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The Top 10 Reasons to Legalize Mary Jane.
So, before we get into it, most people who know me personally know I’m not a weed smoker, HOWEVER, I don’t denounce it. (If its what you do, more power to you, I’ll hold the lighter for you.) But recently I got a message from a reader named simply ‘Sean’ asking me to put up a list of the top 10 reasons to legalize Marijuana. After reading the list all the way through, I couldn’t really disagree with anything on it. So here’s to you Sean, light em up.
29 Ways To Stay Creative.
As a DJ and even as an entertainer in general, you always have to find ways to stay creative. Writers block can be hard to deal with as a writer, but a creative block when your on stage looking for the next song to mix can be fatal. When you have 20 seconds to figure out what song in the same respective genre, with a similar BPM, matching key, and has a clever context bled… being creative is essential. The video above is essentially just a nice little list of hints, tips, and actions that tend to keep people creative, both in the short term and in the long run. Just in case you missed anything in the video, the full list is below.
The Negro Cookie.
Normally I can relate a blog post to a personal experience, or explain why something specific interest me. But this is just downright hilarious. My staff and I laughed our asses off for about 30 minutes the first time we all saw this. Japan has some of the wildest stuff, and the ‘Negro Cookie’ is near the top of the list.
Is Your Child Teething?
Yesterday was father’s day, and I spent the day talking to a few of my friends lucky enough to be proud parents. One of the complaints I heard from a homegirl of mine was that her son was being an “asshole-ish version of Satan himself” because his adult teeth were growing in. I don’t remember all of what it was like going through the process (cept for realizing the tooth fairy was my mom noisily shoving a dollar under my pillow every other month while she thought I was asleep), but coincidentally I came across a scientific art piece that helped me shed some light on her predicament. Below is a REAL skull of a human child with their adult teeth growing in. Seeing it made me understand that sometimes kids go through things I’m happy I don’t have to. So if you have a little one who’s adult teeth are coming in, cut them some slack. It can be a painful process.
If that was my face, I'd be cranky too.
Core Values: Angelina Jolie.
In the pic above, Angelina Jolie poses for Louis Vuitton Core Values Campaign on a wooden boat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province where Jolie shot Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2000. Louis Vuitton’s president says, “People are not used to seeing Angelina in this situation. I like the fact that it’s a real moment.” Four of Angelina’s children were also present at the photo shoot, shot by photographer Annie Leibovitz , with lily pads and verdant foliage everywhere. Previous “Core Values” campaigns featured people like Bono and Sean Connery. Angelina reportedly donated part of her paycheck to charity. Angelina has a special connection with Cambodia as she adopted her eldest son, Maddox, from this region. Angelina and Brad Pitt established the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which is active in community development and conservation in the country. As for the LV bag she carries in the photoshoot, it’s six years old and has been Angelina’s “go-to” bag for years. Though it’s not longer in production, Louis Vuitton says they’re thinking of bringing back the collection. But all in all, I still prefer miss Jolie without clothes.
Paris vs. New York.
This is one of the first times I’ve been writing a post about something that’s happening AS I’m writing. My good friend from Paris, France, Maelys and I are in a heated debate about the difference between Paris and New York. (We started off debating about Paris and New Jersey, but there was no competition.) But in the midst her saying “Paris has so many things New York doesn’t and their similarities don’t compare” I happened to come across a few simple pictures to demonstrate my point… That neither city is better, and when you take out your own personal bias, they’re on the same level. (Prenez cette, chienne)
The World’s Hardest Language to Learn.
For whatever odd reason, be it, Indiana Jones, X-Men: First Class, Sucker Punch, or Knight and Day, it seems like so many movies I’ve watched over the past week are popping up with sections of the movie in German. That made me ask, “What is the hardest language to learn?”. They will then find that the answer is a complicated one. This is because the answer is subjective (opinion) and also depends on what your native language is. While no language is simple to learn, those that are more closely related to your native language are going to be easier. Learning a completely different and exotic writing system can also be a big challenge, but that does not necessarily make a language more difficult.
Since it’s impossible to say with certainty that there is a language that qualifies as “most difficult”, we’ve provided a handy infographic below that will give you a general idea of difficulty of the most common languages. The statistics and rankings included are provided by the the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State and are intended for native English speakers.
Hello From Earth.
Any consistent readers know that I’m a self-proclaimed nerd, but some news running through the scientific community over the last week really got me excited. (Be warned, it’s about to get REAL scientific in this b*tch). Apparently for the first time in human history, we have identified a planet 20 light years away that could be capable of supporting life, complex/intelligent life, and possibly even human life. The name of the planet (for now) is Gliese 581 D. Check the article below.
An Earth-like planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support liquid water and harbor life, scientists announced recently. Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. The newfound planet is located at the “Goldilocks” distance-not too close and not too far from its star to keep water on its surface from freezing or vaporizing away. And while astronomers are not yet able to look for signs of biology on the planet, the discovery is a milestone in planet detection and the search for extraterrestrial life, one with the potential to profoundly change our outlook on the universe.
Imagine life from the surface of this planet – its sun, being one third the size of our Sun and 50 times fainter – would be a dull, red glow in the sky. Under a deep, possibly planet-encompassing ocean, thick layers of ice surround the planet’s rocky centre. It’s the “first serious waterworld candidate”, according to astronomer and exoplanet hunter Stephane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, who was part of the team that discovered the planet in April 2007.
