as if religion were not bad enough

When It Takes a Miracle To Sell Your House
Owners, Realtors Bury Statues Of St. Joseph to Attract Buyers;
By SARA SCHAEFER MUÑOZ
October 30, 2007;

Cari Luna is Jewish by heritage and Buddhist by religion. She meditates regularly. Yet when she and her husband put their Brooklyn, N.Y., house on the market this year and offers kept falling through, Ms. Luna turned to an unlikely source for help: St. Joseph.

...
Some Realtors, too, swear by the practice. Ardell DellaLoggia, a Seattle-area Realtor, buried a statue beneath the "For Sale" sign on a property that she thought was overpriced. She didn't tell the owner until after it had sold. "He was an atheist," she explains. "But he thanked me."

...the rest of the story is here.

I'm not even going to point out all of the logical fallacies in the article. But if some people want to believe a 6 inch tall statue solves all of their problems so be it from me to talk them out of absurd thinking. The funny part is the statues are made in China, a heavy Buddhist country. Life is ironic.


It amazes me what people will believe and do in the name of religion.

80 Proof Rocks Bungalo 8

The best 80's band in Houston....
Coming soon to a venue near you.
Playing the Houston Hash Christmas Party - Dec 1, 2007.

holy attic crawl batman

ELLWOOD CITY, Pa. -- Holy rare find, Batman!

Pittsburgh comic collector Todd McDevitt has come across a copy of one of the most valuable comic books ever printed. It's the Detective Comics issue No. 27 from before World War II. It's famous because it's the first one in which Batman appears.

McDevitt said that his copy is worth about $250,000, although a pristine copy can be worth as much as $500,000. The Action Comics edition No. 1 is the only one considered by collectors to be more valuable, since it marks Superman's first appearance.

McDevitt owns a chain of comics stores and said the copy he bought was brought in by somebody who found it while cleaning out an attic and wondered if it was worth anything.

He said that his eyes almost popped out when he saw it.

McDevitt won't say how much he paid, but says he's been saving money for 20 years, hoping for just such a find.

For now, he's keeping the Batman comic in an airtight bag in a bank vault, bringing it out occasionally to give friends and customers a peek. He says he hasn't even read it yet.

the unforgiven

mmm...cheerleaders

I love football season.

The Barcardi Bat

This just happens to be my second favorite logo of all time. Here is the story behind it.

The Barcardi Bat
Piss Off the Bat and He’ll Bomb You

If company legend is to be believed (and it rarely should), a bat found its way onto the Bacardi label in 1862 because the wife of the distillery’s founder noticed a colony of fruit bats hanging around the rafters of the converted warehouse that was their first distillery. The bat was considered a noble and lucky creature by the local Cubans, so it seemed a smart move to attach the symbol to the fledgling rum.

An alternative history, strenuously denied by Bacardi, is that the bat got the nod because every morning distillery workers had to fish the lucky, noble, and thoroughly intoxicated creatures out of the rum vats.

The rum found quick favor in Cuba and spread rapidly throughout the Americas. Prohibition gave it a boost, thanks to Cuba’s close proximity to the U.S. coast, and by the ‘50s the bat was flying high as the best-selling rum in the U.S.

Then came the communists. Despite the fact that the Bacardi family helped bankroll the Cuban Revolution, they were driven out of the country and their holdings nationalized when Fidel Castro seized power. The Bacardi clan never forgave this betrayal, and have used their considerable political and financial influence to make things difficult for Cuba ever since.

Why It Worked: The aforementioned locals not only considered the bat good mojo, they were also largely illiterate. They couldn’t read the verbose Spanish praising the product on the early labels, but they could recognize the bat just fine. When the rum spread to more literate countries, the exotic mammal matched up well with what Westerners thought of rum: nocturnal danger with a hint of vampirism.

Evolution: The prototype bat was a fatter specimen, but aside from the usual streamlining, Bacardi has remained true to the original logo.

Dark Secret: Embittered Bacardi helmsman Jose Pepin Bosch bought a surplus B-26 bomber with the hopes of bombing his ex-pal Fidel’s oil refineries (the bold plan was foiled when a picture of the bomber appeared on the front page of New York Times). He was also allegedly involved in the CIA plot to assassinate Castro.

Claim to Fame: Bacardi was the first “civilized” rum. The founder, Spanish emigrant Don Facundo Bacardi Masso, tamed the raw New World spirit by experimenting with charcoal filtering and oak barrel aging.