Trailer: Germany answers Brokeback Mountain with Freefall

A photo editor for the New York Times seems to have liked this movie a lot, and who are we to say that s/he is wrong?
     Whenever we see a picture like the one on the right, we like to give our local daily news­paper a shoutout.
     "Never in the World-Herald!" is what we shout, actually.
     But we totally understand why the World-Herald never runs pictures like this.
     If it did, bunches of homophobes would be at its doors screaming at it as if it were an abortion clinic.
    And in the face of a din like that, how in the world could the Herald muster enough concentration to concoct editorials persuasive enough to dupe its readers into voting for candidates like Lee Terry or Steve King or Jean Stothert?
     For the love of Mike, cynical editorial deception and manipulation of the body politic requires some piece and quiet.

Trailer: Kill Your Darlings, Beat writer pic, opens 10/18

Semi driver tries to beat red light, kills 27 people in the blink of an eye

From Jalopnik, a reminder that speed kills, especially when you engage in wishful thinking concerning the duration of a yellow light:

Around 7 p.m. Thursday, a truck crashed into four full taxis and a Volkswagen Golf at the intersection of Fields Hill (M13) and Richmond roads in Pinetown, South Africa.

AKSARBENT's Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy demonstrates how to evade fleas

Lucille holds the same position at AKSARBENT that Brian Fischer holds at the American Family Association but, unlike Fischer, is not inclined to rant bullshit to gullible rural Christers on low power radio stations.
     She has a more practical use for a radio antenna, that being an improvised safety harness to keep from sliding off the hood during a power nap.

ANOTHER pedophile scandal breaks in Dominican Republic Santiago Archdiocese of Cardinal Rodríguez, who called U.S. ambassador a 'faggot'

This one involves the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, a Vatican envoy abruptly removed from his post days ago. He was accused on the Dominican television network NCDN by the director of a community group, of sleeping in the same room as several altar boys at his beach house.
     Wesolowski's pal, Fr. Gil Wojciech, suddenly fled the Dominican Republic earlier this summer after accusations surfaced from several families accusing him of molesting minor girls. Authorities have said they are trying to find out if he left the country under a false identity and whether he was accompanied by one or more minors.
     From the AP:

     Shortly before his [Wesolowski's] removal, several residents of the mountain town of Juncalito made allegations of sexual abuse against the Rev. Alberto Gil Wojciech, also a Polish priest and a friend of Wesolowski. The community leader, Pedro Espinal, told reporters that Wojciech took altar boys to the home of Wesolowski...
     The whereabouts of the 65-year-old Wesolowski were unknown. He was removed a few weeks ago, Lombardi said, though there was no official announcement of it in the Vatican's daily bulletin.

No one in the Dominican Republic seems to know where Wojciech is, either.
     Both Wesolowski's and Wojciech worked in the Santiago Archdiocese, headed by Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, (rumored, justly or unjustly, to be a notorious womanizer), who recently referred to the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the Domincan Republic as a "maricon" [faggot].
     On Wednesday the archbishop of the Santiago Archdiocese, but not its head (Rodriguez) apologized.
     On Thursday, a group of the Dominican Republic's Catholic bishops sharply criticized one of their most prominent colleagues, Agripino Nuñez Collado for accusing the media of “instigating and stoking the intrigue,” and claiming that “there’s no evidence against Wesolowski.”


(H/T: JoeMyGod)

Should you trust a Carfax report? ABC says maybe not

Carfax is a very profitable independent operating unit of privately-held R.L. Polk, acquired in July by IHS for $1.4 billion.

Iowa Filmmakers video: Wrestling doesn't belong in the Olympics? Grapple with this!

Seemingly perplexed Iowa State wrestler

Iowans, whose state is a perennial wrestling powerhouse, are admittedly more irate about the absurd move by the International Olympic Committee (the sages of which bring you the 2014 DADT Winter Olympics in Sochi) to drop wrestling as an Olympic sport, which can only be explained by a lust for the money attracted by the most telegenic sports, not by the provenance of wrestling, which dates to the first, ancient Olympic games, and beyond.
     The video below, unsurprisingly, comes from Iowa and includes a cameo appearance by Tom Arnold, who does not appear in the nude scene, thank you very much.

