Google Translate bug mixes up Heath Ledger, Tom Cruise

Gawker has unearthed a rather odd bug in the Google Translate software: its English-to-Spanish translator converts the name of the actor Heath Ledger, who died tragically on Tuesday, to the name of another actor–Tom Cruise. So if you enter in “I will miss Heath Ledger,” Google Translate will come back with “Voy a perder Tom Cruise.”

This looks like a simple bug in the system, perhaps the work of a bored Googler somewhere in the world. It only affects the English-to-Spanish translation; translations from English into other languages leave “Heath Ledger” intact, and “Tom Cruise” remains “Tom Cruise” in a Spanish-to-English translation. And the bug only appears to apply to the name “Heath Ledger,” as substituting a number of other actors’ names (Owen Wilson, John Travolta, Russell Crowe, Jake Gyllenhaal) also fails to yield “Tom Cruise.”

It’d all be pretty funny were it not for the terrible circumstances surrounding Ledger, 28, who was found dead after an apparent overdose of sleeping pills; there’s nothing tasteless about it, thankfully, but cracking jokes or hinting at Scientology conspiracies just doesn’t seem all that fitting. We’ve contacted Google for comment. But we’re guessing that this won’t be a very pressing issue for Mountain View.

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“I Escaped Scientology” An insider gives a brief history.

There are moments in life, coincidences, which have the potential to utterly change the direction and meaning of your existence. Of these I have had several; they have all marked me in various ways, but none more so than that fateful late afternoon in Stuttgart, Germany, when an attractive and rather aggressive young woman blocked my path and accosted me with the interrogative; “Do you have a good memory”?

This story aims to serve a dual function: Enlighten those who may be susceptible to seduction by mind and life control cults and to provide a sense of hope for those who may be so entrapped. A tertiary purpose is to encourage the reader to seek wisdom and direction from the vast array of knowledge available at our finger tips – thanks in part to Google and ultra-fast broadband, you can read incisive works on psychoanalytical and sociological thought by Fromm and Jung, Russell’s seminal ‘Analysis of mind’ lectures to the philosophic revolutionary ideas of the enlightenment.It is among these that you will find true wisdom and real answers to the questions and uncertainties that have driven so many into the gaping maw of deceptive pseudo religion.

To the informed, Scientology evokes a visceral revulsion, and with good reason. Cruise, the empty headed fanatic, stirring up collective nausea on national TV, personifies the true core value of Scientology to the man in the street. Lisa McPherson’s emaciated corpse, the true facts of her agonizing demise hidden under a cloud of Church generated obfuscation. ‘The exhibition of death’, a C-grade horror movie set, toured around the world by the Church in a vain attempt to obliterate two hundred years worth of neuropsychiatric and psychological research and insight.

To the yellow coated Scientology Volunteer Ministers, guaranteed to appear at the site of any national disaster, like the proverbial vulture, in a hopeless endeavor to pass off recruitment and the conceited effort to gain positive media response as ‘help’; in actuality, they tend to get in the way of qualified professional rescue and emergency personnel, while wasting valuable resources that could otherwise be passed onto the victims of disaster.

Professor Erich Fromm would have diagnosed the cults’ founder, L Ron Hubbard, as suffering from an extreme form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. So warped was his condition that he not only founded a religious body to honor him and his thought, but further, formed a virtual military unit to protect him and his ‘works’, execute his orders and pretty much pander to his every whim.There is no doubt that he was a powerful individual and, at least before his increasing mental instability got the better of him, had bucket loads of charm and great intelligence. But these virtues were contorted, perverted, by his illness. In an all too brief moment of clarity in the early 1950s, he asked for psychiatric help, but ran away before he could be adequately assessed and treated.

A thread that runs right through all of Hubbard’s lectures and writings from the early years of the cult to his last incoherent broadcast in 1979 is that of impending doom. He paints a bleak picture of our everyday lives. Our minds are subject to our barely contained, violently irrational subconscious, and the civil cohesion we see around us is a mere shallow pretense. Hubbard gives us to believe that our social order is run by a small clique of Machiavellian, fascistic bankers, politicos and media moguls plotting to subvert our liberty and freedom.

One could be forgiven for objectively viewing his world view as an expression of severe paranoia. It would be laughable except for the fact that all cult members were gradually inculcated into this exact outlook; we viewed the world around us with mistrust and apprehension.

