This one is dirty.

Guess what? St. Patrick's Day isn't your only chance to drink in public in March! That's right, there's another day, March 15, that is host to the Hounen Matsuri, or Japanese fertility festival. There's singing, dancing, music, and even a parade! But the only float is an 8-foot wooden phallus, and everyone is given penis-shaped candy to suck on, receive phallus-shaped keychains and souvenirs, and eat dumplings shaped like...well, you get it. 

Don't look at me like that, I didn't make it up. I could never think of something like this! Only the Japanese could think of something like this. I'm serious. 

Depending on who you ask, the festival is either a serious festival of fertility, where there is a lot of merrymaking and drinking, but also prayers to a feminine deity for successful conception. But I also read that the festival is called the Kanamara festival, and it began as a celebration of the killing of a female dragon who bit off men's genitals. A monk used iron to create a huge penis that she shattered her sharp teeth on, and the penis festival was born. 

Either way, this has got to be one of the more eccentric festivals the world over. Please look at these photos and watch the video below if you're interested in this crazy awesome street party. If you don't like graphic representations of the male member, then I suggest you stop reading this at the top of the page where you started. Oh, too late now! Enjoy. 

This one is ninety-seven and half percent zinc.

So I'm at work the other day, and a man comes in and gets two cents as his change, and he says, "You know they're considering not making the penny anymore?"

"What?" says I.

"Yeah. Says it's worthless." He drops the pennies in my tip jar and leaves.

First of all, why would you point out that you were leaving me a worthless tip? 

Secondly...really? No more pennies?

Turns out, Worthless Tip is right! There's a lot of people out there who think the penny should be retired, even the U.S. Mint, because it costs more to manufacture pennies than they are actually worth. Also, most people throw pennies away or save them in piggy banks, jars and drawers rather than spending them, so they aren't actually being circulated very well. Apparently if it takes you longer than 3 seconds to bend down and pick up a penny off the ground, you're earning less than minimum wage. 

The anti-penny movement thinks we should just round everything up or down by five cents, thereby eliminating the need for a penny and saving money in the process.

Of course, there's two sides to every coin (punny!). On the pro-penny side, companies are more likely to round purchases up than down, thereby punishing the consumer. It's true that pennies are essentially free money, but this is also a good thing; charities have raised a lot of money from setting up boxes for pennies (like the box at the Dairy Queen or the McDonald's). Because it doesn't mean anything to you, you'll give it to anyone, even a waitress. 

And, it also costs more than five cents to create a nickel, so the problem won't be solved at all. 

What do you think about pennies? Would you miss them? Would you rather never see them again? Too bad, here's a video: 

This one is.

Wow, it's been a minute since I wrote! Sorry; been totally immersed in Little Big Planet and my theatre company. Plus I sleep in whenever I can. 

As usual, the world is on hyper-drive. Heard about Obama's new budget plan to slash the deficit in half by 2013? Of course some economists are doubtful, but I hope it works. It's not looking good out there. 

Also, after all those Cabinet nominations went horribly awry, here's the next possible pick for Commerce Secretary. Hopefully he's actually been paying his taxes.

Speaking of taxes, the stimulus package is still kicking up major brouhaha. Some states have said they will refuse to accept the stimulus money set aside for states in the package. This absolutely blows my mind since most states have their own alarmingly high budget deficits and a real need to start modifying their roads and infrastructure for the new millenium. For example, why are we trying to build our cities around our cars instead of ourselves? Of course the main problem are the staggering unemployment rates and the lowest stocks since '97 and the housing crisis and...

Let's think about something else, shall we?

All you need are knobs.

For awhile, I was writing a movie about bingo, and I learned that a mathematician by the name of Carl Leffler was tapped to create a bunch of different bingo cards because too many people were winning each game. He created 6,000 different bingo cards, and then went crazy and is still in an insane asylum today. Think about that every time you call out B-6. 

For less depressing secrets behind your favorite toys, go here. 

Fashion doesn't sound like a dangerous thing to get into, but history shows it totally is. Want more? Here's where some recognizable uniforms come from, and here's the origin of some crazy hairstyles we all know and...love?

