Banner Banality: Dissecting Advertising's Lowest Form.

DoF asks: And this has what to do with toned abs?

The Internets. They're Not Just for Porn Anymore.

by Blaine Fridley, Modern Day Warrior/Today's Tom Sawyer

Hey guys! What's up?

So do you know about the World Wide Web?

It's fucking awesome, right?

Shut up!
Of course it is.

Stop wasting my time answering rhetorical questions, you big dummies.

It's the fucking coolest thing to happen to planet Earth since this:

Name anything. MusicmoviespornharvestedorgansANYTHING - in the whole wide world - and the World Wide Web will get it for you.

Just type it in the Googles and the Googles will abide.

Basically, it's a much more efficient version of the guy that used to sell shit out of the back of his van at your neighborhood strip mall.

But do you know what else?

The Interwebs are good for another thing besides pirated music, entertainment news and masturbation.

Identity theft.

wait.

oh!

And self-empowering knowledge.

The kind that can be used to hold those responsible for our well-being accountable.

With the Internet, there's absolutely NO reason not to be informed.

Don't know something?

It's a 5 second search away.

What once was a time-consuming ordeal with card catalogs and microfiche and encyclopedias and mean old librarians can now be researched in a matter of minutes.

It's the greatest ignorance-eradicating tool (tool. teehee) mankind has ever had at its disposal.

Yet we're busy taking the "What Golden Girl Are You" Facebook quiz. (I'm Blanche, by the way.)

(Above) Slutty, seventy and LOVING IT!

The way it's currently being used - basically, as way to pass the time - has turned it into just another distraction to keep us in the dark.

We seem to be less aware despite having easy access to more information than we've ever had in history.

Over the last week or two, the Internet's role in Iran's post-election turmoil has been discussed at length. More specifically, Twitter's role in disseminating information in the face of an oppressive regime.

Surely, the sheer volume of images - ruthless brutality, bloodied protesters, demonstrators shot dead on the streets - and reports are made possible only through the existence of the Internet.

People on every continent can witness the same thing those impassioned masses in Tehran are seeing. In real time.

The question is, what do we do with this information?

In the case of Iran, a strongly-worded blog post may not have much of an effect on the Supreme Leader and Co.

The hope there, I think, is that change might come about as a result of the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad working under the bright light and intense scrutiny provided by a constant barrage of Twitter reports, unfiltered images and commentary straight from the scene. This, in concert with extreme actions by the government, may cause Iran's supporters to back away, isolating Mahmoud and the gang, thereby forcing them to start making concessions.

Kinda like the Kim Jong-Il method.

The problem, of course - as displayed by North Korea - is that method doesn't account for crazy.

Kim Jong-Il has obviously decided Kim Jong-Il is gonna do what Kim Jong-Il wanna do.

Sanctions be damned.

His whole nation could starve. But he's gonna get his nukes, goddammit.

And one gets the same feeling with Ahmadinejad.

That boy just ain't right. But is he crazy enough to sacrifice his people to make a point? The major difference, of course, is that he ultimately has to answer to the Ayatollah. Kim Jong-Il, nobody.

But this is an extreme example and slightly overshooting my intended point.

Change starts in your own backyard.

All the info you need to stop bitching and start making changes is sitting right in your lap(top).
Knowledge. It's IN the computer?

Everything you'd ever want to know about your local government is online to see. Contact info, too.

The same for your state and federal reps.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the curtain can be pulled back if you truly want to see what's behind it.

Again, anything you want to know you can know.

The beauty is, you don't even need to bother with news outlets and their shabby (and in many cases, profit-influenced) reporting. You can access the same sources that journalists use before they slant the story to please their corporate pimps.

And it'd still leave you with plenty of time to upload that video of you lighting your own farts.

'cuz that's just like, awesome.

And the world needs to see that too.

Everyday Inspiration with: Elbert Hubbard.

"There is no failure except in no longer trying…

… or, eating this:
."