It was just one of many mechanisms employed to keep us obedient and fearful of leaving.The organization operating under the brand name ‘Scientology’ and later on Hubbard’s own militant ‘praetorian guard’ The Sea Organization, where I spent twenty years of my life, were born out of Hubbard’s pathological desire to take fiction out of its context as entertainment, and place it into the realm of actuality. In this fashion he hoped to rewrite the miserable reality of his life.

This deeply flawed individual failed at everything he attempted to put his hand to. His only modicum of success was his much touted brilliance as a science fiction writer. The reality was that he wrote rather garish and poorly constructed short stories for about eight years during the nineteen thirties for a cheap throwaway medium, the pulp fiction magazine. He also wrote pornographic texts; this was an aspect of his literary career his church publicity officers kept under wraps.

Hubbard signed up for the Navy in 1940. Here he found himself in vast organization, a complex bureaucracy that he could play to suit his own ends. He never saw action, most of his war being spent in training institutions, hospitals and on leave. The brief period where he was actually allowed command of a small submarine chaser ended in disaster when he ordered his crew to fire live rounds at America’s ally, Mexico. He was relieved of command and put under close supervision as a navigator on a Liberty ship; he signed himself into hospital complaining of ulcers and conjunctivitis the day before the ship left for combat in the Pacific theatre.

World War II was over, the troops had come home.

The youngsters that had previously devoured pulp fiction during the mid 30s had grown up and were focused now on building lives in a newly prosperous America. There was now little or no market the fiction magazine.Hubbard was out of a job. Working off his 1939 premise that the way to make a million dollars was to start a religion, Hubbard dug up his unpublished manuscript, the science fiction novel ‘Excalibur’. This novel concerned a galactic overlord called Xenu, who banished millions of his subjects to the ‘prison planet’ Earth. It was around this 1930s era manuscript that Hubbard created what we know today as Scientology.

He was enough of a pragmatist to realize that the story of Xenu and the fate of the banished aliens would not entice the masses to part with hard earned cash; he needed a hook, and thanks to Freud and a few party tricks, found one. He called it Dianetics and its brief popularity rode on the back of a wave of a renewed interest the mind, mysticism and self exploration.

Dianetics was concocted from a mixture of vicious mind-control techniques and scrambled versions of both Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis. It was developed and expanded upon over the years, and eventually became part of an apparently vast body of ‘research’ that Hubbard called ‘The Tech’ (as in Technology) which he made available to his followers; for a price. Trained in this lethal ‘therapy’, these unqualified mental practitioners were brainwashed into believing they were the vanguard of a new civilization, one that would eventually overwhelm the institutions of state, learning and religion with Hubbard’s brand of social obedience, and thus avert the coming apocalypse. Driven by their leaders incessant haranguing, they formed what we know today as ‘The Church’ of Scientology.

Hubbard had been practically kicked out of Washington University’s School of Engineering, where he was a sporadic attendee between 1930 and 1932. As he developed the ‘philosophy’ of Scientology, he thought it would be helpful if he acquired a Ph.D, and he did, for about $250 US. I will cite a passage from Dr. Christopher Evan’s pithy volume on the religion, ‘The Cult of Unreason’ – The Cult of Reason: “As for Hubbard’s doctorate, it was awarded, one learns, from the magnificently styled `Sequoia University of California’ – an establishment which you will search for endlessly the standard list of American universities, but which used to be well known to quacks on the West Coast as a degree mill where `qualifications’ could be bought for suitable sums.

There is some evidence, as it happens, that L. Ron has had occasion to regret his involvement with the diminutive faculty of the Sequoia University, for his bogus Ph.D. has been frequently brought up by unkind critics as a stick to beat him with – and one for which he can find no ready defence.

On 8 March 1966, possibly tiring of suffering on behalf of this valueless embarrassment, but with a typically flamboyant gesture, he took an advertisement in the personal column of The Times, `resigning’ his degree in the following words:

“I, L Ron Hubbard of Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, having reviewed the damage being done in our society with nuclear physics and psychiatry by persons calling themselves `Doctor’, do hereby resign in protest my university degree as a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.), anticipating an early public outcry against anyone called `Doctor’; and although not in any way connected with bombs or `psychiatric treatment’ or treatment of the sick, and interested only and always in philosophy and the total freedom of the human spirit, I wish no association of any kind with these persons and do so publicly declare, and request my friends and the public not to refer to me in any way with this title.”With this characteristic piece, which it is impossible not to admire, he partly sealed a crack in his armor, at the same time cleverly taking the opportunity to pound psychiatrists, his perpetual antagonists.

