Coming soon to the Sci-Fi Channel: A quiz

I made up only one of these--I swear. But which one?

The Man With the Screaming Brain
Wealthy industrialist William Cole (Bruce Campbell, who also wrote and directed) awakens to realize part of his brain is that of a Bulgarian cab driver. Resurrected by mad scientist Stacy Keach (TV's Mike Hammer), the brain-mates have something else in common: The woman who killed them.

Mansquito
Those pesky scientists are at it again. This one is trying to find a cure for the West Nile virus. Unfortunately she turns herself and a junkie into mutant mosquito creatures. Starring Corin Nemec (Parker Lewis Can't Lose).

Dragon Storm
In the Dark Ages, the bitterly opposed rulers of two neighboring kingdoms (John Rhys-Davies, Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark, Maxwell Caulfield, Waxwork II: Lost in Time) must put aside their rivalry to combat an alien-dragon menace.

Killer Ferrets
When a science nerd (Gilmore Girls' Alexis Bedel) splices her pet ferret's DNA with her late pitbull's genes, havoc rules over a small town, and the visiting British sheriff (John Rhys-Davies, The Lord of the Rings) must put down the carnivorous critters before they tear the throats out of the best players on the high-school football team. Featuring Charlie Schlatter (Diagnosis Murder).

Sabretooth
David Keith (Sci-Fi Pictures' Epoch and Deep Shock), Vanessa Angel (Weird Science), John Rhys-Davies (Raiders of the Lost Ark, TV's Sliders) and Jenna Gering star in this adventure about a killer cat, a sexy scientist, an arrogant Englishman and several unlucky campers. Watch kitty litter the woods--with bodies!

Attack of the Sabretooth
Theme-park owner Niles Green thought that stocking his Fiji nature preserve with real sabretooth tigers would make him rich--but the tigers are the only ones making a killing in this rip-roaring creature feature. Brian Wimmer, Richard Carradine and Stacy Haiduk star.

(Descriptions taken from Sci-Fi's site. No cheating.)

TVB employs the Pat Robertson defense

Did The Velvet Blog try to counteract a bad day yesterday by looking at pictures of cute dogs and kittens? Of course not. The implication is absurd. We categorically deny any such assertions, and suspect the liberal media of misquoting TVB yet again.

Has TVB taken a turn for the scatological, with posts about pee-fueled batteries and cow manure? What??? That's just sophomoric! The Velvet Blog would never sink to such depths. We must protect the children from such language.

Earlier this week, did TVB unfairly compare popular comedienne and fashion authority Joan Rivers to a living fossil? There is no proof of this, and such a charge is simply unfounded. What the TVB said was, "Joan Rivers should be taken out." And by that, we meant "taken out on a date and shown a really good time." By a death squad.

Does TVB have an impossibly adorable dog? Well, yes. That much is true. But would the liberal media ever admit this? Of course not!

Hey, this one doesn't work...

Cute Pat Robertson

(Thanks to concerned reader Grammarian for pointing that out.)

Having a really bad day

So, let's just look at cute pictures:

Cute puppies
Cute kittens
Cute babies
Cute monkeys

OK, this is just plain freakin' weird

First poop. Now pee.

What's next?

No, wait--don't tell me. Seriously.

PS: I ran Blogger's spell checker on this entry before posting, and it wanted to know if, instead of freakin', I meant foreskin. Just for the record, no, I did not.

This whole thread has gotten so odd, I've decided to run a picture of my dog, just to change the topic.



Isn't he a cutie? Discuss.

We have a winner!

The first person with the correct response was trinamick. The answer is indeed cow manure. I'm still trying to figure out how to shove cow poop into my gas tank.

Trinamick, as our lucky winner, you will soon be receiving a load of bullshit. Don't spend it all in one place.

Congratulations, and thanks to all for playing!

News quiz: Guess the [mystery substance]

As oil prices soar, [mystery substance] is getting more attention as an alternative fuel source, particularly in Texas, the country's biggest producer of [mystery substance].

For years, researchers have studied [mystery substance] as a [deleted to avoid giving it away]. But at a time when state and federal energy bills have called for increasing renewable energy sources, there is more focus on developing [mystery substance] as an alternative to coal or natural gas.

