Here Be Treasures

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Monday, August 3rd, 2009 | crass | No Comments

Pax Bank, a staunchly Catholic bank, blushes today over revelations that it bought over €1m of shares in tobacco and arms companies, and a pharmacutical company which manufacturers the dreaded and forbidden Pill.

In gambling circles, this is known as hedging your bets.

Stand On The Word Of God

Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | crass | No Comments

Well, I’ve been looking at this picture for a while, and I can’t decide if it’s real or fake. The website is real, and they’re selling the word of God as soul for your in-sole. But it could still be a practical joke. Tell me it’s a practical joke. This is as bad as wearing magic underpants.

The Visual Dictionary

Friday, October 24th, 2008 | crass | No Comments

There are some sites I just don’t understand. The Visual Dictionary is such a site.

When I first came across it I thought that perhaps it was a dictionary with pictures, so ‘apple’ would have a picture of an apple, ‘banana’ would have a picture of a banana, and so on. But no. It doesn’t work that way. In fact, in answer to the question of Why?, here is what the site owner has to say:

Good question – and not one we really have the answer to. It is just a nice idea which should be visually stimulating and interesting, but in time, once the dictionary has more words, there could be plenty of applications for the content, perhaps creating ‘ransom note’ style emails using images from the dictionary, delivering a word of the day, converting your text into images as you type – the ideas are unlimited.

Anyone have any ideas what they could do with this?

The Uniform Freak’s Stewardess Uniforms Collection

Friday, October 24th, 2008 | crass | 1 Comment

I literally do not know what to make of this site about stewardess uniforms. In a way it reminds me of that film, “Lars and the Real Girl“, which I highly recommend. Now excuse me while I try get my head back together.

The Truth About The 1996 McDonald’s Hamburger

Sunday, September 28th, 2008 | attention seekers, crass, food | 1 Comment

There’s a lot of comment around the web about this McDonald’s hamburger from 1996. The blog publisher, who offers her services as a nutritionist, claims that she keeps it in a plastic box and takes it out every so often as a prop to demonstrate that fast food contains so much preservatives that the food can’t rot.

In itself it’s an interesting experiment, but she hasn’t kept anything else as comparison. However, reading her ‘bio’ started to creep me out:

My name is Karen Hanrahan. Many of my friends call me Mother Earth…you can too if you like.

No. That’s just creepy new age hippyism at it’s worst.

Anyway, back to McDonald’s. This reproduction of a 1995 McDonald’s Nutrition Information book claims that every burger patty is 100% beef, with no additives, fillers, binders, preservatives or flavour enhancers. That implies that the burger that Mother Earth Karen Hanrahan has in her little box has been preserved due to it’s natural high-fat and -salt content. Ms Hanrahan hasn’t provided any scientific analysis of this burger showing that it contains preservatives, nor does she have any other item for comparison that she has stored in the same conditions.

Need I point out that there are many natural conditions under which organic matter is finely preserved for thousands of years? Heck, even the holy sandwich needed no special treatment to survive. And before we had fridges, meat would be cured in order to store it for long periods of time.

Now, I’m not an apologist for McDonald’s, but producing a photo of a burger and claiming it’s from 1996 is just self-advertising.

Bette To Stay Put

Friday, September 26th, 2008 | crass | No Comments

Bette Midler, star of screen, stage and concert hall, has decided to give up touring in order to become more green. Instead of taking her fleet of trucks to new venues, ‘The Divine Miss M’ has decided that it’s more eco-friendly for everyone who wants to see her to get on a plane, train or automobile and head to Las Vegas. Question is, does that work? Ignoring the question of whether it’s advisable to see Ms. Midler at all, does staying-put offset the carbon footprint that her fans will generate coming to see her? Of course, it’s nothing to do with the $13m residence fee she’ll get at Caesars Palace.

Well, nevermind whether it’s greener or not, I’m happy for her to stay in one place, and there are quite a few other aging divas that I could recommend do the same. Cough-cough. Celine. Cough-cough.