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

Picture of the day

Via the Big Picture Blog comes more of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption. Look, I don't want to jump to any premature conclusions yet, but I think it's time to declare Europe a dead, ash strewn wasteland and move on with our lives in this post-Euro world. They had their run and God destroyed them because we passed health care reform. We mustn't be consumed with the past, consumed with the Europe that was. We must look to the future. We'll just wait for them to slowly die from the lack on sunlight and heat, then we'll send in looting teams to pick up ashy Mona Lisa's, statues, and the like. Win win.

Clicks embiggen. You know this.

Picture of the day w/ bonus animation

The Icelandic death cloud that is devouring Europe/ushering in a new sunblocked ice age/inconveniencing air travelers.

Picture of the day

Via Talking Points Memo and the Big Picture Blog comes a look at the 2nd eruption in the last month of Iceland's Fimmvorduhals volcano, located beneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier. The subsequent ash spewing has shut down flights all around Europe and sealed off the UK in Icelandic death dust.

Click to embiggen.

Picture of the day

From the NASA Earth Observatory comes this look at two volcanoes, Bezymianny and Klyuchevskaya, erupting simultaneously in Kamchatka and spewing out 3.5 mile high smoke plumes.

Is the planet about to be covered in ash? Is Kamchatka? Are there even any people there? Where is Kamchatka? What's a volcano? These are all important questions that will need to be figured out in the upcoming days. For now it just seem s as if the double volcano thing is just a normal occurrence and life on this planet and in Kamchatka (Indonesia? India? Russia? I'm too lazy to look it up) will continue to go on as normal.

Click to embiggen.

Space-plosion

The International Space Station catches footage of the Sarychev Volcano erupting as it rockets by at a million miles an hour. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? They need to film nuke tests like this. Someone go inflame tensions along the Pakistan/India border and I'll go tell the ISS to swing by all slow like.

The non-state of the union

Barry gave his pseudo SotU last night and there was much rejoicing. He confused America by appearing calm, collected, rational and he baffled us by talking to us as if we were adults and explained his plans and reasoning to us in much the same way. After eight years of "They hate your freedom. We are awesome" goo goo gaga childspeak it was at time horrifying and confusing. If he talks to us like we're adults, then don't we have to act like adults? Terrible. Barry talked about the economy, jobs, energy, bipartisanship, greed, torture, health care, and about messing with Joe Biden. There were 37 standing ovations and 65 applause breaks. Additionally someone installed an electric shocker on Nancy Pelosi's seat, causing her to jolt up excitedly after every sentence the President completed. 30,000 volts in the anus makes you excited about change.

The early review are in and Obama won the speech overwhelmingly or something. People liked it as both Democrats, Independants, and Republicans gave him high marks for the speech, the issues it addressed, and applying electrical shocks to Congressional members. Barry apparently killed it on taxes, Iraq, and the deficit. While some are even saying that the pre and post polling saw a 14 point jump in his popularity. Which is all meaningless as I can't remember there ever being a SotU that people came away hating. Talk is cheap, let's see if he can actually live up to the words. Furthermore this will hardly make a difference with Republicans he has to win over in the House or Senate, as the polling was not done of people from the 1950's.

Then there was Louisiana Governor and part-time exorcist Bobby Jindal's response. In his defense these are usually terrible.....and his was as well. He decided to take the opposite path Obama did, talking to us as if we were five year olds. Slow five year olds who couldn't realize that his speech was the same one Republicans have been giving since time immemorial. Government is the problem, we trust the people, tax cuts, Reagan, boo liberalism, volcano monitoring is for suckers, government is the problem. Maybe not the volcano thing. He also somehow tried to use Hurricane Katrina against the black Democrat President. Points for effort. He also talked like Kenneth from 30 Rock. When the words 'amateurish', 'laughable', and 'awkward' are thrown around, you know you've just springboarded to the top of the GOP's 2012 list. Someone's going to have to out hokey, out religious, and out folksy Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal thinks he's the man to do it. Godspeed.

