Pedia Press is a pretty neat concept. It allows anyone to compile hand-picked Wikipedia pages and transform them into books that are instantly available for purchase. The super-simple process takes about 10 to 15 minutes. I’ve already produced a few volumes of my own. Each one, detailed below, has made the world a better place.

Inanimate Immortality. This baby retails for $33.04. It explores the world of taxidermy, androids, sex dolls and other items that mimic or commemorate life. Key sections include robot fetishism, glove puppetry, and shrunken heads. My favorite passage is from the Icelandic Phallological Museum: ”Although the museum does not yet have a Homo sapiens specimen, in the interest of advancing phallological knowledge, a patron (Páll Arason, born in 1915 and currently 94 years old) has donated, presumably posthumously, an affidavit for his penis.”

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Tags: books & writing
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It’s a moment that every baseball player dreams about. Tenth inning, game tied at one, bases loaded, two outs. Hero time, right? Kendry Morales, a young first baseman for the Los Angeles Angels, found himself in this exact situation on Saturday. Morales is a promising player who is in only his second full major league season. He stepped to the plate to face Brandon League, a reliever for the Seattle Mariners. What happened next boggles the mind. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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10. She goes off on a rant about “the great left-wing liberal socialist conspiracy.”

9. His speech begins, “Hello, I’m Glenn Beck…”

8. Her speech is 90 minutes of “Knock Knock” jokes.

7. He’s Obama, just not the Obama.

6. His claim to fame: he’s the surviving member of Milli Vanilli.

5. He advises the females in the auditorium to take Home Economics ’cause “nummers is hard!”

4. He’s a Goldman Sachs V.P. who claims he can triple your graduation gift money in three months.

3. First name: Kate. Last name: Gosselin.

2. After applying lipstick to the edges of his thumb and pointing finger, he lets the entire speech be delivered by Mr. Hand.

1. He’s wearing his cap, but forgot his gown.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, education, ends & odd
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An explosion kills a number of oil workers and BP is accused of causing the tragedy through a mix of indifference and incompetence. Sound familiar? It should, because this happened back in 2005, when a BP explosion killed 15 (the most most recent explosion only killed another 11, so by this measure their performance is improving). BP’s record is filled with incidents where they jeopardized the environment — see Prudhoe Bay — but the truly shocking thing is that they’ve caused so much human death in such a short time. How did they get away with this? As has happened so many times in recent years, props must be given to the Bush administration. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government
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This week I am devoting my column to one amazing clip I saw from an upcoming movie.  Please allow me to explain.  Now that I am a dad, I am soon going to be suffering through movies made for kids.  And everyone knows the formula to a great kid’s movie- talking animals, dancing animals, sunglass-wearing animals, groin shots, and fart scenes.  This clip takes the beloved, always funny, always painful, and always crowd pleasing shot to the groin to a whole new level. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, movies
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Happy birthday to Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond thrillers.

Fleming was born on May 28, 1908. He died on August 12, 1964. 

You can read three of my On Crime & Thrillers columns that dealt with Ian Fleming here  

Tags: on thrillers and crime
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When I think of Boston I think of George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

For more than a dozen years when I worked for a Defense Department command in Philadelphia, our regional headquarters was located in Boston. During that time I visited the city quite often.

Boston has fine bars and restaurants and fine historical and cultural scenes, and I’ve had some fine times there - yet to me Boston will always be first and foremost the home of The Friends of Eddie Coyle. 

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Tags: on thrillers and crime
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In 1979 it was decided that the decades-old practice of naming hurricanes after women was unfair. Whether it weighed down the moral standing of women to associate them with inchoate and uncontrollable mayhem or if it was man-kind who was shorted by being overlooked, we cannot say but we have long exercised gender-blindness using alternating male and female names alphabetically so it is no surprise that early in the storm season we should be battening hatches against Hurricane Barack. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government
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A lot of my friends have been complaining to me about their husbands lately. The stories all sort of blur together and it seems as though most of them (the husbands in question) do the same dumb shit. Now — we all know I don’t have a husband. And for those of you who didn’t know that bit of information – now you do. So you may wonder what qualifies me to even create such a top ten. It’s simple — for all intents and purposes, I am a wife and I have a wife — I’m the perfect person for the job. [Read more →]

Tags: advice, family & parenting, going parental
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A 19-year-old crashed his car when he and his three passengers tried to hold their breath for the entire drive through “Garbutt, a rural Rochester-area hamlet that’s just three-tenths of a mile long.” The driver, Bryan Parslow, fainted and crashed into a boulder.

The story notes that Parslow is “no stranger to bad luck. He’s a paraplegic who was paralyzed in 2008 after falling out of a window in Brockport while attending college.” The bad luck is noted twice, in a sub-head as well as in the body text.

