Category Archives: Celebrity

weirdness roundup: also-rans

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weird al mona lisaHere’s a brief taste of weirdnesses I cruised or missed which didn’t make it into the ol’ raincoaster blog, for one reason or another. If it’s Santa-related or Squid-related, you can assume the reason it didn’t get into the blog has to do with the fact that I copied it to the hard drive at home before the cable went out and haven’t been back to get it. Otherwise, it’s the kinda thing where I looked at it and said Nah, we’ve had too many Darth Vader Sticks Up a Drive Through stories recently, and I just skipped it.

He-Man Sings Four Non-Blondes. The reason I didn’t post this is simply that I figured everyone on Earth had seen it, but I found out today that’s not true. So here it is. Break out the rainbow legwarmers and glow sticks and put on your dancin’ shoes!

An Aussie roundup of world-wide weirdness, all of which escaped the blog except the Brazillian who blowed himself up.

I’d a used this one if I’d seen it in time:

In Cologne, a plastic surgeon cheated out of payment by two women using fake names gave “wanted” pictures of their enlarged breasts to police.

I’ll BET they were wanted!

Rich people getting ripped off on luxury items. You see these from time to time and every time I think: This is news? This is justice, baby!

The best of Dear Prudence. I’ve read it. There IS no best. Dear Prudence, please shut the fuck up.

Predictions, particularly by people who were wrong in the past, and who start their prediction stories by listing instances of them screwing up last year. What hurts most when I read these is realizing he was paid just as much for “I was wrong when I said Britney and K-Fed would have a girl” as “And today the the weird eyeSudan was invaded by Ethiopia…”

Public opinion polls, particularly contradictory ones. If I wanted to know what the common people thought, I’d go to the bloody beer store and I’d ask them.

Praise be to Fark, which is a year-round source of insanity upon which I have come to rely. And some day I’ll even figure out how to register there. Maybe.

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new game: the raincoaster challenge

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TIALookie everybody! All that famewhoring paid off: I’ve got my own game.

Me and Kevin Bacon, we’re likethis. Even William Fucking Shatner hasn’t got a GAME! If you thought I was insufferable before, just watch out, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!

Check it out: the raincoaster challenge, by Richard Mahoney over at Envelope Filter: tasty harmonics in a creamy static sauce.

  • Anyone can play. Everyone should play. Tell your friends.
  • Raincoaster should be in the first 10 results, partial credit for first 20.
  • Successful searches should be posted in the comments.
  • Use of the term ‘raincoaster’ in the entry kind of defeats the point, in case you hadn’t guessed.
  • Funniest/weirdest term wins bragging rights.
  • Visitors to the site should hit google with the search terms in the comments. If we get over twenty or so in a day it turns up in her blog stats.

But the FIRST RULE of the raincoaster challenge is, you must go show the luv to the inventor of the game. G’wan, give him a hit; he deserves to be hit, for feeding my ego!

I'm so totally important, though. Just ask anyone! Well, anyone who's heard of me.

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two songs, one title: Hold On

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Inspired by the interesting contrast of Jesus Jones‘ and Van Halen‘s songs both called Right Now, I’m posting these: two songs, both called Hold On, both optimistic and arguably existential in different ways, and both outstanding examples of their genre.

In this corner, Wilson Phillips, girl band extraordinaire:


I know this pain
Why do lock yourself up in these chains?
No one can change your life except for you
Dont ever let anyone step all over you
Just open your heart and your mind
Is it really fair to feel this way inside?
Chorus:
Some day somebody’s gonna make you want to
Turn around and say goodbye
Until then baby are you going to let them
Hold you down and make you cry
Dont you know?
Dont you know things can change
Things’ll go your way
If you hold on for one more day
Can you hold on for one more day
Things’ll go your way
Hold on for one more day
You could sustain
Or are you comfortable with the pain?
You’ve got no one to blame for your unhappiness
You got yourself into your own mess
Lettin’ your worries pass you by
Don’t you think its worth your time
To change your mind?
(chorus)
I know that there is pain
But you hold on for one more day and
Break free the chains
Yeah I know that there is pain
But you hold on for one more day and you
Break free, break from the chains
Some day somebodys gonna make you want to
Turn around and say goodbye
Until then baby are you going to let them
Hold you down and make you cry
Don’t you know?
Don’t you know things can change
Things’ll go your way
If you hold on for one more day yeah
If you hold on
Don’t you know things can change
Things’ll go your way
If you hold on for one more day,
If you hold on
Can you hold on
Hold on baby
Wont you tell me now
Hold on for one more day cause
It’s gonna go your way
Don’t you know things can change
Things’ll go your way
If you hold on for one more day
Can’t you change it this time
Make up your mind
Hold on
Hold on
Baby hold on

 

And in this corner, Tom Waits, the bard of the Black Rider himself:

They hung a sign up in out town
if you live it up, you won’t live it down
So, she left monte rio, son
Just like a bullet leaves a gun
With charcoal eyes and monroe hips
She went and took that california trip
Well, the moon was gold, her
Hair like wind
She said dont look back just
Come on jim
(chorus)
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on
Well, he gave her a dimestore watch
And a ring made from a spoon
Everyone is looking for someone to blame
But you share my bed, you share my name
Well, go ahead and call the cops
You dont meet nice girls in coffee shops
She said baby, I still love you
Sometimes theres nothin left to do
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here,
you got to just hold on.
Well, God bless your crooked little heart st. louis got the best of me
I miss your broken-china voice
How I wish you were still here with me
Well, you build it up, you wreck it down
You burn your mansion to the ground
When theres nothing left to keep you here, when
Youre falling behind in this
Big blue world
Oh you go to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You got to hold on
Down by the riverside motel,
Its 10 below and falling
By a 99 cent store she closed her eyes
And started swaying
But its so hard to dance that way
When its cold and theres no music
Well your old hometown is so far away
But, inside your head theres a record
Thats playing, a song called
Hold on, hold on
You really got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
And just hold on.

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would you watch Saddam Hussein die?

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This got started in the comments section of another post, but it seems to me more than deserving of its own post; it is far more important than Saddam Hussein’s last words. I started to watch the Daniel Pearl video, then I stopped it and did not go on. But I have read all kinds of banned documents, including the manual of Afghani Jihad, and I think I would watch the Steve Irwin video if his family would allow it to be released, so why I draw the line here but not there, I am not really sure I know.

Here’s the debate so far:

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Saddam Hussein’s last words

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NOTE: This is not the thread in which to pimp out the death video. There IS a thread to discuss whether or not you’d watch the video, and that thread is here. Not here. I’m getting rather cranky about this and future such comments will probably be deleted. Deal with it.

Saddam Hussein in custody

No, I’m not going to show the video. I’m not even going to watch it. Watching an execution to me is unconscionable, but recording someone’s last words is quite literally the least we can do.

The Guardian is reporting that, according to witnesses, his last words were taunts and boasts, followed at the last moment by prayer, and there you have the Platonically perfect end to a secular and opportunistic dictator.

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq’s savior, not its tyrant and scourge.

“He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians,” Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: “You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution.”

“I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans,” Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.

“God damn you,” the guard said.

“God damn you,” responded Saddam.

New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam.

Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.

Then Saddam began reciting the “Shahada,” a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site.

Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.

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