Did someone say “crab juice”?

And I thought Red Bull was bad enough.

Or, as Jonah Spangenthal-Lee noted, “It can’t be worse than Mountain Dew“.

A hardline Hindu organisation, known for its opposition to “corrupting” Western food imports, is planning to launch a new soft drink made from cow’s urine, often seen as sacred in parts of India.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Corps, said the bovine beverage is undergoing laboratory tests for the next 2 to 3 months but did not give a specific date for its commercial release.

The flavour is not yet known, but the RSS said the liquid produced by Hinduism’s revered holy cows is being mixed with products such as aloe vera and gooseberry to fight diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

Onion peelings

So, what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

Sometimes, you know, I wake up and suddenly I’m in a bad movie.

Or a Monty Python sketch.

Or, worse yet, a cliché.

And it does no good to pinch myself, or mutter, “One, two, three, wake up!” No, no. We’re stuck here, you and I.

Fuck.

The perils of technology meet the perils of humanity

If technology seems soulless and dispassionate, well, it is. It doesn’t laugh or cry, and it certainly doesn’t get embarrassed. On the other hand, it can very well make us laugh and cry, and there is no question that it can embarrass us. Like this example, from the Seattle Times website:

It’s a simple enough pitch, and hardly uncommon. Many news websites offer prints of dramatic photos, and often use galleries with names like “Photos of the Day” to promote the service. And in many cases, you can get reprints of articles or your favorite political cartoons. But there is something amiss about the pitch, which I snapped in the wee hours of the morning. Something seems incongruent about the sunny invitation to “Capture a memory and own a moment” compared to the image detail. Indeed, the photo it refers to—

—is from Dar Yasin, via the Associated Press, and is captioned as follows:

Relatives mourn Abdul Ghani Shiekh, an 85-year-old man killed during clashes, in Budgam, a town 19 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of Srinagar, India, Tuesday, July, 2008. Authorities in Indian-held Kashmir made concessions to Muslim activists Tuesday in hopes of quelling heated protests that have left five dead and hundreds injured.

Yes, here’s a picture of you that went around the world as you wept for poor Abdul. I saw that I could get a print of it from the website and thought, “My goodness, she would probably be delighted if I put that one on a coffee mug for her!”

Capture a moment, indeed. So I did. I couldn’t help myself. It’s just one of those unfortunate moments that technology occasionally brings. (Or did someone have to choose that detail specifically?)

As to the violence in Budgam, or anywhere else? Well, shit. Very unfortunate, but that should go without saying.

Or maybe not. But I can’t imagine that saying it over and over and over and over again is actually going to stop the killings. And that’s perhaps the most unfortunate thing of all.

Scratch this

A thought arose of late when considering a recent Italian court decision that apparently makes it illegal for a man to scratch or adjust himself in public.

The Italian ruling clubs together all forms of “crotch-scratching”— prompted by discomfort or by superstition — as offensive. Certain actions are considered inappropriate for public viewing. They not only offend the “average man” — a useful alibi for legislators — but also taint the sanctity of the public sphere. The issues raised by the Italian ruling go beyond the obvious question of violating an individual’s right to touch himself. Suddenly, this behaviour becomes as suspect as a range of other ‘uncivil’ activities — spitting, peeing or bathing on the streets — which would be severely condemned in any Western society ….

…. There is nothing inherently dangerous about crotch-scratching. Unlike spitting or peeing publicly, it does not ‘pollute’ in any physical sense. It is rather like a moment of unconscious intimacy with oneself, like biting fingernails or tugging at one’s hair. The West remains unmoved by unabashed public display of sexual affection, but is perturbed by a superstitious habit.

The Italian legislation is the outcome of a history of sensibilities that is unmistakably Western. These sensibilities have been formed as much by increased awareness of civic norms as by a heightened self-consciousness (as in the flatulent woman on the plane). It is unlikely that India will ever have a law that forbids men to touch their privates in public (in which case, every second man would have to be fined by the minute.)