrote this song I was listening to the Cure a lot.

[sung]
You don’t know how much I need you.
While you’re near me I don’t feel blue.
And when we kiss I know that you need me too.
I can’t believe I found a love that’s so pure and true.

But it all was bullshit.
It was a goddam joke.
And when I think of you linda,
I hope you fucking choke.

I hope you’re glad with what you’ve done to me.
I lay in bed all day long feeling melancholy.
You left me here all alone, tears running constantly.

Oh somebody kill me please,
Somebody kill me plee-ase,
I’m on my knees,
Pretty pretty please kill me.

I want to die.
Put a bullet in my head.

Buffy in the Buff? Sarah Michelle Gellar to Play Porn Star

Sarah Michelle Gellar will ditch her good girl film image and dive into the world of porn in an upcoming film titled "Southland Tales." The UK Sun reports the Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress will play "busty blonde Krysta Now in the saucy project, Southland Tales."

The movie will also star The Rock, Seann William Scott, Jon Lovitz, Justin Timberlake, Kevin Smith and Mandy Moore.

So, Buffy in the buff? Easy fellas, that's still not clear.

http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_2726881.shtml

Would now be a good time to remind everybody of the famous (infamous) "You can put it anywhere" line?

Hyperframe

You'll have to sit through an annoying ad first, but live with it, Hyperframe rocks. A 3d puzzle game, where you connect lines up on the cube. Gets increasingly hard, but wonderfully done, complete with amusingly crappy vocodered music.



http://www.shockwave.com/contentPlay/shockwave.jsp?id=hyperframe

Trampoline Accident

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Forces Of Nature - The Tornado

Heh, over on the National Geographic website you can create your own adverse weather conditions and watch as the generated tornado rips farmyards into tiny splinters.



For a more accurate representation of the damage caused by tornados it's a pity they didn't do a version ripping through a trailer park.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/forcesofnature/interactive/index.html?section=t

Monday, September 26, 2005

URL ingenuity

Does exactly what it says on the tin. You don't understand? Click the link, then you will.

Needs sound.

http://www.iiiiiiii.com/

Hyperframe

This game is incredibly addictive - like smoking, don't start. It's like much like a rubiks cube, but interesting and amusing, and unlike a rubiks cube it won't end up in pieces in the corner.

(And no, you can't take the stickers off.)

http://www.shockwave.com/contentPlay/shockwave.jsp?id=hyperframe

Dew

As I walked to work down the small hill from Syon Lane station this morning the grass on the huge playing field of the school next to the station was shimmering a silvery green - the heavy dew brought the coolness of autumn and that fresh, clean, crisp smell that I remember so well from my own school days.

PE on such a school morning was well looked forward to. The knowledge that it's not too cold, not too hot, the transition from the athletics of the summer gave way to the football and hockey of the autumn - less sedate, more team-based activities in the September sun. Somebody was going to get smacked with a hockey ball, my shoes would be covered in mud, and my books would smell of grass and sweat for the rest of the day.

September I remember as an early waking month. Back to school at the start, the later in the month my dad would wake me up early to go to the school playing fields and collect mushrooms for his breakfast. Some morning I would get up early to forage for conkers from the huge horse chestnut tree opposite my house. There would be rich pickings after the nightly winds and the other kids would be jealous of my huge bag of bullseyes. Each of these activities involved walking over the early morning grass and having my school shoes wet and covered in fresh dew.

That's just what I wanted to do this morning - walk from one side of that field to the other, shuffling my feet, getting them as wet as possible. Then for the rest of the day, as I feel my shoes dry off, I can be safe in my knowledge that I lived a little this morning.

Why is it that so many good memories seem to be only triggered by tiny, infrequent occurrences. Why can't I have that dewy freshness every morning?

Tommy

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Nude New Zealand MP takes stroll

Wearing nothing but copious amounts of body paint and a pair of pants, a New Zealand politician has taken a stroll through Auckland.

