Zen 1131: Underwater zombie killer attack dogs

The only part of that headline is the 'underwater' bit and the 'dogs' bit. A man has captured photographs of dogs attempting to grab things underwater, which makes them look improbably aggressive and freakish. It's a good job dogs have no sense of shame. Here's the full collection: Hilariously Ferocious Underwater Dogs [LINK]. Via Richard of the Surprisingly Beautiful Girlfriends.

Zen 1130: Look! A footballer who doesn't dive! And he's the best player in the world...

Surely no coincidence? I'm no fan of the kissball, but this Lionel Messi chap (who's apparently quite handy?) shows that it's not all about hurling yourself to the floor and crying like a big girl. Bravo, sir.

Zen 1129: Here's some inflammatory stuff for your Friday afternoon

Some observations about the news this week, presented like this mainly because I haven't had time to write a ranty, swearing blog on each.

1. I don't feel sorry for Greece. If you run your economy like a hooky second-hand car dealership, you deserve to be lectured by Germans. Greece will still default and will probably take the Euro with it.

Rick Santorum: sucks

2. If you haven't had a job for a while and someone offers you a job and you turn it down, you should have your unemployment benefit taken away. And your arse kicked.
3. Holy shit, those Republican candidates are a proper bunch of ignorant, bible-thumping, reactionary, bigoted throwbacks, aren't they?
4. If you watch Fox News and believe it, you are retarded.
5. The Occupy Movement. I told you so, here.
6. Lloyds TSB may have lost £3.5 billion, but they have excellent customer service.
7. Only fascists use collective punishment. Take note Israel.
8. Why aren't China and Russia taking more shit for greenlighting Assad's killing spree?
9. If you don't believe in evolution in this day and age, you're a fucking moron (see also point 3).
10. The Sun on Sunday. What the fuck? I mean, what the fucking fuck?

Zen 1128: What if Star Wars Episode I wasn't a steaming pile of crap?

Here, Belated Media doesn't just pose the question: what if Episode I was actually good? He answers it. Not only does he answer it, but he absolutely nails it. I think the world would be a significantly better place if we collectively chinned the money and got the prequels remade by this guy.

Zen 1127: Management lessons to be learned from Star Wars

Alex Knapp of Forbes Magazine has taken a look at the management lessons we could all learn from the original Star Wars trilogy (disregarding the prequels, because the main lesson we're learning here is not to shit on your legacy).

It's really good. He plays it with a dead straight bat and produces something both insightful and really silly at the same time. Nice job.

Management lessons to learn from 'Star Wars'[LINK]

Zen 1126: 'What the world needs is a Periodic Table table'

He's right. I want one of these so badly it hurts.

Zen 1125: Wing suit guy flies into a mountain and just about survives

Remember Jeb Corliss of Grinding the Crack fame? Remember how his mountain scudding activities in a flimsy wing suit looked really, really, really, insanely dangerous? Turns out you were right. Back in January, Jeb flew into Table Mountain in South Africa, but somehow survived despite breaking both legs and a bunch of other bones. Happily, he is unrepentant and will no doubt be back doing lunatic stuff again fairly soon.

Since the accident, a few clips of bootleg footage of the crash have been popping up on You Choob, but nothing that really depicted the full crunch and twang of the first impact, the parachute getting tangled and him hitting the ground like the proverbial half tonne of bricks. Thanks to Timandbarry for finding this gloriously edited HD version.

Zen 1124: Hilary Clinton urinating on Boris Johnson for an ITV programme

Like the man says.

When Cassetteboy hits the news, it stays hit.

Zen 1123: Brilliant photographs of shattering figurines and dancing paint

Martin Klimas is a German photographer who specialises in super-high shutter speed photography and takes very interesting pictures. I really like his collection of dropped figurines, captured at the moment of impact. If I were an artist, I might say they were a fascinating juxtaposition of an supremely kinetic moment frozen in time, but I'm not, so I won't. They look great though, don't they?

There are some more here on his horrible Flash blob of a website: martin-klimas.de/

I also like his 'painting with sound stuff, here. The one below is apparently Miles Davis.

Zen 1122: When I say Lego Millennium Falcon, your first reaction is unlikely to be 'way cool'...

...but you are wrong. This is way cool. The fact that it took three years of someone's life to complete is astonishing, but, hey, he could've been out turning over old ladies. And not in a good way.

Zen 1121: This will get inside your face and eat your brain

Don't press play! There's no going back!!!



Can't say I didn't warn you.

Zen 1120: Dude rides old lady vintage bike like a BOSS

Like the title says.

Zen 1119: The creepiest cover for a children's book, EVER

Creepier, even, than the paedotastic original cover to the unsettling Blyton story called 'Hello, Mr Twiddle'.

Zen 1118: 'Sound the alarm! You're going to be uncomfortably energetic...'

This drink is real. I shit you not.



Via Keyboard

Zen 1117: Some observations on running from a non-runner

I've generally made a habit of not running unless chased by something bigger and scarier than me, so imagine my surprise when I signed up for the London Marathon.

I am no Kenyan. By common reckoning, I'm approximately 30kgs too heavy for anything over six miles. Leastways, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

It's only recently that what I laughingly call my training schedule has taken me into relatively onerous distances - 10, 12 and 14 miles. It's only when you conquer a few of these landmarks you feel you're not 'jogging' but 'running'. Jogging is for amateurs. Running is for serious people in close-fitting synthetic fabrics. I know, I've bought some, and now the good burghers of Surrey and Belfast know what a rhinoceros looks like in Lycra.

