Archives for October 2013

It’s time, once again, for children of all ages to dress up like sluts and embarrass themselves in public. Who could ask for a better holiday than that? I mean, we surrendered the Saturnalia to Christmas, so officially being allowed to be who you’re not was missing from our lives. Halloween brings that back. Speaking of back, as in bringing sexy back, you’ll be pleased to note that thick chicks tend to be smarter and live longer than those chicks who need a biscuit. ABC News spent a lot of time sharing that knowledge with the universe yesterday morning. For me this is great news. Some women, hello Miley Cyrus, more closely resemble a 12 year old boy and, to be quite honest, 12 year old boys do not turn me on. By the way, the link for Miley is for when she still had talent. I wouldn’t twerk on you. I’m better than that. Nevertheless, I like a little cushion when I’m pushin if you catch my drift. As the old saying goes, straight lines are for boys and soap box derbies, real men handle curves.

I think I got off track there. Sorry about that.

Halloween. This blog is supposed to be about Halloween.

Okay, first a nice overview of the day from Halloween History.

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. The word Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows’ Evening also known as Hallowe’en or All Hallows’ Eve.

Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, bonfires, costume parties, visiting “haunted houses” and carving jack-o-lanterns. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century including Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom as well as of Australia and New Zealand.

Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced “sah-win”).

The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and prepare for winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.

The festival would frequently involve bonfires. It is believed that the fires attracted insects to the area which attracted bats to the area. These are additional attributes of the history of Halloween.

Masks and costumes were worn in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or appease them.

Trick-or-treating, is an activity for children on or around Halloween in which they proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for treats such as confectionery with the question, “Trick or treat?” The “trick” part of “trick or treat” is a threat to play a trick on the homeowner or his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected that if one lives in a neighborhood with children one should purchase treats in preparation for trick-or-treaters.

The history of Halloween has evolved. The activity is popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and due to increased American cultural influence in recent years, imported through exposure to US television and other media, trick-or-treating has started to occur among children in many parts of Europe, and in the Saudi Aramco camps of Dhahran, Akaria compounds and Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. The most significant growth and resistance is in the United Kingdom, where the police have threatened to prosecute parents who allow their children to carry out the “trick” element. In continental Europe, where the commerce-driven importation of Halloween is seen with more skepticism, numerous destructive or illegal “tricks” and police warnings have further raised suspicion about this game and Halloween in general.

In Ohio, Iowa, and Massachusetts, the night designated for Trick-or-treating is often referred to as Beggars Night.

Part of the history of Halloween is Halloween costumes. The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages, and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of “souling,” when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of “puling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas.”

Yet there is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in America, and trick-or-treating may have developed in America independent of any Irish or British antecedent. There is little primary Halloween history documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween in Ireland, the UK, or America before 1900. The earliest known reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911, when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, near the border of upstate New York, reported that it was normal for the smaller children to go street guising (see below) on Halloween between 6 and 7 p.m., visiting shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes and songs. Another isolated reference appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920. The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but do not depict trick-or-treating. Ruth Edna Kelley, in her 1919 history of the holiday, The Book of Hallowe’en, makes no mention of such a custom in the chapter “Hallowe’en in America.” It does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the earliest known uses in print of the term “trick or treat” appearing in 1934, and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939. Thus, although a quarter million Scots-Irish immigrated to America between 1717 and 1770, the Irish Potato Famine brought almost a million immigrants in 1845-1849, and British and Irish immigration to America peaked in the 1880s, ritualized begging on Halloween was virtually unknown in America until generations later.

My grandfather, who was born in Cork, used to bitch that we practiced Halloween on the wrong day. Not that he or I could do anything about it. On the other hand, I was 4, I would have been thrilled if every day was Halloween.

Yes, that’s a link to the extended remix. It’s a party here, after all.

Halloween, as you can tell, is just another way to celebrate life. You chat with your ancestors, make sure evil is abated and share a feast & treats. These are all good things.

Or, as Damian (THE OMEN) Thompson points out, it’s a holiday that must be cleansed from the earth according to those who would rule us.

Fundamentalist Christians are also in their element. Given that Halloween is the feast of Satan (they have decided), they feel they have permission to go into rhetorical overdrive – and these aren’t exactly folks who hold back in the first place.

Meet William J Schnoebelen, former “witch high priest” – funny how ex-Satanists always insist that they were senior devil-worshippers, not just part of the demonic rank and file. He writes:

Halloween used to be called Samhain, and is still celebrated as an ancient pagan festival of the dead by witches all over the world. Unfortunately, just giving the date a “holy” name like All Hallows’ Eve or All Saints’ Eve cannot change its grisly character. Halloween is an occasion when the ancient gods (actually demons) are worshiped with human sacrifice. The apostle Paul warns us: “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils” (1 Cor. 10:20).

If you are a Christian parent, God has given you a precious responsibility in your children. Remember, their ability to resist spiritual wickedness is much less than yours. If you allow your children to participate in Halloween (Trick or Treating, costume parties, etc.) you are allowing them to play on “the devil’s turf,” and Satan will definitely press his home court advantage. You are opening up doorways into their young lives for evil by bringing them into a kind of “fellowship” with these ancient “gods”.

Some of this is actually true: the Celtic festival of Samhain, when the spirits of the dead were supposed to return, does seem to have been adapted by the early Church to become Halloween. But Halloween as an occasion for human sacrifices? There’s no evidence of that – you just have to guess that if the Celtic druids were into human sacrifice, which they were, then they may have killed people on this feast day.

Meanwhile, demonbuster.com is so alarmed by Halloween that it tells readers to “Do some major Deliverance on yourself” if you ever celebrated the holiday. That means self-exorcism. Says demonbuster:

Burn any left over halloween stuff in your home. Don’t even open your doors to pass out “tracts”. If you do, then you are celebrating this unholy day.

Really? In which case, those of us who are irritated by anti-Halloween campaigners have a ready-made response. If they try to press a fundamentalist tract into your hand today, just yell: “Keep away from me, inadvertent agent of Satan!”

Or, you could do as a guy I know did last year. He put out a big, empty, bowl with a sign that said “Free Candy.” Kids assumed all the candy was taken and left him alone.

Yes, he is the dictionary definition of an asshole.

You might want to have headphones on if you click that particular link.

Oh, never mind, your coworkers will figure it out once you start singing along, and you will, everyone does.

Nevertheless, this must be the favorite time of year for practicing witches, right?

According to Daniel Burke, not so much.

Like lots of people, when October 31 rolls around, Trey Capnerhurst dons a pointy hat and doles out candy to children who darken the door of her cottage in Alberta.

But she’s not celebrating Halloween. In fact, she kind of hates it.

Capnerhurst says she’s a real, flesh-and-blood witch, and Halloween stereotypes of witches as broom-riding hags drive her a bit batty.

“Witches are not fictional creatures,” the 45-year-old wrote in a recent article on WitchVox.com.

“We are not werewolves or Frankenstein monsters. We do not have green skin, and only some of us have warts.”

Warts or not, many witches say they have mixed feelings about Halloween.

Some look forward to the day when witchcraft is front and center and no one looks askance at big black hats. Others complain that the holiday reinforces negative stereotypes of witches as evil outliers who boil children in black cauldrons.

Capnerhurst falls into the latter camp.

Hanging up witch decorations at Halloween is no better than wearing blackface costumes or taking a slur, like “Redskins,” as the name of your football team, she says.

“Unless one actually is a witch, dressing up as stereotypical witches is bigotry,” Capnerhurst said.

In June, the wife and mother of two started her own church for “traditional” witches called Disir, an old Norse word meaning “matron deities,” she says.

(Capnerhurst draws a distinction between “traditional” witches, like her, who were born into the religion, and Wiccans, most of whom are converts.)

Most Wiccans identify as witches, and they form the largest branch of the burgeoning neo-pagan movement, said Helen A. Berger, a leading scholar of neo-paganism at Brandeis University.

A 2008 survey counted about 342,000 Wiccans in the United States and nearly as many who identify simply as “pagans,” a significant increase from the last American Religious Identification Survey, taken in 2001.

Three-quarters of American Wiccans are women, according to Berger.

“It’s harder to train male Wiccans,” Capnerhurst said with a cheery sigh. “Most men just aren’t going to sweep the kitchen and think about sweeping out the bad energy.”

The faith is fiercely individualistic. Although there are umbrella groups like Wisconsin-based Circle Sanctuary, most Wiccans practice their own blends of witchcraft.

After centuries of persecution in Europe and colonial America, modern witches still bear a sharp suspicion of authority. The rede, or ethical statement at the core of Wicca, is: Harm none and do as you will.

Despite the rising popularity of their faith, many Wiccans remain “in the broom closet,” fearful of losing their jobs, their families or their reputations, said Berger and other experts.

Here’s the thing, true Wiccans are the most peaceful people on the planet. Their whole gig is based on being in balance with nature. Oh sure, sometimes they want to get a little naked, paint themselves blue and frolic with a tree but, really, who among us hasn’t? If you think it’s evil to be au naturel in the middle of nature, I assure you that the problem lies within you and not in anything Wiccan.

