The Exorcism of Evan Rose

Gone the Way of the Leprechaun...

Tracks of Extinct, Giant Scorpion Found in Scotland

from Reuters

LONDON - Tracks made 330 million years ago by a six-legged water scorpion bigger than a human have been found in Scotland.

Martin Whyte, the geologist at the University of Sheffield in northern England who discovered the tracks, said on Wednesday they were left by a scorpion that measured 5ft 3in in length.

"To my knowledge, this is...the largest terrestrial trackway of a walking arthropod to be found so far," he said in a report in the journal Nature.

Arthropods include insects, spiders, crabs, shrimps, and lobsters. They have a body divided into distinct parts, an outside skeleton and jointed legs.

Whyte said the now extinct giant scorpion had at least three pairs of appendages of different lengths. Its lumbering movement indicated the creature could have survived out of water.

What If Cujo...Was a Goat? From Hell?

Goat Attacks Couldn't Keep Her from Church

from The Town Talk

BOYCE - Ruth Barden said she might have to use a walking cane to get around, but the devil can't keep her out of church - and neither will a goat.

The 80-year-old widow was making her way down the steps in her carport Sunday on her way to play the organ for services at First United Methodist Church of Boyce when she was attacked by a goat that had escaped from her neighbor's pen.

"He is a big, old billy goat. He came up the steps and bucked up on those hind legs and nearly scared me to death," Barden said.

Barden said she fended the goat off with her cane, but he continued to attack.

"He kept trying to head-butt me until I was able to get him off balance by pushing him down the steps with my cane," she said.

She said the goat pursued her around the car until, by the grace of God, she was able to get inside and lock the doors.

"I have a hard time getting around," Barden said. "I don't know how I was able to get in the car that fast. I think God must have picked me up and put me there."

When an officer was dispatched to Barden's house to investigate, he also was attacked by the goat.

'Blood Test?!? Blimey! Are You Mad, Man?! Do You Want Me To Eat Your Brains?!'

Zombie Fears for Witch Doctor

from News.com.au

A self-styled British witch doctor has been fined $583 after refusing to give a blood test when suspected to be driving under the influence of alcohol.

Nyararia Mukandiwa, 33, was stopped after driving erratically in the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield last year, but refused to give officers a blood sample on the grounds that as a witch doctor it was likely to send him into a zombie-like state.

He was initially cleared of drink-driving but the High Court has found him guilty of refusing to give a sample and fined and banned him from driving for 18 months.

The Gimli System

'Oh...Awww, it's adorable! Look at it's little bitty rings and teensy weensy wittl-I'll take three.'

A Planet with Planets? Spitzer Finds Cosmic Oddball

from Spitzer

Planets are everywhere these days. They have been spotted around more than 150 stars, and evidence is growing that they also circle "failed," or miniature, stars called brown dwarfs. Now, astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope say they have found what may be planets-in-the-making in the strangest of places - around a brown dwarf that itself is the size of a planet.

The little brown dwarf, called Cha 110913-773444, is one of the smallest known. At eight times the mass of Jupiter, it is even smaller than several planets around other stars.

Yet, this tiny orb might eventually host a tiny solar system. Spitzer's infrared eyes found, swirling around it, a flat disk made up of dust that is thought to gradually clump together to form planets. Spitzer has previously uncovered similar planet-forming disks around other brown dwarfs, but Cha 110913-773444 is the true dwarf of the bunch.

"Our goal is to determine the smallest 'sun' with evidence for planet formation," said Dr. Kevin Luhman of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, lead author of a new paper describing the findings in the Dec. 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Here, we have a sun that is so small it is the size of a planet."

Brown dwarfs are born like stars, condensing out of thick clouds of gas and dust. But unlike stars, brown dwarfs do not grow large enough to trigger nuclear fusion. They remain relatively cool spheres of gas and dust.

So, what makes this oddball a brown dwarf and not a planet? "There are two camps when it comes to defining planets versus brown dwarfs," said Dr. Giovanni Fazio, a co-author of the new paper from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Some go by size and others go by how the object formed. For instance, this new object would be called a planet based on its size, but a brown dwarf based on how it formed. The question then becomes what do we call any little bodies that might be born from this disk - planets or moons?"

HAHAHAHA! Foolish Humans!Target Their...Free Porn![Nooooo!]HAHAHAHA! FIRE!

Attack of the Alien Hackers!

from Sploid

Foolish scientists have put the Earth in great danger by letting millions of humans download and run the program SETI@home on their computers, experts say.

That's because space aliens may be studying all the computer-coded radio waves constantly broadcasting from Earth. Once the enemy space monsters have learned how our computers communicate, they'll be ready for a massive attack on our Internet.

SETI@home is a free download that quietly examines radio signals from outer space when you're not using the computer. It's a popular networked version of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence effort to identify alien radio signals. And because it runs on so many unattended computers that are all online, a crafty alien civilization could easily blast radio signals filled with an unstoppable alien virus or spyware that's almost impossible to get off your computer.

The entire Internet could grind to a halt, leaving the Earth ripe for a violent takeover by space monsters, scientists say.

Richard Carrigan - a particle physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois - wrote a terrifying report on the threat for the scientific journal Acta Astronautica.

