The epic facepalm in video form above comes from KPHO in Phoenix, Arizona. The news station learned of a Facebook group where anti-vaccination zealots were hooking up to mail chicken pox infected items to parents who wanted to intentionally give their kids chicken pox. Because giving a kid a potentially deadly illness (and putting them at risk for shingles later in life) is totally a better idea than just, you know, using the vaccine which has a much, much lower rate of complications than getting the disease. Hence the reason vaccines exist. You know, the whole saving lives thing these douche canoes stubbornly ignore while clinging to completely-discredited fraudulent studies and insisting chicken pox is no big deal because, hey, it didn’t kill them when they were kids. (Maybe it should have.)

And here’s another problem (among many) these child abusers didn’t consider:

Well, for starters, they’re breaking the law. Varicella is classified in biosafety risk group 2, meaning the those working with it must be trained in how to handle it and follow certain protocols to prevent inadvertently letting it out into the environment. In order to ship material like this, the sender must be trained in proper packaging and handling of the material, and trained carriers with a permit can transport the package. Clearly, though, the law does not matter to these twits, since in response to someone pointing out that it was a Federal offense, one woman answered: “Tuck it inside a zip lock baggy and then put the baggy in the envelope :) Don’t put anything identifying it as pox.” [Harpocrates Speaks via Bad Astronomy]

The smiley face lets you know she’s a trained biohazards expert.

The Arizona TV station learned that lollipops and rags tainted with chicken pox infected saliva had been mailed from Arizona to California, Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, and Canada. Anyone along the way — mail sorters, drivers, postal carriers — may have been exposed to whatever disease(s) were in the saliva. If any of those people had a compromised immune system (or later came in contact with someone with one, like, for example, an infant) these Facebook loons may have killed someone. Also, who the hell accepts a slobbered-on lollipop from a stranger and jams it into their kid’s mouth? What. The. Eff?

And it gets worse. At least two wonderful parents on the Facebook group were looking for measles, mumps, and rubella in order to infect their kids. The World Health Organization says measles is the number one cause of vaccine-preventable child deaths, but, yeah, both of you go ahead and infect your kids with it on purpose. That’s just great. A pox on both your houses.

It’s finally happening. The trees are turning on us, just like in The Happening except they’re robbing us of oxygen instead of robbing us of our will to live. Well, not really, but that is what a doctor in Cambodia is offering as an explanation for the 136 students at a high school in Kompong Cham who fainted while being forced to stand at attention in the hot sun for an unspecified amount of time “as punishment for not showing deference to the national flag”. Yeah, I’m sure it was the trees that caused the fainting.

“According to the hospital’s analysis, the reason why the students fainted is [because of] the huge tree in the school compound and the farmland surrounding the school, which absorbed the oxygen,” said Heng Meng, police chief of Chamkar Leu district, adding that the punishment could not be blamed as one of the teachers “also [had difficulty breathing] and felt dizzy”. [...] A doctor from the local hospital, Iv Then, said that based on his examination, the lack of oxygen was due to an abundance of trees, which trapped the oxygen, adding that the first four or five students fainted because they were standing under the school’s large medicinal oil tree. [Phnom Penh Post via io9, emphasis mine]

ಠ_ಠ

Trees do not work that way.

Completely related:

Read the rest of this entry »

“TETSUOOOO!”

Variety reports Warner Brothers has greenlit Akira for a late February/early March start at a budget of $90 million, with Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, Unknown) directing and Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Davisson Killoran, and Andrew Lazar producing. They also claim Garrett Hedlund is the studio and the director’s top pick to star as Kaneda, but no offer has been made yet. To give some background, here’s a summary of this increasingly disastrous sounding project we made awhile back:

The Hughes Brothers were originally attached to adapt books one through six in two movies with a total budget rumored to be $230 million. Things were looking good until rumors started circulating Warner Brothers was going to cast Zac Efron or a bunch of other white guys as the teenaged, Japanese gang members. Then the Hughes Brothers left the project. Then we heard Keanu Reeves was in talks to play Kaneda but smartly walked away, perhaps after looking at a calender and realizing it’s been nearly two decades since he was a teenager. (Allegedly, upon looking at the calender he said, “Whoa.“)

So yeah. The budget’s been slashed by over 60% and they still want to cast 20-something and 30-something white boys to play the very young Japanese hoodlums. Because apparently a white boy with spiky hair is interchangeable with an Asian character by Hollywood standards. This is why we can’t have nice things.

In lieu of anything related to this awful story, please accept this happy kitten.

Zack Snyder has been planning a return to the zombie genre after Dawn of the Dead with a movie he’s producing based on his own original concept, called Army of the Dead. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. (The Thing prequel) is set to direct the movie, which has been put on hold since 2008. He gave an interview to io9 about the film, which is set in a zombie-overrun, quarantined Las Vegas where a father attempts to break his young daughter out. Wait, a daughter needs saving? Somebody call Liam Neeson immediately.

In the interview, van Heijningen says they’re going to be fast zombies and he also dropped this gem:

There’s an extra dimension to this zombie film, because they…. they…. I’m still wondering if I should tell this…. the male zombies rape human females. Yes. And they have human hybrid zombie offsprings. It’s a new take on the zombie genre, which is crazy. [io9]

Uh . . . guys? Don’t zombies have no heartbeat, therefore no blood flow, therefore no ability to get an erection? Same deal with vampires: no blood flow (suck on that, Twilight fans). Yes, I am willing to suspend disbelief on the existence of zombies but not on the zombie boner detail. By the way, “zombie boner detail” is the worst job an artist can have at the pornographic zombie comics publisher (you know one probably exists somewhere).

Anyway, if Zack Snyder is going to keep throwing rape or implied rape into movies he directs or produces, we demand Man Of Steel includes some Lois Lane on Faora Hu-Ul pegging action.

Like some kind of half baked vision that one of my old stoner roommates would have had, the fine folks over at We Come In Peace decided to get extra creative with a Kinect hack and rigged that sh-t to be usable with a game of Breakout. Oh yeah, before I forget, they also decided to project their idea across the side of a big ass building. Yes, that’s correct, we’re talking a version of Breakout that towers several stories high and is controlled by the players motion. Pretty cool, especially considering that the level maps actually incorporate features and borders from the physical architecture of the building, something I know that my former stoner roommate could have never programmed. Sorry Chad.

So throw on some hipster clothes, turn up the Ratatat and enjoy the video after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 1988 when the Star Wars prequels had yet to gently caress our inner children in a questionable manner, George Lucas delivered a speech in front of Congress to help establish the National Film Registry. Interestingly, his speak included this sentiment: “In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be ‘replaced’ by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.” Of course, if he’s altering it, that’s still cool. Unleash the CGI rewrites.

We already knew he replaced the puppet Yoda with the CGI version in the Star Wars Original Trilogy on Blu-Ray, but now several videos are out (see detailed list below) about several other changes Lucas made to the originals [at least some of which have been confirmed by LucasArts], because that’s what these films needed: more resemblance to the prequels. Excuse me while I scream a multitude of profanities into a pillow. By pillow I mean megaphone.

[Sources: /film, NYTimes, io9 (1, 2), ToplessRobot]

Read the rest of this entry »