FunBlog

BARBER: Being a barber used to be great. Back then, everyone wanted to be a barber. There were barbershops everywhere. It’s not that way anymore. It’s Ella Grasso’s fault. She ruined it for everybody.

ME: Huh? How did she ruin it?

BARBER: We used to have a state barber commission. Barbers had a six-year apprenticeship. Barbers had to be men, and we could cut either men’s or women’s hair. The ladies’ hairdressers, they had only a three-year apprenticeship, and they were only allowed to cut women’s hair. When Grasso came in, back in 1980, she cried that it was discrimination. She said that women should be allowed to cut both men’s and women’s hair.

These days when the inspector comes, he only checks the bathroom and the water and says “Sign here and pay $100.” The inspector from the state barber commission used to inspect the equipment and talk to the customers. He was a barber himself with his own shop, so he knew what he was doing. The governor appointed the state commission, so when there was a Democrat governor the inspector was a Democrat, and when a Republican got elected we had a Republican inspector.

Ella Grasso got rid of the state commission and left it all up to the city health departments. There used to be a barbershop on every corner. Now we have these “styling salons.” It just isn’t the way it used to be.

Eyes flashing, robot conducts wedding in Tokyo.

Somebody asked, “Is that legal? A Robot, since the minister has to sign the Marriage License!”

The answer is that in Japan what the law requires is to update the family registers at the local government office. The ceremony may be important to the families, but it has no legal significance.

You may have heard that Christian weddings are very popular in Japan. What is usually not mentioned is that these usually take place in a replica church with an actor playing the part of the priest. A real priest, after all, won’t usually perform a wedding for people who are not members of his faith.

UPDATE: video here. It actually looks rather cute. The original headline gave me a mental image of a huge robot in an industrial setting laughing manically as it orders its brainwashed minions to get married. The reality is less colorful.

I’ve posted before about the unfortunate side-effects of 3-D movies, such as their tendency to cause headaches and nausea in some viewers. However there is one side-effect that I never would have predicted.

According to this story, a U.S. serviceman came back from a tour of duty in Iraq and found that his wife was pregnant. She denied having an affair and explained that she got pregnant from watching a 3-D porno movie.

The husband seems willing to believe her, saying “I see it as suspicious. The films in 3D are very real. With today’s technology, anything is possible.”

(OK, I admit that this story is probably entirely bogus. TechEYE doesn’t strike me as the sort of publication that does rigorous fact checking, and they don’t give any source for the story. What can I say? Some stories are too good to check.)

Here’s a surprisingly effective way to view stereoscopic images without special glasses:

This site has a lot more of them (via).

Lisa Katayama calls this a “funny sushi restaurant commercial.” For me the words that come to mind are “bizarre” and “disturbing”.

via Steven.

…I think.

This pamphlet arrived in the mail:

(Click for larger image.)

Ever since the scientific community adopted heliocentrism as fact, attempts have been made to prove it. Some of these attempts should have worked. Remarkably, not only has NOT ONE of these attempts produced proof, but also the results of all of them are consistent with the hypothesis that the earth is at rest.

The general argument seems vaguely familiar:

1. The King James Bible clearly states that the Earth is fixed and the Sun moves around it.
2. Scientists claim that the Earth actually moves around the Sun. They have been trying to prove this for centuries, but have never succeeded (at least, not to our satisfaction.)
3. Q.E.D.

Now it would be easy for some wise guy to set up a web site as a joke, but a direct mail campaign costs real money. Also the web site seems “funny-strange”, not “funny-ha-ha.”

Important consumer alert: If you want to buy a poodle, make sure that you aren’t actually getting a sheep with a funny haircut!

(If anyone has pictures of this, let me know.)

UPDATE: Snopes identifies this as an urban legend. Just one of those stories that is “too good to check.”