Pussy Power!

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Today’s news of the weird: Inventor fuels car with dead cats.

A German inventor has angered animal rights activists with his answer to fighting the soaring cost of fuel — dead cats.

Christian Koch, 55, from the eastern county of Saxony, told Bild newspaper that his organic diesel fuel — a homemade blend of garbage, run-over cats and other ingredients — is a proven alternative to normal consumer diesel.

Koch said around 20 dead cats added into the mix could help produce enough fuel to fill up a 50-liter (11 gallon) tank.

Never fear, though…it turns out that while the biodiesel fuel Koch is working on is real, the “dead cats” angle was nothing more than the overactive imagination of a Bild newspaper reporter.

A German inventor said he has developed a method to produce crude oil products from waste that he believes can be an answer the soaring costs of fuel, but denied a German newspaper story implying he also used dead cats.

“I use paper, plastics, textiles and rubbish,” Koch told Reuters.

“It’s an alternative fuel that is friendly for the environment. But it’s complete nonsense to suggest dead cats. I’ve never used cats and would never think of that. At most the odd toad may have jumped in.”

Bild on Tuesday wrote a headline: “German inventor can turn cats into fuel — for a tank he needs 20 pussies.” The paper on Wednesday followed up with a story entitled: “Can you really make fuel out of cats?”

A spokesman for Bild told Reuters the story was meant to show that cat remains could “in theory” be used to make fuel with Koch’s patented method.

The author of the story said Koch had never told him directly that he had used dead cats as the story implied.

Sounds like Bild employs one reporter who’d make a better fit at the Weekly World News….

iTunes “Liontamer” by Faithless from the album Outrospective (2001, 5:48).

Goodbye FedEx Kinko’s

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Some people may have noticed that there was a lot more information here not too long ago.

I’m having second thoughts about publishing what just happened publicly, though.

Suffice to say:

  1. I didn’t get fired — I quit.
  2. This is a good thing (for me).

Friends and family are welcome to the details. I just don’t want an urge to air my dirty laundry to potentially damage any future job prospects.

You’ve gotta be kidding me

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So…when did CNN start hiring The Onion‘s writers?

Bush Takes Responsibility

Oh, wait. They’re serious?

Amazing.

At least he’s actually acting like a President for once. Pity that it took this long, this big of a catastrophe, this many dead people, and I’d bet that it’s motivated more by his tanking approval rate than any real sense of responsibility…but at least it’s something.

iTunes “Nothing Really Matters (Kruder and Dorfmeister)” by Madonna from the album Nothing Really Matters (1999, 11:10).

In Transition

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Along with upgrading the backend of the site to Movable Type 3.2, which I did last week sometime, I’ve decided to upgrade my templates to the new MT3.2 styles. As I’ve had a fair number of customizations that I’ve been using, though, it’s taking a bit of time to incorporate them into the default templates provided by Six Apart.

Expect some oddities for a few days as I get things tweaked and configured. Once I’ve got everything working with a basic startpoint, then I’ll see about customizing the style to something a little more “me”.

For now, though…things might be a bit odd. Bear with me, hopefully this won’t last too long.

Basic HTML tag cheatsheet

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After a friend asked me a few questions about the basic HTML tags while trying to clear up some confusion, I went Googling for some sort of cheat sheet listing just the most basic tags. I couldn’t find one — just came up with a lot of full-blown tutorials or cheat sheets listing every tag in the book — so I tossed this together. Hopefully it helps.

I’m only looking at the tags most likely to be used in your standard, basic weblog post, so there won’t be much in the way of structural stuff here, just presentational.

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Why I’m not a Hollywood casting agent

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Seeing as how they’re both horribly typecast these days and just seem to play the same characters over and over in every movie…I think Sam Jackson and Morgan Freeman should switch agents for a few years. Shake things up a little bit. Let Freeman play the “permanantly pissed badass with whom you do not want to fuck”, and give Jackson a few of the “heartwarming kindly older wise man” roles.

Put Jackson in the Miss Daisy’s driver’s seat. Partner Freeman up with John Travolta, guns a-blazin’ and Bible a-quotin’. Let Jackson battle institutionalization at Shawshank. Drop a bright purple lightsaber in Freeman’s hands.

They’re both great actors, and I love seeing each of them do their thing, but…just do something different for once.

More Katrina Incompetence

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On August 27th, President Bush declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana due to the then-incoming Hurricane Katrina. Sounds like a good thing, and possibly one of the few things done right in this whole mess, right? Well…not quite. The declaration spelled out which Louisiana parishes were covered by the State of Emergency (emphasis mine):

The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.

As Chris Floyd first noticed, none of the coastal parishes were included in this list. All the inland, landlocked parishes were mentioned, but the coastal parishes in the most immediate danger from Katrina? Conspicuously absent. Bob Harris created this map highlighting the mentioned parishes:

bushincompetencemap.gif

So good to know we’ve got the best and the brightest doing everything in their power to keep the people of America safe from any harm.

Olbermann blasts Bush

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Well, not so much Bush specifically, as the entire botched crisis management in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It’s an astoundingly good editorial sequence — could it be that the media’s finally been jostled awake from its all-to-complacent willingness to give a pass to everything the current administration does?

Here’s the video clip. It’s an embedded .wmv file, unfortunately, but the transcript follows.

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