Russian homophobes with assault rifles now evidently looking for LGBTs

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin was forced by worldwide revulsion, demonstrations and President Obama's vow to meet with Russian LGBT activists, to comment on the war on Russian LGBTs Putin has engineered via draconian new legislation as a distraction to deflect attention on the corruption of his government.

"I assure you that I work with these people, I sometimes award them with state prizes or decorations for their achievements in various fields," Putin said in an interview with Associated Press and Russia's state Channel 1 television.

Meanwhile, the BBC interviewed "Yekaterina," head of one of many Russian 'Occupy Paedophilia' chapters: "Our priority is uncovering cases of pedophilia. But we are also against the promotion of homosexuality and if, along the way, we encounter people of non-traditional sexual orientation, we can kill two birds with one stone."

-

How Huffington Post trolls readers by misrepresenting a video

(Note: if your browser has ad blocking software, you'll see a blank screen for 30 seconds before the video starts.)

Bill Maher was on the Tonight Show the other night, pretending to eviscerate Jay Leno, but really mocking NBC for now having fired Leno twice when he was #1 in the ratings.
     The twisted HuffPost account of the amiable proceedings:  Bill Maher On Jay Leno 'Tonight Show' Departure: 'What The F**k Is Wrong With You?'

Two scorpions in a bottle: Nebraska Watchdog documents the he-said-she-said between Fire Chief McDonnell and Mayor Stothert

     Now McDonnell is claiming the city went outside the lines of the memorandum of understanding first. When Joe Jordan asked Stothert why she couldn't go back to the original MOU, she first said it had expired, then claimed she didn't know which one the first one was.
     Stothert's tossed word salad: "We're not saying that there was an original MOU right now because the original one expired."
     When Stothert asked the camera "Am I supposed to pick one?" we're not sure if she meant MOUs or the contradictions she made in the same sentence. 
     We would loved to have seen Jordan ask McDonnell and/or Stothert if the three MOUs had the same date. That would have cleared up a lot, assuming Stothert and McDonnell would have given the same answer, which is probably too much to hope for.
     Nebraska Watchdog's interview with McDonnell:

One exasperated Toronto Blue Jays fan sympathetically arrests another

Here's the police report, courtesy of The Score. Click to enlarge.

Russia considers another antiLGBT law, to remove kids from homes of gay parents; rationale: discredited University of Texas Regnerus study

The man who introduced the law into Russia's Duma, Alexei Zhuravlyov, said law enforcement would establish a parent’s sexuality “if necessary.” From Buzzfeed:

     Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament regularly passes Kremlin-backed laws unanimously, including the “gay propaganda” ban that it passed in June, earning it the nickname of “the rabid printer.”
     Zhuravlyov estimates that just between five and seven percent of Russians are gay, and about a third of that number - between 2.3 and 3.3. million people - have children.
     Zhuravlyov’s bill would also extend to single gay parents. Russia’s run-down orphanages already hold hundreds of thousands of children, many of whose parents are alive but unfit to parent.
     “A homosexualist shouldn’t bring up a child. He perverts it. He harms him a lot more than if he were in a children’s home,” Zhuravlyov said. As evidence, Zhuravlyov’s bill cites a study by Mark Regnerus, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, which argued that children of gay parents were as much as a third more likely to be gay than children of straight parents, and at greater risk of suicide, sexually transmitted disease, unemployment, and cheating on their partners. Regnerus’ study has been widely discredited, but Zhuravlyov wrote that it had been “carefully checked by independent experts and raises no doubts.”

The scholarly merit of the laughable Regnerus Study has been questioned by 200 PhDs and MDs; it was concocted to influence the gay marriage debate now before the Supreme Court and it was called "bullshit" by an editor of the very journal that published it, Darren E. Sherkat, who was assigned to audit the study after the uproar it caused.
     The prestigious American Sociological Association ripped apart the junk science of the Regnerus "research" in a Supreme Court brief opposing the upholding of California's Prop 8 (on pages 15-22, which you may read here.)

