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David Gonterman is "the Ed Wood of internet cartooning", according to some. He is a frustrated but relentless artist whose "passion far exceeds his aptitude", and who seems destined for mediocrity and ridicule everywhere but in the panels of his own comics, where he treads the earth like a living god -- a misogynistic, racist, and ultimately unintelligible god, yes, but man, he sure can dance.
posted by Hildago at 10:26 PM PST - 10 comments

Are you a night person? Like blood? Member of the European nobility? If so, you might be interested in becoming the next count Dracula. Yes, it seems that after vampire cloning didn't pan out, the Count decided to pick an heir. Seem weird? It's okay, there's precedent.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 10:15 PM PST - 7 comments

Miniature cross stitched album covers.
posted by riffola at 9:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Meanwhile in Small town news, the city of Independence, Missouri is holding a battle on adding fluoride to the water. Don't say you didn't expect odd quotes from people: "We have the best water in the area as far as solids and softness go, I myself have been drinking this water for over 30 years, and I have every tooth in my mouth that God gave me, except the four the Marine Corps took away from me years ago.", I, myself, trust one authority on this, Jack D. Ripper. ;)

So... Fluoride: good, bad or neither?
posted by RobbieFal at 8:25 PM PST - 40 comments

Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion "This is a reproduction of the award-winning Dark Alliance website, which first appeared Aug. 18, 1996, as part of a series I wrote for the San Jose Mercury News. This innovative website was seen by millions worldwide and acclaimed as the first Internet-based expose in journalism history. In the wake of a furious controversy, the site vanished from the Web in 1998. It has been reproduced here for historical purposes and is in no way affiliated with the San Jose Mercury News. -- Gary Webb" (via disinfo)
posted by kliuless at 7:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Molly Ivins wraps it up nicely and ties a bow on top. When Dick Cheney was CEO of the oilfield supply firm Halliburton, the company did $23.8 million in business with Saddam Hussein, the evildoer "prepared to share his weapons of mass destruction with terrorists."
posted by pejamo at 6:51 PM PST - 22 comments

Couch potato lifestyle is worse for your health than smoking Poor diet and lack of exercise cause more illness than smoking, new figures show. The lifestyle of couch potatoes has overtaken smoking as the major cause of ill-health in EU countries for the first time, the World Health Organisation says. Great, now reading Metafilter is bad for me.
posted by Coop at 6:38 PM PST - 12 comments

Chinese checkmate ? "Those who love to quote Sun Tzu might consider his nationality', says James Webb, as he offers still more cogent reasons why a 30 year "MacArthurian regency in Baghdad" is probably not in America's national interest. Why are the military men the ones who have to keep pointing out the unwisdom of an invasion of Iraq? Quoth Secretary Webb: "The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years."
posted by rdone at 6:00 PM PST - 18 comments

Showbiz Pizza Place. (aka. Chuck E. Cheese) is every American child's right of passage. I, personally, am still haunted by nightmares of the animatronic terror that was The Rockafire Explosion. I can still hear their soulless robotic chanting. No mention however in the employee handbook about having to clean the 'accidents' in the ball-pit. (I only did it once after a large soda.)
posted by Stan Chin at 5:09 PM PST - 25 comments

Conservation Communities are a recent development in subdivision design. Rather than dividing the land up into equal portions, houses are clustered together and the residents share a common green space. Though they're becoming more common, there is only one that has its own record label.
posted by ewagoner at 5:05 PM PST - 10 comments

Christie Blatchford 's 9/11 road trip: From Montana to New York on a first anniversary odyssey "to audit America."
posted by timeistight at 4:15 PM PST - 12 comments

Constructive Debate on World Poverty ? It's depressing that certain groups seem to think that the only way to get their message across is to jeer and heckle Colin Powell at the World Summit.
posted by daveg at 2:37 PM PST - 40 comments

Sunday, Bloody Sunday... On the night of 30 January 1972, Murray Sayle was sent by the Sunday Times to Londonderry to report on the fatal shooting of 14 unarmed civil rights marchers by British Army Paratroopers. The article he wrote diverged from the official line; it was never printed. Twenty-six years later, his lost copy was unearthed by the new Inquiry. In what follows, he returns to Derry to give evidence. His original article is reproduced in full, along with a map marking the locations of the dead and wounded, and a memo Sayle wrote to the editor of the Sunday Times when the article failed to appear.
posted by dejah420 at 1:26 PM PST - 17 comments

Confucius is making a comeback at the Shengtao Experimental School north of Beijing, where the children of China's elite are once again studying the teachings of Confucius. It will be interesting to see what impact studying the classics has on the next generation of China's leaders.
posted by homunculus at 1:12 PM PST - 8 comments

They're athletes not rocket scientists:

Reporter: "President Bush has been holding town meetings across the country about Title IX. He's considering changing this important legislation that's helped women get involved in sports. If you could say something to President Bush, what would you say?"

Capriati: "I have no idea what Title IX is. Sorry."