Let’s make a deal; it’s Halloween and I like you. Each of you. So be safe, have fun, send pics of all the hot naked chicks you meet and come back to us tomorrow for the radio show.

But, most of all, respect each other out there. You’d be amazed at the rewards you’ll reap.

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During the history of history the Catholic Church has accomplished some tremendous things. It has also been responsible for some of the most vile atrocities know to man or woman or beast or what have you. I have friends who can’t get past the Spanish Inquisition. I can understand that. However, having been raised Catholic my world view is a tad more nuanced. Or so I hope. I have covered how porn led to people learning to read the bible and helped literacy in general. It’s a simple fact. It doesn’t make me anti-this or pro-that. What simply is cannot be denied. It doesn’t help, either, when people in power within the church, such as Chicago’s very own Francis Cardinal George, make dogmatic statements like “It has always been this way” when “no it hasn’t” and “who cares” are both correct responses. Still, softly at first and now, with Pope Francis at the helm, more decisively, the Church has been making forays into humanity that don’t feel as though they were scripted in the Middle Ages. And they’re doing so in a way that every beer swilling sports fan can appreciate.

In 2010 the Vatican quietly got Vatican City certified to compete in the Olympics. In 2012 they fielded a small, ragtag group – no sorry, that’s Battlestar Galactica – they fielded competitors. They showed up in London and did well for first timers, even coming home with a silver medal in synchronized swimming.

The Vatican Olympic team 2012 participated in the fields of football, synchronized swimming, athletics, canoeing and boxing. During the London Olympic Games of 2012, the Vatican Olympic team managed to win one medal: a silver medal in synchronizes swimming.

During the London Olympic Games, the Vatican Olympic team was represented by some of the following athletes: Synchronized swimming was represented by Paolo Moretti and Ahmed al-Abdulla; marathon was represented by Cardinal Enrico Domeniconi; boxing (light flyweight) was represented by Matteo Albani; canoeing was represented by Federico de Luigi.

The Vatican City national football team surprised many by beating Portugal 2-1 in the opening match. However, the Portuguese coach said that the defeated resulted from his players’ fear of scoring against the “God’s football team” which could be seen as desecration. Unfortunately, the Vatican City national football did not manage to win against San Marino and Sao Tome and Principe; which were in the same group. The Vatican national football team finished last in that group with three points.

Speaking of the Vatican’s football team, that’s soccer for those of us on the right side of the pond, they are painfully bad but need not be. Currently the only people who can play on the Vatican’s official team are members of the Swiss Guard. They are the Catholic equivalent of the Secret Service here. Just like our guys and gals train day and night to take a bullet for the president and/or his family, the Swiss Guard trains the same amount to protect the pope.

A job made especially difficult now that there is a pope who truly believes his life or death truly is God’s will so he just traipses out into crowds at random. That’s fun for the faithful but I bet guard members are drinking heavily now.

That’s a joke kids.

Nevertheless, according to the Vatican’s media department, that may change.

The soccer thing, not the drinking thing.

The Vatican national football team is fully supported by the Vatican. During the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, the pope used to visit the team when training and encourage the players stating the importance of sports and playing as a representative of their state.

As a way of improving the Vatican national football squad, there have been suggestions to take some players from the Catholic seminaries from different parts of the world. This suggestion has not yet been acted upon. If accepted, this will be one way of enabling a teem where the players have some time to train and play with other teams.

I think this is a good idea. While I doubt that young seminarians would compete with Man U, at least teams comprised of players like that would stand a shot at competing.

Also, tiny trivia, the Vatican is one of only nine fully recognized sovereign states whose national team is not a FIFA member. The others are Monaco, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Marshall Islands (they have no national football team), Palau and the United Kingdom.

there’s no UK team due to the fact that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all field their own teams.

Now you know.

Anyway, about 500 years ago the Catholic Church got into a near war with the Anglican Church, because nothing shows the love of Jesus like a good war.

Well, Pope Francis of “Who am I to judge” fame, thinks that it might be a good idea to revisit that particular conflict. But, because this pope is very different than any pope I can remember, Philip Pullella is reporting that he wants to revisit on a cricket pitch.

The Vatican officially declared its intention to defeat the Church of England on Tuesday – not in a theological re-match nearly 500 years after they split, but on the cricket pitch.

The challenge was launched at the baptism of the St. Peter’s Cricket Club.

Vatican officials said the league will be composed of teams of priests and seminarians from Catholic colleges and seminaries in Rome.

The seminaries and religious colleges will play each other in a “Twenty20” tournament, where games last about three hours.

After that, the best players will form a Vatican team, which will be called the “Vatican XI,” and challenge the Church of England to form its own team of Anglican priests and seminarians to play in London at Lord’s, the home of cricket.

“The Vatican team will be able to play anybody in the world. We hope to see a Vatican team playing at Lord’s,” said Alfonso Jayarajah, a Sri Lankan who was the first captain of the Italian national team and a board member of St. Peter’s Cricket Club.

“We hope to have ecumenical dialogue through cricket and play a Church of England side by September,” said Father Theodore Mascarenhas, an Indian official at the Vatican’s Council for Culture, who once played as an off-spin bowler.

The idea for a Catholic cricket club was the brainchild of John McCarthy, Australia’s ambassador to the Vatican. He wanted to see something similar to the Clericus Cup, a soccer tournament among the religious colleges and seminaries of Rome.

He enlisted the support of other diplomats and prelates from what he called “other cricket countries” – including Britain, South Africa and Pakistan – and found “anonymous sponsors from the cricketing world”.

In response to a suggestion that cricketing terms and field positions might be translated into Latin or Italian, McCarthy was firm: “English is the language of cricket and will remain the language of cricket”.

The Vatican team will wear the official colors of the tiny city-state – yellow and white – and their jackets will have the seal of the papacy, two crossed keys.

By all accounts Pope Francis is not much of a cricket man. He still supports the San Lorenzo football club of his native Buenos Aires.

But Mascarenhas, the Indian priest who is the chairman of the St. Peter’s Cricket Club said: “I am sure that cricket will be another thing that he accepts as part of his openness.”

How nice. If the Pope can accept gays I guess he can tolerate cricket players.

If that sentiment doesn’t prove the new pope has his priorities right nothing does.

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There are people who demand that no one be allowed to buy condoms. They claim it is a command in the bible. It’s not and they’re stretching that spilt seed thing way past its limit, but this isn’t about logic or truth, it’s about control. They also demand that you not have sex but, if you do have sex, have it without a condom. That way, after you have your condom free sex and get yourself or your partner pregnant, they can forbid either of you from getting an abortion. Then you both can share the joys of giving birth to an unwanted child who will grow up with many issues and, one day, end up in prison where they will demand that the state spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to kill said child all while ignoring the fact that all of this could have been avoided for the price of a $1.00 condom. I’ve always felt that there’s a special place in hell for these people. What I did not know was that we need not wait for them to greet their due reward. We can just drive them over to the gates and drop them off.

Before I begin, we need to have a brief history of hell.

In the Old Testament there really was no defined hell. Oh, sure, you had the beginnings of Satan, but he was more of a trickster than ruler of the underworld. In fact, when Abraham was putting together what would be the rule book for what would become Judaism, there was no mention of a nether realm at all. Just do good and good things will happen. As example “A” he could point to Adam and Eve. When they disobeyed God they were kicked out of the garden, not swept, Spawn-like, into an eternal inferno. Oh, yeah, they were also cursed with mortality and Eve got the raw end of the deal when it comes to monthly pain, but still no pits of unending flame.

Later Egyptians, Romans and Greeks – not necessarily in that order – added a new element of an underworld to religion. Even so, what Anubis, Pluto and/or Hades oversaw wasn’t a place of punishment, just a place where all souls went. Even the Disney flick Hercules knew that.

Then, not all that long before Christ was born, all that changed.

There became two types of after lives. One good, the other not so good. And, when you consider how long normal theological changes take, this one happened rapidly. And, more importantly, it spewed forth clearly defined. It had the River Styx, it had a three headed dog, it had a serpent and, most of all, it had death. Lots and lots of painful death.

That’s a little too specific for multiple visions.

Francesco Cerri, of the Anna Lindh Foundation, says that’s because the ancient Greeks stumbled on a real place that, to abuse the obvious, scared the hell out of them.

Few doubts remain that a cave discovered by a team of Italian archeologists led by Professor Francesco D’Adria in the ancient city of Hierapolis in classical Phrygia is indeed the mythical ‘Gate to Hell’ of Greek antiquity.

Celebrated as the portal to the underworld in Greco-Roman mythology and tradition, the cave called Plutonium or Pluto’s Gate was a destination for the VIPs of antiquity, such as the philosopher Cicero and the great Greek geographer Strabo.

It was discovered in March this year amid the ruins that lie adjacent to the modern city of Pamukkale in Turkey. D’Adria’s team found it thanks to the bodies of some small birds, who appeared to have dropped dead at the mouth of a cave that was spewing deadly carbon dioxide fumes. Cicero, who visited the cave in in the first century BC, spoke of the same phenomenon.