"The possibility of a malevolent SETI Hacker signal must be assessed and protective measures should be put in place prior to the receipt of any real signals," Dr. Carrigan told SC Magazine last week.

He says the SETI@home program needs alien-virus protection because many alien civilizations are evil.

Dr. Carrigan says that just as space probes and astronauts returning to Earth must first be decontaminated, raw signals from space aliens should be "cleaned" before being allowed to enter millions of home computers.

Concerns are growing that relations with extraterrestrial civilizations may not be friendly.

Just last week, the former defense chief of Canada demanded his nation make policies for dealing with possibly evil space monsters.

Paul Hellyer, former Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister, first went public with his fears in September.

"UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head," Hellyer said. "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

'After All, We Are All Made of Stars'

And on the Eighth Day...Did God Create Aliens?

from Neil Mackay of The Sunday Herald

My grandfather, a rampant atheist, liked nothing better than savaging the priests that my devout Irish Catholic grandmother invited home in the hope of saving his soul. After laying into them about the dubious credibility of immaculate conceptions and self-replicating loaves and fishes, he’d declaim, with a flourish: "And what the bloody hell is Genesis chapter six all about, eh?"

Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days - and also afterward - when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

Numbers 13:33
We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.

For those not up to speed on the Old Testament, this part of the creation story deals with a category of creatures called "the Nephilim," a non-human race that apparently inhabited the Earth around the time Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. My grandfather would holler: "What are these things? Little green men from outer space?" At which point, the deflated priest would be led from the house as my grandmother crossed herself in the face of her husband’s wickedness. Even in the 1950s, priests knew that aliens and the Church didn’t compute. If there were extraterrestrials out there, their existence could effectively herald the death of God – cutting the ground from beneath key biblical truths, not least of which is the claim that humankind was made in God’s image.

Half a century on, the Catholic Church is finally getting round to asking what it would mean for their religion if humankind were to establish the existence of intelligent aliens. The question weighs heavily on the mind of Guy Consolmagno. Sitting among his telescopes in Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer palace, Consolmagno is puzzling over whether or not the Catholic Church could – or should – baptise an alien. Were such creatures discovered, ought the Pope to consider ordaining an ET? And if the human race ever masters interstellar travel, should missionaries be sent into outer space?

Consolmagno, a 53-year-old Jesuit brother from Detroit, is the Pope's astronomer, with the run of the Vatican’s observatory here at Castel Gandolfo, in the hills outside Rome. Despite the aristocratic-sounding name and the arcane, slightly eldritch subjects he immerses himself in, Guy Consolmagno appears surprisingly Earth-bound: a self-confessed “nerd” from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who's into Star Trek.

It's his job to reconcile the wildest reaches of science fiction with the flint-eyed dogma of the Holy See. Right now, he’s off on a mental meander about "the Jesus Seed" – a brain-warping theory which speculates that, perhaps, every planet that harbours intelligent, self-aware life may also have had a Christ walk across its methane seas, just as Jesus supposedly did here on Earth in Galilee. The salvation of the Betelguesians may have happened simultaneously with the salvation of the Earthlings.

"Is original sin something that affected all intelligent beings?” he asks. “Is there a sort of 'cosmic' Adam predating even life on Earth? Is Jesus Christ’s redemptive sacrifice sufficient for the whole universe? Would there be a parallel history of salvation on other planets?"

Gra'Djni 23:25-31
And in the fourth watch of the sub-night Mellikri went unto them, crawling across the acidic sea. And when the disciples saw her crawling across the sea, they were troubled, thinking to each other, It is an omnimorph coming to feast on our flesh; and they gurgled and hissed in fear, their skins erupting in pheromones. But straightway Mellikri spake unto their minds, thinking, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Neshrek-2 and Neshrek-3 answered her message and thought as one, Lady, if it be thou, bid us come unto thee on the acid. And she replied, Come. And when the Neshreks slithered down out of the ship, they crawled on the acid, their limbs undulating in unison, to go to Mellikri. But when they saw the wind boisterous, they were afraid; and beginning to sink, their carapices beginning to burn, they howled, thinking together, Lady, save us. And immediately Mellikri stretched forth her tendrils, and caught them, and her touch healed their burns, and her mind cleansed theirs of pain's memory, and she thought unto them as her eye glowed blue with love, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

Consolmagno's job is to shore up the crumbling edifice of the Church against the acidic drip, drip, drip of rationality and science. "To me there is no clash between faith and science," he says. "My religion teaches me that God created the universe, but my science teaches me how he did it. Religion doesn't become obsolete like a science text book. In 3000 years, people will still be reading the Bible, but they will not be reading the science texts of today."

That tension between science and religion is the backdrop to his life's work, and Consolmagno has been granted a special dispensation from the Church to produce a book called Intelligent Life in the Universe? Catholic Belief and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life. Published by the Vatican’s Catholic Truth Society, it explores an issue which could – theoretically – reduce the spires and steeples of Rome to rubble.

The Roman Catholic Church has, in the past, been obliged to rue its mistakes: the Crusades, the Inquisition, wartime acquiescence by certain clergy with Nazism. But it was the scientific cock-ups, not the moral ones, that really threatened the institution’s authority. Having taken more than 350 years to admit its mistake in convicting Galileo of heresy for insisting that the Earth orbited the sun, the Church seems keen to demonstrate that it is no longer the natural haven for scientific dunces: hence, Consolmagno and his peculiar little book.