- Elbert Hubbard

American writer/publisher/artist/philosopher

I Fucking Hate You, Stupid Car!

Nobody hates cars as much as this guy:



Afterwards he fought an entire army of lawnmowers and made sweet love to a washing machine.

Fucking Terrifying Food Additive of the Week: Hexane

Hexane: a highly explosive, neurotoxic petroleum substance produced as a byproduct of gasoline refining.

(Above) Delicious Hexane.

And you know the protein bar you had or the formula you fed your kid this morning? Yeah. Well. The soy beans used to make make it were probably bathed in that shit during the processing stages.

The linked article says it best, really -- "There is no limit to the insanity of what goes into the food supply when profits are at stake."

DoF suggests: tearing into a giant turkey leg at the office instead of a PowerBar. It's high in protein, fucking delicious and you'll look like Genghis Khan, earning you mad fear-based respect from your co-workers.

OBEY THIS 1 RULE FOR A FLAT STOMACH!!!!!

Get a SEXXXY STOMACH in SECONDS!!!!

EPHEDRINE FREE! NO PILLS! NO DIETS! ABSOLUTELY NO EXERCISE!

The secret?

Sucking in!

INSTANTLY go from this:

To this:

And then momentarily back to this as you reintroduce oxygen to your blood supply to avoid passing out:

Trim inches off your waistline WITHOUT giving up your lifestyle as a sedentary stain on society!!

Send $19.95 via PayPal to diaryoffools at gmail dot com for your instructional DVD, including testimonials from real actors in white lab coats posing as health professionals, shallow breathing techniques and the last 3 episodes of Charles in Charge, Season 1.

OBEY AND BE SEXXXY!

ORDER NOW!!!

YOUR SUPREME LEADER COMMANDS YOU!!!!!

NEWS FLASH: Farrah Fawcett Dead at 62

According to an article on CNN.com, actress and 70's sex symbol Farrah Fawcett has lost her battle with cancer. She was 62.

So, as a public service announcement, the DoF Newswire would like to inform you that if you plan on spanking it to her "nipple" poster later, that officially makes you a necrophiliac. And that means you're no longer welcome at the cookouts or pool parties.

Shit, we have to draw the line SOMEWHERE.

Everyday Inspiration with: Henry Ford.

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal… like the Jews."

-Henry Ford
American Icon

Or, you could just use your dildo…

Time for another DoF Extraneous Web Poll!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

If T-Pain Produced Press Conferences

Jim Mora spits hot FI-YAHHH!

Actually, T-Pain could only hope to produce something this good.

vid found on Kissing Suzy Kolber… nice find, guys

Dept. of Defense: "Free Speech = Terrorism"

More to come on this later.

But until then, here's an activity to help you hone your own terrorist detection skills:

Can you identify the terrorists in this picture?

Hint: terrorists love pretty flowers.

Barry Does Race Relations

"This is for Birmingham, bitch."

DoF Newswire

Kobe Bryant named "Greatest Rapist to Ever Play the Game" by Uncomfortable Truths magazine

(Above) Kobe Bryant. 11-time all-star, rapist.

One Man Can Change the World * (*party.)

Dance Motherfucker, Dance.

Friday Funk: Jay Electronica

Erykah Badu's worse half is everyone else's better half.

This Day in History: 1934

The Federal Communications Commission was created.

Those tit-brained, shit-eating, piss-drinking, cunt-faced, motherfucking cocksuckers.

Miss you, George.

CMT: Complete Mental 'Tardation.

by Blaine Fridley, Editor-in-Chief/Unlicensed Pediatrist

You know that thing people call "country music" these days?

It's not breaking news to say it has actually no connection to country music. "Contemporary country music fan," as we all know, is actually just a euphemism for "honky poopstain." It also means you lack taste and the 25 IQ points it would take to put you on the same intellectual footing as pudding. Explained further, the target market for this consists of 100% contemporary country music fans.

Brad Paisley? Ugh. Please don't insult pudding's intelligence.

