An enterprising company in Phoenix Arizona, Objecs, is offering a new gizmo that could up the entertainment value of the graveside experience, and give future generations more to remember about the deceased than the tombstone particulars. The company’s RosettaStones are stone tablets that can be affixed to headstones (or passed out on keychains at funerals) and contain radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, which direct users of mobile phones carrying compatible technology to an online memorial archive. The archive could contain remembrances, photos, biographical info, IMDB highlights, favorite recipes, and voice messages that you don’t need a member of the psychic alliance to access.

We welcome this multimedia dimension being added to the otherwise – let’s face it, dull and depressing – experience of visiting a cemetery, and would like to offer our own suggestions for ways to perk up that trip to the boneyard:

A/V tours of entire cemetery: Now commonplace at museums and places of great historical import, such as Graceland, user-controlled guided tours delivered via headsets could boost cemetery attendance and raise the profiles of those interred for whom attendance is down.

Theme songs: While picking out a tombstone, a perspective dead person could also choose a themesong to be played at a respectful volume when a large red button on top of the tombstone is struck. “Grandpa Joe did enjoy his Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

Artistic rendering of life’s dreams realized: Here, the person buying the tombstone would meet an artist and discuss the dreams of youth that were crushed long ago and replaced by disenchantment and dread. The resulting painting could be included as a multimedia item as part of the RosettaStones archive, or maybe slapped on the back of the tombstone itself, depending on cemetery rules.

Enemies list: The RosettaStones archive could include a list of all the people truly despised by the deceased, from those who never paid back loans, to the type of grudges so intense they outlast even death.

Electrified tombstones to ward off pee vandalism: The jury is out on whether peeing on the electric third rail of a train track can result in an unpleasant zap to the genitals and death. Mythbusters found that this could only happen when someone was ridiculously close to the track. Here we suggest electrified tombstones with enough of a current running through them to kill enemies looking to urinate on the grave of a vanquished foe. The cost would be prohibitive and environmentalists, as well as health and safety officials, might raise cause for concern, so only really an option for privately run cemeteries.

The Telegraph reported that Toby Elles, a bank cashier, nearly checked out when he “fell asleep cooking some bacon” and awoke, startled to find that cooked into the skillet was non other than the pan-seared prophet himself.

“My housemates and I had a few beers earlier in the evening [Editors' note: this should come as no surprise to anyone] and I thought I would snack before going to bed and as it was cooking I decided to take a rest on the couch. When I woke up about an hour later the room was full of smoke.”

That the Savior would be rendered in bacon fat  is in keeping with his artery-clogging culinary tour which has included pancakes, fish sticks, Pizza Hut pasta, pierogis and Kit Kat bars. Considering his name is so often uttered in restaurant kitchens (albeit with the modifying gerund in between that starts with ‘F’ and ends in ‘G’) perhaps it’s not suprising that he’s been made to order.   

Elles, who is considering making a glass case for his find, considers it a miracle and that the image is uneqivocally JC, however we’re not so sure (see pic below).

The crusty likeness could also easily be South American Marxist revolutionary and noted t-shirt Che Guevara and not just because it suits the name, but 70s-era Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey.

Also, a case could be made for Daniel Day Lewis as Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York, WWE wrestler Al Snow, possibly Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider and at one time or another, all members of the Allman Brothers Band except the black guy.

Pliny the Elder, likely embittered by everybody referring so bluntly to his advanced years, summoned the descriptive powers of a man with freshly poked out eyes when he wrote: “A killer whale cannot be properly depicted or described except as an enormous mass of flesh armed with savage teeth.” Apparently, specifics such as “black and white in color”, “big as a motherf’ing really big boat”, were beyond Pliny.

The view of orcas as predatory threats to mankind remained until the creatures were studied and it was found that they were not motivated primarily by a desire to chomp on human extremities. That understanding came partly as a result of research undertaken on orcas after they were captured and put on display in the 1960s. When it was observed that Moby Doll, the first orca to be captured and displayed, didn’t pop off the heads of every second marine biologist it met, researchers concluded that killer whales weren’t the menacing predators that Pliny and his lot made them out to be. In other words, they were the ideal candidates to perform circus-like stunts that may be aberrations of nature, but for which SeaWorld and the like can charge a hefty per-head fee.

