To Be Used On Both Heads?

If you thought lead-laiden products from China were bad, what do you think of hair bands made of recycled used condoms? Yup, used. How the hell do they dispose of used condoms in China that someone could get access to them? Does someone have to go through the garbage looking for them? *gag*

And worse than the gag factor, the condoms could still contain STD’s that people could contract by holding them in their mouths while they shaped their hair into pony-tails and such. I keep picturing how many times my mom would hold hairclips in her mouth while she fiddled with her hair. I’ll never hold an elastic in my mouth again! Gaaa! Cheap isn’t always good.

On a funny sidenote, where did these show up? Guangdong province.

Diabetic Shock Meets Electric Shock

If you’re driving through the Ozarks and you have Diabetes, make damn sure that you’re wearing a medical alert bracelet proclaiming your condition. Otherwise, if you have a blood sugar drop, and you are incoherent in your car and police want you out of the car, they might think you’re drunk and taser you, just like they did to James Bludsworth. Bludsworth? Let’s heap some naming irony on top of it, even though it’s not quite spelled perfectly.

Ok, let’s be logical. Even if the guy was drunk, as long as he’s not punching you in the face or saying he’s not gonna do as you say, why whip out the taser? Why not just get the guy out of the car?

These police are lucky they didn’t kill him, as Diabetes can make the heart not so strong, and a few thousand volts don’t usually sit well with an irregular heart.

Oh it gets even better. After being taken to jail, he had to pay a grand to get out, blew a .00 on the breath test, and still has DUI charges against him. And, the chief thinks the police were right in zapping him. Alrighty then.

I feel sorry for the poor guy. It must have been scary enough having a low, then you pull over to the side of the road, probably as your last attempt to get yourself out of harm’s way, then the police show up, and if a fragment of your mind is still conscious, you think you’re going to get helped, and then you get zapped and carted off to jail! It would be great if one of these police officers developed Diabetes later in life and had an event that left him in similar circumstances. Then he’d see how useful a tasing really is in that case.

Little Jimmy’s Little Gym

Does this even seem safe to you? I guess in the UK, since they’re all worried about the child obesity epidemic, to feed off parents’ fears that their kid will end up going to Fat Fuck High, there are now chains of baby gyms where babies as young as four months old can start doing exercises.

Now, I’m a little rusty on my infant development, but really, should kids that little be made to do rolls and stuff? Isn’t there some risk of injury?

And, I’m all about starting kids young into being active, but this seems a little neurotic. If your kid is already getting fat at four months of age, then maybe he has a medical condition, or you’re feeding him way too much food.

This goes to show people will pay anything to feel better. They could probably give the kid just as much exercise at home by playing with him.

Living Rooms And Room For The Dead?

Ok, hopefully someone can explain this one to me. I’ve seen this in a couple of towns, so I know it’s not just some kind of freak thing. There will be a furniture store, and right next door, a funeral home. Both are owned by the same people!

What is that? That is the weirdest pairing of things I’ve ever seen. Do they think you might need a better bed to rest your head, and failing that, a final resting place? Perhaps you’d be interested in a couch or a casket? Or, do people often die on furniture, so you need new ones to replace them? but if you’re grieving, is that really the time to replace the chair?

So, why the hell would more than one family own a furniture store and a funeral home? What’s the connection? When I said to my dad that I thought it was weird, he acted like this was completely normal, and looked at me as if I was the weird one. Why?

We Are The Giant Microbes

At last! At long last! Steve can find Matt some quality ebola for his stocking in the form of a plush toy at the low low price of $8.95. And If Matt is feeling equally, well, warm and fuzzy, he can buy Steve some plush Gonorrhea. Or, if you really like Karl Winter’s stuff, you could buy him some stuffed Salmonella. No, I’m not kidding. This place actually exists. To see the whole pile of choices they offer, go to their main site, GIANTmicrobes.com, choose your country, and look around.

They say their products are good for educational purposes, but they sorta make them out to be a wacky gift/toy. How much of a geek kid would you have to be to appreciate these? They’ve looked at microbes and someone has sat down and designed stuffed animals that represented what the microbe looked like, only way bigger. Please, please, please someone go look at the Giardia doll and describe it to me, so I can picture what Trix’s Giardia bug would have looked like. Or maybe I don’t want that picture. And I wonder what Mad Cow disease looks like. Is it all spongy on top?

