They're not Oompa Loompas, they've dyed their skin

I don't actually intend to take all these articles from British newspapers, they're just the first ones I find. Here's the Sun:

ONE of the world’s last ‘uncontacted Indian’ tribes has been photographed from the air near the Brazil-Peru border.

The photos were taken by global organisation Survival International, over one of the remotest parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s Acre state.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said: "These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist.

"The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct."

There are more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, with more than half living in either Brazil or Peru.

They are in danger of being forced off their land, killed or dying from new diseases.

Survival International supports 82 countries working for tribal peoples' rights.

And here's a picture of said tribe:



Now, I'm not entirely sure I believe the claim that this really is a lost tribe. I mean, if they are, we have no way of communicating with them - so how do we know they've absolutely never run into other humans?

I buy that they've pretty much shut themselves off from civilization, but I'm not sure it's possible for there to be a tribe that has literally never seen any people who were not part of that tribe.

However, that aside, I have a bigger question - why send a plane? Assuming for the moment (and the rest of this post) that they are in fact a lost tribe, surely the sight of a large, bird-shaped-but-clearly-not-a-bird object, making A LOT of noise, would probably be a bad idea? Maybe it would, I don't know, cause them to threaten it with their weapons, as they're doing in that picture?

I'll give them some credit, though - a helicopter would be worse. It looks like a giant flying bug which is about to swoop down and eat you.

My initial thought was that they should send a hot air balloon. If you were to forget everything you know about aircraft and physics, and picture a flying machine, wouldn't it look sort of like a hot air balloon? Plus, you can actually see the person inside, and they can yell down to the ground.

Then somebody pointed out the obvious - those guys have spears. You're in a balloon. It's going to end badly.

So I'm stuck - how can you get photographs of this group from afar, without excessively scaring them or killing yourself?

--Ryan

I now pronounce you man and wall

Or more accurately, wall and wife.

I say this because a Swedish woman has married the Berlin Wall. Here's the full story, from the Telegraph"

Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, 54, whose surname means Berlin Wall in German, wed the concrete structure in 1979 after being diagnosed with a condition called Objectum-Sexuality.

Mrs Berliner-Mauer, whose fetish is said to have its roots in childhood, claimed she fell in love with the structure when she first saw it on television when she was seven.

She began collecting "his" pictures and saving up for visits. On her sixth trip in 1979 they tied the knot before a handful of guests.

While she remains a virgin with humans, she insists she has a full, loving relationship with the wall.

Mrs Berliner-Mauer, who lives in Liden, northern Sweden, said: "I find long, slim things with horizontal lines very sexy.

"The Great Wall of China's attractive, but he’s too thick – my husband is sexier."

While the rest of mankind rejoiced when the Wall, erected by the Soviets in 1961 to halt an exodus from East to West Berlin, was largely torn down in 1989, its "wife" was horrified.

She's never been back and now keeps models depicting "his" former glory.

She said: “What they did was awful. They mutilated my husband."

She is said to have shifted her affections to a nearby garden fence.

Objectum-Sexual or objectophilia is feelings of love, attraction, arousal, and commitment for a particular object.

The mere thought of a relationship with an actual human being seems ludicrous.

My favourite part (by far) is that SHE TOOK ITS NAME.

That said, this does raise a number of increasingly bizarre questions.

For one, where are the rules on adultery? If some emotionally-charged East German sympathizer were to find a piece of the wall and kiss it, would that be considered adultery? Would the wife get mad at the woman? Would she get mad at her 'husband' for being complacent in letting it happen?

How about citizenship? I'm not familiar with Swedish law, but if a marriage has been going on for 29 years, odds are that would make the foreign spouse a citizen. Is the Berlin Wall now holding a Swedish passport? And if he is, is he eligible to play goal for their national soccer team?

I mean, seriously, between this and the chimpanzee that wants to be designated as a human, I'm starting to wonder if the main cause of overpopulation is us counting things as humans that clearly aren't.

But I guess those are just some of the problems facing any wallfully-wedded couple.

--Ryan

Get Smart International Trailer

Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway and team up against KAOS, in Get Smart, an upcoming cinema adapatation of the 1960's Spy parody series.

Here below an international Get Smart trailer, from Germany:

(A translation in case you don't read German:)
To be a hero, no need to be a secret agent.
Just one thing to do:

Keep quiet! And turn off your mobile phone!

GET SMART
The more I see from Get Smart the more I want to see from Anne Hathaway! She's getting hotter every time!
;-p

Found Them!

They were in Toronto this past weekend! Unfortunately, Carmen slipped away before the authorities could arrive, and when we went to ask Waldo where she went, we simply couldn't find him.


--
D. Phillips

Cup crazy

(Once again...if you're not a hockey fan, don't waste your time reading this.)

The big day has arrived. Kitchener against Spokane, winner gets the Memorial Cup.

