October 5th, 1969 changed the face of comedy history for it was the day the world was given Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

I honestly don’t know where comedy would be today without Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.  These six men pushed the boundaries of taste, logic and even the basic structure of comedy to limits people couldn’t have even dreamed of.  If you ask just about any person working in comedy today, they will list Monty Python as one of their key influences, and rightly so.

For just as many people who love them, they’re are those who don’t “get it”, and I can honestly respect that, their particular brand of humor wasn’t for everyone.

I honestly can’t remember which skit I saw first, I just know it was in the late 1970’s and I was dumbstruck at the insanity of it even at the young age.  (remember, I was born in ‘71)  I had already been watching Saturday Night Live since it debuted in ‘75, and even at those young ages I could see how wildly different this British comedy was.  You weren’t sure if you were supposed to laugh or scratch your head, but in those early years I just laughed myself silly.

Over the years as I saw every sketch 50 times or more, I came to appreciate the show on so many more levels, and I also came to realize how it influenced just about everything we see around us today when it comes to comedy.  These men were, and are, brilliant (R.I.P. Graham), and comedy lovers everywhere owe them a debt of gratitude.

I’ve gathered up a few of my favorite skits from the Official Monty Python YouTube Channel, but I always encourage you to check out the source material.  Sadly the channel doesn’t have nearly all of my favorites (Dead Parrot, Upper Class Twit of the Year, Spam, Spanish Inquisition and so on).  After the BS I have been dealing with all day over the FTC, this was a welcome post to write, as I found I still laughed and smiled at every sketch I have posted below.

Every Sperm is Sacred (from The Meaning of Life)

Ministry of Silly Walks

Lumberjack Song

Stoning (from Life of Brian)

Black Knight (from The Holy Grail)

Always Look On The Bright Side of Life (from Life of Brian)

President Obama has begun talking about the possibility of extending the school day, and while I think he is on the right track, he is coming at it from the wrong angle.

According to a story for the Associated Press (sorry, can’t link it or quote it due to their insane rules on bloggers owing them money if we do so), President Obama is currently looking at extending the school day by three hours, and also increasing the number of days per year that students go to school.  This is said to be combat the continually low scores that American students have in comparison to countries such as Japan.

In comparison, USA students attend school an average of 1,146 hours, while students in Japan attend 1,005, but I am going to concentrate on why this is a bogus number and the Japanese actually attend more hours than that.  The students OFFICIALLY attend 1,005 hours, what is not counted is their “extra curricular” hours which are “elective”, but you would be hard pressed to find any student who does not attend them.  They are also quite often going in to school on Saturdays and Sundays, again this is “optional”, but due to the pressure of their peers doing it, so they know if they don’t follow suit that they will fall behind.

So is extending the hours of the day the solution?  No, I don’t think so.  From the sounds of it, it almost sounds like Obama envisions this partially as a babysitting service as he sees keeping the students in school until 6 or 7 PM.  You are talking about children who are not used to such long hours, and you are also going to have a major cut down in the amount of time they have each night to do homework.  Extending the hours per day is not the best choice.

He also has discussed the possibility of cutting the summer vacation time down, and while I have problems with extending the number of hours per day, I have no problem with changing up the structure of the entire year.  The current model of nine months on, three months off is based on the agrarian calendar of farming, but children are no longer spending the summer working in the fields with their parents, so needing the block of time off is no longer required.

A school year model that has shown some definite success is a quarter system where students attend school for 9 weeks and then have 3 weeks off.  Students attend the same number of hours per day, but with less down time between sessions, the students don’t forget as much, and take less time to get back up to speed when they do get back.

Of course, all of these plans ignore the problems inherit in our public school systems and the subject matters they teach our kids, but that is another argument for another day, but I do agree with the President that a change needs to be made in how the kids attend school.  While I have already seen some blogs such as Sweetness & Light decrying this as a way to brainwash children into being liberal leaning, Obama lovers, there have been schools playing with the structure of the school day and year for quite a while now.  I knew a child attending a 9 on/3 off school 12 years ago in St. Louis, and yes his grades did go up from when he attended in the 9 months on/3 months off school.

In a study conducted in 2006, students in the United States placed 17th amongst 30 countries compared in how their students were doing.  I am sure no one will ever think this is a desirable place to be for this country, and while I feel there is a lot that needs fixing in our system (psst, school uniforms), a change to the school year is inevitable at some point.  Be it under Obama or whomever follows him into the Oval Office, this is a subject that will need to be addressed at some point along with the manner and matter of what we are teaching the students in school.

… or do you really know that many kids still working in the fields each summer?

Well, that didn’t take long.

