Background: The begging letters that aspiring screen-writers send to production companies, imploring them to please please please take a look at their POS screenplay, are called "query letters".

This site catalogs some of the most unintentionally hilarious query letters ever written - letters like this, this and this.

"The world today seems absolutely crackers,
With nuclear bombs to blow us all sky-high
There's fools and idiots sitting on the trigger,
It's depressing, and it's senseless, and that's why ..."

Profound words written, of course, by Mr Eric Idle, who naturally goes on to explain why

"... I like Çhinese"

But what of today? We have no Monty Python to soothe our fevered brows, and the Chinese, while still apparently "ready to please" seem to be doing so mostly by fuelling the mighty Wal-Mart juggernaut with Nike trainers for $1.98 and Aiwa DVD players for 37c (plus tax), allowing it to continue to roll across the world, squashing Mom-and-Pop stores and killing downtown and replacing them with out-of-town soulless boxes staffed with superannuated hollow-eyed minimum-wage drones in blue smocks and overalls.

But I digress.

Anyway, not to fear - one Ohio couple has the answer. They've built a godawful huge statue of Jebus, of which they say

"We're living in a day when a lot of people feel hopeless, but we believe that when people see him, they will understand he is the hope for the world,"

Thanks Lawrence and Darlene - I feel better already knowing there's one huge shitpile of plastic foam and fibreglass sitting just off I-75 amid a "Hustler of Hollywood sign for one of Larry Flynt's largest adult stores and a billboard for Bristol's Show Club & Revue adult club that features a lingerie-clad woman"

This is a neat idea, unless, of course, it gets so popular it brings the entire interweb to its virtual knees, in which case, it's not.

Got a burning question? Ask Crystal!

A couple months back, I posted an entry about recognizing the location in which an FYR contribution was taken. Well, it's happened again, only this time the location is even more specifically recognizable, and I have photographic evidence ...

Here's the new FYR entry in question, and here's another photo of the same place, (taken at night, but clearly the same place). The location is Singapore, specifically the balcony of a hotel room on a high floor of the Swissotel Stanford. The weird, bulbous thing you can see behind her left hip is a concert hall I think, and you can see the Singapore River in the background. If you want more pictures of Singapore taken from a location very close to the one where the young lady is, just let me know. If you want more pictures of the young lady, however, I'm afraid I can't help you, but I suspect she's available by the hour, for cash.

"Wrong on social services
Wrong on crime
Wrong on defense
Wrong for America"

Bush vs. Jebus

I need your clothes, your boots, your motorcycle and your vote for Presinator.

As a blue voter (in more ways than one) I've been more than a little bit dismayed to see the maps that all of the news agencies have posted making it look like the US is overrun with Jesuspublicans. Well, take that map and add in a little bit of statistical accounting for population densities and you get something a little less depressing.

And speaking of blue voters this guy may just be on to something.

Good news at last, brought to us by the BBC, who report that "great tits are not considered to be globally threatened. There are about 1,600,000 pairs in Britain".

I heartily recommend that you all take 3 hours out of your lives to watch the following documentary series recently put out on the BBC entitled "The Power Of Nightmares". I strongly doubt this will ever air on US television. It chronicles the rise to power of the neoconservatives in the west, and the islamists in the east on the back of fearsome myths of their own creation. Its premise is that politicians failed to live up to the promises of their ideologies in the early part of the 20th century and lost control over their citizens, and have attempted to regain that control using mythical threats from invisible, intangible sources. It makes such startling claims as denying the existence of Al Qaeda in the form in which we know it from media reports and political proclamation. Broadband, bittorrent required...

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Free beer and peanuts! That is, if you don't mind a bit of a drive.

The Internet is a great resource for music lovers, whether you wish to make music, or simply to listen to music others have made.

Well, since we're on the topic of recent-election-diatribes, here's mine.

David Icke:

The Bush family is one of these ‘Illuminati’ ‘royal’ bloodlines that 

go back to ancient times and these are shapeshifters that can take 

either human or reptilian form. It’s all holographic trickery because 

everything, including the body, is a hologram and not ‘solid’ as it 

appears to be. I have had many reports of people seeing father Bush 

shapeshift. As for Kerry, he is said by Burkes Peerage to be more 

‘royal’ in his bloodline than any American president, so he’s of the 

shapeshifter bloodline, too. Only the bloodline gets into the Skull and 

Bones Society. Kerry and Bush are both related to the British royal 

family and Vlad the Impaler (‘Count Dracula’). Readers of my books 

will understand the significance of this.

More nuttiness here.

OK, listen up all y'all, coz this is the only post I'm going to make concerning the results of the recent erectionelection (well, you have admit, it was a cock-up) we had here.

