News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2013/11F

Asteroid heading for Earth?

No. Why do you ask?

Call Bruce Willis

No, you call him. Dudes from Jersey creep me out.

London - A fleet of kamikaze spacecraft could be used to defend Earth against asteroid strikes The robotic vessels would change the direction of any threatening space rock to prevent it from crashing into the planet.

Or not.

Under the plans, member nations will share information in an International Asteroid Warning Group, allowing space agencies to pool their brainpower to come up with the best way of deflecting any incoming objects.

I guess the intrepid "journalist" (let's call him Tin Tin for now) doesn't get that the PLANE wasn't the Kamikaze, the pilot was, and that he is more than welcome to participate in the "beta test", being part of that pool of exemplary "brainpower."

Creepy Remnant of Time Past

Those of you out there as enamouried as I am with Number Stations might enjoy the fact that some of them still operate, in this case on 6949 khz. In fact, they seem even MORE mysterious in this day and age when there are so many other means of communication, and many of the traditional users of Number Stations in intelligence communications are, well, gone.

Ziggy Stardust meets Marketing Whiz

The Atlantic reports on a scary new trend in playing with your hair from the most unserious place on earth. Skandinavian style peddler offers Vintage Video Games, Retro Haircuts and a generalized air of wierdness.

Bobby, a hybrid hair salon-toy store in Copenhagen celebrates the games and geek culture of the 1970s-1990s. Bobby Ågren, who sports a mushroom-meets-mullet hairstyle

This goes some length to explaining their anomalously high suicide rate.

It's a Polite Way of Saying "Hello, I'm Tedious and Vapid"

Berlin, a city where being individualistic always seems to mean sheepishly following one dingbat style cult or another, is holding a "hipster festival. Gack. Most of them think the former east is charming. In other words: hide the children and the livestock.

Piraten! Move out of Your Parent's Basement!

I've never heard of a political party become so adept at repelling women without, say, making them wear veils or binding their feet:

Just after walking the German Pirate Party plank due to exhaustion, ex-Pirate political manager Marina Weisband dropped the boom on her mobbing male marauders by outing them as being just as chauvanistic and sexist as male types everywhere else are, political or otherwise.

The response she got from these thoroughly modern males amounted to "whatever you say, sweet cheeks."

The HuffPo Reader's Idea of "Street Cred"

One can only wonder where they think that street is - or rather at least what part of Northeast Philadelphia they think it is.

'Part-Time Hair Piece, Full-Time Lady-Getter'

You go, "Lady-Getter" ( ...? ! ?... )

Clearly, it has worked: After selling out of their stock of 2000, the couple just placed an order for 10000 additional mullets. So let's get to the most important question: Are the mullets synthetic or real human hair?

Important, indeed. Almost as important as parading you're wife's silly ironic name.

My wife Morgan went to high school with a friend that originally had this idea. He had the stuff sent over from China and had a prototype made, but let it go. We were in Cabo in 2010 and a group of tourists walked by with real mullets, and we both agreed that we should talk to our friend about getting the business off the ground.

Their choice in vacation locales says the rest.

Of COURSE they Could...

Teams of laser-wielding satellites could shoot rogue asteroids

Researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow are floating the possibility that a flock of small satellites could fly in formation and fire solar-powered lasers at a threatening asteroid, knocking the space rock off its path to Earth.

"Flock"? Thazt almost makes it sound that supernatural threat sound almost "natural".

Of course this is after we have been wizzened to the fact that they can't, or that nukes can take our imaginary decimator out, or that it can't. Etc. Stay afraid of imaginary things, my friends...

The likelihood of a humanity-threatening asteroid strike remains low, but astronomers have not pinned down the best way to deal with ones that pose a risk to our planet.

I'm so glad they're keeping it unreal.

Jammin' 'til the Break of Dawn

One can easily forget how it was not that long ago that transmitting honest news was a hard thing to do, and that people in oppressive states had to rely on word of mouth to find out what was going on in the world. One always had to suspect that there was falsehood in it as well.

Among the Impressionable: People Who Pay for Premium Cable

The Chicago Tribune reports that:

HBO's 'Boardwalk Empire' sparks demand for men's retro haircut

It's not really a MULLET we're talking about here, but we'll let them have their "fun".

It's actually just another collection of over-the-top adjectives being tossed around about the empty lives of hipsters.

