Faking cancer for fun and/or profit. I was reading the Kaycee Nicole thread yesterday and thinking about what sort of person would fake cancer for the hell of it, when I found the above article, then this one and then this one in close succession. What the hell, people?

Jessa Crispin, Bookslut, doesn't appreciate being called a drunken slut, apparently. In a recent column in the Austin Chronicle, Shaun Badgley mentioned that the well-known Bookslut had spent a night on his couch after getting drunk. She's taken offense to that: Last I checked, calling someone a drunken slut, whether or not she is one, was frowned upon. In other news, those who don't know about her website probably should. more inside

Tha Shizzolator.

Visual Poetry. VisualPoetry translates any text into a series of images by looking up the words on Google image search and projecting the most relevant results as a slide show. [Via blog.org.]

A city built around a prison. Guantanamo Bay is in the news again because of the promised release of 140 detainees. What are the conditions like for the remaining prisoners, who are labelled "enemy combatants" because prisoners of war have treatment restrictions under the Geneva Convention. The camp has been subject to a myriad of controversies, including the imprisonment of children fifteen or younger, and the poor treatment given at Camp X-Ray, which was then demolished to make way for Camp Delta.

The Online Information Source for American Military Cooks and Bakers. Pan-seared marinated buffalo stuffed with vidalia onions, shitake mushrooms and black tiger prawns, that's what we eat in the Navy.

Famous monkeys throughout history.

Want to buy Jaws' jaws? A NZ fisherman who expressed "remorse" last week after catching a 7-metre pregnant great white shark is trying to sell the shark's jawbone - but only if the price is right. Unable to get $20,000NZ for the jaw, he's asking $10,000NZ. Any takers? And, by the way, is it reasonable to profit from accidentally killing an endangered species?

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Pirated MP3s "Do not be frightened, young children, I am Lars Ulrich, powerhouse drummer for Metallica, and we are needing your help, Encyclopedia Brown."

Scheduled Server Outage From our hosting company: The data center that our servers are located in will be undergoing a major network upgrade on Friday, 5 December. This will result in a maximum downtime of 4 hours from 6pm. Unfortunately, the timing of the event is outside of our control. We apologise for any inconvenience that may result from this upgrade. That's NZDT, or GMT+13 hours.

What's trendy in Japan, according to Rie. Are you kawaii or are you an oyaji? A site with everything from essays on war to recipes for Japanese curries to the Japanese online dating scene.

Why obscure languages are more fun to learn. Teach yourself Abkhaz, Schw

Forty years ago today Doctor Who was born.

Anonymous confessions. "I just now figured out the Colonel Lingus skit from SNL. It just suddenly made sense to me, but I'd seen it months ago." This and other, mostly (but not all) sex-related confessions. (Via Fark.)

Freeway blogging. One surefire way to make your voice heard: put your blog on the side of the road. Of course, this isn't always popular: in Scotts Valley, CA a pair put an anti-war banner on an overpass bridge after the Sept. 11 attacks. While the US flags and pro-America sentiments were allowed to remain, Caltrans removed Courtney and Brown's banner, claiming that it was more "distracting" than a flag. We can be thankful that Caltrans policies regarding this were overturned, so people can use this unusual but valuable medium.

"Hi, it's me, I've had a terrible car accident and I'm unexpectedly pregnant. Will you give me money?" Despite the fact that I'm a complete stranger, that is.

Guess the gender! Those crazy Europeans and their gender-specific languages! If a native English speaker was confronted with, say, a pair of scissors, what gender would we assign them? See if you're with the majority.

Amazing street art by Kurt Wenner. These paintings are incredibly three-dimensional.

"Body sushi" is "performance art." A Japanese restaurant in Seattle serves sushi on the bodies of naked women. [Via Yahoo.]

Tampon Art: Not as scary as I thought it would be. Possibly NSFW. [Via memepool.]