"I see it as a valuable tool in our tool box," said John Sweeten, resident director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Amarillo. "Sixty-dollar-a-barrel oil recruits a lot of interest in biomass. At $10-a-barrel oil, there's not much interest."

The Panda Group of Dallas plans to fuel a $120 million ethanol plant set to open next year in Hereford with [mystery substance]. ... The company said it will realize an energy savings equivalent to 1,000 barrels of oil per day turning [mystery substance] and cotton gin waste into clean-burning fuel to power the plant.

Biomass is renewable organic matter, such as [mystery substance] and crops like corn, grain sorghum and soybeans, all of which can be processed into ethanol.

"Anything that's renewable and is at least competitive with other prices, it's better for everybody," said Donald L. Klass, director of Biomass Energy Research Association in Washington. ...

Nearly 5 million [deleted to avoid giving it away] ... produce billions of pounds of [mystery substance]. --The Associated Press

OK, guess away--and remember, Texas is the biggest producer of [mystery substance].

And no cheating.

Quote of the day

From The New York Times, in an article about the Discovery Institute and the drive to remove actual science from schools:

Denis Hayes, director of the Bullitt Foundation, described Discovery in an e-mail message as "the institutional love child of Ayn Rand and Jerry Falwell," ...

[Shiver.]

News story I mistakenly thought was about Joan Rivers

I mean, all the signs are there:

Strange fossil defies grouping

Joan Rivers: Check!

A strange 525 million-year-old fossil creature is baffling scientists because it does not fit neatly into any existing animal groups.

Joan Rivers: Check!

The animal, from the early Cambrian Period, might have belonged to a now extinct mollusc-like phylum, academics from America and China say.

Joan Rivers: Check!

The ... fossil ... had a flattened body and horizontal fins which, researchers think, could have been used to support it as it moved along the sea floor.

Joan Rivers: Check!

It also had well developed senses, including a pair of eyes on stalks.

Joan Rivers: Check!

The trouble is the animal, named Vetustodermis planus, did not possess a set of features, or characters, which placed it clearly within any known group. When it was first described in 1979, Vetustodermis was included in the annelid category. Later researchers argued against this classification, saying it was, in fact, either an arthropod or a mollusc. ...

Joan Rivers: Check!

Jonathan Todd, a palaeontologist from the Natural History Museum, London, UK, is also mystified by the baffling animal. "It is an intriguing beast," he told the BBC News website. "It is another strange thing from the Cambrian. It doesn't look much like an arthropod and I don't find its molluscan affinities particularly convincing." --BBC News

Joan Rivers: Check!

See? Easy mistake to make.

Joan Rivers Vetustodermis planus

Winner: Name of the day

From a news story I just edited:

...Orson Swindle, a former member of the Federal Trade Commission.

Congratulations, Mr. Swindle!

Choices, choices

What's just so great about 24/7 cable-news coverage and the Internet is that you can pick whether you want good news or bad news. Want to be cheered up? You can find a news source to do that. Want to be sent into a dizzying tailspin of depression? You can find a news source to do that, too.

I filled up my tank with gas this morning, spending about $24 (small tank, but, ouch!), which got me to wondering where prices were headed, so I checked Google News when I got to the office. These two headlines appeared right next to each other:

Supply fear pumps up oil prices
Oil prices dive as demand fears ease

Are fears going up or down? Are prices going up or down? I've read both stories, and the only thing that's definitely going up is my level of confusion.

In fact, I'm so confused, I'm just going to turn to the real news: P. Diddy changes name to just plain Diddy.

"I felt the 'P' was coming between me and my fans," Combs, 35, told Katie Couric on NBC's Today show Tuesday. "We had to simplify it. It was, you know, doing concerts and half the crowd saying 'P. Diddy,' half the crowd chanting 'Diddy.' Now everybody can just chant 'Diddy.'"

Yes, that must have been very, very confusing.

But thank God the media gave us the scoop.

Hey, whatever happened to the investigation into Karl Rove?

What--it's not in the paper?

Oh, well, at least we've had our Daily Diddy Update. Now, pardon me as I hide in an isolation chamber for the next few years.