Does This Change Anyone's Mind?

Guess what?! A new picture of George Zimmerman has been released (for some reason). Now, you might remember (or you might not because you might have blocked it all out of your mind because you just couldn't stand to hear about a bunch of speculation over and over and over again) George Zimmerman is the guy who shot Trayvon Martin about a month ago. If you don't know what I'm talking about, might I suggest you volunteer to be on this man's jury. They're looking for people like you. When the video of George being taken into the police station surfaced, I heard way more than my share of "He looks fine to me" and "I thought that he was in a fight". Too rarely did I hear "He could have been cleaned up by the paramedics" and "That video is so blurry that it might as well have been shot with a potato". Anyway, here's the new picture. Behold!

Well, how 'bout that? Looks like the back of his head was bloody because he had been injured. Just like he had said that it was. Just like the police report said that it was. And I'm not saying that this means anything one way or the other. But it does mean that something happened out there before everything got kind of shooty. I'm not saying that I know what happened (and neither do you, by the way). There are only two people who know exactly what happened and one of them is dead. If I hadn't gotten so sick of hearing this story misreported and misrepresented ad nauseum, I might be interested in what people who were so quick to jump to a conclusion had to say about this. (I'm sure they're already got their conspiracy theories a-brewin'.) What I'd like to know is why this information is just trickling out? Or actually, why it's coming out at all? But considering how irresponsible the media has been up to this point, I see no reason to expect them to handle all of this any differently.

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No Wonder They're Closing

Apparently Sears is going to be closing a bunch of stores due to poor holiday sales. This according to the Glendale News-Press. Now, the article goes into minor details about the aforementioned poor holidays sales and how that would affect an undetermined number of stores and jobs. Then the article includes a picture. Behold!

What in the world is going on there?! No wonder the stores are closing. They have a Brinks armored car plowed into the side of the building and some other random vehicle that has been smashed all to hell up on the sidewalk! I don't know about you, but I tend to avoid shopping at establishments with vehicular mayhem on the sidewalks. Call me crazy, but I like to know that the chances for my getting flattened by a Brinks truck or sideswiped on the sidewalk by an Audi are slim to none. At the very least, I like to shop places where there are not pictures in the paper of those sorts of things happening.


I only came across this article through the help of my friend Kelly, who ever so graciously passed along this little gem to me. Thanks, Kelly!

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The Money Shot

So Anthony Weiner sent the money shot. That's right. He sent a relatively unobscured photo of his genitalia to some chick via his cellular telephone. That's right. It's a telephone that also takes pictures. And it sends those pictures to other people whether they want them or not! What a great time to be alive! Or not. I'm kind of starting to think that it's the latter.

He kind of has to resign now, doesn't he? I mean, now that it has come out that he has been sending pictures of his naked manhood to college girls that he met online via Twitter (of all things), can he really still be a member of Congress? I think that's really the question. And it bothers me that I don't have a freaking answer.

On the one hand, he's obviously a total perv. But what if he is a perv who gets the job that he was elected to do done? Should it matter than he's a total perv? I don't really know if it should, but I know that it does. Shouldn't there be some sort of moral standard for our elected officials? And I don't think I'm being all that radical by suggesting that one of those standards be NOT taking pictures of your junk and texting it to people. No, wait. Let me revise that. I don't think that I'm being all that radical by suggesting that one of those standards be to NOT GET CAUGHT doing whatever it is that you do with your various body parts.

Private lives are supposed to be private, just the same way that private parts are supposed to be private. Look, what you do with your weiner in your own time is your own business. Take as many pictures of it as you want. Put different little hats on it or dress it up for special occasions. I really don't care. But I sure don't want to know about it! The day I get a picture on my phone of some guy's wang with a little bowler hat and a necktie on it (where the tie would go if it HAD a neck) is the day when that person is forever after declared a perv and and idiot. He could have avoided both labels by just not getting caught OR by simply not doing something so freaking weird.

