Seems to be broken, putting a break to keep it from cluttering the front page…
Continue reading “One of those silly blogmemes…”
Category: General Weirdness
re: Kiss the wawa
On RASSF, Karen Lofstrom wrote:
Latest hottest Arab pop video!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4559854674036497542&q=Haifa
I’ve never seen anything like it — a music video featuring a sexy singer,
a toddler, a kitten, lots of chocolate and pink fake fur.
That was … interesting.
I was trying to figure out what the heck she was singing about, and found
this article on TNR, and this excerpt:
The shoot is for her recent single, notoriously known as the Wawa song. Supposedly, it’s meant for children–a “wawa” in Arabic is what we would call a “boo-boo” in baby talk. “See the wawa, kiss the wawa, and help it get better,” Haifa sings, dressed as various fetish archetypes like Little Red Riding Hood and a naughty schoolgirl. You don’t have to be a member of Al Qaeda to think this is a little too kinky for kindergarten. But, as I return upstairs to attend to my personal grooming and file my interview for People, I wonder if perhaps that’s exactly what all the lost boys of this lost region need: a beautiful woman with fantastic tits to kiss them where it hurts.
It answers the question of what the video was about (partially made clear by the title, in retrospect) but this was just too weird/interesting to pass on. I have no particular comment on (or endoresement of) what the author on TNR had to say (although she – Haifa – is awfully cute.)
(Un)holy numerical coincidences, man!
As many of you have likely already noticed, today’s date of 6 June 2006 is in short form 6/6/06… awfully close to (for those supersitious or zealously Christian out there) the “number of the beast” from Revelations.
“Cubicles: The great mistake”
Ok, breaking the streak of this having NOTHING to do with Cubicles, we get (via Google “What’s Hot” and Technorati)…
Cubicles: The great mistake
Even the designer of the cubicle thinks they were maybe a bad idea, as millions of ‘Dilberts’ would agree.
By Julie Schlosser, FORTUNE Magazine
March 22, 2006: 2:03 PM ESTNEW YORK (FORTUNE Magazine) – Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called “monolithic insanity.”
Propst is the father of the cubicle. More than 30 years after he unleashed it on the world, we are still trying to get out of the box. The cubicle has been called many things in its long and terrible reign. But what it has lacked in beauty and amenity, it has made up for in crabgrass-like persistence.
The article goes on to discuss the history and original concept of the “Action Office” which became the cubicle as we know and … love?… it. I’m very pleased that my present employer doesn’t use them; the open-desks layout took a little getting used to (probably about my first day), but it’s much more congenial.
For the “unintentionally humorous headlines file”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two outer rings, one red, the other blue, have been observed around the distant planet Uranus.
While Uranus had been known to have inner rings of neutral color, the newly discovered outer rings show color contrasts that researchers think are caused by light reflected off particles that differ in size from one ring to the other.
via Pryor on DBA.
A cute geeky note…
Tonight, shortly after 1:00am, the time and date will be: 01:02:03 04/05/06
From a coworker… (although in fairness, two-digit years are evil, unless we’re restarting the count from 2000)
Caught in the net, “Real Genius” edition.
The character of Lazlo Hollyfeld in the film Real Genius may have been loosely based on a real person:
Chuck claims to be a fairly normal inventor at a large audio equipment manufacturer. But in 1972, Chuck lived in the tunnels beneath Caltech’s student dormitories. Soon thereafter, he moved into the misty realm of Caltech legend, where he apparently still lives today.
His legend played a central role in a recent movie about Caltech, called “Real Genius”. The movie was directed by Martha Coolidge and starred Val Kilmer. In the movie, a burned-out misfit named Lazlo Hollyfeld lives in the tunnels beneath a student dorm, easily recognized as Dabney House.
Found via google, looking for something else entirely.
“P.S. I am not a dictator!”
From today’s Presidential Press Conference:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. I wonder if you can tell us today, sir, what, if any, limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a President during a war, at wartime? And if the global war on terror is going to last for decades, as has been forecast, does that mean that we’re going to see, therefore, a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I disagree with your assertion of “unchecked power.”
Q Well —
THE PRESIDENT: Hold on a second, please. There is the check of people being sworn to uphold the law, for starters. There is oversight. We’re talking to Congress all the time, and on this program, to suggest there’s unchecked power is not listening to what I’m telling you. I’m telling you, we have briefed the United States Congress on this program a dozen times.
