J.M.W. Turner Is Painting Nebulae In The Afterlife

The Bug Nebula, from Astronomy Picture of the Day:



Which irresistibly brought to mind the works of J.M.W. Turner:

If Captain America Wasn't Dead, This Would Kill Him

This is just so, so wrong:

Captain America Arrested With Burrito In Pants

MELBOURNE, Fla. --
A Brevard County doctor dressed up in a Captain America outfit was arrested with a burrito in his tights. What he allegedly did at the police station got him into more trouble.

Doctor Raymond Adamcik, 54, would probably rather forget about the weekend when he was arrested on charges of battery, disorderly conduct, drug possession and trying to destroy evidence. It's not what you would expect from a doctor or Captain America.

The Palm Bay family physician was at On Tap bar as part of a pub-crawl with other medical professionals. It was a sort of costume party on a bus that would take them around from bar to bar.

Everything was fine until, witnesses said, Captain America started getting too forward with a burrito he kept tucked inside his blue tights, a burrito that ultimately landed him in jail.

It's certainly not the Captain America from the comic books. This one is accused of sinister deeds more fitting of a villain than a superhero.

On Saturday night, when a costume party full of medical professionals stopped at On Tap Cafe, police said Adamcik had a burrito stuffed below the waistband of his costume and was asking women if they want to touch it. When one refused, he allegedly took out the burrito and groped her.

The woman called police and, when they arrived, the officers wrote in their report "there were so many cartoon characters in the bar at the time, all Captain America's were asked to go outside for a possible identification."

The woman pointed out Adamcik and the burrito was found in his boot. He was taken to the police station. There, while in a holding cell, police said, he asked to use the bathroom and tried to flush a joint, also hidden in his blue tights, down the toilet.

"The officer observed him try to flush something into the toilet. He tried to flush it. The officer was able to reach inside and grab part of what he tried to flush," said Jill Frederiksen, Melbourne Police Department.

The doctor wasn't in when Eyewitness News went by and didn't return calls. He may now have to rely on a lawyer instead of his superpowers to get him out of the jam.

"This is definitely an unusual situation. We don't usually arrest people in costume," Frederiksen said.

No super powers got Adamcik out of jail. He needed $2,000 cash bail and then, once he got out of jail, he still stopped to pose for pictures on the way out. It is unclear right now whether the doctor could lose his medical license if he's convicted.

This is the sort of thing I tend to call "secular blasphemy". With great costumes come great responsibility; if you dress up as Captain America, then damn it, you need to act like Captain America.

He should have dressed up as, oh, maybe Lobo.

IPSTP Day: A Message From The Man In The Moon

I tend to press deadlines to the last moment (I got my taxes done in time last week, but it meant I went to work on three hours sleep), and posting something for International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day is no exception.

Without further ado:

A Message From The Man In The Moon

Luna's far side is covered
with boundless forests of trees,
immense and towering, tall.
Redolent with usefulness.

Wood, easily cut and shaped,
hardens to stonelike toughness.
Sweet fruit, zero calories,
antivenom to cancer.

I am chainsawing them all,
and burning the logs and limbs
to open the space required
to begin the strip-mining.

For fist-sized nuggets of gold,
head-sized flawless white diamonds,
boat-sized caches of amber.
And did I mention the oil?

Earthside's secret caverns
cloak shadowed lands and oceans,
brimming with fauna thought lost
in your own prehistory.

Sabertooth and giant sloth,
plesiosaur and T. Rex,
trilobites and armored worms,
and gasping mud-crawling fish.

The slaughterhouses open
the beginning of next month,
staffed with abducted children
wielding the keen-edged knives.

(Sixteen-hour shifts should leave
the kiddies worn and sexless.
But abortionists stand by,
if procreation proceeds.)

Hey, the topside slaves must eat
while they etch Nazca lines
of vilest pornography
on Tranquility's broad plain.

And by the way, one more thing
you all should probably know:
I am -- I am -- stockpiling
weapons of mass destruction.

If any of this upsets you,
if any of this angers you,
if any of this alarms you,
why don't you just come on up here

and stop me?


A list of other participants in IPST Day (plus a long list of additions in comments) can be found on Jo Walton's LJ site here. And still more listings at the International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Live Journal site. (Thanks to John Scalzi at Whatever for the links.)

A Few Links

Some links of interest:

LowerManhattanite opens a can of whup-ass on the Keyboard Commandos who think Virginia Tech students should have disarmed the man shooting bullets into them with their bare hands.

Via The Inferior 4, a moving message from Michael Bishop on viewing the body of his son Jamie (one of the VT shooting victims).

On a lighter note, Jennifer Crusie passes along the secret of The Glittery Hoo-Ha.

And over at Angel Station, Walter Jon Williams discusses various "Robins Hood" he has known. (Speaking of which, the first 13 episodes of the 1980's Robin of Sherwood tv series he mentions is now available on DVD; I recommend it very, very, very highly, even if it didn't catch Walter's interest.)

