World of Suck

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- New Zealand's national airline has adopted a cheeky way to encourage passengers to watch its in-flight safety video: The cabin crew's uniforms are nothing but body paint.

Now I admit it wholeheartedly. I don't pay one tiny bit of attention to the fight staff when they run though their emergency routine. At best I might glance at the make and model of the aircraft (I prefer Boeing and MD to Airbus and Canadian aircraft) just for the heck of it but nothing else. After all these years I know where the exits are, I know how to open them in an emergency, I know where my life vest is and really if you don't know how to put on a seat belt by now you shouldn't be allowed out of the house un-escorted. Air masks - check, no smoking - check, wear seat belts while seated - check. American doesn't accept cash any more for snacks. Meals cost $5 and snacks between 2-3. Blah blah blah. No one watches and no one cares. Seasoned travelers know the routine and just want to get to an altitude where they can turn their computers and ipods back on again.

The body paint idea is also being used in a series of television advertisements in New Zealand for the airline, which include the promise: ''At Air New Zealand, our fares have nothing to hide.''

Anyway I applaud this bit of innovation. And it's a nifty advertisement to go without underwear to encourage people to fly down under.

... they'll probably eat it and then hold out their trunk for more. Honestly this was a little known fact that I'd never fathomed (or even thought to fathom), but elephants apparently like hotdog buns.

Elephants Outdo Humans in NYC Bun-Eating Contest(AP)

Three elephants ate 505 hot dog buns in six minutes to win an eating competition against three humans Friday at Brooklyn's Coney Island. The losing side ate 143 buns in six minutes.

A commentator says the elephants seemed to be eating at a leisurely pace.

Well I give the humans a solid round of applause, I mean heck going up against not just one but three elephants? They didn't stand a chance. Plus, as reported, the elephants didn't even know they were in a race. They just casually wrapped a trunk around the squishy, oblong bread-food and packed it into their copious maw.

Still, I wonder what they had for dessert?

I had an art supply store that I loved. It was the only reputable supply house that wasn't some shit-box craft chain spin off. It was called Charrette and they were located in Woburn MA. There were there for decades until, fairly recently they were bought by some ass-clowns named Pitman.

Little by little they sucked the life out of the store. They made it smaller. They reduced the stock. They turned it from an active artists haven into little more than a mortuary. But I kept going back.

Until they closed it.

Now there's fucking nothing of the same quality and caliber for miles. You basically have to go into Boston to Pearl Paint (which is a haul) if you want decent materials. And what does Pitman have to say? Fuck nothing. You can't even tell from their website that they raped Charrette and then left the corpse to rot.

So from here's a big fat FUCK YOU PITMAN from all the artists you just left out to dry. We knew you never had any intention of keeping the store or the name alive. I hope you all rot in hell.

A 2-yr old girl was strangled by a 12-ft Burmese Python. It had bitten the girl on the head, probably in an attempt to swallow. The snake was the pet of failed dinner's mother's boyfriend's, a pet he never bothered getting a required permit for.

I'll admit it, I like my pets warm blooded and typically with fur. Some dogs have a screw loose and chew up little kids and that is tragic. Some of those dogs that chew up a kid may have just been doling out their own sense of justice after some kids tormented the crap out of them (please don't give me the speech, we've all seen some little bastard tormenting a dog, and in the case that kid gets mauled, I blame kid's parents for not tanning the bastard's behind). Some cats will shred people into ribbons. However, for every dog and or cat that makes a poor pet, there are dozens that do make good pets. For many of these pets (including cats) you can feel like they love you.

Snakes are a different story. I know some people consider these reptiles "pets". I would prefer to call them "curiosities". No matter how hard and creatively you gaze into a snakes eyes, that is not love. If it is a big python, he/she is just trying to figure out how to fit your head into its mouth after squeezing the life out of you - basically he/she would love to have you for dinner.

In addition to in home tragedies such as this, we are going to hear more and more about fluffies, fidos and small children disappearing in the south, likely as meals for big ass pythons. More and more retards, perhaps not unlike the owner of this snake, are releasing snakes that have gotten so big as to be difficult to handle. The problem is, it is warm enough for these pythons to survive along much of the east coast.