This is an awesome responsibility to make decisions on behalf of the American people, and I understand that, Peter. And we’ll continue to work with the Congress, as well as people within our own administration, to constantly monitor programs such as the one I described to you, to make sure that we’re protecting the civil liberties of the United States. To say “unchecked power” basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the President, which I strongly reject.
Q What limits do you —
THE PRESIDENT: I just described limits on this particular program, Peter. And that’s what’s important for the American people to understand. I am doing what you expect me to do, and at the same time, safeguarding the civil liberties of the country.
(resisting the urge to correct “The President” to “El Shrubbito”)
John on AMERICAblog summarizes it nicely:
Q: Are there any limits on the power of a president during war time. And if the war on terror will last for decades does that mean we’re going to see a permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive during wartime.
A: I disagree with the phrase unchecked power. blah blah blah. I am not a dictator. [paraphrase]
[THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES JUST HAD TO DENY BEING A DICTATOR]
This reminds me of what my college buddy Mearls used to say “PS I am not a crackpot!”
Fun with wikipedia
Check out the article on 52 Pickup, on Wikipedia.
The joke may be gone soon, but it will likely be just edited out – look for the one in the history dated 14:21, 30 November 2005 by anonymous @ 161.112.232.22
Those wacky Austrians.
Old news, but funny enough that when I saw it, I had to post it…
Brits steal carloads of F**king Austrian roadsigns
By Lester Haines
Published Monday 15th August 2005 13:06 GMT
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An Austrian village called Fucking will not change its name despite sniggering Brits making off with its roadsigns.Mayor Siegfried Hauppl has asked visitors to lay off the signs which began to attract outside attention after British and US soldiers passing through in 1945 illuminated the locals as to the English meaning of Fucking, Ananova reports.
Hauppl explained: “We had a vote last year on whether to rename the town, but decided to keep it as it is. After all, Fucking has existed for 800 years, probably when a Mr Fuck or the Fuck family moved into the area. The ‘ing’ was added as a word for settlement.”
Also mentioned on Snopes
Phi Beta Iota?
FBI agents take over fraternity house
Agents displaced by Hurricane Katrina
Wednesday, September 28, 2005; Posted: 10:11 a.m. EDT (14:11 GMT)
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (AP) — A new fraternity of sorts has moved in on the Greek row at Louisiana State University: the FBI.
About 50 New Orleans agents displaced by Hurricane Katrina will be living in the red-brick home once occupied by a fraternity exiled for hazing violations.
“They’ve been jokingly referred to as Phi Beta Iota,” Special Agent in Charge Jim Bernazzani said Monday. “We even had T-shirts made up.”
The home has been empty since the Sigma Nu fraternity lost its charter in 2004 after an investigation into allegations of hazing. The fraternity has been barred from campus until the fall of 2006.
I was a Sigma Nu at Dartmouth. Via DBA (which is our house alumni mailing list, BTW)… disturbingly, the house has a blog, too.
Scientists hunt for big fish.
Truly, It Was a Whopper, but Are There Bigger Fish?
By SETH MYDANS
HAT KHRAI, Thailand – The monster fish announced itself with four huge whacks of its tail, thrashing against the net that had trapped it in the pale brown water of the Mekong River.
It was a rare giant catfish the size of a grizzly bear, and it took five boatmen an hour to pull it in and 10 men to lift it when they reached the shore in this remote village in northern Thailand.
Only after their catch had been chopped into pieces and sold did they learn how special it was. At nine feet in length and weighing 646 pounds, it may be the biggest freshwater fish ever recorded.
But in one of the world’s more surprising mysteries, nobody really knows which is the biggest species of fish lurking under the waters of the Mekong or the Amazon or the Yangtze or the Congo or the Colorado or Lake Baikal.
When the giant catfish was caught in May, a biologist named Zeb S. Hogan rushed here to take a look. It was his first trophy in a project to identify and study the world’s largest freshwater fish in the hope of slowing their extinction.
Sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the World Wildlife Fund, Mr. Hogan has embarked on an 18-month expedition that will take him to five continents and more than a dozen rivers.
“I guess it’s like looking for Bigfoot,” he said. Some species may already be too rare to study.
Plenty more in the article, check it out before it hits the times archives.