”Any animal that passes inside meets instant death”, wrote Cicero. ”Bulls that are led into it fall and are dragged out dead; and I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell”. ”The Plutonium…is an opening of only moderate size, large enough to admit a man”, wrote the geographer. ”(It is) full of a vapour so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground”. Fittingly, D’Adria on Thursday told ANSAmed his team has made what he called ”a one-of-a-kind discovery”: a 1.5-metre-high marble statue of Cerberus, the Greek mythological three-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades, or the Kingdom of the Dead, at the entrance to Pluto’s Gate.

Next to the three-headed dog – whom Hercules alone managed to subdue by feeding it a loaf of bread laced with narcotic poppy seeds – the Italian team found a marble statue of an enormous serpent, another mythical guardian of the gates to the next world.

The Hierapolis dig proceeds with painstaking caution. Just two meters wide, the cave has yet to be fully investigated and might hold more surprises. Meanwhile, restoration work on the exceptional site of ancient Hierapolis, whose hot springs have been used as a spa since the 2nd century BC, is ongoing.

In a church next to the tomb of St. Philip, which D’Adria discovered two years ago, eight great marble columns have been restored to their original position. The city’s theater, one of the most spectacular Greco-Roman sites in Turkey, is almost completely restored.

Okay, put yourself in their sandals. These were not stupid people, nor were they overly superstitious. But they had their religions and they were confronted by vapors pungent enough to kill a healthy bull. They would have known volcanoes and the smells they make. They would have known that this wasn’t that. This place would have been completely out of their experience.

Gates of Hell would make as much sense as anything else. Although it was called Tartarus or the Underworld at first. Hell came much later when this myth met the myths of the Norse and the pagans of the north.

But that’s a story for another day.

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If you’ve spent more than one minute in public or watching TV in the last year you have probably noticed that racism, thought to be on the wane in years past, has been making a roaring come back. Or, to be more accurate, it is not going quietly into the good night. As the racial makeup of America skews darker each year there are those who cling painfully to a past that never was. And if their vitriolic screed injures another that is a price they seem far too willing to pay. Yet, as odd as this sounds, I find this whole thing slightly heartening. You see, these losers and xenophobes are no longer lurking in the shadows where they could do real harm and have for centuries. Instead they are out in the open and we can easily spy them. We know not to breed with, or encourage, them in any way. Also, now, when they do do something hateful or harmful society is more likely to hold them accountable. Slowly but surely humanity is bending towards justice for all. Not as some hoary phrase but as something being put into actual practice. But, boy oh boy, do we have a long way to go.

Pre-Christmas, 2011, I wrote an article about racist holiday traditions. Because nothing says “Happy Birthday Jesus!” (a dude born in the middle east) like belittling someone of a different race. Well, now, no longer satisfied to be a Dutch holiday tradition, the adherents to Sinterklaas have set up a Facebook page to celebrate wearing black face with giant red lips and try and make it a global tradition.

A Dutch Facebook page seeking to preserve the country’s fall “Sinterklaas” festival exactly as it is — including clowns in blackface makeup known as “Black Petes” — has received nearly a million ‘likes’ just 24 hours after it was created.

The swift growth of the ‘Pete-ition” page reflects the depth of emotional attachment most Dutch people feel to the tradition, and their annoyance at outsiders who judge it without understanding it.

On Tuesday a U.N. expert condemned the tradition as racist.

In the festival, St. Nicholas arrives in mid-November accompanied by a horde of helpers — the Black Petes, who also have red lips and curly hair. Opponents say they are an offensive caricature of black people; supporters say Pete is a figure of fun whose appearance is harmless.

Ahem. The “Black Petes” are based on the Dutch tradition of having Moorish (a/k/a black) servants to jolly old St. Nick hand out gifts at Christmas time. Since the Dutch East Indian Trading Company not only shipped tea, they also shipped slaves, you can guess where those Moorish servants came from and how they got their meager jobs. They are universally portrayed as not very bright. So you have white people wearing black face and pretending to be stupid. Yeah, I can’t imagine why anyone is offended.

Now, let’s look at this next photo.

That is from an African themed party in Australia. It was hosted by a young lady who wants to teach English in Africa. You have to read the rest to believe it.

As Halloween approaches it was only a matter of time before racially insensitive photos hit the web of people dressed up in blackface. This time, however, it’s connected with a young woman’s 21st birthday party rather than a Halloween themed gathering. Buzzfeed brought the offensive photos to our attention.

The Tumblr user “BlackInAsia” was alerted to the photos through one of his followers and shared them with this context:

Attendees were all asked to wear “African themed” clothing to depict the continent and this is what resulted… blackface, elephant and gorilla costumes, warpaint, native American headdresses (?!) and more…. I’m at a loss for words.And yes, this is from 2013.

The girl posted the pictures proudly and flatly refused to take them down when confronted by another individual about how they were racist apparently. Pictures were reported to facebook weeks ago and they still have not been taken down.

Wow.

In case you ever wanted to know how white folks saw us black Africans… here you go.

The girl, known as Olivia Mahon, lives in Australia and wants to teach English in Africa one day. Shortly after the photos were shared on Tumblr, she posted an explanation for the photos (where she also refers to Africa as a country).

“In fact as you can tell from the photos I dressed up as cleopatra, whilst MAJORITY of my guests came as animals, that can be found in africa or wore traditional african clothes or even dressed up as famous people who come from africa. If anything this was to celebrate the amazing country and people. “

You can read her full clarification on BlackinAsia’s Tumblr page.

The birthday girl planned the party using a Pinterest pinboard, where she pinned photos with captions like, “Though now in Africa you also have people who live in modern day houses like us. The woman tend to dress more traditionally and the children play outside and go to school.” She also highlights “beautiful” African woman, safari-themed cupcakes and inspiration for her Cleopatra outfit.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. In recent history, there was the “African Queen” editorial in Numero Magazine, with a white model in blackface; University of California-Irvine produced a video featuring a member in blackface, and two students from Beta Theta Pi fraternity at the University of Florida attended a party donning blackface last year.

Two students from Northwestern University made headlines in 2010 for attending parties in blackface. A similar situation happened at Lehigh University. The “Compton Cookout” hosted by members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at University of California-San Diego is another incident that sparked outrage.

And this latest party making headlines is yet another example of what not to do when hosting a party.

Just in case you were asleep that year they busted out the world map, Africa is a continent, not a country. I would have thought that a college student might know that little fact, but it appears I was wrong.

Also, just FYI, they have cars and indoor plumbing in Africa too.

Closer to home we have the fun story of Trayon Christian, a black man who bought a belt.

A college student from Queens got more than he bargained for when he splurged on a $350 designer belt at Barneys — when a clerk had him cuffed apparently thinking the black teen couldn’t afford the pricey purchase, even though he had paid for it, a new lawsuit alleges.

“His only crime was being a young black man,” his attorney, Michael Palillo, told The Post.

Trayon Christian, 19, a NYC College of Technology freshman from Corona, went to the Madison Avenue fashion mecca in April to buy the Salvatore Ferragamo belt after saving up his paychecks from a part-time job at the college.

But as soon as he exited the luxury department store, undercover officers grabbed Christian and asked “how a young black man such as himself could afford to purchase such an expensive belt,” according to the suit, filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

A Barneys clerk, who had asked Christian for identification when he bought the belt, called police claiming the purchase was a fraud, the suit says.

Plainclothes detectives hauled Christian off Fifth Avenue and into the local precinct.

There, Christian produced his identification, his debit card from Chase and the receipt with his name on it, the suit states.

“In spite of producing such documentation, Christian was told that his identification was false and that he could not afford to make such an expensive purchase.”

A belt similar to this one was purchased by Trayon Christian at Barneys.

Cops eventually called Chase, which verified that the card belonged to Christian, and they let him go.

Police sources said Christian has no arrest record.

Christian told The Post he returned the belt out of disgust over his treatment by the world-famous clothing store.

“I didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” he said, adding that he was first inspired to buy the accessory by Harlem rapper Juelz Santana who wears the Italian designer’s duds.
Christian said he’ll never shop at Barneys again.

He is suing both Barneys and the NYPD for unspecified damages.

Barneys did not immediately comment.

A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department said she would review the claims once she received the suit.

So now we can add “Shopping While Black” to the list of actionable offenses. While this is appalling as is, I almost cried when I heard someone I know say “Well, how were they supposed to know that black kid had a job?”

Did I mention we have a long way yo go? Yes, I believe I did.

In the meantime we have this gem. It seems that young lady was fired from Hooters for not being black enough.

When will the foolishness and hoopla around black people’s hair stop? Over the past year we’ve had to hear about a little girl being kicked out of school for wearing locs, an Ohio school banning a list of natural hairstyles and let’s not forget meteorologistRhonda Lee who was fired for defending her right to rock her natural hair on TV.

Now comes news out of Baltimore that a black woman has allegedly been fired from her job because of her blonde highlights.

Farryn Johnson told Maryland’s CBS News affiliate that she was let go from her job as a waitress at Hooters due to ‘”improper image” after the 25-year-old refused to remove blonde highlights from her dark brown hair.

