Category: Curios & Humor

Brought to you courtesy of The Curt Jester.

The vest she’s wearing says “American Guide Dogs / Puppy In Training.”

She was real quiet during the whole Mass. Didn’t bark once.

Mostly lay quietly trying different doggie-comfortable positions on the ground. Would open her eyes when people walked by.

Sniffed at the shoes of the collection takers at collection time.

Only excitement was when everyone stood up at the Gospel. She thought it was time to go and hopped up, excited to go somewhere new. Once she realized that wasn’t happening, she settled down and every other time people stood up in Mass she continued laying on the ground and didn’t do more than raise her head.

Real calm, quiet, professional demeanor.

Good dog!

DAILY PLANET (METROPOLIS) – Dan Rather today said that he stands by a recent story reported by the ScrappleFace newswire about a 1972 e-mail raising doubts concerning President Bush’s national guard service.

Wearing a cowl that obscured most of his face, the veteran CBS anchorman–known to some of his colleagues as Darth Rather and Darth InCBS–spoke to reporters in front of the network’s Metropolis affiliate. “That story is true. That story is true,” he said to reporters. “I will make it true.”

Denizens of the blogosphere were quick to respond. “If Dan Rather says it’s true, then that’s good enough for us,” said Chirp Birdly of Little Red Power Cables Instablog, which served as a major clearing house for used auto parts and evidence of the falsity of the ScrappleFace story.

Birdly was contacted by the Daily Planet at his home at two o’clock in the afternoon. He came to the door wearing pajamas.

“We originally doubted the authenticity of the story because of concerns that were raised by some of our readers,” Birdly explained. “A close examination of the ScrappleFace logo suggests that it was originally produced on a computer.”

After the ScrappleFace story broke, Birdly says a number of his readers were able to duplicate it in modern word processing programs such as Microsoft Word.

“It appeared to be written in 50 point bolded Courier New font,” Birdly explained. “Some blogs even did side-by-side comparisons of ScrappleFace logo with MS Word-produced versions.”

Though an original copy of the ScrappleFace logo could not be obtained, unnamed sources at Little Red Power Cables Instablog provided to the Daily Planet a copy of one comparison, which appears below. Afterwards, unnamed experts testified to its authenticity.

Birdly did express concern that in his response Rather had not addressed all of the major points of evidence suggesting that the story was a fake.

“For example, look at the subtitle to the ScrappleFace logo,” Birdly suggested. “It’s clearly a reference to FOX News’s slogan, ‘News Fair and Balanced. We Report. You Decide.’ Yet Rather himelf is on record as saying that FOX News didn’t even exist at the time the ScrappleFace story appeared. In fact, he recently reiterated his claim that FOX News still does not exist. Yet he didn’t address this aspect of the story at all.”

Birdly stated that Rather’s failure to address the logo’s subtitle continues to cast grave doubts on the story’s authenticity. “Of course the subtitle doesn’t mean anything at all after a newsman of Rather’s gravitas has vouched for the story. If he says it’s true and that he’ll make it true, then you can be sure he will.”

When pressed on how he would make the 1972 e-mail story true, Rather brushed aside reporters’ questions while loading a couple of laptops and a wireless network router into his 1985 DeLorian. As some reporters pressed closer to get a glimpse of the vehichle’s flux capacitor, Rather shut the car’s hatch.

“I regret that I have but one professional reputation to give for my President!” he declared before screeching away.

————————

UPDATE: Chirp Birdly of Little Red Power Cables Instablog now claims that his comments were misrepresented by the Daily Planet. According to Birdly, he stated that Rather’s failure to address the ScrappleFace subtitle does not mean that it continues to cast grave doubts on the authenticity of the story, whereas the Daily Planet represented him as saying that it does. The Planet stands by its original story.

A while back I used an online application to do an anime-style version of myself (Ani-Me). At the time, I didn’t have a recent picture of myself, so folks couldn’t see what I look like these days. Now that’s been rectified, so I thought y’all might like a comparison. Here ’tis:

It’s not identical (given the limitations of the progam–which didn’t even have a cowboy hat option–the style of anime, and the fact I’m not smiling in the photo), but at least folks can see I wasn’t trying to lie with the picture.

Something for the “I am not making this up” file.

Actual material from the homily delivered last weekend at the 5:00 p.m. Saturday Mass at St. Cyril of Alexandria parish in Houston, Texas:

PRIEST: Now here is something for those of you who like Star Trek.

