I like cows. The judge likes cows. Who doesn’t like cows?

AN OBSCENITY trial was put on hold yesterday after revelations the judge hearing the case posted a photo on the internet of nude women painted to look like cows.

Judge Alex Kozinski, 57, had uploaded the photo, while a video on the site showed a semi-naked man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal.

[…]

“Is it prurient? I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I think it’s odd and interesting. It’s part of life.”

Look, I enjoy milk and udders as much as the next guy, especially when they come in pairs.  That said, you don’t see me cavorting with sexually aroused farm animals.  To be honest, I’ve seen enough sexually aroused farm animals to know that, if they’re aroused, they’re not particularly picky about where they satisfy their animal lust, and, well, I’m sorry, but most farm animals are built just a wee bit more… stout than the average human.  Plus, cows are heavy, y’know?  I mean, do you really want 4,000 pounds of aroused bull getting ideas about you?  I think not.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some black and white latex paint to go play with…

Here’s the deal - there’s nothing on the Internet.  Nothing. It’s very boring.  So, allow me the leisure of spicing it up by ranting like a complete lunatic.

—-

NOW IS THE TIME OF THE SNOW WEASEL! The purpleness of the people is perplexing the purpose!  We must embrace the amniotic experience!  The clarity of our nihilism is near and dear to our hearts, which is why we must repurpose our synergies towards the greatest task.  We must build a clandestine hose. With this hose, we may smite the pidgeons from their lofty perches and approbriate their effluvium.  The effluvium is made of cheese.  The cheese is made of the blood of small baby shrews.  The shrews are made of cheese.  Behold the power of cheese! The cheese is neverending lifelessness in a sea of joyous expectoration!

The life mind of geometrical sympathy is a symmetric quantum singularity of purpose, a veritable bustleland of purity.  Within the angles of geometrical sympathy are the legs of chastity, dedication, and affront.  The sine of the angle between dedication and affront lies righteous fury.  When the sine of righteous fury becomes 1, the cosine of that angle, which is passive-aggressive petulance, reaches 0, at which point all is right with the world.  There lies a tangent between chastity and affront that leads to infinite desperation.  This tangent becomes undefined as affront becomes greater and greater, leading past the limits of infinity, into a nospace of infinite and negative infinite, a place of deep madness and confusion.  This is a place that must be avoided at all cost, lest one become pulled in the nospace and the allspace simultaneously.

All will hail the multilarity! A singularity is a selfish nospace, one which inhabits the infinite none, one which must be shunned, avoided, and disavowed at all cost.  A dualarity is hilarity and joy, the beginnings away from the nospace, towards a space of fullspace, a space of infinite all.  The infinite all shall become a multilarity, which is the one all expansion of the single becoming multiple; none shall reject the multiple all many.

——-

Thus endeth today’s moment of incoherence.  Just remember, this wasn’t for you.

Being the highly motivated worker that I am, the veritable font of productivity (Pay no attention to the time stamp on this post!) that sets the pace for everyone around me, it occurs to me after reading this that I might live in the wrong country:

For Egyptian-born Muslim cleric and television host, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, there is a simple answer to Egypt’s productivity problem — pray less, work more.”Praying is a good thing … 10 minutes should be enough,” Al-Jazeera television personality Qaradawi says in a religious edict, or fatwa, published on his website.

Praying five times a day is one of the five pillars of Islam, along with the well-known requirements of making a pilgrimage to Mecca and of giving alms to the poor.

[…]

Society’s increased Islamisation over the past 30 years has already silenced some critics of long prayer sessions.

According to an official study, Egypt’s six million government employees are estimated to spend an average of only 27 minutes per day actually working, reflecting a real problem with productivity.

27 minutes per day… that sounds perfectly sustainable. I can manage that. Show up, spend some time waiting for the bathroom, choose a rather long passage from the Koran as a prayer (say, the entire Koran, perhaps), eat lunch, wash up again, choose another long passage from the Koran (say, the rest of the Koran), go home. I’d probably only be working during the first 27 minutes of the day. Of course, I’m not much of a morning person, so I’d probably make it a point to show up a half hour late if I thought I could pull it off.

There is a price for all of this, though…

Religious beliefs in Egypt are very overt, from the headscarf covering the majority of women’s heads to the bruise on many a man’s forehead showing how piously and how often he has touched his head to the ground in prostration.

So, in order to get out of work, all I have to do is slam my head against the floor as hard as possible twice a day. Let’s think about this… brain damage, or work? Brain damage, or work? Hmm… let’s pray on this…

*WHACK*

Wain bamage, or bork? Wain bamage, or bork?…

*WHACK*

DEATH TO AMERICA!

There’s failing, and there’s this…

If that doesn’t bring a tear of joy to your eye, I don’t know what will.