“They specifically said, ‘Black women don’t have blonde in their hair, so you need to take it out,'” Johnson told CBS.

“I didn’t see that it would be a big issue just because there were a lot of other employees working at the restaurant of other races with color in their hair. For instance, there were Asian girls with red hair and Caucasian girls with black hair and blond streaks so I didn’t think it would be an issue for the little piece of blond highlight in my hair.”

Johnson has reportedly filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights.

“The law is clear that employers can’t have two separate unequal sets of rules—one for African-Americans employees and one for everybody else, and yet that’s exactly what Hooters did here in firing Miss Johnson, an African-American employee solely because she’s African-American. They targeted her because of her hair solely because of her race,” Johnson’s attorney, Jessica Weber, told CBS.

Hooters has declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

I work in the burbs. As such there are Hooters everywhere. I went to one recently, just for the wings you understand, and our waitress was a pale young lady with neon pink hair. I am pretty sure, as a fan of genetics, that was not her natural color. Simply put I doubt that the curtains match the carpet, if you catch my drift.

Speaking of the suburbs, a recent study took a look at how black youths assimilate into predominantly white culture. The results aren’t all that surprising, but they are kind of sad.

Many studies have focused on young African-American boys and their experience in school. From gender biases in teacher grading that start as early as elementary school to blaring disparities in disciplinary practices, black male youth seem to be at a perpetual disadvantage in academic environments.

However, two studies that examined programs aiming to increase diversity by bussing minority students to primarily white schools revealed an area where black boys reportedly engaged with relative ease. According to an article published last year by Megan H. Holland, a professor at the University of Buffalo, minority boys reportedly have an easier time fitting in with their white peers at suburban schools because of stereotypes about their athleticism or “coolness” that give them greater access to activities that increase positive interactions with white students, like sports and social clubs.

On the contrary, another study conducted by Simone Ispa-Landa at Northwestern University found that black girls were comparatively seen as “ghetto” or “loud” when they exhibited behavior that was usually socially rewarding for their black male counterparts.

Ispa-Landa’s study showed that “as a group, the boys were welcomed in suburban social cliques, even as they were constrained to enacting race and gender in narrow ways.” However, these urban signifiers resulted in the opposite result for black girls, who were seen as “aggressive” and undesirable, with neither the white nor the black boys showing any interest in dating minority girls. In short, playing out racial stereotypes worked in black boys’ favor, while doing the same was detrimental for black females.

Excluding Oprah, Mrs. Cosby, Mrs. Obama & Whoopi, can you name a positive black female image in popular media? They are few and far between. The fact that I had to put Whoopi on that list shows you how thin the pickings are.

Well, I did say we had a long way to go. But, at least, we’ve begun the journey.

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We are humans. As such we have senses and social histories that color our world view. No matter how hard anyone tries to be impartial it’s just not truly possible. Unless you’re a fictional TV character or a robot. And even then I’m not so sure since both are created by fallible folks like you and me. Yesterday I wrote a brief update on an article I’d done a while back about Atlantis and then I went into the research on Yetis, which took an odd turn towards reality. Several people wrote to me that the scientists in both cases were wrong since their research did not support the known facts. Actually, in both cases that is patently untrue. It’s just that the research does not support the many myths surrounding each. Which brings us back to perceptions. Some of the best scientists I know admit their biases and make sure to note them so when their work is peer reviewed they can be accounted for. Well, they do that to the best of their abilities. Still, science muddles on and gets enough right to keep me interested.

Well two stories popped up today to truly drive home my point. First we’ll join Tia Ghose on a trip 2,600 years back in time to see sexism first hand.

Last month, archaeologists announced a stunning find: a completely sealed tomb cut into the rock in Tuscany, Italy.

The untouched tomb held what looked like the body of an Etruscan prince holding a spear, along with the ashes of his wife. Several news outlets reported on the discovery of the 2,600-year-old warrior prince.

But the grave held one more surprise.

A bone analysis has revealed the warrior prince was actually a princess, as Judith Weingarten, an alumna of the British School at Athens noted on her blog, Zenobia: Empress of the East.

Etruscan tomb

Historians know relatively little about the Etruscan culture that flourished in what is now Italy until its absorption into the Roman civilization around 400 B.C. Unlike their better-known counterparts, the ancient Greeks and the Romans, the Etruscans left no historical documents, so their graves provide a unique insight into their culture.

The new tomb, unsealed by archaeologists in Tuscany, was found in the Etruscan necropolis of Tarquinia, a UNESCO World Heritage site where more than 6,000 graves have been cut into the rock.

“The underground chamber dates back to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. Inside, there are two funerary beds carved into the rock,” Alessandro Mandolesi, the University of Turin archaeologist who excavated the site, wrote in an email.

When the team removed the sealed slab blocking the tomb, they saw two large platforms. On one platform lay a skeleton bearing a lance. On another lay a partially incinerated skeleton. The team also found several pieces of jewelry and a bronze-plated box, which may have belonged to a woman, according to the researchers.

“On the inner wall, still hanging from a nail, was an aryballos [a type of flask] oil-painted in the Greek-Corinthian style,” Mandolesi said.

Initially, the lance suggested the skeleton on the biggest platform was a male warrior, possibly an Etruscan prince. The jewelry likely belonged to the second body, the warrior prince’s wife.

But bone analysis revealed the prince holding the lance was actually a 35- to 40-year-old woman, whereas the second skeleton belonged to a man.

Given that, what do archaeologists make of the spear?

“The spear, most likely, was placed as a symbol of union between the two deceased,” Mandolesi told Viterbo News 24 on Sept. 26.

Weingarten doesn’t believe the symbol of unity explanation. Instead, she thinks the spear shows the woman’s high status.

Their explanation is “highly unlikely,” Weingarten told LiveScience. “She was buried with it next to her, not him.”

Gendered assumptions

The mix-up highlights just how easily both modern and old biases can color the interpretation of ancient graves.

In this instance, the lifestyles of the ancient Greeks and Romans may have skewed the view of the tomb. Whereas Greek women were cloistered away, Etruscan women, according to Greek historian Theopompus, were more carefree, working out, lounging nude, drinking freely, consorting with many men and raising children who did not know their fathers’ identities.

Instead of using objects found in a grave to interpret the sites, archaeologists should first rely on bone analysis or other sophisticated techniques before rushing to conclusions, Weingarten said.

“Until very recently, and sadly still in some countries, sex determination is based on grave goods. And that, in turn, is based almost entirely on our preconceptions. A clear illustration is jewelry: We associate jewelry with women, but that is nonsense in much of the ancient world,” Weingarten said. “Guys liked bling, too.”

She is 100% right. Ancient Egyptian males, several African tribes, ancient Chinese and many others had males who wore as much, if not more, jewelry than their female counterparts. Furthermore, history is jam packed with examples of female warriors and leaders. To use modern sexual mores is not a good idea.

Actually, it never was and never will be.

But, as you can clearly see, even the best minds can succumb to social prejudices.

Another form of perception is wishful thinking. Cadell Last asks an interesting question; if the theory is that an advanced civilization would actually use a star as a fuel source, not just solar panels but actually tap into it, and that such fuel sources would show erratic orbits, can you imagine being the guy who looked at the data and asked “Hey, guys, is that what I think it is?”

Cadell talks to that guy.

Philosophy and the physical sciences have a long and interesting past spanning the entirety of human history. Philosophers have played the role of logically deducing the existence of certain physical phenomena that were untestable. Physical scientists have then either empirically confirmed or refuted the philosophical speculation proposed when the necessary technology and/or method were developed.

Sometimes the philosophical speculations failed to describe the nature of reality, like the Ancient Greek proposition that the heavens were composed of a fifth element: aether. However, on several occasions, the philosophical speculations turned out to be quite exact. For example, in the 4th century B.C.E. philosopher Democritus deduced that the universe was composed of indivisible units of matter known as “atoms.” This belief wassubstantiated over 2,000 years later by the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (you may have heard of him).

A similarly impressive academic partnership manifested when the Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno read the On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres by astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. Bruno found Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the solar system ground breaking (which it was), and logically deduced that all stars in the night sky were fundamentally similar to our own Sun, and that they had worlds gravitationally bound to them. He famously stated that:

This space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, possibility, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit. In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own.

Of course, we now know that Bruno was more or less right. Most stars seem to exist as systems with at least one exoplanet.

In the modern world some believe that this ancient relationship between philosophy and the physical sciences is dead, or dying, or functionally redundant. But I most certainly disagree. Last week I had a chance to meet with philosopher (and systems theorist)Clément Vidal (@clemvidal). Vidal has pointed out that there are certain binary star systems that astrophysicists have had difficulty explaining with conventional astrophysical models. These binaries are semi-detatched stars that exhibit an energy flow that is irregular, but not out of control. Vidal argues that instead of an astrophysical model, we need an astrobiological model to describe these strange systems.

In essence Vidal is claiming that these systems are not typical binary stars, but rather civilizations that have advanced well passed a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale and are now actively feeding on their parent star. He calls these hypothetical civilizations starivores. And if he is right… then there are approximately 2,000 known starivores in our galaxy alone.

