The internet gives voice to all who use it. By placing these words here, someone I don't personally know from very far away might stumble upon them and hear what I have to say. That effectively gives me a shout that can travel 24900 miles. The problem is that sometimes it gives that voice to people who shouldn't be heard. But not all of the voice-underserving are loathsome, bigotted, monsters, I'm mostly just talking about the run of the mill idiots. But hey, I believe in free speech, so let the idiots have their voices. More often than not, they make the internet fun. It makes reading forums and comments fun. Case in point: the discussion over at YouTube regarding a video of supposedly "trained" goldfish. Here, I'll just edit out the boring bits:

FoxyChoklatRobot (1 month ago) how the hell do you train fish???

zElmos (1 month ago)
they were speaking chinese. o.O im not sure

hanii (1 month ago)
yea y r they speakin chinese?

pinkexperience (1 month ago)
its japanese. god. look at the description.

imog321 (1 month ago)
The gold fish wont do this at all. the explanation to this is the magnet in the stomachs

TaiCat (1 month ago)
That's CHINESE DUDE!!!!!!

adibchelala (1 month ago)
actually i believe the narrator is Thai, the trainer and reporte are japanese... Awsome skill

emeraldFloyd (1 month ago)
How dare you its chinese. Its in mandarin man. just cause we asian doesn't mean we're all the same ass hole

visnes (5 days ago)
Bordur and the rest who think Goldfish are "stupid" or have a short term memory, should read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfish#Behavior

andreasm (5 days ago)
You claim it is a fact, but there is no reason to beleive it (now). Realize your ignorance and get your facts straight (or name a source), instead of attacking people who question what you claim as being facts.

wily6 (4 days ago)
my penis is larger than yours

mcdoots (4 days ago)
haha you idiots are aruguing on the internet

mformby (3 days ago)
I had actually trained a couple of fish I had to swim to different corners of the aquarium. This video is probably not fake.

thadopeman (3 days ago)
I trained a couple of fish to suck my nuts yo

lol, internet

Posted by wonderfoo at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

There I was, a-browsing the BoingBoing Archives when I came across an entry about dry ice bombs. People have been a little this summer about dropping Mentos™ or dry ice into soda bottles. Yes, yes, we know. Pow, sploosh, hooray! But listen to this:

You need to be very, very careful with dry ice. I spent one week in the hospital with a collasped lung and 4000 stitches, and my then-future wife received 500 of her own. And I wasn't even making a bomb, just playing around with dry ice - capped the lid and didn't unscrew it quickly enough. After a few seconds, the mountain dew glass bottle it was in exploded. It blew out all of the windows on the first floor of our house, and neither of us could hear anything for days. Be very, very careful.

Say what? You exploderized yourself into the hospital, peppered this girl with frozen plastic shrapnel, and she eventually *MARRIED* you? Maybe that's why I'm still single - I'm not causing my female companions enough grievous painful explosive concussive damage.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of explosives, the TSA earlier this week has reinstated KY Jelly as being in the category of things you are allowed to carry onto an airplane. Hooray! No more chafing, abrasive in-flight anal intercourse!

Up to 4 oz. of essential non-prescription liquid medications including saline solution, eye care products and KY jelly

Now perhaps I'm being insensitive, but does anyone actually consider KY Jelly to be "essential medication"? I understand that someone might be a little dry down there, but is it really life threatening? Would your nethers turn into a vortex of dessication, sucking into itself the beverages of all of your neighbors? But wait, further down the page you'll note that neither eyedrops, toothpaste, nor mouthwash are not permitted onboard flights. So out of these "wet" openings on our bodies - mouth, eyes, vagina, we're only allowed to service the last?

Posted by wonderfoo at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Bjork Bjork Bjork Bjork Bork

Posted by wonderfoo at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the insistance of a colleague, I made a stop at a local Chicago hot dog joint. Chicago hot dog protocols are apparently different from those of New York's. They're loaded with salad-esque toppings, making them rather frilly and colorful. In fact, it may be most accurate to describe them as America's most flamboyantly homosexual hot dogs - short only of topping one with mayonnaise and fudge chunks.

Please read on, a most wonderful story follows.

