The sweet smell of science fiction

What smells like Cheetos, Mountain Dew, an aversion to sunlight, and the realization that you will likely never know the sweet , wonderful touch of a woman? Well, this, probably:

An online company's line of "Star Trek" inspired fragrances was met with mixed reactions at the Fan Expo Canada convention in Toronto.

Genki Wear, an online fan merchandise company, is selling three new fragrances in the wake of this year's successful "Star Trek" film: Pon Farr, named for the mating ritual of the Vulcan species; Tiberius, named after Captain James Tiberius Kirk; and Red Shirt, a reference to the expendable extras commonly killed on away missions.

Yeah, I'm gonna guess that the latter isn't going to be all that popular. FAIL mixed with even more FAIL is probably a bit much even for Trekkies.

Since it's Friday night, classic edition

My dad told me that when he was in college, he and his frat brothers would always sit down to check out new episodes of The Avengers.

Yeah, while Patrick Macnee was a good actor, something tells me that they were a little more innarested in Diana Rigg.

Senile delinquents

I guess this isn't all that surprising, considering the lack of emphasis on after-school programs following World War II and the subsequent overfocus on rebuilding the country's infrastructure...

Tokyo police will try to rein in a wave of shoplifting by lonely elderly people by involving them in community service, a police spokesman said Thursday.

One out of four elderly shoplifters in the capital blamed their crime on loneliness, Japanese media quoted a police survey as saying. Another 8 percent said it was because they had "no reason to live."

More than half the elderly shoplifters said they had no friends and 40 percent of them lived alone, media said.

"Making shoplifters do volunteer work in the community is effective," the Tokyo Shimbun quoted J.F. Oberlin University professor Akihiro Sakai, head of a police research panel set up to tackle shoplifting, as saying [sic].

"Instead of increased punishment, I hope we can rehabilitate shoplifters with special care."

The article goes on to mention that "Over 20 percent of Japan's population is aged 65 or over, with that figure set to double by 2050."

With the increasing lack of youngsters that Japan's elderly can offer pieces of hard candy to and/or discuss walking back and forth from school in harsh winter conditions, who can really blame them, um, acting out?

Parks and...um...recreation

If the park near my place had this kind of view, I might be motivated to take Riley for walks just a little more often...

Guests at the fashionable Standard Hotel in Manhattan have repeatedly stripped off to frolic naked in front of their rooms' floor-to-ceiling windows, which are easily viewed from the newly-opened High Line park. The park was built on an old elevated railway line and passes beneath the hotel.

It has proved very popular with tourists and locals. But few visitors expected such explicit views as they wandered past the High Line's planted borders, benches and railway sleepers. Christine Quinn, City Council Speaker, has called the hotel guests' behaviour "unacceptable."

Aaron Lipman works in the neighbourhood and said the shows were "healthy and fun." He says they're like TV's "Wild Kingdom."

Damn. I was never much of a fan of nature shows like that. I guess I never knew what I was missing.

Friends don't let friends be this guy

I like to drive, and I like to drink, but I don't mix the two, seeing as how doing so can get you thrown in jail. This guy, apparently, isn't bothered too much by that prospect:

State police say a Mora County man has been arrested for his 22nd drunken driving offense - and his blood-alcohol content tested almost five times higher than New Mexico's legal limit.

Delano T. Vigil of Guadalupita, N.M., was arrested Monday near Espanola. State police said the 51-year-old man was so drunk, he had to be taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent hospital in Santa Fe.

A blood-alcohol analysis showed a content level of .393%. New Mexico's limit for presumed intoxication is .08%.

He was more alcohol than man at that point.

I'm hoping he was also charged with driving on a suspended or revoked driver's license, because if he still has a valid license after all of those DUI arrests, well, that would be pretty fucked up right there.

You may get wet

Um, you do understand that dolphins are aquatic animals and that when you go to a dolphin exhibit at a zoo, their trainers have them do flips in their tanks and splash around and such, right? Apparently not...

A woman is suing a Chicago-area zoo for a 2008 fall near a dolphin exhibit, accusing zookeepers of encouraging the mammals to splash water and then failing to protect spectators from wet surfaces, local media reported on Thursday.

In her suit filed earlier this week, Allecyn Edwards said she was injured while walking near an exhibit at Brookfield Zoo, where a group of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins were performing, media said.

Thank God she didn't visit the monkey house.

Since it's Friday night...

...and finding a picture of Salma Hayek bearing showing off her cleavage is much easier than finding something else, well...

Easy like a Sunday Morning. But on a Friday Night. And I mean the Google search, not Ms. Hayek. But you knew that.

Pre-wedding jitters?

I've never been married or even engaged, but I can understand how people can get cold feet in the days leading up to their wedding. That said, there are probably healthier ways to break things off:

Police in Connecticut say a masked man who attacked a woman in her home last month was the victim's fiance and a town official.

