Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

That’ll teach those kids to sneak through your rhododendrons: This spastic The Zombie of Montclaire Moors sculpture, by artist Alan Dickinson

will claw his way out of your garden plot or family room corner, pleading for assistance with the most lifelike eyes you’ve ever seen. His macabre expression is captured in such great detail in quality designer resin and finished so realistically that you’ll swear you can hear him breathing!

Plus, wait ’til slugs start crawling out of its mouth!

Life-sized. $89.95 from designToscano, via the unstoppably awesome BoingBoing.

Not talking, either: Cindy McCain on The Today Show

It’s the question that won’t go away. Since The Huffington Post reported John McCain’s foul outburst back on April 7, and MEDIA ASSASSIN followed up with its own post on April 16th, “Does John McCain Suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?”, more and more folks in the blogosphere are asking: Did John McCain once use an unprintable epithet—the so-called “c-word”—in a tirade against his wife?

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According to the UK’s Daily Telegraph, via The Huffington Post, world leaders, meeting in Japan on Monday to solve the global food crisis, stuffed themselves stupid at an 18-course banquet, below, specially prepared for the meeting, calling down, no doubt inaudible, worldwide outrage. (“Meanwhile back at the Vomitorium” stabbed The Daily Kos. “Crumbs from the rich nations’ table” dripped the capitalism-giddy, sherbert-toned Financial Times.)

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This story came out earlier in the year but, clearly, has not gotten the traction it deserves, and probably never could: According to a study by the Center for Public Integrity, via Alternet.com, “President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements, in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”

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As written, the comic strip Garfield—cartoonist Jim Davis’ look at the travails of an eponymous cat and its owner—is kind of like the funny pages equivalent of tourists: In the background, not bothering anybody, always there, and quietly looked down upon by people who think they’re much smarter.

So, perhaps it’s appropriate that it took a foreigner, Dan Walsh—and a Dubliner yet!—to turn Garfield from wallpaper into something truly hip: a darkly ironic reflection on “schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life.” Walsh did it, not by rewriting dialogue but, via one genius move: He completely stripped the cat and his unfunny thought balloons out of every panel.

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Here you go, just in case you, like I, missed that ridiculous Fake Obama Kia commercial, as it was originally seen on The Daily Show. I guess this also implies that an Obama win “promises” four years of work to Black actors with floppy ears.

Dubai is on an architectural spending spree, and designers are lining up with pricey toys. The latest: Italian architect David Fisher’s proposal, above, for a building that will visibly modify its own form.

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More and more women are belly-dancing to lose weight, get in shape, improve their self-image, liven up their relationships, or simply to learn a beautiful form of traditional expression. If they dance like this woman does though, they’ll get none of those benefits, boyee.

Infinity and beyond: Buzz Lightyear sketch from Toy Story (1995)

Pixar, the computer animation powerhouse behind such works as Toy Story, above, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and, currently, the number one movie in the country, Wall•E, has created one of the strongest, most dominant brands in entertainment. But, in its early days, the company stumbled and faltered repeatedly, staying in business by the sheer dint of its tenacious founders.

So says David A. Price in his new book, The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. David Price is today’s guest on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, July 4th, 2 pm ET.

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Dressed for every occasion: FLDS women

I probably get asked this question more than any other one. “Harry,” a friend will say, “I’d like to dress my kids in FLDS clothing, but the group is so cut off from the outside world, I don’t know where to begin looking. What should I do?”

My answer? Go to their web site. Because of overwhelming demand for their modest, Western prairie settler-styled ankle-length dresses and rugged boys work shirts—due to the visibility created in the April raid by Texas authorities on the Yearning for Zion Ranch—the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is now selling a kids line, online.

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