!!!!!Warning!!!!!

With a scare graphic this good, who cares what the actual news story is? (But in case you do, here it is. Bonus points for the fact that the lizard is named "Gonzo.")

I'm outta here . . .

No, I am not joining ogged in the great hereafter of blogdom. I will just be away from my normal routine for the next week or so, and as a result the Ego will be spending very little time in front of a computer, and the Alter Ego even less so. Perhaps I will have interesting tales to recount upon my return. Perhaps not. We'll see . . .

Le Dromadaire

Avec ses quatres dromadaires
Don Pedro d'Alfaroubeira
Courut le monde et l'admira.
Il fit ce que je voudrais faire
Si j'avais quatre dromadaires.

Guillaume Apollinaire - Le bestiaire ou Cortège d'Orphée (1911)

Nancy, what's a third-stage Guild navigator?

The Ronald Reagan Presidential library has an online list of all the movies Ronald Reagan watched during his term as president. I wonder, did Dune (12/22/84) make any fucking sense at all to the Gipper?

"Look, Nancy -- Baron Harkonnen just pulled out that young man's heart plug!"

Via Grow-a-Brain.

Photogenic?

Um, not exactly.

P.S.: Please tell me this isn't a preview of what we have to look forward to in the 2008 presidential election!

It was a good death.

But how good was it? How does it rate compared to other deaths? What were its distinguishing characteristics?

If it is death on the silver screen that interests you, you will find your questions answered at the Movie Deaths Database.

Do you remember where you were . . .

When you heard that John Lennon had been shot?
When you heard that the space shuttle had been destroyed?
When you saw the Berlin Wall coming down?
When you heard that planes had hit both towers of the World Trade Center?
When you read that ogged was giving up blogging for good?

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents

Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) has published a freely-downloadable guide to blogging anonymously entitled "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents". In their words:

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.

Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

Not that this blog has any journalistic aspirations, but it is useful to know how to let loose my inner freak online without those around me being any the wiser.

Honey, can you help me prepare for my speech?

File this under "News You Can Use." From the BBC, via Boing Boing:

For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men kept diaries of how often they engaged in various forms of sex.

Then they underwent a stress test involving public speaking and performing mental arithmetic out loud.

Volunteers who had had penetrative intercourse were found to be the least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who had engaged in other forms of sexual activity such as masturbation.

Those who abstained from any form of sexual activity at all had the highest blood pressure response to stress.

Fastr

Via the FlickrBlog, Fastr is "a game where you are shown a group of pictures from Flickr and have to guess the tag before other people do." Moderately addictive. Direct link.

Captain of the Crosswalk

Someone who goes by the handle The Nabob recounts a quotidian yet somehow compelling tale of an intractible pedestrian:

The cars behind us began honking their horns. The Captain remained in front of our car, preventing us from moving forward. Illegally parked cars prevented us from driving around him. The angle of our car had blocked most of the intersection and prevented anyone from driving around us.

The Captain stated that pedestrians always had the right of way and continued to stand fast. The Courier and I apologized again, pleaded that we were in a considerable hurry and asked if The Captain could remove himself from the middle of the street. He instead removed his cell phone from his pea coat pocket and claims to dial the police. The Courier and I exchangd looks of confusion and surprise.

Read the entire saga.