Having considered the Founder of Scientology’s scanty academic background, we now pass on to inspect other interesting claims which have helped to bolster his image as a man of wild and far-reaching talents. The claims are many and apart from the obvious, and quite unchallengeable, one that he is a writer, he is also often referred to as an explorer, a naval war hero, a philosopher, a master mariner and, most extraordinary of all, `one of the prime movers in the US effort of getting man into space’.

What of Lord Xenu and the 1939 manuscript?

This became part of the mysterious Scientology ‘holy of holies’, the secret knowledge that would only be revealed to the follower after years of extensive conditioning and parting with large sums of money. Hubbard built various myths around this ‘level’: One would attain superhuman abilities, read minds, operate as a conscious unit outside the confines of the body, become aware of ‘past lives’ and so on. It was a hook that Hubbard used, and indeed, the ‘Church’ today, uses to keep the sycophant paying money, donating time or, in the case of Hubbard’s military, their whole lives, to the cause.

I escaped the cult just over a year ago, having been an ultra orthodox member of its militant inner circle for twenty years. Contrary to their rather shallow propaganda claims, it was neither a healthy nor life enhancing experience.During my last year in the cult, I was involved in wide ranging plan that involved among other things, the infiltration of a relatively important local government institution. I was already sitting on several influential committees and it was really only a matter of time before I would be able to manipulate this democratic institution to the advantage of my own, very undemocratic, hierarchical and quite frankly, criminal operation.

It is ironic that my subversive mission provided the key to my waking up, seeing Scientology for what it is, and escaping.

I had been more or less cut off from the real world since 1986: Access to TV, Internet and other media has always been discouraged, but since 1990, Internet use for the Sea Organization member, with the exception of those in the intelligence and policing branch, has been strictly verboten.

My work granted me considerable latitude with regard to typical organizational rules and restrictions, and the fact that I was in a rather senior position a long distance from the cult HQ in Sussex, gave me unprecedented freedom. Because I was involved in the educational and social field, I had to read up on the various theories I was being exposed to: Fromm, Jung, Freud and Dr. Perry. Additionally, I had to do considerable internet searches to trace key targets for the purposes of my mission.Exposure to such material had the effect of developing my critical thinking faculties, and I began to spot huge holes in Hubbard’s ‘philosophy’. One evening I ‘Googled’ the word ‘Scientology’, I began reading. I stopped at five the next morning due to exhaustion, but I was exhilarated, I had hit a gold mine of information. I came across posts, essays and exposes of the cult, very often from colleagues I had known over the years and who had disappeared into that murky realm outside of Scientology.

It was a terrifying experience to walk out into the real world, with nothing to show for my slavish devotion to the cult. Twenty years of sixteen-hour days and seven-day weeks takes its toll. I had nothing to show for myself, just the clothes on my back, I was unknown to any social services and was in a country that was not my own, this and facing up to the lies and distortions that had been drummed into me over the years was difficult.

The Scientologist describes the world outside as ‘the wog world’; the unenlightened humanoid is a ‘wog’.

The cult member who ‘falls from grace’ and leaves the church is described as a ‘degraded being’, destined for a short pain-filled life and reincarnation as a lunatic, handicap, street kid or some other form of degraded creature. This is not very encouraging to say the least.As is typical of many ex-cult members, I suffered a period of acute suicidal depression, which I survived thanks to Hubbard’s and Scientology’s biªte noir; Psychiatrists and psychologists.

In my new life outside of that psychotic cult, I have found love, encouragement, compassion, real peace and a sense of contentment that I did not think possible while moving up Hubbard’s torturous ‘Road to total freedom.’

*****
If you enjoyed this story, you may also enjoy Scientology Exploits The Virginia Tech Tragedy

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Colbert’s Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery [PIC]

Download the Large size – All sizes of this photo are available for download under a Creative Commons license.