This one doesn't stay on topic.

Someone left a Newsweek magazine with the headline, "We're All Socialists Now" at work today. I wanted to take it home and read it, but I forgot. Thank God for the Internet. Anyway, one of my co-workers was looking through it for a minute, then said if we got national health care, it would make us socialists."If we get national health care," she said, "I'm leaving the country." 

At the time I didn't say anything, because she and I disagree politically but she's a cool person, so I don't like to get into it. But if I had said something, I would have asked her where it was she was planning to move. The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized country where there isn't some form of universal health care. The only wealthy, industrialized country where keeping your citizens healthy isn't a priority. What is the beef? Why is it such a bad thing to have access to medicine and doctors? If it "doesn't work," how come every government is doing it but us? 

Speaking of government, the widely debated stimulus package is going to be signed by President Obama on Tuesday. Really don't know what's going on with this American Recovery and Reinvestment Act? This is what Obama says about it--and here's where you can tell him what you think about it. I'd read it first, though. There are some comments on it where the people implore Obama to talk to some economists and "do his homework" and let me tell you--he did. Although apparently it's over 1,000 pages long of legalese, and even Congress "didn't have time to read it all." Though why that's suddenly a problem after eight years of not reading any of Bush's bills, I don't know. 

Anyway, most people aren't so mad at the President. Here is an awesome photo gallery from NPR of a huge portrait of Obama and Lincoln made completely out of cupcakes. 

The above is called "Oversoul" by cosmic artist Alex Gray. Check out the Sacred Mirrors, if you haven't already. Extraordinary. 

What's up with the American space program's love affair with littering? Every launch involves some piece of machinery being jettisoned into the stratosphere. Why are we leaving junk all over the universe? Apparently, most of the debris ends up burning up in Earth's atmosphere, but here are 8 Weird Pieces of Space Junk to be on the lookout for if there's ever a Clean Up the Milky Way campaign. 

Everyone knows someone who is into a raw food diet, and while it does help you lose weight alarmingly fast, apparently there was a good reason man learned how to cook. 

While you're cooking, try out some of these foods which are touted for their ability to get you in the mood. Everyone likes that, right? Right? Unless you're this guy. 

OMG play this game.

This one is fully automated.

I started off this blog talking about how I hate Twitter. Since then, I've come to find that I was both right (Twitter users apparently call themselves "twitterati"-ugh) and wrong. I read some interesting Wired articles about Twitter today, and even though I still don't want to use it, I was definitely fascinated. 

Apparently, Twitter has exceeded every expectation for how useful it actually can be. People have rigged their technology to tweet them when their laundry is done, when someone is moving around their home, to turn on and off their lights, even enable your houseplants to tell you when to water them. I mean, I actually kind of could use that maybe. 

On the other hand, the other Wired article talks about how much guilt social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and blogs carry with them--for not updating often enough, for not uploading pics and vids for comment, for not posting links. And then, the anxiety that comes from sharing all this information on the World Wide Web. 

I'm all for technology making my life easier, but who wants the responsibility of making their life seem interesting 24/7? What do you think? 

Speaking of technology, I just read this month's Rolling Stone, and there is a crazy article in it about this guy named Ray Kurzweil, who is an inventor who has won every tech award you can get. He's invented a few dandy little devices. One translates text into speech, so that blind people like Stevie Wonder (who says the invention has changed his life) can, for example, take a picture with their cell phone of a menu; then, their cell phone would read the menu to them. Or, if you're traveling, you can take a picture of a menu in a foreign language and it will read a translated version to you. Awesome! This guy is the smartest dude ever! But, he also thinks that by 2045, humans will merge with machines in a Rapture-style event called the Singularity, enabling humans to live forever because all their memories would be backed up onto a hard drive. Also, nanobots can enter the body and clean up toxins, attack viruses and kill diseases, and even enter trees and rocks and in essence, turn them into computers. Then, Ray Kurzweil says, the universe will be conscious. 