The habitability of this distant, possible waterworld depends on the composition and presence of an atmosphere. A Venus-like atmosphere, with a runaway greenhouse effect, could boil water away, whereas a thin, Mars-style atmosphere would see ice sublimate into vapor.
Gliese 581d orbits its sun every 66.8 days at about one fifth of the distance from the Earth to the Sun (0.22 astronomical units, or AU), closer than initial estimates and firmly within the star’s habitable zone according to a study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics in April 2009.
SONY Got Served.
Sony’s latest revelation came just a day after it announced measures to avert another cyberattack like that which hit its PlayStation Network two weeks ago. The Japanese electronics company said its Sony Online Entertainment PC games network had been hacked on April 18, but did not find out about the breach until the early hours of Monday and shut down the service shortly afterwards. The breach may also have led to the theft of 10,700 direct debit records from customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain and 12,700 non-U.S. credit or debit card numbers, it said. PS3 players, BE WARNED.
The 10 Greatest Movie Villians.
With certain blog posts, I unintentionally cause some sort of an uproar. (And then I get inbox full of emails from angry people, then I make my staff go through it, then they complain, and its just not pretty) BUT, that being said, this post is meant to cause some discussions. My person top 10 movie villains, is a list made out of personal opinion, and a list that I hope people will give me suggestions on. I haven’t seen every movie, and if you think there’s a bad-ass that I’ve left off the list, please let me know. But before I get to it, I want to explain why I left one person off the list. ‘The Dark Knight‘s joker is one of the best most compelling villains I’ve ever seen. But there is too much speculation about Heath Ledgers death being the reason people loved his performance, or about how he went crazy while playing the role, yadda yadda. So although I took Joker off the list, I still had to put up one of my favorite scenes from The Dark Knight by one of the most iconic antagonists in modern American cinema. Click the pic to see the scene.
Click the pic to watch.
And now that we have THAT out of the way, let me go into a bit more detail about my hard thought list. There is always a very worthy antagonist for every good movie, but my selections weren’t based on the money the movie made, or how well it received by the general public. When I say best villains, I mean just that. I’ve picked the most devious, reckless, demented, mischievous rapscallions ever captured on film, and portrayed by great actors, but keep in mind this list is not in any specific order. This is just my personal top 10, not how they rank. I also did my best not to over-saturate the list with over played persona’s like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Essentially I tried to stay away from a whole list of “possessed crazed white people”, there’s an abundance of that in good movies (Ryan Reynolds in ‘Amityvillie Horror’, Katie from ‘Paranormal Activity’, and so on). The second category I stayed away from were the action movie bad guys, who are a normally a dime a dozen, and all either want money or have a personal vendetta with the good guy, which is why I tried my hardest to deviate from that as well. I’ll explain my reasons for picking each person on the list, but basically I wanted to stick to truly unique, one of a kind, malicious bad-assery (more like John Doe in ‘Seven’ which would have came 11th on the list) so I’m pretty sure I picked 10 winners. Check the method.
Patrick Bateman – (American Psycho)
What I consider a master of deception, Bateman is insane, and can keep it all in his pants when it matters most, but I think is the most unsettling thing about him is when his “crazy” slips out, like in the classic ‘business card’ scene from American Psycho. Interesting, intriguing, while still unsettling and disturbing, this simple scene doesn’t depict any of his murders, but it shows just how the mind of a person that deranged just might work.
Adrian Veidt – (Watchmen)
I consider Adrian an unparalleled monster, for the simple fact that in his movie, he did something no other villains tend to do… Succeed. He carried out his master-plan, killed a billion people, and had one of the sickest evil lines in ANY movie. “I’m not a comic book villain. Do you seriously think I would explain my master stroke to you if there were even the slightest possibility you could affect the outcome? I triggered it 35 minutes ago.“ Not to mention in his universe, he’s the smartest man alive. Check it out.
Hannibal Lecter – (Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Red Dragon, Hannibal Rising.)
When the original ‘Silence of the Lambs’ came out, I was far too young to appreciate it. All I remember thinking was that Buffalo Bill not having a d*ck was downright disturbing in every sense of the word. But years and years later, when the sequel ‘Hannibal’ came out, my sister sat me down and made me watch the original, and it warped my mind as to how brilliant and insidious the character of Hannibal Lecter really was. Check out a scene or two from one of my favorite evil genius’s. (B.T.W. if you haven’t seen any of the movies, he eats people.)
Blue – (Sucker Punch)
‘Sucker Punch’ is a relatively new movie, its an original, and most people are unfamiliar with its basic cast of characters. But all that being said, Blue, the movies main villain is ridiculously malicious, and carries out one of the most shocking acts in any movie I’ve seen in years. Seeing as how when this post was written, ‘Sucker Punch’ was still clocking dollars at the box office, I won’t put any spoilers into this post. But I do have to reiterate that Blue is a gentleman, a low down scheeming liar, a man of great emotional depth, a disturbed m*ther f*cker, and still one of the biggest pimps I’ve ever seen on screen. The scene below (has no spoilers) but is immediately before Blue shows his “true colors” and rockets himself into villain history. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what happens next.
Simon Phoenix – (Demolition Man)
I feel like if people were satisfied with my choices so far, they may not be after this. I know I tried to stray away from action movie villians, but if you’re a fan of the 1993 movie ‘Demolition Man’, you know exactly why Simon Phoenix breaks the action villain mold. He’s planning, methodical, and absolutely insane. Not only does he get pure joy from destruction, he carries out most of his acts in a world where people are innocent and crime doesn’t exist. He prays on the innocent not for any motive or reason, but simply because he just LOVES doing it. Which makes him a great villain. Check out exactly what I mean below.
