perfidy

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. So are you.

Only 36 percent of common spiders are capable of laying eggs under human skin.

There are currently 163 petabytes of collective iPod hard drive space available in the world, of which only 53 petabytes are being used. Of those, 4.7 Petabytes are used to store the song, "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band.

A major naval battle was occasioned when allied commanders misinterpreted the remains of a rolled up centipede in a relief map of the Pacific theater.

Over the past several days, I have received some atypical emails in my spambox. Typical in that it was unsolicited, unwanted and bothersome. But unusual in that it was actually... interesting. For years, it has been the unending drudgery of clearing out my email of exhortations to enlarge my penis (unnecessary), refinance my mortgage (irrelevant), buy dubious pharmaceuticals (unwise) or act as an agent for rich but not exactly liquid Nigerian widows. (Did you know that there is now a peins enlargement patch? Remarkable these new technologies.) We are seemingly entering a new era of spam. Take a look, if you dare.
Item One: The first of several unsolicited bulk emails from Congressional representatives came from obscure midwestern democrats urging me to support or not support various measures I found myself completely apathetic towards. So apathetic that I can not now remember the name of the congresscritters or the issues they espoused. For them, there is only this open letter from James at OTB:

Rather than simply acquiring the e-mail addresses of all bloggers that you perceive to be on your side of the political spectrum and sending them your every thought, however undeveloped it might be, you should consider carefully targeting your messages to those who your staff knows through careful research are actually interested in the topic you are communicating, as evidenced by having written about it recently.

Further, if you are a House Member that few people outside your District have heard of–which is to say, about 420 of you–you should be especially diligent about this. If, hypothetically, you often give radio updates in Dallas on pressing issues facing our nation, it is highly unlikely that any blogger not from Texas gives a rat’s would be interested in having transcripts of same mailed to them.

Item Two: I am informed by reliable sources that God does not eat meat. How reliable? Well, the guy that wrote a book called, “God Does Not Eat Meat” told me. In an unsolicited bulk email, no less. So it must be true. This title was odd enough that it ducked into my head, and proceeded to crouch in a corner of my mind hissing and spitting at me. I couldn't help but ponder the philosophical issues underlying such a bold claim.

I made a point of not actually reading the email, but just letting the thoughts roll over and through me. “Well, sure, God doesn't eat meat,” I thought. Of course, he – being an ineffable and omnipotent being – doesn't eat anything at all. So one could hardly make a case for vegetarianism by example to a being that doesn't eat meat only because it eats nothing at all.

Then I thought, “Hey, there is a long tradition of offering meat sacrifices to God. And not just mangy, fornicating pagan Gods, but our own uh, really big God.” So clearly, in historical times God dug the meat, so to speak. And remember, one of the very first stories in the bible was that of Cain getting his sacrifice of wheat and granola rejected (for no clear reason) by God. This of course led to the first murder, and shortly thereafter, the first appearance by Cain on antediluvian COPS. Scripturally, we can make a strong argument against eating vegetables. God, like my three year old son, doesn't like them.

But still the thoughts kept coming. Where is this dude's head at? Making fundamentalist arguments for left-loony lifestyle choices? Is this Rod Dreher's crunchy-con movement gone mad? Or is it a more particular kind of madness. Where the voices in Arthur Poletti's head just sounded like God. And told him not to eat meat, after they said kill your neighbors and bury them under the 711.

I may have to buy the book.

Item Three: All State Investigations sent me an email. Curious, I thought. What do they investigate? Well, in a word, Infidelity. With fifty years of experience in the field, they know infidelity. And they were sending a message to me. Did they know something I didn't? I did a little research, and discovered that All State Investigations Group, LLP located at 501 Stillwells Corner Road A-2 · Freehold, NJ 07728, is also registered as All State Investigations, Inc. Strange, they say they can find out anything, but they can't figure out whether they're incorporated or a partnership.