Green Party MP Keith Locke had pledged to strip off if Act Party leader Rodney Hide won the seat of his constituency.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4280316.stm

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Pain in the English

Look, look - a site dedicated to people being all up and anal about the many and varied uses of the english language.

Mike and Phil, you're going to love it.

http://www.painintheenglish.com/default.asp

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Internet maps reveal Roman villa

And again with the google wonderousness...

Latest technology proved an unexpected aid to unearthing the past when an Italian man decided to look at internet maps of his home.

Computer programmer Luca Mori found the remains of an ancient Roman villa when he browsed Google Earth maps showing satellite images of his local area.

His curiosity was sparked by unusual shading by his home in Sorbolo, Parma.

He contacted local archaeologists who investigated and confirmed it was once the location of a Roman villa.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4267238.stm

Balls of Steel

What do you do when the landing gear on your plane won't lock down? Have someone on the ground in a jeep pace the plane and beat it into place with a stick!

(Whilst it's flying 10 feet above the runway, and your' underneath it in a jeep)

Holy crap this is ballsy.

http://www.wftv.com/video/4983089/detail.html
Ji Lee's got a good schtick going - he takes speech bubble stickers and plasters 'em on posters and signs... then comes back later to photograph what people have written in 'em.



Speech Bubbles

Google saves baby's life.

Jesus, google IS taking over the world, I swear.

Howard and Melissa of Boca Raton, Florida found out first hand that the Internet can be a powerful tool for parents. A few weeks after they brought their premature twins, Andrew and Carly, home from the hospital Andrew had to be admitted to the ER. The doctors told them that the baby had a serious problem, that his hemoglobin levels had dropped from 14 (at birth) to 7. The doctors wanted to do an emergency blood transfusion immediately. Using his cell phone, Howard used Google to search for "hemoglobin" and "premature infant." The results were surprising. He found a medical journal article which said that it’s normal for preemie twins to have a drop in their hemoglobin levels during the first three months.

Howard gave the link to the doctors, and they spent a few hours researching it. When they returned, they "sheepishly admitted that our son was indeed fine - no treatment was necessary…Google literally saved our newborn son from having to endure an extremely dangerous, and totally unnecessary, blood transfusion."

http://www.bloggingbaby.com/entry/1234000620059549/

Artists erect giant pink bunny on mountain

An enormous pink bunny has been erected on an Italian mountainside where it will stay for the next 20 years.



http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1541732.html

404 - Not Found

Blogjam - Hello? Is it me you're looking for?
Team Dirty Tricks - yeaaah boy

404 Research Lab

Jetski Power - Cool Game



http://www.skivedomain.com/m3power/live/

Historic Cities

We would like Historic Cities a site to be a meeting place for the lovers of historic cities and to function as a virtual archive, which will constantly develop and grow. The content will be loaded gradually: first we will load several hundreds of high quality city maps which we scanned, and brief documented histories of some of the most important cities.

Is your city listed? Mine is!

http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/

Death by Coke Machine

And what not to do when hacking a coke machine...

This site is dedicated to our dear son and brother Kevin Mackle, who was found dead in his Residence at Kuehner Hall, Bishop's University, Lennoxville Quebec on December 13th 1998, a day of sorrow for us, his family. A toppled Vendo Model Coca-Cola Machine crushed him. It was put in place, unsecured, by the Beaver Foods Company. On October 19th 1999, almost a year after Kevin's death, the Quebec Coroner, Dr. Rene Maurice Belanger issued a Coroner's Report on what he considered to be the facts of the case.