Castor Troy – (Face Off)
Now when it comes to vile, demented, horrid, despicable, and utterly hilarious characters, no one can tell me that Castor Troy doesn’t deserve to be on this list. A great sense of humor is always something that makes an antagonist greater than the ‘evil-brooding-angry-man-sitting-in-a-chair-petting-a-cat’ stereotype that villains can have. But the mental disturbance level of Castor Troy throughout the entire movie “Face Off” is what I think gives Mr. Troy the chops to make it onto this list. Check out one of the opening scenes of ‘Face Off’ and you’ll see what I mean.
Alonzo Harris – (Training Day)
Yes… the photo above is of Denzel Washington playing Alonzo Harris in the 2001 hit ‘Training Day’… (AND yes he’s pointing a shotgun at a small boy) So now that we have an idea of how gutter the villain Alonzo Harris was, I have to say that what puts him on this list (for me) is the fact that when you watch this movie, you feel the character’s plight. You don’t care that he’s an evil, vindictive, deceitful, murderer, you just want him to succeed. And I’ll admit this whole-heartedly, when I’m alone, I can’t watch the end of ‘Training Day’. It just pushes a bad button to see Officer Harris go down the way he does. After all, he’s responsible for one of the most classic lines in current urban culture…. “King Kong ain’t got S*HT on ME!” (tell me you’ve never heard anyone say that in real life.)
Clyde Shelton – (Law Abiding Citizen)
Clyde Shelton is another relatively new bad guy, but never the less, he deserves to be on this list. I don’t know the percentage of people who have seen “Law Abiding Citizen” but if you haven’t, Shelton is one of the most brilliant bad-asses I’ve seen in a long time. He manages to keep the audience guessing as to his next move, while keeping the audience guessing as to how he’s doing it all, while keeping the audience saying “I don’t understand why your doing what your doing, but go on sir.” Perfect example is the courtroom scene below. Half the time your wondering what the hell is wrong with this man, but you can’t take your eyes of the screen. Dope.
Agent Smith – (The Matrix)
This list is all about the qualities that make antagonists extra evil, and counting those qualities. Agent Smith is unique because for the first time we have to disregard a few things. Lets just forget that the man has an army of HIMSELF. Lets forget the fact that he technically cannot die. Lets just forget the fact that he can kill you with one touch. Lets just focus on the little part where he doesn’t have one main enemy, Smith just hates the ENTIRE HUMAN SPECIES as a whole. Just for having that much hatred in your blood, you deserve a good spot on the list. Check out Smith’s explanation for his angry disposition below.
Alex – (A Clockwork Orange)
Click the pic to watch this final villain in action.
Due to restrictions put on me by the people who pay me, there is a certain bracket of content I can’t post directly onto this site. Alex from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ falls directly into that bracket like 27 times. And that’s one of the things that makes him one of the greatest Villains in movie history. Deranged beyond all comprehension, crazed, angry, disturbed, and any other synonym you can come up with, are all things to describe this character. If the “disturbing” level of ’2 Girl’s 1 Cup’ made you want to drop kick a baby stroller, then after watching the “Singing In The Rain” scene from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ you may just look like this when it’s over. The best part is, unlike ’2 Girls 1 Cup’, people actually ENJOY watching this movie, which is why Alex is one of the top ranking bad guys on my list. Enjoy.
The Vote.
So as I said in the beginning of this post, I’m very open to speculation, conversation, and mediation on this topic, and I’m really curious to hear other people’s opinions. If I’ve missed anyone I’d like to take them into consideration. So I’ve set up a vote in which you can vote on the list as to who your favorite is, or you can write your own answers in. Lets see what happens.
The 15 Richest Fictional Characters.
Forbes magazine has released its annual Fictional 15, which ranks the richest characters from television, film, comics and books. On top of the list is Scrooge McDuck, a billionaire bird known for storing a fortune in gold coins inside a massive Duckburg “money bin.” With the price of gold up more than 30% year over year, the quacking Croesus’ net worth soared to $44.1 billion. Joining the Scottish McDuck at the top of the cash heap are; immortal vampire Carlisle Cullen ($36.2 billion), Ireland’s master criminal and child genius, Artemis Fowl II ($13.5 billion) and business magnate Richie Rich ($9.7 billion). The members of the 2011 list of wealthiest fictional characters have an average net worth of $9.86 billion, up 20% from last year. In aggregate, the Fictional 15 are worth $131.55 billion –more than the gross domestic product of New Zealand.
2011 Forbes Fictional 15
1. Scrooge McDuck $44.1 B — Mining and treasure hunting
2. Carlisle Cullen $36.2 B — Compound interest and investments
3. Artemis Fowl II $13.5 B — Theft, forgery and Facebook
4. Richie Rich $9.7 B — Inheritance and conglomerates
5. Jed Clampett $9.5 — Oil and gas
6. Tony Stark $9.4 B — Defense
7. Smaug $8.6 B — Marauding
8. Bruce Wayne $7.0 B — Inheritance and defense
9. Mr. Monopoly $2.6 B — Real estate
10. Arthur Bach $1.8 B — Inheritance
11. Jo Bennett $1.2 B — Electronics and inheritance
12. C. Montgomery Burns $1.1 B — Energy
13. Chuck Bass $1.1 B — Real estate
14. Gordon Gekko $1.1 B — Investments
15. Jeffrey Lebowski $1.0 B — Inheritance
WTF Picture From The Distant Past. (Part 2)
With the globalization of the internet, there are trillions of images that float around, and an immeasurable number of pictures that make people say “WTF” on a daily basis. I came across a series of these pictures that had a bit of a twist to them. All of said photos are authentic, vintage, and dated between the 1920′s and 1940′s. The number of pictures that caught my attention was so great that I had to split it up into two posts (the first post dropped yesterday and you can see it here) but the subject matter and content of all the photos are unique, but I guarentee you all that all of them will make you (in one way or another) think to yourself “WTF”. Check part 2.
