Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

Please stop staring at me…: Carl Panzram, serial killer & tough guy

If you knew you were about to be executed, what would be your last words?

Most of us would want to offer encouragement to our children or loved ones, or make a profound summary on the meaning of life.

Not these guys. In “The 11 Most Badass Last Words Ever Uttered,” Cracked.com have put together a list of ne’er-do-wells who, mere seconds before the the state was about to have their way with ’em, were still out to prove whose cojones had the greatest girth and the most metal.

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While I’m glad that BestWeekEver.tv hipped me to this French Orangina television ad, above in English, I want to wash all of it—including the sight of a bear, above, grinding a busty deer on a swing—out of my eyeballs. Now. Please.

McDonald’s “mixed race” “cha cha slide” kid

“The biracial look is in vogue in advertising. The process of changing racial definitions continues, and dramatic new developments may be on the horizon.”—Anthony J. Cortese, Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. 113

Always count on BlackCommentator.com to, once again, boldly go: “Biracial is the New Black,” by K. Danielle Edwards, laments what the author sees as a new light-skinned color standard for Black people in advertising and related contexts:

What’s up with all the olive-skinned, spiral-curled, hazel-, blue- and green-eyed folks standing in for black people in commercials and print advertisements these days?
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From the I’m-Just-The-Mailman Department, and BoingBoing, but, apparently, not from the people who brought you VULVA Original, comes something for men: Pretentiously accented Bálla Powder: Scented Scrotum Talc for Men, just $15 for 3.5 oz. on Amazon.com.

Because you’re wondering, yes, Bálla is “lightly fragranced,” designed “for ‘nether region’ freshness,” and “also great for sweaty buttocks, armpits and feet.”

Aaaahh…. Sweet relief.

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I completely did not catch this until the adroit Living in Small Sizes pointed it out: Did anybody notice that when Hillary Clinton emerged from her lair, under a conciliatory agreement to campaign with Barack Obama for his presidential run, she did so only under the completely humiliating condition that Obama’s ties match her pantsuits?

Not exactly the best white father to his Black sons: Thomas Jefferson

Jesse Jackson was completely and absolutely correct: Of course, Barack Obama was, and is, talking down to Black people. If there’s any doubt about this, compare the tenor of very first major speech he gave after he effectively captured the Democratic nomination—one to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) Annual Policy Conference on June 4th—to that of the one he gave at Apostolic Church of God in Chicago on Father’s Day, June 15th.

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Director James Marsh’s new movie, Man on Wire: A Tale of High Crime, documents French high wire artist Philippe Petit’s August 7, 1974 tightrope walk between the then new, 1350-foot-high twin towers of the World Trade Center.

The film opens next week, Friday, July 25th. Marsh is a guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, July 18th, 2 pm ET.

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Someone went through a lot of trouble to fake this protest against the Beijing Olympics, above, and get it to look like an Amnesty International effort. (Click on the image to see its details—like the AI logo and eratz URL—at full size.) But even after the organization disclaimed it, via Boing Boing, it still retains its primal power.

Yeah, that caption (“Where’s me Aye-pod?”) is dumber than a bag of hammers. But I love it. Or, should I say “aye” love it?

Thirteen colors. Only $18.95; $2 more for larger sizes.

Bele (Frank Gorshin), Star Trek, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.”

Surprise, surprise: Even with Barack Obama’s pleas against “divisiveness” and affirmations that we are “one people,” a New York Times/CBS News poll reveals what everybody, especially Black people, knows: The needle hasn’t been budged an inch, and Americans, white and non-white, still see the issue of race in an almost opposing way.

The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics — Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas — many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years.

Indeed, the poll showed markedly little change in the racial components of people’s daily lives since 2000, when The Times examined race relations in an extensive series of articles called “How Race Is Lived in America.”

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