Surely this idea is worthy of scientific attention and empirical testing. Democritus’s speculation was tested after the introduction of the special theory of relativity. Bruno’s speculation was tested as our telescope technology improved. Is there any theoretical model or technology we could use today that could validate or refute Vidal’s speculation?

Perhaps, the necessary test is related to understanding the nature of the binary systems “metabolism.” Metabolism is one of the fundamental and necessary conditions for complex living systems because it allows them to draw and sustain order from the surrounding non-living chaos. So if these binary systems are actually intelligent civilizations feeding on their parent star then we should expect a degree of energy flow control that cannot be described by the laws of physics alone.

This idea may come as a shock. Over the past 50 years scientists have been disappointed by data indicating that we are alone in the Milky Way. Physicists like Max Tegmark have even gone so far as to suggest that we are  the first intelligent civilization to arise in the entire universe. And he might be right… but he might be very wrong as well.

Major breakthroughs in the sciences can come from ideas that at first seem bizarre… even impossible. But the universe has also proved to be stranger than we ever imagined. In my opinion Clément Vidal has called our attention to an interesting phenomenon that our current theories cannot describe fully. I strongly suggest reading his Ph.D. thesis discussing the possibility of starivores (Chapter 9 — PDF here). And if you are a researcher interested in putting his speculation to the test, the Evo Devo Universe community has just announced the creation of the High Energy Astrobiology Prize. The community is interested in receiving a research study that can either positively or negatively test the starivore hypothesis.

I’m interested to see what we discover!

I sincerely doubt we are alone in the universe. Heck, I doubt if we’re alone in our galaxy. There are just too many opportunities for life to develop.

Or, to be more blunt, do you really want to live in a universe where I’m the most evolved being you know?

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Way back in 2011 I wrote a little story about how Atlantis had been found. And not in any bizarre location thousands of miles from nowhere, but in Spain by a scientist named Richard freund. Research is ongoing but, except according to some irate occultists, it seems to be the real deal as described by Plato circa 360 BC. However, since reality is boring to some folks, there are those left unsatisfied by the discovery. There is also nothing I can do about that. It is what it is. The same basic rules apply to Bigfoot and its ilk. As I wrote back in 2012, there would be some evidence beyond a blurry pic. There would need to be, at least, 1,000 of the creatures to keep the species alive. Since there are millions of humans in the northwest, someone would have found some evidence by now. A skeleton, a scat pile, something. The total amount of evidence to date? Zero. The Yeti, however, is a slightly different story. As noted in that fine documentary, Monsters, Inc., there are millions of miles of nothing in the Himalayan mountains. And, as science has discovered over the last few decades, when you get into unspoiled lands you can find stuff that shouldn’t be there. Still, the whole Yeti thing seemed a touch far fetched.

In an effort to try and settle the matter once and for all genetics professor Bryan Sykes asked people who claimed to have samples of Yeti hair and so forth to send it to him for testing. Many did. And much to his surprise he found something. Since Jill Lawless broke the story, I’l let her tell you.

A British scientist says he may have solved the mystery of the Abominable Snowman — the elusive ape-like creature of the Himalayas. He thinks it’s a bear.

DNA analysis conducted by Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes suggests the creature, also known as the Yeti, is the descendant of an ancient polar bear.

Sykes compared DNA from hair samples taken from two Himalayan animals — identified by local people as Yetis — to a database of animal genomes. He found they shared a genetic fingerprint with a polar bear jawbone found in the Norwegian Arctic that is at least 40,000 years old.

Sykes said Thursday that the tests showed the creatures were not related to modern Himalayan bears but were direct descendants of the prehistoric animal.

He said, “it may be a new species, it may be a hybrid” between polar bears and brown bears.

“The next thing is go there and find one.”

Sykes put out a call last year for museums, scientists and Yeti aficionados to share hair samples thought to be from the creature.

One of the samples he analyzed came from an alleged Yeti mummy in the Indian region of Ladakh, at the Western edge of the Himalayas, and was taken by a French mountaineer who was shown the corpse 40 years ago.

The other was a single hair found a decade ago in Bhutan, 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the east.

Sykes said the fact the hair samples were found so far apart, and so recently, suggests the members of the species are still alive.

“I can’t imagine we managed to get samples from the only two ‘snow bears’ in the Himalayas,” he said.

Finding a living creature could explain whether differences in appearance and behavior to other bears account for descriptions of the Yeti as a hairy hominid.

“The polar bear ingredient in their genomes may have changed their behavior so they act different, look different, maybe walk on two feet more often,” he said.

Sykes’ research has not been published, but he says he has submitted it for peer review. His findings will be broadcast Sunday in a television program on Britain’s Channel 4.

Tom Gilbert, professor of paleogenomics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, said Sykes’ research provided a “reasonable explanation” for Yeti sightings.

“It’s a lot easier to believe that than if he had found something else,” said Gilbert, who was not involved in the study. “If he had said it’s some kind of new primate, I’d want to see all the data.”

Sykes’ findings are unlikely to lay the myth of the Yeti to rest.

The Yeti or Abominmable Snowman is one of a number of legendary ape-like beasts — along with Sasquatch and Bigfoot — reputed to live in heavily forested or snowy mountains. Scientists are skeptical, but decades of eyewitness reports, blurry photos and stories have kept the legend alive.

“I do not think the study gives any comfort to Yeti-believers,” David Frayer, a professor of biological anthropology at the University of Kansas, said in an email. But “no amount of scientific data will ever shake their belief.”

“If (Sykes’) motivation for doing the analyses is to refute the Yeti nonsense, then good luck,” he said.

Sykes said he was simply trying “to inject some science into a rather murky field.”

“The Yeti, the Bigfoot, is surrounded in myth and hoaxes,” he said. “But you can’t invent a DNA sequence from a hair.”

A new species of bear. As soon as I read it it all made sense. As the good doctor noted bears do walk on their hind legs. They can cover tremendous amounts of ground when they forage and they tend to shy away from humans. A subspecies in that vast emptiness would be pretty easy to hide.

Plus bears do mimic human expressions and are pretty clever. Since people thought for centuries that manatees were mermaids it’s easy to see how they could think a bear on its hind legs was a furry person.

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Bert and Ernie conduct themselves in the same loving, discreet way that millions of gay men, women and hand puppets do. They do their jobs well and live a splendidly settled life together in an impeccably decorated cabinet.
– The Real Thing by Kurt Andersen, 1980

Bert and Ernie are two grown men sharing a house and a bedroom. They share clothes, eat and cook together and have blatantly effeminate characteristics. In one show Bert teaches Ernie how to sew. In another they tend plants together. If this isn’t meant to represent a homosexual union, I can’t imagine what it’s supposed to represent.
– Reverend Joseph Chambers on his radio show, 1994

Yes, there really is a Muppet Wiki site and, yes, this is on it. To be fair I should note that the makers of Sesame Street have continually denied that Bert and Ernie are meant to portray gay men. It sounds to me like someone’s in de-ni-al.

That being said, it seems that America’s beloved poofs aren’t the only gay puppets in the world. The Israeli government has long used two, Sheka & Teka (Plug & Socket in English) to promote clean energy. Tia Goldenberg, at ABC, notes that now that the puppets have adopted an unnamed child they have spawned a debate on gay rights that no one saw coming.

Before you make you kosher jokes you should give this a a read.

The goal was merely to promote clean energy in Israel — but television ads starring a pair of male puppets called “plug” and “socket” have instead unleashed a debate about gay pride.

The puppets, named Sheka and Teka in Hebrew, have appeared in ads for the state-owned Israel Electric Corp. for more than a decade. Israelis have long playfully questioned whether they might be gay. But the arrival of a baby puppet in the new campaign set off fresh speculation about their sexual orientation.

The ads highlight a striking paradox of the Holy Land: Although religion holds great sway and there is no civil marriage, gays have gained a widespread acceptance that is increasingly noted around the world. Gay activists demand the ad characters, who have a close but ambiguous relationship, officially come out of the closet.

Some gay rights advocates accuse the company of being intentionally ambiguous about their sexuality in a cynical publicity ploy.

“This should weigh on the conscience of everyone who worked on this campaign, who will come home and ask themselves whether they would want to raise a child in a country where the electric company says: ‘Hide, don’t be proud,'” wrote Dvir Bar in nightlife magazine City Mouse.

Sheka and Teka have drawn comparisons with another famous puppet pair: Bert and Ernie, whose sexuality also has come into question in pop culture. Sesame Workshop, which produces “Sesame Street,” has declared that the two are just good friends and they “remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

In their latest ad, Sheka and Teka are seen in a living room, talking to a pinkish baby puppet with a tuft of orange hair. The scene then flashes back to a hospital nursery, where the baby is sucking on a pacifier and Teka congratulates Sheka on the birth of his child. It’s unclear who the mother is.

Later in the ad, the duo sits on a park bench with the child. They breathe in the fresh air the electricity company suggests is made possible by cleaner energy production. Teka sniffs and suggests that the baby needs a diaper change.

