Too Blotto to Baptize

Too bad Jesus didn't turn this priest's wine to water.

A Sacramento priest has been suspended from active ministry after parents complained that he appeared drunk Saturday during a church baptism.

[...]

[The Rev. Julian] Medina, 64, arrived an hour late for the afternoon ceremony in which he was to preside over the baptism of 15 children. The priest slurred his words, had difficulty walking and later fell down, according to witnesses.

"We apologize to the families who had to experience this incident," said the Rev. Santiago Raudes, canon lawyer for the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento. A church deacon was called in to finish the baptism.

About 150 people were at the church for the sacrament, according to Raudes. After Medina fell, church members carried the priest to the rectory.

[Sacramento Bee]

Get a Grip

This unlucky stuntman suffered one hell of a bringdown.

U.S. officials are investigating the Selfridge Air Show accident on Sunday, in which stuntman Todd Green fell 200 feet from the airplane to his death.

[...]

Green's colleague Kyle Franklin told AP that Green was "very good at it" and performed it successfully "many, many times."

[...]

Green was attempting a stunt in which he stands on a small airplane and transfers himself to a helicopter by grabbing on the helicopter's skid. In the fatal accident, the stuntman appears to have lost his grip and then fallen to his death.

[International Business Times]

Angry At Branson, Heavens Unleash Lightning And Barely Miss Winslet

The building was completely destroyed. I got this off of WikiPedia.

Branson's business empire is owned by a complicated series of offshore trusts and companies. The Sunday Times stated that his wealth is calculated at £3.065 billion; if he were to retire to his Caribbean island and liquidate all of this he would pay relatively little in tax.

His biography points out several humanitarian causes and his label did sign the Sex Pistols, but he is a rich tax avoiding type guy and there may be a message in this. In any case a downer for Kate Winslet. This kind of thing would totally blow my vacation.

British Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet was among the guests who escaped unhurt from a fire which swept through Richard Branson's Caribbean holiday retreat overnight, the billionaire said on Monday.

Branson said the blaze was caused by a lightning strike on The Great House on Necker Island, and that the building was completely destroyed.

Branson, his wife Joan and son Sam were staying in a nearby property, but among those who fled the affected building were 35-year-old Winslet, her boyfriend and family, Branson's mother Eve and his daughter Holly.

"Around 20 people were in the house and they all managed to get out and they are all fine," Branson said in comments released to the British media.

"We had a really bad tropical storm with winds up to 90 miles per hour. A big lightning storm came around 4 a.m. and hit the house.

[Reuters]

Placentas: Latest Food Craze

Looks pretty tasty, doesn't it?

Jennifer Hughes’s placenta was delivered ten minutes after her first child, just before midnight on March 31. It was on the large side, with a liverish texture and a bluish tinge; it measured nine inches in diameter and weighed a pound and a half.

[...]

[I]n the birth plan that Hughes brought with her to Beth Israel Medical Center, she specified that she wanted to keep her placenta, for cultural reasons. Complying with New York State health regulations, which says that hospitals “may, at the request of a patient or patient’s representative, return a healthy placenta for disposition by the patient,” the hospital allowed her to take it home, and even packed it up for her.

In some cultures, it is customary to bury the placenta and plant a tree over it.

Hughes had other plans. She was going to eat it.

[...]

[Jennifer] Mayer—an upbeat, blue-eyed blonde from upstate New York—is a professional placenta-preparer. Her job is to transform placentas into supplements that are said to alleviate postpartum depression, aid in breastmilk production and lactation, act as a uterine tonic, and replenish nutrients lost during pregnancy. Her clients are mostly middle-class, like Hughes and her husband, Doug, who are college-educated, in their thirties, and live on a gentrifying street in Crown Heights.

[...]

Mayer, who also works as a massage therapist and doula, first became interested in placentas as a student at the University of Colorado. After reading up on the purported benefits of consuming one’s afterbirth and learning that a client was planning to try it, Mayer decided that she wanted to offer her customers placenta capsules: dried, ground afterbirth packaged into a clear pill no bigger than a regular vitamin supplement.

[...]

“They’re happy pills,” Mayer says. “They’re made by your body, for your body. Why wouldn’t you want to try?”

[...]

For Alexa Beckham, a petite brunette who started [a placenta] encapsulation service called Ruby Tree Birth late last year, the science, or lack thereof, has little impact on the magic she experienced.