I don’t think “luck” means what the writer of the article thinks it means.

Tags: trusted media & news
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Sorry for exposing some of you to Glenn Beck. He is a bit fire and brimstone in a Paul Revere - Joe McCarthy sort of way. If you watched the first 10 minutes of Monday’s show you saw him imply that America is in deep peril, and that only a spiritually inspired revolution would revive America. He even asked, “where is our next George Washington,” referring to Peter Lillback’s Sacred Fire, a book about Washington’s faith and it how it seeded a nation.

However, in suggesting that someone (like Washignton) or something (like a religious awakening) needs to jumpstart American prosperity again, Beck perpetuates a misperception that he would probably prefer not to. This misperception is that Americans are the beneficiaries of America and its politics and not the other way around, and it has lead to American mediocreism over the last 20 years. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, race & culture
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Lost is dead. Long live Lost. And so it ends, in much the same way it began: with a close-up of Jack’s eye, staring straight up past the tall stalks of bamboo that circled the sky above. This time however, that eye would close, and with it, our six-season journey that took us right back to where we started — with questions about a mysterious show that seemed to parallel the mysteries of life. For some, the journey was far more compelling than the destination. For others, it was the perfect resolution and they can walk away feeling fulfilled. Whatever you thought about the conclusion, the one thing most viewers can agree on is that the show challenged us to think in ways we might not have otherwise. In short, Lost was a real trip. And what a long, strange trip it’s been.

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Tags: religion & philosophy, television
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May 9, 2010
I dream I am sitting in my old house in the middle of the night with Daniel and Bobbi. I cut up a long vegetable, but I can’t tell if it’s a cucumber or a zucchini. Daniel is sure it’s a cucumber and Bobbi thinks it’s an eggplant, but I assure her that an eggplant has never entered our house. I consider this further and go downstairs and discover that the burglar alarm is not on and that the back door is open and sitting in my basement are three people I don’t know. There is a large glass shard from a bottle, so I brandish it and tell them to get the fuck out of my house. My voice, however, sounds like that of a comic drunkard, so they don’t take me seriously. I start stabbing them lightly, but still they don’t leave. I stab all of them, including a little old lady, but to them I seem to be a nuisance and not a threat.

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Tags: Fred's dreams
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I enjoyed the first Iron Man so much that I was really looking forward to Iron Man 2. I should have known better. I would watch Robert Downey Jr. in anything and Tony Stark is a compelling character, but Iron Man 2 falters under the weight of Justin Theroux’s bloated screenplay.  Even able director Jon Favreau cannot recreate the magic of the first film.  [Read more →]

Tags: Gail sees a movie, movies
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What makes someone a freak?

It’s the question at the heart of The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno by Ellen Bryson.  The story revolves around P.T. Barnum’s American Museum and the “freaks” who entertained the masses there.  There were midgets and fat ladies, savages from exotic lands, musclemen and other oddities.  But what made them freaks, and what would they choose, if they could choose another fate? [Read more →]

Tags: Lisa Reads, books & writing
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I began this column on May 12, the same date on which in 1895 J. Krishnamurti was born. I had chosen a quote from him for the “Thought for the Day” feature on my blog: “A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.”

I thought I might take that as my point of departure for the column I was planning for last Tuesday. But then I started looking at some other things Krishnamurti had said. I came upon a talk he gave in Bombay in 1948 in which he said that “ideas create only further ideas.” Later in that same talk, he says, “When do you have creative moments, a sense of joy and beauty? Only when the thinker is absent, when the thought process comes to an end. Then, in the interval between two thoughts, is creative joy.”

In other words, you can’t think your way to truth. [Read more →]

Tags: religion & philosophy, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson
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The sordid story of Floyd Landis took a revealing turn this week. After years of denying the doping allegations that caused him to be stripped of his Tour de France win from 2006, Landis has now admitted having cheated throughout his career. On top of the admission, Landis has taken this opportunity to accuse a number of other riders of the same thing, including seven-time champ Lance Armstrong. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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10. You answered every question on your History final with, “Hey, I wasn’t even alive then!”

9. You’ve been in the eighth grade since the Clinton Administration.

8. Your term paper in music class compared the vocal stylings of Lady Gaga and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

7. Because of new carpeting, you’ve worn all the hair off your knuckles.

6. The only word you learned in Spanish class was “No.”

5. When you tried to sell your textbooks, you were told you might want to hang onto them for a bit longer.

4. On your Geography final, you said the English Channel was the BBC.

3. That stuff you cooked up in Chemistry class attracted six busloads of DEA agents.

2. Your combined score on the SAT: 4.

1. Your teacher suggests you could use that ten bucks for better things than a cap and gown rental.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, advice, education, ends & odd
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The Vietnam War remains in the news and the public debate thanks in part to the Connecticut attorney general, who was caught lying about serving in the war.

