"You Know The Rules..."

I'm warning you now...because you may not even get to the part about being "the toilet of your dreams". Best to let your friends tell you about this and spare yourself.

Endless Criticism

Better Than Dishgut™

Pharmaceutical start-up Gelesis has developed a pill that is filled with tiny polymer beads. Delicious!

Simply swallow the pill, and the beads absorb water in your stomach, swelling over one hundred times in size. The idea is to partially fill up the stomach so that the user is less hungry. When you down a pill with a glass of water, the capsule dissolves in your stomach and the hydrogel beads begin to grow. Problem solved?

Of course, now you have a belly full of hydrogel, and this is where the engineers at Gelesis had to be clever. The food (or whatever else is in your guts) is now mixed in with the gel, but you still need to digest that food (the object here is weight loss, not starvation - there's other pills for that). The hydrogel keeps food in the stomach longer, giving stomach acid more time to break down both the food and the hydrogel, which begins to release its water. Everything then moves to the small intestine where the gel can re-expand to some extent, slowing the absorption of fatty materials and sugars. Finally everything ends up in the lower bowels, and the rest is history.

FYI, they are not meant for reuse.

Die Interview

Ninja and Yo-Landi of Die Antwoord sat down with Xeni Jardin after their first-ever US performance at the Coachella.

And as a bonus, a gallery of photos from their performance, shot by Dave Bullock, (the living version and coincidentally not related to the character of the same name from His Words - Not Mine s1).

Arrakis. Dune. Desert Planet.

The LA Times had this piece on one of my favorite science fiction book and movie:

Half a century ago, a middle-aged newspaperman with a few obscure books to his name sat down to pursue a pet obsession based on a story that had never sold.

The ensuing 1965 novel -- in which his agent had no confidence -- sagged at first. But within a few years, it was a pop-culture sensation, and this year, on its 45th anniversary, "Dune" is one of science fiction's best-known books and probably the field's bestselling novel.

The mystery of why some works continue to speak to us is heightened with a book like "Dune": Frank Herbert's desert-planet epic not only remains popular and well-known, but this tale has anticipated many of our contemporary concerns. Its saga of dueling great houses, the fight for a rare resource and a young aristocrat's coming of age was set 200 centuries in the future. But it grapples with numerous issues pressing in the 21st: the fragility of the environment, the shortage of fossil fuels, the threat of religious jihad, the unpredictable effects of mind-bending drugs.

"It was the SF book that everybody in the mainstream culture was reading," recalls Northern California novelist Kim Stanley Robinson. "But it wasn't like Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle,' which was essentially a mainstream novel. Herbert was doing hard-core SF in the anthropological and world-building sense. People went for its huge back story taking off from [the prophet] Mohammed's life."

That the novel was planned and researched during the Eisenhower and Camelot years -- before widespread Muslim fundamentalism, OPEC, mainstream narcotics use and other issues that seem to inspire the narrative -- underscores the author's prescience. The book also helped galvanize the environmental movement: Set on a world far from ours, its rich description of a water-poor planet is credited by some as the inspiration for Earth Day.

Because of its huge following, fast-moving plot and opportunities for special effects, "Dune" has repeatedly attracted other artists -- it's been the source of a video game, a board game, numerous posthumous sequels and several adaptations. And though a 1984 film was widely considered a failure and two subsequent Sci-Fi Channel miniseries were made, Paramount recently selected a director for a big-budget movie.

The inspiration
"I am a political animal," Herbert said in a 1983 promotional interview. "And I never really left journalism. I am writing about the current scene -- the metaphors are there."

The novel was sparked when, in the late 1950s, Herbert flew to Florence, Ore., in a small chartered plane to write about a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort to stabilize sand dunes with European beach grasses. The author was struck by the way dunes could move, over time, like living things -- swallowing rivers, clogging lakes, burying forests. "These waves can be every bit as devastating as a tidal wave . . . they've even caused deaths," he wrote his agent, beginning an article, "They Stopped the Moving Sands," that was never published.

Despite his agent's indifference, Herbert dug in: He was fascinated by the project and superimposed the history of another sandy place -- including Arabs and Islam's Mohammed -- into an adventure novel originally called "Spice Planet."

When he hit his stride, Herbert was writing 70 pages a week.

At the time, science fiction was at the tail end of its Golden Age, dominated by brisk tales of interstellar war and planet hopping. Several icons of midcentury were doing major work -- Robert Heinlein, for instance, published his campus sensation "Stranger in a Strange Land" in 1961 -- but the field's energy was flagging, and the magazine market had imploded. (A 1961 fanzine was titled "Who Killed Science Fiction?") Herbert and his gargantuan manuscript were turned down by dozens of publishers but eventually accepted by Chilton, a small press known for auto manuals.

Herbert's story of young aristocrat Paul Atreides, along with maps, appendixes, glossary and epigrams ran to more than 500 pages. After almost two years, the book took off in 1967. The novel was a hinge between new and old, says Annalee Newitz, editor of science fiction blog io9.

" 'Dune' functions nicely as a transition between classic SF -- focused on space opera and astro-politics of the kind Isaac Asimov and other golden age authors wrote -- and the next generation," she says. "In the '60s, we saw a shift away from science fiction focused on space travel and space politics to anthropology. You aren't rushing between planets, you've landed on one and you talk about that one" -- including its biology and sociology.

Writers had imagined life on other planets and written of environmental catastrophe. But the scale of "Dune" was unprecedented, comparable, as Arthur C. Clarke said at the time, only to "The Lord of the Rings."

"The planet was something you could really feel," says Robinson, whose latest novel is "Galileo's Dream." "Herbert spent a lot of time outdoors -- you can see it in the writing, he's seen things you can only see if you've been there. It's physical and expansive."

Still, the novel's pulp roots show.

"Parts of it are almost poetic," says Rob Latham, who teaches science fiction at UC Riverside. "But the villains are comically ridiculous. Baron Harkonnen could have been played by Sydney Greenstreet or Charles Laughton, say -- 'swishy.' And I don't know what we're supposed to think of the eugenics. There are all sorts of half-baked ideas in there."

