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I haven’t done much for Halloween (besides drinking) since my freshman year, but this year the office ladies are trying to whip up some enthusiasm among the students for a costume contest. This shouldn’t be difficult, but it’s a building full of difficult people. Now generally their attempts to bring some seasonal festivity to the department are smashing successes; but this one is different as it requires us to actually (*gasp*) actively participate as opposed to just showing up to a room at some certain time where food somehow magically appeared.

As you can see, I feel morally obligated to come up with an entertaining, kickass costume. I call upon the power of the internets to help me: if you have/seen/done/wish you could do something awesome, the commence bragging in the comments.

Please go visit ko htike’s prosaic collection. It’s a blog featuring photos, writing, and video from inside Burma. As you probably know, the junta has imposed a media blackout and cut off internet access, so the contributers to the blog face incredible difficulties getting their story out, and are risking their lives.

Just a warning: The photos are graphic and the stories are horrifying. But it’s important to see them.

H/T cuntgirl

Apparently, “I was just following orders” is once again a valid defense.

Future would-be war criminals, take note.

My roommates and I have a fairly liberal your-stuff-is-my-stuff policy that works fairly well outside of minor quibbles about food. Books are borrowed with abandon, other people’s clothes sometimes pop up in your clean laundry, and when we finally move out from each other untangling the DVDs is going to be a mess. So when RoommateA needed to cut his hair, he went and borrowed RoommateB’s hair trimmer.

He was returning it to the proper bathroom when RoommateB came home.

“Uh, that’s cool but you should know that I mostly use it to trim ‘myself’.”

Blank stare.

“Dude, my balls.”

There’s really no commentary I can think to add to this story: Thai cops punished by Hello Kitty. I mean, I sort of envisioned Hello Kitty whips when I read the headline, but the idea of the Thai police force marching about with pink Sanrio armbands is even better.

“Guilty officers will be made to wear the armbands in the office for a few days, with instructions not to disclose their offences. Let people guess what they have done.”

I love it.

In a rather bizarre case from my neck of the woods, a 75-year-old man has been found guilty of making a death threat against his city councillor. The twist? The threat was in the form of a poem, which the man claimed was a work of political satire.

But Justice James J. Keaney claims that since Antonio Batista doesn’t have a high level of education, it’s unlikely that he knew what satire was.

Threeliesforone, who drew my attention to the article, is calling classism, and I agree. Plenty of educated folks fail at sarcasm. One friend of mine, a community college teacher (name withheld not to protect his identity, but rather the identities of his students) had his kids read A Modest Proposal; several reacted in horror, wondering why their teacher was advocating cannibalism.

Obama is catching heat for daring to suggest that “neener neener neener I’m not talking to you” isn’t really the greatest foreign policy ever.

Seriously, people. It’s not like he’s under the table giving Fidel a blow job. He said that if he were the leader of a country, he would talk to the leaders of other countries. Which, last I heard, was part of the presidential job description.

Does anyone want to explain how Edwards gets away with “I personally have been on a journey on this issue [equal marriage]” without being soundly mocked, and Obama gets called “irresponsible and frankly naive” for claiming that diplomacy and negotiation are better than silence, occasionally interrupted with bombing raids?

Today’s cat and girl is especially cute ‘n’ clever.

It’s wrong that I rather envy Johann Hari for getting to go on the Cruise of Wingnuttia, isn’t it? My poor, sheltered brain would have likely exploded from all the stupid, and Hari ought to be commended on his apparent ability to keep a straight face through the entire ordeal.

Still. It sounds deeply hilarious.