"Most places around the country, the style is slightly less exaggerated," Ash says. "And the more severe James Darmody look is one we're seeing stronger in our major metropolitan areas where there's a little more high fashion.... [Men in] Los Angeles, New York and Miami seem to prefer more of an extreme look, where it's much shorter through the sides and longer and more artsy on top."

"art-say" !!! Spoken like someone who never kissed a girl, if you asked me.

They Invented Their Own Worst Stereotypes

Now iss de time on Schprockets venn ve tance.

File Under: No Longer Deliciously Grim

The DDR built Berlin's Funkturm tower to get million Euro make-over.

But the TV tower, a favourite with tourists for its East German kitsch and revolving restaurant at the top, will remain open while the work is carried out

It may no longer be deliciously grim, but should remain DDR-kitchy and wierd.

“The last big renovation was 15 years ago. But the expectations of the guests have increased. We will now create a smarter atmosphere and provide more comfort,”

A Nation of Sitzpinklers

Canada becomes Sweden.

Even more surprising, though, was the sign above the toilet, showing a stick man tinkling into a toilet with a line through it. Yes, Edible Canada has banned men from peeing standing up.

It’s a true advancement for social justice

Violent Unbeardings Terrorizing the Good Burghers of Ohio

Oh my:

In Holmes County, a group of Amish men allegedly burst into a home and cut the hair off men and women inside and cut the beards off the men.

And they were acting on orders of a rather unfortunately named chap.

Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said there was an incident in Trumbull County about three weeks ago in which a group of Amish men and women from Bergholz went to a home in that county and cut the hair off men and women inside. Abdalla said hair from the victims was brought back to Jefferson County to prove to Sam Mullet, the bishop of the Bergholz group, that Mullet's orders concerning the hair cutting was followed.

Good Gravy, What am I waiting around for?

The Swansboro Mullet Festival is a tradition in Onslow County. Last year, 25000 to 30000 people came to celebrate the mullet. "It's not the hair cut, no, it's about the gathering of the town of Swansboro," resident Damein Martinez said.

"We're talking about the fish mullet that swim in the sea and that we actually, unfortunately, fry here for folks to enjoy as well," Swansboro Festival Committee Director Judy Hailey said.

Dag.

Mullets with Motives

"When I have a kid, I want him to have a mullet at some point.

Hide the livestock.

" Budde's head remains still, but he eyes Lebowitz quizzically. "You're like 'A Boy Named Sue.' You're trying to make him tougher by giving him a mullet?"

Probably not, but it isn't the first misguided thing to emerge from the vanity trade on a coastal resort town in California.

Carson Budde is heading to Rhode Island this weekend to meet his girlfriend’s family.

Images of the Near Distant Ago

SPON features a set of images of a disused Soviet military hospital in the Brandenburg town of Beelitz, a sanitarium in Oranienburg, and other abandoned structures in what was the DDR by Berlin photographer Axel Hansmann. Is it art or merely deliciously grim scenery?

Smell ya Later!

An excellent data source is found for twhat I'd like to call “the dead hippy index”.

"German society is changing and it's not easy to be a naturist anymore," said Kurt Fischer, president of the German FKK association (DFK). There are some 500,000 registered nudists and a total of seven million Germans sunbathe naked regularly.

"But the numbers are unfortunately falling by about two percent each year," Fischer told a group of reporters in the Foreign Press Association (VAP) while sitting, fully clothed, at a beach bar in Berlin's government quarter. "Times are tough."

The main problem is the shrinking population, Fischer said.

Aside from a still fetid river cum canal, Berlin’s government district (as if that didn’t describe their whole society), is far enough away from a tropical beach (Club Med Libya, perchance?) to make this look about as silly as most impromptu press events in Germany.

Poetry Break

In fact it’s all about beef

Terribly upset.
It is my birthday today.
No one gave me beef.

Mullet's, Now to be Made Dull by Academia

It's the hairstyle that time forgot

Just long enough to get sidetracked:

It's the mullet of the moment. Yes we're talking about the male ponytail. If you want to look like a crim, a weasel or most probably both, grow your thinning hair long and scrape it back. Into a girl's hairband.

They Got Da Fever

Mullet mania grips Dust Devils

Hancock, a third-round draft pick by the Colorado Rockies out of Rowlett (Texas) High School in 2005, is the brain behind what he calls the "Mullet Militia";

Mr T in Your Pocket Talking Keychain