I couldn’t stop laughing, despite myself. Hat tip to MK for sharing.

(Also, I had no idea that redubbing this same scene was something of a cottage industry, but check out the related videos, and marvel at how much free time there is in the world…)

Yet I haven’t really bothered trying to overcome this phobia as it’s not a daily problem since you don’t often run into roving gangs of clowns accosting you on the street.

So, sure, there was a false sense of security right up until I was innocently having fun at Mardi Gras and found this flung my way:

When I saw this, I had an immediate PTSD flashback to being a kid and sneaking onto HBO latenight to watch Poltergeist I & II, neither of which helped one bit with these phobias.

The whole clown scene in the first movie was bad enough, but the entire second movie…that preacher dude is by far the creepiest villain with inadvertent clownface ever. I tried to find a video of him doing his little sing-song, but lucky for both of us I couldn’t find it. Here’s the trailer instead.:

Ironically, watching the youtube clips I found, I definately came to understand that Poltergeist II was a terrible movie, despite the fact that it seems to be burned in my brain.

No, actually, I realize that’s wrong- only Mr. BigTeethPreacherMolesterClown lives on* in my head, which will probably serve up a really nasty dream starring him tonight.

:::shiver::: Clowns. Those bastards.

Multicolored musical notes and over sized wings aside, he does look pretty nervous, no? Like he suspects somebody’s about to pluck him unless he can manage to run away on his weird tiger stripped legs?

I only remembered about this guy when Chris sent me this video the other day:
(link here)

The guy coming in at 1:46 looks like he’s trying his damnedest to make the Chicken Dance, staple of weddings everywhere, look cool. And coming pretty close to succeeding, too.

(And on the off chance you’ve lived a sheltered life and haven’t been exposed to this attrocity, you can check it out here. )

And aren’t these ladies a classy pair? I wonder if they’re meant to symbolize anything? They’re so subtle, it’s hard to say…

If I had to choose, though, I’d say goldie on the left is my favorite. Crime fighting hooker. Haven’t seen that one since:

You know, I think the plastic bead girls could act just as well.

Maybe we’ll even start having a contest to get rid of all these, because I found out I’m a wimp- I hate throwing them out to the crowd at Mardi Gras.

Alison was confused when she was 10 or 11 and caught a naked lady bead. I’ll never forget the look on her face as she held the stripper immortalized in plastic up for my inspection.

“Why did he think this would be a good bead for me, Mommy?”

Yikes. So I guess I’ll have to find another way of disposal. Let me know if anybody’s interested…

We just came out of a bitch of a Legislative session. I won’t go into the hairy details, but it was painful, drawn out, and exhausting. Which, I suppose, makes this performance a perfect representation:

(Youtube vid here)

I had to track this down after it was mentioned by the Times-Pic’s Capital bureau chief in a post-session wrap up live chat:

Q: [Comment From Jk]
Why was Hurricane Chris allowed to perform a rap song in the well of the House? Don’t they have anything better to do?

A:in truth a lot of songs are sung at the House podium, lot of performers come by ….it was really nothing that new…Cajun and country music — and patriotic songs… tend to be the norm.

I read that and snickered, figuring it was just some yokel offended by rap in those hallowed halls. But no, it was horrendous on too many levels to be real. Still, I wasn’t quite sure I trusted my ears, so I went and looked up the lyrics.

Classy, y’all:

She fine den a bitch ass and her tits
Thick in tha hips every nig want her
Call her Halle Berry, Halle Berry
Halle Berry, Halle Berry
She walkin like a model
Hands on your knees
Scrub the ground
She aint nothing but a tease
Halle Berry, Halle Berry
Halle Berry, Halle Berry

So, once again, we look like morons. The one upside is that I know Piyush had a heart attack over this, which makes the national scorn almost worth it…

So…let’s see. Toilet paper is ‘archaic’ and this is the first ‘improvement’ since the 1880s? This? This is a ‘modern solution’?

They seem to admit that their market is made up of:

• People who are too ‘big’ to reach around and take care of the deed themselves (and the answer isn’t to lose weight, but, naturally, buy more stuff.)
• People with arthritis who can’t grip or turn properly (If they can’t grip the paper, how on earth would they be able to grip this, turn, push the weird button thingie, etc?)
• People in need of serious therapy who don’t want to go anywhere near their own body.