Broken News: Obama to sacrifice bankers to appease financial Gods

WASHINGTON—Looking to get a handle on the financial crisis still spiraling out of control, President Obama gathered his economic team together to announce the first step of their economic recovery plan: ancient ritualized killing ceremonies designed to ward off evil omens and spirits.

After consulting with Lawrence Summers, Tim Geithner, and several other voodoo high priests, the President decided that the best course of action was to ritually sacrifice bankers in an attempt to appease the Financial Gods.

“My fellow Americans, I know this seems like a harsh and punitive measure,” said the President, already decked out in a gilded black robe, high necked priest’s collar, and gold ankh pendant. “But you must understand the dire straits we are in. I have been advised, and I now believe, that we have angered God or a series of Gods and the only way forward is to sacrifice one banker per God until we hit upon the right combination.”

As the President walked over to a stone alter constructed in front of the Washington Monument, his economic advisers already encircling it and chanting from various Latin tomes, the President revealed the first sacrificial vessel, a portly man strapped to the altar with razor wire, his bare flesh adorned with pagan symbols painted in goat’s blood.

“This is Michael Simon of PNC and I believe we’re sacrificing him to Baal, isn’t that right Rahm? Alright let’s get this under way.” The President then proceeded to open a large book, on loan from the Smithsonian, bound in what seemed to be human flesh, inked in blood, and started reading the ancient Sumerian script. At the culmination of the chanting, the President produced a large bone dagger from his cloak, raised it into the air, and brought it down into Mr. Simon’s chest.

After a quick series of calls over to the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, wiping the blood from his Blackberry, announced “Still the same. We’ll all need to be back here for the six o’clock. Remember to get those cloaks washed. Dry clean only. Oh, and toss the body in the Potomac."

While some are questioning the decision to bring sacrifices back to White House grounds for the first time since Dick Cheney was forced to move his dark rituals to the Naval Observatory in 2005, others point out that Obama is pretty popular and that they really ought to shut up.

On the other hand there are others who support the policy, such as Dr. Colton Kent, Professor of the Occult at Cambridge and director of Faces of Death VII. “Look we’ve exhausted all other options and maybe we should open our minds to what the ancient civilizations did. We just watched the big cheese take his oath of office twice on a leather-bound book of 2,000 year-old Jewish proverbs. Everyone loves following what long dead primitives did so long as there’s chanting and a book. Ra, Kali, Zeus, Thor, Gozer, Morgan Freeman. It doesn’t make a difference. The transgressors must be offered up in death to the offended party. Do you really think an offering of nuts and berries is going to do it? Oh, and try finding a virgin in this day and age.”

Kent added, “We all need to understand that obviously a God or consortium of Gods is causing this and one of them needs to be appeased. Otherwise we’d just have to blame the free market and capitalism, right? That, my friends, is fucking ludicrous.”

Officials note that if the sacrifices do not work there is, as of yet, no backup plan. Treasury Secretary Geithner has advised, “…collecting up bitches to throw in volcanoes,” while other, more experienced advisers feel that the President might need to consider that a witch might have hexed the financial sector or even that someone has stolen a priceless artifact from the US that needs to be returned.

These same officials note that the proposed economic stimulus proposal is just a ruse designed to keep congress busy. One such official, on the condition of anonymity said “We just don’t want them gumming up the work with their ‘motions-to-stab’, committees to review what ancient evil manuscript to use, and commissions to look into the best type of altar to funnel blood into the collection receptacles. Plus, there are even some senators who honestly think this crisis will be solved by spending. Like Vishnu or Eric Clapton is going to care about transit funding.”

Later, when asked if he really thought these ritual killings were going to solve the crisis, the President smiled and shrugged, “Don’t know. But it still makes more sense than giving a trillion dollars to George Bush and Hank Paulson, no questions asked.”