Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Gross and Sensational News That's Not About The Ramsey Case



there's human sacrifice and cannibalism:

Aztecs butchered, ate Spanish invaders

Skeletons found at an unearthed site in Mexico show Aztecs captured, ritually sacrificed and partially ate several hundred people traveling with invading Spanish forces in 1520.

Skulls and bones from the Tecuaque archeological site near Mexico City show about 550 victims had their hearts ripped out by Aztec priests in ritual offerings, and were dismembered or had their bones boiled or scraped clean, experts say.

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when i travelled to mexico in 1998, i visited the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. i read in a visitor's guide or on one of those plaque thingies next to the exhibits that the consecration of one aztec temple was accompanied by several days of non-stop human sacrifices. according to that story, it ended when the priests were too exhausted to continue. i'm not certain of the veracity of that story, but it's a little more believeable in light of this.

and now, i present to you news stories about a trend of super-sized yellow jacket nests in the deep south. in case you don't know, yellow jackets are carnivorous stinging insects that live in colonies like ants and bees. unlike bees, they can sting a victim repeatedly and not die. they are also notoriously bad-tempered and don't hesitate to fuck your shit up if you so much as look at them cross-eyed.
Giant nests perplex experts

To the bafflement of insect experts, gigantic yellow jacket nests have started turning up in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities across the southern two-thirds of Alabama.

Specialists say it could be the result of a mild winter and drought conditions, or multiple queens forcing worker yellow jackets to enlarge their quarters so the queens will be in separate areas. But experts haven't determined exactly what's behind the surprisingly large nests.

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this nest is even bigger than the one pictured above:
Massive Yellow Jacket Nest Forms on Couple's Property

Most of us have reached for the can of bug spray to put down wasps or bees around the house. But a Bulloch County couple has a bigger problem than that.

Rising up out of the water, it looks like another tree stump from a distance. But a closer look is enough to take your attention, and maybe your breath.

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and in other news, osama bin laden allegedly is obsessed with whitney houston:
Look out, Bobby--bin Laden might be sweet on Whitney

Who would have ever thought we'd see Osama bin Laden and Whitney Houston paired in the same sentence, let alone with a romantic/obsessive twist?

Yet one memoirist is linking those very same names.

Sudanese writer and activist Kola Boof, 37, claims in "Diary of a Lost Girl" that she was the unwilling mistress of the leader of Al Qaeda years before he masterminded the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and that he often fantasized about the pop diva.

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1 comment:

FM said...

random news is excellent. oh, cows can "moo" with different accents. so that advertisement for california dairy products where the new cow, an import from minnesota, had a ridiculous "fargo"-esque accent, isn't all that farfetched.