We Christians are like the Borg.

Our purpose is to assimilate everybody into a spiritual collective . . . in Christ.

Just thought you Trekkies might like that.

At which point I leaned over to my aunt and whispered “Or not . . . “

This brings up a good point that even some apologists need to remember: A single point of contact between two things does not mean that one is automatically a good metaphor or similie for the other. By that logic the priest might as well have said “Here’s something for those of you who like Germany. We Christians are like the Nazis. Our purpose is to impose a spiritual order on the world . . . in Christ.”

Used the Abi-Station Portrait Illustration Maker to do up an anime (“Japanimation”) version of myself. Cool!

Tip of the Stetson to Southern Appeal.

(NOTE: No cowboy hat option for the picture, unfortunately. Thought it looks at least a little bit more like me than you might suppose, as I’ve lost significant weight since the picture on the left was taken.)

DAILY PLANET (METROPOLIS) — A West Virginia father attempted to grab his levitating, twenty-month old son on Wednesday. The boy, identified only as Jack, suddenly sprang from the floor and became unstuck from the law of gravity.

“This happens all the time,” his father, John, explained. “Especially when he is getting up from a sitting position. Sometimes he hops up too quickly and just keeps going up.”

Kelly, the boy’s mother, explained the need for fast action when an event like this happens. “It’s important to grab him quick,” she said. “We never know how high up he’ll go, as he hasn’t learned to fully control his powers yet. He may bump his head on the ceiling–which could hurt the ceiling–or, if he’s out-of-doors when it happens, he might interfere with local air traffic.”

The boy is improving his levitation skills, claims his father. “He used to only be able to go up and down, but now he’s able to go forward and back. It’s still a kind of slow, jerky process that makes him look a bit like a giant, wobbly bumblebee bobbing around, but he manages. Lately, he’s been levitating around the perimeter of whatever room he’s in, stretching out his little hands to the wall to steady himself.”

The boy also has other special abilities. “He can make microwave popcorn by himself,” his mother reports. “No, I don’t mean that he knows how to use the microwave yet. He just kind of looks at the bag real hard and it starts popping on its own. He loves to do that. He giggles and claps his hands.”

Raising such a boy has presented its challenges. “It’s made it hard to get him all his childhood innoculations. We can get him the oral ones no problem, but it’s pretty hard to give him a shot. You have to angle the syringe just right or the needle breaks off when you try,” his father notes.

“And he’s really hard on shoes,” his mother adds. “Really, really hard.”

Both parents adamantly deny rumors that they found their child in a Kansas corn field on a night marked by unusual UFO activity.

“That wasn’t a UFO,” his father says. “It was just a meteor that made that crater.”

Know what this critter is?

Neither, it seems, does anyone else at present.

Yes, one of “nature’s special creatures” is now stalking the byways–and eating from the garbage cans–of Maryland.

Fortunately, the critter seems to be non-threatening (thus far) and is reported to get along well with cats.

Excerpts from the story:

More than a month after the first sighting, the creature has become a neighborhood regular and showing up often.

Kim Carlsen: “It comes to our house. It’s been up in the woods for a while and it comes up through the bottom of our yard and eats our cat food.”

Despite the fact it’s lurking in these woods and no one knows when or where it will come out, no one here seems afraid of it.

Jacob Wroe: “I don’t know, it doesn’t look like it’s going to harm anybody.”

Even the other neighborhood animals like Bullwinkle the dog next door seem okay with the beast.

Kim Carlsen: “It’s not afraid of the cats and the cats seem to get along with it fine.”

The beast is not shy, and visits most often under bright sun. While no one here knows what it is, they do have a name for it — the hyote, a combination of a hyena and a coyote.

In a boon to cryptozoologists, the hyote has been caught on film repeatedly, and in the story above there is a link to a good number of pictures.

Hopefully animal experts will be able to use these to determine what the creature is. If not, it might be captured and viciously identified.

You’ve probably seen pictures of two-headed or two-tailed snakes, lizards, and other reptiles before.

Such creatures are always curios. One reader, knowing my interest in science, sent me this link, where you can view a number of interesting pictures of them.

The page title says “Nature’s Special Creatures,” but I think the URL of the page gives a more direct insight into what you’ll find there:

http://www.texasreptiles.com/freaks.html