We were elated to arise this morning and discover that the Stanley Cup finals are headed toward a seventh and deciding game. This isnt because we’re huge hockey fans—in fact, we must confess general ignorance when it comes to the fastest game on ice. Having decided to go whole hog in support of Premiership laggard […]
Tags:barbarians·facial hair·hockey·playoff beards·Roman Empire·sports
We’re dog tired today due to Microkhan Jr.’s recent sleep woes. He woke up screaming at an ungodly hour, obviously having suffered through a terrible nightmare. And as we rocked him back into the Sandman’s embrace, we got to thinking—in our Reagan-era days as a wee bairn, what caused us to suffer similar night terrors? […]
Tags:Jane Badler·sci-fi·TV·V
Big news out of North-East India, where the leader of the infamous Black Widow insurgency is finally in police custody. According to Indian officials, Mihir Barman (whose nom de guerre is Jewel Gorlosa) was picked up in Bangalore while awaiting delivery of a false passport—a document he needed to reach Nepal for romantic reasons: Gorlosa […]
Tags:Assam·Black Widow·crime·India·Jewel Gorlosa·Nepal·plastic surgery
Royal Dutch Shell’s decision to settle with the family of executed activist Ken Saro-Wiwa reminded us of this disturbringly prescient piece from a decade ago. It’s an account of all the dirty dealings that surround Nigeria’s oil wealth, and how oil companies and Big Men manage to keep enriching themselves despite frequent grassroots protests (or […]
The missus isn’t due back from Vega$ ’til late tonight, which means we’re in extreme-parenting mode for one more day. Genuine posts up soon; in the interim, please enjoy the above vid of Burmese construction workers showing off their Eto’o-like skills. We wonder if any of these blokes are currently living the dream in the […]
Tags:Burma·housekeeping·soccer·sports
Microkhan is big enough to admit when we were wrong. And so we must eat a bit of humble pie regarding Gabonese president Omar Bongo, who apparently wasn’t faking his illness. Last month, we opined that the timing of Bongo’s medical leave seemed curiously perfect, given that he was under French investigation. Given Bongo’s horrendously […]
Tags:cars·corruption·France·Gabon·Omar Bongo·Stutz
We’ve previously written about Allied mustard-gas experimentation during World War II, involving live human subjects who were occasionally given no protection whatsoever. But it wasn’t until we read about the Bari disaster that we realized hundreds of Allied troops perished from mustard-gas exposure. This wasn’t due to deliberate release, mind you, but rather a horrific […]
To celebrate the paperback release of Now the Hell Will Start, we’re gonna be hitting the subway system over the coming weeks, doing a trio of readings in our adopted hometown. If any of y’all are in the environs of Gotham, we’d be honored if you’d turn out to support The Cause. Come up and […]
Tags:Brownstone Books·housekeeping·New York City·Now the Hell Will Start·Sunny's Reading Series·The Half King
We always love it when The Economist makes a cutting reference to Americans’ preference for bright shiny teeth. It’s almost as if the magazine takes pride in English teeth, as a sign of lack of vanity, wise allocation of health resources, or what have you. The mag’s latest crack got Microkhan thinking about the reasons […]
Tags:Belarus·Britain·Cuba·dentistry·Dominican Republic·Estonia·Lebanon·medicine·Norway·Slovakia·Soviet Union·Uruguay·World Health Organization
Gonna be a late start today, due to the impossibility of blogging while simultaneously making sure Microkhan Jr. doesn’t throw toys out our fifth-floor window. Back in the game as soon as he decides to nap; ’til then, please enjoy the above video of Ulaan Baatar’s finest buskers. The YouTube poster’s whole channel is actually […]
Right around the time this post goes live, we’ll be handing in Act Three of the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay—yes, the project we’ve been using as an excuse to get away with weak blogging for much of the last month. A momentous occasion, and one we would have toasted with copious pints of […]
Tags:Dirty Dolls Lingerie·Ghostface·hip-hop·housekeeping·music·Now the Hell Will Start·Wu-Tang
When we first established Microkhan HQs a few years back, we were immediately struck by the nabe’s vibrant cigarette bootlegging scene. For a while there, we couldn’t walk 10 feet without having someone pull up alongside us and whisper, “Newport, Newports.” (The pace of solicitations has since decreased a bit, in part due to mounting […]
Although we realize that gluttony is one of the Seven Sins for a very good reason, we can’t help but be fascinated by the sport of competitive eating. We previously marveled at the gustatory prowess of Juris “Doctor Bigtime” Shibayama, a Tennessee orthopedist who can put away T-bones like nobody’s business. Today our adulatory gaze […]
Tags:Badlands Booker·competitive eating·famine·gluttony·hip-hop·Juris Shibayama·music
We’ve been so wrapped up with parenting and screenplaying these last two weeks, we’ve had scant time to ponder the tragic demise of former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. As longtime Microkhan readers know, suicide is one of our great topics of interest. And so we were struck by the means with which Roh chose […]
Tags:neuroscience·Roo Moo-hyun·South Korea·suicide·The New Yorker
We’ve literally got less than 24 hours ’til the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay draft is due, so once again, no time for deep afternoon thoughts. Instead, take a mental load off and enjoy an unfortunately attired Debbie Harry doing “Call Me” with a bunch of super-funky Muppets. The extraordinarily brief, theremin-like synth solo […]
