Oddities And General Verbal Dyspepsia

I know, I know, long time, no post.
Got it.
Really.
However, we still have no internet, so it'll maybe be a week or two before the next one after this.
Thus, I decided to really pull out all the stops for this one: EVERYBODY is gonna get hit today.
Are you ready for some 'a THIS?


POW!
That's right, no more mosaic censoring in Japan! Well, just for one movie, but still, it's a crack in the armor.

"There's nothing dirty about the scene where the genitalia are displayed. In fact, I thought it showed how serious an academic Kinsey was. This movie does not just show Kinsey's life, it also has the added value of sparking discussion about modern sexuality. There aren't too many academics like Kinsey nowadays. And, no matter how open we've become about sexuality, there are still many areas that remain taboo," Japan's foremost sexologist Kim Myung Gan tells Shukan Post. "There's a chance that showing this movie without a mosaic may deepen discussion about sex education. Hopefully, this movie could establish a precedent for how sexuality is depicted."

Never mind the fact that "adult" movies are created by consenting adults, for consenting adults, and no-one is forced at gunpoint to go buy and watch them: no, in Kinsey the nudity is important to the plot and therefore it's ok. So, it's ok to use naked people for DRAMA, but not for plain enjoyment.
Huh.
Well, it makes no damn sense at all to me, but then, I'm not Japanese.

POW!
I guess the waters off Cuba aren't safe for swimmers: (gee, you think?) you might just accidentally find a sunken 19th century U. S. ship from the Spanish-American War. 10 miles south of Santiago, off of Siboney Beach, two teenage swimmers found the ship, which appears to have been uncovered by Hurricane Dennis. Um, good luck trying to get anything out of your discovery, though, kids: according to Nicasio Vina, director of Santiago de Cuba's Investigative Center of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, the ship belongs to them. Nice interpretation of the maritime salvage laws, isn't it?
See, according to international law, since it's a United States Ship, and since it's a wartime vessel, it belongs to the USA, and no salvage rights can apply; the ship and its artifacts should be turned over to the USA immediately.
Failing that, since WE didn't recover, or attempt to recover, the ship, it therefore belongs to the two kids who found it.
I don't see anywhere in the law that says it belongs to the Cuban government, but hell, when have they paid any attention whatsoever to international law?

POW!
Or, more literally: BOOM! A Florida mom whose daughter took a "joyride" in a stolen car that took 9 shots fired by sheriff's deputies to stop announced that she would blow up the courthouse after the judge sentenced her daughter to prison time.

"I'm gonna blow this #@%$ up," Bush said. "That's how upset I am."

So am I, but not because the court stuck your kid in jail. I'm more upset that they didn't stick YOU in jail, lady - first, for raising a juvenile delinquent who destroyed 2 police cruisers while "joyriding" in the car she stole, and second, for making a bomb threat, which these days is almost criminally stupid.
Someone desperately needs to remove you from the gene pool. Prison time until menopause for being a complete frigging moron just LEAPS right to mind.

POW!
That's right, you don't give the government in Massachusetts enough money. Boston's Logan International Airport is currently threatening to take punitive action against Continental Airlines for operating a free WiFi hotspot in the airline's Presidential Lounge, which the airport calls a security risk.
Odd, that.
Considering that the airport itself offers WiFi hotspots - the only difference being, the airport's hotspots charge $7.95 a day for access, which same goes straight to the airport - a fee their service provider estimates at $1 million annually.
In response to the fact that the FCC regulations specifically allow Continental's behavior, a Logan spokesperson said that the FCC's regulations "may not even be legal" and shouldn't be taken as the letter of the law.
Oh, wait.
Does that mean I can operate a pirate radio station whenever I want without fear of jail time?
No, because the FCC says I can't, and their regulations ARE the law.
This is really, really stupid on the part of the Logan Airport people - sooner or later the FCC will get tired of annoying regular joes and go after them - after all they make a million dollars a year off this, they can surely pay bigger fines than a private citizen.
Logan officials add that Continental is free to purchase WiFi service from the airport for "very reasonable rates," which of course would force Continental to charge their customers, which is the whole point of the exercise.

POW!
Never forget, even if you name your housecat after a Pokemon, that your pet is in fact a vicious predator.
No, really, I mean it - in fact, sometimes they just have to let you know that the hard way, too. Duane Johnson, of Joliet, Illinois, found out his cat was secretly hardcore on Wednesday morning. Pikachu the cat held a four-foot alligator (In Illinois?!? WTF?!?) at bay in the dirveway long enough for Johnson to call 911 and get animal control officers to his house.
Which was funny.

A 911 operator was in disbelief when Johnson called.
“It’s gonna sound funny, but I got a live alligator,” Johnson said in the 911 call.
“A what?” the operator asked.
“In my driveway, a live alligator,” Johnson responded.
“Where did it come from?” the operator asked.

