September 5, 2002
EMINEM: JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR?
If, like me, you've never paid much
attention to the childish rantings of Eminem, I suggest you head
directly to NarcoNews.com, which has awarded Eminem its First Annual
Narco News Award for Journalist of the Year. Confused? I was too,
until I read an utterly brilliant essay by Narco News editor Al
Giordano, in which he holds up The Eminem Show as the purest
distillation of the voices of America's voiceless in response to the
events of last Sept. 11, in direct opposition to "the politicians,
pundits and journalists who are no more than TeeVee talking heads and
house eunuchs of the mass media - [who] will be speaking, if for
anyone, only for the minority that they have always vied to speak for;
the minority that buys the ads and the politicians." Giordano writes
"[this] rapper has offered better, more accurate, and more detailed
journalism on the State of the Union post 9/11 than those
traditionally thought of as journalists," and goes on to explain in
great detail how Eminem is one of the only public figures brave enough
to take on a censorship battle which others refuse to touch, and to
use his freedom of speech to tell it how it really is for the vast
majority of young Americans. After that essay whets your appetite,
head over to GuerrillaNews.com, where you can view their collaboration
with Eminem on the new video White America, which kicks the
corporate/military/fat-white-hypocrite censors squarely in the nuts.
Finally...
<STRANGE REUNIONS
In truly bizarre style, a woman in England has been
reunited with a ring she lost 27 years ago. The strangest aspect of
this story is that the ring had inexplicably turned up inside an
apple. 12-year-old Jamie-Louisa Arnold found the ring when she bit
into an apple. The event attracted the attention of a local newspaper
which published a picture of the girl with the ring. A woman named
Rosalind Pike saw the photo and immediately recognized the ring as the
one she had lost at a swimming pool when she was a child. "I knew it
was mine because it had the same markings inside the band. It's an
unusual design. My mum and dad bought me that ring when I was very
young and I treasured it...to see it inside an apple was incredibly
spooky." How the ring ended up inside the apple is still a mystery.
One gardening expert says it's possible that a fruit picker may have
dropped it in a tree, and then a piece of fruit might have formed
around a ring, but even he doubts that explanation. (thesun.co.uk.com)
THE PILLSBURY DOUGH BOY IN SPACE WILL SAVE THE EARTH!
The latest idea
proposed to shield the Earth from collisions with incoming asteroids
sounds like it was thought of by a college kid strung out on to much
glue, then stolen by a guy with a doctorate. Yes, professor Hermann
Burchard of Oklahoma State University suggest that a giant air bag
could block an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. His proposal
would see the creation of a giant air pillow, about a few kilometers
wide, inflated in space and steered by a spacecraft, and used to
softly push the rock into another direction. Okaaay... (New Scientist)
GUILTY OF EXTREME STUPIDITY
A computer software consultant in San
Antonio tried to invoice the state of Texas $100 per hour for
performing jury duty. In response to a summons to be a juror for a
seven week trial, David Williamson sent the court an invoice for
$16,000 for "court-ordered professional services." The court sent back
a fax offering to hold him in contempt of court and put him in jail if
he didn't show up for jury duty just like everybody else. And so he
did. (canoe.ca)
LOVE HURTS
A 24-year-old woman in Mexico stabbed her boyfriend last
week because he kept calling out another girl's name while they were
having sex. She says that she repeatedly warned him to stop saying
"Veronica" while they were in the sack. Finally, she snapped: "When he
came out of the bath I grabbed a knife I found in his trousers and
asked him to keep his eyes closed in order to fulfill one of my sexual
fantasies." Then she stabbed him in the neck.
(online.ie)
THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER MONKEYS BEFORE ME
It's interesting how truth
is all in the eye of the beholder. I found two entirely different
versions of the same news story last week, about a monkey in Andhra
Pradesh, India. The story from the Indian source, himtimes.com, claims
that a monkey wandered into a temple and has been sitting atop the
statue of God Hanuman for the past twenty-two days, refusing to leave.
Priests and devotees tried to chase the monkey away, even beating it
with a stick and throwing stones at it, but the monkey refused to
budge, and has refused to eat food since the episode began. After five
days of the standoff, priests at the temple declared that this monkey
is the reincarnation of the God Hanuman. Since the declaration,
thousands of people have thronged to the temple to pay worship (and
donations) to the Monkey God. The BBC version of this story is quite
different. It claims that animal rights activists are trying to free
the monkey which has been confined to the temple for the last month. A
spokesperson from the animal rights group alleges that the monkey is
being held against its will and is being used to "exploit religious
sentiments and make money." The vet who examined the monkey says he is
in good health and seems unwilling to leave the temple. (A few days
after these stories appeared, a third, final installment of this tale
broke. The monkey died last Saturday, of exhaustion and starvation,
and was cremated at a service attended by 4000 worshippers.)
Go to:
Copyright 2002 by Andreas Ohrt
Email:aohrt@hotmail.com
Website:www.curioustimes.com
