I saw this sad tableaux while walking this morning. Apparently the Deweys have fallen upon rough times, judging from the sight of their possessions lined up along the curb outside a Clay Street apartment complex. The Christmas decorations are melancholy enough, but plenty of personal affects are there as well, including photos, papers, and what looks an awful lot like laminated identification.
The Onion did this a lot better in 1996.
Christopher Cox, Paris Review editor, has a piece on Slate entitled “Consider the Oyster — Why even strict vegans should feel comfortable eating oysters by the boatload“. Cox’s position is that although he’s in all other ways vegan, he eats oysters because oyster farms are environmentally friendly and oysters don’t have central nervous systems, so they (likely) don’t experience pain.
Oy. I hate it when some VINO (Vegan/Vegatarian In Name Only, of course) commits to structuring a tortured rationale to justify eating certain animals. I’ve seen it over and over again. It’s intellectually dishonest and uncomfortable to watch. The only way it gets worse is when they also falsely claim to be a Buddhist (BINO). That’s enough hypocrisy to literally make one choke.
You know who I respect a lot more than VINO’s? The folks over at Meatpaper. They totally own their carnivorous nature and are a hell of a lot less judgmental than your average BINO.
Discovered via the Consumerist.
Dammit, this is sad. Apparently as many as four Tata Nanos have self-immolated recently. I’m a big fan of the fugly little things and was really hoping for a crack at the US domestic version, although I have my doubts they’ll make it into the US market without their retail price inflating 2-5 times over their $2500 (USD) Indian sticker price.
According the Jalopnik source article, Tata is refusing a recall, stating that the electrical short in the rear engine compartment is not a design issue. Somehow I don’t think that explanation’s going to work out in other markets, let alone India, since at least one of the owners of an as-yet un-charcoaled Nano is already trying to return the car for a refund, refusing any sort of replacement, and pledging never to buy another.
Via Boing Boing by way of Dangerous Minds, the Daily Mail reports that a Pennsylvania woman has been charged with animal cruelty after installing large-gauge barbell piercings in kittens’ ears and necks, then attempting to sell them online for hefty sums. She also docked at least one kitten’s tail by suffocating its blood supply with a rubber band.
I dare you to LOL this. And screw you in advance, 4chan.
Hold on, don't jump yet.
Via The Consumerist:
A woman found a frozen frog in her Weight Watchers fettuccine alfredo. The post describes the frog as “practically intact”, but it looks completely intact to me (sans its froggy little soul, of course). It looks like it’s ready to jump clear of the dish. This might be a graphic depiction of amphibious indecision, literally flash-frozen as the frog wondered “Should I jump now, or perhaps wait another moment?”
Wait a second...
I’d like to think that if my daughter and I had found this we’d have immediately looked for some magnet wire and a nine-volt battery. What kid doesn’t want their own Frankenfrog/frogzombie? The scene:
“Spark it up!”
ZZZAP!
“Ribbit. Braiiiiiiiins…”
If we were successful, we’d have to follow the classic script and reanimate a mate (Bride of Frankenfrog). The great thing about playing God with frogs is that we don’t have to go out of our way to find another frog of the opposite sex — frogs are capable of heterogametic sex change under the right conditions. Returning from the dead sounds like a good start.
The Consumerist mentions several other “prizes” recently discovered in packaged foods, including:
I should have jumped.
Via The Consumerist, the story of a Continental passenger with an anxiety disorder and depression who is confronted by a gate agent who refuses to recognize the disorder, refuses to recognize written doctor’s orders, mocks the passenger, then holds her doctor-prescribed companion cat hostage for $100, which (predictably) triggers a massive anxiety attack. Then she denies the passenger access to her meds.
This is an unbelievably awful scenario. The Consumerist’s post features a well-written first-hand account of the experience, but I was just as interested in the comments as the story. I expected to see a lot of derisive comments about 
the doctor-prescribed cat and the passenger’s lack of foresight in not doping up prior to a stressful situation. I was extremely happy to see near-universal support for the passenger. The only vaguely negative comment had to do with other passengers’ potential pet allergies.
As for the anticipated pre-doping criticisms — people without experience with the types of medication prescribed for panic and anxiety disorders have no idea that almost all of the meds contain fairly fast-acting sedatives. They also sometimes have other unpredictable side-effects under stressful situations (like flying). Passing out once you’re seated on the plane is one thing, but the terminal is a different story. I doubt the passenger would have resorted to medication while still in the terminal if the situation wasn’t critical.
This was certainly a nightmarish experience for the passenger. I agree with the post’s comments — this employee should be fired.
According to the Washington Post (by way of the Consumerist), a New Jersey bowling alley torched a rival alley and burned it to the ground. This is story is like a Coen Brothers mashup — The Big Lebowski meets Fargo. Loyle Lanes, a family-owned and operated bowling center was burned by the manager of a rival alley, Pike Lanes, with the help of a couple of hired arsonists, one of whom is an electrician.
