Barkerburgh

Don’t know why this makes me so mad, but it does.

Jennifer Wilbanks, the Duluth, Georgia jogger who disappeared on Tuesday, just days before her own wedding, has turned up safe and sound (sic) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The prime suspect in her disappearance was her fiance, apparently, but he passed a lie detector test. Of course, with the general tenor of the story, it felt like he had beat the test, with Coles Notes for liars or something. For my many American readers, that’s like Cliff Notes or Lying for Dummies or something.

No way did she get cold feet, her friends and family said. Guess what? You probably already know, or have already assumed from the tone of this, it was cold feet.

She called local 911 this morning in Albuquerque to report she had been kidnapped by a man and a woman in a blue van. I was waiting for them to say ‘a black man’, but they didn’t. You may recall that when crazy white American women do something criminally crazy, they blame the mythical black man.

CNN reports this morning that she will likely not face charges in New Mexico, and her friends and family are just glad she’s back and safe. That’s what they’re saying to the media. I hope that when they get her home and in private they lambaste her like Elizabeth on Camilla after a frat dance. No ‘poor dear’, no ‘we understand how difficult this all must have been for you’, just a lot of yelling and swearing, peppered liberally with ’stupid’, ‘moron’, and ’spec-fucking-tacularly, ego-fucking-maniacally fill-in-the-fucking-blank, you stunned twat, you’. Pardon my French.

This woman may not even face charges in Georgia. One of her friends was on CNN this morning saying what a big deal a large wedding is, and how much pressure is on the bride. WTF? I mean seriously, WTF? A) She didn’t know this? and 2) her considered reaction to this pressure was to run five states away, then lie about it?

What a stupid, self-absorbed, egocentric, selfish, spoiled idiotic brat this Jennifer Wilbanks is! And she ain’t 19, she’s 32 years old. Grown up and responsible and everything.

People assumed the worst. It’s happened before, recently. A woman is reported to have gone out jogging, disappears, and is found later five meters down in a landfill. Dead, of course.

It’s early yet, but she may not face any charges in Georgia either. Her friends and family posted a $100,000 reward for information leading yada yada. They should use this to pay for the efforts of the local police, the GBI, FBI and, I don’t know, NMBI and Interpol. And if there isn’t a National Center for Missing and Exploited Idiots, there should be after this. With ice-water baths, intelligence tests and Ealing comedy hospital matrons.

Here’s what they should do, once a year for ten years. Put her in the back of an ass-drawn tumbrel, wearing a dunce cap, with a big scarlet ‘A’ (for Asshole) on her chest, and have her paraded through the streets of Duluth. People should be allowed to jeer and throw old food at her, formerly fresh fruits and vegetables only, though, nothing canned, and maybe McDonalds.

Rrrrr.

Yeah, I know I’ve posted this before, but I’m very pleased with it.

The one-humped camel, she’s a treat.
The two-humped camel can’t be beat.
But no more than a three-l lllama’ll,
You’ll never see a three-humped camel.

It’s all in the contractions.

And the rhymes. And the references, jokes and punctuation.

Briefly, from news.bbc.co.uk, a story about - I swear - exploding toads.

I don’t know that I can add anything.

This is from a Ontario high schol English teacherer who I know.

She was supposed to be marking papers.

[open_quotes]

Little Jacques was in his class when the teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came up - - Fireman, policeman, salesman, etc.

Jacques was being uncharacteristically quiet and so the teacher asked him about his father. “My father’s an exotic dancer in a gay cabaret and takes off all his clothes in front of other men. Sometimes, if an offer’s really good he’ll go out to the alley with some guy and have sex with him for money.”

The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on some coloring, and took little Jacques aside to ask him, “Is that really true about your father?”

“No,” said Jacques, “No not really. He’s is a conservative MP, but I was too embarrassed to say that in front of the other kids!”

[/open_quotes]

From an email I got about Joss Whedon’s movie ‘Serenity’ based on his TV series ‘Firefly’ …

[open_quotes]

Check out exciting news from Joss Whedon now on the Browncoats message boards!

Hey guys.

I’m here on the official site, so that can only mean one thing: somebody finally told me my password! (Again.) It probably also means that I have some big-ass announcement or other. Well tops on the announcement list is this: after months of intensive yoga, i can finally touch my toes! (They feel round and bunion-y.)

But there’s more! I’m talkin’ movie news, peeps, so no more drumroll: Trailer. Serenity. Tuesday.

Yeah, kids, the haps is hap’nin’, and it runs thus: EXCLUSIVELY on Apple movie trailers (and linked through this site as well of course) will be a small, medium, large or FULLSCREEN trailer for Serenity the major motion movie. Yeah, THE trailer. And the following Friday said trailer hits theaters. Which theaters? Until I get confirmation you’ll have to guess, but I’m betting you can.

Now, here’s a word of warning: this trailer ain’t shy. If you’re looking to live totally spoiler-free, know that there’s plenty of key dialogue and images running through this bad boy. It’s pretty tasty, though, and it doesn’t give everything away. But close scrutiny will definitely learn you much of what’s to come. (Anakin TOTALLY goes evil.) It’s a nice piece to while away the time till September, and hopefully should intrigue th’ peeps that don’t have coats of brown.

