Weird Weekend

I met an old friend at a local Denny's to catch up on things at about 10pm on Saturday night. While there, a customer had a Denny's employee bring over a rose, some balloons, a bowl of ice cream. The customer then got out of the booth, got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend. She said yes, and the whole restaurant applauded. Very surreal.

What does your pig say about you?

You are positive and optimistic.
You are direct, enjoy playing devil's advocate and neither fear nor avoid discussions.
You are emotional, care little for details and are a risk-taker.
You are living through a period of major change.
You are a good listener
http://drawapig.desktopcreatures.com/

Video anarchy

It's been a long day, and here are a few videos to sum it all up. Enjoy the madness.

Everyone Poops


A tribute to the films of Joel and Ethan Coen


A Tube Man waves in arms in an expression of joy at the wonder of life set to the music of Cream.


Psychedelic Milk

Mr. T brought boy out of coma

"Former The A-Team star Mr. T once stunned a sick child's family by bringing him out of a coma - after doctors begged the actor for help.

The poorly kid fell unconscious in Detroit, Michigan in the mid-1980s - and the only physical movement he made was in response to hearing Mr. T's name.

And when the mohawked star was in town, he stopped by the hospital to visit the ill boy - with miraculous results.

He tells Empire magazine, 'His family put toys around him and one of them was a Mr. T doll. And whenever my name came up, the boy moved his arm.

'Somebody told the doctors I was in town, so they called me down there. I closed the curtains and prayed. Then, as I was walking down the hall, the kid suddenly came out of the coma and hollered out.

That was my supernatural moment.'"

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/wenn/20080329/ten-mr-t-brought-boy-out-of-coma-c60bd6d.html

Glow in the Dark Kittens

South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday.

In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams.

Read the whole story here

Man, I thought the glow in the dark tomatoes were weird.

Star Wars Tattoos

A Pirate's (After) life for me!

I had no idea that pouring the cremated ashes of your loved one in Disneyland was a big problem, but I guess it is. From miceage.com

"While the rate of "HEPA Cleanups" has been increasing lately at the Haunted Mansion, the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie craze (with its supernatural plot themes) means that ride isn't immune either. Just this past Friday a Cast Member watching the security cameras noticed a woman in the back of a boat throwing a powdery substance into the lavishly decorated sets in the cavern scenes near the beginning of the ride. Even though Pirates is a 15 minute long ride, by the time the lady spreading the substance returned to the loading area Security had yet to arrive.

The college age Cast Members operating the attraction knew that legally they were not supposed to detain anyone, and when they confronted her about what she was doing in the cameras she told them she was only throwing baby powder around. The woman quickly disappeared out the exit, never to be seen again, but she'd actually left more than baby powder all over the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Security and the police finally arrived, and the ride was shut down on a busy afternoon of a holiday weekend. The ash was identified by the Anaheim Police as cremated remains, and the custodial department found most of it all over the "Captain's Quarters" scene in the caverns. The woman had done a very thorough job of spreading the ash everywhere though, and after an hour of cleaning with the HEPA vacuums there was still work to be done.

While custodial did a thorough job of cleaning the ash from the rockwork and the areas closest to the passing boats, much of the cremated remains would have to stay there until the set could be dismantled and cleaned completely after the park closed for the night. So after a lengthy downtime, Pirates of the Caribbean was reopened by management with the remains of a very devoted fan still spread through much of the Captains Quarters."

You can read the rest of the article by clicking here

The Nietzsche Family Circus

The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote, and sometimes you get lucky with combinations like these:

Click here to check out the Nietzsche Family Circus

How long would it take you to fall through the Earth?

Here's a bit of useless trivia for you: If you could drill a hole through the Earth to the other side, it would take you 42.25 minutes to fall all the way through. I am not even going to pretend I understand the math used here, so I am trusting their calculations. Damnit Jim, I was a Film Studies Major in College, not a math or physics major! Sure, it's useless info, but man it makes you look smart at dinner parties or at the office water cooler.

Man Builds $30,000 Jumbo Jet Simulator in his Bedroom

"John Davis spent eight years and £15,000 building a Boeing 747 flight simulator in a room in his house. And now the 47-year-old's hobby has turned into such a full-time occupation that he has jacked in his job as a graphic designer to run a full-time flight simulation business from his home in Coventry, UK."

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/bedroom-747/man-builds-30000-jumbo-jet-simulator-in-his-bedroom-312735.php

Bad Pluto!

Weird video of Pluto at Disneyland chasing a child.

China now regulates Buddhist Reincarnation

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/

BeliefWatch: Reincarnate
By Matthew Philips
Newsweek

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue -

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation." But beyond the irony lies China's true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959, is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under Chinese control. Assuming he's able to master the feat of controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. "It will be a very hot issue," says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism scholar at Stanford. "The Dalai Lama has been the prime symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so it's quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be a lot more important than the others."

So where in the world will the next Dalai Lama be born? Harrison and other Buddhism scholars agree that it will likely be from within the 130,000 Tibetan exiles spread throughout India, Europe and North America. With an estimated 8,000 Tibetans living in the United States, could the next Dalai Lama be American-born? "You'll have to ask him," says Harrison. If so, he'll likely be welcomed into a culture that has increasingly embraced reincarnation over the years. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in reincarnation. Recent surveys by the Barna Group, a Christian research nonprofit, have found that a quarter of U.S. Christians, including 10 percent of all born-again Christians, embrace it as their favored end-of-life view. A non-Tibetan Dalai Lama, experts say, is probably out of the question.

Pencil removed from woman's head 55 years after accident

A 59-year-old woman who has suffered blinding headaches since she was four years old has finally had an 8cm long pencil removed from her skull.

Margaret Wegner underwent the risky procedure in Berlin at the weekend to remove the pencil, which showed up on a computer brain scan.

When she saw the image of the white pencil, snapped in two places, she recalled an accident in the town of Dessau when she was four.

"I remember tripping over and the pencil I was holding disappeared," she said. "I had a pain in my head ­ the pencil, it seems, had penetrated the skin and bored straight into my skull."

The pencil missed an artery and nerve endings in the brain by a whisker. Doctors at the time deemed it too risky to operate. That remained the consensus among many doctors over the years but the large part of the pencil was finally removed.

The 2cm tip is still embedded. It has been overgrown by nerves and blood cells which are too dangerous to cut through.