He really doesn't look like he needed any more sugary carbonated drinks.

http://www.cokemachineaccidents.com/

How To Hack A Soda Machine

How To Hack A Soda Machine. Most modern soda machines have little computers in them. The tiny RED LCD usually displays the data. The computer can be controlled by using certain buttons on the soda machine in different combinations. This can be used to check the temperature, see the amount of money (load and dump), and dump certain sodas. Will usually only work on newer machines that look like the one on the right. They need to have an LCD and also need to have some type of message on it "ICE COLD SODAS" This tells you it is running something.

http://www.sahaskatta.com/html/hacks_3.html

How to tell if a relationship is over

You find a dead pigeon...

http://www.depict.org/content/films/2003/relationship_over_320.html

The humble banana - on crash course toward extinction

The banana as we know it is on a crash course toward extinction. For scientists, the battle to resuscitate the world’s favorite fruit has begun—a race against time that just may be too late to win.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/5a4d4c3ee4d05010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

NZ finds Black Cocks hard to swallow

It was a bloody silly idea in the first place, but New Zealand's badminton world may finally have to concede that calling the national team the "Black Cocks" really is a bit too strong, the New Zealand Herald reports.

Badminton New Zealand adopted the name a year ago as "a gimmicky label to attract sponsors and fans". It worked to a degree, because the organisation was quickly innundated with cash offers from companies such as - you guessed it - condom manufacturers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/15/nz_badminton_kerfuffle/

Monday, September 19, 2005

Man's static jacket sparks alert

An Australian man built up so much static electricity in his clothes as he walked that he burned carpets, melted plastic and sparked a mass evacuation.

Frank Clewer, of the western Victorian city of Warrnambool, was wearing a synthetic nylon jacket and a woollen shirt when he went for a job interview.

As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up.

"It sounded almost like a firecracker or something like that," he said.

"Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt," he told Australian radio.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4252692.stm

Maggie Thatcher

Whilst looking at the BBC news website, I found a recent picture of Maggie Thatcher. Now is it just my imagination, or is she really starting to look like her Spitting Image puppet?


Maggie Thatcher


Spitting Image Puppet

Word Of The Day

Word of the Day for Monday September 19, 2005

immure \ih-MYUR\, transitive verb:

  1. To enclose within walls, or as if within walls; hence, to shut up; to imprison; to incarcerate.
  2. To build into a wall.
  3. To entomb in a wall.
Not surprisingly, Sally shuddered at the thought of being immured in the black cave, to die slowly and hopelessly, far below the sunny hillside.
--Peter Pierce, "The Fiction of Gabrielle Lord," Australian Literary Studies, October 1999

True, there was a Mughal emperor in Delhi until 1857, but he was emperor in name only, the shadow of a memory, described by Lord Macaulay as 'a mock sovereign immured in a gorgeous state prison'.
--Anthony Read, The Proudest Day

When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn't expand in any direction.
--Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon

Immured by privilege in a way of life that offered little scope, army wives were often enfeebled by boredom.
--Frances Spalding, Duncan Grant: A Biography

Immure comes from Medieval Latin immurare, from Latin in-, "in" + murus, "wall." It is related to mural, a painting applied to a wall.

Synonyms: cloister; imprison; incarcerate.

c-jump: Ski & Snowboard Race



Discover fundamentals of computer programming by playing a board game!

c-jump helps children to learn basics of programming languages, such as C, C++ and Java.

You know I want this, right?

http://www.c-jump.com/

Oh, and by the way, whilst I am talking about baord games, if there's anyone out there who could possibly explain the rules to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer boardgame, could you please take some time to explain it to me, because I paid 20p for it at a car boot sale and I am damn sure I need to get my money's worth.

Friday, September 16, 2005

The Boys of Iwo Jima

Each year my video production company is hired to go to Washington, D.C. with the eighth grade class from Clinton, Wisconsin where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation's capitol, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially memorable.

On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history-that of the six brave men raising the American flag at the top of Mount Surabachi on the Island of Iwo Jima, Japan during WW II. Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, "What's your name and where are you guys from?

I told him that my name was Michael Powers and that we were from Clinton, Wisconsin.

"Hey, I'm a Cheesehead, too! Come gather around Cheeseheads, and I will tell you a story."