As you may unfortunately know, there's a whole cable network dedicated to this, um, "musical" category - CMT. Every year, the CMT execs (or "mistakes" as God likes to call them) even hold an award ceremony to honor the Toby Keiths of the world for their (whatever the polar opposite of contribution is) to the music world - the CMT Music Awards.

Just think "MTV Music Awards", only worse.

Wait.

On second thought, don't.

I just did and I died a little inside.

Anyway, it's a horrible fucking ordeal that results in shit like this:

Hint: You can tell it's "country" because someone is pretending to play a fiddle in the background.

Actually, there's nothing countrified about this. AT ALL. In fact, Taylor Swift's appearance turns an undeniable 80s anthem into a terribly awkward karaoke performance with old balls Joe Elliot singing about wanting a girl to put it on him while a 19 year old girl sings along and attempts (and fails like only a spazzy teenager can) to "dance sexy."

I am reminded immediately of this:

True, Joe Elliot and Taylor Swift aren't related… (Softball lobbed into wheelhouse)… but it's not like that would matter to the CMT audience. (WHAMMY!)

In closing, I'd just like to ask the corpse of Johnny Cash what, exactly, is it going to take to get you to come back from the grave and shoot them all… just to watch them die?

10-Second Confessional with: Blaine Fridley

• I once misspelled "intelligence" on a resume.

• On more than one occasion, I have listened to TLC's Crazysexycool at work. For the entire day.

• I don't like Radiohead.

• I have wet the bed many years after society deems it acceptable.

• Sometimes, I touch our readers while they're sleeping.

Great Moments in Fat History: Enter the Comfort Wipe

So it's come to this. Sweet, creepy Jesus, IT HAS COME TO THIS.

It's no secret that obesity is a growing problem in America. So much so that, "Obesity - A Growing Problem™" is actually a copy-protected slogan registered by Amlagamated Puns Enterprises/Service Humor International Trademarks. And believe me, the folks at APE/SHIT know what they're doing.

It's also no secret that America has apparently decided to simply accept this and adapt to it accordingly rather than actually fight the problem (hence my attempt to force the euphemistic phrase, "shaking the hook" into the popular culture). I guess fighting takes too much effort. You actually have to get up off the couch, put down the Ben & Jerry's, and do something. It's easier to just blurt around on your Obesity Scooter, sitting around after having given up. In fact, "sitting down and giving up" are pretty much the only two things you have to do in order to succumb to your new status as a member of the Hutt family (well, that, and eat half your weight in Western food every day.)

But never have "sitting down" and "giving up" combined in quite so hopeless, so cynical, so downright OBVIOUS a fashion as they do in the Comfort Wipe.

Used to be that years ago, "he has to clean himself with a rag on a stick" was the sort of news that elicited clucked tongues and sorrowful head-shakes from people who can't imagine how anyone could possibly let it get that far. But now? These pitiful wads of clarified lard aren't shameful cautionary tales. Heavens, no. They're an under-served consumer niche that can be marketed to! Just watch!



I don't know about you, but I'm having a hard time deciding what's funniest/most horrifying about this:

A) The voice-over lady's liltingly musical delivery.

B) The copywriter's delicate dance around the concept of, "this is something you wipe your ass with."

C) What the talent agency's ad must have looked like that sought to recruit for the role of the guy who shows up at the 40-second mark.

D) The fact that the woman who pops up at :45 is obviously well-taken care of (and from the looks of her, probably even has a advanced Dance Performance degree from Juilliard), yet we're still expected to believe that she's so elderly and infirm that she previously needed assistance swabbing out her brown-eye before the Comfort Wipe came along.

E) The subtle, probably until-now-unconsidered fear-implantation aimed squarely at squeezing additional sales out of the OCD/germophobe crowd ("If you're someone who just doesn't want to touch DIRTY TOILET PAPER...").

F) The idea that you can and should give this stain on the dignity of Western culture as a gift to "someone you love," and that their knee-jerk response WON'T be to use it to beat you to death with.

