The sparkly vampires are winning the war

An unsolicited ad for Stallone's upcoming Kersplode!!!! The Movie.



They had me at Dolph. Free pair of camouflage trucknuts with every ticket purchase.

Eat it, women. How dare you have entertainment that caters your own low rent interests over our low rent interests. On August 13th... PEW PEW PEW RATATATTAT KABOOOM!

Video of the day

Artists BLU use the mediums of paint, stop-motion animation, and too much free time to surmise the origins of the universe and the end of human life.

Picture of the day

It's been hard going as of late for the Picture of the Day feature. Well, unless you want to see another photo of an oil covered turtle or something. But we decided that maybe it was time to stop the focus on man made environmental disaster and start focus on naturally occurring ones. Namely the Mount St. Helens eruption, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. If you can "celebrate" such a thing.

See, Mother Nature can be just as destructive as oil corporations. I'm sure we'll be hearing that from a BP executive any day now.

So, via the Big Picture Blog: Mount St. Helens, 30 years ago to today. Also, as a bonus... because I'm lovely: a 30 year time lapse video of Mount St. Helens' recovery... as seen from space

Broken in Brief: Local Cop Walks Away Slowly as Something Explodes Behind Him

CHICAGO—Earlier today, tormented outlaw cop Jack Murphy was seen walking away slowly as most of the warehouse district exploded behind him.

“Yeah, there was this huge shootout between him and like two dozen Colombians,” said Walter Fields, a bystander who hid behind a stack of boxes while the epic battle was occurring.

“Murphy shoots them all in a pitched gun battle --without reloading-- and then I see him talking to the one Colombian he had left remotely alive. I couldn’t hear what Murphy said, but I bet it was gritty and embittered. He then flicked a lit cigarette into a pool of gasoline that had appeared and walked away as the man screamed "You'll pay for this, Murphy" and the building exploded. From reports I've heard, Murphy has already paid. Dearly.”

Murphy, a rouge officer with the Chicago police, has been waging a long and bloody battle with area drug cartels for the past few months. Blaming them for the death of his family, he has engaged in outlaw tactics that local citizens have deemed “the coolest shit they have ever seen in their lives”, ranging from various shootouts that would be killer to see in slow-mo, several exciting car chases, an incident where he was hanging from a helicopter as it spun out of control over the Sears Tower, and several mano-e-mano gun duels which ended with Murphy snarling out a terse, vindictive one liner before coldly shooting his prone opponent to death.

“After the initial fire raged, Murphy turned around and asked ‘Hot enough for you, Mendoza?’ before the building exploded even bigger than before,” finished Fields.

“It was the coolest shit I had ever seen in my life.”

A Tale of Two Cities

I live in New York, where someone plants a bomb-type-thing in Times Square and residents go about their day pretty much as usual. After all, Times Square is populated predominantly by tourists, and we can always find more of those.

Matthew, however, resides in our hometown of Pittsburgh, where the annual marathon gets re-routed because of a broken microwave near the finish line:

Two-minute Jihad?

Broken In Brief: Poll Finds Majority of Americans Rooting for Katla Eruption

NEW YORK--A highly scientific national poll conducted early this morning in a south Brooklyn bar has concluded that a majority of Americans are rooting for Iceland's Katla volcano to erupt sometime in the near future.

Katla lies to the east of Eyjafjallajökull, whose eruption last week caused massive flooding, evacuations, and the closure of most European airspace. Katla, however, is much bigger than its neighbor and is known for its powerful subglacial eruptions and substantially larger magma chamber.

"Honestly, I think it'd be freakin' sweet if Katla went up in addition to Eyeja... Idjafull... Eyegartoll... that other one," admitted Adam Stannery, 31, a part-time census worker who owns his own dog-walking business. "I don't want anyone to die or anything, but did you see those pictures of the ash cloud? And the volcano lightning? And all those pissed off French people? We're just one eruption away from a massive, Bjork-led relief effort."