James Bradley just happened to be in Washington, D.C. to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good-night to his dad, who had previously passed away, but whose image is part of the statue. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, D.C. but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night. When all had gathered around he reverently began to speak. Here are his words from that night:

"My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and I just wrote a book called Flags of Our Fathers which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me. Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game, a game called "War." But it didn't turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of twenty-one, died with his intestines in his hands. I don't say that to gross you out; I say that because there are generals who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen years old.

(He pointed to the statue)

You see this next guy? That's Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this photo was taken, and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph. A photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that in there for protection, because he was scared. He was eighteen years old. Boys won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.

The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the "old man" because he was so old. He was already twenty-four. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, "Let's go kill the enemy" or "Let's die for our country." He knew he was talking to little boys. Instead he would say, "You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers."

The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes walked off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, "You're a hero." He told reporters, "How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only twenty-seven of us walked off alive?"

So you take your class at school. 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only twenty-seven of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes died dead drunk, face down at the age of thirty-two, ten years after this picture was taken.

The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky, a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, "Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then we fed them Epson salts. Those cows crapped all night."

Yes, he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of nineteen. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. The neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.

The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers, or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say, "No, I'm sorry sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back."

My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually he was sitting right there at the table eating his Campbell's soup, but we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press. You see, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a caregiver. In Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died, and when boys died in Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed in pain.

When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, "I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. DID NOT come back."

So that's the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time."

Suddenly the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero in his own eyes, but a hero nonetheless.

nice-tits.org

Legends: Companies choose domain names with unintendedly risqué double meanings.

Origins: In the Internet world, the domain names that guide customers to companies' web sites can sometimes be a bit confusing, as they lack spaces between words and often eschew punctuation for the sake of brevity. Domains for similarly-named companies can sometimes be mistaken for each other, and other domain names may seem to represent something entirely different than what was
intended.

One example of the latter category arose in June 2003. when Powergen, the UK's leading integrated gas and electricity company, supposedly picked a rather unfortunate domain name for the web site of their Italian subsidiary, Powergen, that sounded like a shopping place for persons looking to purchase industrial-strength vibrators: powergenitalia.com. But the folks at Powergen maintained that they had nothing to do with the choice of domain name and didn't even have an Italian division. The powergenitalia.com domain hosted the unrelated web site of a real Italian company (Powergen Italia) selling specialized battery products. They have evidently since adopted the less provocative domain name of batterychargerpowergen.it

http://www.snopes.com/business/names/domains.asp

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Weird Coincidence

Yesterday I had iTunes one random ("it's on random") and the following two songs played one after the other:

1. When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin
2. City Of New Orleans - Arlo Guthrie

Do dee doo doo (imagine a man, going on a journey beyond sight and sound...)

Where to buy Drugs

Certainly not in Brixton at 2am, that's for fucking sure. Not unless you want to be beaten by a crackhead and have your wallet stolen.

Reproduced here in all it's glory is the average street price of various drugs in 15 towns and cities across the UK, from a survey of 40 frontline drugs agencies carried out by drugs information charity DrugScope.

Can't find work, get on your bike...


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/4206388.stm

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Yes, chocolate-lovers, the spectacular Chocolate Fountain really does flow with lashings of liquid choccy. All you have to do is fill it up, turn it on and watch in wonder. Once you've recovered from the shock of seeing those mesmerising curtains of cascading Belgian chocolate you can get busy dipping your delicacies into the fountain's warm liquid embrace. Strawberries are stupendous, fudge is fantabulous and marshmallows are magnificent (forgive the alliteration - we're feeling wonderfully Wonka-esque). But the truth is, pretty much anything you can shove on a stick tastes amazing when it's covered in warm, gooey chocolate.

Origins of Band Names

AC/DC:

The lead guitarist for the band, Angus Young, had a sister who sewed. the band looked on the bottom of the sewing machine and they saw ACDC with a lightning bolt in the middle. they thought it sounded cool.