It's Consolmagno's job to finesse any looming doctrinal difficulties that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence may present for His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. For instance, if aliens were discovered, then why would the Bible – supposedly the word of God – contain no information about his non-Earthly creations? If they turn out to be green blobs or sentient gaseous spirals, what's all that talk in the Bible of humankind being created in God's image? What if the aliens wanted to convert us to their God? And do ETs go to heaven? Consolmagno's role is to scientifically, metaphysically and theologically take the lethal sting out of such a debate; to marry Christian faith with the possibility of discovering a talking crab in the next galaxy.

But how does the prospect affect other faiths? According to Dr. Mona Siddiqui, senior lecturer in Islamic Studies at Glasgow University, the discovery of aliens would merely signal that the human race had learned a fraction more about the universe. "The question wouldn't be: 'What does this say about our relationship to God?,' but: 'What does it say about us in the cosmos?'.

"God would remain, but the way we think about his 'creation' – the universe and everything in it – would change." Unless humankind finds a way to communicate with the creator, says Siddiqui, "then the mystery of God remains," no matter what discoveries we make about intelligent life elsewhere in the void.

Ephraim Borowski, former head of philosophy at Glasgow University and current director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, also remains sanguine. "My gut tells me that the discovery of alien life would have no more impact on faith than the discovery of Australia," he says. "When that land was discovered and people of different racial characteristics were found, there was no problem in recognising them as human. If an ET was discovered, would it be that much different?

"Even if we take Genesis literally – with the story of the creation of the sun, moon and stars – we are not told what was going on on those planets." Although Judaism sees humans as the only creature gifted a soul, Borowski has a fanciful explanation for how humanity could reconcile something physically vastly different from ourselves – a giant self-aware spider with a gift for pottery, say – with evidence that the alien creature was just as capable of love, fear, jealousy, and abstract thought as us.

"If we came across an alien with whom we could enjoy a visit to the National Gallery," he muses, "then we might take the view that this creature was a different shape to a human and so not biologically like us, but it functioned like us – or even better than us – and so could be seen to have a soul; to be effectively human."

Only the Church of Scientology waxes enthusiastic about the prospect of extra-terrestrial life. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland refused to participate in a debate related to a Sabbath Day newspaper, and the Church of Scotland was reticent in putting forward a spokesperson on the subject.

Dr. Richard Holloway – the controversial former primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church – insists that only a faith which has embraced modernity could cope with the daisy-cutter level fire and brimstone that would rain down on organised religion in the event of a flying saucer landing on the Esplanade outside Edinburgh Castle. "Christianity has dealt with dinosaurs, Darwin, and the emancipation of women," Holloway says. "It gulped momentarily and moved on. Good religion is not hermetically sealed. A religion that is held with lightness and less intensity can adapt. It won't be stuck in time, but move with the times." Ultimately, he believes, the discovery of aliens would just underscore how big a mystery the universe and its creation – or creator – remain to us mortals who are just passing by.

The central question posed by the discovery of aliens would be: "Are they fallen like us?" If so, says Holloway, did they have their own version of Adam and Eve? Did they have a saviour? If they aren't fallen, then are they living in some pre-Edenic paradise with no need of a saviour? "The biggest fact that plays against the belief in a benign creator," says Holloway, "is meaningless pain and suffering. If we discovered intelligent life on a planet that believed in no God and was just as brutal as our own planet, then that might be seen by some as the ultimate definition of a Godless universe."

For the Vatican and Consolmagno, the theological puzzle is more tricky. As a scientist, Consolmagno can't reject the possibility of alien life. But as a theologian he has to perform an intellectual somersault in order to make sure that the chance of an ET cropping up somewhere in the universe doesn't shunt the Christian God to the outer fringes.

Consolmagno says he believes in ETs – and that they too are God's creatures and no challenge to Rome's authority. His belief is a bit like his faith: he can't prove it, but he's certain nonetheless. "I can't be sure I'm right," he says, "indeed I could well be wrong, but still, I have a hunch that sooner or later, the human race will discover that there are other intelligent creatures out there in the universe."

At the core of Consolmagno's reconciliation between science and religion is an almost hippy way of thinking about spirituality and the universe. He cites the opening lines of John, Chapter One: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything." He interprets this as meaning that the word of God – the spirit of the essence, the meaning of God – existed before anything else, and is part of everything in the natural universe: even a giant mindworm on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.

"After all, we are all made of stars," Consolmagno says, quoting the US singer, Moby. His thinking is this: just as the word of God echoes from "the beginning" until now, in all of us, so the stuff that formed the first stars remains present within the minerals from which we are all made. In Consolmagno's worldview, God and science are one. Apart from certainty in God the creator and Christ the saviour, he believes almost everything else is unknowable. It means Consolmagno can maintain his faith in God, but still believe in the Big Bang. The Lord is an infinite physicist – an all-knowing Stephen Hawking – who started the whole process of life, the universe and everything else by flicking a switch, triggering an almighty explosion some 10 billion-plus years ago and allowing his creation to unfold in accordance with his omniscient, and highly mathematical, plan.