"Nah, kid, nah. I want this thing to go all Krakatoa and Vesuvius... combined," shouted David Furness, a self-proclaimed "doctor of some repute."

"With doctorates in both completely ancient history and historical explosions of note, as well as being an owner of both seasons of Rome on DVD, I lament the fact that truly humongous, earth shattering, civilization-destroying volcano 'splosions are relegated to the history books. I think it's time the 21st century had it's own Mt. St. Helens... but near cities and people and not out in the woods or some shit. It'd be epic!"

Geologists this week were quick to point out that the last three Eyjafjallajökull eruptions have been closely followed by Katla eruptions. Thus Iceland, as well as most of mainland Europe, remains on high alert while America contentedly flips back and forth between CNN and "Dancing With the Stars."

The Simpsons Did Something Funny

Just a quick reminder that, apart from the two countries we are currently occupying by force, Israel is by far the largest recipient of US foreign economic and military aid. Egypt is 4th. Serbia and Montenegro get the shaft.

Apropos, we recommend yesterday's NYT thought piece on how an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities might play out.

Picture of the day

From the Hubble comes this look at our newest celestial doomsday fear: random sun explosion. See, 2012 and Knowing were right: the sun will kill us all. The star, sexily named V838 Monocerotis, out of the blue one day decided to grow 600,000 times brighter and balloon to 1,000 times its diameter over a period of a few weeks. Scientists are sure it isn't a nova or supernova, but a previously unknown of example of a star "going rogue." Yes, that is the exact term they used. The star went all Sarah Palin on that solar system's ass, killing a literally incalculable number of Bothans.

The star is also now emitting x-rays, something it shouldn't be doing, leading scientists to surmise that this might all have been the result of THREE SUNS SMASHING INTO EACH OTHER! As cool as that sounds, it is only a hypothesis and the resulting expansion was probably the Random Sun Explosion Syndrome that I just invented two minutes ago.

So, you know, just in case you didn't have anything else to worry about, you know have to worry about the sun randomly expanding out into Saturn's orbit, evaporating our oceans, setting our forests ablaze, and melting asphalt before finally destroying Earth. So...you know.........happy Thanksgiving!

Video of the day

From Popular Science's Best inventions of the year, comes the Grand Award winner in Security, X-Flex's bombproof wallpaper.



Yes, PopSci should have manned up and set off some serious explosions in their office to really test it, but it's still mighty impressive. Also effective bomb protection: truck bed liners.

Stay classy, Dave

The "Dean of the Washington Press Corps" David Broder of the Washington Post, making the case that it's he, not Bill Kristol, is the most awful columnist in America:

The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees. But, as the old saying goes, to govern is to choose -- and he has stretched the internal debate to the breaking point.

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right

That's right, a man is openly arguing in a national newspaper that President Obama needstomakeadecisionrightfuckingnow on Afghanistan and that he doesn't care if that decision is wrong as long as a decision is made. Wow. Sure, the wrong decision will costs untold billions, thousands of lives of soldiers, ten of thousands of lives of Afghan civilians, and completely destroy any influence and ability to shape critical interests in one of the most important areas of the world, but David Broder has decided that he's tired of waiting to hear in what new way brown people are going to be blown up, he just wants to see them blown up NOW.

Classy. Though it's not as if the Obama Administration is actually debating a course. I think they've pretty much decided to do exactly what McChrystal wants and the only debate is over whether 39,999 troops makes it look like they got their way more than 40k does. But irrespective of that, dumping 40k soldiers into the area requires a lot of logistical planning, especially when you have to co-ordinate with other nations with armies there, the corrupt Afghan government, and are trying to make sure that Pakistan doesn't fuck you over. All of this is actually difficult and takes time. I know, organizing doesn't give you a war boner. Still, it's a much better plan than killkillnownowdiemuslimdiekillbloodwarejaculatekill. Just think of it this way: he's coming up with a plan to kill more brown people for the taxpayers dollar. Does that get you hard? I think I see your pants tenting. Alright Dave, keep up the good work.