Ansonia police charged Keith Maynard Thursday morning with second-degree assault, unlawful restraint and reckless endangerment. Maynard, an alderman in the town, is to be arraigned in Superior Court later in the day.

Police say the woman, who married Maynard four days after the July 1 attack, came home that day to find a masked man in the couple's house. She told police the man threw a blanket over her head, hit her with a bat and ran out the back door. She suffered minor abrasions.

So, he went to the trouble of pretending to be an intruder and beating her up with a baseball bat, but couldn't work up the courage over the next few days to actually, you know, tell her that he wanted to back out of the wedding?

I don't believe in blaming the victim, but damn, she must be kinda scary.

Criminal mastermind foiled somehow

I've always been of the opinion that stealing isn't a very good idea, but when you feel the need to steal something, it actually is probably a pretty good idea to take the evidence a bit further away before passing out in a drunken stupor...

Daytona Beach police spokesman Jimmie Flynt said Scott Riley, 28, allegedly broke into the Halifax River Yacht Club's Tiki Bar Sunday night and took the beer and cooler to a shrub across the street from the club, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported Wednesday.

Flynt said police found Riley passed out in the shrub next to the bottles and cooler, which was labeled "Halifax River Yacht Club."

Well, that doesn't prove anything. Except that he's a dumbass.

How come none of my stupid crap is worth anything?

On the one hand, it's tempting to call this guy a weirdo or a loser:

When comic book store owner Dave Luebke heard that after 67 years, the carrot-topped everyman of the comic world, Archie, was proposing to va-va-voomy rich girl Veronica instead of girl-next-door Betty, he decided to protest by selling his copy of the series' rare first issue.

Luebke's Archie Comics No. 1 sold for $38,837 when Dallas' Heritage Auction Galleries offered it Friday. Heritage spokesman Noah Fleisher said the buyer was a longtime Archie reader and collector from Virginia who did not want to be identified.

On the other hand, he just got nearly forty large from being pissed about something that happened in Archie fucking comics, so there's something to be said for that.

And the thing to be said for that is, basically, "Damnit, why don't any of my stupid obsessions ever make me any cash?"

Nature is terrifying

Um, it's not like I'm a big fan of rats or anything, but daaaaaaaaamn!

British scientists said they have discovered a plant in the Philippines that feeds by luring and consuming rats.

Botanists Stewart McPherson and Alastair Robinson said the plant, dubbed Nepenthes attenboroughii after legendary wildlife broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, consumes "whole rats" by luring them into its mouth and dissolving them with acid-like enzymes.

Well, at least it doesn't just eat "half rats." That would be wasteful, you know.

Since it's Friday night...

...I might as well not post anything, but here's a sexy picture of Julianne Moore

I think this is supposed to be a reference to a painting, but, really, who cares?

Um, what the hell?

The internets have opened up nearly unlimited access to information and news sources that nobody could have dreamed of less than a generation ago. Unfortunately, the webtubes have also provided us access to things like this:



Hey, that's great.

If time travel becomes a reality, let's all promise not to go back and show the people who invented cyberspace that clip, m'kay?

My kind of gal

Gee, it's a shame I'm only hearing about her now that she's off the market:

A bride in Germany spent her wedding night passed out next to a crate of vodka in the back seat of a car and had to be rescued by police when the BMW began to overheat in the sun.

Police in the western city of Cologne said Monday the inebriated 30-year-old remained unconscious even after they smashed the car window to get her out.

The article goes on to say that she had to climb out of the car's smashed window because she couldn't find the car keys (or her new husband, for that matter) but why couldn't she just, you know, unlock one of the car's doors from the inside?

Oh, right. She probably wasn't thinking very clearly.

Which begs the question...

...did he change out of his clothes when he got there, or did he show up to the scene of the crime naked?

Authorities in Oregon say they arrested a burglary suspect dressed only in the underwear of his victim.

Lt. Sheila Lorance, a spokeswoman for the Marion County Sheriff's Office, said a woman called 911 about 10:05 p.m. Monday and said her boyfriend had found an intruder in her Salem garage, where her laundry is kept, The (Portland) Oregonian reported Wednesday.

Deputies arrived and arrested Randall Joseph Giesbers, 47, who they said was wearing nothing but the victim's underwear.

Um, that would be the female victim's underwear.

You know, I've never been arrested, but I'm fairly certain that's pretty much the polar opposite of what you want to be wearing when you get taken to jail.

Disorder in the court

I'm a believer in the idea that you should be respectful while you're in court, but this is ridiculous:

Drowsy spectators in one suburban Chicago courtroom might want to stifle their yawns from now on. Clifton Williams, 33, of Richton Park, is facing six months in jail for making what court documents call a yawn-like sound in Will County Judge Daniel Rozak's court last month. The yawn happened as Williams' cousin, Jason Mayfield, was being sentenced for a drug charge on July 23.