San Antonio, USA's seventh-largest city, passes LGBT antibias protections in 8-3 city council vote

This poor guy, testifying on behalf of extending civil rights protection to LGBTs, had to answer tedious, inflammatory trans/bathroom questions from an elected official. To watch the livestream, surf here.

UPDATE: Livestream is now over and the ordinance was passed, 8-3 by the City Council of San Antonio, the nation's seventh-largest city. Houston, Dallas, Austin, El Paso and Ft. Worth already have similar ordinances. Said Talking Points Memo:

The local proposal roiled conservatives nationwide and was opposed by big-name Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Abbott, who is running for governor, predicted a lawsuit over religious freedoms but has not said the state will challenge the ordinance.

Lee Terry's sleazy new tactic to fight Obamacare: harrassing civic organizations educating public on program by demanding a blizzard of paperwork

Why keep this story to yourself? Share it via the Facebook,
Google+, Reddit, Twitter, or email buttons at the bottom of this post.

Rep. Lee Terry has found a new way to waste tax dollars. He and his fellow Republicans on the Committee on Energy and Commerce have sent letters to 51 groups which have received "Navigator" grants to help the uninsured enroll in the new health care program. The GOP only targeted those 11 states which have the most uninsured. From Rep. Henry Waxman's indignant letter to the committee:
 

Norwegians

Bård Ylvisåker and Vegard Ylvisåker made this video. In Norway they go by "Ylvis" and have a talk show on TVNorge.

More on London's death ray "fryscraper"

Business Insider reports that Uruguayan-born architect Rafael Viñoly, designer of the troubled, 37-story London building also designed another building with similar problems years ago in Las Vegas.

In 2010, guests of Viñoly's Vdara Hotel and Spa at MGM's Aria began complaining of severe burns from the glare being reflected off the building's facade.

State with worst scenery: NE, IA barely beat bottom states, KS and NJ

More survey questions and rankings here. Spoiler: Texas is widely despised, especially among gay couples disgusted that the state is refusing, along with Mississippi, to comply with Pentagon orders to start offering partner benefits to troops with same-sex spouses, using as an excuse the state's law banning same-sex marriage.

#Construction time-lapse video of new S.F. Bay Bridge, which opened today

Details here. After 30 huge bolts snapped, all 288 were replaced.

Movement to name hurricanes after global warming deniers gets a video

AKSARBENT suggests naming a weak, ineffective hurricane which fizzles out without doing much damage after Rep. Lee Terry, who explained that he doesn't deny climate change, just "anthropomorphic" causation at a recent North Omaha town hall meeting.

Auckland, NZ students, The Law Revue Girls, make disapproving (but sexy) 'Defined Lines' parody of Blurred Lines video

Westboro Baptist Church files amended federal complaint against Nebraska alleging state's funeral picketing law discriminates against it

Also: Auckland, NZ students, The Law Revue Girls make disapproving (but sexy) 'Defined Lines' parody of Blurred Lines video

From the AP:

The amended free-speech lawsuit, filed Monday in Lincoln's U.S. District Court, challenges a Nebraska law that requires protesters to stand 500 feet away from a funeral service. The amended filing comes after a federal appeals court in April reinstated the lawsuit, reversing a lower court's dismissal of the case.
     The amended complaint includes at least 16 examples in which the church says its members were kept hundreds of feet from funeral services, while counter-protesters were allowed to congregate immediately outside services...
     The lawsuit's new examples include a protest in June 2012 at a funeral in York in which the church says members were kept five blocks — about 1,000 feet — from the funeral while counter-protesters were allowed right outside the doors of the church and inside the cemetery.
      "They have signs and flags, just like us. There's no difference, other than content," [church member and attorney Margie] Phelps said. "(The law) is being applied discriminatorily."

Russian teen's dad forces him to file complaint about gay protester he saw online; father hates gays because ex-wife left him for a woman; Dimitry Isakov may be first to be convicted under new gay propaganda law

Above: Dmitry Isakov holds a sign reading “Being gay and loving gays is normal.
Beating gays and killing gays is a crime! (cs306713.vk.me / Via VK)

Max Seddon of BuzzFeed reports on the first person who may be convicted (not charged) under Russia's new gay "propaganda" law.