On one hand, I'm like, well, that's a better outlook than the Terminator-style, I, Robot point of view. On the other hand, what about the Terminator, I, Robot point of view? Doesn't he just make them more plausible? 

But he can't be all wrong. Basically, he's saying a day will come when humans can't live without technology, and honestly, can't you imagine that happening in your lifetime? I left my cell phone at home once, and it was really weird. Does a day go by that you don't use technology in some way or another? Maybe Ray really is seeing the future. 

Here is a video of Ray Kurzweil talking about the Singularity: 

This website, which is news on all things robotic, even has an article all about the day when human bodies will be hybridized with machines, to help the disabled walk by creating exoskelebots, or to clean arteries by releasing nanobots into the bloodstream.

Ask me how I can help! 

On a totally different note, Lux Interior of the Cramps died recently. The Cramps is one of my favorite bands, so I was really sad to hear about it. Here is an awesome obit for Lux on Pitchfork, including a good history of the band and several awesome performance videos if you're not familiar. 

Speaking of music, ever heard of Girl Talk? This guy Gregg Gillis makes awesome dance music by mixing up the greatest collection of samples ever. He has made the remix an art form. For cereal. 

This video, by the way, was made for the Open Source Cinema Project. This guy is making a documentary all about copyright laws, and how living in the digital age has opened doors to all of us to collaborate on all kinds of projects and use what's already out there to create something new. This is a big issue right now. You know the iconic Hope poster of Obama that was so central to his campaign? Well, the artist who created that poster, Shepard Fairey, was sued by the Associated Press because he used their photo of Obama. Shepard Fairey is countersuing because he says he used the picture to create a piece of art, thereby changing it so substantially that it cannot be called copyright infringement. Fairey can say that--his art has been taken over by the populace to the extent that you can upload your own picture and Obamicon it, and he says he loves it. "Only when someone is trying to bootleg it for profit have I ever tried to protect the copyright," he says in this interview on the Colbert Report.

This one has an ellipses in it.

I never really liked the word "blogger." But not as much as I hate the word "Twitter." 

Buuuuut, I do like to write, and my friend Cherry told me the other day that maybe having a blog would be a good way to keep in the habit of writing, which I think can maybe replace some of my bad habits like biting my fingernails. I don't care about Twitter at all. Updating my Facebook status is so much effort I can't imagine doing it every few seconds of every day. Besides, what would you really say? "Diana is at work." "Diana is still at work." "Diana will be at work until a few hours from now." So I don't have one of those. But a blog, that I can get into. I just get to type and type about anything I want? Fun! 

...

So, video games! I have terrible hand-eye coordination, so I don't play video games very much, but I do watch people playing video games pretty regularly. The best game EVER, however, is Mortal Kombat vs. the DC Universe. First of all, it's just a fun fighting game you can play with your friends. I read this article on Cracked.com about the three systems, XBox, Playstation 3, and Wii, and how many more Wiis have sold because it's all about playing with other people. As someone who hangs out with no less than four people all the time, that's pretty valuable. That's one of the reasons Mortal Kombat-DC is so fun, 'cause you can just pass the controllers around a huge group and everyone gets really into it. Plus, it is awesome to be Batman and the Flash and Wonder Woman. 

There are also pretty awesome fatalities and heroic brutalities that the characters do, and here is a video of all of them if you are interested. 

So I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist the other night (cute, definitely cute...if I were in high school it would be my favorite movie of all time. But I'm not, so it's not). In the movie, Michael Cera is in a band with three gay guys. Throughout the movie, the boys give Norah a makeover, play matchmakers, and give pep talks. It leads to a question: have gays become the new "magical negro"? (Not to be confused with the "hilarious" "Barack the Magic Negro" video that wasn't as big a deal as it should have been. Seriously. Have you ever really seen it? It's amazingly racist.)

I'm not in college anymore, but sometimes I do miss my Psychology classes, when I would learn about some crazy shit my brain was capable of doing. Are you anything like that? If so, this website is for you. Look up Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disorder--that's weird shit.