“When I was pregnant, I just craved organs,” says Beckham, a onetime vegan and raw-foodist who now eats grass-fed and organic meat. “I’d go to Diner [the Williamsburg restaurant] and order beef hearts, marrow … so the placenta just made sense.

“After I gave birth, I threw a chunk of placenta in the Vitamix with coconut water and a banana,” she adds. “It gave me the wildest rush. You know the feeling of drinking green juice on an empty stomach? It’s like that, but much more intense. It was definitely physical.”

[...]

Back in Hughes’s kitchen, Mayer takes the placenta she dehydrated the day before and grinds it up in a Magic Bullet blender. Wearing a surgical mask, she says, joking, “I don’t want to breathe in placenta.” She then pours the nutmeg-colored powder into a pill-making kit and seals the capsules, several dozen at a time. The entire batch will take her just over an hour and produce about 150 pills.

[...]

Hughes and her husband, Doug, have come home with their newborn son after spending the night in the hospital. They sit on their couch, depleted, while the baby sleeps.

[...]

Mayer takes a bit of dehydrated, cooked placenta she saved and ceremoniously places a portion in their open palms. The pieces are brown, shriveled, and brittle—like old shoe leather left out in the sun.

The new parents toast each other, giggle nervously, and begin to chew. The crunch is audible across the room, and they wince slightly at the sound.

“So, what do you think?” Mayer asks.

“It tastes like jerky,” Doug says. “Dry, gamy, bland jerky.”

[New York Magazine]

Can He Type?

What a raw deal this is. Burger King has a decline and they blame this guy? Why is it his fault? When the executives mess up, blame the mascot? For the failed vision? The undercooked cheese? The less than crispy fries? COME ON!

You think YOU have problems, look at this fucking guy. What kind of job can HE get? He's going to be a distraction in most places. I can't imagine him coming on the ship with me. We would hurt ourselves laughing. Maybe he can sell that ring?

If this is how corporate America treats its plastic figurine type guys imagine how they are going to treat YOU. There's no mention of a severance package. Plus his residuals are over. Get ready to climb over another drunken bum with a big plastic head on your way to work in the morning.

Fast-food chain Burger King is making a 180 degree shift in its marketing, with a decision to drop its "King" mascot and focus on — sit down before you read this! — product.

For years, Burger King had placed its bets on edgy commercials by creative powerhouse Crispin Porter + Bogusky, targeting men in their teens and 20s. Crispin's campaigns got a lot of attention, and plaudits from the advertising community. Unfortunately, however, advertising awards don't necessarily translate into sales, and Burger King has been badly lagging main rival McDonald's. According to consulting firm Technomic, Burger King's same-store sales declined 6% in the first quarter; compare that to a 3% rise for Mc Donald's.

This discrepancy in performance is not the result of McDonald's having more "creative" advertising or a hipper mascot (Ronald Mc Donald is many things — hip he's not). But while Burger King was trying to sell consumers an edgy brand image, McDonald's focused on something much more mundane: selling burgers, fries and coffee. The rest is marketing history.

Now, under new ownership, and with a new management and marketing team, Burger King is focusing on what matters: updating the stores, fixing its food and changing its image. As Alex Maccedo, SVP, marketing, put it to USA Today: "People want a reason to go back to Burger King ... There are no plans to bring the King back anytime soon."

[Forbes]

Dump Trucks: Not Intended as Hearse/Mass Transit Hybrid Vehicles

What do you get when you crowd one dead person in a dump truck with a several dozen mourners?

A damaged coffin and more dead people!

Malfunctioning brakes caused a municipal dump truck to speed downhill and fall on its side in Barili town, south Cebu, killing eleven people in a large group of mourners on their way to a funeral yesterday.

The accident left at least 49 injured, many of them relatives and neighbors of the 68-year-old woman whose coffin they were accompanying to the St. Anne Parish Church in the town proper for a requiem Mass at 2 p.m.

The government truck was borrowed as a funeral hearse, a common cost-saving practice in rural areas where families can’t afford to hire their own vehicles.

Eleven passengers were killed by the impact, including a 60-year-old woman.

[...]

The funeral of Tranquilina Diagbil finally took place later in the afternoon. Another truck picked up the damaged coffin and brought it to the town proper for burial, according to the mayor’s staffer Salome Merelos.

