Monthly Archives: May 2008

Don’t work late

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I have been terribly busy of late, which explains my absence from blogging for the past three weeks. I’m sure this has caused much dismay for my reader(s).

There are many matters on which I could opine, but for now here is a totally fake but effectively creepy video from Singapore depicting an “elevator ghost“:

I was expecting it to be a trick of light or something. Turns out it’s just viral marketing. There’s a video explaining how they did it (SPOILER: It’s computer editing), but it’s not in English (possibly Singlish–I’m not too familiar with the languages of Singapore).

To get an idea of how effective something like this can be amongst the public, check this out:


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Wizardry???

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Seriously???

No matter how many times I blink, rub my eyes, or try to wash them out with Visine, it’s not going away.

[A]nother Pasco County substitute teacher’s job is on the line, but this time it’s because of a magic trick.

The charge from the school district — Wizardry!

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land ‘O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

“I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue. You can’t take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,’” he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he’d hoped.

“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’ ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.

I guess I’ll have to stop removing my thumb to entertain kids, lest I be branded a minion of the Dark One or something.


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Has it been worth it?

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I wonder:

Thomas Insel — director of the National Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. government’s top psychiatric researcher — said today that “the number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care.”

(h/t ThinkProgress)


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Does anyone else think…

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…that this whole Miley Cyrus topless thing is some sort of publicity stunt? I mean, she’s supposedly shocked, shocked and appalled at photographs for which she posed, probably for hours, but now she’s all over the headlines. I for one, was only vaguely aware of media personalities by the names Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana, but I didn’t realize until this week they were the same person (or that Billy Ray Cyrus had procreated). But really, this is waaay more interesting than, say, the ongoing Iraq war, the reconsituted al-Qaeda force in Pakistan, or Russia and Georgia’s brewing war in Abkhazia. Just to name a few yawners.


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