Steely Dan:

The band's name (like a number of others) is derived from the works of William S. Burroughs: Steely Dan is the name of a giant flying steam-powered dildo that appeared in Burroughs' book Naked Lunch. Fagen once explained, "We just wanted to give the band a little more thrust than most other bands."

http://www.amiright.com/names/origins

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Patients put down

DOCTORS working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated.

With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.

One New Orleans doctor told how she "prayed for God to have mercy on her soul" after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials.

One emergency official, William Forest McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,16566858-5001022,00.html

Monday, September 12, 2005

40 Things That Only Happen In Movies

  1. It is always possible to find a parking spot directly outside or opposite the building you are visiting.
  2. When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a note. Just grab one out at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.
And 38 More here:

http://www.nostalgiacentral.com/features/20moviethings.htm

Friday, September 09, 2005

Self-Defence - English Styleee

"If you have a set of keys, I want to see you use them."

http://www.dumpalink.com/media/1121087557

Errr, errrrmmm...

There is no explanation for this because I really can't explain it.

http://www.dumpalink.com/media/1124022433

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Channel 4 Feck Fest

F**K C**T M***ER-F**KER

Extremely NSFW

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=1199

Beatbox Effex

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=1519

Hardcore - You Know The Score!

Funny thing is I really did used to look like this during most of the early 90s.

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=658

Jungle Love - Oh Ee Oh Ee OH!

Written by god himself and handed down to the greatest band in the universe - The Motherfucking Time

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=1821

Asian Numa Numa

These guys really do look like they are having fun. And the coreography must have taken ages...

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=2471

Make Yourself a "Magic Booty-Hole"

Rednecks! God love 'em.

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=1156

Last Night - Headbanging

Last night, after a bit of a night out, I was walking home from the bus stop and I was listening to Saxon's "Princess of The Night" on my iPod. It was really REALLY loud, and I was head-banging walking down the street - so much so that I couldn't walk in a straight line, which only served to exacerbate the drunkenness I was feeling and displaying.

There were people behind me, but upon seeing me, kept a safe distance and gave a wide berth.

It wasn't until I took the earphones out that I realised just exactly how loud the music was.

It all started yesterday whilst I was re-organising some music on my pc and found all this old 80s metal and hard rock. So here, for you viewing pleasure is my current metal playlist.
  • Thunderstruck - AC/DC
  • Enter Sandman - Metallica
  • Sweet Child Of Mine - G&R
  • Princess Of The Night - Saxon
  • You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC
  • Wildside - Motley Crue
  • Power And The Glory - Saxon
  • Pour Some Sugar on Me - Def Leppard
  • In My Darkest Hour - Megadeth
  • Live & Let Die - G&R
  • Welcome To the Jungle - G&R
  • We're Not Gonna Take It - Twisted Sister

And here is my want list:
  • Dio - Holy Diver
  • Judas Priest - Breaking The Law, Johnny B Goode, Monsters of rock, Come and get it, pretty much anything from the Ram It Down album
  • Keel
  • W.A.S.P. - The WHOLE Live In The Raw album AND Inside the Electric Circus Deep Purple - Smoke on the Water, Child in Time, Black Night, Highway Star, Strange Kinda Woman
  • Def Leppard - Animal, Armageddon It, Hysteria
  • Bon Jovi - Livin' on a prayer, Keep the faith, Blaze Of Glory
  • Van Halen - Jump - Why Can't This Be Love
  • Europe - Final Countdown

Kanye West - You Go Boy!

Kanye West used live TV to his advantage when he went into a tirade against President Bush (and the media) during NBC's Hurricane Katrina fundraiser. This clip is worth seeing, if only for the perplexed look on Mike Meyer's face!

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2678975?htv=12&htv=12

Very Very Sad Interview

Katrina! Damn youz.

http://www.dumpalink.com/media/1126085192

Brilliant Political Commentary

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Japanese Hentai Game (NSFW)

Who makes this stuff? BTW it's more fun if you don't even bother to try to avoid the tentacles.