[Inquirer News]

Rude Awakening

Some women wake their beaus with sweet kisses and tender words. Others prefer to use explosives.

A 36-year-old woman lost three fingers early Sunday when she tried to wake up her boyfriend with fireworks.

The woman and her boyfriend told the Gainesville Police Department that they had been drinking before the incident at the Georgetown apartments. The woman said she was holding a fireworks novelty item in her hand when she lit the fuse. She had been planning to toss the device out the front door, thinking it would make enough noise to wake her boyfriend.

Instead, the device exploded in her hand, tearing off her thumb, middle and ring fingers. The blast was so powerful that police said they found one bone remnant embedded in the ceiling.

The woman was taken to Shands at the University of Florida. Her boyfriend told police he did not realize that the couple had any fireworks left over from the Fourth of July. He also said the woman’s actions were out of character.

[Gainesville Sun]

Mediocre Actress Confirms Link Between Great Breasts And Marrying Wealthy Men

I've always suspected that billionaires prefer good looking women with great breasts, but this really nails it. She prayed for big breasts and she got them, and now she's married to a guy with so much money that he's shelling out cash for kids he's having with every hot model he can bang.

You would think billionaires would be interested in more substantial things, but that isn't true. It's the looks and the big breasts. Anyone evaluating Salma Hayek would have to notice she has been in precisely ONE decent movie, "Frida," and she has been in dozens of films. So if the billionaire was looking for a talented or interesting actress to marry, he wouldn't be with HER. Proves on this level the looks and big breasts are the deciding factor.

For her part, Salma was able to hook the big fish, and it's obvious from her comments in this article that she is interested in the perks that come with marrying a billionaire. She doesn't say anything about actually liking the guy. They just seem made for each other.

You may be asking yourself, so what is the downer here? Well for one thing, if you're an average looking flat chested woman you are not going to be able to marry a billionaire, even if you really want to. And if you're a billionaire it's kind of a drag that the big breasts may not be attached to a really good actress, which proves money can't buy absolutely EVERYTHING. Bastards.

You have to hand it to Salma Hayek. When it comes to the subject of her breasts, she's certainly ready to talk about them.

In the upcoming issue of Allure, the curvy Latina explains her upper half is not as good as it was 10 years ago. We should all have such problems.

"They're not bad ... I'm not complaining about them," the 44-year-old actress says.

This isn't the first time she's spoken up about what's up top. In a 2007 interview, Hayek explains that they were actually an act of God.

During a vacation in her native Mexico with her mother, Hayek said the two stopped at a church. That's when The Almighty stepped in.

"When we went inside, I prayed for the miracle I wanted to happen. I put my hands in holy water and said: 'Please God, give me some breasts,'" Hayek said. "And he gave me them!"

In the Allure interview, the Oscar-nominated actress also seems to like being the wife of a multi-billionaire -- French businessman François-Henri Pinault.

"I never understood the point of being privileged if you don't get to have the privileges," she says. (Not mentioned: The battle Pinault is currently engaged in with model Linda Evangelista over child support for their 4-year-old son.)

[Zap2it]

Pastor Burnt to Crisp for His Invisible Penis

It's one thing to go around town talking to animals and turning your wife into a snail, but when you start sleeping with all the local ladies using your magic invisible penis, you can expect to burn.

Malelane - Eleven villagers accused of setting a pastor alight after accusing him of using a magic penis to sleep with women still don't know whether they'll face trial or not.

[...]

Initially, 12 villagers, aged between 28 and 50, were arrested in February after Albert Malwane, a pastor of the Izwi Zion Christian Church in Jeppes Reef outside Malalane, was burnt to death a day before.

One of them, Sunnyboy Mthalala, died on May 16 after complaining of painful and swollen feet. He also vomited blood.

[...]

Malwane was dragged from his one-roomed house in the Etitandini informal settlement near Jeppes Reef south of Malalane and taken to a hill, where he was set alight.

Malwane's house was also burnt and his wife and daughter went into hiding.

Community members had accused him of talking to animals and using an invisible penis to sleep with women in the informal settlement.

They also accused his wife of turning into a snail and terrorising the community.

The 11 accused have not been asked to plead to charges of murder and arson and are all out on R1 000 bail each.

They are expected to appear [in court] on September 29.

[News24]

Homemade Missiles Not as Safe as Once Thought

This is what happens when a once great superpower slashes its military budget.

