This week’s article in Slate on the lolcat meme (here) starts us off, with a Rocky Horror lolcat spoof and a sonnet in lolcatese. And if you want more cute, cuddly, Intertubes crap, you’ll find it at this massive lolcat compendium.

Ahem.

Now for the serious satire. (Heh.)

The Richmond Democrat shows how history repeats itself in: The Richmond Democrat: History for Republicans: The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

Ahistoricality found this gem for us at historiblogography, in which Republican debaters race to the bottom. Warning: Some graphic content, including the phrase “skull-f#*k@ng”. See, now you have to go. But it is graphic. Our advice is to hang in there for the punch line.

The Epicurean Dealmaker has learned about a new synergistic movie: Destroy All Monsters. We excited!

Over at Conservathink you’ll be happy to learn that a Creationist museum to open in Kentucky; Flat Earth Society, Eugenicists United to follow suit.

Madeleine Begun Kane has a polimerick If This Is True, My Head May Explode posted at Mad Kane’s Political Madness. Continue reading…

Breathtaking news for all you caffeine addicts out there — not only does coffee taste good and wake you up, it can prevent gout. Plus, you smell like coffee and it make you bulletproof.*

Never mind the tachycardia and frequent (sometimes alarmingly frequent) trips to use the gents, coffee is where it’s at.

According to a study of 45,000 men, if you drink four to six cups of coffee a day, then you cut your chances of developing gout (the most common kind of arthritis) in half!

Uh, But Watch for Caffeine Intoxication

However, if you have more than three or four cups of coffee, you may over-stimulate your central nervous system. I know, that sounds cool, but it can be bad. How bad? Well, symptoms include:

• restlessness
• nervousness
• excitement
• insomnia
• flushing of the face
• increased urination & gastrointestinal disturbance (count on these, and they won’t be pleasant)
• muscle twitching
• a rambling flow of thought and speech (granted, for some of us it’s hard to tell)
• irritability (ditto)
• irregular or rapid heart beat, and,
• psychomotor agitation.

What, pray tell, is psychomotor agitation? Well, essentially this will make you look like you have obsessive compulsive disorder, unless it just causes a terminal case of the Jiminy Leg. (Or arm, or hand, or feet, or teeth — wait, am I rambling, really, I didn’t think I was rambling, but then you said I was rambling and wait a minute, where did my coffee go, is that rambling coffee….)

*The Small Print: drinking excessive amounts of coffee does not make you bulletproof. (Though you may feel you’re fast enough to dodge them.)

You can find the New Scientist story about it all here. Photo by Snuggle Up & Read. The whole set of Talkin Timmy’s lids is here.

If you’re a comedian a standard (cliche) thing to poke fun of is how men don’t like to ask for directions; now researchers at the University of Warwick have discovered why men won’t get some orienteering aid.

No, it’s not that straight men are inflexible, arrogant, know-it-alls (or not just that), nor is it because they’re “making good time”. It’s because they’re better at reading maps.

Really. It’s not just a stereotype. According to the study, sexual orientation is a good predictor of how well you will be able to orient yourself with a map. Straight men are best at it, followed by gay men, then lesbians, and then straight women. (Presumably bi-sexuality has an impact too, but the report from the Telegraph does not say. Perhaps this leads to always wanting to find two routes to the same destination.)

But all you straight boys shouldn’t get too excited. When it comes to finding the map, straight women are much better at remembering where it was left.

Bad History! Baaaad!

The Friday Ark, for all your lolcat needs. (And loldogs, lolnewts, lolbees, etc.)

And you can head over to the beach for the Carnival of the Mundane.

Once again, it is “my face is on fire” season, and I have prepared by kitting myself out with a solar radiation suit designed by a team of uber-monkeys from General Kang’s Space division.

Actually, it’s a tube of sun-cream with an SPF of 55. Now, that’s supposed to mean that it will allow you to stay out in the sun 55 times longer than it would normally take you to burn.

So, if you normally burn in 12 minutes, theoretically, this would enable you to stay out in the sun for 11 hours. But what if you burn in several seconds? Let’s take the average vampire. Exposure to the sun’s life-giving rays usually turn you into a pile of dust in about thirty-forty seconds (unless you’re in one of those movies where you burst into flaming chunks of charcoal almost immediately). Let’s go with 10 seconds just to be on the safe side. (There is no room for error when you’re a 400-year-old metrosexual with a serious hemoglobin Jones.)

That means the average vampire can slap on some SPF 55, and survive 9.167 minutes! Minutes! Plenty of time to rip someone’s throat out, drink some of their blood, mince around in your velvet cape, and still get into your coffin before you have to reapply.

So far, I’ve found that I get about two hours before I get the telltale, “my face is on fire!” feeling. Working backwards, this means I would burn in 2.18 minutes.

Better than the average vampire, but damn, I’m one pale bastard.

Photo by Leadbetter74.

One orangutan goes on a rampage and you immediately assume I had something to do with it?

I’m offended.

I merely suggest to Professor Baktargula that he was being imprisoned by his captors in Taiwan at the behest of the mopeds. Who knew he was going to freak out and start lobbing Vespas at people dining out?

Next time: My face is on fire — is that normal?

That’s Victoria Day. She would not be amused by the VD edition of the Lost PowerPoints, I’m sure. I know, it’s hard to believe that we still celebrate the birthday of a peevish potentate who died 106 years ago, but that’s Canada for you!

You may also want to check out the Carnival of the Insanites, the Friday Ark, or the Storyblogging Carnival.

Welcome to our 74th edition. The Carnival is weekly or bi-weekly, depending on the submissions, and the blood sugar levels of our pixel monkeys. (Except when it’s not.) Please enjoy responsibly:

Chainik Hocker has an excellent plan for how to vote for the next US President in: Democracy is survival of the craziest.

Ever wonder what a religion based on Dr. Seuss would sound like? Plebian at Daily Dollop has: Seussanetics (aka Seussentology).

Enidd has an enjoyably mashup of the joys of flying & the four yorkshire men. Luxury.

We’re not sure how to do this without the proper equipment, but Hazel has news of a cat who changed its Legal Name to the Sound of a Can Opener.

Al Nye has news that we hope the diet industry never gets its hands on: Jail Inmate Lost 1/3 Body Weight — Now Force Fed.

Madeleine Begun Kane has poetry parody about Bush’s Iraq Strategy.
Continue reading…

Okay, all you septuagenarians with a little ticker problem and a yen for getting down with your iPod — be warned, because those iTunes could mess with your pacemaker!

A recent study at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University shows that iPods, if held five centimeters from the chest for five to ten seconds, can interfere with implanted pacemakers.

So that pulse-pounding music is actually doing something to you, except making you feel the groove.

No word yet on if regular MP3 players cause the same effect.

New Scientist story here | Related story here

There is some excellent reading in both the Tangled Bank and in the Carnival of the Godless this week.

I enjoyed “I think I can feel my brain evolving” and “No more monkey business”. I’ll let you decide which carnival each posts belongs to.