I Think I Can
November 12, 2009
Well,
you certainly don't need our blog to bring grim news to
your doorstep this week. While the media beats its
vulturine wings over Ft. Hood and Jarret, Virginia
(where John Allen Muhammad is to be executed tonight),
we bring a bit of good news from north of the
Mason-Dixon. In Boston, subway driver Charice Lewis
managed to stop her train just as it was about to pass
over the legs of a woman on the tracks. Thanks to
some high-quality surveillance
video,
you can watch every second -- and judge for yourself
whether the woman lost her balance on the platform
or took a drunken leap. We can't get over the
remarkable video: so crisp, focused, and
color-accurate for surveillance footage. Oh yeah,
also pretty cool that Lewis stopped the
train.
When God Deletes You
November 05, 2009
Facebook
welcomes new users with a page saying it "helps you
connect and share with the people in your life." So
what happens when you no longer have a life? We mean
this literally, not in the now-you're-a-loser sense.
Deciding what should become of online profiles and
postings when flesh-and-blood counterparts pass away
has become a subject of controversy.
As the NY Times reported this week, online administrators can decide what becomes of, say, the possessions of an avatar despite the wishes of family and friends. Back in the world of brick and mortar, that's like having the government take control of your estate instead of your spouse or your kids -- and who would opt for that? Well, you do when you click that radio button approving Terms and Conditions. At least one wiki out there, Dealing With Death Online, has begun compiling death policies from the likes of Facebook, MySpace, and Amazon. Until guidelines approve, here's hoping your life doesn't encounter a service interruption.
As the NY Times reported this week, online administrators can decide what becomes of, say, the possessions of an avatar despite the wishes of family and friends. Back in the world of brick and mortar, that's like having the government take control of your estate instead of your spouse or your kids -- and who would opt for that? Well, you do when you click that radio button approving Terms and Conditions. At least one wiki out there, Dealing With Death Online, has begun compiling death policies from the likes of Facebook, MySpace, and Amazon. Until guidelines approve, here's hoping your life doesn't encounter a service interruption.
Pigs On Parade
October 29, 2009
If
you want to scare the pants off of people this
Halloween, go out dressed as the H1N1 virus. We suggest
a pig mask complete with runny nose. Reports this month
tallying the number of swine-flu fatalities have rung,
or re-rung, the alarm bells, and President Obama's
declaration of a national health emergency contributed
extra jitters . . . even though his motivation was to
release funds to fight the virus.
What's truly scary, though, is the government's historically poor track record with flu-vaccine development and distribution. We're still growing influenza vaccine on chicken eggs, which doesn't happen much faster than it would in a kid's terrarium, even though promising new technologies wait in the wings. Tough flu seasons of the recent past have also shown that it's hard to move vaccine through existing distribution channels even when there is enough to go around. So if you want to be really terrifying as a trick-or-treater, here's an idea: go dressed as red tape.
What's truly scary, though, is the government's historically poor track record with flu-vaccine development and distribution. We're still growing influenza vaccine on chicken eggs, which doesn't happen much faster than it would in a kid's terrarium, even though promising new technologies wait in the wings. Tough flu seasons of the recent past have also shown that it's hard to move vaccine through existing distribution channels even when there is enough to go around. So if you want to be really terrifying as a trick-or-treater, here's an idea: go dressed as red tape.
Live Loud
October 15, 2009
It
always evokes a strange feeling when a recognized
figure from youth culture's history reappears decades
later in the obit columns. In our minds they're
preserved like a bug in amber, forever young and
bell-bottomed. Then suddenly they're back in the
spotlight, but only to take a curtain call. Turns out,
we read, that they had actual lives. They settled down
in the Midwest. Stabled a few horses. Had grandkids.
Got sick.
This week, two revered men of music gave their souls to rock and roll. Dickie Peterson had fronted Blue Cheer, the band credited with fathering heavy metal/punk/hardcore (take your pick). The other was Brendan Mullen, who ran the Masque, early home of latter-day L.A. punks like X and The Germs. To the rest of the world they never grew a day older -- till the news came down. And it'll keep coming. The baby boomers have been getting a lot of this lately, and the outlook for the future is cloudy with a 100% chance of dead guys.
This week, two revered men of music gave their souls to rock and roll. Dickie Peterson had fronted Blue Cheer, the band credited with fathering heavy metal/punk/hardcore (take your pick). The other was Brendan Mullen, who ran the Masque, early home of latter-day L.A. punks like X and The Germs. To the rest of the world they never grew a day older -- till the news came down. And it'll keep coming. The baby boomers have been getting a lot of this lately, and the outlook for the future is cloudy with a 100% chance of dead guys.
Alcor Meets Albacore
October 08, 2009
One thing you can say
about the Grim Reaper, he's not wishy-washy. Once the
sickle comes down, you're out. There's no replay, no
rethink, no reverse (assuming no reincarnation). But a
handful of people have arranged to put their remains
into biostasis hoping that science may one day be able
to restore a cryogenically preserved body to life.
Probably the most famous human freezer pop is
baseball's Ted Williams.
This week, The New York Daily News quoted a former executive at Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryogenics company, as saying the severed head of Ted Wiliams had been stored on an empty tuna can to keep it from being stuck inside its case. The ex-exec (embittered ex-exec, we have to guess) also says he saw the Splended Splinter's head getting accidentally whacked with a monkey wrench as a "technician" attempted to dislodge it from its perch. With cryogenics costing a minimum of $150k, we have a recommendation: Spend 79 cents on a can of StarKist, make yourself a nice sandwich, and save the empty can for your ashes.