A mere month after 26-year-old Helen Goddard, a trumpet instructor at the City of London School for Girls, was discovered to be having a sexual relationship with one of her 15-year-old female students, she has been given her sentence.  While I normally don’t do follow ups on the sentencing of the teachers I write about, this one just filled in too many holes to be ignored.

According to the London Evening Standard, it was the teenager who instigated the relationship by first discussing personal issues with the teacher, and then eventually going for coffee together that led to the girl attempting to kiss the older woman.  The girl said in a victim impact statement that she felt remorse for the situations he had gotten the teacher into.

While the original story on Helen Goddard had the parents saying they would have no problem with their daughter eventually reconnecting with Ms. Goddard, they have now taken a much harder line over the situation. The young girls parents are now angry and say that the teacher betrayed their trust.  They also revealed that the girl had been telling them she was staying at a friend’s house when she was sneaking away to see the teacher.  Nothing specific was mentioned on how Ms. Goddard ended up taking the girl to Paris for a weekend to attend a Gay Pride parade, but they somehow managed to pull that off also.

As the evidence was presented, more details of the raid that found the two together was revealed.  When the police went to question Ms. Goddard, they found the girl there also, and confiscated numerous sex toys, including “fluffy handcuffs”.  They also seized the girl’s cell phone which contained one text message from Ms. Goddard that read:

‘It’s going to be a beautiful day. I love you. You were on my mind all night.

With the amount of evidence against her, Ms. Goddard confessed to six sexual encounters with the student between February and July of this year.

Speaking on her own behalf, Ms. Goddard said she had been “pressurised” (yes, she said “pressurised”) into the affair by the young girl.  Seeing as the woman is so much older, Judge Anthony Pitts apparently didn’t care; he sentenced Ms. Goddard to 15-months in jail, she must register as a sex offender for 10 years and she is banned for life from working with children.

Other teacher sex scandals from this year

• Christine McCallum, Boston, MA
• Lisa Lavoie, Holyoke, MA
• Christy Lynn Martin, St. Petersburg, FL
• Linda Nef and Valynne Bowers, Bountiful, UT
• Sarah L. Tolzien, Richton Park, IL
• Autumn Faulkner, Randolph County, WV
• Lindsay Massaro, Hackettstown, NJ
• Lauren Breslin, Vineland, NJ
• Kristina Anna Baeta, Union City, CA
• Raeanna Jewell, Apache Junction, AZ
• Jennifer Lea Burton, Orangefield, TX
• Tamara Hofmann, Chandler, AZ
• Jennifer Marie Collier, Jacksonville, FL
• Gina Marie Watring, Durham, NC
• Alison M. Peck, Greenfield, MO
• Maria Guman Hernandez, Hialeah, FL

I’m not 100% sure who first thought to do this, but I would send them a huge thank you if I could.

Someone got the bright idea to pose a very simple question: Ever wish songs just sang what was happening in the music video?  The concept is simple enough in that you take any music video that has odd, non-sensical moments (i.e. pretty much every music video from the 1980’s and 1990’s), write new lyrics for the song that deals with what you are seeing in the video, and, there you go, you have a literal video.

I believe the first one was by Dusto McNeato for A-Ha’s “Take On Me“, which has since been pulled and replaced by a version showm on a Digg show.  Since then the concept has really taken off, but I think the person producing the highest quality ones is dascottjr.  Check out his latest for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.

You can check out all six literal videos that dascottjr has done so far on this playlist, or be more adventurous and check out every literal video done thus far (be warned, some of them really suck).

It’s a nifty concept that I am sure will be taken too far as happens to everything else on the Web, but it’s a fun diversion for now.

Susan Boyle appeared on Britain’s Got Talent this week, and to say she wowed the judge and audience would be an understatement.

Seeing as I live in the United States, I don’t watch Britain’s Got Talent, but, then again, I don’t watch America’s Got Talent either.  I’ve never been big on the “talent” style shows like American Idol, but then tonight a video was making the rounds on Twitter, and considering it seemed to leave everyone speechless, I went ahead and checked it out.

Same as its American counterpart, Britain’s Got Talent consists of common British folk coming on the show to display their talents, whatever they may be. Unlike American Idol they can dance, sing, play instruments, even spin plates if they want, it really is open to all talents. In the early rounds the judges, Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan, can say if someone is passing on to the later rounds, or they can stop them there, and even stop the performance by hitting their big X lights.

In this week’s episode, Susan Boyle, who is 47-years-old and hails from West Lothian in Scotland, came on the show. She informed the television audience that she lives alone with her cat Pebbles, and has never even been kissed, let alone had a boyfriend. When she took the stage the audience and judges were snickering alike… and then she sang.