Consolmagno considers himself a free thinker, who wears both a dog collar and his MIT graduation ring as evidence that he can be a "fanatic and a nerd at the same time." He's happy to point out Biblical disparities – including the bit of Genesis about the Nephilim that vexed my grandfather – and say it's just silly fiction. Nor does the Bible's failure to mention dinosaurs mean that Christians have to question the existence of T-Rex. "The Bible doesn't tell you how to program your VCR either, but you know it's there," he adds.

Consolmagno’s natural audience, he says, is the devout. "They are the people who fear even thinking about science, as it might make them question their faith. But a faith that is afraid of the truth has no faith." Part of his mission is to show the blinkered that even the most fantastical of scientific discoveries would, at least in his opinion, not trash the teachings of Christ and the prophets. "The discovery of extraterrestrial life will not destroy the Church," insists Consolmagno. "What it might do is help us discard the bad ideas in religion – the narrow views, the hubris, the divisiveness."

But what about the deep-rooted paranoia evident in so many science fiction works, that alien life, if it's out there, might one day attempt to destroy humankind? "We've seen when human cultures interact that nobody comes out superior," Consolmagno says. What about the genocide of Native Americans when white Europeans "interacted" with their culture? "Hmmm," he says, "it could happen, I suppose, but the important thing is that the Native American culture did survive."

Consolmagno, it seems, remains the eternal optimist. God is great. And for him, the Church, in the face of everything that we know, is safe, secure and a source of succour for the souls of us all – no matter what planet we're on.

Dr. Who vs. The Robophiliac Disco Babes

'Daleks Do Not Do Porn'

from Sky.com

Dr. Who's most deadly enemies, the Daleks, have taken time off from taking over the universe to star in a porn film.

Despite only being equipped with plungers, the croaky-voiced evildoers have been cast in an 18-rated film alongside three naked "disco babes."

Normally only seen making the Doctor's life a misery, the metallic monsters are shown chasing the girls round a spaceship and getting involved in various X-rated activities.

However, the people who dreamed up the Daleks are not amused.

BBC chiefs are said to have had copies of the DVD - called Abducted By The Daleks - withdrawn from Internet auction site eBay.

And the estate of creator Terry Nation reportedly plans to sue.

Estate director Tim Hancock told The Sun: "The reason the Daleks are still the most sinister thing in the universe is because they do not make things like porn.

"They weren't ever intended to be sexual creatures. It's simple - the Daleks do not do porn."

SamThe World's Bufugliest 'Dog'1991 - 2005Rest in Peace, Little Nightmare

Sam, the world's ugliest dog, finally died today after 14 years of making children scream and keeping me from sleep.

Now, maybe, I can rest in peace, secure in the knowledge that he cannot creep into my bedroom in the middle of the night to hump my leg with his monstrous, pus-filled, decayed vienna sausage.

Farewell, little monster...and please, for the love of God, stay dead.

Amen.

In Your Face, South Korea! Our Lifeless Geeks Are Just a Little More Lifeless Than Yours, Eh? I Know! It Sounds Impossible!

The only Olympics where Non-Virgin, Morbidly Obese, Asthmatic, and Needs a Bath are weight categories...

US Takes Gold at Computer-Gaming 'Olympics'

from NewScientist.com

After two days of concentrated laser combat, high-octane road racing, and world class soccer, the US notched up the most victories at the 2005 World Cyber Games in Singapore.

More than 39,000 spectators saw 700 contestants from 67 countries battle it out to claim a stake in a prize money pot of $435,000 – not to mention the kudos of being declared one of the world's elite computer gamers.

Fans cheered as crucial games were projected onto large screens in the auditorium, and the grand final was broadcast live on the internet.

Among the competitors were several professional computer gamers, including Niklas Timmermann from Germany, playing the racing game Need for Speed, and Jihoon Seo of South Korea, playing the strategy game StarCraft. Successful gamers can earn substantial salaries and are celebrities among their peers.

During the event, 12,000 kilowatts of electricity were pumped through the International Conventional and Exhibition Center, to keep 600 PCs and 30 Xbox game consoles running during more than 1000 matches.

The final scores saw US players win the most accolades – team gold medals for the hotly fancied Team3D in the frantic combat games CounterStrike and Halo 2, as well as an individual silver medal in the strategy game WarCraft III.

The US was closely followed by South Korea, which won two gold medals and one bronze, and by Brazil, which collected one gold and two silver medals. Individual gold medals also went to Germany, for FIFA Soccer, and to China for WarCraft III.

Here's How My Scrabble Games Sound:Is 'Jixieq' a Word?No. Not on Earth.How About 'Jizieq'?No.'Xijizeq'?No!

Puny Headline Score Can't Top Scrabble Kings

from The New York Times

LONDON - In the end, the zobo and the ogive could not quite triumph over the qanat and the euripi on Sunday, and thus the contender was birsled - Scottish dialect for scorched or toasted.

It was with such linguistic acrobatics that the eighth World Scrabble Championships came to an end in a north London hotel, when Adam Logan, a 30-year-old mathematician from Canada, scored 465 points to beat Pakorn Nemitrmansuk, a 30-year-old architect from Thailand, with 426 points in the final game of a playoff.

