Osama bin Makeover

Osama bin Makeover

Is it October already? Quel suprise!

Much attention has been paid to the “latest” video which purports to be from Osama bin Laden. Less attention, unfortunately, has been paid to the remarkable differences in his appearance between this video and the “last” video, which was released back in July and shows bin Laden as he appeared back in, say, 2002 or so. In fact, there are no pictures up until this past week which have been identified as bin Laden post-2002.
Naturally, if you’ve been rocking the same look that long, it’s high time for a makeover. From the looks of this “latest” vid, he got one: why, the transformation is positively Swan-worthy. It’s like he’s a different man! Note in particular the Osama bin Rhinoplasty‘d, the Osama bin Browplucked, and the Osama bin Restylaned mouth and nasal folds, the whole region of which appears to be so changed that it is almost as if it belonged to another person.

Almost, eh?

The great fashion blogger (and, not coincidentally my boss) The Manolo has fisked Osama‘s new look over on Pajamas Media, and for once we at the deeply Red ol’ raincoaster blog will encourage you to click over to a site owned by the Great Right Wing Conspiracy to get some good old-fashioned belly laughs. If only Stacy and Clinton could get their hands on this boy!

In the simple phrase, we now have witnessed the arrival of “Osama bin Metrosexual”.

With the freshly dyed beard, it is obvious that here is yet another sorry example of the aging man who has resorted to the Grecian Formula SPF50 in order to stave off the ravages of time; the man for whom the grey beard is not the mark of honor and of the life well lived, but of the irretrievable loss of youth.

Trust the Manolo, Osama, this look is not working for you.

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pic o’ the day: Baghdad

Baghdad

From the Guardian.

The shattered window of a bus struck by a roadside bomb that killed two people and injured 14 more.

Photograph: Hadi Mizban/AP

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the market for #114: going long on Nasrallah

Well this is lovely. In a no-doubt outreachy and educational move, Lebanon has popularized sticker books featuring politicians. Not exactly the glamorous and exciting Lost in Space stickerbooks of my youth, they are nonetheless popular with collecting-y types. One particular thing stands out, however.

Hezbollah stickers

I got all the major politicians except Hassan Nasrallah. Apparently he’s a hard to find sticker. It makes me wonder who is making these stickers. By only printing a limited number of Nasrallahs, it may be a political statement. But at the same time, it means that the demand for Nasrallah is being driven up and he’s becoming more desirable. No matter how you look at it, Nasrallah is the hardest man to find in Lebanon.

Me, I think the CIA cornered the market and is passing them out to new recruits as part of the training process.

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the Evil Overlord list

Evil Genius. EEEEEvil!A hoary old classic of the intertubes, but one which is repeat-worthy. My particular favorites are #15, #85, and #87. Yours?

 

The Top 100 Things I’d Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies’ predicament before killing them.

7. When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him. No, on second thought I’ll shoot him then say “No.”

8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks’ time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled “Danger: Do Not Push”. The big red button marked “Do Not Push” will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

16. I will never utter the sentence “But before I kill you, there’s just one thing I want to know.”

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero’s rugged countenance and she’d betray her own father.

20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it’s too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way — even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless — my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line “No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!” (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

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Continue reading

yet ANOTHER reason to drink gin

St Mary MartiniAll the Polonium-210 in milk and groundwater.

A study released Friday by the US Geological Survey found the radioactive isotope in 24 private wells and one public well around Fallon, about 60 miles east of Reno. Polonium-210 is known to cause cancer in humans.

All dairies around Fallon sell their milk to the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative, which in turn markets the milk to a dairy in Reno and plants in northern California.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian security agent, was killed in London last year with a dose of polonium-210

The second in a series.

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