Deja Vu

faithinthegood

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Hair of the Dog

    A British pub, the Brandling Villa in Newcastle, has begun offering a pint for the canine companions of their customers so that they won't feel left out of things. The brew in question has a meat flavor added to the more traditional ingredients, which would be a bit of a nasty surprise if one were  to accidentally grab the wrong bottle.

    " It has gone down really well with the local dog population and the Brandling Villa had to reorder fresh stock after the first 48 bottles ran out in less than a fortnight. But ironically, manager Dave Carr’s own dog, beagle Franco, doesn’t like it. "


     In addition to the beer, the pub also offers a dinner menu for dogs as well, including such fare as Sunday roast with cat-flavored gravy.




    No, I am sure the humane society would never allow that. 




     More at Sunday Sun

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Jaw-droppingly Offensive Ad

    The founder of a fitness center in Dubai has offered up the usually tepid apology that is so well known in the political arena when he was called to account for this shockingly tasteless ad on the center's facebook page

featuring the railroad tracks leading to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.

     Mr Parkinson, the British founder of the gym, said he was sorry for using the image. “I apologize if I have offended anyone with the campaign. That was certainly not my intention when we created it,” he said. “You put strong ideas across, and if they’ve been poorly received then I apologize.”

      Since the poster appeared under the heading, “New Poster Campaign – aka Politically Correct”,  one can be forgiven for being a bit skeptical about his denial of intent to offend.

   For more see: thenational

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Excuse Me Earth Person...

   My favorite headline of the Week:

   

White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars

     Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as “chrononauts” at DARPA's behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them. As “Barry Soetero,” the 19-year-old Obama was one of 10 youths selected to secretly teleport to and from Mars. Regina Dugan, the director of Darpa, was another member. 

    This would, of course, explain how he was able to forge his own birth certificate. Time travel is handy for that sort of thing. 

     In a statement made Sept 20, 2011, Mr. Basiago confirmed Mr. Obama’s co-participation in the 1980 Mars training class, stating:  “Barry Soetoro, a student at Occidental College, was in my Mars training class under Major Ed Dames at The College of the Siskiyous in Weed, California in 1980. That fact has been corroborated by one of my other classmates, Brett Stillings. Two years later, when he was taller, thinner, more mature, a better listener, using the name ‘Barack Obama,’ and attending a different college, Columbia University, we crossed paths again in Los Angeles and I didn't recognize him as the person that I had been trained with in the Mars program and encountered on the surface of Mars. In fact, doing so would have been virtually impossible in any case, because measures had been taken to block our later memories of Mars shortly after we completed our training in 1980.”

     For much, much more see: exopolitics and dangerroom

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If Aliens Monitor Our Broadcasts...

    They must be totally convinced that our reproductive cycle somehow involves claw-footed bathtubs.

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Three Wise Men, Mary, Joseph, and WTF?

   In the region surrounding Barcellona, in Spain, there is a tradition going back to the 18th century of including figurines depicted in the act of defecation as part of the nativity scene. They are thought to to bring good fortune and a rich harvest. As time passed the use of famous personalities for these figurines, called "caganers", has become popular. I suspect that there is probably a collector's market for them by now.

This holiday season Michael Jackson and the Pope were particularly popular.

   The figurines sell for between eight and twenty dollars. One can see how the production of fertilizer would come to be used as a metaphor for fertility.

More images and background at the links.

Images Background

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Living In a Cyberpunk World

... another angel
approached me.
This one was quietly but appropriately dressed in cellophane, synthetic
rubber and stainless steel,
But his mask was the blind mask of Ares, snouted for gasmasks.
He was neither soldier, sailor, farmer, dictator, nor munitions-manufacturer.
Nor did he have much conversation, except to say,
"You will not be saved by General Motors or the prefabricated house.
You will not be saved by dialectic materialism or the Lambeth Conference.
You will not be saved by Vitamin D or the expanding universe.
In Fact, you will not be saved."
In his hand was a woven, wire basket, full of seeds, small metallic and
shining like the seeds of portulaca;
Where he sowed them, the green vine withered, and the smoke and
armies sprang up.
"Nightmare, With Angels" by Steven Vincent Benet

Hot or not: Hiroko Aki, a resident of Nagareyama, Chiba Prefecture, places a food sample in a radiation detector Oct. 11 at Bec-Miru, a DIY irradiation scanning store in nearby Kashiwa. YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

     Kashiwa is a suburb to the north of Tokyo. A little over 400,000 people live there. It is for the most part unremarkable, save for in one respect: It is the first city in Japan, or in the world for that matter, to have a new business that is emblematic of Japan's troubles in the 21st century.

     Ever since October, Motohiro Takamatsu has been offering a unique service. For 980 Yen (about $12) his customers can spend 20 minutes scanning their groceries, their top soil, or whatever they are concerned about for radioactive contamination. Takamatsu imported several gamma spectroscopy machines from Germany at about a million Yen each (about $12,800). The devices can detect radioactive isotopes of Cesium in traces as low as 20 bacquerels, as long as the customers can provide a 1 kg sample to test.

      Teachers in Tohoku now carry Geiger counters to check radiation levels on school grounds, and cesium isotopes have shown up in baby formula, rice and tea. In as much as the Fukashima reactors are likely to continue leaking for some time, testing food seems likely to become a growth industry. 

     "Takamatsu said he has already established a new nonprofit organization aimed at creating a food safety database for consumers to access, and plans to expand it considerably in 2012.

"The database will focus on items that are not checked by the government, such as instant noodles," he said.

Despite losing more money than he is making on his Bec-Miru venture, Takamatsu said he is ready to spend another year doing whatever he can to help.

"These efforts are something I will continue as long as there is a need among the people."

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     Source: japantimes