Not From The Onion: Sarah Palin Seeks to Trademark Her Name

Palin (and her white-trash daughter) have gone straight to B-list celebrity status by attempting to trademark their names. After quiting her day job mid-term, this is the loudest way to announce that she's just a wannabe "entertainment" figure, and not an actual politician.

The best part might be that she was denied because she didn't bother to sign the documents.

This latest durp is hot on the heels of last weeks herp that Bristol was scheduled to speak to Washington University students about abstinence, a topic she's no doubt well acquainted with."It had been reported that she would receive between $15,000 and $30,000 to speak". Sanity ensued, and the speech was canceled.

Airports and Holograms: A Dystopian Nightmare

Luton Airport in the UK is now unveiling holograms. But what purpose could an airport possibly have for a talking hologram? Why, to tell everyone to take off their belts and prepare to be inspected, of course!

The current argument is that people will pay more attention to Holly and Graham than signs and videos, thus improving customer service. I have to wonder, how is a shinier form of signage in security an improvement in customer service? These things can't be cheap. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find a subsidy behind all of this.

When you add holographs to a place as lifeless and soul-sucking as an airport security checkpoint, I can't help but think the result will look like Bladerunner. Perhaps they'll also add a voight kampff test as well.

Caffeine Madness!

Look into his cold eyes!

A Kentucky man with the unfortunate name of Woody Will Smith (Protip: avoid middle names that are homonyms for verbs) goes on trial today for strangling his wife with an electrical cable. To this, he claims it's not his fault, it's the caffeine!

According to the reports, Woody would consume "five or six soft drinks and energy drinks a day, along with taking diet pill." Wow, word is Woody was wound! "...it all added up to more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day."


Wait, what? Woody Will unwillingly wacked his wonderful wife with only FOUR CUPS OF COFFEE coursing through his wooden veins? Pardon my incredulously. I'm pretty certain that I regularly did more then that over the summer. What a light-weight. 


So either someone took the caffeine curve a bit too seriously, or someone just found a rediculous scapegoat. Jacob Scullum, over at Reason, has a very insightful comment:

I suspect the notion of a caffeine-crazed killer will strike most people as risible, since caffeine is a very familiar drug—the most popular psychoactive drug on the planet, in fact...

People are much more credulous about such tales when they involve less familiar drugs such as crack, PCP, or methamphetamine. As I show in my book Saying Yes claims that such drugs turn people into killers, like similar stories that were told about marijuana in the 1920s and '30s, have little basis in fact. 

Coffee: It's the new reefer madness!

Someone didn't refill the pot again! I bet is was Frank over in accounting. Why, I outta...

Feeding Time and Your Rights

SF Weekly has a story about a lawyer who's found a particularly sweet honeypot: suing resurants with poor disabled access. He's been making bank finding people who pretend to be hurt because they couldn't eat where they wanted to.


Mr Frankovich has already been blasted for abusing the spirit of the Americans with Disability law, but lets pretend for a moment that it doesn't exist. Imagine I own a greasy spoon called The Carotid Artery. Only a single-wide door allows entrance into my cholesterol paradise, disallowing the most obese of customers. Lured by the smell of fresh meat, they gather around my door and try to wedge their lumbering masses into my humble cafe, but to no avail. Mr. Frankovich, liberator of the oppressed, will you have mercy on me?

Frankovich says he has no patience for the "mom-and-pop crap" as an excuse to not be complaint with ADA requirements that have been in effect since 1990. "Quit your crying and wimping and I'm a minority, because they are picking on the most deprived of minorities." 

Apparently not. I forgot the principle right of being able to do anything you what, wherever you want. 


Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, as he's talking about people in wheelchairs, not the obese. While people never choose to be wheelchair bound, I know that nobody has any duty to serve them, disabled or not. However, money talks. McDonalds will never turn me down while I have cold cash in my hand (with shirt and shoes), mostly because McDonalds likes money. They serve nasty "meat" products because I'll give them money for it. Yet if a ritzy jazz club that serves rich seniors wants to toss me out (and they will), that's their right.


Perhaps Mr. Frankovich ought to talk to this man:

Zombie Castro Hungers for Capitalist Brains

Whoa! Fidel Castro has been seen in public for the first time since he underwent emergency hospitalization four years ago. I was pretty convinced that he had succomed to his nasty intestinal infection. I mean, besides random op-eds, the only thing we've heard of the old coot was a taped message that sounded straight out of the cold war.

So after all of this, he walks on stage dressed like a plastic green army man. He gives the same cold-war speech and instead of his characteristic hour-long rants, ends after 11 minutes. People applaud, chant his name, and the international elite congratulate themselves by getting drunk and smashing mailboxes.  

I think the story here is obvious. Castro is actually a powerful mage with centuries of arcane knowledge. After conquering Cuba, he assured his immorality by binding his soul to the motherland, intertwining the fates of the two.The ritual insured that as long as one existed, so would the other. After becoming infected with an illness that evaded the talents of his best court healers, he descended into death. Over the last four years, Cuba has reconstitute his body into a hollow construction of un-life. Now, undead zombie Castro rises to take lead of his great empire again!

Or it could just be a body double. But what's the fun with that?

One Step Closer to the Apocalypse

Perhaps I'm on a post-apocalyptic kick lately. First Cuba, then refugee housing, and now radioactive boars.


Apparently, Germany's been having something of a boar problem, with reports of them randomly attacking people, even some guy in a wheelchair. People have been hunting the boars to lower their populations to more manageable levels,  and have been finding some of the meat to be radioactive.


The issue comes from the fallout of Caesium-137, the water-soluble, radioactive substance that's polluted the countryside since the Chernobyl reactor IV went critical in 1986 (hundreds of miles away, mind you!). Caesium-137 has managed to pollute the water all the way over in Germany, where it gets picked up by mushrooms. The boars eat the radioactive mushrooms, and thus the mutant boar problem. 


The German government has been compensating hunters for their contaminated boar meat, and their payouts have quadrupled since 2007 to roughly half-a-million US dollars. This is likely due to a larger boar population, not increase pollution. So, the need for alarm isn't that great, as the problem isn't getting better.


Sorry, but Chernobyl? Violent Radioactive boars? Where have I seen this before...


If you'd like to do some experimenting yourself, Amazon sells a small Uranium sample for $35.