First, I'll let the Onion explain how it happened. Next, they can explain what the other 48% of the country is going to back to doing now. And finally, a positive and uplifting message of outreach, healing and hope to Bush's political base.

Raise your hand if you think Florida has managed to fuck up elections in just about every way possible.

Thanks but guess again. Combine their complete idiocy with computer coding from the 1970s and look what you get.

If it weren't for the fact that "channeling" is

a) associated with spiritualism, ESP, ghosts, witchcraft and so on, and therefore "the Devil's work" (ooga booga! ooga booga!) and therefore anathema and scary to Dubya, AND
b) a bunch of horseshit,

Dubya might plausibly channel FDR's first inaugural address and utter something like "Fear of the unknown is the scariest fear of all fears."

These two themes (scariness & horseshit) also achieve nexus in the Homeland Security Advisory System of Tom "Ruby" Ridge's Department of Homeland Security, and thereby on the website of THREATMETER.com who are, at least, quite open about the fact that "We Profit from Your Fear".

I like to travel. Here's where I've been:



Hmm .. that map of Western Europe looks pretty much solid red. Here's the detail:



The little white dots in the big red splodge are: Andorra, Monaco, Vatican City and San Marino (but not Liechtenstein)

And in the US? Here's the states I've been to:



How about you?

Just the thing for cutting someone off (up) on the highway.

Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Come to Jesus.

It's good to know that all of the godless, heathen humans and other primates have already been converted.

I think by now we've all heard the infamous Steven Thrasher Canon helpdesk raveout, but you probably haven't heard the new improved version, with added piano accompaniment.

Truly the most hilarious, inspired, and impeccably-executed mash-up I've ever heard. Madd props, big ups and a shout out to all concerned. Hoorah!

A list of strange foods that some guy has eaten. Hachi no ko reminded me of a certain Simpsons episode. Here's my own list:

Reindeer - it's venison, what did you expect? Meat was an interesting dark red color though, even when well done. Had this somewhere in Germany.
Horse - don't recall this being much different than beef in either taste or texture. Had it in a stew, in Belgium, whence cometh French fried potatoes which, when done "right" (i.e. a la flamande) are actually cooked in rendered horse fat and apparently taste positively righteous.
Frog's legs - yeah, they taste like chicken. Had 'em in Chicago.
Goat - ate this curried in a West Indian restaurant in London with Rob Harrison on the occasion of some birthday or other. Tastes (surprise, surprise) like mutton.
Alligator - tastes like (tough) chicken. Not bad. Philips' Seafood, Baltimore.
Jellyfish (raw) - small threads of chewy gelatinous stuff. At a top-notch Chinese restaurant in Rockville, MD, in the company of a Hong Kong-Chinese guy who called two days in advance to order the meal; none of the dishes are on the regular menu.
Tigerlily buds - same restaurant, same meal as the jellyfish. Lightly braised in oyster sauce, I think. Very good.
Sea cucumber - eaten raw at a restaurant in Hong Kong. Sliced thin, served with equally thin slices of hot red and green chilis. Near transparent, slightly brownish color. Slightly chewy. Pretty good.
Chicken's feet - also in Hong Kong (same lunch), served in a disconcertingly sweet black bean sauce. Sort of like stringy, near-meatless chicken wings. Not really to my taste.
Tripe - actually pig, I think. Boiled for a long time, but served cold, garnished with onions. Had this in Tokyo. Pretty good.
Sea urchin - not sure this really counts; it was in the sauce on an appetizer at the W hotel in Atlanta. Uhh, it wasn't horrible. Quite tasty in fact.
Caviar (various) - Sturgeon, salmon and flying fish. Caviar is an acquired taste. If you like it, as I do, it's great. If not, there's not much you can say.
Eel - pretty pedestrian, I suppose. Have tried it hot-smoked (on a Danish cruise liner on the overnight route from Harwich to Hamburg) and poached (various sushi restaurants). Eh - it's OK.
"Variety meats" - a nice euphemism for various internal organs of meat animals. I've certainly (and knowingly) eaten kidney, liver, heart and brain of cow, and - honestly - various parts of chicken that I don't even know what they were. The former (the cow parts) were all in England (hence I can't donate blood here in the US now); the chicken parts were all served as yakitori in a couple of Tokyo dining establishments (where I also had grean tea and black sesame ice creams which were very good)
Bivalve molluscs - catch-all term for the oysters & clams I've eaten raw. These are pretty mainstream, but still not for everyone. I really love raw oysters. The stories about oysters being an aphrodisiac are not quite true; it is true however, that oyster-eaters make better lovers. After all, they say, if you'll eat a raw oyster, you'll eat anything. Ba-dum-bum.

Baffling babbling.