Steven Smink, the manager of Pike Lanes since 2007, supposedly bragged about putting Loyle Lanes out of business “within two years”. He allegedly hired 21-year-old electrician Felix Manzano and an unnamed seventeen-year-old to do the deed. First of all, Smink already has a Coen Brothers character name, and will doubtlessly be played by Steve Buscemi. I can easily imagine William Hurt and Keanu Reeves as the accomplices, essentially reprising their roles as the drugged-out, incompetent contract killers from I Love You to Death, but that won’t work for a couple of reasons — they’re both too old to play the parts and one of them is Keanu — but you get the idea.
The best quote in the story came from the electrician’s father, Felix Manzano, Sr. (played by William H. Macy):
“He’s stupid, but he’s not that stupid,” the elder Manzano said.
The story points out how dedicated bowlers are. They’ve been showing up to commiserate in the Loyle parking lot and are genuinely bewildered. They don’t know what to do because they have nowhere to bowl. This might seem strange to non-bowlers, but hardcore bowlers are fiercely loyal to their favorite alleys and, as one quote illustrates, see it as their “second home”. The sentiment doesn’t even come close to describing the level of affection bowlers have for their lanes. It’s not difficult to imagine The Dude and Walter among those in the parking lot crowd, the former attempting to dissuade the latter from acts of vengeance against antisemitic arsonists.
I was a bowling alley mechanic for a while and saw the same hyper-dedicated bowlers every night. As time went by, I learned all about their interpersonal dramas and romances. Shortly after the 2008 elections there was a near fist-fight between two long-time friends over politics and race. Marriages were made and broken as league seasons came and went. I saw a lot of public, drunken, emotional dysfunction, but at levels usually only seen behind closed doors around the holidays. When the bowlers are at their alley, they are truly home.
There’s a reason why the novel I’m writing uses a bowling alley both as occasional setting and as environmental catalyst for the character conflicts. It’s a natural place for a drama like this to unfold, given the passionate entanglements of different social classes, and if the bowling alley has been around long enough, spans generations. I had no intention of burning my fictional bowling alley down, but the image of dozens (or even hundreds) of melted bowling balls is extremely compelling. I’m willing to bet that New Jersey grief counselors will be seeing a lot of bowlers in the near future.
More bowling-related posts on ERIWA:
Three food-related examples of idiocy, via The Consumerist:
God help us, but this is could be the future of Tea-Bagging.
Via Talking Points Memo: Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard’s home was invaded by a 28-year old Somali man armed with an axe and a knife last Friday. Westergaard’s grandson was spending the night and the two fled to a purpose-built safe room and were not harmed. Aarhus police responded and ended up shooting the attacker through the knee and hand. Officially, Danish police are calling the assault a terrorist attack, due to the assailant’s ties to the Somali group al-Shabaab, which is thought to be affiliated with al-Qaida.
Westergaard was a target because he created an infamous political cartoon depicting Muhammed with a bomb-turban. Well, more sucinctly, Westergaard was a target because he drew a picture. His picture was actually one of twelve depictions of Muhammed, published on same page of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005, specifically to address the taboos surrounding the criticism of Islam in the media and media self-censorship, in general. Visual depictions of Muhammaded are typically considered blasphemous by devout Muslims and the publication of the editorial cartoon resulted in death threats against the cartoonists, rewards for the heads of the cartoonists, torched embassies, and protests with three-digit body-counts.
And now one of the cartoonists is attacked with an axe in his home — five years later. I remember when I was in high school and Salman Rushdie was hiding from the fatwah issued by the Ayatollah Kohmeni over his novel, The Satanic Verses. My plan at the time was to become a novelist and I found this situation both surreal and terrifying — a guy had a significant portion of the world’s population out to kill him because he wrote a book they didn’t like. But time passed and Rushdie eventually emerged into daylight again and most people (including me) basically forgot all about it.
It definitely didn’t go away, though. If anything, things have become much, much worse over the last two decades. The type of people who are most likely to actually murder people who disagree with them are more radicalized than ever. Case in point, Dutch director (and great-great grandson of Vincent van Gogh’s brother Theo) Theo van Gogh was asassinated in 2004 — literally shot off his bicycle, stabbed, then nearly decapitated by an attacker allegedly motivated by the remarks of a Dutch Imam — all over a ten-minute film which addressed the abuse of Muslim women.
This kind of craziness begins with a difference of opinion, is exploited by demagogues, and eventually results in armed psychotics hurting real people. It’s impossible for me to consider this situation without thinking of the Teabag Crazies. These nutbags are whipped into a frenzy by the screamers at Fox and AM radio, then strap on their guns to protest healthcare for kids who live in different zip codes and might be a different color. These are people who consistently vote against their own self-interest and consider themselves morally superior for doing so. That is a pretty good working definition for insanity. Eventually one of these freaks is going to absorb one Glenn Beck rant too many and start shooting. Oh, wait that already happened.
Wow, as though I needed any more proof that life can always become weirder than I can imagine </douglasdams>. Ford is selling Volvo to Geely. I was barely finished eulogizing Saab!
A few years ago I was a little surprised to realize that my three-car fleet was entirely Swedish. I simultaneously owned two Saab 900’s (a 1990 and a 1992), as well as a 1994 850 wagon. Come to think of it, all of my cars had numbers for names. That’s a total of 2650 meatballs rolling at any given moment. These days I’m down to the ‘92 900 and it’s on its way out.
News from 2015: Tata Buys Volkswagen
