Tag: the random

Posted on

The immortal Liam Neeson

Currently I’m trying to construct a theory that all of Liam Neeson’s characters are the same person. It works like this: Rob Roy was from the Scottish highlands, just like Christopher Lambert. This makes him a literal highlander. 

Thus, like the Wandering Jew, Liam Neeson walks this cursed earth, sometimes fighting and winning, sometimes loving and being loved, but always living life to all of its extremes. Obviously his Rob Roy identity wasn’t his first one, since he fathered Orlando Bloom during the Crusades, but perhaps it’s one that accidentally reveals his true nature. And taking the name Ra’s al Ghul is a sly commentary on his adventures a millennium before. Sometimes he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Germany in the 1940s. A life like his can be pretty stressful, so other times he takes a few decades to chill out, like when he was raising an actual red-headed stepchild who he somehow wasn’t beating nightly.

The only problem with this theory, besides its stupidity, is that I couldn’t quite reconcile Qui-Gon Jinn. How did this Neeson Earthman join a society of mystic space knights from a completely different galaxy which existed untold millennia before Camelot was built? Then I realized that this immortal was merely longer-lived than I’d initially thought. Qui-Gon was simply the earliest known identity of our immortal.

Well, glad that I figured that out. Anyway, what did you do at work today?

Posted on

To reach the unreachable star

Via Foreign Policy, behold: a human interest puff piece from a reporter asking Chinese school kids what they want to be when they grow up. Most of the answers are boring and predictable, but one precocious little girl reveals the dark underpinnings of our dog-eat-dog society:

“I want to be an official”
Reporter: “What kind of official?”
“A corrupt official, because corrupt officials have a lot of things.”

I wish my guidance counsellor had told me this was an option.

Posted on

Animal Castration and You: A How-To Video

Via Cracked, that strange competitor to Mad Magazine during the 1980s (and now a comedy website/time sink), I learned about the Sami practice of half-castration, where a reindeer’s testicles are crushed to remove its orneriness while leaving it enough male hormones in the form of squished testicles to give the animal plenty of muscle mass and preventing it from becoming decadent and eunuch-like. The traditional practice is to have the reindeer’s testicles crushed personally, that person being a woman using merely her teeth and jaw muscles.

Perhaps a video might help illustrate what I’m talking about. Incidentally, if you watch it with the sound on mute it becomes vaguely pornographic, especially with the final shot of a guy smoking a cigarette.

Posted on

Bring out the gimp

The esteemed sages of DC Comics ask that eternal question which has plagued countless philosophers for millennia:

Yes, why is Lois lashing a wooden puppet of Superman? Buddhist apocrypha holds that the Sakkyamuni Buddha pondered that very question under the bodhi tree. Husserl was said to have stared at this comic book cover when he got bored of staring at his copper ashtray.

So what was the reason for this shocking act of kryptonite bondage?

It was simply Lois attempting to drive an evil spirit out of Superman’s body and into a wooden simulacrum. That clears up that mystery.

Posted on

Thank god it’s dead

Argentavis magnificens

Sweet Jesus crap I’m glad that thing’s extinct, I would shit myself if I saw something that size flying through the sky. And hey, good news: scientists think it mostly ate carrion like its relative, the Andean condor. However, apparently it would occasionally hunt small to medium sized animals and “[s]kull structure suggests that it ate most of its prey whole”. I think children count as small to medium sized animals. Something to sleep on, friends. Pleasant dreams!

Oh fine, all Argentavis fossils are around 6 million years old and they’re all from the Andes, so it probably never swooped down and dragged our ancestors screaming into the sky.

Posted on

Hoy pare, pakinggan niyo ko (also, my hands are deadly weapons)

I know that I don’t post too, too often. I haven’t been reading the blogs that I used to read obsessively, either, and I’m not too great at checking some of my email accounts. I find that one of the side effects of doing Internet-based research is that I’ve started trying to find excuses not to use my computer. Sunny outside? The wireless doesn’t work so great with that weather, guess it’s time to read in the park. Work out tomorrow morning, you say? Sure, I’ve been getting lazy lately. I have to catalogue and code all these blogs, but I have to go to the Farmer’s Market first since I need fresh ginger for the Ma Po tofu I’m making for dinner.

Actually, I’m getting kind of hungry right now. I got up at 11 AM, had brunch, went to the library, and have been catching up on my email and the various LiveJournal communities I’m part of (I got a headsup on some more theory). And I’ve been writing these posts. That’s enough work for one day, right? I can’t seriously be expected to work with an empty stomach, and after my merienda it’ll be time for karate. When I get back, I may make some chili or just heat up some leftovers. Toss some salad, wash the dishes, do my laundry, and whoops, no time left to work at my computer if I want to get up early tomorrow to go to the gym. And I hate working at home anyway.

So there you go, a day in the life of an Internet researcher. Just to remind you that the person behind the blog you’re reading also eats, sleeps, and occassionally works when he feels like it.

And if you know what I was getting at with the title of this post, I will congratulate you on your taste in music.