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What a strange world we live in.

Watching a primetime special on ABC about North Korea, and it really is the best media that I’ve seen on the country. Nothing before has really struck at the strangeness of the country and everday life for most of the citizens. I read a book about Kim Jong Il that gave detail of his genesis but precious little about the sci-fi like world that he has created.

Diane Sawyer’s report is showing all the stuff that I’ve been trying to discover through books and documentaries, but have yet to find until now. What the libraries look like, the empty department stores, the streets empty, only robotic traffic attendants goignt through the motions.

I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by this terrible country, its awful history and despotic leader. Maybe it’s because as a fan of science fiction, I’ve come to appreciate fantastic tales of strange cultures and omnipresent leaders.

This is as close as I’ll get to ever seeing that in my lifetime

(Picture via mfi @ flickr)

Subject: May this email find you well

Thank God you wrote me Henry, it’s been so long!

Good thing to write you I have a proposal for you, i intend to establish with you and in your country which however is not mandatory nor will in any manner compel you to honour against your will.

Well, yes. Certainly you wouldn’t want that.

Dearest I am Henry .S. Kurubos, 18 years old and my sister Lillian. We are the children of late Mr and mrs Kurubos. Our Father was a highly reputable business magnet-(a cocoa merchant)who operated in the capital of Ivory coast during His days. It is sad to say that He passed away mysteriously in France during one of his business trips abroad on the 12th.Febuary 2005.

I love how ‘cocoa merchant’ is put parenthetically; and that this poor man passed away mysteriously. BUT WAIT. It gets better.

Though His sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been masterminded by an uncle of mine who travelled with Him at that time. But God knows the truth! My mother died when I was just 4 years old,and since then my Father took me so special. My father called the secretary who accompanied Him to his lawyer In our country Siere Leone and told him that he has the sum of (USD$8.700,000) ( MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS)deposited with a Bank in Cote’D Ivoire west Africa. He further told him that He deposited the money with the name of a business partner while I am the next of kin.



Him = Jesus. Just saying. Jesus was a cocoa merchant?

Yes

If not me, whom?

www.419eater.com

This particular child got stuck and decided to stick around and gleefully play with all the toys. He cried when the fire department extracted him, and he was forced to get away from his new playmates.

http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/claw-machines/hey-look-theres-a-kid-in-this-claw-machine-163638.php

Incidentally, where in the f are these children’s parents?

Dear Mexican,

Why do Mexicans have so many babies?

The answer is here. And the rest of the questions and answers are equally entertaining, especially for those of you who have grown up or spent time in the great state of California. It’s truthful, it’s frank and it’s funny. Gustavo Arellano writes this for the weekly Orange County, CA paper; OC Weekly. Think the Willamette Week, The Stranger, etc.

Fear of the "other" can only be mitigated by dialog and discussion. This is a good starting point.

We got there about 6 (the screening was to start at 7:30) and we thought that we weren’t going to get in. Nothing bums you out like waiting and just not knowing if you were going to make something of an otherwise wasted evening.

The real torture existed in the line. We were unfortunate enough to have gotten in line behind a couple of high school kids who, like so many others of their generation, were attached to their cellphones. Talking and gabbing to no end, one of the guys in particular was like listening to screeching nails on a chalkboard. Young and religious (and incongruously sounding a lot like Christopher Lowell) he simply did not stop speaking on the phone or to his friend for the entire hour plus that we were in line. He would rapid fire a stream of sentences like a 4 year old that just learned to speak: "And then, Jenny was there, and I was like, hi Jenny, and she was like, Hi, and it was so funny because we were like saying hi, but at the same time but not at the same time. So were were like, let’s go and see what’s going on. And she was like. Wait. There was this one time when…" Copy and paste that sentence, then read it aloud for an hour and a half for the full effect. I was about to gouge my medulla oblongata, when the line finally started moving.

Then, the consumer as criminal parade really started. I’m saving my anti-anti-piracy-crusade for another time, but any time when you are assumed to have done wrong before you’ve even stepped in the door can’t give you faith in the system. Little kids, senior citizens and dorky high school kids getting wanded and patted down because they’re going to see a film is asinine. As was the requirement that we take out our cellphones, power them down, and submit them to security if they contained a cameraphone. As if a blurry, two day before the movie comes out, camera pic would somehow damage a multi-million dollar movie. If it did, the film has bigger issues to deal with. I held mine in my hand as the guy wanded me, then put it back in my pocket.

Finally, came the pre-show entertainment that was in the form of a disclaimer claiming that the movie was ‘their property’ and that they would ‘protect their property’ by whatever means necessary. This is the point where I rolled my eyes (that and when I saw the roaming security guards with night vision goggles). The whole thing was a surreal, Orwellian-lite fable filled with enough nonsense to take me out of the movie and the movie-going experience. Hell, dealing with all that, I’d rather just pay the price for the fucking ticket and be left alone.

Despite this, the movie was a fine romp, and a nice adaptation of a work that I’ve always believed to be more simple-minded than Lord of the Rings. But more about that later. Oh, and Amy won me a lightscribe t-shirt because she knew some obscure piece of Narnia trivia.

Disney, I knew that you were a cruel master. I just never realized how cruel.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002568970_webhorse18.html

Is it at all possible to get something erased from your brain, Sunshine of the Spotless Mind style? Please?

Not surprisingly, I misread the article headline below.

My first thought was: "A 9 year old killed a Playboy Playmate? How did she managed that?"

What does it say about me as a person?

Wrong man pays child support to Peterson mistress

FRESNO,
California (AP) — The former mistress of convicted murderer Scott
Peterson is back in the spotlight after a DNA test showed that her
first child was not fathered by the man who was paying child support.

Anthony
Flores, 29, has been paying Frey $175 a month for nearly four years,
his attorney, Glenn Wilson, said Wednesday. The father of the
4-year-old girl is actually Fresno restaurant owner Christopher Funch,
Wilson said.

But my favorite part of the article is the following:

No one answered the telephone at Porky’s Rib House on Wednesday, and Funch did not have a listed home number.