Other ads have seen the two on a shaded paddle boat in the Dead Sea, driving a red convertible in crisp black suits and sunglasses, and lounging on the couch in their pajamas. They have also been seen sharing a room with single beds. Many of the ads are public service announcements, warning children about the dangers of climbing electricity towers or getting too close to space heaters.

The Israel Electric Corp. says it does not understand the fuss over the campaign. It says the puppets, who have been on the air since 2002, are merely delivering the company’s messages.

“They represent the concerned Israeli, who is really worried about the air quality he is breathing and the environment he lives in. The baby that was born now represents the next generation,” said Oren Helman, a senior vice president who is behind the commercial. “There are no hints or ambiguities here.”

Although sections of Israeli society — especially ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs — remain conservative and often deeply opposed to homosexuality, Israel is seen as one of the world’s most progressive countries in terms of gay rights.

Gays serve openly in Israel’s military and parliament, and the Supreme Court has granted gays a variety of family rights such as inheritance and survivors’ benefits. Gays, lesbians and even a transsexual are among the country’s most popular musicians and actors.

Officially, there is no gay marriage in Israel, primarily because there is no civil marriage. All weddings must be carried out through the Jewish rabbinate, which considers homosexuality a sin and a violation of Jewish law. But the state recognizes same-sex couples who marry abroad, although they are not granted all the rights extended to heterosexual married couples.

Gay adoption is allowed in certain circumstances but activists say same-sex couples are discriminated against during the process. Surrogacy or adopting abroad is also an option and the partner of a parent can adopt the child of his or her partner, at a court’s discretion.

In a column on the Walla website, writer and blogger Nir Hoffman lambasted the ad.

“As long as the policy of ambiguity continues, Sheka and Teka are preserving and perpetuating a situation in which there is something strange, funny and mysterious in homosexuality that must be hidden and should not be spoken about,” he wrote.

Gil Kol, a spokesman for the Israeli national LGBT task force, an advocacy group, said the criticism was far-fetched and that his interpretation of the pair’s relationship was clear.

“Sheka and Teka have represented the Israeli Electric Corp. for years and have been gay for years. Having kids and expanding the family seems to be a natural stage in the evolution of the story. That pretty much represents what is happening in the LGBT community,” he said.

The majority of the ads, some of which can be found on You Tube, can be interpreted individually in many ways. But, when taken in the aggregate, those puppets have never met a women they’d like.

Also, just FYI to headline writers, saying that these puppets “electrified the debate” because they represent an energy company is slovenly work.

Let’s look at it this way, Bert and Ernie have been together coming up on 30 years. Sheka and Teka have been together for 11. They’re all doing better than either of my marriages. We should be lauding their commitment to loyalty, love and friendship.

Everything else is their business.

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As stalkers around here know, I am friends with a young lady who works on the left coast and is involved in possibly, maybe, doing pre-production for the new Justice League movie. Which is GUARANTEED to come out in 2017 ….. maybe. I say “maybe” since Warner has yet to green light a Flash or Wonder Woman film. Nor have they decided what to do about Green Lantern. Do they Thor him? That is, ignore the first movie, use him in the assembly anyway and then make a 2nd real movie that people won’t hate. Or do they start over? In other words, they have 2 films to make and then a third to ignore or remake before the JL saga can begin. Granted they have taken the first step by agreeing to make the Superman / Batman feature film. And I still say that if Heath Ledger were still alive Christian Bale would have been cast. Can you imagine that film? I’ll wait until you take a cold shower and return.

Okay, cool, welcome back.

Well, while that film can never be made, and the Supergirl / Power Girl love story should but never will, there are still a variety of films that have had money tossed at them and then disappeared.

One such film is Superman Lives. Meant to star Nicholas Cage and be directed by Tim Burton it died barely a year into the making. My buddy, Jon Schnepp, is making a documentary about it called, cleverly enough, The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? Here’s a bit from Jon on why he is making the doc.

As news slowly bubbled out, news buzzed around about Rainbow Robot Outfits, Brainiac Skull ships, Superman not “flying”, Fighting a Giant Spider, Polar Bears guarding the Fortress of Solitude. It all sounded so crazy, so weird, so different, that I honestly was hoping that they would actually make it, just so we would have something different from what had come before.

Okay, maybe I can see how that one got left on the cutting room floor. Then again, he’s right about one thing, it would have been different and, sometimes, different is good.

Thomas Mentel, from the Wall St. Cheat Sheet, says there are 8 more that should see the light of day if there were any justice in the world.

Click on the movie titles to see related artwork in a new tab.

With the news of Warner Bros. (NYSE:TWX) greenlighting the production of Superman & Batman for release in 2015, the seemingly impossible quest to get the two superheroes in the same film appears to finally be happening. If plans for a Justice League film follow in 2017 like Warner Bros. says, that will be two films that movie-fans everywhere had become convinced would spend an eternity in development and never see the light of day.

But while Superman & Batman looks poised to break the cycle of development limbo, there’s still a wide variety of exciting films just waiting for the opportunity to break free.

Here are 8 interesting films, in no particular order, that are stuck in development hell for a variety of reasons.

1. Ghostbusters 3

While fans of the Ghostbusters franchise have been clamoring for a third film in the series for years, the hold-ups for Ghostbusters 3 have come from seemingly every direction, starting with the script. Dan Aykroyd originally wrote a script that revolved around the original group of Ghostbusters getting transported to a hell-like version of Manhattan, but according to Harold Ramis, “no one was motivated to pursue it,” and the script ended up being used as the basis for Ghostbusters: The Video Game.

Then, Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, writer-producers on The Office, wrote a script that introduced a new group of young Ghostbusters with the old ones appearing in a mentor role, according to Ramis. However, the failure of their comedy Year One then put that version of the film in jeopardy. As if the story situation couldn’t get any more complicated, Aykroyd appeared on Larry King Now in May and said, ”It’s based upon new research that’s being done in particle physics by the young men and women at Columbia University,” seemingly giving out concrete story elements.

However, Aykroyd has never exactly been the person to ask about the status of the film, having said the film was on the verge of production on various occasions for a decade. And then you have potential Ghostbusters 3 director Ivan Reitman, the director of the first two films, telling Slash Film in July, “we’ve been thinking of alternatives, and we’re actually making some real progress, and we’ll see what happens. That’s the most honest answer I can think of.” So who knows what’s really going on with this film on the script level since even the filmmakers can’t give consistent answers.

Script problems aside, one of the biggest issues with a potential Ghostbusters 3 has also been that actor Bill Murray reportedly isn’t interested in returning — which is probably the only consistent factor in the history of Ghostbusters 3’s development. “I would love to work with him again. I’d hope that he could be in this film. He could be, he might not be, I really don’t know,” Reitman told Slash Film. The lack of Murray’s Peter Venkman in a potential third film begs the question as to whether there’s even a point in trying to figure out this decade-long train-wreck.

2. Halo

The story of Halo’s attempts to reach the big screen start in 2005 when Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) hired screenwriter Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine, Dredd) to adapt the hugely popular game franchise for the screen. When the script was completed, it was sent to all the major studios where most studio-heads balked at Microsoft’s asking price of $10 million against 15 percent of the gross.

Then, 20th Century Fox (NASDAQ:FOXA) and Universal (NASDAQ:CMCSA) decided to partner up for the film. Soon after, Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) was attached to be executive producer along with director Neil Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium), who at this time had not directed a feature film.

D.B. Weiss and Josh Olson were later involved in rewrites of Garland’s script while arguments over profit-sharing reached a standstill, causing the studios to pull the plug. Blomkamp and Jackson went on to collaborate on District 9 soon after — but not before Blomkamp’s seven minute Halo movie demo hit the Internet and galvanized fans.

At this point, the rights to Halo have reverted back to Microsoft, but all the signs point to the film being made at some point. In 2009, Steven Spielberg expressed interest in making a Halo film and Blomkamp said this past April, “I still really love the world and the universe and the mythology of Halo. If I was given control, I would really like to do that film.”

3. At the Mountains of Madness

At the Mountains of Madness would have been based on the famous horror novella of the same name written by H. P. Lovecraft. The story follows a group of explorers in Antarctica who discover the remains of an ancient, alien city, eventually finding that the creatures were once the creators of all life. The explorers also find out that they’re not alone, discovering six-foot tall blind penguins that serve as livestock for something much, much worse.

Director Guillermo del Toro and screenwriter Matthew Robbins wrote a screenplay based on the novella in the mid-2000’s and immediately ran into trouble trying to finance the project due to the dark nature of the story. But in 2010, it seemed like Del Toro had finally gotten the go ahead; it was announced that not only would the film be moving forward starring Tom Cruise and in 3D, but James Cameron would be producing. The (linked) picture (click on the movie title) is from Del Toro’s personal journal sketches from the film (go here to check out some of Del Toro’s other sketches).

Then, in March 2011, which was only months before Del Toro had believed he was to start filming, Universal refused to greenlight the film due to Del Toro’s insistence that the film be R-rated. Del Toro then tried to shop the film around to other studios without any luck.

