TANcast

Here is yet another reason why I am a suspicious person:

(Snatched without permission from The Daily Advertiser in Louisiana)

BellSouth says it took part in survey
Claire Taylor

BellSouth is a co- sponsor with Cox Communications of a controversial telephone survey centered on a proposed Lafayette fiber project.

Lafayette BellSouth spokesman John Williams on Tuesday said as far as he knew, the company was not involved in the poll. On Thursday, Williams retracted, saying he has learned since that BellSouth is a co-sponsor with Cox.

“I was just unaware of it,” said Williams, who said he has not seen the poll questions.

Lafayette Utilities System is hoping to expand its telecommunications business, competing against Cox and BellSouth for cable TV, telephone and Internet customers. Both companies offer the services LUS plans to provide. LUS says it can offer more Internet bandwidth and the services at a lower price.

Voters in the city of Lafayette will go to the polls July 16 to decide whether to issue $125 million in bonds to pay for the fiber project.

Pollsters with Market Research Insight of Pensacola, Fla., launched the telephone survey Monday.

Tim Tippit, vice president of public affairs and government relations for Cox Communications, said the company was one of the poll sponsors. He said the company was simply “gathering more information on the citizens of Lafayette” and learning more about its customers.

Residents who received the calls reported the questions were slanted in favor of BellSouth and Cox and against LUS. The pollsters reportedly said things such as the separation of church and state may mean LUS cannot offer religious TV channels, or because LUS rations lawn watering during the summer, it might also offer Internet or TV only on certain days.

Originally published May 6, 2005

Here is my poll:

“Would you do business with BellSouth or Cox Communications if you knew they were paying people to deceptively influence a vote on an issue that would force them to compete more aggressively for a mid-sized city’s high-bandwidth service market?”

“If so, would you still do business with them if you knew their CEOs were, respectively, a convicted child molester and a devout Devil worshiper?”

“If so, would you still do business with them if you knew that BellSouth has a corporate policy dictating that they must dig up the corpse of your dead mother and gang-rape her, using any opening they find? What if you knew that Cox Communications has hired hitmen to murder every puppy in your home state?”

In health news today (and shamelessly ripped off from the AP):

Brain Areas Shut Off During Female Orgasm
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — New research indicates that parts of the brain that govern fear and anxiety are switched off when a woman is having an orgasm.

In the first study to map brain function during orgasm, scientists from the Netherlands also found that as a woman climaxes, an area of the brain that governs emotional control is also heavily deactivated.

“The fact that there is no deactivation in faked orgasms means a basic part of a real orgasm is letting go. Women can imitate orgasm quite well, as we know, but there is nothing really happening in the brain,” said neuroscientist Gert Holstege, presenting his findings Monday at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

In the study, Holstege and his colleagues at Groningen University recruited 11 men and 13 women, together with their respective partners.

The volunteers laid on a scanning machine bed and were injected with a dye that shows changes in brain function on a scan. For the men, the brain scanner tracked activity during rest, during erection, during manual stimulation by their partner and then during ejaculation, brought on by the partner’s hand.

For the women, the scanner measured brain activity during rest, while they faked an orgasm, during manual stimulation by their partner, and while they experienced genuine orgasm.

Holstege said he had trouble getting reliable results from the study on men because the scanning machine needs activities lasting at least two minutes to record an activity. But the men’s climaxes didn’t last anywhere near that lone, meaning he could not reliably compare the scans before climax and during.

However, for women, the results were clear, he said.

When women faked orgasm, the cortex, the part of the brain governing conscious action, lit up. It was not activated during genuine orgasm.

The most striking results, however, were seen in the parts of the brain that shut down, or deactivated.

“During orgasm, there was strong, enormous deactivation in the brain. During fake orgasm, there was no deactivation of the brain at all. None,” Holstege said. “It looks like to have an orgasm, you need to not be fearful or full of anxiety.”

Men, now you can know for sure how you are doing! Just get a brain scanner, plug her in, and then, um, plug in.

Not that any of you cared…

I wonder how well this study paid its participants. Amateur porn can be quite lucrative (I hear), but then there is the messy situation of your perv co-worker seeing the film. Maybe medical studies are the way to get paid to finger-bang without lasting complications.