'A real mess'
Thanks to the novel's success, plans for a "Dune" film began as early as 1971, when producers wanted David Lean, whose "Lawrence of Arabia" is in some ways a precursor, to direct. Another early version would've enlisted Orson Welles, Salvador Dalí, Gloria Swanson, Hervé Villechaize and Alain Delon in a 10-hour epic -- before financing evaporated.

Today, the 1984 movie directed by David Lynch and starring Kyle McLachlan and Sting has gained cult status. An endless shoot in Mexico City and the dunes of Chihuahua engaged 1,700 people: As the costs stretched, Lynch's film was sliced to two hours, and he was denied final cut. Roger Ebert, not known for his vitriol, called the movie "a real mess . . . incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless." Lynch all but disowned the movie and rarely discusses it in interviews.

Herbert, however, deemed Lynch's baroque film "a visual feast."

The current adaptation comes from the wreckage of a project that was to be helmed by "Friday Night Lights" creator Peter Berg and with Charlize Theron as Jessica, Paul's mother. After considering Neill Blomkamp (political-SF sleeper "District 9") and Neil Marshall (low-budget hit "The Descent"), Paramount opted for Frenchman Pierre Morel. (Chase Palmer, a relatively unknown writer, will work with an existing screenplay by Josh Zetumer.)

Morel -- director of "Taken" and "From Paris With Love" -- has discussed his aim to make the film faithful to the novel, which he says he's read 10 times.

Optimists hope that the director can do for Herbert's book -- and maybe its sequels -- what Peter Jackson did with Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," finding a balance among action, story and ideas.

It could also, of course, be cheap. "If they want to reawaken it as a film franchise," says io9's Newitz, "it's hard to imagine that it would not just be action-packed, with a video-game tie-in."

Lasting effect
For a book that's enjoyed such critical and popular success and continued interest from Hollywood, the legacy of "Dune" is not especially clear.

It's not quite New Wave -- which developed in the late 1960s -- not an antecedent to cyberpunk, nor a precursor to the recent space-opera renaissance. "It's some kind of singularity," says Latham.

"Dune" both channeled and stoked a greater environmental consciousness in SF: Important later novels by Ursula Le Guin, John Brunner and Octavia Butler looked at planetary ecology.

The original novel's most evident influence is on the science-fiction tradition of world-building, for which it raised the bar considerably. Writers and scientists had been envisioning other planets for a century, but not this deeply: The rituals by which the Fremen, the planet's desert people, deal with water are especially well imagined.

Many consider Robinson's trilogy about the terra-forming of Mars the best-realized exercise in the form since Herbert's. Robinson calls "Dune" a big influence: The book showed him, he says, that "you could talk about the future of the wilderness. It gave me courage. I knew that people were willing to read at great length and that the world could be a character."

But Herbert's future vision of a galaxy with numerous populated worlds seems out of step with the deflated present. "The future," says Robinson, "doesn't look to be off-planet in any near-future time frame."

A less encouraging descendant of the original "Dune" novel is the large number of other Dune novels. The first sequel, the much slimmer "Dune Messiah," came out in 1969; Herbert published the sixth of the original series, "Chapterhouse: Dune," in 1985. And though Herbert died the following year, while recovering from cancer surgery, Dune's universe has been extended by his son Brian and journeyman writer Kevin J. Anderson.

Some think these posthumous prequels and sequels have confused the legacy by dumping less serious books into the marketplace. "They've gone from something profound and thought-provoking," says Newitz, "to being something like candy, like the 'Star Wars' novelizations."

Whatever the book's influence and implications, the original continues to attract readers: It's sold an estimated 10 million copies. To Latham, it remains "a weird kind of in-between thing."

"It culminates a pulp tradition, with ridiculous villains and a pseudo-medieval empire set in outer space, and some bad writing," he says. "Then it has these '70s elements -- environmental concerns, drugs and mystical experiences. And somehow it managed to coalesce all of them."

New Jack Franks

Last month, when the Treasury Department announced that it was revamping the $100 bill yet again to curtail counterfeiters, the Associated Press said that the new design — which employs a new "moving" microprint technology — was "like something straight out of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Isn't that just precious?

To hype the new bill, the Treasury set up a website counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds to its unveiling, hosted by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The AP added, "there was thankfully no sign of Lord Voldemort." Wakka-wakka! The Treasury Department released video of the new note, "which incorporates the best technology available to ensure we're staying ahead of counterfeiters," Geithner said at the unveiling ceremony.

Officials are especially concerned with the $100 bill — the favorite target of counterfeiters, who continually upgrade their tech arsenals with new color-copying and other software. One particularly high-quality type of counterfeit $100 bill — dubbed the "Superdollar" because it's the product of technology believed to be superior to that used in producing the real thing — has been thwarting Treasury enforcers for more than a decade now. No one knows the true origins of the Superdollar — such mysteries are, after all, the hallmark of successful counterfeiting. In 2005, the U.S. government accused the North Korean government of forging the phony bill, though some believed that accusation to be founded on "shaky evidence." Pop-conspiracy theories swirl wildly around other candidates — including, but by no means limited to, the Iranian government, Chinese or Russian organized crime outfits, and the CIA.

According to a 2006 New York Times Magazine piece, the government's failure to crack the Superdollar case prompted a 1996 redesign the $100 bill, its first since 1928. That version of the bill featured watermarks as its chief anti-counterfeiting tool. The new bill goes way beyond that, featuring a security thread decades in development: the microprinted mobile image that has inspired all the lame Harry Potter chatter. When the bill is moved side to side, the image on the bill appears to move up and down, and it's moved up and down, the image appears to move side to side.

The new bill will go into circulation later in the year. Also coming this year is a new design for the $5 bill. Because if you can't counterfit $100s, you'll aim lower...

Clusterfuckchella

Guys like this are just one of 10,000 reasons not to go...

Uncomfortable Adolescence

In Charles Burns' awesomely twisted indie comic Black Hole, a mysterious STD transforms horny high schoolers into otherworldly freaks.