Marine parks operate on the Victorian notion that we can better understand nature’s majesty by removing animals from their native habitat, locking them up somewhere the public can gawk at them without being mauled and, where possible, by teaching them skills so they can earn their keep, like riding unicycles or reading sheet music. These parks are skilled at maintaining the pretense that the creatures on show are enjoying themselves and not merely anticipating a fish-guts-based reward.

There are times, however, when the primal nature of creatures not intended by evolutionary processes to play beach volleyball and splash package tourists surfaces, as it did at a Florida SeaWorld recently (See Entry No. 1) when a trainer was drowned by an orca. It wasn’t the first time – even for that particular whale – and isn’t likely to be the last until we realize that nature should be left alone or at least kept at a respectful distance – 32 feet, the spray distance of bear repellent, is about right.

Here are The Top 7 Captive Killer Whale Attacks of All Time!

7. The Fins of the Father

Tillikum is the orca responsible for last week’s death of a trainer at Orlando SeaWorld and indeed, all of the top three killer whale attacks on this list (wags have dubbed him a “serial killer whale”). He is also the father of Ky, a whale that in 2004 at a SeaWorld show in San Antonio displayed the old man’s penchant for taking marine park trainers on unscheduled jaunts around the tank.

In a stunning blow for nature in its battle against nurture, Ky stopped listening to his trainer’s commands and began ramming him and knocking him under water each time he came up for air. The trainer waited it out and eventually emerged unharmed from the incident; though one reckons the bottom half of the wetsuit would have had to go to the cleaners. Afterward, the trainer was remarkably calm for a man who had been nearly drowned by a six-tonne marine mammal, saying, “It looked like Ky lost a little bit of focus.”

6. Shame on Shamu

Often imitated: The original Shamu in less violent times.

Shamu, Namu and Ramu are the brand names given to SeaWorld orcas while they’re performing. In 1971, a 22-year-old secretary rode the first Shamu, a legend in orca circles, as part of a publicity stunt. Perhaps unaccustomed to the snapping cameras and harsh glare of the media spotlight, the whale threw Eckis off, kept divers from entering the pool to rescue her, and bit her on the leg as she was finally able to make her exit.

The secretary was left with several lacerations and puncture wounds from the attack. For stunned fans of the Shamu show, the incident was the marine park equivalent of Elvis putting the boots to a puppy at a live concert.

5. Whales Play Trainer Ping Pong

When grisly incidents happen involving wild animals in captivity behaving, well, like wild animals in captivity, attempts are made to rationalize the actions of the animals in terms humans can understand and appreciate. One of the most common is the suggestion that when the killer whale is engaged in the kind of behavior it would use in the wild to, say, drown and eat a sea lion that it is in fact “playing”.

In March, 1987, SeaWorld San Diego trainer Jonathan Smith, then 20, found that playtime is no fun when the other kids in the pool are the size of buses and homicidal. Smith was in the water performing with two whales, when one of them seized him in its teeth and shot to the bottom of the pool before resurfacing with Smith bleeding and spitting him out. Rather than scrambling for the exit or signaling the harpooners, Smith waved to the crowd, who after all had paid damn good money to see a performance. Then the second whale picked up where the other had left off and slammed him into him. Playtime continued as the whales repeatedly dragged him to the bottom of the pool. He managed to escape, but emerged with cuts around his torso, a ruptured kidney and lacerations on his liver.

Not such a pretty sight for anyone at the landing spot.

4. Splash Landing

Divers who don’t properly survey their landing points are a menace in public pools, and, of course, the larger the diver, the greater the peril. But imagine lolling about in a pool, mid-Sunday afternoon swim, only to look up and have the light in your world eclipsed by the descending specter of a diver 60 times the size of Oprah Winfrey.

In 1987, John Sillick, then a 26-year-old trainer for SeaWorld San Diego, was performing a routine with two orcas. He was riding on the back of a female orca, when a fully mature male, Orky, perhaps incensed by the minimal effort that went into naming him, jumped and came crashing down on Sillick. This is enough to warrant an asterisk in any published sentence in which a marine park official stresses the low number of captive killer-whale related fatalities over the years. Survival in this case, like all others on this list, cannot be considered much more than a fluke. Sillick nearly did die, sustaining fractures throughout his body and requiring six operations in 14 months so that he could be “reconstructed”.

Special Mention: In 1987, Joanne Webber, a trainer at SeaWorld California, broke her neck when an orca landed on her during rehearsal as a result of a miscue.

Not the drifter mentioned.