Everything else aside, from a purely practical point of view, um…ew. Really? If you think toilet paper is ‘disgusting?’ just wait until you have to clean that plastic thing up. Plus, from a purely editorial POV, the woman at 0:41 is hysterical- she starts out serious, then is all flirty about maintaining her dignity- I think it has to do with suddenly letting her native New Yawk accent come out. There’s a Freudian bathroom joke in there somewhere, but I’m going to take her message about dignity maintenance to heart and leave it alone.

Unfortunately, I think they’re right- this is a ‘modern solution.’ Have a problem? Even better, can we invent a problem so we can sell you some crap (har har) you don’t really need?

It all started with a stupid joke post called Torturing the Animals, which, for the record, was about annoying the dogs with a silly Mardi Gras hat.

However.

It seems some search engine has taken the title at face value, and now I’m getting some pretty f’ed up search terms. Things became exponentially nastier once I added in Alison’s prom. I wanted to write this post to make a big joke about how no matter how bizarre (and/or illegal) your predilections, the web will serve something up for you and make you feel normal.

Only once I started this post I realized I can’t list the search phrases, since including them in here will just reinforce Google & co’s algorithms.

So, to give you an idea of the kind of weirdo we’re suddenly keeping company with, let’s play a little mad-lib, shall we?

A typical phrase goes something like this:

(racial epithet)(violent verb)(intimate female body part) Exciting bonus points: (age specificity)

(large animal)(explicit verb, present tense) Exciting bonus points: (excrement (seriously))

(age specificity)(state of extreme inebriation)(High school dance of the sort my daughter didn’t actually have) (explicit verb, present tense)

(adolescent)(drug often slipped into an unsuspecting target’s drink to render them…pliable)Exciting bonus points: (family member)

(strangely specific body part description)(adjective)(violent fetish) Scary bonus points: (ways to end a person’s life)

I used actual searches that have appeared multiple times, in multiple ways- but what amazes me is that this is all internal data. That means that these people got to the site, looked around and said to themselves “I bet they’ve cleverly hidden the really good stuff away. I’ll check!”

If you’re one of those people, please do me a favor: (colorful verb, present tense) off. Thank you.

The answer is ‘sort of.’ It turns out they do have a Mature Audience section, but there are a bunch of restrictions, the biggest pains being no paypal allowed, and higher fees (surprise!).

BUT….(butt?) it’s amazing how much you can get away with as long as you wink and call the item a “health aid” or somesuch. As long as it’s not lifelike and veiny, they don’t wanna know.

In the spirit of public awareness, I decided to post this product of my research, a video that was embedded right in an ebay listing for a “Body Massage Massager Vibrating Vibrator Health Care.” Right.

My favorite part is the background music, which sounds like it should be in a really upbeat Ken Burns documentary. (BTW- this is NOT graphic at all, but after it’s done, the related videos are definitely NSFW)

Every. Single. Day.

You wouldn’t think there would be so much out there begging to be invented, but apparently, yes. And if it’s not new, it can be repackaged, renamed and done in florescent colors. (Here’s today’s. Yes, those are bunnies and dolphins.)

I also get exciting info about adult movies, which we don’t put into baskets, so I never bother paying attention, but I’ve seen several things come across (har har) for one particular ‘film,’ (“BIGGEST ADULT MOVIE PRODUCTION IN HISTORY!!!” sort of things) and finally I broke down and clicked the link.

They even have a PG-rated version of the trailer! I mean….what? Granted, it doesn’t tell you anything, but why would you bother, given your target audience? There’s another more hardcore trailer, but even there, what they’re really working on showing off is the fact that they obviously had enough of a budget to hire a CGI dude.

640

If you watch the full trailer, you’ll see there’s even acting, of a sort. The women are particularly pitiful, but they definitely hired real actor-types for the bit players.

We’ve got great big 4 inch suckers that fly, and they’re out and about now. Trust me, you haven’t lived until the bug you’re approaching with a rolled up newspaper flies at your face and you run off screaming like a loon. Good times.

So what else is there to do but celebrate this lovely local problem with its own bead? I want to jump in the shower just looking at these. But clearly somebody put some thought into them- even the beads in between the roaches are…skeevy.