Snarkaption Nation #3

"Researchers announced today that with the

proper application of electroshock, drugs, and

waterboarding, even the most diehard Bush

supporter can be converted into a relatively

benign Chicago Bears fan."

The entire Chicago Tribune photo-series of Bears fans can be found here. Well worth a look.

This Is Just To Plausibly Deny

If you're going to commit parody, parodize the best:



This Is Just to Plausibly Deny
by William Karl Williams

I have deleted
the emails
that were in
the server

and which
you were probably
subpoenaing
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were dangerous
so sweet
and so cold

Topic I

Because there just hasn't been enough talk and discussion about Don Imus lately.

Background, if you've been living under a rock: Last week Imus, on his talk show, referred to the Rutgers University womens basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's". Much upset resulted. Once it was realized how much upset, Imus apologized, and his parent company suspended his show for two weeks.

The sincerity of Imus' apology is suspect. His career has been mostly built around being rude, insulting, in-your-face offensive.

But what made Imus famous wasn't that. It was something called "1,200 Hamburgers To Go." 1200HTG was a classic prank phone call Imus made from his radio show way back around 1970. At the time, there were numerous university and college student demonstrations against the Vietnam War, not always peaceful; in a number of instances, National Guard units were called out to preserve order on campuses (not always successfully; see Kent State).

One such NG unit was called out for such purpose in Imus' home city. Imus called a local MacDonald's burger joint, and pretended to be the National Guard commander, who explained to a hapless clerk that arrangements for feeding the NG members had fallen through, and that he needed to order twelve hundred hamburgers to go. An extended conversation later, roping the MacDonald's manager in, and the MacDonald's had agreed to provide the twelve hundred hamburgers.

"Okay," Imus said, "We'll need two of those with pickle and ketchup, no, make it three with pickle and ketchup, and---" At which point the MacDonald's manager finally realized he was being put on and hung up the phone.

It was funny. It was classic. And... it was benign. It didn't put anyone down, or belittle them, or insult them. It just played a joke, and a good joke. It got airplay everywhere, and repeatedly. It made a local radio host into Don Imus, National Celebrity.

Flash forward a few years, to 1978, when a fellow named Dave Klause was staying with Hilde and me for several months following the Phoenix Worldcon.

Dave was a big fan of 1200HTG, and somewhere he came across a tape of Don Imus performing as a standup comic at a private club. He brought it back to our place, and eagerly popped it into our tape player for a listen.

It was... ugly. Imus' performance was racist, vulgar, scatological, way way over the edge of acceptability. And none of it, none, was even the least bit funny. It was just ugly, and hateful, and... literally... disgusting. After listening to about ten minutes worth, Dave turned off the tape player, a shocked look on his face, and said "Uhh, I guess we won't listen to any more of that."

You see, when Imus is on the public airwaves, no matter how much you think he's rude or offensive, he's actually behaving himself.

Because the real Don Imus is the man who slipped and called a group of black women athletes "nappy-headed ho's", the real Dom Imus is the man we heard on that tape from 1978.

Imus has described himself as "an equal-opportunity bigot"; he hates everybody. I don't think that's a joke. I think Imus is a man deeply poisoned by hatred and anger and bigotry; he just (usually) keeps himself (barely) on the acceptable side of behavior. I think he is a deeply ugly, bone-ugly, soul-ugly individual.

I said above that 1200HTG is a "classic" piece of comedy. It is. I wish it had been the product of someone who deserved the credit.

[02/29/2012 -- A rude, petty, and irrelevant endnote removed.  My apologies, Dave.]

Snarkaption Nation #2

"What? What is it? Why are you all laughing? C'mon, guys, let me in on the joke."

Add your own caption in comments.

Easter...

... the one day of the year when tentacled monsters from outer space suck the brains out of your pet dog:

Original here.

Snarkaption Nation #1

Roxanne over at Rox Populi decided to close up shop there (she's now a contributor to Pandagon) a few months ago, which meant my favorite source of "Write Your Own Caption" contests dried up and blew away.

As the saying goes, when your supplier vanishes, you have to become a dealer yourself.

So I'm going to try posting occasional news photos here (I'll try for about weekly), with my own snarky, mean-tempered captions attached, along with an invitation for readers to contribute their own captions in comments. Like so:















"This is my personal suicide vest. Political suicide."



Add your own caption in comments.

Co-In-See-Deenk?

In the news recently has been the story of Matthew Dowd, political advisor to the White House, a VIP in the election campaigns of 2000 and 2004, who in an interview with the New York Times, announced his deep disaffection and disappointment with the Bush administration.

There was one section of the NYT article, written by Jim Rutenberg, that I particularly noted:

"In the last several years, as he has gradually broken his ties with the Bush camp, one of Mr. Dowd’s premature twin daughters died, he was divorced, and he watched his oldest son prepare for deployment to Iraq as an Army intelligence specialist fluent in Arabic. " [emphasis added]

Hmmm. Does this sound like what I think it sounds like?

That, in short, if you have children in the military, as long as you're a "loyal Bushie", they won't be sent to a combat zone? (Dowd's son joined the Army in late 2004, two-and-a-half years ago.)