3. Tillikum and the Drifter

Top of the list of awkward points for SeaWorld PR flacks trying to put a positive spin on last week’s trainer killing: the fact that the orca involved, Tillikum, appears to be an incorrigible recidivist – he’s tied to two deaths prior to the most recent one. The second death with Tillikum’s fin-prints all over it involved a 27-year-old man who gained access to Orlando SeaWorld afterhours and found his way into Tillikum’s tank. (Yes, the Darwin Awards people have recognized this man’s contribution to the gene pool). Park staff found the man’s body draped over the whale’s back behind the dorsal fin the following morning. He died apparently of hypothermia, though scrapes on the body suggested he might have been dragged along the bottom of the tank, which falls in line with the MO the orca established in the other two deaths.

After Tillikum was found with a corpse in his tank, SeaWorld’s then executive vice-president Victor Abbey made one wonder whether he is able to differentiate wild animals from their animated counterparts when he said: “This isn’t a bad animal. He’s a good animal.”

In his film, Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog said in reference to the bears Timothy Treadwell “befriended” before they ate him, “I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.” Extrapolate that to all wild animals and we tend to agree.

2. Tillikum’s first strike

If we were to take a leap and think of killer whales along the simplistic lines suggested by Victor Abbey, then surely an incident involving Tillikum that occurred eight years and involved him drowning a 20-year-old biology student would put him in the “bad egg” camp. On February 20, 1991, Keltie Byrne slipped and fell into the orca pool at Sealand of the Pacific a now defunct marine park in British Columbia. Tillikum was in there with three orcas and Byrne had just finished a show with them. One of the whales grabbed her in its teeth and began dragging her around the pool. When she tried to scramble out of the pool, the whales pulled her back in, screaming, and she drowned. Several hours elapsed before park officials were able to extricate her body from the tank.

An inquest was held and, surprise, it was determined that the trainer’s death was the result of the whales playing a game that got a bit out of hand.

1. Tillikum and the Florida trainer

Tillikum’s killing of a trainer at SeaWorld Florida prompted this blog. Late last month, Tillikum grabbed 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau by her ponytail and drowned her in front of horrified spectators, including screaming children, who will likely be reliving that day in their nightmares for some time to come. Park officials and rescue workers tried to rescue Brancheau, but, minus the crucial weaponry that would have been their only hope in this situation, they couldn’t extricate her from the creature’s teeth until 30 minutes after it had snatched her from the side of the tank and by then it was too late.

Not good, not bad -- indifferent.

The trainer’s death reignited the debate about killer whales being used in marine parks and also a bizarre take on the situation from the American Museum of Natural History’s Richard Ellis. “The fact that they’ve been in captivity for 60, 70 years and not attacked anybody makes this a very surprising event,” he said. He followed up this erroneous statement with his attempt to make like Jonah and get inside the beast and try to guess at its motivations for the attack. “This was premeditated, and for whatever whale reasons, the whale did this intentionally.” More helpful analysis followed: “Whatever prompted the whale to do this, it behaved in killer whale fashion. That’s what it uses to attack with. It doesn’t have hands, so it uses its teeth – it has a lot of them.”

The most worrying quote came from another AP story. Larry L. Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management, in Louisville, Kentucky, said the attack could drive up attendance at marine parks among teens and young adults.”It’s not going to draw families necessarily or older people who would typically visit there, but there is an age group that gets excited about the risks and the potential for drama and it may attract some of those folks,” he said.

Killer whale shows would go from being an obscenity in the face of nature to an exhibition made more exciting by the prospect of someone’s ghastly death.  These Sharks will stay out of the no-splash zone.

Chuck Liddell: Security detail at Chuck E Cheese?

As we noted previously, long before the movie Ratatouille made the thought of rodents in the kitchen anything less than disgusting and a sure sign that the proprietor needs to hang board of health signage in the window, the rat-themed Chuck E. Cheese was welcoming children of all ages (though single men over 40 going there would be met with a raised eyebrow).

In the chain’s heyday, a menu greasier than an auto-body shop and a slew of wallet-emptying games would keep rug-rats busy while their parents shouted at one another over pitchers, wishing they were at the nearest casino instead.

With braying animatronics, clanging tokens and a psychedelic tableau of flashing lights, it’s a wonder Chuck E’s 500 plus locations aren’t more often marked by the kind of violence not seen outside a karaoke bar in the Philippines.

Once known for whatever bits of 80s gaming nostalgia had not yet been picked off by collectors and kids’ diabetes-courting birthday parties, the chain has become known for something less wholesome lately.

