From the CNN front page:
I read this block of leads and felt like I was suddenly back in the mid-90s.
Will I be able to play Super Mario with my friends, on my virtual boy, over this new fangled inter-network?
At least now we can all get headaches simultaneously, instead of having to take turns.
Rail guns are one of those science fiction tropes – like hover cars and jet-packs – that have been around for years, and no one really expects to have happen tomorrow.
The thing is, we’re wrong.
From the EMRG Fact Sheet, as provided by the ONR
For those not in-the-know, rail guns are weapons that fire their munitions using electromagnets instead of gunpowder.
That doesn’t explain why there’s a bunch of flame and smoke in this video, but that doesn’t make the idea of catching one of these with your teeth any less terrifying.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_OjZyQ6LGE]
This weekend I had reason to google shrinking machines. After some clicking about, a note near the bottom of this wikipedia article caught my attention:
Size-changing has recently been seen as a sexual fetish with the advent of the internet. Macrophilia/Microphilia, and to some extent vorarephilia are rooted in size-changing fiction. Social networking sites such as Writing.com, DeviantArt, and YouTube have thousands of user-submitted stories, groups, blogs, video, and artwork related to microphilia.
Well, all right, not the most disturbing fetish I’ve ever encountered on the internet – weird, but then, all sex is weird.
My eye stuck on that one interior mention however, Vorarephilia? Wha?
Oh, Wikipedia:
Vorarephilia (often shortened to vore) is a sexual fetish and paraphilia where arousal occurs from the idea of being eaten or by the process of eating. The fantasy may involve the person being swallowed alive, and may or may not include digestion.
The word vorarephilia is derived from the Latin vorare (to ‘swallow’ or ‘devour’) and Ancient Greek φιλία (philia, ‘love’).
I find that middle sentence especially interesting – is there already splintering amongst the vorarephiliacs? A virulently pro-digestion sect? Maybe a holier-than-thou group who find the ‘swallowed alive’ people to be perverted degenerates?
According to this picture, either George W. Bush was a giant, or Tina Turner and group were being awarded for their transformations into pixies.
(Someone call Gandalf, Sauron’s grabbed a hobbit!)
This guy’s explanation of the tune is the sweeter version of the tale, but not the original:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmLRUgu3ou0]
From Wikipedia:
In the oldest extant version of this ballad (circa 1600-1650), an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task; she responds with a list of tasks which he must first perform, thus evading rape.*
I don’t think even Gaga would touch that one.
* That last sentence sounds like the plot synopsis to the most horrible episode of According To Jim ever.
I’m going to script the first full-on Furry-as-murderer teen slasher flick.
I will call it “Rabid”.
(I hope this post is admissible as prior art when someone with more cash than brains inevitably has the same idea.)
I’d generally feel better about life if this was the standard Windows crash display:
I sometimes wonder how much influence The Muppet Show had on turning out a generation of smart-mouthed pop-culturalists.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQALLGsn-Fk]
Few shows have ever humanized the famous quite so well.
This thing is apparently called an Apache Knuckle Duster:
In the early 1900’s France went through a period of unrest in which the lower class “Apache” gangs would accost the middle-class homemakers, a group who’d been brought up to avoid violence and were thus entirely unprepared. The gangs often carried combination weapons such as this, not something that could be taken seriously by anyone with a proper gun or blade, but a real enough threat to those who couldn’t defend themselves.
In the end though, the solution was Jiu Jitsu.
Maybe the way to bring about world peace is to actually televise international war games?
Just sayin’.
