SpiderFarmer

Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, has for the past two months been writing a series of opinion essays in the New York Times that discuss poverty, both new and entrenched. The pieces, so far, are “Too Poor to Make the News,” “A Homespun Safety Net,” and “Is It Now A Crime to Be Poor?“”Too Poor to Make the News”

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Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. and Robotic Technology Inc. have sent out a press release denying that their new robot will feed on the dead. “It’s a vegetarian!”, they claim. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI. “We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone’s CEO.

Best. Press. Release. EVER!

I just got back from seeing Tuna Does Vegas.  If you’ve never seen Tuna Texas in any of it’s incarnations, you’re missing a hilariously good time.  Joe Sears and Jaston Williams portray an astounding cast of characters, rotating in and out in set changes that are so fast it’s hard to track them.

They hail from Austin, but Dallas natives claim them as their own…as Dallasites tend to do with things we like. Every time one of the favorite characters made an appearance, the audience clapped and cheered, but the guys seem to know the audience is going to do that, and the dialogue was spaced to allow for it.

The writing, fast paced dialogue, and costumes have only gotten better in the decades that Joe and Jaston have been defining the small town of Tuna, and this show was no exception.  I thought  was going to piddle, I laughed so hard when they came out dressed as showgirls.  Show girls pretending to be female impersonators.  Complete with snowman breasts and a giant turkey butt on one, and spinning flower boobs on the other.  Hysterical.

All of our old favorites were there, but a few new characters got added: Anna Conda – harridan performer/hustler from the days of the first Brat Pack, a tough thug named Shot who got his nickname because Frank shot him in the bottom when he was a baby, Charlene’s 4 new babies, and of course Elvis number 42, and Elvis number 11.  (You can’t do Vegas without Elvis.)

Aunt Pearl strikes it rich and discovers adult movies, Vera Carp has her thumbs threatened by loan sharks, and the Baptists find joy in rubber sheets and bathing suits.  All in all, it was a really fun way to spend the evening.

If you get a chance to see them on tour, you should go.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll go out and buy a squirt gun for your favorite Baptist.

Instructables.com moves to a “pay to see” model

Instructables, the community craft blog of the handy set, has moved to a closed pay-only model, and the timer is ticking for legacy accounts. After 90 days from implementation rollover, people who do not pay for an Instructables “Pro” account will have their accounts “crippled”. Non-paying accounts will no longer be able to view entire instructables at once, print out projects or get a PDF, have a “favorites” list, and most perniciously, people won’t be able to view “secondary” images in instructable steps that have multiple images. (Even if you happen to be the person that created it.)

Some creators suggest that this new pay model breaks the Creative Commons license that most writers used on their projects, but Instructables says that creators don’t understand that the CC applies to everyone *except* the site where the content is published.

For my part, I’m removing my content from Instructables and will republish it elsewhere.  For those of you who would like PDFs of the projects, please drop me a line or message here, and I’ll email them to you until I can get the projects republished.

So…he told the press he was a Vietnam vet. But, he also said he was 53. The last American troops left Saigon in 1973. That means, if he were there for the very end of the war, the evacuation of the diplomats, he could only have been 17 at the time. So…either he lied about his age to join the military and had the forged documents to go along with the story, or he’s lying about his age now, or he was never in Vietnam.

For the record, there are a lot of reports listing Yettaw’s name as being spelled “Yeattaw”, so I’ve added that tag as well. He also seems to have a mostly unused travel-blog under the name John7children, with just a few pictures of the Great Wall. Someone with that same name on ebay recently purchased a couple of cell phones without contracts, a camera phone that looks to be the same model that shot the pictures of himself wearing the flippers he used to get to Mrs. Kyi’s house, and a breathing trainer.

Oh…but wait…the story just keeps getting weirder:

Apparently, John and his first wife divorced, and he got custody of their 6 kids. He remarried, to a woman named Betty, but reportedly, Betty wouldn’t let the first wife’s kids live in her house, so those four kids, ranging in age from 17 to 10) lived in a trailer in the woods. John apparently just left the kids there alone when he went to Asia.

Very odd, indeed. (As a snarky aside, what sort of evil stepmother refuses to let the first wife’s kids live in her house? And what sort of man marries a woman who makes his kids live in a trailer in the woods? I mean, wtf?)