There's one big difference between this year's Rangers, and the last Kitchener team to win the Cup (five years ago) - in 2003, Kitchener was dominant. There was the sense that something would have to go horribly, horribly wrong for that team not to win it all. This year, consensus is that the game could go either way - two great teams, and nobody's sure how the game will unfold.

In the interest of "I haven't seen anyone else do this", I'm going to go through some of the Rangers' best players from this year, and try to find their equivalent on the 2003 squad.

Justin Azevedo is quite clearly Derek Roy, probably the most obvious comparison there is. Both are noticeably smaller than the average hockey player, both are centres, both are in their final year of junior. Azevedo lead the team in scoring, Roy would have led in 2003 if he played the full season. They're also the two players who each received the brunt of the spotlight from the national media.

Mikael Boedker is Mike Richards. Both of their names are derivatives of 'Michael', both are/were eighteen years old in the Cup year, and they're both the huge prospect who broke out on a big stage during the Cup, coming to national attention for the first time.

Nick Spaling is Gregory Campbell. They're both solid contributors who got overlooked (both by fans and scouts) because of all the talent around them.

Nazim Kadri is, strangely, Scott Dickie. Although Kadri isn't a goalie, he is on his way out of Kitchener after the season, and all the fans know that today is their last chance to see his understated contributions to the team.

Yannick Weber is Andre Benoit - high scoring defenceman with Quebecois connections.

Mike Mascioli is Evan McGrath - rookie who you just know is going to be the top player on the team a couple years from now, but is getting lost in the shuffle at the moment.

Mike Duco is Adam Keefe - the fans love him far more than they would the average player of his ability.

T.J. Battani is Nathan O'Nabigon - solid player who was brought in to add more depth to a team that doesn't really need it. They also both have punctuation in their name.

Scott Timmins is Chad McCaffrey - an indispensable part of the team, but you sometimes forget he's even part of it.

Matt Pepe is Steve Eminger - consistent veteran defenceman.

And that's all I've got - the goalies don't really match up at all.

GO RANGERS GO!

--Ryan

Best prank ever?

(No pictures, because they'd ruin the surprise.)

A few winters ago, it snowed in North Carolina. Apparently this is an unusual occurrence, and even a little bit of snow causes everything to close - schools, places of business, etc.

News 14 Carolina, a local cable news station, had a running ticker of cancellations, and allowed people to submit cancellations through their website. However, a bunch of college students discovered that all cancellations were being placed on the ticker immediately, without anybody looking at them. So, being college students, they started submitting some of their own.

Here is the message board thread which contained the hijinks in their entirety. Or, if you're too impatient to read through all that (too bad for you), here are screen captures of some of the funniest to make it through.

If some of the humour seems dated, remember that this was 2004.

Enjoy!

--Ryan

Hitting the links

I didn't plan to do this. I was going to blog tonight, but it was going to be about something funny. However, throughout yesterday and today, little things kept coming up - things that aren't worth a blog by themself, but combined, can be. So here's some links to news stories, and the part that makes it interesting.

A truck driver took out some power lines near my house yesterday. The Record actually has it wrong - it was the corner of River and Holborn (not Ottawa), right at the Zellers entrance to Stanley Park Mall. Went by today, and there's still evidence of damage - one of the lights must have been damaged beyond repair, as it's gone. Also, the entrance/exit to the mall parking lot has now been repainted, which is great news - any time I went out there and straight down Holborn (my preferred route home), I'd be glancing over to make sure that whoever led the left turn lane was aware that he was supposed to turn left.

In other news that's close to home (albeit another home), Brantford police raided five homes for drugs and made 42 arrests. These were all within walking distance of my house (and in once case, quite possibly right across the street). Obviously it's good for Brantford to get rid of these problems, but I'm sure it's no coincidence that this didn't happen until after all the students were gone.

Sticking with Brantford, Peter MacKay was in town to play some rugby. While this story is offbeat enough on its own, the accompanying picture was taken by one of my professors - and another picture he took of the same event wound up in yesterday's Toronto Sun. That was a neat surprise, although it wasn't the first time his photo ended up in a bigger paper.

On another note, Quebec's government has a report on the experiences of immigrants in their province. This story by itself isn't that interesting, but I heard something on the news last night that made me stop for a moment - French-Canadians in Quebec apparently think that minorities need to do more to integrate themselves into the Quebecois culture. So French-Canadians are angry that a minority wants to keep its own culture...seriously, am I missing something here?

This was something I did not expect to see in the Record yesterday, or any day for that matter. Any newspaper, either.

This guy agrees with me about the pig in Monday's Pearls Before Swine.

Finally, the Memorial Cup is still going on. Kitchener is beating Belleville right now in a game that is literally meaningless - the two teams play again on Friday, with the winner of that game meeting Spokane for the championship.

That thing I was originally going to blog about tonight? Friday or Saturday, probably. And you won't be disappointed.

--Ryan