If you're interested in the money shot, you can click here and it will take you there. But remember, it's a shot of an erect penis. Do I really need to shout that it is NSFW? It's not safe for work. It's not safe for home. It's not safe for anywhere! (How did he get that angle? Is there a timer on the camera on his phone? I'm so confused.)

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Grilling The Weiner

Let me ask you something. How many pictures of your wang are out there? If you're woman and therefore, wangless, perhaps you can take a moment to inventory how many pictures of your lower regions are floating around out there. I have done the same. Now, I don't know about you, but my total was zero. Thus, if you were to ask me this question, I would have an immediate answer. (I should take this opportunity to mention that figuring out that there are zero pictures like that of me out there (or ANYWHERE) took me less than two seconds.) I would have that answer so rapidly because it shouldn't be something that one has to think about for longer than the two seconds that I allotted myself. Apparently, Anthony Weiner does not fall into the same category as I (and, hopefully you) do.

When I first heard about this story, I didn't think that it could possibly be real. A

guy named Weiner is being accused of sending a picture of his weiner via Twitter?! It's like a dream come true for me! But that is what allegedly happened. (And between you and me, it totally happened. I just have to throw in "allegedly" because that's what you do when you know something totally happened.) According to Yahoo! News, "...a lewd photo was sent from the congressman's Twitter account to a 21-year old female college student via the social networking site--and it was visible for all the public to see." Yeah, that's a problem. Not as much of a problem as his reaction to what happened, but definitely a problem.

He sure didn't take it all that seriously at first. I'd be rather alarmed if someone was sending pictures of my wang across Twitter (and just not because I don't have a wang) and it wasn't me doing it. But no, he just said, "Look, this is a prank and not a terribly creative one...I was hacked. It happens to people. You move on." Huh. You're not even just mildly curious as to who is sending pictures under the assumption that the sender is you? Even if you're a congressman that doesn't bother you? You just want to move on? Just like that, eh? Yeah, that's usually a sign that someone doesn't want to talk about something. Here's a tip: Things like this? Try and be really upset about them. It's more believable than acting like you don't care if people send lewd pictures and make them from you. That's not believable AT ALL.

And the more that he "answered questions" about this, the more not believable it became. For instance, when Luke Russert asked him in an interview "That's not a picture of you?", his reply was not really what I would have expected from someone with NO knowledge of these sorts of shenanigans. He said, "You know, I can't say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated. Pictures can be dropped in and inserted." OK, now he's just saying words. (And for the record, it's an "account" not a "system". But I digress.) That doesn't make any sense. If pictures can be manipulated and you DON'T have any pictures of your grundle out there, then you should be able to say "NO, it's not my weiner." But more than once that is not what happened with this guy.

In a different interview, this time the the monotone voiced Wolf Blitzer, he danced around the question again. Wolf made the astute observation that "...he should be able to recognize his own underwear." Yes! Yes, he should! But again, Mr. Weiner (God, I love typing that!) replied in a way that is unimaginable to me when he said "...It certainly doesn't look familiar to me but I don't want to say with certitude to you something that I don't know to be the certain truth." How can you NOT say with certain truth that those pictures were not of you if you don't take pictures like that of yourself?! I could say for certain if a picture like that was of me. It would absolutely not be for the sole reason that there ARE NO pictures like that of me! I don't need to think about it.

Seriously, what about this exchange: Wolf continued to grill the

Weiner (I needed a BBQ-ing pun in there somewhere) directly if he had ever taken a picture like the one in question of himself. The response was less than convincing when he said "I can tell you this. There are... I have photographs. I don't know what photographs are out there in the world of me. I don't know what things have been manipulated and doctored. And we're going to try to find out what happened." Let me save you the time! I know what happened! You send a picture of your junk over Twitter to some college chick in Washington! Mystery solved!

I noticed that he didn't elaborate a whole lot on "I have photographs." Really? Of your erect manhood inside of your underwear? Why do you have those photographs? Just because your name is weiner doesn't mean that it has to be all about the weiner. Who does that? What a moron. No one wants to see a picture of your penis. They're not that great. They're kinda funny looking and I have no idea how you guys walk around with one of those things down there. But again, I digress. There are better ways to deny that you've done something extremely inadvisable than to do everything BUT deny it. Does he think we're idiots? Or is he just an idiot? Considering that it seems fairly obvious that he did send a picture of his slightly covered genitals, I'm going to go with the latter.

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Best Picture On The Internet

According to the Internets, this is the best picture on the Internets. And while I can't totally agree with them, I'm finding it a little hard to outright disagree, you know what I mean? You will after careful consideration of what may actually be the best picture on the Internets. Behold!

See what I mean? Hard to know, really. Hard to know.

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Turmoil in Pictures

And now, some of my favorite little blurbs that describe plenty of stuff going on these days. They're all sadly insightful, painfully true and freaking funny as well. What could possibly go wrong? Don't answer that. (Some questionably offensive language in two pics. I mean, it's offensive if you're offended by that sort of thing. I usually try to avoid intersparsing the F-bomb in here, but once every gazillion posts I don't think will drive any of the eight of you off. And if it did, well, I'd be sad because I'd feel like I just hadn't toughened you up at all.)

And below, my personal favorite. Whoever put that up down on Wall Street is my hero.

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Montauk Monster Mayhem

OK, what the hell? I like the Internet and all, but sometimes, all of those tubes and pipes and wires and strings that connect everything together can just end up to serve the purpose of pointing out either a) how gullible people are, b) how ridiculous people are or c) a little bit of both. (On occasion, it can also be used to point out d) how hot some people are. But when they're d) hot with a little bit of b) ridiculous thrown in, they end up just e) annoying the hell out of me.)

So, this "creature" thing "washes up" on the shores on Montauk. Well,actually, it was photographed lying on the shores of Montauk. (Hmm...the key word there might actually be "lying'. Interesting.) How it got there is debatable. Who saw it is debatable. What happened to it is also debatable. And what's really debatable is what in the hell it is! Seriously, look at this thing:

Whatever it is, it's disgusting. It's like they took a bit too long digging the fire pit at the luau and the thing just languished in the sun for far too long. I don't get it. But I do get this: Weird-ass animal things that look like old, bald, dead dogs don't "wash up" on the shores of a beach on Montauk. They also don't go to the shores of Montauk to die a la some elephant graveyard legend. (I'm pretty sure there was a Scooby Doo episode that exposed that whole farce.) And three fairly hot chicks like that (who may or may not have a cumulative IQ of 100) don't have the stomach to belly on up to the creature and take it's picture. No way. So what gives?

Well, Nick Leighton from Plum TV tried to get to the bottom of it. And I'm sure that he was as forceful as he possibly could be (which is to say, not very. He's a rather effeminate chap, don't you know? But I liked him. He asked good questions.), just short of smacking the chicks with his feather boa.

During his interview with Rachel Goldberg, Jenna Hewitt and Courtney Fruin, Nick said, "Four scientists say that it does not exist. They all say you're drunk and that you Photoshop really well." That was met with the response, "The animal exists." OK, see, a response like that which alludes to something, but could also allude to something else points one in the direction of concluding that it's a real fake creature. She might just as well have said, "Oh, it's something, all right." Well, we know it's something, sweetheart. Same principle. Any ideas as to what? "A mutant." Of course! How could I have overlooked the possibility of "a mutant". Oh, for cryin' out loud, a mutant what?! But sadly (or thankfully) that question wasn't answered because another one volunteered her theory of, "It's a cross breed. I think it came out of the ocean from Plum Island." So, it's a plum? I don't think so.

But I loved it when Nick asked, "Where is the animal now? Because apparently it got dragged off into someone's home. In Montauk. And it's been mounted on someone's wall." That's pretty funny. Even funnier is when one of the girls said, "No. It decomposed in someone's backyard." And Nick, who is very sharp and catches on to details like this really fast, jumps in with, "Oh, so you're friends? So we could go to this backyard?" Good job, Nick! Way to get the scoop! And? "It's been since...removed." What? "By whom?" You get 'em, Nick! Let's see them get out of that! "Friends of ours." Darn! I did not see that coming. Apparently, neither did Nick because he told them, "You're a little shady with the details." And here's where what little, if any, credibility these three chickies had goes right out the window. "Well, it's very mysterious. We're not just giving up all the information." Um, what?

First of all, the only time I've ever heard someone say, "Well, it's very mysterious" was on Scooby Doo. Usually it was Velma stating the obvious there. And when something is "very mysterious" you don't have any information to give up because it's mysterious. Hence the term, mysterious!

But Nick soldiers on (don't ask, don't tell, don't you know?) with, "So it's been carted off to somewhere that you know but you won't tell us?" "Our friends have it. We're hoping to have scientists contact us and then we can find out what it is. That's really ...the goal." Is it now? I don't think that's your main goal. And what do you mean your "friends have it?" Right! Look, I really like the friends that I have, but if any of them came to me and said, "Hey, we found this crazy looking, dead mutant on the beach. Mind if I keep it at your place for a while?" Yeah, see, I'm not going to do that. If it was just crazy looking or just a mutant, I might consider it. But dead is out of the question. If you start hanging on to your friend's dead carcasses, pretty soon, all of your friends are bringing over their dead carcasses as well. It's just more trouble than it's worth is all I'm saying. But I digress.

"It's in a box. The bones are boxed." Now it's just bones? How long does it take for fake, mysterious creatures to decompose? That thing looked pretty meaty. It wouldn't be overnight. So Nick tries to pin them down with specifics. "How do we know it's not a raccoon, a turtle without it's shell, or a dog?" (OK, that's quite the variety there, Nick. Perhaps next time, what say you narrow the field down a bit.) "What we've heard from a scientist at Stonybrook University is it's not a raccoon because the legs and arms are not in proportion with the body." Wait a minute. Weren't they waiting for hear from the scientists to tell them what it was? What happened to this Stonybrook Farm guy? He wasn't good enough or what?

Come on, Nick. Do your thing. "OK, proportions. Dog?" "It's not a dog because of, um, the feet." Because of the feet? All dogs that I've had AND seen in my lifetime have, surprisingly enough, HAD feet. What kind of mutant dogs does that chick keep for pets anyway? WTF? One more, Nick. "The feet. OK." But before Nick could get to his final question, one of the chicks piped up, "And a turtle doesn't have teeth." At that point, I expected them to stand up, spread their collective arms and shout, "Ta-da!" But they didn't. It was a little anticlimactic.

Well, whatever it is, I'm sure that we'll find out about it in a couple of days. The story is starting to fall apart here and there and it's looking more and more like it might be part of some Internet marketing campaign for some show that's going to be airing on Cartoon Network called Cryptids Are Real. Nice. I hate that crap. Hey, but if it is just a promo, then what's the creature?

Jeff Corwin of Animal Planet says that what we have here is a very rare.....raccoon. Wait. What?

Hey, does this look like a raccoon to you?

I've seen raccoons before. They look like this:

They do not look like this:

Now, I'm not saying that he's wrong. After all, he does work for the Animal Planet. But maybe his Animal Planet doesn't have animals like this planet because that is not a freaking raccoon. Just to be clear again, this is a raccoon. Please note the difference between the real raccoon and the pictures above that crazy people are saying is a raccoon.

We'll see how this turns out. (I still don't think it's going to be a raccoon, but that doesn't mean I think it's going to be an ocean mutant either.) Stay tuned, won't ye?

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