WTF Pictures From The Distant Past. (Part 1)
With the globalization of the internet, there are trillions of images that float around, and an immeasurable number of pictures that make people say “WTF” on a daily basis. I came across a series of these pictures that had a bit of a twist to them. All of said photos are authentic, vintage, and dated between the 1920′s and 1940′s. The number of pictures that caught my attention was so great that I had to split it up into two posts (the second would should be coming tomorrow) but the subject matter and content of all the photos are unique, but I guarantee you all that all of them will make you (in one way or another) think to yourself “WTF”. Check part 1.
BCR vs. BK (It Only Takes A Few People To Make An Entire Race Look Bad).
Ton’s of people have been talking about the video above, and even among my closest friends, this video caused a discussion that upset a few people. The story I’ve heard about whats taking place in the video is that during ‘Black College Reunion’ week, 2 women were in Burger King, waiting to be served, and the wait was so unbearable for the obese women, they started senselessly tearing up the Burger King and accosting the staff. (This is the story I seem to keep hearing over and over.)
My first question is why do people have to act like that in the first place? The world may never know, so lets just move along. One question that came to my mind immediately after watching the video, and seeing the comments underneath the video from random viewers on YouTube. WHY are people so racially driven when talking about these peoples actions. Yes, its quite obvious that everyone that was causing trouble appeared African American, but why does that spark comments about an entire race? Because of one group of rowdy people, an entire race seems to get put into a box and labeled, which I personally think is very unfair.
The comments that I saw are in the picture below, and you can click the picture to enlarge the photo, but people really said some wild sh*t. Where my questions lie, when there are videos of crazy drunk white kids during spring break, no one classifies ALL white people as being that ridiculous, its just openly accepted that the group of people being observed in the video are idiots. When there are videos of a group of girls flashing people during Mardi Gras, not all women are labeled as sluts who will show off their tits for a necklace they’ll lose before the end of the week, so why is it that all black people are being labeled (by some) as ignorant, destructive, or disorderly just because of the actions of a few fat girls?
One of the things that really threw gas onto the raging fire of a discussion my friends and I had, was when we saw someone comment that they themselves were black, and then proceeded to say that most people of the black race can be ignorant or absent minded. No one person can speak for an entire race, and I think people seem to forget that. Its unfortunate that whoever the person was that made that comment has black friends that can be ignorant and absent minded, but please don’t do the SAME thing everyone else is doing by labeling your own race as predominately ignorant and absent minded.
The other wild comment I read was about the ‘Obama Entitlement’ class. I’ve never heard this term prior to reading these comments, but I can naturally assume it means that there exists a class of black people who feel “entitled” to something, or to act a certain way because President Obama is office. And regardless of weather I’m 100% on the mean or not, people seem to be under the impression this is an iron clad, rock solid phenomenon. I’m a stickler for details, so let me just examine that one for a second…
1. President Obama is half black, and half white, so either the “Obama Entitlement Class” applies to both black and white people. OR, it only applies to mulatto children who have both a black and a white parent.
2. I would presume this “Obama Entitlement” suggests that the attributes of the president in office can effect the actions of the people who share the presidents most publicized qualities. If that’s the case liars would have been tearing up Burger Kings when Nixon was in office, promiscuous men would have been at it when Clinton was in office, and vast number of less than intelligent former cocaine addicted rich kids would have been pulling things apart when Bush lived in the white house.
And finally, 3, it’s ignorant in itself to assume that an entire “class” of people feel exactly the same way about themselves because of the current president being elected. If some people feel entitled because our president is half black, that’s fine, but how can you tell from a YouTube video that the people there that day were part of that group?
But lets move past the Obama point, past the “all black people are destructive in large groups” thing, and even past the racism aspect of it. All in all, I’m not trying to preach, or make some sort of major political, racial, or jump on any type of high horse. All I’m trying to say is this… Two fat b*tches had to wait too long for a Whopper at Burger King… what did you think would happen?
Click the pic to enlarge.
Who Said Gangsters Can’t Be Generous?
In many cultures, in many places, there is a belief that times of crisis reveal the true value of a person. In Japan, applying that axiom proves difficult, especially in light of a recent Daily Beast report that Japan’s infamous mafia, the Yakuza, are providing tons of vital goods to the earthquake and tsunami relief effort. The three largest Yakuza groups (kind of like the crime families of the American Italian mafia), have sent dozens of trucks with a few hundred tons of goods to the devastated regions thus far, reports Japan crime expert Jake Adelstein. They’ve sent everything from diapers to batteries to instant ramen. While this support may seem antithetical to a criminal ethos, one member said, “There are no yakuza or katagi (ordinary citizens) or gaijin (foreigners) in Japan right now. We are all Japanese. We all need to help each other.” In 1995, Adelstein reports that the Yakuza also provided tons of goods and services following the Kobe earthquake.
There is allegedly a philosophy the Yakuza follows that “values humanity, justice, and duty and that forbids one from watching others suffer or be troubled without doing anything about it. Believers of ‘the way’ are expected to put their own lives on the line and sacrifice themselves to help the weak and the troubled. The yakuza often simplify it as ‘to help the weak and fight the strong,’ in theory,” Adelstein writes. However, the reality of Japanese organized crime is such that the Yakuza frequently prey on the weak to become strong, Adelstein reports. In this one instance though, they appear to be actually trying to help. This support is given with great concern, however. The Yakuza said they fear having their donations rejected if their support becomes too widely publicized. One member told Adelstein: “Right now, no one wants to be associated with us and we’d hate to have our donations rejected out of hand.”
Think Panda.
When you see a tuna, think panda. The bluefin tune is now critically endangered to the point of extinction. Industrial overfishing, fueled by the voracious appetite for tuna in several parts of Asia, is killing off the remaining breeding populations. Act quickly to save what’s left. Don’t sell, buy or eat this endangered species. And please support the bluefin defense campaign. Operation Blue Rage, at seashepherd.org.
The 6 Creepiest Places On Earth.
I don’t consider myself a p*ssy, by any stretch of the imagination, but there is ONE place I’ve visited that legit scares the crap out me. ‘The Devil’s Tree’ in New Jersey, I won’t go into the backstory, but its just not the place you want to have a picnic. That being said, some the places on this list could make the Devil’s Tree in New Jersey look like a Snuggles Fabric Softener commercial. Before I say my usual “check the method” as you proceed to read on, whats every creepier, is that it’s taking me forever to write this post, because for whatever reason, things mysteriously move around, the coding warps, things change format, or disappear all together. So my apologies for the inconsistent type format, this really is very peculiar.
6. The Aokigahara Forest
Aokigahara is a woodland at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan that makes The Blair Witch Project forest look like Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood. It probably has something to do with all the dead bodies scattered around. What Niagara Falls is to weddings, Aokigahara is to suicide. How many suicides does it takes for a place to get that reputation? A dozen? Fifty? More than 500 f*cking people have taken their own lives in Aokigahara since the 1950s. Think about that for a second… Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
The trend has supposedly started after Seicho Matsumoto published his novel Kuroi Kaiju (Black Sea of Trees) where two of his characters commit suicide there. After that, (always eager to prove they are bizarrely susceptible to suggestion) hundreds of Japanese people have hanged themselves among the countless trees of the Aokigahara forest, which is reportedly so thick that even in high noon it’s not hard to find places completely surrounded by darkness.
Besides bodies and homemade nooses, the area is littered with signs displaying such uplifting messages like “Life is a precious thing! Please reconsider!” or “Think of your family!”. In the 70s, the problem got national attention and the Japanese government began doing annual sweeps of the forest in search of bodies. In 2002, they found 78. But who knows how many they missed? In all likelihood there probably is a hanged person somewhere in Aokigahara on any given day.
By the way, if an entire dark forest full of hanged corpses wasn’t bad enough, a few years ago some people noticed that a lot of the dead in Aokigahara probably had cash or jewelry on them. Thus began the proud Japanese tradition of Aokigahara Scavenging where people are running around the Death Forest, looking for dead guys to loot.
5. The Overtoun Bridge 
Located near Scotland’s charming little village of Milton in the peaceful burgh of Dumbarton, the Overtoun Bridge is a local arch construction where no human beings have ever died in any suspicious circumstances whatsoever over the last few decades. However, during that span, for reasons I can’t begin to possibly understand, hundreds and hundreds of dogs have killed themselves there. It appears that dogs have been plunging off of Overtoun since the early 60s, at a rate of one animal a month… bringing the total number today to around 600 mutts, who for some reason, decided to end it all.
And I’m not talking about a series of unfortunate accidents that could have been avoided with a simple guard rail. People who actually witnessed the reported dogs willingly climbing the parapet wall and leaping to their doom with dumbass doggy grins on their faces. Whether they were crying blood, remains to be confirmed. Theories on why is this happening have been all over the place… from particularly aromatic rodents, to a simple stream of bizarre coincidences. I call bullshit on both seeing as (to paraphrase Ian Fleming) “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action… and over 600 is clearly the work of an ancient Sumerian demon or some sh*t.”
To further drive the point home, it has been observed that certain dogs that jumped off the bridge and survived, f*cking climbed back up and THREW THEMSELVES TO THE BOTTOM ALL OVER AGAIN. (Because the great Overtoun demon’s hunger will not be appeased with tries.) He “demands fresh canine blood”, and lots of it. I’m not a dog person, but still, very creepy.
4. Winchester Mystery House
In San Jose there is a house. It’s a gigantic, sprawling 160-room complex designed like a maze, with mile-long hallways, secret passages, dead ends, doors opening to blank walls and staircases leading to the ceiling. It’s the work of Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune. In the late 19th century, deeply saddened over the death of her husband and daughter, she visited a Boston medium who told her she was haunted by the spirits of all the victims of Winchester rifles. It was said she needed to make peace with them by… always be building a house. (As in, never stop building a house, or else she would die.)What a nice thing to say to someone who has just lost her family. There is no way this couldn’t end with Sarah building a real life version of the Addams Family household. In 1884, Winchester started construction of her new San Jose mansion, which went on non-stop for 38 years, right until her death. Despite modern contractors taking about that much time to put in the wooden paneling in your kitchen, the Winchester mansion eventually grew so big you could, in all seriousness, get lost in it. But getting lost was the idea. The crazy twists-and-turns and dead ends were intended to confuse the ghosts. (Sarah was kind of a jerk like that.) But pissing off vengeful spirits was just one of the many architectural choices for the mansion.