Rozak found Williams in contempt of court and sentenced him to six months in jail. However, Rozak could free Williams after a status hearing Thursday, if Williams apologizes and the judge accepts. By then, Williams will have served 21 days.

Now, people on both sides disagree about whether or not the sound he made was disruptive, but you'd think the judge would issue a warning before sending the dude off to jail for three weeks or more.

Fat, lazy Americans

We're just a terrible, horrible Fast Food Nation, aren't we?

"The nation has fallen into a vicious circle of laziness that we must put a stop to," she added.

And she warned: "If we don't start to take control of this problem, a whole generation will become too unfit to perform even the most rudimentary of tasks."

In the poll of more than 2,000 adults, 15 percent said that, if the television remote was broken, they would rather continue watching the same channel than getting up and switching to another programme.

Oh, wait. That extra "me" when talking about changing the chunnel channel there might have clued you into the fact that we're not talking about the US of A at all. But once we get our own National Health Service, everything will be just ducky.

Yeah.

A Hard Snow's Gonna Fall

I can just hear it now..."Cuuuuunh heeeey ohld eeee, buh ruh uhn uhn huuuun":

Bob Dylan is set to release an album of Christmas songs, including "Here Comes Santa Claus" and the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem," according to music websites.

Boy, I can't wait to start hearing some of his takes on Christmas classics in stores, probably starting sometime around October 20th.

Since it's Friday night...

...and you know the drill by now, how about a picture of Jessica Alba?

Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. (Click for bigger.)

Money well spent

When you're living an elaborate lie, it's probably not a good idea to call attention to yourself, as this dumbass learned after shelling out a couple grand to do just that:

A Connecticut woman who authorities say spent more than $2,000 to stage a dinner honoring her as "Nurse of the Year" has been charged with pretending to be a nurse at a doctor's office. Betty Lichtenstein, 56, of Norwalk was charged Thursday.

Prosecutors say Dr. Gerald Weiss believed Lichtenstein was a registered nurse, especially after she was named the Connecticut Nursing Association's "Nurse of the Year" in 2008.

According to the arrest warrant, that association does not exist.

Yeah, that would seem to be a minor problem right there.

The horror! The horror!

There have been plenty of commercials over the years that I haven't liked, but unlike this stupid Scandi, I've never been terrified by one, much less felt the need create an online support group for like-minded pansies:

Anders Hammas, the Swedish student who started the "I am scared of the girl in the Apoliva commercial" Facebook group, said he was inspired to protest the "horrible" commercial, which features supermodel Adina Fohlin standing in the snow and rain while a Swedish folk song plays, the very first time he saw it, The Local reported Wednesday.

"Those of us who have a TV and like to watch commercials/can't be bothered to reach for the remote are facing a problem," Hammas wrote in the group's description. "Apoliva has begun to run a commercial that is frightening. A woman singing a Nordic/Swedish folk song in freezing rain with lightning. I am creating this group for those of us who need somewhere to seek support and talk things out. It's only a matter of time before it creeps into our dreams and terrorizes us in our sleep."

I can't be certain that this is it, but I found the following, which seems to fit the description from the article on YouTube. Brace yourself for half a minute of sheer, white-knuckled terror...



Yeah, that's like every horror movie ever made, all rolled into one.

Advances in medicine

Uh, am I the only one who doesn't see the title "Doctor" in front of this guy's name?

Russian soccer fans have been told to drink whisky on their trip to Wales for next month's World Cup qualifier to ward off the H1N1 swine flu virus, the head of the country's supporter association (VOB) said Monday.

"We urge our fans to drink a lot of Welsh whisky as a form of disinfection," VOB head Alexander Shprygin told Reuters.

"That should cure all symptoms of the disease."

It also makes you immune to criticism and meeting ugly potential sexual partners.

(Side effects include nausea, headaches, vomiting, and short-term memory loss.)

World Record FAIL

What if you attempted to break a world record and (almost) nobody came? These Brits, who wanted to break the record for most ever women in bikinis photographed in one place, found out:

Debbie Reynolds, 23, said the turnout at the Southend-on-Sea, England, beach was far less than the 1,924 women needed to break the world record, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

"It was sunny and everything, so we thought we'd get a good turnout, but it was very sad when we realized that 42 was the grand total," she said. "It's pretty rubbish I must admit. We really need to try harder. It made me feel pretty embarrassed to be British when we can't even mount a decent challenge."

That's right. They were 1,882 bikini-clad women short of the record. Which, considering the idea that this world record could have been held by nearly two thousand pasty-white Limey "birds," might not be such a bad thing.