The Michael Jackson trial goes to the jury today to decide the pop icon’s guilt on 10 felony counts including 7 counts of “lewd or lascivious acts on a child under the age of 14” and 2 of “administering an intoxicating agent” related to the molestation charges.

Happily, Jackson should be assured a fair deliberation thanks to the extraordinary, nay, Herculean lengths the Santa Maria courts went to to assure Jackson a jury of his peers. The deliberation will fall to:

• Two young black men
• Three middle-aged white women
• Eddie Murphy
• A hermaphrodite of indeterminate race
• A family of chimpanzees: Bobo, Suzee, and Mikey (no relation to Bubbles)
• Robert Kelly (known as “R.” to friends and fans)
• And jury foreperson: A Macy’s store mannequin

The Jolly Green Giant was excused from the jury pool early on when his past associations with Jackson came to light.

I wonder if Lindsay Lohan misses her boobs…

Before
After

For the love of God, somebody feed this girl!

Thanks to KCRA‘s love of “local fluff” slide shows, you can all get in line to meet me now…

I just figured out that Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu and his grandson Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu: The Legend Continues are really just allegorical representations of the life of Jesus Christ, with the wandering and the good-doing, and the ass-kicking with the beating stick, and so forth.

I think they upped the ass-kicking a bit for the ratings. Also I’m not sure Jesus was Buddhist.

PS: You should see Kung Fu Hustle. It is like Quentin Tarantino and Tex Avery got together to make a Kung Fu movie. Jesus said it totally kicks ass.

PPS: I think I set a record for pointless hyperlinks there.

Listen, children, as I impart a lesson learned by watching a dog take a shit.

Like Jimmy Pop said, I hate poopin’ in public places. The constant noise of others coming and going (pardon the pun) really makes my brown eye squint. I’m always super self-conscious about the rude noises and foul smells coming from my stall and even worry about the “dirt roads” left behind on the bowl when I flush. These low-flow toilets don’t seem to have much in the way of self-cleaning ability, at least not when dealing with my turds.

I can’t stop the people or the noises or the smells, but through a stroke of pure genius I have come up with a way to deal with poo-trail issues. Crap on paper.

Seriously. Crap on paper.

Every single public bathroom stall has a dispenser for those rings of tissue paper. I don’t know what those things are really for other than allowing piss/shit water to wick up to your thighs, but I have come up with a better use for them. Take two or three sheets of ass-gasket from the dispenser and float them on the water in the bowl. When you do the doo, your little torpedoes will land on and sink the floating paper, keeping the tissue layers between your butt mud and the pristine porcelain.

In order to avoid clogging the works and just on the general principal of doing right by those around you, it would be best to do a courtesy flush before you start wiping. When you flush you will send a little wrapped package of feces off to the Bay for the homeless to nourish themselves with, and nary a fleck left behind.

Who doesn’t like a brown-bag lunch, after all?

I only have one thing to say in reply to this video, and that is…

America! FUCK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother fucking day, yeah.

America! FUCK YEAH!
Freedom is the only way, yeah.

Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too
America! FUCK YEAH!

So lick my butt and suck on my balls.
America! FUCK YEAH!

What you going to do when we come for you, now?

PS: Just how does Dennis Madalone think “America” is spelled?

PPS: Why is the baby in the cemetery (that sounds bad if you haven’t see the video) browner than its mom and what I presume is the dad?

PPPS: Anyone who finds “America We Stand as One” deep, meaningful, or touching needs to learn that cheesy, back-patting, pseudo-hair-metal, patriotic ballads are neither deep nor meaningful, and that the only thing that should have been touched was the “stop” button on the video player.

I sold my soul to a lovely temptress and the price was pizza, cake, and a “Birthday Girl” tiara for me to wear.

All is forgiven. Farewell, holy chonies…

My girlfriend demolished my last pair of old chonies last night. I had thought I was pretty fucking clear with her about my sentimental attachment to them the last time she destroyed a pair, or perhaps the time before that, or maybe the time before that.

Men are not supposed to throw tighty-whiteys away; they must gently fade and tear until they become translucent, nebulous things, things no longer of this earth, destined for a high purpose.

Holey chonies become holy chonies. Just ask the Pope.