CURIOUS TIMES: Trippy News from a Dysfunctional Planet

NEVER FEED A ZOMBIE, THEY’LL ONLY COME BACK AGAIN AND AGAIN

The helpful folks over at Zombiephiles.com have scoured the most popular zombie movies of all time and compiled this helpful list of the 10 worst things to do during a zombia outbreak. Your chances of survival will greatly increase by following these simple rules: don’t set zombies on fire; don’t get sentimental; don’t forget to shut the door behind you; don’t keep zombies in the basement (even if they are your zombie family); don’t try to reunite with friends or family over long distances; don’t go down (zombies can go down too); don’t broadcast your presence; don’t stand in front of the window; don’t get too creative with zombie defense. And the number one worst thing to do is be an asshole. According to the stats, the asshole character in zombie movies only stands a 4.32 percent chance of surviving.

KILL ALL EXTREMISTS
If $25 million wasn’t enough cash to get you off the couch and out into the mountains of Pakistan in order to hunt down Osama bin Laden, the U.S. Senate has voted to double the reward for his capture to a sweet $50 million. So dust off your Boba Fett costume, max out your credit cards for some cool Terminator-esque weapons and start putting your video game shooting skills to some good use. (P.S. Don’t forget to send me 10 percent for finding you this gig.) (BBC)

IT’S ENTIRELY POSSIBLE THAT YOU’RE WORTH MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE
Unfortunately, while Osama’s dead body is worth $50 mil, mine is only worth about $4000. Or so says the Cadaver Calculator at Mingle2.com which calculates how much your corpse might be worth to the medical research industry. Go punch in your stats and see how much you’re really worth. Then fantasize about killing yourself in order to collect the cash, then coming back to life and going on vacation to celebrate your good fortune.

DON’T LET THEM GET NEAR YOUR NUTS
According to a website which appears to deal in real news comes a story that can’t possibly be true: Ynetnews.com reports that the Iranian government has arrested 14 squirrels which they claim are operating as spies for the west. Iran’s state news agency supposedly reported that "the squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services."

DUDE, WHERE’S MY PENIS?
A bad day for a young Thai man who got into a fight with his wife turned into a rough night when she woke him up by chopping off his penis. The situation then plummeted from terrible to horrific when the man forgot to bring along the dismembered member in his rush to the nearest hospital. By the time a nurse made it all the way to the man’s home and back to the hospital, too many of the cells in his once-useful penis had died, killing all hopes of successful reattachment surgery. (Sapa-DPA)

BANGKOK, SLICEKOK, FLUSHKOK DOWN THE TOILET
I’m sure you don’t want to hear any more about hacked-off penises, but then you’re reading the wrong column. According to a Bangkok surgeon who now specializes in penis reattachment surgery, Thailand leads the world in this most horrible crime against man. Dr. Surasak Muangsombot performed his first penis reattachment surgery in 1978 and has discovered that penis hacking is a notoriously Thai form of violence. While Australia has witnessed just one case in the past 25 years, and only two cases in the ultra-violent U.S.A., this single Thai surgeon has operated on 33 cases and many more have been reported. “Some years there are three or five and then it goes quiet. It goes in and out of fashion but sometimes its like an epidemic,” says Muangsombot. “They boil them, feed them to ducks, flush them down the toilet, bury them and have even tied them to hot air balloons and let them float away.” The doctor advises that Thai men who have mistresses should always keep a thermos full of ice nearby in case they ever need to bring their little friend to a hospital in an emergency. (Iol.co.za)

PROPAGANDON’T
This week’s full supply of irony comes out of China, where a British man has been ordered to stop publishing a newsletter which for years has been trying to convince foreigners that China’s government is not as repressive as the Western media portrays. Editor Nick Young now faces deportation and a ban from visiting China for five years, even though his publication consistently put a positive spin on China’s relationship with the media. (Reuters)

FREAK OUT AND FEAR YOUR NEIGHBORS
It’s good to see that governments weren’t always obsessed with intense fear-mongering and Orwellian terror alerts in order to keep everyone controlled with fear. During World War II, when the British were being carpet-bombied by the Nazis, the government put up posters in the streets which said simply “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Now that’s a message worthy of a Pentagon press conference. Check out the story behind the original poster (and now available as a t-shirt) at KeepCalmAndCarryOn.com.

I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE WEEK
People who eat with one other person consume 35% more food than if they eat alone, 75% more if they are in a group of four, and 96% more if they are in a group of seven or more.