G) That we're supposed to believe a plastic stick (and a bonus plastic stick with a pair of suction cups attached to it) is somehow a steal at twenty bucks (plus S&H), because the two of them together represent a "$50.00 value."

H) The understated, in-context acknowledgment of the eternal "crumple vs. fold" debate.

I) They want us to believe this thing is somehow "sanitary" when you KNOW that in the hands of the sort of person who has trouble wiping his or her crack normally, it'll no doubt wind up more smeared with shit than GG Allin during a curtain call.

No matter what, I just want to send a very clear message to all of my treasured Diary co-contributors and readers:

I know I'm not the most in-shape guy in the world. But if my personal physical condition ever gets so beset with tragedy that I'm forced to drop a Jackson on a special stick just so that I'm not waddling around from buffet to buffet reeking of stale excrement? PLEASE MURDER ME. Just walk up and launch the business end of one of those gas-powered livestock-killing spikes like Javier Bardem toted around in "No Country For Old Men" directly between my eyebrows. Then, print out this entry, bring it into court, and allow me to exonerate you from beyond the grave. The gigantic, diamond-mine sized grave they had to use a backhoe to dig before bulldozing my Steinway crate into it.

"I just done you a solid, friend-o. That was for your own good."

You can do whatever you want with my shit-stick after that.

Friday Funk: Mos Def

"Quiet Dog Bite Hard"

"Umi Says" aka, one of the best songs ever.

And a great freestyle, because thats the kind of beautiful shit we love here at the Diary.

The Deep End (of the Thought Pool), Vol. I: Smart people saying smart things.

"There could never really be justice on stolen land."

- KRS-One, from "Sound of Da Police", Return of the Boom Bap

Pop Culture Potpourri: And People Wonder Why Radio is Dying

Merton Sussex, King of the Damned

First, a disclaimer: I know full well that looking to morning radio for substance is like looking for an honest cop in Tijuana. Yes, the law of averages would seem to indicate that such a thing more than likely exists, but actually finding it is a fools' errand that's most assuredly not worth the effort. The sad fact is, with rare exceptions, the sort of programming most mainstream radio puts on in the mornings is so sack-of-gravel stupid that it actually gives you a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as you fear for the continued future of the human species.

That said, some folks are just plain overachievers of under-delivery.

The dopey grins and dead eyes to the right belong to the Twin Cities' pre-eminent Drum Majors in the great 'tard parade, KS-95's "Greg and Melissa." Or, as they're most often referred to on the air, "GreggenM'lissuh," which, when you think about it, almost looks and sounds like some sort of two-headed, baby-eating monster from a Welsh folk tale. Apropos, that.

But, not to worry. This isn't the case. I say this largely because my exposure to them has left me with serious doubts as to whether either of them possesses the mental capacity to feed themselves at ALL, much less consume fresh infants that need to be dressed and de-boned before you can even think about roasting them.

Morning after morning, GreggenM'lissuh serve up exactly the sort of dumbed-down, lukewarm tapioca-brained pap that the General Public who made Jay Leno the #1 host in late night apparently demands. The gulf in intelligence 'twixt their show and, say, NPR's "Morning Edition" is so vast that Columbus would've died TWICE trying to sail the expanse of it.

For the blissfully uninitiated: their repertoire consists largely of toothless gags, empty and obvious pop-culture "observations," and stuff ripped off wholesale from much-funnier humor-based news-aggregator websites like Fark.com. And yeah, in this, they're far from unique. Every major media market in America has a similar "wacky" morning team whose only real purpose is to shovel enough waste product to fill drive-time (Don't even get me started on those hyena-cackling syndicated penises "Bob & Tom"). Such a situation is pretty much par for the course on airwaves from Portland to Miami, so it's not like anything up to now has been news, per se. What bears remarking upon is the amazing consistency, the bland, reliable, cream-of-wheat evenness of their banality. They succeed only at being deeply vapid, all the time. Their greatest achievement is the unwavering smoothness they achieve in the colorless rhetoric they dribble while busily and enthusiastically soaring to new depths.