Over four days of triple-letter scores and usages involving q's without u's, like qanat, and qi, it had been a time of abstruse words, canny tactics and high tension for 102 contenders from more than 40 countries from Australia to Zambia, including the United States. It was a time, too, when language divorced itself from meaning in the competition for the $15,000 winner's prize.

"For the purpose of the game, the meaning of the word is not important," said Leslie Charles, the national champion of Trinidad and Tobago, who sat in a hotel ballroom where the final best-of-five playoff was relayed on wide television screens from a smaller room where the two players were closeted with their racks, tiles and 25-minute timer clocks.

In the game, all that counts is whether words figure on a list of the official compendium of legitimate words. (There are over 108,553 acceptable words with up to eight characters - just for starters, according to the contest organizers.)

Indeed, the previous champion, Panupol Sujjayakorn, a 21-year-old Thai university student, was said to have won two years ago with an encyclopedic memory of the list but without a broad knowledge of spoken English.

Amy Byrne, an adjudicator from Edinburgh who sat among the audience for the finals, said that many words not familiar to non-Scrabblers were listed and that their meanings were explained in either the Chambers English dictionary or the Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary from the United States.

In the finals, she said, euripi, Mr. Logan's opening word, was the plural of a word meaning an arm of the sea with strong currents. Zobo, she explained to a non-Scrabbling outsider, was a form of Himalayan cattle. Ogive was an S shape used in architecture or mathematics. And qanat, she said, was an irrigation channel.

"We all know that one!" she exclaimed with a fond smile.

Mr. Logan triumphed with a straight 3-0 victory over Mr. Nemitrmansuk in the final playoff. It had been a challenging fight.

During the contest, Mr. Logan said, when he was going for one particularly high-voltage triple-letter-score, triple-word-score word, he was so tense that "my hands were shaking and it was difficult to get the letters on the board" - passions perhaps not familiar to the average parlor player.

But then, average parlor players do not habitually hit scores in the mid- to high hundreds: historically, the highest recorded score in a single game is 1,049, the organizers of the contest here said.

Sartorially, the contest had few of the trappings of world sporting finals - no fancy uniforms or drum majorettes and an audience that, apart from players, numbered but few, though more were thought to have watched on a Webcast.

Indeed, fleece jackets, baseball caps, denim and sneakers seemed popular apparel for contestants, locked before the finals in three, heads-bowed days during which each of them played 24 one-on-one games. With 51 games under way in a ballroom, the tournament played out to the sibilant rustling of tiles being gently shaken in Scrabble bags and occasional calls of "challenge, please" for particularly unknown words.

The organizers also sold Scrabble T-shirts with slogans like "Cheeky not geeky" and "funky not geeky," which, one way or another, spoke for themselves.

Girl Found Wandering Graveyard...11 Years After Her Death!And Not Craving Delicious Braaainnnns!

Girl 'Resurrects' after 11 Years

from Nation Online

AFRICA - Sixteen-year-old Josephine Chilamba, who died at the age of five in 1994, is believed to have resurrected last month after spending 11 years in the world of darkness.

Josephine surprised people who spotted her walking around a graveyard as mourners were returning home after burial ceremony of one village member in Mkungula Village on October 2, 2005.

Josephine told people who questioned her that she was looking for her mother, Luduwina Chilamba.

Luduwina said her daughter died in April, 1994 after a short illness as they were transporting her to Nkhoma Mission Hospital.

She said people were puzzled to note that Josephine's body felt like any normal living body in terms of temperature, an indication of something fishy surrounding the girl’s mysterious death.

She said women, who were washing the body, noticed that the girl's hands were grabbing the funeral caretakers, adding that the girl could urinate and sneeze as her body was being washed.

Josephine said after disappearing from this world she was taken to a certain house where she met other 15 stranded people who were made to work on the owner's garden, grocery shop, and do other house chores like drawing water and cleaning utensils. The landlord renamed her Dolpha.

"I used to go to the village well to draw water, where I sometimes recognised my relatives, but I could not talk to them," said Josephine.

Asked how she found herself back to this life, Josephine said there was a man who took her into a confined room with a small glass window. He went to the garden, leaving the door unlocked.

"Something just came into my mind to try to open the door," said Josephine. "Then I started running until I found myself near the graveyard."

When asked his view from a religious point, Pastor Jeremiah Chikhwaza of the Bible Faith Ministries said he knows that magic and witchcraft are real.

"For example, in the book of Exodus Moses used magic power," said Chikhwaza. "I have some friends who claim to have used such powers when they were Satanists."

Somewhere in Hell, a Clown Is Giggling...

A Brush with Evil: Serial Killer’s Painting Brings Bad Luck, Owner Says

from Boston Herald

BOSTON - A Malden man’s guilty pleasure of investing in murderabilia has come back to haunt him thanks to a "cursed" clown painting by serial killer John Wayne Gacy, which the collector claims turned his life into a three-ring circus.

"I just want to get rid of it," said musician Nikki Stone about the late Gacy’s signed self-portrait of his terrifying alter ego, Pogo the Clown.

Since he plunked down $3,000 in 2001 to buy the framed oil from national murderabilia merchant Arthur Rosenblatt, Stone said his beloved dog has died and his mother found out she had cancer. When a friend offered to store the painting at his house, the friend’s neighbor was killed in a car crash. A second friend who kept the painting for Stone attempted suicide, Stone said.