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America’s Top 20 Drunkest Athletes

Last July, COED featured pictures of a sloshed Eli Manning throwing down karaoke style. The Giants made it to the Superbowl last Sunday and his infamous pictures have resurfaced with a fury, appearing on nearly every sports blog on the net.

This popularity has led us to compile a list of the America’s Top 20 Drunkest Athletes on the internet. These guys are rich, famous and as you will see, they enjoy throwing down a few beers after a hard day at the office.

Make sure you click the pictures to view the galleries and vote at the bottom for who you think is America’s Drunkest Athlete.

#20 Plaxico Burress – New York Giants

#19 Adam Morrison – Charlotte Bobcats

#18 Antonio Pierce – New York Giants

#17 David Ortiz - Boston Red Sox

#16 Derek Jeter – New York Yankees

#15 Eli Manning - New York Giants

#14 Jimmy Johnson – NFL Coach and former Superbowl champ

#13 John Daly – PGA Golfer

#12 Kyle Orton – Chicago Bears

#11 Matt Flynn - LSU Football QB

#10 Matt Leinart – Arizona Cardinals

#9 David Beckham – Los Angeles Galaxy

#8 Mike Dunleavy, Jr. – Indiana Pacers

#7 Randy Wolfe – Philadelphia Phillies

#6 Eli Manning (Part. 2) – New York Giants

#5 Ryan Howard – Philadelphia Phillies

#4 Ben Roethlisberger - Pittsburgh Steelers

#3 Steve Nash - Phoenix Suns

#2 Dirk Nowitzki - Dallas Mavericks

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Awesome Mashup: Celebrity Heads on Money

Advanced Photoshop Pictures Gallery – 26 image entries

 Contest Directions:  There’s a new craze going in United Kingdom – people take pictures of themselves partially covered with folded banknotes (mostly with queen Elizabeth) in the foreground. The result is merged faces of people and queen Elizabeth on the banknotes. The mix looks surprisingly natural for some. See example – the queen is bald!.
In your entries you should include a banknote (or any country) folded so that the person depicted on the banknote is merged with any celebrity or politician of your choice, similar to how it’s done in this example. Feel welcome to merge the lower part of the face on the banknote or upper part. Please don’t forget to include the name of the celebrity in the entry title.

Top 26 Contest Gallery Pictures

 This photoshop gallery of pictures only contains our top 26 picture selections from its parent contest Money Celebrities. All 37 contest pictures gallery and contest information can be viewed here.

Register free to participate here.

Browse the Best of FreakingNews picture galleries.

Recommend this picture gallery to a friend.

NOTE: This picture gallery is copyright protected. You may not repost any of the pictures inside this gallery on external sites (including message boards and non-profit sites) without express permission from FreakingNews.

Ben Bernanke Money Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

Jack Nicholson Money Jack Nicholson behind a hundred dollar bill.

Abraham Lincoln Money

Keira Knightly Australian Money

Johnny CASH Money A little tribute to the man in black, Johnny Cash.

Dr. Evil Money

Brad Pitt Money

Fred Thompson Money Fred is perfect for a $2.00 bill.

Kenny Rogers Money Kenny Rogers and a Grant bill

Mr. Bean Money Mr. Bean Invade the Philippines Currency…just for the holiday season.

John Kennedy Money Marconi is on the other side

Gene Wilder Money

Bin Laden Money

Steve McQueen Money

Lindsay Lohan Money

Jack Sparrow Money

Colin Farrell Money Hope you like it

Laurie Hugh Money Laurie Hugh

Pope Money This version is submitted for the sake of purety ie. the folded note as opposed to a merged whole note.

Phyllis Diller Money Phyllis Diller

TomKat Money

Elvis Money

Ben Stiller Money Ben Stiller

Julia Roberts Money

George Lucas Money On a 2000 Lire note

Matthew Mcconaughey Money

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Heath Ledger is Dead

TMZ has learned that 2006 Academy Award nominee Heath Ledger has died in NY.

He was found dead in his bed in one of his residences in Soho by his housekeeper at 3:35 PM ET today. Law enforcement sources tell TMZ they believe it was not a crime, adding that prescription pills were found near his body.

According to NYPD a masseuse arrived at Ledger’s apartment and was let in by a housekeeper. When Ledger didn’t answer his bedroom door, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened it and found him unconscious. They attempted to wake him; when they couldn’t, they called 911.