To begin with, in addition to being incredibly vacuous (which, admittedly, most AM hosts are), they're also a pair of right-leaning conservative puritans. So besides being culturally and intellectually shallower than a Frisbee™, their show is also riddled with barely-concealed contempt for any person or idea any further left than Dennis Motherfucking Miller. Granted, they're not journalists...SHIT, no. Perish the thought. So it's hardly as though they're held to any standard of neutrality. They're not required to leave their personal bias at the door when they punch in, I suppose. It's just a jarring thing to pause just long enough when flicking through my presets to hear the female specimen smugging it up as she pulls the same sort of thinly-veiled, "don't get me wrong, I TOTALLY respect their right to exist, and stuff" diatribes of passive-aggressive homosexual-bashing hate speech that not even far prettier blondie-bots with expensive, pageant-funded Tupper-tits are allowed to get away with.

"No offense to anyone out there, but I personally think that I believe that U.S. Americans'
marriage should be between a man and a woman and like The Iraq and such as."

And it's not just gays. As it is with the bulk of moralist religion-humping Republican types, it's anyone who thinks or acts differently. F'rinstance: the other day, I stopped for a sufficient span of seconds to have the privilege of hearing the two of them go to town on "The Bachelorette" (which is just further reinforcement of the usual academic level of the proceedings). Evidently, there's some dude currently on the show who has a full-on foot fetish, and footage of him talking to the camera about how much he wants to suck on the desperate bimbo du jour's instep is constantly inter-cut with unbroken takes of his longing stares at her pump-enhanced toe-cleavage. Fair enough. I'll allow that's likely as not at least as interesting to watch as moisture evaporating out of freshly-applied "Sandy Beige" flat wall latex.

But these two mooks were having a god-damned field day...especially Golden Years Barbie. She just couldn't shut her tooth-lined dick-receptacle about how EWW WEIRD it was that this guy thought the chick on the show had pretty feet, and how he liked to kiss and massage them. They even invited any of their brain-dead listenership who might have had any experience with some shameful C.H.U.D. who dug feet to call in and share their stories of said "weirdo" encounters. And she wrapped the whole disgusting proceedings up with the typical breathless shock you might expect of your average dishwater-dull meat-and-potatoes puritan aghast at anything more salacious than the grudgingly joyless, pitch-dark room/hole-in-sheet procreation-based medical-grade intercourse she reluctantly permits her husband on the occasion of his birthday. "GOSH, I'm glad I'm 'normal'! What's next...cross-dressing?!?"

I'm honestly not into dudes, but FUCK is he pretty.

Y'know what, you squared-off, Palin-worshiping skin-puppet? Maybe! And at the end of the day, if some dude in his wife's pantyhose is happy, fulfilled, and not hurting anyone, then so fucking what? Who are you to judge or denigrate them, much less invite others to call in and jeer them as well? How DARE you?!?

Look, I'm NOT a foot fetishist. But if I was, I'd admit it. Y'know why? Because there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. A lot of people with quirky trigger-trips feel needlessly ashamed, isolated, and alone enough about their perfectly-normal desires even WITHOUT insignificant vagina-hosts like Sister Mary Dumbshit openly mocking them on the airwaves. People with completely harmless erotic preferences should feel good about their needs, to give themselves the permission to explore them in ways that are healthy, consensual, and beneficial to their psyches. So it does NOBODY any good when June Cleaver (and her un-ironic pearl necklace) pulls the incredulous act out of her puckered dirt-star in a public forum like that. Christ. As if folks don't have enough to deal with without being made to feel like deviant freaks by a couple of square, clueless prudes on the radio calling out their secret yen.