Good morning, go see 2012

Yes, go see 2012. "It looks terrible" you say. "It is terrible" I say. But it's that magical kind of terrible that never offends or insults too badly, entertains the entire way, provides enough spectacle and unintentional humor to counterbalance the lack of any real drama, has John Fucking Cusack and Woody Goddamn Harrelson in it, and will lose any sense of spectacle, grandeur, or point if watched on anything less than a giant movie screen. Go see 2012, it is a 10,000 foot monument to scientific mumbo jumbo, ethnic stereotypes, plot contrivances, epic destruction, and pointless deaths wrapped up in almost every film cliche and tied off with a bow of the most meanspirited deaths and worldview that might have ever made it into a major blockbuster release.

Speaking of those cliches, Mike Russell of CulturePulp is kind enough to give you the "Make Your Own Disaster Movie" cliche rundown. Does 2012 follow this exact layout? Almost to the letter. But poor Mr. Russell seems to have forgotten about a hundred other disaster cliches that also applied. Perhaps his arm would have fallen off if he attempted to draw them. It doesn't matter, Roland Emmerich didn't forget a single one.

Can I see this movie ten times already?

An "exclusive scene" from Roland Emmerich's new disaster porn masterpiece 2012 that was put on the YouTubes. You didn't think Emmerich could top the scene in Day After Tomorrow where Jake Gyllenhaal outruns the cold? How do you like the sound of John Cusack calling his wife to tell her that Governor Fake Arnold is lying about the crisis....and then California explodes and he has to outwit the earth with a limo? Yeah, I thought so. We may be looking at the Citizen Kane of terrible disaster movies.

KA-BOOM

What's that sound? It's a ticking clock strapped to a a bundle of TNT. Why? Because this health care debate is READY TO EXPLODE!!! Like a roadside bomb in Afghanistan or like a pro wrestling grudge match. Why? Because the Huffington Post said so. Why would they say that? Sensationalism, but also because the Senate Finance Committee is going to consider public option amendments and SHIT is about to GO DOWN and simultaneously GET IT ON. Why? Because these rotten SOB's finally have to go on the record about a public option.

As reporter Jill Lawrence puts it in Politics Daily, ""The debate over whether to create a public insurance plan to compete with private plans is about to explode in the Senate Finance Committee. The stakes are high and so is the suspense."

Although the public plan isn't expected to get a majority of the panel, supporters say at least they'll know where everybody stands.
...
Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is already in the hot seat -- accused of being lukewarm, if not downright hostile, to the government option.
...
Senators will have at least two Democratic alternatives to choose from – and maybe a compromise from a moderate Republican who is keeping all her options open.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is proposing a public plan modeled on Medicare, in which the government would set what it pays doctors, hospitals and other medical providers.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is proposing a government plan that looks more like a private insurance company and negotiates payment rates with providers.

As the story goes, 9 of 13 panel Democrats have publicly come out in favor of some public option. If the dark and mysterious Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) comes out a supports one, then Baucus will have the tiebreaking vote. And one can see why Baucus is hesitant about including a public option, I mean why would Max Baucus want to tie his vote to a crazy idea that fringe leftists like Max Baucus support in their health care white papers. Plus, as Max Baucus knows, the public plan doesn't have much support in the Senate because jerkoff Senators like Max Baucus say they won't support it. Can't you see what he sees? Riddles wrapped up in enigmas wrapped up in Senators from Montana.

