Something evil's lurking in the dark

I've never been much for zombies. The resurgent zombie craze has, in fact, left me a bit baffled. I saw Night of the Living Dead, but I was more interested in the racial politics than the zombie stuff. I never even got around to Shaun of the Dead... & I really liked Superfuzz. (I never saw Run, Fat Boy, Run either though, so maybe my interest in Superfuzz is solely Timothy Dalton related.) As far as zombie books are concerned, there have been a bunch recently: World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, etc. Believe it or not, I haven't read any of those either. There is even a prequel to the Pride & Prejudice book although @ the moment, I can't recall what it's called. W/ this in mind, you can imagine my shock @ really being interested in this story. You should check it out... scientific evidence for zombie ants straight from The Guardian!

In other zombie news, I was watching a bit of the Man U game the other day & came to a fun realization. People have compare Berbatov to Dracula on many occasions, but it goes far beyond that. Alex Ferguson's House of Fucked Up Horrors also includes Igor, Michael Jackson's zombie from Thriller, & some weird cyborg. No wonder those bastards win so much... they're obviously dealing w/ the dark arts. (I found the Berbatov & Nani pics on-line but I had to make the Rooney & Owen ones... you better enjoy the effort!)

So Tonight I'm Gonna Party Like it's 700 BCE

Graves in the Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, China, in the Gobi Desert were recently excavated, & according to a report in the latest issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology, 1 of the graves contained a big bag of dope. A whole kilo to be exact of some nice Chinese chronic. These nugs, while no longer potent, are believed to have been as strong as the stuff circulating today. I know that's a pretty vague claim since the quality window is huge, but they're suggesting that this means the guy was using it to get his stone on. It's not clear if it was medicinal or spiritual, but it is clear that it asn't just being used for the fibers as scientists assumed it was only used for then. Apparently, they didn't think the THC level would have been high enough before the more recent (last 2,000 years) growing methods were established. This is the oldest stash ever found, so high-ons (& bloggers like me) world wide have decided it's a grand day for thee cause of legalization... when in fact, it really does very little for the hippies who think they're going to save the world by turning it on. Legalize today; get high tonight. Right.

"The Galveston Flood"

It was the year of 1900
that was 80 years ago
Death come'd a howling on the ocean
and when death calls you've got to go
Galveston had a sea wall
just to keep the water down
But a high tide from the ocean
blew the water all over the town.

Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning
Wasn't that a mighty storm
It blew all the people away.

The sea began to rolling
the ships they could not land
I heard a captain crying
Oh God save a drowning man
The rain it was a falling
and the thunder began to roll
The lightning flashed like Hell-fire
and the wind began to blow

Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning
Wasn't that a mighty storm
It blew all the people away.

The trees fell on the island
and the houses gave away
Some they strived and drownded
others died every way.

The trains at the station were loaded
with the people all leaving town
But the trestle gave way with the water
and the trains they went on down
Old death the cruel master
when the winds began to blow
Rode in on a team of horses
and cried death won't you let me go.

Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning
Wasn't that a mighty storm
It blew all the people away.

The flood it took my mother
it took my brother too
I thought I heard my father
cry as I watched my mother go
Old death your hands are clammy
when you've got them on my knee
You come and took my mother
won't you come back after me?

Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning
Wasn't that a mighty storm
It blew all the people away.

---John Duffy, Tom Rush

Odds & Ends & Douchebags

I have little to talk about right now, but I have a lot to give you none the less: bloggable stuff I haven't been able to make entire posts about, so you'll get this little hodge-podge before we return to our regularly scheduled Indiana Jones stuff. 1st, we have this fun little story about the alligator in the woman's kitchen. Of course there is also this nugget about the Spiderman Window Cleaners at the Shanghai Sheraton Hotel. While we're on the subject of China, let's not forget about the 60,000 people who died in Sichuan Province earlier this month. 60,000!!! That's a lot of people. Not the 1,100 from Hurricane Katrina or the 3,000 in the World Trade Center... this is 60,000 people. Unfortunately, that's nothing compared to the more than twice that dead in Myanmar, but when we think about it together, 60,000 + 128,000 = a Hell of a lot of people died in natural disasters lately. At this point, I don't know how to pin this on George W. Bush... but you can believe I'm working on it.