"I’ve never even hung it," said Stone, who hopes a less superstitious buyer will at least cover the $3,000 he blew - even if only to burn the true-crime artifact.

The creepy conversation piece is now in the care of Stone's pal Shawn McCarron, a consignment art dealer and owner of Kaleidoscope Tattoo & Art in Cambridge.

"I’m not afraid of it," McCarron said of the painting. "I don't believe in the hocus-pocus and the bad mojo that comes with it."

John "Killer Clown" Gacy, a suburban Chicago contractor and former shoe salesman, was executed in 1994 at age 52 for the torture and murders of 33 boys and men. Gacy, who also performed as Pogo the Clown at children’s parties, would kill his victims while raping them, then bury the bodies in a crawl space in his home.

Stone admits he once thought it would be "super cool" to own a Gacy original. "It's the most evil of bastards who are most in demand," he reasoned at the time.

And after all, actor Johnny Depp invested in a Gacy clown painting. Then again, Depp reportedly became so weirded out by the piece that he developed a pathological fear of clowns and unloaded the artwork.

Somewhere in Prison, Miss Cleo Is Calling Her Attorney...

Phone Psychic Was Right

from Sploid

Army Staff Sgt. James Estep was killed on Tuesday by a bomb in Iraq. The father of three was 26 years old.

Years earlier, he called a telephone psychic who gave him a prediction that proved grimly accurate: Estep would marry, divorce, marry again and die before his 27th birthday.

Before being sent to Iraq, Estep made his funeral plans and made special visits to his family members.

"The last time I saw him, he said, 'Dad, I love you and probably won't never see you again,'" Estep's stepfather said. "Like he'd had a premonition."

Estep's family said many soldiers go to war with fear in their hearts. But his wife said her husband possessed an especially strong foreboding.

"I had a weird feeling that he knew," she said.

Tinkerbell? Pissed! Off!

'Don't Anger the Faeries' is right. First of all, 'faerie' is an ugly slur, and unless you want your ass kicked by a furious 6'5" 270-pound Cher impersonator named 'Mitch' in six-inch heels and a Bob Mackie gown, I wouldn't go around calling us faer...um, hold on...This Just In: I misread the story. My bad! Correct caption: Attorneys Sprinkle Bamblesprout and Nimbelina Flutterfluff depose Tweeter, material witness in their "big folk" court hearing against a mini-mall developer. 'First, poop on the defendants, and then...'

Don't Anger the Faeries

from Sploid

In the Scottish village of St. Fillans, Perthshire, housing developers have lost out to the local Fairies.

Plans to build new homes at the edge of Loch Earn were scrapped when the villagers went berserk over the builders' intention to move a single rock...because the Fairies live inside the stone.

The Times of London reports:

Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000. His first notice of the residential sensibilities of the netherworld came as his diggers moved on to a site on the outskirts of the village, which crowns the easterly shore of Loch Earn. "A neighbour came over shouting, 'Don't move that rock. You'll kill the fairies.'"

Salter made the mistake of thinking the whole thing was either a joke or just the opinions of a lone nut. He was wrong. The villagers were very serious about the alleged Fairy nest.

The rock protruded from the centre of a gently shelving field, edged by the steep slopes of Dundurn mountain, where in the sixth century the Celtic missionary St. Fillan set up camp and attempted to convert the Picts from the pagan darkness of superstition.

"Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn't go down very well," Mr Salter said.

With the locals firmly on the side of the Fairies, the developer had to start over with new plans. It seems the Fairies do have some implied legal rights:

The Planning Inspectorate has no specific guidelines on fairies but a spokesman said: "Planning guidance states that local customs and beliefs must be taken into account when a developer applies for planning permission." Mr Salter said: "We had to redesign the entire thing from scratch."

Battles between developers and Fairies aren't limited to weird places like Scotland. New York's Staten Island has its own colony of Fairies who began complaining in 1939 and apparently never stopped:

The fairies expressed their fear that, before very long, the beautiful Island will have changed into "a great brick, mortar and steel city, with cement roads, long rows of modern houses built closely together, and, will... "no longer be a home for fairies."

They felt it their duty, Kolff wrote, to leave a verbal account of their life, as well as a description of Staten Island, "with its hills and valleys, its lakes and dells, its forests, its wildflowers, its golden grain fields, its delightful country lanes, its waving fields of delicious strawberries and other fruits, and its wild life filled with song and other birds of all kind."

And in Iceland, the Fairies and Elves are reportedly so numerous that road construction projects are often re-routed so as not to offend the supernatural creatures living under various rocks. The New York Times reported in July:

Recently, the planning committee considered a resident's application to build a garage. "One member said, 'I hope it's O.K. with the elves,' " Ms. Erlingsdottir related. Should the council determine that it is, in fact, not O.K. - usually this happens when a local mystic hears from the elf population, directly or through a vision - the town would consider moving the project, or getting the mystic to ask the elves to move away, she said.

Such occurrences are not unusual. In nearby Kopavogur, a section of Elfhill Road was narrowed from two lanes to one in the 1970's, when repeated efforts to destroy a large rock that was believed to house elves were thwarted by equipment breakdowns. The rock is still there, jutting awkwardly into the road, but it is unclear whether the tenants are.

