Halloween: Making it both Scary AND Religious!:

"The holiday Halloween always presents a problem to people who only like Ghosts if they get inside them and make them convulse on the floor of a public building, gurgling saliva and screaming nonsensical words. But, let's face it, being Pentecostal is not everyone's cup of tea -- and can ruin the crease in silk and linen! For such people who like their Ghosts Holy, Halloween is a time when non-saved people do strange things at the bidding of Satan. Each year, children are faced with the tricky dilemma of how to stock up on those yummy bite-size Three Musketeers bars without succumbing to Devil Worship."

Dangling chads have nothing on this shit.

"We have in our possession the internal memoranda of Diebold Elections Systems, the company in charge of the electronic voting machines in 37 states, and we intend to share them. These memos prove that Diebold knowingly produced an electronic election system that contained absolutely no security against voter fraud. In fact, the lead engineer from Diebold wrote over two years ago that anyone could change votes without leaving a trail: “Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log.” GEMS stands for Global Election Management System and is the central computer in each county on which the votes are stored after the election."

Ananova - Lightning strikes Jesus on Gibson's Christ film set:

"The actor who plays Jesus in Mel Gibson's film The Passion of Christ has escaped injury after being struck by lightning during filming.

The incident, in which The Rock and The Count of Monte Cristo star Jim Caviezel did not sustain an injury, is the second bolt to hit the set of the movie in Italy."

On the Job: Games P.R. People Play:

"'I want to cause you legal pain,' Jarrell told the IRE members. Sharing secrets, he explained to me later that a frequent strategy is to 'get the story about my client away from the reporter, away from the producer, and up with the general counsel' — a kind of legal leapfrog. Thus, the smart crisis managers will often refuse to deal with the reporter, sometimes alleging bias from the first contact and interview; they won't wait long to draft letters from the corporation's high-priced outside law firm.

'I want to take control of your story away from you,' Jarrell says. This stalls the story, and it frequently puts the fear of God into the media organization —'Do we need this hassle? Is this story worth it?' The lawyers nitpick, and even solid reporting can become suspect internally. "

Beer School, halloween edition



Aw yeah. Today, I'm hung over.

THEMEPARK OF THE GODS:

"Today, more than three decades after Däniken became a bestselling author almost overnight with Chariots of the Gods, he is probably the world’s best known German-language author. He might also become the first author to see the erection of his own extravagant monument in the form of Mystery Park, a multimedia museum located close to Interlaken, the main tourist centre of Switzerland’s Berner Oberland (and conveniently close to Däniken’s home in Beatenberg)."

US is 'battling Satan' says general, inadvertantly invokes the 'penis-size' argument:

"Evangelical Christian Lieutenant-General William G Boykin was also quoted as saying a Muslim warlord in Somalia had an 'idol' for a God.
Secretary Rumsfeld, questioned by journalists, defended the general's statements as 'a private affair'....

In one speech, he recalled a Muslim fighter in Somalia who said he had the protection of Allah against US forces.

'Well you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his,' said Lt Gen Boykin. 'I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.'"