Intergalactic Warfare May Already Be Upon Us
Foreign Policy magazine is really killing it on the extraterrestrial beat today. To start, a new cover story highlights a dozen potential weapons that the military’s research arm DARPA is working on and evaluates their likely effectiveness against an attack from aliens intent on the Earth’s destruction, and then it passes along word that 10% of Brits think their prime minister may be more Martian than man.
Of the 1,089 respondents to the poll, which was released to accompany the launch of the new Men in Black video game, 10 percent said that British Prime Minister David Cameron could be an alien. U.S. President Barack Obama also made the top five list of possible aliens among us.
…Wait, wait one second. Cameron is a highly intelligent, emotionally-detached being who pursues logical solutions without concern for the human toll they may take? That can only mean one thing. David Cameron is a Vulcan.
To be fair, a full quarter of Americans think Obama’s an alien, too. And maybe we’ve had it all wrong assuming Mitt Romney is a robot. Maybe he’s actually Vulcan.
Lessons From Memorial Day Will Last All Summer Long
Three days of not working in 90-plus degree heat and humidity will change you. It’s good if you went to the beach or a lake and saw some friends, but it’s also alright if you sat at home in the air conditioning and watched television all day long. This is only stage one of summer 2012, so there is no need to rush things. Take it cool and easy. Just build upon the lessons you learn throughout the season. Like:
Put a slice of cucumber in your glass of ice water. Everything will be better.
Live-Blogging The Great Gatsby Trailer
0:05 Wait, they’re using “Church In The Wild”? Didn’t that Denzel Washington movie already do that and now have a monopoly on using that song in movie trailers? Or is every film about overwhelmed men lost in the world (which is every movie every) now going to have that song, too?
0:09 Pretty sure that same shot is in every movie set in New York before 1950.
0:18 There is absolutely a zebra in that pool.
Coors Light Is One Of The Best Beers In Summer
Summertime beers are my favorite beers. I like my alcohol cold and refreshing, not room temperature and oatmeal-esque, so stouts and porters aren’t up my alley. Pumpkin beers are a nice novelty but a little too sweet for an all-the-time drink. IPAs are good with certain foods (Indian, Mexican) but when you want to down a couple of cold ones, summertime beers are where it’s at.
Of those, Coors Light is at the top.
Dogs Can Do More To Get People Laid
A few days ago someone that I know overheard someone else talking about launching a dating website where dog lovers find mates by only posting pictures of their dogs. Obviously this is a brilliant idea that will make a kajillion dollars. Especially if it were called something like Puppy Love or Paws For Love (tagline: “And push play on life!”).
Here are some other dating website ideas that are almost as good:
A site where you can only post pictures of your cat: PurrfectMatch.com. Any account that makes a pussy joke is immediately banned and reported to the FBI.
A dating service for neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan: J-Hate
A dating site for prescription drug addicts: ePharmacy. Also doubles as an actual online pharmacy.
A site where you can only post pictures of your fish: Kois ‘R’ Us
A website for teenage tennis fans: 15-Love.com. Or, alternately, GameSetMatch.com
A dating service where you can only post pictures of your genitals: Craigslist.org
I Know Nothing About The Number One Song In America This Week
There are two artists behind this week’s number one song in America and I have no idea who either of them are. It’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” by Gotye ft. Kimbra, according to the Billboard Hot 100. I have never heard of either of those people (bands?) and, to let my old white person flag fly, I doubt my ability to pronounce either of them well enough to say it our loud in public (I similarly avoided naming KE$HA for a good two months in 2009).
Zinc Is An Amazing Wonderdrug
This weekend I am traveling for a wedding. Fun! Except there is a concern that I am beginning to get sick. Not so fun.
However! Today I am going to take zinc and it is going to cure all of my ailments. You can buy it in pills and basically it is the cure for the common cold. Forget the rest of the alphabet, starting with Vitamins A, B and C – skip to zinc and you are covered.
An analysis of 17 studies found that zinc is likely to relieve cold symptoms three days faster than normal. Three days! That is a whole long weekend right there.
And what’s more, it’s even better if you start taking zinc within 24 hours of your first symptoms. I woke up tired with a headache today, so if I take zinc now I will be good by game time. It will also mean I don’t have to take so many other drugs, which is good for going to a wedding, because I plan to drink alcohol and dance to “ABC” among other songs and it’s probably better to limit various intakes.
Also, the FDA is recommending Truvada to high risk populations as a way of preventing HIV infection. Really, modern science is going places we have only dreamed of.
Kids Are Jerks To Each Other
From the Washington Post this morning:
John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind [Mitt] Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
It’s an unfortunate anecdote and completely awful timing, but most likely a 65-year-old presidential candidate’s high school antics have little bearing on his policy priorities. (Does being a teenage bully say something about the underlying motive behind his willful capitalism as an adult? Probably kind of a stretch) And the odds are pretty good than any handsome rich kid with a governor for a dad is going to be kind of shitty to other kids.
Like that Vanity Fair piece about Obama’s ex-girlfriends in New York, stories like these are worthwhile only to the extent that they serve as partial biographies to someone who may well be the leader of the free world. My favorite part is when the article talks about what a bad athlete he was.
What’s The Deal With Conspiracy Theories?
A thing to talk about these days is whether or not Barack Obama should be able to politicize and thus take credit for the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbotobad, Pakistan, just over a year ago. It’s a fair criticism; Democrats, now quick to defend the president’s right to campaign on orders he gave and national security successes of his administration, soundly mocked onetime Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani for what they called an exploitation of post-9/11 New York City as well as any allusions George W. Bush made in 2004 to the war on terror.
But, asks one brave soul with a blog, what if Barack Obama weren’t even in the room when the decision to go after bin Laden was made? Mara Zebest, a graphic artist who proudly helped Sheriff Joe Arpaio examine the president’s birth certificate to see if it was fabricated, takes a look at the now iconic “Situation Room” photo to see if she can’t find something a little fishy. And, whadda ya know, she does:
