This hilarious waste of perfectly good paint got linked from a comment thread on Unfogged sometime in the last few days. It’s well worth spending some time zooming around with one’s mouse and reading the explanatory text. Money quote: “Some stars shine brighter than others,” said of the stars on the American flag. My other favorite thing is probably the note that the little white boy represents both boys and girls and children of all races. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

At any rate, tengu was chatting with me the other night and asked if I had seen the response piece, “One Nation Under Cthulhu” and sent me the link when I said I had not. I’m impressed! It’s got buckets of blood, Great Old Ones, Deep Ones, some critters that could arguably be Mi-Go and/or Star-Spawn of Cthulhu and Satan wearing an expression somewhere between perplexed and pleasantly surprised. No Shoggoths, but I guess they would tend to crowd others out. The arm-stump Elder Sign being drawn on the Constitution is the crowning touch of class.

Best comment from the Wonkette thread on the response piece had to be, “If he passes out loaves and fishes, tell him you already ate.”

Finally, because the Internet is nothing if not a space that encourages creativity, this animated GIF. If you don’t get it, watch They Live sometime. It’s a classic.

So awesome.

NaNo thus far: 38,495 words.

I created a Wordle word cloud of the text so far. Hell yeah.

Then don’t randomly look up your nephew’s MySpace page on a whim.

Just FYI.

But don’t watch it at work, or at least wear headphones if you do.

(Oh shit!  It’s Dr. Tran!)

And gaming.  Kittens, too!  OK, so I have a lot of needs.

Saturday afternoon we rolled over to Bascha & Kath‘s place to start off the grilling season in style. Bascha’s enormo-grill was in full effect (she has mastered the use of a chimney to get it going quickly, something I should learn to do at some point) and Kath had a spread going before we’d even gotten there. We cracked open some wine, The Boyf marinaded some ribeyes for me to grill, and several pounds of meat (I’m not exaggerating, really) later I was laid up on their couch while the rest of the party got their fun on. One nap and a few Tums later, I was well into my second wind.

You know you are in good hands when one of your hostesses tells you that the other hostess has Advil in her bathroom and when you go check said bathroom there are both Advil and Tums sitting out, ready to be used by those who need them. Gods yes. They have great grilling parties, I am here to tell you.

Speaking of good friends and fun times, those of you who know fiend must check his new digs: Geek Nanny (FYI – fixed the link; that was weird). It’s good reading. Follow along as he twists young minds to his evil purposes!

WAYNESVILLE – At least six men traveled from across the nation and South America to have their genitals mutilated in what Haywood County authorities described as a sadomasochistic dungeon.

Three Haywood County men are now in jail on felony charges of castration without malice and practicing medicine without a license.

OK, um, wow. I didn’t even know “castration without malice” was a crime. I mean, wow. Some legislator, somewhere, must have had a fun time hearing about it in the cafeteria after they proposed that one.

Also, you really must visit the link for the mug shots. Damnation. No one, and I mean no one, in their right minds would walk into that house, drop their pants and hope someone produces a knife. Additionally, you have to respect a media outlet that captions the photo with “CASTRATION HOUSE,” then helpfully provides a map to the place in the same story.

They asked a neighbor about the guys, and got this:

Kurtz said the men kept to themselves, rarely waved and never spoke.

I hate to say this, but in the mountains that is every bit as good as putting a sign at the end of the drive that reads WE ARE DOING SOMETHING FREAKY HERE. It shouldn’t be that way – people should have a right to ignore each other all they damn well want, and I remember well when a neighbor accused a gay couple in my neighborhood, back in the ’80s (no, really), of being “drug dealers, or something,” because they didn’t talk to others in the neighborhood and occasionally had out-of-town guests. Still, if the allegations are true, maybe it turns out that even a stopped social clock like that one can be right once in a while. And I find it somewhat heartening that her suspicions were not raised by more than one unmarried man living together, but about their lack of neighborly ways.

My favorite part of the whole article, though?

The victims met the men through a locally produced Web site that published photographs of men engaging in sadomasochistic behavior.

Of course there was a website.

Yahoo! shut down the site in December 2004. The castrations took place last year beginning in March and continued through November, according to police documents.

The case is the first involving willing castration in the county and could be the first in North Carolina.

“This right here beats everything I have ever seen,” the sheriff said.

That’s the mountains, for you.