And besides, if they think something as comparatively vanilla as having a foot fetish is that outlandish, it's probably for the best that they've just advertised out loud just how sheltered their wetly-trembling li'l sensibilities are. Because then people might refrain from calling to their attention any of the myriad of even more unusual, but still totally-reasonable kinks some others have. Hell, I'm not even someone who necessarily seeks out the alternative-lifestyle crowd (for the most part), but if something so "Sex 101" as a fucking foot fetish gets their blood pressure up, hearing even the surface details of some of my TAMER evenings would curl their hair, knot their underpants and induce fatal cardiac arrest.

Go ahead...use your imagination. We sure as hell did.

Uptight judgment of others aside, that's not to say their little motorcade of morning mediocrity is TOTALLY devoid of any entertainment value. A lot of days, I play a little game with myself. I turn on their show when I leave home for Diary HQ, but I do so with the understanding that my finger will reflexively stab a different pre-set the MILLISECOND that I can sense my intelligence has been, or is about to be insulted. Sometimes, I make it a block or two. If there's a song or a commercial on, I might even make it as far as the highway on-ramp. Today? The garage door wasn't even closed yet by the time the stimulus/response conditioning kicked in, and I was jabbing at my radio like a smack-addled chimp in a Skinner box. I wish I was joking.

Once in awhile, I also dial up their dung-fest when they're running one of their regularly-scheduled call-in contests. This is largely because most of their aforementioned stone-skulled audience members (as you might expect) are such cripplingly-hilarious mongoloids that it's a good dose of schadenfreude to hear them fumble around and fuck up tests of mental prowess easier than your sister at a Shriners' convention.

To wit: they have this derivative rip-off called "The $25 Pyramid" that's similar to the $64,000 version, wherein they feed you clues trying to get you to figure out the shared category they belong in within a specific time limit. And it's always a crap-shoot (emphasis on "crap") as far as who is going to be more hilariously inept: the low-watt bulbs calling in, or the meat-headed seat-warmers mouth-breathing into the microphones.

Pictured: Greg, Melissa.
Not shown: EEG-measurable beta-wave activity.

As with most things during their programming block, Tweedle-Dumb is marginally better at this than Tweedle-Dumber. He's usually at least in the ballpark, if not outright running the bases. But her? If the category is "Peanut-Butter Brands," you can be sure she'll stammer for at least five seconds trying to wrack her shriveled raisin of a brain adequately enough to drop turds like, "Jiffy-Pop," "Skipper" and "Peter Paul." At which point the clueless dolt on the phone will no doubt blurt out, "TYPES OF SHOES!!!"

Or if it's "Ice cream flavors," she'll no doubt come up with "Pork," "Grape" and "Guilt," prompting the response of, "Places my dad touched me!" Maybe one in twenty will actually be lucky enough to penetrate the dense knot of their clumsy incompetence and win miniature portraits of Andrew Jackson and Abe Lincoln, plus some other perfunctorily worthless "prize" like tickets to a concert nobody in their right mind would ever want to go to (that they're giving away because there are still so many still left unsold). So, that particular few minutes usually turns out to be the only thing they do that's actually funny, albeit unintentionally.

In fact, the imbeciles who typically play this little game are so laughably thick that I got it into my head that I had to make it through on the phone banks someday, play Ken Jennings to their collective Zippy the Pinhead, and run the board by barking out a single correct guess per category before the flesh-pod that was giving the clues even got done reading the second one. This would be a challenge, but mostly due to how much they suck at coming up with examples to convey each item or idea on the list.

This really doesn't need a caption. I'm just gonna go ahead and
file it under, "Part of the Problem."

Even so, I managed to do exactly this, to the letter, the morning after I decided I ought to try. The dude half of their brain trust (thankfully) fed me the clues, they were as plainly simple as always, and I got every one on the first guess. It was kind of a letdown, actually. Kind of like everything else they do. I mean, it's one thing to set realistic goals for yourself. It's quite another to achieve them with such minimal effort that you literally used a larger percentage of your cerebral cortex tying your shoes before you left the house. I mean, sure. Based on having heard this wee game played previous to this, I knew it would be easy. I wasn't prepared for effortless. Leave it to those "shoot for the bottom" anus-wrinkles to rob me of even the SLIGHTEST sense of anything resembling accomplishment.

