Archive for March 2010

Mount Yamantaw

From the Mount Yamantaw wiki article:

Mount Yamantaw (Russian: гора Ямантау) is in the Ural Mountains, Bashkortostan, Russia. The name means bad (useless) mountain in the Bashkir language. It is also known as Mount Yamantau. It stands at 1,640 metres (5,381 ft) and is the highest mountain in the southern Urals. Along with Kosvinsky Mountain (600 km to the north), it is suspected by the United States of being a large secret nuclear facility and/or bunker.[1] The closed military town of Mezhgorye (Russian: Межгорье) is situated nearby. As late as 2003, Yamantaw was not yet fully operational.[1]

Large excavation projects have been observed by U.S. satellite imagery as recently as the late 1990s, during the time of Boris Yeltsin’s pro-Western government after the fall of the Soviet Union.[1] Two garrisons, Beloretsk-15 and Beloretsk-16, were built on top of the facility, and possibly a third, Alkino-2, as well, and became the closed town of Mezhgorye in 1995. They are said to house 30,000 workers each. Repeated U.S. questions have yielded several different responses from the Russian government regarding Mount Yamantaw.[2] They have said it is a mining site, a repository for Russian treasures, a food storage area, and a bunker for leaders in case of nuclear war.[3] Responding to questions regarding Yamantaw in 1996, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated: “The practice does not exist in the Defense Ministry of Russia of informing foreign mass media about facilities, whatever they are, that are under construction in the interests of strengthening the security of Russia.”[3] Large rail lines serve the facility.[3]

Mount Yamantaw is near one of Russia’s last remaining nuclear labs, Chelyabinsk-70, raising speculation that it already houses nuclear weapons. Russian newspapers reported in 1996 that it is a part of the “Dead Hand” nuclear retaliatory command structure.

On a visit to Russia, former U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), who had been following the story since 1995, asked about the mountain. “I went to Moscow and spoke with the deputy interior minister who was in charge of mining,” Weldon said. “I asked him if there was any mining activity there. He just shook his head and said he had never heard of it. So I mentioned the other name the Russians use for it: Mezhgorye. He said he hadn’t heard of that either. Then he sent an aide out to check. Twenty minutes later, the aide came back, visibly shaken. He said they couldn’t say anything about it.”[4]

The Human Centipede

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From The Human Centipede wiki article:

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a 2009 horror film starring Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura and Dieter Laser, directed by Tom Six.[1] It tells the story of a crazed doctor who surgically joins three victims together, mouth to anus, to create a “human centipede“. The film has won several awards at international horror film festivals, but has received mixed reviews from critics.

The doctor explains that he is a world renowned expert at separating conjoined twins, but dreams of creating new beings that share a single digestive system by joining separate individuals via their mouths and anuses. He explains that his previous experiment, a “3-dog”, died. However, he explains how he will attach the three human subjects to each other to create a “human centipede”. Once the operation is complete, the doctor begins training the centipede to perform tasks. Katsuro, as the front part of the centipede, refuses to do as he is told, and the doctor beats him. When Katsuro has to defecate, Lindsay is forced to swallow his excrement and the doctor watches with great delight. However, Heiter eventually becomes irritated after being kept awake by the centipede’s constant screaming and realising that Jenny is dying from blood poisoning.

Directing

When seeking funding for the film, Tom Six did not initially let on that the victims of The Human Centipede would be joined by mouth to anus, fearing that it would put off potential investors, and his backers did not find out the exact details of the film until it had been completed.[8] Additionally, the actors themselves were not presented with a completed script prior to signing onto the film, instead only being given an outline of the film’s storyboard.[13]

Effects

Throughout the production process Tom Six stated his intention to create a film that was “100% medically accurate”,[13] consulting a real-life surgeon during the creation and filming process.[14] Six has claimed that whilst initially reluctant to take part in the film because of professional reputation, after reading the script the surgeon consulted took a very strong interest in the procedure, devising a method that he believed would work in real life. Six claims that by using an IV drip to supplement the diet of the middle and back parts, the centipede would be able to survive for “years”.[7][15]

Tió de Nadal

From the Tió de Nadal wiki article:

The Tió de Nadal (roughly “Christmas Log”), also known as “Tió” (trunk or log, a big piece of cut wood) or “Tronca” (”log”) and popularly called “Caga tió” (pooping or defecating log in English), is a character in Catalan mythology relating to a Christmas tradition widespread in Catalonia.

The form of the tió de Nadal found in many Catalan homes during the holiday season is a hollow log of about thirty centimetres length. Recently, the tió has come to stand up on two or four little stick legs with a broad smiling face painted on the higher of the two ends, enhanced by a little red sock hat (a miniature of the traditional Catalan barretina) and often a three-dimensional nose.

Beginning with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), one gives the tió a little bit to “eat” every night and usually covers him with a little blanket so that he will not be cold at night.

On Christmas day or, depending on the particular household, on Christmas Eve, one puts the tió partly into the fireplace and orders it to “poop” (the fire part of this tradition is no longer as widespread as it once was, since many modern homes do not have a fireplace). To make him “poop”, one beats him with sticks, while singing various songs of Tió de Nadal.

The tió does not drop larger objects, as those are brought by the Three Wise Men. It does leave candies, nuts and torrons. Depending on the part of Catalonia, it may also give out dried figs. When nothing is left to “poop”, it drops a salt herring, a head of garlic, an onion or “urinates”. What comes out of the tió is a communal rather than individual gift, shared by everyone present.

Here is a song of the “caga tió”:

caga tió,
caga torró,
avellanes i mató,
si no cagues bé
et daré un cop de bastó.
caga tió!”
poop log,
poop turrón,
hazelnuts and cottage cheese,
if you don’t poop well,
I’ll hit you with a stick,
poop log!