Build Date: Sat Mar 15 10:50:57 2025 UTC
Blackhawks are just big, dumb troop carriers, like flying AC Transit buses.
-- Tjames Madison
Solar-powered Corpse Cooker
2001-08-04 09:35:47
"When my grandmother died we took her to the Towers Of Silence. Four men carried the body into one of the towers. I heard the harsh cry of the vultures and knew that in a matter of minutes they would strip the flesh from the bones. The skeleton would then lie under the fierce glare of the tropical sun until it calcified, after which the powdery remains would be cast into a central well and seep into the Earth. I wasn't revolted because we have been doing it for centuries. And my grandmother wanted it this way." -- Homi Dastur, deputy executive secretary of the Hindu Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
But what is a Zoroastrian to do when there are too many corpses and not enough vultures to eat them?
(A) Start a vulture-breeding program.
(B) Come up with a vaccine to cure dying vultures.
(C) Use solar-power to heat up corpses to increase the speed of decomposition.
(D) All of the Above.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Vacationing from Somnambulant Narrow Realities
So about six months ago, I was chilling in Chang Mai, Thailand with ICBINJ, perursing the Bangkok Times over my banana pancake and Big Chang breakfast when I spotted this article reprinted from the LA Times. It was about some kooks from California (where else?) who were claiming to have been to the front lines in Afgahnistan in mid-December and had recorded the whole feat on their website. "Holy Fuck!" I thought, "Now That's web journalism. Who are these guys!?" (More...)
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)
Negative Nancy, touring the gin joints of the world, sent us her latest Spocktail creation, The Inattentive Beachcomber, which she concocted and field tested somewhere in South East Asia. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Last week I had eye surgery and it was certainly one of the least enjoyable episodes of my life. Eye Surgeons like their patients to be conscious enough so that they can move their eyes to the proper position during surgery. (More...)
NASA's Mars missions keep blowing up and crashing, but dammit, when you reach for the stars you have to expect a few minor setbacks. Drink a toast to the men and women of NASA! Toast them with a Lost Probe mixed up with your own two (or three) hands! (More...)