They still don't know, actually, but the animal control officers who retrieved the alligator said that it showed signs of abuse. The cat, the gator, and the homeowner are all unharmed, and the Chicago Herpetological Society has the gator in custody in preparation for releasing it into the wild in Florida or Louisiana.
Say what you will, but that's a bad ass house cat - even a four-foot gator is tough as hell, and an awful lot bigger than any house cat I ever saw. Way to go, Pikachu!

POW!
I had a really good article, complete with pictures, for you guys on the new F/A-22 Raptor fighter jets arriving at Langley, but it got Farked yesterday and is temporarily down, like probably until the end of August, so nevermind. If you just REALLY want the pictures, though, here's the link.

POW!
There's more bad news for the Good Humor Man: if you sell dope from your ice cream truck, the cops will get you.
No, really.
There's not a lot I can really say about this; this is really horrible, yet oddly logical for the drug dealers, and I can only wonder why they didn't think of it sooner - or if they DID, how come it took so long for the cops to catch on? It travels a lot, summons kids magically to do business, is relatively innocuous and therefore able to do business even under the watchful eye of parents, and does so much business that a little on the side is easy to disguise.
EEEEeeevil, but smart.

POW!
In the category "Surprises No-one," Jacko was guilty as hell. Or at least, so say two of the jurors, who want you to buy their books, and are therefore coming forward now to tell you about it, rather than sticking to their guns at the trial, which is where it would have made some actual difference.
Of course, preventing the future rape of children shouldn't stand in the way of Eleanor Cook and Ray Hultman making plenty of money for their retirements, should it?
I mean, the financial security of a couple of old farts is certainly more important than jailing a criminal and stopping the torture of children - after all, those kids' scarred, miserable lives are nothing compared to the misery of a couple of old people who will otherwise have to live off Social Security, aren't they?
You utter shitballs.
Yeah, you, Eleanor and Ray. You two worthless fucks let him get off scot-free in exchange for thirty pieces of silver. Yeah, I'll bust out the Biblical references - didn't Jesus say that doing something to a child was the same as doing it to him personally? I, myself, am not a Christian, but I do believe that the rape of a child is a horrifying moral evil, and let me tell you, you two, yourselves, personally, are responsible for every negative consequence suffered by any child Jacko victimizes in the future.
Whatever Hell you believe in, I hope you spend enough time there to truly understand what you've done.

POW!
Techheads might be getting sucker-punched in the next few weeks. Sadly, Mozilla has finally turned for-profit, which means the worlds' best free browser / email client package, Firefox and Thunderbird, might no longer be either free or open source.
That stinks.
Badly.
Unfortunately, it was almost inevitable; since Firefox now has about 10% of the browser market, they've simply come face-to-face with a brutal fact: no non-profit organization can hope to compete with Microsoft. While that sucks, as far as I'm concerned this is "game on!" Firefox is very much better than Internet Exploder, and hopefully once the browser is making the Mozilla Foundation some money, they will be able to make even further inroads into the marketplace.
*wipes away a tear*

POW!
The MPAA is at it again - now they're deliberately sharing new releases online prior to theatrical release dates, in an attempt to "harvest" downloaders' online addresses. Of course, this doesn't help theater owners, whose revenues are shrinking due to the movie companies' refusal to release films immediately.
See, if people get to watch the movie before it comes to theaters, and it sucks, they tell their friends, who then don't buy tickets.
A stroke of genius would be releasing movies immediately, rather than waiting 6 months after completion for marketing hype. That way, people would actually maybe go back to the theaters, until word of mouth got around, one way or the other.
Of course, this would require thought and logic on the part of the MPAA, which is, as we've come to know, a totally unreasonable expectation. Speaking of which, the MPAA says they're "on the warpath" against piracy and downloading. Just so you know.
I'm going to laugh myself sick if the MPAA manages to get filesharing outlawed and still keeps losing money.

POW!
Just so you know, apparently the rumors are true, the XBox 360 will retail at $299, according to some employees of Wal-Mart, who will doubtlessly be fired as soon as their managers figure out who they are.
Now all we need to know is the price of the PlayStation 3. As I'm not going to own any XBox, 360 or otherwise, I don't really care, but I figured you might like to know.

And Last, But Not Least:
Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. The Flying Spaghetti Monster Might Get You! And If Not, You Might Be Harassed By Proselytizing Heretics From The Reformed Church Of Alfredo!
Oh, what, did you think I was kidding?

That's all for this week, how soon the next entry will be is as yet open to question. Either next weekend or the following one, but until closer to time I will have no way to know, so if it comes to next weekend and I haven't written anything, Just Wait Longer!