Jungle Girl

NSFW, obvisouly.

What Really Happened

Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV. ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time. The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF. link

"2 minutes ago the President drove past in his convoy. But what has happened in Biloxi all day long is truly unbelievable. Suddenly recovery units appeared, suddenly bulldozers were there, those hadn't been seen here all the days before, and this in an area, in which it really wouldn't be necessary to do a big clean up, because far and wide nobody lives here anymore, the people are more inland in the city. The President travels with a press baggage [big crew]. This press baggage got very beautiful pictures which are supposed to say, that the President was here and help is on the way, too. The extent of the natural disaster shocked me, but the extent of the staging is shocking me at least the same way. With that back to Hamburg." Daily Kos

“But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast -- black and white, rich and poor, young and old -- deserve far better from their national government" - LA Senator Mary Landrieu senate.gov

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/bush_orleans_photos.html

Friday, September 02, 2005

Yahoo statement on the Black/White, Looting/Finding Controversy

Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/page/photostatement

To Yahoo! News readers:

News photos are an especially popular section of Yahoo! News. In part, this is because we present thousands of news photos from some of the leading news services, including The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France Press. To make this volume of photos available in a timely manner, we present the photos and their captions as written, edited and distributed by the news services with no additional editing at Yahoo! News.

In recent days, a number of readers of Yahoo! News have commented on differences in the language in two Hurricane Katrina-related photo captions (from two news services). Since the controversy began, the supplier of one of the photos – AFP – has asked all its clients to remove the photo from their databases. Yahoo! News has complied with the AFP request.

Here are a few of the postings that have commented on the photo caption language:

Flickr

Salon

Romenesko

Gothamist

You can comment on the issue on this message board.

Yahoo! News regrets that these photos and captions, viewed together, may have suggested a racial bias on our part. We remain committed to bringing our readers the full collection of photos as transmitted by our wire service partners.

Neil Budde
General Manager
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Camel Spiders Again

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Thursday, September 01, 2005

Pirhanas vs Mouse

I think these are pirhanas. If they are not pirhanas, then someone has trained killer goldfish and filed down their teeth.

http://www.drunkencat.com/media/1125149295

Lion vs Hyena

Ahh, poor little lions, getting beaten up by a pack of hyenas. They do get their revenge though. This is a pretty amazing video.

http://www.drunkencat.com/media/1125322986

Yahoo / AP Racists?

Are there people working at Yahoo news who can be called racists? Why is a white woman finding bread and black man looting a grocery store, when it looks like they're doing exactly the same....

http://yahooracists.ytmnd.com/

Pink Steel

The gods (or godesses?) of Gay Heavy Metal.

http://www.pinksteel.org

Splashing in the Water

There is a small boy, thin with straight brown hair and freckles on his nose, who walks over the top of a hill. It is early in the morning, about 7:30 and the sun has recently risen. There is a touch of dew on the grass and spider strings glisten with drops.

Is it is slightly chilling but he can feel a warmth from the sun as gets higher in the sky. He doesn't have a destination. He is simply walking. In his pocket is a piece of string and he fiddles with it while walking along.

He is slightly tired from the early morning start but feels good to be out and breathing the fresh air. As he walks to the top of the hill, he can now see down the other side. There is a valley down below with a tiny pond

He runs down the hill. It feels like it takes ages until he gets to the pond. Someone has built a small dock into the pond. He runs onto it. Slightly out of breath, he sits on the dock and removes his socks and shoes.

He sticks his toes gingerly into the water. The water is cold but he likes the slight sting. He eventually warms up and is able to submerge his feet to the ankles.

Suddenly, it feels to quiet so wildly he starts swimming his legs kicking up water. He kicks faster and faster so that all he can hear is the swooshing noise of the water being redistributed. Thud, thud, thud. It feels good on his feet and legs as he hits the solid feeling water.