Police in the central Russian city of Kazan filed charges against Dmitry Isakov Thursday for his protest on July 30 this year, his legal team told BuzzFeed. Isakov stood in the city center holding a sign that said, “Being gay and loving gays is normal. Beating gays and killing gays is a crime!”
Isakov, 24, is not the first person charged under the law, passed in late June, but stands a good change of being the first person convicted under it, his legal team said...
Police filed the charges on the basis of a complaint from a teenager in the northern Arkhangelskaya province who had seen Isakov’s protest online. The teenager, Erik Fedoseyev, wrote that he had been forced to write the complaint by his father, who hates LGBT people because his ex-wife, Fedoseyev’s mother, had left the family to live with another woman when he was four...

Isakov told the The Times of London that after his one-man protest, Kazan cops beat him so badly he had to walk on crutches for ten days. When he was well enough to return to work, he discovered that the local branch of then-Sberbank had fired him.

Buffalo etiquette on a Yellowstone Path

(Via Towleroad)

America's best Christian congratulates Putin on state-sponsored homophobia

(Via JMG)

Death ray skyscraper can melt nearby cars in an hour or set fire to a barbershop's carpet

20 Fenchurch Street in London's financial district

Predatory architecture: Here's a London building not content to wait for terrorism to be visited on it; it can dish out some of its own.
     The edifice curves out toward the top to provide more rentable floorspace where leases are highest.
     Making matters worse, the sun-facing facade also curves from side to side.
     Sadly, the architects didn't consider the possibility that such a parabolic design would concen­trate the sun's heat on nearby objects (like cars and a barber shop) the way that satellite dishes focus signals on the feedhorn.
     Because of its shape, the building's nickname has been Walkie Talkie, but wags now call it "Walkie Scorchie' after The Telegraph reported that at least two vehicles have been damaged by the building, including Martin Lindsay's Jaguar XJ, which sustained more than $1500 work of damage, including melting of mirror housings, the Jaguar badge and parts of the bodywork panels.

Dior hook$ up with Twilight actor star

AKSARBENT, dear readers, breathlessly brings you not the ad — oh, no — but the OFFICIAL UNCENSORED DIRECTOR'S CUT of the ad.

Foam Finger inventer unamused by Miley Cyrus' indecent use of his invention; prefers Julie Andrews, but must not know about her potty mouth and racy practical jokes

59-year-old Steve Chmelar, who invented oversized foam fingers in 1971 at age 16 in his parents' Iowa garage and who claims to have made no money from his invention, told Fox Sports:

“If I had a choice between Julie Andrews singing ‘The Sound of Music’ and Miley Cyrus doing ‘Can't Stop,’’ he told Fox, “I’d go the Julie Andrews route.”—he respects that “everyone has their choice and their decision.” He adds of the racy performance, “For people that like that kind of entertainment, I’m sure that it met their needs.”

Obviously Chmelar is not an AKSARBENT reader and must be unaware of the racy impromptu performance the discretely potty-mouthed Julie Andrews inadvertently staged (with Carol Burnett) for Lady Bird Johnson in a hotel hall (below at the 4:35 mark):



Here's Julie Andrews' version, starting at 1:07

Heavyweight boxer Tommy Morrison, who tested positive for HIV, died Sunday 'in a Nebraska hospital'

ALSO, via twitter.com/aksarbent:

• Death ray skyscraper can melt cars, ignite carpet of neighboring shop
• Chilean pop sensation Alex Anwandter: 'So, yeah, I guess I'm a [gay] activist. A closeted activist.'
• Sochi: how officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony; Sovietsky Sport's racist coverage of 2013 IAAF win of Russian women's 4x400 relay team over U.S. team: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'; Sportswriter Frank Deford: Send U.S. athletes to Sochi but keep USOC officials at home 
• Russian teen's dad forces him to file complaint about gay protester he saw online; father hates gays because ex-wife left him for a woman; Dimitry Isakov may be first to be convicted under new gay propaganda law
• Video: Gay comic and ex-NSA employee Wanda Sykes wants Edward Snowden to 'rot' in jail for disclosures of surveillance abuse of Americans

Boxer Tommy Morrison died Sunday in what news reports said was "a Nebraska hospital" of an undisclosed cause. (More recent stories say "Omaha Hospital.")
     A few weeks ago, Morrison's mother told a writer for ESPN.com that her son still believed he never had the virus. But she said he had full-blown AIDS and hoped he would die peacefully.

