Off topic, but….

Way, way, off topic, but too hilarious to let pass…

Joe Francis, creator of the “Girl’s Gone Wild” video series, and Larry Flynt, founder of Hustler, will ask Congress for a $5 billion bailout, according to TMZ.

Why does the porn industry need a bailout? Because apparently even porn is getting smacked by the recession.

XXX DVD sales have taken a hit – about a 22% hit, according to TMZ.

“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind,” Flynt is quoted as saying on TMZ. “It’s time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America.”

Francis thinks that the porn industry deserves a bailout just like the auto and financial industries got, and he said he’ll go to DC to get it, according to TMZ.

“Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation’s most important businesses; we feel we deserve the same consideration,” Francis is quoted as saying on TMZ.

Via Marmot’s Hole

This in from Mr. Pink.

The following is the winning entry in an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term: This year’s term was Political Correctness.

The winner wrote: ‘Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end’

R.J.Wiedemann.LtCol.USMC Ret.

Don’t know if the story is on the level, but the definition is spot on!

I just got back from two weeks in South Korea (not actually Japan-related, I know, but it’s close). While in Korea I made a number of field recordings with my portable audio recorder. It’s a nice way to remember the trip, an additional sense memory to complement pictures.

I made an “album” of them, and have uploaded it here:

Download korea_in_sound.zip (38.5 MB)

It’s about 30 minutes long. I put it together like a continuous mix, arranged chronologically as I went through the country, but broke up the tracks so you don’t always have to listen to the whole thing.

For those of you interested in such things, I recorded it with an Edirol R-09 recorder at 24 bits. I assembled it in Logic and added just a touch of normalization and EQ, where necessary, and bounced it down to 16 bits. The final editing I did in Peak. I then converted the files to MP3 at 160 kbps for Web distribution. (If you’d like the full, CD-quality tracks, let me know. kemekthedopecomputer[at]hotmail[dot]com)

Enjoy!

This news out of the U.K. is a bit off topic, but it is too good to pass up. . .

People labelled “idiots” and “lunatics” under archaic mental health laws could soon be allowed to stand for Parliament.

Thanks to remora, who said, “Why bother? the old laws never stopped them?”

The following is an image of a tag affixed to a power cord of an appliance from the U.S.

What I want to know is if it is known to the State of California, why in the heck aren’t they telling anyone about it?

Off topic, but I thought this montage someone put together of 100 of his favorite movies was pretty cool.

My apologies to those who hate off-topic posts.

Via Gawker

I know this is totally off topic, but much of the blame credit for the development of my warped unique sense of humor lies with George Carlin. May he rest in peace.

Swiss lawyers are elaborating the doctrine of vegetable rights. “A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out.” In short, they are arguing that plants have inherent rights which humans can’t transgress. It sounds ridiculous. Why should we care? But we should.

A 24 page PDF edition of the committee report can be read here. One of the arguments for plant rights is that vegetables are members of “collectives”. But beyond that, each individual plant has inherent worth, rather in the way that men used to have. Therefore the committee concludes that “it is unanimously held that plants may not be arbitrarily destroyed … the majority considers this morally impermissible because something bad is being done to the plant itself without rational reason and thus without justification.”

But who is really being “empowered” by the Swiss committee’s decision? Is it plants? No. It is bureaucrats. The point of vegetable rights isn’t to give plants dignity but to transfer yet more individual human freedoms to activists and government officials.

More here. . .