Historynet.com has reprinted an interesting piece from an 1989 issue of Vietnam Magazine by the then-editor, Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr.

The late Colonel Summers wrote that deliberate distortions still obscure understanding of this very complex war.

Tags: terror & war
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I’m sick and tired of reading about liberals attacking Rand Paul as a racist ( 1, 2, and 3 ) when his views could just as easily be seen as advocating for the freedom and the rights of Morehouse College, and other historically black colleges and universities, to serve whomever they wish to serve. It’s the kind of hypocritical political nonsense I think we’ve all come to expect from the Two Main Parties. It really makes me want to vomit.

So I’m going to discuss some thoughts I had that were generated by a quote from a book that came up in conversation. It’s from Edward “Father of PR” Bernays’s Propaganda (1928).

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.

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Tags: politics & government, race & culture, television
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I know Mark Souder and have two distinct memories of the former congressman. In the late eighties, when Senator Dan Coats was the only other senator to stand up with Jesse Helms the day he launched the culture wars with his denunciation of the National Endowment for the Arts, Souder was Coat’s chief of staff. As President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, I was visiting D.C. and stopped by Coats’ office for a social visit. As we were chatting, a sweaty Souder in shirtsleeves came in and handed Coats a newspaper clipping. The look on Souder’s face was glum and vindictive. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government
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Recently PBS’ continually magnificent Frontline documentary series aired “The Wounded Platoon”, about an Iraq unit returning to their base in Fort Carson, Colorado (you can watch it here). Spoiler alert: the transition often didn’t go well. One of the most disturbing portion deals with Jose Barco, a Staff Sergeant with an honorable discharge for medical reasons: burns, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a traumatic brain injury incurred from a car bomb. By all accounts he both served heroically and suffered immensely…and he’s currently scheduled to be in prison for 52 years. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government
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Gerald Ford, among other disabilities during his campaign to win the Presidency he had been appointed to, suffered from rampant inflation. His administration came up with a modest response indeed, a program basically to admonish the citizenry not to engage in inflationary behavior, to save more, spend less and otherwise short-circuit rising prices. This was pitched with a tangy little acronym; Whip Inflation Now! [Read more →]

Tags: money, politics & government
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A 27-year-old woman pregnant with her fifth child walks into a Catholic hospital on the verge of death. At 11 weeks into her pregnancy she is told that the baby must be aborted or they will both surely die. The hospital administrator, a nun, is forced to make a fast and life-changing decision. She allows the abortion to take place in order to save the mother’s life. When Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted caught wind of what had happened, he declared that she was instantly excommunicated, claiming “you can’t do evil, to bring about good.”

I’m having a hard time focusing on which part of this story bothers me the most. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that at 27, this woman is pregnant with her fifth child, or that the nun who OK’d the medical procedure to save the woman’s life was excommunicated from the church — instantly — while it is a known fact that not a single priest credibly accused of molesting children has ever been excommunicated. Her actions saved a woman’s life — a mother of four. While the accused Priests’ actions have destroyed thousands.

Tags: family & parenting, going parental, religion & philosophy
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I know I have been M.I.F.A. I apologize… life happens… shit happens… and things in between happen. But it’s finale season and while this marks the end of good television and the beginning of crappy summer fillers, I live for these weeks in May. I recently acquired a completely legitimate prescription for Valium (Dude, I swear it’s kinda legit) and it came just in time for highly intense TV goodness. Let’s pop a pill and dive right in. [Read more →]

Tags: Lauren Likes TV, television
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I had a Star Wars dream the other night. In it, an Imperial officer asked Emperor Palpatine where Lord Vader was. Palpatine, visibly agitated, said: “At his therapist.”

Later, while searching Google for “Darth Vader” and “therapist,” I discovered an image from the personal site of When Falls the Coliseum’s very own Ricky Sprague:

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Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing
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In the penultimate episode of Lost, “What They Died For,” Jacob tells the surviving Losties why he chose them as candidates: “I chose you because you were all alone. You were all looking for something that you couldn’t find out there. I chose you because you needed this place as much as it needed you.” This explanation really resonated with me, on one hand because it provided a mythologically sound answer to the main question I’ve always had about Lost: why do all these characters have major issues? And having that answer provided the other reason I really liked the explanation: I immediately understood that while Jacob was addressing the remaining candidates, he was really speaking to us. [Read more →]

Tags: religion & philosophy, television
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Snoopy suit? Check.

Water pistol? Check.

Wrong prison? Check.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Tags: on the law
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Michelle Malkin wrote an interesting column  about Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of State who spoke of America’s human rights record to the Communist Chinese, of all people.

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Tags: politics & government
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