Over at their website, I did find some useful information. For instance, the top ten signs that your spouse or significant other is being less than perfectly faithful:

• Working a lot of overtime
• Excessive use of the interweb
• Unaccountable hours
• Hiding the phone bill
• Saying, “It's your imagination”
• Getting hang-up phone calls
• No longer interested in sex
• Not wearing a wedding ring
• New sexual techniques
• Saying, “I need my space”

Of course, the number one sign that your spouse is cheating on you is seeing your wife wearing a tshirt that says, "Adulterer."

I breathed a sigh of relief. My wife only displays eight of those symptoms, so things must be okay. But as I continued to peruse their website, I became more and more fascinated. ASI has for sale an infidelity test. It looks for semen in your wife's underwear. They offer computer forensics, GPS tracking, and debugging services. They have support for people in pain – chat rooms, online therapy, and links to local support groups.

And most interestingly, for only $36,500, you can start your own franchise. Become a private investigator! Live a life of danger, intrigue and stultifying boredom as you wait in the rain outside some slut's window waiting for a chance to videotape her indiscretions. Sign me up! I wanna be the new Philip Marlowe, and this sounds like just the ticket.

Item Four: Finally, I received what at first glance looked like another promotion for junk bonds. An INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY! But this one mentioned oil shale. That peaked my interest, since a while back I read a fascinating book on abiogenic oil, The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold. I read with some interest, skimming through the INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES. The author of this Oil Report brought to my attention that there is a vast deposit of oil shale right here in these United States. And it is truly enormous. Trillions of barrels of oil, more than pretty much the proven reserves of the rest of the world. Wow, thought I, that's a shitload of oil. I thought to myself, “Hey, why haven't I heard of this?” But Matt Badiali, Editor of The Oil Report, has an answer. You just haven't heard about it yet.

Matt kindly mentioned some people who have been talking about it. Like the World Energy Council, which had this to say:

It is estimated that nearly 62% of the world�s potentially recoverable oil shale resources are concentrated in the USA. The largest of the deposits is found in the 42 700 km2 Eocene Green River formation in north-western Colorado, north-eastern Utah and south-western Wyoming. The richest and most easily recoverable deposits are located in the Piceance Creek Basin in western Colorado and the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah. The shale oil can be extracted by surface and in-situ methods of retorting: depending upon the methods of mining and processing used, as much as one-third or more of this resource might be recoverable. There are also the Devonian-Mississippian black shales in the eastern United States.

And like the RAND Corporation. RAND is the big leagues when it comes to science and government. And a little googling revealed that they do indeed have a report out about the Green River Oil Shale And right there in the second paragraph of the report, we find that Matt Badiali is essentially right:

The largest known oil shale deposits in the world are in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates of the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels. Not all resources in place are recoverable. For potentially recoverable oil shale resources, we roughly derive an upper bound of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a lower bound of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day. If oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, 800 billion barrels of recoverable resources would last for more than 400 years.

Then I thought to myself, “Hey, oil shale is hard to process. It's not like pumping oil out of a hole in the ground like towel heads do in Arabia.” Matt was there for me. With oil so damn expensive, more expensive recovery techniques are profitable. And the oil shale in the Green River formation is especially, uh, oily. Compared to the oil sands in Alberta (which are much smaller) the rock at Green River is twice as oil rich. And almost all of this stuff is under government property. And now the government is letting people in.

Matt is tracking some companies that are well poised to profit from all this. Some people have some new techniques for cheaply processing oil shale for crude. Investing in them would no doubt be wise. Greed aside, though, it is a happy thought that when the Arabs, Iranians, Venezuelans and whatever whackjob ends up in charge of Nigeria all decide to screw us at the behest of Red Imperial China, well, we've got more oil than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick. And, we've got the bomb. So back the fuck up.

Typical newspapers can withstand 136 individual class 2 raindrops before becoming unreadable.

