Parliament! Fight! Parliament! Fight!

Eager to prove that monks aren't the only ones who can stage an ill conceived and ultimately embarassing brawl in a completely inappropriate setting, the Ukranian Parliament erupted into a row earlier this week.

The fight began when members of the Orange coalition tried to block Victor Yanukovich, the leader of the new parliaments majority coalition, from being named prime minister. Rather than using traditional parliamentary techniques like denying a quorum, however, Orange coalition members engaged in heckling and egg throwing before the chambers of Ukraine's upper house turned into a battle royal.

News Rundown: The Giant Sucking Sound, The Return of the King and a Girl's Two Best Friends

I hope you're in the mood for ominous news, because there's plenty to go around these days. But where to start? How about these apples: a distant cluster of galaxies is moving at a regular, measurable speed independent of the expansion of the universe, leading some scientists to suspect that it is subject to the massive gravitational pull of matter beyond the observable universe. The phenomenon has been dubbed 'dark flow,' and, since it seems constant across billions of light years, there's good reason to suspect that it affects everything in the visible universe. Yes, even you. Pragmatically, this means astonishingly little, being that the effect works on a cosmic time scale, so by the time this has any effect on out galaxy, we'll all have been dead for eons.So that's something. But it does mean that the next time you have one of those days where you feel like you're being pulled inexorably towards a swirling, unknowable nether region... well, you might be onto something.

Jarring news like this is bound to send people scrambling for comfort and tradition. Nowhere is this more clear than Russia, which continued it's unnerving nostalgia for tsarist times this week as the nation's Duma assembly hurried to draft legislation, expected to be handily enacted into law tomorrow, that would extend the term of the Russian presidency from four to six years. This would allow Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to serve up to another twelve years as president, a move that is beginning to look like it may come sooner rather than later. Putin's official return to Russia's highest office was always a foregone conclusion, but it was generally accepted that he would allow current president Dmitry Medvedev to keep his seat warm for a full four year term. In the face of tough economic times and stressful relations with neighbors like Georgia and the international community at large, it would seem likely that the plan has changed, and some Kremlin experts expect that Putin may return to the presidency before the end of the year.

On the other hand, science has finally mastered that most sought after of all alchemical wonders... the transmutation of tequila into diamonds. Sure, you need an electron microscope to see the diamonds that are produced, but what do you really expect for a jewel that's been synthetically crafted from $3 a bottle hooch? Though considering the state of the economy at the moment, reversing the process may end up being more cost efficient and practical in not too long.

I'm on Standby

After one last gasp of transmissions from Mars just over a week ago, the latest NASA probe, Phoenix, seems to have finally succumbed to the overwhelming cold and darkness of the approaching martian winter.

The mission, which lasted about two months longer than anyone expected and gathered a wealth of new information on Mars' polar region, was a success by any measure, recording snowfall on Mars as well as analyzing soil and ice samples that suggest a history of liquid water on Mars. But with no sunlight to power its solar batteries, it's more than likely that Phoenix has, at this point, become a permanent part of the equally dead martian landscape, prompting the cessation of operations today by NASA officials, who, like a bad ex, will continue to call regularly, not really expecting the probe to answer.

Gladiators...Ready!

In an apparent attempt to beat back the beast known as Hulu, MGM reached a deal with YouTube today to provide full length films and TV shows from the the MGM archives on the seminal video sharing site.

Getting to watch TV for free on the Internet is more or less yesterday's news at this point, and this would be too, except for one thing. MGM's first addition to YouTube will be an "action programming" channel whose flagship show will be classic episodes of the original run of American Gladiators. So for everyone who's been watching the relaunch and saying "Yeah, this is cool, but all I really want to see is Nitro freak out and absolutely wreck a dude at the end of Breakthrough and Conquer," your time is at hand.

One more note on this happy bit of staged-violence flavored news - I don't know who is responsible for sending out the MGM press releases that all the news organizations are regurgitating that note that two classic movies to be shown on YouTube courtesy of the deal are The Magnificent Seven and Bulletproof Monk. In point of fact, that constitutes one classic movie and one absolute suckfest starring Stifler, which has no business being mentioned in the same sentence as the greatest Western of all time.