God, I feel like such a geek. I have to admit I’m a little curious about some of these. Happy looking around, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Remembrance Day Forgetfulness

I was watching the news last night, and a story came on that doesn’t even need the time of day. But, it’s the local news, where coverage of snow blowing around in open areas is considered important, and it being another scorcher out there gets top priority, so I guess it’s slim pickin’s. Anyway, the story was that some people were pissed off because they forgot yesterday was a holiday because Remembrance Day fell on the weekend. The best was the man who said, “I knew it was a holiday, but thought they might be open.” Are you stupid? Either it’s a holiday, or it’s not. If it’s a government holiday, and you’re pounding on the door of a government building, you’re shit outa luck. Go home, or back to work, or something.

All I can think is this is news? Anyone who has lived longer than 17 years has for sure seen at least two cycles of when Remembrance day falls, and knows that when it’s on Saturday or Sunday, the Monday after is a holiday. It does not warrant some reporter running around tracking down nitwits staring at locked government buildings with a look of shock and dismay plastering their faces. Everybody forgets every now and then that a certain Monday will end up being a holiday. But they walk up to the door, go “ah shit! I forgot they’re closed today!” Then they go about their business. It’s not a goddamn tragedy that needs to be on the news.

U R 2 St00pid 2 Post Here.

We’ve pissed and moaned about stupidity on the internet, especially lete-speak. Well, someone agrees with us, and has decided to design a stupidity filter. It will even flash a message back to the apparent moron, telling him his message was more or less unintelligible and to try again.

But Gabriel Ortiz and his team have their work cut out for them, since sometimes, what may look stupid to a computer is actually someone being funny. Plus, they say that their program is more complex than a spam filter, and we all know that spam filters are far from perfect. I’ve deleted spam from my inbox, and fished legitimate mail out of the junk pile. So, imagine how many mistakes this thing has the potential to make. I think that along with the people making fun of something, people who aren’t native speakers of English could get very, very mad after being told their English sucks when it might only be off by a bit.

They’re working on fixing that, looking for patterns in moronic writing. I think everyone should go and help them grade the pool of dumb comments they have gathered so they can make this thing better. Sweet! Someone’s cleaning up the internet! Hopefully the day never comes when I get told that something I wrote was unintelligible. If we had it, I wonder how many times it would have shat on some of Nicks’ gems. Ah, maybe stupidity on the net can still be entertaining.

Mommy And Daddy Are Making A Better Version Of You

This whole thing makes me sick. There’s now a new bill being introduced in the UK to do with IVF. A lot of its ideas are good, like allowing gay couples to register as the kid’s parents on birth certificates, or not denying lesbians from having kids. hell, if they can do it and they can find a donor, go nuts! But one thing they think is a good idea makes my entire body scream “nooooooooooo!”

They want to make it ok for parents of sick children to use In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to create what they call saviour siblings, or kids from whom cells, or perhaps entire organs, can be harvested to give to the sick kid. Hmm. Do you see any problems with this? I hope to hell you do.

In the story, both kids seem to be doing fine and they’re a happy family. But what happens if the parents who decide to create a “spare parts baby” as they’re calling them aren’t such good parents? Then what happens to baby no. 2? Do they give the kid up for adoption? Or worse, maybe they keep him around in hopes of getting more parts, but he’s never treated as well, or is perhaps abused. yes, one sibling can be abused when the other ones are treated well. If you don’t believe me, go read A Child Called It.

Or, horror of horrors, what happens if kid no. 2 gets sick too, and needs stem cells. Are ya gonna pop out another kid?

What really really burns me up is this whole bullshit is unnecessary if we could just figure out how to save umbilical cord blood. The cells are right there, and we throw the stuff away. Why not use that? Creating another kid for parts is just wrong, and it has nothing to do with playing god. It’s got to do with treating every human being like a human.

Sometimes we have to accept that a kid’s got something wrong with him, and the solution isn’t to brew up another kid for parts. If another family member can help out, that’s great. But if not, then the family has to find ways to deal with it. I don’t know how I’d feel if my mom decided to have another kid just so they could have the nerve cells to somehow regenerate my optic nerves. That would just be too weird.

Don’t Download This Song

This, for lack of any better terminology, is fucking absurd. Why should it be the responsibility of college and university students to prop up the failing business models of multi-billion dollar corporations? And why should doing the sensible thing and not doing so be punishable by the revocation of all federal financial aid to all students of non-compliant schools, including those who don’t own computers? Not only does it go against the principle of innocent until proven guilty, but it also forces undue financial stress on people who are supposed to be the great minds and workers of the future.

New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also “alternatives” to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.

The U.S. House of Representatives bill, which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

The full article is
here,
and I hope that after reading it all sane Americans will write or call whoever they can to ensure that this type of stupidity is not only blocked this time, but never crops up again.