Mostly Safe For Work

Faking Satanism

I have a coworker who moved to America from West Africa a few years ago.  He's a really nice guy.  He's also a very religious Baptist.  Listens to sermons in the car in addition to attending church a couple times a week.  Reads the Bible at work sometimes.  Again, he's the nicest guy in the world, but his comments sometimes reflect a social conservatism that was likely prevalent in 1950s America.  He has on occasion mentioned something being the work of the devil.   

He also doesn't believe people can be left-handed.   Remember, it wasn't that long ago that left-handed people in America  were pressured in school and elsewhere to switch to doing things right-handed.  In organic chemistry, certain molecules that are very similar are distinguished by the direction of their molecular arrangement.  Those that are oriented leftward in a certain fashion are labeled S, which stands for sinister.  There are many other historical examples of left and left-handedness being associated with wickedness. Still, as a left-hander, this bothers me.  Twenty-first century and all that.  I tried to explain the concept of different dominant hands to my coworker, but he would not listen.

There is only one course of action here.  I will subtly pretend to be a satanist.  Fake tattoo of the devil slightly protruding from below my shirt sleeve.  Chanting right as he walks into a room and then stopping.  Maybe leave some pigs noses or some kind of other satanic party favors around. 

Most Insane Japanese Television Show Ever - And, Let's Face It, That Means Totally Fucking Crazy

Esquire has a piece on some of the weirdest clips from Japanese game shows.  I have linked to a few of them before.  The most insane one, below, had disappeared from YouTube but is miraculously back:

The Authority Prank Call

The "strip search prank calls" phenomenon is probably the craziest, most fascinating and most disturbing thing I've read about this decade. Most commonly a man posing a police officer would call a fast-food restaurant and convince the manager to do all sorts of humiliating things, usually sexual, to a female employee.  There were variations.  Sometimes the caller claimed to be a superior within the company.  Link above is to the Wikipedia entry which touches on some of the psychological issues; best article is here.  The caller would establish authority.  Some think he'd pick fast-food places in small towns because those are organizations in which one follows orders in environments where people are generally trusting.  He'd have information, such as the manager's supervisor's name or the name of the town sheriff.  And he'd start off and build rapport with the manager before ordering him to do the more outlandish stuff. 

This summer somebody pulled a similar prank in which they got staffers at a group home to give electric shock to two emotionally disturbed teenagers.  Now, this is a facility that does elecrtic-shock therapy and sometimes does so on telephone orders from superiors who have video access.  And the perpetrator was once a resident of the place, so it's different from the strip calls from several orders of magnitude.  Still, note to America, you probably shouldn't take drastic action based on telephone orders from someone you don't know.