So, now I'm a runner, I feel qualified to make a few broad observations about the runner's art.

1) Running hurts. You get blisters, muscle aches, abrasions, frostbite and bad skin. You need to love the hurt. You need to be kinky for it, or you might as well give up before you start.

2) Running is good for thinking, right up to the point where it hurts so much you can't think anymore. The less observant imagine that the cessation of thinking means their woes have been resolved. This is a useful illusion. Your brain has simply shut down and devoted itself totally to pain management.

3) If you are sick, tired, dehydrated, lame, wounded or bereft, run. These are all important ways to maximise the pain you crave.

4) If you have demons, run with them. A malignant imaginary father-figure berating you every step of your route for being a worthless quitter and worm is the greatest motivating factor known to man. Wars have been won and mountains conquered by lesser forces. Don't fight your demons, feed them.

5) Sponsorship is hard to come by these days. The runner with the sponsorship form is like an amiable leper in modern society. Smile and nod, but move quickly on. Even if he is only doing it because lifeboats are cool.

These are the things I have learned about running. I will share more when I have it.

Zen 1116: Next time you feel beaten, like it's all too much, watch this...

... and revise your opinion.

Zen 1115: Boy Assad hacked by Anonymous because his password was '1,2,3,4,5'

When the shadowy hacking collective Anonymous went calling on squinty, bungling Pink Panther gendarme lookalike Bashar 'Boy' Assad, they found the murderous little prick's email ludicrously easy to compromise because his password was '1,2,3,4,5', which, as any fule kno, is the password of dribbling fucking idiots.

Turns out he wasn't the only one and Anonymous was able to turn out the contents of 80-ish government inboxes, detailing amongst other things what a colossal bunch of evil shits run Syria.

And while we're on that subject, well done Russia and China. If your veto wasn't a licence for cold-blooded murder, what's with all the cold-blooded murder, eh? Wankers.

Apologies for the intermittent service on Otter Zen recently

For some of you it will have been a blessed relief, but for those who can't go a day without some inane footage of a cat falling from a high building, an obscure music video, a curiously diverting art/extreme sports film, some geeky banter from the frontiers of the web or an unprovoked rant about something that probably doesn't bother you in the slightest, I'd like to apologise for the recent slump in posts on Otter Zen.

Three reasons. First, I'm working 14 hour days at the moment. Second, I'm training for the London Marathon, so when I'm not working, I'm running. Third, I've been trying to get an anti-harassment injunction through the civil courts and that shit takes time.

I know what you're thinking.

Zen 1115: Die Antwoord turn the freaky up to eleven, then rip the knob off and mate with your stereo

Die Antwoord are one of those bands (?) whose music doesn't really make sense without the videos. Put another way - music: meh; videos: deeply unsettling but weirdly compelling. To say they have a unique visual style is like saying Ted Bundy had a way with women. Watch and be appalled. You might like it.

Zen 1114: Fox News declares war on 'cesspool' Netherlands - and loses

For those of you not familiar with Bill O'Reilly, he's a right-wing 'commentator' on Fox News, by which I mean he's a knee-jerk blabbermouth endowed with the political sophistication of a peevish toddler and the IQ of algae. This pointless wooden-top recently got all hot under the collar about the 'permissive' Netherlands, which provoked a succinct and elegant rebuttal from Dutch YouTube user maxwezendonk.

O'Reilly couldn't leave it there and attempted to rebut the rebuttal, but only succeeded in revealing to the world that he's too intellectually challenged to cope with O-level maths.

Zen 1113: Data Pool 3 a.k.a. the massive payload of clusterf*ck that may take down The Sun

So what could be worse than the police crawling all over every private investigator you've ever hired and said private investigators joyfully spilling their guts, thereby revealing your verminous practice of hacking the phones of murdered children and dead soldiers?

Rupert Murdoch works on his soap grip

Being an object of pleasure for every sadistic shower bull in Wandsworth prison possibly?

This is the fate that may or may not await News International executives after forensic computer geeks restored a 'missing' cache of NI emails - millions of them - dating back more than 10 years. It's called Data Pool 3 and it was deleted. But as we know, in the crazy binary world of the computer, nothing is ever really deleted completely. And now the police have found it.

The pool is so vast, it defies human analysis. The slow business of trawling through it will be the task of some muscular algorithmic programming, which isn't exactly the stuff of Hollywood thrillers unless you think of it in terms of the horrors this Mount Everest of News International filth is concealing and what will happen to the bastards responsible.

The delicious irony is that nobody knows what's in it. But I think we can all begin to guess, given the cavalcade of jaw-dropping WTF?!?! that was the phone hacking scandal. But that's not (necessarily) the reason NI execs should be panicking about becoming the prime ride in the South London Ass Rodeo.

The more pressing reason is that they may have ordered the deletion of the emails after the police and the courts requested them to retain all documentation. If such a thing were to have happened, it would be seriously and massively illegal, and would incur significant custodial sentences.

And it may not be only The Sun that's affected. Sister titles The Times and Sunday Times are dangerously close to the fire. It might just be that this snowballing scandal ends up taking more than just the tatty old News of the Screws down with it.

Zen 1112: Mmmmmmmm. Boobies.

Rip off your own arm and walk away. A real man would.

This is the natural history equivalent of being rickrolled.