The only thing more exciting than y’all finally seeing this was showing it to Nathan. Like a schoolboy giggled he.

Bye-ee!

Joss “You can’t take my toes from me” Whedon.

[/open_quotes]

I’m also mentioning Battlestar Galactic so I can categorize this under that heading…

“Habemus papam” ?

Posses ille habere. Non ille desiremus.

Radicalis est, pro radicalis sensu originalis.

Caput est de latrocinio pueri seneci, ecclesiae sine feminae, sin imperium parturitionis, cum caput in saecula XIII, por gratias Christi.

Credit quam Ecclesia Universalis est ecclesiam solam pro humanitatis.

Merda quadrigae.

Dumtaxat ultra generationis de Africani morti de SIDA, inter alia, ante papam saeculae XXI, te propono.

Res singularis bonum est papa novus LXXVIII est. Mortis essere mox, cum fortuna.

Necessitas papam novum.

Confestim.

Graviter.

(P.S. Johannes Vilicus de ‘Spectaculum Quotidianis’, ille appelatit Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, qua Enfortator pro papam previo, ‘Joey Rats’, fui ROFLMAOendi.)

Did anybody else see the iridescent ring around the moon last night?

It looked like a false colour picture of a ring nebula.

Hi, I’m Barbara Hall, creator of Joan of Arcadia.

Now, in case you didn’t get it when Ryan Hunter, the guy with the red jacket and mysterious red hood came down the mountain with Adam (that’s ‘Adam’) Rove, who had been thought lost and possibly suicidal, but was found safe - symbolic death and rebirth, if you missed that bit - and then had a bit of a stare-down with God in the form of the park ranger type, and then turned up in a sketch Adam (that’s ‘Adam’) was making when Joan walked up to him as he reclined in a low tree with his scarf hanging down looking vaguely ophidian (from the Greek for serpent-like), I had them play ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ when Joan wondered who that guy was.

Get it?

Okay, I’m not really Barbara Hall. It’s me, Barker. I really like Joan of Arcadia, and I’ve been wondering for a while when Old Red Eyes was going to make his appearance. There’s more cliches about the devil’s appearance in stories than you can shake a stick at, so she (Barbara Hall, the real one) must have known that there was no right, good, easy, subtle or new way, to introduce him, so she just did it. (I was almost expecting Snake or Ned Flanders to show up somewhere. Almost.)

When ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ started up - I already knew, hard to miss, see above - I started to clap and laugh. ‘Oh, man, Joan’s ticks are shifting into overdrive…’

It was funny and contextually ominous at the same time.

It ain’t Battlestar Galactica, but, funnily enough, they’re cousins.

1) Battlestar Galactica season finale : Very good! Clarified some things, opened new boxes, shot a commander.

2) Doctor Who, second episode: Very nice. Excellent story, very Who-y. Spot on Michael Jackson reference.

3) Sunday dinner at Reid and Luisa’s. Mmmm. Barbecue. Reid thinks Commander Adama’s first name should be Lorne. I agree. Ronnie can play Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious on the piano. I can’t even spell it. Can’t spell Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis either. Betcha Ronnie can’t play it. =;]

4) Corner Gas episodes: baseball, corn, Brent broke. Larf and a harf!

5) CNN, the Catholic News Network: felt guilty for hoping something ‘newsworthy’ would happen in the US to get the Pope funeral coverage off the air (”Yes, Miles, I can confirm our source inside the conclave, if you will, tells us the Pope is still dead, I say the Pope is still dead. Miles?”) Then Charles and Camilla got married. CNN replayed both events in their entirety. WTF? Oh, and Lou Dobbs is an opportunistic racist and Nancy Grace is trash.

The Doctor, that’s Who(m)!

I was a fan way back. I lost interest in the original series in the 80s, but really liked it previous.

However, I was actually fonder of the two Peter Cushing Doctor movies from the 60s. (q.v. and q.v.)

The last series episode I really remember was young bushy haired scarf doctor finding secret chambers in the Canary Islands or something. At least it wasn’t a quarry.

When last night’s episode started, they had an intro by Christopher Eccleston (who you may remember as DCI Billborough from Cracker who was murdered quite nastily by Hamish Macbeth), and as the intro started they had a bare hint of the old theme playing. Jeepers H. Jiminy, my spine tingled, I swear to something.

As the episode played out, I kept thinking “Is this working? I think it’s working. Yeah, it’s working!” Especially when Rose was trying to point out to the Doctor where the transmitter probably was.

Of course, I have my usual complaints about lack of verismilitude (Buffy: no such thing as Klingon vampires, Battlestar Galactic: Hindu-Arabic numerals, are you kidding me?) and internal consistency (Buffy:she can’t die again, she died already, Battlestar Galactica:hard to tell, it hasn’t settled down yet)

Spoiler Alert:All the plastic was supposed to come alive, people!

But holy cow, man. It’s the Doctor.

Doc on!