Halloween’s Apotheosis

Posted on October 30, 2013 by wellsdc

The trend of preceding all women’s Halloween costumes with the descriptor “sexy” may have reached its point of artistic nirvana (or something) with Yandy’s “Sexy Bert & Ernie” costume, a regular feature of “ridiculous costume” lists at this time of year.

A Reddit user brought this to the world’s attention last year, but I’m not sure if the famous ambiguously-gay Muppet roommates will be available for long in a “sexy” format, especially after last year’s cease and desist from Sesame Street:

Sesame Street Workshop has advised Yandy.com to “cease and desist” selling sexy costumes based on Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie.

On the heels of U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comments about PBS and the possible firing of Big Bird, the sexy Big Birdlike outfit was positioned as a hot seller, according to the New York Daily News.

Unsurprisingly, Yandy.com, a costume, dress, and lingerie online retailer at the forefront of the sexualized Halloween costumes movement, has reaped the rewards of Romney’s comments during the first presidential debate.

On its site, Yandy.com features a sexy yellow bird costume that one can pair with an officially licensed Big Bird headband manufactured by Disguise Inc. Yandy.com has been careful to avoid accusations of copyright infringement or otherwise get in legal trouble, but the increased attention occasioned by Romney’s comments caused Sesame Street Workshop to step in.

Basically, if you can’t get a “sexy” Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, or Snuffleupagus costume this year, I recommend blaming Mitt Romney. As far as I can tell, though, the costumes are still available, so the warping of our childhood memories may continue.

Monday Morning Cute: Hedgehog Buoyancy

Posted on October 28, 2013 by wellsdc

This hedgehog is supposed to be having a bath, but can’t help but dream of the open sea…

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

Photo credit: Tom Phillips, on Twitpic; h/t to Bob.

This Week in WTF, October 25, 2013

Posted on October 25, 2013 by wellsdc

shurmpa on stock.xchng – An “irate grandpa” busted a guy who was taking upskirt pictures of women on an airplane preparing to depart from Nashville International Airport. Did I mention that the creeper was a U.S. Air Marshal? Because he was. Was.

– Also in Tennessee, a police officer lost his job for shooting at a squirrel in a Dollar General store. When bullets failed to stop the squirrel’s bargain reign of terror, the officer tried pepper spray. He finally bested the squirrel with one of humankind’s oldest evolutionary and technological advantages over most rodents—he stepped on it. (I say most rodents, because stepping on a capybara would just make it annoyed.)

– A museum in Iceland houses the only known pair of necropants in existence in the world. Beyond that, I’d rather not talk about it.

Photo credit: shurmpa on stock.xchng.

If You Push Hard Enough, Maybe They’ll Finally Send the Black Helicopters

Posted on October 24, 2013 by wellsdc

By Dmitry Pichugin [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html) or GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

What is this, Russia? In this picture, yes.

I came across an old complaint about the Affordable Care Act during my Googlings, which criticized a law professor’s attempts to alleviate concerns about the penalty aspect of the individual mandate. Walter Dellinger told the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 2011, according to Ann Althouse:

There’s a misimpression out there that… federal agents arrive in black helicopters dressed in fully equipped armed ninja costumes, kick down your bedroom door and drag you off at the point of bayonets to an insurance agency.

In fact, what — all that happens is that for those who are not otherwise exempted and — when they’re filling out their federal income tax return, if you’re not maintaining minimum coverage, you have to pay an additional 2.5 percent, much less than Social Security. That’s all that happened.

So in that sense, this great intrusion on liberty doesn’t approach any slippery slopes or exceed any understood limits in our legal culture.

The concern seems to be that the government will exercise its police power against people who refuse to cooperate with the insurance mandate, pay the fine, or respond in any way to what the law says. Believe me, I am very sympathetic to the argument that we must be vigilant against expansions of the government’s police power, but this is not one of those instances of government going too far. Besides that, I’ll be more sympathetic to concerns from the right over police overreach when they get more consistent about it. Continue reading →

A Hobbit by Any Other Name Would Smell Less Infringing

Posted on October 23, 2013 by wellsdc

The Asylum is an interesting film production company. On the one hand, I give them props for sheer brazenness. In addition to sharing Sharknado with the world, this is the company that produces direct-to-cable or -DVD films that often bear remarkable resemblances to, and with release dates in close proximity to, major Hollywood films. When I Am Legend came out in 2007, The Asylum released I Am Omega (or I Am Ωmega). (That’s even funnier if you know the Will Smith movie’s predecessor.) Its counterpart to Roland Emmerich’s 2008 film 10,000 BC was entitled 100 Million BC, and apparently had dinosaurs. The Keanu Reeves-led remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still was joined, so to speak, by The Day the Earth Stopped. Right before the Brendan Fraser film Journey to the Center of the Earth came out in theaters, The Asylum released a film starring Greg Evigan (the other one of My Two Dads) entitled…..Journey to the Center of the Earth. I guess there’s plenty of Jules Verne to go around. The list goes on and on.

