The Red Army Choir joins forces with Finnish rock group Leningrad Cowboys to sing . . . the Alabama national anthem.  The only thing that could top this is the nuns from Sister Act dropping "Like a Virgin".

Oh, for the fuckin' love of . . .



Much as I dislike the police, I'm not sure a tasing or seven isn't justified for Public Displays of Felonious Stupidity.  As usual, I blame our stellar education system.

From Mari in Watashi to Tokyo comes this unintended consequence of automated data mining:

I often read articles that someone commited suicide by hydrogen sulfide in Japan. I couldn't understand why they can get such a poisonous gas, then some said a manual "how to make hydrogen sulfide from some toilet cleaner" was up on the Internet. Sanpore is a very well known toilet cleaner in Japan. Please check the Sanpore page of Amazon Japan and see "Customers who bought this item also bought.......orz. Those books are "suicide manual", "abscondence manual", "145 cases of suicide" ....

Data mining explained in case you're unfamiliar with the term.

Here's a perfect snapshot of our modern American society:

A couple fighting about which gang their 4-year-old toddler should join caused a public disturbance that resulted in the father's arrest, Commerce City police said Thursday.

On Saturday, Joseph Manzanares stormed into the Hollywood Video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her and knocked over several video displays and even a computer, Commerce City police Sgt. Joe Sandoval said.

After he ran out of the store, police were called and the 19-year-old was arrested at his home.

His girlfriend told police that they had been arguing about the upbringing of their son and which gang he should belong to. The teen mother, who is black, is a member of the Crips. Manzanares is Hispanic and belongs to the Westside Ballers gang, the woman said.

We no longer fight over our children's education or religious upbringing, or our disciplinary styles.  No, now it's about which OG's you gonna roll with.  WEST SIDE 4 LIFE!

Check out the tourist kitsch available at the airport in Charleston, S. C.

It feels wrong to say this, but I'd feel better if they also sold little KKK knickknacks. A souvenir hood, maybe, or a noose: "Charleston - a great place to hang out!"

This is fucking creepy beyond words.  Whatever happened to just stuffing Fido and placing him on the mantel?

Looking to pimp your pussy?  Er, maybe that's just primp:

Kitty Wigs

Actually I saw this earlier on Graham Norton but didn't realize it was an actual Web site.

Get away from the Crazy Taxi machine, you bitch!

The Associated Press reports that a 9-year-old birthday boy's Chuck E. Cheese party went awry last Saturday night as his mother and that of another customer got into a fight. According to the wire service, police said the mother of the birthday boy was upset at another woman's son "hogging" an arcade game, which led the two moms to tussle in the Natick, Mass., gaming-themed pizza parlor.

Only in Florida:

Amber Tedrick said she didn't know she was headed for a terrifying beer run when she climbed into the back seat of an acquaintance's car Sunday with her 16-month-old daughter.

Tedrick, 20, said she thought they were going to a Winn-Dixie not far from a San Juline Circle mobile home to get food before a small Super Bowl gathering. She said she didn't have her daughter's car seat, but put the youngster in a seat belt.

Minutes later, Tina Darlene Williams, 46, was careening through St. Augustine traffic with a case of Busch beer strapped in beside her and twice missed colliding with other cars.

"I was nervous with the baby in the car," Tedrick said Tuesday. The car was running out of gas and stalling while Williams swerved down the road. . . .

Williams performed poorly on a field sobriety test and was arrested on charges of drunken driving, child abuse, possession of drug paraphernalia and no driver's license. She refused to submit to a breath test.

Sheriff's spokesman Chuck Mulligan said the car had an automatic seat belt but that the beer had been secured with the lap belt. He said the deputy had to physically go over and undo the lap belt to move the case of beer.

While that was nice and secure, the toddler was not.

It's all about priorities.

Haiti's rising food prices drive poor to eat mud

Just wait until they convert the rest of their farms to raise corn.  Not for food, of course, but to cash in on the ethanol boom.  Why should they feed people?  They can just eat mud!

Heath Ledger dead at 28.  That was . . . unexpected.  I actually liked his work; A Knight's Tale is still a fun way to kill two hours, even with its cavalcade of anachronisms, and there was also Casanova and The Brothers Grimm.  Why is it that complete wastes of oxygen manage to survive overdoses and DUI arrests and failed stints in rehab, but the ones who are actually talented and appear to be decent human beings check out?

The 20 Worst Foods in America

Seriously, how the hell do you create a "healthy" turkey burger with 1,145 calories and 71g of fat?

I love the "Bob Evans Caramel Banana Pecan Cream Stacked and Stuffed hotcakes", though.  I mean, if you're on a budget, you just order one of these babies and not eat for a week!  (Probably because you'll be in the hospital on IVs.)

America, the Big and Beautiful!

From Marginal Revolution:

BasePoint Analytics LLC, a recognized fraud analytics and consulting firm, analyzed over 3 million loans originated between 1997 and 2006 (the majority being 2005-2006 vintage), including 16,000 examples of non-performing loans that had evidence of fraudulent misrepresentation in the original applications. Their research found that as much as 70% of early payment default loans contained fraud misrepresentations on the application.

Just . . . wow.  Can an entire industry be corrupt?

I don't know how you can blame all this on the borrowers.  If they were lying somehow to get a mortgage, then lenders were utterly negligent—perhaps criminally so, in misrepresenting the risk to banks—in not checking them out.

Jesus, what a mess.  I hope y'all either rent or have fixed-rate mortgages, in which case I'd hold on to them for dear life.

Britney's 16-year-old sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, is knocked up.

Jamie Lynn says she plans on raising the baby in Louisiana so "it can have a normal family life."  Right, like hers and Britney's?

I can't make this shit up, folks.

Update: Assuming this is correct, Casey Aldridge, Jamie Lynn's baby daddy, may have committed felony statutory rape under Louisiana law, unless he was 18 at the time, in which case it's just a misdemeanor.

The South Lake Union Trolley made its maiden run today in Seattle.  I'm sure it'll be, ah, well-ridden in the future.

Yes, it's the SLUT.

That is all.

Oh, the ways in which the shootings at a missionary center in Arvada and New Life Church in Colorado Springs could be spun in the media:

• Home-schooled kids are weird.


• Christian home-schooled kids are really weird.


• Militantly secular groups like the ACLU are to blame for the growing wave of hatred against Christians!


• All churches should have armed guards (yes, I actually heard this on the radio tonight—can't wait to see all those Friends going strapped to their meetings!)


• The Trench Coat Mafia lives!  COLUMBINE!  THE DEVIL!


• Guns are bad, mmmkay?

I could go on, but you get the idea.  All the breathless speculation over what these attacks represent will gloss over the fact that the dude was nuts.  He'd been kicked out of the missionary training program for "health issues" (the group declined to elaborate) and clearly had some type of vendetta planned.  Fortunately someone was around to stop him (a volunteer security guard, no less), or this could have been much, much worse.

In fact, the worst thing that could happen right now is to blow this up into much more than it really was: a fucked-up kid with a lot of guns.

High school students' hands partially severed during tug-of-war match.

In other festive homecoming news, a Westcliffe teenager died after slipping off a float and getting run over by the tractor.  Jesus.  Whatever happened to just drinking 'til you puked at the homecoming dance?