The common notion that most people only use one quarter of their brains was proven true in 1958 by Soviet scientists, in a series of grisly experiments on petty criminals.

Scholars have concluded that the cruelest decision in the history of the English language was to put an "s" in the word "lisp."

The national flower of Greenland is an ice sculpture in front of the cultural center in the capital city of Godthab.

Hindu demographers at the Kharagpur Institute of Technology warn that the expected increase in world population will lead to a shortage of souls by the year 2045.

Thomas Kinkade is the self proclaimed "Painter of Light" who has somehow, in defiance of all standards of taste, decency, excellence and marketing, managed to franchise his pathetic, cookie-cutter soi-disant "art" into a nationwide franchise. Are you experienced? Well, I languished in blissful ignorance of the Thomas Kinkade phenomenon for years, as it metastasized after I moved to the East Coast. (And much as I love the midwest, the midwest is that part of our fine country most susceptible to all forms of treacly kitsch.) My first encounter with Black Thom and his franchise of horror was in a slightly rundown yet comfortable mall on the outskirts of Akron, Ohio. My mom and I liked the place because while it had the standard issue mall stores, it did not have crowds of fashion victim teens who looked like they'd just walked through an explosion in a shrapnel factory. It did not have crowds at all, and we liked that. A slow paced mall where you'd never have to jostle, or even talk with, anyone.

Over in the corner by the May Company, I saw a glimmering of light. What ho? A new store? That hadn't happened since 1991. I looked and saw the proud sign, "Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light(tm)" I turned to mom, and asked, "What the hell is that?"

Mom explained that this was a new thing, a franchise cheezy art store. All art by one no-talent ass clown, rather than hundreds of no-talent ass clowns as was the traditional practice. Well, greed is good, I thought, and said, "Let's take a look." As we got closer, my anticipation grew. Swelled, in fact. This would be more fun than the time I got kicked out of the scientology center in Columbus for walking in an responding to every question for twenty minutes with a single response: "Excuse me?"

We entered the dimly lit premises, and I looked about me in something akin to horrified wonder. Surrounding me were bad paintings. But not just any old random bad paintings. Bad paintings all in a single style. A style that stopped short of the mastery displayed by the wacky tree painting guy on PBS. A style that focused on, well, light. Everything was stagelit. From all sides. Every painting had more colors than it deserved. The subjects were the worst sort of Hallmark cloying sentimentality. Pretty trees, houses, quaint villages, all lit up by the guy who designed the lighting effects for Pink Floyd's last concert tour.

I forced my way deeper into the store, stunned into silence. I noticed that up high, out of the reach of children, hung the expensive paintings. The exquisite taste and burning desire for light of those who would purchase these fine works could not be satisfied with the mere overuse of lighting techniques using mere paint. These paintings had something extra. They had actual lights. Hooked to batteries and shit, and capable of heating a small room.

I could not contain my disgust. I turned to mom and asked, "Who would buy this shit?" My mom, clearly agreeing but too polite to say anything, merely nodded in the direction of the other customers. From that point on, I restrained myself to pointing at the really, really bad ones, and laughing.

But the cool kids over at Something Awful have done far more, and shown no restraint whatsoever. Below the fold, a couple examples:

This one really captures the essence of how Kinkade does his thing, while at the same time ridiculing it:

And these two are just fun:

Go check out the rest.

The food spilled from tacos in a single afternoon could fill the shoes of everyone in Norway.

If all the tongues that were scalded by chicken soup in a single week were laid end to end, they would stretch from Montpelier, Vermont to the outskirts of Hibbing, Minnesota.

The original polka dot has been carefully preserved in a textile museum near Brussels.

A California-compliant civilian model of the M1 Abrams Tank is scheduled for regular production by 2008.

In order to cut court costs, Queen Elizabeth I reluctantly expunged four letters from the English alphabet.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes.

It really is.

The U.S. Patent Office refused to patent the common BB because they require two views.