“Sex Attacks Blamed On Bat Demon”

* This Week In Pervert Suit Comics (you thought we didn’t do that, right?)

* The Warren Ellis Mass Interrogation Thread (goes on and on and on)

* Vanessa Yaremchuk’s Mad Science

* Chip Zdarsky on the best-looking Free Comic Book Day free comic yet, which includes a new SCOTT PILGRIM strip, new Hope Larson and new Darwyn Cooke. (Also, Chip’s prefacing paragraph is uniquely horrible.)

* Something I will never be able to un-see.

• It may hit Earth … but don’t worry, we’ve got a plan
  Scientists believe that a gravity tractor – a spaceship which flies alongside the asteroid – is the best way to neutralise the threat of Apophis.
  (tags: space doooooom)
• Children’s TV ‘is linked to cancer, autism, dementia’
  Listen, son, I had to sit through the fucking TELETUBBIES with my little girl. Tell me something I don’t know.
  (tags: tv specialist+subject+the+bleeding+obvious)
• For sale: prime place for a prophet to play
  UFOland, the playground and pied-a`-terre of the white-robed prophet known as Rael, is on the market — a onetime utopia that appears to have fallen to Earth.
  (tags: cult)

A German paragliding champion has survived being sucked into a storm that pulled her higher than Mount Everest.

Ewa Wisnierska, 35, who lost consciousness as she soared skywards, was covered in ice and battled hailstones the size of oranges. She was pulled 9,940m (32,612 feet) above sea level in the storm near Tamworth, in New South Wales, paragliding officials said.

Championship organiser Godfrey Wenness said it was remarkable that Ms Wisnierska had survived. “There’s no oxygen,” Mr Wenness said. “She could have suffered brain damage but she came to again at a height of 6,900m with ice all over her body and slowly descended herself…It’s like winning Lotto 10 times in a row – the odds of her surviving were that long.”

Ms Wisnierska says she felt like an astronaut returning from the Moon as she landed. “I could see the Earth coming – wow, like Apollo 13 – I can see the Earth,” she said.

She was sure her chance of surviving was “almost zero. I was shaking all the time. The last thing I remember it was dark, I could hear lightning all around me.”

Ms Wisnierska finally made contact with her ground team at 4,000m (13,123 feet)… and finally managed to land – 60km (40 miles) from where she took off.

How did no-one see this coming? HOW DID NO-ONE SEE THE FUTURE IN HIS BEARD?

A Romanian priest has been jailed for 14 years for conducting an exorcism that led to the death of a nun who he believed was possessed by devils.

Irina Cornici, 23, died after being starved and chained to a cross at a secluded convent in the north-east. The ritual in 2005 was led by Daniel Petru Corogeanu, 31, the priest at the Holy Trinity convent in Tanacu village…

Strangest pick-up for the next American tv pilot season so far:

Network: CBS
Genre: Comedy
Title: RICH INNER LIFE OF PENELOPE CLOUD, THE

Studio: ABC Television Studio, CBS Paramount Network Television
Commitment: Cast Contingent Pilot Pick Up
Auspices: Jeff Greenstein (EP, W-Pilot), James Burrows (D-Pilot)

Logline: A comedy series about a woman who is attractive, erudite, imperious, sarcastic, dryly funny and more than a little intimidating. A novelist, critic, and guest lecturer at Berkeley, she’s struggled for fifteen years to deliver the follow-up to her acclaimed first novel, and has blotted out her frustration with a cocktail of antidepressants. She’s also managed to fail in romantic relationships with both men and women: Her editor and ex-lover is now expecting a baby with his new, much younger wife, and as for her ex-girlfriend … well, she discovered she prefers men, so they became best friends instead. She also volunteers as Big Sister to a taciturn Hispanic girl, but becomes so frustrated at their inability to communicate that she tries to return her. Nothing in her life is working — but then, at the urging of her new therapist, she decides to kick the drugs and her emotions reawaken. There’s renewed creativity, along with a doomed pass at a 22-year-old student, bu! t she ends with a creaky sense of optimism about what the new day might bring.

###

* DIARIES AND REVIEWS: Proposed New Section

* New York Comic-Con Check In

* The Ormes Society Launches

* FUCKUP 2008: Meet The Contestants

“To Go Home” – M Ward

“Seven Years” – Autokat

“Triangular Pyramid” – Trans Am

(all mp3s provided for review purposes only and expire in seven days. Contact me if you need them taken off)

(outreach)

Lola 020

Originally uploaded by Sannybot.

(the artist formerly known as Sannybot)

Matt Fraction: “I offered Chu five dollars to sit in it. He refused.”

Charlie Chu: “I am not going to get HepaAIDSflu of the ass for $5.”

(thinkin’ chair)

* Have You Ever Considered Giving Up?

* STUDIO 60 Deathwatch

* McCain Ready To Sell Out Own Mother

* Introducing the FUCKUP 2008 section of The Engine

“Saving indigenous languages from extinction is the only way to preserve traditional knowledge about plants and animals that have yet to be discovered by Western scientists, says a linguist and cultural expert.”

(One of the charities I subscribe to is Survival International.)

Thanks to Jonathan Hickman for this handy bit of focus:

(go out in style)

(cautionflowers)

(IMG_4604)