a cookie even Cookie Monster couldn’t love

a cookie even Cookie couldn't loveYou think I’m kidding? First off, it’s Japanese, which is the 21st Century’s version of Dali-esque. The entire nation seems populated by navy suit-clad, sex toy obssessed, seafood-fetishizing lunatics. Seriously, if there are sane Japanese people out there, I ain’t heard about it.

Secondly, they are made from giant, invading jellyfish.

Thirdly, they taste like it.

From Pink Tentacle:

yummylicious!As part of an ongoing battle against invading swarms of giant jellyfish in local waters, some residents of Fukui prefecture have developed a method for converting the jellyfish into powder, which is used to make souvenir cookies. The jellyfish treats, called “Ekura-chan saku-saku cookies,” are now on sale at JR Fukui station at a price of 580 yen for a box of 10…

The result is a cookie with a superbly textured sweetness nicely complemented by the bitter, salty flavor of jellyfish.

Simply charming. Not even in the name of research will I go near these godforsaken morsels of hellfire, not least because I know what they’re made from.

Mmmm, doesn't that look good?

blog o’ the day: Ask Sister Mary Martha

TIAFound this via the nominations thread for Best New Blog; one notes, one does, a dearth of voting information there, and one assumes, one must, that voting will be done by highly arbitrary committee.

I’m simply outstanding with highly arbitrary committees. This looks excellent for the continued success of Operation Global Media Domination!

One notes as well that one clever reader has simply followed the link and nominated his own blogs. Not that we hold that against him, as we would surely have done the same, engtech.

In any case, deep in the midst of an otherwise repetitive list of unaccountably dull suggestions (present company excepted, of course) we found this:

Ask Sister Mary Martha

Note that, unless I simply haven’t gone far enough back in the archives, one cannot actually ask Sister Mary Martha anything except in the comments on her blog posts. So it’s a bit of a misnomer, but that’s not a mortal sin.

Or is it? Paging Sister Mary Martha

In any case, the blog is amusing, particularly when it gets into extended metaphor territory in this account of a simple trip to everybody’s favorite gay hangout, Home Depot.

At 9pm at the Home Depot there are a lot of terrible looking people. People who have 5 hours to paint their apartment walls before they move out in the morning who are looking for the cheapest white paint they can find that will cover up the unsightly colors they painted the place without the landlord’s permission and 7000 hand prints. Saint Mary MartiniPeople who are buying plants and rugs and fans and doorknobs and drawer pulls. And lots of people with emergency plumbing problems. Because it isn’t really an emergency if it’s not at 9pm now is it?

And they all look like zombies. Poor Souls.

It’s an oddly good match when we arrive in a land of zombies. We look like exorcists. Sort of…

UCLA protest over tasering

I'm a student; don't taser me!

Today at high noon, UCLA students staged a protest of the November 14th tasering of fellow student Mostafa Tabatabainejad by University Campus Police officers. As reported by pretty much every media outlet in the world, Tabatabainejad was using a library computer and failed to produce his student card for police, whereupon they tasered him repeatedly, an event which was captured on video.

As he was dragged away, he was heard to cry, “I’m not fighting you” and “I said I would leave.”

Let’s remind ourselves that one is under no legal obligation whatsoever to identify one’s self to police officers if one is not under arrest.

None.

There’s a large serving of “Blame the Victim” going on around the blogosphere, but let’s reduce this to the key issues:

  • Tabatabainejad was a bit of a jerkoff

  • that is not illegal

  • Tabatabainejad was within his rights to refuse to produce his ID

  • no crime was being committed, nor did the police have any reason to believe a crime was being committed or was going to be committed

  • the function of the police, in the absence of an actual crime, is to maintain the peace and public order

  • these particular officers could not be said to have done so in anything like an effective manner

  • unquestioning obedience to the arbitrary demands of armed authority is the hallmark of a police state and contrary to the goals of the Founding Fathers of the United States; it is inherently and perfectly un-American.

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It’s beginning to look a lot like…a vibrator!

First Tesco puts pole dancing equipment in the toy aisle, and now Dora the Explorer‘s new, limited edition Aquapet (TM) is encouraging your kiddies (ages five and up!) to explore themselves in exciting, new ways!

Sigh…they grow up so fast, don’t they?

Dora, dora, dora.

stay gold, Brian Atene, stay gold

Or at least gold-plated.

Here’s the real Brian Atene. He’s alive. He’s not fat. He’s still Over-the-Top and if you liked his cheesy bits here’s more of them. Atene Beat fans are logging onto christopherreeve.org and scooping-up those groovey Superman dogtags. Show support. Go forward! Get tagged and enjoy the unlikely life and madness of Brian Atene.

From the ashes of a now-legendary audition tape flameout rises the real 43-year-old Brian Atene, as overacty as ever and more than willing to make a fool of himself on YouTube if it coaxes the public into following his nerdy Master Plan and making the world a better place by buying dog tags from ChristopherReeve.org.

also stolen from Defamer. What can I say, Gawker sux since they hired the twin Hermiones!