For the most part, The Asylum seems to have avoided serious legal entanglements with regard to their films’ occasional similarity to movies that get actual theatrical releases. Sony, which distributed the 2011 film Battle: Los Angeles in the rental market, took legal action against the directors of 2010’s Skyline because of similarities between the two films. The Asylum’s Battle of Los Angeles [emphasis added], released just before Battle: Los Angeles, did not have the same legal issues.

You might think that The Asylum would have some major copyright problems, with a movie like The Terminators coming out close to the same time as Terminator Salvation. You can’t copyright an idea, though. This is how movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact can coexist. Continue reading →

In Space, No One Can Hear You Meow

Posted on October 22, 2013 by wellsdc

I guess this is from the remake of Alien where they replaced all of the humans with cats. I wonder if they replaced Jones the cat with a human.

The Irony-Free ’80s

Posted on October 22, 2013 by wellsdc

Say what you will about ’80s hair metal, but you have to give them this: they did not give a flying fuck what you thought about their clothes or their hair. Maybe it was all the hipster music I heard at the Austin City Limits Festival a few weeks ago, but there’s something sort of liberating about music that is utterly devoid of irony. Your mileage may vary, and that’s cool.

Here’s a bit of ’80s metal. If I recall correctly, this was the first track on Skid Row’s self-titled debut album, meaning that you could listen to it as soon as you got the tape into the deck, without even having to fast-forward.

Here’s a lesser-known bit of ’80s rock, from Shark Island:

The Civil War Really Was About Slavery. Who Knew?

Posted on October 21, 2013 by wellsdc

Out of a snarky Twitter exchange, a small research project was born. A fellow who tweets under the name @defendheritage tweeted the following:

The Battle flag is not a racist symbol, it is a symbol of defiance to government intrusion and a declaration for… http://t.co/ygXYCKPvq1

— Robert Mestas (@defendheritage) October 19, 2013

…which led to an appropriately snarky response from JC Christian:

rt @defendheritage The Battle flag is not a racist symbol / These guys agree pic.twitter.com/dc9A2Rde0L

— Gen JC Christian (@JC_Christian) October 19, 2013

That got me thinking about how people try to say the Civil War was about almost anything except slavery. The most common alternative rationale for the Civil War is “states’ rights [to allow slavery],” which I took the liberty of amending just now. Continue reading →

Monday Morning Cute: Transitional Cuteness

Posted on October 21, 2013 by wellsdc

I’m not sure if Ambondro mahabo is actually a “transitional fossil,” or if it was really as mean as it looks in this artistic representation, or if it was actually blue. It is kind of cute, though.

By Alannis (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

It is also a relative of the echidna and the platypus, and they’re cute in a weird sort of way.

Photo credit: By Alannis (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

“The last time hundreds of Texans showed up at the Alamo with rifles…”

Posted on October 19, 2013 by wellsdc

Jerry Patterson, the current Texas Land Commissioner and candidate for Lieutenant Governor, is promoting a rally (or some other sort of event with people) at the Alamo in San Antonio, at which everyone is encouraged to carry their guns openly. This would be in violation of a city ordinance that gun people think is unconstitutional, and openly flouting the law in massive numbers is just so much more fun than challenging it in court, right?

Anyway, there’s a term for this: civil disobedience. Of course, when liberals practice civil disobedience, they often expect to get arrested. We’ll see how the liberty-loving folk packing heat at the Alamo handle it today.

One thing Patterson said causes me some concern, though: “The last time hundreds of Texans showed up at the Alamo with rifles, they were hailed as heroes in their stand against a tyrannical government.”

They also all died.

Photo credit: “The Fall of the Alamo” by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cryptic Philosopher

A Boil on the Butt of Antiquity

Monthly Archives: October 2013