Oh Canada… when will your wackiness end?

A larger than life Canadian drug dealer has had his jail term cut - because the jail is not dealing with his 430-pound weight.

Michel Lapointe has already served 20 months behind bars awaiting sentencing in what his lawyer described as horrible conditions.

There are two ridiculous parts about this story.  First, that it’s possible to become too fat for jail - when the jail is in charge of every prisoner’s diet, how on Earth is it possible to feed someone enough to become too fat to remain in jail?  Did it not occur to someone to maybe cut his portion of poutine?

(As an aside, am I the only one that finds the concept of french fries covered with melted cheese curds and gravy far too delicious to contemplate?)

The second ridiculous part, though, is that he was in jail for 20 months awaiting sentencing.  Apparently, the Canadian judicial system is about as clogged as their medical system, requiring upwards of two years just to figure out how long someone should be incarcerated for.  I’d be curious to see how they handle sentencing that’s less than the period the prisoner was incarcerated for - do they get some “comp time” if they commit another crime?

The Morning Call has a nice little article today about a particularly precious snowflake (h/t Fark):

Rebecca Maykish is 17 and dreads school so much that she stopped going regularly.

In fourth grade.

Those days off have come at a price to her school district and the Palmerton taxpayers who support it. Since 2004, the Palmerton Area School Board has authorized payments of more than $45,000 to help Rebecca make up for her missed school days. Rebecca’s mother, Barbara, has used the money for at-home tutoring and education software purchases. She has also spent it on modeling classes for Rebecca, subscriptions to teen magazines, and travel to New York and Toronto with a summer camp.

All of the expenses were approved by the district.

That’s right - for close to nine years, Mother-of-the-Year Barbara (hereby designated “MoY Babs” from here on out) decided that, when her daughter started freaking out about school after a couple of weeks, that it was definitely time to not only get her out of there, but start collecting tens of thousands of dollars in tax money under the auspices of some make-believe phobia.

It gets better, though.

When the final bills were tallied, the fund set up for Rebecca had reached $46,361. All the money paid to her came from district funds, said Steve Serfass, Palmerton Area School District solicitor.

Barbara Maykish spent $3,892 on at-home instruction, and hundreds more on educational software. She spent $2,100 for Rebecca to take classes at the Barbizon modeling academy, and nearly $6,000 to attend summer camp in Ferndale, N.Y., and go on field trips to Toronto and New York. The fund also covered $54 for subscriptions to Seventeen, Teen Vogue and Teen People magazines, according to documents provided by Maykish and the school district.

The documents show Barbara Maykish spent $222 to board her dogs while visiting Rebecca at a California boarding school in 2007; $2,329 for her and Rebecca to fly to the school and $500 for tuition and spending from March-May.

That’s right - a modeling academy, along with subscriptions to teen magazines.  Let’s take a look at America’s Next Top Model…

I’m thinking no.  Also, while we’re on the subject, what airline did they use to fly to this school?  Virgin Air Superfly Pimp Class or something?

The real crux of the problem, though, is right here…

At the beginning of most school years, Rebecca has tried to attend school but the longest she has made it was to Thanksgiving in fourth grade. She began this year as a junior at Palmerton High School but stopped going after the third week of September.

”It’s kind of humiliating to start out at the beginning of the year,” Rebecca said. ”People always say ‘Didn’t you used to go to this school? What happened?’ ”

Rebecca says she reads for pleasure, enjoying parodies such as ”Zen of the Zombie,” a mock self-improvement book. But her writing skills are weak and she can only do basic multiplication and division on downloaded worksheets. She estimates she spends three hours a day learning. Barbara Maykish has opted not to homeschool her, saying she worried that she would not be able to help Rebecca with her math and writing problems.

That’s right - the mother elected not to homeschool her because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep up with the academic demands of a fourth grader.

Look, I understand phobias, at least to a point.  I have a mild phobia of spiders.  It used to be a lot worse, but, as I got older, I realized that I had a choice - I could either let my phobia of spiders turn me into a sniveling wimp whenever I saw one in a room, or I could get over it, channel that fear into pure, undying hatred, and crush the bastards.  In short, I realized that it didn’t matter whether I had a phobia or not - the spiders didn’t care.  They weren’t going to stop existing just because I had some hangups regarding them.  At some point, MoY Babs failed to teach her daughter this, letting her develop all kinds of wonderful separation anxieties (NOTE:  Why do I have the feeling she was one of those “mothers” that insisted on holding her daughter whenever she cried?) so that her daughter is essentially doomed to a life of useless ignorance.

Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.

Part of the fun of the Internet is watching things that used to be private domain suddenly get thrown into the public. Today’s example of that, which I found via ArsTechnica, and which I can’t believe I missed until now, is the Church of Scientology’s Operating Thetan documents, which are being hosted via WikiLeaks.