"With the artificial lampposts, there's too much light for them, and there's also too much noise," explained Gurdrun Bjarnadottir, who has lived across the street for some 30 years. "A lot of people believe they still live there, but I think they've moved."


Following dismissal of her lawsuit against Wal-Mart, Tink grimly realizes that only one thing will stop the Big Folk from destroying her woodland home now. 'I think I'll start with their children first,' she finally decides. 'Their entrails shall feed my garden, and their severed heads shall serve as a warning to others: DON'T FUCK WITH FAERIES, FELLAS!'

Sneak Peek at Tarantino's Harry Potter & the Jigsaw of Bloody Chunks?!

Cut into Pieces for Allegedly Practicing Witchcraft

from New Karala

GUWAHATI, INDIA - A tea garden worker in Assam killed two people and chopped their bodies into pieces because he suspected they had cast evil spells on his sons.

A police official said the tribal man, Bhim Turi, attacked and killed the two men Sunday with sharp weapons at the Rajmai tea garden in Sivasagar district, east of Assam's main city of Guwahati.

On Sunday evening, the 45-year-old garden worker attacked the alleged sorcerer with a machete and killed him at an isolated area inside the plantation.

"Turi had sliced the body into pieces and was preparing to bury in a pit nearby when another garden worker saw him," a police official said.

Turi pounced on him and killed him as well thinking he was also a partner of the victim.

"He finished chopping off the two dead bodies into pieces when a group of garden workers spotted him," the official said.

Police arrested Turi after the workers managed to capture him.

"It is shocking that even in this age you find about 200 people killed each year, inspired by superstitions," Assam's Inspector General of Police said. "We need to get rid of these practices and beliefs, to save innocent lives being lost."

Superstitious beliefs, black magic and demonology form an integral part of tribal customs.


An Exclusive Preview: '...and then after three good whacks of the blade, Ron's head finally came free and rolled clumsily towards them, still gasping and gurgling in crimson sprays of steaming blood. Just then, Harry's bowels released, soiling Hermione's new shoes...'

When Demons Attack!

'Demons' Wreak Havoc in North

from The Nambian

NAMIBIA, Africa - Many people in the North are fearful about a spate of incidents where what they call demons are terrorising people with mysterious phenomena.

More than 10 pastors and school authorities are struggling to deal with cases of bewitchment at schools and in villages.

A 17-year-old schoolgirl from Oshidhiya village says she cannot wear clothing because it catches fire spontaneously.

Johannes Nghidipo (21) from Elyalyatika village is in the Oshakati Hospital with feet so burnt that they may have to be amputated.

And 41 schoolchildren - 39 girls and two boys - at Mumbwenge Combined School near Oshigambo are falling to the ground in school, screaming for Satan to leave them alone.

"We really do not know what to do," Helena Makili, the Principal of Mumbwenge Combined School, told The Namibian yesterday.

She said that the whole school - 514 pupils from Grade 1 to 10, 16 teachers, two cleaners and a secretary - is stunned by the phenomenon.

"This has never happened at our school and we are praying to our Lord to stop these demons as soon as possible," Makali said.

The school has called in parents and had meetings, and then decided to take the concerned children to Onandjokwe Hospital, where no illness was found. The principal decided to contact pastors from different churches and seven have come to pray over the children.

Pastors all tried praying, laying hands on the children who are falling and screaming, but nothing has stopped the "demons."

Children continue to fall, and to scream.

"All those pastors who came couldn't stop the demons and the children continue to be molested by these demons," Makili told The Namibian.

She said that the children are seeing a black thing with a long stick.

"Go away Satan, leave us and our teachers, Satan, we were sent to school by our parents to learn and not to be molested by you," the children apparently call and scream when this starts, said Makili.

"We are still calling to all Namibians and the whole world to come and help us in this big problem," Makili said.

The Principal of Ozizi Combined School told The Namibian that one of the schoolgirls is being molested by some mysterious phenomenon. Her clothing always catches fire when she is at her parents' home. A source from this girl's village told The Namibian, that when this starts, she has to be naked to avoid getting burnt.

Klaudia Silas (45) from Epangu village told The Namibian that her son, Johannes Nghidipo, mysteriously burnt both his feet at a witchdoctor's house last Thursday night.

"I was told by his doctors that both feet will be amputated. I really do not know what that witchdoctor has done to my son," Silas said.

Nghidipo told The Namibian that he did not know what happened to him during that night.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Nghidipo said when he woke up the next morning he noticed that both his feet were seriously burnt.

"I didn't feel pain, although I was seriously burnt, only later I started to feel pain. Nobody could explain how was I burnt and why."

E = MC Hammer [Einsteinsayswhat?]

Delta Dawn of the Dead

133 Dead As Delta Cancels Flight in Midair

from The Onion

CINCINNATI — A 737 traveling from Cincinnati to Salt Lake City was lost with all passengers and crew Monday when cash-strapped Delta Airlines, the aircraft's operator, canceled Flight 1060 en route.

According to a statement from Delta, the midair cancellation was made as part of the company's plan to cut continental service by 25 percent and emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with an economically viable business strategy.

