“An Indonesian girl swept away in the 2004 tsunami has been reunited with her parents seven years on, the family say.
Meri Yulanda, also known as Wati, turned up at a cafe in Meulaboh, Aceh, earlier this week, looking for her parents.
She says she was found by a widow after the disaster and forced to work as a beggar, being freed only last week.”
You may have heard about this. If so, well, there’s been a very big update as of yesterday.
Back story: On December 10, comedian Louis CK put a video of himself performing at the Beacon Theater in New York City up for sale on a website made just for purpose. It offered the video for $5. You could pay through PayPal – even if you didn’t have a PayPal account – and download the video right away. And:
Comic book writer Grant Morrison said it best: “[Every bat-suit is] completely different” – sometimes insanely different – “but they’re all instantly recognizable as [the-bat-suit].”
This is one of the most mindblowing stories we have ever seen. Let’s look at that headline again:
That’s impossible.
We just noticed that someone named “Kim Kardashian” is in the news – again – and we just wanted to say a few things about this, so here goes:
Okay, we’ve done A-D, now here’s E.
• E-Books
OMG! What a coincidence! You can gift Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader e-books right now over at Amazon! How weird! That’s totally coinci-mental!
Okay, it wasn’t a coincidence, we made that up as a clever way to get into this post. Not really that clever, though, huh? We’re sorry.
Where were we? Oh yeah. All you need is the giftee’s email address. It’s really easy.
And you don’t need to own a Kindle—and whoever you’re gifting doesn’t need a Kindle either, as Amazon has FREE apps that allow you to read books on other devices, like computers, and pads, and phones.
There are nine UJBR’s currently available as e-books. Here are the links, straight to Amazon:
A rumor zipped tsunami-like around the internets today that rock superstar Jon Bon Jovi had died.
We can only think that someone believed that “Jon Bon Jovi” was actually an alter-ego of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, and due to “Dear Leader’s” death yesterday, well, one thing followed another…
This is rare. You’ve probably heard, like we have, dozens of times, how scientists have proven that acupuncture is a bunch of hokum. (And heard dozens more times from friends, aunts, wandering musicians, etc., that “No, it really works! I quit smoking, became psychic, and had my piles cured—all from acupuncture!”)
Well, score one for Team B above, as for one of the first times we’re ever seen, a medical research team has just recently found that acupuncture does something quite good:
Acupuncture significantly reduces levels of a protein in rats linked to chronic stress, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have found. They say their animal study may help explain the sense of well-being that many people receive from this ancient Chinese therapy.
Now, that’s not a complete vidication for acupuncture supporters, of course, but it is something.
And how they conducted he experiment is pretty cool, too:
It just seemed appropriate.
I SPY…AT THE MOVIES
More fun in-jokes and cameos from the silver screen.
CHARLIE’S ANGELS (2000)
I Spy…E.T.’s living room
Where to Find It: Wearing nothing but a plastic blow-up swimming-pool toy, Dylan (Drew Barrymore) bursts into a house where two boys are playing a video game. It’s the same house in Tujunga, California, that was used for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the film that launched Barrymore’s career in 1982. (To hammer the point home, the kids are eating Reese’s Pieces and there’s an E.T. poster on the wall.)
That’s just one tiny excerpt from the brand new Uncle John’s 24-KARAT GOLD Bathroom Reader.
If you put just the word “no” into the Great Google Machine (with a space after it), it will prompt you to fill in “No Fear Shakespeare.” (This place, apparently.)
We find this odd. And funny. And if only we could go back in time and tell Shakespeare about his place on Google…
This has been “Your Saturday Google Moment.”
FYI, sports fans: There could be a big story concerning the National Football League breaking pretty soon:
Chicago Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd was locked up in federal custody Thursday as his stunned teammates learned he had been charged with trying to set up a drug-dealing network following his arrest with more than a pound of cocaine.
A POUND of cocaine. That’s not your “personal-use” amount of cocaine, as the story implies with the “network” comment. And the dude just signed a three-year contract worth $5.15 million! Why on earth…?! Wow.
But for the REALLY big ingredient in this story we have to go to another site:
Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd, who was arrested Wednesday on federal drug charges, was a top drug dealer in Chicago and police have a list of NFL players who were supplied drugs by the receiver, a law enforcement source told 670 The Score.
Oh. Dear. This is really, really ungood for the NFL.
This story is about something else – a robbery? The New York Mets? Lady Gaga? – we can’t remember. We read this part and forgot everything else:
Members of an armed gang are on trial after they’ve been charged with stealing millions from the Dubai royal family. The £2million heist ($3,099,000) was the royal family’s “holiday spending money” set aside for its visit to London on June 24.
Because we live to serve you the latest and greatest (and, well, let’s face it, some of the most awful) news, history, wisdom, nonsense, and, as in times like these—still steaming piles of fresh gossip—we point you to the Twitter feed of comedy legend John Cleese, who twittered, just minutes ago (it’s around 10 AM on the 14th day of December, 2011), of his Monty Python partner, Eric Idle:
Oh dear. Somebody’s a Mr. Crabby Pants this morning.
He followed that up minutes later with:
Over the past few weeks we’re published several excerpts from our very latest annual “Big John” publication, Uncle John’s 24-KARAT GOLD Bathroom Reader, a 544-page behemoth of mind-widening wonder. We brought you:
• The Playboy Playmate Edonomic Indicator
• and Obscure Fads of the 1960s: Piano Wrecking
Just to name a few.
Here’s one more. We think, we hope, you will like it.
HOW TO EAVESDROP ON THE ASTRONAUTS
The International Space Station is one of the wonders of our age, as large as a
football field and the third-brightest object in the sky after the sun and the
moon. Few of us will ever get to visit it, but you can listen in when
it’s passing overhead. It’s easier than you think.
UPDATE, 8 OCTOBER 2012: It has just been brought to our attention that this story is a hoax. Ugh.
An April 2012 ABCNews story on fake handicaps in sports for the disabled contains these paragraphs:
The Dutch handbiker Monique van der Vorst had won two silver medals in the 2008 Paralympics. But after that she suddenly experienced a seemingly miraculous recovery. In the summer of 2010, she claimed that she had regained sensation in her legs after 13 years in a wheelchair. Since then, she said, she could stand up, walk and even ride a racing bike again.
Now Van der Vorst has had to admit that she was also able to stand and walk during her career as a paraplegic handbiker. Former competitors and neighbors had reported often seeing the athlete outside of her wheelchair — taking a shower, or even dancing. Van der Vorst was a sports celebrity in the Netherlands, and now everyone is outraged. The newspapers are calling it a “scam” and a “lie.”
Update over.
*****
And in what is without question a candidate for the most amazing story of the year, last year, next year, and possibly every other year ever – she’s now in training to go to the regular old Olympics in 2016. Because just coming un-paralyzed? Boring!
Your instructions for watching this video, from BRI article and art veteran Ol’ Jay: The goat’s nostrils are actually the eyes of an evil alien that has implanted itself on front of the goat’s face. That is all.
