I posted this video before:

It's hilarious. It's also an OBVIOUS satire. Of course, I couldn't possibly have known that without the help of the New York Times.

NYT: BET Says Cartoon Was Just a Satire

“It’s meant to be very satirical, and in a real way kind of mimics and mocks the current state of hip-hop and hip-hop videos,” said Denys Cowan, senior vice president of animation for BET. He said the video was not part of any literacy campaign or “Schoolhouse Rock” alternative, but was intended for BET’s demographic of 18- to 34-year-olds.

Opinion online has been divided. Someone who posted the video on YouTube praised its “positive message” and “social satire,” while another anonymous user uploaded it under the title, “BET racist rap?”

I can only shake my head. For those unfamiliar with the form and function of satire, several online resources are available to you. But, why spend your time with ivory tower pursuits like that when there's a perfect solution for stopping world hunger that the global mega-corporations don't want us to know about?

Act now! Read a book!

Much thanks to Mister Bookworm for the NYT link.

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Reuters: Fake dentist's 29-year career?

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian police have arrested a man who practiced as a dentist for 29 years although he had no medical training and treated patients at his home in a cast-off examining chair.

Now, obviously, given my current financial situation and country of origin, I would not go to a Malaysian house for my dental care. But if I were poor and lived in Kuala Lumpur, I'd probably give it serious consideration. The government really shouldn't be involved in this sort of thing.

The Reuters article doesn't give any indication that he mistreated anyone who entered his care.

The biggest problem I had with what he did is that he misrepresented himself to his patients, which constitutes fraud.

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Reuters: Blind driver caught again

TALLINN (Reuters) - An Estonian man who was caught driving a car even though he is blind has been at it again, police said on Monday, and this time he faces jail.

Police first arrested the man, 20, a week ago.

[...]

"He was drunk. There were three people in the car with him giving him instructions."

Drunk and blind. Driving a car. With three willing passengers shouting directions to him.

It's like Jackass, but with a Cyrillic alphabet.

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Warning: this post contains offensive language bandied about with relish and a spot of mustard.

I want to open this post with a cartoon that Diana posted the other day:

heh heh heh... 'vagina squirrels' heh heh heh...

Ok. So, anyway.

Nigger.

There. I said it.

Bitch.

What do those two words have in common? Some people in New York want them banned.

With regard to "nigger," the efforts were successful in February when the New York City Council decided to symbolically ban the word.

Granted, the ban is merely symbolic. No one will go to jail or receive citations for having uttered the word. It's a good thing, too, because then I wouldn't be able to rap along with Ludacris' interlude in the Missy Elliot song "Gossip Folks" without the secret police pushing me down in the street and taking my iPod away.

Well, now people are talking about banning the word "bitch." Mister Bookworm sent me this article this morning:

NY Times: It’s a Female Dog, or Worse. Or Endearing. And Illegal?

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity” for all women.

But conversations over the last week indicate that the “b-word” (as it is referred to in the legislation) enjoys a surprisingly strong currency — and even some defenders — among many New Yorkers.

And Ms. Mealy admitted that the city’s political ruling class can be guilty of its use. As she circulated her proposal, she said, “even council members are saying that they use it to their wives.”

It's hard to take this sort of proposal seriously what with image of councilmen walking around calling their wives 'bitches' in my head. And how seriously should we take this when the people writing the legislation aren't even mature enough to actually say "bitch" in the legislation.

Which b-word? Bootylicious? Bulemia? B*A*P*S? Badonkadonk? There are so many.

Ten rappers were cited in the legislation, along with an excerpt from an 1811 dictionary that defined the word as “A she dog, or doggess; the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman.”

I was planning to start using "doggess" in place of "bitch" anyway.

Can we talk about how few English women there are in New York compared to all the other sorts of women we have?

And I think it is agreed now that "cunt" is the most offensive appellation these days and I said it, too.

You know my position on this. If you mean "nigger," "bitch," "cunt" or whatever, then you should use exactly the word you mean. Don't insult me further by coyly referring to it as "the n-word" or "the b-word."

