size matters, but not how you think

I got this from Mainichi.com via Fark. It appears that, along with infantile, pervy accessories, giggling behind their fingers, and platform shoes, Japanese women just cannot get enough really, really tiny…

 Huge! Rod! Sale!

sushi.

From the land that gave the world such tiny treats as bonsai, midget submarines and shiploads of quaint consumer goods comes, according to Shukan Bunshun (10/19), the latest example of Japanese miniaturization — single grain sushi!

Single grain sushi is not the latest diet fad to hit the country, it’s just the latest item on the menu at Omoroi Sushiya Kajiki, a sushi restaurant with a sense of humor in Fukuoka

Single grain sushi is sold in plates of 10 or 12 (arranged in a circle with a couple of strips of leek in the middle to form the hands of a clock) and features all the typical sushi, including makimono, tako, tamago, ikura, kohata, anago, ebi, ika, Otoro and kanpachi…

“I do it because the girls love it,” the crafty itamae tells Shukan Bunshun. “I tell ’em I’m gonna give ’em a full serving of sushi and then bring out a plate of the single grain stuff. They laugh and then go on about how cute it looks. Some of ’em take photos of it with their mobile phones. More than anything, though, I do it because I like nothing more than seeing a woman’s smiling face.”

So they laugh and tell you it’s cute? That hasn’t changed any; nobody can get those words out with a straight face.

iPod iPorn

Saudi single seeks same…if not same species

A boy and his goatSo I’m cross-posting this from a comment on Guido’ s site. As he says, if you don’t like it take a full refund and don’t come back. But it was my comment anyway, so I shall paste it here unabashedly, not that I’ve ever been abashed, cuz you all know I’d-a bashed him right back.

My mother worked in the King Fahd hospital in Saudi Arabia back in the 80’s, and one day an unmarried Saudi fellow came in with a diagnosis of a ruptured penis. And for several days he remained in the hospital, taking wincingly painful daily walks in the hallway, drawing a fair bit of attention, as he walked so slowly anyone else could have run a marathon in the time it took him to do a lap around the ward.

Now, unmarried Saudi men are not supposed to be doing anything with their penises that could rupture them. They’re not particularly supposed to notice that they have penises until they’re married, except to ensure the pee isn’t dribbling down their legs.

So the medical transcriptionist was curious. And so was the entire pool of medical transcriptionists. So they asked my mother to find out how it happened, my mother being an unabashed sort (acorn not falling far from tree and all that).

So she did.

She walked up to the doctor who’d examined the patient and asked him point-blank, “So how did that patient rupture his penis? All the typists are dying to know!”

The doctor rolled his eyes, then looked left, looked right, waited till the coast was clear, then leaned in and whispered:

The goat bolted.

sigil of Baphomet

shrimp on a treadmill

Just what it says. You’ve had shrimp on a bed of rice, so go wild, kick the jambs out and try shrimp on a treadmill.

This isn’t the scholarly, narrated, boring version of the video, the one linked to by everybody and his brother the Total Farker. Naw, it’s the colourized, Flight of the Bumblebee-scored, cheaply amusing version, just as you’d expect from the ol’ raincoaster blog.

And this concludes Cthulhu Day.

Oh, one more thing.

Parsnip.

The Parsnip that bubbles and blasphemes at the centre of the pressure cooker forever, or at least until Grandma remembers she left the stove on

Aniston/Jolie Star Wars

This pic says it all, really. The Aniston/Jolie star wars are what originally drove me off VanityFair’s forum…not just once, not just twice, but fully three times. If the Team Aniston/Team Jolie throng resurface again for yet another death match I’m just gonna suggest they take it to meatspace. Or, given my assumptions about vast hordes of women with far too much time on their hands, an overidentification with celebutards, and a propensity to take other people’s marriage problems far, far too personally, let’s call it “lardspace” instead.

from the Worth 1000 Star Wars photoshopping contest, via BoingBoing.

Aniston/Jolie Star Wars

Black (Ops) Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young

Hail! Ia! Ia!It looks like it’s Cthulhu Day both here and, thanks to me, on Boris‘ blog as well; and, thanks to Jupiter, on Gawker too. It’s a shame I missed tying it in to Mental Health Day; it would have been a perfect matchup.

In any case, we’ve had a cartoon from Hello Cthulhu and a nice bit of Cthuloid fiction, as well as a lovely and collectible street sign, so let’s look at the nonfictional aspects of it. Are there applications of the mythos to the current situation in Washington? Beyond those that have already been mentioned on the blog?

Yew betcha there are:

MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS:
MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY:
SEPTEMBER 16, 2004

Professor THIDWICK will not meet his class in “Modern American Politics” this morning, or indeed any morning. In partial explanation we offer this note, written by him in the pre-dawn hours:

I begged the Dean not to make me teach “Modern American Politics” this semester. I knew that in order to teach it properly I would have to delve into the secrets of the Bush administration. I knew that I would learn THINGS THAT HUMANS (as we say in these post-sexist times) ARE NOT MEANT TO KNOW. I feared that this would drive me insane–into shrill unholy madness. And so it has.

But up until now I have still able to teach my course. I am proud of that. Far gone in shrill unholy madness as a result of the incompetence, mendacity, malevolence, and disconnection from reality that I am, I could still communicate with my students in English and. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Krugman R’lyeh wagn’nagl fhtagn! Aiiiiiii!!!

Apologies. The fits come and go. They come more quickly now. By proper effort of will I can sometimes. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh. Stop them. There. But I fear that tonight I have taken another step, and will no longer be able to intelligibly communicate with humanity. I have learned more. So shrill as to be inaudible to human hearing. But the dogs will still hear me, for a while at least.

While preparing tomorrow’s lecture I came across this: a letter from Michael Scheuer, the head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit from 1996-1999…

Go on. You know you want to read the rest.