Teen "vampire" wannabe inspired by TWILIGHT to bite classmates

A 13-year old middle-school student in Des Moines, Iowa apparently got a bit too carried away with the Twilight books. He was remanded to juvenile corrections after trying to bite and suck the blood out of 11 fellow students.

Twilight is the first book in a series written by Stephenie Meyer about a clan of "vampires". No, I haven't read the books. But these alleged nosferatu aren't afraid of sunlight, aren't repelled by garlic, aren't stopped by running water and aren't turned away by crucifixes. Those aren't vampires: they are, at most, people with severe eating disorders. Anyhoo the books are wildly popular (but y'all know that already right?) and Twilight just became a hit movie.

And to think that some people say I go too far with Star Wars :-P

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Awesome GUITAR HERO METALLICA commercial!

Good friend Doug Smith told me to yank my peepers toward this excellent ad for Guitar Hero Metallica featuring not only the band itself but also basketball coaching legends Bobby Knight, Mike Krzyzewski, Rick Pitino and Roy Williams...

There's another one at coaches.guitarhero.com that shows the band tying the coaches up to a tree and then destroying the house.

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Government now warning us about depression from economy

What the hell has become of America over the past few days?

From Drudge Report...

NANNY STATE: GOVERNMENT WEBSITE TO WARN OF SADNESS/CRYING OVER ECONOMY

Mon Mar 30 2009 18:43:56 ET

The U.S. government is set to offer an online emotional rescue kit!

"Getting Through Tough Economic Times" will launch Tuesday with a media push across all platforms. The site is meant to help people identify health concerns related to financial worries.

The feds will warn of depression, suicidal thinking and other serious mental illnesses. It will raise warning flags for: Persistent sadness/crying; Excessive anxiety; Lack of sleep/constant fatigue; Excessive irritability/anger.

The guide will be available starting at midnight at http://www.samhsa.gov/economy.

Developing...

Is anyone else finding this order of words to be a little less than encouraging?

"The feds will warn of depression..."

"The feds will warn of depression..."

"THE FEDS WILL WARN OF DEPRESSION..."

Barack Obama is fast building up his legacy as the Great Emasculator.

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Obama says the U.S. government will back your car warranty

The words I never, ever thought I'd hear a President of the United States tell the country...

"Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been, because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warranty."

-- President Barack Obama

And you thought "womb to the tomb" policies were bad. Now the federal government has got your car covered bumper to bumper.

And Obama's firing the head of General Motors apparently didn't take well with the markets today: they were down all over, including the Dow at -254 points.

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Search is on for real-life Duke Nukem (Plus: DUKE NUKEM 3D at GOG.com!)

While we're waiting for Duke Nukem Forever to finally come out (it's been in development since early 1997), a trilogy of Duke Nukem games is coming to Nintendo DS and PSP this fall. And to promote 'em Apogee and Deep Silver are holding a nationwide contest to find someone to pose as a real-life Duke Nukem.

According to the story at USA Today: "The contest will travel to New York, Los Angeles and Dallas seeking out potential Duke Nukems. As the press release describes, 'aspiring Dukes will be judged on how well they personify the character's take-no-prisoners attitude.' The winner will be revealed during the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June."

Blast here for the official website of this gimmick.

And if you've never had the politically incorrect pleasure of playing a Duke Nukem game (or you have already and can't get enough of Duke's crude humor) GOG.com has Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition for purchase and download - and guaranteed to run on Windows XP and Vista machines - at the great price of $5.99!

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90-year old man earns pilot's license

Maury Marler just got his license to fly airplanes as a student pilot. Nothing unusual about that. But Marler is also 90 years old and living in a retirement community. He had a civilian license around 1941 but it's long since expired. Sixty-six years after he logged his last flight, he showed up at a flight school and took to the cockpit again. Flying has long been his passion, and now he's getting to satisfy it.

Maury Marler, you sound like a good man... and this blogger is gonna salute you for it :-)

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Campus computer labs going the way of the dinosaur?

Only four incoming freshmen were without personal computers at the University of Virginia this academic year. So the school is shutting down all the computer labs on campus in an effort to save money. And there's some lively discussion over at Slashdot about whether computer labs are even necessary anymore.

If they ever go away completely... wow. I was a computer lab manager during all four of my years at Elon. So was my filmmaking partner "Weird" Ed and a lot of others. 'Twas some of the best work that you could ever do as a student. Most of the time you were sitting on shift for three or four hours with nothing to do but surf the 'net. That is, until another student... or an instructor... came to you about "there's no paper in the printer", or "the printer is jammed", or "THE MOUSE ISN'T WORKING!" That one happened to me more than once. And it was from a faculty member who had apparently never used a computer before, and they were waving the mouse above the top of the table trying to move the cursor!

Tellin' y'all here and now, that computer lab managers were - and still are - a breed apart. We all got our war stories to tell. We are a proud but dwindling race. And now we go quietly into that long night, brought on by ubiquitous laptops and personal wireless networks.