Teenagers who get "The Bug" become freakish outcasts, condemned to live in shantytowns in the forest. Photographer Max Oppenheim and prosthetic artist Bill Turpin did this shoot for 125 Magazine, recreating Burns' monstrous yearbook shots. You can check out the rest of the illustrations at The Operators.

Come To Think Of It, I Do Have A Spare Room I'm Not Using

From the Motor City's own Metro Times comes the tale of a man with a plan. And that plan is running a strip club out of his house:

There's no stage at this strip club. No pole. Not even a bar. And the music comes from a boom box.

Welcome to Club Thunderbolt, the strangest place in the city to get a lap dance. It's located in the back room of an old house in an east side neighborhood of working class bungalows.

"Everybody in the neighborhood knows what I do," says Jay Thunderbolt, the 45-year-old club owner, homeowner, house mom and house DJ. "In the summertime you got all these girls leaving wearing four ounces of clothing, so they kind of get what's going on."

Thunderbolt, who stopped using his real name years ago, is a striking sight. He's 6 foot 5, has longish hair combed back, and he wears a black suit with a bulletproof vest underneath and a gun on his waist. His face droops on one side, the aftereffects of getting shot in the head, in a Detroit alley, when he was 11 years old.

"Before they [strippers and patrons] come over I tell everyone I'm real scary looking, so don't freak out," he says. Get past his looks, though, and he's droll and laid-back, with an acute sense of the club's absurdity.

Other than the girls, he's the only one who works here. "I play everything — daddy, uncle, banker, provider of tanning," he says. His empire is called Thunderbolt Entertainment, the umbrella name of the in-house and mobile stripper service. Twenty-four hours a day, any day, you can come to a show or a show can be brought to you. He says he's open for business 24 hours a day, and will wake up at any hour to get the club going.

There's no cover charge. Customers can order different strippers out of the company catalog — a photo album full of seedy-looking Polaroids. Each page features one of his strippers in three poses — bent over, spread eagle and come hither. There are dozens of girls to choose from.

Thunderbolt doesn't need a cabaret license like other Detroit strip clubs must have. The city ordinance regulating other places doesn't apply, because it's not a bar serving liquor or food, but rather a private arrangement in a private home. To him it's like having a strip-o-gram sent to your own house.

"As far as I'm concerned," Thunderbolt says, "when a guy calls up to come here, he's my 'friend.'" And though the club is dry, people can still drink. "If they want to party and bring their own party favors, that's OK," he says.

There's absolutely no prostitution allowed. Thunderbolt stays in the room the whole time, watching. He takes 10 percent of the girls' earnings for his services.

His business card is vague, like a secret pass to some hidden afterhours spot. It says simply "Thunderbolt — Party Naked" next to a phone number. He places ads now and then in newspaper classified sections offering just as few details: "Private strip club. By appointment."

The club's main room, at the back of the house, looks like a Northern Michigan lodge decorated in the 1970s. The walls are fake wood paneling. The aged carpet is greenish-brown. The seating is an old, thick, sectional couch. A single bed rests suggestively in a corner. An ancient stereo receiver and 8-track tape player sit on a table. A few shotgun shells are lined up along its edge, incongruously. A patron's first visit is an eye-opener. "Usually everybody is shocked," Thunderbolt says, "but I've been in AmVet halls smaller than this."

Before every night's show, customers are given the same introduction. "Listen up," Thunderbolt announces to the room. "These are the rules: There's no licking, sticking, biting or slapping. Can't hurt the girls, gentlemen. Be good to the girls, they'll be good to you. It's 10 dollars a dance with the g-string on, 20 dollars with the g-string off. OK? It's lap dance time."

The club got its start after a botched bachelor party. The guy across the street was getting married. Thunderbolt hired a stripper and threw him a party that went sour.

"For 225 bucks she came out, did three songs and fucking left. And I was pissed, 'cause I set it up and then it falls on me. So I said screw it, I'm gonna do this." He came up with his showbiz name, printed some business cards, hired a few strippers and began what might be the strangest home business in town.

He has had the club in several different houses, mostly on the east side. Every time he moves to a new one, he goes door-to-door to explain what's coming to the neighborhood.

"I tell everybody, 'This is what I'm gonna do. Don't be freakin' out.' I have to because the girls put a shitload of cars on the street, but I keep the grass cut, I pay the bills."

His current home belonged to his parents, who both died recently. Until a few years ago his elderly dad shared the house with Thunderbolt and his business. His last days were spent among strippers roaming the house. "My old man didn't give a shit," he says. "There's a bunch of naked girls laying around here? Believe me, he didn't care."

Everything about Club Thunderbolt is surreal. The front room has several tall mirrors lined up against the walls, behind the easy chairs. The curtains are drawn tight. Ashtrays overflow with stubbed-out cigarettes. The walls are yellowed from years of smoking. It's dark, dank and creepy.

"It was a little weird at first," says Summer the stripper. She's 29 and works at a local strip club when she's not here. A friend introduced her to the place. Now she's a regular. "I got used to it."

Weirdest of all are the framed certificates on the wall from the Republican Congressional Committee's Business Advisory Council, naming Thunderbolt as an honorary co-chair and lauding his business acumen. One is signed by Newt Gingrich, the other by Tom DeLay.

He thinks they're tied to a breast-cancer fundraiser he attends and donates to. "I make my money off of boobs, so the breast cancer thing, coughing up a couple bucks seemed like good karma to me," he says. "So I happened to go to their breast cancer thing, I got invited and for some odd reason they put me at a table with a bunch of Republicans. I never sent them a dime but they sure do like to send me shit."

Thunderbolt just might be indestructible. As a kid he got 10 operations during a 10-month hospital stay after getting shot by a stranger as he headed home one night. He spent most of his career as a bodyguard; once for a dirty cop, another time for the owner of a porno theater. In his time he's been stabbed with a crochet needle in the thigh. Shot in the shoulder. Stabbed in the back. Blasted by buckshot. Wounded by a bullet in his calf.