Single-mindedness is quickly becoming a pre-requisite for reaching elite status in almost any pursuit or occupation. Are we forsaking ourselves and our children by continuing to reward such single-mindedness with fame and fortune?
posted by ajr at 1:00 PM PST - 37 comments

John Otway is a true maverick of the British music industry and is a legend in some sad quarters. His last hit was 25 years ago and now that he is coming up to 50 his fans have promised him another hit for his birthday. I see this as a fight for authenticity and against bubblegum. John must have that hit. It's a miracle he has survived, he deserves it.
posted by Fat Buddha at 12:56 PM PST - 9 comments

As if verbal and physical threats in the schoolyard aren't enough. Give a bully a mobile phone and voila, another way of torturing another kid. But which is worse? Being picked on to your face or being bombarded with nasty text messages? It seems that kids have a pretty rough go of it nowadays. It makes me glad I'm almost a grown up.
posted by quietfish at 12:09 PM PST - 33 comments

''Am I proud to have served my country? Hardly. On September 11, I will awaken at dawn. I will retrieve all my variously colored medals from their little box in my dresser drawer. I'll put my robe on, go into my daughter's room and tell her I love her. I will unlock the deadbolt (my homeland security), and proceed out the front door, remove the lid to the trashcan, and throw my medals in the garbage, where they belong." (via yellowtimes.org)

Napoleon once said he could make men fight and die for brass, and bits of colored ribbon. There will be no more fitting memorial for September 11 than destroying the symbols of a way that contributed so mightily to the terrible events of that day....an American Waterloo.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:02 PM PST - 87 comments

The writing isn't the only great thing about Roald Dahl's books. There's also his fantastic illustrator, the perfectly-matched Quentin Blake. He's best known for illustrating such Dahl books as Matilda, The BFG, and The Witches. A comprehensive bibliography can be found here, his books in print can be ordered here, and, if you can afford it, buy some prints.
posted by interrobang at 11:54 AM PST - 30 comments

No laptops??? How am I going to watch my DVDs? Or, for that matter, get my ego stroked by people ogling my TiBook?
posted by fpatrick at 11:02 AM PST - 35 comments

Elephants are people, too. A new book by Steven M. Wise, Drawing the Line, marshalls the latest research on animal cognition in arguing for legal rights for some animals, especially gorillas, chimps, elephants, and gray parrots. The author's previous book, Rattling the Cage, forcused on primates, as many researchers and animal rights activists do. After all, we share at least 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. Other researchers are expanding our knowledge of animal cognition in the octopus, dolphins, even dogs. See also: Next of Kin and When Elephants Weep.
posted by acridrabbit at 10:47 AM PST - 40 comments

"So we just created everything out of nothing. No knowledge of how it's done or anything." And with that, Steve Wozniak invented the future.
posted by joemaller at 9:26 AM PST - 7 comments

French film on September 11 to debut in Toronto on, well, Sept. 11. -- I came across this link in the Guardian describing a series of 11 short films strung together by a French filmmaker. What doesn't bother me is that the film is labeled as "Anti-U.S." People have their own opinions and that's just fine. What DOES bother me is the debut of this film at the Toronto Film Festival is slated for Sept. 11 2002. Has anyone seen this film? Should the festival organizers been more respectful of the deceased and debuted the film on another date? Does it matter that there were more nationalities than just American that lost citizens that day? Please be respectful. I'm trying to open a dialogue on the film and it's contents, not a flamewar on US Foreign policy.
posted by absquatulate at 9:18 AM PST - 47 comments

It's official, Napster is dead as the company folds, reading to go Chapter 7. On the upside, this is possibly the best goodbye dotcom message ever.
posted by mathowie at 9:14 AM PST - 40 comments

Girl to get tracker implant to ease parents' fears... The parents of an 11-year-old British girl are having her fitted with a microchip so that her movements can be traced if she is abducted. The doctor involved believes we "should consider implants for all children"
posted by Irontom at 9:09 AM PST - 54 comments

Recommendations from a Canadian Special Senate Committee that cannabis should be from here on in legal and of restricted use. Legal pot in Canada, about time.
posted by Leonard at 9:06 AM PST - 24 comments

The Politics of Flu Vaccination. When the next deadly Flu pandemic sweeps the world, will you be able to get a vaccination? Are you an infant, elderly, or a nuclear power plant worker? Due to economics, the yearly flu vaccinations are unreliable.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:02 AM PST - 17 comments

There's Something About Mary. Miracles fascinate me, especially stories of apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Fatima, Lourdes, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Medjugorje--the list is extensive and ever-growing. Skeptics scoff, agnostics ponder and various scientific theories are propounded.
posted by y2karl at 7:53 AM PST - 19 comments

Do Judge A Magazine By Its Cover: I'm ashamed to say I only recognized one name (Covarrubias) from the list of illustrators featured in Condé Nast's sparkling collection of cover art, dating from the 1910s to the 1950s. It's also searchable by magazine. So now I count myself a fan of Rene Bouet-Willaumez, A.H. Fish, Henry Stahlhut, Carl Erickson and a few others too. All in all, it's good, clean fun - even though the site's commercial and one's fingers often ache to open the damn things and actually read the bastards!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:17 AM PST - 6 comments

Britney turned on by lesbian porn. Seems pop princess Britney Spears has been hanging recently with adult film star Jenna Jameson. Reportedly there is "an attraction between them," and Jenna would love to perform with Britney in a movie. I can't make this stuff up.
posted by johnnyace at 2:23 AM PST - 43 comments

"A format designed for Unabombers." Andrew Sullivan blasts Weblogs (odd, ain't it?) in a conversation with Kurt Anderson at Slate. Both Sullivan and Anderson rip on our own Rebecca Blood. I find it especially ironic that Sullivan refers to blogs' "supercilious tone." He also can't stand the idea that drives Metafilter, apparently: "Worse, [Blood] can write earnestly about a Weblog 'community.' Aaagghh. " *more inside*
posted by Vidiot at 12:42 AM PST - 49 comments

Bush By The Numbers... "Bush has spent a whopping total of 250 days of his presidency at Camp David (123 days), Kennebunkport (12) and his Texas ranch (115). That means Bush has spent 42 percent of his term so far at one of his three leisure destinations." More fun numbers about "43" in the story...
posted by owillis at 12:40 AM PST - 48 comments