snakes on a blog

Two and a Half Men, this Monday, will be showing a themed "Snakes On a Plane" episode.

Check your local listings.

"Stakes on a plane"

(Re. Lufthansa buying a 19% share in JetBlue.)

http://www.spacecast.com/spaceblog_2592.aspx

If you guys don't hear from me for a couple weeks, don't worry. I'm getting my copy of Portal tomorrow, and so that'll probably fill every waking hour of my workweek, and half the sleeping hours, and I might forget that I even have the internet until I beat the game a few times. ;)

...now it's Zombies on a Plane.



What was to be a simple flight from L.A. to Paris turns deadly when a genetically engineered zombie virus breaks out within the cabin of a fateful 747 jumbo jet in Flight of the Living Dead. Unbeknownst to the passengers and crew, a CIA scientist has stowed away a package on the flight that will endanger the lives of everyone onboard. As the plane makes its way through some heavy storm clouds, the package is jostled and a secret government zombie experiment is unleashed on the plane, infecting everything in its wake. Soon, every living being on the jet is fighting for their lives as the ravenous, gut-munching monsters give them little places to hide aboard this dreaded flight.

Man accused of biting girlfriend's snake


A Northern Ireland man bit his girlfriend's pet snake in half during a fight and remarked that it "tasted lovely," lawyers testified Friday.

Shane Cooke, a 33-year-old bricklayer, was arraigned in Belfast High Court on charges of assaulting his girlfriend, Coleen McGleenon, and fatally torturing her royal python Aug. 4.

McGleenon's lawyers said he headbutted her twice and picked up her pet, put it in his mouth, and threw its severed head at her. "Your snake tasted lovely," he was quoted as saying.

Cooke's lawyer, Adrian Higgins, said his client admitted both offenses and had attacked the snake because he knew his girlfriend loved it. He said Cooke, from the border village of Keady, had been consuming alcoholic drinks for several hours before the attack.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/24/egypt.snakes.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

( it just refuses to die )

Alleged Harness Race Fixing at Saratoga Gaming & Raceway

A grand jury in Saratoga County is looking into allegations of harness race fixing at Saratoga Gaming and Raceway.

According to Monday morning's New York Post, that grand jury is looking specifically at whether horses were doped with pain killing snake venom and an energy boosting drug.

The doping reportedly happened during the summer season.

The jury allegedly convened last week and has begun hearing evidence, including wire-tapped conversations between a dozen targets.

Hey, it's Brian from SnakesonaBlog.com.

I've been working on a new site called FanTent.com focusing on a wider swath of Fanmade Content (Fanmade + Content = FanTent).  However, since I have a ton of Snakes on a Plane material, I figured I'd start out mostly with that.  I've posted an easy to browse collection of every image I posted at Snakes on a Blog over the last year. The comics, video and sound archives are tentatively up as well, but they need a lot of work.

I though you might be interested.   Enjoy.

EDIT: Found another scorpion on a plane story!

Scorpion stings man on plane to Toronto
Mon Jan 8, 2:56 PM ET

TORONTO (Reuters) - A stowaway scorpion that stung a man on board a plane headed to Toronto caused a delay at the airport as investigators combed the aircraft for further arachnids, an airline spokesman said on Monday.

The scorpion apparently crawled out of the man's carry-on knapsack on American Airlines flight 1552 from Miami to Toronto on Sunday morning, said John Hotard, a company spokesman in Fort Worth, Texas.

"We delayed the outbound flight and searched the cabin of the aircraft to see if we could find any more, which we did not," said Hotard.

He said there was no indication the scorpion was brought on the plane intentionally.

A return flight to Miami was delayed by less than an hour after touching down at the Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Hotard said the man told airline officials he was returning to Canada from a camping trip with his brother in Costa Rica, from where the scorpion likely originated.

"This is rare," said Hotard. "I'm not aware of a scorpion stinging a person on any of our flights before."

Still, "we get critters on board from time to time," he said.

After the plane touched down in Toronto, the passenger initially said he was alright but then reported feeling some "numbness," said Hotard, who couldn't provide further details on the man's health.

Fire and emergency crew responded and the man was treated by paramedics before being taken to hospital, the Greater Toronto Airports Authority said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070108/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_scorpion_odd_1

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Scorpion stings Vermont man on airplane
By DAVID GRAM, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 10, 9:41 AM ET

MONTPELIER, Vt. - A scorpion stung David Sullivan on the back of his right leg, just below the knee, then continued up that leg and down the other, he believes, before getting him again in the shin.

