The Case Against Humanity: Industrial Mechanical Poultry Farming

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 By the way, I don't buy the idea that eating free range chickens is a solution to the fucked-up-ness of factory farms. It's a step, I suppose, but you still don't know your meat, so to speak. The dirty work still occurs out of sight. Yeah, they've done away with the overt mechanical cruelty and provided the hen with a laid back life & comparatively decent food, but her destiny remains the same.

F'd Puppet of the Week 9/29/07

I always knew veteran stage and screen entertainer Joel Grey was flexible but not this flexible. He is apparently in training to revise his role as the Asian sage in the 1980's classic "Remo Williams". Keep your hands up... Umberto St. John

Get Your Ghost-Viewer Ready

Saw this at a revival theater a few years back. William Castle explains the technical workings of "Illusion-O" (red and blue cellophane) in the pre-credit opening to "13 Ghosts". It's a very boring movie, and obviously you can still see the ghosts without the viewer, but gimmicks like this are what's needed to get more people into the cinema. And bring back "Odorama!"

An Audio Archive Saturday w/ Kitchens of Distinction

I went back to the old stacks a couple of weeks ago, and I've been listening to the two Kitchens of Distinction albums Strange Free World (1990) and The Death of Cool (1992) exclusively and non-stop ever since. I recall having a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward them back when they were new (and maybe that is how you still react to them), but they seem to have clicked with me now. A big tip of the hat to the mysterious individual now known as "Hot Funk" who gave them to me or sold them to me or swapped them for a "fetus burrito" at Buenas Nachos in Frankfort, Illinois. Yes, Mr. Funk, they are still in the transparent CD cases you slipped them into when you were working at CD Exchange.

Chess For Girls

Very rarely, when the stars are aligned ever so precisely and the moon glows with a certain eerie phosphorescence, an itty-bitty glimmering nugget of gold can be seen encrusted in the dry, lumpy turd which is SNL...

A Short List Of Worthwhile Famous Humans Who Committed Suicide

Let's get your day off to a winning start, shall we? Here is a short list of famous people I enjoyed who voluntarily took the long nap, ripped off from this page on Wikipedia. I'm sure you'll find people on that list you'll say I should have included, but oh well. I probably didn't really enjoy them (Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain, for example). You may also think that I am posting this list as an ironic gag. That is not my intention. Suspected suicides of worthwhile famous individuals (Marilyn Monroe, for example) were not considered. Diane Arbus barbiturate overdose & slashed wrists Scotty Beckett (shown above) sleeping pills overdose George Eastman gunshot to chest Sigmund Freud lethal dose of morphine Arshile Gorky hanging Spalding Gray drowning Ernest Hemingway shotgun blast to the head Jack London (major bummer) overdose of morphine & atropine Sylvia Plath gassed in kitchen oven Mark Rothko anti-depressant overdose & slashed arms Del Shannon rifle blast to the head Alan Turing ate an apple laced with cyanide Vincent van Gogh gunshot to chest Hervé Villechaize gunshot That's right, Hervé Villechaize made the list, but Ian Curtis didn't. Sue me.

GOSH-WOW #5

from Batman #166 "A Rendezvous with Robbery!" (scanned from Showcase Presents: Batman Volume 1)

Robot of The Week: Roll-Oh

This "chromium-plated butler" does all the chores of the american housewife, therefore making her existence completely meaningless.