Some people should never be allowed to procreate or get pets.

Spurred by a broad coalition of religious, labor and immigrant groups, the City Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Tuesday to add two of the most important Muslim holy days to the public schools’ holiday calendar.

But the vote, which was nonbinding, put the Council in conflict with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has the final say to designate the days off and has said he is resolutely opposed to the idea.

Ok I'm sorry, I'm a very tolerant person when it comes to religion but it's time for the Muslim minority to shut the fuck up. My limited research puts the American Muslim population at less then 1%. I'm betting there's almost the same number of Buddhists, Taoists, and Hindus in the US so what about them?

I'm just fucking tired of hearing about Islam and their issues. The Taliban wants to kill the French now because someone finally observed in public that making women wear bed sheets was discrimination. Yes, any fool can recognize that having to cover your entire body and face is the equivalent of slavery, but somehow Muslims call it an "honor". If it was such a fucking honor then shouldn't the men be doing it too? (Well they only do it when they want to escape by cross-dressing).

Fuck this bullshit. New York doesn't need to recognize Islam just because people are loud mouths. And Bloomberg is absolutely right in saying that it doesn't make sense to honor every religion around or kids would never be in school. Islam hasn't done much to recognize other religions (other than threatening to kill anyone that doesn't practice theirs). So screw it.

Give your freeking religion a makeover and start making it something that supports equality, freedom and peace. Then maybe it will be something worth celebrating as a country.

I've had enough of the Michael Jackson stuff... enough already. Any news program on TV is completely and entirely consumed with this drivel. Don't we have more important things to broadcast?

SHANGHAI (AP) — The buying and selling of the make-believe currencies used in online gaming has become so widespread that Chinese authorities fear it will affect the real economy.

Fascinating really. China is so worried about teh intarwebz that they believe their real gold backed currency will become obsolete. Now they want to regulate the "gold farmers". It reminds me of when Congress set its sites on all the Internet businesses. Yes they can smell the money but they can't get their grimy mitts on it. I'm sure that's infuriating.

The coin of fantasy realms have already moved markets here. So-called QQ coins — a form of currency produced by the Chinese Internet giant Tencent — have sometimes risen sharply in value against China’s official currency, the renminbi, alarming officials at the nation’s Central Bank.

Some people have even traded virtual currencies in China, and exchanged them for clothes, cosmetics and other goods.

Why is this strange? Banking is completely virtual these days, no one carries around gold bullion. People hardly even carry around cash. Still the idea of a non-metallic based currency is considered bizarre. Well to those who can't equate time and effort to value. See that's the rub, people are willing to pay real money for someone else's time and effort. That's what gold farming is all about. Instead of spending the hours of your life leveling a character, learning how to make one successful, joining a group, learning to team and maybe getting a nifty reward you can just pony up some cash and get it that way. It's no damn different than any other service industry really. Sure I could change my own oil, but it would cost me time and effort. I just pay someone else to do it.

“This action shows that at least one government is concerned about the way virtual worlds challenge its control of society,” Professor Castronova said in an e-mail message Tuesday. “As virtual currencies take over more and more purchasing power, control over the effective money supply shifts from the central bank to the game developers."

No what this shows is that Edward Castronova is an idiot who never played an MMO. Game developers are NOT rich. They never have been and they never will be. Even the damn companies that produce the game are in a violently Darwinian evolution, living and dying in a matter of years. It's brutal out there and they are the one group that is NOT getting wealthy.

On Tuesday, China said that new regulations would restrict the trading and use of virtual money, and that virtual currencies would be banned from being exchanged for goods.

The government also said it was moving to fight online gambling and disputes over virtual coins.

Well I can't wait to see how they try and implement that. From poker to simple algorithms built into the games themselves it's impossible to really distinguish gambling and trading. China already sucked the big on with their Green Dam software, seems like they're well on their way to the next big fiasco. ggs morons.