The entire Winchester Mystery House was decorated with a constant spiderweb motif (which Sarah believed had some spiritual meaning) and everything from the hooks on the walls to candle holders has been arranged around the number 13, supposedly for good luck. (Yeah… for someone trying to free herself from ghosts, Winchester did everything but sacrifice a baby goat to Satan to assure her house will be haunted forever.)
3. The Sedlec Ossuary
Remember when I said Aokigahara was the Niagara falls of suicide? Well, for centuries the abbot in the small Czech town of Sedlec has been the Niagara Falls for dead people, regardless of cause of death. Ever since someone sprinkled soil from the Holy Land on the local cemetery in the 13th century, people from all over Europe started demanding to be buried there and the Sedlec graveyard kept growing until 1870, when the priests decided to finally do something about all those surplus bones lying around. Something insane.
Today, the Sedlec Ossuary is a chapel famous for being decorated with tens of thousands of human bones. This macabre style of interior design was the work of Czech woodcarver Frantisek Rint who, for some reason, was hired to organize the church’s extensive skeleton collection. The results were huge mounds of human remains in the four corners of the chapel, a terrifying chandelier built from every bone in the human body, and a massive skull coat of arms adorning the entrance. I realize this is the Czech Republic and all, but it has been almost 30 something years, surely Poltergeist was released out there already. Like, maybe last year or something? Why are they still playing with human bones as if they were Satan’s Lego blocks and making them sit through Mass every single day for almost 140 years now?
On the Tempting Fate scale, the only thing worse would be to start using some of the skulls as ceremonial mugs or chamber pots. At this point, does it really surprise anyone that the church became the inspiration for Dr. Satan’s lair in my tattoo artists favorite movie House of 1000 Corpses?
2. The San Zhi Resort
What do you get when you cross a series of abandoned, rusting, futuristic UFO-shaped buildings with a series of mysterious deaths covered up by the government? How about the ghost town-slash-tourist resort of San Zhi, located just outside Taipei and inside your worst nightmares. The exclusive San Zhi resort in Taiwan was supposed to be the destination for bored, rich folk who always wondered what it would be like to live inside an over-sized hockey puck.
Construction of Pod City started around the 80s but was quickly shut down after a series of mysterious on-site fatal accidents… or it could have been due to Godzilla attacks for all I know. There is actually very little official information on San Zhi. I can’t even confirm how many people died there or if they screamed something about eyeless children eating their souls. The whole thing is shrouded in secrecy.
Currently, most of the information on the complex comes from the locals who (what a surprise) refuse to go near the damn thing. And thus the abandoned 90 pods just stand there, waiting for anyone foolish enough to wander in. Wait a second… abandoned resort town in the middle of nowhere, mysterious deaths, lack of any official information… where have I seen this before? (Silent Hill?)
1. Prypiat
A whole lot of you may have just got deja vu looking at the above picture. Specifically, those of you who have played Call of Duty 4, as there is an entire level that takes place there. If you thought the idea of a completely silent, abandoned, radioactive city was typical video game apocalyptic fantasy, you were wrong. Prypiat is in the northern Ukraine and once housed the workers and scientists of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant. Founded in the 70s, it held as many as 50,000 people. Then in 1986, according to a footnote in the official Soviet records, there was a small malfunction in the Chernobyl reactor, so for safety reasons the city was evacuated.
Since then, Prypiat has been desolated, its buildings decaying, the giant Ferris Wheel just standing there all alone with nobody to ride it. The city actually had an entire amusement park for the families of the Chernobyl employees. Because when you are living next to a nuclear reactor which was outdated even by 1986 Soviet standards, the only thing on your mind is bumper cars.
The city is located in what is known as the Zone of Alienation, the 30-kilometer radius directly affected by the Chernobyl “minor technical difficulty” over 20 years ago. Despite that, Prypiat is now opened to the public because the radiation levels have apparently went down significantly over the years. We guess we have a different view on radiation than the government of Ukraine. They obviously have a scale for it, while we consider any radiation a very bad thing. Aside from the inherent risk of getting bit by a radioactive snail and becoming the lamest superhero ever, there is another reason why you will never see us among the tourists occasionally visiting Prypiat.
The f*cking nursery. I told you this was a place built for families and wouldn’t you know it, they have a nursery, which according to certain claims is currently paved with baby shoes and abandoned dolls. So, Prypiat is basically an abandoned radioactive ghost Soviet baby amusement park. Thus, ’nuff-said”… Prypiat, the creepiest place on Earth.
The First Interracial Marriage In America.
So every year, my mother will inevitably prompt me to engage in Black History activities much the same way a toddler pokes a sleeping dog with a stick for entrainment. But this year instead of having to prove to her that I’ve watched some program on Dr. King, or a documentary about Guion Bluford, I’ve decided to find some new faces relevant to black history in America. Now we all know that the gay rights movement is currently something that rotates in and out of our faces every so often, and there are some people who believe gay marriage is wrong. I’m not here to say weather it is or isn’t, but what I do want to do is remember a time when marriage between blacks and white was illegal. (It’s also called Miscegenation) Not being able to marry another race (to me) is ridiculous. I’ve, uh… copulated with women of every race there is, and to not be able to take any of those relationships further because of some law is absurd to me. But just like every boundary before and after it, the destruction of Miscegenation started with one incident, and then spread. Read the very important story Richard and below.