So, apparently, I won 25 bucks and two tickets to a Bridal Expo. The tickets, I was supposed to go to their studios to collect. Which you can bet I did with all of the speed and urgency of a 90-year old's bowel movement. As you can well imagine, I have about as much use for (and interest in) a Bridal Expo as I do in exfoliating the head of my penis with a cheese grater. In front of my mother. While she's naked.

Warning: prolonged exposure to this photo has been shown to be a leading cause of pancreatic cancer.

As for the 25 bones, they mailed it to me. Or, at least, they said they did. I "won" their little Special Olympics in early March, but it's currently mid-June, and I've still never seen the check. This, despite three consecutive weekly phone calls to the bubble-headed dingbat in their promotions office who I'll refer to as "Kelsey," mostly because that's her name. So, I guess KS-95 is an operation that doesn't confine the idea of abject incompetence just to the broadcast booth.

Y'know...I'm an optimist at heart. I want to believe that most people are basically good, and capable. It's been said that every cynic is a frustrated idealist, and I guess that's me in a nutshell. It's just that the longer I live, and the more I find myself exposed to sharp-as-a-bowling-ball, "we got to fail UPWARD" schmucks like the Dread Beastie GreggenM'lissuh, the more its becoming apparent that "Idiocracy" wasn't a spoof cautionary tale. It was a pre-emptive documentary.


Except, of course, for the part where we'd ever be progressive enough to elect a black president.

Macho Man Randy Savage Sought in Connection with Slim Jim Factory Explosion

Officials unsure of cause, but many suspect Slim Jim's volatile combination of super-charged spice and beefy, juicy flavor.

(CNN) -- Two people were found dead and a third person is still believed missing in a North Carolina food plant heavily damaged in a morning explosion, police said Tuesday night.

Four people were in critical condition after the explosion at the ConAgra Foods plant in the town of Garner, CNN affiliate WRAL-TV reported.

The explosion, reported about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, caused sections of the roof to collapse. Search efforts for those missing were slowed by ammonia leaks and a fire that was not extinguished until afternoon.

"There was no warnings, no signs," Garner Mayor Ronnie Williams said. "It all happened very abruptly."

At least 38 people were transported to area hospitals, said Jeff Hammerstein, district chief for Wake County Emergency Medical Services.

Police said recovery workers still were trying to get the two bodies out of the plant, which makes Slim Jim food products. The victims' names weren't immediately available.

More than 300 people were in the plant when the explosion happened, authorities said. The cause of the blast was unknown, according to Garner police spokesman Joe Binns.

Rescuers were crawling into the rubble -- sometimes in pockets of space less than 30 inches tall -- in attempts to access the two bodies and find the missing person, officials said at a news conference Tuesday night.

The search crews were moving slowly in part because the building is very unstable, officials said.

Video from the scene showed holes in sections of the roof of the 425,000 square-foot plant. First responders set up a makeshift triage area near the building. A section of the roof was collapsed, and pipes could be seen spewing liquid believed to be ammonia. VideoWatch liquid spew from building »

ConAgra Foods' brands include Healthy Choice, Chef Boyardee and Orville Redenbacher, among others. The Garner plant is known for producing Slim Jim beef jerky products.

The company was "working with authorities on the ground to ensure that their employees are getting all of the support that they need," said Stephanie Childs, ConAgra director of corporate communication. "The employees' health is their only real concern at this time."

Gail Ruffin, a ConAgra worker who was in the plant when the explosion happened, told WRAL she heard a boom.

"The ceiling start coming down, and we all start running," Ruffin, who wasn't injured, told WRAL. "Everyone was trying to get to the exit door.

Garner is seven miles south of Raleigh.

For the record, a "fiery storm of ultra-processed animal byproducts" is number 3 on the DoF's Worst Ways to Die list.

