An educational, but disgusting, early morning.

Things you can learn before 7:30 a.m.:

1. You know how if you throw rose petals or some other stupidity into your bathwater, then after a while all the bits clump together? Well, the Ocean is everyone’s bath, and maaaan, we throw some extra-stupid stuff in it. The Pacific Trash Vortex (or Eastern Garbage Patch) is a fairly well-known result of this, but there’s a better one, even though it is an urban-mythical exaggeration of a real problem (at least, it’s an exaggeration for now): The Great Condom Sargasso, a floating mass of used condoms at least 100 yards in diameter and 10 feet thick (some stories have it at two miles!), which overly-briney sailors claim is a hazard for ship navigation. The best part, though? The purported island of slimy latex (and probably dead fish) is claimed to be located at S. Lat. 52º and W. Long. 126º 43′.

The Derleth interpretation of the real location of Ryleh, where Cthulhu will arise: S. Lat. 49º 51′, W. Long 128º 34′.

Spawn of Tsuthoggua, indeed.


2. If there’s a hell for the current President, it will involve having a giant metal equals-sign shoved somewhere very uncomfortable every morning, then fighting in jungle trenches all day, only to find that, when it comes time to expel the equals sign, it has grown to twice its size and become a ≠.

I say this because, while visiting Vietnam today and trying to act knowledgeable about it because he was able to point out the lake where his “good friend” John McCain was pulled out and then held hostage for five years, he gave the following answer to the inevitable question, “What lessons can Vietnam teach us about Iraq?” (Probably a question he should have answered one hell of a lot earlier than today!).

Vietnam teaches us that “people want instant gratification,” the President said. The lesson is “not to give up”, because “We’ll succeed, unless we quit.”

I JUST DON’T GET THESE PEOPLE. Isn’t it only in the movies that powerful leaders are really dumbasses who stand around going, “I’m not going to even consider the possibility of failure, mwah ha ha! What a brilliant strategist I am! The laws of probability bow to my very will!!”


Hmm, do we have to wait for Hell to punish people like this? We could just throw them into the trash vortex right now…(or, well, I guess I’d be willing to wait for the giant condom vortex…!).

-PD