Terrible Analogies

Michael Jackson…dead? 

It’s almost too difficult to believe.  I mean, not being a fan, and not privy to the inner sanctum of the Jackson cult, I find it strangely odd to think that the man whose videos I grew up watching on MTV has come down with a slight case of death.  It just seems a bit…surreal.

And to think, we’ve had a rash of celebrity deaths recently; David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett.  Who’s willing to take bets that Patrick Swayze will be the next to go?

It’s inevitable that the celebrities you grew up watching will one day die.  It’s the passing of an age and the march of time happening right before our eyes.  

And so, I say a sad “so long” to our moonwalking, studded glove wearing, flaming haired, zippered jacket icon of yesteryear.  I almost feel guilty for mocking him in a recent post.  I guess I’ll pick up my statue from the Bad Timing Awards on my way out the door…

When Ryan Seacrest confirms your death...brother, you're dead.

I was playing Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on my MAME arcade machine the other day, deftly fighting my way though wave after wave of knife-wielding rednecks, skulking mobsters and deadly robots, armed with nothing more than my crystal-encrusted glove, my chimp buddy Bubbles, and my electric personality, when something struck me as a bit…odd.

Attacking our fearless hero Michael is a surprisingly well prepared army of “roaring 20′s” style gangsters, cloaked hit men, gas-tossing chemists, as well as manned and unmanned robots.  Amid this cast of characters there seemed to be a subset of baddies who appeared to not be wearing any pants.  By all indications, they were coming at Michael “commando” style, fully cocked and ready to rock:

Okay, I can understand if this was a poor color choice for pants, yet  I still question the developers for what I can only assume to be design input from MJ himself.  I was going to let this slide until, later in the game, another strange thing began to attack our lone champion:

This mini-boss has eyes for our intrepid smooth criminal.  His weapon of choice: A metallic battering ram that repeatedly thrusts in and out from the waist area.  Long, hard, and green, this boss wants nothing more than to repeatedly violate Michael about the face with his protruding tool.  If our slide glidin’ adventurer doesn’t beat this foe off quickly enough, miniature golden bosses are spawned, each with a similar rocket in its pocket aimed at Michael’s lower gyrating extremities.

If by "wondrous and magical adventure" you mean "tied up and held captive", then I'm sure you will Michael. I'm sure you will...

As a child I don’t recall Moonwalker being so graphically questionable, but as an adult playing this game, I wonder if “game designer” Michael Jackson was trying to tell us something about himself way back in 1990…

On the day I learned that David Carradine died of what’s looking more and more like a session of autoerotic asphyxiation gone horribly awry, I also learned that the burgers I’ve been enjoying since childhood contain less than 15% actual meat.  

According to this study, what you’re eating isn’t all that appetizing:

Meat content in the hamburgers ranged from 2.1% to 14.8% (median, 12.1%). The cost per gram of hamburger ranged from $0.02 to $0.16 (median, $0.03) and did not correlate with meat content. Electron microscopy showed relatively preserved skeletal muscle. A variety of tissue types besides skeletal muscle were observed including connective tissue (n = 8), blood vessels (n = 8), peripheral nerve (n = 8), adipose tissue (n = 7), plant material (n = 4), cartilage (n = 3), and bone (n = 2). In 2 hamburgers, intracellular parasites (Sarcocystis) were identified.  Approximately half of their weight is made up of water. 

Great.  Just great.  I’ll never be able to look at my burger with the same childlike, glassy-eyed, pseudo reverence again.  Now I know how these fast food joints can sell their food so cheaply and yet still manage to make a profit.  

And I fear that whenever I do sneak a burger it’ll forever remind me of David Carradine and Michael Hutchence.  I can see it now.  There I’ll be, sitting in a greasy booth with my fellow coworkers, the skin of my forearms fused to the sticky surface of the faux marble table top, eyeing my bone chip, arterial matter, and connective tissue burger when I not-so-subtlety blurt out, “So, did you know that some people get off by choking themselves?”

This day has irrevocably changed my life for the worse.  Thank goodness it’s Friday…

Karin spotted these while we were shopping this weekend.  Photographed them on the conveyor belt with the rest of our groceries, then immediately put them back on the shelf:

So….which is it?  Are they getting married or are they splitting up?  Come on Star/OK…I have to know!

This is a prime example of how certain unscrupulous grifters cater to our celebrity-fixated culture and how any bit of unfounded news will get suckers to fork over their hard earned cash.  I’m curious where thier sources come from, and how one source can directly conflict with another.  Do these rags even bother to fact-check their sources prior to going to press?  Not being an avid reader of these periodicals, I’m also curious if they ever publish retractions and corrections should their stories turn out to be incorrect?