He figured that, if anything, strip club work would be less dangerous. So far so good, except for a burglary last year. The club's front door is half plywood right now because Thunderbolt nailed it there to cover the jagged hole left by the shotgun blast he aimed at the fleeing robbers. The cops showed up, took the report, and scratched their heads at the mirrors and curling irons and hairspray cans everywhere. "They're looking around — 'What do you do, man?'" he remembers them saying.

By now though, most cops know him and what he does. If they pass by he'll send a welcome committee out. "I say, 'Somebody show them some boobs, press them up against the window and say thank you for being a cop,'" he says.

So cops leave him alone, as does the city. Now he's just got to attract more customers. "I imagine some time and some advertising will do it," he says. He thinks the house's advantages over traditional gentleman's clubs will outweigh the weirdness of getting a lap dance in some stranger's back room.

"I think people get tired of the minute and 54 seconds worth of song," he says of normal strip clubs. At Club Thunderbolt on the other hand, it's a flat fee that gets you long songs with no last-minute surprises.

"Here, when you buy a Cadillac," he says, "you actually get the rims and tires too."

Super Chics And Geeks

Not In My House!

There's no way to relay the atmosphere of a playoff game, unless you want to throw a toaster in the tub next time you take a bath.

Getting to playoffs after nearly a decade-long drought was the highlight of the season...until tonight. It was intense and exciting and stressful, but I can now say that the best thing this season was winning a home game during the playoffs. Yeah, there's still Game 4 here mid-week, and they'll be returning to Vancouver for a potentially series ending victory if their fortunes are realized. But even with the possibly upsetting possibility of a Game 6 back home that could be the decider as to who goes to the next round, nothing will tarnish this victory or the feeling from it.

Recaps
• Kings Chase Luongo, Take 2-1 Series Lead
• Kings Power Play Leads To Win

Video
• Kings Skate Past Canucks, 5-3
• Los Angeles 5, Vancouver 3

From The Teams
• Kopitar postgame quotes
• Johnson postgame quotes
• Doughty postgame quotes
• Smyth postgame quotes
• Handzus postgame quotes
• Murray postgame quotes
• Canucks postgame quotes

The Dark Side

New research from Harvard University suggests that moral actions may increase our capacity for willpower and physical endurance.

Study participants who did good deeds -- or even just imagined themselves helping others -- were better able to perform a subsequent task of physical endurance. The research shows a similar or even greater boost in physical strength following dastardly deeds.

"People perceive those who do good and evil to have more efficacy, more willpower, and less sensitivity to discomfort," said researcher Kurt Gray. "By perceiving themselves as good or evil, people embody these perceptions, actually becoming more capable of physical endurance."

The findings run counter to the notion that only those blessed with heightened willpower or self-control are capable of heroism, suggesting instead that simply attempting heroic deeds can confer personal power.

Gray's findings are based on two studies. In the first, participants were given a dollar and told either to keep it or to donate it to charity; they were then asked to hold up a 5 lb. weight for as long as they could. Those who donated to charity could hold the weight up for almost 10 seconds longer, on average. In a second study, participants held a weight while writing fictional stories of themselves either helping another, harming another, or doing something that had no impact on others. As before, those who thought about doing good were significantly stronger than those whose actions didn't benefit other people. The would-be malefactors were even stronger than those who envisioned doing good deeds.

"Whether you're saintly or nefarious, there seems to be power in moral events. People often look at others who do great or evil deeds and think, 'I could never do that' or 'I wouldn't have the strength to do that.' But in fact, this research suggests that physical strength may be an effect, not a cause, of moral acts."

Proto-Brokeback

Ass-Kicking Weekend

So even if Mark Millar is having a little hissy fit about his print work, he's got to be all smiles about Kick-Ass debuting - as am I. Ever since they announced the comic would be turned into a flick - which was after only one issue, I've been reading it with anticipation. Yeah, knowing how it will end could be considered a drawback, but that only makes me want to see how it translates to film.

And on the other side of the universe from geek pursuits is game two of the Kings / Canucks playoff series on Saturday. The first one came down to OT and was a loss, but the Kings will play their asses off to make sure they don't come back to town down by two. There's also the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday. Red Bull, Ferrari, and McLaren have all taken the top of the podium, so will there be a repeat winner finally or does Mercedes have the goods to claim legitimacy as one of the Big Four teams in the race world?

Best of the week: Finding an NHL jersey craze in West Africa is like that scene from Tropic Thunder, in which Ben Stiller discovers a remote village worships his character's box office bomb Simple Jack because it's one of the only VHS tapes it owns. Necessity can facilitate some strange cultural mash-ups.

National Post writer Bonnie Allen found Liberians wearing Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks and other NHL jerseys being bought, sold and worn by the citizenry. Sure, they added teams in Florida, but this isn't the next stage of expansion.

"We don't know the game," one man admitted. "But the jerseys are very fine. Very high quality."

The booming and controversial used-clothes business in Africa means hockey jerseys can be found sprinkled throughout this war-torn West African nation. Bizarrely, the authentic hockey jersey has become a status symbol among the poor for its "premium-grade" rating and high price tag ($4 CDN!). "It is tough, tough material," a street vendor raved. "If you buy it, you can wear it for 20 years."

That the jerseys are donated by churches and charities in North America, and the popularity is a bit surprising, given the widespread belief by many Africans that these "used clothes have been stripped from the body of a dead person." Perhaps not, but some of those teams have barely had a pulse all season.

Check out the Post's gallery of Liberians in NHL sweaters, as they attempted to find all 30 teams. Puck Daddy (who posted the links) added, "No word if the village enforcers all wear Philadelphia Flyers jerseys, or if feuding communities are naturally drawn to Flames and Oilers jerseys. Clearly, this West African nation is on the cusp of NHL fandom. You know, once they work past the whole 'no national electricity grid and televisions are for the rich' thing."

Plus: Folks are slowly realizing what happened to them on April Fool's day. The online game store Gamestation.co.uk added language to its click through license that asked customers to surrender their immortal souls, though it offered a checkbox to opt out if you wanted to keep yours. 7,500 customers did not check the box.