"Delta Airlines regrets any inconvenience to our valued customers," the statement read in part. "Unfortunately, in today's uncertain economy, service interruptions and cancellations are inevitable."

Air-traffic-control personnel reported that Flight 1060 was at cruising altitude when Delta cancelled the flight. According to the aircraft's black-box flight recorder, the crew announced the cancellation over the intercom, instructed passengers to gather their luggage from overhead bins for disembarking, then shut down all aircraft systems. At 9:46 a.m. Central time, Flight 1060's tracking designation vanished from air-traffic-control radar screens. Approximately 15 minutes later, the aircraft crashed in a cornfield outside Tipton, IN, killing all onboard.

While Delta officials are blaming the cancellation on financial troubles, other problems, such as high fuel costs and bad weather, have caused delays and lost profits for airlines in recent months.

"Airlines have been compensating for recent shortfalls by canceling flights, as well as overbooking," airline-industry observer Gerard Mendez said. "These things never fail to irritate customers—especially when they're done in midair—but unfortunately, the airline industry is a business like any other, and as it becomes increasingly competitive, these sorts of frustrations are taking place more and more."

In May, Delta officials made an adjustment for an overbooked flight by bumping six passengers from Flight 400 somewhere over the Allegheney Mountains.

Delta Airlines spokesperson Clarice Waddell said that, in cases of cancellation and overbooking, the airline does everything it can to accommodate its customers' travel plans.

Said Waddell: "When we're forced to bump passengers from a moving airplane, we always offer meal vouchers or SkyMiles credits."

Consolidating flights is another controversial cost-cutting measure used by Delta in recent months. Delta's last attempt to consolidate flights in midair, in December 2005, resulted in the total destruction of two 747s, which exploded in a large fireball approximately 35,000 feet over central Arizona. Although the loss of these planes was recoupable as a tax deduction for the airline, Waddell stressed that Delta nonetheless regretted any unfortunate repercussions the decision may have had on the company's top priority—the customer.

I Love Hate the 80s!

Due to a modem malfunction, I've been exiled to the '80s-wasteland of dial-up! Can you imagine? Using the phone to connect to the Internet? It's so fucking Flintstone.

And I just discovered I can't fit in the oven! None of my guns are loaded! And the closest thing I have to poison is some Yoplait that expired two weeks ago! (It just made me, um, splatter a few hours later.)

Alcohol is my only solace. Again.

If my bloggings are sparce over the next few days - which is about how long it will take each to actually post - it's because I'm drunk on dial-up, probably wearing leg warmers and kissing to be clever. Ugh!

Maybe it would be quicker to snail mail my blog...


'Awww...does the big baby have to dial-up to the Internet? Does baby want his ba-ba? Did he make a poopie?' Fucking Hal Sparks!

M & Emma Cast

Two Models Sign on for X3

from Cinescape

X-Men Films has reported two models have signed a deal with Marvel Entertainment to be in the X-Men 3 (or a possible spin off of the film). The women are Ashley Hartman (below) and Mercedes Scelba-Shorte (left).

Mercedes will play a mutant simply known as M. Ashley is portraying Emma Frost.

For those not in the know, M equals Monet St. Croix from the old Marvel Comic Generation X. She's a mutant with amazing strength, telepathy, and the ability to fly. And Emma Frost, aka The White Queen, is the attractive, yet deadly mutant who's currently a member of the X-Men team, but has had a past as a villainess. She was also once the head mentor of the Generation X team.

Superman Returns

Dilithium Crystal

William Shatner Wants To Sell Kidney Stone

from FemaleFirst

William Shatner is hoping to persuade medics who removed his kidney stone to hand it over so he can sell it on auction site eBay.

The actor, who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek, claims the stone will become "the ultimate piece of Star Trek memorabilia."

Shatner plans to give the proceeds of the sale to charity, but he has to cut through eBay red tape first - the website's rules are strict about the sale of body parts.

The 74-year-old actor was taken from the set of his hit TV show Boston Legal last month, suffering from what was initially reported to be chronic back pain.

But Shatner has since revealed he had a kidney stone, which he successfully passed after experiencing excruciating pain.

'Query: What Do You Mean I Am "Creepy"?'

Einstein Shows Off High-Tech Ware at APEC

from AFP

BUSAN, South Korea - Korean robot makers produced a stroke of genius this week as a walking, talking Albert Einstein greeted APEC delegates at a fair exhibiting the latest in IT gadgetry.

"Albert Hubo" has the face and even an attempt at the famous hair of the German-born physicist. He is also capable of making facial expressions and displaying human-like emotions thanks to 31 hidden motors.

Shuffling about the hall of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Busan, the 54-inch robot views an array of innovations that would have brought a bemused smile to Einstein himself.

SK Telecom, Korea's biggest mobile operator, leads the charge with new wireless technology that allows mobile phone users to watch videos, listen to music, and access the Internet on the move.

If the phones were too much for technophobes, there was always the less complicated prospect of climbing on board "Hubo FX-1", a robot capable of lifting up to 90 kilograms and operated by a joystick.

Or...if it all got too much, "T-Rot" was on hand to act as a bartender and makes drinks at the customer's request, while "Kibo" could lip-sync and dance to music.