…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
Posted on YouTube by Grand Theft Country August 10, 2007 after the piece appeared on C-SPAN3 [History] on August 9. In this interview from April 15th, 1994, Dick Cheney reveals the reasons why invading Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussein wouldn’t be a great idea. He also stipulates that “not very many” American soldiers’ lives were worth losing to take out Saddam during the Gulf War.
via Editor & Publisher and PR Watch
Everything’s Made of Ice at Dubai Bar
by Donna Abu-Nasr
Dubai, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Outside it was a sticky 111 degrees, but Ali Hamdan was shivering under two parkas as he sipped hot chocolate, surrounded by tables and chairs made of ice.
Chillout, its owners say, is the Middle East’s first ice lounge – the latest venture in this desert Gulf emirate, which has been transformed by a mania for the biggest, first or most outlandish.
Gulf men in traditional white robes with wives covered in black cloaks, teenagers eager to experience their first cold blast and Westerners who miss the chill are flocking to the bar-restaurant to hang out in what amounts to a freezer.
Everything is made of ice: the walls, tables and chairs; cups, glasses and plates; the art on the wall, the sculptures depicting Dubai’s skyline, the beaded curtains, the 7-foot-chandelier and the bar. Read the whole story here.
Crime author charged with murder after the police read his perfect plot
Roger Boyes, Berlin
Times Online UK
August 9, 2007
An author leafing through a newspaper comes across tantalising details of a murder so grisly that he becomes obsessed, and imagines the events into a novel. Or a murderer, so self-satisfied with the brilliance of his perfect crime, pens an account to pass off as fiction and enshrine it in literary history.
Where reality ends and fiction begins in the stomach-turning novel Amok is the central task before the jury in Poland”s trial of the decade. Four years after he published his bloody bestseller, Krystian Bala has found himself on trial for the same torture and murder that he detailed in his novel. Continue reading “A Novel Plot”
In 1993, Joey Skaggs created the world’s first sexual virtual reality company, SEXONIX to market an apparatus that offered not only safe sex in the era of AIDS, but also offered a new dawn of hope for the impotent and handicapped. As Skaggs noted, “Let there be no doubt, SEXONIX offers pleasure of a different order of magnitude. By translating individual fantasies into a stunning approximation of reality, we enable our clients to experience sublime pinnacles of delight that most people only dream of.”
Unfortunately for SEXONIX, Canadian customs agents confiscated all of the hardware and software, valued at over $300,000, at the Canadian border as it was enroute to the Metro Toronto Christmas Gift and Invention Show, on the grounds that SEXONIX was morally offensive to the Canadian people. Thus ensued a long legal battle to retrieve the confiscated property.
Fast forward to 2007 and a story of not-so-epic proportions, but that might actually be true, is unfolding in the virtual world of Second Life.
Entrepreneur Kevin Alderman’s company, Eros LLC, created SexGen Platinum, software that, according to AP, “animates amorous avatars in erotic positions… [It] has gotten so popular that he’s now had to hire lawyers to track down the flesh-and-blood person behind the online identity, or avatar, that he says illegally copied and sold it…
“Catherine Smith, director of marketing for ‘Second Life’ creator Linden Lab, said she knew of no other real-world legal fight between two avatars.”
Here’s the AP Story, and a Reuters Story with a slightly different angle.
Wierd But True
by Dan Kadison, Wire Services
New York Post
August 6, 2007
A British pub operator will begin pumping in fragrances to help offset foul smells once cloaked by cigarette smoke.
Mitchells & Butlers will test scents such as leather, cut grass and ocean breeze now that England has banned smoking in enclosed public spaces.
“Appetizing food smells have increased, but others are less attractive, such as stale food and beer, damp sweat and body odor, drains and – how do you put this nicely? – flatulence,” said a manager for one M & B brand.