I practically begged Will and Karen to get on a carnival ride with me so I could get portraits with the lights streaking behind them. Will warned me that he doesn’t do well on rides; I argued that no ride with so many kids under four feet tall could be too dangerous for us.

We boarded, it started. From the ground it looked gentle, much like the teacups. That was misleading. I started second-guessing my decision that my seat belt wasn’t necessary — it was designed for somebody fully one third my size and couldn’t be buckled. The carny didn’t seem to care during the seat check, but then I’d neither pointed it out nor hid the seat belt’s shortcomings. Will, on the other hand, was able to buckle up and he had all his notions of personal security pinned on that belt.

Then it came loose.

Still, there were photos to be had, and Karen seemed to be okay. Pressing my feet against the center post, I wedged myself into the seat and started snapping. Will held on, and Karen flopped about. It’ll be a while before I can coax them both onto a ride again, but I do sometime hope to repeat this with more natural light. Something more like this, but not so much as this.

Extra: anybody want to buy an extra carnival ride?

Will McElroy, Karen Ladd, carnival, ride, scary, photo, photoblog, portrait, blur

I regularly check the English language online edition of Pravda for laughs and sometimes for their take on US domestic affairs. But today’s headline left me scratching my head. What calendar are these people using, anyway?

The headlined story is offered without any context or explanation. As it turns out, author Ian Magnussen really did mean February 5th 2006, not 2007 or later. Had it appeared two months ago it might have been called speculative fiction, though more likely seen as a crazy conspiracy theory. I just find it a bit scary. But still, why publish it now?

breaking news, conspiracy theory, contradiction, contradictory, foreign opinion, headline, news, newspaper, odd news, pravda, russia, russian, russian news, scary, speculative fiction, strange headline

Treehugger pointed out these P.B. Slices as an example of excessive packaging. What they didn’t mention was the ingredients or processing used to make a non-sticky, peanut flavored “food product.”

It’s worth mentioning here that I have a rule about things I find in the supermarket: if it says “food” on the label, you probably shouldn’t eat it. Think about it, start first with the cat food, dog food, and fish food, then take a look at the pasteurized processed cheese food product and some of the goodies in the canned meats aisle.

Anyway, I haven’t tried these, but I’m a little concerned about a product that suggests “peanut butter” but apparently isn’t allowed to label itself as peanut butter. The website lists nutrition facts, but not the ingredients. Hmmmm…“peanutty slices” indeed.

Of course I want to try some; probably just once, though.

My friend Troy pointed out a while ago that the more “realistic” our 3-d models of humans get, the scarier they look. Apparently it applies to robots to, at least judging by the “actroid” above.

Maybe I better put How To Survive a Robot Uprising closer to the top of my reading list.

More at Akihabara News, found via Gizmodo.

robot, actroid, android, robots, androids, automaton, automatons, animatronic, robotics, eerie, scary, human, humanoid

It turns out that K-Fee, the company that pushes its energy drink with the scary TV ads, has a English-language website. It also turns out they’ve got the scary car ad and eight others online. Here they are:

• Angler
• Car
• Buddha
• Golf
• Beach
• Meadow
• Yoga
• Soothing Waves
• Ocean Path

tags: angler, beach, buddha, car ad, energy drink, ghost, ghosts, k-fee, k-fee energy drink, kfee, kfee energy drink, scary, scary tv ad, scary video, tv, tv ads, video, waves, yoga