Want an excerpt? Of course you do. Perhaps you’d like to know how to become an OT-1?

1. Walk around and count bodies until you have a cognition. Make a report saying how many you counted & your cognition.
2. Note several large and several small female bodies until you have a cognition. Note it down.
3. Note several large and several small male bodies until you have a cognition. Note it down.
4. Find a tight packed crowd of people, urYe [sic] it as a crowd, then as individuals until you have a cognition. Note it down. Do step over until you do.
5. Seat yourself unobtrusively where you can observe a number of people. Spot things and people you are not. Do to cognition. Note it.
6. Seat yourself unobtrusively where you can observe a number of people. Spot things and people you can have. Do to cognition. Note it.
7. Note some physical thing about yourself you don’t like. Observing people, in them note that body part. Do to some change. Note it down.
8. Observing people, note things that are not wrong with them. Do to cognition. Note it.
9. Walk around and note someone walking toward you, then someone walking away, then someone walking toward you, etc. Do to cognition. Note it down.
10. Walk around and note how people stick to the ground and their sense of weight. (Huh? - DC) Do to cognition. Note it down.
11. Spot importances in people while looking at them. Do to cognition. Note it down.
12. Look into space and find spaces where there are no persons. Do to cognition. Note it down.
13. Walk around and note where there are people. Do to cognition. Note it down.

Riiight… so, basically, they have you do a bunch of random, repetitive, and probably mildly hypnotic exercises until you have a thought. Then, you write the thought down and go to the next exercise. Well, here’s a thought - people pay good money for this shit? Really? “Wow - people stick to the ground! How insightful!”

Oh yeah, the ArsTechnica article also links to some good ol’ fashioned Mormon weirdness, too. It’s not quite as new-agey or quite as ridiculous as the ramblings of a crack-addled sci-fi writer, but it’s still some pretty decent stuff. For starters, it’s actually written in English, so you don’t get strange and bizarre paragraphs like this:

In clearing you move the Being up to where he is cause over mental MEST (Matter, Energy, Space, and Time). A Clear has erased the matter, energy, space and time connected to the thing called MIND. He has been cleared of the MASS, PICTURES etc. It is a negative gain.

Instead, you get somewhat more mundane prose like this:

The stake president and bishop are entitled to the discernment and inspiration necessary to be spiritual advisers and temporal counselors to ward members who need such help. They should prepare spiritually before counseling a member, seeking the power of discernment and the guidance of the Spirit. This guidance usually comes as impressions, thoughts, or feelings. The Spirit often prompts leaders to remember teachings from the scriptures and from latter-day prophets.

Funny, I’m having an impression, thought, and feeling right now… and it has nothing to do with remembering teachings from scriptures or from any prophets. It does have to do with profits, though - I need to make more of them. That would be nice. I would profit greatly from increased profits. Perhaps I should start posting ads on my blog? Hmm…

Religion is just so weird…

UPDATE: I had a feeling I would find some more weirdness if I dug long enough… thanks, Mormons:

Consecrating Oil
One or more Melchizedek Priesthood holders must consecrate olive oil before it is used to
anoint the sick or afflicted. No other oil may be used. To do this, a priesthood holder:
1. Holds an open container of olive oil.
2. Addresses Heavenly Father.
3. States that he is acting by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood.
4. consecrates the oil (not the container) and sets it apart for anointing and blessing the sick and afflicted.
5. Closes in the name of Jesus Christ.
Members should not take consecrated oil internally or apply it on afflicted parts of the
body

That’s right - don’t drink or use the consecrated oil as a disinfectant. Oh, and thou shalt not consecrate vegetable oil, for that is forbidden in the eyes of the Lord… or something.

Have I mentioned that religion is a little weird?

There are terrible, terrible things that lurk on the Internet… terrible things like… the LOLCatz Bible. Let’s quote from the “good” book, shall we?

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.

9 An Ceiling Cat gotted all teh waterz in ur base, An Ceiling Cat hadz dry placez cuz kittehs DO NOT WANT get wet.10 An Ceiling Cat called no waterz urth and waters oshun. Iz good.

11 An Ceiling Cat sayed, DO WANT grass! so tehr wuz seedz An stufs, An fruitzors An vegbatels. An a Corm. It happen.12 An Ceiling Cat sawed that weedz ish good, so, letz there be weedz.13 An so teh threeth day jazzhands.

I… wha… um…

16 So liek teh Ceiling Cat lieks teh ppl lots and he sez ‘Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleevs in him u wont evr diez no moar, k?’

That, folks, was John 3:16… and, with that, there was me running for the frakking hills.

UPDATE: But wait! It gets horrifically mind-bendingly worse! That’s right… I also discovered LOLCode! An example:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE

What… the… make… it… stop…