This week, The New York Daily News quoted a former executive at Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryogenics company, as saying the severed head of Ted Wiliams had been stored on an empty tuna can to keep it from being stuck inside its case. The ex-exec (embittered ex-exec, we have to guess) also says he saw the Splended Splinter's head getting accidentally whacked with a monkey wrench as a "technician" attempted to dislodge it from its perch. With cryogenics costing a minimum of $150k, we have a recommendation: Spend 79 cents on a can of StarKist, make yourself a nice sandwich, and save the empty can for your ashes.
Sleep Tight, Sweetie
September 30, 2009
When
This
Will Kill You first
hit bookstore shelves this summer, we got a lot of
comments back from doctors, morticians and various
lovers of the dark side. Several of these twisted
individuals (all good!) have suggested lethal subjects
for our next edition's table of contents. They've asked
why, among our list of snakes, spiders, household
cleaners and car crashes, did we not include another
common threat: spouses.
We laughed at first but then we reviewed the numbers. Nearly a third of all female murder victims are killed by a spouse, ex-spouse, or boyfriend. Though strangers strike fear, less than 9% of all female homicide victims are offed by someone they didn't know. By contrast, only 5% of male murder victims die in what the Department of Justice calls an "intimate homicide." Then again, as men, we have to live with ourselves.
Stay tuned for more. Meantime, be nice to your one-and-only.
We laughed at first but then we reviewed the numbers. Nearly a third of all female murder victims are killed by a spouse, ex-spouse, or boyfriend. Though strangers strike fear, less than 9% of all female homicide victims are offed by someone they didn't know. By contrast, only 5% of male murder victims die in what the Department of Justice calls an "intimate homicide." Then again, as men, we have to live with ourselves.
Stay tuned for more. Meantime, be nice to your one-and-only.
Water, Water, Everywhere
September 23, 2009
They
say our vengeful and all-seeing god will destroy the
world by fire next time around, having already given
water a go back in Noah's day. But He still seems to be
getting a lot of mileage out of floods. This week,
eight people died in the 72 hours of rain that fell
relentlessly in Atlanta, GA, and surrounding counties.
Cars and mobile homes have been swept into overflowing
creeks and streams. They're finding bodies in corn
fields. And as we know all too well from Katrina's
visit, the trouble doesn't stop when the rain does.
Stay dry, southern brothers.
Free to Be
September 11, 2009
This
marks the eighth anniversary of the attacks on
9/11/2001, a day as difficult to remember as it is to
forget. If you live anywhere near NYC you can join any
of the walks, vigils, name-readings, floating-lantern
ceremonies or concerts planned
as memorials of
the day and the lives lost. And if you lived nowhere
near New York or D.C. on September 11, you can just
stay home and thank your lucky stars.
Hope You Guess My Name
September 02, 2009
Forty
years after founding Rolling Stones guitarist Brian
Jones was found dead at the bottom of his swimming
pool, police will be re-examing his death. This time,
though, it will be as a murder rather than a
"misadventure" involving drugs and alcohol. Jones
became something of a whipping boy to Mick and Keef,
and was tossed out of the band by them just prior to
his death. Each of the Glimmer Twins has at one time or
another been fingered for the murder by imaginative
theorists, and those who thought that the Stones duo
were peeved that Jones got sole songwriting credit for
their bizarre Rice
Krispies commercial.
Any new investigation will likely focus on a builder named Frank Thorogood who'd been at odds with Jones and supposedly made a deathbed confession to the murder . . . before he himself painted it black in 1993.
If the investigation goes far enough, they may need to exhume Jones' body, which was buried in a casket reportedly purchased by Bob Dylan and buried 12 feet down to discourage grave-robbing fans. Let the good times rock and roll over.
Any new investigation will likely focus on a builder named Frank Thorogood who'd been at odds with Jones and supposedly made a deathbed confession to the murder . . . before he himself painted it black in 1993.
If the investigation goes far enough, they may need to exhume Jones' body, which was buried in a casket reportedly purchased by Bob Dylan and buried 12 feet down to discourage grave-robbing fans. Let the good times rock and roll over.
Not So Endless Summer
August 27, 2009
As
the heatwave here in the Northeast finally breaks, we
at TWKY are starting to feel lucky we lived through it.
After all, the CDC warns that nearly 700 people die
every year of heat-related causes. Hyperthermia, the
red-faced cousin of hypothomia, is a medical emergency
when the body runs over 105 degrees Fahrenheit, which
handily bakes the brain like a spongecake. Anybody for
whipped cream?
If you do choose to be active in the heat, you may be happy to learn that summertime sports cause far fewer pseudo-athlete casualties than winter sports do. Snowboarding accounts for more injuries than the summertime sports of hiking, biking, swimming, boating, fishing, camping and water-skiing combined. But if the summer does wind up your final season, at least you'll be out of the heat. Remember, it's always cool at the morgue.
If you do choose to be active in the heat, you may be happy to learn that summertime sports cause far fewer pseudo-athlete casualties than winter sports do. Snowboarding accounts for more injuries than the summertime sports of hiking, biking, swimming, boating, fishing, camping and water-skiing combined. But if the summer does wind up your final season, at least you'll be out of the heat. Remember, it's always cool at the morgue.