We’re told when paramedics responded, the actor was in full cardiac arrest. They attempted to perform CPR on him, but were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead at the scene.The 28-year-old actor has a two year old daughter with former fiancee Michelle Williams — they separated in September, 2007. He plays The Joker in the upcoming Batman film, “The Dark Knight” and is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking role as Ennis in “Brokeback Mountain.”

We’re told Heath had dinner last night with his model girlfriend Gemma Ward.

Story developing…

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Burt Reynolds will beat you up if you touch his toupee

 

 

 

Watch out!  Burt Reynolds is on the attack and has issued a threat to fans who try to steal his toupee, he’ll beat them up.  The 71-year-old admits he slips on a wig to cover up his baldness when he is in public, but he is confident he can tackle any pranksters who try to snatch it from his head.

Reynolds tells Maxim magazine, “I wear wigs once in a while. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It’s all a joke really. I always say, ‘If you can get it off my head before I kick all the air out of your body, let’s do that. One good thing, no matter how old I get, is that people say, ‘He’s crazy; he’ll kick you.’ I have that reputation, so I just stick with it.”

Incase you want to test him out, he will be hitting the red carpet soon when his new animated comedy ‘Delgo’ is released.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you, he’s one fiesty dude!

HA!  Derober.com has just offered up a $200 bounty to whoever snatches Burt Reynold’s wig! Check them out for more details!

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Actor Brad Renfro Found Dead at 25

  A coroner’s investigator says an autopsy could be conducted as early as today on Brad Renfro. The actor was found dead yesterday in his Los Angeles home.

Renfro’s career began promisingly with a childhood role opposite Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in “The Client,” but rapid faded as he struggled with drugs and alcohol.

Coroner’s chief investigator Craig Harvey says the cause of death was not immediately determined. He says Renfro had reportedly been drinking with friends the night before his death.

Renfro recently completed a role in “The Informers,” a film adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel that stars Winona Ryder, Brandon Routh and Billy Bob Thornton.

Renfro was 25 years old.
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The 7 Most Bizarre Celebrity Blogs

#7.

Rosie O’Donnell – “R Blog”

If You Must Read It
You can find it HERE.

Rosie O’Donnell’s “R Blog” serves as a chronicle of her waning sanity. This is evident in the borderline incoherent writing style that she employs when discussing any and everything. For example, have a guess at what she’s talking about in this post …

“as the lines all blur
together
into the brightest yellow

i saw a light
they say
those who went and came back

follow it
if u can”

Ok, time’s up. Did you say “Oprah?” Congratulations! You’re goddamned crazy also!

As an outspoken lefty, her blog is surprisingly light on the Bush bashing. But, when she does decide to copy and paste something someone else said about Bush into one of her posts, the fire and passion displayed when she occasionally adds a sentence of her own at the end is truly inspiring. Such as when she pasted this bit from the Washington Post, then declared to America, “we r lost.”

The rest of the entries provide a disturbing look into the mind of a former comedian (and we can’t stress the “former” part enough) with way too much time on her hands now that her gig on The View has reached its merciful conclusion. Among the various nonsensical posts are several videos of a squirrel Rosie has decided is named Shady who, for your enjoyment, performs several acts of animal cuteness such as eating, staring and walking around.

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?!?!

Keep in mind, Rosie is a married mother of four adopted kids. That she still fits in time to always be looking out the same window, camera at the ready, waiting for a fucking squirrel to show up so she can post a video of it on her blog suggests that the early stages of Jack Nicholson in The Shining-style cabin fever may have already set in. No work and all play makes Rosie a very crazy broad.

Words of Wisdom:

“today
out in the bay
there r no words
really

80 % say conspiracy re jfk
hmmmm

gonna get a ? of the day button
this will b fun

maybe a graph
pie chart
something

dolphins
a nudge
from above
4 me”

#6.

Pat Sajak – “Sajak Says”

If You Must Read It
You can find it HERE.

Pat Sajak has spent the better part of a quarter century watching garden variety dumbasses stumble over fourth grade-level crossword puzzles. In reading through some of the entries on his blog, you get the sense that this daily interaction with the dregs of society has instilled in him a loathing and mistrust of common folks that has him teetering on the brink of a Michael Richards-style breakdown at any moment.