Elaine Benes vs. Barry Bonds: A Statistical Analysis of Improbable Late-Career Surges

by Blaine Fridley, No Longer Welcomed at Neighborhood Gym

Last week at the gym, I accidentally watched CBS. Which, unless being subjected to an advanced interrogation technique, is the only way I'm ever going to watch CBS. In all honesty, I was a tad bit surprised to learn that it still existed. Andy Rooney, too, apparently. 

Well, on that particular evening, the Columbia Broadcasting System was airing a brutally-named program called The New Adventures of Old Christine starring the former Ms. Elaine Benes - Julia Louis-Dreyfus - as "Old Christine."

After catching a glimpse of the now 48 year-old comedic actress, I quickly thought of a new title and mailed it off to CBS president Leslie Moonves: ¡SPOOGE!

Good christ, she's fine as all hell (No word back yet from Leslie on that title change, btw. But I don't imagine him arguing the point that ¡SPOOGE! is a far superior title).

And then while browsing the gym's magazine rack for the newest copy of Ebony, I'm slapped in the face with this rack:

Daaaaamn, Elaine! 

I said, shit! Goddamn!

Wha ha happen'd? 

Don't you know you're supposed to be OLD?

I should be reading your pamphlet on the ravages of Osteoporosis, not rubbing one out at the gym to your Shape Magazine cover. (Note: Be on the look out for my next post: The Top Ways to Get Your Gym Membership Revoked. Hint: don't rub one out on the elliptical machine. Also don't resist arrest so you can "finish" before being taken into custody. That only exacerbates the problem). 

In fact, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is way more of a boner threat now than she was 20 years ago. 

See?

I suspect some sort of performance enhancing drugs are at play.

After all, this kind of late-career surge is almost unprecedented.

Almost.

 

Conclusion:

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the Barry Bonds of female sitcom actresses.

Ummmm...Yeah: Those Crazy Japanese, Vol. 4

Admittedly, I don't understand Portuguese well enough/at all to understand what the caption read on the blog I stole this from (nor am I completely sure how I ended up on a Portuguese blog. Last thing I remember I was being hooded, tied, sedated and tossed into a nondescript white van. When I came to I was on a Portuguese blog. You know the story), but context or no, I'm pretty sure that this...just. isn't. right.

DoF Newswire: Brad Pitt is a Hideous Crater-faced Monster

"Sexxxiest Man Alive?" Psshhh, yeah right. Just how much did your publicist pay People Magazine for that honor, Brad?

From AOL.com:

So just what does a closer look at Brad Pitt reveal?

Well, thanks to some great work by the DoF's Ministry of Celebrity Dermatology, we were able to find out using advanced image enhancing techniques andOHMYGODWHY??

That's right, Olmos. It's personal now. Come get your dance, you son of a bitch.

-Blaine.

Hot Sh!t: The Bees

But for some reason in the US, they're known as A Band of Bees. No matter what you call them, their music results in a massive erection.

These two cuts are off of 2007's Octopus.

http://www.thebees.info/

And my favorite tune…

Left Foot Stepdown - A Band Of Bees

DoF Friday Funk: No Love for The Government Edition

One of Stevie's most powerful and under-rated cuts off of 1972's Talking Book. Lyrics included. Read 'em. 

Your name is big brother
You say that you're watching me on the tele,
Seeing me go nowhere,
Your name is big brother,
You say that you're tired of me protesting,
Children dying everyday,
My name is nobody
But I can't wait to see your face inside my door

Your name is big brother
You say that you got me all in your notebook,
Writing it down everyday,
Your name is I'll see ya,
I'll change if you vote me in as the pres,
The President of your soul
I live in the ghetto,
You just come to visit me 'round election time

I live in the ghetto,
Someday I will move on my feet to the other side,
My name is secluded,
We live in a house the size of a matchbox,
Roaches live with us wall to wall,

You've killed all our leaders,
I don't even have to do nothin' to you
You'll cause your own country to fall