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Rob Beschizza at 5:21 am • • 
At The Atlantic, Joe Fassler votes for an infamous passage from Cormac McCarthy's The Road:
He started down the rough wooden steps. He ducked his head and then flicked the lighter and swung the flame out over the darkness like an offering. Coldness and damp. An ungodly stench. He could see part of a stone wall. Clay floor. An old mattress darkly stained. He crouched and stepped down again and held out the light. Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous.
Jesus, he whispered.
Then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light. Help us, they whispered. Please help us.
The key, he adds: "What is revealed is even more terrifying that what I could have imagined."
Rob Beschizza at 4:57 am • •
While researching the sounds from the classic series, Burtt discovered that they were created with a Hammond chord organ. "Going back and getting some organ recordings and playing with it, I was able to fashion some things very similar to the transporter, perhaps exactly the same way, so that's in there."
Rob Beschizza at 6:38 pm • •
ABC News: "An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing when a female passenger refused to stop singing Whitney Houston songs."
Come for the rendition of "I will always love you", stay for the bogus and futile "DO NOT TAKE PICTURES ON THE AIRPLANE!" demands from the flight crew. [Thanks, Michelle Fox!]
Rob Beschizza at 2:55 pm • •
"Complex Pile", an inflatable sculpture by American artist Paul McCarthy, is displayed at the exhibition "Inflation!" on the grounds of a new park in Hong Kong. "The Park", as it will be called, will cover 14 hectares of landscaped public space devoted to the arts and culture. [Bobby Yip/Reuters]
Rob Beschizza at 2:43 pm • •
Come for Tom Hanks + Zooey Deschanel, stay for Mike Tyson + Michelle Obama, then run in terror from Sarah Palin + Honey Boo. The animated GIF has reached its apogee in
Hybrid Celebrities, a collection of nightmarish video faceswaps at the distinctly NSFW DailyPicDump.com. [Thanks, Papa Fapa!] UPDATE: They're taken from this sketch. [Team Coco]
Jamie Smith Hopkins at The Baltimore Sun writes about the tiny homes more and more Americans are opting for: "U.S. houses got bigger for decades ... even as household sizes shrunk, according to Census Bureau figures. But the housing crash, foreclosure crisis and rough recession have pressed some to think differently." — Rob
•
"This is the biggest ship graveyard in the world - where huge tankers and cruise liners are scrapped on the shorefront by teams of labourers using little more than hand tools. The job is considered one of the most dangerous in the world with workers earning a pittance of just £2.25 a day. But amazingly there is no shortage of willing recruits." [Daniel Miller / Daily Mail]
— Rob
•
Papers, please is the latest from Lucas Pope, creator of unsettling developing world newspaper sim The Republica Times. A "dystopian document thriller", Papers simulates the pleasure of immigration inspection in a grim Soviet-style republic: "Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists. Using only the documents provided by travelers and the Ministry of Admission's primitive inspect, search, and fingerprint systems you must decide who can enter Arstotzka and who will be turned away or arrested."
— Rob
•
Rob Beschizza at 12:35 pm • •
"Why?" The New York Times investigates:
“We are responding to the desire by our fans to experience the brand in more ways,” said John A. Frascotti, Hasbro’s chief marketing officer. “They imagined themselves as which pony they would be or which pony they identified with the most.” So Hasbro created Equestria Girls, a parallel world in which the My Little Pony characters were reconceived as teenage girls in high school.
Seriously, it's happening every day now, people coming up to us and saying "I want to experience your brand in more ways. Could you lose the hooves and snouts?"
Rob Beschizza at 12:19 pm • •
Only $240, and it's yours. Not sure if the smoking baby comes with him.
Rob Beschizza at 8:34 am • •
Detroit's Robocop statue, crowdfunded two years ago, is finally taking shape.
And it's pretty damned amazing.
Rob Beschizza at 8:15 am • •
The BBC, in an unbylined report:
"Paula White was removed after 30 minutes of her afternoon show on Friday, which was to be her last show in that slot. ... A BBC spokesman said she had been "unable to continue as she was under par". The spokesman would not say if any other action had been taken."
"I'm not drunk. I've had a couple of drinks, but I'm not drunk! [squeaks]"