OK, maybe it isn't his fault, but I needed a good transition into douchebaggery so as to bring up these asshats. This family is suing Little League Baseball, Sports Authority, and the bat company after because their kid was hit w/ a line drive a couple years ago and has suffered brain-damage. It wasn't even in a little League game, but since Little League officially endorses the bat, I guess they figure they can get a piece of them too. So while the line drive is the kid's excuse, it seems the verdict is still out on the parents. I mean, come on... when you play a sport the chance of injury is always there. It sucks for the kids that his was so bad, but suing the store that sold the bat? Give me a fucking break!Speaking of Douchebags, you can check out this story about the guys who vandalized Stonehenge last week and then read this little update about myself. Namely, I've gotten a ton of free-shit in the mail lately. I suppose it's bad timing since I'm just gonna have to pack more stuff this week, but getting free stuff is always fun. 1st of all, I finally got my Utilikilt. You may remember that a number of friends, all of whom I'd like to take this moment to thank, got me a gift-certificate for my b-day. I've spent the last 11 months attempting to use it, but they were always out of my size. However, as it turns out, they weren't out of it, it's just that the directions for measurements on the web-site are wrong, so I was measuring an odd size. Once I finally talked to a dude on the phone he explained that I shouldn't follow the directions. This company is as shady as they come, brah. The conversation went like this:
"utilikjfg;khj"
"Is this Utilikilts?"
"Yeah, brah, that's what I said..."
Oh, well, I have a gift certificate, but the web-site says you've been out of my size since June."
"Since June? wow, bro, that's a long time."
"No kidding. I was wondering if you have different things than just what's on the web-site."
"No, brah, just what's on the site. But we do have an outlet in Michigan; you could try that place, bro."
"Well, the gift-certificate says it can only be used @ your location or over the phone."
"oh, yeah bro, I forgot about that."
It went on like this for a 1/2 hour, but in the end, it turned out, they not only had my size, but in fact that had a sale going on so I was able to up-grade from the Original to the Workman's & it ended up being 10 bucks less.The other stuff I've gotten recently is thanks to Amazon.com. The search-portal on my side-bar is supposed to yield a small finder's-fee in gift-cert. form, but over the last few years I've never seen a gift-cert. I looked into it the other day & realized they owed me over 160 bucks so I e-mailed I got the information. Apparently, they'd e-mailed it to me, but it went straight to my junk folder & I missed it. W/ this free cash, I finally got the new Flash Gordon: Saviour of the Universe Edition along w/ a bunch of other stuff: a France soccer shirt & scarf for Euro '08, a memory stick & car charger for my phone, a breast-pump for Stephanie, a Hannah Montana CD for Solstice's b-day, & a book by Umberto Eco: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Thanks to all of you who have actually used that portal to get your Amazon.com shwag... keep it up.

The final little up-date about douchebags is that Douchebag FC, my fantasy team, won my league in a hotly contested battle w/ Jason, Jean, my father, & Solstice. She joined 2 weeks late so even though she didn't win, she may have had she been involved all along. Speaking of her, be sure to check out her poem on her blog.

AIDS in Africa

Obviously, we all know this is a serious problem and by blogging about it, I'm doing my level best to fight it, but this Catholic Arch-Bishop from Mozambique just might be doing more harm than good. Check out this BBC article and his claims that European condom manufacturers are infecting the condoms in order to destroy all Africans w/in the next 100 years. I was alright w/ the claim that AIDS was developed by the CIA for the purpose that Archbishop Francisco Chimoio (of course other information suggests his name is Francisco Silota from the city of Chimoio) is claiming. I was alright w/ Public Enemy's suggesting that the formula for AIDS was listed in a book of chemical and biological weapons in the 1950s. But condom manufacturers? Be sure to also check out the picture that the BBC included w/ the article. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it might be a little jovial concerning the nature of the article itself. I wonder what the thought process was that went into picking the photo: "Well, I can't find a picture of Chimoio/Silota (maybe they can't find a picture of him because they don't know his actual name) or anything related to Mozambique or the Catholic Church or the global war on AIDS so lets go w/ this one."
For more info on the AIDS conspiracy theories, check out this wikipedia page... wikireality at its best.