It wasn't what he was expecting on a flight from Chicago to Vermont.

Sullivan, a 46-year-old builder from Stowe, was aboard the United Airlines flight on the second leg of his trip home from San Francisco, where he and his wife Helena had been visiting their sons. He awoke from a nap shortly before landing and noticed something strange.

"My right leg felt like it was asleep, but that was isolated to one spot, and it felt like it was being jabbed with a sharp piece of plastic or something."

The second sting came after the plane had landed and the Sullivans were waiting for their bags at the luggage carousel. Sullivan rolled up his cuff to investigate, and the scorpion fell out.

"It felt like a shock, a tingly thing. Someone screamed, 'It's a scorpion,'" Sullivan recalled. Another passenger stepped on the two-inch arachnid, and someone suggested Sullivan seek medical help.

He scooped up the scorpion and headed to the hospital in Burlington. His wife stopped at the United counter and was told the plane they were on had flown from Houston to Chicago. The Sullivans surmised the scorpion boarded in Texas.

"The airlines tell you can't bring water or shampoo on a plane," Helena Sullivan said. But the scorpion did make it aboard, she said.

United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said the incident "is something that we will investigate and look into. We're very sorry for what happened. Our customer safety and security is our No. 1 priority."

Such incidents are not unheard of. An American Airlines flight was delayed for an hour in Toronto on Sunday after a passenger was stung by a scorpion that had made its way on board. Paramedics treated the man when the flight from Miami landed. The delay came when officials searched the aircraft to ensure no other critters had stowed away.

Scorpion stings are rarely fatal, except to babies or older people with health problems, said Dr. Stephen Leffler, director of emergency services at Burlington's Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital.

"We don't see many scorpion bites in Vermont," Leffler said.

For a healthy adult, a scorpion sting can mean numbness or shooting pain extending out from the sting, or flu-like symptoms, which Sullivan said he had the next day.

He said he hadn't seen the recent movie, "Snakes on a Plane," starring Samuel L. Jackson.

"I'm pretty selective about what I see," Sullivan said. "Maybe I have to see it now."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070110/ap_on_re_us/scorpion_on_a_plane

Hey guys, over at SnakesonaBlog.com I've put up my final contest:

Prizes:

1. Ten Snakes on a Plane DVDs (courtesy of New Line's marketing people),


2. One Snakes on a Plane fan prize pack, which includes one original shirt, one additional shirt of your choice, one snakes in the rain umbrella, one snakes in a can, one snakes on a wristband, one different snakes on a wristband and three snakes on a thing tickers (courtesy of the awesome Damnation Inc).

How to win:

Imagine yourself a passenger on Pacific Air Flight 121,
calmly enjoying your flight across the Pacific. Suddenly,
and without warning, there are snakes all around you.
In less than 500 words, describe what happens to you.
You can live, you can die... you can nap through
the whole thing -- it's up to you.

Please don't feel like you need to fill up the entire 500 words, short and sweet is a perfectly valid option here. I will chose the 10 most original, interesting, gorey, funny or otherwise entertaining submissions and each will receive a Snakes on a Plane DVD courtesy of New Line Cinema. The BEST submission will also receive a prize pack from Damnation Inc.

To submit entries, or for some rules, go here. Please don't post entries at LiveJournal, follow that last link, only entries submitted there will be looked at.

Botswana "Snake Rock" May Show Stone Age Religion
By Alister Doyle
Reuters
OSLO (Nov. 30) - Carvings about 70,000 years old on a snake-like rock in a cave in Botswana indicate that Stone Age people developed religious rituals far earlier than previously believed, a researcher said on Thursday.

Ancestors of Botswana's San people apparently ground away at a natural outcrop about 2 meters high and 6 meters long (6 by 20 ft) to heighten its similarity to a python's head and body, said Sheila Coulson, an associate professor at Oslo University.

"We believe this is the earliest archaeological proof of religion," Coulson, a Canadian expert in Stone Age tools, told Reuters of findings made during a trip in mid-2006 to the Tsolido Hills in northwestern Botswana.

The previous oldest archaeological evidence of religious worship is about 40,000 years old from European caves. The Botswana find bolsters evidence that modern humans originated in Africa, along with religion and culture.

Coulson said the python-like rock had 300-400 carved indentations. In flickering firelight, the patterns might have seemed like scales and given the impression of movement to the rock as part of some sacred rite.