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Study sez: Lobsters and crabs feel pain

Next time you go to Red Lobster and order a succulent, mouth-watering lobster or some crab legs, it may or may not interest you to know that according to a new study lobsters and crabs and other crustaceans are now said to register the sensation of pain throughout their neurobiology.

And incidentally, there is already talk about legislation that would protect crustaceans from "cruelty" like cultivating them so they can be thrown into cooking pots, etc.

That makes no sense. I mean, for the longest time we've been raising cattle on farms and ranches, for the explicit purpose of eventually slaughtering them so they can be turned into steaks and hamburgers. Same thing with pigs destined to become a plate of barbecue or a slab of ribs. What next: a study showing that bananas scream in agony when they're plucked from the stalk?

'Course, there's always this compelling evidence from a 1988 episode of Garfield and Friends demonstrating that lobsters not only have sensation, but they can feel lonely too. Here is "Maine Course"...

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Final theatrical poster for STAR TREK

Ooohh-kaaaaay...

That's definitely one movie poster that doesn't give anything away.

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Obama forces out General Motors CEO

I said Friday afternoon that I was leaving the blog until Monday. Anytime I take a respite, I'm serious about it. And it's gonna take something really damned bad to drag me back here.

If this ain't bad enough, then I sure as hell don't know what is...

President Barack Obama has effectively FIRED Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors.

What this means is that the United States federal government has pretty much nationalized and taken over a private company. It's likely not going to be called that officially, but the policy is still the same.

Has a President of the United States ever done anything like this, in the history of this country? Certainly not in recent memory. The closest I can think of is what happened between Ronald Reagan and the air traffic controllers' union... but not Reagan or any other President in living recollection ever seized enough control of a company to call the shots about who it hires.

Scary stuff.

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Off for the weekend

Will probably be Twitter-ing some, but otherwise I'll return to the blog Monday, following a few days' rest and working on mysterious new projects.

Go out and play now! :-)

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What should we call the UN's global currency?

So not only are several countries wanting to ditch the U.S. dollar as the main instrument of international trade, but a United Nations panel is now calling for a new global currency. Officially it's being touted as a "Global Reserve System".

If this new money becomes a reality, it's gonna need a name, just like for the dollar and the euro and the yen, etc.

"Global Reserve System", eh? Well then, how about we call the base note of this proposed cross-borders currency...

- the greaser

- the grisly

- the gross

- the grue

- ?

My favorite pick is the grue. Like, you can have several grues in your wallet (where they like it dark). And just like the grues of the Zork games, they are always eager to devour the unwary.

Got any ideas? Let's hear 'em! :-)

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Follow me on Twitter!

http://twitter.com/theknightshift

It's actually my second attempt at "Twittering". Yeah, like I've said before when it comes to new technology I'm much like the Amish: I have to come to trust it first, before I adopt it. Hence why I let the last go at it lapse. I'm gonna keep that one as a "personal" line for friends and family. But theknightshift one will stay public.

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MYTHBUSTERS shakes town with explosion

The Discovery Channel's popular show Mythbusters gave a fright to the residents of a small California town when a detonation being performed for an upcoming show wound up making a bigger bang than expected. They set off 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate. A mile away, people in Esparto were literally thrown from their couches and the bang even shattered windows of houses (which the Mythbusters staff had replaced the same day).

The purpose of the explosion was to see if socks could literally be "blown off" of a mannequin. Can't wait to see that 'un :-)

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Amateur astronomer's uber-kewl photo of the International Space Station

Manually tracking with a 10-inch Newtonian telescope armed with a video camera, amateur astronomer Ralf Vandebergh captured this amazing photo of the International Space Station, with the Space Shuttle Discovery docked alongside it...

Read more about it here.

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Reaction to tonight's LOST: "He's Our You"

I've got one thing to say about that ending:

HOLY #&$@!!!

Well, Sayid's done and gone scrooooooowed things up now, hasn't he?

"A twelve-year old Ben Linus brought me a chicken salad sandwich. How do you think I am?"

After half a season of reconfiguring its style every which-away, Lost returned to familiar roots tonight with a Sayid-centric "flashback" episode. Didn't make it any less of the thrill that we've come to expect lately. "He's Our You" was the payoff for last week's show, which a lot thought was a step-down from the recent intensity.

Leave it to Lost to crank it up again and break the needle right at the end of an episode.

It's always good to see William Sanderson in anything. But his role as the torturer might have been the creepiest character that I've ever seen him as. I thought it was one of the more inspired bits of Lost casting that we've seen (and that's saying plenty good). Also loved seeing the circumstances of Sayid's presence on Ajira 316 being revealed.

And did anyone else catch the DHARMA logo on Hurley's jumpsuit? Heh-heh... wouldn't it be nifty if an official Lost: Hurley's DHARMA Initiative Cookbook wound up on bookshelves? :-P

Excellent episode, as usual. Can't wait for next week's, titled "Whatever Happened, Happened".

(And the Internets will be burning up for the next seven days about whether he "lives or dies", no doubt...)

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