If these various public plans fail in the finance committee, there is still the weak-ass public option trigger supported by Olympia Snowe (R-ME) back when she thought she was the big shit 60th vote. But now that Massachusetts altered its Constitution in time to get a Kennedy replacement seated, its unclear whether or not she still feels like she has to be a responsible adult. So...tick-tick-tick. The assured childishness is probably happening on C-SPAN as I type. Go watch and weep as you see Democrats try to hem, haw, and weasel their way out of supporting the one thing that will be guaranteed to put the reform in health care reform

Don Draper gets his shit wrecked

It's the fiftieth anniversary of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and they're not content just to sit and bask in their reputation as an invaluable and impartial agency that has dramatically helped improve the safety of cars. No, they need to celebrate their 50th in the only way they know how: by taking a new car and smashing it into an old car. The cars? A 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air and a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. The verdict? You'd probably be better letting the Malibu hit you while you walked on a crosswalk wearing full hockey pads than straight on in the Bel Air. Still, the Bel Air looks waaay cooler. So it's a trade-off.

That still leaves one remaining problem I have. It's 2009, we should be smashing a 1959 Bel Air into a 2009 Fusion Powered Hover Malibu. Let's go Detroit, crumple zones aren't the future car designers imagined in 1959.

Broken In Brief: Black Eyed Peas spend 10 whole minutes writing new hit

LOS ANGELES—“Yeah, so I’m gonna be all like, ‘We’re gonna rock it, rock it. We’re gonna rock it, rock it. We’re gonna rock it tonight.’ And I’m gonna repeat that like forty or fifty times. Understand?” said Black Eyed Peas member and producer will.i.am during the band’s marathon 10-minute writing session for their upcoming #1 hit We’re Gonna Rock It.

It is this very commitment to the craft of songwriting that has the band’s label, Interscope, privately excited that this might be the track that gets used in every single commercial and montage during the fall and winter months, as opposed to merely most of them.

“Yeah it’s got this great beat. ‘Du-dum-dum-dum, da-dum-dum-dum-dada-dumdumdum’ and it repeats it over and over and over and over again, at least a couple hundred times. I don’t know, I’m not a mathematician,” said an excited Jimmy Iovine, Chairman of Interscope. “And just when you think it’s about to drive you insane and sap your will to live, they double-time it and Fergie starts singing, ‘We’re rockin’ it, rockin’ it, rockin’ it, rockin’ it’ and those two other guys… shit, I don’t know what they do. I guess they’ll be dancing in the video and going ‘Yeah’ and ‘Huh’ on the backing track. Anyway, it’s going to make everything Bob Dylan did sound like a Raffi tape.”

The 10 minutes spent on this new song eclipses the previous 8-minute record the band spent writing Boom Boom Pow. To be fair, this total also included recording time. Most credit this new focus and dedication to the realization within the group that painting by numbers simply wasn’t enough, that they needed to spend time making sure the colors were right and put carefully into their designated spaces.

“Yeah, it’s about art and shit,” said will.i.am from atop his giant pile of cash. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go rap about how hard I’m rockin’ it. I’m counting this interview as part of the writing time.”

Thrust~!

If you ever wondered what 3.6 million pounds of balls to the wall, fire breathing, yee-haw, good 'ole American rocket thrust looked like, NASA is happy to let you know. Above is the test of the Ares-1 rocket motor which will be used to launch the post-shuttle generation of manned spacecraft in the future. Now if only we were sure what NASA's future was....

Cheap Blogging Crutch 08.19

At Least 75 Killed in Series of Attacks in Baghdad
Yeah.....remember Iraq? Still not a great place to live. Unless you're a real big fan of loud explosions, wailing women, smoke plumes, and sirens, endless sirens. This happened largely as Iraq has regained control over most of it's security as the US is now engaged in the process of laughing nervously and slowly backing out of the country. It will end with the US declaring everything fixed, and then running, no...sprinting, back home before something can explode again. Then when Iraq descends into chaos we all get to sit back and pretend to wonder "What happened? When we left everything was fine." Thanks again, George!

A Conservative’s Road to Same-Sex Marriage Advocacy
Ted Olsen, he of the Bush side of Bush v. Gore, discusses why he hopes to eventually legalize same sex marriage through an eventual Supreme Court hearing on a case he's helped file over California's Prop 8 fiasco. And it's not because he lost a bet to a liberal friend of his. The story involves Rob Reiner, a lot of awkward silences at conservative judicial and legal conferences, and a man who decided to actually apply his libertarian principles in all cases.

