Desiree has refused to watch Return of the King for nearly a year now because she's convinced that she'll turn into a pile of blubbering tears at the end.* She says she gets antsy just thinking about the scene where Frodo and Gandalf sail off to the Undying Lands, never to be seen again.

She'd never let me film her--she has enough of an issue with crying just in front of me--so I must commend this woman for allowing her own Lord of the Rings meltdown to be recorded and posted for the whole world to see:



Wait...it looks like the end of the Star Wars trilogy makes her a bit weepy too:



And who doesn't dissolve in tears at the end of the...Back to Future trilogy???



Wow.

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*Desiree also cries at the end of Smoke Signals, My Neighbor Totoro, Anne of Green Gables, and Spirited Away. I still maintain that we should just do a back-to-back viewing of all five movies one day as the ULTIMATE CATHARTIC EXPERIENCE. If she survives, she'll be set for life!

So this teenager apparently got up to some pipe bomb-related mischief at a Bay Area high school yesterday, so the local news this morning is all over the story. Other than the fact that the lad seems to have shown up at his former high school armed with a chainsaw and sword (this kid's been playing too many video games!), the only thing that really lept out at me from the news reports was what this one woman said when she was interviewed by the news crew out at the apartment complex where the teenager lived (with or without his parents, I'm not sure).

At any rate, she basically said that, on finding out that the kid had been making highly unstable explosives in his room for the past year, she felt a great sense of relief that nothing had gone wrong. Her reasoning? "Because everyone around here has kids, and if there had been an explosion it could have been really bad for all the children."

So...if it was a complex full of childless adults, that would have been OK? Or if there had been an explosion, only the children would have been hurt, but the adults would have been fine?

Bah, I say!

From Wikipedia:

Dave Allen Mather (August 10, 1851, date of death unknown, most probably May 1886, but nothing confirmed), known as Mysterious Dave, or sometimes as New York Dave, was an American lawman and gunfighter in the American Old West.

I wouldn't have been able to choose between "Mysterious Dave" and "New York Dave" either.

Most hardcore high school ever:

"I furthermore promise and declare that I will, when opportunity present, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do, to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex or condition; and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics, rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants' heads against the walls, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisoned cup, the strangulating cord, the steel of the poniard or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank, dignity, or authority of the person or persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Faith, of the Society of Jesus."



How anyone could intone this passage and end with the word "Jesus" and not die from hypocrisy, I have no idea.

Also, read Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation.

I just got up, and I'm sitting at my computer blearily reading Wikipedia and eating cereal. The TV's on in the background, but the volume is low and the voices of the morning news casters has blended into a general murmur.

So I find myself reading about the 23 Enigma, the belief that the number 23 can be connected to almost every event, when suddenly I hear very clearly the traffic reporter's voice intone: "There are no accidents." The weird part is that he put the emphasis on the word "are". Anyone have an anti-paranoia serum they can inject me with?

Hinduism, eh?



Christianity, eh?

For tigerpillow:

"SOUTH PARK MURDERED ME LAST NIGHT AND IT'S PRETTY FUNNY. IT HURTS MY FEELINGS BUT WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM SOUTH PARK! I ACTUALLY HAVE BEEN WORKING ON MY EGO THOUGH. HAVING THE CRAZY EGO IS PLAYED OUT AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE AND CAREER. I USE TO USE IT TO BUILD UP MY ESTEEM WHEN NOBODY BELIEVED IN ME. NOW THAT PEOPLE DO BELIEVE AND SUPPORT MY MUSIC AND PRODUCTS THE BEST RESPONSE IS THANK YOU INSTEAD OF "I TOLD YOU SO!!!" IT'S COOL TO TALK SHIT WHEN YOU'RE RAPPING BUT NOT IN REAL LIFE. WHEN YOU MEET LITTLE WAYNE IN PERSON HE'S THE NICEST GUY FOR EXAMPLE. I JUST WANNA BE A DOPER PERSON WHICH STARTS WITH ME NOT ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE HOW DOPE I THINK I AM. I NEED TO JUST GET PAST MYSELF. DROP THE BRAVADO AND JUST MAKE DOPE PRODUCT. EVERYTHING IS NOT THAT SERIOUS. AS LONG AS PEOPLE THINK I ACT LIKE A BITCH THIS TYPE OF SHIT WILL HAPPEN TO ME. I GOT A LONG ROAD AHEAD OF ME TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE I'M NOT ACTUALLY A HUGE DOUCHE BUT I'M UP FOR THE CHALLENGE. I'M SURE THE WRITERS AT SOUTH PARK ARE REALLY NICE PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE. THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO DRAW MY CREW. THAT WAS PRETTY FUNNY ALSO!! I'M SURE THERE'S GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN THIS... THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW IT'S ME!"

In reference to this:

I found a photo tucked in a book today. I was looking at it and its white trash glory, and I noticed this...thing...in the background:



I posted it to an online community with a "Once you see it..." subject. And I get all these comments along the lines of: "Pff, they sell those at Micaels...My neighbor has one...I have one..." and so forth.

Now, I know it's been a few years since I've been out in suburbia for any length of time (ditto Michael's), but are these seriously that common? Because...that's kind of sad. Really. Those things are hideous. I assumed it was some kind of sad ceramics class failure on the part of the girl or some autistic relative. But apparently people pay money for these? Huh.

This ad is just...I can't stop looking at it, yet it terrifies me to the core.

OK, at no time have raccoons ever been America's favorite pet.



I wonder how many kids' parents went to check the mail one day and found a baby raccoon sitting in a box on the front steps. I wonder how many of those raccoons survived the trip... Sheesh.

Bill Gates has finally turned full-blown supervillain!

"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes," Gates said while opening a jar onstage at a gathering known to attract technology kings, politicians, and Hollywood stars.

"I brought some. Here I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected."

Source

Unlike my Netflix post, this is objectively the worst historical marker EVER:

 

...or best?

A hard-hitting video on the realities of inner-city gang warfare in the 80s:



I can't believe this video only has 40,000 views! I'm getting the word out--c'mon folks, let's get this thing's view count up into the millions.

"We as a nation have to ask ourselves: what the hell is going on?"

Yesterday Des and I were doing some last minute stocking up for Thanksgiving when Des spotted a jar of baby food on the shelf--pureed veal. What. The fuck. Who the hell would feed their infant pureed calf? I didn't even know they made meat-based baby food period, let alone veal. Ack.

Babies eatin' babies man.