You may not know her name, but Mildred Loving was a civil rights activist. Like many who played a role in the civil rights movement Emmett Till, Rosa Parks Mrs. Loving wasn’t looking to change the world by her actions. All she was looking to do was be married to her husband, Richard. Richard was white, and Mildred was black and when they were married in 1958, interracial marriage ”miscegenation” is the pejorative was against the law in their home state of Virginia, as well as 16 other states. Interracial marriage was once a concept so odious that in 1912, Rep. Seaborn Roddenbery of Georgia tried to introduce an amendment to the Constitution banning such unions. To his colleagues in Congress he lectured, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune: ”It is contrary and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is contrary and averse to the very principles of a pure Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. … No more voracious parasite ever sucked at the heart of pure society and moral status than the one which welcomes or recognizes everywhere the sacred ties of wedlock between Africa and America.”
Aren’t you glad we’re living in a time when politicians don’t use relationships between consenting adults as wedge issues? (sarcasm) The Lovings even spent time in jail for the high crime of being married to each other, and were forced to move from Virginia… Then, in June of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Lovings’ ACLU-supported challenge to the Virginia law banning interracial marriages. Forty years later, there’s something like 4.3 million mixed-marriage couples in the United States. Never mind the number of people legally allowed to love as they please, Mildred Loving never thought she personally had done anything special. “It was God’s work,” she told the Associated Press in an interview last year. Though their only desire was to be together, it was not meant to be for the Lovings. Richard was killed in a 1975 car accident. Well, they’re together again now, and bless them both.
I know Mildred and Richard’s name may not be mentioned in middle schools across the country every February, or they may not have a street in every major city named after them, but when it comes to the freedom of being with whoever you love, they are pioneers. February, aside from being Black History month, is also the month that holds valentines day. So if you (like myself) are emotionally involved with someone of a different race, take a second to thank the people who made it possible for you.
Want To Win The Lottery?
The random winning numbers on lottery tickets aren’t exactly random at all. Mohan Srivastava is the man who figured out how to beat a scratch lottery game — and he has no desire to profit from it. Srivastava, who was featured in this month’s Wired magazine, is a geological statistician by trade and is naturally adept at analyzing numbers and realizing patterns. His day job involves scoping out potential gold mines and determining the how much gold they might contain. Cracking the lottery wasn’t all that different. Srivastava, using the same math, was able to predict winning tickets for a Canadian Tic-Tac-Toe scratch lottery game 9 out of 10 times.
The method is surprisingly simple but his road to discovery involved a bit of chance. Holding degrees from MIT and Stanford, Srivastava was never drawn to the allure of the lottery — given the inherent propensity to lose long term. When a friend gave him a couple of cheap scratch games as a joke, he didn’t think much of it. But one of the tickets turned out to be a winner. Srivastava was intrigued.
As a trained statistician with degrees from MIT and Stanford University, Srivastava was intrigued by the technical problem posed by the lottery ticket. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his day job, which involves consulting for mining and oil companies. A typical assignment for Srivastava goes like this: A mining company has multiple samples from a potential gold mine. Each sample gives a different estimate of the amount of mineral underground. “My job is to make sense of those results,” he says. “The numbers might seem random, as if the gold has just been scattered, but they’re actually not random at all. There are fundamental geologic forces that created those numbers. If I know the forces, I can decipher the samples. I can figure out how much gold is underground.”
Srivastava realized that the same logic could be applied to the lottery. The apparent randomness of the scratch ticket was just a facade, a mathematical lie. And this meant that the lottery system might actually be solvable, just like those mining samples. “At the time, I had no intention of cracking the tickets,” he says. He was just curious about the algorithm that produced the numbers. Walking back from the gas station with the chips and coffee he’d bought with his winnings, he turned the problem over in his mind. By the time he reached the office, he was confident that he knew how the software might work, how it could precisely control the number of winners while still appearing random. “It wasn’t that hard,” Srivastava says. “I do the same kind of math all day long.”
Srivastava had been hooked by a different sort of lure—that spooky voice, whispering to him about a flaw in the game. At first, he tried to brush it aside. “Like everyone else, I assumed that the lottery was unbreakable,” he says. “There’s no way there could be a flaw, and there’s no way I just happened to discover the flaw on my walk home.”
The BEST Drinking Game Ever In Life.
So, while in L.A., I was chillin with my good friend and business partner, and we decided that the clubs were a bit boring. We’ve both clubbed a bit too much for the weekend, and we were over the scene for the night, so we decided to go back to my hotel and kick it with some folks. In the process, I’m pretty sure I created one of the most ridiculous drinking games I’ve come up with in the last few years. The HBO hit series Entourage has been one of my favorite shows for quite some time, so we started watching and put some rules into effect. With the help of a set of drinking dice that were labeled with phrases like “Sip”, “Drink 2 Cups”, “Bottoms Up”, “Drink Half Cup”, “No Drinks”, “Drink 2 Cups”, and “Drink At Will”, I devised one simple rule. Every time Ari Gold says the word “F*ck” or any derivative of said obscenity, we roll the dice, and drink as instructed. We started with season 5, and by the second episode, all parties involved were plastered, and by episode 4 we ran out of liquor. All in all it was a fun night, and I’m fairly certain that the next time I’m taking a break from work on the weekends, I’m sure to play the game again. And if your feeling a bit frisky, but you don’t have the dice we used, just take a simple shot of whatever you have whenever Mr. Gold utters the F word. Here’s a sample, enjoy the results.