Americans, consider yourselves warned.

RUSSIAN authorities were today probing the freak death of a woman killed by a homemade missile launched by her husband.

The victim was looking on as her aviation-enthusiast spouse assembled his makeshift rocket in a field, RIA Novosti reported.

But the launch when horribly wrong when the missile blasted off and veered toward her, striking the woman in the head.

[...]

"During the launch, the model rocket veered off course and hit his wife in the head. The woman died in the hospital," investigators said today.

The 42-year-old husband, who works for an aviation company, could face up to two years in prison for manslaughter, the state-owned Russian news agency said.

[News.com.au]

Pathetic Rehash Of Old Ideas Means The End Is Near

There are no more ideas. We are fresh out. All they can do is crank out movies based on...old movies, comic books, or movies already made from old comic books. There is that joke about a million chimpanzees sitting in a room typing for a million years until one chimp types out "Hamlet." The truth is the million chimps have exhausted almost every corner of their minds and there is nothing left. No new ideas. Just when we really need them!

The good news is that the "Apes" film outdrew "The Help." Another civil rights story. Yawn. We all know how it turns out, it's a feel good story with equal rights for all. It's great that America solved the race problem but how many movies can you watch about it? Racism = problem solved. Boh-ring.

Damn them all to hell, all those early humans who burned up all the really good ideas. Damn them all to HELL!

Rebellious apes have held off Southern maids for a narrow win at the weekend box office.

Studio estimates Sunday pegged "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" at $27.5 million, good enough for its second-straight No. 1 finish. The 20th Century Fox release raised its 10-day domestic total to $104.9 million.

The "Planet of the Apes" prequel came in just ahead of "The Help," a drama about Mississippi maids during the civil-rights movement that debuted at No. 2 with $25.5 million. "The Help," a DreamWorks release distributed by Disney, has taken in $35.4 million domestically since opening Wednesday.

[Associated Press]

Perry, New Religious Guy, Will Not Play In Peoria

My favorite part of this is Perry being hot on the heels of Romney, who can't distinguish humanity from the mass of corporate bullshit we confront every day. He's against abortion and gay marriage and he doesn't like Obama.

Interesting that he doesn't take George Bush to task. Almost as if he had never been President at all, and he's from Texas too. Hmmm.

Perry is a strong fundraiser and can outpray the field. He wants to be President and he prays for America. Me too.

Republican Rick Perry, the conservative governor of Texas, on Saturday declared himself a candidate for president with a blistering attack on Democratic President Barack Obama.

"I realize that the United States of America really is the last great hope of mankind," Perry said, as he accused Obama of imperiling America's standing in the world with "disastrous economic policies" and the "incoherent muddle that they call foreign policy."

Delivering a speech to about 700 conservative activists in South Carolina, Perry, 61, touted his job creation record in Texas and promised to reduce taxes, business regulations and the overall role of government in people's lives. He said leaders in Washington have lacked courage and Obama's policies have "prolonged our national misery, not alleviated it."

"Mr. President, let us tell you something. You cannot win the future by selling America off to foreign creditors. We cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership," Perry said.

Perry's entry shakes up the race for the Republican nomination to face Obama in the November 2012 general election. Opinion polls indicate Perry already is close on the heels of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the early Republican front-runner.

The announcement by Perry, who has made his deep Christian faith a big part of his public image, came one week after he led a seven-hour religious rally in Houston to pray for America, a nation he described as "in crisis."

The three-term Texas governor is an opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage. He is considered a strong fund-raiser.

[Reuters]

Romney Struggles To Distinguish People From Other Legal Entities

The first thing that popped into my head was Charlton Heston screaming "Soylent Green is people!" Really, corporations aren't people. Starting with the legalities of it all, that's why they have separate taxes for individuals and corporations.

Also what is getting lost is the fact that it's not a matter of RAISING taxes on corporations. It's a matter of getting them to pay ANYTHING AT ALL. Everyone knows two thirds of American corporations don't pay U.S. taxes, including such notables as General Electric and Exxon.

Most people pay SOMETHING. So if corporations are people they must have some special mojo that keeps them in that ZERO tax bracket. I would also like to know what kind of doctor a corporation sees for a checkup. Romney is so rich he really might not know the difference between a person and a corporation. He probably drives around with corporations all day in his limo, and he may wonder why they refuse his offers for drinks. Do corporations have mouths? Can they get drunk? Does Romney have a pulse? Is he human? If people and corporations are one in the same how about other inanimate objects? Is it a Buddhist all is one with the universe thing? Has Romney taken acid? All good questions for the campaign trial ahead.