Now Challenging Maxim for Bathroom Reading Supremacy

Have you ever found yourself wondering just what the difference between blackwater and graywater? How to modify your ho-hum outhouse into a fabulous fossa alterna? Or are you finally ready to install your own septic system, but don't know where to start?

Look no further than the brand new Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies, a free 158 page tome with more information on the staggering, gag inducing rainbow of diversity that is human waste and it's various methods of disposal than any work of literature since Everyone Poops. From humble holes in the ground to sophisticated sewer systems, the Compendium is the ultimate 'How-To' on sanitation technology, breaking down the pros and cons of every type of toilet, waste transportation and sewage treatment system known to mankind and providing all the knowledge you need to build one from the ground up.

Irresistible lowbrow humor aside, the Compendium, published in part by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council promises to be a valuable resource for engineers and planners throughout the developing world, where waterborne diseases are responsible for as many as one of every ten reported illnesses.

Monk! Fight! Monk! Fight!

This probably isn't the most hilarious thing I've ever seen, but I'm hard pressed to come up with anything that beats it off the top of my head. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem plays host to this bench-clearing brawl between Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks that would do the NHL proud.



The fight started over a standing quarrel between the Greek and Armenian monks, who share an often tense responsibility for the church with four other sects. After a Greek monk apparently attempted to occupy the Edicule, which is purported to hold Christ's tomb, during the Armenian monks' celebration of the Feast of the Cross. What began as a peaceful protest swiftly degenerated into an old fashioned donnybrook - featuring the servants of God. Though to be fair, if you're going to get engaged in fisticuffs over something, who gets to hang out with Jesus is a pretty solid bone of contention.

Will the pope be handing down suspensions and fines to the monks involved? And who's side is God on here? We may never know these answers, but one thing is for certain: as noble as living one's life in devoted and pious service to God is, the dude in the red robe missed his true calling as a cage fighter. Just sayin'.

Snap Judgment: Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the latest film from Kevin Smith, and in some ways, that's all you really need to know about it. In other words, if you like Kevin Smith movies, you'll probably like Zack and Miri, which stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as the quintessential Kevin Smith movie couple - a pair of lifelong friends working dead end jobs (badly) and dutifully avoiding anything resembling an adult responsibility. And naturally, they're also totally in love with each other, even though they would never admit it, and, due to being sort of putzy, convincingly don't seem to know it.

Being a Kevin Smith movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno features a cast of adults in various stages of badly arrested development swearing a lot and making dick and fart jokes. There are awkward confessions of love and long rants in which characters loudly reprimand themselves for cramming a seeming lifetime of poor decisions and fuck-uppery into only their late twenties. Since the film revolves around the titular making of a porno, there are plenty of boob shots sure to get the seal of approval from the adolescents and adolescents-at-heart (yes, myself included) who make up Smith's bread and butter audience. Then there are some more dick and fart jokes, the power gets turned off, and somebody gets their face shat on. And for the most part, it's pretty goddamned hilarious. But just below the veneer of this mostly by the numbers romantic comedy is a genuinely touching love letter to independent filmmaking and the power it has to change lives.

It's this subtle sweetness, along with strong performances all around by a cast including porn icon Traci Lords that keeps Zack and Miri Make a Porno from collapsing into a goofy, scatalogical melange and keeps things rolling along for a mostly enjoyable film. That's not to say it's without problems, as evidenced by the stumbling, stereotypical portrayals of black and gay characters in the film, an especially disappointing turn of events in light of the fact that Smith has proven before, most notably in Chasing Amy, that he's capable of penning smart, convincing gay and black characters. It's just that he chooses not to here, and it's a loss to th film. But mostly, things stay above the board in Zack and Miri and audiences are left with a lowbrow, hilarious mirror image of what Michel Gondry's Be Kind, Rewind might have been - an homage to the beauty of filmmaking, and the capacity of creating to help us find who we are. With poop jokes.