The State Of The World Is In Dispute.
A cluster of 300 artificial islands off Dubai‘s coast in the shape of a global map is stable, its developer Nakheel insists, despite a court claim alleging that “The World” was neglected and eroding away. “There is no issue with the stability of The World islands that are approximately 70 percent sold and handed over,” a Nakheel spokesman said. “The island purchasers (have) the responsibility to proceed with their developments in due course,” he added. The islands, many of which represent individual countries and which can only be accessed by boat or helicopter, were meant to be one of the Gulf city-state’s crowning developments. Builders have announced plans for a few of the islands, but development has yet to begin on most of them.
A company contracted to provide logistics support to the islands filed a claim with a tribunal that handles cases related to the emirate’s troubled Dubai World conglomerate, alleging that third-party developers had not been encouraged to develop the islands, and said they were being hit by erosion. Nakheel subsidiary The World LLC “did not develop the project as anticipated at the time of the agreement and the project has lain largely undeveloped,” according to the claim filed by Penguin Marine Boats Services LLC. Penguin is contracted to pay “a licence fee of $1.36 million dollars per annum” to conduct operations, but the lack of development on the islands means it has “been unable to develop its business opportunities,” the claim said.
Additionally, “the navigation channels… are presently so ill-defined and the water depths have been so seriously eroded due to reclaimed sand silting up the navigation channels that major reclamation works will henceforth be required.” A lawyer for Penguin Marine, Richard Wilmot-Smith, was quoted by local media as having told the tribunal that “the islands are gradually falling back into the sea.” Nakheel dismissed the allegations as “misleading and mischievous statements. The wholly incorrect and unsupported assertion relating to the state of The World islands was made in the context of a legal case brought against The World LLC by a logistics provider,” the spokesman said.
“Nakheel will continue to protect the interests of its operations and stakeholders and take such action as is appropriate in the circumstances,” he added. The spokesman said that the case “was dismissed with costs awarded in favour of The World LLC. We are vindicated by the court’s decision.” However, a final judgment with reasons for the decision has not yet been posted to the tribunal’s website, where judgments appear after they have been issued. Abu Dhabi-based English-language daily The National said that the tribunal ruled against Penguin but has not yet given its reasons for doing so. Lawyers for Penguin Marine declined to comment, and the company’s general manager Alex Labor said only that “Penguin’s position is… what our lawyers said during the trial.”
Nakheel, which developed Dubai’s iconic palm-shaped islands and the Atlantis luxury hotel among other developments, was hard-hit by the global economic crisis, which led to a sharp fall in Dubai real estate prices. Nakheel was to split from parent company Dubai World, which rocked global financial markets when it announced in November 2010 that it needed to freeze debt payments, under a debt restructuring plan.
2012 Predictions.
Everybody’s got one. A prediction about what the devil is going to happen during the winter solstice of 2012. That’s the end of the world, say some. Here we have a graphic, provided by InformationIsBeautiful.net, about various 2012 predictions and possible horrid scenarios. The most redeeming quality of this graphic in my opinion is that it shows both sides–that of the believers and the naysayers. The believers generally fall into two camps: those who think the Earth’s population will collectively undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and those who think civilization will be completely annihilated or, instead, transubstantiate into a living hell for all. Then you have the skeptics, who either believe that all 2012 doomsday theories are bollocks because they are completely made up or bollocks because quasi-scholars have misinterpreted the Mayan calendar and the beliefs of that highly intelligent civilization.
The believers have a number of varied theories, and I suppose some think they are mutually exclusive, while others believe they can overlap. Their theories range from geomagnetic reversal (extremely unlikely, according to scientists), pole shift (scientifically impossible), egregious solar storms that ravage the planet (if there are storms, they will do nothing more than disrupt cell phone signals), the earth passing through a “galactic plane” (kind of hard when there are none within 24 light years), a rogue planet smacking into the Earth (if this was going to happen, it’s the kind of thing astronomers would notice, and none are coming toward us), a great flood that will tear the planet to pieces (out of the blue, huh?), and a nuclear holocaust (at least this theory/prediction isn’t based on faulty science). Many of ideas that believers hold onto are based on completely historically incorrect information. For instance, they think that the Aztecs and the Toltecs knew about 2012 and also believe something unusual is going to happen on that date. But this idea is completely made up, as there is no evidence to suggest that either civilization knew about the Mayans. Ok, have I torn the believers’ beliefs apart enough yet? Let me know.
The Blue Lagoon.
From what I hear swimming is supposed to give you a healthy glow, but these swimmers weren’t quite sure what was going on when they took a late-night dip and turned a fluorescent shade of blue. ’It was like we were playing with radioactive paint,’ said photographer Phil Hart who snapped the bizarre sight as his friends emerged from a lake in the dark of night. The light is created by a chemical reaction called bioluminescence, which happens when a naturally-occuring micro-organism in the water is disturbed.
It’s believed that the combination of bushfires and floods created the high levels of nutrients in the lakes for the organisms to feed. ’It may not happen again in my lifetime,’ said Phil. ‘I feel fortunate to have been there to see it and to have had my camera gear there to record it.’ Phil, from Melbourne, added: ‘While the luminescence was obvious to the eye, the bright blue colour is only apparent in photos.’ When the first photo that was taken appeared on screen I could hardly believe how freakish the whole thing looked.
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