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[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Props to Nicolas Cage for just rolling with it.

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/06/nicolas-cage-wears-shirt-with-his-face-on-it-to-guns-n-roses-concert

http://Hollywood actor/eccentric Texas oil tycoon from outer space Nicolas Cage went to a Guns N' Roses concert in Las Vegas on Saturday, and Guns N' Roses posted possibly the greatest photo ever taken of Reddit's "One True God" to its official Instagram account today.

Let's quickly run down what we're working with here.

A shirt with Nicolas Cage's face on it
The camera hat from The Simpsons
That cane
Those leather pants (and chaps!)
Mirrored sunglasses indoors
A goblet (possibly filled with the magical blood of a virgin)
Andrew Dice Clay
The perfect amount of wooden bead necklaces

[Reginald Ret]

There's something hilarious about wearing a shirt with your own face on it to a rockshow.

[minuspace]

It's just the over-determination of it all that's brilliant

[Junkenstein]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27829958

Things not really being discussed - The ongoing dodgy relationship between all UK political parties and the Murdoch media.

Things not being discussed at all - Why the Murdoch media empire is still even a thing after numerous colossal fuckups.

[Junkenstein]

Stories where you don't need to even read them # 33442/J:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rob-ford-the-musical-holds-open-casting-on-monday-1.2676236

"Falstaff from Shakespeare," McCaig said in a telephone interview. "He's very Shakespearean or operatic. He's our modern tragic hero — he rode in on his white horse, stallion, to save his village and then through his own weaknesses fell hard."

McCaig will be looking to fill the shoes of such a character on Monday when he and his collaborators hold an open casting call for "Rob Ford The Musical: The Birth of a Ford Nation" at Toronto's Second City Training Centre. The show is set to run at Toronto's Factory Theatre from Sept. 16 to Sept. 28, although McCaig said there's a possibility of extending it.

If they wait a few weeks, they can probably get Ford to play himself in this.

I'm guessing he would for a bowl of crack.

[Junkenstein]

Well. This is pretty fucked up, even by my standards:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/04/children-galway-mass-graves-ireland-catholic-church

The bodies of 796 children, between the ages of two days and nine years old, are believed to have been buried in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway. They died between 1925 and 1961 in a mother and baby home under the care of the Bon Secours nuns.

Locals have known about the grave since 1975, when two little boys, playing, broke apart the concrete slab covering it and discovered a tomb filled with small skeletons. A parish priest said prayers at the site, and it was sealed once more, the number of bodies below unknown, their names forgotten.

The Tuam historian Catherine Corless discovered the extent of the mass grave when she requested records of children's deaths in the home. The registrar in Galway gave her almost 800. Shocked, she checked 100 of these against graveyard burials, and found only one little boy who had been returned to a family plot. The vast majority of the children's remains, it seemed, were in the septic tank. Corless and a committee have been working tirelessly to raise money for a memorial that includes a plaque bearing each child's name.

No glib comment, just a big sack of fucking awful.

[P3nT4gR4m]

The weird part for me is that it was catholic nuns. Given that, y'know, religious people tend to be pretty superstitious about death and burial and all that shit. Do septic tanks count as holy ground? Genuine question - I have no idea how these peoples minds work.

[Junkenstein]

Well, you're dealing with babies that are "illegitimate" in many cases. Bastards got notoriously terrible treatment so the neglect being pushed to this level, while shocking, is hardly unexpected.

You're dealing with the kind of mentality that assumes the pain of birth is justified because of sins committed. When you start with that outlook, it's hardly a surprise that many kids met a bad end.

What scares the shit out of me here is the chances of this being an institutional problem being rather high. Mortality rates in these homes were high even for the era so the chances of there being many more mass graves just like this one is significant.


Disclaimer - I've met Nuns on two occasions and both times been stunned that they refer to their behaviour as "Christian". I'm sure this isn't the case for all nuns, but personal experience does not make me particularly willing to give the benefit of the doubt. If I sound somewhat biased, it's probably because I am.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Yeah, well you know my opinion on this brand (and competing brands) of irrational belief structure. Nuns would be the sorta epitome of the disconnect from reality, giving their whole life over to the thing, "marrying" some ancient pre-historical figure who may or may not have existed but, to the best of our scientific understanding, almost certainly isn't still alive. My respect drops to minus figures around here.

[minuspace]

Then, on the other hand, scientific understanding turns out to be fundamentally grounded in theory.

[P3nT4gR4m]

In order to function in this existence, you have to pick a system. I choose science as the best of a bad bunch. By the kind of margin you get when you compare olympic athletes with the morbidly obese for ability to run marathons.

[minuspace]

I feel you on that.  It's just that science also needs to know it's place.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I think it tries to. It's not science that's at fault when it fails, it's human beings being insufficiently rigorous. 

[minuspace]

Rigor:  That's what life is for

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Stories where you don't need to even read them # 33442/J:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rob-ford-the-musical-holds-open-casting-on-monday-1.2676236

"Falstaff from Shakespeare," McCaig said in a telephone interview. "He's very Shakespearean or operatic. He's our modern tragic hero — he rode in on his white horse, stallion, to save his village and then through his own weaknesses fell hard."

McCaig will be looking to fill the shoes of such a character on Monday when he and his collaborators hold an open casting call for "Rob Ford The Musical: The Birth of a Ford Nation" at Toronto's Second City Training Centre. The show is set to run at Toronto's Factory Theatre from Sept. 16 to Sept. 28, although McCaig said there's a possibility of extending it.

If they wait a few weeks, they can probably get Ford to play himself in this.

I'm guessing he would for a bowl of crack.

Wow.