     Morrison lost to Lennox Lewis but beat George Foreman in 1993 to win the WBO heavyweight title, and he appeared in Rocky V.
    In the winter of 1995, an HIV test came back positive and Nevada suspended his boxing license. At a news conference, he blamed his circumstances on a "permissive, fast and reckless lifestyle."
     In 2000 he went to prison after a string of arrests over the years. Upon release, he said his HIV test results were false positives, he passed medical tests in Arizona (though Nevada wouldn't reverse its decision) and fought two more bouts, in West Virginia and Mexico, winning both and finishing with a 48-3-1 record with 42 knockouts. Said his manager:

      "Tommy's a very stubborn person and he views things the way he wants to view things. That's his right and privilege," Holden said. "All through his career, him and I would come not to physical blows but disagreements on certain things. We always ended up friends. That was Tommy.

      "That's the way Tommy took off after he was told he was HIV-positive," Holden added. "When he first was told, I was taking him to seek treatment and to different doctors around the country. And then he started research on the Internet and started saying it was a conspiracy. He went in that direction and never looked back."

Chilean pop sensation Alex Anwandter: 'So, yeah, I guess I'm a [gay] activist. A closeted activist.'

Anwandter

Alex Anwandter is a leading light of Chile's pop rennaisance, celebrated at this summer's Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC) in New York.
     His music became identified with Daniel Zamudio after his brutal murder at the hands of Chilean neo-Nazis last year.
     Zamudio's family said Anwandter was Daniel's favorite artist; they played his music at the funeral, which became the focal point of a media frenzy, and encouraged Anwandter to continue speaking out against Chilean homophobia.

     The experience inspired Anwandter to create a music video that was a tribute to Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary about New York’s queer subculture, “Paris is Burning”.
     “My idea was that we in Chile don’t have an equivalent of Paris is Burning. We are that far behind. Like people do not accept any type of diversity, nor do they get to actually see diversity. So my intention was to show, if you wish, sexual minorities or diversity in a very beautiful light,” Anwandter explains.
     The final result is the video to his song “Como Puedes Vivir Contigo Mismo”. [How can you live with yourself?]
     When asked whether he now calls himself an activist, Anwandter isn’t so sure at first.
     But then he says, “I’ve been a bit surprised now reading press releases or stuff calling me “singer and activist.” I’m like what? I’m an activist? But I guess, I’m fine with it. When I found out that my visibility could actually help get a message across, I felt comfortable with that. So yeah, I guess I’m an activist. A closeted activist.”

Anwandter discussed gay marriage on this week's installment of PRI's Afropop Worldwide, which devoted an hour to the Latin Alternative Music Conference:

I don't really think of gay marriage as something that in my country should be a priority because we are, like, far behind that actually. In Chile, sometimes gay movements tend to hide some elements of the sexual diversity and I think it's like a correct ideal done wrong. My goal, my flag somehow is more of acceptance and tolerance and in living in diversity rather than achieving something as concrete as attached to economic rights like gay marriage.

Below: Anwandter's Tatuaje (Tattoo)



Anwandter's collaboration with fellow Chilean Gepe on Alex & Daniel



Below: two arresting videos by LAMC performer Ulises Hadjis

Coke, marquee sponsor of Sochi DADT Olympics, takes out print ads claiming sweetner in Diet Coke is 'healthy alternative' to sugar. It's not

Salon says Coke is taking out newspaper ads touting health benefits of aspertame:

---

     When one of the leading Junk Food Giants says it wants to help fight obesity by selling you more Diet Coke, nothing could be further from the truth. But when it takes that campaign a step farther, by paying newspapers to run full-page ads disguised as scientific articles, that’s deceptive advertising at its worst.
     We should be celebrating a 3-percent decline in sales of Diet Coke. And we should be boycotting any product that contains aspartame, a synthetic chemical compound linked to a host of health issues, including obesity, and brought to market under the shadow of dirty politics.