GAY <---> GAY

Anyway, the gay hot dog tasted just fine, if a little fruity, but the service was nothing short of hilarious. Now, I don't know where Chicago ranks on the dope-o-meter, but I could have sworn that everybody at this joint was stoned out of their minds. After ordering, a giggly middle-aged fellow handed me a bag containing my gay hot dog and then just sort of wandered off without asking for any money. In fact, nobody seemed to be manning the register.

When I finally caught the fragile "attention" of another employee with my arm-flailing, fists full of cash, it took her a few moments to process my claims that I had not yet paid for anything.

"Money!" she uttered. "Right! Well.. the register's over here..."

And then she proceeded to stare at the bag containing my food. With both hands placed firmly against the counter she stared, and stared some more, utilizing some sort of x-ray vision or sausage-divination... which ultimately must have failed because she ended up gripping her temples and groaning, "I give up. What'd you order?"

I paid for the food, not bothering to mention that I'd been shortchanged. By this point, I simply wanted to leave - to preclude the possibility of losing intelligence via osmosis into the cannabinoid void. But before I could actually leave the establishment, the cashier(?) came a-running up to me, placed her hand upon my shoulder, and said, "here's your food sir!" completely oblivious to the fact that I was holding my order in my hand, in the very sack that she'd earlier been burning with her sausage-vision.

If you would like to find this hot dog joint, I can't help you. I was lost at the time (for reasons which may or may not be revealed in the future). What was it called? I don't know, I might have been drinking at the time. But if this is of any help to you, here - this is my recreation of the incident at the counter.

PS: "Homo Sausage" name inspiration obtained here.

Posted by wonderfoo at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The Shedd Aquarium was the last stop on my trip to Chicago, but really, the rest of the trip wasn't all that interesting. Or even pleasant, for reasons which may or may not be revealed in the future. Now, I wasn't expecting much of the Shedd Aquarium. After all, it's right in the middle of the continent, with no easy access to any oceans. Surely New York City, with its millions upon millions of tax-paying resident idiots, surely this ginormous megalopolis would have the best aquarium anywhere on the planet! Well, no. Not really. As it turns out, the New York Aquarium is practically a Wal-Mart next to the Neiman-Marcus that is the Shedd Aquarium.

Read on, for many pictures and amusing anecdotes.

Bestiality is officially endorsed by the Shedd Aquarium

First of all is the better-than-average representation of the subphylum Crustacea. While the NY Aquarium had a few little shrimp - shrimpy shrimp, really - the Shedd Aquarium had a chilled deep-sea tank containing these:

Tasmanian King Crab Pseudocarcinus fuckin' gigas (official taxonomical designation)

It's huge. It's surly (I think), and while the picture does not accurately convey a sense of scale, that there right claw was about the length and breadth of my calf. Not at all surprisingly, everyone who passed by this tank mentioned butter. But few mentioned butter when moving on to the next tank which contained this:

Japanese Spider Crab Macrocheira kaempferi

I mean, yeah. They're supposed to be edible, but BLAARARARARGH. Here's a less gory view of the beastie:

Of course, it wasn't all "OMG!!! SO AWESOME!!!!"

...but generally I was very impressed by the breadth of the exhibited fauna. Some of the tanks really illustrated how varied organisms from such far-flung taxonomical branches could co-exist in completely blissful, stoned, complacency. For example, we have this lovely setting, where a sea cucumber lounges catatonically next to a somnolent crab, which itself is sitting next to some kind of comatose pipefish. It is truly awe inspiring to see that in nature, racial divisions do not stand in the way of being stoned and lazy. If not tolerant, we should at least strive to be as indifferent and indolent as these creatures.

Chillin'.

The Phylum Mollusca was represented very well at Shedd, with many colorful bumpy tubes of flesh decorating the tropical-sea tanks.

Colorful, bumpy fleshtubes.

WTF

LOL, Sea Cucumber

I apologize for the lack of details and classification on these later images. Somewhere between being drunk and being jostled by large-handed German tourists, I lost the ability to read the placards next to the tanks. Fortunately, some of the photos I took really need no specification in order to be enjoyed. For instance, the Kirk Douglas fish:

Anyway, the fun don't end there, but I'm gettin' tired, so git lost!

Posted by wonderfoo at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (780) | TrackBacks (0)