However, Del Toro said in January that he’d like to give the film one more shot and that Tom Cruise is still attached. “Once more into the dark abyss. We’re gonna do a big presentation of the project again at the start of the year,” he said.

4. Akira

Akira is one of the most famous Japanese manga series, which was later turned into one of the most famous animated Japanese films of all-time. The story depicts a dystopian version of the future as a teenage biker Tetsuo Shima begins to discover his psychic powers and threatens to unleash the imprisoned psychic Akira. Tetsuo’s friend, Shotaro Kaneda, is then forced to go on a mission to save his friend from his destructive powers.

Warner Bros. acquired the rights to Akira in 2002 and has been trying to get the movie made ever since. Around 2010, the film came as close as it’s ever been to being produced, with Leonardo DiCaprio attached as one of the film’s producers and Albert Hughes attached to direct; however, Hughes later dropped out over creative differences. Jaume Collet-Serra was then brought on to direct before the film was shut down for the fourth time.

The sheer amount of actors rumored to be involved in the film seem endless; DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon Levitt, James Franco, Michael Fassbender, Justin Timberlake, Joaquin Phoenix have all been considered at one point for one of the two leads — and that’s only a fraction of the actors who have been considered.

Recently, Jaume Collet-Serra entered the project once again as director and it looks like the film might actually get made this time around.

5. The Tourist

The Tourist is a science-fiction screenplay that’s been making the rounds since 1980. Written by Clair Noto, the script initially caught the attention of Quadrophenia director Franc Roddam along with well-known production designer HR Giger. The website io9 describes the film as “a darker, sex-charged Men In Black.” More specifically, it “revealed a secret alien world in Manhattan, including a secret alien club called the Corridor, where various aliens from all over the universe meet, have sex, and commiserate about being stuck on Earth.”

The film began its 30 plus years of development hell at Universal, but was immediately met with creative differences and personality clashes, according to io9. The structure of the script was influenced by the New Wave and director Brian Gibson and writers attempted to revise the script into a more conventional structure. At the same time, HR Giger was brought in fresh off the success of Alien and asked to design the aliens of the Corridor.

When the process stalled, Noto was able to use a rare clause in her contract to shop the script to another studio. It found it’s way to Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studio for a brief moment, with director Francis Roddam showing strong interest, but financial issues at Zoetrope caused the project to stall once again. Universal then came back for the screenplay rights and the project simply hit a dead end.

So where is it now? Well, Universal still owns the rights to the script, but it doesn’t appear that the film is any closer to making it to the big screen today than it ever was. As io9 laments in the title to their article on the project, The Tourist might be the greatest sci-fi movie never made.

6. Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy’s dark western Blood Meridian has often been referred to as unfilmable for many different reasons, but it hasn’t stopped directors from trying — the most recent being James Franco. Blood Meridian follows a teenager referred to as “the kid” and his experiences with the Glanton gang, which was a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred Native Americans and others in the United States-Mexico borderlands between 1849 and 1850.

If the synopsis doesn’t tip you off to one of the biggest problems, let’s make it clear: this book is unbelievably violent. In fact, it makes the violence in McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men seem tame in comparison. While McCarthy’s lyrical prose almost makes the violence in the book bearable, a film wouldn’t have the benefit of that beautiful prose — what you see is what you get. And what you get is violence that rivals and surpasses even a film like Hostel.

Of course, someone will figure out the key sooner or later and make a film of it despite the violence. Franco supposedly reached the point of shooting test footage with actors Mark Pellegrino, Scott Glenn, Dave Franco, and Luke Perry, but now he joins Todd Field and Ridley Scott as directors who have tried and failed to get this film on the big screen.

But with All the Pretty Horses, The Road, and No Country For Old Men all having been translated to award-winning films, it’s only a matter of time before Blood Meridian does the same.

7. The Dark Tower series

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger is the first book in a series of eight novels by Stephen King, which are often referred to as his magnum opus. The story revolves around the gunslinger Roland Deschain and his pursuit of “the man in black” and his eventual journey to the titular Dark Tower.

Talk of a film adaptation of The Dark Tower started to gain momentum when J.J. Abrams was briefly attached to direct in 2007 before removing himself from the project, calling the adaptation “tricky.” Ron Howard then became attached to the adaptation, along with partner producer Brian Grazer, and the film has seemingly been on the verge of production ever since.

Universal and Howard were supposedly close to a deal at one point before the studio backed out due to Howard’s scope being too ambitious at a time when Universal was trying to cut costs — the very same reason the studio backed out of Del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness. Warner Bros. later came close to a deal before backing out for similar reasons.

Most recently, Howard and Grazer were able to secure funding from Media Rights Capital to produce a single movie based on The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger with Russell Crowe set to star as Roland Deschain. Another option is an offer for funding from a ”mysterious Silicon Valley investor” who has offered to finance the full realization of the project, including three films and multiple TV mini-series which would air between films.

King fans likely have their fingers crossed that it’s the real deal this time.

8. Rendezvous With Rama

Written by Arthur C. Clarke, the writer of 2001, Rendezvous With Rama tells the story of an alien starship that enters the Earth’s solar system and the group of explorers who journey to it in order to discover its secrets.

Actor Morgan Freeman has been the strongest driving force to get a film adaption of Rendezvous With Rama made, and he’s been trying since the early 2000’s. It nearly went into production in 2003 with David Fincher slated to direct, but the production later fell apart, and in 2008, Fincher said, ”It looks like it’s not going to happen. There’s no script and as you know, Morgan Freeman’s not in the best of health right now. We’ve been trying to do it but it’s probably not going to happen.”

However, as recently as 2012, Freeman said that the film is still moving ahead with Fincher in the director’s chair. The only thing they need is a good script.

One film that never gets mentioned is Clark’s Childhood’s End, not to be confused with the Minneapolis based, soft core porno, about being a teenager.

Clark was embarrassed by the book in later years due to his use of a Ouija board as a plot point. I can understand that but the book is epic storytelling on a level rarely attained by anyone. Also, unlike most other alien invasion books this one has no violence, no paranoid governments (although it does have some paranoid people) and it does have a very moving story about what mankind could become. In the right hands it would be legendary.

Sadly, I know that studios are now run more by accountants than film makers, it’s the same in the music industry, so the skew on what the studios will and will not accept is heavily tiled to the mundane.

Maybe producers should follow Jon’s lead and just do a Kickstarter campaign.

La ∇ille Des M⊗rts from HOT POSSIE on Vimeo.

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Life choices. We all face them every day. Some would seem to be easy, like should I take the hair dryer into the shower and use it? Allegedly the answer is no. And yet, every year some schlub dies with a hair dryer in a shower. Because the whole interaction between electricity and water has never been examined. In Australia they created a video about many of the dumb ways you can die. I warn you now; if you click that link you will never unhear that song. It was clearly designed to be the equivalent of a perky nursery rhyme. It just happens to be a perky nursery rhyme about feeding your genitals to piranha and stepping in front of a moving train. Which, you do have to admit, are some pretty stupid ways to die.

Of course, not all people who die useless deaths are stupid. See this list of gems for example “A”.

Attila the Hun:
One of the most notorious villains in history, Attila’s army had conquered all of Asia by 450 AD–from Mongolia to the edge of the Russian Empire–by destroying villages and pillaging the countryside.
How he died: He got a nosebleed on his wedding night
In 453 AD, Attila married a young girl named Ildico. Despite his reputation for ferocity on the battlefield, he tended to eat and drink lightly during large banquets. On his wedding night, however, he really cut loose, gorging himself on food and drink. Sometime during the night he suffered a nosebleed, but was too drunk to notice. He drowned in his own blood and was found dead the next morning.

Tycho Brahe:
An important Danish astronomer of the 16th century. His ground breaking research allowed Sir Isaac Newton to come up with the theory of gravity.
How he died: Didn’t get to the bathroom in time
In the 16th century, it was considered an insult to leave a banquet table before the meal was over. Brahe, known to drink excessively, had a bladder condition — but failed to relieve himself before the banquet started. He made matters worse by drinking too much at dinner, and was too polite to ask to be excused. His bladder finally burst, killing him slowly and painfully over the next 11 days.

Francis Bacon:
One of the most influential minds of the late 16th century. A statesman, a philosopher, a writer, and a scientist, he was even rumored to have written some of Shakespeare’s plays.
How he died: Stuffing snow into a chicken
One afternoon in 1625, Bacon was watching a snowstorm and was struck by the wondrous notion that maybe snow could be used to preserve meat in the same way that salt was used. Determined to find out, he purchased a chicken from a nearby village, killed it, and then, standing outside in the snow, attempted to stuff the chicken full of snow to freeze it. The chicken never froze, but Bacon did.

Jerome Irving Rodale:
Founding father of the organic food movement, creator of “Organic Farming and Gardening” magazine, and founder of Rodale Press, a major publishing corporation.
How he died: On the “Dick Cavett Show”, while discussing the benefits of organic foods.
Rodale, who bragged “I’m going to live to be 100 unless I’m run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver,” was only 72 when he appeared on the “Dick Cavett Show” in January 1971. Part way through the interview, he dropped dead in his chair. Cause of death: heart attack. The show was never aired.