By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions....we reserve the right to serve such notice in 6 (six) foot high letters of fire, however we can accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by such an act. If you a) do not believe you have an immortal soul, b) have already given it to another party, or c) do not wish to grant Us such a license, please click the link below to nullify this sub-clause and proceed with your transaction."

A small minority of the customers probably didn't check the box because they knew it was all a gag, the majority likely didn't check it off because they didn't read the agreement. No one reads the agreements. Famous Sister deals with stuff like that for a giant software corporation, to which Herr Docktor comically noted that her hard work is negated by people who don't read them or skip them entirely. And realistically, they aren't agreements anyway. The legal fiction that you can create agreement merely by throwing tens of thousands of words' worth of legalese at a customer is not as bound in stone as you'd think. I'd be willing to bet your soul on it.

And: Directed by the notorious Banksy himself, Exit Through The Gift Shop takes viewers through the illicit world of street art. Looking behind the scenes of the movement, the film follows the transformation of French shopkeeper Thierry Guetta — who’s obsessed with documenting street art, but unable to make a good film — into Mr. Brainwash, a megalomaniacal artist set on conquering the graffiti-art scene. Narrated by Rhys Ifans, the film also features music by Roni Size and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow set to footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and other street-art heroes.

You can visit the Exit Through the Gift Shop website, read an interview with Banksy, catch photos of celebrities tagging a limo at the Hollywood premiere, and watch a video of Banksy’s phenomenal exhibition in Bristol...or act as though dogs playing poker is actual art.

Best picture of the week:

flights all over Europe may be screwed, but it's still an awesome eruption

Best bonus links:

• Hugh Hefner Says Tiger And Jesse James Are Creeps - If an 84-year-old pussy-monger with decades of sexual affairs with multiple girlfriends thinks you're a scumbag, I think the odds are he's right.

• Japanese Toilet Horror - I automatically have to post anything that has a combination of the words 'toilet', 'Japanese', and 'horror'.

• F1 Keen On Russia, New York - Who knows how they'll pull off a street circuit in the Big Crapple, but that'll be easier to get to than Montreal (no customs agents searching my shampoo for narcotics).

• HBO's New Drama 'Treme' Renewed For 2nd Season - That's how good it is after airing only one show. Guess I need to start watching it...after I finish five seasons of The Wire.

• Lethal Injection Or Firing Squad: Death Row Inmate In A Bind - what a shitty pair of choices. Wonder what Bing has to say on that...it is billed as a decision making engine.

• Judge: National Day Of Prayer Is Unconstitutional - Fortunately, National Day Of Pizza is still legal. Hooray!

• Former NYT Reporter Sleeps On Street, Eats Out Of Garbage Cans - It's all part of his new series of reports titled "I fucked my life up and will be dying like a pauper soon".

• The Diarrhea Defense - If you're claiming diarrhea as a defense for anything, you get a link here.

• Site Posts Pics Of Chicken-Eating Times Reviewer - And no, it does not have anything to do with either of the above links.

• JWoww Wishes She Could Get Implants Every Year - As do I.

• Bishop Convicted For Denying Holocaust - Amazing how church members can pretend something that effected millions never happened. Oh wait, they can...

• Evander Kane KO's Cooke, Becomes Beloved In Boston - Even if you don't know the back story, it's an awesome clip to watch.

• Escaped Inmates Dress As Sheep - Suck on that, Shawshank Redemption!

• Copying Is Not Theft, Now With Studio-Recorded Audio! - This may or may not be legally sound in court, but it's unflappable logic to me.

• Foes Of Tea Party Movement To Infiltrate Rallies - A nice take on keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Though making them look like bigger asses than they already are will be hard.

• Man Dies While Waiting In Line To Buy World Cup Tickets - And normally that would suggest it was a long line. But as a consolation, the seats he would have had were not that good anyway.

• Important Breaking News: Big Tits Zombie 3D - That is important! It's like the perfect storm of all that is hot in film and culture today. It will probably bring about the end of the universe.

Worst of the week: Clearly Mike Huckabee is not seriously considering a presidential bid for the Republicans in 2012. Why else would you say the effort to allow gays and lesbians to marry is comparable to legalizing incest, polygamy and drug use. He also told college journalists last week that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt. "Children are not puppies," he said. Jesus, you prick - gays can't even have pets?

The former Arkansas governor visited the obscure College of New Jersey in Ewing to speak to the Student Government Association. He also was interviewed by a campus news magazine, The Perspective, which published an article two days later. Dumbfuckabee, which he will be henceforth referred to as, told the interviewer that not every group's interests deserve to be accommodated, if their lifestyle is outside of what he called "the ideal."

"That would be like saying, well there's there are a lot of people who like to use drugs so let's go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, should we accommodate them?" he said, according to a transcript of the interview. Guess he'll be left of Mitt Romney's Xmas list.

"Why do you get to choose that two men are OK but one man and three women aren't OK?" he asked. Uh, the answer is that polygamy is illegal, and people en masse are not trying to change that law, whereas folks nationwide have voted to legalise gay marriage. You ought to know that if you're really thinking about being a leader.

Huckabee added that his goal isn't to tell others how to live, but that the burden of proving that a gay marriage can be successful rests with the activists in favor of changing the law. "I don't have to prove that marriage is a man and a woman in a relationship for life," he said. "They have to prove that two men can have an equally definable relationship called marriage, and somehow that that can mean the same thing." And once again, I'll have to refer him to the previous statements and voting records of places like Connecticut, Washington DC, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Iowa, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, California, and Nevada.

Dumbfuckabee's archaic point of view is equally old. In response to a 1992 questionnaire from The Associated Press, the then Senatorial candidate spelled out his opposition to homosexuality, saying it was crucial that the country not "legitimize immorality". "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle," he wrote, in response to a question about gays in the military. He also advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, saying it was necessary to confine "carriers of this plague."

I haven't seen this kind of political suicide since R. Budd Dwyer...