If there ever was a case of “don’t judge a book by its cover”, it is obviously Susan Boyle.  I hate to admit it, but I was snickering along with the audience when she took the stage in her awkward little way.  Shame on me.

I also have to admit it is very rare for me to actually watch a shared video on Twitter, it is even odder for me to watch the whole thing, but I have watched this one a couple times thus far.  Her voice is simply amazing.  If I had the ability to vote in this show, I would be, and I don’t even know if there is someone with more talent performing, but I find that difficult to imagine.

Good luck, Ms. Boyle, but somehow I doubt you’re going to need it if you keep wowing the audience and judges like this.

UPDATE: You can see the Susan Boyle CBS The Early Show interview here.

Update 2: Hear Susan Boyle sing “Cry Me A River”.

Make sure to check out SusanBoyleFandom.com for all of the latest Susan Boyle relate news!

A United States Air Force F-22a Raptor crashed in California on Wednesday morning.

At approximately 10 AM Wednesday morning, an F-22a Raptor crashed around 35 miles northeast of the Edwards Air Force Base in California. (link takes you to an interactive map)  The fighter was conducting a test mission at the time, and the cause of the crash, as well as the fate of the pilot, is unknown at this time.

The plane officially entered service in 2005, and costs $137.5 million each, hence why we’ve only built 135 of them thus far. Due to the advanced nature of the fighter, and its perceived superiority over everything else in the sky, the government does not allow them to be sold to any of the countries we normally sell weapons to.

This is the second of these fighters to crash, the first being in December 2004, and luckily the pilot in that case ejected to safety.  Hopefully the pilot in the latest crash is okay, but only time will tell.  Search and rescue teams are currently working in the area.

If the fighter looks vaguely familiar to you, by the way, it’s because it’s the basis for Starscream in the Transformers movies.

UPDATED: Unfortunately, the pilot, David Cooley, 49, was killed in the crash.

Mt. Redoubt, near Anchorage, AK, is erupting.

Beginning around 10:38 PM local time on Sunday night, Mt. Redoubt, which has been under watch for quite some time, finally blew its top.  The mountain, which stands 10,200 feet tall, threw ash as high as 60,000 feet, causing some sir traffic to be rerouted or turned back.

If history tells us anything about this volcano, when it last blew in 1989, it continued to spew ash for four months.  Scientists have no clue how long it will continue to emit ash this time, but it could be for a similar amount of time again.  Ash is a known abrasive that can eat away at exposed mechanical parts, cause asthma attacks or any other host of health problems.  Luckily the winds are blowing it away from Anchorage, but other smaller towns are expecting to get a good coating of the stuff.

What concerns me, and prompts me to write this, was the news last week of undersea volcano off the coast of Tonga erupting.  While these volcanos are seperated by great distances, they are both part of the Pacific Ring of Fire: a series of volcanic trenches, arcs and belts that encircles the Pacific rim.  When one area of the Ring starts to have major activity, it is usually a good indicator that other parts of it will react with its own eruptions and earthquakes.

In short, don’t be surprised if there is news of other things happening in this region sometime soon.

Actress Natasha Richardson has passed away.

Unlike the rumors of Tuesday, this time it has been made official by a spokesman for the family.  She is survived by her husband, actor Liam Nesson, and their two  sons, aeges 12 and 13 years.  She was the daughter of Oscar winning actress Vanessa Redgrave, with whom she had worked on Broadway.  Ms. Richardson won a Tony for her role in Cabaret in 1998, and had appeared in numerous movies such as Nell (where she met her husband), The Parent Trap and The Handmaid’s Tale.

She was injured on Monday while taking a private skiing lesson at Mont Tremblant near Montreal. While practicing on the beginner’s slope, she fell, but wa sable to get up and walk away with no visible injuries. A member of the ski patrol and her instructor followed her to her room to watch over her, and an hour later she was taken to Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal. Mr. Nesson then raced to her side from Toronto where he was filming a movie.

Rumors abounded on Tuesday that she had died, then was just brain dead and then that her brain was swelling. She was moved from Canada to Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, though this was only confirmed by sightings of her family. On Wednesday afternoon she was taken off of life support, and was not expected to make it through the night. While the “brain dead” rumor was never confirmed it is looking highly likely that she was indeed at the time she was moved to New York.

Did I miss a memo about how doing porn was the way to get back some of your fleeting fame?