• In Memphis, a melee resulted in charges after a ruckus that began when someone asked a woman “how long she planned on being at a vending machine.” Police reports stated that when the woman said she “was going to take her time,” a man punched the woman, she and a companion fought back and the victim’s family got into the brawl. To add to the Maury Povich intrigue, the accused was a pregnant teen. (according to another media outlet’s more riveting account, the exchange was ‘Dang how long ya’ll gonna be?’” with the accused helpfully noting “five of us got arrested: me, my mom, my sister, my boyfriend, and my step-dad.”)
• In Indianapolis, Metro Police reported surveillance video showing a young woman directing a girl who appears to be about 5 years old (!) to go under a table to steal another patron’s purse.
• In Illinois, two women face charges of child endangerment for leaving kids alone in a Paducah Chuck E Cheese (as far as the criminal round up here, this seems fairly innocuous if it weren’t for the ages of the kids involved)
• Finally, a former employee who once donned the rodent get-up at an Arkansas location, was charged with internet stalking after detectives posing as a 14-year old, nabbed him in a sting operation (no word if he was busted in costume)

There has been a Unabomber and an Underwear Bomber, but not, as of yet a Unitard Bomber wreaking havoc on the backyard wrestling circuit.

While the Unabomber’s impact has been rather limited and has in no way negatively impacted the singing telegram market, the Underwear Bomber’s has been anything but (for those of you who are interested, the Unabomber’s handiwork is currently on display as a reproduction in what is possibly the worst name ever for a museum, the Newseum! Editor’s note: billed as DC’s ‘most interactive museum’ you can actually bring an aerosol can and tag the exterior—OK, we made that up).

The Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, hot on the hells of the shoe bomber’s hot heels has hopefully made finery fireworks a thing of the past.

While there are some who claim that the proliferation of body scanners is a breach of privacy, a subset of those flying the friendlier skies are a security personnel’s dream passenger: nudist fliers.

As Reuters reported last year, a travel agency began booking nude excursions in Germany. So called “free body culture” (FKK) as it is known there, began to blossom in the former east Germany where they’d already lost their shirts economically speaking, so the rest was sure to follow.

Speaking of Germans, Michael German of the ACLU said “The body scanner machine is not the best technology to get the current threat and it has this huge privacy set-back.”

We tend to agree, but who really stands to benefit from these enhanced security measures? Answer: the porn industry, who can now add another narrative thread to the randy flight attendant / horny co-pilot scenario.

In all seriousness though, speaking of dirty imagery and its potential abuses, at Manchester Airport, “Under-18s can’t go through at the moment – there’s a grey area in the legal system.”

These developments are enough to have some opting for the long-haul bus and bottle of Gravol instead.

Speaking of bars, when you sidle up to one you most often unfurl a Queen and, if you’re in one of the more bargain-friendly taverns, receive two pints and a ten in exchange. QE II is also the default scrilla spit out of an ATM so by extension, the Queen is the one responsible for getting you home safely in a taxi after a night out drinking.

We’ve written about our social betters previously, and we’ve also blogged about Prince Harry. In a show of solidarity with our guest of honor, HRH the Prince of Wales, we’ve decided to take the day off and, well, not do much of anything. It is, we realize,  a small token but as much as we’d like to fully pay our respects by say, not doing anything for the other 364 days of the year, we’re beholden to performing regular activities in exchange for remuneration, otherwise known as a job in a free market.

Two World Cups have passed since the prince last found himself in Canada. To put this in perspective celestially speaking,  Transits of Venus across the Sun are among the rarest of planetary alignments, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps. A Venus Transit occurs when we can see the planet as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun.

While this can be seen with the naked eye, a high-powered telescope would be required to detect any interest we might have in his return visit.

Gladstone Hotel Karaoke Night, Toronto

“You haven’t lived until you have seen a Japanese salaryman sing the Frank Sinatra ballad “My Way”. It is one of those quintessential said sights that seem to define Japan. What an odd and yet common spectacle: a tousled salaryman, living a life of bows and stifling conformity, a man married to the company, a man who—in the thousands every year—works himself to death for the sake of the corporation, a man who has to eat shit and smile every day, a man who fuels the economic engine yet remains unsung, unacknowledged and often openly mocked. A man like that, standing up and singing in heartfelt English: that the record should show, he took the blows and did it his way! This is something you don’t soon forget.”