In fact, if the entry titled “The New Big Brother” is any indication, it may be his biggest fear. In a diatribe that wouldn’t have been out of place in the Unabomber Manifesto, Pat goes into way too much detail about how Big Brother, the omnipresent privacy invading government entity from the George Orwell classic 1984, has already arrived. But, and here’s the rub, it’s not a government entity. Nope, it’s YOU! You and your camera phones and your YouTubes spreading vicious untruths about decent, hard working, celebs behind the anonymity of a computer and a screen name!

Even worse, he argues, the government now has to live in fear of the people. Preposterous! In another post titled “The Dark Side of the Internet,” Pat rails against the idea of “online communities,” arguing that if the Internet was really a community, it would have schools and shops and such. Yeah, it would be awesome if you could shop and go to school online. Maybe someday Pat, maybe someday.

Christ, has this guy actually even been on the damn Internet? But it’s not just the way the regular folk yield their new fangled computer boxes that bothers Pat. In a post titled “Artificial Intimacy,” he recounts a tale of a young man who dared to ask if he wore a toupee during a question-and-answer session on the set of Wheel of Fortune. He’s baffled by the fans who seem to believe he, “wouldn’t have a job if they didn’t watch.”

That’s right, Pat. Advertisers paid you millions, not because anyone watched the show, but because they liked writing checks to douchebags.

Words of Wisdom:

“In addition to giving up so much of our personal lives, the new technologies have also forced us to spend endless hours on truly trivial matters. In a world without cell phones, would you really want to paste decorative wallpaper on your old telephones?”

#5.

Lily Allen – MySpace Blog

If You Must Read It
You can find it HERE.

It used to be that no matter how big a rock star got, there was still a curtain around their personal lives. Outrageous stories still made their way out of the rumor mill (tales of, say, fucking a groupie with a mud shark), but that all just added to the sense of mystery.

That was before the Internet. Now, the artists can talk directly to fans eager to know every completely inconsequential detail of their daily lives. And, more than any other star in this world, Lily Allen is more than happy to oblige.

If Lily Allen took an odd-looking shit, you can bet there would be a delightfully misspelled post on her MySpace blog about it an hour later. Nary a negative comment pointed in her direction goes unanswered, no shoes go purchased without her telling the world. When it comes to keeping her fans in the know, Lily Allen does not fuck around.

It would be plenty awesome enough if she left it at that, but Lil’ goes the extra mile and makes sure to include photos when describing the innermost details of her personal life. Take the August 10, 2007 post for example. When most musicians would explain canceled gigs with a simple “sorry, I’m sick, I’ll make it up to you,” she not only tells us how she got sick, what it is that ails her, what cities the doctors who diagnosed her practice in and exactly how long she expects to be out of commission, she also makes sure to include this photo as proof …

She’s an odd duck, but that’s pretty fucking charming; a far cry from the “holy shit, she’s totally going to kill herself” reaction that most people had after reading her May 12, 2007 post titled “fat, ugly and shittier than winehouse.” In a sob story rant that surely sent the self esteem of genuinely obese chicks throttling to new lows, Allen talks of how she used to not care about being a little chubby, but has now “fallen victim to the evil machine” and is researching gastric bypass surgery and liposuction. Naturally, all of this research was being done “in a sea of tears.” Lest anyone think that was an exaggeration, there was a picture, of course …

That picture has since been deleted from the blog, but the post inexplicably remains. If any of the blogs on this list are worth keeping tabs on in the months ahead, this is the one. In December 2007, Lily Allen announced she was pregnant with her first child. That should make for interesting reading from a woman set adrift on a sea of tears by being a few pounds overweight, especially considering she managed to pull it together enough to look like this right before getting knocked up.

Let the over-dramatic nervous breakdowns commence!

Words of Wisdom:

“Everything i write here gets twisted and rewritten buy a bunch of lazy fucks who havent got anything better to write about.”

#4.

Jeff Bridges – “Stuff”

If You Must Read It
You can find it HERE.

There are a couple types of strange in this world. First, there is the oddly endearing kind of strange that may weird you out a little, but you put up with it for one reason or another. Like the old guy in the park that always gives you spot on stock tips who just happens to have Tourette’s syndrome so he also calls you a “fuckhunter” after every sentence. Then, there is the kind of strange that annoys you to the point that you just want it right the fuck out of your sight as soon as possible, like the cashier at the grocery store who thinks he’s really good at impressions and insists on speaking to you strictly in his best Bill Clinton voice at all times.