With people still shocked by the news yesterday that Kelli McCarty, Miss USA 1991, has made a porno, now comes the news that the Long Island Lolita herself, Amy Fisher, is not only making porn, but it will be pay-per-view! True, Ms. Fisher, has preciously been seen in a “leaked” home sex video, and, in news to me, has been going around at feature dancing at strip clubs for a while now, but this is a whole new level of “ick”.

For those of you who don’t remember who she is, or she came to be “famous” after she had an affair with Joey Buttafuoco. As the affair carried on, Amy asked Joey to leave his wife, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, but he refused. So, in May 1992, when Ms. Fisher was a 17-year-old, she shot Mary Jo in the face in the doorway of her Long Island home. She has been in and out of the headlines ever since for various escapades.

Apparently this latest “event” (I just made actual air quotes before I typed that) will feature Ms. Fisher in a girl-on-girl scene, but she would like to expand into man-on-woman scenes eventually.  The only thing that stops her for now is that her husband, Louis Bellera, views that as cheating, but he seems oddly a-ok with Amy hooking up with a woman.

…

Oh, excuse me, I passed out after repeatedly slamming my head into my keyboard.  -peels the “G” key that stuck to his forehead off and place it back on the keyboard-

I am perplexed by this sudden decision by people that no one cares about starring in porn productions.  There have been others before such as Scott Schwartz from the movie A Christmas Story, and John Wayne Bobbitt who famously had… a piece of his anatomy removed by his wife, who later starred in a porn film after he had reattachment surgery.  Is this some odd ball extension of Andy Warhol’s 15-minutes of fame?  Are these people so desperate to be known again that they are willing to debase themselves in these ways?  Have we become such a fame obsessed society that people feel they must do whatever it takes to stay in the spotlight?

… or maybe they’re just skanky?

It’s episode 23… Scattercast is facing life without college!

- I finally checked out another podcast, Smodcast… I’m not doing so bad!

- Christmas Eve… more holidays need an “Eve”.

- Christmas shopping reflections.

- Digg annoys me and is an enigma.

Here’s a link to the MP3 for those who wish to download it, subscribe to Scattercast via iTunes.

Considering my recent rant against Christmas sweaters, some how this story from Pete Cashmore at Mashable seems like some sort of cosmic justice against me.  Office Max has jumped on the Christmas sweater bandwagon and produced a web site called My Christmas Sweater that will let you make as an atrocious Christmas sweater as you’d like.

I tried to keep mine at least somewhat tasteful, but I had to include a red pompomed reindeer over the left nipple per the comments on the last article I did.

Merry Christmas to all my readers.

What in the world is wrong with Fred Phelps?

For those unfamiliar with Phelps, he is the head of the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, KS.  They are best known for their protests at the funerals of soldiers saying that all their deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are the fault of the United States acceptance of homosexuality.  He has also been known to blame natural disasters on the same “problem”.

Well, it seems Mr. Phelps has now moved on to blaming things on Santa.  The economy?  Santa’s fault.  Dead soldiers?  Yep, Santa. To get this point across to the masses, the church wanted to post a sign detailing all of this in the Washington state capitol. (The SpokesmanReview has the story, but requires paid registration) Steve Valandra, a spokesman for Washington’s Department of General Administration, when e-mailed the text said, “Holy cow. I guess we’ll consider it like all the other requests.”

You can see the whole poster here, but I’ve reprinted the text below.  You can also sing it to the tune of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” as demonstrated by a video the church made, which I refuse to link to, but you can find it if you insist.

Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell!

You’d Better Watch Out Get Ready To Cry
You’d Better Go Hide I’m Telling You Why
Cuz Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell

He Is Your Favorite Idol You Worship At His Feet
But When You Stand Before Your God
He Won’t Help You Take The Heat

So Get This Fact Straight You’re Feelin’ God’s Hate
Santa’s To Blame For The Economy’s Fate
Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell

Don’t Leave Your Kids With This Red Fright
Just Like The Priests He’ll Rape ‘Em At Night
Oh Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell

You Tell The Children He Is Real
You Know That’s Just A Lie
To Justify Your Own Vile Sins
That’s The Only Reason Why

So Get This Fact Straight That You’re Feelin’ God’s Hate
Santa’s To Blame For The Dead Soldier’s Fate
Santa Claus Will Take You To Hell!

While I am all for religious freedom, and these people have every right to say whatever they like, you have to seriously wonder what is wrong with them?  Sure the world is messed up, but blaming Santa for the world’s woes?  I guess maybe the homosexuals have been cleared now?  They are somehow now blameless for the deaths of the soldiers, it’s all Santa’s fault!  Good to know.

Comparing him to child molesters?  Saying he will take you to Hell?  What in the world did Santa ever do to these people?

Some of the stories I find online just make my brain hurt.