Will Ferguson, Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan

Apparently, the owner of Tokyo’s most famous karaoke bar, ‘Smash Hits’, holds the dubious distinction of hearing one such hit, warbled 25,000 times: “My Way”, the song penned by pumpkin-complected Paul Anka.

We’ve written about karaoke-inspired violence previously, and if there’s one person who no jury in the world would convict for turning homicidal it would be Smash Hits’ Hide Saito, who notes: “We have tens of thousands of songs to choose from, but they always finish with a bad version of My Way. Usually after ruining Bohemian Rhapsody.” Everybody croon along at home. “Regrets, I’ve had a few…”

The very worst thing to happen to a museum since the release of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, or when that nutjob went all Zorro on Rembrandt’s Night Watch, the outlet will be the ‘American representative in a rich and varied food court’. Because if there’s one term people the world over associate with food courts, it’s ‘rich’.

Perhaps this isn’t a bad thing. Maybe those arches can be put to good use as an educational tool: describing to museum goers the architectural concepts of “compressive strength”, and ‘tensile stresses’.

Speaking of weight bearing loads, a Big Mac with cheese contains a whopping (so to speak, we didn’t check out its Burger King competitor) 700 +  calories and 18 grams of saturated fat—that is 88% of your daily recommended intake.

We eagerly await the opening of a White Castle at the MoMA.

Plug your nostrils everyone. We just passed Week 1 of the city-wide garbage strike (well, city-wide except for one borough that has private pick-up), smack dab in the middle of one of the city’s biggest tourist draws—Gay Pride.

Here is Christie Pits park, in Toronto’s Korea Town / Annex West Neighborhood. It’s one of the temporary landfill sites that the city has set up, much to the chagrin of everyone in the ‘hood and one of the authors, who lives a few blocks away.

In another few weeks, this outdoor rink [above and below left] will be filled to the brim with stinking trash, which is already smellable a kilometer away. If this keeps up, we might have to compare New York City Versus Toronto garbage strikes.

As you can see below, trash bins have been wrapped up with cellophane and are ‘temporarily out of order’.

In Windsor, across the border from Detroit, their strike has dragged on for more than 10 weeks. We hope to get photos of that soon. Luckily, the moronic government monopoly that holds our hand when we go to buy liquor, averted their strike [please see our LCBO Strike post] so we avoided the perfect shit storm. We’ll be back with more shortly, if we aren’t overcome by the fumes.

Joey Greco will track you down. Unless of course, his show is canceled during these turbulent economic times

Most men will go to great lengths – crafting intricate alibis, destroying evidence, bribing the family pet – to avoid being caught two-timing their spouses.

Horrified by tales of divorced men who were found cheating and left with nothing but a toaster and a fork (and a diagram suggesting on how the  two could best be employed in tandem) from their vast fortunes, the need to keep “what she doesn’t know” from “not hurting her” becomes all the more pressing.

Interestingly though, these days, during tough financial times as the economy is going south, it seems fewer relationships are as well. According to no less a source than a bunch of dicks in Massachusetts, (private investigators that is), infidelity tapers off in a depressed economy.

While it might be tough to blame the old lady if she succumbed to the relative charms of some other guy who hasn’t yet grown comfortable enough to pass wind in her presence, you can, especially if there are dishes to do—rest easy.

Carnal expeditions have been so reduced in number, that, like the comely secretary’s bottom, even PIs are feeling the pinch.

You might want to grab the nearest hankie and wipe a tear away from your moistening eyes as you find out why this is.

“A lot of people can’t afford to (mess) around because they no longer have the expense accounts to write the dinners off.  Corporate travel is down, where before they had the hotel,” notes a Boston attorney.

Regardless of  origin, the essential wrongness of, say, throwing a leg over cousin Fred’s low-cut-blouse-wearing flirtatious dish of a wife before the ink on divorce papers is dry and their boy Billy is shunted off to boarding school, has become an accepted part of civil society.

According to reports though, jilted not-so-significant others may also be swallowing their pride, rather than pushing confrontations that could lead to a pricey divorce, as PI business is dropping faster than a John’s drawers at brothel closing time.

“There’s a phrase, ‘It’s cheaper to keep her,’ ” the head of the Licensed Private Detectives Association of Massachusetts. “Perhaps they’re giving their marriage a second bite at the apple.” That’s an interesting phrase to use, but given their line of work, ‘one more kick at the can’ just doesn’t have that same sense of inevitability.