On his blog, Jeff Bridges wants to be the first kind of strange. He winds up being the second.

On the blog’s homepage, for instance, instead of a series of neatly arranged posts with clearly worded titles, His Dudeness has opted to scatter a bunch of half-assed doodles that people lucky enough to make money as actors or musicians usually refer to as “their artwork.” It’s at this point that nine out of 10 readers probably don’t even realize this is a blog and not just a collection of shitty drawings and hit the back button in search of The Big Lebowski quotes.

Each picture is actually a link to a different blog post, if that’s what you want to call them. You see, what really blows the mind isn’t that Jeff Bridges would draw a picture for each of his posts, it’s that he takes the time to draw a picture even when he’s just posting a link to some inane website or news story. And in most cases, that’s exactly what he’s doing. Jeff Bridges is a man clearly moved beyond words by each and every forwarded email that arrives in his inbox. So much so that he whips up a snappy little doodle to represent it and posts that shit on his blog where it can be enjoyed by fucking nobody but him.

It doesn’t take long before clicking on all of those obnoxious pictures in hopes of finding something that isn’t a damn link to something else just tires you clean the hell out. It’s right around that point that you’ll stumble across this gem …

Yeah, it’s called “some links,” because it’s a link to more links. Naturally, each of those links have their own colorful little drawings to go along with them also. By the time you do find something that is actually of Jeff’s own doing, it’s usually a bunch of pointless goddamned rambling and it looks like this:

Fuck you, Bridges. We’re not doing that.

Words of Wisdom:

None are batshittier than these.

#3.

Roseanne Barr – “Roseanne World”

If You Must Read It
You can find it HERE.

There are several celebrities capable of discussing their political viewpoints in a thoughtful and intelligent manner. Roseanne Barr is not one of those celebrities.

On her “Roseanne World” blog, Roseanne Barr dishes out attacks on George Bush, Dick Cheney and just about anybody else with all of the calm objectivity of Rush Limbaugh on a two-week meth bender. In a post titled “getting old really really sucks,” Roseanne screams about how she’s tired of nobody listening to her just because she is a “loud and offensive old woman!” For the record, we here at Cracked are completely against writing someone off based solely on their age or sex. With that said, if someone you know has ever drawn up a picture like this …

… ignore that person at all costs. That picture is from the post charmingly titled “Huckahitler” and is, well, just what it looks like. Why draw Hitler mustaches on Mike Huckabee and his kids? Because during his time as the governor of Arkansas, he apparently let a convicted sexual predator out of jail early and helped his son escape punishment for killing a dog at summer camp …just like the holocaust.

Of course, even the most hardened political blogger needs a break sometimes. Every once in awhile, Roseanne tones down the political crazy to indulge in some good old basic vanilla crazy. For example, check out this excerpt from the post titled “Christmas Wishes“:

“God is now making Itself seen. It is creation Itself. Creation is an interconnected Being. It is a silver thread shaped like a spiral, and we the biosphere that moves up and down it, like Jacob’s ladder. It’s ‘language’ is RNA. IT IS GREEN. HER BABYLONIAN NAME IS ‘NEMESIS’.”

Word up.

Words of Wisdom:

“Pat Sajak … you traitorous old queen!”

#2.

Fred Durst – “American Alien”

If You Must Read It
You can find it HERE.

Oh man, this fucking guy! How well-liked was Fred Durst by the time this blog was started in 2004? So much so that he made it a whole three posts before hackers got into his Xanga account and took the site offline for over a month. He returned to make one last post and then disappeared never to post again, bringing the sum total of this blog’s output to a whopping four posts.

And, what a hilariously shitty bunch of posts they were. Apparently, the idea behind “American Alien” was to give Durst an outlet to explore his newfound interest in, wait for it … philosophy.

That’s right, the man behind thought-provoking lyrics like “I did it all for the nookie (come on), the nookie (come on), so you can take that cookie and stick it up your (yeah)” was reinventing himself as, literally, “a person who offers views or theories on profound questions in ethics, metaphysics, logic, and other related fields.” So what does it sound like when Fred Durst gets philosophical on that ass? Something like this:

“this assures me all is well regardless of my minds own interpretation of exactly where i am at in this particular genre of love and life. i know, i know, i’ll stop. when things that are living are in fact dying they change colors, but the things that are already dead will always remain the same.”