Plus: Kathy Griffin is going to be promoting pap smears, which is fine...except she's going to be doing it poolside at the Palomar Hotel, just down the street here from me in Los Angeles. And worse than seeing her 46-year old crotchhole is the info that she's getting her vagina vagazzled. Cue the blockquoted press release.

On Friday, April 16th, she will receive this important test in hopes that every woman will see how easy it is to get this done. She will receive this test poolside at the Palomar Hotel, by a veteran medical physician at 12pm. This is will be taped for her hit reality show "My Life On The D- List." Kathy feels that this cause is so important that she has bedazzled her "va-jay-jay," so it can be as 'va-beautiful' as it 'va-can.'

Kathy's goal is to get the word out about women's health. She wants to say "Suck it to Cancer" and educate women all across the world about keeping their bodies healthy and of course inform them about when they should be getting their check-ups.

I'm all for preventing cancer, but Kathy Griffin's live pap smear is not the solution. Especially as fodder for her crappy show. The only way I'd ever want to look at her vagina is if it was vagazzled with Isla Fisher's vagina.

Also: Perspective future bachelors - you don't get to keep your assets just because you file for divorce first.

Larry King filed his paperwork shortly before his seventh wife also sought to end the couple's nearly 13-year-old marriage. The 76-year-old host of his namesake CNN program made the move hours before Shawn King filed her own petition. Both cited "irreconcilable differences." The couple were married in a hospital room in 1997 three days before Larry King underwent surgery to clear a clogged blood vessel. They have two sons, ages 11 and 9. The petitions differ in that Larry King is seeking joint custody, while his 50-year-old wife wants physical custody.

But the kicker is that Larry King is also asking a judge not to award his wife any spousal support and to invalidate an agreement in which he transferred property to her. And this matters because Larry never signed a prenup. And in California, earnings accumulated during a marriage are split 50/50, and King’s net worth is reportedly estimated at $144 million.

As teh story goes, several years ago Shawn accused Larry of having an affair with her sister, Shannon Engemann. Shawn threatened to leak the story to the media unless Larry signed a document giving up his interest in their Beverly Hills estate, along with two other homes in Utah. Larry took the document to his attorney, who ordered him not to sign it. Larry then went to Shawn’s lawyer, and that attorney eventually gave Larry the green light to sign the agreement. Well of course her attorney did!

Having been married all those other times, I think he should have figured it out. But now he deserves the shithole he's dug himself. With the other exes and payments he's making, he'll need to work another 54 years before he can retire.

And: Children's author K.P. Bath has pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography. His name even sounds creepy, but wait until you get a look at his picture.

The 51-year-old author of "The Secret of Castle Cant" is expected to spend six or seven years in prison. I'm sure he'll have some wonderful secrets from that adventure! The Portland resident was arrested last April after federal agents discovered thousands of sexually graphic images and more than 125 videos on Bath's computer and thumb drives. I understand politicians being liars, and Wall Street bankers being fradulent, but children's authors as pedophiles just crosses a line.

Worst picture of the week:

the only thing I like less than baseball are whores doing self promotion through baseball (Holly Madison = vomit)

Worst bonus links:

• A Mysterious Powder And A Miscarriage Prompt Investigation Of Restaurateur - It's not like he put something in the food at his eatery. He just rubbed a substance on his girlfriend to abort his unwanted pregnancy.

• Michelle 'Bombshell' McGee Apologizes To Sandra Bullock, Says She 'Would Do It Again' - Newsflash there, tattoohead...that's not an apology, because an intrinsic part of an apology is remorse. Nevermind, you can't teach an old Nazi new tricks.

• Zac Efron Headed For Life Of Crime In 'Snabba Cash' - It just sounds gay when you have Efron in the same sentence as 'Snabba' - whatever the fuck that is.

• Green Men Of Vancouver, Your Current Playoff MVPs - Perverting my beloved It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, especially against the Kings, makes me sad.

• Heidi Montag Is Writing a Bourne-Meets-Barbie Action Flick - It will be the first treatment done entirely in crayon. She's too stupid to function properly, sho whow is she going to pull this off?

• John Tesh Confirms: Oprah And I Dated - How did that giant head filled with nougat become the nubian queen of bland white dudes? First Roger Ebert and now Teshy? There wasn't any Hallie Berry back then, but what about Dihann Caroll or Shari Bellafonte or Rae Dawn Chong? It's further proof that her relationship with Stedman Graham is bogus - she isn't into black men (where are the one's who dated her?), and the only black action she likes is Gayle King.

• Twilight's Kellan Lutz: 'I'm A God' - No, you're a douche. You're in Twilight, and your name is Kellan Lutz. Kellan? Lutz? Uberdouche.

• Study: Cats And Dogs Are Household Hazards - Right up there with knives, outlets, and ill-constructed closet shelving. And none of those eat their own feces and then lick your face.

• Consumer Reports Calls Lexus GX 460 Unsafe - But it is the most luxurious and sleek sport SUV that you'll ever have the pleasure to possibly roll. And isn't that a risk of status you're willing to take?

• Demi Moore: 'Laughter And Smiling Are The Best Antidotes to Aging' - I thought last week we had this covered? You had more work done than the LA freeway system (and may actually be a better ride). Shut the fuck up!

• A 2nd Garbage Patch: Plastic Soup Seen In Atlantic - I thought there were more Garbage Pail Kids until I read a little closer. Now I'm not so jazzed...

• Charlie Sheen's Rep Denies Cheating, Explains Fake Mustache - I would take Sheen in a dead pool above Linsday Lohan if only he could be killed. He's like a drug and sex fueled Terminator. Though if the two of them hooked up...

• Police: NJ Teen Told Blacks To Leave Whole Foods - I thought trends started at upscale places like Whole Foods and then trickled down to Wal-Mart, not the other way around.

• Jenny McCarthy Blasts Steven Seagal - Take the attention off your break-up and your ill-imformed crusade against science to chime in on Steven Seagal's sleaziness. I hope it's just pre-fight hype for when they square off in an Akido match. I'm looking forward to his throat punch takedown of her.

