From Maxim, which cannot be said to be one of the publications I read with great regularity, or even when constipated. Still, worth checking out this bizarre slideshow of accidental porn images; surely some of these have to be tongue in cheek. There just can’t be that many virgins in industrial design.
Can there?
I’m pleased, for example, by the fact that the gay couple who just walked by me at the Chinatown Night Market mistook…
Hang on, perhaps we need some background.
Okay, so this hasn’t been the easiest two or three years of my life. I turned 43, not much cause for celebration under any circumstances. Undiagnosed illnesses are highly inconvenient, not just because it is, under the circumstances, just as impossible to get on disability as it is to hold down a full-time job. The fact that Investor’s Group gave my father’s life savings to someone who is not a legal heir, and that I am on the hook for the whole amount if I can’t get it from them, is another energy drain. Let us not speak of the Orwellian Nightmare that is the Ministry, nor the box o’ delights that the foodbank has been known to provide from time to time (their beef stew “helps build healthy coats” according to the label).
And I got fat.
All very annoying, and not designed to have me looking my best, particularly tonight, as last night I put in a wad of deep conditioner and didn’t bother to rinse it out, thinking instead that if it worked well in five minutes it’ll totally kick ass if I leave it in for 24 hours. As well, I have finally tired of packing a caboose of this magnitude around everywhere I go and so tonight, hair frozen in greasy curls and all, I went out and got some good, old-fashioned exercise. Hey, it’s Vancouver, I figured. Everybody looks like an extra on Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
So I was not looking my very best.
And as I passed the gay couple on my way to get the $1.50 hotdog at the Market, one of them, apparently mistaking me for a junkie because of my loopily exhausted walk and personal fashion sense (still wearing the fragrant and ratty T and pants I’d gone skating in), turned to his partner and whispered, “That poor girl.”
I practically skipped home.
He called me a “girl!” I still qualify!
Half-baked, anyway. I suggest a scientific name Carlin Cheechinigus, but that’s subject to (dis-) approval.
This hallucinogenic beauty was caught off the coast of Maine, so the possibility exists that he was just on his way back from a wild party on the Gaspe, which would explain why he still looks half-baked.
Although it no doubt has an ironclad alibi. It’s underage, too, as are some of its most vociferous fans. Here is the report from the Bangor newspaper:
“Dude, it’s half orange and half, like, regular color for a lobster,” exclaimed Alyssa Bonin, 12, of Webster, Mass.
Sharp eyes there, Alyssa. Maybe a little bloodshot from the sounds of things, but still, sharp.
Mills intends to keep the two-toned lobster over the winter and have him on display for educational purposes, though he has no plans to name him.
“Lobsters are interesting but not personable,” he said.
We at the raincoaster blog beg, of course, to differ. Even our on the one hand shall not know what our on the other hand is doing
The rare 1-pound crustacean, caught earlier this week in Steuben, is a genetic mutation with a two-toned shell.
One side is the usual mottled dark green. The other side is the orange-red shade of a lobster that’s already spent some time in the hot pot.
The odds of this kind of mutation occurring are very rare – something like one in 50 million to 100 million, according to oceanarium staff. The chance of finding a blue lobster is far more common, at one in a million.
“Isn’t he pretty?” Bette Spurling of Southwest Harbor cooed Thursday as she stroked the lobster’s shell to calm him down.
Now that is the proper way to treat an addled celebrity. Not at all the way Jon Stewart did with the poor, hapless and handsome Butterscotch Stallion here (heartlessly stolen from Defamer):
Why US third parties don’t win elections. From The Hammer of Truth, and greatly abbreviated.
We hear it again and again in the news: voters are unhappy with Democrats and Republicans, approval of both major parties is in the dumps and there’s a general dislike for the status quo. So this year, more than any other, I want to give voters the low-down on why the status quo is going to stay the same. Sadly, whether you like it or not. It’s a problem that we’ve only recently become aware of with some regularity thanks to the decrentralization of the Internet: the system is rigged this way.
You see, the truth is that even as more and more independent candidates are being fielded for office each year, the number of them actually being elected has remained relatively flat (that’s not to say it never happens, but that it’s just so rare that it’s relatively unnoticeable). I’ve decided it’s in everyone’s political best interests to identify and break down these walls that have been erected by both incumbents and an apathetic media for third parties in this country. Here’s my rough take on what these are (in order of apparent priority):
- Restrictive ballot access laws
- Lackluster media coverage
- Fundraising and volunteers
- Inclusive polling
- Debating major candidates
- Election day (voting methods)
My favorite election book is Michael Lewis‘s book Trail Fever, which he originally wanted to call “Losers” because those are the people he found most interesting, the ones who were never going to win, yet who had to run because of some strange, twisted fire within themselves. Sometimes you just want to play with the big boys; sometimes you figure you only have to be better than that dumb trust fund sumbitch; sometimes you’re wrong.
raincoaster 