You know what else will always remain the same? The fact that no matter what Fred Durst is saying, we will always want him to just shut the fuck up. Never before have computer hackers seemed so benevolent.

Words of Wisdom:

“This is so accurate to me. Powerful words assassassain29″

#1.

Courtney Love – MySpace Blog

If You Must Read It:
You can find it HERE.

Unless you’ve been stuck with the task of compiling a list of potentially dangerous blogs for the government, or you really fucking hate yourself, there is no good damn reason you should be reading Courtney Love’s MySpace blog. There are professionals like us whose job it is to sift through this 50,000-word long Internet nightmare comprised exclusively of wholly incoherent rants that are all misspelled to the point of making your average Nigerian email scammer look like Hemingway. It’s dangerous work, and best left to the experts.

There is literally no subject that Courtney Love can’t turn into a short story-length exercise in consonant and vowel misplacement that, if copied and pasted into Microsoft Word with spell check turned on, will cause your computer to make a sound like a boiling tea kettle before bursting into flame.

It’s foolish for us to keep trying to describe it, so we’ll just let Courtney’s blogging skills speak for themselves:

Words of Wisdom:

On her new album:
“when i first stazrted this endaevor almost 4 years ago ( yeah but ONLY 74 DAYS IN THE STUDIO ALL IN) i had these niave barely there little songs this paino sinmset ,marwuis i gave to Visionare because i loved the idea of anything being in Vinyl and becaus ei knew that it would never opthewr wise see the light of day, so yes it goes on and on – bu tthaqtsx because itll cvome out when its ready”

On identity theft:
“i feel as tho my karma is good emnough that i wont get burned sonc eim not the one that did the plethora of oh every whiote collar crime you can think of from morgtage fraud to notary fraud to a MASS id fraud abnd 20 some corps oppened on my name”

On miyo;cooya/need princess ai to tour and record/ mirakami:
“i cant seem to find you! i am sending nobuku th emarch kera ( please include ther new kera in your package when you get this) i have a major very impoirtant task for you-= it involves mirakami and you will be mroe than welcome- it is not mr mriaskami ylou willbe seeing someone else- but its important we speak japamnese to this person- not geijin through geijin.”

On spelling:
“im a good speller technically but its like i juts cant post toptally cohetent long thoughts as my braon goes os fast”

More from Adam Brown can be found at ScenicAnemia.com, the Midwest’s only source for humor, news, rock and awesome.For an article about celebrities doing what they’re actually good at, check out Mike Swaim’s compilation of The 11 Most Unintentionally Poignant Drunk Celebrity Videos or check out real professional blogger Ross Wolinsky’s rundown of the most underreported celebrity stories of the year.

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Nicole Richie gave birth to baby daughter Harlow Winter Kate

Nicole Richie and her rocker boyfriend Joel Madden are the parents of a daughter, the couple’s rep at Handprint Entertainment tells PEOPLE.

Harlow Winter Kate Madden was born Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and weighed 6 lbs. 7 oz.

“The beautiful healthy baby girl left the hospital with her ecstatic parents,” says the rep, who confirmed the birth to PEOPLE exclusively.

Richie, 26, said she was pregnant in July, telling Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America: “I would really want to be someone my child would look up to.”

Later, Richie, who had a famously wild childhood, said the idea of parenthood had made her more mature. “When I found out that I was pregnant, there was just something inside of me that felt a responsibility to mend any issues that I’ve had with my parents in the past, because, listen, I’ve put them through a lot,” she said.

As for Good Charlotte frontman Madden, 28, he told PEOPLE in November he was looking forward to being a dad. “Having a baby is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me, and to us,” he said.

And the new parents plan to teach their little one the value of generosity. In December, the couple started the Richie Madden Children’s Foundation to help the less fortunate. “We want our child to be a part of the community, and to know that there’s a responsibility to help the community,” Madden said at the time.

The couple have yet to set a wedding date, but in September Madden said “marriage is in our future” – he just wasn’t sure when. “Right now our priority is our family and is the baby,” he said. “That’s all we’ve been thinking about. We are in love and are really happy.”read more | digg story