Blue Food Dye Treats Spine Injury in Rats
It turns out that the same dye that makes your tongue blue and gives Gatorade's Cool Blue Raspberry that same neon blue sheen that's found in raspberry's, also prevents nerve tissue damage. Prevents nerve tissue damage....while turning you blue. Win-win. Yes, that was the sound of loud cursing you heard from Christopher Reeve's grave. Guess he should have spent less time advocating for stem cells and more time eating the blue portions of his Superman suit.

Poll: Whites, Southerners, Republicans, Few Others, Trust Fox News
That was today's "No shit, Sherlock" poll of the day. It seems that basing your news strategy around stoking the fears and prejudices of white Southern Republicans makes you really popular among white Southern Republicans.

Actor's U.S. Airport Screen Roils India
Apparently India doesn't like the fact that we racially profiled and detained one of their more famous Muslim actors while he was on a trip to our country. What was he here to do? Promote a movie he made about America racially profiling Muslims after 9/11. C'mon customs, if you want to give a guy some real method acting experience you have to pull this kind of stuff before he films the movie.

Walmart, CVS, Best Buy, GMAC Among 8 Major Companies To Pull Ads From Glenn Beck Show
What? Large corporations don't like to see their brands tainted with the stink of Glenn Beck's weepy, aardvark humping insanity? This makes 20 companies that have pulled their ads from Beck's show. Wal-Mart is one of those companies. Let's see, Wal-Mart, OK with being associated with the cheap product making sweatshops of the world's largest communist country, not OK with being associated with this guy.

Take that, Jupiter

The image of Jupiter's new scar, via a comet crash, asteroid impact, or a pissy Grand Moff with a space laser. For your information the hole is the size of the Pacific fucking Ocean. Which is to say that if it hit the earth it probably would have cracked the planet in half, set the entire planet on fire, and made you wish the apocalypse came in the form of a pig based virus. Which, for your information, it still very well might.

So strut a bit earth, God hates Jupiter and reigns His horrible judgment upon its repugnant gaseous heresy. We're still in His good graces.

Retribution

Well, we've done it. After years of planning, years of searching, billions of dollars, tens of thousands of man hours, the commandeering the most sophisticated equipment in the world, and the solemn pledges of two separate President's to bring him to justice, the United States has finally killed the mastermind of 9/11 Osama bin Laden.........'s son. Well, at least we're pissing him off some.

U.S. officials believe Saad bin Laden — a son of Osama bin Laden — has been killed by an American missile in Pakistan.

Saad bin Laden reportedly spent years under house arrest in Iran before traveling last year to Pakistan, according to former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

It's believed he was killed by Hellfire missiles fired from a U.S. Predator drone sometime this year.

That sounds awesome. I want my death to involve the words "Hellfire" and "Predator". With the possible addition of "Bearcat", "Slaughterhouse", "Wall of unholy fire", and the sentence "Through his actions he was able to save both the supermodels and our beloved el Presidente." I'd like to believe that if we aren't at least holding him responsible for killing 3,000 people, we are at least picking off his children. This one was one he's met before too.

The only military question seems to be can you piss of a man who has dozens of children if you only pick them off one at a time? Can you piss off a man more if he's already sworn fiery jihad on your country? After we move off of killing people with the same last name do we move on to killing people that kind of look like bin Laden? The theory being that once we kill enough people with his features and last name, we'll finally be prepared enough to get him. Ah well, if we can't get the big fish at least we can step on a few minnows. If you're interested in the hunt for OBL immediately after 9/11 and why it didn't work, 60 Minutes recently re-aired a report with the man who headed up the team. It doesn't say if they were able to kill any of bin Laden's nieces, nephews, or beloved pets.

Happy 4th

May your day be filled with freedom, charred meats, and low grade, Chinese manufactured explosives.