Aeschylus:
A Greek playwright back in 500 BC. Many historians consider him the father of Greek tragedies.
How he died: An eagle dropped a tortoise on his head
According to legend, eagles picked up tortoises and attempt to crack them open by dropping them on rocks. An eagle mistook Aeschylus’ head for a rock (he was bald) and dropped it on him instead.

Jim Fixx:
Author of the best selling “Complete Book of Running,” which started the jogging craze of the 1970s.
How he died: A heart attack….while jogging
Fixx was visiting Greensboro, Vermont when he walked out of his house and began jogging. He’d only gone a short distance when he had a massive coronary. His autopsy revealed that one of his coronary arteries was 99% clogged, another was 80% obstructed, and a third was 70% blocked….and that Fixx had had three other attacks in the weeks prior to his death.

Okay, some are just ironic.

But firefighters in London are trying to stem a horror that has me baffled. Men who have intercourse with active toasters.

London firefighters have launched a public shaming campaign to stem the rise of locals summoning urgent help to remove foreign objects stuck on — or inside — their bodies, but the kinky topic is so taboo in America some top U.S. emergency workers won’t discuss the behavior.

Except in Los Angeles.

L.A. Fire Department medical director Dr. Marc Eckstein acknowledges that 911 operators do receive a small number of sexually bizarre rescue pleas and do dispatch ambulances, including instances in which they must assist men with heavy steel rings lodged around their private parts. 

In some of those scattered cases, Eckstein said, the firefighters, paramedics or emergency medical technicians use bolt cutters or, when necessary, the blazing torch of a plasma cutter to burn the rings off of the men’s penises.

“They have to be careful because the plasma cutters cause a lot of heat and sparks,” Eckstein said, adding he could not provide statistics on the number of such calls. He did emphasize, however, that the L.A. Fire Department receives high a number of other types of “inappropriate” 911 calls from local residents that tie up ambulances, fire trucks and personnel — resources that could otherwise be used for people in actual medical trouble.

When contacted for comment, officials at other emergency agencies struggled to answer if — as in London — they have marked an uptick in the rate of 911 calls or ER visits from Americans with foreign objects wedged into their rectums or folks with sensitive body parts jammed into kitchen appliances or other embarrassing orifices.

“I don’t have any statistics to that kind of claim or inquiry in New York City,” said Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the New York Fire Department.

A spokeswoman for the National Association of EMS Physicians simply responded to the query with: “I’m just not sure where to go with this.”

But in London, fire officials aren’t holding their tongues about how they must perform tasks like freeing a man’s penis from a vacuum cleaner.

The London Fire Brigade has launched a public campaign dubbed “Fifty Shades of Red,” theorizing that an increase in such randy rescue calls in that city is perhaps propelled by the popularity of the erotic romance novel “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

The campaign simply urges people in London — especially guys — to exercise more common sense before inserting their manhood into gadgets made for cooking or cleaning. The brigade reports that it responded to 416 stuck-body-part calls in 2010-11, another 441 in 2011-12 and 453 in 2012-13. Among those emergency requests for assistance, 79 people were wearing handcuffs they could not remove.

To help fuel the agency’s gentle request to just stop doing these things, the brigade has added a dose of public shaming, often taking to Twitter to share some of these ambulance requests from people who have become oddly entangled.

Like this couple.

And like this man.

CBS late night talk show host David Letterman heard about the issue and decided Wednesday to dedicate a top 10 list to “Thoughts Going Through The Mind Of The Guy Who Had Sex With A Toaster.”

“Boy, I mean I can think of maybe a dozen things around the house I’d pick before the toaster, just off the top of my head,” Letterman said. “But that’s just me. I mean, everybody has different tastes.”

My tastes may wander a bit but they’ve never wandered into a kitchen and tried to seduce an appliance. In fact, as a general rule, I limit my penis placements to living humans of the opposite sex. But that’s just me. I mean, everybody has different tastes.

The Hoof & The Heel – “Fireworks” (NSFW) from Bryan Schlam on Vimeo.

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I’m not good around kids. Oh, I can be if need be but the things I like to do – drink, swear, frolic with naked women – are prohibited by a variety of state and federal laws, not to mention some social mores, in any situation involving kids. I suppose that’s for the best. Nevertheless, since parents are (in the main) reluctant to do the mattress mambo in front of their spawn they occasionally will ask someone to take their darling progenies elsewhere for a nonce or two. And since horny parents do not make good life choices, I have taken children away from their safe homes and into my world. Well, not into my world, that would be wrong, but away from their little safe havens. Since bars and strip clubs are off the list I tend to take them to zoos, museums, baseball games and parks. I also have a bad habit of introducing them to music and food, since I dearly love both.

Apology time.

Dear Tyrone, I’m sorry. I know that you think Burger King is too zesty and, thanks to an afternoon in Pilsen with me, your kids now shop for gourmet hot sauces at Whole Foods and I know that I introduced them to Stevie Wonder before you did, but your oldest was 9 then and they’re both in college now. We need a new topic of discussion.

My friend Enrique raised his kids to be good Catholic children who respect their elders and do good in school. They are all that. They are also avid fans of funk and bad horror movies thanks to me. And they are teaching their children the joys of grooving, Elvira and Svengoolie. Enrique’s grandson, who just turned four, does a mean version of Brickhouse. Unfortunately that fact was discovered when he busted it out during a lull at mass.

Oh well.

Everyone blames me.

But there are some things you can’t blame me for. Sebastian Murdock says that no matter how much I warped those kids, I was a better influence than the parents of these ingrates.

Sometimes, work can seem unbearable. Your boss doesn’t appreciate you, your co-workers suck, and you always stay late. But at least now you can take solace in knowing you aren’t these seven souls who lost their jobs. Share this with Mark in accounting and laugh about how you “can totally see Brett getting fired that way.”

• 1
  These KFC Sink-Tubbin Gals
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  Chicken breasts weren’t the only thing simmering at this KFC. Two female employees at KFC decided to go for a swim in the company sink, later uploading the pictures to Myspace with captions including “haha KFC showers!” and “haha we turned on the jets.” They forgot the caption: “haha we’re so fired!” because that’s exactly what happened once the manager found out.
• 2
  “Weedpriest” Subway Worker Puts Penis On Bread
  

  In a story broken by HuffPost Weird, a Subway worker was seen defiling a foot longwith his less-than-a-foot-long after posting images of it on his Instagram. Ian Jett copped to putting his penis on the bread in an exclusive interview with HuffPost, and was later fired by Subway.
• 3
  This News Anchor Who Couldn’t Make It One Day Without Dropping An F-Bomb
  Ever have one of those days? Newbie reporter A.J. Clemente made his debut and said his goodbyes his first day on the job at KFYR in North Dakota. In the video,Clemente can be heard saying “F—ing sh-t,” before being introduced. If that’s not bad enough, Clemente had a rather…awkward time introducing himself after the slip up.
• 4
  This Guy Who Called His Boss A “Serial Masturbator”
  ReactionGIFS
  A South African 23-year-old man was fired after calling his boss a “serial masturbator” on Facebook, AFP reported. Hilarity aside, (and it is pretty hilarious) the man probably should have kept that thought to himself — or at least off Facebook.
• 5
  This Woman Who Called Obama The N-Word, Hoped He’d Get Assassinated, And Didn’t Really Seem To Get What The Big Deal Was
  Denise Helms, a California Cold Stone Creamery worker, was fired after she posted on Facebook: “And another 4 years of this [n-word], maybe he will get assassinatedthis term…!!” On the off-chance Obama got assassinated: “I wouldn’t care one bit,” she told Fox 40 News. She then said: “OK, but what did I do wrong?” Oh, honey. So much. You did so much wrong. Cold Stone later tweeted saying Helms was fired.
• 6
  This Drunk Gym Teacher
  
  Erik Schock, a former Washington middle school gym teacher, was fired after administrators reported his breath reeked of alcohol and his speech was slurred. It was estimated that his blood alcohol level was a whopping .15. In a truly alpha move, Schock is actually seeking to get his job back because he did not engage in “flagrant misconduct” as defined by state law. Look, we get it — we’d be getting wasted if we had to deal with children all day too, just not if it was our job to responsibly look after and teach them.
• 7
  This Guy Who Peed On His Coworkers Chairs…For 5 Months
  West Des Moines Police
  Raymond Foley, a 59-year-old IT worker at Farm Bureau Financial Services, was caught on surveillance video allegedly urinating on four female co-workers’ chairs over the course of at least five months. He was suspected of going through the company’s database of worker profiles, picking out the most attractive females, then whizzing on their seats. Listen, guy: there are better ways to flirt with pretty girls. You could start by, for instance, doing literally anything other than peeing on their chairs. They don’t like it. Foley had the piss taken out of him when he was promptly fired, then arrested.

Give yourself a round of applause and knock back a drink, chances are you’ve never lost a job through this level of incompetence!

YEAH! You’re not an ingrate!

I do have to admit one thing. In all my years of hitting on women it never once occurred to me to pee on their chairs as a way of introducing myself.

I must be getting old.

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