“They buried the n-word, but what about the other words that really affect women, such as ‘b,’ and ‘ho’? That’s a vile attack on our womanhood,” Ms. Mealy said in a telephone interview. “In listening to my other colleagues, that they say that to their wives or their friends, we have gotten really complacent with it.”

If people are becoming 'complacent' with the word "bitch," then doesn't that indicate that the word does not carry the same weight as it did in the 1400's? Won't enshrining it with this law draw more attention to the word and remind people that it is one of the words to choose from when you really want to insult a bitch? Indeed, others agree:

Robin Lakoff, a Brooklyn-born linguist who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, said that she despised the word, but that enforcing linguistic change through authority “almost never works,” echoing comments from some New Yorkers who believed a ban would only serve to heighten the word’s power.

This is extremely ridiculous.

If you want people to behave with courtesy and civility, you don't ban words. You have to teach people why civility and courtesy are good and necessary. You also have to acknowledge that the standards of courtesy are at least as variable and changing as the use of certain words.

To stop people from actually using "bitch" to insult people means that you actually have to change their minds about insulting people in that way. You actually have to somehow police their thoughts. You can see where I'm going with this.

Banning words is plainly idiotic. These are your tax dollars at work.

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Soooooooo... a certain New York firefighter has an enormous penis and washboard abs.

I know about the abs because the FDNY calendar was released last week. (See? that's him on the cover.) It's full of humpy firefighting menfolk. I kind of think it is un-American that none of you guys offered to buy it for me.

Well, it's too late now.

The news of this young, ripped, sweaty, axe-toting young man's endowment* broke on the global intarwebs because he appears in a 2004 edition of Guys Gone Wild. Apparently, he waves it around or something. I honestly have not seen it, so I do not know.

I do intend to find out as soon as I'm at home, though. These are the internets. We have our ways. (NSFW) Provided I have an internet connection at home when I get there, of course.

Well, because Mister Michael Biserta went waving his wang around in front of a camera, FDNY has announced that they aren't selling any more of these calendars.

I don't get it.

They didn't know that he was in that video. They aren't condoning that behavior; they could even issue a statement saying they don't condone the behavior. But they acknowledge that firefighters are (to $150,000 worth of people) sexual objects by the very fact that they're publishing a calendar of muscley, shirtless men in their firefighting gear.

So, why not issue some statement saying that they don't condone the behavior but will continue to offer the calendars for $15.99 to support FDNY?

Sounds like pretty good, free marketing for this calendar to me.

* This blog is deliberately avoiding references to this man's penis as a "hose." It's been done. It's not that funny. And I think my indignation should earn me at least a half-hearted attempt on the part of Mister Bookworm to acquire a firefighter costume.

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A couple of oddball news reports for your enjoyment:

News.com.au: Sheep baa'd in sex case

A MAN who was accused of having sex with a sheep has walked free because the animal was unable to testify.

[...]

Under Dutch law, bestiality is not a crime unless it can be proved the animal didn't want to have sex.

This is awful, but I would be SO tempted to sheer the sheep's wool into the shape of hooker clothing and then simply explain that she was dressed like she wanted it.

Fox news.com: Woman Had Pencil in Head for 55 Years, Suffered Chronic Headaches

A 59-year-old German woman has had most of a pencil removed from inside her head after suffering nearly her whole life with the headaches and nosebleeds it caused, Bild newspaper reported.

[...]

At the time no one dared operate, but now technology has improved sufficiently for doctors to be able to remove it.

The news story didn't provide any specific clues as to how this sort of thing happened to the lady. The original injury happened when she was just 4 years old.

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There really isn't anything you can say about something as effed up as this.

Reuters: Man cuts off hand for Hindu goddess offering

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - A 23-year-old Nepali man cut off his right hand after morning prayers and offered it to Kali, the Hindu goddess of power, the Annapurna Post local daily said on Wednesday.

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