Scores of carved stone items, including 115 points and 22 burned red spearheads, were abandoned on the floor of the cave beneath the snake-like rock. Many had been brought more than 200 km (125 miles) across the Kalahari Desert.

"The snake symbol runs through all the mythologies, stories, cultures, languages of southern Africa," Coulson said. The cave, with a floor of 26 square meters (280 sq ft), was not known to archaeologists until the 1990s.

( Read more... )

From the Mail on Sunday

Revealed: How BA bans men sitting next to children they don't know
By MARTIN DELGADO, Mail on Sunday Last updated at 22:00pm on 4th November 2006


British Airways has been accused of treating all men passengers as potential sex offenders after it was revealed it has banned children from sitting next to male strangers - even if their parents are on the same flight.

The bizarre regulation came to light when a nine-year-old girl was moved from her seat next to a 76-year-old passenger and his wife on a flight from Malaga to London.

Instead her mother was told by a stewardess to take the seat next to retired journalist Michael Kemp and his wife Frances, and the girl was moved to the back of the plane.

Mrs Kemp had booked an aisle seat because a bad leg meant she needed extra space. But as the Airbus A320 filled up, she was asked to swap seats with her husband so that she, not he, would be sitting next to the girl.

Mrs Kemp politely declined, explaining to the stewardess that she had asked for an aisle seat to avoid discomfort during the three-hour flight.

But when Mr Kemp offered to move to the window seat so that the girl could sit between him and his wife, the stewardess said it would still breach the airline's child-welfare regulations.

Mr Kemp, from Kensington, West London, said last night: "The little girl's mother put her in the window seat next to me and then went to her own seat further back.

"When everyone was seated, the stewardess asked my wife if she would sit next to the girl. Frances explained why she couldn't move and I thought I could resolve the problem by moving up and letting the girl sit between us.

"To my amazement, the stewardess said BA had a rule that no unaccompanied child under 16 may be seated next to an adult male stranger - even if there's a woman on the other side.

"The discussion went on for several minutes but she refused to back down and said we could not take off until the problem was sorted out. I heard her muttering to a colleague that everyone would have to disembark.

"She didn't seem embarrassed - just rather irritated that it was taking up so much time.

"The whole thing caused a good deal of inconvenience which could have been avoided if BA had spotted the problem when we booked our tickets."

Leading child protection campaigner Michele Elliot, director of the children's charity Kidscape, said she was astonished by the BA rule.

"It is utterly absurd. It brands all men as potential sex offenders," she said.

"What message does it send out to children - that men are not to be trusted? Women also abuse children. This is just totally lacking in common sense."

The aircraft was operated by GB Airways, a BA franchise partner. A spokesman said: "As a responsible airline with a duty of care to our customers, it is our policy to ensure that, where possible, we do not seat unaccompanied minors next to adult males.

"We apologise if Mr Kemp was offended by our request, but we have to balance the needs of the child with those of the adult.

"The policy is there as a precaution in the best interests of the welfare of young children flying alone."

The unintended consequences of this sort of blanket profiling is that men are more reluctant to help children. Case in point, a fellow in England let a 2 year old drown out of fear of being labeled a "pervert" for helping.

For fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 - the TV show that made fun of bad movies - Austin is a great place to live, because there's a swell comedy trio that gives the MST3K treatment to various bad movies... in a theater... live... with dinner served... and beer available. (The theater/restaraunt is the awesome Alamo Drafthouse, who also hosted the Blanks on a Blank competition, and the amazing opening night documented by Harry Knowles... I had the Snakes on a Plate and it was good.)

Anyway, this comedy group was originally called "Mister Sinus Theater." Then they were threatened with a lawsuit and changed their name to "The Sinus Show." I've gone to a couple of the shows and they're pretty hilarious, they mix some improv into a single sketch in the middle of the show.

The point? "The Sinus Show" is giving the MST3K treatment to Snakes on a Plane. Their synopsis of the film:

Beginning this weekend, come see the Sinus boys tackle the most strangely- marketed movie of all time: "Snakes on a Plane", starring Samuel L. Jackson as FBI Agent Keanu Reeves, who finds himself trapped with dozens of C-list actors aboard a plane which must not go below 250 miles per hour or it will crash. Plus there's snakes on it!

You can buy tickets for the event here.

But I thought this would be interesting to everyone... do you think that Snakes on a Plane is bad enough to deserve the MST3K treatment? Then again, they call this "Samuel L. Jackson's best movie ever", so maybe they think it's good enough for the MST3K treatment.