He is happy.

Fake Moon Landings?

I knew it. I bloody knew it...

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=385

Ryanair and EasyJet

Looks like these two are having a bit of a barney.

Ryanair -
http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/news.php?yr=05&month=aug&story=cst-en-240805

EasyJet -
http://www.easyjet.com/EN/News/ireland.html

Camel Spider vs. Lizard

We saw some camel spider pictures a while back that made us cry in our sleep. Watching a video of a camel spider eating a lizard is pretty much the scariest thing ever.

http://www.fazed.org/video/view/?id=85

Please forgive the dumb shit American soldier commentary. It's probably the first time they've seen something eat like that - other than their mothers at Burger King of course.

Oooh!

101 Childrens Show Theme Tunes

All for you, really, 101 of them!

http://www.fuggled.co.uk/Nostalgia/Songs.htm

Harsh - But Brilliant

This deserves a wider audience.

http://www.ekincaglar.com/coin/flash.html

This almost made me cry this morning…

Katrina will scar US 'for years'

US states stricken by Hurricane Katrina will take years to recover, President George W Bush said after he flew over devastated areas on the Gulf coast.

He vowed his cabinet will take over the aid operation for "one of the worst natural disasters" the US had seen.

An extra 10,000 troops are being sent to the worst-hit areas in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi.

New Orleans is to be fully evacuated, amid fears thousands may have died there as flood waters swept the city.

With most of the low-lying city now submerged, its remaining residents have no electricity and are running out of fresh water and food.

Plans have been announced to evacuate tens of thousands of people from New Orleans - including some 20,000 sheltering in its crowded Superdome stadium.

Army helicopters have been helping survivors to safety

Asked how many had died in the city, Mayor Ray Nagin said "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

BBC correspondent Alastair Leithead says widespread looting and the failure to stop water pouring in from burst embankments have added to the panic in the city, and most people are now desperate to leave.

Hundreds of soldiers and police have been diverted from rescue work to law enforcement duties, amid reports that heavily-armed gangs are ransacking the city.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said she was angered to see the crisis bringing out the worst in people.

'Doubly devastating'

President Bush's aircraft circled low over the stricken region on Wednesday as it flew him to Washington, ending his month-long break in Texas a few days earlier than scheduled.

As he passed over towns whose rooftops alone remained visible above flood waters, Mr Bush said: "It's devastating."

"It's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."

Later addressing the nation from the White House, the president said the relief effort would initially focus on restoring power, communication and transport links.

He also announced the release of fuel from federal reserves to stabilise oil output, severely dented by hurricane damage to rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

"This will help take some pressure off the gas price," Mr Bush said.

'Late response'

With conditions still deteriorating, the government has declared a public health emergency along the whole of the Gulf coast to speed up the delivery of food, water and fuel to the region.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said 1,700 truckloads of essential supplies were on their way there.

Medical shelters are being set up offering 10,000 beds, while the US military is providing dozens of rescue helicopters and boats.

The Pentagon has ordered 10,000 extra national guardsmen to be despatched to Louisiana and Mississippi.

This will bring to 21,000 the total number of troops in areas hit by the hurricane, including Alabama and Florida.


President Bush flew over areas worst hit by the hurricane

Officials in Mississippi state, to the east of Louisiana, have warned the death toll is likely to climb above the current 110.

The state's Harrison County bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina as it slammed into Biloxi and Gulfport before heading inland.

Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg has accused the Bush administration of taking too long to respond.

"We are watching this devastation unfold on our televisions for days and you have to ask: where is the federal government?" the Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.

"We should have had a significant amount of troops and supplies there on the ground Monday."

Anger has also been reported among some of the poorer people hit hard by the hurricane.

"Many people didn't have the financial means to get out," Alan LeBreton, a Biloxi resident told Reuters news agency.

"That's a crime and people are angry about it," he said.