• The People Demand A Ricky Martin Sex Tape - Which fucking people? Oh, the gay pron industry. Have they really run out of Latin men? Maybe Menudo can save the day.

• Tea Party Group Offers Refunds For Hannity No-Show - When blowhard Sean Hannity won't even show up for your extremist group rally, you may want to look at what you're doing. It came down to rebates to keep these fringe activists happy.

• Vatican To Bishops: Follow Law, Report Sex Abuse - Who says the Catholic Church isn't progressive? That's 21st century thinking right there! Because common sense can finally have it's place amongst dogma.

House Of (Painfully Similar) Ideas?

Have you seen the X-Men teaser images Marvel's been putting out? Of course not - you're not a comic reading nerd like me. But even a casual observer who's at least heard of a comic book movie or two that's been released in the past decade would recognize Spider-Man and Wesley Snipes Blade and the X-Men name, right? Well, so has Ultimate Comics Avengers writer Mark Millar.

Apparently the "X-Men vs. vampire mutants" storyline people have deduced from the teaser images is awfully similar to an upcoming Ultimate Avengers storyline Millar's been talking about for years, and he's very unhappy. Millar's furious posts on his message board, in a thread titled "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS X-MEN/ BLADE THING" (all-caps in original) are as follows:

I'm just starting Ultimate Avengers 3, issue 5, and it's the arc I'm maybe most proud of. As trailered forever, this is vampires in the Ultimate Universe attacking mutants and Blade brought in to help the Avengers as heroes go down one by one.

Now someones sent me a link to an X-Men event out two months previous that's exactly the same idea.

Seriously.

What do I do? This is what JRJR and I were going to do 5 years ago before Enemy of the State and I've been talking about it in interviews (and on here) since Ultimate Avengers launched. Blade's even on the cover to issue 1 as I've been excited about this since I had Blade painted on an ice cream truck in 1978.

I don't want to pull the issues as they're part of a complex plot that runs through my entire four arc run, but I'm almost finished now. I'm writing issue five of six and they're really, really good.

How the Hell did this happen? It wouldn't have been as big a deal if I hadn't started the series yet, but it's almost done and just going to look foolish following an X-Men event. Am honestly just so disgusted with this as I've talked about it many times. Thoughts on what I should do next?

I'm hoping this is some horrible misunderstanding. I've only seen what you've seen online with Blade and the X-Men and a vampire Jubilee (again, very close to stuff I'm doing). Fingers crossed this bullshit gets fixed, but am getting closer and closer to just doing my own stuff every day.

The difference [between this situation and examples like Blackest Night/Necrosha and Deep Impact/Armageddon] is that was competing companies with different characters. This is something I created for a company that's being used within the same company and using the same characters, now two months earlier.

I'm going to speak to the guys and then take a night to think about this. But really, really pissed off about this as have put a lot of work into this and it's really, really good.

We'll see what happens. This storyline was planned 5 years ago, like I said, and was known at the company. But it's been public knowledge since I started hyping Vampire X prior to Ultimate Avengers issue 1 coming out. The mods here read the original proposal I sent to all the Marvel bigwigs in 2005. I'm hoping this is all bullshit and the teasers are misleading.

I'm not changing anything. I did this first and it's too tightly plotted with the other arcs to pull and replace with something new. I guess they could kill the series with the second arc and bring someone else to take in a new direction. I dunno. Hopefully it won't come to that. We'll see what they say when I speak to them tonight, but I couldn't believe it when I saw this online. How the Hell did this happen when they have weekly meetings about what's coming up across the line? I discussed this arc at the Marvel retreat in Summer 2008, weighing up with the guys whether to have Leinil do this arc or the Punisher/ Ghost Rider one.

Millar has touted his own awesomeness in bombastic (and occasionally unrealistic) fashion for years. So is he taking on his Marvel bosses in addition to battling Roger Ebert? Soon thereafter, the Millarworld thread has been deleted following a post from Millar that read:

Hi guys

am now in boozer but just off the phone with dan b (Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley, presumably) and were all talking tomorrow to sort this out. Have never had problem in ten years at company so expect this can be fixed fast. Dan assures me this was a misunderstanding and he's a good bloke so have no reason to doubt. I don't think this is as bad as it looked a litle earlier. Will keep you posted.

Good to backpedal and not bite the hand that feeds, but Millar does have a lot of cred now that he's got arguably the year's most controversial film opening today, and a hit under his belt with Wanted. Marvel would also be wise to spare their golden goose, as he has been instrumental in some of their biggest storylines to date, but they're now with the House of Mouse, which makes them an even bigger brand. The storyline connected to the "We Are The X-Men" teasers is expected to be announced Sunday at the C2E2 convention. So maybe there's a part two on Monday...

Lights Out

Wii Fit Manditory For All Ladies

According to a suspiciously brief web article, 24 year-old Briton Amanda Flowers has become a "sex addict" after falling off her Wii Fit board. Is that possible? Did she land on her libido?

It appears she's developed a condition called persistent sexual arousal syndrome (which believe it or not is a real thing), due to a damaged nerve. Now any time Amanda is around anything vibrating or pulsing, like a mobile phone or blender, she becomes...aroused. Exactly how close? Like when she's straddling them? "It began as a twinge down below before surging through my body", she says of the onset of an 'attack'. "Sometimes it built up into a trembling orgasm".

She says she needs 10 sex sessions a day, and laments, "With no cure I just have to try to control my passion by breathing deeply. Hopefully one day I'll find a superstud who can satisfy me." Hey, over here! In America!

Sniffler

It has been argued that good smells are in the nose of the sniffer, but a scientific study using a robotic "eNose" proves that pleasant smells are predictably universal. Still, your farts only smell good to you.

A group of Israeli neurobiologists were able to rank smells by pleasantness, by testing dozens of smells on people in Israel and Ethiopia in order to determine whether these good smells were universal or culturally specific.

