If you’ve been following the murkier corners of the Internet (as I do, habitually), you’ve probably heard of Jeff Peckman. The Denver native claims to have video that ‘proves’ aliens are real. It was supposed to be screened exclusively for the media today, but it has (surprise!) been leaked to the interwebs.

Hmmm. Not exactly the silver bullet Peckman claimed it was. Still, the video does answer the age-old question, “are aliens perverts?” Yes, apparently. Despite having the technology for interplanetary travel and anal probing, they still get off on looking in our windows. Kinky.

UPDATE: Looks like the above video is actually fake. That is, it’s not the actual video presented by Jeff Peckman. Apparently, the real vid still has not leaked…but the Rocky Mountain News liveblogged the whole event.

This is easiest weirdest news story I have seen in a loooong time:

Cat turns into woman in P/Harcourt

Bolaji Ogundele, Port Harcourt - 22.05.2008

WHAT could be described as a fairy tale turned real on Wednesday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, as a cat allegedly turned into a middle-aged woman after being hit by a commercial motorcycle (Okada) on Aba/Port Harcourt Expressway.

Nigerian Tribune learnt that three cats were crossing the busy road when the okada ran over one of them which immediately turned into a woman. This strange occurrence quickly attracted people around who descended on the animals. One of them, it was learnt, was able to escape while the third one was beaten to death, still as a cat though.

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Funai, Brazil’s national Aboriginal foundation, has released photos of a native village deep in the Amazon. The residents have apparently never had contact with ‘modern’ civilization.

Two things: it’s kinda neat that in a world as populated and seemingly inter-connected as ours, there are still folks living much as they did thousands of years ago. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those back-to-the-land luddite types (I loves me some electricity), but I find this strangely reassuring.

Also, I don’t think we should be in a hurry to contact these people. For one thing, we could irreparably harm their society or wipe them out with our dread European diseases. But they also look kinda dangerous. If you look closely, you can tell that they’re actually firing arrows at the helicopter.

It would, however, be interesting to find out how they get themselves so orange.

View all the photos here.

High-five, humanity!

Coooool. This photo of the Phoenix were taken by the HIRISE camera, stashed on the Mars Orbiter. For the full-size pic, go here.

This is like some giant ‘it’s awesome to be human’ moment. Wicked badass awesome. We sent something thousands of miles to another planet, got it to land all by itself, and the damn thing still works. Of course, this makes the continued insouciance of my toaster all the more perplexing. Via io9.

Here’s a classic from today’s Toronto Star:

Boring machine stuck in Vaughan muck

Well, I guess if it’s so boring, nobody will really miss it. Hey-o!

Seriously though, it costs like $5 million, so somebody is totally getting fired.

This entry is cross-posted with blogTO.

Creating a new play isn’t easy, especially when you eschew more mainstream conventions of story and character. Like, say, if you were to take an utterly mundane daily activity and explode it into an extraordinary moment of self discovery.

Such is the challenge of the Independent Aunties/ Theatre Centre co-pro Breakfast. Billed as a ‘production in progress’, it’s not always a complete success as a piece of theatre. But it is an interesting and brave show, well worth checking out for those who like to walk a bit off the beaten theatrical path.

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There’s a mini-controversy brewing about some comments made by Sharon Stone, b-lister extraordinaire whose nether-regions are now familiar to thousands of young males, on the devastating earthquake in China:

“I’ve been concerned about how should we deal with the Olympics, because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine. And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma - when you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

And why not watch the video?

Yes, you heard right. Ms. Stone just chalked a natural disaster that killed around 67,000 people to ‘karma’, which is a new age loser way of saying “they deserved it”. That’s a monstrously stupid thing to say.

But I’m always a bit perplexed when these things become international incidents. I think it has something to do with the bizarro role celebrities play in our society- that they somehow speak for us, and that their opinions on anything, anywhere are somehow valid.

Look, the incidence of stupidity among celebs has to be as high, or even higher, as in the general population. Which means the majority of celebrities are idiots. So, if you’re looking for a meaningful comment on earthquakes or the Iraq War, ask a geologist or a foreign policy scholar. Don’t ask Sharon Stone and Sean Penn. I’m sure many actors have thoughtful things to say about the state of the world. But I refuse to believe that Leonardo DiCaprio’s views on global warming are more significant than my own.

Clearly, Sharon Stone is a moron. But I just don’t understand why any of us care.