Tags:Debbie Harry·Muppets·music
We could easily spend the rest of the year—and probably a fair chunk of 2010—blogging exclusively about Cold War nuclear testing. But since doing so would certainly lead to a mass exodus of readers, we’ll spare you the endless geek out. For now, content yourself with this short-yet-fascinating report (PDF) on the Nevada Test Site‘s […]
Tags:Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission·atomic testing·Hiroshima·Japan·Nevada·World War II
One of Microkhan’s most faithful correspondents wrote in yesterday regarding our recent Taiwanese landmines post. Our piece quoted from a report on Mozambique’s mine removal program, which suggested that dogs were doing much of the detection. But our reader, who obviously knows Mozambique better than the Average Joe, points out that giant pouched rats are […]
Tags:animals·Black Death·coal mining·landmines·Mozambique·rodents·weapons
These are somewhat dark days for sumo, with a celebrated trainer about to serve six years in prison for the bizarrely violent hazing death of one of his pupils. (It involved beer bottles, metal bats, and rubber hoses.) And the sport’s still reeling from a drug scandal, albeit one that would cause little outrage in […]
Tags:Harumafuji·Mongolia·sports·sumo
Jammin’ on the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay ’til quitting time, so we’re gonna leave you with an invaluable bit of barbarian wisdom. To be perfectly honest, we sorta find ourselves more in agreement with the nature-loving warrior who speaks first, and is promptly shouted down by the master. We’re just not that into […]
Tags:barbarians·movies·Oliver Stone
In our all-too-fleeting free time, we’ve been researching the development of Nigerian Pidgin (primarily so we can better understand the comedic stylings of Basketmouth). This exploration recently led us to another mash-up language: Solomon Islands Pijin, which shares some English influence but not much else with its Nigerian cousin. According to a leading Pijin scholar, […]
Tags:Beach-la-mar·language·Nigeria·pidgin·pijin·Solomon Islands
We were grateful to come across this tale not only due to its sordidness, but also because it answered a long-standing question we’ve had: What’s the going rate for a serving of moonshine nowadays?: A Duplin County couple is facing multiple charges after a shocking discovery at their home daycare business. Authorities confiscated a stash […]
Yesterday we came across an alarming factoid: Only 30 percent of our fellow Americans hold a passport. That strikes us as absurdly low, especially now that all travel to Mexico and Canada will require the precious document. And while one could argue that the expense of international travel is a factor in our exceptionally low […]
We know you’re sick of hearing this excuse, but we’re seriously slammed on the screenplay today; hoping to get a complete rough draft done by end-of-day Friday, so the weekend can be all about Microkhan Jr. So we’re gonna be lazy right this second and just post a great video of yore—the public-access-style promo for […]
Tags:East Flatbush Project·hip-hop·music·prisons·Sergio Leone
We’re a sucker for unintentionally wry headlines, so we were delighted to come across this gem last night: “Demining efforts to make Taiwan’s Kinmen island more tourist-friendly.” Why, yes, that seems quite logical—few tourists are fond of vacationing amidst landmines. Yet once we stopped chortling, we couldn’t help but become engrossed in Taiwan’s project. Kinmen […]
Tags:China·Depression v2.0·dogs·Kinmen·landmines·Mozambique·Taiwan·weapons
Two weeks ago, we posted about a pub kerfuffle in Ireland that appeared to stem from anti-Traveller prejudice (mixed in, perhaps, with some randy behavior by the Travellers themselves). We’ve since kept our eyes peeled for Traveller-related news, seeing as how we only scratched the surface of the community’s history and contemporary situation. The news, […]
Tags:boxing·Britain·crime·sports·Travellers
We’re suffering from a major, extremely ill-timed case of writer’s block today, and have thus been relegated to listening to the above song on repeat in order to reboot our creative powers. We’re actually far more familiar with the Ashe Bhosle version, which sounds a touch more ethereal to our amateur ears. But this’ll do […]
Tags:Ashe Bhosle·Bollywood·music
Those few of you who’ve perused our mission statement know that Microkhan’s a devoted fan of female billiards. Our favorite player has long been Vivian “The Texas Tornado” Villareal, in part because of the classy way she endured a weirdo kidnap drama. But we’ve recently considered switching our allegiance to South Korean upstart Yu Ram […]
Our semi-regular First Contact series continues with a look at the needlessly violent encounter between Captain James Cook and the Maori of New Zealand. Cook himself is our source, as he was a fastidious diarist during his travels around the world. And he recorded the strange events of October 9th, 1769 in great detail. Things […]
Tags:Captain James Cook·First Contact·Maori·maritime·Sydney Parkinson·tattoos
We always figured that the advent of cheap CGI effects would have a deleterious effect on living, breathing stuntmen. But we had no idea things were so rough in the Filipino film industry. The Manila Times sheds some depressing light: Stuntmen are not covered by life or health insurances, but merely hope for the assistance […]