"We tuned an eNose to human odor pleasantness estimates," they wrote. "We then used the eNose to predict the pleasantness of novel odorants, and tested these predictions in naïve subjects who had not participated in the tuning procedure. We found that our apparatus generated odorant pleasantness ratings with above 80% similarity to average human ratings, and with above 90% accuracy at discriminating between categorically pleasant or unpleasant odorants. Similar results were obtained in two cultures, native Israeli and native Ethiopian, without retuning of the apparatus."

The findings suggest that, unlike in sight and hearing, there is a systematic predictable link between stimulus structure and stimulus pleasantness in the realm of smell.

They added, "We could predict whether a person who we never tested before would like the odorant, and this prediction was consistent across Israeli and Ethiopian cultural backgrounds. We argue that this difference was not a reflection of better hardware, or better algorithms, but rather a reflection of a fundamental biological property of the sense of smell."

According to the test subjects, these were the best smells:

1. lime (fruit)
2. grapefruit (fruit)
3. bergamot (similar to an orange in scent)
4. orange (fruit)
5. peppermint

Rounding out the top 10 were freesia (flower), amyl acetate (a molecule that smells like apples and bananas), cassia (similar to cinnamon), mimosa (flowering tree), and fir (tree). The worst? The researchers say the smells consistently ranked the worst included "either carboxylic acids or amines [and] cyclohexanol." These would probably produce sharp, vinegary smells. Among the lowest-ranked of the so-called "pleasant" smells were musk and patchouli, though I don't know who finds hippie pleasant smelling.

Wheels Of Steel

Playoff Hockey

The insanity begins tonight with half the contenders from each conference squaring off, and you can get lots of perspective from both ESPN and Yahoo! Sports on the overall picture...but most importantly, tomorrow night is Game 1 for the Kings in Vancouver.

There's no question the Kings have their work cut out for them, even though they clocked in with only three less points than the 3rd seeded Canucks. Rich Hammond assembled the tale of the tape in some of the most high-profile statistical categories this season, including the league ranking:

POINTS: Kings 101 (tie 9th); Canucks 103 (5th)

GOALS FOR: Kings 241 (7th); Canucks 272 (2nd)

GOALS AGAINST: Kings 219 (10th); Canucks 222 (11th)

SAVE PERCENTAGE: Kings .907 (18th); Canucks .910 (tie 14th)

POWER-PLAY %: Kings 20.8 (7th); Canucks 20.9 (6th)

PENALTY-KILL %: Kings 80.3 (20th); Canucks 81.6 (18th)

HOME-GAME POINTS: Kings 50 (tie 17th); Canucks 63 (2nd)

ROAD-GAME POINTS: Kings 51 (tie 2nd); Canucks 40 (17th)

PENALTY MIN./GAME: Kings 11.9 (tie 14th); Canucks 15.5 (26th)

MOST GOALS
Kings: Anze Kopitar, 34; Canucks: Alex Burrows, 35

MOST ASSISTS
Kings: Anze Kopitar, 47; Canucks: Henrik Sedin, 83

MOST POINTS
Kings: Anze Kopitar: 81; Canucks: Henrik Sedin, 112

GOALIE WINS AND GOALS-AGAINST AVERAGE
Kings: Jonathan Quick, 39, 2.54; Canucks: Roberto Luongo, 40, 2.57

Some "experts" have the Kings going down in 5 to 7 games, which at least comforts me that none of them think it'll be a sweeping blowout. But giving Los Angeles some love are John Buccigross (in 7), Scott Burnside (in 7), Dmitry Chesnokov (in 7), Tom Murray (in 6) and Scott Pianowski (in 6). Clearly, the expectation is there will be a bigger battle for the Kings to get into the next round, but it's not an unheard of opinion.

Only in the most recent of four match ups did the Kings beat Vancouver, but it was a sound drubbing. Again Rich from LA Kings Insider has the data:

Oct. 29 at L.A.: Vancouver 2, Kings 1 (shootout)
Shots: Kings 31, Vancouver 15
Kings’ power play: 0-3
Kings’ penalty kill: 2-2
Goalies: Jonathan Quick, Andrew Raycroft
Goals: Scott Parse (LA), 11:27 first period; Mikael Samuelsson (VAN), 18:36 first period

Nov. 26 at Vancouver: Vancouver 4, Kings 1
Shots: Vancouver 34, Kings 32
Kings’ power play: 0-4
Kings’ penalty kill: 5-5
Goalies: Jonathan Quick, Roberto Luongo
Goals: Alex Burrows (VAN), 7:35 first period; Wayne Simmonds (LA), 19:17 second period; Henrik Sedin (VAN), 3:54 third period; Tanner Glass (VAN), 7:18 third period; Kyle Wellwood (VAN), 19:54 third period

Dec. 14 at Vancouver: Vancouver 3, Kings 1
Shots: Vancouver 28, Kings 25
Kings’ power play: 0-5
Kings’ penalty kill: 4-5
Goalies: Jonathan Quick, Roberto Luongo
Goals: Ryan Kesler (VAN), 1:04 first period; Sami Salo (VAN), 17:15 first period; Alexander Frolov (LA), 19:43 first period; Mason Raymond (VAN), 14:48 third period

April 1 at L.A.: Kings 8, Vancouver 3
Shots: Vancouver 30, Kings 29
Kings’ power play: 2-5
Kings’ penalty kill: 2-3
Goalies: Jonathan Bernier, Roberto Luongo
Goals: Alexander Frolov (LA), 5:26 first period; Anze Kopitar (LA), 14:01 first period; Dustin Brown (LA), 18:02 first period; Jarret Stoll (LA), 3:37 second period; Dustin Brown (LA), 9:20 second period; Kyle Wellwood (VAN), 12:43 second period; Ryan Kesler (VAN), 13:22 second period; Dustin Brown (LA), 3:31 third period; Kyle Wellwood (VAN), 4:49 third period; Justin Williams (LA), 6:38 third period; Michal Handzus (LA), 15:42 third period.

I'm looking forward to the first playoff series in close to a decade, and the season's already a success by virtue of the outcome of this year's campaign compared to years past. It's all gravy now, but that doesn't mean we're not hungry.