It would be great if this debate could ever emerge into the full light of day, with all the facts out there, instead of being obscured by clouds, which puts me in mind that Pink Floyd album, back when they were good.

Mitt Romney’s visit to the Iowa State Fair on Thursday might have been the best debate prep session he could have hoped for.

Romney’s appearance at the fair’s soapbox grew unusually testy when a few angry people heckled the Republican presidential candidate over his declaration not to raise taxes. They urged the campaign front-runner to increase taxes on the wealthy to help fund such entitlement programs as Social Security and Medicare.

Romney explained that one way to fulfill promises on entitlement programs is to “raise taxes on people,” but before he could articulate his position on not raising taxes, someone interrupted.

“Corporations!” a protester shouted, apparently urging Romney to raise taxes on corporations that have benefited from loopholes in the tax code. “Corporations!”

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said.

Some people in the front of the audience shouted, “No, they’re not!”

“Of course they are,” Romney said. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

The heated exchange prompted an attack from Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

“Mitt Romney’s comment today that ‘corporations are people’ is one more indication that Romney and the Republicans on the campaign trail and in Washington have misplaced priorities,” she said in a statement, calling the comment a “shocking admission.”

[Washington Post]

Crying Game

The Captain presumes Dr. Spock would not approve of this.

A baby wailing its arms, howling in misery and shedding tears galore is typically perceived as a sign that Little Timmy or Little Tina needs his/her diaper changed. However, this general outlook doesn’t apply to Japan—or at least not to Japan’s notorious ‘Crying Sumo’ contest.

[...]

The festival first begins with a blessing from the monk, who according to ABC “dabs a ceremonial stamp on the forehead of each baby.” Then each sumo picks up a baby and is tasked with making it cry; in fact, whosever baby bursts into tears first is heralded as the winner. And in case two babies simultaneously begin bawling, victory then goes to whosever baby cries the loudest.

Tactics used to break the babies include gently shaking them left and right or rocking them up and down, growling and making mean, scary faces. In case a baby dares and laughs (it does happen), monks donning frightful masks are brought in to assist. All the while, the head monk utters “nake, nake,” which means “cry, cry.”

Thousands of mothers line up every year to volunteer their babies, who must be no younger than 6 months and no older than 3 years, into the competition. Not only is winning good in that it sucks to lose, but children capable of producing an “impressive wail” are considered to be in better health than those too shy or weak in vocal chords to do as such.

[Weird Asia News]

The Predictive Power Of Daily Downers Is The Only Thing Left To Rely On

Just YESTERDAY I wrote about layoffs on Wall Street and people giving up their will to fight in the upcoming war with the zombies. TODAY Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is denying that banks are turning into zombies! And this other woman Meredith Whoever used the term "zombies" to refer to banks and the horrible people that run them.

Alcoholics refuse to acknowledge their problems with alcohol and this process is called "denial." If Jamie Dimon is refusing to acknowledge the threat of zombies I think it proves that he knows the bankers are going to turn into zombies any day now and he's just trying to keep everybody cool while he does the Dr. Evil thing and freezes himself in an underground bunker somewhere with Elvis while he waits for the whole zombie thing to blow over.

It's classic "denial." A textbook case. The bankers are going to be the most fucked up zombies of all, I'm sure of it! Canned goods and ammo. Max out your credit cards, you won't have to pay those bills. Nobody will be around to collect. You can stimulate the economy AND prepare at the same time. Get moving.

U.S. banks may be facing numerous headwinds, but they are not "zombies," Jamie Dimon told CNBC Wednesday.

"I love Meredith and all that but, honestly, most of that stuff is hogwash," the CEO of JPMorgan Chase said, referring to well-known analyst Meredith Whitney, who told CNBC earlier in the day that large U.S. banks are "turning into zombies" because they have little net worth but are backed by the government and continue to meet their obligations.

"All businesses have things that change all the time-interest rates, commodity prices, cost of wages, demand, supply-and you have to manage around that," Dimon said during a bus tour of California Chase branches. "That's not to say there's not negatives against banks. Bad economy is a headwind, volatility may not be but people being scared is a headwind."

[CNBC]