Bizarro bizaar

The curious case of craigslist.

Lots of people give lots of advice about how to do lots of things. Rules, strategies. Stategery.

Vanity and dust.

I'd hit it 2.0

Jaguar XFR (slightly modified) goes 225 mph at that altar to speed, Bonneville. Looks like they got the boys from Top Gear to film it, too. Incidentally, that's very fast.

On a related note, here's a Porsche 911 turning a nine second quarter mile.

Germany is different

I can't explain this at all, but it's fascinating. I am doped to the gills with cough medicine, and so this is more than a little trippy. [via]

For Laura

Hey, when you wanna unlock your kids from the basement, you can keep them "safe" in this snake-proof "crib."

"At least they're not listening to the Osmonds"

Via Dr. Frank, the surreal Ann Coulter deadhead interview.

Time Travel

I'm pretty sure this is a joke.

Depthscraper

Call me crazy, but that Depthscraper actually seems kinda cool. The mirror at the top is a little goofy. Also, Depthscraper is a little too metal. I'd go with Magnapenetrator, or maybe Tetonic Livingshaft, or go ahead and throw out decorum and call it Trumphole.

Florida, America's Penisula

Family Auto Mart.

Deceptively Ironic

I perused 9 Words That Don't Mean What You Think (including perused), when I came to their number one word, deceptive. Go ahead and read it, and I think you'll agree, it's insane. Deceptive's meaning is deeply ambiguous, and well, deceptive. Which means that it is what it means, which it's not. It's a walking paradox. It is anti-ironic.

Dear Internet

Sometimes I have a hard time believing everything you tell me is true:

1) There's a cat that can smell when you are about to die and will sit next to your bed. I guess the owl saying your name comes later.

2) A guy in Brazil was kidnapped for his online game password, but after five hours with a gun to his head, still wouldn't give it up.

3) Columbians have been training rats to sniff out landmines, part of which involves putting them in cages with cats whose paws have be taped over.

Now excuse me while I run over to Wikipedia to see if these stories are true.

You cannot out-parody reality

Outsourcing the Picket Line (via)
By Keith L. Alexander
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 24, 2007; A01

The picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.

Many have arrived with large suitcases or bags holding their belongings, which they keep in sight. Several are smoking cigarettes. One works a crossword puzzle. Another bangs a tambourine, while several drum on large white buckets. Some of the men walking the line call out to passing women, "Hey, baby." A few picketers gyrate and dance while chanting: "What do we want? Fair wages. When do we want them? Now."

Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.

They're hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.

[...]

Supporters of the practice consider it a creative tactic in an era of declining union membership and clout. But critics say the reliance on nonunion members -- who are paid $1 above minimum wage and receive no benefits -- diminishes the impact and undercuts a principle established over decades of union struggles.

No kidding.

Down Under

Someday I am going to have to visit New Zealand. Also, Australia. (via Tim Blair):

The important thing to remember about Australia, though, is that it is some tough-as-nails country. It's, like, where all the nasty stuff from evolution went to go and live in a trailer with a shotgun.

They got ants that are literally on fire, like a pilot light, all the time, and they got a kind of shark that actually says runes when it jumps out of the water.

They got a type of bush there that will rustle all night when you're sleeping near it and drive you nuts. Oh, and did I mention the spider that can mimic the tones of you keying your PIN number into a telephone keypad? OK, so I made that up, but in Australia, that would be the LEAST treacherous animal.

And Now, Your Daily Moment of WTF?

Via the Tacoma Tribune, the new Narrows bridge has opened. I have no idea why Darth Vader and Boba Fett are there.

Parody?

I can't quite believe that this Reason article about a bunch of ultra-libertarians who moved out to the ass-end of nowhere to start their own do-as-thou-wilt paradise is as unintentionally funny as it seems to me, but I think this sentence gives it away:

The local culture defies easy stereotypes. "Going into this community with this traditional mainstream liberal ideology," Jeremy says, "we realized all our preconceived notions were bullshit. These people were extremely into their Second Amendment rights, and they were also into marijuana legalization. They don't fit into these molds."

Actually, pot-smoking anti-social misfit gun-nuts is pretty much exactly the stereotype I had in mind. So there.

So it was and ever shall be

Ten-Foot FIDDLES and Two-Story HARPS
HOBBYIST BUILDS FREAK INSTRUMENTS FOR WORLD’S ODDEST ORCHESTRA
By EDWIN TEALE

There are two things that happen when you visit with a strange culture: One, you have sort of a kumbaya moment where you realize that beneath all the superficial trappings and different langauges, we are all just human beings living our ephemeral lives together on this great big planet that is spinning its way through the starry heavens.

Then someone stands 12 inches away from your face while talking to you, or the stores close on Sunday before 10pm, and you realize that despite their superficial similarities, the thoughts of these people bear little or no relation to anything sane at all. Although you understand each word they are speaking individually, in fact they are speaking in some terrible cthulhu idiom that is untranslatable into human terms, and that they probably want to eat you before they return to their windowless, subterranean cities and fungoid gardens. How ironic that alienation is a universal experience.

Anyway, I like reading the Modern Mechanix blog because the strange culture here is the one I am standing in, but 80 years ago, and those aliens are my forebears. The articles are a little less banal and a little more expository than someone's old pictures, but they don't have that posed, artificial stentorian voice and Grecian stature that people assume when they want to be recorded for posterity. I linked to the weirdo instruments above just to show that people were, like they still are, completely nuts. From this, I conclude that they always will be, and it's a relief.

What If

Roy Zimmerman: What If the Beatles Were Irish?

Hamster Powered Shredder

I am not sure what I can add to this hamster powered paper shredder. Nothing, it's pretty much perfecto.

Newt Gingrich Amazon Reviews

Via Freakonomics, Newt Gingrich is a prolific Amazon reviewer and just gave Chuck Schumer's book a positive recommendation. Weird.